This article is based on play of an in-development build of FINAL FANTASY XIV: Dawntrail, and content in the final version is subject to change.

“What we want to bring to all of you Warriors of Light is the very best summer vacation a hero could possibly have. I realize this is like a sudden change from the feeling of Endwalker. But I mean, you did save not only all of Hydaelyn, but kind of the whole universe, so we thought maybe we’d give you just a little break.

So, the site of this vacation, and a brand-new adventure, will be what you know as the ‘New World’…what we know as ‘Tural’.”

~Naoki Yoshida (FINAL FANTASY XIV FAN FESTIVAL 2023-2024 Keynote Address)

In my hands-on demo of Dawntrail as part the Dawntrail Media Tour, my mind kept going back to those statements made in Las Vegas. I am veteran of Eorzea. I’ve played since alpha of 1.0, and I have completed every storyline and explored every new region as the story drove itself towards its almost inevitable conclusion that (perfectly, in my opinion) bookended the story that started so long ago for me in the Sixth Astral Era.

Personally, I am incredibly ready for something new and different. And yes, that includes even a summer vacation.

My hands-on Dawntrail demo was not the full expansion, unfortunately. I was limited to exploring the city of Tuliyollal, the field areas of Urqopacha and Kozama’uka, and a new dungeon that comes fairly early on called Ihuykatumu. I did that dungeon both as part of a media group as the Pictomancer job, and I attempted it later on both new jobs solo with Duty Support.

I won’t spoil what little of the storyline I saw in Ihuykatumu other than to say that the division of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn into different competing camps to determine the new Tural king that was teased in the Growing Light patches is not a pre-expansion gimmick, but it actually looks to be genuine. I am glad about this, as I hate it when intriguing storylines are set up and then immediately discarded afterwards. And honestly, what can be more interesting than having dear friends turned into competitive foes as a narrative hook?

But let’s talk the landscape and cities of Tural, because what little I got to see of Dawntrail is unlike anything we have seen so far in FINAL FANTASY XIV Online. Dawntrail is FINAL FANTASY XIV’s most beautiful expansion to date, and one that I never stopped discovering new things in during my demo. The place I kept coming back to during my Dawntrail demo, even to just watch the sun rise and eventually set, was Tuliyollal. This city is drenched in vibrant colors and was laid out in such a natural way that I did not feel like I was being bottle-necked into one part or another like I was by the bridges in Stormblood‘s Kugane.

A Day in the city of Tuliyollal. © SQUARE ENIX

Tuliyollal is built on a hill, with the dock and markets at the foot and the Royal Palace at the top, and the entire cityscape exists out in the open air. Tuliyollal did not feel excessively stretched out over a large map for the sake of making it appear ‘big’ or needlessly complex for the sake of looking complex, and there was something quite magical about being able to look down from a higher elevation and see the city (and a few other members of the media!) bustling down below. There is one certain spot, near the top, that I think will be an extremely popular spot to just people-watch from when Dawntrail launches because you can see so much of the city below it against the backdrop of the sky and ocean.

True to Dawntrail’s cultural inclusivity lore in Tural, Tuliyollal has a lot of NPCs of different races chatting with each other, sitting at a table, or even demonstrating combat for an adoring crowd. While we were warned there are quite a few NPCs missing in the city to talk to (and all they could say anyway was ‘Welcome to Tural!’), Tuliyollal feels like a real, lived-in city that was built up around the environment it inhabits instead of a place built to spite the environment like Rhalgar’s Reach does.

The two outside areas I could visit, Kozama’uka and Urqopacha, could not possibly be more different and they both were gorgeous in their own ways. Kozama’uka is a colorful, forested area with giant waterfalls that dwarf everything around you, while Urqopacha is mountainous with volcanoes with glowing lava cracked across the surface. While not everywhere in both areas was accessible to us, I was incredibly impressed with how much there was to discover. These photos below really only give a glimpse of everything there is to find there.

There is so much to see and visit in Kozama’uka and Urqopacha. © SQUARE ENIX

Both of these areas, and the tiny towns that exist inside both of them, are places you’re going to want to explore in depth while flying on a mount, as they are clearly geared towards that. To show just how much there is to find in these areas: it was only towards the end of my hands-on demo that I found a small, out of the way, pathway that had mysterious paintings inside across the walls.

I believe that I was part of the first non-SQUARE ENIX-employed North American group to clear the Ihuykatumu dungeon, and I did so as the new Pictomancer job. While my thoughts on the job can be seen here, I just want to say briefly that Pictomancer is incredibly versatile, and you will be utilizing both Aetherhue Actions and Motif/Muse Magicks quite a bit. As for Viper, you can see my full thoughts here about that job, but it will be the most complicated job in FINAL FANTASY XIV Online when Dawntrail is released. This is because there are multiple combos you need to execute in different ways in order to maximize your damage output. Once you try it out, you’ll get the hang of it. Trust me.

“Dawntrail is FINAL FANTASY XIV’s most beautiful expansion to date, and one that I never stopped discovering new things in during my demo.”

Ihuykatumu is a level 91 dungeon, and my character was level capped down to level 92 from 100 for it. Presumably, this sets Ihuykatumu as a fairly early dungeon in Dawntrail. One of my biggest questions coming into this expansion, especially with all the new Xbox Series S and X players, and the ability to buy scenario skip items in the online shop for a large discount at the moment, was if Dawntrail would be a good jumping on spot for brand new players.

Based solely upon my experience raiding in the dungeon, the answer is ‘no.’ The boss mechanics at each of the three major fights of that dungeon have Areas of Effect that crisscross the battle area in large patterns, and the enemies have special attack moves and patterns that clearly expect the players to know what to do based upon prior dungeon experience in prior expansions. In other words, this is a strong continuation of the gameplay style and degree of difficulty from Endwalker. If you’ve completed maybe only A Realm Reborn’s basic storyline and you want to jump into Dawntrail, then (based solely upon this dungeon) you’re going to have a hard time as the difficulty level is far higher than even the final ARR fights.

Something else that I wondered about would be if there was going to be a return of dungeon gimmicks/mechanics. I was curious about if this was going to make a resurgence due to another SQUARE ENIX-published title, BABYLON’S FALL, actually introducing the concept of dungeon mechanics during the Tale of Two Ziggurats substory that was released in May 2022.

Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P), however, stated that they want to introduce fresh mechanics back into the gameplay during the Dawntrail Day 1 Q&A. Unfortunately, Ihuykatumu did not have that. Ihuykatumu was the fairly standard ‘fight enemies, kill enemies, get to a miniboss, kill that, and repeat two more times’ type gameplay that has been around since the Stormblood expansion.

Personally, I am of a split opinion of this: while the dungeon mechanics do get annoying when you’re running the dungeon for the umpteenth time to try to get the latest Tomes, they do break up the standard dungeon format into something new. I am hopeful that with Yoshi-P’s comments, we can get more dungeon mechanics like firing cannons at Cuca Fera during Heavensward’s The Stone Vigil (Hard) dungeon. Therefore, I am hopeful that Ihuykatumu will not be indicative of the entire expansion.

There is a lot of enemy variety in Dawntrail. The enemies throughout the overworld and inside the Ihuykatumu dungeon are both unique and were not barely reskinned from elsewhere in Eorzea with a higher level and a different name (well, except for possibly the Malboros). Whether I am running away from Mountain Bears or even a reimagined Cactuar (yes, they are there, and I need that plush now on the SQUARE ENIX Store for purchase!), I kept gawking at them before dispatching them. I even ganged up with my fellow media Warriors of Light to take down a Rank A hunt, Queen Bee, that had fun new mechanics that required us to work together as a group to kill.

The new race option coming to Dawntrail is the female Hrothgar. I spent my entire demo playing as one, and I was more than pleased with how the character model looks. I don’t think it is a big secret that there aren’t a ton of male Hrothgar characters out fighting in Eorzea, but I would be absolutely shocked if we don’t get a lot more female Hrothgars long-term in the game. Everything from the character face to the fur looked detailed and amazing, and I was quite pleased with how the female Hrothgar looked in various job gear.

There is one more thing that I want to talk about, and this takes place back in Tuliyollal. Towards the end of my Dawntrail demo, I visited what I assumed will be the in-game market area in the city for tomes trade ins, NPC item sellers, and such. If you’ve played FINAL FANTASY XIV from A Realm Reborn through the Endwalker expansion, then there is one thing that you can count on when you visit any NPC shops: they will all be bare-bones cut and paste graphic images of each other’s stalls, no matter where you go in the world. There will be large, stacked bags, generic armor suits, and a few baubles here and there on display. Even at the most lavish lore-wise shop locations in-world, such as the Steps of Nald in Ul’dah and the East/West Balshahn Bazaar in Radz-at-Han, suffer from this generic sameness.

Yet, Tuliyollal’s shops could not be any more different. When started as a quick run through turned into a long, lengthy walk as I kept stopping to gawk at all of the small details the developers placed in. There are so many shops with jewels, individual books, different fish on display, and none of it – even the bookshelves – look to be a copy and paste job between shops. This part of Tuliyollal feels like an actual marketplace that has real, unique, shops in it that is absolutely stuffed to the proverbial Namazu gills with items.

What I presume to be the NPC shops in Tuliyollal are the most detailed ever in this game.

If you’ve read the past two paragraphs, then you’re probably wondering why in Etheirys I am talking about something like basic NPC shops in such detail. Basic service NPC shop background graphics are the kind of thing that no player ever really has talked about for the past decade-plus of FINAL FANTASY XIV Online. In fact, the development team could have probably just done the same bare bones basic work for it for Dawntrail that was put into every other prior expansion, and no one would have noticed or likely cared.

Yet, the fact that the details of NPC shops is something that’s been changed, that this is something SQUARE ENIX has taken the undoubtedly precious time to improve on, speaks volumes about the care and attention to detail the development team is bringing to Dawntrail. After all, if the development team cares this much about improving such a tiny detail of the game, which also haven’t been talked about at a Fan Festival or in a Producer Live Letter so far, then what other improvements and surprises await all of us Warriors of Light in Tural?

I, for one, cannot wait to find out.

There is a large variety of new enemies in Tural. 

If you cannot tell just from reading all of this so far, I was seriously impressed by my hands-on time with Dawntrail. This expansion’s hands-on demo, especially coming off of Endwalker, pulled off the equivalent of a Four Kan or Thirteen Orphans hand in Doman Mahjong for me. Tural feels truly like a fresh break from all of the prior expansions, and this expansion has real promise to be the best expansion yet. This opinion comes from having tried out the two new jobs, seeing the care and attention being given to the graphics and intimate, small details of Tural, and just how simply new everything feels.

Oh, and the music.

You cannot forget the music. Masayoshi Soken has composed music that sounds wildly different than anything that has come before in FINAL FANTASY XIV Online while also feeling appropriate to the atmosphere and the summer vacation goal Naoki Yoshida laid out in Las Vegas. I cannot wait to hear Tuliyollal’s theme at a future Distant Worlds: Music from FINAL FANTASY, A New World: intimate music from FINAL FANTASY, or Eorzean Symphony- FINAL FANTASY XIV Orchestra performance.

All of this is very high praise, considering how much I have loved this critically-acclaimed MMORPG. I spent almost ten hours in just a handful of areas, and yet I feel like I have yet to see everything there is out there. Tural feels like a giant, colorful, beautiful world with so much potential present to be the best expansion yet. And so I am just counting down the days until Dawntrail enters early access on June 28 and is fully released on July 2.

Please check out my thoughts on the new Viper job, on the new Pictomancer job, and about Naoki Yoshida’s Media Q&A from Day 1!

If you want more FINAL FANTASY XIV Online-themed content, then be sure to check out my ongoing cooking series, Cooking Eorzea!

Also, check out what eleven FINAL FANTASY XI Online enemies that I think need to be part of the upcoming Echoes of Vana’diel raid series in Dawntrail.

What do you think of Tuliyollal, Urqopacha, and Kozama’uka?

Did you preorder Dawntrail so you can get in during the June 28 early access period?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post Dawntrail Media Tour: Dawntrail Shows Promise to be the Best Expansion Yet appeared first on oprainfall.

This article is based on play of an in-development build of FINAL FANTASY XIV: Dawntrail, and content in the final version is subject to change.

Introduction to Viper

Viper is the other new DPS job introduced in the upcoming Dawntrail expansion, which uses two one-handed blades that can be combined into a single two-handed weapon to fight with. This job utilizes weapon skills to attack enemies and calls upon the memories of ancient hunters contained within their soul crystal to enfeeble opponents and enhance themselves for a period of time.

Because this job does not have such an obvious inspiration as Pictomancer does from FINAL FANTASY VI, Viper has the opportunity to make its own unique mark on the FINAL FANTASY job canon. I was able to take up this job and spend some serious time with it in Tural as part of the Dawntrail Media Tour, and I found it to be a complicated but incredibly fun job.

Playing as Viper

Viper is a complicated job that focuses primarily around enfeebling foes and enhancing your Viper, pulling off multiple basic combo variations, gaining and using Rattling Coil stacks, and finally using the Reawaken ability to pull off a nine-ability combo sequence that you can then do a second time through the 120 second cool down Serpent’s Ire action.

Please note that I was able to demo Viper at the 100-level cap.

