Recent reviews by Aya

With Mount&Blade: Bannerlord's 2nd anniversary update being a few weeks old now, I think it's best that I rewrite this review to the best of my abilities in a way that's not just me being mad about the PVP mode just being a shooter.

Granted, all of my hours are still from the multiplayer mode, though when I have inquired whether or not I should expect much things to be different from Warband's campaign, the answer was a no, and I've noticed that a frequent complaint is how the game along with its updates have remained consistently barebones which creates this perception that TaleWorlds is simply letting modders finish their game, as if Calradia is meant to be a blank canvas for modders to paint over.

This is a very flawed way to look at the state of the game, since updates aren't compatible with mods designed for earlier versions of the game, and most players don't consider the updates' additions to be worth the constant mod breakage. Most importantly, since the game is also on PS5 and the Xbox Series consoles, those players are just left with the vanilla experience: a canvas without the tools to paint over it.

Now if I were to go to the part where I have sunk most of my hours in, I can say with full confidence that the multiplayer mode is on borrowed time. Since Early Access, the faction balance has been one faction being the absolute best at everything (Vlandia), two factions having poor options in regards to fighting armored opponents (Sturgia and Aserai), and one faction who's starting unit only exists to feed kills to the enemy (Empire). Excluding mirror matches, the only matchup that's really balanced is Aserai vs Khuzait, though it is also rarely played. Another thing that has driven me to uninstall the game was that everything that I said about certain factions being better or worse than others can be made a moot point when one team decides to play the archer class exclusively. At that point, skill becomes optional unless the opposing team also decides to spam archers, which by that point, the game ends up becoming a worse version of the modern military shooters that have saturated the late 2000s.

I won't lie if I say that I'm not the target audience for the singleplayer campaign, though it's apparent to me that the singleplayer campaign's target audience aren't very happy with Bannerlord either, on account of constant mod breakage and barely anything to justify it.

[slavic folk music stops]

While Disgaea 2 has been a pretty large source of nostalgia back in the later years of the Playstation 2's lifespan, I really wish that my ability to recommend this game to other people can reflect the amount of enjoyment that I had with this game. Unfortunately, their antics regarding the PC gaming scene in Japan ensures that it will always be nothing more than a series of glorified petitions for future ports from Japanese developers.

Yes, I know that the issue i'm describing is relating to ClaDun X2 more than the Disgaea franchise, but I genuinely believe that the dev team deserves all the hatred that they can get for why Square-Enix and Bandai Namco Studios are dangerously close to outright abandoning their PC support: NIS made a game, it failed and that failed game has become the golden standard that Japanese game developers adhere to when selling their games on Steam. I am leaving a negative review on Disgaea 2 because I don't think they deserve a single dime from the Steam Community moving forward.

Even if they do continue their PC support moving forward from Disgaea 5, I would much rather they apologize for ClaDun's PC release and the long-term consequences of its failure

While I haven't been able to play the Taste of Adventure scenarios proper (in my defense, custom scenarios can be a little too fun at times), I think it's important to mention that even if you aren't too far ahead in the base game, you can still get a lot of enjoyment from this DLC since you can still use the new rides and scenery in the base campaign.

Sure, you'll still probably be using Go Karts to win your scenarios, but I won't deny that I probably had a little too much fun building the Inverted Spinning Coaster and having more flat rides in the game is always a welcome treat for players not wanting to bankrupt their parks.

Also, you can decorate your park with lava and while it is functionally identical to water, it's still a welcome bit of flavour for whenever you decide that some less favourable guests need to be disposed of, though you won't get to hear the sound of air bubbles when a guest dies in lava rather than regular water.

Probably not the most accurate comparison, but it's definitely the most convenient. At the very least, the spectacle is very much comparable to Touhou if we're to go by soundtrack and background art. Anyways, this game was originally released back in 2011 on Steam, became abandonware in 2015 and resurfaced yesterday with a significant portion of content for all skill levels. While the loyalty discount is debatable for people who played the original 2011 release, it's definitely a welcome treat for people who haven't played the original.


