Feb 2025
You are the rat kisser
It feels like I played a lot more games than is being shown but not entirely sure why. In some fairness Witcher 3, MHRise, and some unlisted games have been taking over my life. Right now just hoping to get through what I can and start prepping these reviews before hand instead of doing it all in one go. Putting FFXI on the backburner for a bit as I am enjoying my break from MMOs for the time being.
Steamdeck
Game gifted to me, though I had some knowledge of the premise already (gift giver knew this before gifting it).
All you need to know is that this game has all of your rat shaking needs. Decent enough little that involves shaking rats among other actions, but don't worry about that yet just keep shaking your rat. Interestingly enough it did receive a content update shortly after playing which vastly improved the last half of the game.
Some of the issues with the game involve a lack of a decent save or checkpoint system which can create frustrating moments. This issue is reinforced by the fact that the first portion of the game can be a bit of a slog once you have played it a few times. Sometimes just shaking the rat on it's own just isn't enough. Some "tutorial" messages pop up each time you approach the same object it pertains to can be a bit annoying as well. Please, I know when and how to shake my rat THANK YOU VERY MUCH. The rat shake meter can be REALLY slow if you are shaking without moving, this kind of loops back to the issue with the beginning of the game but a weird design issue none the less. Lesson here? Always shake your rat on the go.
Steamdeck: Generally plays well, though maybe not the most ideal for rat shaking purposes. Ended up using the touchpad for most of the shaking as I fear my joystick would have broken in twain.
Recommend? Yes, aside from the free price I got, it is a relatively cheap game that is generally good ol' rat shaking fun.
Rating: 7/10 Shakes of a Rat
Plus Ultra: Will never forgive myself for missing out on the Valentine's event that allowed you to kiss the rat.
Steamdeck
Only covers base game up until Sunbreak
I put off this game for a long time because I was pretty annoyed with how the game appeared to play. I fell in love with Hunting Horn in Worlds and to have it reduced to some fast paced and simplified weapon that lacked the oomph… well I disagreed a lot with it. In truth, the grander issue dealt more that I was expecting either more a more Worlds like game or something more similar to 4U… but this wasn't either. (But also the HH thing really bothered me…) Yet when I started treating this game more like a spin off I actually started to enjoy it a bit more. That is until I started noticing more aspects that bothered me.
Let's start with the good. Generally great monsters with Magnamalo being a fantastic, albeit a bit tame, flagship monster. It looks great, interesting abilities, and awesome armor/weapons. Aesthetically, the Japanese Ninja/Edo period style is very charming and a nice change of pace from the typical Jungle small village vibes most MH games give. This is both good and bad, but it is very streamlined and wants you to go. What I mean is the game doesn't want you to waste time doing anything. It wants you to go to the monster, get there as fast as you can, and move on to the next one. Gathering points only take one interaction and animation to receive your material. You can do most actions from your dog mount which you can use to traverse the map quickly. You are able to run up just about every surface and even when you can't you are likely able to use wirebugs to zip around like Spider-man. This also translates in combat where weapons either get very fast move sets or additional moves that allow them quickly in and out. Admittedly this probably made Great Sword far more viable for me being a newcomer to the weapon set. It was interesting to see how they designed and adapted monsters to keep up with this new fast paced MH. For instance, a lot of monsters that shot balls of fire now shoot streams of fire as well for more coverage. The palamute, which is your new ally and mount, offers not only quick movement but an additional ally in battle with it's own skills.
So, what's the bad? Rampages, which are a sort of horde mode introduced in this game, are god awful experiences. Having to setup and use installations is cumbersome and not enjoyable. It was one thing to do this for Zorah Magdaros in Worlds, but that was a massive Kaiju. This is just a stream of various monsters and is just clunky. Luckily there is a limited signal mode that buffs your weapon so you get get in there and fight yourself but it's a small bandage on a huge wound. This game has some of my least favorite maps in the series. With the wirebugs offering new traversal it seemed like the maps were over-designed to compensate for this. They are far too vertical with too many holes to just fall down or go up that it just gets down right annoying. So many areas are just unused for monster hunting purposes and don't have much purpose other than "Oh neat, I can go here" or picking up various items which usually aren't all that necessary. Maybe it's just me, but I felt a lot of the menus and figuring out where I gotta go to equip my palico, equip skills, forge, etc. was kinda confusing. It just felt over complicated and spread out. As I said before, the fast paced and streamlined is as much of a negative as it is positive. Plenty of weapons were quick without having the weight behind their attacks, dumbed down (hunting horn songs can now all be done with repeated button presses), and the game itself just felt a lot easier than usual. You even get stat enhancing pickups while traversing which makes the game even easier. You don't even get access to most things until your well into HR and just nearly before Sunbreak. With everything being able to be done as you go, it almost felt like you were rushed to get done. Also, being able to sharpen on your mount mid battle is a crazy work around that renders most sharpening abilities moot. I've also rarely ever needed to upgrade gear. For most of the base game I was using the same basic low rank gear with some slightly upgraded weapon until I made the Magnamalo set. Most fights, even in High Rank ended within 6 or 7 minutes tops. Village quest line is so short it's kind of embarrassing to the point where it reminded me of Generations on the 3DS. I understand that there are more hub quests that really get into the meat of things but it just felt kinda barebones. Oh, and I feel the "final" fight for the original set of hub quests is horribly designed.