Enfeeblement and Enhancements

The longer I kept killing enemies in Tural, the more I realized Viper’s first priority is to enfeeble your enemies and enhance your own Warrior of Light. Unlike Pictomancer, Viper does not enhance anyone but themselves, and does not increase damage to the enemy for anyone else but themselves. As for what options you have, please look below:

These are not minor enhancement/enfeeblements but are instead quite significant to have in effect during battle. For instance, if you have both Noxious Gnash and Hunter’s Instinct in effect, then you’re doing quite a bit more harm to your enemy than you would otherwise.

Combos

Combining Noxious Gnash, Hunter’s Instinct, and Swiftscaled together significantly increases the amount of damage Viper can dish out by a significant amount by both pure numbers and the reduced cast/recast delay. Thankfully, these can be initiated by the first two steps of the 1-2-3 combo with Dread Fangs > Swiftskin’s Sting or Steel Fangs > Hunter’s Sting. You’ll want to complete out the full 1-2-3 combo to enhance the potency of another combo finisher as well in order to increase the Serpent Ire Gauge by 10 before switching to the other combo. These combos will be your standard combo cycle, and thankfully the 1-2-3 combo rotates through a single hotkey.

AoE combos start off with Steel Maw or Dread Maw, and they also combo out from there like above.

In addition to all of that, there is a lot of combo crossover in order to maximize damage through Swiftskin’s Venom Effect and Fellskin’s Venom Effect. These two effects bolster the damage potential of the third step of the combo, which gives a real incentive to do both combos back-to-back. And if that wasn’t enough, then you can execute Death Rattle or Last Lash on top of all that at the end of each combo.

Every 40 seconds, you can also fire off Dreadwinder into Hunter’s Coil/Swiftskin’s Coil and then into the other second skill of Hunter’s Coil/Swiftskin’s Coil that you did not use moments before. Furthermore, using Hunter’s Coil/Swiftskin’s Coil as a finisher to that second combo gives you access to Twinblood Bite and Twinfang Bite. Not only does this second combo grant the full array of enfeeblement and enhancements, but it also increases the Serpent Ire Gauge and grants a Rattling Coil. These Rattling Coil stacks appear as the red gems on the Vipersight bar. Rattling Coil stacks can be used to activate Uncoiled Fury, which does significant AoE damage.

I’ve barely discussed some of the combo possibilities here, and so I would urge you to review the action assignable and unassignable charts below to see how everything can be utilized. I promise you: it is a lot.

Finally, when you have 50 in the Serpent’s Ire Gauge, you can use Reawaken. Reawaken does solid AoE damage to surrounding enemies, but more importantly…it grants five stacks of Anguine Tribute. At this point, you can utilize the insanely complicated combo at level 100 of First Generation > First Legacy > Second Generation > Second Legacy > Third Generation > Third Legacy > Fourth Generation > Fourth Legacy > Ouroboros. Each Generation step uses up one Anguine Tribute, and Ouroboros uses up the fifth and final Anguine Tribute. If you then pop the Serpent’s Ire action (120 second timer) immediately afterwards, you not only are granted a stack of Rattling Coil, but you then have the ability to use Reawaken, and all nine other linked actions, in the combo a second time.

Combine that with a Role Action such as Bloodbath, and you’re a walking, damaging, self-healing DPS machine…especially if you have all three major enfeeblement and enhancements active as well. Please check out the end of the YouTube video linked at the top to see this full Reawaken combo in action!

Direction-Oriented Attacks

In what is probably the baffling decision for Viper, Swiftskin’s Coil and Hindsting Strike/Hindsbane Fang does more damage when executed from the target’s rear, and Flanksting Strike/Flanksbane Fang does more damage from the target’s flank. Thankfully, you do get Truth North as a Role Action to negate the directional angling, but it is still something that is quite a surprise to find for this job and it honestly does not fit in as you already have enough to worry about already.

Viper Actions Charts

Viper Unassignable Actions Charts

Viper Role Chart

Viper Traits Chart

Final Thoughts on Viper

If you’ve followed along with this all so far, then you’ve probably reached the same conclusion that I have: Viper is a very weaponskill heavy, complicated job. In fact, I suspect that Viper will be the most complicated job in all of FINAL FANTASY XIV Online when Dawntrail is released.

It can be very easy to lose your place in the weapon skill rotation, as both the single target and the AoE rotations have multiple weapon skill paths to go down to complete the combo — and you’ll want to do so in order to max out your enfeeblement and enhancements. FINAL FANTASY XIV Online’s smart AI is a Twelvesended gift, because the hotbar will light up the weapon skill with a higher effect to do next, and this will help you keep pace with alternating between the different combos. For me, this meant I could hit the combos constantly and consistently without remembering exactly what I had already hit. Without this, Viper would be infinitely harder to play and utilize appropriately in combo for anyone but the most skilled of players.

I do think that the directional-oriented bonuses to damage are something that requires quite a bit of movement and makes Viper a bit like Dragoon because of it. Thankfully, True North can negate that need to direct yourself if you don’t want to deal with repositioning every so often during the fight. I frankly don’t care for that mechanic because it feels a bit tacked on, and I am glad that not every combo and weapon skill requires me to be rotating to different positions around the enemy in order to execute effectively.

Finally, you’ll notice that I haven’t talked about single bladed and dual bladed weapons, despite that being what is advertised in the Viper job description. Watching the blades come together and come apart is quite cool looking graphically, but I found myself focusing on enhancing/enfeebling, filling up the Rattling Coil and Serpent’s Ire Gauge, and trying to pull off back-to-back nine-hit combos through Reawaken action and Serpent’s Ire action when I wasn’t utilizing my other combo sets.

Viper is ultimately a lot of fun to play, make no mistake about it. It is also the one job that I am dying to see be utilized in Crystalline Conflict PVP due to simply how much damage it is expected to dish out as quickly as possible. I really think that if players take the time to experiment and learn this job, then they will fall quickly in love with Viper like I ended up doing.

Please check out my thoughts on the new Pictomancer job, and about Naoki Yoshida’s Media Q&A from Day 1, and my opinion on the Dawntrail demo as a whole.

If you want more FINAL FANTASY XIV Online-themed content, then be sure to check out my ongoing cooking series, Cooking Eorzea!

Also, check out what eleven FINAL FANTASY XI Online enemies that I think need to be part of the upcoming Echoes of Vana’diel raid series in Dawntrail.

Are you going to pick up Viper when the upcoming Dawntrail expansion releases?

What do you think about directional-based actions?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post Dawntrail Media Tour: Viper is a Complicated, and Fun, DPS FFXIV Job appeared first on oprainfall.

This article is based on play of an in-development build of FINAL FANTASY XIV: Dawntrail, and content in the final version is subject to change.

Introduction to Pictomancer

Out of the two new jobs, I would definitely say that Pictomancer is the easier of the two to quickly grasp and use. As I experimented more and more with this job, I found myself assigning the various actions/role categories across two cross-bars in order to utilize the Pictomancer toolkit to its fullest. This job is debuting as part of the upcoming Dawntrail expansion and draws upon the Pictomancer class first brought to life by Relm Arrowny in FINAL FANTASY VI (that’s FINAL FANTASY III for those of you who are playing on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or SNES).

Playing as Pictomancer

Billed as a magical ranged DPS job, there are two major aspects to Pictomancer, Aetherhue Actions and Motif/Muse Magicks, with a smattering of other abilities thrown in. Each of the two main categories are assigned a different player HUD display: Paint/Palette Gauge and Canvases, respectively. I will first be diving into both of these, and then addressing the miscellaneous other abilities below. Please note there are Role Abilities for this job too, but none of those are unique to Pictomancer.

Please note that I was able to demo Pictomancer at the 100-level cap.

Aetherhue Actions

First up are Aetherhue Actions. Despite what you may think or anticipate, Aetherhue Actions are intended to be the bread-and-butter 1-2-3 combo actions for Pictomancer. Your regular cycle starts off with Fire in Red (single target) or Fire II in Red (AoE). Once that is activated, you next use Aero (I/II) in Green and then finally Water (I/II) in Blue to complete the combo. At this point, you accumulate a White Paint and you get 25 aether on the Palette Gauge HUD. White Paint can be consumed to use the spell Holy in White, which is an AoE attack. If you use Subtractive Palette when the Palette Gauge has 50 points in it, then you gain the effect of Monochrome Tones, which converts a single White Paint into a single Black Paint, and you get three stacks of Subtractive Palette to utilize.

Only once Subtractive Palette is active can you use the other 1-2-3 spell combo: Blizzard (I/II) in Cyan to Stone (I/II) in Yellow to Thunder (I/II) in Magenta. These are MUCH more damaging combo attacks than the Fire/Aero/Water combo, but they also grant you a White Paint and Aetherhues. With the converted Black Paint, you can cast Comet in Black, which is a more potent AoE attack than Holy in White. It is important to note that you can only use Comet in Black while under Monochrome Tones, and you can only cast the Blizzard/Stone/Thunder combo while Subtractive Palette is in effect. You can also still fire off Holy in White back to back with Comet in Black or with other Holy in White spells, even under the effect of Subtractive Palette.

This all sounds complicated, but it definitely is not. The majority of your damage is going to come through your Aetherhue Actions, and by doing the Fire/Aero/Water combo until you can swap over into the Blizzard/Stone/Thunder combo while firing off Holy and Comet AoE spells for as many times as you can. It was quite fun to do, and I was surprised at how little that I had to pay attention to the Palette Gauge in order to track my Aetherhues.

Your Aetherhue Actions are directly influenced by your Landscape Motif/Muse Magics, as I will detail below, and are the major reason why you’ll want to be firing off Starry Muse every chance (okay, every 120 seconds) that you get.

Motif/Muse Magicks

The second major half of this job is the Motif/Muse Magicks, and they are what you are thinking about the most when you see this job: A Pictomancer will paint Creature Motifs, Weapon Motifs, and Landscape Motifs on each of three canvases, and then bring them to life with magic.

First up, the Creature Motif. This spell has a 2.92 second cast time, with a 3.90 second recast timer. It also is a constantly changing action that will go from Pom Motif, Wing Motif, Claw Motif, and finally Maw Motif (in that order) when used. Once you use the Pom/Winged/Clawed/Fanged Muse ability (Living Muse Action turns into whatever painting is on the Canvas), it will then add that particular Depiction to the slot above the canvas as well as damage the enemy. Each Muse has a 40 second cooldown as well. When you have both Depiction of Pom and Depiction of Wings active, you create a Moogle Portrait that hangs out at the top of the Creature Canvas and will signal that you can use the Mog of the Ages ability that does significant AoE damage. Additionally, Retribution of the Madeen becomes available at level 100 when you have all four Motifs painted. These two Moogle and Madeen actions honestly really cool, and you will want to fire it off every 40 seconds or so in order to add another Depiction to the Creature canvas so you can build up to bringing out either the Moogle or Madeen to obliterate your foes.

The Weapon Motif is absolutely the most personally useful out of the three. First, you use the Hammer Motif ability, which appears when Weapon Motif is placed on the hotbar, and it paints a hammer on the Weapon Canvas (yes, that is the only weapon available so far). When you have a hammer on the canvas, you can use Striking Muse. This uses up the hammer painting and grants three stacks of Hammer Time. When you have Hammer Time active, you can then use Hammer Stamp to deal critical AoE damage at a large range. Hammer Stamp turns into Hammer Brush, and then into Polishing Hammer to complete the combo. Most crucially, you can still use the Hammer combo even while running away from enemies and it won’t be interrupted…which I found out firsthand during a FATE gone bad.

Finally, there is the Landscape Motif, which paints a starry sky over on the Landscape Canvas through the Starry Sky Motif when that particular action is placed on the hotbar. Every 120 seconds, you can then use the Starry Muse ability. This ability throws down a party AoE buff around the Pictomancer that increases the affected party members’ damage by 5%. It also gives the effect of Inspiration, which reduces the cast/recast timer for Star Prism and Aetherhue spells by 25%, lets you cast back-to-back Rainbow Drip spells, and lets you cast Star Prism. Star Prism restores the health of nearby party members and does AoE damage to enemies. Finally, there is the Hyperphantasia effect. If you perform five Aetherhue Actions or Star Prism spells, you are then granted the Rainbow Bright Enhancement. While that is in effect, Rainbow Drip (discussed in the next subsection) becomes an instant cast spell and has a reduced recast timer. If you can’t tell, Landscape Motif is more of a buff Motif than anything else, but it has a lot of really cool effects to help the party with. The AoE for party members was surprisingly large too, and I kept being surprised at how much I didn’t have to be in the deepest thick of battle to activate it.

If the Aetherhue Actions are the heart of the job’s mechanics, then the Motif/Muse Magicks are the extra necessary bits you will have to master the timing of in order to really execute Pictomancer successfully, since they simply add so much more damage with each Creature or Weapon cycles you do in combat. Also, because each motif can be recast immediately after battle, any Pictomancer worth their Archon Loaf will be reupping the motif paintings after battle and will be casting them whenever they can between Aetherhue Actions.

Miscellaneous Actions

Besides the Aetherhue Actions and Motif/Muse Magicks, there are a handful other Pictomancer actions. For example, there is the Tempera Coat, which acts like the Stoneskin of yester-era by absorbing damage up to 20% of your maximum HP and Tempera Grassa that absorbs 10% damage for yourself and other nearby party members. There is also Smudge, which lets you dash 15 yalms forward and gives you a very brief movement speed increase. Finally, there is Rainbow Drip. That spell does significant straight-line damage to enemies and also grants a White Paint. If you have Rainbow Bright Enhancement active, that means that you can rapidly stack up White Paints to then cast back-to-back Holy in White spells for even more damage.

