Recent reviews by Qelris

I've played a lot of online games, between mmorpgs and gacha games, and there's less than a handful that I would recommend. This game is one of them. This review is based on my one year experience.

The early story is kind of average at best, but there's still a few great moments. The voice acting was also kind of mid, although I believe some of the voices from 1.0 were redone at some point, which I cannot comment on. There's a drastic jump in quality once you get to the second region(2.x content).

The exploration experience is incredible. It doesn't feel like you're fighting against the environment when exploring. Stamina isn't reduced while sprinting out of combat, you can run up walls and you obtain a grappling hook very early on. There's also a gadget that lets you shoot bullets for puzzles or to destroy ores instantly, without needing to change to an appropriate character. While Huanglong(1.x) looks barren and can feel like a drag to explore at times, Rinascita(2.x) feels like a different game; it's a beautiful region that doesn't feel empty, and it is lot more fun to explore thanks to its flight mechanic.

Combat is smooth and has a lot of potential. The main outlier for Wuthering Waves is its Intro and Outro skill system. When the Concerto gauge is full, and you switch character, the current character will trigger its Outro skill, while the incoming character will trigger its Intro skill. That aside, if you change character while in middle of an attack animation, the previous character will finish its attack automatically, allowing for some interesting and complex swapping gameplay. Teams are also made of 3 characters, which makes it easier to build a team than your standard gacha game, although you'll still want at least 2 teams in the end.

Progression feels a bit awkward because of the nature of the game, a live service gacha game. You'll be encouraged to log in daily in order to get resources. At the very least, once you enter maintenance mode, you'll only need to play for about 5 minutes a day, unless you want to farm Echoes in the openworld or work on events. Echoes are the gear system of this game. They can be farmed in the open world or by using Waveplates(energy restriction system). As a new player, you'll struggle with Echo Exp, while as a old player, you'll struggle with Echo Tuners, both of which must be farmed by spending Waveplates or from events.

The main character is actually very strong in this game. Similar to other open world gacha games, they are able to change elements, and each of them have a use case. You can easily make a team without even spending your freemium currency by pairing Havoc Rover with Sanhua, a reward from logins, and Verina, which can be guaranteed with the beginner banner and all the free standard pulls you'll get. Then, at Union Level 45, you can get a 5-star standard weapon box, of which you can pick the sword for Havoc Rover, completing your first team.

Monetization is about the same as any other gacha game. There is two slight differences. The first is that weapon banners don't have a 50-50, meaning you're guaranteed the weapon on your pity. Additionally, for the standard weapon banner, you can select which of the standard weapon you want to aim for. The second difference is that you can purchase up to two dupes per limited character using the currency you obtained when pulling 4-star and 5-star characters, allowing players to slowly collect a few dupes over a long period of time. There is also a Battlepass system, but the weapons are actually kinda meh, and only becomes comparable to standard 5-star weapons at R5, which takes multiple passes.

It actually goes a bit further than Battlepass weapons being terrible. Most 4-star weapons in this game are actually just trash. The most notable one is the pullable rectifier Variation. At the very least, 4-star characters aren't completely worthless for the most part. They are serviceable, although only a few of them are very good.

Overall, it's a great game. Old limited characters are still relevant, inconveniences aren't thrown at you at every corner while trying to sell you solutions, and they are keeping a decent balance between monetization and gameplay experience. While it is still a gacha game, it is one of the least predatory and one of the higher quality game that you'll encounter.

The game was a blast to play, but it definitely has some issues with its gameplay that makes playing it annoying at times, which I slightly got used to by the time I beat post game, but they still feel terrible. My main complaints are that there is way too many menus, controls are a mess and environnemental updates prevents you from accessing other menus until you skip them all by holding a key. That aside, as much as I like and think that the Wound mechanic is fun, I understand that it may be making the game way easier, as bosses are often chain knockdowned or staggered.

MH Wilds has a ton of options, some of which makes playing the game worst by default, so I'd recommend to look for some settings guides to easily navigate through the options and target specific ones to make the game more playable.

Third game of the Ryza series.

Back home, but something is not right.

Atelier Ryza 3 takes a lot of what made the previous two titles a success, while also bringing out the open world aspect a lot more. There is also more ways to strengthen your characters, to the point where your damage becomes nutty. However, because of this, difficulty in this game can be near inexistant if you focus too much on alchemy. English voices are still not a thing.

Not much is new since Ryza 2, but that's fine. The Key system was cool, but I'm a bit more on the neutral side when it comes to gameplay with them. I think "farming" them is a bit annoying, but heh. It's not that bad of a system though.

I think the story may be the weakest point of the game. I feel like the pacing is kind of bad overall. I think the open world may be partially at fault here, because you can access almost all of a region without doing story when unlocking them. A lot of story segments just ended anticlimatically, most notablely the character's side stories.

Overall, it's a fairly decent game. While not that different systematically from its prequel, it is was still enjoyable. You can feel the freedom to experience with alchemy very early on thanks to its vast open world. However, I was a bit disappointed with the story. The Ryza series has been a really strong one. Hopefully the future keeps looking this bright for this franchise.

