Painkiller Black – Every Level Ranked From Worst To Best

It goes without saying that Painkiller is my religion as I preach about it whenever I get the opportunity to do so and right now, I feel like preaching about Painkiller but I’ve already done an entire let’s play of the game as well as a review. So this time I will be ranking each and every level in the greatest first person shooter ever made from worst to best so that I can share with you my personal favorite levels in Painkiller. Now of course this list will include all of the levels in Battle Out Of Hell as well, so be sure to look forward to seeing those levels show up in the rankings. So without further ado, let’s begin.

35. People Can Fly HQ

Ok so this isn’t much of a level, rather a bonus developer’s room for beating Battle Out Of Hell on Trauma, there’s nothing exactly bad about it, it’s just that there’s barely any enemies to kill and they don’t even hurt you, the whole level is basically platforming to collect the souls of all the developers so there isn’t much to it really, though it should at least get mentioned.

34. Shadowland

Quite frankly, the final boss of Painkiller Battle Out Of Hell is terrible and is the worst part of Painkiller Black. Unlike in the original Painkiller where the Alastor fight was fantastic, King Alastor on the other hand is not. The fight lacks the spectacle that the original Alastor fight had. Now all you really have is a copy/paste of the original fight’s final phase but with a catch, you can’t actually damage him directly, instead you have to go through a really obtuse sequence, requiring you to take damage within one of the circles of the level, making a no hit run literally impossible for this fight, only then will a golem show up which may or may not make King Alastor vulnerable to damage, it’s purely luck based which is really annoying. Hands down the worst proper level in Painkiller Black for this reason alone

33. Pentagon

Remember the giant spider demon that appeared right at the end of Lab that you just killed? Well now you have to fight another one in what may quite possibly be the most boring level in the entire series, no joke, it’s just a small arena with containers littered around and some cannons, that’s it. At least Shadowland had an interesting aesthetic with all the ruined buildings, Pentagon is just kinda bland. While the boss may not be as terrible as Shadowland’s boss, it’s still one of the worst bosses due to the fact that part way through the fight, the boss gains a shield and you have to use one of the cannons around the level to break his shield. The game doesn’t tell you this of course and the cannon’s don’t always point towards the boss, so it can be a pain to find the correct cannon to lower the shield. To make matters worse, the boss launches homing projectiles which I can’t for the life of me figure out how to properly avoid besides using the containers as cover, to the point that doing a no damage run means you have to stay far back and shoot between the containers or you are guarenteed to get hit. Definitely not one of the game’s highlights if you ask me.

32. Swamp

So now we have our first level from the original Painkiller. Now this is nowhere near as bad as the other two boss fights in Battle Out Of Hell but it can still be really annoying, particularly on trauma. Basically you’re fighting a huge blob that walks around the outskirts of a swamp, you can’t shoot him directly of course, that would be too easy, instead you have to shoot the bubbles next to it to both damage him and eventually make him vulnerable but you only have a brief moment to hurt him before he turns back. When he reverts back to his invulnerable form, the strategy for the fight changes on the fly, now you have to shoot the bubbles in the air when they are near him, which makes him vulnerable again but to spawn these bubbles, you have to shoot the bubbless on the outskirts first, pretty obtuse for a boss fight in a game that’s all about mindless shooting if you ask me. Should you manage to figure all of this out, you will still need to deal with the nigh unavoidable attacks this boss throws at you. It will shoot a white orb that instantly kills you on trauma and tentacles that can kill you in 2 hits on trauma, requiring you to bunnyhop in a circular motion around the outside of the island to avoid them. It’s definitely one of the more frustrating bosses for sure.

31. Ruins

Ok so this boss is a little better since you can actually deal direct damage to his hammer right from the get go, though unless you actually aim for the hammer itself, you may not know this. The level is actually pretty cool, putting the havok physics to good use, trouble is that you can often get trapped in the debris which can be annoying to deal with. Not a bad boss but certainly not a brilliant one, once the hammer is destroyed you can simply shoot him directly and win, not much to it really, all you have to watch out for is the tremor every time he hits the ground with his hammer, since you can only avoid it by being airborne, though you can usually avoid this by bunnyhopping.

30. Enclave

One of the better bosses for sure, Necrogiant is the first boss the player encounters and it’s certainly an intimidating boss. It has quite a few moves at its disposal and has two phases. There’s plenty of ammo to be found around the huge level and there are also additional enemy spawns that show up part way, though they don’t drop any souls. Best of all, you can actually damage this boss directly at the very start so it isn’t obtuse like the rest. Only reason why this is so low on the list is because it’s a boss level and bosses aren’t really Painkiller’s strong point.

29. Tower

Arguably my favorite boss in the entire series. Alastor begins the fight completely hidden from view. As players grab the ammo, they can hear his screams in the background, eventually Alastor will suddenly emerge when the player least expects him to and flies across the tower where players can shoot him. He likes to sneak up on players and breathe fire next to the tower as well. Once his health drops, the fight isn’t over, Alastor smashes the floor beneath him for two additional phases where you fight him on the ground only for one final phase where he is at the very bottom of the tower, surrounded by pillars which he will drain energy from to heal himself. While he is draining, the statues can be destroyed by any weapon, allowing you to deny him of his healing, which lets you deal the finishing blow on him. I really like the build up of this fight, it truly is a spectacle, though the fall damage definitely lets this boss fight down as if you’re playing on trauma, it is impossible to survive all of the falls unless you land on the archways and pillars below, hence the reason why this level is so low on the list.

28. Atrium Complex

Atrium Complex is the first non-boss or developer’s room level to be mentioned on this list and it certainly isn’t a bad level by any means. Pretty much every level on this list from this point onwards is a great level, I just find Atrium Complex to be the least interesting thematically speaking. The level itself has a lot of destructible explosives to make combat more fun and chaotic, plus it still has that gothic aesthetic you come to expect from the Painkiller series, the level isn’t too long either. Definitely a great level for sure.

27. Forest

Now this level is only available to players that are playing on the Trauma difficulty and is without a doubt one of the game’s tougher levels. The atmosphere of this level is great, I really love the ruined archways with all the vegetation growing around them, the ambient music is great too when you’re not fighting, definitely one of the more underappreciated songs in the game. The battle music is great too of course, there’s tonnes of enemies too. The only annoying thing about this level is those damn witches, which are a pain to kill since they fly across the arenas at insane speeds. That and the fact that the level itself is very short, consisting of only 2 large arenas and one tiny corridor linking between them, hence why it’s so low on the list.

26. Underworld

Now there are two mineshaft stages in Battle Out Of Hell and Underworld is arguably the worst of the two as most of it is completely on rails with a really annoying tarot card condition, requiring you kill every single enemy in the level, including all the enemies that show up during the minecart ride which annoyed the hell out of me. The reward was worth it though, giving you a card which gives you 666 ammunition for every single weapon at the start of a level. Thing is though, I just found Underworld to be the less interesting of the mineshaft levels personally as it doesn’t really feel as iconic as its counterpart, Stone Pit, making it a somewhat forgettable level, I suppose you have the second half of the level which takes place in an underground tomb as well as tonnes of secrets to find for those who backtrack through the minecart sections of the level, which is cool and all, I just think that Stone Pit does a better job, which is why this level is so low on the list, that and that irritating tarot card condition.

25. Castle

The interesting thing about this level is how realistic the castle itself is, which is likely due to the fact that the castle itself is actually based on the real life Będzin Castle in Poland if it was coated in snow. The building itself looks dilapidated and run down, with lots of walls smashed inside, there’s also a few huts on the outskirts for storage and another, larger shack outside the central walls. The coolest part is the basement area which features both prison cells and a torture chamber, no oubliette’s though which I found to be quite weird but considering the fact that it was based on a real life castle, it’s possible that said castle did not have an oubliette. Fortunately, the Haunted Valley level in Painkiller overdose features all of the things that this level was lacking in, featuring a more traditional fantasy castle as opposed to a realistic one. Personally I’m more into the fantasy style of castle so I wasn’t really as big into this more realistic style Castle as I was with the Haunted Valley castle but I appreciated this level nonetheless.

24. Snowy Bridge

Yet another snow level and I don’t want to seem as if I dislike snow levels by putting them both on the lower side of the list. I actually like this level a lot and really liked the atmosphere of these alpine mountains which can actually be explored should you manage to get out of the level by accident, which I did. There’s both a brief cart ride and a cable car ride but you don’t need to take either of them if you don’t want to. I just thought it was cool to see these features. The only annoying thing about this level is the slippery ice and if you do take the cart ride, you’re likely to be hit by explosives making it a bad idea to use it. The cable car is also pretty hard to stay still on, so I found it easier to just walk on the cable itself. Certainly not a bad level but it’s not really the most noteworthy one either.

23. Stone Pit

So here we have the other mineshaft level and the moment you enter the second area, if you look up, you will see that you are at the bottom of a huge chasm. Unlike all the other levels in the game, this one has you climbing vertically up the shaft, using both ladders and elevators to navigate through it. The tarot card for this level requires you to find all the secrets and it’s quite fun to hunt them all down as many of the secrets are in caves that you can’t easily reach without a bit of tightrope walking. Trouble is that if you fall, it’s a one way ticket to the game over screen so if you’re afraid of heights, this level might not be the one for you. I just really enjoyed the concept of climbing to the top only to finally see sunlight at the end, for a penultimate level, I found this to be pretty cool, the battle music here is pretty awesome too.

22. Prison

This level is only available for people who play on either nightmare or trauma and takes place inside a more modern prison than the one in the basement of Castle. This level has a great mixture of destructible explosives, tight rooms and open areas, making it a pretty fun level to play through. It’s far from being an easy one though. Players ballsy enough to pick Nightmare difficulty are treated to a huge difficulty spike, featuring enemies with automatic chainguns and tommy guns which can be extremely deadly if they get the chance to hit you. The trick to overcomming this level is its design itself, with it being mostly tight, you can kill most enemies with the shotgun quicker then they can fire a single bullet and you really should since these guys really hurt. It’s all about using the level itself to your advantage to keep all the demonic inmates from escaping their confines and sending them straight to hell, courtesy of a giant sharpened piece of wood being shoved into their demonic ballsacks.

21. Train Station

The Train Station in Zurich is cursed, if you ever arrive there by train, please tell me if you see any world war one skeleton soldiers with bayonets because they are all over this level. Weirdly enough, this level starts off inside of a sewer, with enemies just waiting to be stuck to the wall with your stakegun. Sado and Maso commandos make their debut here and they both have devastating weapons, though the start of this level is more closed in making it easy enough to take them out with the shotgun. Sadly all this changes once you reach the actual station itself where you are finally given the most powerful weapon in the game, the rocket launcher chaingun and suddenly a huge army of world war one skeletons will charge at you, you know what to do, put those rockets to good use and make swiss cheese out of their pathetic corpses. The level gets harder once you reach the interior sections of the station as it is very open and filled to the brim with enemies that fire automatic weapons, definitely a challenging level for sure and the tarot card condition is one of the hardest, requiring you to never pick up a single soul. Quite frankly if you’re playing the black edition of this game, it’s probably recommended to get this tarot card on Trauma difficulty because otherwise it will be a pain in the neck to get. Why all these soliders entered the Swiss capital is unknown, maybe it’s the irony of Switzerland being completely neutral during the war, who knows?

20. Military Base

Now it wouldn’t be a first person shooter if there wasn’t a military themed stage now would it? Tanks make their debut here which is great since wooden stakes make short work of them. I don’t know how a sharpened piece of wood can blow up an armored tank but who am I to question Painkiller’s logic. I can’t help but love this fact though as it just goes to show how little of a fuck Painkiller’s developers give about realism and that can only be a good thing. Throughout the whole level you will hear some weird comm chatter and there’s even a communist flying saucer hidden inside one of the hangars. It’s a huge level too with lots of open space to move around in but it also features some tighter interior sections to mix things up too. There’s certainly some fun to be had here.

19. Lab

The tarot card condition is the best part of this level as it requires you to only use the bolt gun to get kills and considering the fact that the bolt gun is my favorite weapon in Painkiller Black, this is hardly a problem. What is though are the lab commandos that snipe you with hitscan shots from above but you are able to snipe them with ease thanks to the boltgun’s scope which you’ll almost never use since sniping is barely ever required in a fast paced shooter like Painkiller. The coolest part about this level is the techno music that plays during battle, which is pretty damn awesome, there’s also big breasted nurses that try to inject you with something nasty which you have to kill as well as doctors who breathe this weird gas at you. Plus the lab commandos appear to be wearing the EVA helmet from the Halo series… oh wait it’s a fishbowl, my bad, I get them confused all the time. I love the quirky enemies of this level and the area with the portal is pretty cool with all the enemy spawns, making for a great place to unleash the demon morph which thankfully doesn’t cause you to fail the tarot card condition. Right after that though you have to flee from a bunch of demonic piranhas only to encounter your first panzer demon before the level ends. What a level.

18. Colosseum

Colosseum is the ultimate breather level, it kind of reminds me of Blackrock Depths in World Of Warcraft with its atmosphere, maybe it’s because Blackrock Depths was heavily inspired by the roman colosseum? who knows? The interesting thing about this level is that it’s actually spelt incorrectly, that and there are booby traps in certain areas which would have cost it some points if bunnyhopping didn’t avoid most of them. If you are a fan of navigating obstacle courses in games then you’ll enjoy what this level brings to the table. It’s a pretty long one with lots of weak enemies to kill and really doesn’t pose much of a threat, especially when compared to the level before it which is the toughest level in the entire game. I really love the dreary atmosphere throughout this level, showing the darker side to what was a fun, family friendly show for the roman aristocrats to watch back in the day. It’s one of those levels that let you experiment with all of your weapons and just have some mindless fun, which can never be a bad thing.

17. Catacombs

Ok so the only things holding this level back from being higher on this list are the colour scheme and the last enemy of the level which is best described as a puzzle boss which can be killed by conventional means but it takes ages. Other than that I really enjoyed this level a lot, the structure of the level is nice and varied. It has a good mix of open areas and tight areas. The enemies are a mix between melee, ranged and explosive enemies so there’s a good mixture of foes to deal with and they all come together in the final section to make for a pretty tough, yet manageable encounter early on. The best part about this level though has to be the battle music, that guitar solo is absolutely fantastic.

16. Cemetary

The first level of Painkiller is a great way to start things off, I absolutely adore the eerie ambiance and the lighting is incredible, It blends in so well with the fog. It’s a very steady, easy going level for the most part where you are dealing with mostly melee enemies, easing you into the game but also teaching the importance of movement. There’s some nice secrets here too. I particularly love the building at the end with all of the hanging corpses, it really sets the tone for what’s to come. The battle music is also fantastic as well, really gets you pumped to start slaughtering demons.

15. Old Monestary

The penultimate level of the original Painkiller is an odd one. Unlike previous levels, there is no real set path here as it is open-ended. Instead it is a collectathon where you have to collect all of the pentagrams and you can collect them in any order you want. I simply adore the ambient music in this area, it kinda reminds me of Metroid Prime a little. It really gives you that feeling of “the journey is finally over” and kinda acts as the calm before the storm so-to speak as you make your way to the bowels of hell itself. There’s a nice variety of enemies here with a few tricks up their sleeves, some pretty interesting level design too with the whole island being filled with caves and fissures to navigate through, with the ruined monastery on top. It’s definitely a memorable level for sure.

14. Cathedral

This level is simply incredible. I absolutely love the sense of scale this level has, it truly is an incredible cathedral with lots of huge, open areas to fight in and the atmosphere is top notch. I particularly like the ambient music, it’s so hauntingly serene that I can’t get enough of it, it’s levels like this that make me want to take my fingers off the keyboard and mouse for a few minutes, just to take in all the incredible atmosphere, and they said Painkiller was just a dumb shooter, hell no, Painkiller is a work of art and this level showcases both the artistic merits as well as the strong level design of this game so damn well.

13. Docks

Without a doubt one of the game’s tougher levels, though thankfully you don’t have to play through it on Trauma difficulty because if you did, this would probably be the hardest level in the original Painkiller. The nail guns wielded by the hell bikers are devastating if you are unlucky to be hit by one of them but that’s before we even start talking about the rocket wielding hell angels which are even more devastating. Regardless, this level has a rather interesting structure, as you find yourself maneuvering through all kinds of industrial areas, using cranes to traverse between each location. There are a crap ton of secrets to find in this level, so much so that it would take ages to find them all and if you want to do so, you better be good at platforming because you will often have to hop from crane to crane to get to them at the risk of falling to your death. There’s just so much to like about this level but at the same time it can get pretty difficult.

12. Dead City

This level is absolute chaos from beginning to end. So many explosions, so many enemies, large panzer spiders show up to greet you that can take quite a beating, bombs on cars and under tables. This level is literally a nightmare and that’s precisely why I love it. It just about sums up what Painkiller is all about. In a way it sort of reminds me of something out of Hunter The Reckoning with all the hordes of zombies charging at you in an urban landscape, only much more chaotic by comparison. There are quite a few things to see here, ranging from a shopping mall, a car park and a museum. The only thing stopping this level from being higher on the list is the fact that the tarot card requires you to finish it in under 20 minutes which may not sound that bad at first but if you take into account the fact that there are tonnes of enemy waves and that panzer spiders have a lot of health, it’s going to take a while to get through it, so you kinda have to rush through this level in order to get the tarot card which is highly recommended as the tarot card you get is one of the best.

11. Hell

Of course I had to put Hell somewhere on the top of this list because this level may quite possibly be the greatest depiction of hell in any videogame ever. This would be on my top 10 if it wasn’t for the shitty final boss fight because it’s such a fantastic concept for a final level. When most people think of hell, they think of fire and brimstone but in this level, there isn’t really much of that, instead you find yourself in what might as well be a war museum because that’s basically what hell is in this game, it’s a depiction of all of humanities disasters frozen in time and mixed together into one gigantic catastrophe. There’s so much to take in as you roam through this level, ranging from crusaders besieging walls, world war one trenches, plane wreckages, ruined buildings, a sinking battleship and overlooking all of the carnage is a colossal mushroom cloud from a detonated atomic bomb, one of which can be seen lodged into the ground. Throughout the level you’ll hear screams from all the victims of these terrifying tragedies, swords clashing, soldiers panicking through the radio, demonic chants and people screaming for their lives as they try to escape a sinking ship. This level truly deserves its name and is truly a masterpiece, illustrating that no fictional hell could possibly match the terrors brought about by mankind.

10. City On Water

Venice has clearly seen better days, loads of hell angels and hell bikers have taken over the city. There is lots to see in this level and the design of it all is simply gorgeous. There’s loads of secrets to find here and you’ll need to find all of them to get the Tarot Card. You’ll have quite a lot of platforming to do if you want to get them all. There are many famous landmarks featured in this level, my favorite being the basilica of saint mark. I love shooting enemies off the edge and watching them fall into the water, it never gets old. I really love how interconnected this level is, it’s one of the things I always loved about Painkiller’s level design in general and it is at its best in this level.

9. Leningrad

If the final level of Painkiller is Hell, then this level might as well be its sequel, just a few footsteps and suddenly, the soviet national anthem starts playing as an army of russian soldiers, tanks and air strikes are ready to greet you. All the odds truly are stacked against you in this level, heck I’d even go as far as to argue that this level isn’t even fair as all of the soldiers have hitscan weapons that can deal insane amounts of damage per hit without armor. Despite having the urge to just charge in and mow down communists, it’s recommended that you keep your distance and pick them off from afar to avoid getting swarmed. This is without a doubt the toughest level in Painkiller Black by a mile and if you manage to make it to the second half of the levels you encounter suicide bombers who charge at you with c4 attached to their chest, eager to take you on a one way ticket to hell. Everything in this level wants you dead and the level spares nothing to make that happen. While it can certainly feel very frustrating to get through, it feels so satisfying when you finally finish it as you have essentially defeated both the russians and the germans simultaneously by yourself. It really emphasizes just how powerful Daniel Garner has become, showing that he is practically a one man army at this point. Easily one of the most memorable levels in the game for sure.

