Steins;Gate 0 (Nathan Green)

 Out of all the titles I was excited for this year, Steins;Gate 0 was pretty high up on the list. I remember watching the anime of Steins;Gate and adoring it so much that I went and played the game soon after. Steins;Gate 0 isn’t exactly a sequel or prequel to the first game, rather it expands upon the events that took place so that the true ending of the first title was even possible to begin with. It’s an interesting concept, which made me excited for what I was going to see it pull off. With that being said this review WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST GAME. I’ll try to keep Steins;Gate 0 spoilers to a minimum but the final part of this review will be potentially spoilerific due to the subject matter so if you haven’t played Steins;Gate 0 yet then stop reading when you reach the spoiler warning. Anyways, without further ado, let's time leap!

Graphics and Sound:

Now I usually do this section later but since Steins;Gate 0 is a visual novel, the majority of this review is going to be focusing on the story so I’m saving that till last.

The first Steins;Gate was game that looked great and sounded great. The art was unique, the soundtrack varied and memorable, and the voice acting spot on. Steins;Gate 0 unsurprisingly continues this with some excellent art (albeit in a different style to that of the first game), an excellent soundtrack, and great voice acting.

Art-wise the actual art-style has seen a significant change with characters looking closer to how they looked in the anime than then first game. Old art does show up from time to time though, and it can get a bit daunting seeing it mixed in with the new art. It’s not a huge issue, but it is awkward at times. (Editors note; Think back to the Morrigan sprite that Capcom kept re-using in all of the SNK vs Capcom games if you need a point of reference.)

The soundtrack contains a mix of happy go lucky tunes, more intense nerve racking tracks and some really beautiful tracks which usually accompany the more important moments in the game. My favorite track would probably have to be Hoshi No Kanaduru Uta. More specifically, the rendition of it which accompanies the end credits for one route. The vocals on that version really make it that bit better, especially since they were sung by the Voice-Actor for the character of Kagari. The soundtrack does a good job of both setting the tone of the scene and adding to the overall memorability of scenes. It does exactly what a good soundtrack in a visual novel should do, and it does it well.

For voice acting, the entire cast of the original Steins;Gate retain their original voice actors, and they all sound as good as ever. Line deliveries are enthusiastic and really do make the characters feel more alive. The new characters also sound good with some solid performances all around, my favorite being from Maho Hiyajo, whose VA perfectly reflects her character in her acting. Dr. Leskinen's voice actor is a bit goofy with his broken English thrown everywhere, but overall his performance is pretty darn good as well.

Gameplay:

Being a visual novel, Steins;Gate 0 doesn’t really try to sell itself on gameplay. Overall it’s a pretty standard visual novel affair although it is less linear than the first game. All the visual novel basics are present along with the ability to both lock your save file to prevent yourself accidentally saving over it (a very welcome addition) and automatic quick saves which allow you to pick up at important events in the game if you aren’t liking the results of your decision. It’s a small but very welcome change and is something I wish more VNs had. Also present is the tips system which provides you with information on special objects, items etc that are mentioned in the game. A vast majority of these tips are quite useful and helped clear up some confusion I had surrounding some things but some are a bit on the silly side, so your mileage may vary. You’re also able to advance text and menus using the Vita's touchscreen, although you can disable this if you’d prefer otherwise.

The only slightly irritating thing about the game is that the only way to access the dialog archive in case you miss something is to pause the game and select it. A vast majority of visual novels have a button that allows you to quickly access the archive without needing to pause the game so this comes off as a bit clunky. It doesn’t help that the menus lag, and aside from the main menu, you aren’t given any visual or audio feedback upon selecting an item, which can be awkward. I also found myself having to reboot my Vita on one occasion, because Livearea had slowed to a crawl after leaving the game open for so long. Again, your millage may vary.

Story:

With Steins;Gate 0 being a visual novel, the story is the most important aspect, and for the most part Steins;Gate 0 does a good job at crafting a solid plot with a believable set of characters. However it isn’t perfect. I’ll touch on why later on. For now though lets look at the characters.

The entire cast of the original Steins;Gate makes a return with the obvious exception of Kurisu who is well… dead. We also see a variety of newcomers in the form of Maho Hiyajo and Dr Leskinen from an American University that Kurisu used to attend. Fubuki, Yuki and Kadee, who are close friends of Maiyurii, and finally Armadeus, an AI who takes on the form of Kurisu for most of the game. Out of all these new characters, I’d have to say my personal favorite would have to be Maho, one of Kurisu’s closest friends before she passed away. The story does a great job of portraying her as a likable well rounded character, and portrays her inner struggle and love hate relationship with Kurisu very well.

Story-wise, Steins;Gate 0 in and of itself takes place before the true ending of the original Steins;Gate, so if you have not played Steins;Gate, then play that before even thinking about touching Steins;Gate 0.

In essence, Steins;Gate's true ending involves our main character, Okabe receiving a video from himself twelve years in the future giving him the keys to discover the world line knows as steins gate, a world line where neither his childhood friend Maiyurii, or his lover Kurisu has to die. Now that’s all fine and dandy, but how the heck did that video even get sent in the first place? This is the basic premise behind Steins;Gate 0. It works on filling in the gaps present in the true ending of Steins;Gate and bring a bit more closure to everything. On top of that. Steins;Gate 0 goes more into depth around the concepts of AI, time travel and time manipulation, and the consequences of such technologies, which is something I absolutely love. The portrayal of these topics is very well done, and most importantly, thought provoking. There’s a lot more of them as well. While Steins;Gate 0 does have its fair share of slice of life bits, it is far darker in tone than the original Steins;Gate. This really works in its favor, with the story exploring more possibilities that really wouldn’t have been possible in the original game. There’s a constant feeling of danger as the group realizes the size of what they have gotten themselves into, and it makes for an incredibly gripping read. It isn’t as dark as say, Zero Escape but it doesn’t need to be. The story is also paced really well, which really helps a ton.

All this stands true for the vast majority of the game, and compared to the original the story had definitely improved on the problems the original had with pacing and tone. HOWEVER, Steins;Gate 0 isn’t perfect. While the vast majority of the story is excellent the remaining minority kinda crashes and burns. Let me explain, but first here’s your obligatory spoiler warning.

SPOILER ALERT FOR STEINS;GATE 0! DO NOT READ THIS PART IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED STEINS;GATE 0. SKIP AHEAD TO THE VERDICT SECTION TO HEAR MY OVERALL THOUGHTS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. SERIOUSLY, I’M NOT JOKING.

I’m going to be blunt, Steins;Gate 0's story feels a bit unfinished. I came away from the game feeling like I had missed something or that a chunk of the game was missing. Now I’m not talking about the obvious cliff hanger due to how Steins;Gate 0 carries directly into the true end of Steins;Gate. The problem is that the true ending to Steins;Gate 0 is so incredibly disconnected from the events of the other endings that it in fact drags the rest of the game down with it a bit. Up until then the other 5 endings had been pretty incredible and had dropped little mysteries and tid bits here and there that stuck with me and kept me hyped up for the true ending where I’d learn what was going on. Then I actually played the true ending. My hype turned to confusion which then turned to disbelief which then turned to disappointment.

The true ending, rather than serving as an epic conclusion to my twenty-hour journey, was more the closest thing the game could do to blowing its own foot off with a rocket launcher. It commits one of the cardinal sins of storytelling by NOT SOLVING ALL THE MYSTERIES IT SPENT TIME CREATING. Not only that but the extent that it does this to is enough to drag the rest of the game down with it. All those mysteries you had learned in the other endings? All that stuff that happened when Armadeus got deleted in Maho's ending? The mystery surrounding the song in Kagari's ending? Kagari's lost memories? I hope you weren’t expecting answers to any of those mysteries because the game NEVER EXPLAINS THEM. Yes, those technically happened in separate world lines, so from a story perspective it at least has an explanation as to why it doesn’t get explained. However that doesn’t make it any less frustrating.

It ALSO doesn’t excuse the true ending from not answering questions about mysteries and events that happened in its OWN DAMN WORLD LINE. Who was that guy who attacked Maho, Okabe and the Professor in the carpark? What was all that garbage text Armadeus Kurisu left to Maho as a message on @channel? Why was Yuki given plastic surgery and brain washed with Kagari's memories? Where even WAS Kagari in this world line? All these seemingly important events and mysteries that happen in the true ending's world line? NEVER. EXPLAINED. What the hell happened?!? Why put in mysteries to advance the plot and then never give the player closure on the damn things? It isn’t like the player is left enough hints to figure it out themselves so they’re just left scratching their head and wondering where the rest of the game went.

The true ending to Steins;Gate 0 is simply a train wreck. That isn’t to say it isn’t enjoyable, on the contrary, I still enjoyed reading through the true ending. However the unfinished feeling it leaves the player with upon finishing it along with how it unsuccessfully ties up a surprisingly large number of mysteries CAN and most likely WILL get on your nerves. It isn’t enough to ruin the whole game and make me feel like I wasted my money but it is enough to weigh on my mind for a few days while the game is still fresh in my mind.