My Play Order at the time of this review:
1. Mysterious series (Sophie +, Firis -, Lydie & Suelle +) // 6. (Sophie 2 ++)
2. Arland series (Rorona +, Totori -, Meruru ++) // 4. (Lulua +)
3. Ryza series (Ryza ++, Ryza 2 ++) // 7. (Ryza 3 +)
5. Dusk series (Ayesha +, Escha & Logy ++, Shallie +)

Looks promising.

I've never played a prologue type of game, so I don't know if they usually feel like a full game, but this one does to me. I've only played on the third difficulty, and it felt pretty challenging, specifically the bosses. The visuals are pretty nice, although it can get a bit hard to see in certain places, where monsters meshes with the environment. The skill system and gem mechanic are interesting and can lead to interesting combos. At first glance, because daily quests are one of the first thing that are shown on the main menu, I thought meta currency was time gated, but turns out you can actually get the currency while playing. It doesn't feel like the daily quests are intrusively annoying, but feels like an alright complement that can probably be ignored if you wish to. One thing that I'm not too happy about is how player resurrection is handled in multiplayer, but otherwise, the game seems pretty solid for what I assume is meant to be a demo.

It's like CSGO, but anime, with character abilities and paper mechanics. It's surprisingly fun. However, sound effects are left to be desired. There is a battlepass and gacha system, but they are limited to cosmetics only. Some maps are like 90% copied from another game (ie: Overwatch's King's Row and Gibraltar). The chat system is also HORRID. Lobby Chat is wiped entirely between matches, which makes communication with your guild near impossible and there is no private guild announcement box to put a link to 3rd party communication app for easy sharing (there is discord id sharing though). Meanwhile, the Match Chat gets spammed with where pings happened, which would technically not be too bad, but the box is so small you can only see like 3 lines at a time without scrolling, and a ping takes 2 lines.

It needs some work, but it still a decent game.

- Gameplay -
The game feels a bit clunky to play. Hitboxes seems wonky. There's a lot of times where something hits me when I think it wouldn't or that something doesn't hit me when I think it would. It feels like attacking normally feels better most of the time, as skills don't feel impactful enough to be used in a lot of scenarios. Flying monsters are kind of annoying, because you can't change direction while attacking midair, but also because some of them just keep running away from the player. The lock-on camera needs improvement. It doesn't always center the target, sometimes the target goes off screen.


- Game Modes -
The story is whatever, but I did enjoyed one specific part. Story stages are based on Coop Battle stages for the most part. The problem is that there is no indication of where the map ends in a story stage, so you end up wasting a lot of time walking around while trying to collect everything, although you can probably just find a guide for collectables now that the game has been out of a while.

Coop Battle is one of the main modes. Honestly kind of disappointed about this one. I kind of expected a pseudo raid like experience, but there's no mechanics at all. You just go from objectives to objective, meeting up with other parties twice, before fighting a boss. As of right now, you cannot get max level gear from this mode. Tier 1 and 2 serves are map introduction. Once you reach Tier 3, you get 2 maps paired per level range. This makes for a very repetitive experience, as nothing changes for over a dozen of Player Ranks until you can start doing the next level range. When you outlevel the last level range, there's no point going back outside of doing battlepass quests and farming cosmetics you may be missing.

Boss Raid is the other main mode. This seems to be the proper end game, although I feel like the clunkiness of the game brings down its potential. It also feels annoying to fight certain bosses as a melee character. Tier 3 Boss Raid drops the highest level gear in the game and also rotates on a daily basis.

Extreme Boss Raid: I don't know. You need to be 90 to participate. After 80 hours, I just reached 70 and I'm starting to feel the burnt out. They aren't even permanent either, seems to be a weekend type of thing during specific time frames.

Free Roam: The idea is technically nice, but it doesn't feel as good as it might sound. From my experience, the place feels empty and elites are too spread apart. If you want to kill a few minutes and don't know what else to do, and you really don't have anything else, then I guess it's something.

Tower of Determination: Your tower type of content, except you need to be able to beat a floor with 5 different characters to go to the next one. It mostly just gives you gold on initial clears.


- Multiplayer -
The game already feels empty. It's been a bit over 2 weeks since the game has been released and my rooms are usually around 5 to 7 players out 20, after a few minutes of waiting, even with cross-platform multiplayer. Unless you switch your matchmaking to Asia, then it fills up pretty fast, but I don't personally enjoy playing games with lag, especially when the game is clunky. You need 5 people minimum to start a run, as there is 5 parties, requiring 1 player per party.

There is an Aid feature that sometimes pops up, allowing you to join a match already in progress. This is a nice feature because it scales the rewards to your Player Rank and allow you to have a much needed change in scenery. The only thing that feels terrible here is when joining an in progress Boss Raid. Unless you happen to spawn in during a mob wave, you'll be severely under leveled until the next mob wave.


