Recent reviews by Luke The Traveller

This has been many Sonic fans' dreams come true. I know I was among those who were hoping SEGA would remaster Shadow The Hedgehog's game from 2005, but this was an unexpected surprise! SEGA listened to the fans, and then said, "By the way, we're going to add more to what y'all asked for."

First of all, I like that they added in the main Sonic Generations game to Shadow Generations, and added new features to the Sonic side. This gives Sonic Generations some new replayability, including the Chao hunt, and new Red Ring placement. (I haven't found all of the new things, but that's what I have seen on the surface.)

Secondly, Shadow Generations is just downright awesome! The level design, the abilities Shadow has access to, the return of Black Doom, and the reality-bending segments of the maps is great! You can tell that SEGA went all out on this game, which just earns them more loyalty points in my book to come back for future Sonic games. Also, I think the story element is stronger in Shadow Generations than in Sonic. The writers have done a pretty good job or reaching back all throughout Shadow's past in the video game lore to grab all that they can to fit into this game, which I appreciate 100%. It makes for a more fulfilling game and gameplay in the end!

Well done, SEGA and Sonic Team for bringing us a game that was a very pleasant surprise! Keep it up!

Having been around the bend in Stardew Valley, and trying a bit of Core Keeper, Sun Haven is a very chill and relaxing game! What, particularly, makes this game stand out in the farming/builder games is that it takes on more of a fantasy setting to the world your character is living in. You have the option to choose between a regular human or an angel, amongst other racial options, which comes their own features and bonuses. Furthermore, the creatures you encounter in the world have that more fantasy vibe than just slimes, crabs, and zombies.

The character design is fairly unique, the design of the world is nice, and the cadre of NPCs you can form friendships with is also colorful and engaging! Sun Haven's another good title to add to your library if you like a nice, easy farming, soft combat, and adventure game.

I played the mobile game, and while I enjoyed it, the amount of grinding and/or pay to win type schematic they had going slowed my progress immensely. With this Steam release, the pay to win is gone, they're using the in-game currency as a means of leveling up your character/weapons/chips, etc. They balance that by still giving you only so much per level, and keeping prices for upgrades fair enough to where the game makes you work for the upgrades without punishing you. It's a much more rewarding game than the mobile, and honestly, with the ability to use the controller, it makes the game much more fun. To me, at least, it was very difficult trying to jump dash with thumbs on a screen that did not pick up the movements half the time.

I am very pleased with this game, and am glad to see that it has migrated over to Steam! I think it will do very well here, and who knows, it may very well outperform its mobile counterpart!

What can I say? As a long-time Gundam fan, I've been waiting for a newer Gundam game. The folks at Bandai-Namco have really outdone themselves with this game! If you're a Gundam fan, if you like FPS team games, if you like giant mechs blasting, slicing, smashing, dashing, and all other activities you can possibly think of that can be done in mobile suit, then get this game! Plus, it's free, so even more of a reason to at least give it a try!

(Edit: 2/19/2024) This was a short lived game, and one that seemed to be doing so well. I hate that they closed this game down. For once, an FPS shooter, team-built Gundam game that was very fun, very unique for a shooter, and overall, a good way to spend an evening with friends. It's a forlorn hope to think they'll bring it back, but sad to say, good bye.

As much as I like this game, and have played it for many years, it has fallen so low. The last several times I tried to play, servers were filled with nothing but hackers. Whether they are spinning Snipers who head shot you across the map, or hackers that mimic your username and get you kicked, the game is not even worth playing anymore. I enjoy the alternate modes, like SlenderFortress and the Minecraft maps, but good luck finding an official server that you can, actually, have fun on outside of Mann Vs. Machine. You can see how many hours have been sunk into this game. I thoroughly enjoyed it...when it was fun.

I was introduced to Aura Kingdom back in 2015, and so far, I've enjoyed my time in it. Tis been an on/off experience (i.e. play it for a while, leave it, and then come back to play more), but overall, in my opinion, it is a very good and fun game.

The customizability of the characters are enough for me to be satisfied with. While not as complex as Blade & Soul, I'd put it around the same as Spiral Knights and Dragon Nest; Mabinogi's customizability would be slightly above AK for a further example. So, good job on AK there, along with their costumes. There are tons of costumes in the game, though I will say this: For decency's sake, there need to be better covering costumes for female characters, since most of the ones I have seen others wear are/were rather exposing.

