Recent reviews by FrostyJinx

Be advised, you must be a degree of a J-jank enjoyer for this game. It is a labor of love from a pretty small team, and for sure it is flawed in many ways. For me it just came together in the right way. If you're going in expecting Armored Core with anime girls, you'll probably be somewhat disappointed.

What made the game shine for me was that it doesn't shy away from mystery and tickling the player's imagination. The game encourages you to quite freely explore its environments of massive, mostly abandoned megastructures and meeting its odd denizens without a talking head loredumping everything to you or mission briefings herding you to the next objective. It's all about showing not too much and telling even less instead of the more common practice of treating the player like a toddler who must be sat on the booster chair and carefully spoon fed mashed together stale goop. Even with the dated graphics the environment design is generally excellent. You are an ant scurrying around gigantic, ancient structures, trying to piece together from sparse clues what it's all about. Even as I spent quite a bit of time exploring around on my first playthrough there are still unanswered questions I think a second run with somewhat different choices made will help to answer. Overall it took me 33 hours to complete, with pretty generous amount of time spent exploring (and getting lost).

The general combat design is solid although strongly favoring mobility over all else, as even rank and file enemies can put out a lot of damage which makes face tanking scarcely viable. There are no i-frame dodges here so you ain't rolling your way out of this one. I got killed far more often by being careless with normal enemy encounters, than by bosses themselves. Some combat mechanics could use some rethinking, especially the throwables which are not intuitive at all to use and so I very rarely resorted to them aside from the smoke grenade, which is thankfully quite effective against enemies including bosses. The status effect system could have seen more use too, they are rarely a concern at all unless you are particularly bad at dodging. Fights against other frames were definitely the highlights, and I wish there would have been more of those, especially fighting multiple at once.

Performance wise the game launched in a rough shape but after the recent patches it's run smoothly and without crashes. Getting a stable 60fps with 5700x3D and 4070 at 1440p.

Overall it's a flawed gem, but I found it very charming and well worth the money. I will certainly return to it for a NG+, and hope for a sequel.

This is pretty much what I thought FFs would be like in the future back in the FFX days, instead of the George-RR-Martin-at-home/Ubislop multiverse 5-deep-6-u that they've turned out in this cursed timeline. The main story is a compact, well told spectacle that prioritizes all the right things and left me satisfied and happy that I played through it, which is more than I can say of almost anything these days. Is it worth the full price? Debatable, the quality of the main story is outstanding but it _is_ short, and while there is a lot to do postgame, the value depends on how much you end up liking the combat system. On discount I can easily recommend this to anyone.

Main story:
The main story is short, I took about 20 hours going through the scenic route. But it's short because it in a baffling display of sense uncommon to the current industry trends refuses to waste your time. You can finish the story with minimal grinding, you don't waste much time fighting waves of trash mobs, you don't watch 40 minute cutscenes, and every effort has gone to making the bombastic boss battles the star of the show. The story is simple and gets to the point, this is the good old days of adventuring in a colorful world where you begin slaying woodland creatures and end up killing God. You beat up giant monsters and charismatic villains along the way, and win by the power of friendship and trust. Good stuff one knows to appreciate only after slogging through the modern day nihilism and brown and gray bloom that somehow didn't end with the PS3 generation. Knowledge of the gacha game is not required, you'll get up to speed very quickly as to who the Grandcypher's crew are and what they've set out for. Gameplay wise there is a clear effort to keep the player at the helm as much as possible, so cutscenes are short and I counted a grand total of two instances in the story which could be called quick time events. This is a testament to the fact that you _can_ indeed make spectacular and cinematic games while also letting the player to actually play the damn game instead of the video game equivalent of a DVD menu. My advice is to play the story on hard difficulty, as normal is quite easy even for a fossil such as myself unaccustomed to action RPGs.