8. Orphanage

One of the most unsettling levels I have ever witnessed in a first person shooter. The atmosphere in this level sends chills down your spine. The fog, the swamp, it all sets the tone for what’s to come. Your enemies in this level are none other than the orphanage’s former victims, children who have become possessed by demons that set themselves on fire and chase after you, either that or they will try to shank you to death with knives. If you think that’s bad, eventually you will encounter bag babies who were placed into sacks to be used as fresh meat for the Preacher to be butchered. Those that have been stored for years have finally awoken and will detonate whenever they close in on you, intent on killing you. Then finally you have the Preacher himself, the first of many to appear in Battle Out Of Hell who chases you down with a huge meat cleaver, looking for another meal. To make matters worse, the preacher is invincible until every child has been slaughtered. So the only way to stop the preacher is to kill every single child in the entire level. Yeah you heard me, you’re going to kill children and lots of them. Have fun with that. This level is so twisted and sadistic it’s insane how they made it the very first level of Battle Out Of Hell, talk about making one hell of a first impression, for better or worse.

7. The Palace

This level has a ton of open areas and there are tonnes of enemy waves to fight. It’s one of the few levels where I got to use the electrodriver a lot due to the fact that there’s a crap ton of ammo crates lying around, containing lightning ammo as well as plenty of ammo for other weapons too. It’s one of those levels where you can just have fun shooting enemies with whatever weapons you choose, with minimal repercussions since ammo is so plentiful and the arena is so open, you are free to experiment. The level structure is interesting too, there’s a lava fountain that shoots molten rock out at random which can potentially hurt you if you get hit by it, there are also destructible pillars and some statues that shoot projectiles at you which can be destroyed. The enemies offer a reasonable challenge with the introduction of templars who can shoot you from afar and protect themselves with shields but it doesn’t feel too overwhelming, it mostly feels like a laid back massacre. The music for this stage is fantastic both in and out of battle, you have the arabic soundtrack outside of battle which perfectly matches the arabic aesthetic of the palace. I really love the aesthetic design of this level and how grandiose it is, the size and scale of the arenas only serve to make the level aesthetic all the more spectacular. The best part is the battle music which is noticably more laid back than the other battle tracks, it’s the sort of music that you’d listen to when you’re cruising on the highway in the middle of the night.

6. Asylum

Yet another unsettling level, though this time you’re not fighting children, instead you are fighting against brain damaged amputees as well as freaks. I really love the horrifying atmosphere brought about by this level, after playing through more hectic stages like Prison, Asylum is a harsh contrast as it feels considerably more tense. While you may not be dealing with chainguns or tommyguns, the claustrophobic level design brings about an entirely new challenge as you will encounter melee enemies that are kind of tricky to deal with as they can leap at you from off screen at any moment so you really need to keep your eyes peeled and be aware of your surroundings. These enemies like to feign death, only to leap at you when you least expect it. The design of these enemies is gruesome and considering the context of the game’s level, it’s kind of tragic to see them in action. These Amputees are not only brain damaged but they are missing limbs too and considering the blood on the walls, it’s possible that they were mistreated, having their limbs torn off by the abusive Asylum staff. Later on they can be found crawling on the ceiling which is even more disturbing. To top it off, these foes are accompanied with freaks in straight jackets, struggling to escape their shackles, some of these freaks are still undergoing Electroconvulsive therapy even after death and if they get too close to their victims, their heads will explode. These enemies love to hide behind corners just waiting for you to walk through so they can explode in your face for a nasty surprise. One of them is headbutting the door blocking the entrance to the building, clearly wanting to escape the horrors that were brought about in this terrifying level. Truly one of the greatest levels in a first person shooter to date.

5. Opera House

One of the more vibrant stages in Painkiller, the Opera House is without a doubt a visual spectacle with all the red carpets and artwork on the staircases, there’s a lot to see here. The level starts in the middle of an alleyway with several dumpsters, there are no enemies here but there is a secret area over the fence. I don’t know why but I have always liked this area as it feels both foreboding and calming. I don’t know why but an urban landscape in the middle of the night with no people around is kinda relaxing to me. You slowly enter the Opera House from behind the set, there’s a lot to see before actually reaching the main hall but when you do, it looks absolutely sublime. I love the colossal chandelier on the ceiling as not only does it look impressive but you can shoot it down for a massive white explosion. The ambient sound is accompanied with echoing voices, likely representing the crowds of people that would be watching the opera as well as high pitched screams from what could be an opera singer, to top it all off, the entire opera house has been invaded by Ninjas, yes you heard that right, Ninjas. I mean it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever but that’s the point. You’d think you would be fighting ghostly actors or something but nope, that would be too predictable, let’s just throw in Ninjas and Samurai into the level because why the fuck not? It’s so absurd that I can’t help but love it. I mean I’m not sure where the connection is but who cares, it just gives me something to shoot and we all know that everything is better with Ninjas.

4. Factory

This is without a doubt the most definitive level in Painkiller, at least in regards to gameplay. While it doesn’t exactly have the gothic atmosphere, there is still a feeling of unease brought about by the ambient music. The biggest highlight of this level has to be the metal music that plays in every single fight. This is my favorite battle song in the original Painkiller by far, it really gets you pumped up for some carnage. There are tonnes of enemies in this level, many of which come armed with long ranged weapons so you have to be constantly on the move, shooting whenever you get the chance. This level is fast paced, frantic and extremely cathartic. Many of the arenas are open and there are countless waves of enemies to deal with in each one, just waiting to be blown to pieces by rockets. If you’re looking for some action packed mayhem, this is definitely the level you want to be playing.

3. Town

This is another level that reminds me of a dungeon in World Of Warcraft. If you’ve played Warcraft 3 then you probably remember the mission titled The Culling where Arthas had to purge the plagued city of Stratholme. In World Of Warcraft, this location becomes a dungeon, showcasing the aftermath of Arthas’ onslaught and this level just happens to be strikingly similar to it. It appears however that this level has more to do with the black plague as the buildings have crosses on the doors. I absolutely adore this level’s aesthetic, not only am I a fan of medieval style buildings but the atmosphere as a whole is top notch, with some fantastic lighting and sound to accompany all of the burning buildings. It appears that the local townsfolk aren’t particularly keen on outsiders so needless to say you can expect a warm welcome in the form of flaming torches and what I presume to be rotten flesh thrown at you. What I love most about this level is the final section, which has you going underground into what appears to be a secret hideout, possibly used by cultists, which leads me to believe that the whole plague might have been the result of a conspiracy, though there isn’t any concrete proof that it was. I just think it’s interesting how the level ends this way, almost as if it’s trying to tell us something. It’s subtle storytelling like this that makes me appreciate this level so much, that and the battle music which has a really good beat to it. Definitely one of my favorite battle tracks for sure. One of the best Painkiller levels ever.

2. Babel

Everything from the starry skybox, the serene ambient music and the gorgeous lighting makes this level an absolute joy to play through. It’s also very challenging featuring a large quantity of powerful foes, with plenty of open space to fight them in. It requires a bit more thinking than previous levels but there’s still a lot of action to be had. The battle music for this level is intense, as it should be because the enemies do not pull their punches here. You’ll be fighting advanced versions of the enemies you fought in the previous levels of chapter 4 and they all have a trick up their sleeve. The Templars fire three arrows as opposed to just one and each arrow is fired in a different direction which can be tricky to avoid. The Executioners now come with a grappling attack which can hit you from quite a distance so they should be dealt with quickly. Beasts are now fitted with explosives so you will want to kill them quickly before they close in on you. You will constantly be overwhelmed in this level but that’s part of the appeal. It always feels satisfying to conquer this level.

1. Loony Park

While it may not be the first depiction of a haunted amusement park, Loony Park is without a doubt the best. The orange lighting throughout the level gives off a demented tone that accompanies all of the grotesque depictions of its attractions perfectly. The very moment you start this level, you are greeted with a massive sign that says Loony Park with the too O’s in Loony being used as eyes for a clown face with fire coming out of his mouth. This sign is so striking that you can’t help but want to know what lies behind it but the moment players attempt to walk through the gate, they are greeted with a pit of spikes, talk about a warm welcome. Those who were smart enough to jump over the spike pit will be greeted with numerous attractions ranging from a helter skelter, two carosels, one with buzzsaws that slash away at anyone misfortunate enough to be riding it, the other with electric chairs for those who would rather die from electrocution instead. There are also two buildings, one is titled Acid Bath, the other titled, House of Pain. While the House Of Pain cannot be entered, the Acid Bath is actually a secret area and inside is, you guessed it, a pool of acid with jump pads to cross over, you better nail those jumps or you’re going get melted. Your reward for making it across is a set of gold armor and a super health, the downside is that you have to make it all the way back and unlike most visitor attractions, there aren’t any health and safety regulations here, that acid will hurt you if you step in it.

Tired from all of that jumping? Maybe you need a snack. The good news is that there’s plenty of popcorn to be found here, the bad news is that it isn’t the edible kind. The popcorn is actually a name of a demon which has a body that consists of many lumps that throws these weird red gas bombs at you and you really don’t want to get near them. There’s also a burger stand nearby but you might want to think twice about ordering one because as the name of the burger stand implies you will most definitely get sick if you eat one of those burgers. In addition to this, there’s a gigantic slide with a ball rolling down it that is likely meant for humans to be placed inside, though on the way down, there’s a flamethrower that will probably burn anyone inside to cinders as they pass by. This is such a colourful level for such a dark game and I really appreciate that change in tone, especially after the previous level. The whole level is so ridiculous and silly that it’s instantly appealing. The ambient music is the usual carnival sounds you’d hear at any carnival and the battle music is best described as a sequence of guitar riffs that I just cannot get enough of, it’s hardcore.

To top it all off, the final section of the level is a rollercoaster ride that has you riding on top of a ribcage with demonic heads attached as you ride through the whole amusement park behind the giant crevice in the ground. Beyond the fissure is a bumper coffin ride, a huge castle floating on top of a pit of flames and a ferris wheel with a pentagram shape in the middle. Now you would think at first that this area is off limits outside of the rollercoaster ride but it is actually possible to cross over the crevice with a well timed jump which clearly wasn’t intended as there are no secrets back there and the benches aren’t breakable, everything is static. Though there are a few cool things you can see including a few shooting galleries and stands. This is such an amazing level and is without a doubt my favorite level in a first person shooter ever. Heck this level is so damn good that it was re-used in Painkiller Overdose. It’s just so iconic that it’s the first thing that comes to mind whenever I think of Painkiller.

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Review

I played Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord for over 200 hours, 200 freaking hours and didn’t even get close to conquering Calradia. Meanwhile in Mount & Blade Warband, the first game in the series, it took me 200 hours to conquer Calradia and while it felt like a long, arduous journey, it is nothing compared to the tedious ordeal that is Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. Now this might not make sense to you if you haven’t reached the end game of Bannerlord but I will say this. Warband’s end game is tough but fun, you feel overwhelmed, every faction declares war against you… but if you keep at it, eventually you will unify calradia as its emperor.

Bannerlord on the other hand is a completely different ball game, not just in the end game but in general. Despite this however, Bannerlord as an experience isn’t really anything new, you’re just playing Warband again but the way it works is completely different from that of Warband. The immersion and engagement factor from Warband is still there and you will sink a considerable amount of time into this game. Bannerlord will suck you in just like Warband did and you will quickly become addicted to the experience but unlike Warband, the immersion and engagement quickly begins to waver in the end game. The reason for this is due to the fact that Bannerlord is seemingly designed to keep you playing for as long as possible so that the game never fucking ends, while Warband is designed for the player to bring about an eventual unification by breaking the stalemate through their own ability.

Killing looters never gets old

Now there are two types of people who I need to address, those who played Warband and those who are new to Mount & Blade in general. While Bannerlord revolves the same kind of formula as Warband, the experience is completely different and whether you will prefer one over the other will depend on your preferance as a player. Much like in Warband, you will create your own character and give them a banner of your choosing, there are extensive facial options but body customization is minimal with a decent quantity of hair options available to you, as well as face paints. Defining statistics is where Bannerlord differentiates from Warband as it goes through numerous stages of your life where you select events that occured in your past to decide what stats you start with at the beginning. The main thing that sets Bannerlord apart from Warband is the emphasis on clans, which allow you to take ownership of multiple separate parties and the game is built around this. You see in Warband, you just had individual lords with their own band of warriors to command who follow their marshall into battle. In Bannerlord however, marshalls are nonexistant and just about anybody can set up an army at any time at the cost of a new currency called influence.

Influence can be used as a means of pushing agedas which can be handy for vassals looking to get their hands on feifs as well as being able to adjust laws to work in their favor, it sounds good on paper as it seemingly gives players more control over their experience. In reality however, it is quite the opposite, which you’ll quickly realize the moment you become a ruler as Influence governs every single decision you make, even when you are in charge of the whole faction. You can’t just tell people to do what you want for free anymore, now you need to spend influence to get people to do your bidding. The only difference between being a vassal and a ruler is that being a ruler means that there isn’t a cap on your influence expendature, so you can overule anything so long as you have enough influence to do so. If you have no influence however, you might as well not even be a ruler because you have absolutely no control over your faction whatsoever and the AI will make all the decisions for you which is extremely infuriating when you consider the fact that your AI allies are dumber than bricks.

Fuck off Urik!

Much like the influence system, the new clans feature is also deceptively appealing as unlike Warband where you were limited solely to the warriors you command, you now have tha ability to build your own clan consisting of multiple warbands which your companions can manage on your behalf. This is a cool idea in theory as you can have one party act on your behalf, allowing you to multitask… or so you think. You see there is absolutely no way of delegating anybody in this game and I mean anybody. You can only delegate your army and that means that you can only delegate in one place. Each army is completely independant and this includes your clan’s warbands. You cannot give them commands so you can’t really utilize them strategically. The only thing they exist to do is to supplement your army so that you don’t have to lead so many troops by yourself, essentially spreading the leadership to allow for a more managable army. Without an army, your clan’s warbands will spend the whole game travelling around doing menial tasks, often ending in their defeat at the hands of a stronger warband, therefore if you don’t add them to your army, they become completely pointless. You can also have them lead caravans but there’s little point in doing so because they’ll most likely die sooner than they actually turn a profit.

The most interesting aspect of clans however is the ability to marry a noble of the opposite sex and have children. If you’re into same sex relationships then I regret to inform you that they are not in Bannerlord, though it makes sense given that Bannerlord takes place in a time period where homosexuality was frowned upon. Regardless, the point of this is to create your own family tree, which sounds like a really cool idea. Now at first you would assume that you can just have tonnes of children and build up a massive army as the great great great grandparent of a huge family tree made up of countless generations of your descendants fighting alongside you but you’d be wrong, because the downside to having babies is that Bannerlord features an aging system and this completely changes the nature of the game entirely as you are now under extreme time constraints to accomplish your goals before death claims you. If you enjoy the grim reapers company, you can also opt to allow your character to die in battle at any time for an even more tense experience. Now the entire game was built with this system in mind but there is an option to prevent is through the birth and death options feature in the modules section prior to launching the game, which allows you to toggle this off when starting a new playthrough, allowing you to play the game more like Warband.

Rest in peace Torgath, you were a legend among men, you fought countless battles, you deserve your rest.

If you are new to Mount & Blade and have never played Warband before, I highly encourage that you disable the birth system as it changes up the game so much that it brings about a completely different experience from Warband and this is not necesarrily a good thing for newcommers as it makes the nature of the game considerably more frantic and convoluted to the point that first time players ill be overwhelmed and frustrated by it. Those who have played Warband before might take a liking to this new feature, but some players might not, it is all up to preferance. All I will say is that my personal experience with the birth and death feature was not at all great and this all ties to the fact that Bannerlord is an absolute slog to play through for numerous reasons, with battles going on for seemingly ages. This takes up so much time that eventually your character is going to die and when they do, you better hope and pray that you are not in the end game because if you are, you are going to a place that is far more terrifying than hell, you are going to a world of pain, agony and torment that is unending, a world that makes purgatory in Painkiller look like fucking paradise.

You see, the biggest problem with Bannerlord is the skill system because the skill system in Bannerlord is fucking dogshit. Who’s idea was it to turn this game into fucking Runescape!? I hate Runescape and the reason why I hate Runescape besides the fact that it is an always online MMO with microtransactions on top of having subscription fees is the endless fucking grind that you have to do to level up each individual skill and Bannerlord uses the exact same skill leveling system as Runescape but with a twist, unlike Runescape you can actually choose between two perks instead of just unlocking stuff in a linear fashion and these perks range from being extremely useful to barely useful outside of very specific situations that makes you feel as if growing your character feels completely pointless.

Shields are for pussies

In fact, leveling up in Bannerlord doesn’t feel exciting at all like it did in Warband. Leveling up in Bannerlord is lame as all you get is a focus point that increases the rate in which players level up their skills, sort of like the bonus experience you get for runescape skills and this is absolute bullshit. You aren’t even guaranteed to get an attribute point either and if you do, all it does is give you the exact same thing as a focus point but for all the skills that said attribute governs, essentially removing the cap on bonus experience you can gain to make leveling the skill faster. To add insult to injury, when your character dies and you choose an heir, you have to do the whole fucking grind all over again!

So because of the nature of the game’s skill system, this permadeath timer really doesn’t work well with Bannerlord at all but it’s not just the skill system that makes the permadeath timer a problem as the game has yet another problem and that is the campaign. What I mean by “campaign” is the out of battle strategy sections that play out in synchronized time, which has always been catagorized as “campaign” in both Warband and Bannerlord. The campaign in Bannerlord is an absolute pain in the ass to deal with because there is no balance whatsoever. The biggest problem with the campaign balancing is the map itself. In Warband, every faction controls an edge of the map but in Bannerlord there are factions right in the middle of the map that are surrounded at all sides.

All my territories are the ones in dark blue, the rest are my enemy’s

The distance to travel between each faction was more or less the same in Warband, where as in Bannerlord, travelling from north to south takes considerably less time than it takes to travel from east to west. This means that factions on the far east and west of the map have a considerable advantage whereas factions in the middle of the map are going to be at a huge disadvantage. Sturgia in particular is at an insane disadvantage due to having their terrotories spread out horizontally meaning that if somebody attacks from the east and you’re on the west side, you have to mobilize for ages to defend the castle or town that is being attacked. Now the Aserai also have this problem but they have the advantage of having a giant body of water blocking the middle section of their territory, with the only entry points being at the far east and the far west. Sturgia have the misfortune of having their middle portion accessible from the south, making things even worse for them.

Vlandia on the other hand are basically easy mode because their nation is safely protected by mountains and is in the far west side of the map and the only entry points are from the east. With travel from north to south not taking too long, it is very easy to defend this territory from all sides. Khuzaits also have an advantage in this regard due to being on the far east but to a lesser degree due to being accessible from the north and south as well as the west. It’s very difficult to penetrate Vlandia’s territory for this reason because by doing so, you are putting yourself into a dangerous position as there aren’t many escape points due to the mountains surrounding you, so if you go in too deep you can quickly be surrounded and trapped in there. The Western Empire on the other hand is completely unprotected at all sides, making it easy to get away from them and making it easier for invaders to reach their lands.

Those fucking ugly red bastards will pay!

So if you are planning on taking over Calradia, it is usually a good idea to claim either the east or the west side of the map first, which means eliminating either the Khuzaits or the Vlandians immediately, only then will you have a good enough foothold to begin pushing in the opposite direction of the map so that you can easily control your borders. The problem is that by the time you have defeated either Vlandia or the Khuzaits, your character will be so old that you really need to start worrying about them dying in the near future, I kid you not. To make matters worse, you will become too old to actually bring about an offspring which means that you will have to start the entire game all over again. So the game essentially pressurizes you to get married and have kids early in life, something that was optional in Warband is now practically compulsory in Bannerlord if you turn on permadeath as being a 40 year old virgin is a one way ticket to having to start a new playthrough, as if the pressure of males losing their virginity in their early years wasn’t bad enough in real life.

