Recent reviews by The Yo Tornado

A genuinely fantastic JRPG only held back by some poor late game pacing in both gameplay and plot, Clair Obscur is worth all the hype it's currently generating. Musically and stylistically it's in a class all of its own ( as any game based on artistry should be,) and the battle system is incredibly fun to mess around with and lovingly break. Every character has a unique playstyle, and it's encouraged to min/max the parts you most prefer with how the game manages skills and passive buffs.

My only complaint would be that although the writing is A+ for 80% of the game, a late game tonal and plot shift is awkwardly executed, and jarring, and doesn't really meet the heights the rest of the game has set up. Compound that with the goofy amount of optional post game areas utterly dwarfing the actual main quest areas by that point in the game and it genuinely feels like the last arc of the game is an afterthought, and it's felt in how it plays out.

Mind you, that's still an 8/10 portion of a game that's otherwise a 10/10 so it's hard to get too upset about. Clair Obscur is easily the second best RPG I've played in the past few years after BG3, and a grand slam of a first game for a studio. It's an amazing title and a job well done.

Final Fantasy XVI is very fun, very flawed, uneven and not for everyone. It is a thumbs up with caveats, for a game that is both audacious and afraid to truly stand on its own. Every positive (of which, some are huge) carries with it a downside.

+ Being easily the most protagonist-centric FF, if the main character isn't engaging the whole game would easily fall apart. Fortunately, Clive is genuinely one of the best ones in the series. He's a layered, strongly developed lead with a fascinating personal journey through the game's narrative.
- Because the game is so Clive-focused, the rest of the cast generally comes across as very dry. While there are a few exceptions (Cid and Byron my beloveds,) generally speaking the remaining characters aren't very interesting. The biggest disappointment is Jill. I'm a sucker for romance and I was assuming it'd be strong here since they're the sole party for much of the game, but Jill doesn't have much agency or personality for herself beyond being solely devoted to Clive.

+The combat is incredible when it peaks. When Clive starts fully coming online around a fourth of the way through the game, he stands alongside some of the best protagonists in any character action game. Animation, mode and stance cancels abound as you flow through tons of moves limited only by your creativity.
-I say when it peaks because that's not too often. The game is insultingly easy, to the point I had to make a personal rule not to use potions to give it any shred of difficulty.

+Speaking of peaks, the Kaiju-esque Eikon battles are some of the most memorable setpieces I've seen in years. Alongside some of the late-game hunts, they're some of the most fun you'll have if you're into spectacle.
-They are unfortunately undercut by having some of the laziest QTEs I've ever seen. I grew up on Shenmue and Yakuza, I unironically like QTEs when done well, but here they're a ten second pause to hit one button completely ruining the flow of otherwise great scenes.

+The low-ish fantasy setting suits the game well in the first half. The political machinations and class politics are genuinely interesting, and a nice change of pace from standard JRPG fare.
-Only in the first half though, because once the game reveals the big bad who must be defeated with the power of bonds the narrative ceases focusing on any of that and promptly falls off of a cliff. That fun personal journey of Clive's I mentioned earlier pretty much ends around this point as well.
-As disappointing as the writing can get in the main quest, that's nothing compared to how genuinely awful the sidequests are. Utterly generic fetch quests, there's genuinely maybe five out of the dozens in game that didn't feel like a waste of time.

+Aesthetically the game is beautiful. Though the environments are pretty standard RPG fare, your woodlands and deserts and the like, they're all rendered well, and some of the environmental shifts during dungeons and boss fights are gorgeous.
-It only serves to highlight how superficial the world is though. There's zero reason to explore as there's no real loot beyond crafting materials you already have way too much of, and most areas are clearly earmarked for side quests later on and have zero purpose otherwise.

+There is zero reason for Soken to go as hard as he did on the OST. There's a reason it was essentially unanimous as OST of the year, and it would've won in most years.
-There's no negative to this one, the OST is in that category of "while I might not have chosen it personally I can easily see how this could be someone's GOAT."

Ultimately, I really did like Clive as a character and had an absolute blast figuring out how to optimize his insane amount of versatility in combat. If the dev team would have wholly committed to making a straight action game, and ironed out the narrative accordingly, there is a universe where the game is a 10/10. As it stands it's a half-baked RPG with a good protagonist and great combat, one of those deeply flawed 7.5/10 games that you can't help but love anyway, even if it doesn't meet its potential..

Promise Mascot Agency is an enjoyable time, although not quite as good as Kaizen's last game Paradise Killer, and relying pretty heavily on vibes.

