標籤彙整: reviews

Over the years, expansions have continually infused new life into Final Fantasy XIV, helping it become the best modern Final Fantasy experience. Shadowbringers continues the trend, and while it suffers with strict adherence to old-school MMORPG structure, it soars to new heights with a package that pulls the player in to a massive questline that’s worth the price of admission alone, even if you never engage with endgame progression or even other players. In an unexpected twist, Shadowbringers excels at offering players an almost completely single-player journey through a brilliant new world.

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As you explore, you become immersed in new environments that sell classic tales in beautiful packages. A shantytown of the have-nots resting beneath an opulent palace of the haves. An undersea adventure accessed on the back of Bismarck (there are of course, tons of nostalgia nods to the franchise that evoke joy for franchise adherents). A faerie realm with a sword-wielding frog. A classic tale of sacrifice and a few critical twists in this world are enough to make you forgive, if not completely forget, the fact that you’re bumbling around between main beats collecting bear meat and helping merchants find iron.

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“The grind” is an antiquated MMORPG component that’s pervasive in Shadowbringers, filled with stale objectives that send you from point A to point B killing a few critters here and emoting at NPCs there. However, these are blemishes on an otherwise enthralling main story path. The dungeon backdrops and bosses are especially inspired; in your first battle with a lightwarden in this new realm, you may lose the fight because you’re simply so captivated by the absurd sensory overload of powerful abilities firing off in a grand arena awash with the incredible soundtrack. Words cannot do justice to Masayoshi Soken’s score, and you may find yourself listening to it long after battles have been completed and you’re back in reality. 

The feeling that these multiple aspects of sound and scenery convey during legendary encounters makes you oblivious to the fact that all you’re doing is mashing buttons and standing out of telegraphed circles. Even if combat can almost always be distilled down to standing in the right place at the right time, every boss encounter made me feel like part of a life-or-death scenario with the fate of the world at stake.

One of the new elements in Shadowbringers is that you can play through the many, many hours of the campaign almost completely by yourself. While you still must do four-person dungeon content at times, you can now use key story NPCs as your allies, called a Trust. The NPCs are smart and do a great job of teaching you boss mechanics, as they always know where to stand and how the fights work. This is ideal for players that might be called away during a dungeon, as you can go at your own pace without worrying about slowing a group down. 

Utilizing the Trust also allows players that might have to wait a long time for a group queue to get into dungeons instantly. The trek from level 60 (new dancer!) to 80 took me about 70 hours, and during that time, Shadowbringers only has a few instances where you have to engage with other players, but this can even be done without uttering a single word to them. While this may rub classic MMORPG purists the wrong way, you can make the case that Shadowbringers is a full-fledged single-player Final Fantasy title – and it’s great at being just that.

Technically, you won’t need any prior knowledge of FF XIV to get through the main quest, but I’d advise you to do your homework and research what’s happened so far to enjoy what’s going on. The tale continues from the base game and previous expansions, so it’s not meant as a standalone experience. You can purchase items (with real money) to catch you up to the beginning of Shadowbringers, but completing the back content is the best way to engage with the tale. 

Shadowbringers is the best expansion yet for Square Enix’s MMORPG, a world that comes alive in the player’s hands, with weight and gravitas moving you through every whimsical corner. Old-fashioned quest design and color-dodging combat add a dull tinge to a truly magical landscape, but those imperfections can’t keep down the scale and scope of excellent environments, grandiose bosses, and majestic music.
 

Score: 9

Summary: Fantastic attention to detail, wondrous environments, big bosses, and magnificent music make this one of the best Final Fantasy offerings.

Concept: Explore a new world, bringing darkness to a land of endless light

Graphics: Great variance exists between bland brown and green landscapes and elegant dungeons and boss setpieces

Sound: An awe-inspiring soundtrack contributes immensely to immersion

Playability: Some prior experience with FF XIV (or MMORPGs in general) is a must, but certain pay-to-catch-up mechanics are available for newcomers

Entertainment: Stale mechanics and features can’t bring down an epic experience featuring cool characters, incredible bosses, and a spectacular soundtrack

Replay: High

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Age of Wonders is a long-running strategy franchise, but new entries only release every other blue moon. Age of Wonders III released in 2014. Before that, Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic dropped in 2003. Fortunately, these long gestations give Triumph Studios plenty of time to refine the strategy and pack a lot of tiny features into its robust combat system, and that is evident in Planetfall. This new Age of Wonders isn’t perfect, but its unique strategy-driven battles were worth the wait.  

Previously, the Age of Wonders series dropped players into epic wars set within fantasy worlds full of elven courts and warring dragons. Planetfall warps you into the future; you awaken from cryogenic sleep to build a new empire on a variety of alien landscapes. The setting might be different, but the future remains full of colorful characters. I was impressed by the creativity expressed in every alien faction. The Syndicate is a purple-skinned race of intergalactic traders and merchants who possess powerful psionic attacks. The Assembly is an army of nearly undead cyborgs who see every planet as an organ bank ready for harvesting. And, the genetically engineered Amazons are stealthy warriors who ride dinosaurs into battle. Planetfall’s factions are so interesting that I almost had trouble settling on one at the start of the game.

No matter which faction you choose, you must plant your nation’s flag in the dirt and slowly push your boundary markers across the planet. As with other 4X games (like Civilization), this involves researching advanced technologies, constructing new buildings, and managing your population’s happiness. Sadly, this top-level strategy is a bit stale in Planetfall, and I was rarely faced with interesting choices for what to build or research.