On top of this, unlike Warband where factions would disappear over time after losing all of their feifs, factions in Bannerlord will linger around until they are completely obliterated and by that I mean grinding their armies down to a pulp to the point that they simply cannot affort to purchase units anymore, which is easier said than done. So all it takes is for either you or another faction they are at war with to take a castle and leave it undefended and these factions send their army of 30 men to siege your castle to get back in the game, only for them to become a nuisance once again and believe me, when they get back in the game, they come back with massive armies for you to tear down all over again. So if you think you’ve pulverized a faction by taking all of their castles and towns, think again. This only serves to make conquering calradia all the more annoying as they become a huge nuisance to you, that and it also means that it’s going to take even longer to conquer the whole map due to the game wasting your time by having these fallen factions constantly pestering you by raiding your villages and seiging undefended castles just because they can.

Come at me Vlandian scum!

To make matters worse, making peace with other factions is also problematic as there no guarantee that peace will last long enough for it to be worthwhile. If anything, peace only screws you more as you free up all the enemy faction’s prisoners and make peace with them for a brief moment only for them to declare war on you again soon after. Because of this. during the end game where every single faction will declare war with you at once, you will find yourself in a seemingly endless gauntlet of battles at all sides where even the weakest of factions can sneakily steal one of your unprotected feifs from under your nose while you’re fighting a 5 way war where one faction is completely steamrolling you, while another faction is getting beaten by you. With all this in mind, do you honestly believe you’ll be able to conquer calradia with your created character before they die?

Now you’re probably wondering what exactly happens when you die, well that depends on a few things. First of all you have to choose an heir, now if the heir is in your party at the time, they will keep all of your troops for themselves, if they are not, all your troops are lost. This can be pretty damn annoying when this happens out of nowhere and your desired heir is half way across the map. Not that it matters because chances are that your heir won’t have a high enough leadership skill to command all of your troops anyway so they’ll probably end up deserting in seconds. This is the biggest problem with the birth and death system as lacking in skills during the end game is a disaster waiting to happen as the enemy AI will zerg the shit out of you with massive armies constantly from all sides so if you cannot command troops then you are fucked. Now if you’re considering starting up an army to fight back, you’ll be faced with conhesion issues as well as an insanely high influence cost to maintain said cohesion, which in turn leads to you getting even more screwed over.

Shit…

To make matters worse, your AI lords will constantly be pushing you to make peace with a faction even though making peace will inevitably screw you as you would be freeing the enemy’s prisoners, only for them to declare war with you 2 minutes later with their forces completely restored, only for them to quickly swarm the castles and towns you took, taking them back in a matter of seconds before you can even hope to mobilize against them, then they will proceed to anally invade your territories further, all while you’re fighting a battle on the other side of the map. The only way to prevent peace is by spending an absurd amount of influence to prevent your allies from letting something stupid happen. Also god forbid the enemy lords escape from captivity because if they do, they will regain their armies almost immediately and form an even bigger zerg to screw you over.

Now sure, there is the option of beheading every single lord in the game but there’s a penalty for that as you will lose a crap ton of relation with a lot of people, including your own allies, so it’s clearly not something that you’re supposed to do in the game but it sure as hell makes the game go by so much faster if you can pull it off at the right time and if you’re going to do it, you might as well go all the way and kill every lord you come across. All of this wouldn’t have been an issue if the peace system actually worked properly and enemy factions that lose all their castles and towns disappear from the game. This isn’t the case though so you’re going to have a really rough time if you don’t decide to behead anybody, making playing an honorable character an absolute pain in the ass, proving that Machiavelli’s theory on good people making terrible leaders was right.

So as you can see, most of what I’ve brought up so far has been relevant to the end game but not so much the early game because the early game in Bannerlord actually isn’t all that bad. In fact it’s actually rather fun. Of course it’s not too much different from Warband as you are still playing a wandering mercenary fighting bandits and trading resources between towns but there are few other things to do in Bannerlord such as the ability to take over alleyways in towns and participate in gang wars, playing minigames in the tavern, on top of all the stuff brought over from Warband including quests and arena fights.

The one feature I was most excited for was the smithing feature that allows players to craft their own custom weaponary which I couldn’t wait to try out, until I found out that smithing was the most disappointing part of Bannerlord, not because the crafting system, rather the grind to reach a high enough level to make something remotely useful from the skill. You see, throughout the game you will find all kinds of powerful weapons dropped from enemies and these quickly make the items crafted through smithing obsolete in terms of stats. Now you do eventually learn a smithing perk that increases the effectiveness of crafted weapons to make them more viable to use in battle but to reach that point you’re going to have to do a crap ton of grinding because leveling up smithing doesn’t happen naturally like some skills as you have to spend countless hours sat in towns resting up to restore stamina so that you can keep smithing in one place and if you are a vassal or a king, particularly in the end game, you’re not going to find many opportunities to do this, therefore the only way to truly max out the smithing skill effectively is to make your created character into a full time blacksmith and max out the skill early on, which is surprisingly not all that difficult because the smithing skill in Bannerlord is broken, allowing you to make money with ease without having to do any fighting whatsoever. Who knew that smithing would be used for money making as opposed to actually crafting weapons for your character? For this reason, the skill is certainly not useless but in order to reach a point where smithing can be used to craft your own weapons, you’re going to spend hours doing monotonous grinds and god forbid your character dies before they craft their legendary sword.If you do decide to create your own weapon then you’ll be able to change the handle, pommel, the guard and the blade for swords and resize each part however you see fit. Some weapons have more parts than others which is something to be aware of, it’s pretty straightforward feature wise but there’s enough flexibility to make it interesting enough.

Swords are pretty cool

Now do you see why the permadeath system in Bannerlord is so problematic? If it wasn’t for the grinding and the nature of the campaign, the system might have been fun to deal with but because the game is such a pain in the ass to play to begin with in the end game, losing your character during the end game is the worst thing that can happen and this makes the game a chore to play as you have to start the grind all over again, as if the end game wasn’t aggravating enough. I think that if you disable the birth and death system in the game then you are going to have a lot less hassle to deal with in the long run and it makes the experience feel a little closer to that of Warband, allowing you all the time in the world to conquer Calradia. The thing is though, for the sake of this review, I didn’t turn it off and because of it, I failed to accomplish my goal. The beauty of Mount & Blade is that there really isn’t an end to the game, while the ultimate conclusion may be unification of Calradia, the game is designed for the player to stop playing at any time and after having experienced everything the game had to offer besides conquering the whole map, I decided to end my game with my character’s death because even though I can choose an heir to take their place, I knew that the game would be absolutely miserable to play that way. If it wasn’t for the horrendous end game and the awful skill system, I probably wouldn’t have minded playing as a new character but sadly this was not the case. My Bannerlord journey ended at the retreat, where I took my character’s son to the retreat so that he could retire and bring an end to the long, arduous and painful journey that was Bannerlord.

Now don’t get me wrong, Bannerlord isn’t a terrible game by any means. The fact that the game managed to bring about a similar experience to Warband makes it worthy of praise regardless of its many issues. It really is the next best thing as far as western RPG’s go as there is no game out there quite like Mount & Blade, it is unique and to see it return, even in this state is a dream come true. There’s a reason why I invested over 200 hours into this game after all and that reason is because it is still a Mount & Blade experience. One thing I do appreciate about Bannerlord is the aesthetics, something that Warband was lacking in. Towns are huge spawling mazes of streets to wander around in and castles actually feel like castles and not just a room inside the castle. The minigames were a nice addition as they are both simple, yet challenging. The music is also pretty decent, some of which even pays homage to Warband which was incredibly nostalgic.

Look at this awesome castle, I can’t believe this is my home!

One thing I wasn’t too keen on at first was the town management system but I felt that with the hunting rights law, managing towns became a lot less of a hassle as your people weren’t constantly starving, forcing you to deliver grain to your town manually, because nobody else is going to do it. Once I got over that hurdle, it became a lot less problematic and it allowed me to develop my town in whichever was I saw fit, focusing on developments that were more benefitial to me at the time instead of having the town develop in a linear fashion. It was also handy to have the option to pillage claimed territories to weaken the enemy’s econamy whenever they take them back, a concept taken from Mount & Blade Warband: Viking Conquest.

The laws system is yet another cool idea that also feels like a hinderance, though this system often works in your favor when you are a ruler since you can spend influence to give every single advantage to yourself. As a vassal however, the laws system is an absolute pain in the ass as you can have laws that sap any influence you gain, putting you into negative influence as well as not having hunting rights which can be really bothersome if you own a castle. You need influence to vote to change any of these laws so if there’s a law that constantly saps your influence then you are essentially put into a position where you are incapable of making any decisions which is insanely frustrating in the early game.

Battles are mostly unchanged from Warband but there are a few new features added including new formations such as circles and the ability to kill multiple enemies with a two handed axe which is pretty cool as well as the ability to use the mouse cursor to adjust where troop placements go rather than telling them to move where you are standing. There is also siege weaponary which I never seemed to be able to put to good use as it is difficult to aim them at the target you want to hit, not to mention the fact that they are a pain to set up. If anything, siege weapons are best used during siege preparation as they will fire automatically and break down the walls, making it easy to claim even the most protected of castles. The downside to all this is that it costs time and as we all know, Bannerlord’s end game doesn’t afford the player much time, so you will rarely ever use siege weapons and instead opt to use the ladders like in Warband. It feels like a slightly expanded version of Viking Conquest’s sieges but not quite as interesting as it doesn’t have the random events that make the sieging process unpredictable. One thing that they did add to sieges was the ability to pick up stones and throw them at enemies, you can even use them to break the battlements around towers which is a nice touch. There are even pots which will explode upon breaking, dealing damage to a large area which is always fun to mess around with when you are low on health in a siege and want to bully large groups of enemies.

Ultimately, Bannerlord feels like a culmination of concepts with no thought into how the concepts would co-exist. It’s sad how all the new features that Bannerlord brought to the table only served to make the game worse because of how poorly they all mesh together. Despite all of this however, it still has the same appeal that Warband had and if you took out all the new features, you’d basically be playing a modded version of Warband with better graphics. There are a few features however that didn’t make it into Bannerlord such as the ability to have feasts in castles, the ability to give lords individual orders and the ability to create custom troop hotkeys. This is a bit disappointing but I can live with it so long as the core experience is still there and it is.

Siege Towers make their return in Bannerlord, though this time they are optional in all sieges.

I think the biggest difference between Warband and Bannerlord is the pacing. Because of the peace system and the feasts, Warband plays out at a much slower pace, giving you more downtime to experience all the game has to offer, whereas Bannerlord plays out at such a fast pace that you don’t have time to do anything besides war and thie can get really tiring after a while. Given the fact that Mount & Blade is supposed to be a medieval simulation game, this change of pace just doesn’t fit the nature of the game at all. Warlords do more than just fight, they’re human beings that have lives outside of the battlefield but in Bannerlord they feel like armies of robots, programmed to constantly reproduce and kill, almost like some kind of zombie apocalypse you’re trying to contend with as opposed to actually fighting humans with their own agendas and cultures that are trying to balance a life of war with a life of pleasure and feasting allowed this in Warband, heck it would have been cool to have minigame tournements during feasts but there aren’t any. It just seem that these huge castles you get are pointless to visit as everything important can be done in the menu.

Now for the question everybody wants the answer to. Is Bannerlord a good entry point into the Mount & Blade experience? Well if it is your first time playing and you have nothing to compare it to then so long as you disable birth and death, I can safely say that you will have a fun time in Bannerlord, at least up until the end game but the rest of the game will be fun. The downside is that the only real advantage to playing Bannerlord first is the visuals and the minigames, besides that Warband is better in nearly every other aspect. Those looking to try the game who played either the original game or Warband previously will find Bannerlord to be a fresh new take on the formula but this isn’t necesarrily a good thing. I think fans of the previous entries may find that outside of these questionable changes, Bannerlord plays like just about any other mod for Warband and in that sense, it’s basically just more of the same thing but with better graphics. I think you need to be open to new challenges and be willing to put up with a lot of bullshit because Bannerlord can be an absolute nightmare to play.

Says the guy who looks like he’s ready for an orgy.

The question is, is it worth playing Bannerlord when you have Warband? Well I think that depends on what the modding community can bring to the table because if all you’re going to play is Native, Warband is a more fun experience if you ask me, even though it is lacking in features by comparison, I find that the simplicity of it all makes it considerably easier to pick up and play when you get the hang of the basics and the game feels less stressful, even if it can be a tad overwhelming at times. Bannerlord was just too much for me and I simply couldn’t enjoy it as much as I did Warband but it doesn’t help that my past experiences with Warband have spoiled me a bit. Bannerlord is very much the same game again so I don’t have that fresh new experience that I had when I first played Warband. Nevertheless, I still had fun in the earlier portions of the game so there’s still some value to be had here.

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Plot/Story: Make Your Own

Visuals: Great

Gameplay: Good

Music: Great

Lifespan: Forever

Difficulty: Frustratingly Hard (even moreso than Warband)

Would You Replay? Maybe

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Overall: Good (but really fucking annoying, stressful and tedious)

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Checkmate motherfucker!

I can’t say that Bannerlord is a terrible game but man was this experience an absolute nightmare.

No video for this one folks, sorry but I just don’t feel like recording any footage from this game and I don’t think it would be viable for my channel.

The Ordeal Of Purchasing Games Day 1 from Square-Enix

Ok so I’ve just about had enough with this bullshit. Star Ocean The Divine Force releases in 8 days, 8 fucking days and Square-Enix still hasn’t listed the system requirements on the Steam Store page, on top of this, the game has denuvo DRM and apparently there will be in game purchases according to the ESRB which I only noticed on the Playstation Store page for the game which I decided to check because I wanted to see what Sony were charging for it because it’s common knowledge by now that the Playstation Store is a rip off and I’m going to get into that first because before I went to look up the price for the game on the Playstation Store, I was expecting it to be £54.99, which was still higher than the price on Steam but I knew Sony would inflate the price like the scum they are so I went in expecting it to be higher. Turns out that Sony exceeded my expectations as the price of a digital standard copy of Star Ocean The Divine Force on the Playstation Store is… *drum roll* £59.99!

I know, it caught me by surprise too, I never realized that Sony would stoop so low as to charge more than the physical copies on their store, which are only £54.99. Sure with postage in consideration it’s the same price but this is still daylight robbery and we all know that Sony has a monopoly, they’ve already been accused of it, it’s out there, go look it up Sony have a monopoly over their console’s digital market, I’ve known this for years and it’s the main reason why I refuse to buy from the Playstation Store. Thing is though, it is still an avenue of purchase to consider and for that reason, I had to bring it up. Hopefully this alone will tell you why this isn’t a viable option of purchase. Next up we have physical PS4 copies and I don’t even know where to begin with this. On Gamefaqs, people have mentioned that Amazon have delayed the game till November, only to bring it back to October 27th. Like I get it, there’s a lot of complications with postage right now, the Royal Mail are on strike, I get it. Thing is, this is just confusing to me, if I order a physical copy of the game (which cost the same as a digital Playstation Store copy when you include postage) then I will not have access to the game on release and this will greatly hinder the progress of my review of the game. Unlike most of these mass media outlets and popular content creators, I do not have the luxury of being able to apply for a review code. This is for two reasons, firstly I am a small content creator, secondly this is Cynical Gaming Blog, essentially making me the enemy of all videogame publishers, why would they send me a free review code when I trash these companies time and time again? So this means my only option is to get the game day 1… which is easier said than done.

Now obviously the best case scenario would be to get the game on Steam so that I can play it on PC, since it would be so much more convenient for me to do so as it means that not only is it easier for me to record footage it’s also easier for me to screencap too. On top of this, I’d be supporting more PC releases of Japanese games by buying from steam and showing Square-Enix that there is an audience for those games on PC. On top of this, it would mean that there would be 1 more physical copy available for physical game collectors who play on consoles as I would be buying digitally, which has limitless availability. In addition, the price for Star Ocean The Divine Force on PC is £49.99. I never thought that I’d be happy to see that price tag show up for a game since it used to be £39.99 for a brand new release, remember those days?

Sadly inflation is a thing now and well, they’ve coerced us into paying more… as per usual. I wish It was that simple for me to do that, I mean given the fact that I am a self-employed retailer (this blog doesn’t make me any money, let alone a living just thought I’d put that out there), I understand better than anyone how hard it is to inflate prices simply due to the fact that while inflation goes up, the disposable income of others does not and I always try my best to make prices fair and affordable, going as far as to avoid buying inflated stock to maintain a fixed price. Of course big corporations aren’t going to do this since they don’t give a shit about their customers, particularly game Publishers. They’re only good at one thing: taking and I’m getting fed up with it. None of this would be an issue if the games themselves were improving like they were back in the day but videogames have been going downhill since 2010 and continue to get worse and worse by the day (which is evident by my review of Valkyrie Elysium, a game I paid £54.99 for, more expensive than my copies of Valkyrie Profile 1 & 2 combined only to find out that it was inferior to both of those games), save for a few, yet they charge us more!? What the absolute fuck is wrong with this industry? Why do we eat up this bullshit time and time again? I swear there’s more to it than inflation, the Playstation Store prices greatly suggest this.

Regardless I will accept £49.99 for now as a reasonable price for the sake of this article, assuming that it’s merely inflation but it’s impossible to know that for certain. All I do know is that the way Square-Enix have handled the PC version of Star Ocean The Divine Force is absolutely abysmal. Not only do we have to deal with Denuvo DRM yet again but the system requirements for the game, which should be announced prior to release are still unconfirmed even though the game is releasing in 8 days, what the fuck Square-Enix!? Despite this however, they are more than happy to relieve us of our hard earned money in exchange for a game that we don’t even know will work on our hardware. Not everyone has the best, most up to date PC and because of this, it is important to list system requirements so that people know in advance whether or not they are able to run the game so that they can make necessary modifications to their system in advance prior to release or they purchase the game on console if they happen to have one. With the way things are right now, it is impossible to know whether or not the game will run and while some have speculated that the recommended requirements will be around the same recommended requirements that the PC’s being given away in a Japanese contest by Intel, it’s difficult to know what is in the thing unless you understand Japanese and even then, what are the minimum requirements? We don’t fucking know!!!

So as you can see, I am in a bit of a situation here. I don’t usually try to get reviews out early but I have noticed that doing so yields better results as people are more likely to read reviews of games if the games are new and relevant and considering the fact that two of my favorite franchises had releases back to back this year, I’ve wanted to cover both of them, despite the stressful situation I’ve been going through in real life. Thing is that Square-Enix are making this needlessly difficult for me. I want to support more Star Ocean games and with tri-Ace’s terrible financial situation under consideration, it is urgent that I purchase the game so that I can at least show to Square-Enix the value that tri-Ace brings to the table as well as getting them out of this mess. I don’t give two flying fucks about giving Square-Enix my money if it wasn’t for tri-Ace I’d just wait for a cheap review code to show up on G2A just to spite them for being greedy bastards. Thing is, this isn’t a matter of boycotting, it’s quite the opposite. Buying this game digitally on steam means that I am supporting Square-Enix’s bullshit but that is a necesarry evil to keep tri-Ace afloat and it is so unbelievably conflicting. Thing is though in this situation, I feel that I have to let Square-Enix win because tri-Ace is one of the last hopes this industry has to bring us quality games. While Valkyrie Elysium, was one of those “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situations in regards to buying it, Star Ocean The Divine Force is very similar in the sense that you either watch tri-Ace disappear from the industry or prevent it at the cost of allowing Square-Enix get away with their bullshit. I am so sick of the distain that this company has for its PC market, they didn’t even give PC users access to a Demo, it’s ridiculous. Is there any hope for this industry at all or are we all fucked?