Steamdeck: Plays perfectly with no real issue. I found I could get in more than a few hunts before worrying about the battery.
Weapon of Choice: Great Sword
Favorite Monster: Magnamalo
Least Favorite Monster: Chameleos
Recommend? Yes, despite my disagreements with the choices for this game it is still an overall solid MH game. It does however rank to my second least favorite one just above the water combat entry. That being said, the DLC so far has been a massive improvement in general and will share more once I finish that out.
Rating: 6.5/10
Very reminiscent of Hatoful Boyfriend yet it lacks quite the same charm. Maybe it was just too little too late but it doesn't quite carry the same weight as dating my bird boyfriends in terms of writing or zaniness. It's multiple protagonist pitch is interesting if not slightly annoying as it almost makes the game feel a bit like groundhog's day from a player perspective. I'll admit I did not expect the amount this game does not hold back when it comes to suggestive themes or maybe how accepting your characters are with dating cats. In some cases it was kind of uncomfortable with just how unhinged(?) some moments and suggestions could be. The cats themselves are fine if not a bit too defined by one characteristic. It gets to the point where a couple I just can't imagine ever being a genuine love interest in either design or personality. The mystery behind the story seemed pretty easy to figure out from the get go, which isn't inherently bad but doesn't do much favors either. It's also an all or nothing story which is also kind of annoying especially since to get other endings or paths you will have to go through the entire game again as there is no manual save system. This wouldn't be so bad normally, but there's also no skip button for dialogue either so you'll have to mash out the messages until you make your choices.
Best Cat(s): McMurphy, Trixie, Secret
Worst Cat(s): Kibbles, Floofybutt
Recommend? Not really. It really just doesn't quite capture the same absurd enjoyment that Hatoful Boyfriend provided and in some ways gets a little to serious.
Rating: 3/10
Steamdeck
The UNS game that solidified the formula for Ninja Storm games to come. This covers the first portion of Shippuden and just about all of the Akatsuki arc. Removing the open village travel of the first and enacting a more limited hallways traversal yet now expands past the Hidden Leaf Village allowing for more sites giving a bit more of a drawn and detailed aesthetic. Combat is relatively the same but now has Team Ultimates. There are no more minigames, only fights and fetch quests which is slightly disappointing but also understandable. We also no longer see Giant Battles but instead we get our QTE's in major fights that when done quickly reveals a "hidden" extra scene.
General improvements all around, though some of the boss fights are kind of tedious and boring. I did have weird camera moments where it would get stuck on something in the background and obscure my vision until it became unstuck. It was only really in one general area and was easy to fix, but something to note. I was kind of disappointed they glossed over some fights that felt overall important for their character growth but overall covers a decent amount.
Steamdeck: Unlike the first UNS game, this runs very smooth. From my experience there have been no slowdowns on any arena, ultimate move, or cutscene.
Recommend? Yes, it's a solid entry though it can feel like a slog to get through at times.
Rating: 7/10
Completion Note: There are a few multiplayer achievements, one of which would require up to 70 online battles if done right. Needless to say you'll likely not get this without help.
This only covers base game and Hearts of Stone DLC
I first played this back in 2016 and absolutely loved every moment. Unfortunately I had to drop it pretty early on in the story due to a lot of stuff going on and as time went by it became harder to pick it back up. Yet, I mustered the courage with the latest announcement and was not disappointed. In most ways the pinnacle of the series that gives you ease to dabble into Geralt's various trees whereas in the past games I always felt I needed to focus out a singular tree to be of any use. The writing is great even in just simple side quests to the overall main line story. Each and every character is well voiced, a great cast, and plenty of returning and new characters/monsters. It was even great just enjoying picking up contracts and prepping for each monster. I would often find myself spending hours on just those alone and almost wish for renewing contracts to keep me traveling around the land. Speaking of land the areas felt absolutely massive and were a treat to explore. That being said it almost felt a punishment to explore too much as you may explore a cave that is meant for a side quest. Vise versa is that if you don't explore enough you could miss out on a side quest because you didn't see the quest giver. Combat is pretty solid though sometimes the lock on can be a little unreliable. In addition, at least at my difficulty, some abilities just don't seem to work as intended.
