Recent reviews by Judeo-communism

I finally got around to playing this game ever since loving the first Thief game in 1998 as an 8 year old. At first, I thought it was pretty mediocre, and it made me really just want to go back and replay Thief 1 again for the 6 millionth time. I was missing the "monster" missions like Bone Horde and Haunted Cathedral in Thief 1 that Thief 2 simply doesn't have. Thief 2 is all about the stealth and player vs. human NPC experience, and it does it pretty well. It has some outstanding missions like Framed, Blackmail and Life of the Party. None of the missions are bad honestly, with Casing the Joint being the least good because you simply repeat the map again immediately after in Masks, only with more enemies and objectives (though Masks is pretty fun with all the new objectives and loot and enemies). Cargo was pretty fun as well. Definitely a fantastic game to have in your collection if you like classic stealth games without overpowered killing play styles that have to protect the enemies from you; just like in Thief 1, Garrett is not a master swordsman and Garrett must use stealth to win. This puts a feeling of tension and stress and emphasizes "don't get caught" that later stealth games just don't have. I love this game and the first, and I'm glad I finally played it. Now to replay it many times for years to come!

This game is a jewish anti-White anti-Christ fanfiction that is a complete insult to KCD1 fans with almost no historical accuracy. The black guy was never in Bohemia at this time, he forces you to agree with him when he insults your people and culture, and doesn't even give you the option to tell him that he sold his own mali slave girls to his fellow mali cannibals for eating. Then you're forced to defend jews from a Christian pogrom who blames them for killing Christ, with jews literally saying "we're innocent and defenseless and they're just looting us" despite the reality being they just killed some Christian children in bloodletting while bankrupting the entire province through usury and doing many worse things.

And if you try to ignore all the other woke propaganda like accepting homosexuality and even allowing you to be gay for Hans in a gay sex scene, the actual gameplay and systems that were perfect in KCD1 are all ruined in KCD2. Horse riding is a pain because now you have a second bar that you have to continously spam Shift on to keep galloping whereas in KCD1 you could just sprint and do it as long as you had stamina. Now you have to watch your stamina, horse's stamina, and this stupid little bar. Herbs don't last forever any more. Alchemy takes far more steps for even the classic staples we've been doing for 7 years, and now has multiple qualities going from bad to good, so if you try to brute force fast way you get bad quality so you're forced to do the long way all the time now. Again, as your herbs expire while you do it, forcing bad quality regardless of how well you do it. There are much fewer merchants and almost none of them actually buy stuff you loot from dead bandits. Cumans are few and far between and almost always painted in an innocent light. You can only get your first horse for free if you pass a skill check and choose the correct option. Getting money honorably early game is much more tedious. There's hardly any "Side quests" or "activities" like we had in KCD1 that appear as markers on the map for jobs and money. This game is all about "points of interest" that almost never lead to anything and don't have map markers. It's really garbage and wastes so much of your time.

I'm only like 8 hours in the game and I hate it. A complete regression from KCD1 in nearly every way. You're better off just replaying KCD1 forever than trying this game. IT IS NOT KCD2. It's a complete spin off with worse mechanics, story, and forced wokism.

This game's story carries it really well. It offers small improves over Zestiria's terrible combat and gear systems, but they're both pretty bad still. Berseria's combat improves over time, but it's only "fun" when you're stomping enemies in rapid succession and able to consistently land status effects. Which means fighting bosses is a really boring slog, almost more so than it was in Zestiria because they changed how your "SP" system works.

But despite that, this game's story is very good and compelling. Even if I don't recommend Zestiria overall, I do recommend playing it before this one if you are interested in Berseria at all; so many story beats of Berseria land and hit much harder if you play Zestiria first because this game is a prequel to that game. Indeed, much of the reason of why Zestiria's story had a flat ending is explained in this game. Without spoiling, you play as the bad guy in this game who fights to get revenge. In Zestiria, you play as the good guy who has to clean up the mess left by the bad guy in Berseria.

You do have to overlook the Noticer components of this game like strong independent warrior female protagonist, "religion" being bad, and some really off the wall "reason" and justification for their cause. But it still does a great job showing the natural feminine and woman components of the protagonist throughout the game , with several moments of overwhelming emotion and lack of logic that often requires the male characters to rein her back in to reality. Which gives a nice laugh to us.