On a slightly unrelated note, for those of you who want to get even more pissed off by the gaming industry, check out Hikikomori Media’s video on videogame preservation.

Comparison – YS SEVEN, Memories Of Celceta, Lacrimosa Of Dana

While I can’t say that I know a lot about the YS series, I did dabble in a few of the games and the three games I finished were the modern style YS games in the sense that you control multiple characters as opposed to just Adol. While these games have gotten a lot of flak from die hard fans, I personally had a lot of fun with all three of them. Having tried a few of the older games, I’m glad that these changes happened because I absolutely despise the gameplay in some of the older games and I actually prefer having party members as opposed to just a single character for the entire game.

Now that I have played all three of the modern games, I feel the urge to do a comparison of the three so that you can get a good idea as to what each game’s strengths and weaknesses are as well as my personal thoughts on each one and which one is the best of the three. So for starters I want to talk about the earliest of the three games, YS SEVEN.

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YS SEVEN

YS 7

Playstation Portable, PC

YS SEVEN was the second game I played in the series and was the first game in the series to have multiple party members. This was a colossal change from earlier YS games and because of it, the game had to incorporate a lot of new features to accommodate this feature to the point that it became a completely different experience. In a way, that kinda makes YS SEVEN the Castlevania Symphony Of The Night of the YS series as it completely reinvented the formula and was the first game of its kind.

One thing I noticed immediately was the ability to charge up your sword to perform a stronger attack that fills the sp meter up faster, this is the only game of the three that has this feature as the other two games have the sword charge automatically whenever it is not used. Because you could charge the sword manually, this meant that you would often have the X button held down wherever you went just to make sure that your first hit on the enemy would be a strong attack. I can see why they automated this feature for that reason, however I can’t deny that the act of charging up your attacks was pretty satisfying in a way.

YS SEVEN introduced the three attack modes that players had to be aware of when fighting certain enemies to exploit weaknesses. Because of this, players will usually prefer a party that has one of each attack mode and since you have a maximum of 3 characters in your party at a time, you would need to make sure all of them have different attack modes. This is a problem in later entries as it essentially presents several false choices in the form of party compositions, where certain party compositions would be objectively inferior to others. In YS SEVEN however, this isn’t an issue as Adol can equip different weapon types, allowing him to use all three attack modes, making certain party compositions that would otherwise handicap the player a viable combination. The downside however is that YS SEVEN is the only game of the three to prohibit players from removing Adol from the party, meaning that you only get to choose 2 party members to tag alongside him.

The story of YS SEVEN is pretty straightforward and is arguably the most generic of the three, not that this is an issue. There are a few interesting twists here and there but the story mostly revolves around your typical macguffin hunt for most of the game. While this isn’t inherently an issue, it’s certainly nothing we haven’t seen before. If you’ve played any Zelda game or Tales Of Symphonia, you know what to expect. Go to the elemental dungeon, get the macguffin, go to the next elemental temple, rinse and repeat. It is literally chapter 3 of Valkyrie Profile 2 but for the entire game so if you hated chapter 3 in Valkyrie Profile 2, you will be bored to death by this game’s story. I personally didn’t mind this however as I personally play these games for the adventure, not the story, I enjoyed all the temples as they each had their own distinct characteristics that brought a lot of flavor to the experience though I did notice that I spent most of the game confined to dungeons as opposed to travelling outside.

Next I want to bring up the skill system. In order to learn new moves, players have to equip certain weapons and by using those weapons, they will eventually learn the skill. After that, the skill must be used over and over again to further level it up. This encourages players to swap weapons and keep using old weapons to learn all the skills. This means using all 3 weapon types, encouraging players to change their party continuously. I personally see this system as a double edged sword. If you’ve played games like Final Fantasy IX, Atelier Iris 2 or Tales Of Vesperia then you’ll probably be familiar with this system and if you liked it in those games, you probably won’t mind it here as it encourages you to spend more time in the menu, those who hate having to bring up the menu too often may see this as busywork. I personally don’t mind it as I am used to playing games that implement this system.

There is a crafting system but it’s a pretty conventional one. It’s your typical, gather specific components to make the item crafting system, the one you see in most RPG’s these days. I don’t mind it though as it encourages me to gather components from enemies.

The cast of characters are a mixed bag. While Adol, Geis and Dogi are great, the rest of the cast are pretty bland and just serve as the representative of each elemental temple you go to and they barely ever play a major part in the story outside of their own scenarios.

While I did enjoy the music of YS SEVEN a lot, I found it to be the least memorable of the three games, I found the three most standout tracks from the game to be Mother Earth Altago, Sanctuary Of Meditation Breeze and Crossing Rage, those three tracks were amazing, though the rest of the tracks, didn’t stand out as much to me as the tracks in the other games personally but it’s still an amazing soundtrack nonetheless.

So that’s YS SEVEN, a fiercely unapologetically conventional Action RPG for better or for worse, if you go into it expecting that, you’ll be well catered for but there are no frills here. Difficulty wise, YS SEVEN isn’t too hard but it is probably the hardest of the three as you have limited healing items so you can’t just mindlessly mash buttons, you have to carefully avoid the enemy attacks and counter them when the opportunity presents itself to conserve your health.

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YS: Memories Of Celceta

YS 4 (Remake)

Playstation Vita, Playstation 4, PC

Next up we have YS Memories Of Celceta, a remake of YS IV and the last of the three games that I played. Memories Of Celceta made some noticeable improvements to the combat system from YS SEVEN, implementing the flash move system that rewarded players for avoiding the enemy’s attacks at the right time by making them temporarily invincible. The game also removed the manual charging and replaced it with an automatic charge so you no longer have to run around with the X button held down all the time. All of this made the combat feel a lot more involving and this increased the fun factor for me.

Unlike YS SEVEN where skills are learned from weapons, Memories Of Celceta’s skills are learned in a similar way to that of the Tales games in the sense that you learn new moves as you fight. It’s difficult to pinpoint what triggers this exactly though it seems that fighting stronger enemies makes it easier to learn new skills.

What did bother me about Memories Of Celceta were the underwater sections. In the other two games, the underwater sections had you sink to the bottom and you could fight as normal. In Memories Of Celceta they added swimming, sure this does make the game more realistic but is that really important in a game like this? Plus it makes combat an absolute nightmare since your attacks are so slow and limited while in water, yet there are enemies to fight underwater. It really boggles my mind why they made this design choice but thankfully this is the only game where this is ever an issue.

Unlike YS SEVEN where you had to gather specific items to craft new weapons, YS Memories Of Celceta features an equipment enhancement system, allowing players to synthesize their equipment with just about any component in their inventory. This allows for so many more possibilities and it is a lot more fun to use whatever components you like to enhance your weapons as opposed to just crafting new ones with specific materials, because it means that no material feels wasted. It is similar to that of Star Ocean 4 and 5’s weapon augmentation but it works a little differently in this game as there are no factors so to speak of, rather there are stats for a multitude of effects that are applied to the weapon which are increased by adding components. Of course there’s a limit to how many components you can add to a weapon so you can’t just stack all of your components onto a single weapon, you have to choose your components carefully and because of this, it’s a really involving process.

On top of this, you can even upgrade the key items needed to traverse certain areas in the game, giving them special properties. This was great as it gave you a reason to use them even if you didn’t need them at the time, whereas in the other games you would only swap between them when they were needed as they otherwise felt kinda meaningless. I never was a big fan of these items in the other games as they just felt like keys to access other areas so that you couldn’t just go wherever you wanted, essentially breaking the illusion of openness in the same way a Zelda or Metroid game would.

While the other two games had completely original stories, Memories Of Celceta is a retelling of YS IV’s story. I personally enjoyed the story of Memories Of Celceta a lot more that YS SEVEN’s as it was no longer just your typical macguffin hunt throughout. There were some interesting plot ideas in this one and I found it to be the most grounded of the three games overall. I really liked the premise of being sent into this huge forest to map out uncharted territory, it felt like I was on a real adventure as opposed to being on a quest to save the world, though naturally such a quest does present itself later on in the game. If you play JRPG’s for the adventure as opposed to a deeper, more complex narrative then you’ll be right at home with Memories Of Celceta’s story. I personally consider it to be the best of the three games overall.

Like all great party members… am I right?

The Characters on the other hand I didn’t care for one bit, sure you can’t go wrong with Adol but every other character didn’t really appeal to me at all. Now don’t get me wrong, the characters aren’t terrible, heck I’d actually go as far as to say that the female cast were the most interesting of the group but that’s not saying much. Duren is pretty much a clone of Dogi and while they do try to make him an interesting character, I can’t help but see him as an inferior version of Dogi, don’t get me wrong, he isn’t terrible but he also isn’t breaking down walls any time soon. The other male character, Ozma is so bland that I had to look up his name because I completely forgot about him. Karna pretty much fits the outgoing spirited girl role to a T but she never goes anywhere beyond that. Then there’s Calilica who is just some really annoying little bratty kid and finally Frieda who is a completely new character that didn’t appear in YS IV there’s not much to say about her besides the fact that she is essentially the cool big sis trope given sentience.

Memories Of Celceta’s soundtrack grew on me the more I played of it. While the music at the start didn’t capture my attention in the same way the other games did, the music later on more than made up for it. Burning Sword was great and all but it didn’t blow me away in the same way Mother Earth Altago and Sunshine Coastline did. Ultimately though I consider Memories Of Celceta’s soundtrack to be a colossal improvement from YS SEVEN’s, not that YS SEVEN’s soundtrack was bad, it certainly wasn’t, I just felt that Memories Of Celceta’s soundtrack was better overall. My personal favorites are Crater, The Morning After The Storm, Gust Of Wind and Forest Of Dawn.

I personally found Memories Of Celceta to be the easiest of the three games as you could carry as many potions as you want. Also the flash move system made bosses a lot more manageable. There are still some tough sections but nothing too bothersome. It should be noted though that you’ll occasionally encounter some powerful enemies on the field that are a higher level than you, which can be tough to take down if you don’t run away from them but besides that you shouldn’t have any problems. I recommend this game for people who aren’t very good at Action RPG’s as it’s a lot easier to pick up and play than the other two games.

I really enjoyed my time with Memories Of Celceta a lot more than I did with YS SEVEN overall, it brought a lot of gameplay improvements to the table and the story was a lot more interesting. The only major downside for me was the cast of characters, other than that I’d argue it’s one of the better of the three games.

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YS VIII: Lacrimosa Of Dana

YS 8

Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC

Finally we move on to YS VIII Lacrimosa Of Dana, this was my first YS experience and it’s the only game of the three that I have actually reviewed so expect to see a repeat of what I said in my review. As it is the most recent of the YS games so far, with the exception of YS IX Monstrum Nox which is only available in Japan as of now, the most noticeable change is the fully three dimensional camera. The draw distance is also quite impressive and does a good job at establishing a greater sense of scope when you’re exploring the island. This does wonders when it comes to keeping the player engaged in exploration.

The combat however is surprisingly not all that different from the other two games, though it does have the automatic charge up as opposed to manual charging of YS SEVEN. Put simply, it plays mostly the same as Memories Of Celceta but with the ability to jump and use aerial attacks which was absent from the previous two games for some reason. One thing to note however is that flash move is a lot harder to pull off in YS VIII than it was in Memories Of Celceta as you have to time your evasion perfectly. This makes pulling off a flash move feel more rewarding though the fact that it’s harder to pull off might be a turn off for some though I personally prefer it this way. In Memories Of Celceta you could perform a flash move during the attack which felt quite weird to me after having played YS VIII beforehand.

What I did like about YS VIII was the inclusion of raids, these involved protecting the village from hordes of enemies and were a lot of fun to do and could get quite chaotic, beast hunts on the other hand I wasn’t a fan of as I found that they could become a bit too chaotic and were more complicated than they needed to be.

One thing that I did notice about YS VIII in particular after playing the other two games is how linear many of its systems are. Learning new moves is as simple as leveling up in most cases, though there are a few exceptions. What did bother me however was the weapon forging system, unlike the previous games which had more in depth weapon crafting, YS VIII’s weapon crafting system is extremely linear as you can only have 1 weapon per character which can be reforged and upgraded up to 3 times. Reforging is essentially replacing it with a new weapon and you don’t really get to choose what you reforge your sword into, it just moves up to the next tier, there’s no new weapon types to choose from and no properties you can apply to your weapons. It’s just a really bland crafting system when compared to the other game’s systems.

The story of YS VIII is the complete opposite of YS SEVEN for better or worse. Sure the story is arguably more complicated but that doesn’t necessarily make it better. One thing is for sure though, the story will constantly keep you guessing and will make you want to keep playing to see what happens next. The problem with the story is Dana and literally everything related to her character, I can’t go into too much detail without spoiling the game but it involves time travel and it handles it very poorly to the point that you really have to willingly suspend your disbelief at times. I did enjoy the twist at the end though. All in all, it’s a bit messy but it will certainly keep you engaged for the journey.

Thankfully the cast of characters are very well rounded and likable, except for Dana. I really enjoyed Sahad’s character in particular, though the rest of the cast are just as likable and well written with the exception of Dana of course, who is the blandest character in the game. Even the non playable characters were more interesting than Dana. Interacting with these characters was a real treat as they all have great arcs, even if some of them are a bit generic, it was fun to learn about all of these characters and where they came from and see how they adapt to their new life as a castaway. It’s just a shame the game had to include Dana as a playable character and that they made her an important character, seriously I would take any of the characters from the other two games over her, she really felt like the black sheep of the group in this game.

I thoroughly enjoyed the soundtrack of YS VIII a lot, there’s a good mixture of high energy and calming tracks and there are many standouts, my personal favorite would have to go to Next Step Toward The Unknown, that song couldn’t have played at a better time, I cannot even begin to express how much this track got me psyched up for what was to come. Other notable tracks are Woods Of Elevated Coral Reef, A Footprint In The Wet Sand, Overcome The Rocky Path and many more. Honestly this is hands down one of if not the best soundtrack of the decade.

Overall, YS VIII was one hell of an experience. It felt like they really put their all into this one. Difficulty wise I’d say that it’s kinda somewhere in between YS SEVEN and Memories Of Celceta. If you found Memories Of Celceta too easy, you might prefer this one, if you found YS SEVEN too hard, this one might be a bit easier. What makes YS VIII harder than Memories Of Celceta though is the bottle limit since you can only carry a limited amount of healing items, unlike YS SEVEN however, you can gather extra food items that can heal you should you need it so if you run out of potions, at least you have those to fall back on.

So what do I consider to be the best of these three games? Well let’s compare them and then I can tell you my personal favorite of the three.

While the combat systems of Memories Of Celceta and Lacrimosa Of Dana are more-or-less the same, Memories Of Celceta’s weapon upgrade system is vastly superior to Lacrimosa Of Dana’s, so I would say that Memories Of Celceta is the best of the 3 in terms of gameplay.

Gameplay – Memories Of Celceta

Story is always going to be subjective and I can totally see why someone would choose Lacrimosa Of Dana over the other two games but personally I would have to say that Memories Of Celceta’s story was better simply due to the fact that Lacrimosa Of Dana’s story, despite being greater in concept, went a bit too crazy with the whole time travel thing. While it may be smaller in scale, I think Memories Of Celceta’s story was handled better overall as it was tighter and didn’t drag for too long, that and it was more interesting than Seven’s story.

Story  – Memories Of Celceta

The characters in Lacrimosa Of Dana are vastly superior to the characters in the other two games. I find that the characters in the other two games weren’t half as memorable by comparison. Ozma is like a carbon copy of Mustafa, heck I’d argue he’s actually less interesting than Mustafa. I’d say that SEVEN’s cast is better than Memories Of Celceta’s cast overall but it saddens me that many of the characters in SEVEN were just there to represent their local temples and nothing more. Characters like Sahad, Laxia and Hummel on the other hand each have their own pasts explored and have distinguishable traits that make them memorable, that and they also receive a lot more character development by comparison.

Characters – Lacrimosa Of Dana

In terms of music, while all of them offer amazing soundtracks, I think that as great as YS SEVEN’s soundtrack was, many of the songs didn’t stick with me as much as the other two games did. Memories Of Celceta’s soundtrack had quite a lot of noteworthy tracks and honestly, part of me wanted to give Memories Of Celceta the win here but Lacrimosa Of Dana’s soundtrack gets the win simply because out of all three of the game’s soundtracks, I find the quality of the music more consistent throughout, that and the fact that Lacrimosa Of Dana has more of it than the other two games which is probably due to the fact that the game is longer. Put simply the music in Lacrimosa Of Dana never falters, whereas the other games have a few songs that I just didn’t care for.

Music – Lacrimosa Of Dana

By now, you can see that Lacrimosa Of Dana and Memories Of Celceta are both tied but which one do I personally enjoy the most? Well that would have to be Lacrimosa Of Dana. It was a close call between these two games as they both offer their own qualities but Lacrimosa Of Dana wins simply due to the fact that it is the visually superior game, that and the fact that they added the raid minigame. I know that it’s unfair to compare an older game to a newer game visually but it was the biggest reason why I prefered Lacrimosa Of Dana over Memories Of Celceta. Heck, the story of Lacrimosa Of Dana might have its problems but the story is far more ambitious than that of Memories Of Celceta’s story and is still thoroughly engaging so there really isn’t much between them in that department. Regardless on what I consider to be the best of the three games, I can safely say that I enjoyed all three of these games regardless, so just because YS SEVEN didn’t get a mention in any of the categories doesn’t mean that I think that it’s a bad game, it certainly isn’t. I just felt that the other two games were better personally.

Winner: YS VIII Lacrimosa Of Dana

Thoughts On Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord So Far

So it’s been a while since I talked about my first impressions on Bannerlord and now that I have played a bit more of the game and experienced late game mechanics, I have a lot more to say about the game than I did previously. I have yet to experience sieges though so do bear that in mind but I have finally joined a faction as a vassal and have been overwhelmed with all the new features the game has to offer upon joining a faction.

For starters, let’s talk about influence. What is influence you ask? It’s a currency you can use to buy friendship, no I’m not making that up, you can spend influence to get people to like you more. I find this to be a bit silly but it does build up my charm level so I’m not complaining. Once you join a faction, you join as a clan (the one you create at the start after defeating the bandits in the story). There are many clans in the faction and they all have their own influence, yours included. Influence can be gained through fighting enemies and owning fiefs so if you do not have a fief, gaining influence can be a real pain since there are laws that can drain your influence, on top of all this, getting a town also means getting the associated village so there aren’t many fiefs to go round. I got lucky and won a fief in a vote so I didn’t have to worry but initially some of the laws in place really screwed me over and made me feel like being in the faction was pointless as I got nothing out of it.

Speaking of fiefs, one of the things I do like a lot about this game is the interior design of the castles. No longer is your castle a single room, your castle has several rooms including a place for you to play board games with visitors to pass the time. The board game you have depends on the location of your fief so be mindful of that. I know this isn’t a big deal in the great scheme of things but it’s a nice touch to make the castle feel more livable than they do in Warband.

On top of this, you can upgrade your town fiefs to improve various things including garrison space, prosperity and higher taxes. On top of all this you also have to choose how your town operates in terms of maintenance and growth by choosing between building housing, bolstering your town’s militia, improving your town’s morale and irrigation to increase food production. I really like this new and improved upgrade feature as it feels more involving and the UI is presented better than it was in Warband where it was just a list, the only thing missing is the option to construct a prison tower which can be annoying since lords you imprison tend to escape way too quickly so you’re better off just ransoming them for money.