Tempera Coat and Tempera Grassa are incredibly useful, if you can’t tell, and you will be using Rainbow Drip whenever you can to add that extra bit of damage to the battle — especially if you can cast a Holy in White Spell immediately afterwards with that new White Paint. Smudge is okay, but I found myself wishing that the movement speed boost lasted longer for out of battle purposes.

Pictomancer Actions/Unassignable Actions Charts

Below, I’ve attached collage photos of all of the different Pictomancer actions, roles, and traits that were available during the Dawntrail media tour so you can see it all for yourself.

Pictomancer Role/Traits

Additionally, here are the Pictomancer Role and Traits that were available during the Dawntrail Media Tour for me to try out.

Final Thoughts on Pictomancer

If you’ve made it this far, then you’re probably wondering how Pictomancer fits in with all the other jobs available to play. Pictomancer is primarily a magical ranged DPS job that offers limited party support through the Landscape Canvas and through the Tempera Coat and Tempera Grassa abilities. Pictomancer does not approach the support versatility of Dancer or Bard, but the 5% damage increase through the Landscape Canvas and Starry Muse is quite noticeable if it isn’t kept up whenever possible. Instead, Pictomancer utilizes all eight elements of the wheel (before Red Mage got to, surprisingly) to rotate two different color-themed combos with White/Black AoE attacks while simultaneously painting on the Weapon Canvas and Creature Canvas whenever those times are up. Additionally, there are few things more fun that activating Starry Muse, getting that Rainbow Bright Enhancement, and just spamming as many Rainbow Drip and Holy in White spells as possible during that timer window.

Pictomancer is a lot of fun to play, and it was not as difficult as it made it out to be when it was first demoed. The biggest challenge for this job is going to be remembering to use the appropriate Muse whenever the timer is up, so you can keep building those Creature and Weapon combos every chance you get. Finally, while I do not want to tout my own skills too much…I was able to pull enmity off the tank during the player dungeon we did during the Media Tour. It is an absolute BEAST of a job when it comes to doing damage if you can keep up on everything.

Please check out my thoughts on the new Viper job, see what Naoki Yoshida said during the Day 1 Media Tour Q&A, and what my overall thoughts are for the Dawntrail demo.

If you want more FINAL FANTASY XIV Online-themed content, then be sure to check out my ongoing cooking series, Cooking Eorzea!

Also, check out what eleven FINAL FANTASY XI Online enemies that I think need to be part of the upcoming Echoes of Vana’diel raid series in Dawntrail.

What do you think about Pictomancer? Are you excited to try it when Dawntrail is released for pre-order early access on June 28, 2024, and worldwide on July 2, 2024?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post Dawntrail Media Tour: Pictomancer Is Far More Than Just Painting-By-Numbers appeared first on oprainfall.

You can check out more about Arzette at the game’s official website.

Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore is available for purchase NOW: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC

Finally, you can check out my impressions of a hands-on demo here.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: My name is Quentin H. with oprainfall, and you are?

Seth Fulkerson: Seth Fulkerson, developer and creator of Arzette from Seedy Eye Software.

OR: Can you tell us a bit about Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore?

SF: It is a spiritual successor to a pair of infamous fantasy-adventure games from the early 90s, like CD-ROM era. The game has full motion cutscenes, is full of crazy animation, hand-painted backgrounds, and it is done in a familiar [and] beloved style.

OR: What is your personal history with the Phillips CD-i?

SF: So, a few years ago, I made a fan remaster of Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: Wand of Gamelon. I did that to fulfill an in-joke with friends, but also to explore the potential of ‘Well, what if those games were cleaned up a little bit, they might be a little better?’. The response to that was a lot better than what I thought. I was lucky enough that I had a lot of animators and artists that are my close friends. So, we were always sort of kicking around doing our own take on those games. And the time was right, so yeah, it was where the genesis of Arzette started. My producer, Audun Sørlie, got in contact with me and we started working together to make Arzette to what it is.

“I know a lot of people looked at Arzette and thought ‘Why is he making this? Is he making this as a joke?’

No, I wouldn’t spend three to four years of my life making a joke- I want to make a good game.”

OR: You mentioned a little bit ago, and in a prior interview in a January 2024 interview with Game Developer, you said that you took on the challenge of remastering two CD-i Zelda games: Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon as an in-joke. What kind of in-joke makes you want to develop a game for four years?

SF: So, in 2016, that’s around the time that Twilight Princess HD came out, me and some friends were literally joking ‘What if that, but The Faces of Evil?’. And so, I started trying to scope it out, and I’ve been making games for a long time – mostly really small stuff like game jam type stuff. But I had a hard time finishing projects – especially that were not bigger scope, but along the lines of that.

So, it was a dual purpose: ‘Hey, I’ll finish the joke but also finish a game.’ And in the course of developing those [remastered CD-i The Legend of Zelda games], I learned how to make a game for real and I also learned the development history behind the games and the circumstances that lead to them being the way they were. I found it really inspiring, and it really had a profound effect on me and how I wanted to approach future projects and also what I wanted to do with Arzette.

OR: CD-i aficionados will tell you that there is a third CD-i title out there – Zelda’s Adventure. Why did you not take on remastering [that] game as well? Did you use that particular third game any when creating Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore?

SF: Basically, the duology of games – The Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon – they share the same engine, they are almost the same game. Zelda’s Adventure is a lot different; it is a top-down game. But personally, it is going to sound controversial, but I do not care for Zelda’s Adventure. I know it has a lot of its fans, but for a game, basically The Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon, for all their flaws, had a pretty solid gameplay loop – especially for Western games released in 1993.

It’s very prototypical Metroidvania – multilayer levels – you collect items through people or collect powerups, you go back through levels with new powerups. Zelda’s Adventure does not really have that at all. In fact, there are lots of items that are red herrings – it’s a very mean game to the player. I do not like it.

OR: Let’s follow up on the gameplay loop. You’re taking gameplay from games published in 1993, and putting it into a 2024 gaming atmosphere. We have had at least two generations of gamers come up during that time period. How do you take that and make that relevant to a modern-day audience while still staying true to the original 1993 releases?

SF: So, right away, when I was prototyping, I identified a lot of elements that I knew I would include in Arzette. The gamefeel, how it looks – a lot of things. For instance, if someone were to look at Arzette from a distance, they would say ‘Oh, I know what that is’ or ‘That looks familiar’ and pick it up. Maybe they will get the feeling that this is like a CD-i like game, but they aren’t aware that they are getting the five-star hotel treatment of CD-i. There’s a lot of lives, there’s generous checkpointing, the gameplay’s a lot faster, there’s certain design elements that are intended to be more player friendly.

For instance, keys are always found in the same area if there is a locked door. But in the original game, keys could open whatever door they wanted across the entire world, [and so] it was a lot more obtuse. So, take the essence of those original games and apply a lot of modern sensibilities – ‘cause I don’t want to frustrate the player, I don’t want them to want to give up or think this is poorly designed on purpose.

I know a lot of people looked at Arzette and thought ‘Why is he making this? Is he making this as a joke?’ No, I wouldn’t spend three to four years of my life making a joke – I want to make a good game. It is a delicate balance of jumping, how you attack – it has to feel a certain way and [I] sort of dial it in. Because if I give too many lives, then I can go too far in the opposite direction. But, if you try to stay true to what those games were while polishing off the rough edges, then that is the sweet spot.

“Part of me being sincere and serious about making this a spiritual successor was to get some of the legacy staff on board.”

OR: How did you develop Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore‘s story, and keep the game from falling into an awful parody of the classic CD-i games instead of paying an earnest homage to it?

SF: From the beginning, I knew that I didn’t want to make a wink wink, nudge nudge meme game that was mean-spirited. This was an earnest homage to those games. I wanted to make sure the writing was sincere – it is a strange world with strange characters, but they don’t know that. They are just kind of living their lives. It was important to me and my co-writer to make sure that the atmosphere was Saturday morning cartoons. Sometimes the humor didn’t land, but for the most part, it was a good-spirited world with a good-spirited antagonist.

To me, Arzette would never work if it was mean to itself. It’s a loving homage, and everyone that worked on the game – they all knew what we were doing, they all have the same sort of strange fondness for the [CD-i] games.

OR: About how many minutes of cutscenes are there in this game?

SF: There are 45 minutes of animation in the game.

OR: How do you decide when to use an animation to tell the story and when not to use animation in developing your story?

SF: The original games, for all their flaws, they had a really clever way of delivering player information – and that was through the cutscenes. A lot of the scenes in Arzette deliver gameplay information, like it might seem nonsensical at first, but the drunk guy at the bar is actually telling you that you can reflect projectiles by stabbing them, even though it seems like he is just going on a drunk rant. We added a few minor quests in the game that don’t have animation, but for the most part, I wanted to make sure that the entire thing was fully voice acted and animated.

OR: Did you direct the voice acting?

SF: I had a professional voice director that worked alongside me while voice casting for the game.

OR: And I think you brought back some classic voice actors from the CD-i era. Can you tell us about that?

SF: Part of me being sincere and serious about making this a spiritual successor was to get some of the legacy staff on board. I managed to network and find contact info for some of the original voice actors and one of the original artists that worked on The Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon, Rob Dunlavey – he did the world map for Arzette and one of her levels. He was one of the background painters for Faces of Evil and he did the world map for the game as well.

Jeffrey Rath, who voiced Link in the original games and Bonniejean Wilbur who voiced Zelda – I explained the project, and that yes, it’s been 30 years [but] I promise I’m not crazy. I outlined that it’s an homage, right? They understood, because they’re fully aware of the reputation that the games have. I think for them, it’s really rewarding to see people wanting to revisit their work. They were very receptive [to this], and a joy to work with.

OR: Can you tell us about your partnership with Limited Run Games to publish this title?

SF: After I decided that I wanted to do this game, I started pitching it to various publishers. I sat down with Josh Fairhurst, the CEO of Limited Run, to pitch a physical version of the game. He saw approximately 30 seconds of an early version of the shopkeeper scene, and he decided this was a game they wanted to do. Limited Run seems to want to take risks on games that nobody else would, because Zelda CD-i spiritual successor is certainly a risk. But I think he knew exactly what I wanted to do and how it would be a special game. The game has been a success, so it certainly has been a wonderful relationship with Limited Run Games.

OR: In a 2020 interview with Eurogamer, you mentioned that it took you about four years to develop the remasters of Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon. Did any of that experience play into developing Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore?

SF: Absolutely. I learned a lot more about programming, project management, and how to structure a game from those. They also share the game engine – Gamemaker Studio 2 – I’ve been using Gamemaker since I was 12 years-old, so a fairly long time and I’m fairly familiar [with it].

But it’s learning lessons from those games as well. Even remastering those games – I learned what works and what doesn’t for Arzette to give a modern gameplay experience for players.

OR: There is also a new CD-i controller that was released through Limited Run Games. Can you tell us about that and why would you want to do that yourself?

SF: That was one of the things that we had a discussion about, was doing that controller. It’s just one of those silly, fun things that Limited Run loves to do. For the authentic homage, you can pick up one of those retro controllers. It’ll work on any Switch game. I would not recommend players playing through Arzette the first time with the controller, but it is certainly playable. I’ve played through the whole game with that.

OR: And how was that experience playing with the CD-i controller?

SF: I will say…interesting. I will say, interesting.

OR: That is a loaded statement.

SF: Yes, it is.

OR: Now with Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore released, what’s next? More CD-i inspired titles? Are you going in a different direction entirely? Or what are you planning on doing in the future?

SF: I would love to keep exploring lesser-loved games and everything else. But really, a lot of it depends on the success of Arzette for where I would go next. But yeah, I’m pretty much up for anything.

OR:  Thank you.

Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore is available for purchase NOW: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC

Have you ever played either of the classic The Legend of Zelda CD-i titles?

What do you think about the new retro-style controller?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post PAX EAST 2024 INTERVIEW: Seth Fulkerson on Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore appeared first on oprainfall.

Website

The longer I kept playing The World of Kungfu: Dragon and Eagle, the more I kept thinking “this is so cool!” and the more I wanted to keep playing and wanting to get it when it is released. The World of Kungfu: Dragon and Eagle bills itself as “an old-school wuxia turn-based RPG set in the chaotic times of ancient China,” and it has you start off as a no-named individual who has to learn martial arts as you shape the fate of Wulin.

While the game’s website claims it is a turn-based RPG, the demo I played at GDC 2024 was more like a grid-based tactical RPG game with up to five combatants on your side at once instead. During battle, you can move your characters a certain number of squares around, and you can also attack only within a certain number of highlighted squares too. This isn’t a knock against The World of Kungfu: Dragon and Eagle whatsoever, but I do think it is important to be clear what this game is and is not.

What sets The World of Kungfu: Dragon and Eagle apart from any other RPG of its genre is the combat move pool itself. Every attack is drawn from a pool of over 200 styles of martial arts, and so you will get to experience a lot of different moves. As you use moves over and over again, they will get stronger and level up over time. In other words: you’re literally practicing martial arts in the game and getting stronger and better for it. You can also learn new moves through manuals you collect throughout the world. I hardcore geeked out over all the ingenuity in combat, as I practice kendo in my spare time and it honestly reminded me of walking along the Avenue of the Stars by the Victoria Harbour waterfront in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong.

