Bustafellows - Switch review

Bustafellows by developer NIPPON CULTURAL BROADCASTING EXTEND INC. and publisher PQube Limited—Nintendo Switch review written by Natasha with a code provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

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Think you have what it takes to be the best journalist in town? Well, clasp on that jacket and adjust your hat, because we're going undercover and through time, that's right, TIME, to stop those dastardly bad guys from ruffling up our feathers. Oh! And make sure you grab a couple of hotties along the way, because this super sleuthy dating game is going to make you weak in the knees.

The Story

In this Otome game you play as our young, sweet-eyed journalist Teuta, who's thirsty for any good scoop. Her primary interest is the law and order of New Sieg City, USA. Together with her two childhood friends; Adam, the top news anchor, and Luka, a well respected officer of the NSPD, she takes a brave leap forward into the darker underside of the city. There she comes across a crooked lawyer, who ends up dying in his attempt for justice. Unbeknownst to him, our wall-flower protagonist has a gifted secret: she can go back in time.

Desperate to save his life, she jumps back into the past, taking over the body of someone else, and rushes to save his life. Curious by this strange chain of events, Limbo Fitzgerald, New Sieg's top lawyer, takes Teuta under his surveillance and introduces her to his hidden organization of specialists. Will she crack under the pressure of being in an unknown environment, or will she get more than she bargained for? I think I see romance in your future, little time traveler.

The Action

Like most Otome games, Bustafellows is split up into chapters. Each chapter will focus on an individual member of the organization, allowing you to get to know each of their personalities and background stories. Along the way you'll have to make choices and each choice you make will have an impact on these characters. If you sweet talk them you might end up getting their character ending, which is the lengthy final chapter in the game. So if you've been eyeing tall, dark and handsome from the start of the game, make sure to pick subjects that'll raise their affection level towards you.

Meet the Cast

Let's take a closer look at our lovely bachelors. Limbo Fitzgerald is a 27 years-old Lawyer, and although people on the streets call him a crooked lawyer, he is extremely skilled and many see him as a hero of justice. He dresses ready for the court room, and he may sway you with his short brown tussle hair and pale blue eyes.

Shu is a 28 years-old hitman who lives his life chasing down other hitmen. He may have a bad habit of smoking heavily, but his top-class martial-arts skills and long range weapon capabilities might catch your interest. He may come off a bit intimidating at first, but you'll know he's taking a shine to you once he starts teasing ya. Tall, with wide shoulders and short white hair that's mostly swept to one side, you might catch a glimpse of those sandy brown eyes.

Helvetica is a 26 years-old plastic surgeon who is popular with the ladies in New Sieg. He loves beautiful things and will people-watch women on the street, judging them on their appearance. A bit narcissistic and arrogant, but if you can overlook those obnoxious points you may just see the tender soul that hides behind the veil of deception. Try not to trip over your own feet when you're gazing upon this tall, slender built brunette that sports pink tipped fringes, spectacles and honey yellow eyes.

Mozu is a 25 years-old coroner who works with the police force. He is often misunderstood by his emotionless responses and indifference towards others. He likes to examine people by explaining how unique everyone's bone structures differs from the rest. A bit socially awkward, but if you find you like the quirky nerd who likes cycling, with black shoulder length hair, with electric yellow tips and sparkling blue eyes your heart may skip a beat.

Scarecrow (Crow) is a 22 years-old cyber-geek and professional hacker who is famous on the internet and refers to himself as the Boss of the Underworld. Always been a home body and doesn't normally appear in public, he's extremely shy towards girls. He is regularly picked on by the group for his silly behavior, but his heart is as soft as his brain. If you get a drive out of teasing an inexperienced computer genius with no other skills, who has cropped brown hair and magenta colored eyes you'll get the warm and fuzzies over this adorkable guy.

The Ups and Downs

This game had a lot of positive aspects that stuck out to me: beautiful characters, catchy lounge music, intense story-telling and colorful art backgrounds. I also found that the characters will sometimes have their back to the camera, which is a perspective I've never seen before. If I had to say anything bad about the game, it is that some opening or ending scenes will have the characters talking in the background, but there won't be any text box explaining what they're chatting about. Most Otome games are voiced in Japanese, which is fine, but for those who don't understand the language, this might be very irritating.

I JUST WANNA KNOW WHAT THEY'RE SAYING!

Conclusion

Overall, Bustafellows' story and characters are quite compelling. I found myself falling in love with each and every individual and there are plenty of moments in the game that'll keep you on your feet. The choices you make will affect the outcome of the ending and which bachelor you may, or may not, romance into your arms. I'd happily give this game a 9.5 out of 10 for being extremely fun and heart pounding.

Score: 9.5 / 10

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Lost Epic - PC Preview

Lost Epic by developer and publisher One or Eight INC.—PC preview written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes 

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Starting off in Early Access, One or Eight Inc.'s 2D side scrolling Metroidvania and Soulsborne Lost Epic is off to a good start. With the previous Elder God gone and the New Gods who have taken their place, those with no power are left without protection and are being hunted down for sport. Until now that is. Taking up a sword in a realm of possibilities, you are a knight and your goal? Your job? Your obligation? Is to take those New Gods and their Holy Ones down.

