Owlboy - Too fucking long

Fuck this game. I wanted to enjoy this game, I wanted to like it but every time I do something fucking stupid shows up and drags on way too long to be remotely enjoyable. I commend them for trying different things in the game but when it fucking sucks, it really fucking sucks. Alright what is Owlboy? Its an indie sidescrolling platformer that spent the last decade in development. Literally a decade to develop. The graphics are great, the characters are likable and the gameplay is decent in some parts. However, underneath its pretty exterior is a frustrating mess. I have never wanted to throw my controller at the screen harder than playing this game. Not even Persona 3 or Dark Souls or anything challenging. This game is frustrating because it feels like I'm either fighting with the controls or something boring just drags on way too long like the fucking stealth sections.

The unique part of Owlboy as a platformer is you have the ability to fly. Flying hides the terrible controls somewhat until you get to sections where you cannot fly. Most of the game is spent navigating through dungeons/ruins solving puzzles and killing monsters along the way. Pick up a rock, drop the rock here, grab a cloud and have it pour water here, then kill monster and use it as a bomb blah blah blah. This is fun, its a great game if it was just that. Then suddenly you'll get to a part where the screen goes dark and you "cannot fly because they have poor vision but can hear the sound of your wings flapping." Yet I can run around jumping on rocks or slamming onto the floor as hard as possible. You have to sneak past them and since the jump and fly button are both A, you will constantly accidentally fly and instant game over. Getting to close is a game over. This goes on and on and on. Luckily that part was short. Then you get to other parts where you accidentally set off a swarm of gnats in the darkness and you have to survive by lighting up torches and grabbing lantern monsters. As soon as you touch the darkness you instantly die. Then theres the pirate base where you have to stealth past pirates. If you get seen the door locks and they shoot bombs and you die. Then later in the game theres another pirate base where you have to stealth, then even later you have to stealth through a pirate ship. And so on and so on. LIKE IS THERE ENOUGH OF STEALTHING? Its not fun, its clunky and with the shitty controls makes it a huge core than anything challenging.

Then there are the gladiator rooms. I don't know what they're called but you will constantly enter a room both doors will close then waves upon waves of enemies will spawn and you have to survive. Getting hit in this game will send you flying across the room and stick onto a wall. If you get hit, its fairly easy to get chain hit and you can do nothing but die. So you're fighting swarms and swarms of enemies and then eventually you'll get hit somehow and then get swarmed and die. You need to be flying to summon your allies to shoot at them. Yes you don't actually get to fight you need the power of your allies to do it for you. That is interesting in a way but when you do get hit you are separated from your ally and have to grab him again. Imagine a game where you are hit and you drop your sword or gun and have to pick it up before you can fight again. Sometimes in regular exploration mode I get too lazy to fight monsters and just fly past them but they will keep following you to the next screen and soon I find myself being chased by 50 bees and then swarmed to death. You don't have that much health in the game and getting hit a couple of times usually means a game over so gladiator rooms are just a room of pure luck. Are you standing in the right spot when the monster spawns? Did it spawn on you? Well too bad try again.

Bosses are underwhelming. Theres usually a chase scene before or after bosses where you have to constantly run from a big bad thing or lava or water or whatever thats coming. Messing up once is death. I surprisingly haven't died once in these sections. Its hectic but it doesn't feel too annoying to do. Bosses all have a set pattern and once you learn it it is fairly easy to do. The thing is, for all the bosses, they are immune to all damage so you just have to sit there and take it until it suddenly stops shooting. Use the cannon from an enemy ship to shoot a rock to have it land on them, dodge swords until the guy charges a wall and gets stunned then shoot him, have the guy punch a wall to get his arm stuck then shoot him. Its unrewarding to spend 90% of the time just running until you can run up close to hit him once and after like 3 hits the boss is dead. Whats the point of giving me a gun and upgrades and all that shit if I'm not going to be using it? Look at something like Axiom Verge, you're running around with guns blazing shooting giant bosses. Those felt rewarding to fight when you finally win. This feels like you're a punching bag. You don't even get to kill the bosses as most of them end up being used by the pirates and are actually good people underneath it all. You never kill anyone because murder is wrong! Except the part where you go around murdering all those monsters, and monkeys and the monkey king probably died too after you flood the room with lava. You might be going, yeah but monsters and monkeys and prinnys aren't human. Neither are you, you're a fucking owl.