Postgame and combat gameplay:
The value of the postgame depends on how much you ended up liking the combat and the characters, so they're best addressed together. You get a postgame story to follow by doing quest missions which also unlock higher difficulty levels. There's a bunch varying from fighting mobs to defending an objective to beating up bosses. Your performance is graded depending on how smoothly you pulled the fight off and whether you completed secondary objectives, of which there are three per mission. You can also replay the main story missions in case you missed something, as during the main story you cannot revisit locations once you leave them. There is a decently sized roster and the characters are mostly distinct in their playstyle and gimmicks. A few I found playing too similarly to each other, such as the Captain and Katalina. Some are quite gimmicky requiring forward thinking and setting up, others test your bare knuckled ability to hammer out combos and flailing at the boss like a little kid at a schoolyard bully while trying not to die (optional). There is a lot to experiment with and git gud at, so if that's your thing then postgame will definitely keep you occupied. Even better if you have friends as co-op is an option, but at least for now (at Extreme difficulty) I have been able to solo all the content comfortably. You're encouraged to try different characters and keep a decent roster as most enemies and characters have a specific element, so bringing Fire characters to a volcano monster fight isn't the best idea. Combat is pure action RPG. Characters can run freely around the arena, you've got the block, the dodge with i-frames, basic attack, heavy/special attack that you can form combos out of, a few healing potions and four selectable skills to use (characters have a litany of skills, but you must pick four to use in combat). Most combat is done in a party of four, in most cases you'll get to freely pick whoever you want to control but you cannot switch characters while in combat. AI does a decent enough job as your companions, while you cannot count on the bots to kill bosses for you they are quite survivable, and do a good job keeping monsters busy, clearing trash mobs and using support abilities. Combat system encourages timing and precision, as chaining combos usually greatly increases their damage output the further you can keep them going, and timed blocks and dodges are rewarded with invulnerability, stunning enemies and other bonuses. Bosses aren't marathon sessions, and postgame boss missions usually reward you for wrapping things up in under 10 minutes. The worst struggle I had was 27 minutes, and I took a severely underpowered character to a gigantic boss fight in a fit of extremely poor discretion. A nice touch in combat is how characters interact with each other with the dialogue depending on who you have on the roster, it definitely adds to the vibe of a close knit crew of adventurers fighting together through thick and thin.

Issues:
The most glaring issue with the game is the English localization, which is trash. The main story is thankfully inoffensive enough most of the time, but postgame and Fate Episode side stories have some extremely grating moments. It is funny to think of the days when people made fun of Japanese writing being robotic, yet the Japanese dialogue is to the point while the English script is verbose and quippy in a way that no real person ever talks. It creates some truly schizophrenic moments when the Japanese voice line has concluded but the English script just keeps on rambling like that creepy kid with a Sonic backpack seated behind you mumbling to himself. It is at its worst in the Fate Episodes, where thankfully the text can be hidden but the voice lines are still timed to it, so the characters sometimes sound like they have brain damage and must spend 20 seconds to parse the next sentence together. Some characters also seem to have completely different personality in the English localization which leads me to suspect most localization was done without ever even playing the game but just trying to infer things from concept photos and the raw script. EDIT: Whining about loadout presets removed. You can save 15 different loadouts per character, which should be plenty. I've somehow managed to miss this option all this time, blame it on the whiskey and my advanced age.

Performance:
Ryzen 5700x3d and RTX 4070 run the game at 4k well enough, dropping the frames below 60 pretty much only in the hub cities. Combat and cutscenes run smooth as butter. Much better optimization than what I have come to expect from Japanese titles to be sure.

TLDR: It's a good game and I found it worth every penny. This is not a statement I make lightly. Make of that what you will.

Now if you'll excuse me I'll be fighting Excavallion for the millionth time because I just can't get enough of the music in the second phase.

I thought I hated games like this and the next thing I realize I spent a whole day cobbling together a Viking era hill fort.

Eurojank of the comfy variety.

This game combines most of the things I liked about Fantasy General, Civ and Total War: Warhammer while omitting many of their shortcomings. It may well have the best formula for a fantasy 4X game around. I will be drawing comparisons to TW a lot here, as I mainly picked this game up to have a break from CA's shenanigans and still enjoy tactical battles in a fantasy setting. So here are my impressions. Bear in mind these are at 18 hours mark and subject to change:

Things I like:
- Fairly easy to get into. There are a lot of systems in the game, but it doesn't take long to get up to speed on how things work. Especially if you have some experience on 4X games. Tooltips exist for almost everything and are very informative, which is especially important as the game has a ton of unit abilities and statuses you need to keep track of.
- Combat AI isn't braindead. As someone who has spent years in the TW gulag with CA's breandead ooga booga AI, it is refreshing to find an opponent who doesn't give anything for free and punishes for lazy play. Having to actually employ strategy in battles instead of charging on in (or sitting still with artillery) spamming abilities, is something I very rarely found in single player TW experience.
- Combat itself isn't braindead. You're expected to deploy properly and make full of use of magic and unit abilities. It reminds me more of CPRG combat than TW, as you're relying more on positioning, stacking buffs or debuffs and various spell abilities (such as summons) instead of just raw unit stats themselves. There's nothing like dancing for a few turns with a stronger opponent, looking for an opportunity and setting up for that moment when everything clicks into place and you turn the tables with a few well placed abilities and units which were in the right place at the right time. Technically you could claim the same for TW, but don't be a fool, in the end you're just abusing a lobotomized AI and relying on having higher tier units with higher numbers. Here, unit tiers aren't the final say on how any given unit can perform in your army. A tier 1 spearmannii unit can bring down expensive monsters with the proper execution.
- There's a proper endgame mechanic which rewards finishing a campaign, adding a lot to the replayability value.