One thing to be mindful of however is that fiefs consume food, if you have troops garrisoned in your fief, they may abandon you if you don’t have enough food. Your prosperity will also go down if your food stocks are low. So this means you will have to spend time travelling to and from towns to deliver food to the fief which can be tedious but it does work, even if you have to pay more for the food, it’s a necessity. The issue is though that caravans will buy the food from you if you store too much because it becomes cheap. Also, the bigger your garrison, the more food is consumed so you don’t want to stuff your fief up with troops.

Next I want to go into more detail with the game’s clan feature. All companions you recruit become a part of your clan, you can create a party and have it be led by one of your companions, they will then roam around the world and do whatever the hell they want. This annoys me because as cool as this is in concept, if you can’t give commands to your parties and tell them to patrol an area or something, what’s the point? They just do whatever the hell they want which is kinda lame. Thankfully though I did notice that in later versions of the game, my companion party tends to patrol around my fief more often and the results are noticeable. Still I think being able to have more control over your clan members is important and I’m hoping that the devs will implement this in the full game.

As I mentioned before, factions in Bannerlord have laws. These laws are voted for by each clan and the ruler decides which laws pass and which don’t. Laws can greatly impact the experience of the game and it is very important to make sure that the laws are mostly in your favor since they can affect numerous things ranging from influence gains for certain lords, to keeping the common folk happy. All clans are eligible to vote so long as they have enough influence, the more influence spent, the greater the impact on a vote. Players can also petition for a new law to be passed or disvowed, those in opposition of the player’s vote will lose relation with the player whereas those whom the player supports will gain relation with the player. It feels like a constant balancing act of trying to pass/disvow laws to benefit yourself personally and trying not to fall out with other lords.

There is also the option to spend influence points to vote for a fief to change ownership, this costs 400 influence points and could cause someone to lose their fief should it be voted to someone else. On top of all this, you have the option of voting people out of the faction completely and while I personally haven’t experienced being voted out myself, I would advise you to maintain a strong relation with multiple lords to protect your position in the faction. Ultimately while I am not keen on the influence system as a whole, I do think that the law system is a great idea that requires players to think more carefully about their decision making as well as making the player feel like they have a bigger impact on the goings on in the world.

It’s also worth noting that unlike Warband, feasts have not yet been implemented into Bannerlord which may be why tournaments occur more often. I find the absence of feasting to be odd as it was such a big part of keeping your kingdom in order by gathering vassals and gaining relation with them. It also helped prevent snowballing as feasts would stop factions from acting for a time which in turn gave all the other factions and the player more breathing room. Now I would like to believe that the devs will add feasting later on in the development but the kingdom tab suggests that they planned on removing feasts entirely and instead of inviting them to a banquet to gain favor with them, you spend influence instead which I find to be a step backwards.

I was hoping that feasts would be more involving in Bannerlord than they were in Warband. I would have liked to have seen feasts get improved and maybe having some war stories being told at the table by lords, gossip and of course compete in the new minigames. It’s such a shame that they axed them entirely, it kills a part of the game’s charm if you ask me and makes the castle interiors feel kinda pointless. Speaking of feasting, the ability to get married is still available in Bannerlord, however the criteria for marriage is much stricter than it was in Warband since you have to be under the age of 40 to marry. This means that if you spend the early portions of the game doing other things instead of dating noblewomen, you have screwed yourself out of having children and that’s a big problem because in Bannerlord, you can die of old age!

Even though Companions who join you become part of your clan and can be leveled up, you cannot play as your companions after your character has died, which is a big shame. Blood doesn’t always make family.

That’s right, after so many years pass, your character’s health will deteriorate and when it reaches zero a text box appears saying “you are not a part of this world anymore” and the game just stops, your entire clan falls apart out of nowhere and you lose everything you worked so hard to get. So basically, if you do not get married and have an offspring it is literally game over! Now upon hearing of this, I naturally rushed to get married but when I realized that I was 43 years old and was unable to marry for some reason, I found out that I was screwed. In Warband you could technically live forever and continue to develop your character further, not in Bannerlord and this is what upsets me about the game the most. Combine this with the game’s grindy leveling system and you not only have a game that feels like a chore to play at times but all that work grinding levels was all for nothing.

Now there are a few things I forgot to mention in my first impressions of the game, first of all, the inventory system in Bannerlord has changed for the better. Now you can buy horses to increase your inventory capacity. Food is now stackable which is great as you don’t have to worry about each piece of food taking up an inventory space. Rather than having a grid based inventory system, you now have a list for your items and you can have as many as you want so long as you don’t reach the inventory limit. Thanks to the horses though, I didn’t have much of an issue managing my inventory which is definitely something I can appreciate about Bannerlord as managing food in Warband was a pain in the ass, though to be fair, in Warband you didn’t have to worry about your fiefs consuming food so in a way, the tedious task of hunting for food is still present in the game sadly.

 

“So basically, if you do not get married and have an offspring it is literally game over!”

 

Also I forgot to mention that the game’s soundtrack is pretty good overall. I mean it does kinda get a bit repetitious at times but so did Warband’s to be fair. I do like the music that plays in the empire territory and the remix of the town theme from Warband is great too. Of course the best song in the game has to be the main menu music, I cannot begin to express just how hyped I was when I heard that menu screen music, it’s so unbelievably epic.

So all in all, what can I say about Bannerlord now that I have spent more time playing through it? Bannerlord is a game with lots of great ideas and it has so much potential to improve from those ideas but at the same it is plagued with absurd design choices that ruin almost all of these ideas and make the game feel like a slog, the worst of them being the aging feature. I don’t think the developers thought things through with this feature. On top of this, the game does a terrible job of telling players how to play the game, even with the encyclopedia, I had a hard time understanding basic gameplay concepts and paid the price heavily. It’s one thing to fall in a fair fight, another thing to feel cheated by the game’s design and this is something that I cannot ignore until the game becomes more intuitive in its design. As it stands now, the game requires a lot of trial and error to figure out how to play and this can be very frustrating.

Finally a place to sleep. Now I can finally get a good night’s sleep after a hard day’s work

To this day I am still trying to get my smithing level high enough to craft a weapon that surpasses my own, I am currently at level 150 smithing and hopefully I will reach 200 Smithing before I die of old age. Smithing is such an ordeal to level up due to the stamina system it’s ridiculous. I just want to get to the good parts game… just let me craft that awesome sword already I’ve spent over 1000 in game days playing and still can’t craft a decent sword, what a pain.

 

Need For Speed Most Wanted (2005) Review

What happens when a racing game gets a story featuring cutscenes with real actors and fast paced police pursuits where the cops drive corvettes against your tuned up supercar? You get one of the greatest racing games ever made… according to most people that is. As somebody who started with Need For Speed Underground 2 and loved the whole concept of racing it brought to the table, the thought of a new Need For Speed game filled me with excitement, I couldn’t wait to get straight to tuning up my own personalized ride to compete against other wannabe racers to be the best in the city.

The game starts out with a sizable introduction sequence, which is nothing but race after race with some cutscenes in between in a car that feels completely foreign to you. You didn’t customize this car, it was just given to you, like the Nissan 350z at the beginning of Underground 2 but thankfully you only had to put up with it for a short time. This is where the biggest problem with Need For Speed Most Wanted starts to show, the absolutely abysmal amount of padding and this is just the start of the game’s padding. In Underground 2, the moment you brought the 350z to the car lot, you get access to your first car, from then on the world’s your oyster, you have the freedom to go anywhere, heck you can even freely roam the map right from the get go in the 350z if you want to. You can’t do this in Most Wanted until you finish the introduction sequence.

I hope you like the BMW M3 GTR E46 because you’ll be driving it a lot at the start of the game.

Once you actually get your car and access to the world map, you are presented with a task list. Now In Underground 2 you had something similar but these were just a list of race events you had to finish. In Most Wanted, not only do you have to finish so many race events but you also have to complete milestones and grind bounty to a certain amount before you are allowed to race the boss. While these requirements are somewhat trivial at first, later on in the game they become a real pain in the ass since the bounty requirement is so unbelievably high that you have to start grinding for it. This is not fun, it’s just sloppy padding.

To make things worse, vehicle customization in Need For Speed Most Wanted is insultingly bare bones compared to that of Underground 2. Now you can only apply a single vinyl and individual body parts have been removed, leaving you with only one of 4 wide body kits to add your car. They did add some new things such as custom gauges but was this really necessary? It doesn’t add to the cosmetic appeal of the car, it just changes the game’s UI aesthetic which is pointless to me. On top of all this, countless things have been removed, there are no more spinners, neons, headlights or any of the ridiculous, yet awesome things you could apply to your car in Underground 2, it just really feels watered down by comparison.

Only two body kits!?

What did interest me about Need For Speed Most Wanted is its broader range of cars compared to that of the Underground games since you aren’t stuck with mostly import tuners. As is evident from the player’s flashy BMW M3 GTR right at the start of the game, Most Wanted adds some flashier car brands such as Lamborghini and Porsche. The problem with this is that it can create some ridiculous matchups. Unlike Need For Speed Carbon which later added a tier system, pitting higher tier cars against each other for more believable races, in Most Wanted there is no such thing so have fun watching the AI rubberband you in Fiat Puntos when you’re driving a flashy supercar. I get that tuning up a home grown ride is the whole point and all but I can’t help but find this pretty jarring since much of the appeal that comes from these supercars in real life is their performance, It really diminishes the value of your car.

Now at first, I was a bit disappointed by what Most Wanted had to offer, I came expecting Underground 2 and what I got wasn’t what I expected. This all changed when I got involved in some of the heated pursuit events that were not in Need For Speed Underground 1/2 though apparently harken back to older Need For Speed games like Hot Pursuit. Now before I start throwing praise at Most Wanted’s pursuits, I really should emphasize that police pursuits are a double edged sword and are ultimately the game’s Achilles’ heel.

Somebody give that cop a raise…

What I mean by this is that while Underground 2 allowed me to take a relaxing drive around the world map to break up the intensity of the racing. In Need For Speed Most Wanted, any attempt to roam the world map leads to getting into a police pursuit. Not only that but aside from going to the car lot/customization shop, there’s no other incentive to explore the world map. In Underground 2 you had collectibles hidden around as well as secret races and outruns to do. Most Wanted has none of this and it makes travelling around the world map seem not only pointless but annoyingly intrusive. You can’t drive around at your own leisure without a cop spotting you and it’s a real pain to deal with. Luckily Need For Speed Carbon allowed you to lower the heat of certain districts you conquer which makes encountering police happen far less often than it does in Most Wanted, allowing you to roam freely without worrying too much about police. In Most Wanted they are everywhere and it’s so annoying.

Once you do get into a police pursuit however, the meat of the game begins. This has to be hands down one of the most exhilarating experiences I’ve ever had in a racing game. Unlike Midnight Club 3 where the cops just push you around and are merely a nuisance, these cops work together to take you out and they will use several techniques in order to do so. Initially, evading police is a trivial matter, you can just turn around and drive backwards to confuse them or smash into them causing them to roll over and become immobilized. There’s also pursuit breakers laid out all around the map to immobilize cops that are following you, breaking up the crowd and allowing you to escape easier.

Smash everything to win!

Of course things start to get tougher the longer you are in a pursuit. Eventually you will start encountering roadblocks attempting to slow you down. It’s always fun to watch police cars getting T boned and roll over each time you smash through them. There are many ways to approach a roadblock and some will have an opening allowing you to maintain your speed, be careful though as once you reach heat level 4, police will place spike strips on the road to destroy your tyres. Should you be misfortunate enough to run into one of these, the pursuit is pretty much over and you will likely get busted so watch out for them. They are usually placed in openings though they can occasionally be placed in front of the police cars themselves. On top of this there are helicopters that will appear later on which will track you down, informing police of your whereabouts. These things are just annoying as they force you to either keep driving till they disappear or go under a bridge or something to avoid detection.

In any case, there’s plenty to keep you occupied in police pursuits and your face will be glued to the screen each time you get into one. Pursuits are definitely the main draw to Need For Speed Most Wanted without a doubt, everything else feels like an afterthought by comparison. I will say though that if it wasn’t for the races and everything else, pursuits would have less meaning to them. It’s the weight of your accomplishments and the risk that comes with pursuits that makes them so engaging, granted you can save scum to avoid losing your car/paying a fine (which I did) but the option of playing legitimately and potentially losing your car is there which adds a heavy consequence to failure.

The question is, aside from being exhilarating, are police pursuits rewarding? Well some people may be interested to know that there’s a rap sheet which challenges you to reach the top in every category of pursuits. This is optional but it can be a pretty fun challenge for those looking for it, there’s nothing to get for doing it other than having your name appear at the top of the list. Other than that though, police pursuits are nothing but a progression wall. You have to acquire bounty and reach milestones to progress. Unlike races, there’s no money to be earned from finishing them, nor is there anything unlocked in the customization either. It just feels pointless to do all of the milestones unless you are a completionist but you’ll probably end up doing most of them anyways as you may end up getting several milestones in a single pursuit or you may not even get any at all.

To make things worse, if you managed to trade paint with 50 cop cars in a police pursuit early on in the game and the milestone only told you to trade paint with 5, you will still have to do the trade paint with 50 cop cars all over again later on in the game. Seriously this is what I mean by the game’s incessant padding, they should have let you acquire all of the milestones early on in the game instead of having to wait till later on to do the same thing you may have done ages ago. Now I get that the heat cap increases the further you get in the game to give an extra challenge to these later milestones but it sure feels like you’re doing the same shit over and over again at times and it can get quite tedious. Once you reach heat level 5, one mistake can screw you as the cops are extremely competent to the point that they are an absolute pain in the ass to evade, let alone trying to get milestones from them. Should you fail, you have to do them all over again and this can sometimes be half an hour of progress down the drain.

At higher heat levels, police will begin to employ new tactics to try and take you out. Sometimes they will try to box you in, other times they will try to ram you with SUV’s to slow you down. The worst however are spike strips which are laid out in roadblocks, watch out for these because if you hit one, you recieve a one way ticket to the back of a police car.

So now you can clearly see why Police pursuits are both the game’s greatest strength and their greatest weakness, the game clearly focuses heavily on them and while this is not inherently an issue, it can be problematic for those looking for a straight up racing experience. Those who are looking for a Hot Pursuit style Need For Speed experience however will be right at home with Need For Speed Most Wanted. It feels like they tried to mix Hot Pursuit and Underground together and the result is more Hot Pursuit. I’m not saying that Underground’s influence tarnishes the game, it just doesn’t live up to Underground 2’s standards. So many things were removed that were in Underground 2, even Carbon didn’t manage to bring back all the features of Underground 2 but at least Carbon managed to bring back the more important things such as drift racing, individual body parts for cars as well as limitless vinyls. While it may be a shorter game content wise, Carbon feels like a more complete, well rounded Need For Speed experience than Most Wanted. The only thing memorable about Most Wanted’s gameplay is the police pursuits and if they don’t win you over, the rest of the game isn’t going to save it.

The issue with the racing isn’t the races themselves, it’s the fact that the time spent racing will be pitifully low compared to the time spent in police pursuits, mainly due to the amount of bounty you have to grind in order to progress. You can clearly tell that the game really pushes you to get involved in the pursuits and this might be a major turn off to some people. The race events themselves are plentiful and they added an interesting new one called speedtrap along with a not so interesting one, tollbooth which is basically just a fancy name for time trial events. Speedtrap changes the rules a little, encouraging you to drive faster past certain checkpoints in order to get the highest total speed score at the end. Of course it’s still a race and if you are too far behind you will start to lose points but even if you get passed by the AI right at the end, you can still win if your speed score is higher than the enemy AI’s speed score, take that you filthy rubberbanding scum!

The goal of tollbooth is to reach the next toll booth before the time runs out, by doing so you are given more time to reach the next one. Therefore, the only difference between time trial and tollbooth is the fail condition, in time trial you fail only at the end, in tollbooth you fail part way through. To be honest though, this is a good idea as it gives the player constant feedback on how well they are doing throughout the track which is handy for players to see if they’re doing a good run or not.

Speedtrap is an excellent idea as it offers a personal challenge to the player on top of having to deal with the AI, so you can’t just play dirty or get a lucky pass, you have to use skill, same goes for the AI. Sadly however, many of Need For Speed Underground 2’s events do not feature in Most Wanted, while I can’t say I’m all teary-eyed at the loss of street X (fuck street X with a passion) but the lack of any drift events is disappointing to say the least. The drag events do make a return however but I hate drag events almost as much as street X and am glad to see that they were removed in Carbon.

Ultimately the racing itself can still be quite fun, especially if you enjoy the sense of speed that comes from driving at 200 mph on long straights, that is if you can get past all the usual rubberbanding that you should expect from the series by now as well as being able to appreciate a more arcade style of handling. I always found the Need For Speed games to have a nice weighty feel to their cars as opposed to being entirely floaty like in Midnight Club. Crashing into traffic is also a lot less aggravating than it was in Underground 2 as you no longer have to watch a cutscene of your car flipping all over the place every time you make a collision. Sure the traffic slows you down but it doesn’t completely bring you to a stand still.

If you hit a traffic car in drag events you will become totaled and automatically lose the race. The game makes things worst by making the traffic appear at the worst possible time, like this truck you have to drive under.

To make things even less intimidating for newcommers, Most Wanted adds a new speedbreaker feature which is similar to the Zone ability in Midnight Club 3. Speedbreaker allows you to steer in slow motion so you can make more precise corners. It’s a handy tool for newcomers but many people may find that it makes the game too easy. Still if you’re in a heat level 5 police pursuit, you might be glad to know that speed breaker can be used to apply more force when colliding with other vehicles, an extremely useful tool for breaking through those pesky roadblocks.

Now I’m going to bring up the visuals of the game and this is going to be subjective but I’m not a big fan of the aesthetic of Need For Speed Most Wanted, at least compared with Underground 2. The biggest reason for this is that Most Wanted’s Rockport feels bland and dull when compared to Bayview’s neon lit cityscapes from Underground 2 which I felt brought a lot of flavor to the game’s world. Rockport is a shithole and it makes no secret of it. You have your run down, muddy caravan park, a dilapidated coastal boardwalk, several industrial areas and a city completely devoid of character to the point that the only notable things about it are that there’s a police station, an open air theater and a football stadium on the outskirts.

Sure there’s the rural upmarket area of Rosewood but not even that can cover up the fact that Rockport is a declining city. Then again, what better place is there to organize illegal street racing? The grimy colour palette may not be pleasant to the eyes but that’s the whole point. You’re not here to go sightseeing, you’re here to cause chaos in an urban playground, this is partially what lets down the free roaming aspect of the game as I enjoyed driving around the gorgeous cities of Bayview and Palmont just for that alone. Rockport, not so much which does take away some of the game’s appeal to me personally but it is understandable considering the game’s theme and there may even be some people who prefer it.

If you’re going to play any version of this game, make sure that it isn’t the PS2 version as the visual improvements made in later versions are staggering. Unlike Underground 2 and Carbon which aged rather well on older systems due to the incredible lighting that covers up would would otherwise be bland textures, Most Wanted has none of that. In fact if you want to see how little lighting there is, go and download the Rockport mod for Need For Speed Carbon and you will quickly realize that night time Rockport is almost completely pitch black (particularly on the lower settings), save for the few lights in the middle of downtown Rockport which stick out like a sore thumb. That’s because Rockport was designed to appear in the daylight, not at night so there’s minimal lighting besides the orange glow appearing from the sun every now and again. Ultimately you’re going to either appreciate how appropriate the visuals are or you’re going to find them bland and uninteresting. Personally I think the visual appeal of Burnout 3’s daytime tracks is a lot better and that game was released before Most Wanted.

The cars themselves look pretty good for the most part. When compared with the cars of Underground 2, I’d say that while they do look a little better, the lack of neons and coloured headlights really takes away from the visual flair that Underground 2’s cars had which is somewhat disappointing. Despite this however, I think the cars have held up better than the cars in Midnight Club 3 which is a pretty big accomplishment if you ask me, particularly the cars that are painted in metallic/chrome paint. I will say though that Carbon has definitely aged better than Most Wanted when it comes to the cars themselves and that is mostly due to the light reflections on the cars being more apparent, courtesy of the game’s night time setting.

