Recent reviews by OhShitBye

In summary, pretty successful port that runs well. Being able to play this at 60fps is great after dealing with it being locked at 30 even on PS5, so if you're here because you want minimally 60fps gameplay then the PC version will do that for ya.

With regards to the story, if you're a long running fan just know it's pretty similar in all regards to the other mainline games, so if you enjoyed those you'll enjoy this. If you didn't like the story at all, I personally found that the stories of GE2 and GE3 are a little weaker than the original GEB or Resurrection, they don't quite have that same emotional buildup to get you invested in all the characters as you go about stuff.

Gameplay wise it feels faster than the previous games. Things move just a bit quicker overall, and while dodging/stepping was still very viable in the previous games I have to say that in GE3, you really feel rewarded for blocking while stepping has become very unreliable. However, there are many fast and very difficult to evade moves, so while it doesn't provide you much defensive increase I still suggest using the buckler shield for the fastest deployment and the easiest perfect guarding. The normal shield is just a hair too slow to deploy to save you from getting hit when you predict one of the annoying instant moves coming, and tower shields no ♥♥♥♥ don't really open quick. There is a new piece of equipment you get pretty early on that can give you health regen for blocking 70 damage (G>>HP Healer), so yeah, blocking in this game is very rewarding.

I quite enjoyed the addition of new combat features, I won't really go into each of them though they're given to you pretty quickly in the game. I think they added some measure of extra value to the gameplay overall, though if I'm being honest it's still pretty same-ey so returning players won't feel out of place.

As for new Aragami...the Havakiri is the bane of my existence. Seriously. Pretty much everything else is mostly fine, even the most powerful aragami aren't anywhere near as annoying. Well some of them are, so yeah. Devour attacks are a thing from Aragami in this game now, so seriously get used to perfect guarding since you can't block devour attacks and like I said, stepping is pretty much useless in this game.

Fairly stable port of the original game, and the original game is excellent. Some relatively minor annoyances in the combat like wonky hitboxes and enemies that practically teleport to you, so get used to perfect dodging and don't dodge early. Ray-traced reflections don't tank performance too much (3060ti) and look great. Make sure you use gadgets and your suit powers.

Performance wise I've had one occasion of super bad frame drops in the dlc missions, but restarting my computer fixed that and it runs excellently now, I'm guessing it was a cpu stability issue. If you hit the same bug might be worth just restarting the computer and seeing if that fixes it. Weird bug as well that when I first start the game each time, if I hold down RB to open the gadget select menu, it always glitches and closes the first time, then after that it's fine.

So on the overall this game is worth playing, and for what I got it for on sale (about 40 bucks SGD) it is definitely worth it so far. This is going to be relatively detailed, but I'll go over what's to like and dislike in as concise a manner as possible. If you don't wanna read everything TL;DR is as follows:

Combat nice, but has issues with stunlocking to the point that it's unfair. Boss designs imo are just not good, but normal combat is fine and dropping difficulty just for bosses is perfectly feasible and there's no shame in it. Money is a concern but just do ranching as much as you can until you can get rappigs etc. Use items moderately (expensive but necessary, balancing act here). Story is interesting with not much tropes, overall very nice. Have to give 7/10 just because of the combat/boss designs.

Detailed below.

Combat system: Stellar, not the best ever but very stellar. Perfect dodges are made easier with skills and make sure you change around accessories and artes whenever you need to. Keep your weapons for later enhancement and sell off armour that you replace since those have no value other than reselling. Combat is dynamic and fun, but can get repetitive due to the large health pools of enemies. Learn how to break and stagger enemies with efficient arte combinations, and focus on enemies that the AI are attacking to maximise the stagger gauge. Using elements enemies are weak to is always a good idea, but not essential to getting through most fights. Use boost strikes as soon as they are available just for damage or stagger. Alphen's is great, use it often. Use his blazing sword moves as well.

Story: Interesting, fairly well paced, touches on intriguing topics and challenges certain beliefs of the characters. Interactions between characters are always fun to watch, and I love hearing the little tidbits that really give each character their well...character. Some cliches, but overall nothing so bad that it made me just want to die or anything.

Voice acting: As always stellar, I'm playing in Japanese because that is how I do things. Yoshitsugu Matsuoka literally carries the dynamic though, no one is as expressive as him, so look out for Law's voice lines they're great.

