Recent reviews by Hfar

Gathering Sky is less what I would call a game and more of interactive musical experience. If that sounds a bit ephemeral and artsy, well that's kind of what Gathering Sky is.

As it says on the box, Gathering Sky is about you gathering together a flock of birds with the goal of traveling to some unknown location for some unknown reason. Your control over the game simply comes down to you holding down a mouse button and directing the flock where you want to go. Overall the feeling is rather reminiscent of a browser game. However, most of the game itself doesn't really have a way for you to fail since even if you run head first into a rock, most of the flock will continue to follow you. So don't expect much in the way of a challenge.

The real backbone of the game however is the music. Throughout the entirety of the game, a rather pleasant symphony plays with each movement representing a different chapter. Each movement, and by extension each chapter, represents a different stage in the flock's life. In some ways the entire game feels kind of like a low budget indie game version of Fantasia.

One last thing to mention before I wrap up is that this game is very short. It only took me about 45 minutes to complete this game and that was with me restarting one level.

Would I recommend this game? Ehhh, I suppose. But I wouldn't really push hard for everybody to get it. While a fun idea on paper, the entire experience itself didn't really wow me. Part of the problem was just as I was really starting to get interested in what was happening was when the game ended. But overall I found it to be inoffensive and the music and art design are both gorgeous so I can't bring myself to seriously ding it either. So I'd say get it while it's on sale and play it when you have an hour to kill. Maybe play it for a short, super chill stream or something. Or at the very least buy the excellent sound track, as that is by far the best part.

So if the idea of video games as high art appeals to you and you enjoy symphony style music, then I'd at very least give it a try. If chill browser level point and click games or super short games don't appeal to then I'd say move on to a different game.

Is this game "good?" Ehhhh. Is this game fun? Hell yes!

The majority of this game is taken up by hack n' slash style gameplay, but to it's credit at least the controls are a bit more substantial than "press X for light attack, press A for heavy attack." Attacks in this game are at least somewhat directional are dependent on which direction you move your mouse right before attacking. This however can be difficult to master and is especially frustrating in the heat of battle. However one great thing about this game is that it does allow for a variety of different combat styles depending on which weapon you use and they're all viable.

Ostensibly the single player has a strategy component to it but it's rather simple as strategy goes. Much of it boils down to "just have better dudes than the other guy" and you'll pretty much win. You spend most of the time roaming around an overworld map collecting dudes and looking for similar or smaller bands of enemy dudes to pick a fight with so your guys can get experience. Then once you do pick a fight with someone or someone picks a fight with you, it goes down to a real battle map where you and your guys duke it out with the enemies in a large scale battle that can get very confusing very quickly. You can try being strategic but in the end it almost always devolves into a big ol' melee whether you want it to or not. If you ever played Giants: Citizen Kabuto, think the marine combat but with swords and shields.

In general any tactics boil down to this: cavalry is dominates fighting in the field, infantry are good for assaulting walled settlements, and archers are good for defending walled settlements. And really that's all you need to know.

The sound effects in this game are laughable in the literal sense that they will make you laugh. Battle cries and death screams are so over the top that you'll be removed from any sense of information that was beginning to form, but you'll still have fun at the silliness of it. I recommend you turn down the volume when you're first playing though. Twenty five dudes all going "AAAAAAARGH!" in you ear at the same time might be a bit much at first.

There is multiplayer but frankly at this point the only people who are still playing are people who have been playing this game for years, so you'll get put through the meat grinder pretty fast. If you do want to try multiplayer, I'd recommend going for a team based match first. Free for all or dueling is just going to get you slaughtered by people who know every single exploit.

So yeah, for an arcadey hack n' slash strategy game, it's pretty fun and has a certain charm to it. If you're fine with a story-lite wack 'em up game with diverse personal combat options, then I'd get this game on a sale. If you're not really into hard to master combat controls and enemies that will one shot kill you if you're not careful, then there are other games to try.

P.S. Never go for any quest that involves cattle. They're always more trouble than they're worth.

Did you ever play Spore? Did you like tribal stage of that game? Well, Dawn of Man is, for all intents and purposes, the tribal stage of Spore stretched out into a full length game. It is a strategy civilization building game but a very rudimentary one.

Most of the challenge revolves around finding ways to make certain your tribe is clothed and fed to survive the winter, so most of the strategy in the game revolves around finding food. There is a little variety between the different "ages" (paleolithic, neolithic, copper, bronze, iron) that spices things up, but after you've played through each age you've pretty much gone through everything the game has to offer.

I'm giving it a thumbs up because overall I found it to an inoffensive and mildly fun game that was fairly cheap, but I wish I could give this game a neutral rating. It's just kind of "Eh." Not really bad but not really anything to write home about either.

