Recent reviews by starcrescendo

This is an outstanding game with interesting and unique gameplay mechanics that stand up surprisingly well 15 or so years from its release. Made fresh again with enhanced graphics and sound, the game was absolutely beautiful back on the Gamecube and the new HD visuals certainly aren't no Unreal Engine level beauty but a distinctive and beautiful style that mixes 3D renderings, 2D backgrounds, and animations with brilliant lighting effects.

The story is incredible, the graphics are stunning, the characters are memorable, there is some player choice which can dramatically affect the ending of the game with multiple endings, as well as diversions through the story based on an affinity system between the player and the main character. And again some very unique gameplay elements including the Magnus card system, a durability/time decay system, leveling progression, as well as interesting sidequests and puzzles that aren't just "go fetch this" and line up these statues in a certain way. (Although there are some of those, it wouldn't be a JRPG without, right?)

Those of us who are fans of this series are used to it being Bamco's hated step-child since the beginning so it should come as no surprise that they dropped the ball in some respect and in this case, there is NO ENGLISH AUDIO. That's right, the base game has no audio choices. However, there is an easy tutorial here on how to download the Switch game file (which does have english audio) and replace one folder in the game folder and everything works the same with the exception of ONE early cutscene where it gets out of sync. The Japanese voice actors are great but for nostalgia, many of us grew up with the English voices. I promise even the most technically inept can follow the community guide and do it with no problem, but its just another stopping block Bamco puts in place to wall people off from this adventure.

Back in the day, Baten Kaitos was hated on for its card battle mechanic, which at the time was something a lot of games were doing, but absolutely not in the same way. There is a story reason for "Magnus Cards" and the battle system is entirely unique working sort of like a Real Time Battle system with attacking and dodging but played out with cards, luck, and RNG, thrown in. It is NOT a card battler, which is a marketing label that Bamco never cared to disperse, the cards are essentially just a menu for your battle commands.

I highly recommend this game, not just out of nostalgia but as an incredible must-experience game for RPG and JRPG fans. Go into the game expecting that it is a slightly dated story-driven game with an easy-to-pickup but hard-to-master unique combat system and you will be guaranteed a great time.

It was pretty fun. It would have been worth $2. I enjoyed playing the multiplayer.

Update 1: Best summary of this game is its what Dragon Age would be if Ubisoft made it. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but this plays very much like an Ubisoft game in many aspects to me.


Original Review:

I'm only 3 hours in and 2 of those were in character creation. The game as a whole seems like an 8 or 9/10, (I will update with a better score as I play more) but the game as a Dragon Age title is a 2/10.

Gone are the branching storylines and difficult choices from the previous titles -instead is a linear storyline right up front. Pointless is importing history from the past games -you can bring over a character for some reason which isn't revealed, but its pointless since half those character customization options are missing in The Veilguard so your Inquisitor will never look nearly the same. There is only one plot point to choose from, disregarding the entire history of Dragon Age and the entire custom world that we had all built. No longer do characters have personalities where you can talk with them on your adventures, instead they are plot points and cutscene accompaniment, and combat helpers.

Gameplay is fun and fresh but it bares no resemblance to the games of the past other than a few characters and loose concepts. And that's a real shame. It's not an evolution or a revolution of Dragon Age, not even a reboot. It's just they took the name and threw a completely different game into the mix which is really disappointing. Instead of refining on the things that people liked about Dragon Age Origins (story, characters, choices) Dragon Age 2 (combat, graphics) and Inquisition (mission structure and locales) they just trashed it all and slapped the name on this game.

Also have to mention the graphics are great for scenery but the characters look like cartoons, and seeing old characters reimagined in this style is honestly laughably comically bad.

boring, combat was super weird and not fun

This game SUCKS I can't even edit my created superstar through MyRise mode it repeatedly crashes every time I save the character. This is UNACCEPTABLE! Avoid this game at all costs and Steam should delist them.

The game is glitchy, and cumbersome, years ago they had a splendid UI and now they got rid of it along with most of the features. The story mode isnt even good as a flat lame voice actor delivers all the lines and there is no choice or consequence to saying whatever option it gives you. I just went to choosing what I thought would be the least annoying.

The create mode is extremely difficult to navigate. Hundreds of options dumped into useless unorganized categories and nothing is named so you can ever find it again. Only 2 attire slots which is downright embarrassing. Editing entrances is a chore, everytime you make a choice you have to preview the whole thing and if you want to choose it again, you have to navigate from the start of the list each time.

There is some creepy white haired man all over the menus, the music is blasting and turning it down makes it so you then can't hear entrances. WHO DESIGNED THIS GAME? They should be fired, tar, and feathered.

You would hope the gameplay is the saving grace but its not. Wrestling is a chore, the movement is slow and clunky, it constantly feels like you are playing a cutscene rather than having any control over your character. Just look how robotic and contrived it seems to be able to run. What is WRONG with this game when it can't even smoothly run from a standing position it looks super awkard and feels like everyone is playing as Andre the Giant.

I used to love these games, but this is the worst and most embarrassing. Nothing like the old days of No Mercy when these games were fun.

Such an amazing game. UNLIKE the previous game that was released on PC, this one actually runs really well. However I think there is a memory leak as after playing for an extended time 2+ hours, I found the game would unnecessarily slow down for no reason and I had to restart the game. Then it would work fine for a while and get sluggish and laggy again. Otherwise the game is AMAZING, battle is so fun and the story is intriguing and the main characters are cool.

It was kind of fun gameplay but I didn't like it. Too repetitive and very MMO-like. Not in a good way. I had no idea what was going on and characters had this big elaborate sequence that was unexplained.

The character creator demo was great! I loved the possibilities! But I really hope they are adding more features to it. I would love to see representation like in Cyberpunk with tattoos, piercings, maybe even wheelchairies and prosthetics.

But at a bare minimum, there was NO hairstyles close to mine. There was no beard styles close to mine. I couldn't get the eyebrow structure or face structure right. These really affect how you can shape a character. The eyes in particular are the key thing to get a face to look right, and I found the eyes in this game are super rigid and unable to move them with the handles to get the right shape.

If the game is going to leave the face points the same, then they better add a lot more accessories and items so you can make a realistic character based on their signature items if the face isn't right.

Additionally, there were severely lacking options for moles and facial details. I think their focus is probably on game play att his point but I hope they focus on the editor as well.

WAY better than Persona 4 Golden. That was my first entry into the series and I almost HATED Persona because of that game but I took a chance and 5 is leaps and bounds better. Story is interesting, characters make sense for the most part instead of acting erratically, and the gameplay is FUN and you can choose to play on easy or hard mode. You can also control the party members which is another plus.

Overall, LOVING this game, I keep thinking about it when I'm not playing it and anticipating when I can play it again.

WOW embarassing and deceptive and misleading GARBAGE!!!!!!!!!!! It doesnt lock on to enemies and the main guy runs like a snail.