Recent reviews by RED MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGER

I find the game somewhat meh; since there's already so many positive reviews, I decided to give it a negative one instead.

The other reviews have covered the positive aspects beautifully; the world looks aesthetically other-worldly. Everything just looks incredibly weird in a positive way, etc.

However, the negatives make the game unpleasant to play:
1. The storytelling was not my cup of tea. The character you are controlling is thrown into a situation where you have killed your "Father-Mother" (whoever.. or whatever that is), and you are on the run. But an hour into the game and I still don't have any idea why the main character killed the "Father-Mother", what they even are, who the character is related to, who the main character is as a person etc, nor do I know much (if any at all) about the world except that he hung out with some insane people in some random swamp/forest. It is an incredibly weird approach to tell a story; usually the player shares the perspective of the main character he is following, and the player learns more about the story together with the main character. But in this case the player is just thrown into the game with very little context and you have to hit the road with fists swinging and guns blazing at targets you don't even know why you have to fight, all the while the main character seemingly knows everything but just doesn't want to share anything; it is hard to put your shoes into the main character when the main character is trying their best to hide their backstory from you!
2. Combat feels very clunky. Power attacks are hard to connect because they take a long time to wind-up, but you have to be right next to your target to land your power attack, which does not align with what is being displayed on the GUI; it feels like the hit should've connected, but the game didn't register it because the developers set the hitbox too close to the player. You also cannot run while reloading, nor can you cancel your reloading animation. The game tells you that you can punch and kick while holding your gun, but that's a little hard to do if you're stuck in a long reload animation! And on top of that, the weapons on the ground are sometimes really hard to spot; if you threw them away by accident, good luck trying to pick them up. The whole "lock-on" mechanism feels clunky as well, either because the camera feels janky, or because you're now zoomed into a target and it's hard to get a peripheral vision on your surroundings, so you sometimes strafe into random environmental objects. You also don't have a way to shove enemies out of the way, so if you somehow end up in a corner, you can get stunlocked.

tl;dr: not a big fan

I played this game with my Steam offline, so I've sunk much more time into this game despite what my gameplay stats suggest.

I found the game surprisingly addictive. Each class has their pros and cons; at first glance, the minor differences in each class seem to mean little, until you actually try the class out and realize that it actually makes a surprising difference in how the game is played. Compounded with the randomness of your circumstances with each run and the game continues to provide a (reasonably) fresh experience over an extended period of time.

There is a surprising amount of customisability afforded to the player; you can retrieve items from your vault (that you have accumulated over past runs) and allocate perks to your character to improve them in small but impactful ways.

The (important / hireable) characters you encounter don't get more than a handful of scenes to flesh out their characters, but they do inject life into the game.

I think the best part of the game is its music. Each region / big boss comes with its own piece, and even after hours of gameplay and listening to the same songs over and over, I still find them pleasant to listen to.

The story is not particularly deep (and upon further inspection is actually kind of stupid) but I still enjoyed how the plot subverted expectations in ways I did not think possible. You are lead to believe that the big boss of the game is the demon lord (who, to be fair, literally chases you to the ends of the earth to kill you). However, this is not the case; as you play the game (or browse the internet), you would find out that the demon lord is not actually the hardest / final boss you can fight.

Personally I found the game quite enjoyable, and more than worth its price.

A simple game with a surprising amount of depth and replayability. I had dropped the game a few years ago as I did find it initially boring, but somehow upon revisiting it I found it more palatable. Perhaps at the time of playing I was pining for a more casual / cute game.

There are various ways to make your monsters stronger, and various ways to position them to deal with various enemies. Some enemies are also susceptible to "juking" whereby you use the unit's apartment door as a means to dodge projectiles. I found the difficulty curve reasonably lax on my first run, but attempting to do both no-evict and no-death run simultaneously on my second was sufficiently challenging. Each game mechanic you learn rewards you for applying it (e.g. positioning, breeding, forming families etc), and I found that somewhat satisfying.

Its replayability comes from the units that you can pick; each "race" has their strengths, and I was pleasantly surprised to experience some differences in gameplay in order to unlock the 4th tier of each race.

To be fair I don't envision this game to be particularly outstanding (or memorable) in any way, but still a fun and cute time killer if you have it.

7/10. It's kinda rare for me to enjoy a game but still find it mediocre, but this is it.