The main gameplay loop for the most part revolves exploring around idyllic Kaso-Michi, obtaining collectibles while waiting for your mascots to complete their timed missions in the background.

Michi's truck isn't as fun to explore with as Paradise Killer's parkour was. It's pretty easy to get caught on the environment, although the game is very forgiving with this by having a respawn button in the pause menu. Kaso-Michi has some interesting locales but has a lot of empty space and verticality, to the point where I was using the Respawn system as a pseudo fast-travel which was probably not the intention.

Thankfully, the writing is very solid which assuages a lot of my grievances. Michi and Pinky are engaging protagonists (and going in blind Michi's VA was a wonderful surprise,) although most of the mascots are pretty dry. It's a blessing and a curse that the game plays its narrative so straight, it's one of its most endearing traits but also causes most of its wild designs to come across as pretty muted in conversations.

The mascot battles are amusing the first time you see one but after that they're pretty monotonous, and simple. Between leveling cards and buying passives to mitigate the chances of them occurring it sometimes feels like the core difficulty comes from how much resources you're willing to use to avoid them entirely.

I do wish there was more focus on the world building beyond the intro, because it's an incredible sandbox to work with but it's not really utilized once the agency aspect of the game takes full focus of the narrative. Whereas Paradise Killer layered tidbits of the world and character backstory in their collectibles, most of what you find here are essentially jpgs to make the already easy card game aspect of mascot battles trivial.

Ultimately though the solid writing, character designs, and great OST outweigh any negatives. It's a fun time and a unique experience, and that's all you really want out of a game where you're an excommunicated Yakuza hanging out with a walking, talking giant pinkie.

There's not much I can say that isn't worded better in another review, but 1000xRESIST really is great, much better than the price most probably paid for it in a bundle.

It is just a visual novel with extra steps. Despite how pretentious most of the top reviews may sound, the writing really *is* that good. The visuals are amateurish, although they work extremely well for the cold, clinical vibes of most of the game. 90% of the OST is sparse synth and piano ambience but it works amazingly within context. I am not a smart man and usually find subtext and layers of nuance are for cowards, but even I'm able to pick up on the recurring themes at play here, with how well they're relayed without smacking you in the face.

A level of empathy is required to really appreciate what's on display here. The game will throw seemingly irredeemable acts at you, only to offer a myriad of reasons for why they may have occurred without either condemning or condoning. Generational trauma and its after effects are a major point of contention. How much is one responsible for their own actions when their upbringing seemingly set them up for failure? Everyone has their own answer, but it's rare for a game to ask a question like that without judgment. 1000xRESIST presents a scenario that will have your answer come naturally by the time it's over. There's a confidence in its narrative that I've seen lacking in much bigger budget games, and if this is sunset visitor's first title I can't wait to see where they go next because this is a hell of a table setter.

It's always a little awkward critiquing a retro platformer because the line between legitimate gripes and a skill issue can be pretty thin. Curse of the Moon 2 is a big enough step back from the original that I ended up pretty disappointed by the end, though.

CoTM was a fun little game that was a little too short and easy (under three hours for two playthroughs and the final ending.) It was pretty clearly just a side project and promo piece for Ritual of The Night, but it had a really solid framework for something great.

Both games follow the CV3 template of swapping characters, but the new additions (which are your sole party through the first run) are notably less flexible than the prior game's, filling niche roles that leave you pretty screwed if any of them are unusable at a time when the level design decides you need them. This is mitigated in later runs when you have all seven characters, but in your first playthrough where levels are patently designed around who your newest character is it can feel awkward.

The rooms are generally ok, but the overall difficulty is bafflingly uneven, with a way too easy first half punctuated by a pretty insane difficulty spike. It's particularly noticeable in the platforming you're expected to do with tight jumping over death pits. Good luck in the last few levels if you're missing one of the characters with a float.

There's also just not enough variety for the loop of beating the game three times. There's almost no change in the levels beyond there being a new room or two you can access with a new party member, but it's 80-90% the same experience. I ended up playing through run three mostly on Casual, just because I was trying to bypass as much of the game as possible to get to the thin amount of new content. On the subject of the difficulties, the gap between Casual (which is far too easy) and Veteran (where instant death abounds and you might as well kill everyone if you lose a single party member) is huge. Thankfully you can swap between the two if needed, but it does feel like there's a level in between that's missing.

