Reviews Rate the game you finished/retired

[Kvik]

Not sure how I would rate this in comparison to other games. It's better than Ayesha since it's clearer how to progress the story, but the actual story is less interesting than Ayesha.

I've completed both Escha and Logy routes, including their unique endings, and I have to say the overall experience is underwhelming. You have the standard endings where they went to become adventurers and what nots, but the true ending hardly touches on the subject of the world itself. Ayesha ended in a promising note, but instead of continuing where she left off, Eschatology is mainly about personal growth rather than discovery/fixing the state of the world, which I feel like a missed opportunity. Ayesha herself is entirely missing from the game as well.

I didn't have the time to play Atelier Shallie this year, but I'll try to play that soon because I'm curious how they will expand the story.

 

[Mivey]

I've completed both Escha and Logy routes, including their unique endings, and I have to say the overall experience is underwhelming. You have the standard endings where they went to become adventurers and what nots, but the true ending hardly touches on the subject of the world itself. Ayesha ended in a promising note, but instead of continuing where she left off, Eschatology is mainly about personal growth rather than discovery/fixing the state of the world, which I feel like a missed opportunity. Ayesha herself is entirely missing from the game as well.

I didn't have the time to play Atelier Shallie this year, but I'll try to play that soon because I'm curious how they will expand the story.

one funny detail: the name "Escha & Logy" is pronounced "escha to logy" in Japanese. Eschatology is a name for the expectation that the world will end (in some form or other, and do so soon-ish). Despite this reference, the game just isn't really willing to really deal with that topic, front and center. Sure, things get a bit harder out in the frontier, but you never get a true "end of days" feeling. It's way too cheery and happy for that to ever hit you.

 

[STHX]

Have you ever wandered about what would happen if we could peek into alternate timelines? What if a movie that never came out actually released? What if a famous book was never made? What if Harmony Gold never existed and SRW was now a world renowed series with 25 years of western releases? Well, during these last weeks I felt like I traveled into a different timeline, and saw the result of a completely different evolution of a long running JRPG series spanning 20+ years. Except this series isn't japanese, didn't release on consoles for most of those years, and obviously was never translated outside of its native language. Let's enter this mysterious new world, the world of the Sword of the Xuan-Yuan (軒轅劍)