SPOILERS END HERE

Verdict:

Steins;Gate 0 is an interesting one. If it weren’t for all the loose plot threads and the train wreck of a final ending I’d have no trouble recommending it to anyone who had played the original Steins;Gate. However, it isn’t perfect and the flaws that it does have are in areas which are very likely to effect your potential millage. If there was ever a game fitting of a Your Millage May Vary badge it’s this one. The vast majority of the game is absolutely excellent, with a great story exploring the potential consequences of AI, time travel and a third world war coupled with excellent character development and great pacing but the overall penultimate ending to everything kinda causes the story to run itself smack into a solid steel wall because it wasn’t looking where it was going.

Granted the fact that the true ending ended the way it did was due to Steins;Gate 0’s placement on the overall timeline but I still feel that even taking that into account they could have done better than what we got. It isn’t a deal breaker but it does mean the satisfaction you get from finishing the game is a bit dampened.

Despite the shoddy true ending, Steins;Gate 0 is still well worth playing if you are a die hard fan of the original Steins;Gate. I have no doubt in my mind that you’ll love it if you loved the original. If you’re on the fence about Steins;Gate 0, then you really need to consider one thing, “Do I really care that much if the game ends with mysteries left unsolved?”. If the answer to that question is "No" then by all means go and play Steins;Gate 0, you’ll be in for a treat. However if unsolved mysteries are more of a big deal to you then I’d probably either wait for a price drop or give it a miss. For the most part though the experience Steins;Gate 0 gives you is well worth the price of admission.

For Steins;Gate fans, Steins;Gate 0 gets a Highly Recommended.

For those on the fence about it Steins;Gate 0 gets a Recommended, but wait for a sale first.

For those of you who haven’t played/seen Steins;Gate, Steins;Gate 0 gets a PLAY THE ORIGINAL FIRST YOU GOOF.

Seriously, if you haven’t played the original Steins;Gate yet and are interested in Steins;Gate 0 then PLAY THE FIRST GAME OR WATCH THE ANIME ADAPTION FIRST. I can’t force you, but you’ll be doing yourself a disservice if you do otherwise.

Wow, the last review of 2016 from me (although by the time this goes up it will probably be 2017 already but I wrote this on December 31^st so meh). At the time of writing I would have had my Vita for exactly one year now and what a year it has been. I can’t wait to see what is in store for the Vita in 2017 but I’m hoping to potentially get a review of Danganronpa V3, Mary Skelter and a few other games on the cards if everything goes well. In the meantime I’ll probably get to work on writing up a review for Danganronpa Another Episode Ultra Despair Girls since that’s the only Danganronpa game I have yet to cover so far. Either way I hope you have a safe and wonderful New Year and happy holidays.

This is BDVR writer Nathan Green signing off

ESRB: M

PEGI: 16

CERO: C

OFLC: M (Unrestricted)

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Steins;Gate 0 was played and reviewed on PlayStation Vita (also on PlayStation 4) using a digital copy of the game purchased by the reviewer.

Steins;Gate 0 is developed by 5pb, and Nitroplus, and is published by PQube Games. All rights reserved to their respective owners.

This review is my own work. You are not allowed to duplicate, reproduce or republish on any other sites under any circumstances commercial or otherwise.

Superdimension Neptune VS Sega Hard Girls (Nathan Green)

If you know anything about me as a person then you’ll probably know I love retro gaming. I have a growing collection of consoles and games which I regularly add to and play and I spend a lot of time reading up on retro gaming related topics. For me though the thing that got me into retro gaming was the console legacy left by a little company called Sega. Ever since I started collecting I have been a Segahead through and through so when I heard that the retro gaming inspired Hyperdimension Neptunia series was going to be having a spin-off crossover game with characters from an animated series based entirely on old Sega stuff my interest was immediately piqued.
I’ve been keeping an eye on Superdimension Neptune VS Sega Hard Girls ever since I learned of its existence, and now having sunk around eight hours into the game I feel I can finally answer the all important question of “Is it any good?” So, without further fanfare let's start off by covering the story.

Story and Characters:
The Neptunia series is known for having oddball plots already, but Superdimension's plot is certainly one of the odder once.
For starters our hero of the story this time round isn’t Neptune, but rather her level headed explorer friend IF. At the start of the story, IF stumbles across a place called the grand library which turns out to be a place where all the worlds history is recorded. All seems fine and dandy until a girl falls out of the sky and history starts to just… disappear. Yes history just straight up starts to disappear and IF and the girl who fell out of the sky (who incidentally is named Segami) are the only ones who can do anything about it.
One time travelling bike later and it becomes your mission to visit various eras of history in order to correct what was lost. It’s a relatively simple plot on paper, but in practice Superdimension does more than enough to spice things up despite the premise being a bit cliché.
Character-wise, most of the Neptunia cast is present (apart from Noire, Blanc and Vert mainly due to how they represent non Sega consoles) but along with the regulars we also are joined by the Sega hard girls.
Now for those of you out there who have no idea what I’m talking about let me explain. The Sega Hard Girls were characters that first appeared as a Dengeki Bunko imprint before getting their own light novel, and eventually their own animated television series in 2014 entitled Hi-sCoool! SeHa Girls (If you’re a fan of retro gaming especially Sega retro gaming then I highly recommend you give a few episodes a watch. It’s jam packed full of references to old Sega video games and consoles).
Basically each of the Hard Girls is an anthropomorphized Sega game console. It’s a similar idea to what Neptunia did but the way the Hard Girls were designed makes the references a bit more obvious.
Superdimension features quite a lot of the Sega hard girls but only 4 play a major role in the story, those being Dreamcast, Saturn, Mega Drive and Game Gear. Each of the Hard Girls has a Neptunia universe counterpart. Saturn’s is Neptune/Purple Heart, Dreamcast's is Uzume/Orange Heart, Mega Drive's is Plutia/Iris Heart and Game Gear's is Nepgear/Purple Sister.
In typical Neptune fashion the writing is what really takes the stage here. The game is full of retro gaming references, one liners and dialogue scenes between characters which consistently left me with a giant grin on my face.
Overall, Superdimension does a pretty good job with its characters and writing. The story is a little bit cliché, but it throws enough curve-balls to keep me interested. If you’re looking for a game to play for the story though then this really isn’t it.

Gameplay:
Now for the meat and potatoes of the game, and oh boy there is quite a bit to talk about here so lets not waste any time.
For starters, Superdimension sports a new battle system. You still move around a free roaming circle and attack enemies and all that but instead of picking from one of 3 types of physical attack and using strategy to do stuff such as getting 2 or more enemies in the path of your attack you instead are treated to something new and honestly refreshing for the series.
The combat system works like this, similar to Megadimension you have a circle that you can move your character about in. You can attack, use skills, use items and surprisingly, jump. Yes, jump. I’ll come back to that in a second.
The combat is turn based which doesn’t sound all that interesting on paper but the game implements one major mechanic which makes the system very interesting in practice. Basically when your turn begins you are shown a gauge on the right hand side of the screen. This is the action gauge and it is what determines how long your turn will be and how many actions you can perform. At the beginning of your turn it is completely bottomed out however actions like moving and attacking will increase the action gauge. Once the action gauge fills enough to reach the red area you turn is over.
It’s a simple system but how it is implemented makes it incredibly strategic as well. Firstly unlike in previous games when you start a physical attack you are not locked into having to use a physical attack until your turn ends. When you perform a physical attack a bit of your action gauge gets filled back up but as long as it is below the red area you will still be able to attack, use skills and use items along with moving. This small change means that the variety of actions which can be performed in a turn increases dramatically. You’re given the potential to heal an ally and then attack an enemy or use an item followed by a skill. It’s a simple change but one which adds a surprising amount of strategy to the battle system not seen in previous games. There’s even an element of strategy around how much of the action gauge you think you should use before ending your turn because the further into the red zone your action gauge is when your turn ends the longer it will be until that character gets to have their turn again
As for other battle mechanics there’s your ability to jump for starters. It sounds pointless on paper but bear with me. During battles gems will regularly pop up floating in the air which can be picked up to help recover HP and SP. On top of that after you have dealt enough damage to enemies and have filled the fever gauge (which fills when you perform actions on your turn) up on the right of the screen a fever gem will appear in the battle field which can be picked up to activate fever time. Now when fever time is active all characters will receive a slight stat buff, enemies will miss a turn for the duration of fever time and EXE drives will be able to be used. Fever time ends once the fever gauge runs out though which happens as you perform actions during battle.
The important thing to note is that a full fever gauge carries between battles so if you finish a battle with a full fever gauge it will remain full at the start of the next battle. What I’m getting at is SAVE FEVER TIME FOR BOSSES. The stat buff combined with causing the enemy to miss a turn means that fever time is not only great for dishing pain out but also for recovering since the enemy won’t be able to attack as long as fever time is active.
Apart from fever time you also have access to a charge attack which can be used by holding the X button until the action gauge fills up fully. This deals quite a bit of damage but also results in the fever gauge being filled entirely meaning a longer wait until that characters turn rolls around again.
Skills behave somewhat like they do in other Nep titles however each character has a select number of skill slots which can accommodate either an active or passive skill. As the game continues on you’ll be able to expand the number of slots you have access to allowing for more skill equips.
Also noteworthy is the class system which allows you to gain new classes for characters and swap them to change the type of focus that they have in battle. Importantly this also effects their skill pool and the skills that they will learn as they level up.
Overall the new battle system is something I find quite enjoyable. It refreshes the gameplay style that has been present in the Neptunia series for quite a while and it does a good job of making something both new and enjoyable.
Outside of the battle system there are many changes that have been made in places like the overworld. For example IF is far more acrobatic in the game field than Neptune was in previous games. Not only can she jump but she can also climb ladders, run, enter crawl spaces and swing across ropes.
Now on paper this sounds like just a gimmick and I’ll admit I didn’t think much of it at first, however these new skills are actually used quite a lot throughout the course of the game thanks to the larger variety in dungeon design as well as brand new dungeons made specifically for this game.
The addition of new dungeons is quite nice and they’re designed pretty well however even the dungeons that have been recycled from previous games get a revamp treatment with them having different terrain layouts and routes that you can take depending on the era. In one era a part of land may not be accessible but in another era that same dungeon may have a swing rope or ladder placed in order to allow you to make it to this new area.
It’s a simple system but despite that it is an incredible breath of fresh air as it makes the dungeons that are recycled feel quite a bit more fresh instead of just copy pastes from the previous titles. It also allows for IF’s increased dungeon acrobatics to be used more and make them more than just gimmicks present in only the new dungeons.
Also new are collectibles that are present in dungeons. Inside dungeons you can find medals which are scattered all over the place. Now while collecting them all does give you a little message I’m honestly unsure as to what their real purpose is except for getting 100% completion. The same applies to the baseball collectible which are usually tucked away somewhere in the dungeon. These can be given to the robo pitcher back at the grand library but again, I don’t really know what these do per say.
Game progression is mission based. You select a mission and complete the objective listed. Missions however have a time limit on them in the form of a number to the right of the mission on the mission select screen. If this number reaches zero then the mission disappears. Without spoiling anything this system does lead onto an important plot point which the game explains pretty well so I’ll leave that for you to discover.
Overall, Superdimension is a breath of fresh air when it comes to the gameplay department with the new battle system and dungeon actions really making the game quite fun and quite unlike other Neptunia games we have seen before hand.



