Touhou Genso Rondo: Bullet Ballet (PS4) Review

Touhou Genso Rondo: Bullet Ballet combines the disparate genres of bullet-hell shmup and fighting games.  It's actually not as strange as it would seem, as this has been done before, if anyone besides me remembers Wartech on the Xbox 360.  Basically, it's a one on one fight where you each launch hails of bullets at each other until one person stands victorious.  The characters in the game are people from the various Touhou games, which have the distinction of being well-known shmups that I somehow haven't played yet.

After booting up the game, I jumped into the story mode, since why not?  That's usually where you start.  Turns out, this was a bad idea.  I got a very basic idea of the controls, but was slowly being outclassed by the computer.  Since it was the first opponent, I realized it was just going to get harder.  So, I quit out and found the tutorial option.  This was a good move, even if the tutorial people are a bit too chatty.

Each character has a main shot, sub shot and charge shot, and even melee attacks if you get close enough.  The main shot is, well, your main attack, mostly aimed at the opponent and the sub shot is usually more focused on covering an area, rather than a direct attack.  You can dash, and even slow your movement to make it easier to dodge between shots.  Shooting any of the three shots while dashing or using slow movement will change the shot, giving you access to 9 different types of shot attacks.  I wish the dashing was only active if you held the button down instead of just activating it, so it would be easier to use its shot variations.  I didn't see any option to change it.  If you narrowly avoid an opponent's shot (called grazing), you build up charge.  Once a charge segment is filled, you can use a charge shot at the cost of some of the charge meter.  However, you can also use this meter for other things, like spells.

Spells cost at least one charge segment and a bomb stock (denoted by the "B"s under your charge meter at the top of the screen.  If you activate a spell, it places you at the top of the screen, and your firing patterns change drastically.  Instead of normal-looking shots, you now have firing patterns like a shmup boss, filling the screen with bullets.  You aren't invincible in the mode.  There is a ring around your character that depletes when you are hit.  If it runs out before time does, you exit the mode prematurely.  The opponent can also use one of their bomb stock for an actual shmup bomb, which will clear out some of the bullets, making their lives easier.  It's really cool, but ultimately not very useful against the computer.  Upon activation, they tear into with their shots, while expertly dodging pretty much all of yours.  It would work against an actual person, since they rarely have mathematically precise movement, and are actually prone to freaking out when a screen full of bullets comes at them.

After learning the basics, I then set about trying out all the characters, seeing who fits my style, and what enemies would be a problem.  I started to get the hang of the game after a few matches, and started doing much better.  Strangely, one thing I found that helped was spamming the main shot button instead of holding it down.  I don't know why that made them actually hit the opponent more often, but it made a big difference.  Even so, the CPU is a tough opponent, and I didn't see a way to tone them back so I could eke out some easy wins in the story mode, or any other mode for that matter.  As a computer, they are very proficient in the pinpoint-accurate dodges necessary to avoid damage when they want to.  They also have full access to the 9 shot types and chaining together shots with frame-perfect accuracy.  Thankfully, they don't do it all the time, so you can actually win matches.

A small sampling of what you face when an opponent activates a spell.

Touhou Genso Rondo features a story mode for each character, arcade mode, boss rush, versus cpu, and versus player, online and off.  Story mode is several battles linked by dialogue, just as you would expect.  Arcade mode is more like a survival mode, since you fight an endless string of opponents, with some life being restored to you in-between matches.  Boss rush is you versus the CPU, but they start off in spell/boss mode.  Thankfully you only have to survive until the time runs out to win a match, since the computer is as adept at filling the screen with inescapable bullcrap as they are at dodging your attempts to do the same in the other modes.  Fights in arcade and boss rush are only 1 round each.  Versus CPU and human are pretty self explanatory.  Early on I used the versus CPU a lot to get the hang of each of the characters.  I'm also nowhere near competent enough in my abilities to go online and get destroyed.