The music fits in perfectly with the game’s setting. Lots of punk rock in here to add that extra thick layer of edge to the game as well as some fast paced electronic music to mix things up. It’s all licensed music so be sure to expect music that was popular in the mid 2000’s. Bands like Bullet For My Valentine and Disturbed are some particular notable ones for bringing out the edge in every single race. I will say though that the music does make the gameplay experience feel more exhilarating regardless of whether you’re into that kind of music so it does its job really well. I do prefer Carbon’s emphasis on electronic music though.

If you thought the series couldn’t get any edgier after Underground, think again.

For better or for worse, Need For Speed Most Wanted was a departure from the Underground series. A lot of people swear by this game and I can kind of see why, the story is cheesy fast and furious style nonsense and while it may not be anything special, it does a pretty good job of motivating the player to make their way through the game. I think the fact that Most Wanted was the first game in the series to focus on the story is the reason why so many people enjoyed the game as well as the pursuits. The game isn’t without its shortcomings though, the lack of customization options, drift events and the game’s ridiculous padding will leave fans of Underground 2 disappointed. I would argue that there are better racing games out there but Most Wanted is definitely one you shouldn’t ignore. The police pursuits are definitely a good reason to play this game as they are definitely worth experiencing. If you’re looking for a game that focuses on the racing itself however, I would recommend Midnight Club 3 DUB Edition over this any day. Nevertheless, as critical as I am of this game, I still think that it’s a solid entry in the series and enjoyed it quite a lot.

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Visuals: Satisfactory

Music: Good

Gameplay: Good

Customization: Satisfactory

Lifespan: Quite Long

Licensed Cars? Yes

Difficulty: Medium

Would you replay? No

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Overall: Good

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Value: £20.00

 

Sorry for the lack of a gameplay video, I had trouble getting good enough footage to make one. However if you do want to see the game in action, I did do a live stream of the game a while back so be sure to check it out:

On another note, I have recently started playing Need For Speed Heat and so far I haven’t noticed any Microtransactions or Always Online DRM so that’s good news. Could this be the return of the arcade racing genre?

Resonance Of Fate Review

I remember being mildly interested when I first saw this game in a magazine, only to find out that it had the SEGA logo on the front of the box, causing my interest to disappear in an instant. Fast forward many years later after having experienced countless tri-Ace games and enjoying them, I eventually found out that Resonance Of Fate was not only developed by tri-Ace but it was also directed by the same person who directed my favorite game of all time, what could possibly go wrong? When I heard that a PC port of the game was on the horizon and that it was going to be self-published by tri-Ace themselves, I decided that it was finally time for me to give Resonance Of Fate a go.

I’ll start by saying that Resonance Of Fate doesn’t really feel like a tri-Ace game… but it most definitely feels like a Suguro game. It’s as if Suguro left tri-Ace to work with Square-Enix or Mistwalker and carried over some of his ideas from Valkyrie Profile 2 in order to make a game that feels isolated from other tri-Ace games. What I mean by this is that while Valkyrie Profile and Star Ocean have completely different tones, they both follow a very similar formula. Both of them being action RPG’s with an emphasis on character management and growth in the sense that you are encouraged to interact with a variety of different systems outside of battle, in order to make the process of grinding levels/items to make your characters more effective in battles more interesting.

Other tri-Ace games tend follow this formula as well but Resonance Of Fate is the odd one out in the sense that it is not an action game, it is a synchronized time strategy game that lacks the fun factor of character management that other tri-Ace games are known to have. Resonance Of Fate kinda feels as if it is trying to cater to a completely different audience by employing its own formula as well as its own thematic direction which feels quite alienating to a tri-Ace fan such as myself

Now don’t get me wrong, Resonance Of Fate does have character management but it all feels different to Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile in the sense that you’re not actually managing your characters specifically (for the most part at least), rather you are customizing guns which can be equipped on any character. I suppose this could be considered to be Resonance Of Fate’s item creation/weapon synthesis as to customize guns, you will have to craft the individual attachments using parts looted from enemies but this is literally the bulk of the game’s character management so you better love guns because every facet of this game revolves around them. Leveling up only serves to increase your weight capacity (allowing more attachments to be placed on a weapon) and the character’s maximum HP, as well as acquiring skills depending on which weapon you have equipped in a linear fashion.

At first glance, the gun customization seems quite interesting. You get to place attachments wherever the hell you want. Sadly none of this is cosmetic so don’t expect Serious Sam Double D levels of gun stacking on the weapon aesthetic but do expect to mount multiple scopes on your SMG because tri-Ace logic dictates that more scopes makes enemies easier to see when in reality having more scopes on a weapon only ends up making it heavier and therefore more cumbersome to use with only the first scope being of any use but this is a JRPG so who the hell cares, go crazy with gun crafting, put those multi-barrels on your gun, it may look ridiculous but you’ll regret it later if you don’t. Gun customization is so important in this game that neglecting it might as well be a one way ticket to the game over screen so you’ll have to do it a lot.

By the end of the game, gun customization becomes less of a cool distraction and more like a bloated weapon synthesis that is more complicated than it needs to be and since it is such an integral part of character growth, gun customization can often feel like a slog to get through at times which is a great shame to be honest, especially once you realize that the guns you create aren’t cosmetic. I suppose the game makes up for this by allowing players to buy clothes for the characters to wear and unlike most games these days, not a single piece of clothing has been sold separately as DLC, they’re all available to buy in game. This is quite the feat if you ask me considering the state of the industry these days. There’s a surprising amount of features available in the character customization, even going as far as to change a character’s eye colour, giving player’s lots of ways to personalize their own distinguishable character at no extra cost, remarkable!

What isn’t remarkable however is the game’s story. Resonance Of Fate has quite possibly the worst story I have ever seen in a tri-Ace game and that’s coming from someone who managed to beat the cringefest that is Star Ocean 4. While Resonance Of Fate may not be as cringeworthy as Star Ocean 4, the story is so incredibly boring that I’m amazed at how I managed to stay awake throughout the whole thing. The plot is pretty much nonexistent for more than half the game as you are merely doing odd jobs for the tower’s nobility and by tower I mean the world because much like in Ar Tonelico, the entire game takes place on a massive tower that soars above the clouds. This means that you will spend ages going from elevator to elevator in order to reach a certain floor of the tower and complete quests be they main story quests or side quests, this gets tedious very quickly as there’s no easy way to travel from a to b in this game.

Speaking of travelling, I forgot to mention that the entire world map screen is covered with hexes. What I mean is that instead of watching your character walk around in an overworld, instead you have a cursor that moves on a top down isometric grid filled with hexes that you need to break through in order to progress. How do you get hexes you ask? You get them from battles. You know what that means don’t you? If you want to progress through the game you’re going to have to farm these hexes which means grinding, lots and lots of grinding and believe me, you will want to do more than just simply progress through the game, you will want to fill in all the hexes to get access to all the loot littered around including bezel shards which I will get to later.

See all those hexes? Once you fill all of those in, random encounters become completely pointless.

Put simply Resonance Of Fate has you spending a good portion of the game following the same formula over and over again. Before you even begin doing the main story you will want to head over to the local guild and do all the sidequests, yes all of them, do not leave a single one unfinished before finishing the main story or it will be gone forever and the rewards for finishing them are a pretty big deal as they give you a lot of vital customization parts that will make battles more manageable in the long run. Plus completing quests gives you hunter points which gives additional rewards upon completing so many and there’s a final reward for completing them all which adds another incentive to do them.

Once you have accepted all of the side quests, now you have to start grinding hexes. It is recommended to grind hexes as early as possible so that you get items that would otherwise be inaccessible early on to make some of the earlier fights a lot easier than they would be otherwise so you’ll spend the next part of the game filling out all accessible areas of the map. Once you do that you will want to start doing all the side quests, travelling back and forth between floors as you do them. Finally you want to start the main quest and once you’ve finished that, you go to your home base, save and move on to the next chapter.

Why am I telling you all this you ask? Because the game is ridiculously hard if you don’t know what you are doing… and I mean ridiculously hard, to the point that you will quickly get burnt out if you don’t pick up on the basics fast. A lot of people recommend heading to the arena to learn the combat system before you even start the very first story mission but even if you do that, you will not learn the combat system because the tutorial does a terrible job at explaining things to the player. You can’t just jump into Resonance Of Fate expecting it to play like any other JRPG you have ever played because if you do, you will be seeing the game over screen a lot.

First things first, the most important thing to realize is that there are two types of attacks, standing attacks and hero attacks. Standing attacks cost nothing to do but during these attacks, enemies can attack you. As Resonance Of Fate is a synchronized time strategy RPG, you will want to spare as much time as you can to outmaneuver the enemy. Therefore it is often favored to use hero attacks in the latter half of the game. It is important to note however that hero attacks cost 1000 hit points to use (1 bezel’s worth of hero gauge). This isn’t immediately obvious however but once you become better acquainted with the game you will come to realize this. Of course I’m going to help you dodge all this needless inherent complexity by telling you that hero attacks use hero gauge which requires bezels and guess what? Bezels are basically your total hit points, your hero gauge is the hit points you have left.

What about the actual hit points you ask? Oh that’s different, running out of that kills you then you get a game over but get this, if you run out of bezels/hero gauge, not only do you lose the ability to perform hero attacks but you enter critical condition where you become severely crippled to the point that you are almost guaranteed to be greeted by a game over screen every single time you see it. Therefore it is very important to watch your bezels carefully because if you run out of them… you’re done.

So what happens when you are attacked? Do you lose bezels/hero gauge? Nope, you take scratch damage (unless you get poisoned which I’ll go into later). Scratch damage accumulates over time and once you lose an entire health bar of scratch damage you will lose bezels for every 1000 health your character has in order to fully restore your scratch HP. Those bezels will become littered around the map requiring you to pick them back up in order to bring your maximum hero gauge back up, if you don’t pick them up, enemies will and they will heal enemies, plus you are unable to gain hero gauge if you have no bezels left to hold it.

Defeating bosses will often reward you with bezel shards, you can also find bezel shards while filling in the map and by fighting enemies in flashing red areas on the map. Collect enough bezel shards and your maximum hero gauge will go up 1 bezel.

Because of all this, it is absolutely vital that you do not level up too much too early. If you have even slightly higher than 1000 health, you will lose 2 bezels every time your health runs out regardless of how much health is actually restored. Of course later on in the game you will need to have more health as enemies will deal more damage but until you have enough bezels, you should try to avoid leveling up too much in order to prevent your characters from having way too much hp or you’ll get a nasty surprise (you level up individual weapons, not characters but with each level you gain a boost in HP for the character). Despite all this you will still have to farm hexes anyways so don’t think that you can escape the monotony of grinding, you will still have to do it… early on at least. By the latter half of the game you should have filled the entire world map with hexes, therefore fighting random encounters becomes completely pointless. Does this all sound like fun to you? I hope so because this is what you’re in for when you play this game.

Don’t think I’m done scaring you away from this game because I’m not. Performing hero attacks not only consumes a single bezel of hero gauge (which we all know by now is a very valuable resource) but it also has you moving forward in a straight line as a circle begins to spin. This circle represents your weapon’s charge and you usually want to keep it spinning in order to improve the effectiveness of your attacks. Once it stops spinning, you have to press the x button to execute the attack. You can also jump in the middle of these attacks and this allows you to hit multiple enemy parts at once. You’ll want to do this often as breaking off enemy parts restores hero gauge one bezel at a time (not the bezels themselves), killing enemies also restores hero gauge so be sure to KO the enemy if you choose to perform a hero attack for maximum efficiency.

Another thing to note is that if you collide into anything in the middle of a hero attack, your character will stop in your tracks causing your hero gauge to go to waste. I swear this has happened to me so many times it’s ridiculous. Some of the larger enemies are especially problematic and while you might think that you could run under a giant golem’s legs are under their massive cannon that’s miles above your character’s head, think again. Ideally you want to be as close to the enemy as possible to increase your charge speed (another reason to use hero attacks).

There’s also multiple levels of terrain to be aware of as well as hazards littered around the map such as barrels and even land mines that are planted by enemies. You can (and usually should) shoot and destroy them to deal damage and possible status ailments to anything near them. Don’t worry about running into landmines with a hero attack, they will blow up and do nothing to you (you are invincible during hero attacks)… but running into barrels is not a good idea, nor is it a good idea to run into walls.

Use the jump ability to circumvent these walls when they appear and be careful when you perform tri attacks in case your other characters are in awkward positions to prevent them from running into walls during these attacks. Try to have them jump as soon as you have access to them, even if it means cancelling one character’s charge. Oh wait I forgot to explain tri attacks didn’t I… they’re basically hero attacks but every character performs them simultaneously for the price of 1, using them costs resonance points as well as bezels, the more resonance points, the more laps around the triangle each character makes, allowing for more attacks.

Did I forget to mention that status ailments in this game are devastating? Be sure to avoid getting inflicted by them as much as you can because if you do get inflicted by status ailments you’re going to have a very hard time. Thankfully you can inflict status ailments on enemies pretty easily as there are no immunities like in other RPG’s. Surely you know what that calls for. I should also point out that the poison status completely bypasses your bezel barrier and deals direct damage to your character’s health so you can die from poison even if you have maximum hero gauge… ouch.

 

“You can’t just jump into Resonance Of Fate expecting it to play like any other JRPG you have ever played because if you do, you will be seeing the game over screen a lot”

 

To make things worse, if you want to heal status ailments or scratch damage, you need to use the character with the first aid kit. If the character with the first aid kit is frozen… you’re screwed, prepare to get your ass handed to you very quickly. Each characters can equip two items, either a handgun, SMG, Grenade, ammo box or first aid kit. Handguns deal HP damage but not much of it, they’re pretty worthless tbh, at least if you have plenty of grenades. When fully charged, the damage they deal doesn’t increase so don’t bother charging them up unless you want to get a higher chance of gauge breaking.

Gauge breaking splits the enemy’s health gauge into segments and when a segment is depleted, players are rewarded with an extra bezel of hero gauge. This can be handy against enemies who lack breakable parts but it isn’t always needed. SMG’s deal scratch damage and while they cannot kill enemies like handguns, you will use them a lot because they are your main DPS. Fully charging the gun apply’s damage multipliers to your attack so be sure to fully charge your SMG as soon as possible.

Once you gain a second SMG (new weapons are very rare and hard to come by in this game), it is highly recommended you replace someone’s handgun with it. You only need one handgun user. Grenades deal both scratch and HP damage in an AOE. Grenades are very handy later on in the game and it’s recommended to have someone use both a grenade and a SMG. Finally there’s the ammo box which changes the properties of the attack you are using. Some bullets apply status effects while others apply additional damage, you’ll need a gun to use them though, grenades won’t work.

The goal of the game is to lower the enemy’s health with scratch damage then finish via SMG’s/grenades then finish with either the handgun or a grenade which converts all the scratch damage delivered to enemies into HP damage, much like Final Fantasy Dissidia’s brave damage is converted into hp damage, the difference is that scratch damage heals over time, this applies to you as well, however enemies cannot deal direct damage to your hp unless they poison you.

Did you bother to read this far without being scared off? If so then you may actually enjoy this game… fancy that! For those that are wondering why I told you all of this information instead of actually critiquing the game’s combat is because I want to illustrate to you all just how goddamn complicated this game is. Now that you have read all that, you never have to do the tutorial of Resonance Of Fate as I have saved you so much precious time that you probably won’t appreciate as much as you should. As for my thoughts on the combat, Resonance Of Fate is basically Valkyrie Profile 2 if you removed all of the action, attack areas and the dash ability was replaced with hero attacks, with layers upon layers of inherent complexity dumped on top of it. Does it need to be this complicated? Of course not. The question is, is there enough depth to make up for the game’s ridiculous complexity?

Well let’s just say that by the latter half of the game I found an exploit, if you can read between the lines of my explanation on how the combat system works you can probably figure it out but for the sake of keeping the experience as fun as possible for you, I shall not spoil that exploit. Let’s just say that finding this exploit made the latter half of the game a lot easier. Don’t get me wrong I still had trouble with some sections but the boss fights in particular became considerably easier once I figured out how to deal with them. In fact I’d even go as far as to say that the fewer enemies on screen, the easier the battles get later on. Ultimately the answer to the question I asked at the end of my last paragraph is both yes and no. Does it have a lot of depth? Yes, does it have enough depth to outweigh the level of inherent complexity? No.

Resonance Of Fate may require an encyclopedia of information to play but once you finally figure out how to play it, it’s not really all that difficult, heck I found the final boss to be an absolute joke compared to some of the earlier encounters in the game simply because by that point I had learned the game’s combat system well enough to know the best way to win. There were some tough fights in the final dungeon though so I wouldn’t say that the game became an absolute cakewalk by the end, rather it became considerably easier to the point that certain sections became a joke. In other words, expect a lot of difficulty spikes. One group of enemy encounters may not be as tough as another group of enemy encounters and vice versa, regardless of where you are in the game. Some enemy encounters are going to be a pain in the ass whereas others are monotonous to get through because you already know exactly how to win against them.

I will say though that learning the game did actually feel quite satisfying, even if most of it is inherently complex. I think RPG’s require a certain amount of inherent complexity in order for them to be somewhat cryptic for the sake of keeping things interesting, just not as inherently complex as Resonance Of Fate. To enjoy this game to its fullest you are going to need patience and a lot of it. The gameplay can be enjoyable if you’re willing to invest time into mastering it but it takes a special kind of gamer to do that and quite frankly I’m not one of those people. I still enjoyed it to a certain degree though. I wouldn’t say you need to be a hardcore JRPG fan to be able to enjoy this game, anyone can jump into it so long as they have the patience to learn something new as hardcore JRPG fans will have just as much to learn as people who don’t play JRPG’s, old methods won’t work here.

Leveling up is pointless, especially early on as you don’t have many weapon attachments available to you. Later on you’ll likely have gained so many levels anyway that you won’t need to grind at all and there’s barely any benefit in doing so, especially if you have filled all your weapon slots.

I think if the story was better, the learning curve of the gameplay may have been more tolerable but sadly this is not the case. You’re probably wondering if the story picks up in the latter half of the game. I’d say that it picks up in the final quarter of the game but I’d also argue that by the time the story picks up, it feels a bit rushed. Unlike Valkyrie Profile which had a similar problem with its story but made up for it with its excellent world building, Resonance Of Fate’s world building is severely lacking which is devastating considering how ambitious the game’s setting is.

I would have liked to learn more about the poorer areas of the tower and maybe have the lower level inhabitants involved in the game’s story but sadly they’re kinda just there, there’s nothing to truly distinguish rich and poor except one side of the tower has sewage and debris everywhere while the other is more opulent in its appearance. There is a bit of dialogue from NPC’s that give a few more implications of poverty but there’s not enough to truly make the world valuable, it just feels empty and I think this is what ultimately lets the game down the most.

Could you get any less nuanced than this?

On the plus side, the game has the tendency to throw in quite a few gags in between some of the earlier missions and to be honest these gags are the best part of the game’s story even though they aren’t really relevant to the story at all. The story appears to build up to something big at first but you’ll be surprised to find out that the story is actually very simplistic. Put simply Resonance Of Fate’s story is at its best when it doesn’t take itself seriously, when it does take itself seriously, it falls flat on its ass. Even Star Ocean 4 ties its story together better than Resonance Of Fate and that’s saying something considering how many times the story gets side tracked in that game. I swear there is so much needless bullshit in this game it is unbelievable.

The characters themselves are a mixed bag… and there’s only 3 of them. You have the edgy teenager, the funky middle aged dude and the chick. The only character worth noting is the funky middle aged dude, Vashyron. I found Vashyron’s characterization to be the most diverse of the three as he has a pretty well rounded mixture of seriousness and goofiness that makes him somewhat unpredictable. He’s a pretty laid back character for the most part and often acts as the voice of reason for the group.

