Recent reviews by Zheiss

Elden Ring for women, teenage girls and middle aged men in crisis.

10/10

My single fan RTX 4060 is now a heat radiator.

Actually really fun and isn't just a random CS/Valorant clone. The awesome part is that it's so optimized, it runs 100+ fps on the Steam Deck without looking like clay.

Pardon the playtime, I was playing offline most of the time. I wish there's a mixed recommendation button since while this game is an absolute blast, it has a very noticeable issue that Capcom might not be able to fix at all. I am a fellow hunter since 2011 that started with MHP3rd and I have to say, it is pretty awesome to see this franchise grow from just a game with a niche handheld portable community within Asia to launching a new game that has over a 1.3 million concurrent players just on Steam alone and in less than 24 hours to boot.

Though it is kind of sad that veterans would have to wait for the challenging monsters to be added. World and Rise gave me a bit of a challenge early game but with Wilds, I am just breezing through every monster they introduce but that comes with trying to cater to a massive playerbase and the more people that play this franchise, the better.

Now the negative? The optimization. This game does not look and play like it should require Frame Generation just to get acceptable framerates and Capcom enabling it by default on supported hardware says it all. Given that this is Capcom's money maker, they should've pooled their resources, delayed the announcement and released this game on their newer engine REX.

RE Engine just isn't suited for open world game design and would require a significant rewrite to how the engine works at a core level for this game's performance to be fixed. Dragons Dogma 2 is proof of that and Capcom's developer conference confirms this. If they'd somehow, by miracle port the entire game to REX Engine while developing the expansion pack then that might fix this game's performance issues.

Overall, an evolution to the MH formula introduced in World and I can't wait to see what the future title updates we'll receive. I hope they bring back franchise crossovers again just like back in the Nintendo era. Those were pretty fun events.

finally, Bionic Commando is back

Now that I have finished the game at at 71 hours in Hard Mode, I'll add some spoilery details.

My Original Review:

Metaphor: Refantazio is the culmination of everything that Atlus worked on before. If you're a huge fan of Atlus RPG's then you won't be disappointed with this title.

The Archetype system's flexibility fosters diverse strategies ala Shin Megami Tensei and build while the day based progression ala Persona adds planning depth. With numerous activities from side quests to socializing so each day feels unique. However, activity repetition and uninspired optional dungeons can make the experience stale at times.

Although I find the introduction hours a bit too stale, it only goes up from there. The UI also gets a bit overwhelming at fist but I got used to it considering it was designed to imitate the highly intricate artworks found on classic books.

Performance wise, this game still has potential to run better. On a 4060, I get a stable 90 FPS at 1600p compared to the demo where I can't even get a stable 60 in towns but the Steam Deck performance leaves a lot to be desired.

I'm still around 18 hours in including the Demo playtime and I'm sure there's more to uncover but even with that, this game gets a 10/10 for me.



MAJOR HEAVY SPOILERY THOUGHTS after completing the game:

Metaphor: Refantazio is a love letter to fans of the company's style of RPG's. The 60-100 hour epic revolves around a cast of characters loyal to the Royal family exacting revenge on a tyrant who had the prince and king assassinated. The narrative started a bit weak but gets better as you progress then takes a little bit of a nosedive near the end but it's not that bad.

What made this game special for me was that this game was advertised as a Fantasy world but in reality, this is Atlus' Xenoblade. Another post apocalyptic setting in the far future but is a mash up of some of Atlus' beloved titles. An entire story arc is pulled directly from Etrian Odyssey which is pretty obvious once you get to the place where it's named Eht Ria. Shop names are also Rooster Inn, Shilleka's Weaponry, and Golden Deer Hearth. They even recreated Lost Shinjuku and carried over its sloggishness which is kind of unfortunate but fans of the series will be delighted once they see it. Late game archetypes introduces Personas, Devil Summoner and Soul Hacker. But that's also a downside, I was expecting a fresh new IP but what we got was just a mashup of Atlus games.

The music is incredible. Shoji Meguro is back and has crafted a soundtrack that's reminisce of SMT Strange Journey. From the Esperanto rap by the Chief Priest of Myojoji temple Keisuke Honryo to the Tabla Language chants by Ayako Ikeda in Virga Island's theme. The issue is that the boss battle themes aren't as impactful as the normal battle themes.

The monster/human design is also incredible. I'm not going to say a lot but just check out Hieronymus Bosch's paintings particularly The Garden of Earthly Delights and you will see where they drew inspiration for their designs.

Overall, this game gets a 9/10 for me just like any Katsura Hashino games that haven't been re-released. I'm sure down the line, we'll get a Royal treatment for this game with even more content and QoL enhancements that'll make this game even better. If that happens, I wish they fix the story near the end. Seems like they ran out of budget and rushed it since a lot of the important stuff is unvoiced.

MMORPG turned into a single player/coop ARPG instead of shutting it down and the transition was handled pretty well.

A really solid game bogged down by very poor optimization. On PC, it's generally running fine but it does have frame drops on the open world segments

I am not sure why this is Steam Deck Verified since the performance drops as low as 11 fps on a 3 man team expedition but usually stays 60 when solo and that the open world areas drop to the 20s solo even while solo. Not to mention the memory leak where the Deck VRAM goes up to 8gb usage and it locks up the entire system.

Hopefully this gets addressed when 1.0 drops because it's the only thing holding this game back.

What an absolute dogpoop of a game. If you want better MMO's, go play Guild Wars 2, ESO, FFXIV or Warframe that actually has a deep lore you can get invested in and that it respects your time and effort.

There's a reason those games still have a very healthy player base until now. Amazon only knows how to hype up games but end up mismanaging it. Look at New World and Lost Ark. And don't get me started on Blue Protocol lol

My first exposure to the 9th Dawn franchise and it is some of the most fun games I've played with a whole host of mini games and gameplay depth. It even has a 2 player coop.

I'm not sure if the solo dev is getting enough sleep but 30 updates in 5 days? You've earned my respect.

Peak VN comedy but you will have to install the voice and Director's Cut DLC for the complete experience.

I hope JAST localizes the other games.