Graphics and Sound:
Graphically the game does indeed look nice but it is plagued by one problem, performance. Granted the performance issues present in Superdimension are nowhere near as bad as the performance issues present in say, Re;Birth 1 on the Vita (which has one of the most unstable frame rates I have ever seen). In comparison Superdimension is far more stable in terms of being able to hold a frame rate however it does tend to stutter a little bit in some areas. Compared to the earlier Neptunia Vita titles though the performance is far improved so that’s a plus at the very least.
Art wise the character models look quite nice on the field with nice detailed 3d models and smooth animations. Cut-scenes also use the now Neptunia standard Live2D system whereby 2D characters have idle animations that play while in text scenes. I really can’t fault the game much in this area.
In the sound department the music is a mixture of tunes present in previous Neptunia titles and a few brand new tunes which are OK but nothing to really write home about (although the new battle themes and especially the boss theme are pretty darn catchy). On the front of voice acting I played using the English dub and once again I can say that it is another incredible English dub from Idea Factory. Kate Higgins does an amazing job with voice acting IF and the English voice actors they got in for the Sega Hard Girls all do a top notch job as well. A special mention should also be made to the fact that the lip syncing in cutscenes now syncs properly to the English voice track which is something that wasn’t present in previous Neptunia Vita titles.

Verdict:
Superdimension Neptunia VS Sega Hard Girls is an example of a spin off title which does all the right things in order to make it stand on its own as a great game. Out of all of the Neptunia spin off titles, I’d have to say that this is probably the best one in terms of quality. It has a lot of fresh new ideas which it pulls off quite well which is certainly commendable considering the number of games released these days which have great ideas but never really do anything with them (See my last review on MeiQ Labyrinth of Death to learn more about that).
As fun as the game is though I did notice a few issues here and there mainly with the translation. Some tutorials had certain sentences repeated twice while some items had formatting issues that caused the text to go off the edge of the screen. It’s a minor issue but one that is still noticeable non the less. Here’s hoping that Idea Factory release a patch to fix it up sooner rather than later.
Translation bugs aside Superdimension is a fun time and gets a Highly Recommended.

My apologies for the lateness of this review, I’ve had a busy past few weeks and haven’t had much time to really sit down and finish this off. Hopefully this should go up in time for the European release of the time though. As for upcoming Vita titles there’s still a lot coming so stay tuned for more Vita goodness in the coming months!
If you liked this review, please consider contributing to our Patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/VariousReviews! This is BDVR Author Nathan Green signing off.



Superdimension Neptune VS Sega Hard Girls releases on the 18th of October in North America and the 21st of October in Europe and Australia.
PEGI: 12
ESRB: T
CERO: C
OFLC: M

AO (Video Game)

