Another game where combat looks to be so much of an afterthought they didn’t even bother going over it in a “Gameplay Overview”

It’s also ironic it says gameplay overview, and they spent more than half the video talking about story, voice acting, and music.

p5au.jp when?

OMG, yes! Every time I wanna visit my favorite historical site, I launch Assassin’s Creed and play the same 3 missions over and over again! Bless! 💚

🎵 Assassin’s Creed is a good franchise 🎵

Yes, please.

I have a lot of respect for some Western developers, and there also is a lot of trash that comes out of Japan, but I don’t care about your photorealistic graphics or whatever emotional story your team of wannabe TV/film writers cooked up: Japan just does fun better, IMO.

Amen. I also have a ton of issues with contemporary game design—padding playtime with procedural generation, prioritizing graphics, world size, or narrative over gameplay… etc.

Nowadays, I feel as if every game tries to compete for “most game” while lacking cohesion and polished ideas.

And to top it off: non-optimized game size. I’m sorry—I don’t care if your game is $2.99, I’m not downloading 80GBs just to try a game I may refund an hour later.

True in my case. All of my favorites either were released before 2020 or originally released before 2020 and I’m playing the re-release.

Only new IP I got excited about after 2020 was Project G.G. and I strongly doubt it’ll ever see the light at this point.

I’ve never enjoyed any Ubisoft game except maybe South Park? And I’m guessing this is because it was a collab between Obsidian and Matt and Trey.

If anyone can afford it, I recommend the Neva + Gris bundle. Neva is even better, IMO.

I wish. SimpleX has a notification/delivery issue on iOS—it’s not reliable at all over there.

Jami sucks. I will continue to have it installed and hope one day it evolves into a reliable instant messenger, but, currently, it’s extremely unreliable. Not for times of war.

FR. I hate this app so much, and how necessary it has become for multiplayer gaming. I’m glad it’ll get worse and hopefully give people a strong reason to move.

Why title it “of All Time” though 😅 Helps with engagement, I suppose.

Also, fuck Japan, I guess, haha.

Odd take in this context. The last game in this trilogy was released almost 20 years ago—if they’re not gonna remaster this, what are remasters for exactly?

Nice! I’m not a composer, but I just started playing with LMMS the other week and thought it was cool and intuitive—even encouraged me to finally pull the trigger on that Kurzweil keyboard with midi support I’ve been eyeing for some time! I bookmarked this and will take a look at OpenMPT and Furnace too.

Open source FTW ✊

Hmm… sure, but I feel like “reviews are subjective” gets used as an excuse to give low-effort reviews a pass too often.

Like, I understand if a Steam reviewer writes whatever because they’re just a user, but I cannot justify using the same scale to judge a professional reviewer.

I understand a game may not be a reviewer’s cup of tea, but if this stops them from engaging with the game’s systems and attempting to provide insight through their review then I think it’s fair to judge they haven’t done their job well.

Like, if someone hires me to do a job, and I accept, I cannot go “Oh, I’m gonna do half of it because the rest isn’t my cup of tea. Sorry.” No, I’ll do the job and maybe complain about it afterwards, which IMO, is exactly what reviewers should do—example: “I beat the boss, but the fight sucked because X, Y, and Z.”

I think there should be standards, otherwise you get reviewers unfairly judging games they barely played like in the infamous God Hand review.

Damn, this looks like a proper Onimusha game? Ballsy from Capcom there. The dub is awful though, holy shit 😂

And this has Denuvo? 😂 It’s a 2D Shinobi game in 2025, why are they spending money on Denuvo.

Hmm… I suppose they’re not wrong seeing the most successful action franchise today—Devil May Cry—took the combo simulator route, which’s not necessarily bad, just not in line with the design principles of the genre’s best games: Devil May Cry 3, Bayonetta, and Ninja Gaiden 2.

We need the challenging/awesome action balance to come back, for sure.

Any action/fighting/shmup franchise because the stories are typically nonexistent/shit anyway:

1. Bayonetta: I recommend the original as a starting point for an authentic action experience, but Bayonetta 2 is more beginner-friendly.

2. Devil May Cry: either 3, or 5 will work—3 if you’re after a challenging experience, and 5 if you’re looking for an insane combo simulator. 1 could work as an entry point, but it’s too old and will not appeal to everyone.

3. Ninja Gaiden: I recommend the original Ninja Gaiden 2 on XBOX (not Sigma) if you’re after nonstop action, and Ninja Gaiden Black if you’re more of a souls-like fan.

4. Crimzon Clover: World EXplosion is the superior game.

5. Under Night In-Birth: I recommend Sys:Celes because it’s the only one with functional netcode.

6. Persona 4 Arena Ultimax because it’s the only Persona Arena game, they just started at Persona 4, and the story has tie-ins for Persona 3 and 4.

7. Guilty Gear: start with XX Accent Core Plus R if you need the “the most Guilty Gear” because every character has the most moves they’ve ever had throughout the series. -STRIVE- for beginners, and Xrd if you find XX inaccessible. OG Guilty Gear is a broken artifact, maybe to be admired, but not taken seriously.

8. DoDonPachi: DaiOuJou: widely regarded as a shmup goat and the best DoDonPachi game. I recommend the Black Label release.

God, the cringe…