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As you explore your world, you meet other races who send you on missions, which keeps you busy while your citizens churn through your production queue. However, your diplomatic options are limited, and I found it hard to keep the peace. No matter how many favors I ran for other nations or how often I traded with my neighbors, my relations always deteriorated, and I was forced to call in my army. This makes these interactions feel more like you’re only delaying the inevitable conflict, rather than engaging in political negotiations.

Combat is where Planetfall shines. The early turn-based battles are slow, but you can always auto-resolve a combat, which is a great way to skip low-risk encounters that don’t deserve your attention. Once I had built up a sizeable army, I had the most fun getting my hands dirty, issuing orders on the battlefield. Each faction has their own unique set of units and offers their own twist on the action. For example, the dwarf-like Dvar are fond of explosives and heavy tanks, while the Assembly rush at their enemies in hordes and can even resurrect their fallen comrades. And, since you can have multiple armies join a single battle, some of my biggest encounters felt truly legendary with over 40 units ducking in and out of cover.

Your armies develop complicated team synergies. The insectoid Kir’Ko have a hive mind that gives them defensive buffs when they are positioned near each other. Other hero units are collected by completing various missions, and these specialized commanders are some of your most stalwart soldiers. As they fight, they level up, allowing you to pick from a range of upgrades that boost their ranged attacks and give them special immunities.

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Basic units don’t have hero upgrades, but they can be equipped with mods that do everything from apply status effects to their attacks, let them to heal other units, or even allow them to phase through obstacles. I love the freedom this provides and how two identical unit types can be spec’d for different specialties. This flexibility gave me an endless number of choices on the battlefield so I never felt short of tactical options to work my way out of a jam.

Age of Wonders: Planetfall takes several turns to get moving, and newcomers might feel overwhelmed until they gain their bearings, but Triumph Studios’ newest strategy offering is full of fun, creative ideas and each faction is worth taking for a spin at least once. Building a sustainable empire and managing a happy populous takes some grunt work, but they are really just stepping stones to Age of Wonders: Planetfall’s epic firefights.

Score: 8

Summary: Planetfall’s strategy systems are complex and routine, but managing your armies is the fun kind of complex.

Concept: Turn the fantasy-themed 4X series into a sci-fi romp with stellar action

Graphics: These alien creature designs are fun and the overworld map looks great, but the randomly generated battle environments are repetitive

Sound: The sweeping soundtrack is generic and the stilted voice acting detracts from Planetfall’s otherwise interesting worldbuilding

Playability: Planetfall’s strategy systems are complex and routine, but managing your armies is the fun kind of complex

Entertainment: Overworld missions keep the action moving, but the XCOM-like turn-based combat is the real star

Replay: High

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Picross has quietly become a staple of Nintendo’s handheld platforms that is consistently fun, but rarely strays too far from its comfort zone. Lord of the Nazarick tries something new and changes up the formula, but only slightly, by partnering with the anime and novel property, Overlord, to deliver a picross experience that has a little bit of storytelling. The main draw still remains picross, though, even if the occasional cutscene appears.

Picross is a number-based, picture-drawing style of puzzle that has more in common with Sudoku than something like Tetris. Looking at a grid lined with numbers, you have to use logic to figure out which squares to fill in and which ones to mark with an X. After filling in all the appropriate squares you are left with a pixelated image. Tapping away at a grid to ultimately create a picture is always a rewarding finish line to a puzzle. This element of picross has mostly been the same since the puzzle’s inception, but Nazarick adds a few wrinkles, some welcome quality-of-life options, and a narrative.

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The story, which is the element that separates this picross from the games before it, is minor. The Overlord anime (and novels) follows Ainz, a player obsessed with an online video game called Yggdrasil. At the start of the story, Yggdrasil’s servers are shutting down, but Ainz stays online anyway, and he is transported to a new reality based on the game making him an ultra-powerful overlord in a fantasy world. The idea behind Lord of the Nazarick is Ainz is trying to restore documents (by solving picross puzzles) in order to figure out what has been going on in the world prior to his arrival. If you’re familiar with the source material, you get a chance to see conversations between Ainz and familiar characters, but newcomers will likely be confused about what is happening; it doesn’t do a very good job even setting up the base plot. The story elements end up being middling, but on the plus side, the character interactions are short, and I liked even having a small conceit for completing puzzles. Usually in picross you’re just handed a long list of puzzles and that’s it.

To see the full story you only need to complete the standard picross puzzles, but a number of optional additional puzzle types are available. Color Picross is a new type of puzzle that plays by picross’ normal rules, but adds color. Color Picross forces you to rethink your normal picross tactics and rewards you with a more interesting picture. I initially struggled with Color Picross, but came to enjoy it once I wrapped my head around it.

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Clip Picross isn’t new to Nazarick, but is a welcome addition. These puzzles are made of smaller picross puzzles that eventually come together to create one large picture, which is a lot of fun and always has been. Mega Picross puzzles, which change the way numbers are displayed on the grid, are also available, but they’re totally optional (and even somewhat hidden in the menu), which I am thankful for because I have never enjoyed this style of puzzle.

When it comes to solving any of the puzzles, you can now hold down the R button to help you count out squares. While this admittedly sounds like a small addition, it makes the whole process of solving puzzles more convenient and accurate and if it does not appear in future picross games, I will sorely miss it.

Combining picross with a relatively obscure anime (and not even using the anime’s name in the title) is a weird choice, but if you’re looking for more picross, you can’t go wrong here. The quality-of-life improvements are good, the Color Picross mode is fun, and having a little bit of story is a nice change of pace, even if the plot doesn’t have much to it.