Leanne is quite odd in the sense that she is written as a fiery, strong-willed and likable character but at the same time some of her lines express a lack of confidence in her abilities. It’s pretty jarring to watch her kicking ass in battle only to beat herself up by saying that she’s an amateur. To make matters worse, the other character’s beat her down as well by making out that she’s a novice, even later on in the game. I find that this ruins what would have been a pretty refreshing character. I’m not a feminist or anything, I’d just rather they written her into a stronger, more confident character considering her traits and all.

Finally there’s captain edgelord, Zephyr. Every single time I look at this character a linkin park song starts playing in my head. He’s almost always moping, so much so that he could give Cloud, Squall and even Sieg Wahrheit a run for their money. In fact he is so unbelievably emo and edgy that i dyed his hair red and dressed him in white just so that he could look as close to Sieg Wahrheit as possible. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a sucker for these types of characters most of the times, mostly because I find them amusing and Zephyr doesn’t disappoint in this regard, his character is so unbelievably edgy it’s laughable. I can’t say that his character is any good though… unless you’re into edgy shit I doubt you’ll give a shit about him.

Would it kill you to smile?

I also regret to inform you that the music, while not terrible is pretty sub par for Motoi Sakuraba’s standards. Usually he shines in most tri-Ace games but Resonance Of Fate is arguably his weakest tri-Ace soundtrack. There’s some nice prog rock tracks here and a few good ambient ones but nothing particularly stood out to me as being memorable. I’d say the boss theme is probably the most memorable of the bunch. Ultimately I’m disappointed by the soundtrack of this game, maybe it’s because Motoi Sakuraba focused more on his prog rock this time round which didn’t appeal to me as much as his more mixed approach of orchestral/prog rock. I suppose it’s a matter of taste but this is no Valkyrie Profile 2.

Voice acting on the other hand is pretty good compared to that of most tri-Ace games. While the main cast of characters have surprisingly natural voice acting, some of the cardinals in particular have some really hammy voices, so you get the best of both worlds in this game. I think the voice acting for the main characters in particular was the best part though, especially since the game revolves around the three of them and you hear them talking to each other a lot. They feel like actual conversations, not forced lines that feel misplaced like in Star Ocean 4. It really makes the world feel more natural and believable even though it’s clearly ridiculous and surreal like other JRPG’s.

Visually the game looks pretty decent, Valkyrie Profile 2’s art style seems to linger a bit here though there’s a lot of brown and grey sadly, possibly due to the game’s steampunk setting which lets it down a bit if you ask me. I think the character designs offer a nice contrast to this however. Put simply, Resonance Of Fate is very grungy yet somewhat refined in the visual department. I suppose you can’t expect too much from a giant tower now can you… regardless I do think the visuals meet tri-Ace’s standards of quality so that’s something I suppose, I just think that the grey and brown really isolates this game from other tri-Ace games as there is a clear lack of vibrancy by comparison which I find to be rather bothersome.

Resonance Of Fate is a very difficult game to recommend. You are going to need both patience and tolerance to get through this game but if you can cope with the game’s complexity and the story doesn’t bother you, I believe that you can find some value out of this game. For everyone else this game is a tedious slog that should be avoided. If you plan on picking this up, I recommend the PC version if you can, it is a pretty solid port and the only thing you’re missing is SEGA outfits since SEGA aren’t part of this game anymore. The graphical quality of the PC version is vastly superior and all of the issues have been fixed. Support great PC ports people, the industry needs more of them!

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Story/Plot: Mediocre

Visuals: Satisfactory

Gameplay: Satisfactory

Music: Satisfactory

Lifespan: Quite Long

Difficulty: Hard

Would You Replay? No

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Overall: Satisfactory

 

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Value: £25.00

 

 

YS VIII: Lacrimosa Of Dana Review

It pains me to admit that I never really got into the YS series back in the day. The whole idea of playing as a single character in an action RPG with overly simplified combat seemed a bit too archaic for me. Now I realize that the YS series is one of the pioneers of the action RPG genre and truth be told, I did want to give the series a chance but I just never knew where to start. It wasn’t until the release of YS VIII Lacrimosa Of Dana, that I decided to give the series a try.

It appears that YS VIII opted to follow in the footsteps of more modern action RPG’s such as the Tales and Star Ocean series as it features 3D camera controls as opposed to its top down/side view predecessors. It is also worth noting that recent YS entries have started incorporating a party system into the games and YS VIII is no exception. I personally appreciate these changes to the series as I believe having a more modern 3D look does wonders for the aesthetics and the party system offers multiple play styles to keep the gameplay fresh.

What makes YS VIII stand out from other RPGs of its kind is its premise. The story starts off with the protagonist Adol, who gets shipwrecked on an uncharted island filled with dangerous monsters. Along the way he is reunited with some of the ship’s passengers and crew but many of them have gone missing and it’s up to Adol to track them all down. As simple as it may appear on paper, the simplicity of this premise is quite refreshing as rather than throwing you into a deep and intricate save the world story right from the get go like most games do, YS VIII tells you to go out and explore the world in search of other castaways… and that’s pretty much it really, at least early on in the game.

While this might sound off-putting to those who seek a deeper, more intricate storyline in their games, the game moves at a very quick pace and you will soon realize that there is more to the island than meets the eye. Put simply, the story does get deeper and more intricate later on. That being said however, YS VIII feeds the story slowly to you and doesn’t exactly present its more intricate details particularly well in the game’s early sections but you’ll probably end up ignoring it anyways as the game’s premise is exciting enough for you to keep playing regardless.

God forbid I ever get stranded on an Island then…

I really find that playing the role of a castaway in the search of other castaways on an uncharted really gives off a feeling of adventure that not many modern JRPGs seem to offer nowadays. Back on the SNES, this was common as many JRPGs were lacking in the writing department and the characters you played as were simple and the plot usually revolved around hunting down macguffins in order to pan out game time. For this reason, it was important for developers to create a world that players would want to explore by designing interesting levels in order to keep the games from stagnating. I feel that most modern games focus way too much on their storytelling that they forget how important it is to design intricate dungeons.

The dungeons in YS VIII are some of the best I have seen in a long time, as are the locations themselves. I find that many of the dungeons put a heavy emphasis on verticality which makes them way more interesting to navigate compared to most JRPG dungeons these days. It is also worth noting that YS VIII doesn’t try to throw too many annoying gimmicks at the player, sure there are a few puzzles and there are sections which cannot be accessed until you acquire a certain item, but there isn’t too much of it to the point that it bogs the game down.

The YS games are also known to have had environmental hazards in the past but they are mostly absent in YS VIII. I personally see this as a good thing since I find that environmental hazards often get in the way during combat and serve no practical purpose. All they seem to do is annoy the player. I find that the verticality and the aesthetic design of YS VIII’s levels as well as the abundance of items to find more than makes up for the lack of gimmicks present in previous YS games.

Speaking of the aesthetics, generally speaking I’d say that they are pretty solid for a vita port. While the graphics may appear to be somewhat dated for PS4/PC standards, I’d say that the vibrant usage of color masks this really well. I’d also like to point out that while the visuals themselves may not be as detailed as they are in Star Ocean Integrity And Faithlessness, the field of view in this game is equally as impressive as that game which does wonders for the game’s exploration value which is a big deal considering how important exploring is in this game.

Check out that view…

The character designs appear to be very similar to that of the Legend Of Heroes Trails series and Tokyo Xanadu. So if you like the art style of those games, you’re probably going to enjoy YS VIII’s art style as it pretty much inherits the same style. YS VIII’s character models are celshaded, much like Tales Of Berseria/Zesteria, however the environments have a very vivid vibrancy compared to that of the Tales series and I find that this greatly contrasts with the celshaded design of the character models. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is for you to decide.

Ultimately, the main appeal to the YS series isn’t so much the story/visuals, rather it’s the fast paced gameplay that the series is known for. YS VIII takes the Action RPG genre to the next level, proving that Falcom’s long running series isn’t just a relic of the past. What makes the gameplay of YS so enjoyable is its simplicity and YS VIII does not stray away from this. That being said however, YS VIII improves the mechanics of the combat considerably, allowing for more flexibility in the combat system, giving other ARPG’s a run for their money.

Those who are looking for a more technical, combo-centric battle system may be disappointed by YS VIII as the combat doesn’t really offer any of that, in fact you can spam the same moves over and over again to get through pretty much every single battle, though this is nothing out of the ordinary for an ARPG. YS VIII chooses to instead focus on the defensive aspect of gameplay, rewarding players for avoiding enemy attacks and severely punishing players for getting hit.  Sure you can spam the same moves over and over but it won’t save you from getting hit.

Dodging attacks with perfect timing rewards players with flash move. This makes the player invincible for a short period of time allowing them to freely attack without worrying about getting hit. You can also parry attacks with a flash guard but it requires perfect timing to pull off, doing so makes all your attacks stronger for a short period of time. These features allow players to approach battles differently and rewards players for their dexterity in defensive play.

As far as aggressive play goes, players are able to map up to 4 special skills to each of the face buttons and they can be triggered by holding the R1 button and the corresponding face button, while regular attacks, dodges and jumping can all be performed by pressing their corresponding face buttons without R1. This allows for the game to have that little extra flexibility which is important as without it, the game would be pretty bare bones.

By attacking enemies, a skill gauge is accumulated, using special skills consumes the skill gauge requiring you to manage your usage of special skills carefully. On top of all this you have the extra gauge which is filled by using special skills, therefore it is recommended not to conserve your skill gauge unless you need to. Once your extra gauge is full, you can perform a finishing blow which can deal devastating damage to enemies.

It is important to remember that Adol is not on his own in this game, now he has AI partners to help him out. You can switch control of characters at any time with the press of a button and unlike Star Ocean, they will instantly swap to manual control and vice versa once they are switched. This alleviates one of the biggest issues of the Star Ocean series, switching characters could get you killed fast if the AI uses an attack during a switch.

Speaking of AI, the AI in YS VIII is hands down the most competent AI I have ever seen in an ARPG. You rarely ever have to worry about the AI taking damage in a fight as they will avoid attacks automatically and will receive considerably less damage than the player if they are attacked. Of course the player controlled character cannot do this but they are ultimately going to be stronger in terms of damage dealing to the point that you cannot really rely on the AI to fight for you as the AI tends to respond to the player’s actions, acting accordingly so if you pull out of a fight, so will they.

 

“YS VIII takes the Action RPG genre to the next level, proving that Falcom’s long running series isn’t just a relic of the past”

 

Put simply, if you lose a fight in YS VIII it is never the fault of the AI, it is always the player’s fault, as the AI never holds the player back, nor does it do all the player’s work for them. This is what I love the most about YS VIII, the fact that the game doesn’t force you to babysit a bunch of incompetent party members by constantly spamming healing items. For this reason, I think more ARPG’s should adopt this style of AI controlled characters.

All in all, YS VIII has a very simple, straightforward combat system and with no battle transitions to worry about, battles can end in a matter of seconds. This is very much a run and kill kind of game much like its predecessors, you never feel at a standstill and this does wonders for the game’s pacing as you are constantly on the move, quickly progressing through the game. This is what YS VIII excels at the most, therefore if you’re the type of person who wants to get from a to b as fast as possible, then this is definitely a game that is worth your time.

For the most part you’ll spend your time traversing the world in search of refugees. Some refugees grant you access to certain facilities while others just act as NPC’s to talk to in town. There is also a gift giving mechanic similar to that of Onimusha 2 which allows you to improve Adol’s relations with the other refugees. Doing so rewards the player with stat boosts for each character involved in the gift giving process. While it may not be as open ended as the gift giving mechanic of Onimusha 2, it’s still a nice enough distraction that can give you access to some extra scenes should you choose to partake in it.

There are also side quests to do which allow you to improve your relation with refugees and usually come with a reward. There’s a great variety of tasks on offer to keep the sidequests fresh and they never become bothersome for completionists. The only issue is that sidequests are missable so they must be done as soon as they are available should you need to complete everything the game has to offer. The game doesn’t feature too many of them though, therefore it’s never a slog to get through them.

YS VIII also offers a couple of combat related minigames in the form of raids and beast hunts. This is where the refugees you have gathered over the course of the game are put to good use as they provide various buffs to assist you in battle. In raids, players must defend the refuge from monster attacks, while beast hunts require players to lure out and hunt certain monsters. Both of these minigames can get pretty chaotic as there are usually tonnes of enemies on screen making for some pretty exciting battles. If you’re a fan of musou games, you’ll probably love these missions and if you’re a completionist then you better enjoy these diversions because it makes up the bulk of the game’s end game content.

Personally I’d argue that while raids are a lot of fun, beast hunts are a bit too chaotic and can kind of feel a bit too overwhelming at times due to having so many needless features such as having to take over territories, destroy nests etc. I think beast hunts could have been simplified a little to make them a bit more fun. Raids on the other hand are a lot of fun and are really exhilarating to experience. The goal of raids is to defend your fortifications and bait by pushing enemy groups away from them. The more fortifications you protect and the better your battle performance, the better your rewards. As for beast hunts, there are a lot more factors to be aware of and this can make getting high ratings pretty complicated. Also unlike raids, in beast hunts you have a limited amount of time to finish them and this can be somewhat irritating at times.

On top of all the other side content, there’s also the obligatory fishing minigame that every game has to have these days. It’s surprisingly pretty decent though.

Needless to say, the refugees you’ve gathered are essentially the only other characters besides the playable cast that you ever get to talk to for the most part. On top of all this there is only one settlement in the entire game which basically acts as the main hub. This could be a turn off for people looking for a more traditional JRPG experience where you visit multiple towns and cities to buy items and interact with NPC’s. That being said, many of the refugees are surprisingly interesting characters that you want to get to know and connect with.

Speaking of characters, the story of YS VIII revolves around two characters, Adol and Dana. Adol is pretty much the player’s persona in this game in the sense that he is more-or-less a silent protagonist, occasionally saying something after the player makes a choice. Based on his choices, he appears to be somewhat confident and well mannered. You could say that he is a typical heroic character, which makes sense considering the fact that this isn’t Adol’s first adventure and as a result, he shows a level of competence that is respected by the rest of the group. Despite all this, he still fits the protagonist trope of being a bright-eyed do gooder but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Dana on the other hand embodies pretty much every single issue I have with the game’s story, not to say that the story is bad or anything, rather the flaws in the narrative all tie in with Dana and how the role she plays affects the entire course of the game’s story. I don’t want to go too much into detail for the sake of spoilers but the game’s story takes a crazy turn during the second half where players may have to willingly suspend their disbelief should they wish to continue investing themselves in the game’s narrative. Put simply, the second half of the game leaves itself vulnerable to many potential plot holes due to the complications of what happens and as a result it can be difficult to accept how things play out as a result.

The second half of the game’s story plays out somewhat similarly to Richard Knaak’s War Of The Ancients trilogy in the sense that it focuses on events of the past but also ties in with events in the present. If you have read any of those books, you know exactly what I’m talking about, if you haven’t then I’ll let you all find out for yourself as I wouldn’t want to give too much away. I will say however that if you’ve been finding the story up to this point to be bland and uninteresting, the second half of the game might change your mind. With all of its flaws considered, the story does start to get more interesting in the second half and in some cases it gets better even.

As for Dana herself, I honestly cannot find anything to say about her character other than the fact that she is a mary sue who is gifted with powers that are vaguely explained. She also has a strange connection with Adol which is explained later on in the game. That’s about all I can say about her character. She’s pretty much a walking talking plot device. The problem with this is that the game clearly wants to make the player care about her character despite her not having any distinguishable traits. Sure she isn’t a completely unlikable character but even Adol manages to express more personality than she does and he is mostly a silent protagonist.

This made me feel a bit turned off from the latter half of the game but despite all of its shortcomings, I would say that the narrative is still enjoyable for what it is. I think it handles some interesting themes and aside from Dana, the cast of characters do their job well enough to maintain the player’s investment. Laxia develops surprisingly well, Hummel’s unpredictability keeps him interesting and while Ricotta isn’t the greatest of characters, at least she has a distinguished personality. None of them can hold a candle to Sahad though, Sahad’s personality is simply magnificent. It’s great to see such a cheerful, yet crude character with such a modest composure. Why can’t more games have characters like Sahad? He’s such a refreshing character. I do dislike how many of his lines were censored due to people whining about the so-called bad translation but it didn’t bother me enough to make me like the character any less though.

Regardless of your own personal take on the game’s story, one thing that will stick with you throughout the game is its soundtrack. Falcom are renowned for having great music in their games and YS VIII’s soundtrack doesn’t disappoint. There are a lot of high energy tracks here as is expected from a YS game but at the same time there are also some calmer tracks that offer a nice contrast. The music adds a lot of flavor to the game, particularly in its dungeons but that’s not all, I’d argue that the music is the main driving force of YS VIII as it synchronizes with the game’s pacing, helping to enhance the player’s adrenaline to provide a thrill factor.

Ultimately, while people expecting YS VIII to offer a strong narrative may be disappointed, those who do not may find themselves to be pleasantly surprised by the game’s story. Regardless of how you feel about the story, it’s important to remember that the crux of what ultimately makes YS VIII so enjoyable is the game’s combat. If you do not enjoy fast paced, simple and somewhat mindless action, then this game may not be your cup of tea. Those that do however are going to love YS VIII regardless of its flaws as it is one of the few modern action RPG’s to succeed at doing away with battle transitions, essentially perfecting what Star Ocean 5 and Tales Of Zesteria attempted to do.

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Story/Plot: Good

Visuals: Great

Gameplay: Excellent

Music: Excellent

Length: Decent Length

Difficulty: Medium

Would You Replay? Maybe

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Overall: Excellent

 

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Value: £40.00

Note for PC players: For those misfortunate enough to own a copy of YS VIII on PC who are intent on playing with a gamepad, I have bad news for you. You’re going to be fighting to toughest boss in the game right from the get go:

The Controller Configuration

Have fun with that…

Warriors Orochi 4’s launch price on PC is an insult. Koei Tecmo are ripping off Musou fans.

So there’s this game I’ve been excited for wanting to try called Warriors Orochi 4. As someone who shows an interest in 3D beat em ups, I cannot simply ignore musou games as the warriors series shaped the 3D beat em ups we know today and as such I want to play more of them to see if I can actually get invested in the genre or not.

Many consider musou games to be cheap, throwaway titles built around catharsis. Sure they can be entertaining to play but they aren’t exactly known for having much depth/flexibility, they’re just games that let you kill hundreds of cannon fodder with flashy attack strings. Put simply, musou games are no different from sports games like Fifa in the sense that once you’ve played one of them, you’ve pretty much played all of them, however there is a bit of nuance that slightly differentiates them and as someone who shows interest in 3D beat em ups, I want to see how the genre has grown.

Unfortunately however, Koei Tecmo appears to be a little overconfident with their pricing of Warriors Orochi 4 as they have decided to price the PC version at £49.49… oh but wait, that’s actually a special offer, the base price for Warriors Orochi 4 is a whopping £54.99! Yeah you heard me, they have the audacity to charge the same price of a collectors/deluxe edition for a standard edition game which is insulting to all fans of the series and pretty much everybody who has very little money to spend.

To make matters worse, many people have had salt poured into the wound by having the game run at an abysmal framerate. It appears that people are complaining about the PC port being terrible. When you consider the fact that they have the audacity to charge £54.99 for the game, it’s pretty understandable as to why people are angry about this. Now I understand that the pound has dropped recently and as such, the prices for games are going up (even though the quality is still not up to scratch with the games of sixth generation) and as such, we are forced to accept higher prices as a standard now. However, I have noticed that these prices fluctuate between £45.00, £50.00 and now with the release of Warriors Orochi 4, £55.00… all for standard edition games with no bonuses of any kind.