Then the worst part reveals itself near the end where you go into space and cannot fly anymore. This whole section has no monsters, no puzzles, just hours of platforming fun. OH JOY. This part you'll realize how bad the controls are. You are trying to do a jump when you'll accidentally flap and end up crashing to your death. Want to jump from the chandelier to the door? Oh we've made sure you have to stand at the very edge and leap and click fly at your highest point then glide towards the door. Any less will have you crashing into the ground below. Oh its an autoscroller now? We'll make the rocks spawn as slow as possible so you have to click fly and stay in the air as long as possible and one fuck up will end up costing you the entire thing. Even if it looks like you made it if you jump too early you'll eventually die a slow agonizing death. Which fucking masochist came up with this shit. This isn't fucking remotely enjoyable to do. I love sidescrolling platformers. Its my favorite genre of game but this is fucking infuriating to play. I cannot stress how bad the flying and jumping are in this game. You will constantly fuck up and randomly start flying when you are doing a long jump and crash to your death. If its just a few sections thats alright but this drags on too fucking long. In fact most of the game drags on for too fucking long. Too much instant death, too much stealth, too much platforming with bad controls, too much of shitty stuff.

The really sad part of this game was that its fun to play. Its an enjoyable game ridden with frustrating parts. The puzzle solving is fun, the exploration is enjoyable, and some of the bosses even put up a challenge and the storytelling is great. The characters are likable, they have their flaws, and they have growth to them. One thing I can't help but notice though is that everyone is male. Everyone you talk to, everyone you meet and fight are male. The only women you meet in this game are the two captured soldiers in the pirate base and the mad scientist. And those show up for a total of like 5 seconds. The game is very story driven and its really quite interesting to learn about the world. Its honestly a fun game. However all of that is just completely overshadowed by the horrible experiences in certain sections of the game. Was the game enjoyable for me? After that last platforming section, no. I can hardly remember the fun I was having with the game after that section. I would play it once for the story but I'll never in a million years want to touch it again. If I want a good platformer that I can go back and play over and over again then I'll just play something like Castlevania SOTN, Axiom Verge or even Valdis Story. I'll even reply Shantae: Half-Genie Hero over this.

Shantae: Half Genie Hero - Hip Shaking Transformations

I've never heard of the Shantae series, and I'm sure most people haven't. It started off as an indie game by a husband and wife team on the Gameboy Color but releasing it when the Gameboy Advance was already out hurt its sales. Nevertheless it had great reviews and gained a small following. The next game came out on the DS and once again received great reviews. By the time the third game came out on 3DS and WiiU it already reached cult classic status. It wasn't the most popular but enough people wanted a sequel and the fourth one was funded through kickstarter and they passed it by a huge margin. I recently learned of it from AGDQ as people were talking about speed running the game. I saw that people on my steam list has been playing it but never bothered to look into it because it seemed pretty anime. Its anime, but it has charm.

Half genie hero is the forth of the series and is probably the one most people will start with since its the only one to come to PC. Because of this, half genie hero is a soft reboot of the series and does not follow the plot of the first three games. What is the plot you say? Is there even a plot? Well, you start off as Shantae, a half-genie hero. Genies used to live in the world and protected it and eventually fell in love with humans. However bad stuff happened and they all left the world to return to the genie realm so they can focus their powers on protecting the world. They left behind their children, the half-genies and each one becomes a guardian of a town. Thats where you come in, the guardian of Scuttle Town. You must go around beating up bad guys and saving the world with the power of love and friendship. Before you groan and puke, it's a light hearted game with a lot of charm. The characters are likable and the humor is passable. But the greatest strength of the game would be the graphics and the music. The graphics are bright and colourful and the enemies and NPCs you meet are charming. From small pirate grunts and starfish to giant worm monsters and mermaid girls. Everything looks cheerful and cute. The music is catchy and I sometimes end up humming along with the level. I especially enjoy the music in Mermaid Falls. The main theme of Shantae has actual singing too.

