Recent reviews by Hanger

how the ♥♥♥♥ am i supposed to have long protracted battles when the game can barely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stay alive for more than 10 minutes at a time, fix your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crashing

For the price that I paid for this (MYR 20, roughly 5USD), the mileage is insane - as you'd rightly expect from a Rockstar game, and from flagship title Red Dead Redemption in particular. This has to be one of the best experiences in gaming I've had in quite a long time, but it's a shame that it could only really be this long at the state the game is currently in - which I will get into. There are truly excellent things about the game, that shine so brightly it makes me question the quality of other open-world games today. Yet, there are things so utterly lacking about the game that serve as a constant reminder how imperfect this game is. The review I have written is too long for Steam but I feel maybe out of vanity or necessity, I need to keep it long because I genuinely have a lot to say about it. but there will be a TL;DR section at the bottom. Below, is a link to the full review on Evernote, but I will keep two of my main points praising and criticising the game as those are necessary for context. There is a TL;DR section at the very bottom however.

FULL REVIEW: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s394/sh/bea907ec-c2fc-7a95-eb58-7ffd3a754676/7f45a9ad2712c21e29da32c507408b77

The gameplay is fantastic, from gunplay to exploring. There is quite a lot to see and the things to do are very fun - for however long they last. The missions are exciting for the most part, with decent characters and an interesting story. Players will definitely have a lot of fun playing in at least one of the roles, but not every role is for everyone. Playing in a posse and roleplaying with them is extremely fun and watching your progression through the game with your counterparts does a good job in immersion. And finally, the game is beautiful. From the swamps to mountains, every inch of the game is gorgeous, and it's just a delight to be there. The game is filled with things to take your time up, it is rich in its worldbuilding and events that sometimes it feels alive.

However, my most damning criticism of the game I think is not easily solvable. The game suffers from inflating cash prices and placing heavy focus on requiring gold, making players inclined to try to earn as much cash and gold as quick as possible. Placing this in the context of a lack of content, and other content that entails you having to waste time in game, players very quickly gas out of forcing themselves to play a game that can't be played. In rushing for cash, one will inevitably try to get more experience in certain roles to earn more cash, to buy more things, to earn more cash, to buy more things, to earn more cash, to finish what content there is. And that none of the most obvious ways to earn cash entail one actually playing the game. Thus, one quickly realises that there really isn't much content. In rushing for gold in particular, one rushes through Bounty Hunts, for the 700th time, and then does their Daily Challenges and Role Challenges, most of which entail also not really playing the game. One might question at this point what "playing the game" means to me, because roaming around the world technically is playing the game, and so is doing daily challenges themselves, and so is doing bounties, hunting, making moonshine, collecting, etc. But in all of these things, for most of the roles, to maximise what you need to get, you need to not finish what you are doing, or wait a long time to actually do something. Bounty Hunters need to spend 15 minutes in game before finishing their bounty to get maximum rewards - and most bounties are done within 2-5 minutes. So you sit there and wait and not play until it's time to go. Traders and Moonshiners need to wait a good amount of time before they can even deliver and access the content and money-making for their roles. And for things like Naturalist or Collecting, you roam around the world hoping to find something that might not actually be there, and either get good amount of cash for not really doing anything other than pressing and holding Square and taking 3h out of your day, or come back totally empty handed, and having taken 5h out of your day. If one uses a Collectors Map, what exactly are you doing? Are you really playing a game or are you collecting some random object that just gives you cash so that you can....play the game. Almost the same can be said for every other role. I very quickly realised the burnout I was having in this game through playing the collector role, because I would spend days just randomly roaming around the world looking for collectibles because of the promise of cash. I wasn't having fun, I was promising myself that I would once it was over. And then when I actually played all the other roles, I quickly realised I wasn't really having fun in the end either. Not because the content or gameplay was bad, but because it was braindead, mindless repetition of myself not playing the game at all, yet somehow still playing it. So for such a game filled with activity, I hope one can see my point that the game is empty; it's void of soul despite rich in life.


