Recent reviews by Wingus Dingus

Pleasantly surprised by this remaster. It's been a longtime since I've played FF1 and I thoroughly enjoyed this trip to the past. It's short, pretty simple and it reminded me how much better tabletop magic use is compared to modern MP systems. If you like old school JRPGs then this is a great one and a nice chance to see where the series began.

Yakuza 4 is my favorite in the series. Going back to it on PC has only confirmed that. I get that a lot of people will come into the remastered games having touched 0 first so there may be disappointment with the gameplay, for some. Yakuza has always felt like an evolution of the classic beat 'em up design and that's how I personally like it instead of the faster, style switching design. Instead, this game offered each character a single, distinct style that represents their uniqueness without completely changing the gameplay philosophy.

Some say 4 has a weak story because of how ridiculous and nonsensical the twists are but I think that's part of it's charm. It presents things in a serious tone that are ridiculous as opposed to the substories which can be ridiculous and are acknowledged as being such. You'll either like it or hate it. I like it, but I also liked 3. I recommend getting the mod that replaces the "new" Tanimura with the original. Just preference here but I don't like recasts and the original actor was done extremely dirty by the industry with drug allegations that were proven to be false.

Port is totally fine. Didn't crash, ran as expected. Looks fine for being a remaster of a game from the PS3 era. I fully recommend.

I don't talk about multiplayer because I don't care about it at all and never tried it. Skip this review if that's what you want the game for.

Halo 1, and 2 are great. Halo 3 is good, ODST is pretty good. Halo Reach isn't for me, I liked the original novel and my hopes for this game were dashed on it's release. Halo 4 is fanfiction and retcons what was a good story. Gameplay changes in Reach and 4 were terrible. If you like them, whatever, but they don't feel like Halo and ignore the best parts of the universe building from back in the day.

I don't care for 343 Industries or the direction they took the series. I've seen enough of 5 from a distance to know they have no clue and Infinite looks to be more of the same except you have a grappling hook and an "open world" because there aren't enough of those.

TLDR; 1,2,3 are worth it, ODST maybe. Skip the rest.

Underground 2 is still the best.

Final Edit: They fixed the fps issue so there's no longer a ritual to be performed every start up. Flipped to a recommend per my word.

Edit 1: So I tried to jump back into the game and the fps that was running reliably at 60 has locked itself at 30 despite the fixes that had worked before... *Sigh* Come on SE, please patch this gem of a game into a state it deserves.

Edit 2: Fix for Freesync fps lock- Loading a save and then backing out to the Title Menu from the options did the trick!

Subpar port. Performance for an old game like this is nowhere near where it needs to be on modern hardware. There are guides to make it playable if the solutions work for you. They did for me, but it's clear the QA department is either non-existent or asleep on the job.

The actual game content is quite good though. I've experienced Gestalt in the past, the mirror version of this game with a few story changes between the 2, and the story is Yoko Taro goodness. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll ponder your existence. Absolutely worth a buy if the port gets some official fixes.

If they patch this, BIG IF, then I will absolutely flip to a Yes on the recommendation. If you are willing to work to get it running maybe give it a go and refund if it just doesn't work for you.

NEW REVIEW (2025) COMING SOON

I have returned... to finish what needst be done.

OLD REVIEW (Dec. 2020) 179 Hours Game Time

This isn't a bad game or mmo, it's just not for me. It is very clearly a modern mmo entry and I just can't get into them. The only time I've felt at home in this genre is a brief 2-3 year period during WoW's early days. I'm not much for quickly running around dodging multiple mechanics while trying to maintain a skill rotation at what feels like breakneck speed. I just want to focus on timing my skill usage, manage my resources, and appropriately move or switch targets when a mechanic or phase activates. That isn't to say I didn't enjoy some of my time with this game. I liked quite a bit about it actually.

Your character can play all the classes/roles, though you have to level them individually. You can switch between them, manage gear sets to change when you want them to and they all have a fairly good explanation and build up of how to use what skills and when. It's very well thought out. I spent most of my time as a Dragoon which is a longtime favorite fantasy class of mine. The only thing I dislike about the classes is that they are locked into a single group role. This is somewhat a good thing for game designers as they can focus on making the classes good at a single role. However, this also means if you have a favorite fantasy archetype and you don't enjoy the role they assign it, you won't get to play it. I'd love to be a paladin or a dark knight but I don't like the tanking in this game and that's all they do. Some of these make sense, a white mage is clearly a healer, a black mage is obviously a magic dps etc. The problem is there are multiple classes "jobs" that I can see being a dps or healing role that aren't/can't. It's not a big deal but it does gate some of the cooler roleplay elements to roles you may not enjoy.