Main complaints:

This game stunlocks you on hit. This guarantees that you will be hit by follow-ups, so to a degree this is situational awareness/skill but also luck or lack thereof. And to be completely clear on what I mean by stunlocking as a lot of games do this, I really mean that both Scarlet Nexus and this game have this dumb stunlock when you get hit that leaves you rooted to the spot with no invulnerability frames and completely exposed to follow-up attacks. This is completely different from other "hard" games such as Dark Souls where you do get invulnerability on dodging, or like God Eater or Monster Hunter where you get tossed a short distance away on getting hit. For this game and SN, no matter what you get hit by you get stunlocked the same as long as you don't fall down. This means that getting knocked down is often times better than taking a glancing hit, because at least you get clear of follow ups thanks to flying a small distance away even if it takes you longer to get back up.

As an example, there will come a section after meeting Rinwell and you're going through the waterway where you get her boost strike to interrupt artes, and you will get a group of like 5 enemies that only cast artes. You've never encountered this before. So the thing is it's not possible to interrupt all 5 of them, and I went into this fight without saving because I was just running the section. I got hit with the first arte, a ground-bursting water arte that hits three times. But 3 of the 5 enemies targeted me, and after getting hit with the first one I was stunlocked, couldn't move or dodge, and as a result once the first hit the other 2 hit guaranteed. So naturally I immediately died. That was some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, because before that all other fights could be progressed through sometimes without taking any damage at all. This only really happens in this section due to having less party members, being more susceptible to damage etc, but still can happen if you're unlucky. Another case, the jumping ape dudes, if you see all of them jump, or like one after another, just run. I made the mistake of only dodging the first one then engaging, which got me hit by the second, stunlocked, then got hit by 2 more and died. . This makes boss battles very difficult as well, as sometimes you'll just get clapped by one hit and good job, you're now stunlocked into getting hit by all their other lengthy chain follow ups and potentially dying and wasting a life bottle (which costs like 1k that's not cheap) or CP that you might need later on.

Which brings me to my next point, which is boss design. You can't break or stagger bosses so this deviates completely from your normal combat, adding to the extremely inflated health pools the bosses have, and it becomes more a battle of attrition and frustration. Yes, you are supposed to learn boss attack patterns and when to attack and when not to, but the lack of windup for the human bosses makes life very difficult and their ability to combo you into oblivion for a single mistake is frankly ridiculous. Adding to the fact that dodging distance is miniscule compared to the distance bosses can cover with just a single attack or worse, a string of attacks that can kill you ez, it makes many moves actually impossible to dodge. Unlike dark souls or souls-style games, those give you the ability to go truly untouched with skill, patience, and learning. This does not. You are going to get hit, often times making you go "yo why the F*** did that hit me?!", so be prepared for that.

This is okay at the start, but gets super bad with even the second lord thanks to his shield, and just gets subsequently worse as the game goes on. So combine that with the expensive af items, and that's a recipe for no money and no fun. When you hit 50% on any boss, you get a special strike attack (forgot the name), that literally does NOTHING. NO DAMAGE. WHY HAVE IT. Sometimes it just ruins your combos and it's dumb. This is the definition of just fighting with the design rather than true difficulty since you are punished brutally for any mistakes, while having extremely long boss battles that are just repetitive spamming of 1-2 artes then running around until another opening occurs. And long fights means lots of opportunities to make singular mistakes that basically kill you thanks to stunlocking. So be prepared to over-level or just drop difficulty because it's not worth it. If a big boss charges you while you're close to it, good luck, you're getting smacked. No way to dodge out of it unless you perfect dodge. So get good at that. Or hope you have Kisara's boost strike.

Frankly with this and Scarlet Nexus, I think it says a lot about how Bamco needs to correct their philosophy and idea approval for boss designs nowadays. There is a difference between true difficulty and just unfair mechanics, and they need to learn that difference.

Port is solid, so far no weird crashes or stuttering, smooth framerate throughout. A big step up from when it was released on the PS Vita, but the game has definitely withstood the test of time. A certified Persona classic, but do expect a seriously different vibe from the whole game if you're coming from Persona 5 or 3.

If you were not a fan of persona 3, this will likely be a better game for you since I was much less into persona 3 thanks to the overall mood compared to this or persona 5. They made the overall games much more light hearted and fun than P3 which was a little sombre day to day.

If you're not traditionally a fan of the persona series, don't expect this game to change your mind, and neither will persona 5 since these all use the same formula. It is fundamentally a social link/social bond game where what you do outside combat heavily affects what happens IN combat. If you intend to min-max the game expect to be checking guides for every event/dialogue, answer in class questions correctly, and never go straight to the evening if you can help it.