In today's age it has never been easier to have access to "exotic" videogames. Platforms like Steam, more standardized OS, an increased interest in global sales all allow users to buy and experience titles which would have been impossible to even install, if not play in the past. Hell, even series like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy are in our memories because they released on popular consoles sold worldwide. But 30 years of videogames is a long time, and the world is vast and who know how many series escaped our grasps. 2 "sister" series share this history, The Legend of Sword and Fairy and Xuan-Yuan Sword, and today we'll focus on the latter. Developed by DOMO Studio, a taiwanese dev team, this series started on pc only, chinese only, and more than 20 years ago. This isn't a retrospective and it's not like I even have the knowledge to talk about it, but 20 years are a long time and during this time the series evolved in the same way other similar RPGs changed: from sprite based top down 2D 16-bit games, to the age of pre-rendered backgrounds and more colorful and detailed sprites, to the early low poly 3D models, and up to the high definition era. By some mysterious force one day the "gaiden" chapter of the sixth game in the series (and 12th game in the series total) ended up on Steam Greenlight, passed, and then was released with an english translation (which eventually made slowly made its way to consoles too) and thus the series was available to us outside of china. And this is the game I'll talk about today
The Gate of Firmament feels like a lost PS3 era JRPG. It's a familiar yet different title. The Xuan-Yuan Sword titles are historical fantasy rpgs, set into the real world in different time period, but featuring fantastical/mythological elements. Story wise this game is set in the actual chinese age of myths. The story focuses on the aftermath of the Juedi Tiantong, originally a religious reform in 2000 BC china which in the game world is taken more literally (Severance of Heaven and Earth). The heavenly kingdom of Huaxu sacrificed their lives to seal away the Celestial Gate forever (that allowed anyone to reach the realm of the gods in hope of receiving divine powers, in exchange of informations on the location of the Jade Emperor's daugher which was said to have escaped to the human realm) in order to bring order to the realms. Thus with the gods gone from the affairs of the world, the age of man started. But as hundreds of years pass the world succumbed to turmoil. The Xia dynasty was said to have inherited the gods blodline (and so had the "mandate of heaven"), but eventually fell into tiranny and so the dynasty was overthrown. This market the beginning of the Shang dynasty. But during this reign the land fell victim to natural disasters, such as great floods or famine, and as the years passed many questioned if the Shang were the ones "responsible" for this, as they lacked the "mandate" unlike the Xia. With the country in turmoil many tribes became nomads, and rebellions were common. The actual story starts in one of these nomadic tribes. We are in the 1200 BC period and the protagonist of the story is Sikong Yu, a young inventor/engineer which spends most of the time coming up with traps (mostly to protect the village from potential invasions by barbaric tribes). But on a faithful day to save her adopted sister and dear friend, who was kidnapped by a local tribe to be used as a sacrifice, he infiltrates their hideout and, together with his sister, meets and rescues a mysterious young woman. This woman helps in repelling the enemy tribe with her mystical powers, but Sikong Yu is blamed for the barbarian's attack and so he is forced to leave the village as its relocated to a new, more secure place. The chief decides to give him a chance and will allow him to return only after he escorted their mysterious saviour, Mu Yue, back to her kingdom. And so this "true RPG" journey starts. Sikong Yu is soon joined by Feng Yu (based on a real historical figure), a "high ranking officer of the Shang" (who is totally not the prince of Shang searching for a way to stop the rebellions), and Zi Qiao (also based on a historical figure), a preistesses traveling the land while searching for her future husband by reading the stars. The 3 (and a piglet mascot character named Aqi) so end up accompanying Mu Yue, who is not very subtly eventually revealed to be a survivor from Huaxu (so a celestial being), on this journey to find a way back home, while step by step discovering the true force bringing turmoil to the land and their role (or destiny) which awaits each of them. And obviously the titular Celestial Gate will end up being the focal point of it
The story is without a doubt the strongest point of the game. As it's deeply based on chinese mythology it feels very novel to the "western" mind, but even outside of this the story is well written, with twists, a good lenght and pace, love, mysteries and goodbyes. A true positive is how every town the party visits in the game ends up "important" to the overall journey. While some areas are obviously fillers, the actual towns all have a reason to exist in the story pace, and not many RPGs nail this part. Unfortunately the translation isn't that great but maybe because I'm not a native english speaker I somehow still managed to understand what I was reading. Typos are still common, as are obviously wrong subtitles (the same exact line repeated multiple times even as the character speaking changes, for example) and often the game flip flops on how to write character names or on the terminology. I also found the soundtrack to be quite good, with many tracks all fitting the "ancient china" period. A negative point is with the presentation however: the models are good but outside of the protagonists everyone else lacks any expressivity with the face (and it's not like the protagonists have that many facial animations either). This is one of the most obvious things in the game: its nature as a pc first game means the game looks clean, with textures large enough to not appear blurry and detailed models, but the actual geometry is lacking. The game looks like a weird inbetween of ps3 and ps4 era JRPGs: not enough "graphics" to look as good as its ps4 siblings, but also not bad enough to look like the older ones. Another issue with the story are the simple repeated animations, which will eventually be very noticeable, as well as the various pauses which oftem make the dialogues take too long. An overall "slowness" is also very common gameplay wise. And speaking of slowness, I can't believe the game pretends some of the twists in the story are some sort fo mystery that needs to be delayed for so long, like Feng Yu's identity which was obvious from the moment he started speaking
The game, outside of battles, plays very similar to the PS3 era Tales game: there is no overworld, and every area is made of "corridors" outside of towns which are more open. But instead of connecting the world each "field" is a separate area, with the player travelling between them from a menu based map. Thus exploration is very limited. There is basically no difference between a "field" or a "dungeon", and the only reason to explore is to find treasure chests. The story is completely linear and so the "journey" also ends up like this: every new area, being a town or a new field, is unlocked after seeing all events in the previous one. And this is very literal: usually a new field features multiple events, starting near the entrance and ending near the exit (usually with a boss fight), but the player doesn't really need to "exit" from the exit since as soon as the last event is done the next area is already available, and I tested it by walking back to the entrance and "exiting" from there once and behold, the next area was there. This small thing really makes the "exploration" feels like a "checklist" instead of a journey, and it doesn't help the whole game only has 2 fields which are truly optional (not needed for the main story progression), the DOMO Studio (which is a dev room/museum where you meet the dev avatars and can see artworks and models from the series) and the Realm of Thoughs (which is accessible after finishing all of Sikong Yu's sidequests and it's used to unlock the true ending). As I used the word "side quest" it's important to point out that while the story is very linear, the game is filled with side quests. Most of this side quests are simple "speak with guy, go somewhere else/speak with another, come back" for some extra items, but some have much better rewards, and/or have more involved cutscenes which expands on the cast or the world. The 4 (well 5 including Aqi) protagonist all have a full side "questlines" made of various quests which is used to learn more about them and unlock their best equipments. But these sidequests can have very strict timing and a small distraction can cause the player to miss them. Unfortunately the game does require a guide (or the player always checking every available quest) to avoid missing something. Also the characters move so slow... A simple dash button or a faster move speed would make such a massive difference since there is no "fast travel" for fields: you always enter from the entrance and any side quest that forces you to go to an already explored field (so most of them) will force the player to walk all the way back there, and while there are no random encouters there is no way to actually avoid the enemies since as soon as one of them spots your player characters they immediately rush there, and avoiding them is basically impossible
And speaking of enemies, the battles are uh... a mix of real time but still pretty relaxed? The player controls 1 character while the others are AI controlled kinda like Tales, but it's not full "action" like Tales: positioning doesn't matter, and attacks are limited by cooldowns, but these cooldowns feel more like a "there is no reason to spam the button" cooldown since they mostly end as soon as the attack animation ends. Your character can use light attacks (which can be comboed to a mxaimum of 3), heavy attacks (which can end a combo and can hit multiple targets) and 4 equippable magic skills. It's... not a very original battle system but also not very common, but it's also way too simple since you only have those options + using an item and it doesn end pretty spammy, especially on hard difficulty (which does nothing but making the enemies stronger so it's useless). The game is also very grindy with materials to grind to craft items and equipment aside from the standard experience levels. There is also an option to "capture" monsters but, again, it's not like you use the monsters to fight, you simply turn them into crafting materials to create new monsters or to power up some special accessories by "feeding" monsters to them. Captured monsters are needed to fully unlock their encyclopedia page so you have to do it for the achievements, but that's it. Each playable character also has a way to "interact" with the roaming enemies, like Sikong Yu can hit them (they start the battle stunned) and Mu Yue can turn invisible for 9 seconds (the only way to truly avoid roaming enemies)
The annoyances with the slow, pointless exploration and the repetitive battles become even more noticeable if the player is going for the 100% completition, because aside from the game requiring a careful playthrough to not miss anything the final achievement/encyclopedia entry requires new game+, as the last item needed to get the last entry (and so the last achievement) is obtained past the point of no return, but the "quest" that needs it is actually before that point. It's kinda bullshit honestly, an actual fuck you type bullshit. Which is a shame because there is a good core, it's just the game also suffers from all those "PS3 JRPG" problems that make them not that liked compared to their predecessors (or more modern ones), and the overall slugginess really doesn't help, and for this reason it's not a game you can fully recommend without understanding its problems
But the game can be bought for very cheap at this point, and I enjoyed peeking into an up to that point unknown reality. Without this game (and Sword and Fairy 6) who knows if all these chinese titles would be available on Steam in english for us to enjoy