The way the game controls is fairly simple: Move around, shoot things and dodge bullets. Barring the "dodge bullets" part, the moving and shooting part is pretty simple to get though you also get to unlock additional ships as you play the game, all of which having their own standard and special attack patterns, which in turn provide a welcome variation of ways to play the game though I feel that some of the ships come off as questionable. (Looking at you, bomber)

New to Jamestown+ are the Armada ships that allow you to mix and match various standard shots with different special attacks, with each Armada ship having A and B variations, similarly to Reimu and Marisa having alternate atttacks in the older Windows Touhou games. As someone who has played and beat the original Jamestown, I feel like you aren't missing out on too much with the Armada ships. In fact, the only ones I really enjoyed were LazarB (Purchasable after clearing Phobos) and CrystalB (available after beating the game). There is some content in the new version that is a welcome treat to veteran players, but I'll get to that later

I'm surprised it took me this long to write about this, but it's worth noting that your arsenal of weaponry needs some enemies that are satisfying to gun down in a shmup. Enter the Spanish armada backed by their Martian allies. Often complimenting the stage you're playing on, the enemies you fight won't pull any punches, even on the first level. While you're definitely on your toes while playing this, I found that my biggest annoyance with the game is that while you're focusing on dodging attacks from tougher enemies, you'll often get sniped by far weaker foes. I don't know how to feel about this and this often has me dying without ever seeing HOW i died, which can sometimes lead to some needless frustration. If the game is to receive post-release patches, i feel like a replay system should be something the devs should implement as this would help the player analyze how they play and the cause of their untimely demise(s).

With that said, you do have some tools at your disposal to fight your way out of a bad situation in the form of the Vaunt. To say that it's this game's version of bombs isn't entirely accurate since the primary function is to act as a score multiplier while the defensive shield it gives you on activation is just a neat little bonus. While I've found myself using Vaunt its secondary function, it's still very much satisfying to see just how long you can maintain your meter before it finally depletes since there's a lot more skill involved with the Vaunt than simply hitting the Bomb button out of a panicked reaction to projectile spam. I think this nifty little feature combined with the ship variety does a really good job at setting Jamestown appart from other games in its genre.

Yes, you have every reason to be intimidated by bullet hell games. No, you aren't entirely SOL if you can't 1CC a Touhou game on Normal Difficulty. In fact, the game's missions are played one by one, starting off with 2 lives per credit and 2 credits per level so reaching the end isn't an impossible task for most players. With that said, I strongly recommend buddying up with IRL friends or family as the stock system favours co-op sessions over solo since rather than each player losing lives when they die, they instead initiate a respawn timer where they can rejoin the game as long as one player is still alive. Respawn powerups will also appear to instanly revive a dead player which can make for some pretty epic comebacks if you're down to your last credit. So yeah, if you have some IRL friends and the couch space to spare, then you'll have yourself one of if not the best bullet hell experience available on Steam, even considering some of the more questionable design decisions.

Yes, i know i spent the previous portion of the review geeking over how awesome the co-op mode is and having played and beat the original Jamestown with some co-op buddies, co-op in this game is fantastic but there is one fatal flaw: There is no online component and in my personal opinion, Remote Play Together isn't a valid substitute to actual multiplayer support. Remote Play from my personal experience has been a laggy mess on a LAN connection. Streaming a couch co-op game over the internet sounds like a distaster waiting to happen.


The year is 1607. The empires of Britain and Spain seek to expand their influence beyond their borders and ventered off to the New World, bringing with them their conflicts. While those nations call the New World the New World, the Romans have called it Mars.

I won't lie, but you've got yourself a pretty silly premise there. It still makes for a pretty exciting adventure nonetheless but given that we're talking about an arcade shmup, i think i'll keep this section short but I will say this: The people who made this game did a phenominal job writing this thing. Following the perspective of Sir Walter Raleigh, you escape imprisonment from the Tower of London and venture off to Mars to redeem your good name in battle against the Spanish colonial armies, only to discover a hidden plot regarding the titular colony's disappearance. To compliment the game's writing are some really well-done artwork that displays the events that happen between each level which when combined with the game's writing really, it really makes you forget just how absurd the game's premise is.


Whether or not you think two extra levels are worth $5 is debetable, though I've found them to be an absolute blast.

Rather than taking place in Mars, the Tall Tales of John Smith takes place on her moons: Phobos and Deimos. The story starts off with our daring adventurer allowing himself to be captured by the Spanish army Spanish forces just to have the thrill of a daring prison escape. Yeah, we're already off to a good start and you haven't even started the mission yet. When you do get around to playing it, you'll be greeted with some delicious eye candy in the form of the Black Garrison, a heavily fortified Spanish castle guarded by an array of mobile turrets, siege cannons, automobiles and whirlygigs all trying to kill you dead. You can tell that the devs have poured a lot of love with the original levels and the new missions are them going the extra mile. In my humble opinion, they do more than simply make up for the often lackluster Armada ships.


If you're a fan of bullet hell games, then Jamestown+ is most definitely a game you should set your sights on. Those who aren't too fond of the genre might want someone to buddy up with first, as the co-op mechanics definitely help make the journey through mars far more survivable than if you're to fly solo. As for owners of the original Jamestown, I can see why $5 USD can be a steep price for you but if we're to look at the game in all of its content, i think the base price is pretty generous for newcomers.