So if you can overlook those things, the story becomes extremely compelling. The pacing mid-way isn't the greatest, but the beginning is great and as you progress towards the end it becomes very very good. Magilou is written extremely well, possibly one of the best Tales of characters in terms of writing. She serves as the comedic relief but does so with such finesse that she steals the show any time she's on the screen; I often cared more about her story and fate than I did of any other character. Eizen was also very good, being extremely stoic and rational, providing logic and reasoning throughout the story even when the women were doing women things. Which makes all the more reason to play Zestiria first because of his role in that game. I was impressed by just how much this story compelled me to see what would happen next, which is something I haven't felt Tales of do since Abyss.

The music is a miss, not terrible but nothing all that particularly notable. Zestiria's OST was better. Still nothing compared to Phantasia and Symphonia. But the story carries the overall game regardless. I also wish the characters had access to most of their R2 and L2 abilities earlier in the game, because they really help the combat loop a lot. None of them are particularly overpowered or anything, they just give you more options on how to play the game and strategize difficult encounters. Most enemies won't live long enough on Moderate difficulty to pull off the level 3 Mystic Artes anyway, given the requirements to make them happen. Hard mode and above requires excessive grinding in this game's gear system (getting loot to drop with the right rolls then enhancing and desyntheisizing for materials to further enhance the gear you actually want) only to have to do it again a few hours later in the next area when the enemies upgrade. It's very tiring, repetitive, and not fun, like you're playing a Korean grindy MMO instead of a single player Tales of jRPG.

But again, despite all that, the story is really good and makes the game overall absolutely worth playing. Definitely recommend.

I have to give this game a thumbs down and a pass. The story requires you to be a hardcore fan to enjoy, and even then, it's not that good especially with the ending. The battle system is terrible, and the gear system is even worse. And you MUST understand and use the gear system properly, or you can't beat the final boss' DPS checks unless you play on Easy difficulty.

I personally did enjoy the game's story overall. I really like the setting, the theme, and all the allusions to Christianity in a medieval fantasy world. I love all the allusions to Arthurian legend too, appreciating everything from Ladylake's Round Table and sword in the stone to the Tintagel Ruins and Great Camelot Bridge. Pendrago capital, all fantastic stuff. The characters were pretty great, as with typical Tales of fashion, their interactions and progressions with each other are written very well and cause a lot of laughs. I didn't necessarily have a favorite character, but each of them were still memorable and fun to watch and interact with.

But the combat and the gear system is just so terrible. It's a little better than Vesperia's but not by much. It's like they keep trying to "reinvent" the combat to "make it feel fresh," when all they need to do is just improve upon Abyss' if it's 3D or Eternia's if it's 2D. Zestria feels more like the "spin off" Tales of games, like Dawn of the New World. It feels very budget and lower quality. So, to explain a bit more, you have no more TP, instead "SC" which is basically where every action, including your basic attack combos, all consume SP that get spent and restore very fast. You restore them mostly by just being idle in battle, with some skills/gear that you can get to boost it further while blocking or getting hit. Every "basic attack" is classified as an arte now, so everything consumes that SC. You slowly unlock more and more artes and "basic attacks" as you level up, in addition to "hidden artes" which act like your normal artes from previous games. Your "special abilities" that would normally "consume TP," you use this as supplements with your "martial artes" (basic attacks). There's also a new type of arte called "seraphic arte" which is used when you're in the game's main gimmick: "Armetazation." These essentially are an evolution of previous game's Overlimits, where you build another special gauge through battle and can store up to multiple charges of this special gauge, then use it to either do that character's basic Mystic Arte (which does a little bit of damage and increases drop rates of items from enemies) or combine with specific other party members to turn into a different elemental "form." This special form makes all your "martial artes" (basic attacks) into "seraphic artes," and all your "hidden artes" become slow casting spells. These three types of artes (Martial, hidden and seraphic) play an integral role in the combat. Martial beats seraphic, seraphic beats hidden, and hidden beats martial. This means if you use a hidden arte against an enemy who's charging a spell, you won't interrupt them and instead they'll take reduced damage and you'll speed up their casting time. Sounds neat! But it just doesn't play well, because you only ever have access to 2 of the three artes at any given time, so it basically always feels like you're ill equipped to handle some battles. Particularly ones with tons of spell casting enemies.

And then the gear system... It's a mess. It's very much a "Diablo loot" system where every gear that drops your find in a chest has random properties attached to it so you have to deal with getting one with rolls that you want. But then you also can fuse them together to improve their base stats, and either add their rolls or combine them to create new ones that replace the previous roll. It's really terrible and just doesn't fit in a single player RPG experience, and you MUST deal with it to beat the final boss' DPS check.