The enemy AI felt fairly fleshed out and intelligent, and I was impressed that I had to use tactical thinking in order to win my fights (bouts?). While I did not get to experience much of the storyline, as I had to skip a lot of the dialogue to fit the whole demo into my timeslot, I was entertained by what I saw of the wuxia and historically-based atmosphere. Finally, the graphics are detailed pixel-art with vibrant colors. While I was playing my demo, the developer told me that The World of Kungfu: Dragon and Eagle is supposed to be 30-plus hours and it has multiple storylines for you to complete. I am honestly excited for when this game comes out, as I want to play it, and I think you should consider picking it up too if you like the demo/early access that is currently out on Steam.

What martial arts style do you hope makes it into The World of Kungfu: Dragon and Eagle?

Do you plan on picking the game up?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post GDC 2024 IMPRESSIONS- The World of Kungfu: Dragon and Eagle appeared first on oprainfall.

Developer(s): AstralShift
Publisher(s): SQUARE ENIX
Platform(s): TBA
Release Date: TBA

Official Website

If there is one game that my mind keeps going back to from my brief time at PAX West 2023, it has to be Little Goody Two Shoes. Set in the town of Kieferberg, you play as Elise – an incredibly expressive woman who dreams of riches who discovers a red pair of shoes that will change her destiny. The game itself is split into two parts. First, there is a daytime portion where you’re in the town, playing mini-games, exploring romantic interests, and trying to allay suspicions of your fellow townies. Second, there are the nighttime portions where Elise is solving puzzles and navigating dungeons with enemies in them. Both halves couldn’t feel more different, yet they are clearly meant to be integrated into one whole.

Described to me as an homage to JRPGs, Little Goody Two Shoes has beautiful graphics that remind me a lot of the anime sprites from the Sega Saturn classic Magic Knight RayEarth. The character designs are sharp and expressive while showing off a range of emotions. The city of Kieferberg itself is gorgeous too, and it is a city that would fit well in with any number of classic JRPGs from the 1990s. Even the horror-filled night sections are darkly cute, and they are extremely stylish in a foreboding way as the enemies try to kill me.

My Little Goody Two Shoes demo dropped me into the first nighttime dungeon of the game. Remarkably, the game doesn’t tell you what to do or how to proceed. This is, again, an homage to classic JRPGs. I instead had to try out everything to get an idea of how to proceed. I ended up checking the mirror, letting it crack, picking up a key from the floor, unlocking a treasure chest near the bed, and finding another key inside that let me unlock the door to escape that room. As I proceeded to a room where I had to find four keys to unlock the central door, I encountered candles that would trigger and try to harm me as I came within range whenever I went from corner-to-corner opening chests. While it wasn’t obvious on how to survive them, I ended being okay if I ran away from them before they could spin around and damage me. It is very weird not having a way to defend myself in a dungeon, though it definitely managed to amp up the scare factor because of it.

When the demo moved along to the daytime, it was then that I was told about the Hunger mechanic in the game. Elise, like people in real life, has to eat. And I ended up snacking down on some food in my inventory to help keep her well-fed. As I quickly progressed through various conversations in the daytime, I couldn’t help but be struck by how expressive Elise is. She is not a meek, mute protagonist. Instead, she is a fleshed-out woman who wants money, can be selfish, and is a real go-getter.

As I went around town, I ended up helping one of the townies to chop wood. What I was not expecting was a full-blown mini-game that required me to chop a bunch of wood under a time limit while also not chopping literally anything else that appeared. This mini-game was depicted like a yesteryear mini-game with limited buttons and pixelated graphics inside a faux arcade cabinet. And honestly? It was fun and simple, which I am guessing was the whole point.

“AstralShift has managed to pull off different types of fear and tension in a spectacular way that left me desperately wanting more than what this demo had to offer in this gorgeous world.”

The real show-stopping moment for me of the daytime portion was when Elise launched into a full-on musical song cutscene that, if it was on Broadway, would have been her “I want” song. The music and singing were fantastic, it told me so much about her character, and the graphics kept switching from anime-inspired, to a doll spinning in circles that the developers made in real life, to all these different styles of graphics. It was insane to watch, and it made me giddy with excitement for how unexpected it was. It was like I was transported back into the world of LUNAR: Silver Star Story Complete, Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, or even Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon on the Nintendo 64. I am a complete sucker for unexpected musical numbers, especially ones that help to further the underlying plot, and this one delivered on the concept.

As I was running short on time at PAX West, since we were closing in on the final minutes before the show shut down for the year, the developer assisting me told me to skip along to the final dialogue section of the Little Goody Two Shoes demo. At that point, Elise was trying to allay the townspeople’s suspicious about a woman that had come into town that the extremely superstitious townspeople were wondering about being a witch. I found myself having to select different dialogue options – all of which sounded good – to help explain how I knew this mysterious woman. As I kept selecting dialogue options, I honestly felt a lot of the same foreboding that I felt during the nighttime portion of the game as I was realizing that I wasn’t fooling anyone and that they were going to see through us both. Sure enough, by the end of the conversation, it was clear that the townspeople didn’t believe my wildly spun tales of her being family and I saw that the town’s suspicion of me had gone up.

And that is where the brilliance of Little Goody Two Shoes shows up. It is so easy to build a tense game by stripping away your character’s weapons and dumping them in a world that wants to kill them. After all, it is scariness that is happening to you. It is much, much harder to build that tension by taking that same character and inserting them into a situation where all the bad things can happen when it is completely in your control. I had to weigh the dialogue options and choose the lie that I thought sounded best. It was clear that things were spiraling out of control very early on during my conversation with the townspeople, and it scared me just as much as any candle attacking and draining my health could do. AstralShift has managed to pull off different types of fear and tension in a spectacular way that left me desperately wanting more than what this demo had to offer in this gorgeous world.

I cannot wait for Little Goody Two Shoes to come out, and neither should you. This game is being published as part of the SQUARE ENIX Collective, and I cannot wait for it to come out.

Are you excited for Little Goody Two Shoes?

What do you think of video game musical numbers?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post PAX West 2023 IMPRESSIONS: Little Goody Two Shoes appeared first on oprainfall.

Developer(s): Cygames
Publisher(s): XSEED
Platform(s): PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC
Release Date: February 1, 2024
Official Website

Before I started my hands-on demo of Granblue Fantasy: Relink, I had one question: “Do I need to have played either the mobile game Granblue Fantasy or Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, as I saw during EVO 2022, in order to understand this game?” The answer was simply “No.” Granblue Fantasy: Relink can be played as a standalone title.

With that out of the way, let’s dive right in.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink is an action RPG that can have up to four players playing at the same time as they hack and slash their way towards Estalucia, which is billed as “a fabled island beyond the end of the skies.” In my demo, there are multiple characters I could play as, and each had a different skillset. For example, Katalina, who is one of the easiest characters to play as, performs combos by using the Square and Triangle buttons, while Sigfried (one of the most difficult to use) requires you to carefully time your Square button presses to power up his attacks, and successfully timing all the attacks in a combo unleashes a powerful finisher. For my demo, I chose to try out Katalina.

The Granblue Fantasy: Relink demo itself was fairly simple: clear some trash enemies, take on a boss, and then – if I have time – take on an extra secret boss. This was clearly meant to be a demo to show off the gameplay combat, and it definitely did so.

Combat itself is fairly simple: attack with the Square and Triangle buttons, combo when I can, and hold down the R1 button when I want to use my cooldown skills. I was able to push my way through the trash enemies at the start until I got to the demo’s first boss battle. When it came to my first boss, Gerascene (a giant skeleton) monster, I quickly realized that button mashing would only carry me so far. I started to have to Dodge with R2 as I learned how to read the various attacks, and I would strike whenever I had the opportunity. By the time I was able to clear that boss, I had managed to fulfill all the optional criteria to go into battle against the Rock Golem extra boss that I was unable to beat before the demo’s time limit expired.

The combat itself, despite me never having played before, was easy for me to grasp and make me feel powerful. I hammered the various basic attacks that Katalina had while throwing in the various skills (naturally on a cooldown timer) that she also had available with the additional press of a shoulder button.  The combat itself was silky smooth, and I felt like I grasped it quickly as I was able to button mash quickly through the first few rounds of enemies. Dodging was extremely responsive, and I liked how I didn’t have to expertly time it like some other video games out there in order to be successful.

I mentioned at the top that you have three additional teammates while you play Granblue Fantasy: Relink. These CPU teammates fade, clearly purposefully, into the background somewhat. They are strong enough that I didn’t feel like I had to babysit them in any of the battles that I was in, yet they clearly were not going to be the deciding factor in whether I win or not. I couldn’t, for instance, hide away in a corner of the battlefield and let them simply take on my enemies for me. While the CPU teammates did contribute to the overall battle, I was expected to do the lion’s share of combat and to carry my team to victory.

What my teammates were extremely useful for, though, was for Link Attacks and Chain Bursts. When you and your teammates hit an enemy, their stun gauge goes up. When the stun gauge is full, and your party’s link gauge is full, all four of you can perform Link Attacks that slow down the enemy during ‘Link Time,’ give you bonus effects, and cause great damage to the enemy. Chain Bursts are when you use a Skybound Art in conjunction with your teammates in order to do great damage to your enemy. The Chain Bursts are big, flashy, and come with a miniature cutscene that you can get watch as each character pulls off their move in turn – assuming that, of course, you can hit the appropriate buttons in the fairly generous time window that flashes on screen for it.

It was a real surprise to me that both the Link Attacks and the Chain Bursts happened fairly frequently during combat and it felt more than coincidental that my teammates always seemed to have their Skybound Arts ready to go whenever mine was ready to go. This was a good thing, as it really made me feel super powerful and it felt like my foursome was unstoppable as I would be pulling off crazy fun Chain Bursts and Link Attacks often enough to add a lot of flavor to the combat without completely taking it over and making it just purely combat cutscenes.

There is one more thing that is really worth mentioning: this is a beautiful game with gorgeous character models. Cygames has really gone all out in making a game that is stunning to look at. I kept being impressed with how pretty it all was, especially during combat. The graphics are also sharp enough that I never felt like I was getting lost in combat or what was happening on screen. It also felt like a natural evolution of the 2-D graphical style of Granblue Fantasy: Versus fighting game as it was transitioned into a 3-D world.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with the demo of Granblue Fantasy: Relink at PAX West 2023. If the full game is anything like the demo, then there is going to be an action RPG game that a lot of people are going to enjoy. I certainly wouldn’t mind fighting my way through in a copy at launch.

Who do you want to play as in Granblue Fantasy: Relink?

Have you picked up any of the other titles in the franchise?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post PAX West 2023 IMPRESSIONS – Granblue Fantasy: Relink appeared first on oprainfall.

Developer(s): SQUARE ENIX
Platform(s): PlayStation 4/PlayStation 5
Release Date: TBA

Official Website, X, Instagram, Facebook

In the waning hours of PAX West, I was able to queue up to try out FOAMSTARS at the SQUARE ENIX booth, and I found quite the fun multiplayer shooter that is anything but a Splatoon clone.

First, the basics: FOAMSTARS is a multiplayer title where you pick a character, go into an arena in one of several game modes, and shoot at each other. The guns you use are filled with colored foam that reminded me a lot of soap suds. The mode we were able to try at PAX West was four-on-four and called ‘Smash the Star.’ In Smash the Star, your team tries to kill off seven of the opposing team. Once that happens, one of their members is marked as the ‘star’ and gets buffed up some. If your team can knock out their star before their team can knock out your star, then your team wins! There is also a gameplay element that the foam can stack up on each other. This means that if you are strategic, you can help barricade part of the course to be a lot less friendly to the opposing team with how you shoot your foam out.

During the entire time I was demoing FOAMSTARS, the one thought that kept going through my mind was how amazing the soundtrack was. It had that cozy lofi/chillhop with a bit of pop feel to it that will have an easy future as part of a gaming music’s YouTube streaming channel. It is rare that I play a demo and think ‘Oh, I am buying this soundtrack,’ but FOAMSTARS did it for me. I really, really hope SQUARE ENIX will put it out for me to purchase at some point in the future, or at least on a streaming service.

The graphics are quite gorgeous and uniquely stylish too. In my FOAMSTARS demo, the world, characters, and foam all popped with neon colors that really stood out against the darkened environment. FOAMSTARS is clearly one of those games that you will be able to tell what it is just by glimpsing a little bit of the gameplay. The stark contrast in colors also made it incredibly easy to tell your team’s foam color from your opponent’s foam colors. And honestly? I loved it.

Of course, FOAMSTARS rises and falls based upon the gameplay itself. During the two rounds I played, I purposefully picked out two characters that had wildly different gameplay styles. First, I tried out the Baristador, who carried a portable cannon-like device. This character worked better at a range, as I would be able to shoot at opponents further away from me and I found myself quickly adapting a more supportive role to my teammates who were shooting up close with other characters. In my second round, I played Soa. She is a close-range weapon user who fires her foam from pistol-like weapons. With her, I naturally found myself pressing hard against the other team in order to kill them as soon as possible. Each character also has to reload their weapon with foam occasionally, and that is accomplished by hitting a controller button.