Aesthetically the game isn't for me. It's modern Final Fantasy at it's finest/worst so if it appeals to you then hey, that's a good thing. A few of the Dragoon sets looked inspired from classic Final Fantasy designs so that was nice to see and I didn't dislike them as much as some of the other mainstay design ques. This game sure loves thigh high boots though... Yuck. Some of the story elements are pulled from the long running Final Fantasy catalog and they fit together pretty well. I only made it to level ~70 so I didn't see the full content but the consensus among longtime players is that it's better than what came before. I actually enjoyed the ARR content, lore wise, and think it was interesting. I don't enjoy that you need to complete certain dungeons and raids to progress the story. This is frustrating as someone who would rather keep to himself and avoid the game's increasingly annoying boss/raid mechanics.

I don't want it to come off as I hated this game. I didn't and I think it does a lot of interesting things, being able to run past dungeons and raids with people still leveling by scaling down to them is a neat concept. In the end the game just isn't for me. It's been a continuing theme for me with Final Fantasy as a whole. I just don't enjoy the last 20 years of products and that's a shame given at one point it was by far and away my favorite series. Watch some gameplay, maybe talk with people who have similar taste in games or mmos as you and see what they think.

Time to make fans mad. I hate what they've done to this remake. It's easily outclassed by RE2 remake and REmake. Nemesis being covered by trash bags that say "Caution" on them is quite fitting. His redesign is awful and the changes they made to his involvement in the game were for the worst. If you enjoy this game, I'm happy for you. You got your money's worth. I didn't. I hate it. If I could I'd nominate it for "Worst Remake of 2020" and it would get the award only because Final Fantasy 7 "Remake" is actually a sequel. Disappointed all around and I wish they let the team behind RE2 remake handle this game rather than the third party team they shoveled it off to. They clearly didn't care, and now neither do I. What a waste.

Very late on the review but I came back to this game after the disappointment that is RE 3 Remake. THIS is how you remake a game when fundamentally changing the gameplay. The story may not be a carbon copy of the original but it pays respect to it by not cutting iconic locations or moments from the original and it doesn't just throw out the plot from the original.

The story for each playthrough is short, being just a few hours, but there are 2 sides to the story and you can play through both with either character effectively giving you 4 journeys to make. I don't particularly care for the DLC scenarios/challenge modes but they are there if that's your thing. Overall this is a great remake for what it wanted to do. While it doesn't reach the heights of Resident Evil 1 Remake, which maintained the same style of gameplay as the original while also improving aspects of it, it does manage to be faithful where it can be and it respects you and your time unlike the quick cash in that is RE 3 remake. I recommend this wholeheartedly.

As a taster for the upcoming game, it does its job. I haven't felt hype for a new release in a while and this is doing it for me. You only get 30 minutes total game time so make it count. Capcom is doing the original justice in my opinion.

TLDR - 100% recommend if you like classic jrpgs. Ports good/fine.

Spoiler Free

It's a jrpg in it's purest form. Story heavy, turn based combat, and leveling up. I love this kind of game and they rarely make high quality examples of this genre anymore. The art style is the instantly recognizable Akira Toriyama style (Dragon Ball) and it's gorgeous. You should know by this point whether or not the game is something you'd like so let's skip to the port talk.

The port is above average. The game only (officially) supports up to 60 fps but it's more than you'd need from a turn based game and it runs smoothly (I had to switch the game from borderless to fullscreen to eliminate stuttering, perfect since). No crashes on my end and no graphical anomalies. The requirements for AMD are misleading. You do NOT need an 8 core Ryzen or a Vega 56 to maintain 60 at 1080p, maybe for 1440p or 4k but certainly not 1080. My 1700x doesn't even hit 20% usage, it stays in the single digits a lot of the time. My gpu is an RX 480 and it's having no trouble keeping the game at a solid 60. If you have a midrange CPU from the last 4 or 5 years you are golden and if you own a decent GPU from the last 3 (maybe 4 for high end) years you should be good to go.

Nitpicks: It's a PS4 game released on PC and we don't have the option for Dualshock 4 button prompts. Looking at you, modders, you beautiful people.