Overall, pass on this game. Watch a YouTube summary or something. It's just not very fun and its few good points never make up for its myriad bad points.

FF13 is actually very good and people are just dumb for hating it.

I used to be the biggest hater of FF13, certainly bigger than you, back when it came out and for several years after. I saw it as the decline of FF, a giant hallway simulator that focused on graphics to attract the CoD fanbase of players for a no-substance movie of a game that you just spam X to win in, without actually playing it.

But then I gave it a fair shot when it came out on Steam and I ended up falling in love with it. The combat feels a lot better than I expected, the linear maps do well for its hyper-focused story which does open up later for tons of side-content that's actually fun and rewarding to do, and it shares a lot of similarities to FF10 in good ways. Is it the best FF? No. But it's far from the worst. The story is extra compelling if you're a Noticer.

I replayed the game again a couple of years later with a different party setup and build, and loved it even more that time, finding different ways to play. Each character has their place and each weapon has different styles. I definitely recommend it if you have the balls to admit when you're wrong about something and can enjoy an objectively good game despite already deciding beforehand you don't like it. I can't say the same for 13-2 though, I didn't enjoy it at all and couldn't even finish it, which killed my desire to play Lightning Returns. But FF13 it self is really good and the story wraps up just fine, so there's no need to play the sequels. And still has great replaybility. Think I'll try a third run again and use an even different build for another party.

EDIT: Also, I never had any issues with the port. Never crashed, runs at 60 FPS, looks great on highest settings. I've played through it on two separate PCs, neither of which were high-end, and like I said I've played since near launch with no mods. So anyone complaining about bad port or it's buggy are just dumb with computers and don't know what they're doing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's garbage. While the content itself (dungeons and trials) are pretty good right now, the actual story telling and obvious forced allusions to real world political agendas like trans voice actor, female rulers, and multicultural communist one world government being "good guys" and "idealistic," is beyond terrible. It's very clear the FF14 team has went from "telling a good FF story" to "serving their 'shareholder' masters by attempting to indoctrinate impressionable young minds into accepting a brain chipped AI technocracy under multiracial multicultural communism." It's a good laugh for Noticers, but still remains utterly disgusting as you see just how far downhill the game's going. They even went as far as to make the racial children/natives of the country be the bad guys with completely nonsensical motives just so you would believe "See? Bloodline and race doesn't matter when it comes to who should rule!" Meanwhile, Woke Lamat's only drive is "I want to make my people happy!" without realizing the people themselves don't know what makes them happy and need a good strong ruler to enforce it for them. It's hilarious and sad at the same time. And none of this is even getting into the terrible things the trans voice actor has done and said on Twitter after working with previous companies. He wasn't hired for his talent, he was hired for his decisions, and it shows. He did a terrible job. Thankfully, most people say the JP voice actor for the character does it much better.

Not to mention, the two min meta still here and they actually doubled down on it even harder.

Runs fine. I've only had one crash, which was after I alt tabbed. I play full screen only. I stopped alt tabbing and haven't had another crash since.

I've played through the original KH1, CoM (GBA) and KH2 games when they were each released and loved them, so this is my first time replaying them and also my first time playing the Final Mix versions. There's a lot of differences in Final Fix that personally I'm not as much of a fan of, but it's not a big deal and they do add a lot of extra optional content and post-game grinding. As of this review, I've only finished replaying KH1 and am hunting down the last few achievements, notably Unknown fight, the new Gummi Missions and getting the two rare weapon drops for Donald and Goofy on the Wizard and Shield heartless. I've really enjoyed it overall and I'm glad it finally came to Steam. I'm really looking forward to the 3D remake of CoM and trying out KH2FM, I remember not liking KH2 nearly as much as KH1 as a kid but I think now that I'm older and can actually make more sense of the stories that I'll be able to appreciate it far more.

It's a great port, no where near as buggy or problematic as all the bads with no computer sense always state in the reviews.

