Recent reviews by SACRED

Current game as of writing: Trails Through Daybreak

If I put all of the kiseki games in a tier list, this would be at the top

Best cast. Best setting. Best plotline.

I love Crossbell.

10/10 peak fiction
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Spoiler ramblings:

initially when I played this game last year I loved the journey but hated the ending. It left me wanting a bit more and I wasn't satisfied by the ending similar to how i felt finishing Trails in the Sky SC the year prior. There was also the fact that the azure ending spoils the events of cold steel 2 which kind of sours the Osborne assassination in cold steel 1.Having said that, I loved everything about the SSS and the multiple plot twists in the journey.After playing the over bloated cast in the Erebonia arc I come back appreciating the SSS' smaller cast even more when I reflect on this game these days. I loved where the story took these characters mentaly but have problems with how some of it is locked behind the final bonding scene. If I recall correctly I was particularly bummed with wazy and rixia's backstory being locked behind that. Other than that, this game was stellar. great villains,interesting character moments and developments. The way these characters would make decisions based on their morals,history, and motivations is very real which i liked.

However that was what i liked when i played this game. When I loved this game was many months after I played it. After playing through cold steel 3. In cold steel 3, The current protagonist of that arc Rean Schwarzer visits Crossbell post Erebonian annexartion. You are even introduced to Juna Crawford, one of Rean's students and also a transferee from Crossbell police academy, a place you would frequent in Azure. Seeing crossbell in 3D and the state it was in during the annexation. All of the npc's you've bonded with in the crossbell duology suffering and Juna's moments in that chapter of cs3. I realized just how much I was attached the crossbell games. Its kinda crazy I only realized it 3 games after azure but it cemented my placing for the crossbell duology among the other kiseki games.

Overall,
Barriers.

Monster Hunter by Zack Snyder
written 3/13/2025
hardware: gtx 4090, Intel Core i9-14900K, DDR5 32gb

To preface, this is some of the best gameplay in monster hunter. Some questionable changes to my main weapon compared to rise but overall an upgrade in gameplay. The roster of the base game as i am writing this is better than world and rise. There is alot of monster variety.

However, I cannot recommend this game at its current state. If you have a lower end pc i highly suggest you stay away at the moment. The online is also baffable. You have to go through so many loops just to play with your friends. There is also frequent disconnections even if your internet is fine. This was a problem in World but went away in Rise so I assumed they fixed it by now. Guess not.

I will change this review when more title updates roll out but for now this game is very unoptimized and hard to recommend.

4/5

Play while your friends are watching to bump up the difficulty

Another Great 2024 GOTY contender

I always wondered what a good 'ol fanatasy jrpg would be like from atlus knowing their track record from megaten and persona.This game delivered pretty well.

Great characters with a simple story.
It was less deep and grand than I thought it was going to be but I think there is beauty in its simplicity.
Vilain is Gilliath Osborne tier. Best Atlus villain.

Gameplay was nice. It loved how customizable archetypes were and the turns management was interesting. Definitely enjoyed how difficult it was. My only gripe was how shallow the action combat was. It was kinda scuffed.

Game is very beautiful and menus are some of the best in the industry. Wish they put that much effort in dungeons. alot are copy paste as the game goes on.

Overall,great game. Not much to say. Play it if you love jrpgs/fantasy adventure stories.
Hopefully they expand on the world and this becomes its own franchise. Very interested in the possibility.

9/10

1st match and team already throwing slurs and death threats

2016 overwatch we are so back babyyyy

Peak gaming

10/10
goty

对我来说，《悟空传》是 2024 年最佳影片的有力竞争者。虽然有一些问题，但我还是非常喜欢。作为一个工作室的第一款游戏 这款游戏已经非常不错了。

你可以看出 Game Science 在制作这款游戏时倾注了多少心血。从画面上看，这是我在 2024 年玩过的最漂亮的游戏。这让我感到非常惊讶，因为我确信今年早些时候玩的《FF7 重生》是我今年玩过的最漂亮的游戏。在画面方面把《重生》贬低得一文不值对我来说是很不公平的。悟空》在环境和寺庙等方面的细节之多绝对令人难以置信。我为这款游戏拍了很多截图，因为一切都太美太复杂了。不幸的是，这耗费了很多存储空间。(130 多 GB LMAO）因此，虽然这款游戏很美，但我还是迫不及待地从我的 ssd 中卸载了它。

游戏的玩法很不错。它让我想起了《战神纪》和《最终幻想 16》。它从 soulsbourne 游戏中获得了一些灵感，但归根结底，它真的不是。但这完全没有问题，因为他们可以疯狂地使用各种技能。游戏具有一定的挑战性。但我最喜欢的部分是

各种 BOSS 这个游戏绝对能通关长老戒指的 BOSS。长生圈的 BOSS 希望他们是悟空的 BOSS。每个 BOSS 都有自己独特的机制，而且每个 BOSS 的设计都非常独特。每个 BOSS 都有独特的机制，而且每个 BOSS 的设计都非常独特。

Wukong is a strong 2024 goty contender for me. It has some problems but i really enjoyed it still. For a first game from a studio. This is already very good.