On that note, I enjoy the classes which the game has. I mainly play Ronin (longsword called tachi), Brawler (dual hand blades called katars), and Holy Sword (giant sword). However, I have played Guardian (sword and shield, which would make JoCat happy for spreading the good name of Sword and Shield further across the world), Duelist (dual blades), Archer, Gunslinger, and Sorcerer. Each one has their own specials and features, which are fun to explore and discover through leveling. Plus, the multi-classing feature is very nice, and I like that it limits a player to having to pick one secondary class. (However, now one may change their secondary class if they wish to pick up another, which is alright to have if folks don't like the secondary they've picked.) This is a stark contrast from Mabinogi, which allows a player to multi-class into pretty much every class. I personally prefer to focus on at least two classes, so tis why I like that AK only allows two classes to be held by a character.

The story is...interesting. I liked it starting out, with the character having a dream of things to come, and it really made me want to pursue the story more. Upon reaching level 70, I was a little burnt out with the story, though I'm hoping that it will turn a new leaf. I'm at level 79 now, so here's hoping the story gets better. (One thing I will say about the story is that, to add a bit of flare to it, it would behoove the story-line to have class-specific backstories, along with little side-quests which build upon the character's class. That's one thing I saw to be very promising in Maplestory 2 at the start, but they did not build upon it at all. Very disappointed at MS2 for that, but I think AK would've benefited greatly from adding that element to the story. I say that, since the character being whatever class the player picks is never explored, and in my opinion, that is something worth spending time on.) I do have another subject to bring up about the story-line: Quest lulls. What I don't like about AK's quest line is that there are lulls where you reach a certain level, and then you have to wait until you reach several levels ahead before continuing the story. I understand that grinding is a thing in MMOs, but this quest lull in AK was what put the breaks on me playing it more. Once I reached these lulls, I did not like the fact that I had to grind XP for 2-3 levels before continuing the main story quests. In my opinion, removing the quest lulls would help the flow of the story, along with allow the player to not have to grind 2-3 levels just to get back to playing the main story line. That does get irritating after a while. Now, there is a way to avoid this lull, but that still requires the player to spam the dailies at earlier levels so that the character's level is several ahead of the quest they're on. (For example, I have a Sorcerer that is at level 51, but is doing level 49 quests since I had that character spam the dailies to have a higher level than the quests.)

One thing I really like about AK which, in my opinion, helps it stand out from other MMOs are the Eidolons. These are otherworldly entities which a player can get to help them in battle. You choose which default one you will get when you create your character, and then, close to level 10, you will receive that Eidolon. As the story progresses, the game will give you free keys to certain Eidolons. Just like costumes and mounts, AK has plenty Eidolons one can obtain. However, they can be rather difficult to get in some cases. There is a Temple of Eidolons on the Crescent Hill level where you can go to try and get their key or key fragments, but those are never guaranteed upon beating one in the temple; tis random chance. You can spend money to buy keys, but that is rather expensive to do. Furthermore, you can spin the Paragon Table should they have key frags or keys on them, but again, tis random chance if you land on one. You can earn keys or key frags from several other places, but work is involved in getting them (or having the chance at getting them).

In conclusion, would I recommend this to a friend? Yes indeed I would, if they're into MMOs. In my opinion, it's a fun game, decent story, pretty good customizability for characters, plenty of class choices, and a lot of levels to play through.

Realm Royale has had an....interesting time to say the least since it was initially released as an alpha. When in alpha, it was a very fun game. It had a five character class system (Warrior, Hunter, Assassin, Mage, and Engineer), with abilities bound to each class. They had a forge system, where you used acquired shards (gained from sharding weapons, armor, and abilities along with killing enemy players) and golden chickens (which you got from killing enemy players) to create high tier weapons and armor. If you were "downed", instead of crawling on the ground, you turned into a black-eyed chicken. (You had three of those per game) And to help get around the map faster, you had a horse.

Then came the first several patches which utterly ruined the game, not mention the invasion of the hackers. It got so bad that many of the players which came to like this game left. (I know I did. I started playing Ring of Elysium for a while.) Realm Royale was slowly tanking to the point that most thought it would not recover. However, thankfully the devs decided to listen to what player base they had left, and tried to resurrect the game. They have done so with some success, though the player count now is nothing compared to what it used to be.

That being said, what the devs have now is much better than the earlier patches which scared off many many players. Firstly, the class system is still a good mechanic of the game, though they removed Engineer. (Which was a bit of a blessing, because Engineer was very broken and unbalanced before they removed him.) They still have class abilities, though they are not solely for that particular class. (For example, a Hunter can use the Assassin's ability Concussion Grenade.) However, the classes who use their own abilities do get small bonuses to those abilities through the class level system. That aspect of the game is fairly solid.

The game play itself has improved from what I've seen, and you can tell the devs have done some good work to cut down on glitches and bugs. There are still some minor ones which occur, but overall, the quality of the game has improved. However, I do wish they had a lean system in the game. I think that would help a lot with combating around corners, since the only way to shoot from around a corner is to show a good portion of the character's body, which rather defeats the purpose of trying to get any kind of stealth kills.