The game plays like a side scroller, although not a very complex one. You start off with 2 hearts, each one represents 4 health. It may seem challenging at first, but later on you'll find so many extra hearts that everything does trivial damage. Your attacks consist of hair whipping enemies and it can be upgraded to deal more damage and whip faster. As well as learning magic like shooting fireballs or spinning swords. Thats not all though, the best part of the game is the dances. Early on it will tell you to shake those hips and when you do you can get up to 12 different dances at once. Using a monkey dance will transform Shantae into a monkey that can hop high and climb walls. Crab dance will transform her into a crab that can swim in the water. Elephant dance will transform into an elephant that can break weak walls and floors. There are many forms and each one will allow Shantae into previously blocked off areas in earlier stages for secrets. There is one issue though, if secrets are required are they still considered secrets? For example every time you finish a chapter you will get a new dance, then your uncle will tell you to collect an item for his invention which requires you to help several people by trading item to item and each of the items needed will be from a secret area. I can't help but feel its made as padding for the game.

The game itself is very short, consisting of 5 stages and one extra final stage with no secrets. Like really? This is it? Even when I searched though everything and collected every secret I still managed to beat the game in 5 hours of playtime. The game length really hurt. Luckily, on kickstarter some of the stretch goals included extra characters. Unfortunately, most of the stretch goals were set way too high. It was originally supposed to come with 3 chapters but two were added in as stretch goals. Only 3 chapters? Are they serious? Either way, the extra character's chapter isn't out yet so I can't comment on it. The stages are quite varied with each stage having its own gimmick. However, some stages contains parts which are much too frustrating. There is are too many pitfalls or instant death on stages with no or far apart checkpoints. Its not very bad that you die, however its very bad that whenever you die you have to fade to black into a loading screen then start again. Bosses have pretty predictable patterns and each stage contains one or two bosses. They do have a lot of health so its just poke poke poke until it gets defeated eventually. Defeated, not killed because this is a game of love and friendship. They aren't really that much of bad guys and they come back later, reformed in a way, and you help them out. Except the real villain, the evil pirate Risky Boots, and even she can turn around and become reformed.

Is the game fun? Very. I would recommend this to anyone who likes platformers and isn't turned away by this style of game. It has the old school feel to the game and really makes you feel like a kid all over again. The game is a little easy however and quite short so if 5 hour of gameplay isn't for you, I would wait on a sale. If anything, wait for the other character to be added in first to see if you want to jump into the game.

Freedom Fall - Psychopathic Princess Simulator

To start things off. I like how this game you're not going around trying to rescue a helpless princess. No, its quite the opposite. The princess is out to kill you. Freedom fall is a platformer where you have to avoid all sort of obstacles like traps, fires, pitfalls, electricity, etc. You are a prisoner trapped in a prison tower where if you can escape, you are granted freedom. You might as well give it a shot since you're on death row right? This entire tower was created by a haughty psychopathic princess who constantly write messages on the wall mocking you and the other dead prisoners. Its kinda cute actually. All she wants is to watch you die because shes bored and has no friends.

Difficulty wise, the game isn't very hard. The game isn't very long either but its still an enjoyable game while it lasted. The art is pretty good. Its similar to Bastion, and every time you die it goes splat then covers the spikes with blood. There isn't much of a story though. Then again this is a platformer and there really isn't any text/dialogue in the game outside of the writings on the walls. The princess is mute. Shes also quirky as all hell and it shows in her writing. Really not much else to say about this game. You should get it if you like platformers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o4ma4ki8sE

Muramasa: The Demon Blade Part 2 - More filler content than actual gameplay

This is a continuation of my previous one found here.

