Pokémon Legends: Arceus feels like a promising prototype for what could be a terrific finished game one day. It shakes up the stagnated Pokémon formula but just that, presenting many great ideas but failing to fully develop any of them.
Arceus is an Isekai, the type of story where the protagonist is thrown into a strange, alien world they know nothing about. Here, it starts with the divine being Arceus – Pokémon‘s equivalent to God – speaking with them in a dark void. God asks about our appearance, mods our cell phone, and throws the main character into a beach, where we meet a professor called Laventon, who just witnessed them drop from a rift in the sky. When we find [...]
Kirby Star Allies is a disappointing follow-up to the excellent Planet Robobot, being a less complex, creative, and engaging game in almost every aspect. It banks on nostalgia, recycling old ideas, characters, and music, in the hopes that they will be sufficient to appease fans.
Star Allies is much less narrative-driven than its predecessor. Here, a dark, mysterious wizard makes a spell that corrupts the hearts of the people of planet Popstar. Kirby, then, must help his old friends and enlist their help to defeat the wizard.
The main gimmick of Star Allies is the ability to have three allies accompanying Kirby in his adventure: Kirby can throw a heart at an enemy to [...]
This review contains spoilers.
A diamond in the rough, Epic Mickey offers an ambitious blend of elements from 3D Platformers and Immersive Sims. It introduces a fascinating world that encourages exploration with a focus on choice and consequence, but lacks commitment to its design: the game seems hesitant about itself, as if it were afraid to double down on its core concepts.
The story tells that one day, Mickey Mouse was brought to a wizard’s workshop by a magical mirror in his bedroom (“I don’t know if the mirror was being mischievous or malicious,” the wizard ponders…). This character, Walt Disney’s alter ego from Fantasia, is building a maquette [...]
Just like its predecessor, Horizon Forbidden West is a perfectly decent open-world adventure game that excels when it comes to offering spectacle but suffers from a bland, predictable protagonist, and a world that, despite making a great first impression, lacks mystery and depth.
Aloy, the young outcast turned savior, is now looking for the backup of Gaia, an AI designed to control the terraforming process that is now destroying her machine-infested world. To that end, the now famous Nora hunter heads west, into Tenakth territory, tracking down her old mentor, Sylens, who has kept things from her and may know about Gaia’s location.
Now that she’s deemed a savior [...]
Tales of Vesperia is a competent JRPG that suffers from a lack of focus: it presents a complicated protagonist with a narrative arc full of potential but builds the story around other unrelated subjects. It still offers some great moments and scenes, but could have been a much better experience with a tighter script.
The protagonist is Yuri, a young man that left knighthood after realizing that a police force works not for the people, but for those few in power. Yuri’s hometown, Zaphias, is marked by stark social inequality: “To lack nobility is to lack humanity,” a nobleman scoffs. This explains why no one seems to care that the local fountain in the Lower Quarter has [...]
This review contains spoilers.
Bloodborne not only offers a brilliant Cosmic Horror story, but it is also a strong contender for the best game From Software has ever made. The worldbuilding is front and center, the story is not so vague and abstract as Souls-like games tend to be, and the combat is more engaging and rewarding than the first two Dark Souls.
The game’s opening is brief but very effective. We watch it unfold in the first person as our character, seemingly tied to a bed, watches helplessly as a strange old man talks about blood transfusions and gives a dark, sardonic laugh that should serve as a welcome card to any fan of the Souls series. Next, we watch a [...]