After playing Marvel's Avengers for about 2 hours and giving up entirely thanks to the weird characters, horrible controls and bugs, terrible voice acting and cringy main character, I hardly had high hopes for Guardians of the Galaxy. I bought it because it was nominated for game of the year, and so I thought I'd give it a shot. But sure enough I was met with the same familiar modeling style, same art, same visual feel to the characters in the game as the Avengers at first glance, and I felt my heart sink after paying 50 dollars for the game.

Then I actually got around to the meat of the game itself, which happened really quickly mind you, and any and all doubts I had were immediately erased. This game defied all expectations I had, and even fixed several issues that I'd had with the previous games. The writers and dialogue captures exactly what the Guardians of the Galaxy are; a group of ragtag "heroes" that basically hate each others' guts and aren't afraid to show it. The story narrative was great, choices felt meaningful in the context of the larger story, and each character had a charm to them that is hard to build in a game where every character needs to be meaningful to complement choices. Peter Quill was a fantastic main character, and though his blasters feel underpowered at the start, it falls into place after you realise that the true combat is making your teammates do the damage and not you.

More notably, there were plenty of technical changes that were really welcome in this game. Though the characters don't feel particularly physics heavy, this was a vast improvement over the Avengers. For example, in the Avengers, characters didn't feel like they had any weight at all, and made movements such as turning with the characters feel weirdly sudden and inhuman. This was not the case with Guardians, though it's definitely not physics heavy of a game. Peter Quill felt like a human being, not just a character model, and his movements were punchy and satisfying. Watching Drax wail on an enemy or throw something across the room was immensely impactful and memorably, unlike watching Hulk smash something in the Avengers which felt really more like breaking cardboard than smashing through metal or otherwise. Controls in this game are much smoother feeling, no weird hitches like I had in the Avengers, and interacting with objects in Guardians was thankfully not a weird game of guessing the correct distance to be from an object for the interact button to show up (seriously Avengers, why).

Aside from slightly repetitive combat, as well as some really difficult situations, the game was overall a real bag of enjoyment, and I highly recommend it for a nice linear story where some choices matter, and others are just there for the ♥♥♥♥♥ and giggles.

TL;DR Definitely not worth it for full price, but a decent game overall. Shave maybe 20ish bucks off that price, or just play it on xbox game pass for pc. Maybe a 7/10 for me for story reasons and a few gameplay issues. Play Kasane's route first pro tip. Full review below.

Context: I played this back on release, paid full release price, and never wrote a review, but it hasn't all been great. Some of it is nitpicking that can be and I hope they've fixed; I don't have time to go back and replay it again for a third time, but I quite likely will in the future. I will not however, be playing Kasane's route again, and I'll say why below.

This game is unfortunately "mediocre" when it could have been an absolute banger. This is not due to the technical aspects of the gameplay; the SAS system is pretty distinctive, it established its worth early on, and its use cannot be underestimated in the game. The combat is fluid, if not a little animation locked (will elaborate on this later), and the psychokinesis is pretty damn sick. The world looks great, the character designs are very fitting to the setting, and I like how the lore has been built. It addresses an idea of a fully technologically integrated future, and what happens if you're one of the few that are unable to partake in it. Very interesting concept that I would've liked to see explored more if given the chance; I hope the anime covers more of that.

Also, information was extremely glossed over and not well developed in Yuito's route, and therefore caused a lot of confusion by avoiding several topics or using very vague descriptions of them. As an example, in Kasane's route they immediately explained what the difference between volunteer and scouted soldiers are and how they're scouted (i.e. the power test on the national health exam). This info was only barely glossed over in Yuito's route although it was such an important thing that differentiated Yuito from the rest considering that he was a volunteer. And the most irritating one is that in Yuito's route there was only one mention from Kagero in a brain message that he wasn't given "growth stunting hormones until this age", which explained nothing and seemed like just another weird comment from the joker member of the team. And no more additional info was given about that. Instead in Kasane's route they explain clearly that the anti-ageing drugs are necessary for OSF members and are put into their meals even from when they were cadets so that they can fight the Others for longer. This was not provided information in Yuito's route, but is then mentioned several times later on as if it was complete common knowledge and this confused the living ♥♥♥♥ out of me. I care about the story a lot, so it seemed very strange to me that I had somehow missed this so I took to a YouTube Yuito playthrough just to check that section again, and I was right it was conveniently glossed over.

