New Review: It may not resonate for long after it's beaten, but Yoshi's Crafted World is a fun, pleasant 2D sidescroller

 

Yoshi’s Crafted World is a pleasant experience, the type that I’m growing increasingly attached to as I get older. There’s something just so inherently enjoyable about kicking back and turning on a video game that’s simple and fun to play, one with vibrant and colorful visuals, one that rewards thought but doesn’t require too much of it.

For so long I hated Nintendo’s increasing focus on simple platforming sidescrollers; a practice they began during the later years of the Wii and one which has continued to stick around to varying degrees since. But all these years later, I feel I’m finally beginning to understand the appeal. As life becomes more complicated in so many ways, especially amidst our current (as I write this) COVID-19 existence, there’s something to be said about a game that’s pretty much the essence of pure, simple fun, and that’s what I found Yoshi’s Crafted World to be.

At the risk of overselling it, I’ll note that it’s definitely a little shorter than I’d have preferred for a full priced $60 title, so I think it’s something to bear in mind. But I enjoyed it as I played it, and though it might not stick around too much in my memory going forward, it’s still a fun platformer and one worth a look for people who like that sort of thing.

Developer Good Feel has come to specialize in these types of charming, 2D sidescrollers, beginning with the truly great (and often misunderstood) Kirby’s Epic Yarn. It was a much better game than their previous platforming effort, Yoshi’s Wooly World on the Wii U, which was still fun but not nearly as well-designed, and its reliance on an unforgiving collectible mechanic meant that a lot of its content was inaccessible to anyone who didn’t go out of their way to find and collect almost *everything.* Yoshi’s Crafted World finds itself somewhere in between the two; a significantly better effort than Wooly World, though still not hitting the heights of the ingenious Epic Yarn.

As with the studio’s previous efforts, the platforming gameplay here in Crafted World is designed around the environment and its materials. The platforming involves making use of a world that seems like it was crafted for a school art project, (a spin on the wool/yarn motifs of their previous efforts) along with a cool new ability to venture into the backgrounds and foregrounds of stages in the midst of levels, all of which provides a cool new take on the usual tropes that Nintendo games often feature. (Fire world, beach world, etc.) The platforming itself feels smoother and more fluid than in Good Feel’s previous Yoshi effort as well, and while collecting Daisies throughout the levels is necessary to remove barriers on the world map to progress, doing so rarely forces you to go too far out of your way, while also serving to provide the incentive to explore down multiple paths and trying to find hidden areas as you play. Only one time did I actually have to stop my progress to collect Daisies to proceed, with the rest coming to me naturally as I played, which is ultimately the perfect way to implement this type of system. Once you clear the story mode, there are additional levels to unlock; these require a more aggressive amount of Daisy collecting in order to enter, which is a little unfortunate, as after taking a lot of time to collect the Daisies needed to unlock a couple of them, I decided to forgo the rest of the extra levels, but it’s at least handled better than it was in Yoshi’s Wooly World, and thankfully only rears its head in the post-game.

Crafted World makes use of Unreal Engine 4, allowing for some very cool visual effects not typically seen in Nintendo games, along with unfortunately a significantly lower resolution than you’d usually expect in a 2D sidescroller. The heavy use of the depth-of-field blur also comes across as a little too much at times. The world’s still beautiful and very colorful, however, and that, along with the visual tricks brought to us by Unreal Engine 4, makes its low resolution far less noticeable while playing it. I’ll add though that when jumping back into Persona 5 Royal afterwards, I instantly realized how comparatively sharper that game looked. The music’s Crafted World’s weakest aspect; it’s fine, there are one or two nice tracks that stood out to me, but the majority’s forgettable and at times even slightly annoying. It’d be great to see Good Feel make some big steps forward in this regard for whatever their future games might be.

Yoshi’s Crafted World’s a fun, pleasant, breezy 2D platformer with pretty visuals, smart level design, and solid gameplay mechanics. It’s a little shorter than I’d have liked, and ultimately I don’t find myself remembering too much about its specifics after the fact, but there’s something I so inherently enjoyed about turning on a video game and not being hit with a barrage of incredibly complicated gameplay mechanics and long load times. It’s challenging in the right areas but not a tough game, and one that’s genuinely fun. I always looked forward to playing it, and enjoyed my time with it almost all throughout. I’m not entirely sure I’d recommend it at $60, but if you can find it for any cheaper and like 2D platformers, it’s definitely a worthy purchase that offers more than its share of solid, pretty platforming.