It was kinda surprising to see how buggy and glitchy the game could be. I didn't remember it being so back in 2016(?) but then again I was still in the honeymoon phase of the game. Things like your horse doing a forward (or backward) wheely while going down a hill, monster's sometimes being in walls, noticeable tears/seams in the environmental textures, interactions with people or objects only working if you save and then load right back into the area, among a few other cases. It's not particularly game breaking enough to detriment, but the Cyberpunk release now makes far more sense. Traversing the world can be clunky, especially on horseback where Roach will just dead stop because of slight incline/decline among other path changes. As per each installment, there is a love interest mechanic in play, but I don't particularly like how it's done. First, the game REALLY pushes one interest over the other. Where you normally get to choose to flirt or make various plays, one interest it just happens casually in the dialogue before a choice is given not to mention many of the story implications really weigh in that interest's favor. The other issue is that you don't seem to get much of a chance to sensibly interact with both before making a choice or pursuit. Understandably committing to both is bad in a moral standpoint, but you have to make your choice with each interest at the end of their own questline which initially feels like you can miss. If they were going to do it in this way I would have liked to have a final make a choice after getting to know both. Again, not the most moral route but with the way the game is structured it makes a bit more sense. This only leaves to question how actually succeeding one of them affects the DLC interests. Menu-ing kind of sucks, it's just a lot to parse through especially with inventory and skill trees. A smaller point but some side quests definitely feel under cooked and/or not well thought out as the solutions sometimes don't make sense or one is just objectively (even roleplaying as Geralt) the right choice. This isn't exactly unique to the genre, but so many special weapons seem to not be very usable or special. This may also be difficulty related but man does your equipment deteriorate fast.
Hearts of Stone: The DLC was surprisingly small in that I was expecting a whole new land and adventure considering how it opens. Don't get me wrong the story is still very well written and each character (old and new) is well done, but other than the main quest line you only really have a couple of side quests and a couple merchants to buffer it out. All in all it was a great time and loved the finale of it all. Only wish I could have kept my love interest around.
Recommend? Very much so, currently working on Blood and Wine and it's only been getting better.
Rating: 9/10. Could easily be a 10 had the various bugs and issues been fixed/handled differently.
Completion Note: Play Gwent with every merchant you come across and win. I started to skip out on Gwent for a while and now I'm suffering the consequences as merchants can randomly have a card you need. Better to get it done along the way than to backtrack.
Note: I feel like I'm missing some things to note, but I've been spending a lot of time on this post and can feel my writing deteriorate… Hopefully I'll be a bit more concise and accurate with my Blood and Wine panel.
Congratz for the 120h on The Witcher 3 !
Thank you thank you. In truth some time of that is from letting it idle while I take care of some, but the other 95% is pure Witcher hours.
Congratulations on your assassinations!!! ᓚᘏᗢ
I still need to play The Witcher 3… soon.
Thank you kindly.
Do it, it’s very good. Geralt is a cool guy.
I think removal of the village was what’s been stopping me from checking out Ultimate Ninja STORM 2, and I rather liked the first one. Shame. Glad you liked Witcher 3 and I’m looking forward to hearing what you’ll say about Blood and Wine since in many ways it’s CDPR learning the lessons from the base game to give a more condensed experience.
That’s fair, being able to explore the village in UNS1 was a unique experience that we don’t really get in most anime fighters. Still, if you enjoyed the combat of 1, it is mostly the same in the 2nd so there’s that.
Yeah, been taking my time with Blood and Wine is making a great impression so far.
I haven’t gotten to Purrfect Date yet, but that really is the crux of the whole thing - whether or not you prefer to think a particular dev has played Hatoful Boyfriend before making their own “romance VN… but with a twist!”, it’ll usually fail in comparison because Hatoful Boyfriend did it first (at least as far as Western audiences are aware). Kind of like every VN that breaks the fourth wall and/or features a drastic genre shift ends up getting compared to Doki Doki Literature Club!; even the one that did it first in Japan (it only released in English a few years later.)
That’s true enough, people will always compare media within a genre to the big popular thing within it and it’ll rarely ever meet those expectations, even if it is genuinely good. After all, if big popular game was your first in the genre (or to go to the lengths it does) you just won’t be able to recapture the wonder.
Still, I do think games that follow (or came before) can match or come pretty close despite this sort of paradox. It’s just this game isn’t the case for me. In honesty it isn’t all that terrible and the only real bad thing is that there is no skip feature. Maybe you’ll find the charm where I couldn’t. Either way I appreciate the retrospect.
Which is where one should see the opportunity to delve further into the particular genre or branch off into another one… until one day, they find themselves taken with a work that really did manage to find its way into their heart. :)
While not a genre per se, I’d like to think I’ll always have fond memories of being introduced to the wonder of time travel narratives by Steins;Gate and Life is Strange. I still have quite a few time travel movies to catch up on, too! I’ve recently managed to watch a truly terrible modern one, then a great classic the next month. Life works in mysterious ways.
Oh, of course. I just know that I think it’s important to stop the comparison game at some point, unless it is explicitly intended or otherwise invited by the creators themselves. Weirdly enough, I can’t help but think about it on a personal level; like, if I got good at doing something, would I enjoy constantly being complimented through the lense of comparison to a senior in the craft? Maybe if I looked up to them. Does that make sense?
Hmm, VNDB doesn’t have an engine listed, but that is a common issue with VNs made in Unity. I still don’t know if it’s because it’s not a dedicated VN engine or if most devs who choose to work with it just don’t much care for it. (I would hope it’s the former.)
Thank you! It’s just what came to mind immediately; I wasn’t even sure whether it sounds neutral and/or informative, or condescending. ^^;; I like sharing whatever knowledge I’ve absorbed from being online, but I’m also largely out of touch. Do tell if I ever come across the wrong way.