Up until now, I've generally had a line of what I would consider a Soulsborne and what I would consider a Metroidvania. Metroidvanias have always been the combination of exploration with soft limits to eventually be overcome once you've found the items to do so. Soulsbornes? Same concept but usually in a more 3D situation all the while imposing penalties for falling in combat. Almost channeling it's inner Demon's Souls and finding itself more to the Soulsborne side of the equation like Salt and Sanctuary, Lost Epic is a challenge for more than one reason.

Part of that reason is that like any good Metroidvania or Soulsborne, there are going to be challenges that need to be overcome whether they be intellectual or combative in nature. A bit more on the combat side, for now anyways, Lost Epic doesn't hold its punches once it's taught you how to survive within its ring. Enemies small and large, on the ground or taking flight (very early and I hate those birds…) you're going to have to be careful as on this trip? There are no replenishing healing items like Estus Flasks or Dragon Hearts. Healing items? Those need to be crafted.

So it's with just that small tweak in the approach that can either leave you high and dry or damned near grinding enemies for currency and scouring the landscape for materials in order to craft new healing items. It wouldn’t have been so bad if this was just done with either items or with the currency known as Anima, but unfortunately, it requires both and if you’ve died? You’ll only have access to the physical items that have been picked up.

At this point in time, like a good Soulsborne, once you’ve died you’ll have the chance to go back to your point of death in order to grab what you had on hand which in this case is your Anima that is used to both level up yourself as well as craft new items and upgrade your gear. With a form of storage container for your items in which some are not required for anything but crafting, I am happy that the only thing that you lost is Anima as otherwise the adventure may have been a tad too brutal in the opening acts.

Now, something was bothering me until about last weekend when I finally saw the banner for One or Eight’s “Earth Wars” in which I realized, I’ve played, I’ve reviewed, and I enjoyed. Known a few years ago through another publisher as Earth’s Dawn, that really helped settle that nagging feeling that something felt familiar while also explaining why in Early Access the combat was already as solid as it is. The reason? They already knew what they were doing from past experience!

So with this settled and being able to enjoy and simply immerse myself into the world, there’s a lot to go over. Starting off with character customization as to really just settle what your anime-like character will look and sound like, the rest will be in your hands for how much or how little you want to do. I know this sounds a bit weird in the context of a Metroidvania and a Soulslike, but there are some elements that are required, fighting, leveling up and beating up bosses, but then there are other elements that are purely cosmetic and who doesn’t want to rock that classic “mustache” look?

To get to any of these points though, there’s a bit of mastery of the combat that’s going to need to be addressed first. Seemingly relatively simple in the beginning with regular and heavy strikes, jumping and dodging, you’ll soon find that your stamina is generally not enough to take on all of the enemies on screen without moving back for a few seconds in order to recover a little bit. In some cases this is just not possible as there’s just no space with everything going on which is why there’s also a counter system in place allowing you to strike at larger enemies with a skill at just the right time in order to not only give you an opening, but two seconds to breath. Unless you’re surrounded of course in which you’ll want to try to take THAT moment to recover if you can.

This is really where I had some issues with Lost Epic. There are some moments in time that are just so combat heavy in small and limited spaces that Gitting Gud will only bring you so far as larger enemies keep launching unblockable attacks one after another leaving you no chance to recover your already exhausted stamina bar. This wouldn't be so bad if you didn't take damage when having next to no stamina but unfortunately if your bar is empty and you try to dodge? Say goodbye to a chunk of hit points.

Otherwise what's currently present is a rather solid experience with plenty to already tackle and explore. While there are no character classes to select, you can customize your stats and adapt your playstyle to the weapons that you find allowing you for some versatility on how to approach different situations.

Summary

With a bit of a lull in the Soulsborne category, as we await several of the bigger releases coming such as Elden Ring, Lies of P, the latest expansion of Blue Sun to Hellpoint and more, Lost Epic which is currently in Early Access can easily scratch that itch as it moves through its own development process.

Score: N/A

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Dragon Star Varnir - Switch Review

Dragon Star Varnir by developer Compile Heart and publisher Idea Factory International—Switch review written by Richard with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

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Dragon Star Varnir is a title that released on PS4 back in 2018, and is now getting a Nintendo Switch port. A game that answered the question "what don't you want growing in your abdomen", Varnir is a darker title than the standard Compile Heart fare, so those JRPG enthusiasts that missed out on the PS4 and PC releases may be interested in this recent port. The Switch port may come included with all the DLC formerly at a cost, but how does the port stack up? Well, let's take a look.

Dragon Star Varnir takes place in a world where witches and dragons run rampant. Where dragons are born in the "stomachs" of the witches, and eat their way out of the witch when they are matured enough. In this world, there exists a group of knights dedicated to the cleansing of the world of dragons and witches. A young man by the name of Zephy is a member of these knights, but during an outing with his squadron, he is separated from his friends. On the verge of death, he is rescued by a group of witches hoping to use him as a bargaining chip to have their friend returned.

Unfortunately, Zephy displays properties of a witch after being forced to ingest dragon blood. With nowhere to go when the knights reject to take him back in, Zephy ends joining up with the witches Minessa, Karikaro, and Laponette. Together they are taking care of you witches at their home, called a den. It's here where Zephy finds out that the witches aren't exactly happy with the fact that they are essentially just food bags for dragons. And so the journey begins.

