August 2023
Anime style arcade beat em up that fails to deliver upon the potential provided by it’s core gameplay. The actual base combos against the various mob enemies are actually semi enjoyable (if not a little redundant later on), however due to clunky and generally awful controls (if using a controller you will have to enable it upon every launch of the game) it ends up being a relatively irritating experience. Bosses are also disappointing in that I found each one needs a similar strategy if you don’t want to get caught in tedious and unenjoyable button mashing loops instead of the unique experiences that I would hope for and expect. The art style feels a little cheap at times and feels verging on adult only content but has it’s own charm in a way. Story is… not too serious and honestly wasn’t sure what was going on for most of it but has plenty of references that I found myself able to enjoy.
Recommend? Eh, keep it cheap.
Rating 4/10
Enhanced Edition Review
All the content of the original Borderlands but with more problems and no noticeable improvements. The first and biggest issue this game is packet overload via voice chat. Even when turned off the voice chat causes such a high volume of packets that it will cause severe lag and disconnection rendering co-operative play nearly useless unless you go into the game’s files and turn it off there (recommend looking up a guide to ensure everything is correct). Past that a lot of the bigger issues tend to be invisible walls, random unseen bumps causing cars to flip, and even some bugged enemies and triggers (though mostly rarely). On the plus side… you get some new heads that have never been in the game before.
Recommend? Kinda, but maybe just play the original GOTY
Rating? 6/10
So glad to finally have an official Western release and hope the success of this and Black Water not only get Koei Tecmo to bring the first trilogy to Steam but hopefully a new entry all together.
Though the game itself is probably the weakest of the series it is still a great entry. The remastered graphics do make the characters and lighting much more detailed and vibrant… however a lot of wall and floor textures, as well as animations, still look very dated. Still, great and creepy atmosphere with wonderful sound design. In particular, the resident rooms provided excellent use of these to create individualized and unique characterizations and feel. The story is fairly easy to follow, for the most part, and has a nice unsettling premise to keep the characters moving forward. Though a strong theme isn’t present as it was in III we do still get a solid narrative.
The game play itself is pretty standard for the series. Though I found many a fights stuck in hallways where ghosts would spend a great deal in the walls, and follow up fatal frame shots always seemed to auto track to a “non-hit” location (though this may be due to some aim assist). Not following some specific paths can trigger scenes to play out of your view thus missing some photo shots and the very slow movement speed does not compensate for this in the slightest. There is a shop system that feels a little too generous in the players favor. Yet, the introduction of mission mode and new game plus gives this plenty of replayability.
All in all, any fan of Survival Horror, Fatal Frame, and Psychological Horror should give this a try.
Completionist Notes: Beating the game on harder difficulties does not award you the lower difficulty achievements. This may be due to the difference in endings based on difficulty height (even though the harder difficulties only give the same ending+). That being said you will need to do multiple playthroughs anyways to get the remaining photos with post game unlocks.
P.S. I’m not sure why but the BLAO doesn’t register this game as having any achievements even though it does.
Recommend? Yes!
Rating: 7/10
Street Fighter Alpha
Based on the SFII animated movie based on the game. Alpha takes an interesting cartoony/anime art direction that is very clearly inspired by the wildly successful SF2 movie. This art style is sure to define the series for sometime and be the main style of Marvel vs Capcom (among others). Though we don’t see a ton of returning characters we do see some returning enemies from SF1 and even new entries. In addition the super meter new has three bars to fill, these can be used one by one or in multiple to perform stronger or different supers. Using a light medium or heavy attack in your specials will also now perform different results than just the speed or range of the attack. For instance, Rose’s reflect can either just absorb the attack (light), reflect it horizontally (medium), or reflect it upwards (heavy). Finally we seem to get a psuedo parry system though I think it requires some of your meter to do so. It wasn’t very present as of yet and the AI sure didn’t utilize it. Unfortunately the game is held back by some chunkiness in it’s gameplay and very bland backgrounds. I’m not sure if it was because I just came from SSF2T but I welcomed the much more fair difficulty in this game and most matches (save for Birdie) were quite enjoyable while challenging.
