Recent reviews by Mazer

This scratches the MMO itch that I had. Rural internet has kept me from playing MMOs for a few years now and this was like slipping into comfy slippers.

Skyrim + Octopath Traveler + Wuxia + Trails in the Sky/Azure combat = Wandering Sword

Controller support is not great. That said, I've done most of my playing with a controller and the game is so excellent that I've pushed through. I've more or less gotten used to everything with the controller aside from inventory management and meridians. The developer is talking about console releases though, so I assume the UI and controller support will get a polishing.

This is a very good game. The story may be sort of opaque if you're not familiar with wuxia/xianxia, it is translated more than localized and some of the word choices are different than I would have made. I also disregarded the main storyline and just sort of went off in my own direction (hence the Skyrim comparison) and the game fully supported that. It also had a surprising amount of reactivity -- characters would recognize the things that I'd don, even when it seemed like I'd done something out of sequence.

Each character feels unique and has a truly ridiculous amount of build options. There are 5 weapon types, each type has 4 weapon specific ability types and 2 shared between all weapons. So at any given time you have 6 ability types (normal, special, mighty, unique, lightness, and cultivation) and each of those ability types has 4 slots for different techniques. So each character has 24 possible options (when maxed out) at any given time. You can have up to 5 people deployed in your party at any time, so 120 options are possible. Does that sound insane? Sorta. It works though and gives it a great hard to master feel. If you don't want to mess with that, it also has an auto battle that almost turns the fighting into an idle game.

Supposedly there are 14 permanent companions at the time I'm writing this. I have no idea who they are -- I have some companions that are from the story, some that I've recruited, some flit in an out of the party. It makes for a dynamic party setup and encourages the use of different characters. The level of character development is probably comparable to Final Fantasy VI for the periphery characters. Everyone has their moment, but they don't usually participate in every scene.

I'm roughly halfway through the main story, I assume, and I've done most of the sidequests that have been available to me up to this point with roughly 40 hours played.

I suspect that this will be a game that I play a few times.

edit: After 78 hours, I finished the game. The amount of reactivity to other quests and characters was really impressive -- I had optional characters that felt like they were absolutely essential to the plot. I also discovered that there are multiple endings -- I came as close to playing exhaustively as I possibly could and still ended up missing stuff that I'll be checking out on my next play through. I like it just as much now, if not more, than I did when I initially wrote the review.

This a return to form for the Tales series and plays like an apology for Zesteria. I'm enjoying it as much as I enjoyed Vesperia, Abyss, Symphonia. Only real complaint is a lack of an overworld map, but that is sadly a thing of the past now.

I hated Harvest Moon. I didn't care for Rune Factory. I'm not a big fan of Animal Crossing.

I do not know why I like this game so much, but I do. It scratches the same itch for me as Civ and various clicking games.