Recent reviews by Remoxe

You could've told me this was a JSRF sequel that was shelved by Sega and I would believe you. The music, style, aesthetic, gameplay, just everything is what a Jet Set fan like myself would love. If you even just like JSR I'd recommend picking it up.

At the moment, I'd recommend not getting the game. I did enjoy the time I spent playing the game but for a game announced in 2019 only to come out 4 years later in early access, im a bit underwhelmed. Theres honestly no reason to even make a camp. Now, this was a problem with the original forest; You could just run from cave to cave if you knew where they were, constantly stocking up on every conceivable resource, and then just turtle shell your way to the bottom of the canyon to beat the game. However this problem is exacerbated by the GPS, now you know where every Point of Interest/Cave/Lab/Bunker is.

(Also just to put this out there I don't care about "Oh bro its early access give it slack". This game was announced at The Game Awards in December 2019 and subsequently delayed twice. For this game to come out 3/4 years later with less content than the original, at double the price, AND in early access is unacceptable in my eyes)

Me and a friend just walked from location to location, getting tons of ammo, MRE's, Meds, just everything. We promptly stumbled into a story cutscene that has NO explanation or reason for happening, you just open a random door in a bunker.
Speaking of story, if you had any interest or intrigue for the original Forest and how it ended then just give up. Timmy is now (maybe???) some guy in green clothing you find randomly in the story cutscene I previously mentioned. Endnight built up playing as Timmy on the original island only to make you some military jackass looking for billionaires. But ♥♥♥♥ it, I doubt enough people care about the story.

If you care about the gameplay, prepare to be slightly dissapointed. As I said before, the game can be beaten and the island can be explored in about 8 hours. Building has been changed for better and worse, many things like campfires or making doorways in logs is manual now. However switching to a second book lets you make many different things, and by many I mean only a few pages of mostly un-needed ♥♥♥♥. For a survival game, theres just no point in making a house not only with how tedious it is but also with just how easily you can set up a tarp anywhere or find random tents to sleep and save. Combat is honestly way more fun than the original Forest and by the end of the game you really feel powerful and you end up really just shotgunning everything to death. Fighting cannibals and chopping limbs off mid fight is really really satisfying, the combat is genuinely amazing.

That said, most problems with this game boil down to the GPS and the lack of many buildings the original game had, it really should have been something you had to find on a dead ally or in a bunker. Being able to run in a straight line anywhere you want hampers the exploration and survival feeling the original game had and this game could have. I don't feel I wasted my money and I WILL be playing this again with friends, but this game in many ways is a downgrade to the original.

its fun when you get to play

horrible

this is one of the worst games ive ever played, no its not in "sO bAd ItS GoOD" territory. Its just horrible, frustrating boss/enemy designs, areas clearly designed to further pad the length of the game, weapons that feel horribly "meh" to use, horrible story/characters. Its the works for a bad game, this game does not feel grounded in resident evils world, you can swap a few words in the script and change out the characters and it would feel the exact same. this doesnt feel like resident evil, it feels like some other company or dev wanted to make their own resident evil and instead made gears of war. looking at these reviews make me feel insane, its like i jumped into a dimension where this game was actually good. i have no clue if most people here are trying to be "contrarian" or say some "hot takes", but this game isnt good so dont waste your money.

Let me start this review off by saying that yes, there will be lots of spoilers. I would attempt to stay away from spoilers but I think I can get my point across better if I don't have to tip-toe around things. Im not good at writing reviews or essay length ♥♥♥♥ like this so its going to be a bit disjointed, bear with me.

Now I will continue this review by saying that Yakuza is my favorite series of all time, hell I have bought each game 2 times over. However Yakuza 5 is the absolute worst yet somehow best game in the series yet I've heard nothing but either blind praise or blind hate. I think the gameplay and characters are great, but the story spreads itself so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thin that characters get introduced and immediately thrown away or killed and many chapters reduce to a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ slog to get through. Let me start by talking about Kiryu, probably my 2nd or 3rd favorite chapter in the game, I mean its Kiryu who doesn't love this dude.