Now for the animation bit: in some cases Yuito is animation locked for certain moves that slow down based on what part you hit of the boss, for example hitting a boss's weakspot with longer moves causes a critical hit sound and emphatic feedback animations, which if you compare to the move being executed normally, actually adds several frames to each hit. So if I hit a non-critical spot of the boss with the same move while he is winding up for an attack, I'm able to immediately exit the animation and dodge. But if I'm hitting the critical hit area, I get to see each of my hits play out in slow motion thanks to my lengthened attack animation, but the boss alternates between moving at full speed and the "slowed" version that matches the critical hit speed, so the boss ends up having a frame advantage on me and I get slapped on what should have been avoidable with a sidestep. I tested this quite thoroughly when I noticed it, and I'm quite sensitive to frame data as I'm a fighting game player (I'm a sweaty tryhard in Tekken). I could be completely wrong about this based on chance alone, or maybe just me trying to make excuses for why I'm getting slapped, but I think I tested this quite thoroughly. They may or may not have fixed this, but I hope they have.

Now that I have the proper critiques out of the way, here's the complaining:

Kasane's route is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Right from the get go I already hated her even more than I did when I got to know her playing Yuito's route.

Firstly on gameplay parts, all her attacks are mid to long range and are conal or AOE to begin with, meaning that fighting with her is ♥♥♥♥ easy. And her brain tree is so much better than Yuito's; she gets the good skills so much earlier than him. I had to farm through several different trees or connectors really strategically to get the skills that Yuito needed so that he wouldn't struggle as much in fights because he has to fight close range and with moves that advance forward thanks to their animations, which made dodging with him extremely difficult on top of the prior mentioned animation issues. I had to run through skill trees that were three to four skills long before I got to the skill I needed, and each of those skills needed between 3-5 brain points to achieve, so it was one hell of a grind without said skills. Kasane literally got an air dodge, psychokinesis slam, SAS gauge restore, and psycho gauge expansion within like, 2 skills. And a lot of her useful skills are within the same tree, so I didn't have to get a bunch of skills that I didn't need to get the most essential ones with her. Like to get shortened cooldown between items with her was just 2 skills, aerial dodge and perfect dodge attack were literally the first 2 skills in her tree, her first skill in enhance is a damage buff already, and she gets the enhanced crush skills in a row in the same tree after just 1 prerequisite skill. In solo battles her range advantage really shines through, but Yuito has better crushing when SAS is available. It still means that overall there's far less health lost with her, even if battles are marginally longer.

On to her character. She's a colossal ♥♥♥♥♥, acts high and mighty and clearly puts herself above others with no real reason for said actions. She doesn't listen to people, she's rude, she thinks out loud in a way that clearly people will misconstrue as her talking ♥♥♥♥ about them, and when said people get angry at her she gets confused as to why they're angry and calls them idiots. Also she just expects people to go along with whatever orders she comes up with and I have no idea why she does this it's like she has no social awareness at all whatsoever. I have autism and I have more social awareness than she does.

Also she treats her precious older sister like some kind of mentally retarded duckling that needs to be coddled and protected at all times, which is horrendously demeaning to someone who is just as trained to fight as she is. She graduated fifth in their class and that's not a low score by any means. Just because she graduated top doesn't make her infinitely better than everyone else but she certainly seems to think that way. It also shows how she doesn't seem at all to trust someone in her platoon (Gemma) who's older and more experienced than her, whose power is to literally prevent any and all damage btw, to keep her sister from harm. Like how high of a horse do you have to be on? He is LITERALLY THE TANK, HE NEGATES DAMAGE. She is the textbook example of that irritating, socially inept but somehow loved by everyone prodigy main chick that somehow falls for the main characters whose only defining traits are that he stutters a lot, is also socially inept, and likely sits next to the window.

There's more I'd like to say, but I think I'm reaching the steam review word limit, so I'll leave it at that. Kasane is favoured far too highly by this game in every way, so I recommend to play her route first to get the irritation out of the way then play Yuito's route which is a far better story.

Played this game back in 2018, quite late to the party since I'd never heard about it beforehand but I gotta say, it was an absolute gem I wished I knew about earlier. TL;DR: this was a very short, but ultimately very fulfilling game that I to this day have not deleted from my library, and I think it will go down with me as one of the best games I've played in my life. Not a top 10, but very much a top 20. Very worth your time, though the combat is repetitive but short enough that it didn't become painful, platforming was easy but exciting, and I very much enjoyed it. Longer review below.