Some of you are probably wondering "Why aren't you reviewing Shin Megami Tensei IV this week?" and you would be justified in wondering that. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get the game finished, or even to the point where I could write up a third or so of the game in a first impressions. On the other hand, I've been playing a little indie puzzle-game that I got in the mail recently.
About a week ago I saw a post on a forum I frequent about a game that was published by the publisher of this one, Bomb on Basic City. During my correspondence with the publisher, they offered this game to me for review as well. It sounded like it would be cool, so I accepted, and now here we are.
I'm unaware of any kind of deeper meaning behind the title. There is of course the obvious character in the center. I'm not sure whether it's Japanese or Chinese (Which is kind of embarrassing) but I'm pretty sure it reads as "AO" or something to that effect.
AO is a top-down puzzle game similar to Super Monkey Ball. You've got a thing that you need to roll to the exit, avoid the obstacles, don't fall off the edge. The added challenge is in the fact that you're rolling a rectangular box around instead of a ball. It starts out deceptively easy and becomes pretty hard as the game progresses.It's pretty cool at first, but as time goes on it gets somewhat tedious. It's not a bad game by any means, but some of the later levels seem to have been deliberately designed to be intuitive. However, that makes it all the sweeter when you ultimately figure out how to get to your destination. On that front I would say that the game is incredibly satisfying. On the other hand, there is absolutely no replay value whatsoever. Best I can tell there are one or two different solutions to each of the thirty-three puzzles, possible three for some of the more open levels. There's no story, there are no characters, just you, the instructions, your box and the levels. Not to say that every puzzle game has to be Portal, just that it'd be nice to have some kind of a theme to it. You can't just re-release the original Tetris over and over, you've got to add new play modes, new background elements, things like that.
Let's go over the mechanics quickly. You've got your block, which can be rolled lengthwise or width-wise.There are two different kinds of switches. Light switches, which merely require one or more halves of the block to rest on top of them to activate, and heavy switches which require the block to be standing on-end to trigger them. These switches can add platforms to the level or remove them. Which they do is up to the player to find out. There are teleporters that take you to a designated spot, (Again, up to the player to find out) hard floors that can be rolled on any way, weak floors that can only be rolled on horizontally, and the goal, where you have to stand the block to complete the level. All of this is shown in the manual, and again on the screen around the single-player mode. This means that the entirety of the level is always visible on-screen, which is good because it helps you figure out what all you can do. Plus you don't have to have the manual at all times to figure out what to do. The issue with this is that the levels never fill the whole screen, and the stakes don't get amped up all that much. I was expecting some kind of gigantic, screen-filling level that made use of all of the mechanics that the game had, as opposed to a gigantic maze full of light switches tied to two bridges and one heavy-switch tied to a single platform required to get the block in the right orientation so you can get it onto the island where the exit is. After that you get a screen with your score. If you press start you get dumped back to the title-screen.
Your score is determined by how quickly you completed the game. Your score goes down by about one point per every second and a half by my count. As if there's any reason to care about score. It's not like the game just ends when you run out of time/score either, you can keep going for as long as you want, and I did. I beat the last ten levels of the game with triple zeroes across the board.
I will congratulate the developers for not feeling the need to include lives in the game, because you will roll off the edge a lot in this game, and forcing you to play through the whole thing over again just because you depleted an arbitrary number would basically make the game impossible to complete, or just deplete the players patience. Just like most of the NES library.
Then there's the soundtrack, or rather the single loop that keeps playing in the background in perpetuity. Fortunately this can be turned off by pressing the Select button, but it shouldn't have to be. With the lack of enemy AI, the two animations in the game, the six tile types, and a total of three splash-screens with very little detail to them, you'd think there would be enough space on the cartridge to fit a decent sound-track. Not much, just give me five decent tunes and I'll be happy.
All in all, while I don't think that the game isn't worth playing, it's certainly not worth the $35 asking price, especially not for the thirty-three levels that it's got. If there were maybe a hundred or so levels with more complexity and better variety, then it'd be worth at least twenty bucks. I also doubt that the game is hiding any kind of unlockables behind a score-wall, because I played through the game twice and found nothing other than a mild dislike for the color blue.
There's only one additional mode that I can find, and that's competitive two-player. The map is replicated in green in the lower right and the two players race to see who can complete the game the fastest. It's not much, but it's something. I would have also liked to have seen co-operative two-player where one player controls the X-axis and the other the Y-axis, kinda like Katamari Damacy's multiplayer.
Speaking of which, the controls are a bit touchy. I can't count the amount of times I rolled off the edge because the controls react too quickly when you're trying to roll around tight edges quickly. Thankfully the game doesn't go full-on amateur and keep moving the box when you're holding the d-pad down. The d-pad is the only thing you use to control your block. That's not bad, a limited control-scheme is alright when the game isn't particularly demanding.
By the way, in case you haven't figured it out yet, this is a new NES game. As in a game someone made for the NES in this day and age. I commend the dedication the developers and publisher had to have to put out an actual physical NES game in a box with a manual. The cartridge is pure black, and it's not like the old unlicensed NES carts like the kind you'd see back in the day. This is a legit cart based on the old NES cartridge molds. The ridges, the arrow, everything. It's a three-screw cart, but still. As for build-quality, it has only a bit more give to it than regular NES carts do when I squeeze it, and it's not made of the kind of brittle hard plastic that tends to make up the hilts of dollar-store knives and swords. The one thing I feel the need to mention negatively is that the cartridge bows outwards at the bottom like a bunch of my original licensed NES games do. I would have liked to see them improve a bit on that design-flaw, but it's not like it's a huge breaking point.
The manual that comes with the game is only four pages long, but it is printed in full color, and gives a decent summary of what the game's about and what you need to do. The unfortunate thing is that there are actually six pages in the manual, two of which are blank.If those two had been printed on then a whole piece of paper could have been cut from the manual without losing anything. Plus, the manual's contents aren't exactly well-arranged, and the text is pixelated to hell. I have been informed that Second Dimension is aware of this however, and will be fixing it as soon as possible.
Something that kind of bugs me is that the cartridge itself comes inside a thin plastic bag inside of a cardboard box instead of the thick plastic sleeves that NES games came in back in the day. Plus, the case for Bomb on Basic City tells me that Second Dimension are capable of putting out a game in a plastic box, which would be infinitely preferable to cardboard. Even if they kept it at the same size as the actual NES boxes and just changed the material to something sturdier, it would be a lot better. Then again, this is just my outright distaste for cardboard boxes and slip-covers talking.
The interesting this is that they apparently didn't harvest parts from other games, AO cartridges are made of entirely new material, which is a good thing in my book. Probably costs less in this day and age of people charging extortionate prices for Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt carts too.
While AO is short, it's pretty satisfying to complete and not what I would call a waste of your time. However, the levels that we got seem like a chunk of a much larger game, akin to that of the shareware versions of Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein. If this was part of a bigger whole, like Portal was to The Orange Box, or something like that, the $35 asking price wouldn't be too much, but as it is I'd much prefer to pay somewhere in the order of $10-$15 dollars for a physical release and somewhere closer to $5 for a digital one. The core problem is that I've played games like this for free on places like Newgrounds and other flash sites for most of my life, and I can't get that price-point of "free" out of my head. With a bit more polish and a bit of interesting context a sequel might be well worth a $30+ price-point.
In the end, I give AO a 5.1*. I feel like the developer can and should do better. Maybe move up to SNES or Genesis for the next game? At the very least you'd have access to better sound hardware.

Thank you for reading my review. If you liked it, please feel free to toss me a few bucks on my Patreon. Anything you can give me helps, even if it's just a dollar.

Game provided for review by Second Dimension. It can be found for purchase at Second-Dimension.com. Cover scanned by me.

Warcraft

To say video-game films have a bad-rap would be a major understatement. Ever since The Wizard and Super Mario Bros: The Movie, they have had a terrible track-record. The early-00's was an especially bad time, because Uwe Boll sunk his hooks into making game-movies for a while, and made things worse. Things got better, but then Adam Sandler made Pixels and brought things down again. The best game movies have probably been Sonic The Hedgehog: The Movie, the Tomb Raider films, and Wreck-It Ralph, and that last movie wasn't wholly-based on an existing game. Rather unfortunately, despite being brilliantly made, having a damn good story, and despite raising the bar for direct game adaptations, Warcraft still falls somewhat short of being great.
Let's get this out of the way straight off the bat. This is a gorgeous movie, and part of the reason I like it is because it's just so god-damn cool-looking!
I've never understood the idea of liking something based mainly on aesthetics until I saw this movie. Everything is just so freaking pretty. The costumes, the environments, the swords, the shields, the armor, the gear, the books, the sets, the fights, the effects, the makeup, the cinematography, the direction, the music. My god I just love to watch this film. Where some movies have unimpressive weapons, this film makes literally every single weapon look awesome, like you'd want to have it hanging on your wall. Even the Orc weapons that look like they were cobbled together from random crap are cool. The Horde armor and clothing looks really cool too, but the Alliance armor is freaking sweet, from the king, all the way down to the lowliest foot-soldier. If you want to watch something that will make you want to buy toys and/or props, this is the movie for you.
It's just a shame that the story isn't structured better. And it's a shame there are hardly any British accents in the movie. For as cool as The Alliance's gear and locations are, The Alliance characters are the weakest part of the movie. Part of that has to do with the fact that most of them just have American accents, and part of it has to do with the fact that we start about a movie too far into the story for any of the characters to be really compelling, which is a shame, because I want to care about them, since they've got the coolest gear and some awesome fights. They're not exactly the good guys in the story, but they're definitely the best-dressed.
The orcs side of the story is much more interesting, but unfortunately we're only privy to a very small portion of it. We're in yet another position where the lead-up to the story is more interesting than the story itself. Not that the story is bad, but it would benefit from being a sequel, not the first movie in the series. The orcs are fleeing their home planet to Azeroth. The portal is opened up with evil green magic powered by draining the life from living beings. Rather than being shown the origin of this magic and how the magician, Gul'dan became as he is, we are told later on in the movie. Rule #1 of storytelling: Show, don't tell. I suppose they must have cut the story down in all of the years of production, which I'll get to later on.
The Orc Horde spills over into Azeroth, and our Orc lead, Durotan's (Toby Kebbell) wife has a miscarriage, but Gul'dan brings the baby back to life at the expense of the life of a deer. I don't quite know what emotion this was supposed to elicit from us, but given the chance to sacrifice the life of a deer for a 100% chance to bring someone back to life, I'd take that chance. Anyone would. Snap decision. Unless it was someones pet, in which case no, but just a deer? In exchange for a child? I can't be expected to see that as some horrible act, any more than killing and eating the deer would be a horrible act in something like The Walking Dead. It's necessary for them to survive. For some reason though, the movies soundtrack expects me to see this as something horrible.
The orcs begin their raids, and the military of Stormwind Kingdom is taken by storm, and slaughtered. As they regroup, the commander, Anduin Lothar (Travis Femmel) finds an errant mage looking over the bodies of the fallen. The mage, Khadgar, (Ben Schnetzer) explains that he found traces of the evil Fel magic on the bodies. The mage persuades the king, Llane Wrynn to seek the help of the guardian of Tirisfal, Medvih (Ben Foster).
Lothar and Khadgar go see Medvih, who accompanies them and a scouting team tracing the remnants of Fel magic, and along the way they get ambushed by an orc party. They manage to fight them off and take a half-orc named Garona, who can speak both Human and Orc. Neither of which are English, btw.
They find out that the Orcs are planning to use all the people they've captured to bring The Horde into Azeroth at the expense of their lives.
Durotan deduces that Fel magic was responsible for the death of his world, and begins plotting against Gul'dan. He invites King Llane to a meeting to negotiate a truce, but Blackhand's Orcs ambush them, and Lothar's son is killed by the sheer incompetence of Medvih.
King Llane leads an attack on the Orc encampment, while Lothar and Khadgar deduce that Medvih must be aiding The Horde. Sure enough, he's possessed by a demon using Fel magic to aid The Horde. Lothar and Khadgar fight him and a clay golem to victory, and with the last of his life, Medvih closes the portal to Draenor and opens one to Stormwind, allowing Llane's men to retreat through with the prisoners, but not Llane himself and some of his soldiers. Lothar arrives too late to save anyone, but Llane orders Garona to kill him so she can try and take command of The Orcs herself with the honor his death would bring him. Lothar faces off with a Fel-roided Blackhand, and kills him with Llane's sword, leaving with the kings body on his griffin.
The races and governments of Azeroth form together to create The Alliance to combat The Horde, and Durotan's son is found by humans.
All in all, god-damn I wish this movie was better. I want to like this movie. I really freaking do. It doesn't exactly fall apart, more like it never really came together in the first place, and I can totally pinpoint why. This should have been Warcraft II, and there should have been another Warcraft movie ahead of it. Probably sometime last year, or two years ago. Hell, I'd say it should have been released back in 2012, it would have been amazing to see the start of this whole Warcraft story back in 2012. Then this movie could have been released in 2014 and a third Warcraft movie could have been out this year instead.
However, it's a god-damn pretty movie. I can't even get over that for a second no matter how much I try and focus on the issues with the story. I just love the swords so much. I love the armor, the environments, the effects, everything. This is such a polarizing movie for me, since on the one hand I love it for the aesthetics, and I love it for some parts of the story, but on the other hand I wish they'd bothered covering all of the lead-up to the events in this film. Plus, there are way too many American accents in this cast. King Llane is freaking British, and European accents are standards for fantasy settings. I'm not saying they should have put on bad accents if they couldn't put on good ones, I'm just saying they should have at least tried.
Then there's the fact that hardly anyone in this movie speaks with any kind of pomp and circumstance. The orcs do, Llane does, but Medvih, Lothar and Khadgar don't.
As far as accuracy to the games goes, I wouldn't really know beyond the fact that Gul'dan looks like something out of WoW. I've never beaten Warcraft: Orcs and Humans and I don't own any of the other games. I played quite a bit of World of Warcraft right after it went Free To Play, but I wasn't particularly impressed by it. Best I can tell you is that everything looks about right, and if it's not, who cares? It's a freaking gorgeous movie.
The worst I can say about the effects is that in the very first scene in the movie, the orcs look like they were stripped out of WoW and given a bunch of extra polygons and points of articulation in their skeletons. In fact, the first few minutes of the film have a generally strange air to them, as if they were using incomplete, under-polished animation and CGI. Thankfully it's solved immediately afterwards, but it's still off-putting.
In the end... I can't decide, really. I know I'm going to get it on Blu-Ray as soon as I possibly can, because I really want to see another Warcraft movie. Hell, I might even wind up re-installing Warcraft and playing it. I do love me some old-school RTS.
I guess I'm going to have to abstain from giving this film a score since I'm so conflicted about it. I'll be back again next week, hopefully I can give a more definitive review then. Probably either gonna be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows or Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson.