If you've ever played a Compile Heart title before, you're probably going to have a pretty solid idea of what you're getting into gameplay wise. Dragon Star Varnir is a 3D field exploration with turn based battles when you interact with enemy icons on the field map. The game will progress with some plot exposition, followed by exploration of a new area, a boss fight, and then more talking. Repeat this over a number of chapters and you have the formula for Varnir, albeit with a few twists thrown in.

Field exploration consists of walking around an area, or flying for faster movement for a short period, collecting items from harvest points, destroying breakable items for loot, opening treasure chests, and using each characters unique skills to help you explore. In Varnir, you can switch the character shown while exploring the field, each with their own ability, such as a barrier to protect against environmental damage, or the ability to break barriers. Considering that you may start to feel the dungeons becoming a little repetitive later in the game, the abilities of the characters provide a nice way to break up some of the monotony of repeated dungeon exploration.

If you interact with an enemy icon on the field map, whether by touching it, attacking it, or having it run into you, you'll start the turn-based battle portion. Here is where Compile Heart decided to get a little more ambitious. Battles are fought on a three layer grid, with your units in set columns but able to move up and down, and enemies on a larger grid, that can also move up and down. Some bosses even take up multiple levels. Fights against common enemies will see you tasked with defeating them, whether that be by using magic, physical attacks, or by devouring the enemies.

An interesting facet of Dragon Star Varnir is the ability to "eat" the common enemies. When fighting an enemy, you have the option to use a devour skill. This has a chance, indicated as a percentage, of how likely it is to "eat" the enemy. When successful, that character will restore HP, SP, as well as earn the dragons core. Enemies can also be fought in a standard fashion, using spells to set traps and then knocking enemies into them, using skills to hit multiple targets, or just straight up beating them down. Most enemies have both an elemental and attack type weakness, i.e. water and slash, and using those types of moves will deal increased damage. There is also a Fear Gauge, that when filled will have your characters use a three hit combo.

For large boss fights, the enemy dragons will take up multiple levels, and may often use skills that hit a full level. By dealing enough damage to lower regions, you can prevent the boss from using certain skills, like preventing the boss from healing or using an instant death move. While the head always has to be destroyed to win, destroying other levels is technically optional, although I would highly recommend it. Another thing to pay attention to is the level you are situated on. You can unlock formations, which will give you different bonuses depending on which height your character is sitting at, but grouping up is just inviting the boss to hit your entire party. You'll also probably be abusing the "dragon awakening" mechanic. This occurs when a character has performed enough actions or been hit enough, and will cause a transformation to a half-dragon state, restoring HP, SP, as well as giving an attack boost.

While the interesting battle mechanics were definitely a breath of fresh air from Compile Heart, I did feel as if the battle system wasn't used to its full potential. Let's start with some common battle issues. First up, planning generally isn't needed too much for common battles. You can go in, throw some magic at the enemies, and be done with it half the time. The other half the time, you'll get annoying enemies with a ridiculous dodge rate you can't hit, and will simply be spamming the devour moves hoping you eat them. The tiered battle system isn't really used to the full effect it could be here, which is rather disappointing, and battles will generally devolve into "what is my largest range magic" if you aren't eating the enemies.

Boss fights on the other hand are done fairly well in this regard, but are either super difficult, or pretty easy depending on if you remember you can learn party buffing and enemy debuffing moves. I'm serious, a full party 40% increase in all defenses is no joke. On a more general note, upgrading character skills is done by devouring an enemy and earning their core. You can then spend points you earn in battle to unlock skills and stat increases. Apart from bosses, each core is character individual, meaning you'll have to have ALL your characters devour every common enemy if you want all the cores. At least the bosses cores are shared.

Once you've earned some core and started expending points to upgrade the characters, you can set your skills. You have: Physical, Magic, Devour, and Passive skill equips, and you can equip five skills per category, provided each category is equal to or less than twenty points. Each skill has a cost, with better skills having a higher cost, so you need to really think about what you're equipping, especially in the passive slots. If you're wondering about collecting cores, let me assuage you a bit. If you go to use a devour move, little check marks will appear beside the percentages for any enemies you have the core for. You can also swap to a support character as a free action, meaning you can swap and then devour with the support character. The cores themselves are little mini upgrade grids, where you have to put points into certain skills to unlock the adjacent ones. There are some skill overlaps, but that will simply unlock the skill in any other grid once it's purchased in another.

Outside of the field, you will be hanging around the witches' den, which acts as the sort of hub for your adventuring. Here is where you'll find the shop, a quest area, an area to interact with the other witches, an area for taking care of the little sisters, as well as an area to craft elixirs. The shop I'd hope is self explanatory, as well as the quest area. Interacting with the witches will allow you to give them gifts to fill up an affection gauge. You can view scenes with the witches at set intervals. In regards to the little sisters, they are the three witches that are too young to go adventuring with you. As such, you need to provide them with dragon meat at regular intervals to stave off the madness. But if you overfeed them, the dragon will grow and burst out.

