Recent reviews by Vipershark

This game was released in 2001 and requires several mods to get it to even run on modern systems. I suggest the widescreen fix and AI upscaled textures to get the game looking good at 4K resolution in addition to the fixes needed for the sound, framerate, and CPU bugs.

I own this game on PS2 and played the first hour or so many years ago and didn't enjoy it, so I wasn't really looking forward to trying it again.
I was going to write a review about how this game is incredibly dated and no longer holds up -- which is entirely true for the first third or so of the game -- but then I reached the chapter "Ragna Rock" at which point the entire game went completely off the rails.

I understand why people like this game now.

Buy it on sale.

Ronin is a good game that unfortunately has several glaring flaws.

If you're willing to look past its issues, there is an enjoyable game underneath that fans of other 2D stealth/assassination games such as Gunpoint and Deadbolt will enjoy, but if you can't deal with its problems you probably won't like this game very much.

The primary issues are twofold:
1. The game has a bug where the UI is broken at 4K resolution, causing important screen elements to appear in the wrong places. This renders the game practically unplayable as your primary method of interacting with the game is clicking on these UI elements, and having them display across the screen from where they're intended makes trying to do pretty much anything impossible. The only way to play the game if your screen resolution is higher than 1080p is in a 1080p window.

2. The controls take some getting used to. The game claims that it has full controller support and it *technically* does in that game functions are mapped to the controller's buttons, but this is a game that you really want to use a mouse and keyboard to play. I don't recommend a controller at all.

With that out of the way, onto the review:

Ronin is a stealth/assassination game that is very similar to (and heavily inspired by) Gunpoint.
While Gunpoint is mostly about solving a lot of puzzles and killing very few people, Ronin is about killing a lot of people and solving very few puzzles.
Like Gunpoint, the character's primary form of movement is jumping, using the mouse to line up an arc to send you flying to where you want to be. This allows you to stick to walls and ceilings and allows you to approach objectives and attack enemies from many different directions. This is combined with a grappling hook mechanic that allows you to swing around and quickly zip to otherwise out-of-reach walls.

While there are stealth elements in the game, Ronin is NOT a stealth game and the game goes out of its way to tell you that repeatedly during combat. The objective is not to sneak in and out of each level, it's to kill everyone in each level (but if you manage to do so without getting caught, that's a bonus).

Combat in the game is turn-based and has the player jumping and grappling around the screen to dodge gunfire in an effort to get close enough to enemies to kill them with a sword. For the most part, combat is fun and feels rewarding but there are several areas where things start to get really janky and can become annoying.
In particular, certain platform types can cause you to get hung in place when attempting to jump through them or execute short hops to dodge bullets, causing you to get shot when you should have clearly been able to dodge.
The grappling hook lacks a function for cutting your line early, which often leads to the player swinging into gunfire that they could otherwise avoid if they had the ability to end a swing early and drop straight down.
During combat, the ONLY method of movement is jumping (or swinging) and the player no longer has the ability to run, so there is no way to properly reposition yourself for a better jump or move slightly out of the way to dodge a bullet.

I personally enjoyed this game and completed it both in regular and New Game Plus while achieving both endings on both modes. I can't help but feel like the game is unfinished, though; both endings are literally just a picture with no story or flavor text to go with them, the boss characters are just reskins of existing enemies with no additional combat functions and are killed in the exact same way as every other enemy you encounter, and there are several characters in the game's few pre-boss cutscenes that are never introduced, never explained, and never show up anywhere ingame.

Overall, I'd give Ronin a 7.5 out of 10.
Although it feels unfinished, I think that it's absolutely worth your time if you're willing to learn the controls and look past its flaws.
I'd love to see this game['s formula] expanded upon with more enemy types, additional maneuverability options during combat, and a story that has actual character interaction and motives for the main character.

Buy it on sale.

the post-game content is better than the main game

I ended up forcing myself to beat this game and get all the achievements purely out of spite because it made me so angry that I didn't want to quit and let it win.