Soundtrack is composed by Alexander Brandon, best known for creating the soundtracks for Tyrian, Jazz Jackrabbit and the original Deus Ex. He was also one of the contributing musical artists for 1999's Unreal Tournament (Go Down is probably his most famous track in UT)


Pretty much everything else about the game. If in the unlikely event that Alexander Brandon reads this, I hope his work will appear in projects not geared towards mobile devices but rather larger scale games geared towards PC and home consoles.

Placeholder text. Otherwise, it's definitely about as good as Diablo-like games are on Steam.

Been eyeing this game for some time while it was in Early Access, but at the time, i couldn't bring myself to spend money on what's essentially a pre-order. I don't know how i even heard of it in the first place, but i think part of it had to do with buyer's remorse associated with Planet Coaster (I mean, building things for it was fun, but the management side of the game was absurdly difficult). IMHO, I think Parkitect caters to nostalgia much better than Planet Coaster does, while also adding adding some new mechanics so that it's not just an off-brand remake of RollerCoaster Tycoon. In fact, I strongly suggest that you at least check out the shops section of the game's tutorial, especially if you grew up with RCT1 (First mistake i made was not realizing that shop supplies aren't magically teleported to your shops)


Being a fan of the original RCT, the first thing I did when booting up the game was download custom scenarios, though the first thing I noticed was a thing called Park Utilities, an important asset for designing your park though are considered to be bad decorations in parks. I can see the intention behind having this type of mechanic and actually forces you to think about adding scenery to your theme parks because back in the days of the earlier RCT games, scenery did next to nothing for your parks and was either a money sink for when you wait for the timer to tick down before goal completion or in the case of RCT3, a fun tool for you to play around with in the Sandbox mode. Here, scenery plays a much bigger role in the game, as you are forced to make your park look nice to distract people from the inner workings of your park. As someone who has played around with scenery features in RCT3, i actually like this change, all things considered. Barring the Bad Decorations mechanic, the game's pretty similar to the older RCT games, albeit with RCT3's building system sprinked on.

6/27/2019 Edit
Upon playing the actual campaign, i've noticed that researching is more of a frustration in comparison to RCT, in that the creation of a research team is costly to the point where you'll need to have already built a big enough park to make at least $300 a month before you even hire your first research team. This can make progression a lot more challenging than what RCT players can expect and... I'm of a mixed opinion on this myself, though i think it might have to do with how Go Karts worked in RCT. More likely than not, the devs didn't want you to do the same thing, though I'd like to think that things could've been done differently in this regard.


Being invocative of the 2D RCT games, you're not gonna get some fancy phong shaded normal mapped rides and scenery like in Planet Coaster. That's not to say that the graphics in Parkitect are bad. In fact, the art style does a lot of favours with how Parkitect plays if i'm honest to myself. I do get the occasional microstutter when zooming out the camera, though it's pretty easy to ignore in such a slow-paced game. The only real gripe i have is that I can't seem to enable the advanced water shaders shown in the game's launch trailer, instead having this blue opaque texture instead.


I really don't know what to say about this game, since I've pretty much described the entirety of the game: It's pretty much RCT1 if the game actually forced you to think about decorating your park, and the visuals are pretty good at capturing that feeling. Oh, and the game has mod support, but most people have their sights turned towards Planet Coaster so if you're not content with the default scenery options, you're probably gonna have to pick up Blender and Zbrush. Still, i think this game is a far more enjoyable experience than Planet Coaster even when you consider the much lower production values.

P.S.: You can actually kill your guests unlike Planet Coaster


Another thing i probably should've mentioned that the game also comes with a Flat Terrain scenario where everything is unlocked but isn't a true sandbox since you are limited by the amount of money you have. I actually think that it as a solid alternative to a consequence-free Sandbox mode, as you can learn the game's mechanics at your own pace.

This is essentially Phantasmagoria of Flower View with proper controller support. I don't think there's more than I can say.

Okay, for those who are unfamiliar with Touhou Project, Phantasmagoria of Flower View is a bullet hell concept where two players go head-to-head, with the main goal of the game being to get the other player to die from an overwhelm of bullet spam. To achieve this goal, you shoot down as much things as possible to build up a combo meter which in turn summons up portals on the enemy's screen to throw even more death at his or her general direction.

On top of creating portals on the enemy screen, you also have chargable special attacks where you can spawn character-specific bullets rather than generic mooks to attack the enemy and at 100% meter, you can summon a boss on the enemy's screen! The main difference between Phantasmagoria of Flower View and Rival Megagun is that the boss is an actual player.