Touhou Genso Rondo is very unique and a fun game.  The merging of shmup and fighting game is pulled off very well, and there is a lot of depth to the fighting.  After playing it for a while I really started to get the hang of the game, and the modes offered are good.  The computer can be a real pain, since their accuracy and dodging ability is as good as they want it to be, with sadly no way I could see to adjust it.  Shmup fans should get a kick out of the game, and fighting game players should give it a whirl, too.  You might be surprised how fun (and difficult) the game can be!


The Good:
A well-made combination of shmup gameplay with fighting game mechanics.

The Bad:
If the computer wants to avoid what you throw at them, there isn't much you can do to stop them.

The SaHD:
For whatever reason, I was best with Sakuya.  It also helps that time-stopping maids with knives are cool.

(Review code for Touhou Genso Rondo was provided by the publisher)

MeiQ: The Labyrinth of Death (PS Vita) Review

When I first saw MeiQ: The Labyrinth of Death, I figured it for another dungeon RPG that I should pass it off to my wife for review.  However, before I do that, I still try the games out for myself.  I had some hope for MeiQ after seeing the character designs, and the fact you get robotic guardians in your party sounded really cool.  After a few hours, I decided to keep playing the game myself!

The game is still a first person dungeon RPG, but seemed to do away with the parts of the genre I really didn't like.  The only gimmick panels are movement related, like sliding or teleporting.  No damage floors, no dark zones, and no anti-magic nonsense.  There are hidden doors in false walls, and of course mimics, but it is easy enough to figure out where they are.  Since there is no real formation, there aren't enemies that mess it up and destroy your carefully laid out party.  While there was some grinding (discussed more below), it took several hours before I actually had to do it, a welcome reprieve in this type of game.

You start out controlling Estra, the main character, and her first guardian.  Each of the girls and guardians represent one of the five elements - earth, water, metal, fire, wood.  Estra and her first guardian are earth.  Once you complete one of the towers, Estra gains a costume that is affiliated with one of the other elements, allowing her to more easily switch her elemental type.  This really helps when you give her different guardians, so they get bonus stats.  Besides the mages and guardians each having levels independent of each other, the forms also have their own level, which increases with being in battle.

The way stats work in MeiQ is also different from other games I've played.  Your main stats aren't too high, but seeds and stones that the mages and guardians equip will increase the percent that the stats are multiplied by.  Plus, each mage's proficiency (number) of any element is added to the percent of any guardian paired that shares that element.  If Estra has an earth proficiency of 120, this is added as a percent to the guardian's stats, on top of whatever it gains from its own equipment.  Granted, the guardian parts will actually have to give the stat, since any % times zero is still zero.  The numbers are very fluid, since you can change parts and equipment so easily, but it really pays to toggle them around to find the best bonuses you can get.  It really helps, especially in the late game.

Battles are mostly random as you move around the maps.  You can have up to three teams, made up of one mage and one guardian, in battle at a time.  If a guardian falls (runs out of HP), the mage can continue, but the opposite is not true.  The mage is also predictably squishy, so you don't really want them in the front lines.  Each turn, one member of the team can act.  A guardian's available attacks are based off what parts they have equipped.  It actually shows your guardians in battle, and they have many attack animations.  There are some really cool stones that will even allow multiple attacks in a turn.  Mages can also attack and use magic spells, which are use-based instead of MP-based.  I am more used to an MP-based system, but this works out better as you level up because you get so many uses of the basic spells.  I tended to save their spells for tough enemies and bosses, since they could do decent damage and the buffs they gave are really handy.  The spell Estra gets at level 40 is especially powerful!

I do have some problems with the battle system, though.  While the game says that a mage is protected by the guardian even if they use a spell, this wasn't always the case.  There were plenty of attacks that targeted them when it shouldn't have.  The game does state that some attacks can target the mages, but if the attack hits the mage that cast and the other two guardians, that doesn't seem like it's an attack that would target the mage.