Image from Impawards.com

Stranger of Sword City

I like to consider myself a jack of all trades as a gamer. I will willingly give all game genres a shot and usually enjoy them (with a few exceptions such as sports games and RTS games).

Despite this there are still a few genres that I haven't even dabbled in at all for one reason for another and the DRPG genre was one of these. I'd heard of it but had never really touched a game in the genre before, until now that is.

Going into Stranger of Sword City (which I will abbreviate as SoSC from now on) I really had no idea what to expect having not played a DRPG before. Non the less I took the plunge and I am certainly glad that I did. So without further ado here is my review of Stranger of Sword City for the Playstation Vita.

Now before I get into the nitty gritty review stuff I just wanted to bring attention to this games… interesting release history.

SoSC was originally released in Japan on the Xbox 360 in 2014. Yes, a Japanese exclusive 360 game. Originally it was released exclusively on the 360 but then got a PC port later on which was again only released in Japan.

Why is this relevant? Well, the 360 was never a top performing console when it came to sales in Japan so having a Japanese only game released on the 360 exclusively is quite unusual.

Now around a year later the game got rereleased on the PlayStation Vita in Japan and then another year after that this version of the game got ported as a digital download title to the Xbox One of all systems.

This means that SoSC has come out on the interesting platform combo of 360, One and Playstation Vita, which for a Japanese game is quite odd.

The version that I will be looking at for this review is the Playstation Vita version which was published by NISA. The Xbox One version of the game is largely identical from what I've heard, although it was self pubished by Experience Inc. I was going to take a quick look at the Xbox One version of the game for the purposes of a comparison but that isn't quite out in New Zealand yet so I'll update this review with a comparison when it has come out.

Anyway with that out of the way lets move onto the story.

Story:

You play as a self insert silent protagonest who is the only survivor of a plane crash. When you wake up you find yourself in the fantasy land of Escaro. From there you learn that in Escaro you are considered a stranger, and as a stranger it is your job to hunt down special monsters known as Liniage types and collect their blood crystal (which is a sort of life source) to keep the peace in Escaro.

The plot is…. Well I'll admit it doesn't seem to be the games' strongest point.

While the game spends around an hour at the start fleshing out the characters a bit, the plot quickly takes a back seat from there in favour of the gameplay. While that isn't technically a bad thing it does mean that the plot does progress at a rather slow pace for reasons I will get into later.

SoSC isn't really a game you play for the plot anyway, it is there and the concept is certainly interesting, so I'll give it that. It's just paced really slowly.

Gameplay:

Oh boy this section is going to be LONG.

Before I dive into the games' mechanics, let's just clear up what a DRPG game actually is for those not in the know.

DRPG's stand for Dungeon Crawler RPG. Most of the time the games are played from a first person perspective and involve… well crawling through dungeons, fighting monsters, character building, sometimes permadeath and insane amounts of grinding.

With that out of the way, SoSC is not for the faint of heart especially if you have trouble with games with loads of systems and mechanics.

SoSC does not hold your hand, it basically shoves you right off the deep end and won't force tutorials upon you unless it absolutely has to. However, at the same time the game does provide info for newer players in the form of a guide that can be accessed at any time by pushing the Select Button.

I like this feature a lot. As a person who has never played a DRPG before, this guide certainly made learning the many mechanics and systems in the game far FAR easier.

Speaking of the mechanics and systems, there are a lot of them. Like… tons of them.

You've got skill trees, weaknesses and strengths, weapon balance, permadeath, alignment, positioning, the list goes on. There is a lot to learn in SoSC, which I could see putting off players new to the genre, something which I completely understand myself.

However, the reward for learning these mechanics is you get an incredibly engaging game with a lot of strategy, planning and thought involved in everything from battles to character creation. SoSC is one of those games which will have you spending quite a while in the character creator but unlike other games it isn't because you are spending hours making your character look just right, it's instead spent weighing out what class to go with, how to allocate your points, what age to make your character and lots of rerolling of the RNG die to get the highest number of bonus points possible. Yes, even age plays a part in how your character performs out in the field.

This is why I find SoSC so rewarding. Learning these mechanics is a long process but the payoff leaves you feeling very satisfied and pleased with yourself. I like that.

The other layer of the gameplay is the actual dungeon crawling bit. This is a pretty standard affair and should be familiar to most who have played a DRPG before. You control your character from a first person perspective and use the dpad to move him or her around. Unlike a lot of DRPG's though, most enemies appear on the overworld instead of the encounters being random (although random encounters are still present they are nowhere near as common of an occurrence as in other DRPG's).

One unique feature is the ability to hide in certain places on the map and ambush enemies. These enemies will usually be carrying treasure chests which contain weapons, armor or other items. To make sure you receive these items you have to succeed in killing the leader of the pack of enemies you ambushed. Sometimes after getting a chest you'll have to disarm a trap as well, usually the game will give you good hints as to what the trap will probably be but there are some cases where you just have to guess and hope for the best. Again, this mechanic of hiding is something I quite enjoy although it does result in a lot of back and forward.

Battles also take place from a first person view. Depending on your character and their position, you will be given a variety of options which can be performed. Once you've selected all the options you want, the battle plays out all at once.

One main gameplay concept is rows. Often when you run into a pack of enemies they will be arranged in rows with a max of three per row. Depending on what type of attacks you're using (magic or physical), the characters possition (I.E front or back row) and the type of weapon you are using you will be able to hit enemies in specific rows.

Most of the time front row people will only be able to attack the first row of enemies unless they have a long or ranged weapon. Back row people won't be able to use physical attacks at all unless they have a long or ranged weapon. On the flipside however, magic attacks can hit any enemy in any row regardless of where the user is placed in the party, which means it is usually a good idea to place magic users in the back row and the physical tanks in the front.

Back row people also get attacked less so it's usually a good idea to place all the physical tanks in the front row and the support and offensive magic users in the back row.

The battle system is surprisingly strategic in this way, because it makes you think about the pros and cons of where you place party members, what weapons you give what member and which characters you create. SoSC is one of the only RPG's I've played where I've thought to myself “Y know, maybe giving everyone super powerful weapons isn't the best idea”.

Different weapons also have the ability to hit a different number of times, with a max damage cap for each hit so sometimes it may be better off equiping a weapon that does 20 damage per hit but hits twice rather than a weapon that does 45 damage but only hits once.

SoSC is a game that makes the player really plan and think about their loadout and the pros and cons of different equips. For example, all characters have the ability to equip a second weapon in their non dominant hand, but this weapon usually will have lower accuracy and can also leave a penalty of lowered damage to the weapon in the dominant hand as well. On the flip side it's a chance to deal more hits and sometimes more damage. It's little things like this which really made me think and plan my party in SoSC and I found it very enjoyable.