There's just a lot of weird gameplay decisions, too. For example Zangetsu, who feels rather underpowered before a mid-game power-up in the first run, confusingly loses said power-up for lore reasons in the middle of the second for the rest of the game, going back to his default status. The final boss has moon gravity, where you have to re-learn all of the spacing and pacing you learned from 95% of the game on the fly. There is a really fun shmup section in playthrough three (although apparently opinions on that are mixed,) arguably my highlight of the game, but it's also only about 7 minutes. It's entirely possible these gripes can be summarized as git gud, but I legitimately was not enjoying more than half of my time playing.

It's not all bad, the music is solid (though half of it is unremarkable) and the game's pixel art is the perfect mix of modern techniques without defeating the point of being NES-inspired. But ultimately it's just a slog to play for most of the game, choosing quantity over quality and ending up inferior to the original. If you want a Castlevania homage either play the original or Infernax, which don't carry this game's bloat.

The 3rd gets an undeserved reputation as a skippable epilogue. While it is a wonderful "where are they now" bit and an excuse to hang out with the fantastic Trails cast again, it's still a genuinely fantastic game in its own right, even outclassing the first two games in some respects. The additional layers to the battle system are a marked improvement, and although it's personal taste I think the OST generally grades out over the other games as well.

While it focuses heavily on Kevin Graham, a new protagonist who is nearly as great as the Bright family and has the 3rd double as his own self-contained story arc, there's also a bunch of world-building and hints that play into characters and events that will be appearing in later games.

While it is true there's not much of an overarching major plot (it is as flimsy an excuse to get everyone together again as you'd expect,) the character writing remains stellar and if you enjoyed anything about the first two games, I'd argue it's a necessity to experience The 3rd as well before you move on to Crossbell.

If you're here it's because you played FC. Fortunately, SC is just as good as FC, if not better. Picking up immediately afterward, SC sets about tying as many of FC's threads into a neat bow as possible, and they all hit. Curious if the ending of FC affected the state of Liberl? You bet it did, and you get a frontline view of how much of a threat the big bad actually is as you revisit each town and see the aftermath.

Did that one character's major flaw annoy you in some way, and you hoped it'd be rectified? Of course it will be in SC, silly. It's grander in every way, and doesn't miss in any way.

Well, maybe mod Sophisticated Fight back in. The new OST is otherwise great but the new battle theme is low-key a tragedy in comparison.

The second game from Colorgrave, the studio behind Prodigal, Curse Crackers is a large improvement over what that game offered. While not a classic game, it's a pretty damn good one, and shows hints of a formula that could easily turn into one with another entry.

A 2D platformer with GBC/NGPC inspired spritework, Curse Crackers mixes short but varied levels intermixed with hub worlds littered with NPCs and story-related sub quests. The sprites are colorful, with each character having their own palette and every "world" maintaining a unique aesthetic. What the animations lack in frames they make up for with personality. The platforming feels solid for the most part, you have a lot of control over Belle and she has a good sense of speed. There are some minute issues, such as input errors due to your two (radically different) special jumps being a down and down-forward input respectively, and some weird hitboxes that don't make a ton of sense. Perhaps the most annoying part, especially in the endgame, is the amount of screen space. The 16:9 ratio coupled with the large sprites and top screen bezel results in a lot of leaps of faith or unseen enemy projectiles, which can be grating. Still, the game's checkpoint system is extremely forgiving, making any unfair deaths quickly forgotten.

The world's lore centers around 8 monstrous sisters and a godlike mother who created the world in their image, before ultimately conflicting with one another and bringing about a massive war before they all ultimately vanished from the world. Unlike Prodigal, which threw all the lore inside hidden tomes and expected players to hunt them down, CC mixes the worldbuilding naturally into the gameplay through NPCs and specially designed locations on the map. It's not perfect, but it's a much better way of piecemealing such a dense game world and maintained my interest through the ending. Overall, NPCs are fun and relatively unique, and Belle develops interesting relationships with the majority of them throughout the game.

Musically we get some solid chiptunes, with some strong standouts such as the hub world music and the first platforming world's main track. There were a few that will stick in my memory for a while to come, enough that I bought the OST alongside the game.

My biggest issue with the game is the pacing. Though levels are short, they're *littered* with collectibles. Too many, I would argue, with some having as many as 5, with all the different types being mandatory for some form of post-game content. It's a lot to keep track of, and becomes very tedious by the end. The post-game itself is jarring, too. The game's difficulty spike is wild with how much harder the final two worlds are compared to the three prior, and then the post-game 2x's that initial spike. I probably put 25-30 hours into the game (which I'm not sure why they didn't all register) but at least half of that were fetch quests and pixel hunting for collectibles that wore thin in the last inning stretch.