At a certain point in the game the difficulty curve becomes vertical and unless you want to spend ages grinding, it forces you to buy items from the in-game "Shop" which essentially gives you the ability to cheat. I only got to the end of the game by purchasing loaded dice and luck necklaces that allowed me to roll 19s and 20s on every roll, thus skipping most of the final third of the game. Being forced to cheat your way to the end of the game is not fun.

This game is not worth your time or your money. The concept is interesting enough but the execution is pretty bad and playing it is painful, grindy, and repetitive. Don't make the same mistake I did.

The original review that I was going to leave for this game was "I don't even like synth pop" but I feel like a joke review doesn't properly do this game justice.

Sayonara Wild Hearts is a very short game. On the surface, it's a playable music album and each level represents a different song. It's an auto-scroller that has you collecting heart-shaped points tokens while avoiding obstacles, but it can get pretty difficult and can be disorienting on a first playthrough as most of the levels control completely differently from one another.
The most noticeable thing about the game on a first playthrough is by far the sound and visuals, which are a complete sensory assault and are absolutely overwhelming in the best way possible.
I highly suggest experiencing this game with an OLED screen and a good sound system.

A casual playthrough will probably take about two hours and once it's over you'll probably be left feeling that it was enjoyable, but largely unrewarding.

Then you realize that you didn't get a single one of the game's 24 achievements on your playthrough, and that's when you realize that the real heart of the game (forgive me for the pun) is in its' post-game content and replayability.

A casual playthrough of the game grants you infinite lives and the ability to skip certain hard sections of songs that you fail repeatedly and is simply about experiencing the game's soundtrack and visuals. Everything beyond that first playthrough is where you then get to really experience the gameplay and level design, and you realize the amount of time, love, and polish that the developers put into the game.

Scoring a Gold Rank and collecting the Square coins on each level requires you to learn optimal routes and memorize complex patterns to be able to beat each level without dying and that presents a challenge in and of itself.
But scoring golds and collecting square coins only encompass two of the game's 24 achievements, which are presented to the player in the form of riddles.

I don't personally suggest trying to figure out the answers to the riddles (I certainly wouldn't have) and to look up a guide for their answers, but each of them presents a different and interesting challenge that elevates the game to an entirely new difficulty level.
In particular, there are certain achievements that ask you to intentionally play the game badly.

One such achievement has you complete a driving level while scoring zero points whatsoever, but the road is covered in points and your car is designed to make you slide into points tokens. In a casual playthrough this is a fun level about sliding around and collecting a lot of points and the challenge is in learning how to slide properly to get the most points possible, but it becomes entirely different when your aim is to NOT collect points at all.
The common thought for the challenge would be "okay, well I just won't drive on the road" but then you realize that *the developers thought of that* and specifically added obstacles that force you to drive on the road which you would never encounter in a casual playthrough for any reason. They took the time and effort to not just design a level that's fun and challenging in a normal experience, but is also designed to be extremely hard for players that are INTENTIONALLY PLAYING THE GAME THE WRONG WAY. And both playstyles totally work and coexist within the same level!
A lot of levels in the game have similar design elements and you can see the amount of thought and care that the level designers put into the game.

Another challenge asks you to beat a level while only scoring "Good" ranks on the level's many quicktime events (as opposed to a "Perfect" rank for proper timing), which forces you to completely change your sense of timing and press buttons too early, while ignoring the background music. It's a LOT harder than it sounds.

I spent (at a minimum) five times longer playing for these achievements than I did beating the base game, and at no point did I ever feel like the game design was cheap or unfair or that a challenge wasn't worth beating.
Although you may not see it on your first playthrough, the game carefully telegraphs *everything* it does; there is zero RNG in this game and everything comes down to execution, pattern recognition, and the player simply being good enough to beat it.

It's clear that this game was a labor of love from the developers on every level and you can really see the passion that they put into making the game as good as it is.