Like other RPG's, when you finish battles you gain experience points. Unlike other RPGs, however when you gain enough experience points to level up you don't level up automatically. You have to manually go into the character menu and select level up. It took me a little while to get the hang of this mechanic, but once I did I didn't find it too annoying.

What is important though is to always make sure you check your fighters who are NOT in your party when you exit a dungeon as surprisingly they also gain experience even though they are not in your party. However like your party members they manually level up so you need to remember to check and make sure all of them have been leveled up if possible otherwise they won't gain any extra experience while you are out and about.

On the subject of characters lets have a quick look at the permadeath system.

All characters in SoSC have a certain number of LP, or life points. These life points show how many times your party member can die before they are gone forever. A characters age actually determines how many life points the character will have with older characters having less LP and younger characters having more.

When a character falls they have to recover back at the base. This takes time though, despite revival actually being free. So while your character is recovering you go out and continue your questing to make time pass. When a character is revived you can put them right back into your party, but they will have still lost LP. If you don't want to lose the character for good then you can again rest them to recover LP. This takes… quite a lot of in game time to be honest, but it's worth the wait if your character is one who you really don't want to lose.

You can buy revival items for use in the field but they are rather expensive and like all items in the game are in limited supply so use them wisely.

Finally, we have the Divinity system. Think of it like a special form of magic that only the main character can use. As you proceed through the in game skill tree you will earn divinities which allow you to do such things as escape all battles (except things like boss fights), heal the whole party, perform attacks which deal large amounts of damage and other stuff.

Divinity moves use up divinity points which are gained by fighting in battles and proceeding through the dungeon. Personally I really like the divinity system as it provides some useful little moves which can really help out in a pinch.

Phew that was a long section. Like I said, SoSC is a very meaty game with a lot to get your head around which is why this section was so long. Still with me? Good. Let's move onto the presentation then.

Presentation:

SoSC is in a word, pretty. The art is stunning and incredibly detailed and character and enemy designs are very well done (although I have heard that some of the enemies have been recycled from Dungeon Travelers 2).

One thing that is interesting is the game has two different art styles that you can pick from, the second art style being more light and fluffy while the first one is a little more dark and gritty. Given the setting of the game I used the first art style as I felt it fit with the setting way better than the second art style, which felt a little out of place in my opinion.

Graphically the game, while certainly not pushing the Vita to its limits, looks really nice. Environments are nicely designed and quite a few of them really pop and make for quite a pretty looking game which looks excellent on the Playstation Vita's OLED screen (For the record I'm using a Playstation Vita 1000). To top it off the game also runs at a silky smooth 60FPS the entire time and it makes everything that little bit better.

Musically the game sports an excellent soundtrack with some lovely orcestral pieces which really fit the mood and setting. You have some more mellow tracks, some more upbeat tracks for boss fights and enemy encounters and some eerie tracks for some dungeons.

The vocals sound really nice too, although you are given the option to turn them off if you don't like them which I think is a nice touch.

Now, I don't normally do this but I'd like to touch on the sound design for a second because I feel this is an area that SoSC really excells in.

The sound design in SoSC really blew me away, especially in the dungeons. When all you can hear is the background ambiance you can really appreciate how good it is. The calling of distant birds, the bustling of a village, the chirping of crickets, it's all there and it blends together incredibly well in SoSC and really makes the dungeons that little bit better. I really like games that do a lot of work with the sound design so SoSC really impressed me with it.

Voice acting is also really good too. Most of the game is voice acted, and while I can't understand Japanese the voices do sound pretty darn good.

Conclusion:

Before I get onto my conclusion I just have a few minor nitpicks I wanted to point out. Firstly, this game is very, VERY grindy. It took me around six hours to unlock the first set of dungeons grindy. Now I know this is a trait of DRPGs but that doesn't make it any less of a chore to continuely go back and forward hunting out battles just so you can beat the next boss. I only make this a minor nitpick though as the games battle system is enjoyable enough that it makes me forget about the constant grinding for the most part.

The bar for entry is also quite high. Like I said before this game will not hold your hand and I wouldn't really recommend it to people who are brand new to DRPG's. The game is still excellent and I would highly recommend it to people who have had experience with DRPG's before but it isn't the best DRPG game for people completely new to the genre.

The difficulty might turn some off as well, as this game is quite tough even on easy mode. In fact, easy mode has points where you can be massively outleveled by certain enemies due to a lower encounter rate and enemies on the field so I would highly recommend you play on normal anyway.

Despite those complaints I still thoroughly enjoyed my time with SoSC. It's a game with a lot of polish and thought in the mechanics and is a great game for those who love games which are real timesinks. The game also has multiple endings which adds replay value to an already jam packed game.

So would I recommend Stranger of Sword City?

Heck yes. Like I said above I wouldn't recommend it to newbies of the genre but I totally recommend this game to people who have played DRPG's before and are looking for another excellent timesink.

Stranger of Sword City gets a highly recommended.

This is probably one of the longest reviews I have ever written so if you are still here after all of that then give yourself a pat on the back. Either way I hope you enjoyed the review as much as I enjoyed playing the game.

BDVR Guest Author Nathan Green signing off

PEGI: 16

ESRB: T

CERO: C

OFLC: M (Unrestricted)

Stranger of Sword City game provided for review by NIS America. Screenshots provided by NIS America. Cover from nisamerica.com

Rodea The Sky Soldier for 3DS

Rodea The Sky Soldier has got a hell of a legacy behind it. It comes to us from producer Yuji Naka, former head of Sonic Team, and current head of Prope. In case you were wondering, Yuji Naka was the lead programmer for the Sonic games on the Genesis, and the producer of the series until Sonic Rush. He also served as executive producer on Sonic Riders, and producer and lead-programmer on Nights Into Dreams.  If you know anything at all about any of those games, you can see a lot of obvious influence from the other games Naka has made.
This year I've been covering a lot of games that have taken a long time to be released outside of Japan, and I don't intend to stop doing that just yet. I've still got the first two Trails In The Sky games on my schedule if you remember. The difference with this game is that it's taken forever to come out everywhere, not just outside of its home country. Rodea The Sky Soldier started development for the Wii back in 2010, and completed development in 2011, languishing for two years until Prope's publisher, Kadokawa Games officially announced the 3DS version back in 2013 as being nearly completed. During this time-period, our old friends at XSeed were jockying to publish the game in North America, but as you can tell by the box-art above, that didn't happen.
In 2014, they announced that they would be porting the game to Wii U, and packaging the Wii release with the Wii U version. And then finally, back in April of this year, the game saw a release in Japan, with the rest of the world getting a November release, published by Nippon Ichi Systems America.
I don't think I've ever seen a game that has just sat as long as this one did. I've certainly seen games that took a long time to develop, or ones that took a long time to localize, but I've never reviewed a game that was four years old by the time it saw release.

The gameplay basically amounts to Sonic The Hedgehog meets Nights Into Dreams, with a bit of Super Mario Galaxy thrown in for good measure. There are yellow things to collect, which pull you along in a line like the Lightspeed dash from Sonic Adventure, you fly around a bit like you did in Nights Into Dreams, you can pull off a Sonic-like spindash by pressing B, and there's a bit of a focus on manipulating gravity and the camera to your advantage like in Super Mario Galaxy.
The basics of the gameplay function perfectly fine. You jump into the air by pressing A, point your targeting reticle where you want to go, and press A again to go where you want to. You can press B to get there faster, or to attack a target. Whether or not you can stay in the air is determined by the fuel-gauge surrounding the crosshairs. If that runs out, you can burn collected yellow-things (Called Gravitons) to move a little further.You can also collect a hundred of them to get extra lives, which is practically essential in the later levels of the game. You can also rise vertically by pressing Y and descend quickly by pressing Y again. X is the button you use to activate the function of your equipped gear.
Something that irritates me about the equippable gear is that you can't have more than one of them equipped at once. This would be fine, except for the fact that the gear goes onto different parts of Rodea's body. The gear consists of a pair of boots, a DBZ-style targeting scouter, and a rifle that shoots homing-bullets. All of this gear could be worn at the same time without needing to unequip any of it. But that's what happens, the game removes them from Rodea's model. But that's just an issue of aesthetics, and not an actual issue. So, let's talk about the gear itself.