If a mage or guardian dies, you are pretty much stuck waiting until after battle to fix it.  There is a resurrection spell for guardians and one for mages, but only two characters each have one and they are gained at higher levels.  There are also items that can resurrect and heal, but they strangely can't be used in battle.  Granted I didn't need them very often, but it still seems like a bad choice.  If one of my guardians or mages died, I would just warp out of the dungeon to heal, and use one of the shortcuts to quickly get back to where I was.

Lastly, battles can be really inconsistent.  Even in the first dungeon, there are the rare enemies that are really tough but run away.  Some enemies are a lot tougher than all the other ones in the dungeon.  There are even mutant enemies (shown by the energy circle at their feet) that have much higher stats than their brethren.  When defeated, enemies can vary drastically in the amount of experience, gold and aether they give.  Some harder enemies give very little, and some give enough to level you up several times.  It's not always a bad thing, but it can make grinding a lot more random than you would think.

The Seiruy body is super cool.  Robo-dragon!

MeiQ isn't a very hard game overall.  There are harder parts, usually because the boss' level is higher than yours.  The hardest boss fights are the few times you have to fight two in a row.  Even so, if your party wipes you are just sent back to the town with all of your experience, money and progress.  That's barely a punishment.  While I didn't have to grind really at all in the first 8 hours of the game, there were several parts later where I did.  Only characters in the battle party get experience, so if I switched it up for a new dungeon with new elemental weaknesses, I had to do some grinding to get people up to speed.

It took me almost 29 hours to finish the main story.  I could have shaved off a few hours by not trying to complete every side quest (stupid rare drops from stupid rare enemies), and if I had switched it to hard mode while grinding (for the extra experience).  I also spent a lot of time filling out every map, checking for all the sealed doors, and grabbing every treasure chest.  After beating the main story, a bonus dungeon unlocks if you still have the need to go dungeon diving.

Admittedly, when I first saw MeiQ: The Labyrinth of Death, I thought "Oh, girls and robots!  Sounds cool...oh, it's a dungeon RPG."  While it does have many similarities to Wizardry and its ilk, I actually had a lot of fun playing MeiQ.  It is a dungeon RPG, but forgoes a lot of the gimmicks and other things that keep me from liking that genre, while having a robust equipment system that is very fulfilling to take advantage of.  I think that fans of DRPGs might find the game too easy, but RPG fans should definitely try the game out, especially if you have wanted to get into usually unforgiving world of dungeon RPGs.


The Good:
A dungeon RPG that cuts out (or delays) a lot of the stuff I don't like about DRPGs.  Also a very useful and fulfilling equipment system.

The Bad:
Enemy strength, experience gain, money gain and aether gain can vary wildly within each dungeon.

The SaHD:
Considering how many of the females are scantily clad and busty, I thought the game would have fan service, but there really isn't any.  Except for that sweet mouse pad in the limited edition.

(Review code for MeiQ: The Labyrinth of Death was provided by the publisher)

No Man's Sky and the Tutorial Problem

No Man's Sky.  I had seen complaints about how the developers lied, and how many people felt like they were sold a different game.  When I heard them describe the game as Minecraft with a space ship, that sounded just like the game I thought it was.

Then I tried it.

Yeah, it is actually similar to what I thought it would be years ago when they first announced it.  That wasn't what I had a problem with.

It was the lack of any kind of effective tutorial.

You might be one of the people that says something like, "But Jon!  Back in the day, games didn't hold your hand and tell you what to do, you had to figure it out.  Games were so much better back then, kids these days are idiots since they get crumb trails leading them to their goal without any hard work."

Ok.  First off, yes, some games were better back then.  Some were worse.  Kids these days are also dumb, but I'd blame that on other things before hand holding in games.  The point about old games not telling you what to do does have two big problems with it.  Before I get to those, I will state that I do not want games to tell me everything, but I do want basics, or even help when I obviously am not understanding what to do.  Figuring things out is great mental exercise, but it does have limits.