It would have been very, very easy to make these characters more or less clones of each other and make them fairly interchangeable. Instead, SQUARE ENIX smartly made the characters, at least these two, have wildly different strengths. I tried at one point to charge in with the Baristador, and I found myself getting slaughtered almost immediately. I also tried to hang back with Soa, and I found her to be completely useless at a range. This diversity in combat roles will only serve to enhance the overall gameplay and ensure that people cannot just spam one type of character and win it all over and over again. And in fact: in the second match, my team had a variety of roles on it, and we faced a full four-person Soa team. While it did get close at times, we ultimately did wipe out the Soa team because they simply didn’t have an answer for those of us who were hitting them from a distance.

The controls handled well, and I was mostly pleased with how the foam shooting went. I did die quite a bit, though I freely admit that I absolutely deserved it when I did. By the time the second match rolled around, I was even able to get a few kills myself. If there was anything I didn’t like, it just was that sometimes I felt like the foam ran out a little too fast, and I hated having to reload- even though that was quick as well. I also took my time to stack up the foam, and although it sometimes felt like I was just building into a foam mountain, it absolutely had a purpose in helping to hinder the opposing team on the field’s movement.

When you first see the gameplay, your mind will go to the other multiteam shooter game out there: Splatoon. Having spent way too many hours playing Splatoon, I can safely say that these two games play nothing alike. In Splatoon, Nintendo made the focus of the game to be covering the arena with as much paint as possible in various modes while shooting the opposing team is a secondary measure to help hinder their progress. In FOAMSTARS, just from my short demo, I could tell that the opposite was in effect: you were to spend your time hunting down and killing off your opponents, and the environmental effects were just a side effect of you shooting out foam. In broad strokes, these two games are different from each other in such a large way that it would be hard to confuse the two.

I am pretty excited to see what modes FOAMSTARS has when it releases, as the overall game is deceptively simple to learn yet clearly is not so simple to fully play. There will be inevitable comparisons to Splatoon, but the emphasis on combat and the potential for vertical foam-building makes this game anything but a copycat. Instead, FOAMSTARS manages to stand on its own as an independent title. Unfortunately, the game does not have a release date yet. If the end product is anything like the demo, then it will be hard to not recommend it to everyone.

What do you think of FOAMSTARS? What kind of modes do you hope to see in the game?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post PAX West 2023 IMPRESSIONS: FOAMSTARS appeared first on oprainfall.

Developer: BattleBrew Productions
Publisher(s): Marvelous Europe, XSEED Games
Platform(s): Windows
Release Date: November 9, 2023
Website / X

Cuisineer is a game that you play as Pom, a young adventurer who has to manage the family restaurant, which is mired in debt, after her parents leave a note that they are going on a trip around the world. Pom takes this responsibility cheerfully on, but restaurants take a lot of work. Pom has to purchase and place furniture in the restaurant, pick out decorations, and of course…go out into the rougelite world around her to find ingredients. After all, if Pom doesn’t have ingredients, then she cannot make dishes for customers, and if she cannot make dishes for customers, then she cannot wipe away the restaurant’s debt. In the short 15 minutes that I spent with Cuisineer at the beginning of the game, I found a title that oozes cuteness and charm. Pom is extremely adorable, and I loved how her bubbly personality seemed ready to take on any and all challenges that come her way as she tries to bring the soon-christened Potato Palace to life.

There are two halves to Cuisineer: the cooking and city side of things, and the world exploration and combat side of things. You have the freedom to pick how you want to spend your days in Cuisineer: you can run the restaurant all day, you can farm items in the outside world all day, or you can do a mixture of the two by cooking in the morning and then going out exploring the procedurally-generated world after you close the restaurant.

The game functions as more of a restaurant management system than any kind of deep cooking simulator. For example, a customer would walk into my shop. If I had the ingredients for what they wanted to eat, they would come sit down and I would make the dish by pressing a button at the nearby cooking pot. In a few seconds, the dish is ready and you bring it over to the customer. The customer eats, pays, and leaves while you collect the money. This is not a simulator game like Cooking Mama where you have to actually prepare the dish. Instead, you’re running a restaurant and trying to make sure that you have the ability to give the customer what they want in an efficient manner. While I only was able to serve a couple customers in my short demo, I felt like this could be a hectic but fun aspect of the game once I’ve really expanded the Potato Palace and I’m trying to serve up 10 or more customers at once and give them that great restaurant experience they deserve.

However, you cannot just run a restaurant as you need to farm up cooking ingredients in order to make the recipes your potential customers want to buy, and this is where the roguelite aspect of Cuisineer comes out. I equipped my spatula weapon, which allows me to attack enemies, and I head into a world to slaughter whatever I can as everything gives me different ingredients I need. As I wandered around the map that has a 2.5D overhead perspective, I found myself quickly gathering a variety of ingredients while occasionally getting the random gear drop. In my run, I wound up with a nicer spatula that I obtained as part of the storyline and a pair of boots. The combat was very snappy and responsive, and I quickly learned the attack patterns of the cute enemies I came across. When I got damaged, I would down a bit of boba tea to recover my health. When I died in the field near the end of my demo, I did not lose all of my possessions but instead only lost some of them. All of this made me feel like the different mechanics, especially the death mechanic, makes Cuisineer is a fairly forgiving title that new players to the rougelite genre are meant to enjoy. I particularly liked that I didn’t feel pressured to run away from the slightest hint of danger, as I knew I wouldn’t lose all the progress and items I’ve gathered since the last save point if I did kick the proverbial bucket.

And honestly? All of this works.

The thing that surprised me the most about my demo of Cuisineer at PAX West 2023 was that I was more incentivized to go out hunting in the roguelite world around me not for gear drops to better fight with, but for ingredients to run my restaurant with. I can see myself easily opening the Potato Palace for a few hours, running low on ingredients, and then heading out into the world (I explored the Green Ruins in my demo) to fight and gather up what I need to re-open the next day. More sales means more money and that your restaurant’s reputation rises so that even more customers will come.

Roguelite games are all about finding that (slightly more forgiving) gameplay loop for players to explore as they work their way through the game, and Cuisineer definitely figured that part out. I absolutely adored the various inhabitants of Parell, the city your character is based in, and I wanted to push my exploring out as far as I could to the outer limits of the roguelike area. Cuisineer is definitely onto something potentially great here, and I am excited to see where Pom’s adventure sends her with this title releases in early November.

What kind of dishes do you want to serve to customers in the Potato Palace?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post PAX West 2023 IMPRESSIONS: Cuisineer appeared first on oprainfall.

Developer: Nintendo
Platform(s): Nintendo Switch
Release Date: October 20, 2023
Official Website

The single most exciting part of Super Mario Bros. Wonder is also the part of the game that I want to write the least about: the Wonder Flower.

In various levels, whenever Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, a Yoshi, or Nabbit touches a Wonder Flower, the entire world around them changes from the standard course to a crazy and magical experience, and it shows exactly why Nintendo has been the company leading the gaming industry since the Ultra Hand was created by Gunpei Yokoi in 1966. In the 15 minutes I played the demo, I saw multiple Wonder Flower effects that showed off the insane creativity of Nintendo, ranging from herds of blue buffalo charging across the bottom of the screen to shooting stars raining down from the sky that invoked the opening of Super Mario Galaxy. Everything I saw made me smile in some way and I wished that I could just drink in the full experience instead of continuing to plod along in the course.

It also puts the Wonder in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and I absolutely do not want to spoil it – or any of the other special stage effects – for anyone else who is reading this. I believe that the Wonder Flower is the ultimate selling point of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and it is why it will be a day one purchase for me and many others: because once you see it in action, you will become a believer in this game.

During my demo at Nintendo Live 2023: Seattle, I played with two other people who I competed with just as much as I cooperated with. I played Luigi, one played Princess Peach, and the third played a Yoshi. I picked Luigi purposefully to see if he got a higher jump like he previously did in Super Mario Bros. 2/Super Mario USA for the NES/Famicom or Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii, and I was a little disappointed that he didn’t, as almost all of the characters instead seemed to play identically. The world’s graphics were gorgeous as always, and this definitely felt like a natural graphical follow-up to the 2019 release of Super Mario. Bros. U Deluxe, itself a re-release of the excellent 2012 Wii U game Super Mario Bros. U.

The most interesting character concepts were the various playable Yoshi and Nabbit. If you select one of those characters, you cannot take damage and you can do things like ride Yoshi (which I repeatedly did!) and they had their famed flutter jump. To compensate for this, however, Yoshi characters and Nabbit cannot transform when they receive a powerup item. The inclusion of Yoshi/Nabbit is clearly an attempt by Nintendo to ensure that players who aren’t great at platforming games and who want to simply see all that Super Mario Bros. Wonder has to offer are able to do so. And it is honestly a smart inclusion of Nintendo to do so, since it only widens the potential family gamer pool of who can play all together.

I mentioned earlier that Super Mario Bros. is all about competing as much as it is cooperative, and that is the absolute truth. When I was hit by an enemy and I turned into little Luigi, I was still often competing with the other players to get various powerups to get back into the action. I also competed with other players to get coins, the three large purple coins in each course, and even who could land the highest on the flagpole at the top of the course. It didn’t feel vicious at any point, but instead was more fun than anything. There was also a lot of cooperation at play too: At one point, we wanted to get to a purple coin, but it was trapped by a large set of smashable blocks. We ended up working together to get an elephant powerup (more about that in a moment), and then let that player smash those blocks so we could then get the coin. There were other moments of teamwork in luring one of the buffalo creatures over to smash other blocks, and hitting each other’s ghost (when you die, you turn into a ghost that you can control on the screen) to bring that player back to life. There is a real constant tug-and-pull between being cooperative and being competitive that just simply works.

“I believe that the Wonder Flower is the ultimate selling point of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and it is why it will be a day one purchase for me and many others: because once you see it in action, you will become a believer in this game.”

Another feature I, with the patience of my other players, explored during my Super Mario Bros. Wonder demo was the Badge system. Badges are a feature familiar to anyone who has played Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on Nintendo GameCube or Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga on GameBoy Advance or Nintendo 3DS: you equip a badge, and you can get a special effect that can change your character’s gameplay. I went through several badges that ranged from a badge that let us jump higher after charging for a moment to getting coins whenever we kill an enemy. Intriguingly, I led my party to a course that had a simple goal: learn how to use the Wall Jump I Badge, clear the stage with it, and get the Wall Jump I Badge to potentially equip in the rest of the game. I loved having a real reward for clearing a stage instead of just moving onto the next level, and I hope Nintendo has these types of winnable badges scattered frequently throughout the game.

If you watched the Nintendo Treehouse video linked above, or checked out any of the other screenshots here, then you can tell that Super Mario Bros. Wonder looks like a beautiful game. I loved all the little details in the world, and the bright colors that really popped out of the screen. Even though the Nintendo Switch was released in March 2017, making this console seven years old, it still can produce jaw-droppingly beautiful graphics.

Finally, there are the powerups. During the demo, I was able to experience the Super Mushroom, the Fire Flower, and the new elephant powerup. The Super Mushroom lets you become regular-sized Mario/Luigi, etc., from their smaller form. The Fire Flower changes your character’s outfit and you can throw fireballs to kill enemies. Both of these have been series mainstays since Super Mario Bros. on the NES, and no one needs me to rehash them. The third powerup, the elephant powerup, was definitely a lot of fun to try out. As a stretched-out pachyderm, your character can swing at enemies sideways, shoot water, and more. It did not feel like a game-defining powerup like the Super Bell in Super Mario 3D World that turned your character into a cat, and I was a bit thankful for that. These 2D Mario games tend to always have various new powerups to try and explore, and I was happy that the one I was able to enjoy definitely did not feel like a retread of what had come before.

Overall, I loved what I found in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and it made me want to see what all it has in store. I really hope that Nintendo puts a demo out on the Nintendo Store for people to try, as I think you’ll find that you’ll want to grab every single Wonder Flower out there like I do and buy this game immediately at launch.

What do you think of the Wonder Flowers?

Are you as excited to see what all they can do as I am?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post IMPRESSIONS: Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Nintendo Live 2023) appeared first on oprainfall.

Let me start off by saying I am a big fan of the Fate franchise. When I was younger, I was very intrigued by the concept of having these mythical figures fight each other, and the unique ways each character was portrayed. I soon fell in love with the original characters and story introduced in Fate/stay night, and the rest is history. So, when I got a special chance to try out a preview build of Fate/Samurai Remnant, I was ecstatic. A brand new Fate story set in Edo period Japan? Sign me up! When the game was first announced, I was curious how the action gameplay would be handled. Would it be like previous action games in the franchise, or would it be something different? Let’s see if this first taste of Samurai Remnant left me wanting for more.

The story takes place in 1651 in Edo, Japan. A young man, Miyamoto Iori, finds himself attacked by unknown assailants. He soon comes into contact with a powerful enemy known as Rider and their master, Yui Shousetsu. Just when things seem to be dire, a swordswoman clad in white, Saber,  is summoned to Iori’s side. Iori is dragged into a conflict known as the Waxing Moon Ritual. Will he and Saber be able to overcome the other Masters and Servants and claim the Waxing Moon for themselves?