Out of all the Total War games I've played, this is the one I've had the most fun with.

Every faction has a unique playstyle which gives this game extrodinary replayability, both in who you play and whom you wind up fighting. The music is fantastic and vary's from faction to faction and region to region, which makes the whole world come alive and feel organic. And every part of the overworld map has been been turned into a unique battle map, meaning there are litterally hundreds of different battle maps you can fight on. A tall mountain range, a dense forest, a open plain, or behind the walls of your city, choosing your battlefield is very much important in this game.

The game of course is not flawless. Increasing the difficulty of the game mostly just means that the AI is more agressive and will pick a fight with you more often. On top of that, when storming a city or a castle, the AI will rarely rely on a strategy beyond "amass or entire army to one side of the city and try to pour through" which can be stupid easy to counter when you know what you're doing. On top of that, naval combat litterally does not exist beyond auto-resolve. However in all fairness, with how massive the map selection and unit choice for land is in this game, it can be forgiven for skimping on this aspect.

Overall though I feel this is by far one of, if not THE best Total War games out there, although I know it won't be for everyone. The graphics are thirteen years old as of this writing plus the lack of naval combat and the highly predictable siege battles will be turn offs for some people. But the breathtaking amount of different troops to play with, the meticulous eye for historical detail, and near infinite replayabilty makes it more than worth it.

So in short, if you like immersive historical strategy games with a wide range of possible play styles for you to choose from, I'd say give this game a try. If old games with old graphics and no story (other than what you create) plus hyper agressive AI turns you off, then I'd give this game a pass.

The best way I can describe this game in a sentence is that its a science-fiction interactive novel with themes of LGBT themes woven throughout its story. It seeks to build a world on the cusp of great change where you the player have a great role to play in that change. Such a game lives or dies on how engaged the player is. And I honestly spent most of the game feeling extremely bored.

To cover some of works first, the game does have some good messages to tell. The way LGBT themes are woven into the story do offer a unique touch that feels geniune in a way you don't often see in other video games. On top of that the sprite art for this game is extrodinarily pretty and you can tell someone had fun making it. And most of the characters are pretty memorable for one reason or another.

The problem is that while the characters are interesting, almost every single one of them is a absolute dump of exposition. In fact most of the game can be described as a series of exposition dumps, which at times absolutely kills the pacing of the story. A game like this lives and dies on the flow of its story and here that flow is often stopped while you read three pages while some character tells you their essay about their life philosophy.

Much of this exposition dumping is clearly to try and build the world of the game, and when you sit back and look at the big picture it is an interesting world. Robots on the cusp of sapience, bigotry switching from sexuality to geneticly modified humans, killer battle androids stalking the ruins of North Korea, they're all fascinating ideas on paper. But when they're shared with the player in the form of an endless stream of info dumps, it comes across as clunky and a hurdle to slog through in order to get back to the actual story rather than an interesting bit of world building. It makes the story feel inorganic and klunky.

Ultimately I feel like this game's writing could very much have used two or three more editting passes to trim and tighten the dialogue. And the creators of this game clearly have put a lot of passion into this story. But the problem sometimes with passion projects is that it can be difficult to make the necissary cuts to bring your story to its full potential.

I say play at least the first half of the prologue where you meet your robot companion. If you like them and don't mind the writing in that section, you'll probably like the rest of the game. If you don't like them and the writing isn't your cup of tea, I'm sorry but it doesn't really get any better. Also, if you're a fan of dective noir stories, I'm sorry but you're probably going to be able to predict how this story ends and who's the main bad guy by the end of the first chapter.

The time it'll take you to play through once clocks in at about 10-12 hours. If you're interested in a sci-fi story about sentient robots that deals extensively with themes of human rights and is LGBT friendly, then this might be your game. If you can't stand clunky writing and Metal Gear Solid levels of exposition dumping, I'd give this game a pass.

Nearly every session I played of Tokyo Dark made me feel stressed, paranoid, and creeped out, sometimes all at the same time. And I loved every minute of it.

To clarify, this game is fantastic at making the player feel what the main character is feeling. The developers have clearly put in a great deal of effort to craft an immersive gameplay experience as you follow the main character through a story that the bastard offspring of a noir dective story and a japanese supernatural thriller. The music is creepy, the visuals are disturbing, and the story is honestly one of the best crafted portrayals of a character dealing with psychosis I have seen in a video game.

The overall game will probably only take you about four hours to play. If for any reason you have issues with themes of suicide, forced sex, and violent murder, I'd give this game a pass. If you are a fan of noir, Japanese supernaturalism, or psycological thrillers then I would deffinately recommend trying this game.