Score: 7.5

Summary: Combining picross with a relatively obscure anime (and not even using the anime’s name in the title) is a weird choice, but if you’re looking for more picross, you can’t go wrong here.

Concept: Loosely tie a large collection of picross puzzles to the anime Overlord

Graphics: The art from the anime looks sharp as do the menus housing various picross puzzles, but nothing stands out as being visually exceptional or noteworthy

Sound: The quiet music, subtle sound effects, and lack of voice acting means playing this game on mute is a viable option

Playability: The typical, functional picross controls all exist here, but a new option to hold down the R button to help you count squares is incredibly helpful

Entertainment: Having even a little bit of story context for why you’re solving picross puzzles is nice, but the main draw here is more picross puzzles, Color Picross puzzles, and some added control options

Replay: Moderately high

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No team starts the season thinking they’re going to be average. Coaches and GMs believe they can get the most out of their players. Incoming free agents and rookies improve the roster. Coaches try to out-think the competition with new plays. It all works on paper until it doesn’t. Madden 20 claims to improve aspects of its core gameplay. It adds mid-season scenarios in hopes of  bolstering both a new career mode and the stagnant franchise mode, and Madden Ultimate Team continues to be one of the best fantasy card modes around. It’s a sound game plan, but it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Madden 20’s gameplay makes a decent first impression. Controlling players in the running game and out in the open feels nice. Both smaller movements with the left stick and gregarious special moves let you weave around and assert your authority. You’ll still see animations not sync properly (like when receivers go up for the ball), awkwardly sped up animations, wonky ball and player physics, and oblivious blockers, but for the most part it’s satisfying to grab the ball and take control. Users must adjust their pursuit angles and tackles to account for stick skill pros, and the new command to pull down the ball in the pocket increases the threat of mobile QBs. Super-jumping linebackers snagging interceptions has even been fixed.

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This year’s X-Factor players and superstar abilities integrate well with the overall feel of the gameplay, making you account for special players on both sides of the ball. I like having to release the ball quicker knowing Khalil Mack is coming, just like it’s fun to knockdown passes and people with Bobby Wagner. Thankfully, they’re not so powerful they overtake the game. X-Factors don’t occur super often since they require meeting specific goals before they’re activated, and they turn off when the player scores a TD or gets tackled for a loss, for instance.

The superstar abilities, which more players have than the X-Factors, are arguably more dangerous since they are always on. For example, they bestow QBs more accuracy, WRs better catching in specific situations, and defenders surer tackles. But on any given play, there are enough variables so an X-Factor or superstar ability isn’t working in isolation. Todd Gurley might be able to stiff arm one defender out of the way, but if you’ve called the right defense and are swarming to the ball, he can’t get past everyone. These new abilities help give the game a big-play feel that mimics what we like about the NFL, and since they can be swapped in and out of players in Ultimate Team, they add value and new strategic opportunities to the mode.

These abilities translate to the new QB1 Face of the Franchise career mode where you star as a starting QB, but the mode doesn’t make for an illustrious career. The scenario engine that generates conversations with coaches, teammates, and other players doesn’t create an interesting story for your character. For instance, the cinematic cutscenes that help give you a backdrop stop after the beginning of the mode. QB1 also doesn’t capture the drama and pressure of the NFL. It’s simply a mechanism to feed you XP to grow your player. The mode is caught in the middle of trying to tell an interesting story and being a full-blown player career like NBA 2K’s MyCareer mode, and it succeeds at neither. Furthermore, on the field, your QB has to rely on not-so-smart A.I. teammates who often don’t pick the right hole in the line or catch type for passes.

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The scenarios and the XP they generate are cross over into the regular Franchise mode (as do the abilities), but these additions don’t transform the areas that have needed updating for years. Free agency and the draft are boring. The sim engine can’t tabulate realistic game or season stats or trade intelligently. The teams and the league as a whole are void of the intrigue and machinations that fans love. Contracts’ total dollar amounts are more realistic, but with simple signing mechanisms and A.I. that can’t manage its own rosters correctly, this is a minor improvement.

The one positive facet of Franchise mode is that scouting is more interesting due to a stretch in player ratings (meaning even players rated in the 70s are useful) and the fact that players can develop into superstars and X-Factors with appropriate abilities. These players’ development trait is hidden during the draft, and since the A.I. scouts more in line with users’ own tendencies, there’s more competition for the good players. 

I like aspects of Madden 20 like the addictiveness and slightly easier progression of Ultimate Team, the way players feel, and the new abilities. But too much remains stagnant and unchanged. It’s like expecting a few free agents to change the course of an entire organization when there are key areas the franchise needs to have addressed yesterday. Instead, its roster has gotten old fast and the problems are mounting.

Score: 7.5

Summary: New features can only do so much for a series that needs work in multiple areas.

Concept: EA adds to the series’ gameplay and modes, but it all feels too similar to make a significant progress

Graphics: The players and their uniform details look good on the field, but some of the player models in the career and franchise modes have strange, oversized melons

Sound: The commentary is a mix of good contextual lines referring events that happened earlier in the game or even the previous week, but lines predictably repeat as well

Playability: The new in-pocket QB controls, TE block-and-release function, and pump fake are useful and easy to execute

Entertainment: The football is fun – helped by gameplay improvements and the X-Factor and superstar abilities. Unfortunately, the limited nature and lack of progress in the franchise and career modes is very clear

Replay: Moderately High

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Numerous games have explored what happens when insular societies revolve around cult-like personalities, from the Ayn Rand rhetoric of Andrew Ryan in BioShock to the grassroots gospel of Joseph Seed in Far Cry 5. The Church in the Darkness proposes a more grounded, indie perspective on the subject, with procedurally generating elements to keep things fresh. Unfortunately, shallow stealth gameplay and a lack of interesting ideas cause this movement to stall out far sooner than it should.