Oh who am I kidding, if you're reading this review, you're probably a fan of bullet hell games and I strongly recommend this game for the merit of being a solid attempt into bringing the SHMUP genre into a PVP setting.

Oh, and even if you have already played TH09, I still say that you should get this game because...
A) The bosses are playable
B) You can slow yourself down by gently tilting the analog stick
C) Much better controller support than literally every Touhou game out there
D) Setting up online matches for PoFV is a bloody chore. Steam integration is where it's at

I should not have to say this in a review but if you value your sanity, please stay the actual fuck away from the Steam forums.

Finally, do keep in mind that there will be plenty of placeholder text, specifically entry-level hardware performance and assuming i ever give a $#!+ about it, multiplayer. Now that we have that out of the way...


When i first heard that the game was releasing on PC, i was pretty stoked and wasn't too sure what to expect. While i haven't been invested in the Ace Combat series even when i had a PlayStation 2, I did know that the game was focused more around a singleplayer experience and that the soundtrack was also done by the same composers behind the SoulCalibur series. While the first two missions were an enjoyable romp, it was a bit of a climb to learn how the game controlled but satisfying nonetheless.


First off, the main thing that i've noticed (and extremely grateful for) is that motion blur is disabled by default. Seriously, why do game developers insist that ON should be the default? Asides from this, the game honestly looks... pretty good enough. Textures are of a sufficiently high fidelity that the only time spent being disappointed in them is if you're DEAD. Otherwise, everything looks fan-fraggin-tastic when you're flying at high speeds and high altitudes. Only complaints i really have are... nothing worth noting, to be honest. A part two will likely be done up once the drama that's inherent with buying a Japanese game on PC clears up.

Okay, so after playing this game on my Alienware Alpha R2, it seems to me that entry level GPUs should expect a worse experience than the PS4 version of the game, though the settings I use are still a step up from the Xbox One's 720p. The game can still look pretty good on Medium settings with High texture quality though some systems may experience some extremely low-res textures and while texture loading is a quirk inherent with UE4, some systems may take a longer time to load in the high-quality textures than others. This is something I haven't noticed in SoulCalibur VI (the dev team's prior UE4 game at the time being)


Again, i've really only played the first two missions and barring one botched launching on the first mission (never had that issue again), it was pretty satisfying to just.. fly around and blow ♥♥♥♥ up. Okay, i'll admit that i'm pretty much a total n00b in this genre as the only exposure to it was from a really obscure 2K Czech game known as Flying Heroes so stepping into Ace Combat 7 is still very much a new experience for me.

Controls-wise, while I am mostly content with the default controls, this also feels like the kind of game that would benefit from full controller mapping, even if I had a console and was playing AC7 on it.

Another thing i have issues with is the upgrade UI, where I felt as if it would've been better if you were using an analog stick to control a mouse pointer, rather than to move directly across an upgrade tree.

As for the actual flight, either i'm very terrible with words or games of this genre fall under the category of "no news is good news"


I mean, i feel like i'm getting some Tekken 7 flashbacks during that game's free weekend, though i'm not entirely too sure what to think of the game's storytelling, where cutscenes follow a character that I have yet to see in-game and am honestly unsure of their significance to Trigger and his squad. Other than that, i think it's a bit too early for me to judge, though i do like the whole schtick of you going up against a much more technologically advanced army capable of apparently bloodless warfare. Asides from that, i think i need to play a few more missions before editing this portion of the review.


Yeah, this is mostly an expedited response to the drama inherent with Japanese games on PC and in the specific case of Ace Combat 7, a review bombing over incompatibility with flight sticks. As far as it handles on the standard Xinput controller, it handles pretty damn well and sporting some really good visuals for its low performance impact. As far as i'm concerned, Ace Combat 7 will most likely be the best singleplayer game of its genre for years to come while similar games focus aggressively on their multiplayer components.


While I don't have a flight stick myself, one of the comments suggested looking into this video guide. Feel free leave comments as to whether or not it actually works. If it doesn't, this section of the review is gone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmyHA2H6E5A&t=7s

Seeing that people still insist on complaining about this game, I have this to say: If you absolutely cannot stand playing this game without a flight stick or 21:9 support, then at least support the game under the merits that it's from the same studio that has worked on Tales Of, Tekken, SoulCalibur, God Eater, Code Vein, Mobile Suit Gundam: EXTREME VS, THE IDOLM@STER and Taiko no Tatsujin. As it currently stands, our attitude towards AC7 is a statement that does not speak highly of our deserving of Japanese games on Steam.