 

[fantomena]

Finished



Enjoyed it a lot more than the first game which never truly clicked for me. Great art style (beautiful game), great environments, interesting story, great gameplay, overall a very good game. Shorter than I expected though from the years in development.

Score: 8.9/10

Finished



The campaign. It was better than I expected, had fun with it, short though, but decent fun.

Score: 7.5/10

Finished



Enjoyed it a lot. Lengthy game (10+ hours), fun story, fun world, interesting store and world building, cool gameplay, great art and art style. Some frustrating jank though and sometimes the got got a bit repetive. The way all the mechanics works could have been explained better.

Score: 8.5/19

Finished



Well, somewhat finished, did complete the last level, but there's more stuff to do. Enjoyed it, but I guess not as much as everyone else, mainly felt that when the balls and different stuff hit the enemy could have been made to feel better, felt like hitting paper or something. Other than that, it was fun, but every "round" in the game felt too logn even with the shorer round option and faster round option added.

Score: 8/10

Finished



Fun game. Great looking graphics, beautiful for the most part. Fun gameplay, but too many bullet sponge enemies and all the enemies on-shot kills you too far often and that breaks up the pacing of the game (the game is very fast-paced). Interesting world and the story is interesting, but goes downhill towards the end.

Score: 7.5/10

Finished



Very fun, good looking and smart puzzle plattformer. Short, but has nice endgame content after.

Score: 8.7/10

 

[Mivey]

I finished The Outer World 2



Loking back at my original thoughts about the first game, I was pretty negative on the whole thing. Not because I didn't see the potential, but because it just didn't live up to that potential.

I am surprised how much TOW2 improves on that formula, without really turning it on its head. I think the biggest change is just the game isn't quite so anaemic as the first one. You get more areas, that are much larger. The plot runs for a bit longer and you get moe time to flesh out the companions. It moves from a game that's basically done in 40 hours, to one that gives you maybe 60 hours (not counting completionist types). The quality of writing is also so much better. I particually enjoyed reading up on the terminals: you get so much context and a lot of time finding some info will unlock options in the story you wouldn't have otherwise.