The little sisters have a madness indicator that will change depending on how close they are to succumbing to the madness, as well as a dragon growth gauge that will fill if you feed them. If either of these indicators reach the end, the little sister will disappear. While the dragon growth only increases when you feed them, the madness gauge will increase while you're out exploring areas. For your information, thanks to some testing and what I remember of the PS4 version, the madness is pretty much only affected by distance traveled on a field map, so use that to your advantage. This function puts the game on a sort of "soft timer" where you have to manage your level and dragon core farming against the sanity and dragon growth of the sisters. You don't get a game over for killing them, but you also won't get the best ending either.

The elixir manufacturing area is something rather unusual in terms of gameplay elements. As you play the game, you will discover elixir recipes, either in chests, from defeating bosses, or as quest rewards. These recipes can be used with dropped monster materials to craft elixirs. Elixirs, when used, will summon dragons for you to fight. Upon winning, you will earn a piece of equipment. Elixirs won't disappear if you lose, so feel free to take a stab at anything you think might be with it. Tied to this, equipment has a rank, along with the elixirs, which indicate a general equipment strength.

As in true Compile Heart fashion, cutscenes are done using Live 2D anime stylized character portraits, while map exploration is done with 3D models. The environments are interesting, but nothing to really write home about. The music is quite good though, which is nice, and the enemy dragon designs are quite interesting, even if some of them are hardly "dragons".

So what are the differences between the PS4 and Switch versions? Well to start off, all the DLC is included in the Switch version. The question is, what is actually in the DLC? Well, basically anything of real interest is actually free DLC anyway, but what you're getting is: 3 level cap increases, armor, weapons, and accessories, a new hardest difficulty, and some items. While the equipment is certainly helpful early game, but it also gets you into a bad habit of relying on brute force, which definitely isn't recommended later in the game. The free DLC available is: the weaker equipment, one level cap increase, and the new difficulty. In terms of gameplay, I did notice that the hatch effect from when I played the PS4 version wasn't on the dragons, but instead the draw distance, distance blurring, sharpness and contrast of the Switch version was generally just less than the PS4 version. Graphically wise, the PS4 version comes out on top.

Summary

In summary, Dragon Star Varnir is an interesting title from Compile Heart that takes a few new and refreshing steps away from their standard formula. The combat system is interesting and rather unique, and while it didn't feel as if it used its full potential, it was definitely a fun system to plan around. The devour mechanic was also a fun gimmick, although the need for each character to devour an enemy to get their upgrade grid was a little frustrating. As a port from the PS4/PC version, there isn't really anything extra worthwhile added, and the graphic quality has lowered slightly, but the game still runs smoothly. If you already own Varnir on another platform, there isn't a need to purchase it again, however if you missed this title on earlier, and you're a fan of JRPGs, I would definitely recommend looking into it, especially considering the price.

Score: 8.0 / 10

 

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Fort Triumph - XB1 Review

Fort Triumph by developer CookieByte Entertainment and publisher All in! Games—Microsoft Xbox One review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

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Fort Triumph stands out as a rather unique entry into the strategy genre. It’s a bit like if XCOM had a really irreverent baby with Dungeons & Dragons. There’s a lot to like here, despite some rough edges in a few places.

What is Fort Triumph? Well, at its heart, it’s a turn-based tactics game with some heavy RPG elements sprinkled in. You have action points that dictate how far you can move or what your chosen character can do in any turn. You will encounter enemies along the way that need to get beaten up, and then you gain experience and loot to further feed the gameplay cycle as your characters (should they survive) get stronger. There is also a city upgrade feature that has become a bit more common of late in titles like this, but certainly appeals to me and feeds into this loop nicely.

It’s actually a pretty solid formula, though the tactics component may not quite be for everyone. There is a lot less direct conflict with your opponents than something akin to Fire Emblem. Sure, your warrior can run up and hit something, and your ranger is going to use a bow and arrow to plink at them from range. However, cover is a huge component here, as standing near something in the environment can make a character much more difficult to hit from range (which is what most of the game’s attacks seem focused on). Of course, getting the right angle can certainly help those percentages go up as well.

One notable wrinkle in the combat however, is the use of physics and how they impact the environment. Your warrior can punt an enemy into another enemy to stun them. Your magic-user can summon a gusting wind to knock over a stone pillar and have it fall on the enemy hiding behind it. There is certainly a good deal of thought that goes into how both your and the enemy’s teams move about. It might seem like a great idea to knock over a tree onto the goblin at the front of their group, because it stuns him, does damage and makes him easier to hit. But if you continue to advance forward, you now don’t have the tree to hide behind yourself. There’s a bit of risk and reward to tearing up the battlefield that I found really interesting.

It took me a bit of time to figure out the controls (this was originally a PC game, and I sort of wonder if it was meant to be mouse and keyboard first or not, but the controller works okay once you get used to it), and being a strategy game there is a lot of time spent in menus both big and small as you select characters, abilities, items and more. That being said, the UI is not always very friendly. There were times where I had to interact with a stage item (like a cage to free someone) with no clear ‘action’ to take nor prompts that had me wasting a few turns figuring out just what the game wanted me to do. Also sometimes the ‘tip boxes’ on skills cover so much of the screen chat actually clicking the enemy or environmental object I am trying to interact with gets obscured.

