Revier's Stuff of Dubious Value

After touring through both Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma, I got curious about their predecessor, the supposedly arcade-y, action-y and simplistic Soul Blazer. Well, it is certainly all those things. BUT, it is also a very oddly charming and enjoyable game, despite that. I think this comes down to its gameplay loop, mainly. See, you're an angel tasked to destroy monsters and rescue captive/dead life, and you accomplish both by destroying monster spawners. Doing so not only offers XP and progression, but directly releases formerly captive/dead inhabitants immediately. As in, fully functional NPCs, complete with sprites, dialogue, and sometimes even sidequests and items! This means that while you're making progress in the dungeon, you're also actively progressing with the restoration of life, and can get to feel it yourself. The game smartly uses this format to create fun vignettes, like delving into the backstory of a dolphin who was a shipwrecked man in its former life, or...

 So, in response to my Illusion of Gaia review, some people told me that Terranigma was that game but better in every way. Considering how Illusion of Gaia had fallen somewhat short of its great ideas, this easily grabbed my attention. Turns out, the truth is a bit more complicated. Terranigma starts out great. The initial hook is quite convincing, the protagonist feels a lot more fluid, and has far smoother moves. The "dungeons" in Act 1 are rather simplistic, but this can be easily overlooked, as it is effectively the game teaching the player the ropes. Act 2 is even better, as that's when the protagonist begins to revive life on Earth, and the player gets grand payoffs from guiding him around. The dungeons are a bit too action oriented for my liking, but it's still fine, they're all mostly well designed for their purpose and are decently fun romps. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the bosses, which randomly block all use of magic and are designed m...

 Illusion of Gaia is many things. The short version is that it's a blend of a puzzle game and an RPG, where you run through various landmarks of the world in search of six macguffins. The long version is....well, let's just say this is a game with layers upon layers. But I didn't write this to describe the game, but rather to deliver my judgement on it. So, let me get this out of the way: it is, in simple terms, a Good Game, with certain really big caveats. Chief among them is the inconsistent quality of dungeons, where some dungeons are decently imaginative while others rely on moon logic or excessive backtracking, and make you want to tear your hair out. There is exactly one Great level in this game, the Sky Gardens, while Mu and Mt. Temple are aggravatingly padded out dungeons, not helped in the slightest by their selection of enemies.  So what makes it Good, then? Well, the game does try its hand at a rather intriguing premise. It genuinely captures the spirit of advent...

 So I finally beat Tactics Ogre: Reborn today. Well, more accurately, I saw my friend beat it. And by "beat" I mean "get through a huge ass dungeon, fight through the last few villains, and then get totally walled by the final boss, who has an absurd amount of HP and can out attrition any player not prepared for him". Reborn on the whole is a good game, and a good remake of a now ancient game, but I really can't forgive some of its design decisions. It really feels like a half finished project where the developers were mostly on the right track but couldn't really implement everything they wanted, or test how their changes worked in practice. In that regard it's honestly rather frustrating, as there are glimpses of potential greatness that's held back by all the awkwardness and lack of polish. Still, I will not be too harsh. It is still Tactics Ogre, and it does cure several major flaws of the PSP version, and it does preserve a lot of what made the ...

Just got done playing through Chapter 2 of this on the Chaos route. I still think this is a solid remake, but there are flaws that are starting to get dangerously prominent. The battles from Ashton to Tanmas were largely fine, and honestly I enjoyed the battles where the enemies were better geared and so presented a decent uphill challenge. While the challenge escalated afterwards, it did so in a pretty awful, inelegant way, by adding way more meat than the situation called for. I was forced to switch Denim and a warrior to two handed weapons to get sufficient damage, which isn't a good thing, as the game had not ever indicated the team's damage falling off before this. What really soured the experience was the Vice fight. After a tense, grueling battle in front of Amorika's gates, I was greeted with a uber fast enemy that not only tanked everything, but also got in meaty swings, including an extremely dangerous finisher that often struck Denim for more than 2/3rds his heal...

So I got through Chapter 1 of Tactics Ogre: Reborn today. It was fine. Arguably good, even. Let's get the negatives out of the way first. I was personally disappointed to see the combat being heavily skill based again. There was a certain simplistic charm to the combat of the original, and while I get why they added skills to make it seem more appealing to a modern audience(who likely have experienced Final Fantasy Tactics and thus have their expectations shaped by it), it does take away from it. This version also uses the pseudo Shakespearian, theatrical script of the PSP version, with some mild edits. I'm personally not a big fan of it, I like purple prose but sprinkling it everywhere just makes the dialogue feel a lot less natural and thus a lot less emotional than the original. I also felt like most fights were too easy. Now, granted, this is the very first chapter of the game, it's supposed to ease players into it, and even in the original these weren't hard battle...

  This is the first portion of the fourth chapter of my Impostor Factory parody. I had published it on the Freebird Games discord on November of last year, with the intent of finishing the series, but since then I've grown increasingly pessimistic about both the franchise and the company's overall direction. Thus, I see little chance of finishing this project, or ever making any fan content for the Sigmund Corporation franchise again. I hope that you'll find this bit enjoyable, despite that. Many apologies.