Rose was an interesting experience. I appreciated her reflect and anti-air grab when they worked as intended. Her projectile requires a half circle, which I’m not a fan of. Her super illusion also didn’t make much sense to me and could never get it quite figured out.
P.S. There were supposedly secret characters but I could not seem to get them even in random.
Rating: 7/10
Fighter of Choice: Rose
Street Fighter Alpha 2
A much MUCH improved version of Alpha with much more fluid gameplay, better backgrounds, and overall a great time. In fact, this may even by my favorite SF game so far. The UI does change a little bit and feels a bit weird as it now as a longer bar to show what level meter you are at as well as a guard meter. Characters look great and love all of these Alpha series costumes we get for a lot of the mainstay characters. A larger roster with both returning characters, supposed secret characters from the last, and even more entries from games like Final Fight and the original SF game. Parries appear to be far mroe a thing now and both you and the AI will likely utilize them at a drop of the hat.
Dan Hibiki feels a bit of a joke chracter who has mostly weakened shoto moves. His fireball doesn’t actually go further than a few feet and doesn’t cancel out other projectiles. His super shoryuken is completely in place which felt pretty useless. He does get a jumping forward kick which can be pretty effective though leaves him quite open.
Rating: 9/10
Fighter of Choice: Dan Hibiki
Street Fighter Alpha 3
Though the game does keep it’s very cartoony/anime art style they do changeup the sprites and I can’t quite describe the difference. For me, it didn’t look as good from a still visual standpoint but the motions seemed much more fluid which is an okay trade off. This game throws a lot of new stuff at you including different kinds of meter gameplay (A-ism, V-ism, and X-ism), more moves, and a much larger roster. The difference between the isms were generally how your meter and some gameplay reacted. A-ism was the typical Alpha 3 meter gameplay, V-ism was the traditional SF2 single meter gameplay with reduced moves but stronger attacks, and X-ism was some sort of custom combo mode that could be pretty broken if used wisely. Theoretically this game could be even better than Alpha 2 but there was just two much to get used to that I did not spend enough time learning. I’d certainly like to loop back to this game someday and see if I can’t learn more though I think my favor will still lean towards the simplicity of Alpha 2.
That being said I still had a lot of fun and in part this may be because I chose Sakura who turns out to be an incredibly fun character despite being another shoto. Very quick, a nice assortment of moves, I only wish I could understand her dragonpunch kick special better. Her supers are each useful in their own ways so you never feel like one is particularly better than the other.
Rating: 8/10
Fighter of Choice: Sakura
Street Fighter III: New Generation
Now that we are back onto the “main” series we find a peculiar line of entries that are almost… not Street Fighter. New Generation bolsters a lineup of all new (and incredibly weird) fighters and almost wasn’t even a SF game to begin with until they decided to add Ken and Ryu and slap that popular IP onto the the title. For what it’s worth, this places the foundation for a later entry to become the best fighting game ever (for most). Unfortunately there are several issues. Aside from a bunch of missing mainstays, we do get some peculiar new entries that just seem bad (looking at you Necro). Parry’s are fully implemented and not tied to your super gauge but they are almost punishing to use as you can rarely get a follow up after. We do get to now choose your super per fighter and get the multi gauge super like you do in the Alpha series. Moves and mechanics feel a little clunky especially things like throws and stuns. We also get introduced to a new boss who is notoriously hard throughout each of the SF3 versions, Gill. Bolstering a color on each side and a revival ability all of which is showing off the tech and programming of it’s time, but man is this guy brutal.
Since the roster was filled with such weird characters I figured I’d start with one of the weirder and that is… Oro. Single armed goofy hermit man. I was a little displeased that he was a charge character, but likely it was only two moves and relatively easy to pull off (save for maybe his uppercut). He’s got some decent projectiles with his super projectile being crazy effective due to it’s size and bouncing trajectory. Easily his best move is his ability to hop onto his enemy which was the lifesaving strat to face off against gill. He does have a command grab which is nice but also annoying that it is a half circle. Overall a decent character to pickup.