The game does a decent job to make sure whatever skills or background or abilities you have are rewarded by allowing only people with those abilities to do certain things. You gotta give up the idea to see everything in one playthrough, though the stuff that's optional is usually just things like weapons and money, so nothing story critical.
Exploration is also rewarded quite well, with tons of secret access points to find and small puzzles and secrets scattered around the world.

Combat was good too. I deliberaly played as a "sickly" character with a focus on speech and observation and low focus on combat and it made the early bits of the game rather tough, forcing the use of stealth to thin out the enemies before. Of course, by the end of the game you are still pretty OP, but it actually takes a decent bit of time to get there in this game, as opposed to the first one.

The story is .. ok. It's nothing grand, and I wish the game had made all three groups into factions you can be friends with (at the cost of working with others). Instead, the largest group is always hostile, and there is no way to really compromise with them. Clearly a budget thing and it does lead to some silly situations, like how your companion from the Protectorate is A-ok with you mowing down his pals. There's one brief scene where he brings this up, but then it's just forgotten.
The other factions are Auntie's Choice, who harken back to the first game and represent the "evil corporation" trope of this series and the "Order of Science something something", who are the nominal good guys, though too obsessed with math and science to really be effective. They are both fun to interact with and it's nice that this time it's not just all corporations.
The evil groups, the Protectorate are a dig against authoritarian, fascist ideologies, just as Auntie's Choice is against hyper capitalism.

One thing you shouldn't expect from this game is truly interesting political commentary. It's all too shallow to really explore its subject matter. I'd blame Microsoft for this, but this was already a thing in the first game. Obsidian just isn't interesting in truly sharp writing, sadly.

Overall, if you like Obsidian games, then this should be an entertaining experience. Don't expect Fallout New Vegas levels of quality, and you should be good.

 

[fantomena]

Finished



Pretty fun side scroller action beat'em up with great pixel art graphics and interesting story, Gameplay is decent fun, but very basic. Wish there was more to do with the combat and very much the same enemies to defeat.

Score: 8/10

Finished



Very odd game in an odd world. Interesting graphic style. You go around and you cook different things the people you meet (they say if they are hungry or not) and you have to be careful not to destroy the food or have the food "leave" the plate. Fun concept and fun game all around.

Score: 8.2/10

Finished



Very interesting and cool detective game in a future cyberpunk society where you have different tools to help solve murders, like rewinding time in certain places. Great looking game for the most part. However the detective gameplay does get kinda stale and dragged on many times and the story kinda felt downhill towards the end.

Score: 7.7/10

Finished



Super intriguing game with a weird, but cool graphic style. Good gameplay, the way you have to look at enemies in first person and see their "hearts" to kill them was cool. Great world building and good story. It's like an indie Resident Evil x Silent Hill.

Score: 8.4/10

Finished



Decent game, curious story, nice graphics style and decent gameplay. It is a very much exploration focused game where you often have to go around and find different things and a certain amount of them, use them to build new tools to progress the story, too much focus on that which broke the pacing of the game for me, but the story itself, the world building and graphic style helt it apart for most of the time.

Score: 7/10

 

[STHX]

It is said that years ago, in Tunghai University in Taichung, a boy and a girl were in love, but her parents disagreed of her fiancee because the boy was considered too poor. The 2 lovers decided to elope and live together somewhere else. They were supposed to meet up on the bridge near their campus over the next night, but the boy never came, and the girl threw herself in the lake
Even now it's said if you walk over that bridge at midnight, you can hear a young woman's voice asking what time it is, and the ones who fail to answer disappear to the bottom of the lake
Well, everyone heard a story like in their life, right? Probably every school, campus, park, mountain, beach, lake in the world has a story like this. But one day someone decided to make a movie out of this story (with some liberties of course). 2 years later, the Taiwanese based Softstar Entertainment (which curiously, are also behind the previous title I reviewed, Xuan-Yuan Sword, and the artbook even has a comment about how they usually make RPGs so horror is a first for them) decided to make a game based on that movie, and this is where we are