While a stealth-action game at heart, The Church in the Darkness takes more than a few pages from the roguelike genre, with discreet, permadeath-enabled playthroughs each lasting anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. Your goal of each run is always the same: to surreptitiously enter the cult’s compound (dubiously named Freedom Town) and locate your missing nephew, Alex. The compound layout is static from one playthrough to the next, but most of the particulars change, including item locations, which NPCs you might run into, and, most intriguingly, the personalities of the two cult leaders, Isaac and Rebecca Walker. Like the in-game cult it focuses on, The Church in the Darkness is based on solid ideas. The implementation of those ideas is where things start to fall apart.

From a gameplay perspective, The Church in the Darkness offers a simplified, top-down version of the stealth-infiltration action series like Hitman have been serving up for years. Countless guards patrol Freedom Town, requiring you to skirt their vision cones (visible on the easier difficulty levels), dispense lethal or non-lethal takedowns from behind, or toss stones to lure them out of the way. These well-trodden mechanics (along with the ill-advised guns-blazing approach) make up the totality of the core gameplay. While you unlock new weapon types and can find items like alarm clocks to use as distractions, they are superfluous and less efficient than sticking to the basics. Only disguises, which shrink enemy vision cones, are worth going out of your way to search for in the various cabins and buildings littered throughout the map. Simply put, the gameplay gets dull far too quickly for the amount of replays The Church in the Darkness encourages.

Unfortunately, The Church in the Darkness doesn’t fare much better from a story perspective, either. Because Isaac and Rebecca’s personalities change each playthrough, you need to surmise the threat they pose as you search for your nephew, then respond accordingly. However, these personality differences are mostly binary – either both Isaac and Rebecca are “good,” both are “bad,” or the two are split one way or the other. Which versions you’re dealing with isn’t particularly hard to deduce; various notes and documents you find while scavenging offer clues, as do conversations with NPCs. When you do finally find Alex, his posturing is a dead giveaway; he’ll either want to stay, leave, or be undecided based on which scenario you’re dealing with.

To be fair, these modest permutations do lead to some wildly different outcomes. In one playthrough, I extracted Alex with little concern for the rest of the camp, and afterwards the “bad” leaders convinced the rest of the collective to take cyanide pills, resulting in mass casualties. In another playthrough, after determining I was dealing with the “good” Isaac and Rebecca, I chose to join the cult, and the group went on to enjoy 30 years of prosperity. At first I enjoyed how disparate the endings I discovered were. Over time, however, they undermine any kind of overarching message or contemplation of the intriguing themes The Church in the Darkness attempts to explore. Sometimes group think and hero worship lead people down a bad road that ends in death and destruction. Other times it’s hunky dory, apparently? Regardless, each ending is only comprised of a few lines of text and some pictures anyway, which makes seeking out the rarer endings less compelling.

Because your options for dealing with the cult are limited, it doesn’t take long to exhaust the most sensible solutions. It’s kind of like being handed a few slices of bread, ham, and cheese and being asked to make a meal out of it. A ham sandwich is the obvious answer. A cheese sandwich is also viable, if a little less exciting. But then what? Put the bread in the middle? Going out of your way to discover less-than-ideal solutions to a problem you’ve already solved a dozen times isn’t fun when you’re confined to such simple mechanics. Ultimately, the most memorable endings I ran into were not intentional. On more than one occasion I had a playthrough grind to a halt because Alex cornered me behind a church pew or a tree with no way to bypass him other than knocking him out. It may qualify as emergent storytelling, but not in a satisfying way.

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My biggest beef with The Church in the Darkness, however, is a pragmatic one: Isaac and Rebecca’s propaganda blares continuously over the loudspeakers scattered around Freedom Town, and you start hearing the same repeated diatribes on capitalism, inequality, and military aggression on your first playthrough. Those hoping for a unique take on cult behavior and theology should look elsewhere, as all of the themes are painfully familiar and as nuanced as an angry J. Jonah Jameson rant. These messages aren’t just annoying – they also muddy Isaac and Rebecca’s personalities. While the procedural generation tosses in a few lines specific to their personalities for a particular playthrough, the vast majority are pulled from a far too limited pool of generic recordings, making runs blend together. After several hours of listening to the Walkers’ greatest hits on repeat, I was ready to leave Freedom Town for good.

Despite offering myriad endings and some extra content that unlocks the longer you play, The Church in the Darkness does little to justify sticking around to see it. A half-dozen runs will give you a good sense of the narrative scope and gameplay, without offering anything particularly novel to keep you invested. I went into The Church in the Darkness hoping for a thought-provoking look at how cults operate and entice their followers, but ended up leaving Freedom Town disillusioned.

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Score: 5

Summary: Like the in-game cult it focuses on, The Church in the Darkness is based on solid ideas. The implementation of those ideas is where things start to fall apart.