The ‘items and more’ part above is one of the better hooks in Fort Triumph, as I enjoyed picking up new items (many of which have a ‘can be used X number of times per battle, if they’re not consumables) and learning skills for my characters. One quirk that I didn’t love was the character permadeath. In general I’m not a fan of it, as I tend to get attached to characters, and it’s pretty easy to die here if you’re not being careful. All well and fine, but it’s a little oddly implemented as well.

Why do I say that? Well, the narrative focuses on the original characters. Even after they’ve died – they get speaking parts between stages. The story was already a bit hit and miss for me (the writing tries to be funny, throwing everything they can think of against the wall. Not a lot of it stuck for me though), and this just seemed like a strange inconsistency that bugged me when it occurred. It was like the story was reminding me that I screwed up every time someone I liked was well – dead but not. The presentation is a little rough around the edges too. I think visually, things are clean and effective. This isn’t a AAA studio and the fantasy trappings appealed to me. The sound effects and music lacked variety though, and I found myself boring of the soundtrack relatively quickly. Things just got repetitious sooner than I would have liked. I liked the music well enough, but given the slow pace of gameplay and the length of time spent on stages, more variety would have been appreciated.

In terms of the stage structure, Fort Triumph is not a terribly long game, but the procedurally generated stages provide lots of replay value. That keeps things fresh, especially if you are looking to leverage the multiplayer mode. There are different difficulty settings that can be applied, and there’s a decently sized overworld map to explore. For someone like me who enjoys digging into nooks and crannies, I generally found exploration to be rewarding.

Summary

Fort Triumph is a solid strategy game that should appeal to fans of the XCOM series. I can’t think of anything else quite like it with a fantasy setting, making it a rather unique game. The overall package is generally fairly enjoyable, even if the wrapping (sound effects, narration, uneven humor) has some rough edges to it. Fans of the genre should find enough here to enjoy though.

Score: 7 / 10

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Cardaclysm: Shards of the Four - XB1 Review

Cardaclysm: Shards of the Four by developer Elder Games and publisher Headup Games—Microsoft Xbox One review written by Nick Herber with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

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Cardaclysm: Shards of the Four is an interesting mixture of roguelike, deck builder and turn-based RPG. I am a huge fan of collectible card games, which this at its heart, but balance issues and a less-than-optimized transition to consoles hurts the overall package.

The game starts off simply enough, with your wizard getting in way over his head and summoning a skeletal Wretched that is way more than he can handle. What follows is a series of procedurally generated dungeons where you battle monsters and pick up items to try and increase your ability to eventually stand your ground and deal with the Wretched.

There is a bit of a grind built into the need to get the cards you want, which is heavily based on luck and happenstance. There’s no experience point earning, no levels to be gained, no new skills for your character. He can acquire pieces of gear that might give certain types of creatures bonuses or in some cases, putting together sets of gear give even better perks to your creatures, but he doesn’t actually impact the combat himself.

The cards represent creatures and spells – pretty familiar territory for anyone who has played a collectible card game. When combat occurs, your opponent starts with creatures already in play, and you need to get yours down next. If a single creature ‘breaks through’ and hits your wizard – you die. Death is not terribly punitive, thankfully. You restart the level, sometimes with fewer cards in your library (but I never had them pulled from my active deck). As you play the stage, instead of getting one card from a victory, you now get two – a new card and one of yours back – until your library is restored. As far as roguelikes go, it’s not too rough.

Where I do find myself getting annoyed is how the cards have two sets of resources. There really should just be one. You have golden runes which are the ‘cost’ of spells and creatures, and really – that should have been the only resource. The other are spirit orbs, which after about seven hours of play and two of the four bosses later I only had nine of. Creature and spell cards come in three levels. You can merge duplicate cards to level them up. Top level cards have a higher cost in both golden runes and spell orbs. But when you have 120 golden runes versus eight or nine spell orbs, it forces you to use weaker creatures or spells, but spells don’t do much to protect your wizard and weaker level one creatures are easy fodder later in the game. So you may only get to cast three or four creatures who are higher level before your orbs are spent and you can’t do anything else to protect yourself. I got very frustrated with my inability to continue growing creatures because it was too cost prohibitive on the orb side and actually make me second guess leveling up my creatures.

The randomized nature of the levels makes things a bit dicey as well. You just never quite know what is going to drop, whether it’s gear or golden runes or enemy placement. Sometimes you can cruise right through a level. Sometimes there is a lot of weird backtracking. One of the more interesting aspects to how levels play out, is once you best all of the preset enemies on a stage, the Wretched (or after you beat him, one of the other Big Bads) will then chase you through the stage, forcing you to either face them down (not recommended until your deck has grown mightily) or grabbing the key that opens the door to the portal out of the stage.

Between stages, you have a pub where you can get quests, have some trades, things of that nature. It’s a solid if unspectacular little hub that also highlights one of my biggest issues with Cardaclysm: Shards of the Four: the controls. It is quite clear that this game was optimized for point-and-click interface. Every time a trade is proposed, it starts on ‘accept’. It really should start on decline, because while I get that these trades are randomized, they are usually absolutely terrible. No, I will not give you my max level dragon for a first level goblin. Oh wait, I just did, because it defaulted to accept and I thought I pressed over (I did) to select decline before hitting the button and the trade was accepted.

