Recent reviews by subujun

A highly addictive game where poker hands meets Slay the Spire. Runs perfectly on the Steam Deck and is great to play while on the go with how quickly games can be completed.

The best of the action roguelikes that spawned from Vampire Survivors. I have picked up and played several after I first tried out VD and I find myself coming back to this one again and again. Music is great, the added difficulty modifiers & character selection help keep things fresh, progression is entirely unlocks (characters & gear). Since each character has significant differences between them you'll find yourself trying out nearly every item rather than just consistently taking the same ones all the time. It only costs $5 when it isn't on sale and you will definitely get hours of enjoyment out of it. Highly recommended!

The best edition of the best game in its series.

A fun, albeit challenging, JRPG classic from the PS2 era of games. Talk with demons and recruit them to your side as you make your way through the eerie destroyed Tokyo landscapes. Customize your character as you level up and learn various skills from collected Magatama. Fuse your demons into new ones in order to combat the ever increasingly difficult enemies that bar your progress. The choices you make along the way ultimately determine the fate of Tokyo and the world at large with six potential endings.

This edition includes the ability to manually select skills for inheritance during fusion, similar to later entries in the series.
Additionally, the 'Chronicles' content from the unreleased outside of Japan version on PS2 is available in this release. You can choose to have either Dante or Raidou as potential antagonists throughout your adventure. You can also select neither the Maniax nor Chronicles content on a new game, thus allowing you to play the original release which was also never released outside of Japan.

The only issue with this release is the audio still being compressed like it was on PS2. This can be fixed with the 'HD Audio for HD Ears' fan mod which gives the game CD-quality audio.

The unofficial third Final Fantasy Advance title.

The music is solid, story enjoyable with a fun cast of characters and loads of customization with the class and ability system. There is crafting/loot but thankfully you don't learn abilities from your gear like the Tactics Advance games. It is similar to OG Tactics where you gain AP and then spend it on your chosen ability down a branching skill path.

The difficulty can be tuned to your preference; letting you adjust enemy AI, # of possible enemy units, permadeath and the like. Thus, it is accessible to someone of any skill level in the genre.

If you enjoy the various tactical RPG games with class systems and customization then you will find much to love with this game.

A fantastic return to the 'Metroidvania' from one of its original pioneers.

If you enjoyed Castlevania: Symphony of the Night then you will definitely enjoy this game. The game play is a very well polished 2-D sidescroller with numerous weapons and magic to combat your various foes. The game world interconnects between areas with newly acquired powers providing shortcuts and new paths.

Crafting exists to create new gear and items or to improve your arsenal of spells. The music is fantastic and the story is engaging with a fun cast of characters. The developers continue to add content that had been promised from the Kickstarter as well as additional content in general.

At the time of this review, this addend content includes both additional characters to play as (both were boss characters) as well as a randomizer mode. I enjoyed this game enough to purchase the Iga's Back Pack DLC which is basically just throwing some extra $$$ at the developer.

If you enjoy 2-D Metroid and Castlevania titles you will have a fun time with this game.

A great port of a great game. Like the earlier Final Fantasies it involves the usage of a 'job system.' These unlockable jobs you get throughout the game allow you to customize your characters by mixing & matching the various abilities you unlock to great effect. The depth of this system is such that there are yearly runs where people limit what jobs they can use to truly test their mastery of the system (http://fourjobfiesta.com).

The art on this release is a mixed bag. The character sprites are from the phone release and don't look as good as the original sprites from the SNES. Luckily, this is on PC so there are mods in place to fix this to an extent. Enemy sprites and spell animations however are top-notch and improvements on the original designs.

Eight-way movement allows much easier navigation of the world versus the original four-way movement on earlier releases. Auto-battle was added to this release which makes getting through grindy random battles and the like much less of a chore. The music is solid as always, with several of its tracks appearing in later titles of the series (Battle on the Big Bridge).

If you're looking for an old-school JRPG with customization then this is a solid purchase. The only other worthwhile English-language release was on Gameboy Advance which is no longer in print. This makes this and the phone version the best legal versions to currently purchase. Don't even bother with the Playstation release unless you're looking to laugh at the terrible translation.

*TLDR: game is great, make sure you install dsfix though.

"The Dark Souls of ..."

It's like after this game people felt the need to compare it to any and all future games. There is a very good reason for this: the original Dark Souls does so many things right and borrows and builds upon so many genres that it can be difficult to describe it succinctly. It's an action-RPG that requires precise movement and twitch reaction. It's a metroidvania-type game where the world is interconnected and varied: encouraging you to make it just a little bit further the next time so that you can unlock that short cut or find that hidden area. It has traditional RPG leveling mechanics and stat requirements that helps make every play through feel different due to the ten starting classes to choose from and the large quantity of equipment and spells to find. The story-telling is completely hands off and for the player to discover; you can make your way through the game speaking to less than three characters and enjoy the somber silence that comes with that.

By far though, and what will most likely have the longest lasting impact from this game: the "multiplayer." Demon's Souls and Dark Souls introduced a Co-op and Invasion type system that I had not seen prior to these games. Players are able to leave messages to one another: ostensibly to provide insight as to what will gank you in the corner coming up. This isn't always the case though and often times you will find numerous messages encouraging you to head directly into the traps. Further, whenever you are in human form in the game you can be invaded by other players. Fortunately, at the same time you are able to summon yet more players to assist you. Nearly all of the Covenants that can be found in the game are built around the multiplayer system. That all of the multiplayer aspects of the game are opt-in is what makes this game so unique. You can take it or leave it: it's up to you.

As you can tell from the hundreds of hours I poured into the game I can probably gush about it for pages on end. To summarize: there is a reason that so many people compare this game to any and all future games. Although the Dark Souls sequels have built upon and improved a lot of what the first one did I still suggest playing the original to see where it all began. Make sure you install dsfix though as the PC version isn't the best port.