Yes, this game is actually pretty fun and charming. To say more would go into spoilers, but if you're interested then check it out. If anything it's a pretty cheap game and honestly this will unlikely be like anything you've ever played before.

This game is amazing. VA-11 Hall-A has some of the strongest character writing I have ever seen in a video game and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

The game is placed in the dystopian future in mega-metropolis Glitch City. You play as Jill, a bartender serving at the tihitualar VA-11 Hall-A bar. Throughout the game you serve a number of clientele, each with their own backstory. As the bartender you get to hear small slices of their lives and get to know them as individuals. And the strength of VA-11 Hall-A is the portrayal of these characters.

Some will feel like people you know and you'll find yourself identifying with them. Some you will come across as really sympathetic and make you want to give them a hug after all they've been through. Some will make you want to punt them through a wall because they get on your nerves. All of them have their hopes and hardships, and they all come to VA-11 Hall-A for reasons as varied as the characters themselves.

The protagonist herself is no exception to this. Jill is far from a silent, faceless protagonist and has her own motivations, hopes, and fears that by far make her one of the most identifiable characters in the entire game. She has her flaws but she deals with them in her own way and responds and changes to the events around her in the way an actual person would.

VA-11 Hall-A also makes full use of its genre to build a absolutely fascinating and complex world. The world of VA-11 Hall-A is oozing with personality, with events that are currently ongoing clearly affecting both Jill and the characters she interacts with. The world outside the doors of VA-11 Hall-A is clearly a living, breathing place and a great deal of thought on the developers part went into building the world. Easter eggs are rife in this game and it's nearly impossible to count the number of subtle homages to science fiction both past and present are woven into this game.

Gameplay wise there is not much to the game beyond the mixing of drinks for clientele. A customer asks for something, you look up the ingredients in your book on how to make, and then mix it. Easy for the most part, no? However, sometimes a customer doesn't know what they want, or they're being deliberately vague, or you know in your heart of hearts that one of your regulars always drinks sweet drinks so why they ordering a sour drink, ect. Then it's up to your best judgement what's the proper drink to serve them. Also, throughout the game there are a number of bills you have to pay that can lead to some bad things, so you have to strategize how to serve your drinks in a way that gets you the most money.

And oh my god is the music amazing in this game. Much of the music you can play on the jukebox while you're working was clearly inspired by the 80s and adds an extra layer of that old school cyberpunk vibe to your gaming experience.

Ultimately though this is a visual novel with some gameplay elements to it. If you couldn't care less about story or are more interested in dynamic gameplay over story writing, then VA-11 Hall-A probably won't do it for you. However if you're a person who either loves 80s cyberpunk, enjoys strong character storylines, and interesting writing then I would absolutely recommend that you buy this game.

This game is a beautiful piece of visual art and a prime example about how to tell a story without words. The visuals of this game are beautiful and game's assets are used throughout the story in ways that show creativity and thought towards conveying a story through art.

However, the game is not without it's downsides. The overwealming majority of Bird Story is told as essentially one large cutscene, with occasional moments where you take control of the protagonist. The overwealming majority of these times you do take over is walking and there's really no input beyond hold down a directional key.

But that can be forgiven if the story is good. And the story certainly does have its moments, with the interaction with the protagonist and the titular bird being genuinely heartwarming. However the game does drag in places, and it feels like it could have used another pass of fine tuning to fix the pacing and trim some of the fat off the story. While short at about an hour and half, it could have been third again shorter and been a much stronger story.

Overall, A Bird Story is not ground breaking or my cup of tea, but it's harmless fun and a prime example of how to tell a story with a game in a way that everyone of any nationality can understand. Well worth getting and at least trying, if anything to support work of this kind.

Every visual novel is like a book, either it's a good read or it's a boring read. This visual novel starts slow but becomes an extordinarly good read.

Planetarian revolves around the three themes of war, trust, and innocence from start to finish. It starts off feeling kind of hokey, but the story is self aware of that because the main protagonist intialy feels much the same way about the situation he finds himself in.

In summary the main protagonist stumbles upon an abandoned planetarium in a war torn ruin. What he finds there is a robot girl, a greeter for the planetarium, who appears to be blissfuly unaware that it has been thirty years since the world was destroyed in nuclear war. Her ignorance is exasperating yet her earnestness is oddly endearing and the main protagonist finds himself slowly warming up to her. And chances are you will too.

This visual novel can be a slow read at times, the spacing between letters is atrocious, and the whole story is dripping with setimentality. And yet if you can get past that you will find that this is a read that will draw you in with some of the best writing I have ever seen in a short story. The entire read will only take you about 2-3 hours, so I recommend reading it on a free afternoon or a chapter every now and again when you need a break from a hard day.