The forge system, as is, is still solid. The mount mechanic is also solid, and the new flare of the mount emote is a fun addition. The weapons are pretty good, and they've undone some of the terrible nerfing they did to many of the weapons. The abilities themselves seem to be fairly balanced, though the class bonuses could use a little work, particularly when it comes to Warrior. Being able to freeze someone in place for several seconds with the Net seems rather unbalanced compared to the other classes who simply get CC bonuses of slowing enemies with certain abilities. (i.e. Assassin and Concussion Grenade, Hunter and Trap). Also, it would be nice to have a death cam to show how a player killed another to further cut down on hacking.

All in all, Realm Royale is better now, but it still hasn't completely recovered from the loss it suffered early on. Would I recommend it to a friend? Yes, though I would point out to them that it's still in beta and not perfect. However, it is still a fun game, and the way the devs have been responding to the critiques and suggestions of the players is showing a good sign that, perhaps, they will tread more carefully with their future patches.

(Edit: 9/10/22)

I'm very happy to see that Hi-Rez hasn't completely forgotten about Realms, and that they've kind of brought it back to its original roots. Bringing back the armor was a very nice touch, along with class-locking abilities. The new abilities and new weapons is, also, a welcomed addition. They've cleaned up the game a good bit, and added a few more details to the world. Also, a dragon! I have no idea what the dragon does other than fly around the map, but who knows what'll happen next with the dragon! Perhaps this will be a good sign that more Realm updates will be coming down the pike for us!

As with the Mega Man X Legacy Collection Part I, Part II contains games that I have been looking to play, but never had the chance to do. So, my hat's off to Capcom once more for rereleasing the main Mega Man X titles on Steam.

However, this half is definitely for the die-hard X series fans, because X7 and X8...well, I can see why they weren't well received, especially X7. X5 and X6 are excellent, and I have to say, out of the four in this collection, X5 is the best. X7 and X8 are definitely rage inducing, more so than prior X titles, and while I enjoyed the games, I didn't care for how those games were handled (i.e. moving to 3d instead of keeping it 2d). X8 repaired some of that, in that although it was still 3d, they went back to the more 2d-side scrolling roots which made the prior X series titles great.

Also, I see that many of the achievements from the first part of the Legacy Collection appear in this second half, especially the ones pertaining to the secret wallpaper, music, and credits. Moreover, the XChallenge stages are the same as the first, so nothing new there. This is a small sidenote, but there should've been something new and different added into this second half to help it standout from its other half. I think that would've helped keep things in the game interesting.

I would still recommend fans of the X series to get this second half of the Legacy Collection, but be prepared for the mess that is X7 and slightly better mess of X8. Those two games are still balanced out by the gems of X5 and X6.

Megaman X was the first video game I ever played, and since that day, I've been a die-hard Megaman X fan. However, I did not own anything I could play the game on (I mainly played it at a neighbor's house). Now that this collection came out, I have been extremely happy that I can finally play all of the Megaman X games (minus the Gameboy ones and Command Mission).

I can't say enough good things about the Legacy Collection: Part 1. I have already beaten the first four games, and am currently working on the next four. I will have to give it to Capcom, they did a grand job with adding in new things to do in the Legacy Collection. The Rookie Hunter mode allows someone new to the games to have a fairly easy play through of the X series games, while removing the R.H. mode will surely be a test of skill for veteran players and newcomers alike. With the non-R.H. mode, there will be rage inducing segments to the games, and the bosses are no pushover either. I can't find any fault with this half of the series, so I give this two thumbs way up.

However, these all help build a very fun and enjoyable ride through the first four Megaman X games!

In the years I have played this game, I can say that this is quite the enjoyable game!

The story was one of the first things that caught my attention. Little knights crash to the planet via pods and then, they have to explore it to discover some kind of mysterious power source. The main story missions expand upon this narrative line quite well, and kept me always wanting to move onto the next mission to get more of the story. I am sad that it doesn't look like the story will be continued, because exploring The Core more would be awesome to see, along with expanding more on the mystery of Cradle.

The gameplay was also excellent. The controls are rather simple and that is to be a compliment. Once one gets passed the tutorial missions, you have the controls down pat. The next step is fighting and learning how to survive the levels without having to revive too much, which that comes with playing.

The character customization is not as detailed as other MMOs, but it is good enough. The costumes offered in game allow for further customizing to create one's unique knight.

I would recommend this to someone who wants a nice MMO to play, and who enjoys a good story. However, I would also like to see more missions and story elements put into the game. Sadly, I do not think this will happen, but one never knows what the future may hold for the game.