Curse Crackers gives me the same ultimate feeling Prodigal did, where internally I'm going "Man if the devs just had a bit more time or experience, this could've been an all-timer." Even if it doesn't reach it's potential, it's still a very fun, charming platformer, and I'm glad I spent time with it.

Above all else, this collection is worth it just to finally play AAI2, a criminally overlooked title that legitimately has a case for the best game in the series. That it comes with a pretty solid prequel is just a bonus.

The first AAI is decent, if on the lower end of the series in terms of quality. It feels a little too derivative of the PW trilogy. The music sounds a little too close, Kay is a little too much like Maya (although still likeable) and it doesn't really kick into high gear late-game like the others do. Still, it's novel playing as a prosecutor even if not a ton has changed about the gameplay flow, and the cases focus much more on the overall structure of the law in the series which is a unique twist on things. It's also fun having Edgeworth's skill simply being smarter than everyone else in the room rather than relying on anything supernatural.

AAI2, however, is incredible. Getting to be on both sides of the hero/villain fence has given Edgeworth more character development than anyone else in the series, and all of it pays off in AAI2. The best AA games interweave all of the cases together, and here that's done by utilizing Edgeworth's past, often only touched on in prior entries. The game juxtaposes his present insecurity regarding the role of the prosecutor in AA's oddball legal system with his father's time as a defense attorney, and it's an incredibly interesting conflict. Calling back heavily to his portrayal in earlier titles, by the end of the game Edgeworth becomes the most fully-realized character in the series, with the only comp being Phoenix himself (and PW doesn't really come close imo.)

AAI2 also has the best Pursuit theme in the series don't @ me

tl;dr go play Prodigal first. It's a better, longer game, and then play Veritus if you need more of its gameplay.

I generally hate when people preface their steam reviews with "I wish there was a thumbs in the middle" option, but for the first time I understand where they're coming from, because it's hard to decide where I place Veritus on that scale. It's not a *bad* game, especially not for the price, but it's a decidedly lesser version of a superior title.

Despite not being a huge 2D Zelda fan, I tried Prodigal after strong word of mouth and was ultimately glad I did. It was a flawed but fun experience, an impressive first effort juggling a more lighthearted, idyllic surface level of storytelling with some pretty dense, darker worldbuilding underneath. The novel setting and interesting characters made up for some uneven combat and dungeon design. After their next title Curse Crackers, which bordered on legitimately great, I was excited for Colorgrave's next game. Veritus clearly shows where they've made some strides, but takes some surprising steps back from their prior efforts.

Veritus eschews the tonal mix of the first game to focus almost entirely on the darker dungeon crawling half of the first game, to middling results. The hub town of the first game has been replaced with brief camps in between levels of the sprawling dungeon the game entirely takes place within, and the townsfolk have been supplanted by your adventuring party which, despite some cool designs, are entirely one-dimensional in terms of personality and don't have much substance to them. The lore and overall plot are told almost entirely in books and notes found while exploring, which are generally meandering and don't delve into much beyond vague exposition. By the final act it was borderline incomprehensible to me.

While I beat Prodigal, I did not do the post-game DLC that was added years after its release, which is partially on me but without that context much of the game's plot was extremely confusing. There's seemingly very little connection to what you did in the first game beyond the MCs sharing a similar sprite, especially since none of the previous cast carries over otherwise. It's not helped by the game's treating you as having 100% grasp of the plot without explaining any of its abstract elements, of which there are *many*. Veritus really could've used a more fleshed out introduction or some sort of codex/log to fill in what might've been missed without playing the prior title.

There are some elements that are clearly improved from Prodigal. That game had an uneven soundtrack, and the music here is much better, using more complex melodies and giving each level of the dungeon a very distinct feel. The character designs and spritework are also much more detailed than the prior game, and the game overall is a real joy to look at and hear.

I'm just frankly baffled by the decision to devote the game almost entirely to the first game's driest aspects without reworking some of the mechanics. Combat consists almost entirely of mashing attack through an enemy's hitstun, with some pretty inconsistent hit detection on your attacks and on environmental damage. The puzzles have been noticeably simplified, with a lot of them able to be skipped over entirely with system mechanics. I don't mind that necessarily, but it's a puzzling decision now that the game is almost solely devoted to spelunking.

To be totally fair to the game, I don't think I'm the target audience. Someone who really adores the 2D Zelda titles the game is cribbing from might not mind my grievances quite so much. I was just hoping for more of what I liked from the original game, and Veritus instead doubles down on what I didn't like over what I preferred. I still have faith in Colorgrave and I'm there for whatever they make, but I'm glad their next projects are looking drastically different as I think they've squeezed about as much out of this genre as they can.