I like what I’ve seen of the characters and story so far. There’s a sense of mystery surrounding the Waxing Moon Ritual and its participants. What is the true nature of the Waxing Moon Ritual, and how is it related to the Holy Grail War, if at all? What is each Master’s motivation for joining the Ritual? What is the identity of each Servant, including Saber? I like how they don’t just give this information right away, I enjoy figuring these things out. A nice feature included in the game is the Logbook, which can be accessed from the menu. It includes information on events, characters, and terminology used throughout the story. The Logbook gets updated as you progress through the game, so don’t worry about getting spoiled on anything. This is very helpful as Fate stories tend to use a lot of different lingo, so it’s good to have something you can access if you don’t understand something.

I only got to see a couple of the characters in this build, but I’d like to focus on the protagonists, Iori and Saber. Iori is a good guy and actively tries to avoid killing people. He doesn’t rush into things, unlike Saber. Saber has no qualms with taking a life, and is eager to go out and take out the other Servants and Masters in the Waxing Moon Ritual. She also has a childlike curiosity, constantly asking Iori about the things she sees around Edo. And, she really likes to eat. It was pretty funny how Iori had to keep Saber in check whenever she wanted to take a frontal approach to situations. These two are adorable as a pair, and really work well off each other. This was only from the beginning parts of the game, so I’m interested in seeing how their partnership develops later in the story.

Fate/Samurai Remnant uses an action combat system. Iori can use standard light and heavy attacks by pressing the square and triangle buttons. Holding L1 allows him to change stances and use magic spells. Holding R1 allows you to use your Servant’s Affinity Techniques, and switch places with your Servant. Pressing the circle button when the Valor Gauge is full allows Iori to use his Valor Strike, which is essentially his special attack that causes a lot of damage. I was able to fight a couple different foes in this preview, ranging from normal thugs to monsters to powerful Servants. While you could slash your way through normal enemies with relative ease, fighting powerful enemies like Servants was a different story. You can’t just wail on them, you really had to time when you attacked. This is when switching places with your Servant comes into play. As you deal damage, the Substitution gauge increases. When the gauge is maxed out, you can control your Servant for a limited amount of time. Your Servant, in this case Saber, is much stronger and more durable than Iori, so you can really deal a lot of damage when controlling them. I think limiting the amount of time you can use your Servant was a good move, you can’t rely on them all the time. It made things more challenging. I got to control three different characters throughout the preview build: Iori, Saber, and Berserker. Of the three, I had the most fun with Berserker. She is a buzz saw, and I was able to completely shred through enemies when using her. Berserker was previously playable in Fate/Grand Order, and seeing her attacks translated perfectly into this system was awesome. From what I’ve played, combat is fun, and challenging enough without being frustrating.

Other than combat, you can travel around different parts of Edo, satisfy Saber’s curiosity by taking her around different areas, eat food, pet animals, spend skill points to upgrade Iori and Saber’s abilities, and even perform maintenance on your swords. I really appreciated how petting dogs and cats actually had benefits, as doing so slightly heals your HP and Affinity gauges. So, there’s no excuse, they deserve the pets!

I really enjoyed the short time I had to try Fate/Samurai Remnant. The story and characters have me hooked, and I’m really looking forward to solving some of the mysteries posed, such as the True Name of Saber. The combat is complex enough without being too confusing, and it was pretty fun using the different characters’ fighting styles, and that was only three of them! I’m looking forward to playing as the other characters the game has to offer. So far, I do think it is different from past action games in the franchise, I think it has the potential to be greater than them. I was already looking forward to it, but now I can’t wait to play the full game. 

Fate/Samurai Remnant launches September 29 on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC via Steam.

Preview build provided by the publisher.

The post PREVIEW: Fate/Samurai Remnant appeared first on oprainfall.

I’ve always been interested in the Rune Factory series, but I’ve never actually played any of them. I always wondered if the farming would be too much of a hassle or if I would like the dungeon crawling, so when I got a chance to check out a preview of the upcoming Rune Factory 3 Special, I jumped on it. Let’s see how my first Rune Factory experience went.

The game begins as a young girl is dragging a collapsed monster into the village. Her grandfather is very upset the girl has brought a monster into their home, but she is very keen on helping the poor creature out. The next morning, the monster transformed into a young man. He has amnesia, and has no idea how he got there nor any idea he was a monster the night before. He rushes out of the house and runs into a red haired girl that is very quiet and named Raven. She is in front of a huge tree they refer to as the Sharance Tree. He attempts to talk to Raven but to no avail when suddenly, the girl from last night appears. Her name is Shara. They take him to the heart of the tree where he is told he will be living with Shara for the time being. When they arrive at the field below the house, they are attacked by monsters, and our protagonist fends them off. He is told when monsters are killed they don’t perish, they are simply returned to The Forest of Beginnings. After learning more about the people of the town, you accept a quest to fight off a Raccoon monster that has been stealing food. After completing this quest you find a memory orb, this helps him remember a bit about his past, allowing him to transform into a monster once more. You soon discover a settlement of other monsters outside of town, and the mystery of this young man only thickens from there.

I’m pretty interested to see where the story goes from here. It’s been a while since I got invested in a world so quickly, but I think all of the amazing characters helped this along. Almost of all them have very unique personalities and quirks that make you want to learn more about them. The lazy store clerk, Karina, is a very cute girl, but don’t expect her to do much in the way of physical activity. I think this girl works harder at getting out of work. The bathhouse girl, Pia, is very innocent, and takes whatever anyone tells her to heart. I was pretty shocked when it turned out she was a mermaid when I saw her out in the rain one day, and I really wanted to learn more about this girl going forward. I could go on and on about each girl and the other residents with what little I’ve learned in my time with the game so far, but I want to experience more of this before I go into great detail.

I got sucked into the gameplay of Rune Factory 3 Special very quickly. I can see why players of this series say it’s so addicting. You start each day with a number of Rune Points. You consume these points as you do farming activities and combat. At first, I thought this was very limiting, but the amount of points used will go down as you level up in each respective area. So, after a little while, I felt like I could get a lot more done in a single day. The combat here is your standard top down action game style. Fans of old school Zelda games will feel right at home here. There are a variety of different weapons, and each one has different skills you can learn to make you more effective at slaying your foes. You can even get different skills in your monster form that add even more depth to this fun combat.

I feel like I have barely scratched the surface of everything you can do and see in Rune Factory 3 Special. I’m very much looking forward to learning more about all of the game’s amazing characters, and finding out more about our protagonist and all the other great features here. The game will be releasing September 5th for PC via Steam and on Nintendo Switch.

Preview build provided by the publisher.

The post PREVIEW: Rune Factory 3 Special appeared first on oprainfall.

I recently got my hands on a copy of the PS4 version of Little Witch Nobeta and was super excited to give it a shot. This 3D action shooter from Pupuya Games and Simon Creative boasts a super adorable aesthetic that’s right up my alley, but also looked like it could be a bit on the challenging side, and I wanted to test my skills. After spending about two hours with the game and beating the second boss, I can say I had a blast!

Nobeta is (surprise) a little witch, and she’s in search of herself after losing all her memories. She comes to a mysterious castle in the middle of nowhere looking for… something, and the moment she hears a cat she realizes she needs the black kitty to help guide her to the Throne, where she might get all her answers. What’s the Throne? I dunno, but I’m sure I’ll eventually find out. Anyway, into the castle she goes and Nobeta’s journey begins. Along the way she meets her black kitty, as well as “crafted souls” – dolls that have a vaguely human appearance, but artificial hearts. But what are they exactly? How did they come to be? Are they really empty shells or are they sentient? And does it matter one way or another if they are?

You begin the game with a basic melee attack and a single burst-style magic spell. Pressing your spell button will unleash a weak but quick version of her magic, while holding it down will gradually power it up for heavy damage. Powering it up leaves Nobeta vulnerable to attacks, though, so you need to keep moving, or find cover, lest the beasties in the castle beat you down mid-cast. You can replenish your magic using items or hitting things, as well as by executing precise counter attacks that I was never quite able to get the hang of. You also need to keep track of your stamina, because once you run out, Nobeta will trip and fall over, leaving her open to attack. By the time I finished the preview, I’d learned a second multi-hit ice spell that was incredibly fun to use among groups of enemies, but the basic playstyle didn’t really change much. It was simple but satisfying, and finding the right spell for the right occasion turned out to be a lot of fun.

Scattered throughout the castle are goddess statues where Nobeta can pray to save her progress and upgrade her stats. You can up your HP, MP, Stamina, ATK, etc. by collecting souls from defeated castle enemies. It encourages you to fight the local denizens, but also lets you tailor your playstyle or modify the difficulty level on the fly. Speaking of difficulty, I played on Normal (or Advanced, as it’s called), and it had a couple tricky enemy groups, but it wasn’t anything particularly hard. I’m not sure if a day one patch will add any other difficulty levels, but what I got felt a bit too easy. I also found the enemies a bit uninspired and boring. You mostly fight weird blob monsters and the occasional doll, and I was craving enemy variety by the end of my play session.

Nobeta, the black kitty and the second boss, Tania, are very very adorable, though. Nobeta’s animations are gorgeous, and there’s a weight to her movement that’s very satisfying. You can unlock new outfits for her through advancing the story or meeting certain gameplay criteria, and they’re all just the cutest. You’ve got free range with the camera, too, so you can look at her outfits from all angles. Nobeta herself is a quiet, reserved girl who is understandably confused by what’s going on, but determined to see things through to the end. You can pet the black kitty, and that’s more than enough, but it also gives out nuggets of wisdom and philosophy that give Nobeta something to ponder. Tania wants to escape the castle and is seeking a stronger body with which to do so. She has a bit of a loli vibe going on, and I just overall enjoyed her boss design. Her fight is somewhat underwhelming, though.

The game boasts a really gorgeous soundtrack and was one of the highlights of my playthrough, outside Nobeta herself. The music has a gothic flare to it and feels suitably epic, especially during boss fights. It’s atmospheric where it needs to be. Sound design is also nice, especially Nobeta’s spells. Letting off a fully-powered burst has a super satisfying whirr to it, and the plink of your ice magic makes sure every hit is punctuated. Even the melee hit has a nice thunk to it. The voice acting was pretty good, too.

I really enjoyed my time with Little Witch Nobeta. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be going in, but it did pose a challenge in a couple places. The combat was simple but satisfying, and a fantastic soundtrack made exploring and fighting a joy. Nobeta is adorable, with gorgeous animations and cute outfits, and I got to pet the kitty cat. I definitely recommend checking this out when it releases on March 7, 2023 for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4|5. The game is also available on Steam.

Game copy provided by the publisher.

The post PREVIEW: Little Witch Nobeta appeared first on oprainfall.

In the last few years, I’ve been more into these casual life sim type games and I definitely wanted the chance to try out Disney Dreamlight Valley after seeing it in a Nintendo Direct. Originally, this was supposed to be a full review; unfortunately, I don’t believe I can properly judge Disney Dreamlight Valley in its early access form. Sometime in 2023, this game will become free-to-play and no longer be in early access. I imagine more things will get monetized, but I simply don’t know what exactly will be monetized and what other changes beyond that will be made. So, for the sake of being fair and not putting a score on a technically unfinished game, I’ll be discussing my first impressions instead, in the over 15 hours I spent playing.

As you may have read elsewhere already, Disney Dreamlight Valley is very much an Animal Crossing-esque game. There are all kinds of life sims out there and I wouldn’t be comparing it to Animal Crossing if it weren’t truly similar. Now, it is not a farming sim. It doesn’t have anymore than the basic farming you have in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. There isn’t the depth you would find in a true farming sim. What DDV does have, is a valley/town full of characters for you to to get to know and befriend, plus a house for you to decorate and hang out in; as well as eventually gradually upgrade. You also have your own resident money bags looking to profit off of you, aka Scrooge McDuck. Scrooge runs the local shop where you can buy various decorations and outfits. He’s also who you pay to fix up and upgrade stuff around the valley, such as your house, Goofy’s shop stalls and certain houses for various other characters you unlock and bring to Dreamlight Valley.

The story of Disney Dreamlight Valley revolves around these Night Thorns that took over the valley, caused characters to lose their memories and displaced many of them. The main goal of the game is to clear these out, meet and bring characters back to the valley and find out how everything took a turn for the worse and became like this. It used to be a happy place where Disney characters lived and had fun with each other. There are many things you can do to continue the story and improve the Valley. First of all, you’ll sometimes get story quests from the characters still living in Dreamlight Valley to move things along. You’ll also want to regularly get rid of Night Thorns, as well as collect Dreamlight. Dreamlight can unlock new areas blocked off by Night Thorns, in addition to unlocking realms with more Disney characters for you to invite to live in the Valley. You can get Dreamlight by completing “Duties” regularly, which simply involves little goals and tasks. For example, removing so many Night Thorns, making so many food dishes of a certain quality, catching so many fish, etc.

While we’re on the topic of Dreamlight, let’s discuss the other currencies in this game. You have Dreamlight, Star Coins, Moonstones and Tokens. I just went over what Dreamlight does. Star Coins are the free in-game currency you earn from selling fish, food dishes, crops and whatever else you have to sell, at one of Goofy’s stalls. Moonstones are the cash currency you can use on Star Path events to unlock various decorations, clothes and other items. The Star Path theme and items will periodically change while the game is active and Gameloft continues to support it. Some items you can unlock with Moonstones and some items you can complete special event Duties to get Tokens to earn them. Now in early access when I played, you could only get about 10 Moonstones a day in a chest somewhere in the valley. Also, the grind to earn Dreamlight and Star Coins could be very slow at times. Because currently you can’t buy Moonstones, all of mine came from the base founder’s pack and a letter or two in my in-game mailbox. I don’t know which currencies Gameloft will still make you earn and which, if any, they’ll let you buy more of. This is why I didn’t want to make this a full review and throw a score on it. I specifically wanted to judge Disney Dreamlight Valley as a free-to-play game and how fun it is without spending any money. I wanted anyone reading to know what they were getting into with this future free-to-play.