Things I didn't like:
- The allied AI on the strategic map seems to be either oblivious or treacherous. They drag you into a war, and then sit their stacks in their cities while you do all the fighting. The only way to direct them at all seems to be setting up bounties, but even then they can just nope out and you can't do anything about it. So at least for my first campaign, it seems alliance is mostly worth for just keeping one guy off my hair while I'm dealing with someone else.
- I get a whiff of an anti-player bias, although with my hours this may be just chance. The world map generated all gold wonders in the map (which I would need two of for magic victory) near the starting positions of the opposing factions and not one anywhere near mine. When fighting one AI while being allied to another, the enemy AI and my ally seem to completely ignore one another and the enemy is piling all in on me. Maybe it's to create a challenge, sure, but it makes the world feel a tad bit more artificial when everything is set up to be a personal speed bump for the player rather than having diplomatically independent factions which can also fight between themselves.
- Involves giving money to Paradox.

It's been a good ride so far, and I very much recommend trying this for any tired old TW veteran looking for something different.

Dorf bros we are _so_ back. If you ever felt dwarfs have been done dirty for so long, this is the pack for you. Ain't no talking about balance with this one, this is pure rage-filled power fantasy, and I'm loving every bit of it. In exchange for all the ridiculously powerful stuff and mechanics that you'll be getting, you'll start IE off in a position where pretty much everyone will be on your ass in no time, so better get your slaying game going. With the new grudge mechanics you'll be encouraged to play very aggressively, so enjoy the mayhem.

Best Gundam game on the market.

Everything in the Community, nothing outside the Community, nothing against the Community.

When the box says community-driven, this time it actually means it. If you intend to accomplish anything in this game by yourself, you can spin 360 degrees right around and moonwalk away as fast as you can. The devs have no respect for any prospective solo activity in EVE and as a result every one of them has by now been reduced to mind-breaking tedium or are financially pointless.

The game is a fascinating experiment in what a zero-trust society looks like. You cannot trust anyone in this game. Yet you cannot accomplish anything on your own. Everything that isn't an NPC in the game is a threat. You do not want to be on the same grid with another player you do not know. The difference between PvE and PvP combat is set up so that ships fit for most PvE activities are almost helpless if attacked by a PvP ship. NPC police will not and cannot protect you, as it is easy to instantly destroy your ship before they can intervene, which makes flying an expensive ship a risk anywhere at any time. Practically all public player contracts are scams. Joining small corps for that comfy nerd barrel fire in the wilderness is all fun and games until larger PvP corps start declaring war on you so they can attack you anywhere and they can do so indefinitely.

If you wish for PvP, do not get too hopeful as the killmail-system implemented in the game in its early years means even the hardened PvP veterans in EVE are extremely loss-averse. Every kill and loss is recorded in great detail. Nobody wants to go on record losing an expensive ship. No corp wants to lose a fleet they will have to replace. Nobody wants to lose their shiny implants. Nobody wants to fight unless they are 120% certain of winning. When you duel someone on a lowsec orbit, you can bet there are five guys aligned at you right outside of the grid waiting for your opponent to start hitting low armor. You'll spend three hours of fruitlessly scanning for targets for your roam fleet to finally get a bead on a singly unsuspecting frigate only for the fleet commander to refuse to warp in his 30 ships armed to the teeth because of the tiny off chance it was a trap. You'll spend hours being a redshirt on a roam fleet called to assemble at 11:30pm your time that warps around aimlessly and whenever finding the enemy roam fleet it runs back to the nearest station, unless the enemy fleet has 1/3rd of the numbers, in which case the opposite will happen, and you'll sit around a station slinging insults on chat for a few hours before everyone gets bored and goes home. Don't get me started on the POS bashes. You'll corp will eventually collapse when someone in the management decided to jump ship and steal everything with him to get on a le hecking epic reddit thread.

