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