Recent reviews by Piscian

This review is not about Chrono Trigger as a game, but this particular port.

Steam version is surprisingly rough.
Laggy input
horizontal interpolation lag
Hideous UI lacking customization features
The only two options for video are pixelated and what looks like less intense supereagle smoothing.

Without taking it apart is looks like they just made some minor adjustments to a DS rom. I feel like if you're going to bother doing a PC port in 2022 you'd at least include a few different UI and filter options. Even scanlines would have helped. As it is there's no benefit to playing this over a rom. I honestly would just not pay for this. This is seems like really minimal effort.

Really hate doing this, but I requested a refund. It feels like another attempt to tack the gameloop of a single player game onto a typical grindy mmo. All the mystery and aesthetics of Dark Souls has been replaced with a bright and shiny mmo. Gather trash and craft stuff, grind levels. If you get overwhelmed just run away theres no consequences. The art looks significantly worse than any previous dark souls game. It feels...generic. Additionally the PC port stutters constantly and does not support widescreen, so theres no real reason to play this is on PC. You might as well get the PS5/Xbox version if you have that option.

This is my first premptive review I think, but I'm around 50-60 hours into the game and I think that alone deserves a comment. I'm addicted to this game. I even enjoy dorking around not doing anything of significant value. This is despite hating grindy games which is saying something.

The "primary" gameplay of this game consists of turn-based strategy in which you guide 4 massive mechs through various mission types like an assasination, escort, base capturing etc in a campaign to return some princess to power, but in a way thats maybe 10% of what you actually spend time doing. Once you get through what is essentially a couple of really basic tutorial campaign missions you take over a mercenary company and are given free reign to explore the galaxy and manage the company in whatever way you choose, including name, color schema and logos(Mine is INTENSE CHINESE BUSINESSMEN, you have to scream it.). You manage a monthly budget, buy and customize mechs of all sorts and sizes. Down to the positioning of weapondry, armor and gear which again vast assortment and you can find rare parts through exploration. You also have career and experience path options for your hired mech pilots including special abilities.

All of this is extremely important because the 50+ planets you do your mech murdering on have all kinds of environments some harshly cold and some insanely hot.

I would not recommend this to someone who just wants a straight forward campaign based experience. This game is deep and the learning curve is rough. After the first couple softball missions you can lose a whole mission and the game doing something as simple as facing your mechs inefficiently. This is the game for someone who wants everything - intense combat, micro management, strategy boardering on chess level difficulty. Theres also PVP but I havent even gotten around to that. Theres really not a wrong way to play this game. I've spent the majority of my time exploring and taking on contract missions for all the different space empires. I'm only maybe 5 missions into the actual story. YOU DECIDE YOUR ON LEVEL OF INVOLVEMENT!

I do have one minor complaint. The game tries to smooth your ride by labeling both campaign and contract missions which a 1-10 difficult but its woefully inconsistent. Ive breezed through lv4 diffcult missions and gotten destroyed by lv2. Thankfully the game keeps constant saves. You never lose more than 5-20 minutes of gameplay if you screwed up a mission. It would just be nice for the difficulty ratings to be more accurate and not full on guesswork.

Highly recommend this lifesink and I've never felt more rewarded for kickstarting a project.

I'm sure theres a youtube video around, look for one where some poor guy spends have 5 minutes hammering on some ridiculous 70 ton mech monster with ballistics, rockets and lasers and then finally lands the killing blow, a kick to the chest, explosions everywhere. Do that once in game and you wont be able to put this down.

Solid platformer with a strong lead. It had some enjoyable mild exploration and RPG upgrading elements but neither really stood out. I wouldn't go as far as to say they felt tacked on, but looking back on it I would have preferred more exploration and more ..tomb raiding. This is closer to cinematic games like Uncharted or Last of us than something like Stalker where exploration is paramount. This is not a bad thing just be warned this game is pretty straight forward. I was actually suprised at how quickly I beat it. You'll have to ignore the time stamp, I left the game on. All in all it probably took 12-20 hours to finish the game. I also didn't need any online assistance with the puzzles despite that being one of my weaknesses, so warning number two - easy puzzles.

Aside from those warnings the only thing that I really had a problem with was the characters. It can really be a detriment to a game when the people you're saving are insufferable and stupid. Lara Croft however makes up for the supporting cast by being somebody you actually want to spend time with and has room for character growth.

circling back to the top, fun game would seriously consider the sequel in the next sale.