If I was going to make an autoscroller rhythm game, I would want to make Sayonara Wild Hearts.


edit-
Favorite level: Forest Ghost
Least favorite level: Forest Dub

9/10, very short game but worth every penny

I like this game enough that I want to actually write a full review for it and that's pretty rare.

Graphics: 10/10
The spritework in this game is great, Sakuya is fluidly animated and the entire thing is oozing with style.
I like Nitori's robot.

Sound: 10/10
The soundtrack in the game is great, but when Sakuya's theme hits it takes the game to a whole other level.
Also be prepared to hear "SNAIL TIME" a lot during boss fights.

Story: ?/10
I don't know much about Touhou so I can't say whether the story in this particular game is good or not. As a standalone game, there wasn't much of a story to begin with and some of the dialog was oddly translated, but you don't really play this game for the story.
I think it can be mostly summed up as "Cute Girls Doing Cute Things" but with anime superpowers involved.

Gameplay: 9/10
Though this game might look and feel like a Metroidvania, it is every bit of a Bullet Hell Shmup at heart.

You'll often end up in situations where you're surrounded by screen-filling attacks and the only way out is to slow down time to be able to dodge out of the way, which this game refers to as a "Graze".
The Graze system isn't for everyone and can take some getting used to, but it's an interesting mechanic once you've got it down.

The controls are tight and responsive, and *most* of the time mistakes feel like they're actually your fault as opposed to bad game design.
Sakuya has a cool moveset, though some of the level design decisions made regarding how late in the game you unlock certain abilities seem a bit odd.

My main complaint with the game is probably that Sakuya is *incredibly* squishy and will very easily die in just a few hits. There is technically a story reason for why she's as weak as she is while the other characters/bosses have health in the 10k HP range, but spending 5-10 minutes whittling down a boss's HP bar when you can only take maybe 5 hits from full health without Grazing seems just a liiiiiiiiitle unbalanced.

Not only that, Sakuya takes a ridiculous amount of knockback from *every* hit so you're often sent flying somewhere that you don't want to be. That, combined with the period of invincibility that you get after being hit being ridiculously short, leads to many situations where you can effectively get juggled by enemies and die without being able to do a lot about it.
The screen just before the secret boss is filled with so many screen-filling enemies that juggle you back and forth that I pretty much spent a whole game session just getting past that one room alone. Yeah, that was a post-game room and was literally the last room in the game, but it seemed a little excessive.

<edit- Spoilers?>
After playing around with a save editor, it Is possible to turn Sakuya into a walking tank like the other characters in the game but getting her to that point requires a ridiculous amount of grinding that most players won't do. I 100%ed the game at level 25 and that was playing at a casual pace and I don't consider myself to be particularly good at the game. S-ranking Boss Rush mode seems to want Sakuya at at *least* level 40 with tons of money put into upgrades if the Achievement Guide is any indication and I doubt anyone but the most hardcore of players would be willing to do the amount of grinding necessary to make up 15+ levels of grinding for money on such a short game.
In this regard, my main complaint as far as gameplay balance seems to come from the fact that you need to gather a ridiculous amount of gems to have any real noticeable effect on Sakuya's stats and there just isn't enough content in the game to collect the number of gems needed in a normal playthrough without grinding.
There is no New Game+ option to allow you to continue collecting money and experience so achievements like the one for beating the game without dying seem like more of a slog than a challenge worth attempting.
<end edit>

My only complaint with the controls is that it's sometimes too easy to attack in the wrong direction. Sakuya has the ability to move in the opposite direction from where she's facing while in a certain attack animation, and this can lead to you attacking in the wrong direction if an enemy jumps behind you and you aren't super careful.

In short, this game is absolutely worth your time (pun intended), especially if you're a fan of the Metroidvania genre.

10/10, everything about this game is great and it badly needs a sequel.
10/10 soundtrack

10/10, the only thing wrong with this game is that is isn't longer.

Good game, buy it.

This "game" is an absolute travesty and completely spits in the face of everything that made the original Sonic games good. Calling it a sequel is an insult.

There is nothing redeeming about this game whatsoever. It's a blatant cash grab.