The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation is an interesting title, with issues but still interesting. It does feel like a "first time a non-horror dev makes a horror game", and while the scenes are well directed and motion captured it does feel a bit budget considering the amount of explorable areas and assets (but the game is cheap enough on Steam so who am I to argue)
The story is not that different from the movie one so the trailer above says everything that needs to be said, so let's talk about the gameplay first. Horror as a genre has so many variations, and Bridge Curse fits into the "first-person, powerless protagonist, escape from creature, puzzle" type of horror. Well, the game is obviously horror but to me the gameplay feels closer to a point and click game, but in first person: most of the time you make the character you're controlling walk somewhere specific to collect an item, or talk to someone, or read something, or solve a puzzle, or solve a puzzle with an item you collected and so on. The game is set on the campus of Tunghu University, and the map is detailed and obviously based on the real life one, but it's also too big considering how many places actually serve a purpose. You will walk, and walk, and walk, and the player character is so slow. And boy if you ever get lost or somehow didn't get where you're supposed to go you better have a video walkthrough at hand otherwise you, the player, is the one who will go crazy with all the walking on this gloomy campus. In the very beginning part of the game there is a part where you have to find a specific item to progress and I somehow walked straight over it at least 3 times before I finally saw it on the ground (and you have to look at the ground for the pick up icon to appear). The improvement in graphics, details and resolution can still cause a form of "pixel hunting" even now. Luckily I did quickly figure out the game actually expects the player to usually move forward linearly (a combination of opened doors versus closed doors, hints written on walls etc) and exploring is basically a trap to waste your time (although there are some extra details in the areas you walk through referencing other urban legends or having optional documents to find). Regardless there is still too much walking, one time you even have to walk all the way to the opposite side of the map simply to get an item so you can open a door on the other side. The game is separated in short chapter where the player controls different characters, so there is also no real "continuity" in the inventory: each item you can get must be used there in some way. The worst part is the lack of a map of any kind, which makes it easy for the player to get lost until they memorize where each place is. The puzzles range from the old "place the correct item in the correct slot" to some variations of "figure the password from the environment" to straight up puzzles, there aren't many but they at least break the monotony of walking. I do think the game looks really good, with lots of details in the environments, with good atmosphere
But beyond the normal gameplay, the game also features "monster" segments where the player is supposed to escape a ghost creature. If the creature of the chapter catches you it's an instant game over (with a convenient retry from checkpoint option so it's not that bad). The character you're controlling has no weapons and no way to defend themself, you can only escape. This part is however quite janky and, very well made, and also very obviously scripted. It's clear the player is expected to hide in specific places, walk in specific directions, and behave in a certain way because experimenting always ends in a dead end followed by the current creature catching up with you. Some of the creature animations especially when searching for the current character can be quite goofy, a symptom of first time horror makers for sure. The death animations are also quite simple and in some cases more funny than scary, with the creature grabbing the camera and screaming or scratching the screen. The game has a warning at the start to not play the game if you suffer from heart diseases but really, I don't think a monster punching the screen with a goofy SDONG sound effect is going to give anyone a heart attack
Music is almost non existent, but sound effects are plenty, from the usual ones you expect in horror titles to the ones used to figure out where or how close the current creature is. The scenes are obviously motion captured and well made and even the face movement and lip synching fit perfectly with the chinese voice acting (apparently the console version also features an english dub, but Steam surely doesn't). but I sure hope you like hearing people scream because oh boy these 6 kids really like screaming. I also think the story, while overall having an interesting mystery, has some pacing issues and weird things that don't really resolve in interesting or satisfying ways. The continues protagonist swapping doesn't help either since it makes the story feel more disjointed, especially since the writers do nothing with the fact different characters see, or "percieve" the apparitions differently from each other, and I think this one part could have been interesting if developed more. But it's just an excuse to not have to explain why one character is suddenly trapped in some other place while the others don't realize it
Overall it feels like a pretty cliche asian horror story, with cliche horror game monster designs. There is nothing original and boy the walking is endless, but I still knocked it out in 2 evenings without feeling the need to force myself to finish it or to unistall it. As far as the horror part goes however it leaves a lot to be desired as a game. Annoying, sure. Scary, absolutely not. But the game still ran like butter while looking good (the night atmosphere most likely help in hiding some of the simpliest models or textures), had zero crashes, no issues with progression and it's cheap. It also seems the sequel title i a marked improvement over this one, but that's a story for another playthrough
And, as I often say, I like devs that make things based on their culture/folklore, ancient or modern

 

[Ge0force]

Finally finished Elden Ring.

Playing dual wield with occult katanas + blood damage + mimic ashes makes the game A LOT easier compared to my previous STR build. I managed to beat most of the bosses within 3 tries, including Malenia. The dual gargoyles and the final boss are the only bosses I summoned co-op players to help me.

The game is a masterpiece as you all know, but it's hard for me to spend so many hours in a single game when my backlog is so huge. This is the main reason why I won't buy the DLC (the other is that I accidently started new game+ after finishing the game ). Perhaps I'll replay the game using a magic build one day.