The various clothing and decorations you can buy with Star Coins at Scrooge’s store can sometimes be very expensive. Fortunately, you can get a lot of random clothes and decorations from chests around the area. Random chests seem to spawn every day, which a lot of times contain either random clothing “grab bags” or furniture bags. Also, there are some bags that give you a random design/print you can put on custom clothing you create and decorate yourself. I got a lot of great clothes and furniture out of these bags, some of which, as far as I can tell, are sold in Scrooge’s shop and sometimes pretty expensive to get normally. I appreciated that at the very least I was able to get a lot of cool clothes through freely playing the game.

Disney Dreamlight Valley is actually a pretty fun and decent quality free-to-play title. After you get through the very beginning it can be relatively slow and grindy though. Nonetheless, as a game you either play for just a little bit every day or a few times a week, or however much you want to play, it isn’t half bad. You can customize your character, raise your friendship with various Disney characters to unlock new items and quests, raise your own level and unlock items, cook dishes, farm, craft, fish and have fun in a land full of Disney magic. Keep in mind, though, this is a future free-to-play title. The quality isn’t comparable to that of a paid game like Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The graphics aren’t perfect: long gown dresses and other similarly loose clothing, in particular, are extremely thin and flimsy looking. Not only that, but there were also various glitches I ran into, such as the music getting super choppy and bad in areas with too much going on.

Overall, as a whole, I had a good amount of fun with Disney Dreamlight Valley. I do think it’s one of the better free-to-play options out there. Well it’s still in the paid early access phase at the moment. Regardless, I had a lot of fun hanging out in the Valley and if you’re a Disney fanatic, this is a wonderful game so far to spend a little time on somewhat regularly. If you’re not into the free-to-play model, or you don’t like Disney, or perhaps life sims just aren’t your thing, then I wouldn’t pick this one up. I enjoyed myself for the most part and hope to see the game improve in the future. Hopefully Gameloft doesn’t go too crazy with the monetization and things stay fun.

An early access copy of the game was provided by the publisher.

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It’s been a while since I last really played a Star Ocean game. I tried to play Integrity and Faithlessness when it released in 2016, but it just could not keep my interest long enough to get much farther than the opening sequence. For whatever reason, it lacked the charm and allure of previous titles. When The Divine Force was announced, I was cautiously optimistic. It looked good in previews, and I wanted to enjoy a Star Ocean game again. Well now there’s a demo out, and I jumped at the chance to play it (I played on PS5). I’m really glad I did, because the sixth installment of this vibrant series grabbed me right from the get-go.

You play as Raymond Lawrence (the demo restricts your character choice), captain of the merchant vessel, Ydas. A day before they’re due to unload their cargo, the Ydas is attacked by the Federation ship, Astoria, for unknown reasons. Forced to abandon the heavily-damaged Ydas, Raymond is separated from his crew, unsure how many survived. He and fellow crewmate, Chloe, land in different regions of the “underdeveloped” planet, Aster IV. There, Ray meets up with Princess Laetitia Aurcerius and her servant, Albaird. The three of them travel to some nearby ruins after watching an Ydas escape pod land there, only to find the cargo Ray had been hauling shoved inside the vessel. This cargo is called D.U.M.A., an advanced AI robot that can help in the field and in battle. With D.U.M.A. in tow, the group head back out into the world to find a man Laeticia has been looking for. And that’s about where the demo ends.

First things first, I love the fact that the full game will have dual protagonists. Star Ocean: The Second Story is my favorite game in the franchise, and this will be the first time since that entry – way back on the PlayStation 1 – that you have a choice. The demo doesn’t let you play as Laeticia, but I am absolutely going to do just that once the full game releases. Speaking of Laeticia, she’s an earnest, kind, but capable princess who has clearly fallen on some hard times, considering her and Albaird are traipsing about the country in secret. I like her. Albaird is prickly and overprotective, but definitely has his heart in the right place. The two have been through a lot, it seems, and he’s determined to keep his princess safe. Both of them react as you might expect when Ray crash lands on their planet and starts talking to a glorified cell phone. It’s an honestly adorable scene. As for Ray, he’s a bit cocky, but has a good head on his shoulders, and he’s more than capable at both leading and fighting. From the brief time we see him interacting with his crew on the Ydas, he’s well-liked and runs a tight ship without being overbearing. The cast is all around likeable and charming, and I’m invested in where their stories go. Private Actions return as well, giving the player the chance to have heart-to-heart talks with party members one-on-one while in town. It’s a great way to get to know everyone and one of my favorite series staples.

As for Aster IV, the region Ray lands in is gorgeous. tri-Ace and the team really put their all into making expansive fields that are satisfying to explore. The maps are big and spacious, but not so much that they overstay their welcome, and each area has two or three distinct environments. There are forests and rocky outcrops, lush fields and hilly passes. Enemies populate the area in decent numbers, and combat is in real time. You can swap between all three of the main characters as you run around and fight, but they all use the same basic controls. You’ve got your standard light and heavy attacks typical to action RPGs, and you can build combos off them until you run out of AP. Each attack requires a set amount of AP, but it replenishes when you stop attacking, so you need to be a bit strategic in how you use it. I liked how each character felt distinct, despite the similar setup. Ray is a bit slower with his attacks, but they feel forceful; Laeticia is quick to strike and light on her feet; Albaird attacks from a distance. The music also changes depending on who you’re controlling, and that’s a nice touch. Once you find D.U.M.A., she can assist in battle using VA. I love this. Activating D.U.M.A. will momentarily make your character invincible while you position yourself for attack. Once you release the button, D.U.M.A. slingshots you across the field at your opponent. Changing course right before you hit can trigger a Blindside, which stuns any enemies in the vicinity and increases the damage you dole out. It is supremely satisfying to pull off and can make quick work of tougher fights. Finding a rhythm between combos and VA attacks allows for a high ceiling in combat skill, but it’s also intuitive and easy to pick up, which makes for a fantastic battle system. Combine this with a skill tree that can unlock new abilities, and I can see it being one of The Divine Force‘s strongest aspects.

You can also activate D.U.M.A. outside of battle to search for treasure chests or fly across short distances, and it opens the world up to a lot more avenues for exploration. Flying around feels good and makes short work of large areas, but your default movement speed is also quick to start with, and you have a permanent dash ability to make it even faster. I really appreciated this. The world never felt too big to get through, but I loathe slow traversal, and the speed your character moves isn’t detrimental to either the exploration or beauty of each area. Besides the large fields, there are also a couple towns to explore and a short dungeon, so there’s a lot of variety in just the couple hours the demo lasts.

While I, overall, enjoyed my time with the demo, there were some nitpicks. The character models are lovely and detailed, but they’re also really jittery in that way a lot of 3D anime style games tend to be. It was a bit distracting, especially with Laeticia, who moves every time she talks. I admit this is a “me” problem, but it was super noticeable. The text is less a “me” problem and more an actual issue, because it is incredibly hard to read at times, especially in the tutorials that pop up as you play. Not only do the tutorials break the flow of the game, the tiny text made them extra frustrating. The text problem extends to the subtitles, which lack a proper background and can blend into each scene. I really wish there was an option to adjust them. I also encountered a few framerate dips during exploration. I played in Performance Mode, so I didn’t expect them. Oddly enough, I don’t recall any issues when in battle. Thankfully, the dips weren’t enough to cause any issues, but they were noticeable.

The Star Ocean: The Divine Force demo was a ton of fun, and just what I wanted from a game in this franchise. It had strong sci-fi elements blended seamlessly with fantasy, endearing characters, great voice acting, and some top-notch music from the always-wonderful Motoi Sakuraba. Environments are beautiful, with striking vistas and skyboxes, and exploration was snappy and fun. Combat felt simple and intuitive while leaving a lot of room for skillful players. And, of course, there’s Elena, Raymond’s first officer, whom I love and would die for. The demo definitely put its best foot forward, and I can only hope the full game lives up to its potential.

The demo is available now for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and Series X|S.

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I’m somewhat of a newcomer, or casual player if you will, of Splatoon. I got into it about a year after Splatoon 2 came out. I was hesitant to buy it originally, simply because shooters are not my forte. I did play a ton of Perfect Dark with my older brothers growing up, but that’s about the only enjoyment I’ve really gotten from shooters and I have no skill for them. Nonetheless, I’ve always liked the look of Splatoon, it has such an appealing aesthetic. Back in 2018, I finally decided to splurge on a digital copy of Splatoon 2. I figured at the very least I could enjoy the Turf Wars mode, where the ultimate goal is to ink the most territory, not getting the most kills/splats. Despite not being a very skilled player, I had a ton of fun with all of the Splatfests and put around just a bit over 100 hours into the game. Jump ahead to last weekend and there was a Splatoon 3 World Premiere Splatfest event. Being a lover of Splatfests, I obviously took part in this timed Splatfest demo. I also have already pre-ordered a physical copy of Splatoon 3. Keep reading to find out whether I now regret this pre-order, or if I’ll be keeping it and enjoying the full game.

The Splatoon 3 World Premiere was a pretty limited demo, but it was enough to get a small taste of the newest entry and see what’s different and how it feels to play. First you get to create your character. I really like the gradient additions to the eye color selection. Then you get to meet the new group of characters who update you on all the happenings in Splatsville. Deep Cut, this latest entry’s group, consists of Shiver, Frye and Big Man. Shiver is my favorite so far, but Big Man is great too. One thing I didn’t like was that Deep Cut doesn’t seem to have much of a catchphrase. Their saying when they’re done with the news is, “Catch ya later.” It’s not really anything unique or special, it’s honestly a boring catchphrase. Also, once the Splatfest started it wasn’t as easy to see them perform as Off the Hook was in Splatoon 2. In the first half of the Splatfest they’re riding around town on these floats and are really high up. You can barely zoom in and see the heads of Shiver and Frye. In the second half of the Splatfest, all three are performing on a stage together. You can see them a little better here, but they’re still really high up there, you have to go up some stairs and then zoom in to get a good look at the actual characters rather than the electronic screens they’re displayed on as well.

Splatfests this time around contain three teams to pick from and are divided into two parts. In the first half of the Splatfest, it’s the traditional one team vs another, where you’ll be randomly matched against opponents from one of the other two teams and try to ink the most territory. The second half of the Splatfest has all three teams in one mode, where four people from the team in the lead try to defend their territory from the other two teams who get two people each. The goal is still to ink the most territory but if the team opposite you, who isn’t in the lead, takes the win, you also technically win the match. I was under the impression that once the Tricolor Turf War half of the Splatfest begins, you can’t play the standard Splatfest mode anymore, but fortunately, that wasn’t the case. I was actually able to still pick the normal mode with only two teams battling it out, or I could go with Tricolor. At least that was how it was supposed to work. However, there was one point where I went somewhere between five to seven matches picking Tricolor, only to get consistently forced into the old standard Turf War. I’ve also heard that Team Scissors had the opposite problem as the lead team, where they would be forced into Tricolor. I mean, that’s just unacceptable. You should be able to pick your mode and the mode you pick should be a 100% chance of being the mode you play. That’s like if someone was trying to join ranked and play something like Tower Zone for example, but keeps getting thrown into Turf War. By the way, I sided with Team Rock and it turns out we won the Splatfest. It was hard to decide between Rock, Paper and Scissors, but my favorite primary color is blue and Shiver seems cool, so that’s what I went with.

Mechanically, Splatoon 3 plays a lot like Splatoon 2, but there are quite a few changes. One huge change is the fact that you get a whole lobby to test your weapon in, while you wait to be matched with other players. This is a much welcome change. The room making feature to join friends, though, seems a bit harder to find, but it is there. I just hope the full game allows players to create a room, outside of Splatfests, for only one or two friends to join before opening it to the public for randoms to join. I’m not sure whether or not that’s been discussed somewhere already by Nintendo, I feel like it was maybe vaguely mentioned in the Direct earlier this summer. In Splatoon 2 you could only create a room for less than three friends prior to opening it for random players, during Splatfests and in Salmon Run. Regular every day Turf War matches, required you to stalk your friend to whichever room they were in and when the online was lively, you’d usually have to then wait for them to finish their match before you were let into the room. And even after all this, you weren’t guaranteed to play on the same team as your friend. Well unless you had three friends total, free to play with you at the same time. Weapons are another important mechanics change. Some of them have changed slightly and there’s the introduction of new weapon types and specials. I noticed the Dualies don’t feel as smooth as before. I don’t think the dodge roll is quite as mobile as it used to be. Keep in mind, I am an amateur Splatoon player and this is just how certain things seemed or felt to me during my own World Premiere playtime, I might not be completely accurate on every little change I think I noticed. On another slightly related note, I don’t feel like moving through ink is quite as fast as before either. That could be an intentional balancing feature due to the addition of new gameplay techniques, such as the squid roll. The same could be said for my Dualies observation, they might not be as smooth so that they’re more balanced against the other weapons, or it could be that each weapon even among the same type, is a little bit different from each other.