Concept: Sneak your way through an ever-changing cult compound and assess the threat level while searching for your nephew

Graphics: The low-poly look accommodates the zoomed-out action fine, but the HUD elements and menus feel like they were taken straight from a default template

Sound: The voice acting is largely well done, but the repetitive propaganda rants will have you begging to be deprogrammed

Playability: The gameplay never evolves past dodging vision cones and throwing rocks to distract guards. The Oregon Trail-style shooting mechanics are best avoided altogether

Entertainment: Procedural generation does little to bolster the one-dimensional gameplay and lack of a compelling narrative

Replay: Moderate

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Fire Emblem has always been about going to war and managing comrades along the way. Making the necessary sacrifices on the battlefield while minimizing these losses is the series’ heart and soul, but Fire Emblem: Three Houses goes even further, providing the ability to shape and mentor allies. You play as a professor trying to guide and prepare students for the cruelty of the world; their successes and failures hit hard, and you hope you’ve imparted the right wisdom and focused your students in the right areas of study. This is how Three Houses entrenches you in the role of a mentor, inserting you directly into student life, which enhances the experience in a memorable way.

Everything feels personal in Three Houses, from selecting a house to deciding what side you favor in the unfolding political war. Your house choice shapes the experience, much like the allegiances in the Harry Potter series. Every house has a unique roster of students who represent the noble and commoner classes alike, and your guidance can help them grow in their social interactions and in battle. These students have their own backgrounds that have shaped who they are, and watching them grow is a highlight, but it can also be downright devastating. After all, you can only provide wisdom, and sometimes they need to make their own mistakes. 

The three houses also have very disparate leaders, from The Yellow Deer’s laid back Claude to The Blue Lions’ by-the-book Dmitri. Then there’s The Black Eagles’ Edelgard, who seeks to challenge the status quo. All three play an intriguing role in the world of Fódlan’s future. The threads for these characters keep you engaged, especially seeing what brings them together… or tears them apart.

The school lifestyle plays an equally important role in your investment with the characters. You become immersed in all aspects of your students’ lives. You pair up which students you want to bond on and off the battlefield by doing things like sharing a meal, giving them gifts, or inviting them to tea (my least favorite thanks to an observe feature that makes it feel like you’re ogling your students). You even have control over their lessons for the skills and classes you want to foster. The only time the game strikes out with this aspect is when it gives you the option to romance your students, which feels creepy. I preferred when my students would build their bonds in combat and it more naturally turned intimate between them.

When you’re not teaching or hanging around the school, you’re on the battlefield helping your students grow their skills so they can take their exam to advance their chosen class. Fire Emblem is still a strategy/RPG through and through, which means every character has a limited movement radius and you must pick the best placement for them each turn. The biggest change is Three Houses’ removal of the classic-but-strict weapon triangle. Weapon choice is still important, but damage is determined by the enemy type you’re facing (such as heavy armor or flying) and what material they’re most susceptible to, rather than a basic rock-paper-scissors setup. For instance, sometimes a steel bow and arrow will pack a greater punch than an iron bow and arrow on certain enemies.

I like this system because it encourages you to constantly weigh your options. Some weapons and skills are better suited for certain situations and a wrong move could be costly, especially if you have permadeath enabled. I also appreciate other new elements that help avoid frustrating deaths, like a limited-use ability to rewind time that reverses mistakes without reloading. 

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Other new tools also keep things fresh. For each combatant, you can hire and level up battalions, which are a group of soldiers that block damage, while providing special abilities and attack power. These deadly assaults are comprised of different classes, such as mages and archery, and can cause status effects, such as poisoning or staggering foes. Battalions quickly became one of my favorite mechanics due to how they improve your odds against tougher threats like beasts and dragons. While they’re risky because of their reduced accuracy, they are equally valuable because you’re not risking a counter-attack. They became essential to my strategy as the battles progressed.

Combat arts, special attacks that take more weapon durability, also add some variety to your battle options, though I felt they lost their value as your power grew through your class type. They were one of my least favorite additions. 

The battlefields themselves get repetitive, and I was disappointed to see the creativity in terms of terrain diminish as the game goes on. Even so, the thrill of watching your students get stronger and obtain new skills is hard to top, especially as you see the rate of their criticals rise. A memorable final battle gives you a place to prove your combat prowess as it pulls out all the stops, from traps to heaps of enemies filling your screen, giving you a fun opportunity to overcome the odds. 

Three Houses has plenty of mysteries to uncover, and despite some predictable twists, you get big payoffs from the relationships you build. The story has shades of gray that pervade branching story paths, and the consequences of your choices are rarely clear-cut. I kept multiple save files and experimented with two of the houses, and while I only played Edelgard’s arc to completion, I saw a lot of variation between the houses and narrative branches. I was surprised at how quickly I wanted to load up a new game after completing the 55-hour main campaign, and was impressed at how different each experience feels. 

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is ambitious, and takes more chances than previous entries in the series. The way it lets your role as professor play into both the narrative and gameplay is nothing short of fantastic. This is the most I’ve ever cared about my Fire Emblem characters, and that’s incredibly high praise.

Score: 9.5

Summary: Ambitious risk-taking makes Fire Emblem: Three Houses a must-play.

Concept: Pick a group of students to lead through political turmoil while solving mysteries about your hero’s origin

Graphics: The anime art style and beautifully illustrated cutscenes look fantastic. Just don’t expect the environments to pack the same punch

Sound: Great voice acting and a solid soundtrack both help enhance moments, but some of the music gets repetitive

Playability: Smooth controls and easy-to-grasp mechanics provide a low barrier to entry for newcomers. Features like an ability to turn back time in case you make a bad move with a turn help, too

Entertainment: Fire Emblem: Three Houses combines fun social elements and tense strategy combat wonderfully, making it hard to put down

Replay: High

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Many days into your survival campaign, the restless undead await outside your fortifications. It’s okay – you’ve prepared with a slew of stalwart defenses, snipers at the ready, and battlements ready to stave off any attack. The intruders come, banging on the gates, and you repel them all neatly. More are sure to arrive, but you have time to rebuild your resistance…or so you thought. With your gaze and efforts focused on the front line, a single zombie slipped through the cracks on your south wall and gained access to your hapless colonists. Because of that small oversight, an outbreak ripples through your entire settlement, spreading from within and turning your own forces against you. In moments, your once-great city lies in ashes. What do you do? Start again, of course! This time, you’ll be ready.