Im gonna talk about some general design issues in this game, the biggest issue (that is present in 3/4 but sometimes worse in this game) is that street encounters are so absolutely ♥♥♥♥ that it sometimes just worsens the experience. Thugs either have a pink text box to indicate where they are or its suddenly not there, sometimes thugs are strewn into crowds and running through said crowds prompts a random attack, this isnt "cool and innovative" its annoying and lengthens the game by making you not be able to avoid encounters. Not to mention it seems the designers knew this as Kiryu can get an item through a substory that pretty much reduces the amount of enemies roaming to nothing. Apart from that each city apart from Sotenbori and Kamurocho is an absolute chore to run through, no shortcuts, bad taxi placements, and are usually just a boring grid. Apart from that the gameplay is probably some of the most fun in the series

Kiryu this time is in Nagasugai, a pretty damn beautiful city that's so absolutely poorly designed navigation wise it gives me an aneurysm. This map is 4 squares slightly slanted with an intersection running across them, not only is navigating it just holding forward but even worse is that taxi's tend to be either all the way across the city or 5 feet from each other (a common problem in this game). Kiryu's story this time however is one of my favorites, he has been separated from Morning Glory Orphanage following Haruka getting picked up by a big shot executive called Mirei Park. We follow Kiryu as he tries to balance his work as a taxi driver while juggling the disappearance of Daigo Dojima and putting up with being spied on by the Tojo Clan. Overall, as I said this is my 2nd or 3rd favorite part of the game. Following this however is one of the most boring sections of the game.

Saejima shows up again, and what do you know, he is in jail again! (yeah great choice, not like it was the worst part of Yakuza 4 or anything). Im going to go on a tangent just to say, WOW what a way to make an interesting morally grey character turn into a man with nearly the same ideals as Kiryu. This isn't to say I hate Saejima, but he really got the short end of the stick in Yakuza 4 and 5. Instead of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios deciding that having a character that's attempting to atone for his crimes while still feeling the weight of the lives he took, they decide to pull a ♥♥♥♥♥ wucky and say he never killed because durr hurr rubber bullets. Now ill make this section quick-ish, Tsukimino sucks and has the same problems as Fukuoka, its a giant grid with like 4 taxis on each cardinal direction that forces you into random battles as theres generally no way to go but forward. The prison section is essentially running back and forth talking to people, playing detective, and having lucid dreams, I genuinely can't tell if I hate this or Yakuza 4's prison section worse. Other than that Saejima's section is boring and forgettable.

Now we come to Haruka's section, probably one of my favorites in the game. You get to bop out to some amazing songs, relax from the usual "where the ♥♥♥♥ was that thug ♥♥♥♥ now im in a random battle", and play a rhythm game as one of the best characters in the series! Haruka's section is inter-spliced with Akiyama, another one of the best characters in the game, the story these 4 chapters are genuinely really good.... except for T-Set and Mirei Park. I swear this section has a hard on for introducing a character thats only mood is "im really mean for no reason" only to turn around a chapter or two later and say "whaaaaaat? they were mean???? no way look they are being super nice to Haruka now! Feel bad that you hated them and like them now!" Mirei's "redemption arc" I can forgive a bit more as theres some subtle hints that she starts to really see herself in Haruka and wants to be a bit of a mother figure for her. T-Set just randomly becomes nice just because. Akiyama is his usual self and I love him for it of course, his section is about figuring out the murder of Mirei Park and making sure Haruka is safe. The only downside with Akiyama is that his trainer Saigo is back, another horrible character.

The last section is Shinada, god they did him dirty, a funny and somewhat interesting character shafted by a horrible moveset and little to no reason for being in the story IMO. I've played this game twice now and I have such a hard time just trying to rationalize him being there. I really just don't have much to say about this part or much about the game past this.

The Finale is honestly where this game shines a lot, its brings back a lot of characters and has some amazing fights.... Except Aizawa, I swear this is the one point of the game people absolutely love yet the only reason I've read is that the setting of the Tojo HQ is cool (even though we have had multiple better sections in Yakuza 0, K1, and K2). To jog your memory since you probably forgot, Aizawa was Morinaga's friend helping to find Daigo until Morinaga "killed" him only for him to show up at the Coliseum and fight Saejima 12 chapters later and then disappear again until the final fight. For ♥♥♥♥♥ sake he says himself he doesn't know why he is there when Kiryu asks, how do you applaud a game with such a stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ "final boss" as this. This is the one point I have the most contempt for, it was so jarring that they brought this character in after he had done literally nothing all game. You are to believe the big bad is the Omi Chairman Kurosawa who played as a Osaka Detective until suddenly Aizawa.

This has gone long enough and I've rambled long enough. Yes, you should play this game. No, you should not expect a story as good and as well paced as literally any other entry in this series. If you liked the game and the ending more than me, I really don't understand but im glad you could take joy in something I had trouble enjoying.

I've always been big into indie games, so many indie games can far surpass triple A studio games by a mile. This game is no exception, despite its short length the game has so much going for it. This game just feels comfy; the characters are funny and well written, the music is absolutely beautiful, and the art style is amazing (you can also turn off the pixelation and its still amazing and somewhat even better than the pixelated style).