3.5/5  

New Review: Luigi's Mansion 3 is a dreary, repetitive and tedious game almost from minute one

Luigi's Mansion 3 is a dreary, repetitive, and tedious game almost from minute one, and clocking in at nearly 15 hours, is one long nightmare to play. It’s an unusual misstep from Nintendo, whose major 1^st party tentpole games almost always provide a fun, fluid, and charming gameplay experience that flows well throughout. Luigi's Mansion 3's many failings, including its complete inability to do this, makes more sense upon learning that it wasn’t developed in-house by Nintendo, but instead outsourced (like Luigi's Mansion 2) to developer Next Level Games. This fact at least helps to explain why it suffers from issues almost never present in Nintendo's in-house releases, such as the lack of ability to skip pre-boss cutscenes after dying and having to retry them, along with things like a poor menu interface and bosses that attempt to be so "cinematic" that it sometimes feels like it takes forever before you're allowed to begin damaging them.

The biggest problem though by far that plagues Luigi's Mansion 3 is that its gameplay never feels fun or controls well, and that it fails to change or evolve in any meaningful way from the opening moments until the credits roll.

I'll admit up top that this is my first trip in many years into the Luigi's Mansion universe. I found the Gamecube original to be fun back in 2001 but remember little about it, except that the mansion was more exploration-driven, in an almost Resident Evil style, whereas Luigi's Mansion 3 is designed in the style of a hotel, with each floor serving as its own "level." Progression takes the form of completing a floor and snagging the Elevator Button that allows you to proceed to the next one. It's more along the lines of what I understand Luigi's Mansion 2 does with the formula, though admittedly I haven't played the 2nd one.

Given how long it's been since I played the original Luigi's Mansion, it's possible that its poor gameplay mechanics have been here from the beginning, and that I just didn't remember how unfun sucking the enemies up with the vacuum cleaner is; how even by the game's end I never fully got the hang of whether the aiming was inverted or not, how almost every single enemy variant goes down the exact same way, or how the vacuum cleaner never gains any new abilities throughout the game. I’m not sure if these issues existed in the original, though I feel like I’d have remembered liking it a lot less if they had, but regardless, the core gameplay here just isn't any fun, and all too quickly stops offering any new surprises. Boss battles look cool, but other than one or two fairly inspired fights, the rest of them are defeated in the exact same way that the other enemies are. When the boss fights do step outside their typical comfort zone, they feature slow, long move cycles that you're forced to wait through until you have the one scripted opportunity to damage them. If you happen to miss it, you have to wait through them all over again. And repeat until the boss is finally defeated.

This same basic flaw applies across the rest of Luigi's Mansion 3 as well. The vast majority of the puzzles the game provides you are solved by happening to shine your Dark Light device at the right object in a given room to trigger a path forward. Rather than being fun, the requirement that upon entering a room you must take your Dark Light device out and spend time shining it at all the walls and objects in search of a path forward feels like busy work and even further slows the pacing of an already slow game. On the few occasions where the developers do provide more elaborate puzzles to you, their mechanics are incredibly poorly explained, (the TV puzzle being the worst offender) and these too feel like they go on for far too long, even once the puzzle is figured out.

Luigi's Mansion 3's big new addition is the fairly gimmicky Gooigi, a goo-like replica of Luigi who can be summoned and controlled, with you able to switch between one or the other on the fly to solve certain puzzles or to defeat certain enemies. Given how relatively little Gooigi is used, though, and the fact that he has no personality and very little narrative interaction with the title character, all gives him the feeling of being a Nintendo-mandated addition that the developers had very little enthusiasm for. Indeed at times it almost feels like the game forgets about him entirely for hours on end. As with Luigi himself, Gooigi's moveset and abilities don't change at all throughout the game. 

There are secrets to be found in many of the hotel's areas; all just lead to collectable money, which is essentially Luigi's Mansion 3's currency. But with a whopping 3 items (!) available to purchase in the shop for the entirety of the adventure, going out of your way to find the hidden dollar bills exists with no incentive to speak of, other than an arbitrary letter grade given to you upon the story's completion. I don't remember what grade I received and really couldn't be bothered to care, honestly. 