Now back to the two big problems with that argument.  There are a lot of games released nowadays, way more than back in the golden era of SNES and the other one.  With so many choices, having a game alienate you in the first 10 minutes can kill it.  People will know, and that should hurt your sales.  While you could look up tips online easily nowadays, that doesn't help with pre-release games or just released ones.  Plus, you seriously should not have to look outside of the game for basic help with the game.  That's ludicrous.  I've said the same thing about Monster Hunter if you think I'm just picking on a game I might not like.

Secondly, older games were much less complicated.  You could probably move two whole directions, left and right, and had either 2 or 6 buttons to worry about.  Now you have systems inside systems, context-sensitive buttons and a three-dimensional world to worry about.  Just try to have fun playing something like WWE 2K15 without a tutorial.  It would be awful.  As games have become more complicated, tutorials explaining the basics are a must.  All the intricacies can be figured out by the player, or looked up later.  The game itself should give you enough information to start the game without wanting to shut the game off and go away.  Well, it can if you don't want it to sell, I guess.

Anyway, back to the game.  It eventually dumps you on some random planet in the gigantic universe that the developers created and just lets you go.  Great, how about telling me anything?  Maybe some of the buttons?  If you walk up to something you can harvest without mining it, the necessary button is shown, so at least they do that.  The corner of the screen does have some pop ups to help you along, but they have some problems.  One, they don't call attention to them and two, they disappear quickly.  There are a lot of things to learn and meters to understand, and they do a flat-out crappy job of communicating to players.

It really wouldn't take much to make this better, so here's my idea.

First, I would start out in a small, instanced area.  Make it a crater on some moon, who cares where.  Just a small tutorial area to let players learn what the heck is going on and what they need to do.  Start next to your ship, and it is out of power/gas/whatever it uses for fuel.  They tell you basic stuff, like how to mine, what to look for, how to craft, how to refuel/recharge things, stuff like that.  Just a small area with a few things to mine, gather and something to scan.  Make them craft something, refuel the ship, then they can fly away.  At this point, you could have a wormhole appear and send them to whatever random planet they would normally start on.

Bam, problem solved.  They spend 5-10 minutes to learn basic stuff, then you abandon them on a remote planet in the middle of nowhere to start their journey.  But this time, they have some starting knowledge to effectively play the beginning of the game instead of throwing up their hands in frustration.

I wanted to like the game, and still might.  I haven't played enough to form an overall opinion, just point out how the beginning of the game is terrible, and needs to be improved.  I might have stopped playing at that point, but from my previous experience in games like this, once you learn what to do, they become fun.  Too bad most of them have really terrible or non-existent tutorials.

Oh, and one last thing that isn't related, but is a separate terrible decision: sprinting and scanning.  What kind of dunce puts sprinting, something associated with moving, mapped to the look stick, and then puts scanning, something associated with looking, mapped to the move stick?  It's backwards and I couldn't find a way to fix it.  Stupid decision, Phil Okinawa.

Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X (PS4) Review

Hatsune Miku, the vocaloid sensation is now available on the Playstation 4.  This marks the first time the game has been 1080p and 60fps, and also the first Hatsune Miku game I have reviewed.

Project Diva X is a rhythm action game, meaning you must press the correct buttons at the correct time in the song.  Most of the requisite notes types are present: pressing the button, holding the button, and mashing the button.  Before you play the game, I strongly suggest you do the tutorial and set the input lag in the options.  It was recommended in the PR email, and is good advice.  It really helped me out, too.  It took me a few minutes to get the input lag just right, but it was time well spent.

At the start of the game, you are charged with completing songs to fill up a song crystal to re-energize it.  Once the first one is done, you can choose another to do.  There are five categories of songs (classic, cute, cool, elegant and quirky), and you have to eventually go through each crystal, unlocking songs and filling them up one by one.  At the end of each one, there is a medley song (which I jokingly referred to as "boss songs"), which is snippets of several songs played together.  Once that is complete, you have finished off the crystal and can move on to the next.