The bad
- Too much on the screen to dodge attacks: your equipment may fire projectiles, and more often than not, they fire a lot of big projectiles that look just like your enemies', and they sometimes even cover the enemy's projectile. This makes it very hard to dodge anything because sometimes you either can't even see what's going on or you don't know if that projectile belongs to you or the enemy.
- Story is convoluted, dialogue is cringe: I looked at all the reviews dumping on the story and thought to myself "eh it's anime it can't be that bad.". It is that bad lol. I tried to appreciate the story through my multiple playthroughs but frankly speaking, it's worse than wattpad fanfic. I don't want to talk about specifics because there's just too much to critique. There's way too many plot holes and unexplained things going on. The delivery is cringe, confusing, incomplete. The story is incoherent and inconsistent and the same applies to the characters in general. To be brutally honest, the story adds literally negative value. If you just gave me the game with like an extremely simple story like "okay guys, aliens are bad, let's kill them" I'd have enjoyed it much more. The game ending is literally a feels-bad ending with you dying as you have died several times across the game because you are clones of a sick girl, which is how the game justifies the rogue-like gameplay concept, but there are many plot-hole problems with that. Like that's it. You beat the final boss and you gotta let your "Master" inject some anti-alien thing into the boss because the final boss fused with your friend but turns out your master is a mastermind and it's a bomb with a 2min timer which somehow manages to explode and it kills you and your friend and presumably the final boss or something I don't even know lmao. Then 10 years down the road everyone pays their respects to all of your dead clones. Like I'm not making this up lol the story is much more incoherent than how I'm describing it right now. The story should not rely on sequels that probably will never come to make sense. .

The ugly
- The crafting system was just a gachapon to me lol. It's a lot easier to unlock stronger weapons by fusion / exploration rather than actually participating in the crafting system. Even though the strongest weapons are craftable-only, there wasn't anything hard enough in the game to warrant that. It's only until after I've finished the game a few times did I start looking into the crafting system to try and clear up the stuff I missed.
- The upgrades you can get for your character and metal unit is kinda unexciting; the only exciting upgrades were healing on stage complete and the extra weapon slot. The big ticket upgrades come with big weaknesses that just make the upgrade unappealing. For example, your last melee hit in the combo chain deals 100% more damage but your cooldowns are 25% longer. That doesn't even matter because your biggest source of damage/invulnerability is ultimate charge & ultimate usage and that 25% is going to hurt that. Another example is being able to reload immediately after a successful dodge, but that doesn't matter because dodging sucks because there's too much going on on the screen.
- No incentive to continue playing after you beat the game and explored the secret areas. The story doesn't change after you complete challenges for example, so there's no reason to grind for anything unless you really really enjoy the combat. Idk, I'd personally prefer to play something else at that point.
- Cannot reduce NG+ difficulty, so best to complete any NG+ challenges early on.

The good
+ Combat was fun: For all the bashing I did above I actually like this game. It's fun and combat is fluid and solid (with the exception that there's so much going on it's really hard to figure out when you should be dodging). The game coerces you to try out all the different weapons in the game because by doing so, you unlock "mastery points" which allow you to select in your load-out weapons of higher tiers the next time you return to base. This honestly kept the game pretty fresh because you're almost always running a different set of weapons until you figure out what your favourite equipment and playstyle is like. There's also ways to become completely invulnerable (i.e. broken) for veterans of the game which I found quite entertaining.
+ It's pretty cheap.

Ara Fell is an outstanding RPG maker game. For an RPG maker game, this game certainly doesn't feel like one; the movement is fluid, the OST is outstanding, the combat definitely looks and feels very different.

The crafting system is honestly quite engaging and fresh, and entangles the exploration aspect of the game with upgrading of your characters' skills and equipment. You don't buy new equipment, you pick up materials to upgrade your existing equipment. You can opt to buy these materials too at an affordable price, and it was certainly quite interesting.

The story isn't terribly engaging, but it's still good enough, 8/10.

The graphics probably isn't its strongest point, but the scenery in the game is beautiful for pixel art; gave me stardew valley vibes.

Pros:

Music: The OST is probably the best part of this game. It really sets the mood and atmosphere really well, and I find myself still listening to the score after I had finished the game.

Game Mechanics: There is a good amount of optimization involved for players who like to min-max. The difficulty is also scalable to accommodate players who just want to have fun. I definitely had a lot of fun figuring out which skills to upgrade, which class to pick, what stats to allocate etc.

Cons:

1. Poor direction for players. There are some parts of the game where you will get lost / stumble upon areas you're not supposed to be early on / have no idea where to go or what you have to pick up to continue the story. You will need to review a guide to continue playing at that point, and the process can be kind of frustrating. Arguably the biggest reason not to pick this game up.

This is one of those games that must've been pretty cool for its time, but it's pretty bad for today's standards.

Story
The story
Actually kind of interesting? But the presentation is bland, boring and sometimes even disorienting as your camera follows balls (each representing a world) revolving around other balls in the campaign briefing screen.