Now that I went back and finished Kisuke's route, the only thing I can say is what the fuck. At first I thought Kisuke's story would be related to Momohime's story but no. These two are completely irrelevant. They don't cross over except you see them in hot springs and say one word to each other. A lot of games do the finish the game with two or more characters to have the full story shit. I always hated those. You are already attached to your first character. Why do I have to beat the game again to see the full story? Why not have multiple paths and endings so we can discuss with others and see what we got differently? Instead we get one confusing half of a story with no ending and no fucking answers. Until you play the other half you're in the dark. When you play the other character you notice that he or she is a giant dipshit and you don't feel like playing it again.

For example something like Mana Khemia 2 where you have to pick between the slave guy or the country bumpkin. I started off with the slave and you are forced into school by this girl who is your master and she literally drags you around everywhere. You reluctantly do whatever she says because hey she owns your life. Basically the whole half of the game is how you hate Manas and how she has a crush on you but you are oblivious as all fuck. If you play the country bumpkin you are this dipshit chick who is a giant airhead and pisses you off every opportunity she gets. Her story is about raising a Mana egg. The stories cross over a lot as both  of these teams are rivals at school and you often fight against or with each other. Their team often joins your party as a guest and you are often helping the other team in quests or stuff. Thats alright. I get the majority of the story and each team has their own individual storyline.

Something similar but a little different is Arc the Lad where you play the story of two brother separated at birth. You have to play both of them at the same time as the storyline switches between them from chapter to chapter. One goes from one side of the world the other goes from the other. They never meet and just barely miss each other. One person is fighting for the monsters one person is fighting for the humans and they all hate each other. Until finally at the climax you both meet for the first time and then find out whose behind all that shit and team up brother with brother and fuck them up. That game had a nice story and combat was fun as heck.

But I'm getting carried away from the main point. Muramasa is neither of those. Its two confusing halves of two confusing stories with no ending no climax no character development. Hell the fucking filler content is more than the actual gameplay. You spend more time walking to the next location than actual storyline or boss fights. I finished Kisuke's route in a little over three hours. THREE FUCKING HOURS. And funny part is, over 75% of the game was walking from one side of the world to the other. The storyline is pathetically short. You must be asking, how do you develop characters in an RPG in three hours? The answer is you don't.

I liked Momohime's route a lot more than Kisuke's mainly because Momohime is always travelling with Junkuro who taken over her body and using it to kill gods and demons. Then theres the foxgirl Kongiku the servant of Junkuro and her fox friends who faithfully does everything Junkuro says. Basically her story is Junkuro is out to find the evil sword to gain unlimited power and fuck the world. You actually get travel companions with you and actual dialogue. Kisuke's route is you are this dipshit ninja who lost his memory. How cliche. You're this loner who travels around trying to find your memory and beating up the wrong people like a retard because you're being tricked. Following you is the foxgirl Yuzuruha who tells you that her master sent her over to help you by giving you swords to collect souls of the slain and forge demon blades. Yuzuruha is way better than Kongiku. First of all Yuzuruha doesn't talk like a dumbass, have breasts exploding out her clothes, and doesn't refer to you as master. She does do the little spin-around thing while holding her paper umbrella which is a little distracting but its forgivable. She doesn't really help you or do anything to aid you really. Shes hardly even in the story and only appears to say something then disappear. Kisuke is always and forever alone.

Kisuke's story is mainly about Torahime, Momohime's elder sister who died and was resurrected for 49 days. In those 49 days she's looking for revenge for the death of her entire family and clan. What I found retarded is Torahime is related to Momohime and Kisuke is related to Junkuro yet neither of their stories overlap at all. You would think its perfect to come together eventually but no. Its just two stories doing their own shit. The worst part is it still gives you half a story. So in total you get a quarter of the game in each route. Fuck this game.

One thing I have to point out is this game lets you forge a ton of swords. These names are all impossible to remember you just have to look at the stats. Each sword has a different secret art, basically skills unique to that sword. They also have a special stat such as +1 strength, +10% more damage to all swords, 50% fire resistance. Then theres the attack power of the sword itself. As cool as that sound, most swords you get and use for less than five minutes before you toss them for a better one. You might consider keeping one for their stats or secret art but no you rarely ever need to use them. Normal random mobs are too easy to need it. You might use it once or twice to wipe them out fast but your normal hits can kill them just as fast. For bosses you don't use the secret arts because you need to keep your sword power to block attacks. You can carry three swords with you at a time and you can switch at anytime during combat. Each sword has its individual health bar which is drained by blocking or from using their secret arts. Once a sword breaks your damage is neutered and you cannot block. When you sheathe a sword, it will slowly recover their health. A broken sword needs to wait until it gets full health before its fixed. Therefor the only reason you get a sword is for their attack power. Then you slash the boss until it breaks and switch to another.