No perfect score because of the absurd quest system and the enemy/bosses recycling in the 2nd half of the game, but Elden Ring definitely comes close to perfection.

Score: 9.8/10

 

[Mivey]

I finished Singularity

A game from Raven, back before they become a full-time support studio for the Call Of Duy mines (and surprisngly, Microsoft hasn't laid them off yet, maybe they forgot they exist? )

I think the fairest description of this game is "Temu Half Life 2" (except that back in 2010 Temu didn't exist yet). There's the puzzles that involve a specific gun you get, the scripted sequences with NPCs walking around and speaking at you, and the dystopian Sci-Fi world. Of course, it's nowhere near as good or polished as a Valve game and the gameplay is pretty much just a linear shooter with few interesting set pieces.

If this description doesn't completely turn you off and you are in the mood for a simple shooter, then I think Singularity is still quite enjoyable. The time travel plot is also fun, but sadly the g ame doesn't really do all that much with it.

On a technical level, the port is incredibly barebones. None of the UE3 options are really exposed and to support resolutions that aren't in 16:9 ratio, you have to open up the registry. The engine supports ultrawide, without distorting the UI even, but the fact that they couldn't even expose it using .ini files is just wild. At least it supports xinput properly, which wasn't something you could take for granted back then.

 

[spiel]

Dropped The Knight Witch

I finally unlock a dash ability, and the game takes it away in the next stage set underwater where movement is constrained, the dash is gone, you can only shoot horizontally, AND the game drops you into arena rooms that are far too small with bullet hell.

I rage quit. It felt like banging my head on the wall and not even in a good way like Silksong where at least the combat feels snappy, or One Step From Eden where it's fast-paced.

It upset me so much that I...

... Played Nubby's Number Factory

Instant gratification, the game. It didn't last long in my rotation but I can see why it went viral. Amazing aesthetic.

Completed Linelith

A nice short puzzle fix for The Witness lovers out there. Bonus points for having non-annoying sokoban mechanics. I picked this up in the Bite-Sized Puzzle Exploration bundle and I'm looking forward to playing the other games.

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Mercury Abbey ( YiTi Games / Gamirror Games, 2024)

A visual novel with light puzzling, and a few side-scrolling platforming and top-down action sequences, with the look of a retro pixel-art point-and-click adventure. The game was successfully crowdfunded with a Kickstarter campaign that raised 1,502,241 Yuan in 2022.

Clearly this is a game for furry fans made by (Chinese) furry fans, but the presentation is as high-end as you can get with retro pixel-art, and that includes the animations. The game also uses modern shaders to add effects and lighting to the pixel-art that would not have been possible back in the 1990s, making this a real feast for the eyes (even for non furry fans). Supported by a subtle but vibey soundtrack, the game just oozes cozyness right from the title screen. There is no voice-acting.

Despite looking like a 2D side-scrolling puzzle adventure, it's really a visual novel though - reading dialogue is the main activity in the game and therein lies also the game's biggest flaw, a sub-par English translation that, even a year after release and with more translations apparently in development, desperately needs an editor to fix all sorts of awkward phrasing and outright typos. The story suffers somewhat from initial slow pacing - the game spends two of its five chapters trying a bit too hard to establish a lighthearted cozy vibe to make the inevitable twist and subversion more effective, but ends up coming very close to being outright boring and tedious at times during those first two chapters.

I found this game through a Steam Next Fest demo in 2022 which already showed all of these exact strengths and weaknesses and knew I was going to play this regardless, and I'm happy to report that the last three chapters actually make for interesting reading (despite the weak translation) and the occasional puzzles and mini-games, while not challenging, are a welcome distraction from a pure VN experience.

For people who do not care about the art style (or the furry/anthro factor), this game is probably a 6/10 at best, but for me, it's a solid

7/10 (and if the English translation ever gets properly edited, I would even bump that to an 8)

 

[STHX]

Milestone is one of the biggest videogame companies in italy, having nearly 300 employes and reaching 30 years of age this year (although technically it's slightly older as it had a different name, Graffiti, between 1994 and 1996). Since the beginning they focused on racing games, and slowly made their way year after year, from publisher to publisher, eventually specializing in bike games, which makes sense as italians do love their 2 wheels. From the official Superbike games, to official MotoGP games (and also some car games like official WRC games for a while), even dipping their toes into motocross with offical MXGP titles. But to fully mature eventually a big developer needs to stand on their feet, and work on something that can be considered "by them". Milestone always had an impressive release schedule thanks to most of their titles using the same graphical engine (and probably more), so when looking back at their history they decided to make their own bike game, combining all thei knowledge and code made so far. And so they made Ride, a game "by bike enthusiast for bike enthusiast" not linked to any specific license but featuring multiple types of bikes to digitally collect and events to try digitally try them
But today I'm not talking about that game, but the sequel, Ride 2