TL;DR
The game for the price you buy it at is superb. The mileage and enjoyment I derived was immense. And for those worried about microtransactions to access content, I would even say don't be. You can rack up more than enough gold to access all of the content. It will take awhile to unlock content such as the Moonshiner or Naturalist, but it's all completely doable without taking forever even without buying gold with your actual money. And that's the problem, there's not much content. A severe lack of missions and a disgusting inflation of prices lead to repetitive gameplay that curses the player to basically not play the game at all, even when they're in-game. And beyond this, whatever little content there is, is artificially extended in playtime by said inflation of prices.

My advice is to play this game with other people as a posse, take your time and take it slow. Don't rush for content, and roleplay the game so that you space out your adventures adequately so that you have a more wholesome time playing the game. I would advise everyone gets on board and does everything together and gets the same role and experiences the game uniformly. This way, the game won't really get stale for anyone as everyone will be experiencing something new everytime they turn on the game. All this said however, for the price you get the game at, I cannot recommend it enough. But know it's a fantastic flawed experience.

A thoroughly enjoyable game with a quaint aesthetic and concept. Does not feel too short or too long. Gameplay feels smooth and polished and runs very well. Each mission is a neat pocket world of adventure and fun, and the collectibles are not a slog to collect. The story is passable but a funny and good ride nonetheless. These are the good things I'd like to say about the game, but there's a number of, if not flaws, unfortunate consequences as a result of the way the game was written, played through and designed.

The game although not feeling too short or too long, is definitely too narrow. As per classic platformers with linear design and obvious cues, there's no real sense of expansiveness in both level design and storyboarding. What I mean by this is that everything about the game, from experiencing the story, to playing each level, to doing a completionist run, requires one playthrough - and that's it. 8 hours in (with 3 of them I was sitting idly because food or other responsibilities etc.) and I've collected every achievement and collectible in the game. I mean, not that that's really a bad thing, because achievements mean nothing anyway, but the game as a whole lasts you as good as a short Netflix series - shorter still if you don't go for completionist runs. What's even stranger still is that despite the game being short, and me remembering enjoying the experience while playing, I remember next to nothing about the game - and I just finished it 20 minutes ago. Like every level of the game is its own pocket experience, this game in entirety is like in its own special platformer pocket that you forget about and then hang in your closet forever once you're done with it. Another consequence that arises is that the game doesn't flesh out mechanics or game designs well enough to warrant any sort of real idea of progression in the game. This may not be important to some, but it does beg the question on bothering to not only include other weapons in the game, but also provide players the option to switch between them. Perhaps if you want to give yourself an extra challenge to kill everything with a shovel instead of a magic spell - but even that is still rather easily done. And that challenge is eclipsed by the shortlived nature of gameplay. And that brings me to my next criticism - how easy the game is. I can't remember how many times I was walking through a level and was trying to eye out collectibles only to reach structures I've seen before in different skins - like how there's a random tall tower with a path to beyond the level, but there's a "secret" platform behind the wall of the tower that still goes up and there's a crow skull! Or perhaps there's a random bunch of boxes on a platform that serves no purpose - oh wait it's hiding another crow skull behind there! That's one thing on the easiness to find collectibles, but the game itself in a platforming sense serves little to no challenge plus boss patterns pretty much ensured I beat everything first try - bar Dhor - who I thought was the most confusing of the lot in terms of whether what I was doing was correct. Was I successfully hitting him when I jump smashed or was I not? Would my other attacks work instead? I still don't know. The game can be bought and finished to completion in one run without much effort at all.

So without banging on about this too much: the game is a little too easy, and it's a little too narrow. But that kind of serves as its charm. Because it's easy and because it's narrow without too much going on, it doesn't feel too short or too long - and it was as far as I can remember a truly fun experience. However, because it's too narrow, and because it's too easy, it feels unmemorable and there could have been so much more, with respect to everything else about the game, that could have been fleshed out. I would still recommend the game however as it is a cute game with a good polish.

Not sure what I expected from this game but I am thoroughly enjoying it. Obviously I wouldn't imagine this game to be something you might sink a hundred hours in, maybe not even 50 hours, but I can see it occupy quite a lot of my spare time. It's easy to follow the narration and engross yourself in the world.

However, there are the occassional typos which seem careless. Then there's the difficult UI, where you are pretty much told to exit the game everytime you finish a run. What they don't tell you is that you can type restart instead. Furthermore, the game closes on pressing the ESC key, which is troublesome when you at times also have to press the 1 key (I play on a laptop in which ESC is next to 1.