There's just one final thing I'll get into, but it's one that's such a glaring example of bad game design that I wouldn't be doing it justice without awarding it its own paragraph. On certain occasions after clearing a Floor and earning the Elevator Button to progress to the next one, the game will immediately snatch it back from you courtesy of an annoying cat ghost character, which then forces you to backtrack through previously explored areas and floors in an attempt to catch the cat ghost to get the Button back. When you do manage to find it, you have to fight it the same…exact…way… every single time, before it'll relinquish the Button to you. These segments can take up to 30 minutes at a time of retracing your steps and fighting this repetitive boss again and again, and it becomes increasingly frequent as the game rolls on. It adds nothing to the experience, it's frustrating, it's uninspired, and it almost immediately erodes any satisfaction given by clearing a Floor and thinking you’re about to progress to the next one.

I was genuinely surprised when I was hit with the realization a few hours in that I just wasn't going to like this game; that this was all that Luigi's Mansion 3 was, and all that it would be. Nintendo games, though they can have their flaws in many other areas, are usually able to at the very least get fun gameplay and gameplay mechanics down. They usually feature a true sense of progression, with your characters earning new moves and abilities over the course of the adventure to shake things up and deliver an evolving gameplay experience. With Luigi's Mansion 3, I can say with pretty full confidence that if you're not thrilled by the controls, mechanics, and abilities that Luigi has in the first 30 minutes, then you won't like the rest of the game, because that's really all that it has to offer. The graphics are great and presented in full 1080p, but the claustrophobic rooms and corridors that you’re forced to tread through in order to reach one repetitive enemy encounter after another makes the sharp image hard to appreciate. Coupled with tedious gameplay mechanics, unskippable cutscenes, and a forgettable Gooigi gimmick, there’s very little to recommend Luigi’s Mansion 3 by, and definitely one of Nintendo’s bigger disappointments this gen. Stay far away.

1.5/5

New Review: Final Fantasy VII Remake manages to capture and expand upon much of what made the first part of the original game so compelling

All said and done, playing Final Fantasy VII: Remake was a definite trip. It wasn’t a game I thought I’d like, or one I was sure I’d even play, given my somewhat less than enthusiastic response to the original Final Fantasy VII along with what I thought was a bad decision to split the Remake into multiple parts, with this current game only covering Cloud’s adventures in the city of Midgar and the rest of it scheduled to arrive later.

I found Final Fantasy VII: Remake though to be surprisingly faithful to the tone, atmosphere, and spirit of the original game, managing to somehow capture the inventiveness of that gaming era all while updating it successfully to what gamers expect of games today. To do this while expanding what was only the first 6 or so hours of the original Final Fantasy VII into a full 40 hour+ game was a major accomplishment. It’s a fusion that’s pulled off surprisingly well, and though this is by no means even close to being a perfect game, I found Final Fantasy VII: Remake to be a compelling RPG and one that really made me think about how gaming has evolved and changed over the years, both for better and for worse.

Final Fantasy VII told the story of Cloud, a former soldier in a world that’s essentially ruled by a massive corporation known as Shinra, who not only reigns over the metropolis known as Midgar, but essentially wields control of the planet by using its lifeblood, Mako energy, for power and control. Cloud serves for hire for the eco terrorist group known as Avalanche, which bombs various Shinra Mako reactors throughout the city. His childhood friend Tifa is a part of the group, along with the always-cursing Barret and the likable Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge. It’s a storyline that actually resonates just as well today as it did in 1997, with humanity’s reliance on oil seemingly virtually unchanged after all these years. Presented here of course with incredible advancements in storytelling, cutscenes look and animate beautifully, giving the characters life that I didn’t think the original managed to pull off. All throughout Final Fantasy VII: Remake, in fact, I found myself realizing that this is what the developers of the original game were going for; this is what they’d envisioned, but couldn’t pull off in 1997. I worried that this remake would feel like something entirely different, but this is Final Fantasy VII, without a doubt. And it’s something to behold.

My thoughts on Final Fantasy VII were complicated; I’d played it many years after the fact, having gotten into the series with Final Fantasy X on the PS2 and then working my way backwards. I appreciated that VII was a truly groundbreaking game for its time, but having played it after what were in my opinion the far better games that followed, I found its characters and world to be flat and mostly uninteresting, with the pacing constantly interrupted by terrible mini-games, and the storytelling often hurt by a flawed English localization. Interestingly enough, I found the first 6 hours of Final Fantasy VII in Midgar to be the game’s best, with the city’s slums, their residents cast in the constant shadow of the plate above their heads which houses the city’s wealthy, proving to be a compelling and intriguing setting. It was a gritty and very sci-fi oriented story, one that I thought became less interesting once the characters left the city and the game became a slog across far more bland environments in pursuit of a very creepy but not especially likable villain.