I 100%'ed the game in 3-ish hours but honestly it was worth not only my time but my money. This game is drenched in nintendo influence, the 2 most blatant are Breath of the Wild, taking from it the exploration, some of the ways you can get around the map, and the secrets it has strewn about for you to find; The second being Animal Crossing, not only in the characters and their speech, but little things like the fishing and various dig spots you can find.

The game is only 7.99, seriously, just pick it up its amazing.

As much as I love this game, I just cant recommend it until theres a more solid modding community willing to fix the glaring issues that the devs seems to ignore. I played this game mostly splitscreen co-op on my friends copy so I have more than 4 hours of experience.

• Combat - My biggest obstacle and not for the right reasons. Sure, everyone wants to call it Soulsborne but its not Soulsborne type combat for the right reasons. Its hard, yes, but only because of how clunky and unresponsive it is, in reality this is just Risen/Gothic/Elex combat with a Sekiro style posture/defense meter. I've had several times where I would smash an enemy with a Fang Greatsword only for them to act like nothing happened and they proceed to destroy me. That's the big thing, there's no staggering an enemy, you either hit them enough to break what is essentially their posture meter so they fall to the ground for half a second, thats all combat is.
  
  
  Rolling has little to no invincibility frames, Magic is practically useless unless you spend the time and money to train it (mostly running between different areas and cities finding the right trainers), Archery can be used to pretty much cheese every enemy since the AI outside of melee range is brain dead, and if you get about 100 for it, the trainer in Cierzo can give you Shield Charge and Talus Cleaver can be learned for free by Burac, letting you destroy enemies blocks easily, its a mess. I like the challenge, believe me I do, the Souls Series is one of my favorites challenge wise, but thats only because when you lose a fight, 99% of the time it is your fault.
  Unless the devs decide to actually fix the giant glaring problems this game has or unofficial patchs/mods come out to fix them, the combat isnt worth the time investment. Dont expect the devs to do that though, its coming up on 2 months since release and we havent gotten even an inkling of news to suspect we are getting an update. My guess is that they looked at Risen, Gothic, and Elex and thought they could make those games but with survival elements, except those game actually have better combat systems.
  
  
  
• Survival - Survival is just so bland in this game, you can make potion, food, and get clean water so easily is just feels like an annoyance rather than something you need to actively worry about and plan for. The only problem for survival would be money, and thats why I say WOULD be a problem if it wasnt so easy to make. Heres a little trick for you guys, from the start of the game save up about 100 silver, go get the tribal favor by giving a bandage to the man on the beach (go through the cierzo storage underneath the lighthouse), now buy all the thick oil you can from all the merchants, you should get about 13 in total, get more waterskins, fill them with clean water, get an alchemy kit and use the thick oil plus water to make warm potions, you will get 4 potions per 1 thick oil and water, sell them, sleep for about 4 days to restock merchants, do this for about an hour and enjoy being rich.
  
  Survival is just an annoyance, theres no need to worry about it at all, the amount of gaberries you find just while walking around is insane, it has no reason to be this easy other than probably the team not testing their own game for long enough.
  
  
• Story and Quests - The story isnt anything to write home about, its the same as Gothic and Risen where you are a nobody, no one cares about you, blah blah blah, its been done before. The only problem with it would be how many quests you are given give you a time limit that you didnt know existed. Theres 2 quests I can think of that have time limits it doesnt tell you about, and if you dont do anything about them it has major impacts on the game. You can legitimately be barred access to towns, or have your home town destroyed by bandits, also making it inaccessible. Now that would be fine, if not for the fact that the game does not tell you that you have a time limit for these quests, making you think you have as much time as you need to prep.
  
  
• Co-op - This is probably my second most problematic feature next to the combat, co-op feels like it was thrown in last minute. There will be many times where you can do a quest while your partner has no association with the quest and your partner will get all the rewards. I dont know if this is specifically whenever the second player does the quest (which i believe is the reason) but it should not happen. Whats even worse if the fact that the game doesnt give you second pairs of weapons/clothes in things like the starting area or when you get captured by bandits. You will end up having to just sit around while the other player fights, which is even worse when you get imprisoned in a bandit camp as you will only be given one weapon and pair of clothes. Not to mention how the home chests arent split up between characters, and if you dare to play online with someone you wont have your things in the the home chest. Nothing feels designed around co-op, its just another annoyance, which is sad because its extremely fun once both players get geared up.
  
  All in all, the game is fun, but holds back the player with annoyances and just horrible design. Dont get me wrong, there are so many good things about the game, but its hard to get to those things when the game itself seems designed to stop you whenever it can.
  
  If you think you can ignore the problems, definitely get the game, if you cant then wait until a solid modding community forms that are dedicated to fixing the problems.