Of course this doesn’t stop Koei Tecmo from selling a separate season pass on top of the base game for an additional £24.99 because apparently, paying £54.99 isn’t enough for us to be allowed to purchase a complete game. So if you’re wondering why I named the site Cynical Gaming Blog, it’s because of bullshit like this.

Welcome to modern gaming, where customers end up paying more for less, developers work longer hours for less pay and publishers are practically drowning in money to the point that they claim to need more money in order to resurface… except it just ends up making things worse and now they’re drowning in even more money.

Fuck the gaming industry.

Shadow Warrior (2013) Review

After the disappointment that was Hard Reset, I decided to give Flying Wild Hog another chance to impress me by playing one of their more recent games, Shadow Warrior. Shadow Warrior is a re-boot of a 3D realms game released in 1997 which was also named Shadow Warrior. Shadow Warrior strives to be a blast from the past, allowing players to relive that old school FPS experience.

After watching one of the most badass opening cutscenes of all time (featuring Stan Bush’s “The Touch”), you are quickly introduced to the swordplay of Shadow Warrior. At first the only moves you have are a basic slash attack and a delayed slash attack but later on you can unlock more interesting special attacks you can use by double tapping specific directional keys and pressing the left mouse button. You can also press the right mouse button to use magic powers though I find the restoration power to be the most useful as it can be used to heal yourself mid battle whereas the other abilities specialize in crowd control and damage reduction.

As cool as it is to have such a flexible close quarters weapon, I can’t help but wonder why the katana needs to have a delayed slash attack. You will almost never use this attack as it feels completely pointless to use considering the fact that there are so many better attacks you can use with your katana. This wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for the constant necessity to double tap the directional keys to input these special attacks.

Having to double tap directional keys in the middle of a huge fire fight is a pain to do as it takes a bit too long to execute. Sure you can double tap the directional keys quickly but doing so will still leave you immobile for a split second which is never a good thing in games like this as all old school FPS games are built around mobility and this is ultimately what I consider to be lacking in this game as the movement in this game feels sluggish and this can be a major hindrance when you’re trying to avoid enemy attacks.

So it has shurikens… but where’s the lightning?

Now this could be considered a personal bias but I absolutely loathe the dodge function in this game, yes there is a dodge function much like in Hard Reset Redux but this time there is a stamina meter that governs how many times you can use it, so you cannot abuse it. In my Hard Reset Redux review, I praised the dodge system for existing and as such I will give credit to the developers for considering the necessity of movement in FPS games but to be perfectly honest my experience with Shadow Warrior has conditioned me to detest this dodge system for numerous reasons.

The biggest issue I have with the dodge system is that it just isn’t adequate for this kind of game. You are constantly swarmed with enemies, sometimes in areas where there is lots of clutter. Games like Painkiller get away with this by having bunnyhopping, why doesn’t Shadow Warrior have bunnyhopping if it’s trying to be an old school FPS? This is ultimately the biggest issue I have with Flying Wild Hog’s games. They are trying to make old school style games on a modern framework and this never works. Being able to bunnyhop would make it possible to jump over some of the clutter and could also allow you to hop between platforms, the extra air time from bunnyhopping is crucial to these games for so many reasons.

Much like in Painkiller where the player is constantly tapping the space bar, you will often be tapping the alt button repeatedly to dodge. You can also hold down the alt button to sprint but there’s no point in doing so as it doesn’t flow naturally with the pacing of the combat. You’re supposed to be gunning down enemies on the move and you can’t do that then you are sprinting so adding a sprint option was a waste. The stamina gauge will constantly be limiting your movement and you’ll eventually return to Lo Wang’s sluggish walking if you tap the alt button too much, as such the game encourages players to dodge only when the enemy is attacking which makes movement in Shadow Warrior an absolute pain in the ass.

Being a first person shooter, you’d expect to have some powerful firearms in your arsenal but Shadow Warrior’s weapons are pretty varied in their usefulness to the point that some of the game’s weapons feel misplaced or unnecessary. The revolver’s slow fire rate really doesn’t fit the pacing of the game all that well at all, so much so that you’re just better off using the katana, not only that but the revolver itself is rendered completely useless later on in the game once you encounter tougher enemies.

Then you have weapons like the PDW and the Flamethrower, both of which feel inadequate. Sure the PDW is the only automatic rifle in the game but does it really have to feel this weak? Oh well, at least it’s not as bad as the flamethrower which is completely fucking useless. Seriously what is the point in giving players a weapon with absolutely no stopping power in a game where enemies are charging towards you and you move at a snail’s pace? Painkiller Battle Out Of Hell’s flamethrower was at least decent and could kill most enemies quick enough to be of use.

Finally there’s the rocket launcher which is quite possibly the worst rocket launcher I have ever seen in a videogame. This weapon does absolutely bugger all in terms of damage to most enemies later on and the velocity of each rocket is so slow that it’s near impossible to land a well placed hit with it as enemies are constantly moving. The splash damage it nothing to write home about either, it may kill some minor fodder but that’s not saying much, it’s definitely better than the flamethrower but not by much.

As for the other weapons, the crossbow feels pretty decent despite having a low fire rate. I think they did a fairly good job with this weapon all things considered, it’s powerful without being completely imbalanced. It’s better than the revolver in pretty much every single way if you ask me. The crossbow can also shoot remote bombs at enemies which is pretty cool. The shotgun is also pretty decent for the most part as it deals fairly decent damage to enemies at close range which is a considerable improvement from the shotgun in Hard Reset.

You better enjoy the shotgun, crossbow and the katana because they’re the only 3 weapons worth a damn in this game. The PDW has its uses but only in certain situations is it really all that useful. I get that Shadow Warrior wants to focus primarily on its katana combat but does it really need to make more than half of the game’s firearms completely fucking useless? Satisfying weapons are important in any FPS, particularly the fast placed single player ones. Sadly the majority of the game’s weapons just aren’t effective enough to want to use them.

The shotgun outclasses just about every other firearm in this game.

Part of this is due to the later portion of the game’s constant bombardment of hit point sponge enemies and believe me, there are going to be some long ass firefights in this game enough to tire out even the most hardened of FPS veterans. I don’t think it’s bad to have the occasional mini-boss enemy with more health than the average foe but ultimately I would argue that glass cannon enemies are arguably more fun to fight as you have to react fast before they can damage you. Hit point sponge enemies remove the thrill of killing enemies before they kill you, instead you have to keep blasting away till they fall over.

In addition, shooting enemies in Painkiller causes a stagger effect so if you manage to shoot an enemy once but didn’t get the finisher, you get a second chance to make a finisher. You can also use the freezer to freeze an enemy in place allowing you to shatter them with a single shot regardless of how much health they have. This makes the gameplay feel more aggressive and less passive as rather than trying to back away from the enemies, you’re chasing them down. This whole “run away” mentality is what made me detest Serious Sam and Shadow Warrior does this to some degree mainly due to the hit point sponge enemies. As such you will often find yourself playing more passively in Shadow Warrior than you would in games like Painkiller.

The dodging system does make this a little bit less problematic than games like Serious Sam and I will acknowledge that its existence allows you to play a tad more aggressively but there is very little incentive to do so as dodging wastes stamina which could be used to help you escape from the enemy, therefore playing passively is simply more efficient than it is to play aggressively and I consider this to be a huge flaw in the game’s design.

Now sure, Painkiller had moments where keeping your distance was the best option, particularly in trauma. However the option to play aggressively was always available and was encouraged. The ability to pick up enemy souls gave players an incentive to stay closer to the enemy than to keep their distance. Shadow Warrior has a similar mechanic but unlike Painkiller, health drops from enemies are very infrequent as unlike Painkiller where soul drops are guaranteed, Shadow Warrior’s health gain system uses RNG to decide whether or not the health will appear which is a stupid idea.

Be sure to max this out quickly, you’ll be using it a lot.

This brings me to a point that I neglected to mention in my review of Hard Reset but I will mention it here instead. Now the reason why I didn’t mention this before in my review of Hard Reset is because I was willing to give this idea another chance to see if it could actually work. Shadow Warrior proves otherwise as many of the game’s problems are related to the needless RPG elements that plague the gameplay. Like with many modern FPS games, Shadow Warrior allows players to upgrade their weapons and learn new skills. Unfortunately this is to the games detriment for so many reasons.

Now lets take a look at Painkiller again. In Painkiller you have 5 weapons that have been tightly balanced to give players an incentive to swap between them. Each weapon has a secondary function, some even have 3 functions. Each weapon serves a specific purpose and as such the weapon you’re using often depends on the situation you are in. The shotgun is used to deal with enemies at close to mid range, the stakegun is used to deal with enemies at mid to long-range, the electrodriver is used against large groups of enemies at close range and the rocket launcher/chaingun is used against large groups of enemies from afar. The painkiller on the other hand is a very flexible weapon that can do pretty much anything the other weapons can but isn’t as efficient at dealing with enemies as the other weapons are making it the perfect side arm weapon.

 

“You better enjoy the shotgun, crossbow and the katana because they’re the only 3 weapons worth a damn in this game”

 

In Shadow Warrior you have 7 weapons, one of these weapons being the katana. Much like the painkiller, the katana is a very flexible weapon that can do anything the other weapons can do. The problem is that the other weapons do not give the katana a run for its money. While some weapons like the crossbow, the PDW and the shotgun end up being more efficient later on in the game, at the start of the game they are pretty weak. This is because of the game’s upgrade system. Each weapon starts off as an unfinished weapon in which you have to spend money to complete it.

Now I can see what Shadow Warrior is trying to do, it’s trying to give players the incentive to explore to find valuables that reward players with growth. As good as all of this may seem on paper, it is actually damaging to the gameplay due to the fact that the weapons aren’t worth using until they are fully upgraded which requires players to accumulate resources. This takes time to do and as such you will spend a large portion of the game with a very weak arsenal of weapons, aside from the katana of course.

The sad thing is that it really didn’t need to be this way. Painkiller’s tarot card system required players to gather gold coins to purchase new cards. This gave players an incentive to explore in order to find secrets like holy items which are worth 100 gold each. This allowed Painkiller to keep a strong emphasis on growth and some minor exploration without compromising its weapon balancing. Now I realize that I’m comparing Shadow Warrior to Painkiller a lot here but bear in mind that the creators of Shadow Warrior also worked at People Can Fly and were involved in the creation of Painkiller. As such the fact that their more recent games are so inferior to Painkiller worries me greatly.

One issue that never ceases to infuriate me in most modern first person shooters is the constant need to reload your weapon. Not only does it bring the gameplay to a standstill for 3-5 seconds but it also adds more busywork for the player. Sure it makes sense in a more realistic game but in a game like Shadow Warrior, it just feels misplaced. I cannot count how many times I had to cycle through every single weapon at the end of each battle just to reload them just so that I would have a full clip for the next fight, it’s tedious and it is just bad game design.

This kinda sucks…

Sure you could argue that the need to reload adds an extra layer of challenge considering the fact that you have to be more careful with your ammo usage but let’s be real here, you have 7 weapons to swap between, if your ammo runs out, you can just swap to a new weapon so technically the reload feature doesn’t add any extra challenge, it just brings the pacing of the gameplay to a stand still which is never a good thing in a fast paced first person shooter. When will developers learn to stop assuming that realism is essential in games? Because it isn’t.

While Shadow Warrior tries to bring a solid single player experience to the table, it really doesn’t feel like an old school style first person shooter at all, rather it feels like your typical modern FPS with a premise that differs from the usual military warfare. I really like the oriental setting they went for with this game, the levels are very colorful and being a lot of flavor to the experience, that is until you reach the more industrial themed levels where the game starts to become a bit too generic for my tastes. As such I’d say that the visuals are a mixed bag. While some levels look really great, other levels are pretty lackluster to say the least.

I get that the game wanted to give us something different and it does to some degree. The first few levels are bright, colorful and filled with tonnes of Japanese architecture, later on you encounter a cool urban setting with a similar style to the first few levels. Once you reach the industrial levels however, the game starts to look bland and believe me, there’s no shortage of these levels and they seem to go on forever. Personally I think the industrial levels should have been shortened a little as I find them to be quite monotonous in comparison to the other levels for the simple fact that industrial settings tend to lack color and while they’re good in small doses, I think they overstayed their welcome in this game.

Speaking of things that overstayed their welcome, the boss fights leave much to be desired. Every single boss fight in Shadow Warrior feels like a needless ordeal and a time waste. Why on earth do you give the boss a health bar when the bosses health doesn’t decrease until you drain another health bar? The whole point in giving bosses a health bar is so that players are able to tell how much damage they need to do to the boss before it dies. Unfortunately the bosses in Shadow Warrior cannot simply be shot at, you have to instead shoot their weak points but in order to do so you have to break the shard of armor protecting that weak point.

This is the exact same issue I had with Hard Reset. The developers have clearly learned nothing when it comes to boss fights. Now to be fair, I’ve yet to play a single first person shooter where the boss fights are all consistently good. Even Painkiller had problems with its boss fights but at least it had a few good ones like the Necrogiant which was as simple as “shoot it till it dies”. Plus the bosses in Painkiller could be killed quickly by using tarot cards and players are encouraged to do this in order to unlock new tarot cards. In Shadow Warrior however, boss fights take ages and none of them are even remotely challenging, they’re just a tedious ordeal for the player to get through.

Another issue I have is with the hit detection of the bosses weak points. The hit boxes are way too small and as such you are limited to weapons such as the PDW and the crossbow to deal with every single boss fight as accuracy is everything. Plus if you have to reload in the middle of the fight, guess what? The armor regenerates and you have to do it all over again. This is quite possibly the pinnacle of shitty boss design in a FPS… or it would have been if it wasn’t for Hard Reset which was even worse in this regard. Why can’t I just shoot the boss and kill it? Why do I always have to shoot the weak points to damage the boss? It’s so annoying.

Except it’s not just the boss fights that have hit boxes. In the later portion of the game you are introduced to a new enemy known as Berserker. Berserkers are immune to all forms of damage from the front and will constantly charge at you. Basically imagine an over sized Kleer from Serious Sam with heavy armor at the front and lots of health. That’s basically what the Berserker is. These enemies are hands down the worst enemies I have ever encountered in a first person shooter and for good reason. The only way to kill them is by shooting the weak point on their back. Not only is it difficult to get behind them but when they charge you, you have only a split second to shoot their back before they turn around.

You would think that fighting just 1 of these guys is bad enough but in later levels they throw even more at you and you are constantly dodging around the map trying to avoid them. If you try to shoot one of them in the back, the other one will hit you with their charge attack. Because it’s impossible to focus on just 1 enemy at a time, adding 2 or more of these enemies in a single fight is downright criminal. I get that the developers are trying to make the game more challenging later on in the game but this just isn’t the way to do it, there are plenty of ways to make challenging enemies without having to make it such a needless hassle to kill them.

Will you just die already!?

Another of my biggest gripes with this game is the level design. Much like in Hard Reset, Shadow Warrior likes to fill each level with explosives and clutter except there’s no real thought put into their positioning. Not only does it serve to hinder the player’s mobility but it can be potentially fatal if a player accidentally triggers a chain reaction of explosions. Many of these explosives are positioned in places where enemies are not likely to go, making them nothing but a hindrance to the player. Compare this to Painkiller where most of the explosives are positioned in places where they can be put to good use such as the barrels that appear on the staircase on snowy bridge which can be used to blow up enemies that come down the stairs.

Speaking of explosives, later on in the game you will encounter these weird green orbs scattered across the level. This is probably the developers attempt at trolling the player by adding a form of trap to the game. I hate games that do this and I wish that developers would just stop. While some of these orbs are easy to see, others are not. Some of these orbs are placed near doorways or which aren’t in the player’s line of vision giving them a nasty surprise if they walk in, others are placed behind crates or even in bushes and can be a real pain to deal with.

Eventually you will encounter an enemy known as Mother, these enemies like to create more of these green orbs and send them rolling towards you. The only way to avoid these is by shooting them. I tend to use the revolver for this as it is a completely useless weapon for just about everything else so it’s not a waste for me to use it on these orbs. The worst part about all this is that the orbs can reach you from literally anywhere, they can even roll up staircases… I’m dead serious. You would think that in a game where reloading exists, the laws of physics would also apply. Sadly this doesn’t seem to be the case.

On the plus side there is plenty of ammo to be found in each level so you don’t often find yourself low on ammunition. If for whatever reason you do, there is a way to buy extra ammo from the upgrade shop if you need it. In addition there’s plenty of money littered around for players to find in order to give players some breathing room between fights as well as secrets to find. Despite all this, I feel that many of the games levels overstay their welcome. Some levels are way too short whereas other levels are way too long. One level in particular took nearly 2 hours for me to finish which is inexcusable.

Nearly an hour and a half? Are you freaking kidding me!?

While the game does give players the ability to save anywhere, I think that the developers should have spread the levels out a bit for the sake of encouraging break periods, especially since players are graded at the end of each level. Gamer psychology dictates that players are more willing to drop a game upon completing a level or upon reaching a certain milestone. As such it is important to have a bite-sized level structure, particularly in first person shooters. Shadow Warrior’s failure to do this is quite possibly its most damaging flaw, especially considering the rest of the issues that plague this game.

It doesn’t help that the music adds basically nothing to any of the levels, none of which are particularly memorable and makes you wonder why they even bothered with music in the first place. None of the music is adrenaline pumping nor does it go towards building a strong ambiance… it’s just there. I really have nothing to say about the music at all, it’s just forgettable. It’s like they weren’t even trying.

Music is shit… but at least it has rabbit sex…

All the negativity you have seen so far may lead you to believe that this game has absolutely no redeeming qualities. Is the game really all that terrible? Yes and no. You see when I started the game, I was actually having a lot of fun playing it. I really enjoyed using the katana to chop foes to pieces and at first the upgrade systems appeared to be a nice touch. I really liked the emphasis on exploring for secrets and I also liked the level aesthetics. That all changed when I reached the half way mark where the game started to become a tedious slog, enemies started to get more and more irritating to fight due to having way too much health and I started to lose interest in the level aesthetics once they went towards a more industrial setting.

Shadow Warrior is a game I wanted to like… a lot. While I didn’t expect it to be as good as Painkiller, I still wanted to have some fun with it and I did for a while but then the game began to stagnate in its later sections so badly that I couldn’t help but write a harsh critique on this game. In baseball, when you get 3 strikes, you’re out. This isn’t the way I do things however. If they get 2 strikes from me, they’re out. As such I can’t see myself wanting to give Shadow Warrior 2 a go, or the new Rise Of The Triad. Flying Wild Hog have failed to impress me twice now, they’re not the developers they once were back when they made Painkiller, they’re different now. It’s difficult to come to terms with my dislike for this game but I’m afraid sometimes you just have to accept the truth.

In any case if you’re thinking of buying this game, I’d say that it depends on how tolerant you are of the bullshit most modern FPS games. If you somehow managed to enjoy games like Serious Sam 3, I think you’ll probably find a winner here… but I despise Serious Sam for so many reasons and Serious Sam 3 is the first game in the series to implement a reload feature. It’s also interesting to note that the first Serious Sam makes a cameo appearance in this game which is quite fitting if you ask me. If you can tolerate games like Serious Sam 3 then you’ll most definitely enjoy Shadow Warrior. If not then spare yourself the ordeal and avoid this game.

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Visuals: Satisfactory

Music: Forgettable

Gameplay: Mediocre

Lifespan: Decent Length

Difficulty: Medium

Would You Replay? No

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Overall: Mediocre

 

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So the question is, which game is better? Shadow Warrior or Hard Reset? Well if I was basing my opinions on the start of the game, Shadow Warrior wins hands down. As a complete package however I’d argue that Hard Reset does a far better job.

Value: £5.00

Thanks to Hypno Coffin for gifting me a copy of the game. Saved me wasting my money on this.