It’ll be interesting to see whether the improved storytelling will help me to appreciate the rest of the game, whenever the future episodes happen to arrive. As a standalone title though, the first part of the Final Fantasy VII Remake saga works well as its own adventure. Given how long it took to develop this part though, as has sadly become customary for games from Square-Enix, I’m hoping I’ll get to experience the rest of this saga before I’m in my 50s, but who knows, honestly.

The biggest factor that differentiates Final Fantasy VII: Remake from the original, aside from the content added to spread it out into a full game, is the battle system. Remake gets rid of the original’s turn-based battles in favor of something more along the lines of what was featured in Final Fantasy XV, where you run around the battlefield hacking and slashing at the enemies in real time. Though the AI here does control your teammates, it operates on only the most basic of levels, with the game expecting you instead to take control of the character you want to use with the d-pad and issuing them a command. It’s a bit of a weird system in that the AI which controls the other characters has been dramatically dumbed down from where it was in XV, and you’ll find yourself having to take control of your AI partners whenever you need them to do even the most basic things such as healing or using specific abilities.

I found battles generally to be fun and satisfying as far as fighting regular enemies were concerned. Attacking the enemy fills up their Stagger gauge; doing certain types of damage to certain enemies fills it much faster. Once staggered, the enemy sits there stunned while your attacks do significantly more damage against them. It’s a system that’s been more or less present in the series since Final Fantasy XIII, and it’s one that still feels incredibly satisfying. Each character plays very differently from each other, with two different types of attack styles that can be switched between on the fly; one of them more powerful but slowing your movement. Final Fantasy VII’s oft-praised Materia system remains mostly intact here, with equipping the various Materia to your weapons (such as Cure, Fire, etc) and watching them evolve the more you battle with them a cool way to customize your characters.

Less satisfying is the new stat and summon systems; each weapon has its own Sphere Grid-like system, where you earn AP through battle to upgrade things like “HP+ 250” and “New Materia Slot,” in a spacey menu that looks slick but feels hollow. You lose these advantages when you equip a new piece of equipment, making it hard to tell when coming across a new weapon or armor whether it’s more beneficial to equip it or to stick with your original. Each weapon’s “main skill” becomes permanently learned once unlocked, but I’m genuinely not sure whether I ever accomplished that or not, or whether it’s even worth using old weapons until that point. The Summon system returns from Final Fantasy XV, where once again the ability to use summons is completely out of your control, the game seemingly allowing it only when you’re getting your ass kicked. Somewhat frustratingly, you only come across 2 summons over the course of the main story; with 3 controllable characters in your party at once, that means you’re either stuck sharing 2 summons between your entire party, or you’re forced to seek out additional summons through side missions or, of course, if you happened to preorder the game from the right place. Needless to say, not my favorite way to go about it.

Where the combat system completely falls apart is during the boss battles, where the number of frustrations pile up one by one. The first big offender is their excessive length, which dramatically increases the frustration you face when you die and have to start the entire fight over again. Bosses just seem to have far too much HP, and in fights where targeting specific parts of them provides an advantage, those parts are often hard to target amidst all the chaos. As with Final Fantasy XV, I found myself having to use far more HP recovery items than I had in previous entries in the series, which focused more on magic as an affective way to heal and to revive your characters. Unlike Final Fantasy XV though, Final Fantasy VII: Remake’s bosses are far more challenging, and not having a major stockpile of Phoenix Downs in your inventory (and they’re expensive to purchase) can ultimately make certain fights incredibly frustrating.

One reason for this is that bosses have the tendency to unleash majorly destructive attacks with wide range seemingly without warning, the block and dodge buttons hardly enough to stop them. Annoyingly, you’re prevented from using any items or magic abilities until your ATB gauge fills up, often creating an inescapable loop where the boss kills your fellow party members, as you run around the battle arena waiting for your ATB gauge to charge up, which then allows you to finally revive one of them, but not heal them afterwards;  for that, you’ll have to wait for the ATB gauge to fill up yet again, assuming the enemy doesn’t kill them again before this can happen. During times like these it’s sometimes almost better to restart the battle from the beginning than having to keep doing the dance of trying to revive your fallen party members.