- Battlepass -
This feature is completely free. You can obtain 2 SAO Tickets per month, equivalent to 6$ USD each, and the cosmetics bundles are either 6/12/18$(1-3 tickets). The quests are fairly grindy, but at least you only have to get to 16 out of 28 levels for the tickets.


- Settings -
For some reason, the keybinds are not global. The keybinds are split into 3 types: normal, flying and shooting characters. When adjusting your keybinds, make sure to adjust them for all types. Also, the sensitivity seems to have some weird behaviors. It almost never feel like it should when you start a match, but generally seems to go back to normal after a few level ups..?


Overall, as someone that is tolerant and that doesn't mind grinding and repetitiveness too much, the game still feels kinda fun, but it comes at a high price, with a low NA playerbase, and it is feels very time consuming. That said, this is probably the closest thing we have gotten to a multiplayer SAO game, although I expect this to just end up being a skin platform.

A co-op rogue-like bullet hell that attempts to simulate high end raiding experience of mmorpgs. The game shines the most when played with 4 players, as things gets a lot more chaotic, but it can also be played alone, to experience the story (gameplay adjusted for singleplayer).

The game technically doesn't have much to it. Its strength lies within its replayability, difficulties and simplicity to get into. Each difficulty adds more attack patterns to all fights as well as changing some previously available ones. The game is straight forward with its descriptions, so its easy to understand how an item or skill works.

When starting your run, you can select which biome will be visited first. This allows you to target a specific biome for practice, which is useful when trying to get into Hard or Lunar difficulties. The random option gives you a few extra gold if picked, but is only available once you've visited all biomes within that specific difficulty.

As it is a rogue-like game, there isn't any power gained out outside of a run. Instead, as you play the game, you will unlock more classes, item sets that can be found during your runs and BGMs that can be used while in the main menu. While all of these have unique requirements, they can also be unlocked by defeating a certain number of bosses. This means that even if you struggle to push through higher difficulties or with certain requirements, you will be able to unlock most things just by playing.

I don't have anything negative to say about this game. It's just a solid cute game that doesn't cost much.

The game has improved drastically since its early access release. In game micro-transactions (premium currency, battle passes) are now gone. All cosmetics were placed into a Vault, which you can buy from by leveling up your seasonal level and gaining a currency (which can be farmed seemingly infinitely past 100). Additionally, every time you kill a boss, you have a small chance to gain a random item from the Vault. The battle pass was replaced by Victory Road, which is akin to a "to do" list, but you get rewarded a cosmetic at certain threshold. It is seasonal, but the moment the season ends, the rewards from it gets thrown into the Vault.

Monetization aside, the gameplay has changed a bit too. Movement is different: you can no longer abuse the radius around you to move for free slightly after every action. Now you have a set amount of movement points to use each turn. Vestiges have set effects and can be dismantled at shrines to get permanent set points. I find the new characters interesting as well.

The only thing that's left that's negative for me is the lack sorting/categorizing feature for the Vault and the inability to see what the seasonal level rewards are outside the next one. That aside, it's a visually pleasing and fun game.

Great sequel and the devs are based. It's a hard game meant to be played with others.

You don't lose everything if you're unable to complete a mission. Completing any objectives will give you exp and currency, used to unlock Stratagems (think abilities). Completing all main objectives will give you medals (considering mission completed), that can be spent on Warbands to unlock Weapons, Armors and Boosters (Party Buffs). You can find premium currency at points of interests, to unlock newer Warbands .However, you will need to not only find and collect samples, but also extract with them, in order to keep them, to unlock Ship Modules, which gives buffs to stratagem categories. As killing mobs will not give you anything, you will have to pick and choose your fights to not waste time needlessly.

While the game is meant to be hard, I still feel like the balance feels a bit iffy right now. With the amount of heavy armored enemies spawning in later difficulties, it feels like a lot of stratagems and weapons aren't worth using. There is also some mission modifiers that are very annoying like +50% Cooldown Time and when that one specifically is paired with anything, it just starts feeling like a drag. That said, planet modifiers have been cool so far.

The game can be a bit time consuming, as most missions will be taking upward 20 minutes each (especially going for samples). The game also feels unfair a lot, but it is unfair in a somewhat fun way. That said, it does occasionally feel extra unfair, as they sometimes stealth change things.

Overall, it is a good game paired with a decent price.

100% Orange Juice, but worst in most departments. The main thing the game has going on for itself is the character art.

Characters are mostly tied to a gacha system. You can also get profile cosmetics and gift items (level up affection) from it. Completing weekly quests gives you premium currency to pull the gacha or to buy bond materials (gives you a skin and some profile cosmetics, requires max affection).

The UI feels terrible in a lot of places. We also need to be able to see the previous few effects, as well as having ATK, DEF and Hand Count without having to hover over people's avatar.

The map is a bit hard to read. It's too zoomed in and the background decorations stands out a lot. At least being able to zoom out would be nice so we don't have to drag our camera around as much.

Either everyone has the same deck or we're drawing from the same one. It lacks the fun deckbuilding aspect that 100% OJ had, but I can also see this just being a better thing because simplicity.

In it's current state, Astral Party needs a lot of work.