This version is a lot easier than the 3D version. I've beaten and replayed the 3D version several times, and this is the first time I've ever played FF3 that's not the 3D version. The 3D version can be brutally difficult at times, downright unfair and relying on RNG hoping the boss doesn't do his super AoE attack 2-3 times in a single turn to 100-0 you instantly, as many enemies and most bosses can attack 2-3 times per turn, whereas in Pixel Remaster every enemy and boss can only attack you once per turn. One notable exception for difficulty, however, is the Cave of Shadows. I found it to be much more difficult in PR than in 3D, even though it wasn't necessarily easy in 3D either. The enemies seemed to have a lot more AGI in PR and always acted first, leading your healer to slowly "bleed out" their MP resources every single fight, and the Dark Knight jobs weren't able to oneshot enemies even when dual wielding. My memory may be off, but I think I remember Dark Knights oneshotting enemies there in 3D if they were dual wielding.

In any case, FF3 3D is a brutal challenge and unfair sometimes. FF3 PR is much easier and more streamlined with several conveniences like auto-battle and auto-save. The animations and battles are much faster, and you can sprint around maps. It makes the overall game play much faster and thus much shorter than the 3D version. They're both great, the 3D version is better if you want a good challenge and the PR version is better if you just want a quick experience of what FF3 is like. You might find the PR version to be a bit "watered down" in terms of FF games, but that's because it is. It pioneered a lot of firsts for the series, like multiple world maps and the job systems. Not much of that was "remade" for modern times, so don't expect too much. For example, the game will unlock jobs for you but you have no gear for them at all so you can't even use them yet. Or, some jobs are downright useless then all of a sudden get a power spike in the next town or dungeon when you get gear for them, only to become useless again later as they never get new or more updated gear again.

It's just a classic experience where most things aren't all that balanced, and sometimes enemies even in PR will oneshot you and there's nothing you can do about it thanks to RNG, but overall still an enjoyable classic jRPG. Not great, not terrible, just very middle of the road in terms of the FF series.

So I played through FF7R the first time when it came out on Steam a couple years ago, then just replayed it again alongside the Yuffie episode.

I remember liking it the first time, thinking "I still prefer original FF7 but this is good, too. it has some flaws like bad map design, annoying side fetch quests and some rather anti-fun (but not difficult) bosses."

After replaying it again with a more analytical eye, that's all still largely the same. I was able to appreciate the side quests a little more now that I already knew what to expect from the game, and I was able to use different materia and party builds since I knew exactly how long the game was going to be and what battles to expect. I enjoyed it more this time than my first time as a result, where as in the first time I already had expectations set based on the original and wasn't sure about how much "planning" and "investing" I needed to do in specific materia based on the original game.

With that out of the way, this game is not worth $70. Definitely get it on sale. It's not a bad game, and it will be enjoyable for FF7 veterans or new players, but it's not worth $70.

It is, however, a 40 hour game that's only the Midgar section of FF7 and thus already as long as the original game. But the major wrench in that is that the biggest reason it's 40 hours and only in Midgar is that the game is A LOT of cutscenes with voice acting that pad your time, plus side quests and traveling large hallway maps with no real exploration. So you don't spend 40 hours playing the actual game in gameplay, you spend the vast majority of that watching cutscenes.

The story is not bad and the cutscenes are very good and compelling. They flesh out each character very well, and it throws a large amount of twists at you for the veteran players that you definitely don't expect. Since they intended this to be about a 40 hour game just in Midgar, they definitely embellish many sections and add entirely new scenarios that weren't in the original. These embellishments vary in quality. Sometimes you're having a blast in them, othertimes you're really wishing that part would finally end so you could move on. You spend A LOT of time with Biggs, Wedge and Jessie in this version that you don't in the original, and the Shinra Building episode is also much longer.

You quickly learn that whenever the game tries to subvert your prior FF7 story expectations, certain things start to happen which become very compelling. It makes it so much more enjoyable because despite you knowing what's ultimately going to happen, you want to see how it happens now because of those certain things. It makes for very good storytelling for the veteran players.

I might be a minority on this, but I think the music is pretty bad. Only a few tracks are actually "okay," but most of it is just random dubstep eletronic noises that sound like modern autistic hip hop and barely anything like the original, far superior music. It's also very subdued and quiet, particularly in battles, so it doesn't grip you or make you bounce your head as you begin a boss fight. The battle theme, boss theme, Jenova's theme, and even the motorcycle chase themes aren't truly present in the game. They play bits and pieces of them here and there, but again it's so electronic and subdued that you can barely recognize them when they DO play.

Most of the cutscenes range from fine to okay, with a few good ones and some really bad ones. It definitely pushes the action cutscenes to maximum over the top Advent Children styles that are just unbelievably stupid and cringe sometimes. A far cry to how much more subtle and grounded the original FF7 was, which made the game a lot more relatable than FF7R.