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They Are Billions has a challenging, randomized loop that places you as master and commander of a fledgling city in a variety of environments. In this captivating cycle, you continually refine your old strategies and develop new ones to handle the threat of invasion. The survival mode is the core avenue of play – building up a thriving colony from scratch, teching up, and expanding to take on greater looming threats.

You have a variety of dials to tune before each game, allowing you to select the right difficulty for you, including how many days of preparation you have and how many undead (there aren’t actually billions, but there are enough) you must stave off. The game can be challenging even with a modest amount of difficulty selected, and with permadeath in play it can leave a bitter taste in your mouth after spending hours working on an impenetrable bastion.  But if you’re like me, They Are Billions will make you hungry for even more punishment and perfection. 

A wide variety of units and buildings are available as you expand, and every outing is a different-yet-delightful deluge of the dead. Raise an army of rangers and clockwork titans to complement defensive ballistas and shock towers as you move through the tech tree. Once you master fending off the standard shuffling and slow zombies, variable types get thrown into the mix, forcing you to prepare for speedy threats and colossal terrors. Most games become a delicate balancing act of expansion, economy, and military might; you must be careful not to overextend and put your expansive holdings at risk for a zombie incursion. Building up your fort is fun, even if your attempts end in failure most of the time.

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At the time of this writing, the PS4 and Xbox One versions lack the campaign mode you can find in the PC iteration. While this isn’t a huge detriment (the campaign is not the main draw), the control schemes are unwieldy on a console controller. You can alleviate this by using a mouse and keyboard on your console setup, but your goal should be to experience the title on PC.

They Are Billions is an interesting mashup of classic RTS, tower defense, and survival that successfully conjures up that “one more game” feel, assuming you can persevere through countless defeats.

Check out our review of the PC edition of the game here.
 

Score: 7

Summary: Defend yourself from swarms of vicious zombies, but use a mouse and keyboard.

Concept: Build a colony and survive against a horde of zombies in a real-time strategy experience

Graphics: While not mind-blowing, the graphics do a nice job of showing the scale and scope of the denizens threatening to destroy all you’ve worked for

Sound: Fun unit barks and atmospheric music keep things rolling nicely

Playability: Anyone can pick up the key factors to survival after a few games, but the game’s controls are unwieldy a controller

Entertainment: With permadeath and razor-sharp margins for error, the title caters to RTS veterans and survivalists hungry for challenge

Replay: High

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Many days into your survival campaign, the restless undead await outside your fortifications. It’s okay – you’ve prepared with a slew of stalwart defenses, snipers at the ready, and battlements ready to stave off any attack. The intruders come, banging on the gates, and you repel them all neatly. More are sure to arrive, but you have time to rebuild your resistance…or so you thought. With your gaze and efforts focused on the front line, a single zombie slipped through the cracks on your south wall and gained access to your hapless colonists. Because of that small oversight, an virulent outbreak ripples through your entire settlement, spreading from within and turning your own forces against you. In moments, your once-great city lies in ashes. What do you do? Start again, of course! This time, you’ll be ready.

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They Are Billions has a challenging, randomized loop that places you as master and commander of a fledgling city in a variety of environments. In this captivating cycle, you continually refine your old strategies and develop new ones to handle the threat of invasion. The survival mode is the core avenue of play – building up a thriving colony from scratch, teching up, and expanding to take on greater looming threats.

Click image thumbnails to view larger version

You have a variety of dials to tune before each game, allowing you to select the right difficulty for you, including how many days of preparation you have and how many undead (there aren’t actually billions, but there are enough) you must stave off. The game can be challenging even with a modest amount of difficulty selected, and with permadeath in play it can leave a bitter taste in your mouth after spending hours working on an impenetrable bastion.  But if you’re like me, They Are Billions will make you hungry for even more punishment and perfection. 

A wide variety of units and buildings are available as you expand, and every outing is a different-yet-delightful deluge of the dead. Raise an army of rangers and clockwork titans to complement defensive ballistas and shock towers as you move through the tech tree. Once you master fending off the standard shuffling and slow zombies, variable types get thrown into the mix, forcing you to prepare for speedy threats and colossal terrors. Most games become a delicate balancing act of expansion, economy, and military might; you must be careful not to overextend and put your expansive holdings at risk for a zombie incursion. Building up your fort is fun, even if your attempts end in failure most of the time.

The campaign mode is far less of a draw, featuring a slew of missions and several different styles of play, including “hero” sessions where your focus is on a single unit, but it takes a serious backseat to the survival experience. The missions are curated and often feature aspects that feel like they require trial and error to know where things happen, leading to an unsatisfying series of maps that are incredibly light on story. The campaign’s lack of appeal is mostly forgivable given the vast replayability of the survival mode, but you shouldn’t pick this game up in the hopes of a compelling journey.

They Are Billions is an interesting mashup of classic RTS, tower defense, and survival that successfully conjures up that “one more game” feel, assuming you can persevere through countless defeats.