Rating: 6.5/10
Fighter of Choice: Oro
Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact
Not too much to say about this other than that it feels like a more polished New Generation. We do get some new characters (Hugo, Urien, and returning character Akuma), some changes to colors and arenas, and some changes to moves/Gill. Gill felt a bit easier but it may be due to my character of choice this time around. All in all, more of an update to New Gen than a full on new entry.
Dudley, the boxer extraordinaire. Much like his counterpart, Balrog, he is entirely punch focused but he brings plenty of his won moves to the table including a counter, a stance, dive bombs, uppercuts, etc. The counter is definitely the strongest move he has save for his downward spiral which, again, was such a crutch for me when facing GIll. I only tried one of his supers which ended up being a series of uppercuts which I felt like most characters had some variation for that so I wasn’t too impressed from my experience in that aspect.
Rating: 7/10
Fighter of Choice: Dudley
Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike
There almost isn’t anything to say about this game that isn’t already known. In fact, most people (myself included) probably didn’t even know the previous two versions existed. Easily, from several points of views, this is the best game in SF history let alone fighting game history. The game is incredibly polished, music and arenas bring so much character and individuality from most of the fighting game so of it’s time. Parries have been perfected, almost every character is not only viable but great. The only exception to this is apparently Sean who received a major debuff. There are unique character interactions depending on the match up. There is also an interesting arcade progression system where you get to pick 1 of the 2 fighters to face next. This means if you know you have a bad matchup against a certain character you could choose the other path instead. I did try to do some online with this game but… Akumas everywhere and let me tell you Akuma is an absolutely nightmare to face off even against a novice user.
I thought I’d go a little out of my comfort zone and give Hugo a try. I’m not usually a heavy command grab character but Hugo was an interesting experience. save for a lariat rush and a clap, every single special is a command grab of sort. Most are in place save for one that ends up being a great setup and an anti-air which was my bread and butter. Unfortunately I did not learn to combo very well with him but his powerhouse strength felt nice. Mostly used Megaton press which was an advanced version of his Anti-air but considering people like to jump in the game it was as easy to input as it was to land. Granted so many airs seem to hit me out of it… but that’s neither here nor air.
Rating: 10/10
Fighter of Choice: Hugo
What almost was a better game than the last two iterations we get an incredible mess of choices and executions. We get an entirely new setting where it further leans into the Spirit Medium vibe that was always around (if not partnered up with us) throughout the series. The Far Eastern Kingdom of Khura'in.... except when it isn't and takes place in the regular Ace Attorney settings. The back and forth of locations between cases feels really bizarre and unexpected. These cases that are away from the new setting do not seem to really carry the story much and more feels like intermissions rather than actual cases. When we are in Khura'in we do get a new mechanic which is the Divine Séance which is essentially a POV video of the victim's last moments. You must use all of their sensations to find the contradictions. Aside from the back and forth of settings, we also get worse versions of previous mechanics. Forensics and Perceiving all have very slow movements and had plenty of clunky hard to ready points of evidence. Speaking of slow, some characters in particular wish to waste my time with extended animations and talking. What starts to take the cake, for me, was towards the end when we get a mixture of some semi-nonsense connections and even worse reactions from already established characters. To say the least we get some background on a character that really didn't need expanded background.
Worst Characters: Emma, Sahdmadhi
Best Characters: Rayfa, Dhurke
Recommend: Maybe
Rating: 5/10
Only available in the PSP FF4 Complete Collection, thank you fellow BLAO member for letting me know about this. Taking place not long after the events of FF4 we get about a 2 hour of classic FF gameplay that hits on some relatively minor plot points. Mostly that kingdoms are rebuilt and everyone is going to have children. Difficulty is a bit everywhere. It goes from really easy to crushingly difficulty and oscillates between the two. The bigger crusher between the random upticks in difficulty is that you don't have free reign on the map or your location. The issue comes into play in the term of items and that you don't have as much access to buying them, receiving them, or healing yourself which means you could softlock yourself quite easily. Luckily it is a short game but still a bit discerning.
Recommend: Eh
Rating: 5/10