The combat system is definitely FF13 inspired. Build a stagger gauge, break the enemy, burst them. That's the basic core concept loop for the combat with minimal variation. Some enemies and bosses require more strategy than others, and there are definitely uneven and random difficulty spikes particularly with a few bosses. These only get further compounded when enemies are weak to immune or resistant to particular elements, but you can't switch your materia mid-combat so you can't adapt to them and that makes some fights much more difficult. Likewise, when you do have the setup, some become way too easy. The game doesn't give you Hard mode until you clear the game once, and Hard is designed for max level characters with maxed out materia and builds as a post-game challenge. It is quite hard, especially on two particular bosses (Air Buster and Hellhouse), and will require specific party make ups and builds specific to those fights. You cannot use any items in Hard, even out of battle, and resting does not restore your MP. So healing is definitely a very deliberate decision; every spell cast, offensive or otherwise, will limit your available heals. Enemies are given a multiplier on damage dealt on top of it in Hard, so you really have to plan carefully. It's a little too much min-maxing every single detail for me to be "fun," where I prefer more skill-based than strategy-based gameplay.

What I do like about this game's combat is the variety of character playstyles. Every character plays very, very differently from each other. Tifa in particular is very fun to play; some of the most fun I've had playing "monk" in any RPG. As you play through the game, you'll quickly notice the enemy AI almost always targets whoever you're controlling though which is pretty annoying. Sure there is a "Provoke" materia, but it's limited and has a long cooldown, and only activates on characters you aren't controlling. It's just really annoying when you're trying to swap between characters to spend their ATB efficiently with their attacks (like using Tifa to increase Stagger bonus during burst windows to prep Cloud's huge burst) only to have every enemy instantly chase you down and force you to immediately become defensive. The idea that you swap to a different character as the enemy is targeting a specific character just isn't a thing. The battle system is bad by any means, but it's also not amazing or as good as original FF7. It serves, but it's not particularly memorable outside Tifa's few moments where the enemy isn't targeting her because it's staggered and there's no more adds.

And that's kind of the main point where FF7R falls behind the original: it's not nearly as memorable. It's fine, it's good, it's enjoyable. But it's not perfect, it's not amazing, it's not unforgettable like original FF7 is. I still remember so many extremely minute details about original FF7 as a kid, yet I could barely tell you many of the major specifics in FF7R even after replaying it for a second time. It's worth a playthrough, but only on sale. Here's to hoping they make the next two much better and more memorable, but I can say it is a "good" remake.

Also, for you Noticers, there's a lot of obvious intentional cringe in this game that is blatantly meant to undermine us, particularly with the NPCs. Don't say I didn't warn you

Iron from Ice.

This game was fantastic and a worthy addition to the franchise. The story remained compelling from the very start to finish, and every decision you make ranges form bad to worse. You really do feel like you're in the Game of Thrones world, and all those times you fantasized how you would make good decisions and still retain your honor without dying gets thrown out the window. You will die and face other serious consequences for those decisions.

The characters in this game are very much their show counterparts, not their book versions. Which for characters like Cersei it's great, because her show character is miles better than her book character where she is a joke. Trying to out talk show Cersei while pleasing Margery is nearly impossible. Extremely fun. Show Ramsey, however, is not nearly as compelling as book Ramsey who is far more cunning. It's not that show Ramsey is bad, he's just much more one dimensional and predictable. So you can already tell what's gonna happen any time you see him.

While it is true this game does have a rather broad overarching story it ultimately follows, there are several key decisions you make throughout the game that vastly change how it plays out. This makes replaying the game even more fun as you try other paths, several of which present entirely new scenarios that didn't exist in your first playthrough. This leads to several different "endings," which I put in quotes because the events are largely the same but the characters present in those endings vary greatly. A few decisions in particular dictate the characters more than others, but I won't spoil it, so just enjoy a few playthroughs of the game your self.

It's a very short game. Each playthrough is about 13 hours long or less. That's not bad by any means, because it's just a story driven game with very little gameplay. I don't typically enjoy this style of game at all, but this one is definitely an exception because it does justice to the world of Ice and Fire. The story is actually quite good and makes you very invested in your House.

I'm too honest and good for King's Landing, Cersei ripped me apart with talk and I couldn't bluff Ramsey. 11/10 game