Check out our review of the console edition of the game here.

Score: 8

Summary: Defend your colony against an endless supply of the dangerous dead.

Concept: Build a colony and survive against a horde of zombies in a real-time strategy experience

Graphics: While not mind-blowing, the graphics do a nice job of showing the scale and scope of the denizens threatening to destroy all you’ve worked for

Sound: Sound Fun unit barks and atmospheric music keep things rolling nicely

Playability: Anyone can pick up the key factors to survival after a few games, but console players should be way about playing on a controller

Entertainment: With permadeath and razor-sharp margins for error, the title caters to RTS veterans and survivalists hungry for challenge

Replay: High

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Thanos snapping his fingers to wipe out half of all life in the universe isn’t the only threat the Avengers face in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order. As they race to stop the mad titan from gathering all of the Infinity Gems, their journey is periodically upended by laborious and uneventful level designs, technical issues, odd balancing, and a story that sacrifices heart and soul to continually introduce new characters and locations. Even though the heroes get pummeled by the game’s shortcomings, they still stand tall and deliver plenty of fun when combat intensifies.

Players begin by controlling the Guardians of the Galaxy. This rag-tag group does a nice job of illustrating the diversity in character powers and approaches. Star-Lord can fly around and rain down laser fire from high, while Gamora uses her sword to slice foes at close range. All of the characters control admirably, with the mobility you would expect from them. Whether you are playing single player or four-player co-op, the combat in these early moments is enjoyable and dynamic, pushing you to look for openings, communicate with other players to line up tag-team synergy attacks, and use evasive maneuvers to avoid area blasts and charge attacks. Since enemies often approach in great numbers, with grunts swarming the heroes and shielded adversaries hunkering down to deliver damage from the periphery, figuring out when to use the big “extreme” attacks is another aspect that is implemented well and ends up being quite rewarding given just how much one blast can change the flow of battle.

Combat is similar to the previous Ultimate Alliance games – you do a lot of jamming on the same attack buttons to keep waves of enemies at bay and use special powers strategically to thin their numbers. This simplicity works well, but just don’t expect to see much destruction in the environments other than flying bodies. Whether you are in Avengers Tower or Wakanda’s wilderness, most of the environments are sterile, repetitive in architectural design, and hardly anything in them can be destroyed.

The lack of a connection developed to the world, both through gameplay and visually, hurts the experience more than I thought it would. Levels get repetitive fast, and the periodic puzzles that are thrown in to change up the pace are easy to solve and end up being annoying speed bumps that just halt progress. You mostly slog through bland areas until you reach a room that looks important and likely holds a new hero or villain.

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If you thought Avengers: Endgame‘s hero roster was awesome in size, Ultimate Alliance 3’s is even bigger, and thoroughly explores several sectors from Marvel’s sprawling universe. The playable characters consist of over 30 well-known faces, and not just from the Avengers portfolio. The X-Men, Spider-Verse, Marvel Knights, and Midnight Sons are represented in big ways. Characters with no defined affiliation are also here and embraced fully. While Thanos and his Black Order fill the role of end-game bosses, other villains who line up with the hero reveals or worlds they traverse are also in great abundance. The best part of the game is seeing who will pop up next, even if it is for a brief cameo. The reveals are strong from start to finish.

Most of the characters are handled well, giving you a range of powers that fit their personas. The Hulk is the rampaging mess you would expect, Deadpool is a powerful goofball, and Nightcrawler is constantly “bamfing” all over the place. Some characters are a little phoned in, however. Doctor Strange basically has the same flame attack as Ghost Rider. Most of the hero abilities are brought to life with an array of particle effects and graphics – often too many. Just keeping track of where the characters are onscreen can be difficult, especially when the camera switches to distant perspectives (which makes handheld play a little rough at times). The camera can be a serious pain.

As joyous as the character reveals are, adding yet another face to your roster can be somewhat maddening given how difficulty is balanced. Within one level you may unlock a handful of characters to use. These new recruits are balanced to the particular environment, meaning Ghost Rider will be level 25 when you get him. You can immediately play as him, and he feels appropriately powerful. He also gains experience and continues leveling up. The hero you swapped out won’t gain anything, and the longer that character sits on the bench, the less likely they are to hold their own in the next battle. Considering the large number of playable characters that you have at your disposal, you just have to give up on some of them, since most of the roster ends up being under-leveled. You can’t just say “I want to play Spider-Man” and expect that experience to be fun if he’s level 8 in a level 30 zone. The alternative is to grind experience points for hours just to bring him back up to a viable power level.

Given how powerful bosses are, you’re going to need four high-level characters as you progress through the uneventful story. These villains give you a good run for your money, and end up being the most enjoyable (and lengthy) battles in the game. Some of these bouts are damn fun. They push you to sync up attacks and be as evasive as you can.

Though you can replay levels, the fastest way to level up heroes is to give your character an immediate shot of XP from a cube, which you can find hidden in levels or earn by completing specific tasks like the Infinity Trials. Even though you stumble upon the trials as you work your way through the story, they kick you out to the title screen whenever you engage them. I don’t understand why my characters aren’t dropped back into the level, but it makes the game more hassle than it needs to be. The Trials don’t offer new content, and instead take you through previously completed boss battles and challenges with slightly different parameters and difficulties, such as only being able to use Captain America or every foe giving you a few seconds more on a clock that is counting down to zero. The challenges are also level-gated so you won’t be able to play as low-level characters in most of them. The higher level trials reward you with new playable characters and a few costumes.