Learning curve
In my opinion, the most annoying thing about the game is the steep learning curve, and how you got to learn everything yourself. Sure, the game mechanics are cool and interesting (even when compared to RTS games today!), but there's so little guidance it's no wonder this game didn't take off. Did you know that your buildings take damage if you don't ensure the land underneath them is flat, and for some reason certain types of lands crack while others don't? Did you know that some building/unit options that were previously available to you in previous missions will now be blacked out for no reason, only because the game developer wants you to try out a new option? Did you know that once a unit is assigned to a squad, it cannot be reassigned to other squads? Did you know that you cannot split squads up, and to have multiple squads, you need to build command centres? Did you know that some terrain cannot be flattened, no matter how hard or how long you try? Did you know that when you transform your units, everything is transformed, so even the units that weren't used will disappear until you break them back into their basic units?

Did you know this? Did you know that?

Well, chances are, you don't, and if you don't understand what I'm talking about, then just save yourself the trouble and stay away from this game. It's frustrating when you figure it out after multiple restarts, multiple trial and errors, and multiple "Ohhhh, so that's how it works." when it should've just been either taught in the tutorial, or taught at the start of the mission. These things just make the game less of a game and more of a chore. In 2004 this might've been okay. But with so many RTS options available now, you don't have to put yourself through this suffering.

If you're starting the game, the tutorial barely scratches the surface, and you will struggle to figure out this, that, and whatnot when you encounter the problem and try to resolve it. I actually thought the game was bugged when I couldn't select each unit individually, until I realized that squads cannot be split.

Perhaps you were thinking you could Google and search for tips and tricks on how to play the game. Wrong. The game isn't very popular and the name is even more generic, so Googling doesn't really give any good results.

Personally, just give this a skip and play other games. The game still runs rather smoothly, but for today's standards? It's an ancient relic to be admired from a distance.

I love games that don't take their story too seriously, and this is one of them. Everytime you complete a level, you get a "WE ARE DAMN GOOD" splash screen. In the first region, you unlock beer which you have no idea what it is for, and subsequently unlock the "I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS IS FOR" achievement. These little nuggets give the game so much character, and makes it very unique.

It's an interesting mix between a mobile game and an RTS. The game is easy to learn but difficult to perfect, a rare trait in most games these days. It's great fun. Buy during a sale, because that's when the price drops by 90% and it's super worth it.

Crystal Story II on Steam actually comes with its predecessor, Crystal Story 1. Since I didn't play either, this review covers both games.

Crystal Story 1 graphics was simple and the story was shallow, but what carried the game was that you could customize almost every aspect of your character, and you had all the resources in the world to do so; you could upgrade different types of equipment to suit your characters, spam SP reset to play around with the different types of abilities that each character had etc.

What made Crystal Story 1 phenomenally engaging however, were the characters. You don't get a lot of cutscenes, the story was stupidly absurd, the characters were absolutely comical. It doesn't take itself seriously, the characters don't take themselves or the story seriously, and that makes the game both entertaining and engaging, a rare trait in a lot of games these days.

The characters in Crystal Story 2 didn't have this charm; the story was only a little bit more fleshed out than the first, but the characters took it much more seriously, losing the charm that Crystal Story 1 had. You couldn't respec your points, so if you had specialized your character as a physical damage dealer, you could twist and turn a little to make them deal magical damage later on, but it'll take a while. I feel that Crystal Story 2 had more to offer in terms of game mechanics, but in terms of how engaging the game was, I preferred Crystal Story 1.

That being said, this game is really cheap. Definitely good to pick up and have fun with.

Story is shallow, but that is to be expected. The problem is that the game was too easy for me, it just became a point and click, and winning battles just wasn't satisfying after the first hour, because with every new mission you win, you get a bunch of strong characters to use in the upcoming battles, so much so that your starting character (the king) becomes obsolete, and if you get bad traits, just reroll; you get 3 rerolls which is more than enough.

Your choice in upgrades don't really matter because the increment in value is so minute (compared to what you have to spend to get them). At the end of every battle, you are given 3 choices to upgrade your team, but many times there's a caveat attached to these upgrades which you know nothing about until you get it because the description was too simple.

The game description is also misleading. It implies you're building a dungeon for enemies to deal with. The game is far from that; it's a rogue-like where you instead go around killing stuff; there's no mention of a dungeon, there's no customzing/upgrading of a dungeon, and there's definitely no adventurer raiding your dungeon whatsoever. Heck, half of your battles are out in the open, where it's obviously not a dungeon.

The missions you get per chapter is randomized (something like rogue-like), which weakens the sense of continuity in the game (aside from the fact that you get a few scripted encounters every few missions).

It's not horrible for its price, but personally, I don't think it deserves a particularly strong review either.

It's a cute and calming game. Gets very repetitive when you're trying to grind for achievements, and honestly didn't need the nudity and fan-service. I'd give it a 5/10.