However, so far I've seemed to actually enjoy this game despite me not enjoying dating sims or narration games previously.

PS: I hope you and Krissi are living your happiest lives.

Right, you're probably going to see a lot of positive reviews about this game floating around. That's because the game works for them. Great! Happy it works for you. At the time of this review I have about 4 hours of gameplay put into this. You're probably going to say "don't say anything if you haven't played it yet!" But I have played it. Well, at least I've tried playing it. For four hours, I have been troubleshooting this game trying to get the online to work. I have played a total of 2 Online matches. That's roughly 10 minutes of gameplay. I'm going to say it now, and depending on how the situation changes, I might change my opinion: DO NOT BUY THIS GAME.

I'll begin with the positives, because that's only appropriate for the effort put into making this game. it's gorgeous. Initally I thought it looked gimmicky after watching trailers and gameplay, but after playing it, it feels amazing! It plays really well and despite an easy combo system there's some levels of depth to execution. It's really really fun. And for those hardcore DBZ fans, I can't imagine this game disappointing. It's even prettier than GuiltyGear and Blazblue which are themselves absolutely beautiful. Execution feels great and you generally have a good idea of what you're doing as you're playing, and you're not hindered by lag very often.

The story is really interesting and the characters you can play are some of the most popular loved characters so that's a real bonus. When the game works, playing with friends and strangers is fantastic. The experience is somewhat undescribable. It's easy enough that new players to fighting games are welcome in warmly. It's casual enough that it keeps you hooked to winning enough. It appears as if it's competitive in its gameplay such that there's depth to the combat system as well - though I'm definitely not at that level to start talking.

Right that's it, pros over. The cons will be addressed now, and boy are they some bad cons. Arcsys has had some serious trouble with online multiplayer in its previous games. Blazblue and GuiltyGear are riddled with issues and required me to either open my router to DMZ or use a VPN to play online. At least I could play online. I've tried everything from different regions, to VPN, to opening ports to make this game work. No dice. This game has JUST launched and already a sizeable portion of consumers are unable to play the game. A humorous thought popped into my mind last night. I remembered No Man's Sky and everyone asking where multiplayer was. That's exactly what I was asking when I was playing this game last night. Where's multiplayer Bandai Namco? Arcsys? Where is it?

There's 4 things that stand out at launch that have made this game somewhat unbearable.

1) A permanent lobby mode, where you're forced into chibi form to run around and figure out where you're going instead of using a good old menu. Why the social aspect? There's literally no reason to not use a menu.

2) Connecting with friends. You CANNOT invite friends to any game or lobby. You need to coordinate with your friend, find the same room, in the same region, find each other in the little hub lobby they have, open a ring and pray to GOD it works. That leads on to the next point.

3) IT DOESN'T WORK. I'm super happy (seriously, not ironically) that this game works fantastically for many people. But also for many people they often find this error - "Cannot join because room is full" or "No rooms found". After trying to connect with a friend for an hour we just gave up and moved to Skullgirls because that works. When A 7 quid game outperforms a 60 quid game. I cannot express my disappointment when I could not find games. Alright, so maybe private matches don't work, how about ranked or casual matches? Surely those must work, after all that's the meat of the game!

4) IT DOES NOT WORK NICE TRY. Enjoy waiting 10 minutes for a game. I'm more than certain it's not the population that's lacking. Almost every server is filled. There MUST be at least ONE person who's matching at the same time. Turns out, it's apparent that there's no one! Sorry! Enjoy the single player fighting game!

I'm probably not going to bother playing this game until a patch comes out. I'll be able to provide a significantly more in depth review once I get to play >2 matches. As it stands, it is completely unplayable. I can't connect with my friend, who was the sole reason I bothered to buy the game at all. At this point, it seriously feels like you should just NOT buy the game and wait for a patch and/or buy it on sale. The worst part is, having tried EVERYTHING, I can't tell if it's the game's problem or my problem. Every other fighting game works online for me. Tekken, GuiltyGear, Street Fighter. You name it, it WORKS. it doesn't work for this game though. What's the problem Arcsys, Bandai? Please illuminate me.