As oddly put together as the character leveling is, I applaud how ability progression, items, and alliance enhancement are handled. Equipping infinity shards (which can be powered up) is mighty slick, as is the sprawling alliance enhancement grid, which gives stat increases and bumps to the entire team – just not enough to help low-level characters.

My time with Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 was filled with peaks and valleys. It has great moments where everything is clicking, followed by lulls where it all falls apart. The story never really gets going, however, but is a fun exploration of all things Marvel. For that, it delivers a little bit of fun, but this experience is all about the character reveals and getting to test them out, even if the worlds they explore and challenges within them often lack excitement.

Score: 7

Summary: The massive roster isn’t enough to overcome repetitive level designs and progression issues.

Concept: A super-powered brawl that delivers an impressive number of characters, but stumbles with story, progression, and level designs

Graphics: The heroes and villains look like they were yanked right out of a comic book, and that’s a good thing. The environments are light on details and destructible objects

Sound: The score and character voices are all over the place. Some melodies are appropriately heroic, others sound like generic rock riffs. Some character voices are perfect, others sound forced

Playability: The controls work well and make characters feel powerful and true to who they are (with some exceptions)

Entertainment: The bland level designs and baffling character progression hold the action back and make it somewhat of a slog

Replay: Moderately High

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Tetris gets the most love of all the Game Boy puzzle games, but when Dr. Mario released on Nintendo’s portable system in 1990, it chewed through its fair share of batteries. Nintendo has revisited its virus-crushing puzzle game several times over the years, but now that the series has migrated to mobile devices, Nintendo has flipped the concept on its head. Now pills slowly float toward the top of the screen, but this is only the first of many new features that make Dr. Mario World one of the most notable entries in the series.

Like previous incarnations of Dr. Mario, you eliminate all viruses on a board by matching them to rows of multi-colored pills. In World, you get to choose how many pills to toss out and when, and you can hold onto pills after you’ve thrown them to prevent them from moving. I appreciated this new slower pace, which allows plenty of time to plan an attack. At the same time, Dr. Mario World still offers frantic moments; after making a match, you can move any free-floating pill pieces and use them to make new matches, and the resulting scrambles are exhilarating as you work fast to make the most out of your limited stock.

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Dr. Mario World currently contains five worlds and more than 200 total levels, and I was pleasantly surprised at how the action evolves. In some stages, viruses are frozen in ice and require a couple of hits before they disappear, while other viruses are locked in cages and can’t be destroyed until you break the lock on another area of the screen. A few stages even shift your focus away from the viruses and ask you to smash blocks to find hidden coins. As Nintendo mixes and matches all these elements, Dr. Mario World begins to feel less like a puzzle game and more like a strategy game, but that isn’t a bad thing. I loved calculating which viruses or objects I needed to attack first and then setting up combos as I crossed my fingers and waited with baited breath for the right colored pill to come my way.

While Dr. Mario remains the title character, he’s now joined by a bigger cast of doctors and assistants. Every doctor has their own unique abilities. For example, Dr. Mario can eradicate the lowest row of viruses on the board, while Dr. Toad eliminates both virus and pills at 10 random locations. Assistants provide smaller buffs, such as boosting your score or giving you a small percentage chance of eliminating a few viruses at the start of a stage. You can bring one doctor and two assistants into any stage; their abilities are incredibly useful, and making good use of them means the difference between victory and defeat.

Unfortunately, like a real infection, some of the additions to this mobile version aren’t welcome. Dr. Mario World is a free-to-play game, which means the monetization is baked into the gameplay. Hearts are a currency you must spend to play a level. If you beat the level, you get that heart back. Otherwise, they replenish at the rate of one every 30 minutes. If you’re playing well, you can continue without consequence. But if you get hung up on a level or have a string of bad plays, you are forced to stop and wait for your hearts to refresh. Of course, you are encouraged to refill those hearts by spending real money on gems, which earn you more hearts. They can also be used to give you more time or pills on harder levels, or redeemed for new doctors and assistants. I’m disappointed that even Dr. Mario isn’t hearty enough to stave off this kind of microtransaction infection, but I only ran out of hearts a handful of times, and I never felt like the pay mechanics were too aggressive.

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Even if you do run out of hearts, you can always play in Versus mode and pit your virus-crunching skills against other players online. This mode features all the same color matching mechanics from single player, but as you match viruses you have the opportunity to attack your opponent by throwing viruses onto their screen. This mode is a nice diversion, and I was happy to be able to play the game when I’d run out of hearts, but I spent most of my time in the single-players worlds.  

Despite the monetization method, Dr. Mario World is a fun puzzle game, and the World moniker signifies that this is more than just another Dr. Mario remix. This is the most dramatic reinvention of Dr. Mario since the series’ inception, and I often had trouble putting my phone down before the battery ran dry. Nintendo plans to update this game with new levels down the road, so this is one flu season I look forward to revisiting.

Score: 8.75

Summary: Dr. Mario World is one of the most notable entries in the series to date.

Concept: Reimagine Mario’s pill-focused puzzler by turning it on its head and adding a host of creative new mechanics

Graphics: The art is cutesy and simple, but it gets the job done

Sound: Most of the music is catchy, but the new stuff is nowhere near as memorable as the classics Fever and Chill, which have been remixed here

Playability: Dr. Mario has always been simple to pick up and play, but this mobile incarnation makes it even easier to drag pills around the screen with only a finger

Entertainment: Dr. Mario World’s new mechanics add a lot of strategic elements to the classic formula, but the series remains as engaging as ever

Replay: High

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