As I’ve said before, I’m a casual enjoyer of Splatoon, not an expert, these are just some of the mechanics changes I noticed. I’m going to try to keep this short and won’t be going over absolutely everything. The last big thing I want to discuss, is the overall atmosphere and style of Splatoon 3. I’m not sure yet if I like the music more than Splatoon 2’s soundtrack. I don’t think it stands out as much so far, but I did enjoy what I heard for the most part. One last thing I noticed, is that the ink style doesn’t seem as aesthetically pleasing as I found it in Splatoon 2. It still looks really stylish in the promotional footage Nintendo has put out, but when I was actually playing the Splatfest for myself, the ink seemed to layer more thinly on the ground and just overall, didn’t look as gloppy and shiny as the previous title. Part of why I wanted to get into Splatoon years ago was because of the aesthetics, thus this is a slight negative for me.

At the end of the day, I had a ton of fun checking out this Splatoon 3 World Premiere. Considering this is an impressions article mainly about what I experienced during the game’s demo, that’s what I focused on. But I would like to say real quick, I am quite looking forward to all the other little added things in the full game, like new clothing items, the locker you get to customize and Tableturf Battles. Overall, I see no reason to cancel my pre-order. I get a little burnt out after so many matches in a row, usually when I’m losing often, but it’s a quality multiplayer series and I had fun with the small snippet I got to experience in the demo. Plus, I don’t want to miss out on any future Splatfests. Not to mention, I imagine with feedback such as this, Nintendo will make some fixes to improve the game and eliminate major flaws, like they’ve always tried to do with Splatoon in the past.

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I have previously taken a look at both the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch releases of Neptunia X SENRAN KAGURA: Ninja Wars, and now the release of the Steam version is upon us. Of course this meant I would have to check this version out as well, but this time I felt doing a full review would just be redundant, so I’m just going to do some impressions on the PC release’s performance. If you would like a more in-depth look at this game, I suggest checking out my PlayStation 4 review.

Just to give a brief overview of the story here, the allied nations of Heartland are locked in a ninja war with the great nation of Marveland. Though they fight constantly for control of all the shares in Gamninjustri, this is mostly friendly rivalry. They will soon have to put aside their differences and join forces to face a threat greater than either has ever known. The Steeme Legion with their leader, Yoh Gamer, has invaded Gamninjustri. They conquered all of the smaller schools with ease and have now declared a “Super NINJA War” to see which school is the strongest of all time!

I can safely say this is the best looking version of Neptunia X SENRAN KAGURA: Ninja Wars I have looked at so far. The graphics have better detail, higher resolution and a couple of different anti-aliasing options to choose from. The frame rate can be locked at either 30 or 60 FPS, but if your rig can handle it, this can be completely uncapped as well. My aging Ryzen 2600 and 2060 had no issues pushing out 144 FPS with everything maxed out, so it doesn’t take amazing hardware to get a smooth experience out of this one.

As you would expect, this features full controller support and best I can tell, the keyboard controls seem to work fine as well. You can remap the controls any way you desire, and even incorporate the mouse into the mix if that suits your fancy. I tried out the Peaches and Cream minigame since in both of the previous versions, I found it much easier to play with the motion controls rather than the buttons. The button controls here do OK, but I still feel like the motion controls give you more precise movement here. I never thought in my lifetime I would say that about motion controls in anything, but here we are.

I feel like, overall, this is the best version of Neptunia x SENRAN KAGURA: Ninja Wars. The graphics look better than the other two releases, the higher frame rate makes the gameplay super smooth and there is plenty of controller customization to fit anyone’s play style. If you have either of the previous releases, there is nothing new here, but if you have held off to see how the PC version would fair then you’re in luck. Idea Factory International saved the best for last here for sure.

Game copy provided by the publisher.

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Ever since I saw Trek to Yomi back at E3 last year I have been very interested in it. I love classic samurai movies, and this seemed like it would be right up my alley. The black and white graphics with that grainy film style were very appealing to me, and I thought the combat looked nice as well. I’ve had a chance to play the first two chapters of the game, so it’s time to share some of my thoughts on them.

The game begins the same as every classic samurai movie does. A young man named Hiroki is training with his master to become a great samurai when their village is attacked by bandits. The master goes out to defend the village, and his young apprentice soon follows. He puts up a good fight with the bandit boss but is outdone. His master saves him and defeats the man, but at a great cost. The fight has taken all his strength. He asks Hiroki to vow to protect this village and all he loves from any threats. The boy takes this to heart and becomes a powerful samurai as the years pass, but a new threat to his village has just arrived. Time will tell what fate has in store for him and the ones he loves.

This was the story of the first two chapters I got to preview, and I have to say I’m completely hooked. The graphical styling here really make this story telling pop, and the writing is very good as well so far. I really enjoyed just listening to all of the random conversations the NPCs and enemies are having as you approach them. It really Immerses you in this world, and makes you want to explore every inch of the amazing environment here.

At first glace you may think this is just simple 2D side scroller, but that is far from the truth. While you cannot roam around in full 3D, there are many paths you can take to explore each area. The camera angle will change as you enter different areas like it did in classic Resident Evil titles, but it never gives you a bad angle for combat or exploration. It is very important to check each area thoroughly. You can find important health and stamina power ups, collectibles and maybe even discover a way to take some enemies out with stealth. I found this log in one area I could cut down and killed a whole group of enemies in one swoop. This not only makes your life easier, it’s pretty satisfying as well.

I usually have a hard time with combat in games like this, but Trek to Yomi has a great balance. On the normal level, the game is challenging enough that you want invest your time to get good at it without it being just frustrating. You have two attack buttons, a light and heavy attack; you will use these together at times for combos or with other inputs for different moves. Of course attacking and blocking will consume some stamina, but on the normal difficulty this was very easy to manage. Since you are fighting on a 2D plane you will have to flip around to face enemies on either side of you. I thought this might be a sticking point in this combat, but no it is very easy to flip to either side and you even have some attacks that can be done while turning. By far the thing I enjoyed the most was when you stun a foe, you can execute them. This not only looks totally bad ass, you gain a bit of health back as well. I can’t wait to see what other cool moves are in store for this when the final release rolls around.

As you can probably tell I really enjoyed my time with Trek to Yomi. The graphics and storytelling so far are amazing and the combat is a lot of fun. I can’t wait to see how the rest of this story turns out, and other gameplay features are thrown into the mix here. The game will be releasing sometime this year, and until then I will wait very impatiently to play the rest of this.

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I don’t have much of a history with Kirby. As far as this series is concerned, I grew up only playing Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, which I thought was a pretty fantastic game. Since then, I’ve gotten the chance to play a little bit of other Kirby games, but I’ve always compared them to The Crystal Shards and held that up, in my mind, as the ideal Kirby game. It had amazing music, a fun little item collection screen after finishing a stage, awesome mixed abilities, multiplayer minigames, and overall was just a wonderful game. However, this new upcoming title, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, seems to finally be doing something different and isn’t quite the same old Kirby. After seeing trailers for it I was pretty interested, so obviously I had to try it out once Nintendo released this demo.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land has seemingly been advertised as a new, full 3D world game. By that I mean it’s not the typical title where you travel as Kirby in purely a sidescrolling fashion. The demo seems to support the comparison people have been making between it and Mario Odyssey. It’s not one fully connected world – you have your separate stages (at least that’s what the demo has shown) – but they do look more substantial than prior series entries, and you’re able to explore more fully and even move the camera around a bit.

I had a good time with this short, yet charming demo. You get to play through three different stages and try out some of the new features. First is the ability to suck up big objects and control them, such as a car or a vending machine. Speeding through enemies, as well as shooting soda cans at them, is quite enjoyable. You’ll also be introduced to the basis of this entry’s story, which involves saving all the captured Waddle Dees. Not only that, but the stages have a variety of goals you can complete, beyond just getting to the end. One of my most favorite new things, though, definitely has to be the gacha collectables. You’ll run into little gacha capsules in some stages, which at the end of the stage you get to open and see what you got. Each gacha figure contains various info about it too. Also, the demo provides you the option of checking out the two player co-op, though I wasn’t able to test that for myself.

I don’t have any major complaints about Kirby and the Forgotten Land. I do have one worry, though, and one minor complaint. My worry is that despite how fun and charming this game is so far, it may be as disappointingly short as Kirby Star Allies was. And my one complaint is that I didn’t see a volume sliders option. The sound effects were just a smidge too quiet for me; I hope the full release contains at least a BGM and SE slider to balance those out. Nonetheless, the settings menu seemed to be substantial other than that one missing part. Nintendo added both the option to choose between a few different control schemes and normal and easy difficulties to pick from – although the “Wild Mode” difficulty wasn’t hard at all, which honestly I think is normal with the series nowadays. But bosses do feel like they’ll take some effort at least, even if the overall stages are easy.

In the end, Kirby and the Forgotten Land still appears to be as fun and charming as it looked in the trailers. I hope the overall game is more substantial than the last title, but either way, it looks like it’ll be a carefree and fun game to sit down with. If you’re a fan of Nintendo games and haven’t checked out the free demo yet, you definitely should.

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It’s been quite a while since I played a true horror game, so when I got a chance to check out the somewhat controversial Martha is Dead I decided to jump on it. I didn’t really know what to expect when I fired this up, but with all of the warnings I expected there would be some extreme content. The big question is does the game deliver a great story with all this madness, and is it any fun to play? Let’s find out!

Our story begins in Italy during World War II. You play as Giulia, who has a twin sister named Martha. Their father is a commander in the German army during this time and they live in a small village in a forest by the lake. One night Giulia makes a horrible discovery: her sister Martha is dead and floating in the lake. The odd thing about this is Martha is dressed in Giulia’s clothing, and since their mother was always kinder to Martha, Giulia just assumes her sister’s identity. They couldn’t tell the girls apart and she figured it would be easier on them to lose the daughter they loved less. This begins to eat away at her very quickly, and she begins to look into what really happened to her sister. Was it the White Lady that haunts the lake that killed her? Was she killed by random soldiers, or maybe even something more sinister? This quest will lead Giulia down a very dark path of discovery that will not only uncover a past she had forgotten about, but maybe even what actually happened to her sister.

I want to be very careful here to keep this review as spoiler free as possible, since uncovering the mystery in Martha is Dead is the crux of the whole experience. The game will give you several warnings about the content contained here, and they aren’t kidding. There are some pretty gruesome and disturbing scenes throughout the game depicting self harm among other things. Some of them are probably over the top, but they do fit the narrative of the story well and the developers did a fantastic job of creating a very unnerving environment throughout the entire game. I think some of the latter story bits were a bit of filler, but for the most part this is a tightly knitted tale of horror and mystery.

Graphically speaking, Martha is Dead looks great. All the areas are richly detailed with many environmental effects to immerse you in the story. Examples of this are the way the team used fog to create a feeling of being lost; using a simple lighter to see within the darkness while feeling helpless; and more. The character models are nicely detailed and the terror-filled scenes you will experience are the same, maybe even a bit too much so in some cases. The way they did the ending sequence of this one was something very unique, but I won’t say anymore cause that is very much spoiler territory, but when you see it you’ll know what I was talking about. I did run into a few technical issues with this one, such as some wonky frame rates due to environments loading in and getting stuck a few times, but I feel like these are things that will be fixed with a patch down the line.

The sound design here is really impressive. The effects team did a good job with the nature sounds to really make the woods in the game come to life. They also took the time to throw in some haunting sounds that really keep the players on edge. Music isn’t always present but when the classical music kicks in it escalates the emotions of the gameplay instantly. The voice acting here is pretty good. I went with the English cast and felt they did an excellent job bringing this terrifying tale to life. If you wanted a more authentic experience you might want to give the Italian audio a go.

The gameplay is for the most part what you would expect from a game of this nature. You will wander around the area in first person picking up items to solve simple quests. This isn’t a bad thing, since the story being told is an interesting one and they do throw a lot of interactive prompts in the mix while you are performing these actions – a big portion being the several pictures you need to take during the game in order to progress the story. Taking pictures isn’t as simple as pointing and clicking – there are many additional camera parts you will find as the game progresses and you will have to adjust things accordingly to get the best picture. Players will have to develop this film as well, but the game makes both of these very straight-forward and it’s a lot of fun to take random photos of the environment with all the different filters. Other interactive elements take place during some the darker scenes in the story and add to the disturbing nature of them quite a bit. The little side details like the daily Tarot Card reading are a nice distraction as well, and I loved the artwork on these cards. There are however some things here I felt needed a bit more work. The entire section where you are sending telegraphs is a mess. The chart they provide you on how to decode the messages, makes little sense and if there is an in-game guide that explained it better I didn’t see it. The other major thing I noticed was riding the bike is very difficult due to it controlling poorly. Both of these things are easy fixes that I hope the developers will address going forward.

Overall, while I felt Martha is Dead was a decent experience, I don’t think it’s for everyone. There are a lot of disturbing themes and images in this one that would certainly turn off some players. While the team did a great job crafting this world and the sound design is top notch, some of the gameplay elements need a bit more polish. That being said, this is still a unique experience that fans of these types of games would likely really enjoy. You can complete the game in around seven hours, and the game will set you back $29.99. I don’t think I will be taking another run at this one anytime soon to find some of the collectibles I missed, but folks out there are looking for something very unsettling with a point to all the madness, this might be it.

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher.

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