You can tell how much love and effort Game Science put into crafting this game. Graphically, this is the most beautiful game I've played in 2024. Which is astonishing for me since I was sure FF7 Rebirth which I played earlier this year was the most beautiful game I've played all year. Too knock down rebirth in terms of graphics is quite a feet for me. The amount of detail Wukong has in its environment and the finer details in temples and such was absolutely insane. I took so many screenshots of this game because of how beautiful and intricate everything was. Unfortunately that did cost alot of storage space. (130+ gb LMAO) So as beautiful as this game was I also couldn't wait to uninstall it from my ssd.

The gameplay was good. It reminded me of God of War Ragnarok and Final Fantasy 16. It had some inspiration from soulsbourne games but at the end of the day it really wasn't. Ant thats absolutely fine because they could go crazy with skill variety instead. The game was decently challenging. But my favorite part was..

BOSSSSS VARIETY!!! THIS GAME ABSOLUTELY CLEARS ELDEN RING BOSSES. ELDEN RING BOSSES WISH THEY WERE WUKONG BOSSES. This game had some of the most interesting bosses i played all year.Each boss had mechanics unique to them and each one was designed VERY UNIQUELY. They had like 1 boss reskin and everything else was unique. HECK each boss even had its own folklore and story if you go on the menus. Its absolutely bonkers how much effort they put into these. I do wish some if them were harder though but overall standing ovation for the bosses in this game. Absolute Cinema.

However this amazing pro with bosses does come with a boon....Destined one..lacks..combos..

this is the overall combo of the game: x x x x x Y (weave a transformation/skill) x x x x x Y

what...

Sure there are different skills and stances but the problem is It all boils down to charging up for max charge Y no matter what.
THEY'RE ALL THE SAME! you weave in a skill or two in the middle but its the same damn combo.

Theres no shot they cooked so hard on the bosses and fumbled the main character's combos so hard man. This really pissed me off since this game is so close to being perfect. Hell I could even look over the problems of the story as long as they cooked with this part.

Other than that, map design and controls...
Look.. you cant just not include an in-game map and then put a thousand invisible walls everywhere. Next, there is so much backtracking on empty spaces when you're doing side content. I really wish they gave nimbus earlier. Finally, there is definitely some clunk in the controls and physics. And i don't mean monster hunter clunk. Some moves will literally register lte and there are weird physics at play in the environment. Especially noticeable with the invisible walls. Going map less is fine but doing it when visually there shouldn't be invisible walls in some open parts is a really weird choice.

That aside, Soundtrack was amazing. Every zone or biome had a unique air to it enhanced by music. Ones that stood out were the headless monk in chapter 2 and the songs that would play during the videos at the end of each chapter.

I really appreciated the cultural roots it had even though i didn't know anything about some of these folklores. I really loved the animated scenes that would show at the end of each chapter. It was very cool learning about them.My only exposure of Sun Wukong was from other media like God of Highschool, dbz, fgo, overwatch skins etc so it was cool seeing how he was equally as broken as he was told in those medium. Seeing all these stories and Sun Wukong's struggle for freedom was very inspiring to play.

Having said all that,

I liked Sun Wukong. But the Destined one's journey was "just OK" in my opinion. I think game science focused too much on respecting the source material that they sacrificed the quality of the story they were trying to tell in the first place. Without prior knowledge on the Journey to the West and the whole life of Sun Wukong, the story of the destined one is a jumbled mess. Collecting the fragments was alright but i found the best parts wasn't really the Destined one. The best parts of the story was when they talked about Sun Wukong or Zhu Bajie.
Although I appreciate seeing the Sun Wukong parts I really wished they made a more compelling story for the Destined one.

Overall:

Loved and enjoyed the game. Very beautiful with Amazing bosses and biomes. Very fun and Wukong is my GOAT. Loved the cultural inspiration, OST, learning about CHINESE FOLKLORE. Wished they wrote a better new story for destined one with it. That said this game really lacked combos and had poor map design.

8/10 very good for first game from this studio. Cant wait to see more from 'em.