Released a few years after the first, Ride 2 is a bike focused racing title featuring many bikes (with all dlcs, according to the in-game list, it should be exactly 240) from well known manufacturers (Aprilia, Suzuki, Ducati, KTM, Kawasaki, Bimota, Yamaha etc) across different categories (from Naked bikes, to Sports, Superbikes, 2, 3 or 4 cylinders etc). The game has a similar progression system to titles like Gran Turismo with the player earning credits by winning races, which are then used to buy new bikes, or upgrade existing ones. As soon as you start the game you create your rider which has some limited customization options, pick your starting free bike, and then can immediately race
The main mode is called World Tour. There is no story in the game (I guess the closest thing to a story is your character being part of a riding club with fellow bike enthusiasts and you race for fame and money or something). World Tour is separated into separate modes with the first one being simply called Events. The events mode is separated into 4 categories (Urban Style, Street Icons, Hyper Sport, Pro Racing) each one focused on specific bike categories. Each one of these categories has 3 subcategories (Amateur, Rookie, Expert) with Amateur being the only one available at first and the other 2 requiring 5 and 10 victories in the same category to unlock. Inside a subcategory we finally find the real meat, the actual events: each event is made of a series of separate challenges (from 3 to 6) which the player can tackle as they want. Some (most) are single races (just be first in a race on a specific track with specific weather), others can be things like Time Attack (beat a certain lap time), Perfect Trajectory (beat a certain time but you must drive between specific track cones without hitting them otherwise your final time gets penalized), Drag Races (win on a straight race by pushing the bike to max speed with manual gears changing), Track Day (pass a certain amount of other riders in a limited time), duels (pass a certain opponent in a certain amount of time), endurance (last one standing) and so on. Each event has set limits that allow only certain types of bikes, usually a specific "powerlevel" (which is calculated using PP, or Performance Points, with better and faster bikes having higher ones), but can also be only bikes from certain years, or bikes from certain manufactures, or bikes belonging to specific categories, with some events even limiting the player to 2 specific bikes. Bikes in your garage can be improved with credits by buffing their engine, or having better brakes, suspensions, wheels, anything you can expect from these type of tuning, and I like the changes are also visible on the bike 3D models. Obviously tuning your bike changes their PP, with some reaching too many PP to be used in some events (but most can be fully maxed and still be used with most events PP limits) with a small number of bikes also changing category if fully modded (turned into proper racing superbikes)
Outside of the main events, there are 3 other type of challenges. First are invitationl events: every 8 normal events completed the player can take part of an invitational which is basically a single race with specific conditions, which rewards the player a bike (between 2) on the first clear. The bike you don't pick gets added to the in-game shop regardless (together with the one you pick), and after winning an invitational it unlocks permanently (but you won't get another bike by winning it again). Next you have the Championships,which are multi-race torunaments. You unlock a championship every time you win at least 2/3 of the total events in a category (like 2/3 of the Urban Style Amateur races) and like invitationals you earn and unlock new bikes for winning them. Laslty there is the Team Challenge, in which the player and 3 other members of its club challenge 4 other riders from a competing club (and again, unlock new bikes for each win). The amount of rival lcubs you can challenge depends on the player "reputation" which is earned by winning events together with credits. You can argue the main objective of the game is reaching the top spot of the reputation rankings, which you could see as your rider being recognized as the number 1 bike enthusiast in the Ride world or something
Obviously we must talk about the race tracks. The tracks are nice and there is a good variation between actual race tracks (based on real world race tracks), city tracks (set into real world cities) and others set in more rural areas. The tracks come from around the world (Italy, Japan, Germany, USA, Greece, etc) and each city and rural track clearly follows the architectural style of its country of origin in the background. The tracks are well made and look good graphically but considering the amount of events the game has they're simply not enough: even in the first category the player will see many tracks multiple times. It's good tracks have variations (short, long, complete, western side, eastern side etc) but again, it's not enough. Doesn't help the soundtrack is basically non-existant... well there should be some generic sounding music but the bike engine basically covers it all, and obviously removing the engine sound effect to listen to generic sounding music in a bike game makes no sense. Talking about bikes, the bike models are very good and obviously based on the real life versions. Each bike is unique, with it's own sounds, speedometers (seen when racing in first person), design, and each one also features a small history lesson on the bike (when it was created, who designed it, if that type of bike won something, its specs) which will most likely be of interest for bike fans. Manufacturers also have their own history lesson
As far as the actual racing element is, well the game features many options to make the game harder (more simulation) or easier (less simulation), but I'm not really an expert on this front so I can't give a real opinion. Apparently the simulation aspect is decent but not fully realistic even if the player goes all in on removing any helper option. Like most Milestone games however the player has the power of "Rewind", which allows the player to rewind the last seconds in case of mistakes, crashing, or just because they want. Rewinds spend a dedicated bar which recharges as the race goes on, and as long as you don't spam it you should always have some rewind charge in case of need. Difficulty wise the game is, eh, unbalanced. There are many difficulty options from very easy to "realistic", but it's obvious the AI never really changes and instead on easier difficulties the opponents simply stop pushing their bikes after reaching certain speeds. But this also creates the actual imbalance: because the opponents push their bikes to certain values (depending on difficulty) then unless your bike can pass that threeshold winning is basically impossible, especially on Realistic since opponents never crash (unless you intentionally ride into them, but everyone gets teleported back on track after a crash regardless). Similarly difficulty only works on the opponents, for time attack or perfect trajectory events difficulty changes nothing, and some of these can be quite hard to an "Easy" difficulty player because of this. The devs must have known this because well wouldn't you know each category always has at least 2/3 of the events be normal races, enough to unlock all championships without having to beat the non-standard events. How curious
Ultimately, clearing every event will mostly depend on how much you'll get bored by racing in the same tracks but with a slightly different bike. Even the achievement list doesn't require the player to win all events (you just need to win all team challenges, get first place reputation ranking, and win one type of each event once), but this game can still be of interest for fans of bikes, especially on pc where there aren't many options, and the game is usually cheap during sales. In the end, this is a game for bike enthusiasts, and if you are you will most likely enjoy VROOM VROOMing for a few hours