The devs have been trying to add more activities in the Empire (NPC-policed) space which is commendable, because not everybody wants to be a redshirt in the personal army of some internet tough guy running a nullsec-alliance. But as the focus is small fleet content, you'll be another little buzzard on the wall watching the e-extroverts having their fun.

Runs pretty nice at 4k on a toaster tho.

If you liked the first game, then this is the same but improved in every way. It has some very welcome improvements to the gameplay without changing the fundamentals. Love vehicles? No longer are you punished for using them. Annoyed by the low mobility of non-scout classes? Now there are options to move them around without wasting all your AP. Wished your non-major squadmates had more personality to them? There are side stories involving each one. And let's not forget smacking those snipers around with a new mortar class.

For those new to the franchise I strongly recommend playing VC1 first because doing so after VC4's overall improvements feels a bit of a drag. However story-wise it is not necessary to having played the first game before VC4 (and we can all safely ignore the PSP titles in between), as VC4 takes place roughly around the same time as the events of the first game in a different part of the theater.

Overall I've always had a soft spot for Valkyria Chronicles because it is truly trying to do something novel and VC4 feels like where the franchise really hits its stride. Highly recommended and hoping for a sequel (or just a remake of VC1 with 4's mechanics) however unlikely that may be.

Always liked bashing zombie heads with the cricket bat over everything else in L4D2? This is a whole game focused around that very premise. You can be a coward elf shooting things and dying to one honest axe hit or a knucklehead knight hacking through rats only to be defeated by a fat guy with teleport and attack range longer than your length-compensating sword. Or you could be a gigachad dwarf ranger who has an invulnerability button and ♥♥♥♥♥ out free bombs like an assembly line while deleting all specials off the map and then getting 25% boost after running out of ammo to bash in skulls real hard. The choice is yours, the important thing is there is plenty to choose from so you can be that kruting badass wizard who gets downed four times per run or a tank who runs off while the rest of the team is getting whacked by a Rat Ogre and then logs off when everyone is downed.

Pros:
> Brutal mano a mano. Melee looks and feels exactly the way it should. Not for the feeble elgi.
> Five characters each of whom has four unique classes. Best try them all because good luck getting a quick play slot as Saltzpyre or Kruber during peak hours and then having to pick level 1 wizard with starter equipment like it was your 30th birthday, nerd.
> Decently quick progression means you won't be grinding one character forever to get to the good stuff. Levels are shared across all classes of that character so no grinding them separately.
> Crafting system is simple and allows for making weapons and equip you need easily without having to wait for drops.
> Maps look gorgeous, whenever you have a nanosecond or two to pay attention to the environments.
> Good variety of enemies.
"Man I wish I was fighting Skaven again" t. dodging Chaos spawn tentacle only to get one-shot by a Mauler
"Man I wish I was fighting Chaos again" t. got nabbed by a hookrat hidden in the midst of skavenslaves
"Man I wish I was fighting Beastmen again" t. absolutely no one ever

Cons:
> Steep learning curve. Takes a while to learn how to not die, and then some to learn how to also kill things while not dying. And then there's the whole world of equipment builds.
> Some of the most useful equipment is locked behind DLC, eg. Kruber's arguably the best no-brainer do-it-all weapon (Spear & Shield). Instead Kruber starts with weapons that are fairly difficult for new players to use effectively (Longsword, Halberd).
> Quick play bonus means you essentially get penalized for playing specific maps instead of joining a random session.
> Takes gigantic amounts of hard drive space because optimization in 2022AD is for wazzoks.
> No gobbos to bash. Yet.
> Still allergic to the very existence of a crafting system.

This game has a lot of good things about it and is a pleasure to play overall. For someone like me who has limited time to dedicate to games these days, it's pretty easy to pick up for 4X and I genuinely enjoyed exploring the mysteries of its universe and building an empire.

That being said after three consecutive attempts at a campaign I have come to the conclusion that it is no longer worth the time invested to play this game. The reason being that the game can without much warning at all throw an insurmountable enemy at you and effectively end your campaign. The further you manage to get in building your empire the more frustrating it is to lose all progress due to something beyond your control setting you up against unreasonable odds.

On the bright side it rekindled my interest in space 4X which has been dormant since the days of Imperium Galactica and Space Empires. I will probably seek out something new in the genre to try out, but as for this game I am unlikely to return to it.