The first piece of gear you get is a rifle, which shoots homing-bullets. Hypothetically, those bullets would either fly towards the nearest enemy, or towards whatever you've targeted. In practice, the bullets usually just fly off in whatever direction they want, and don't hit whatever you're pointing your gun at. That's a fairly large issue when you're faced with an exploding barrier you want to shoot from far away, but your bullets keep veering off in random directions. This would be a larger issue if the rifle was a necessary item in the game beyond the level it's introduced in.
A more useful accessory is the boots, which allow you to use boost-pads on the ground, as well as allowing you to pull off some cool attacks, all of which are hard to accomplish, and tend to get in the way of actual gameplay by burning through your fuel when you're trying to stomp on the ground. This is because of an upgrade I applied which allows you to spindash across the ground like you're a goron from Majora's Mask. That works when you absolutely need to use it, but otherwise it's completely useless, and actually winds up being detrimental to the game as a whole, so I left the boots unequipped most of the time.
Thing is, if the boost-pads worked without the boots, then you wouldn't need them at all. Not like you do anyways, because you can literally walk, fly, or jump towards your destination without using the freaking boost-pads.
We now come the the targeting-system, which allows you to set up a chain of attacks in advance, and sometimes attack the same enemy more than once. The huge problem with the targeting-system is that it doesn't always work properly. Hell, this goes for the default targeting-system as well. Sometimes, when you target more than one enemy at a time (Or the same enemy twice) it just cuts out right after the first hit for some reason. Not always, just on some targets, and only when it's the most inconvenient. And even then, the scouter is practically redundant, since you can chain attacks just by hovering and targeting using the regular reticle. And you can chain attacks on a single enemy just by holding down B and tapping A. So not only is the scouter redundant, it doesn't always work.
And that leads me into an issue with the default targeting system. Sometimes, from any range, if you're boosting towards a moving enemy, Rodea will swerve around them and burn through his fuel, leaving him to fall, flailing to the ground, which is a fairly big problem if the ground happens to be electrified, or covered in acid, or a million miles below you.

I can't count the amount of times when I was just barely off the edge of a platform and I was trying to conserve my gravitons so I could boost straight over to the edge of the platform and get all my fuel back. But if you don't start burning gravitons almost immediately after you run out of fuel when you don't have ground beneath you, Rodea just flops out limp and dies. Even when you have the ability to pull off an awesome recovery, you still get flopped out dead. And sometimes, during the death animation, Rodea will land on the freaking platform! And that's happened at least five times during the course of the game. I'm sorry, that just doesn't make any sense. The worst part about that is it costs you a life. That's right, this game has a lives system. Nice to know that someone is keeping that archaic nonsense alive. Especially in the latter stages of the game when the levels are drawn-out longer with very few lives scattered throughout the area. Sure, there are plenty of checkpoints, but if you lose all your lives, you go back to the beginning of the level. This is especially bad during the last two levels of the game, which are both just multi-stage boss-fights. Level 24 consists of two difficult boss-fights, one right after another, the latter of which comes straight out of nowhere, and doesn't resemble the first boss in any way. I'd gotten eight lives by grinding for them in previous levels, and I'd spent six of them fighting the first boss of Level 24. Then along came the second boss, who took away the last of my lives, forcing me to go back to the beginning of the level. Except I didn't, because I quit the level and got myself ten more lives, and finished it up.

Then I got to the final level, and the final boss, Emperor Geardo. He has three stages, with checkpoints in between them, but if you lose all your lives, you gotta go all the way back to the beginning. And since the game only gives you two lives to start with, you pretty much have to go back to previous levels and harvest lives if you want to stand any decent chance of beating him. The screenshot to the left was taken on my first attempt at the boss, right after I'd completed Level 24. To put this into perspective, I had to try five times before I finally beat him. The three times between the first try and the last try I was just running on the default two lives just to see if I could make it. On the last try, I'd scrounged up fifteen lives, and I used five of them in the final attempt. A good tip for this game is to scrounge up as many lives as you can tolerate before facing a boss.

Unless of course you're fighting the first boss, who's a massive pushover. You can take him down in like three hits, and then he starts talking on his cellphone with his boss.
Generally speaking, the smaller the boss is in this game, the less interesting they are, except for the bosses in Level 24, which are actually pretty cool to fight, if a bit easy once you figure them out.
This brings us to the story, which seems to be pretty lacking compared to the Sonic games. It essentially amounts to Sonic The Hedgehog meets Mega Man, with a bit of Terminator 2, Highlander, and Back To The Future thrown in towards the end for good measure. That description makes it sound a lot more interesting than it is, since I was never entirely sure what was going on, or why we were doing what we were doing. The general gist of the story is as follows: You are Rodea, a robot who works for Princess Cecilia. You're trying to help her escape from Emperor Geardo of Naga and keep the Key of Time out of his hands when she gives you half of the key (Instead of just destroying it for some reason) and transports you to a desert, where Rodea punches the ground, his arm falls off, and he goes into a coma for a thousand years for absolutely no reason. That's all in the prologue to the freaking game. There'are also little tutorial in the beginning, which seems pretty redundant, since there's another tutorial almost immediately after it that tells you almost exactly the same thing. It's almost like the prologue was tacked-on as an afterthought. There are other ways it seems pretty unnecessary which I'll get into later.
A thousand years later, Rodea wakes up, having been repaired by a girl named Ion, who also stuck a gear on his shoulder for some reason. All of his memories are gone, all of his friends and most of his enemies are dead, and nobody remembers the war anymore. That's an incredibly anticlimactic start to the game as far as I'm concerned, since it means that you're fighting an incredibly weakened enemy as opposed to being an insignificant little speck going up against an empire.
God only knows how a robot that was sitting out in the desert for a thousand years is still functioning, you'd think that he'd have eroded away eventually.
Recently, the remnants of the machine army have come back and started attacking citizens of Garuda, the country that Naga was trying to invade a thousand years ago. For some reason, the machine soldiers are still working too, as well as all of Rodea's robot siblings, who are in charge of the new invasion. One of those siblings is the first boss in the game. After you beat him, he answers his phone and flies off. And instead of going after him, Ion forces you to stick around and look for a crying child, named Tonio. And after you find him, you're forced to stick around and harvest herbs that can cure his sick sister! Excuse me Ion, I'm trying to save the world here, maybe you should handle harvesting those herbs while I go after that freaking robot!
Over time, Rodea manages to perform a data recovery on himself to get all his memories back. It's also implied that Ion might have had something to do with his memory being erased, but that little plot-thread is never really resolved.
Rodea and Ion travel around Geruda destroying the Chronos Towers that link Geruda to Naga. Seems a bit late to be doing that, since the machine-soldiers have already invaded. God only knows what they hope to accomplish by killing all the ancient machines and destroying the towers. Maybe there are more soldiers in Naga that haven't arrived yet, or maybe Rodea is just making up for lost time and doing what he should have done a thousand years ago.

While Rodea is doing that, he and Ion stop by her hometown for a little bit. Apparently it's hidden, but there's no reason it needs to be hidden, since there haven't been any incursions by Naga for a thousand years. Ion somehow gets kidnapped, and a few of the townsfolk think to blame it on Rodea and try to beat him up. Completely forgetting that he just beat a giant robot snake beforehand. Or maybe Ion didn't tell them.
Anyways, they wind up teaming-up to go find Ion, and it's at this point that we find out that Tonio's sister just won't shut up. It's nice to know that the characters in the game are just as annoyed with her as the player is, because at one point in the game, Rodea tells her (And by extension the rest of the freaking townsfolk who've tagged along with him) to be quiet.

Anyways, Rodea beats up another one of his siblings, and comes back to town, where they find out how the robots figured out where the hidden town was. It's at this point we find out that Tonio's sister is suffering from a terminal case of stupidity, and not any real illnesses.
Take a look at the screenshot to the left. This isn't something made by a little kid in MS Paint, that's an actual screenshot I took from the game. This was the art-style they decided to use for the flashback sequence to explain that whole little abduction section of the game. This little FMV is supposed to explain how the machine-soldiers found the village, but it doesn't really do that.
Okay, let's explain what happens in that FMV. Tonio's sister sits down on a stump, sees this bird, and tells it about her village. One of the robots throws its voice into the bird and he zooms off to find more robots to invade with. But instead of just taking over the village, they just kidnap Ion. And guess what? Rodea comes after them and beats them up. This actually happened, and it's never brought up again.
After Rodea destroys all the Chronos Towers, he gets ambushed by another robot who's extremely powerful and somehow happens to have the other half of the Key of Time. He beats up Rodea, takes the other half of the key, sticks it into Rodea's chest and turns it for some reason. Then he opens up a portal to a thousand years in the past, tells Rodea that this is his chance to save Cecilia, and goes off to tell Geardo what he needs to know to win the war. This is the point where it turns into Terminator, since we have robots trying to take over the world by going back in time to prevent the resistance from arising.

Rodea and Ion fly through the portal, Rodea forgets that he can fly when he's trying to save Cecilia, and she's never heard from again. No clue as to whether she died right there or not, and the game never actually tells you if she dies or not.
Anyways, Rodea storms through the Naga fortress. And no, this isn't straightforward in the slightest. The last several levels of the game are complicated, well-designed, and fun to play. The problem is that the lives-system gets in the way. Due to the levels being extremely long, the checkpoints are a little too far apart. This is only a minor issue, especially compared to how the lives system affects these final levels. Due to the fact that the game has a lives system, once you lose all of them, you're forced to go back to the beginning of the level. This is the same issue that I mentioned above with the last three bosses in the game. The reason I bring this up again is because it irritated the hell out of me, and I needed to bring across exactly how much it irritated me.