Another thing is cooking. I pointed out how slow and tedious it is to make food. But there are actually two types of food. One type of food is shit that you can carry like rice balls you can make out of a pot and then gently knead it in your hands, baked potato by cooking yams under leaves, and grilled squid by sticking a fucking squid into the fire. These take forever to make but are cheap easy healing when needed. You can carry them with you into battle. The other type are hotpots. You cook them but you have to eat them right away. These are pure shit. You cannot cook in combat so the only reason to use them is if you are low on health from random mobs and you wanna heal up. They are also expensive a shit to make so you're better off eating a squid or something. However unlike the other type of food, hotpots always gives buffs. These buffs only last like 30 seconds so if you use it then fight a boss it wears off by the time it actually starts. Using it to clear random mobs are pointless because how easy they are. So what are the use of these? Nothing. Just for the food porn where you watch it get eaten away bite by tiny bite and comments on how good it taste. Fuck just go to a restaurant instead. At least you get to taste it.

Most good games you don't want the story to end yet, while shitty games you can't wait for it to actually end. For this game I'm torn between the two. I want the game to end but since theres no story or real ending I want it to keep going so it can actually give me something. I think even Blade Kitten has more story and depth to the game than this. You should just think of this game as a side scrolling action platformer than an RPG. The combat is fun. Yes its easy but its fun. Some people may find it a bit difficult but I was around 9-18 levels below the recommended levels the entire game and I managed to beat it fine. I was like level 23 by the time I finished the game on Kisuke's route. I couldn't even use half the swords I got from bosses because I was so underleveled. Funny thing is this is supposed to be the "hard mode." The real hard mode is unlocked by beating a game on either character.

There was some confusion from what I said before. When you start a new save, you automatically have two saves on your one save. One is Momohime's one is Kisuke's. By selecting your save you are able to pick between the two. The time spent and swords collected in either save gets totalled into your main save. If you wish to play the hardest mode you must start over after you beaten either Momohime or Kisuke. That is complete bullshit. Why fucking tease us with a mode we will never play. Should just enable it so on your second playthrough you can feel challenged. And after beating the game on both characters you can finally unlock the blocked monster lairs. All fucking three of them. In there you fight the same bosses as you fought in the main game but this time you fight more than one at a time! Gasp! Fucking too lazy to make real content and have to resort to repeating content into filler content. This game is pathetic and I take back anything good I said about it in part one of my review.

One last thing about this game before I'm done. When you play this game you'll learn that all Japanese women can't or refuse to fight and will whine at every opportunity they get. Seriously when you first meet Torahime you tell her that a woman wearing armor and going off into battle is stupid and should stay home. Then you kick her ass. Momohime cannot fight and will whine at every opportunity. In Momohime's route you fight a thunder god which you would think would be powerful as fuck but no. You just smack her then she falls down from the sky and reveals her ass and you have to spank her while she moans for maximum damage. Then she loses and the other lightning god is like stop being stupid or I'll stop liking you and she's all like what thats mean waaaah whineee whineeee. Fucking horrible portrayal of women in this game. Then again this is Vanillaware, known for their extreme sexism.

Muramasa: The Demon Blade Part 1 - Food porn and hot springs galore

Muramasa is a Vanillaware game. Its not bad, the combat is fun but like all Vanillaware games there are huge flaws. The first and biggest flaw is that there is basically no story. You start in the middle of nowhere where stuff has already happened and theres no conclusion at all. This game is similar to Odin Sphere but the combat is greatly improved. The story however is much weaker. There are two characters you can play as, Momohime or Kisuke, and it takes place in the feudal Japan era. It has so much potential but they blew it.