In general, these controls are just finicky. Clicking on enemies in the battlefield does not always work. The cursor sometimes just is hard to see / almost invisible. Sometimes playing the card you want from your hand doesn’t work. This wasn’t a thing that happened once or twice. Dozens of times I just had the starting hand of cards that triggered commands to get ‘stuck’. It would not let me play a creature – clicking the button (repeatedly) would only have the info box come up over the top of the card but it would not play it on the field. At least not until I played the spell card in my hand, whether I was planning to play it or not. It’s just not a clean interface and really hurts the momentum of gameplay. Even moving around the stage is a little awkward at times, given its isometric view. Most of the time, it’s fine as the only time there is a sense of urgency is when one of the bosses is in hot pursuit, but during these chase scenes? It’s rather annoying to get hung up on a piece of scenery. It’s still not as big of a concern as the lack of optimization during combat.

Another mild quibble I have with the game’s various combat modifiers (frostbite, poison, etc) is that things just ‘happen’. Maybe a text box to explain what is taking place in combat would have been too spammy, but there were definitely times (especially earlier in the game before I had found my footing) that combat was resolving a bunch of effects and I had no idea what had just transpired.

Summary

For me, Cardaclysm: Shards of the Four is a mixed bag with a ton of potential, but too many small issues that are impossible to completely overlook. I really liked the card evolution and deck building systems, I appreciated the quests, equipment and randomized nature of the stages, and the turn-based combat is generally satisfying. I just don’t like the difficulty spikes that are largely due to the uneven resource requirements and the rough control optimization. I have a feeling this would play better on PC with a mouse and a keyboard, but appreciate seeing games like this make their way to consoles, where I tend to play more. A bit of UI / control cleanup and better balance of resources would make Cardaclysm: Shards of the Four a much better overall title that is still worth a look – but be ready for a bit of frustration.

Score: 5.5 / 10

 

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Wishlair - PC Review

Wishlair by developer and publisher Chronogears—PC Review written by Susan N. with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

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Wishlair is an RPG adventure game that brings players back to the early days of video games. We’re talking about an RPG that is 2D, top-down and made with exclusively ASCII characters. It is filled with nostalgia and charm as players traverse the Wishlair through more than a hundred different levels in search of 1000 shards. Once they obtain these shards, players will be able to wish their way out of the accursed depths.

Gameplay

Wishlair is a fantastic throwback to a simpler time in video games where developers created entire worlds with ASCII characters and 8-bit music that make us remember the beginning days.

We begin our journey of Wishlair in search of our father who has summoned us. In order to find him, and the entrance to the place, we have to traverse the Old Kingdom and the Underrealm that holds useful items which will assist us in this quest. At first, the journey is tough since there are a number of obstacles and creatures that will prevent progression. And once players find the map, the game becomes a bit easier to navigate. I had quite a fun time going back and forth through the areas in search of the next item or shards I may have missed. Once I started to recognize which characters were likely harmful and which were not, going through some of the sections became easier.

Quite early on I discovered that there are large chasms that can’t be crossed, ice that directs your movement based on where you step on it, and creatures that will fling magic circular spells that do damage. Some of those creatures are ghosts that can walk through walls. If they get to you, they will do damage. And if for some reason you die, your character is placed back at the entrance point of the level which allows you to get those items again - hopefully without being killed.

For an old-style ASCII game from the DOS days, Wishlair was a pleasant surprise. Not only does the game stick to classic gaming principles, but it also provides a nice challenge to the player. There is no restriction on lives, save-scumming, nor hand-holding in Wishlair. It is focused on perception, decent reflexes, and deduction of concepts. I, for one, love a good call back to the simpler gaming days once in a while, and Wishlair definitely gives it to me.

Graphics and Audio

Let’s talk about the ASCII graphics in Wishlair. The game's visual presentation, in my opinion, was a deliberate choice by Jean-Francois Bilodeau. Today’s game development is advanced compared to the video games offered in the ’70s. For those unfamiliar, during the ’70s people were first exposed to Dungeons and Dragons and Lord of the Rings. These two franchises inspired the RPG genre (Check out this video for more information about the history of RPGs). And the video games offered around that time were games like the RPG Moria, the arcade game Pong, and the text-based adventure game Zork. Each of these titles was created with ASCII graphics and text boxes that described situations or items. Wishlair relies on these two elements to bring us back to the days of old.

Then there is the audio which I both love and hate at the same time. I love it because it adds to the classic video game feel which triggers our nostalgia factor. Players can choose to enable the footsteps audio or not. They can also choose to have the music playing, but that is where my issue lies.

I would love to listen to the music in this game more than I did. See, I discovered quickly that the volume of the audio cannot be adjusted at all. Even turning down my computer volume didn’t help because it would overtake anything I had running in the background. Furthermore, a couple of minor patches went live which actually screwed up the music! On the main menu, music would automatically play. (Other video games also have full volume on load up, so this isn't a unique problem.) If a player clicks the checkbox to turn off the music and back on (I misclicked), the music would superimpose itself. This is very unpleasant and I would not recommend doing this. Basically, having volume sliders would be a great addition so that players can listen to the audio. Fixing this superimposed music problem would be fantastic.