Barriers.

Trails from Zero is a solid start to a new arc. It puts the player in the place of a detective instead of the bracers we came to know in sky trilogy. The Special Support Section, a bunch of underdogs in a corrupted city. Lloyd Bannings a young detective trying to overcome any barrier they have to face.

I'm just going to say it now....This was wayyyyy better than how FC started. The team definitely learned a lot throughout the sky trilogy and incorporated it here. Zero is better paced and keeping the main cast to Lloyd, Elie, Tio, and Randy definitely made me feel more attached to them as the game went on. It wasn't like sky where once a character's arc was over they would simply get sidelined until the end. Keeping the game within Cross bell was also such a good decision because it lets easily connect with the setting of the game. I was definitely more attached to the NPC stories in this one than the sky trilogy. The side quests were very engaging with the detective work. I also LOVED how the Renne arc from the sky games concluded. Beautiful finish to a well built up arc.

Having said that, I did find the start to be quite a slog coming from 3rd. However it is a needed a slog to ease players into introducing the new characters. My only other complaint would be how predictable the villain was in zero especially since it was way too similar to sky sc's main villain.

The battle system was improved a lot. I really liked the combo crafts and the party advantages they added in this arc. Arts was still broken but it was fine since crafts were still good to use. Other than that not much in the gameplay has changed from sky trilogy.

The OST in this game was stellar. This game has some of my favorites throughout the series (CS4 as I'm writing this review). I think it was a good step up from sky which had some good tracks as well. One of my favorite openings and final boss music.

For me,the best part of Trails from Zero aside from the cast is the political landscape of cross bell. I really liked how they didn't make the main cast bracers again and instead chose the underdogs of Crossbell. I was also really intrigued with the set ups they were doing for Erebonia and Calvard. Seeing the corruption and different factions in Crossbell and how the Special support section tackled it using detective work was really interesting.

Overall a fantastic start with an unfortunately predictable villain. Will talk more about MY GOAT Lloyd Bannings on my Azure review. But for now..

8/10

Cinema. Peak. Zenith.

This was the game of all time. A modern GTA I would even call it. (until 6 comes out)

Cyberpunk truly has come a long way since release. I put this game off because of the bugs and such until the anime came out and saw people giving the dlc alot of praise. Gotta give props to CD Projekt Red for not abandoning it. They have fixed SO MUCH stuff in this game. By the time I played it, I would give this game a solid 9/10. HOWEVER, if you are to include the DLC Phantom Liberty, I would bump it up to a 10/10. Thats how good the dlc is and I would recommend anyone who wants to buy this game to immediately purchase Phantom Liberty and play it as if it is part of the main story. With all honesty, the DLC's main story is more compelling than the base game's main story. It also includes some of the best characters in the game.

The gameplay is very fun. There are tons of builds, cyberware and weapon variety. Each one being viable and having their own strengths and weaknesses. Your V can by anything you want (through gameplay and story). There are also many ways in approaching missions. You can go guns blazing, full on stealth like classic ac games, or even go use your hacks to confuse enemies. The gameplay is very diverse,fun, and quite addictive once you get into it. My only complain would be more vehicle variety. I wish we could use tanks and flying vehicles as well, but thats more of a nitpick.

The main story's overall progression is 'alright' although the way its used as a motivating force for V throughout side quests is amazing. My main gripe with is it was too short for a main story. However, I don't really mind because if you play all the side quests and the DLC, it adds up to quite a lot and enhances the main plot.

Having said all that,w hat makes this game truly shine in my opinion are the side quests and the setting Night City. These side quests are some of the best I played through ever. Night city is very alive because of these side quests and the amount if detail they put into these is great. There are different endings depending on what you choose and it can even affect other side quests. I wont go into further detail since going into these blind is the best way to go.

As for the characters, they were amazing. Won't go into further detail for each one but I loved how morally grey the characters were in general. It definitely helps set up how bleak and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ the world is in cyberpunk 2077. I think Idris Elba and Keanu Reeves did a tremendous job with their characters (please buy the DLC) . Their character arcs are some of the best in the game imo.

Overall, amazing game. Really wished they just postponed the release date so this could've been the final product instead but it is what it is. What we have now is a good game I could recommend to anyone.

10/10
Please buy Phantom Liberty too.

Testosterone: The game

Short campaign but very fleshed out even if this is your first time entering the series.
Gameplay is fun and addictive. Reminds me of a 3rd person Doom.
I really hope they keep updating the online side of things. Really wish there were more enemy variations and maps/game modes.

Overall had a great time with it
8/10