Like other Vanillaware games, the graphics are great. Since this one is on the Wii its much better than the PS2 titles. Character designs are decently done, some are a little stupid like Momohime is basically running around with no pants and the fox girl Kongiku on Momohime's path has breasts almost bursting out of her clothes. The background is nicely done but there is a minor flaw. Sometimes you can't tell what is in the background and what is in the foreground. Sometimes you're not really sure what you can step on and what you can't. For a platforming game this can be annoying. But the maps almost all use the same background for laziness so once you see it once you won't get that problem again.

Combat is amazingly fun. Its fluid and its fast paced. Its a side scrolling brawler with a variety of combos and special skills based on the sword you picked. There is a normal blade which is fast and the combos are usually fast mini hits. The long blade is slower but it does multiple mini hits in a single swing. The long blade has a bug however that I abused a bit. If you jump in the air and use a long sword combo you have this gravitational pull when you hit something that pulls them towards you even if the enemy is in the air behind you. When you do this they cannot perform any action and with a long blade you can chain about 4-5 combos in the air before you finally reach the ground. Doing so on enemies that can leap in the air can combo upwards to 200-300 hits and kill them before you reach the ground.

However fun the combat is the difficulty is incredibly easy. Most monsters you can just spam your A button and kill them all. Monster lairs and Bosses provide a bit of a challenge but they are not that difficult either. When you first start a game it it lets you pick between two difficulties, Muso for people who suck horribly at gaming, or Shura the normal mode for average players. Once you beat either story once on Shura mode Shigurui mode is enabled. HOWEVER! You must start a brand new game instead of starting on new game+ which is continuing your story with the second character. The game lets you play either character at either time. You can play them both at once or finish one first. It is entirely up to you. Note that both characters can use swords unlocked by either character so its beneficial to play both at once. You may not have the amount of souls needed though. This game also pulls the same bullshit as other Vanillaware games though. To get the second ending of either character you must first complete both character's first ending and equip a secret sword you get after getting both of the first endings then beating the respective final bosses. To get the true ending you must equip the secret sword after getting both secondary endings then beating the respective final bosses. A pain in the fucking ass.

The characters are entertaining and you really want to get to know them a bit better but it never really expands on it. Momohime's route you're a princess whose spirit was forced out of her own body by a criminal called Junkuro. Who is he? What is he trying to acomplish? Nothing really is explained. All you know is he knows the Obouro style sword fighting. To keep it for himself he killed his master and all the other disciples. He's a badass who takes no shit from no one and travels to hell and heaven to get a sword back. Along the way you hear Momohime whine at every possible stop about how evil he is being. You get a few sentences of what happened such as Momohime's family being killed and overthrown, some guy who appears for like 2 minutes and gets his ass kicked by Junkuro, random monk who tries so hard to punish Junkuro and then gets a epiphany at the end of the game and turns "good" and travels around the land with Momohime following him because of Junkuro's fucking sacrifice to save Momohime.

The story is short. I finished Momohime's route in a little over 6 hours. Thats pathetically short especially with me dicking around in monster lairs, hot springs, and engaging in food porn every chance I got. I also left the game on for long periods of time while I did other shit. Theres more hidden content after you beat both stories but still. Another thing in this game is the hot springs. How fucking common are hot springs in Japan? Every 10 maps you see a new hot spring and even after beating a boss you all get into the hot spring together. You see a barely naked Momohime walking around. She looks like shes 12 for fucks sake. Its a free heal and sometimes you get to talk to people. Then theres the food porn. You can go into restaurants and order food and it will be placed on the table in front of you. You have to click A repeatedly to eat the item. It eats it bite by bite and Momohime will keep commenting on how nice the food is, etc etc. Cooking isn't much different. Sometimes I wanna bake a bunch of potatoes for the boss and its taking fucking forever because you have to dig a hole place the potato in the hole and cover it with leaves then set it on fire then pull it out. FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL POTATO. There no auto cook, you have to keep hitting the A button. It was cool seeing it for the first time but seeing it time after time is tedious.

This is it for now.