Final Thoughts

Wishlair is a mindless fun adventure that doesn’t overcomplicate gameplay. It is simple in that players have a set objective and only arrow keys to move. There is no worrying about keybinds or specific classes. There’s no worrying about graphics card compatibility. There is only the player and the dungeon which is filled with objects and creatures. Thus, Wishlair is a wonderful nostalgic RPG game that I highly recommend to gamers and I give it a solid 9 out of 10.

Score: 9 / 10

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Black Book - XB1 Review

Black Book by developer Morteshka and publisher HypeTrain Digital—Microsoft Xbox One review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

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Black Book is a fascinating mashup of genres steeped in Slavic lore. There is a bit of a learning curve to be had here, both with the game’s mechanics and heavily steeped mythologies, but it is absolutely worth the effort. There is an engrossing story to be had here and experience absolutely worth exploring.

Our protagonist Vasilisa, is an engaging one from the start. We are introduced to a nineteenth century Russian countryside that oozes a creepy, dark style that follows the orphaned Vasilisa on her path to becoming a witch after tragedy strikes. Her quest sets Vasilisa on an adventure to break a series of seals so she can have a wish granted.

All of this can take a bit of time to wrap ones head around. There’s terminology in here that I was in no way familiar with. After a time, I began to make the proper associations between words or phrases, and from an aesthetic standpoint I’m glad the in translating the tale to English the heart of the content remained true to its roots. It’s just that it took a bit of time to build up familiar word associations during the early hours of gameplay.

There is a combination of deck building and morality-based decision making that sit at the heart of Black Book’s gameplay. She collects ‘Sins’ as she furthers her adventures. Her quest starts out as a labor of love, but she has to quickly determine how much of the weight she wants to carry herself… or whether or not to let the demons she controls commit crimes out of a restless need to – well, to be demons really. It’s a slowly degrading scale. This is not Mass Effect’s good vs bad paragon system. This is more a matter of: how bad do you want Vasilisa to be? Because she suffers penalties when not sending demons out, and using them collect money or give Vasilisa other benefits – at a cost to her soul.

Combat itself is a card game, that is fairly simple during its early stages. This makes it easy enough to learn the basics, but as you get deeper into your Black Book, you gain far more spells and modifiers that complicate the gameplay. The learning curve (outside of a handful of rather nasty boss fights) was gentle enough in its difficulty curve that I seldom got frustrated. That is surprising given the somewhat random nature of card games of this nature, which attests to the overall balance of the combat. You have offensive and defensive cards and winning matches means getting more cards. Early on the pickings are a bit on the slim side, but as you continue to expand upon your library of cards, you start to see some fun and unique synergies. I just with the boss battles were a bit more balanced. I’m okay with having to come at them from a slightly different angle, but there were a couple that just made me toss out everything I thought that I knew about how I was designing my decks and became something of a frustrating puzzle in and of themselves.

Outside of combat, you are advancing the story to find clues and try to solve the riddles that make up the seals. Each of these seals creates a sort of chapter that is a separate entity from the others. There’s an overarching storyline here, but your focus is on getting through conversations and tasks that allow you to eventually best the seal. I was pleased that the Sins counter had a tangible impact on things like conversational choices and even the game’s endings. This certainly provides some replay value for those interested in seeing the more extreme levels of the counter (which is something that had me playing games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect multiple times in the past).

The overall presentation is pretty impressive. The deck building component of the game looks really sharp. Card art is impressive, and they inject life into the combat component. The visual style is not super detailed and technical, but the use of colors and inky blacks really give the game a creepy atmosphere. The music score is often subtle but complimentary to the graphics as well, really setting the stage for a bleak story that I wanted to see through until the end.

Summary

Black Book doesn’t fit neatly into any one genre with its combination of adventuring, deck building, card combat and morality – which makes it a unique game that might not have a built-in audience but is definitely worth a look from those who like a creepy gaming experience that engages their minds. The pacing and a few of the boss battles can be a little uneven, but the overall experience was one I enjoyed far more often than not.

Score: 7.5 / 10

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Astria Ascending - PC Preview

Astria Ascending by developer Artisan Studio and publisher Dear Villagers—PC Preview written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

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Astria Ascending by Artisan Studio is an RPG that potentially has a lot to live up to with those involved in its creation. With veterans having worked on Final Fantasy, Bravely Default and Nier Automata, adding in the promise of a classic turn based JRPG feel with a mature and potentially emotional story is all that I needed to know in order to start diving into this magical world of demi-gods who’s clocks are ticking as power always comes at a price.

With the full content review still to come, this preview of Astria Ascending roughly covers about the first tenth of the entire experience (roughly six to eight hours depending on how much you do) and even then? It’s in great shape. Starting off with a brief introduction to the world that you find yourself in, you’ll be given your full cast up front each with their own quirks and personalities making them not only unique from a gameplay perspective, but also from a narrative one.

When it comes to JRPGs, getting the full cast from the very beginning can be interesting. It lets you know exactly who you’re dealing with instead of getting a character forty hours down the line and wondering how you’re going to integrate them into your party or strategy. Having them all from the beginning also allows a further building of bonds or conflicts all while adding a bit of mystery of how these people all get along.