It’s not that I don’t like a challenge; Final Fantasy XIII was incredibly challenging I thought in a fun and strategic way. Final Fantasy XV was too easy and I’d have preferred for things to be tougher, but Final Fantasy VII: Remake’s issue is that it goes about its difficulty the wrong way. It’s a fun battle system that, more often than not, falls apart during the boss fights, which just don’t provide the same level of satisfaction as the fights during the rest of the game.

Outside of bosses, combat works well most of the time, which is good, because Final Fantasy VII: Remake features a lot of combat. With a majority of the game’s new areas (somewhat disappointingly) focusing mostly on lengthy dungeon/combat sections, it’s a good thing that the battle system is at least fast and fun during Remake’s many regular encounters. It has to be said though that I can’t help but feel disappointed that Remake didn’t take this opportunity to give us more time to explore Midgar’s wealthy districts on top of the plate instead, or even see some new towns in the slums. Not that town exploration’s completely absent, however; you’re given more time in the slums of Midgar than in the original to wander around the town-like areas completing sidequests for the locals. The side missions are unspeakably bland, but at least their inclusion and the additional story-focused moments in Midgar’s residential areas prevents Final Fantasy VII: Remake from feeling like a claustrophobically linear journey the way Final Fantasy XIII did. You’ll have to finish the sidequests before you complete the chapter they’re in, though, which does take away some of the feeling of open-endedness that they provide.

Other than the boss battles, the biggest gripe I have with Remake is that it features what might be one of the worst navigation maps I’ve used in a long time. You can switch to the more traditional GTA-style map with the L2 button, which is at least significantly better than the awful Elder Scrolls style navigation display that’s set as the default. But even this map is fairly unhelpful and bound to lead you straight into walls instead of pointing you forward. The full screen map visible in the main menu is also fairly lacking, as it divides the city into sections, taking away from the feeling of Midgar being a full world to explore, even if by the end of it there are tons of locations to return to. Segmenting the world on the big map also makes it harder to tell which locations you’ve been to when backtracking, or which road leads to which place. While certainly better than this team’s previous work in Final Fantasy XIII as far as exploration’s concerned, I’m a little worried about how they’ll handle what’s supposed to be the vast world map that becomes available in Episode 2.

On a story note, Final Fantasy VII: Remake is more faithful to the tone of the original game than I ever thought it would be, and in many ways, it remains in lockstep with it. This is definitely better than what I was hoping for, and never does it feel non-cannon or outsourced in any way.  That’s not to say that it doesn’t have issues, however. Remake makes changes to the fates of certain characters, and the changes are handled in such a heavy-handed way, and in a way where it’s not even really clear what actually took place, that I questioned why they bothered to do it.

The game’s final few hours are similarly mishandled; as with many RPGs today, Final Fantasy included, entering Remake’s final dungeon doesn’t simply mean a challenging path to the final boss, but instead it means hours upon hours of combat, boss fights, and action scenes…..never seeming to end. This isn’t a problem unique to this game, but it’s one that I wish hadn’t become the norm. As the dungeon and boss battles and plot revelations rattle on and on, they become tiring, as if we’re being trapped in a Michael Bay movie that I couldn’t just sit back and watch the mindless spectacle of.

Remake also makes the decision to fit Sephiroth into the proceedings, despite him only having a tiny, mostly off-screen role in the Midgar portions of the original game. Some fans might be happy to see him and Jenova make their early appearances, but I found them to be forced and unnecessary, and people who are new to this story will have no clue about the significance of this character and why he suddenly keeps showing up. The ending encounters also expand Aerith’s role in ways that I’m not thrilled with, but I’ll stop there. These are really the only blights on Final Fantasy VII: Remake’s otherwise great storytelling, which makes for a compelling journey through a very intriguing world; far more than the original did. I just wish I didn’t find myself cringing whenever Sephiroth and whatever those weird spirit things are kept forcing their way into the story.  