We now come to the final-boss of the game, which is essentially a less interesting take on Chaos from Sonic Adventure. He's got feelers you have to attack, then after you get through all of those, you get sucked up inside those ventilation pipes you see to the left, and kill him from the inside until his chest opens up and you can attack the jewel in the middle. This was a pretty awesome boss-fight, but like I said before, it's hampered by the presence of the lives-system.
Now we come to the actual technical issues with the game as opposed to just game-design issues. For one thing, there's plenty of slowdown during the fight against the final boss. I target the feelers, boost towards it, and the game slows to a freaking crawl. This isn't the kinda slowdown that you could maybe appreciate giving you some extra time to react, this is the kinda slowdown that's outright freaking annoying. There are other issues with slowdown throughout some of the more complex levels, but for the most part it's not that big an issue throughout the rest of the game. I only played it on 3DS, so I don't know if any of the performance issues are solved on New3DS or not. I've heard they were, but I haven't seen it in action myself.

But there are other technical issues which probably wouldn't be solved by more powerful hardware. For instance, there are plenty of times when I've somehow gotten stuck in the ceiling, or whatever surface happened to be above me. Then there's the fact that Rodea has a tough time navigating edges while he's flying, which is a massive pain during the final-boss when you're trying to climb multi-level towers to get above the freaking acid. That's especially annoying when he starts wrapping feelers around the towers and shocking them with electricity. Even more annoying is when he whips out his laser-wave. But the issue in the screenshot above is especially annoying, since that level took place in closed corridors with ceilings everywhere. Hover too high and you got stuck in the ceiling for a little while. Taking a look at the credits, I see that Digital Hearts worked on quality-assurance for this game. Not to disparage them, but they were the QA team who worked on Lord of Magna, and we all know how many bugs that game had.

Finally, we come to the full-motion videos. The screenshot to the left is one of the worst examples in the game that I could find, barring the next screenshot I took. Take a look at their mouths, especially the two on the left, and look at the rest of the stuff in the background. I don't know if it was just the way they compressed the FMV's so they'd fit onto the cartridge, or if this was how they looked in the Wii and Wii U versions of the game. No matter how the source FMV's looked, I can't see much that makes the FMV's look better than the real-time graphics. Partially because the colors look pretty washed-out, and partially because I just can't see the point in using full-motion video in really any of the situations it's used in. The models don't look too much more detailed than the ones in the game, the textures certainly don't look much better, and there's never anything so complex going on that couldn't be accomplished using the assets in the game itself. There's nothing overly cinematic happening that could have necessitated pre-rendered cutscenes. No major panning shots, no complex effects, and not a whole lot is usually being rendered. And there's a fairly massive issue with the FMV's. For some reason they don't fill the whole screen. I don't know why, I don't know how, but they just simply don't. If they had the assets kicking around, they should have just re-rendered them to fit the aspect-ratio of the 3DS. I checked out some footage of the Wii U version for completely unrelated reasons, and for some reason, the cinematics fit the 16:9 aspect ration.

This brings me to another problem I had with the game. There are three kinds of cutscenes. There are the Sonic Rush-style portraits yammering at each other with word-boxes below them, then you have the FMV's, then you have the odd real-time cutscene. This irritates the crap out of me, and I'm not exactly sure why. It's pretty inconsistent, for one thing. Important events don't always happen during FMV's, sometimes they happen during portrait-yammering, and sometimes we see absolutely pointless stuff happening during FMV's.
Then there's the fact that the characters jaws flap up and down during portrait cutscenes, but they don't match the voices in the slightest, which goes for the Japanese voice-track as well as the English voice-track. It looks like they just looped the lip-flaps infinitely until the actors were done speaking.
Which brings us to the voice-acting. The English cast all sound like they're putting on really bad impressions of the cast of Sonic X, which I can't say doesn't make some kind of sense. The odd thing is that I can't even find out who the English cast was. They're not named in the credits, Wikipedia doesn't have a cast entry for them, and imdb doesn't even have a page for the game. It's almost like they didn't want anyone to know who they were. The English voice-acting is pretty bad, but the Japanese voice-acting is better. The problem is that during gameplay, the captions are shown on the bottom screen of the 3DS, which is a bit of a pain to try and watch during high-action parts of the game. That's a pretty bad thing when characters are feeding you important bits of information during combat, and you only know a few words of Japanese. I certainly know enough to be able to tell when the captions are wrong, but not enough to know what they're saying. So I stuck to the English voiceover so I could tell what was going on.

This brings me to an issue with the translation. Every now and again, there are words that seem utterly out of place, almost as if the translator didn't totally know what they were doing. Every now and again it sounds like the kinda translation you sometimes see in Japanese songs which have been re-sung in English, where the words don't totally match up to the concepts they're trying to convey. It doesn't happen all the time, just often enough for me to notice it. It's incredibly strange to see that kind of thing in a game like this, especially since the majority of the translation seems pretty good.
Moving onto the music, it's fine. Okay. Just sorta there. Nothing really jumped out at me in the default soundtrack like music from a Sonic game. There was one song that I listened to that was an optional track that I really liked, but because it's never actually used in the game itself, I don't really count that. There's no epic rock tune playing during the final boss-fight, Rodea doesn't have an awesome theme-song that plays whenever he's doing something cool, the lead bad-guy doesn't have a cool theme-song, and while the music that plays during the individual levels is fine, it might as well have been stock music for all the memorability it has. Think back to Sonic The Hedgehog on the Genesis. You probably remember the title-screen song, Eggman's theme, Green Hill Zone, quite a few tracks from other levels in the game... Now think about Rodea The Sky Soldier, and try to remember any of the music in the game. I'm willing to bet that you can't.
Let's talk camera-controls now. You can rotate the camera while on the ground with the L and R buttons, and that's it. You can't tilt the camera up and down at all while on foot. You can center the camera by holding L or R, but it rotates the camera ninety-degrees before centering, which is a massive pain when you're trying to center the camera by a couple of degrees. There's an option to control the camera with the 3DS's gyroscope, but that only works in the air, and makes targeting a lot harder, so it really doesn't serve any purpose other than making it a lot harder to aim. There's an unlockable first-person mode you can access if you pay fifteen silver coins, but that's just the regular controls from a first-person perspective, and it's incredibly difficult to navigate when your camera is full of wall. I looked it up, and I couldn't find any evidence suggesting that this game has any option to be played with a Circle-Pad Pro, either online, or in the game itself. Most of the 3DS games I've played that let you use the Circle-Pad Pro have some option in the menu that lets you use it, but this game doesn't have that. Then there's the fact that there are two options screens in the game, neither of which are accessible during gameplay. Technically there are three options screens, since the option for the first-person mode is inside the unlock menu, which also has options for controlling the music, and what character you're playing as. The first options menu is solely dedicated to languages (Voiceover and captions), and is only accessible from the title-screen. The second options menu is only accessible by pressing Y on the world-map, and controls the audio-levels, how often your support characters yammer at you, and whether or not you're using gyro-control. That's something I never understood in a lot of games, since if you'd turned on an irritating feature to see what it did, surely you'd want to be able to turn it off as well! Even then, why would you have three options screens in a game? Even with one as an unlockables screen, you could just do what Fire Emblem Awakening did and stick the unlockable music tracks into the regular menu.
Going back to camera-controls, they feel a bit like the ones from Sonic Adventure, but without the same kind of analog precision that game had to its camera. It's strange, especially since Ocarina of Time had much better camera controls back on the N64, and it had even less control over the camera! I'd hope that the Wii and Wii U versions of the game had better camera controls, since both of those have more options.
Finally, we get to the art-style and general design of the game. Personally speaking, aside from Rodea and Geardo's final form, I didn't particularly care for the character-design in this game. The colors are all muted pastels, without the same level of vibrancy that Sonic The Hedgehog games have. The characters don't have the same level of elegant design the cast of Sonic has. Everything has this overcomplicated, angular quality to it, without the same smooth detailing I liked about the Sonic characters. The levels pretty much look fine, but they don't have the same sort of colorful flair to them as ones from say, Sonic Adventure, or Super Mario Galaxy.
All in all, Rodea The Sky Soldier isn't a bad game by any means, but it doesn't grab me the same way my favorite Sonic games do. At its best, Rodea The Sky Soldier is pretty freaking good. At its worst, it's a bit of a glitchy mess, at least on 3DS. On average, it's a decent game with some cool ideas, but it's not as interesting as, say, the other Sonic-inspired game that came out this year. Look forward to my review and Let's Play of that sometime soon.
In the end, I give Rodea The Sky Soldier a 6.7* rating. I'll see you next week, hopefully. I'll be at Geek-O-Nomicon that weekend, so the review might wind up being a bit late.

Game provided for review by Nippon Ichi Systems America. Cover image provided by NIS America. Screenshots taken by me.