With our cast assembled and only three months left to live, the 333 demi-god company could be found bantering in their suite of the tower they call home until the unprecedented happens. Beings known as noises which can generally be found outside of town causing problems are for the first time being found inside of the city walls causing discord within Harmonia. While not exactly a new premise to have things “yet to happen” just when they would be most inconvenient, it does act as the catalyst for the story setting off a chain of events that this world had yet to see, or at least yet to see over the last thousand years. I also liked the wording choices being used that noises are running the harmony of where our protagonists can be found. It adds easy to remember terms especially in a musical sense.

From here, the eight demi-gods are off on an adventure to protect those that they are sworn to and solve a mystery all while only having three months left to live. It’s an interesting premise as it lends to two different points of views. On one hand, you have those sworn to uphold their duty to the very end, and on the other, you have those who are annoyed that this had to happen so close to the end of their charge. Basically par for the course when it comes to pre-retirement. This also helps flesh out the characters' personalities and give you a better idea of who you’re potentially spending the next forty some odd hours with.

On that note, one thing that I really appreciated is that while some JRPG tropes are being upheld, they aren’t being followed to the letter. For example, there’s the classic wide range of character ages in the mix, but, these characters are all in the same boat as they are all, young and old, “done” once that clock strikes three years. There’s no, ok well we need X, Y, Z to properly follow the formula and maybe the younger ones get a sequel down line, so how are we going to put them all into the same bucket? Instead, the bucket is already there as part of the staging as all eight are demi-gods with a clock getting close to strike twelve.

Furthermore, channeling a little bit of Final Fantasy XII’s Ivalice, I liked Astria Ascending's range of character types from the humanoids to the lizardfolk and the cat people. Now I know what you’re potentially thinking, you’ve got a sexy cat lady on the team and well? You would be wrong! Instead, you’ve got this giant burly bearded feline, gruff as all hell who would probably just “lift” all while being your wizard. Yes, Dragnar is your spell caster and it made me happy that a few of your typical “of course they are” character types are instead ignored here. It’s refreshing and it helps channel the nostalgia without being bound to outdated formulas.

In regards to a bit of nostalgia, on top of the Final Fantasy vibes, there are a few nods to another Square “Enix” series that was worked on by Tri-Ace, Valkyrie Profile. Set in a 2D platforming world, there’s a bit of, not much, metroidvania-ness RPG dungeon crawling as you figure out some small puzzles and which doors in the dungeon lead to which rooms as you figure out your way forward. Adding to your arsenal is the ability to strike at your enemies in hopes of getting the upper hand on the opening initiative.

Now whether or not you get the upper hand at the start of combat, fans of both classic and recent JRPGs should easily be finding themselves at home. Split between four of your demi-gods to one side and numerous enemies to the other, each character has access to a basic attack or a set of skills that they've learnt through a skill tree. Adding in items and a feature known as focus, the tide of battle can easily go from one side to the other in a heartbeat.

For those familiar with the Bravely series, Default, Second, Default II, know that actions could essentially be stacked to get an upper hand. Channeling this concept, but not the defaulting, characters can use focus in order to maximize the power of their attack. 50%, 100%, 150% or 200% increases can be done to a character's action either blasting enemies where it hurts the most by targeting their weakness, or by healing your own party members in a pinch. Not quite as easy as using Brave or Default, focus is accumulated by hitting an enemy where it hurts so using a multi physical attack against a foe weak to it, will yield three to five extra focus, not just one.

Still on the subject of focus, as an extra layer you can also gain temporary points that will expire in a full turn from the point that a character concentrated in order to add it to the party’s reserve pool. This can be really useful when in a bind or if you have certain characters on the field that just don't meet the requirements in order to accumulate focus otherwise. It's a “nice to have”, but more often than not I found myself more occupied with either trying to either stay alive or simply finish off the enemy without having to waste a turn on a temporary measure unless it was really going to work in my favour.

Finally, there’s something that I really want to highlight about Astria Ascending's visual presentation. Hand drawn, 4K resolution graphics, from the individual character models to the backdrops and environmental effects like rain or sandstorms, everything was simply amazing to look at. Even more impressive is that most towns or city folk are also individually crafted so when walking by or running through its not just a repeat of what you've already seen short of a few of the soldiers guarding certain points.

If there are some things that I wish could be addressed, they would just about all be within the battle system. The first of these is that while things are pretty to look at, it’s slow and I wish, especially with some Bravely Default being channeled in, that it can be sped up to go a lot faster especially as boss fights can already take a fairly long time. On that note, and as previously mentioned, focus can be expended to deal loads of damage but unlike Bravely Default which its based off of, if and enemy has no real weakness it's hard to really stock up on it. Once you’re thrown into the negatives, you can’t even stock up on the temporary versions making things just unnecessarily tough.

Astria Ascending's other major issue is that enemies always seem to get so many more turns than you. Surprised for the fifth time? Even if you aren't, the initiative seems stacked against you, often allowing the four to six enemies to all get a hit, and then all get a second hit between all of your own characters. Even when you do finally get “a turn”? It’s spent switching out your downed party members for those in reserve hoping that they can at least get a turn before being downed themselves. It takes away from the enjoyment and even with some leveling up and grinding? It's not enough. 

Summary

Overall though, even with some of the adjustments that I'm hoping to see for the full release, Astria Ascending is in good shape. Amazing visuals, well written dialog and a classic battle system that's easy to get into (short of some adjustments on enemy initiative), I look forward to seeing the final version.

Score: N/A

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