The story may seem simple and straightforward, obviously being based on the Chinese "Journey to the West" classic novel, and that's because ultimately the original story really was simply about a supposedly historic journey to the border of India by a monk to receive holy scriptures from Buddha. This allowed the game to achieve what I really believe was a quieter message, trying to make this vague to avoid spoilers, which is a criticism of the idea of blind, unquestioning, and destructive faith in religion. Yet it ends on a question, a pondering if the rejection of this "fake reality" or religion, is the right thing to do. This simple criticism in the story lets the real depth of writing come from the characters themselves and their interactions with each other, of course with the primary one and the one of most interest being the relationship between Trip and Monkey. I found their story endearing, more than occasionally funny, their world and environment were beautiful, and overall it was a game that kept me running to it in my free time because I wanted to see the end of the tale. I loved the dialogue, the slow way that Monkey and Trip warmed up to each other, and their scenes together were precious as anything. I very much recommend this if you're a sucker for romance stories, particularly pretty straightforward ones where you can see things moving along, and I say this is easily worth your time and money though it's short.

Long story short: If you've never played a monster hunter game before, this is a great entry point. But do not go back to the previous games and expect them to be the same. You're in for an unpleasant surprise.
If you have played a monster hunter game before, this is a great game in the series. Some people have gripes about how the inventory and stuff is auto managed for you, and you can change your weapon in the field etc, or you can top up your items/eat in the field whatever not. I have no idea why you have a problem with the quality of life changes. Just because a game is less tedious does not make it easier, okay?

Now that that's out of the way, here's the full review.

Okay, so this game recommendation has to come with a grain of salt. Read the review first before commenting or whatever you wanna do.

Now I really enjoy this game. I really really like this game, and at the same time I sorta hate it. I really like this game because I played God eater growing up, and I also really hate this game because I played God eater growing up. Let me elaborate.

Monster hunter is objectively slower than a game like God Eater since your character literally moves slower. God Eater is more dynamic since you have the whole meta of switching weapons from close to long range during the fights, you can dash and don't have to sheath your weapon to run, you can block with any melee weapon since you have access to your shield, and you can actively jump in this game for aerial strings which introduces attacks on different field levels. Monster hunter has a bigger emphasis on specific positioning, timing of attacks, and dodging, where you're on the ground all the time except when you jump off stuff to mount the monster. So God eater veterans, this isn't the same game, it might seem similar but they play very very differently. The similarities are memorizing the monsters and their attack patterns, learning the tells for its moves, and exploiting weaknesses etc. But that's where it ends. Everything else has to be learnt playing the game, nothing else will help you.

This game lacks a good story, but that's always been the case with Monster Hunter games so that's not a problem. It's still a fun game, but if you're primarily story driven then there isn't that much merit to you continuing. Keep that in mind before purchase. This game is really about just hunting monsters and leveling up. The game is the grind, so if you're not into that then steer clear. Fight a monster, get new gear, fight another monster, new gear, fight a stronger version of the previous monsters, new gear. The list goes on.

The point is, this is a great game for the right people. There's no point in story enthusiasts to come to a game like this and say "the story sucks!" yeah, we know. That isn't the point of the game. It's like saying BO4's campaign sucks. (For those who don't play BO4 there is no campaign that's the joke). Play the game for what it is and enjoy it for what it brings, and with that said I recommend this game. But as a bit of a story enthusiast myself, it's not like you can't enjoy this game, if my 146 hours are any testament to that.

Great game, just like the rest of the arkham series that expands a lot on what made the game good. Most of the problems on the pc port have been fixed since launch and at least on my system it runs steady at the cap of 90fps. The story is interesting, controls are mostly smooth and responsive, and it feels great playing whether you're playing on controller or keyboard. Controller support is fine as well, but wireless dualshock 4 sometimes gives Xbox button prompts instead. Overall great game, 9/10

As a newcomer to the DMC series, this game was a nice starting point for me aside from a few points that'll be brought up. Graphics are nice, gameplay is smooth and immersive, and the story is quite interesting aside from a few minor gripes. Overall give this an 8/10.

Some issues that I faced were as follows:
I have no idea who certain characters are, prompting me to watch a few catch up videos on youtube that didn't take very long but honestly didn't quite explain everything. Not a big deal but something worth noting.

This game takes timing pretty seriously, dodges etc need to be timed properly or you will get hit and lose your style meter.

Be aware of which direction your character is facing as well, since he only dodge rolls to the left and right and jumps forward or back. Executing moves is a little wonky as well since some require specific stick movements and directions that sometimes get you the wrong move, especially when you're doing something like shuffle.

Other than that it's great. Exploring is fun and rewarding, characters are interesting and entertaining to watch. The devil breakers are fun and surprisingly easy to use for some. Great for returning veterans of the DMC franchise and still welcoming for new players.