Oh, right, why did I skip straight to Ride 2 instead of the original? Well, because honestly Ride 2 is Ride 1 but better: more bikes, more events, more tracks, runs better (the first Ride has a nasty bug whoich can corrupt your save file). As I said most Milestone games are clearly built on the same codebase and are very similar, and the same goes for the first 2 Ride. So you might as well play the sequel (or one of the licensed ones if you want to play as a professional MotoGP or MXGP racer). After Ride 2 and MotoGP 17 Milestone would retire their old engine and move to Unreal 4, so Ride 2 is, for all intent and purpose, the final sendoff for their engine and their style of games up to that point, which makes it a good test run to see if you like their type games

 

[TrishaKit]

Its been ages since I posted here, but I beat the Atelier Dusk trilogy last year and I gotta say, while Ayesha was fantastic, and Escha & Logy was a huge leap in graphical fidelity (and imo the best battle system in the series of the ones I've played), I was really underwhelmed by Shallie. This is not to say that I didn't enjoy it, but I saw the birth of a lot of things I don't like about Sophie in that game. Time limits being fully removed is the most obvious one - one I don't care for, as I feel they keep you focused on progression and completing goals and made the earlier games (the Arland games in particular) feel more, well, gamey. The way you progress the story also at times felt a bit busy work-y and sometimes things the game would reward you for doing or wanted you to do were vague. This isn't to say that I disliked Shallie overall; the above posts by Kvik regarding Escha & Logy are addressed in that trying to solve the problem of the Dusk is a major aspect of the game's story, and this means a lot of characters from Ayesha return including my fave best boy Keithgriff. It also seemingly has the most English dubbed lines of the PS3/Vita Ateliers, based on my experience.

Anyways
Ayesha - 8/10
Escha & Logy - 7.5/10
Shallie - 6.5/10

 

[TrishaKit]

one funny detail: the name "Escha & Logy" is pronounced "escha to logy" in Japanese. Eschatology is a name for the expectation that the world will end (in some form or other, and do so soon-ish). Despite this reference, the game just isn't really willing to really deal with that topic, front and center. Sure, things get a bit harder out in the frontier, but you never get a true "end of days" feeling. It's way too cheery and happy for that to ever hit you.

You do see a town become deserted due to running out of water, fwiw.

 

[Mivey]

You do see a town become deserted due to running out of water, fwiw.

that's what I mean with "things getting harder". Sure, it hints at the danger, but it's only a small subplot.
I'm playing Atelier Shallie right now, and this game actually spells out the danger much clearer, right from the start, with the "Dusk Sea", the ever increasing desert that threatens to swallow the whole world if nothing is done.