This is one of those games that needs a middle ground. I enjoyed the idea and I wouldn't fault anyone for lauding it, but I was more bored and irriated than intrigued playing it. The game states it only takes about an hour to play. I suspect if I didn't know that going in I would have unistalled it 5-10 minutes. There's more aimless wandering than story and the puzzle solving is click and wander until something unlocks. It's also one of those "open to interpretation" games. Do with that what you may.

I'm not recommending this game, but only because I'm not the target audience. There's a demographic that's into these sort of "Art as a game" budget indie entrees. If you're one of those types feel free to ignore me and pick this up.

This game improves over FarCry 3 with a more interesting premise, improved graphics and vastly more to do. Too much honestly. I remember going in determined to complete 3 sub-mission lines and by the end of the game Id only completed about 75% percent of the collecting and what not. I had hoped that there was some value in finishing the side stuff but after looking online I found out there wasn't it was purely achievement awards. I really hate that. I like a good sandbox game, but I wish they wouldn't put collectable junk in there with no real payoff. I also died quite a bit for no particular reason. I'd spawn and get run over by a rhino or god help me a Yak once. One time the area was clear I walked up to a radio tower and people came out of no where and started shooting me, Then a eagle grabbed me. While the eagle was attacking me a honey badger jumped on my chest and killed me. This is hilarious the first time. The 15th not so much.
Overall I still enjoyed it immensely I would just recommend not doing anything thats not needed for the main quest or the secondary story.
*If you're an above average FPS player definitely play on hard. Being a long time CS player I felt like I was in God mode through most of it.

Interesting game. The story is neat and worth a playthrough. On the downsides, the controls felt intentionally awkward, at times your controls will glitch and youll have to mash buttons to stop looking at the ceiling. Being as it's pertinient to the story I let it slide. It's also incredibly short. I'm fairly confident INSIDE was longer. That said it does already have a sequel out which will hopefully fill out the story more. It's worth the $10 and a rewarding hour or two of your time. I found some of the puzzles a little unintuitive. For instance you'll try and use two things together and it says "OMG dont thats bad!" instead of telling you they need to be combined differently than the obvious. In their defense they basically tell you at the beginning to scan and click on everything, but it does get tedious. I'm definitely not a pro-puzzle solver, but I noticed a couple other people said that portion good have been a little more generous. Will definitely pick up the sequel on the next sale.

I should note I only played about 5 minutes before I just got kinda irritated with the whole thing. In the trailer you'd get the impression they worked hard on the graphics but once you're in game it's extremely unpolished. Some things look great and some objects like the animation for the main character look terrible. She even moves really weirdly. This makes for a jarring experience. Right as the game started I was immediately confused. They made this odd choice of dumping you in a big open area and you just kinda wander around until you figure out where to go. When you get in, the main character starts sorta shouting trying to get in the house and the voice acting was so mismatched with the Character that it really put me off. To put it succinctly the character seems to be of middle-age, but it sounds like a teenager. I actually went and looked for foreign language options hoping maybe it was just a poor translation choice but it's not. I ran into some sort of interaction glitch getting into the house and got too annoyed to bother with it. I would describe this game as too ambitious. I think we're supposed to clap for that, but I'm a jerk sorry. I'll wait for another patch or two. Maybe play it drunk. mmm that might make it worse honestly. Don't do that.

Pretty disappointed to say I feel I would not recommend this game. It's a walking sim essentially which is fine if the story is worth getting absorbed in, but it wasn't. It slams you with all these emotions in the first 5 minutes or so and then it sort of incoherently rambles from one plot to another until it ends with no real payoff.
You ever play through a game and get to an ending so disappointing that you start googling alternate endings wondering if you somehow got the bad ending? I did that right after beating this. There's also no mapping of your choices like in telltale games or OXENFREE to give you some sense of what the game was trying to do. It feels like the game was supposed to revolve around your radio relationship with the primary NPC. Maybe go on some kind of emotional journey, but you don't. I seemed to me the writers ran out of gas trying to do that and instead threw in a bunch of distracting and hohum subplots. Also the exploration felt incomplete. I felt like I probably had the option to explore, but there were too many invisible walls that kept me from bothering.
I wish steam had options other that a simple YAY or NAY, because I don't feel ripped off and the game was competently done. It's not something I feel was worth recommending. If you aren't the type that gives a lot of slack when it comes to walking sims I can't recommend this one.

Above average solid entry in the GTA style sandbox game genre. I actually like this quite a bit more than GTA. Instead of reveling in scummery you're a good guy which is a nice change of pace. I liked being able to flipflop between running sting operations on drug dealers and then go and then Steal cars to make money. Beautiful game with great music. I was pretty enraptured through all of it. The unique asian atmosphere and charaxters was a huge bonus.