When they are all filled, you do a special event festival to celebrate.  Then, you can replay songs and fill the crystals again a few more times to unlock more event requests.  This time, the amount filled is based off "voltage", which is basically your score for a song.  This is blatantly just making you play the songs again and again, but you can increase the difficulty for more voltage.  There are also special ways to play songs, like having the notes disappear, or moving twice as fast.  Plus, you will probably be playing the songs multiple times to unlock items, so it isn't as bad as it would initially appear.

During the songs, there are two special areas to be aware of.  First is the Technical Zone, which tasks you with hitting every note at a set point in the song.  "Cool" and "Good" will count, but "Safe" does not.  If you hit them all, you get bonus voltage points.  Miss one, and you get nothing.  Sad to say, I rarely hit them all.  The other special part of the song is the "Chance Zone", which gives you a chance to get a new module (basically costumes).  During these parts, every note you hit fills a star that gives a module change (mid song transformation!) if you fill it completely and then hit the star note at the end (the notes where you flick the stick or the touch pad).  Make sure to hit it or you get nothing!  The costumes are per character, but you aren't guaranteed to get a new one, only a chance at a new one.  Sadly, I got the same one three times in a row, even though I already had it.

The game isn't overly hard, but I'm still not very good at it.  After playing a few songs, I got into the groove, so to speak, and started doing much better.  Still, I don't think I have ever perfected a song.  Sometimes the song is just harder for me, and sometimes it's the star notes.  They sometimes have problems registering when I flick the stick, but I don't think it's a controller issue.  Notes are also at various places on the screen, not in one set location, like other rhythm action games that I have played.  Sometimes notes come from the near side of the screen, making you have to react a lot faster.  That's pretty mean.  With all the dancing action and effects taking place on the stage, plus the fancy camera cuts, it can be pretty easy to not be able to see the notes, and thus miss a note.  Combining all of that, it is easy to see why I haven't hit every note in a song.

The modules and accessories you unlock aren't just for show.  Each one matches one of the types of songs.  Equipping them will boost the starting voltage rate for a song, making it easier to gain the required score to complete the stage.  Some combination of accessories give a further bonus if they are themed in some way, for example equipping several animal pieces.  Modules also have different abilities, with the most useful (to me) being the ones that give you a better chance at a new or rare module.

The other items you gain at the end of a song are gifts, which you can give to the various characters to raise their affection.  Sometimes after a song, they will ask for a certain type of item.  Items that raise the character's affection are different per character, which you should expect in any game where you give characters stuff.  I don't know these characters, so I don't know what they would prefer.  A few times I've had them ask for something, such as when I had Luka tell me her throat was dry, and she acted like I was a weirdo for giving her juice.  Yeah, I'm the strange one here...

The first part of the story mode, unlocking each crystal and playing all the songs, takes about 4-5 hours.  Past that, you are looking at many hours to fill up the crystals over and over again, plus unlocking all the modules and accessories for the characters.  I played through the first time on easy, and later on normal.  I actually completed a song on hard, but normal is pretty much my limit.  I'm not that great at the game.  Besides making the songs harder, higher difficulties will let you get more items at the end of a song, and higher voltages also mean less replaying to fill the crystals.

Besides the story mode, there are other things to do.  There is a robust photo mode that lets you dress and pose two characters and take a picture of them.  Concert mode will let you set up songs, pick the performers, and even change camera angles to make your own music videos.  Both of these modes, while extras, are really involved and are great things to include in the game.  Besides unlocking all the stuff, these give the game even more replay value.

Overall, it was fun to play my first Hatsune Miku game, Project Diva X.  The songs are catchy, the game is really pretty, and there is a lot to unlock.  There is a fair amount of grinding if you want to see all the content, and the notes can be hard to make out over all the background action.  Other than that, the game is fun and worth playing for fans of rhythm action games.  I don't think it would be the best one for people's first foray into the genre, though.


The Good:
There are a lot of unlockables, giving you a lot of reasons to replay the songs.

The Bad:
Notes are all over the screen and can be really hard to see with everything going on.

The SaHD:
I'm too busy watching the notes to be able to read the lyrics.  I have no idea what any of them are.

(Review code for Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X was provided by the publisher)