Recent reviews by NegativeNac

As a long-time fan of the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series, I cannot in good faith recommend Like a Dragon: Ishin!

TL;DR
I believe this is an incredibly rushed, buggy and (in my opinion) boring game from RGG Studio. If you’ve never played a Yakuza game before, go look at Yakuza 0, Yakuza: Like a Dragon or Judgment, all three of these will scratch a similar gameplay/storytelling itch minus the Edo Japan setting, and are not only great starting points but are also just amazing games. They all have their unique pros and between the three there’s something for everyone. For RGG veterans who absolutely must experience this long anticipated game, I'd recommend you either watch it on YouTube or wait for it to get patched so at least the bugs listed are fixed, then buy the game on sale without the comically useless and scummy DLC in the Digital Deluxe Edition. Otherwise I think you're wasting your money.

Review:

I'm going to be as objective as possible here, and I really hope you spare a few minutes to this read review before you consider buying the game in its current state. This review is not only spoiler free, but also a little long.

Firstly, this game is incredibly buggy, not unplayable by any means, but I was fed up with it by the end. Multiple times character models would disappear during cutscenes, the cutscene camera would start flashing intensely or go into walls, obscuring what’s on screen. I once had the water textures bug out and obscure the game in all directions and had a boss’s theme play twice simultaneously with delay. This is just the tip of the iceberg for strange occurrences, and I've even had friends whose games crashed on them, which I’ve never heard of happening with any other game by RGG Studio.

The game also suffers from many frame drops when displaying blood, when some bosses use their "superpowers" for the first time and in action sequences, which made timing QTEs especially difficult since not a single one of these sequences in the game didn’t have a frame drop or freeze. Another thing I took issue with is the new cast changes leading to very off-putting face movements from characters. The main example I point to is Yamazaki Susumu, whose counterpart is Joon-gi Han. They cast his face over a character who had very unique facial movements. However despite the model change his animations were not adjusted, making his facial animations unnatural and uncanny. This applies to all the new characters who were cast over old faces to a lesser extent as well.

Denuvo usage and the scummy DLC practices are very disappointing to see. Many DLC packs are one time purchase, meaning if you lose your save, you must buy the DLC again to use it only one more time. It’s not worth it, and despite buying the Digital Deluxe edition for the Early Access I never once had to use it. Denuvo means you need to play an offline game online, which is questionable at best.

Finally, while this is a more objective point than the rest, I found the game to be incredibly tedious. The enemies in this game feel like they have way too much HP, especially if you opt not to play with the Trooper Cards. RGG Studio went on record saying you didn't need to play with the card "superpowers," to enjoy the game since many community members didn't think they fit into the game, but that could not be further from the truth.

It also felt difficult to maintain any momentum in this game. A lot of the fun of RGG's combat is about trying to experiment and come up with your own style of gameplay. In Lost Judgment, you had style switching juggle combos, in Yakuza K1 you had to try maximise heat gain while also maintaining max speed with well timed moves and style switches. In comparison, Ishin's styles are all very unbalanced. Brawler does way too little damage, Swordsman is slow even with speed upgrades, Gunman is barely interactive at all and while Wild Dancer hits a decent balance it's limiting to only use this style. Heat actions also lose their impact as they do minimal damage and the more you them the less damage they’ll do. It's a mechanic in most of the other games but it’s especially harsh here. All of these factors lead to an overall underwhelming combat system which makes the game difficult to get through.

A lot of these issues are things patches could fix, and I think this game has many positives too. The story is incredible, one of the best by this studio, and that says a lot. Your usual offering of side activities and distractions is here. It’s the blueprint for a solid Yakuza game but held down by horrid performance, weak combat, disgusting DLC practices and a frankly sloppy job from RGG Studio. Their move to Unreal Engine 4 is mostly to blame for poor optimisation and bugs; and the kinks of the original Ishin are still here unimproved because this game is a port from it's original engine to Unreal 4, rather than a ground-up remake like Kiwami 1 and 2.

For now, I recommend taking the advice in the TL;DR. I adore RGG Studio, and this review is harsh because I don’t want this to be the future of their games. I still really want to see the other Japanese-only Yakuza games like Kenzan or Black Panther (Kurohyou) get localised through remakes, ports or otherwise. I believe this studio should absolutely be supported; this just isn’t the quality standard I think warrants your support.

I'm not an avid reviewer or anything (this is my first review) by Valkyria Chronicles is absolutely a hidden gem and hopefully this review helps another person solidify their purchase. Despite originally being a 2008 PS3 this game has aged amazingly well, and stands as one of my favourite strategy RPGs/tactics game as a huge fan of the genre.

The story is very solid throughout and only a few bits were damped down for me. There are many moments I'd love to talk about but without spoiling it there's one in particular which forced me to take a break just to think it was that great. The main cast are all amazing in their own right too with Rosie in particular winning my award for "wow this character was amazing".

The game can be cheesed very easy, but if you don't know how to abuse the various systems this game holds up as both challenging and insanely enjoyable, some of the best combat systems I've played with in a while. There are a few maps that REALLY push you to your limits too (everyone who played knows about the Batomys). Speaking of the Batomys, the game really makes a great use of it's gameplay to show the strength of the Empire and it's generals, who are all amazing characters and challenging to fight.

Of course it has it's shortcomings, again you can really trivialise the difficulty if you know how to but that's more of a failing of strategy RPGs as a genre. If you don't like generic romances the game has one, but it doesn't ruin the experience as a whole, just slows the game a little. Also outside your main cast, all your other troops are very samey, and don't get much screentime at all, only having a few quirks as seen by their skills/backstory documents.

Overall though, Valkyria Chronicles is an amazing game and I highly recommend playing it. It even has a sequel, so if you like this one, Valkyria Chronicles 4 (the only other VC released in the west) is a polished and refined version of VC's same systems.