Remakes are always a daunting prospect, and Final Fantasy VII is such a beloved property. As someone who didn’t find that particular installment to be nearly as compelling as several of the others, I have to say that I thought Remake really elevated the original’s storytelling and its characters to turn them into something great, some long dungeons and a never-ending final several hours aside. It’s faithful to the original game and really captures the tone and vibe of Midgar perfectly. The combat system’s fast and fun but often a nightmare during bosses, with the few diversions from the original’s story similarly proving to be hit or miss. Music’s overly-orchestrated and far from Masashi Hamauzu’s best, while exploring the world can feel unintuitive due to its segmented nature and poor mini-maps. But whether it’s the quiet moments in the bar in Sector 7, or Cloud and Aerith traversing the slum’s rooftops together, or of course the eventual appearance of Red XIII, Final Fantasy VII: Remake manages to capture beautifully and expand upon much of what made the original game so beloved to begin with. It isn’t perfect, but it’s an adventure I’m incredibly eager to continue, and hope we won’t have to wait another entire console generation to get to do.

3.5/5

Note; this review is based on the PS4 version

New Review: Although a big step back from its predecessor, Life is Strange 2 overcomes a shaky start to provide a solid adventure

Life Is Strange is an episodic and story-driven Adventure series, one which occupies a world brimming with charm and warmth.

The original game starred teenager Max Caulfield, a student at Blackwell Academy in a small town in suburban Oregon, and had the vibe and presentational style of an indie flick, with the mystery that enveloped the academy venturing into some startlingly dark territory. It was carried by strong characters, a compelling setting, and a Butterfly Effect-like power that allowed Max to rewind time. Very often, you’d have to make crucial decisions that would have real impacts on the world around you.

Told episodically, Life is Strange garnered increasing popularity and critical praise as it went on, and wound up developing a large following.

I have to say that Life is Strange 2 isn’t the same home run that the original game was; in fact, in many ways it feels like a definite step back. Much of this is due to deliberate decisions made on the part of developer DontNod Entertainment to move from the format of a contained, developing world to a Last of Us-style road adventure, where likable main character Sean Diaz and his fairly aggravating younger brother Daniel find themselves on the run after a series of horrifying, if slightly unbelievable, events. As they journey south from Washington state to Mexico, they encounter various types of people, some friendly and some hostile, and fight for survival with very little money as law enforcement hunts them down.

There are ways that these narrative choices result inevitably in a smaller, lesser game than its predecessor, but I’ll come back to those in a bit. Life is Strange 2’s biggest improvements over the original are in its presentation; this is a gorgeous game, its visuals bringing its world to life, its dialogue relying less on the slang that proved somewhat divisive last time around. Though I have major issues with Daniel, Sean himself proves to be a great main character, and while the 1st episode gets the game off to an almost cartoonishly awful start, Life is Strange 2 does ultimately hit its stride by the time it reaches Episode 3, and continues on well for its 2^nd half despite an anticlimactic ending.

It remains very fun to wander DontNod’s beautiful, intimate environments, with no shortage of objects to interact with, the acoustic guitar music setting the scene well, and a series of mostly well-acted, occasionally compelling characters and decisions moving the plot forward in interesting ways. The game still brims with character, from Sean’s ability to sit down and sketch out the various environments he comes across, to the funny comments he often makes and the hand drawn nature of many of Life is Strange 2’s menus. In what’s by far the game’s best episode, Episode 3, Sean and Daniel find themselves in a deep forest, living in an encampment with a crew of endearing marijuana cultivators, who bust their assess for an abusive boss. It’s here and really only here that Life is Strange 2 manages to channel what made the original game so incredible; the sense that your choices mattered, that they affected the people around you. Living with and interacting with this group of misfits really allows Sean to come into his own as a character, and gives him some much-needed time to associate with people other than his often-irritating little brother.

It’s here that Life is Strange 2 hits its stride, and though episodes 4 and 5 don’t quite manage to live up to this fantastic part of the game, the stakes from that point on feel more human and more urgent, and things power through well to its final act. It’s commendable that Life is Strange 2 was, in the end, able to moderately win me over despite an opening episode (and about half of the 2^nd episode) that had me majorly wondering whether I’d even finish the game.

What ultimately stops Life is Strange 2 from living up to its predecessor is the “road game” format. Each episode brings Sean and Daniel to a different location entirely, with few of your decisions seeming to carry over or make much of a difference once the story whisks these characters hundreds of miles away. While Life is Strange featured a cast of likable side characters and a school and town that grew as you played, part 2 sacrifices this almost entirely for a story that keeps these characters almost constantly moving, giving you no ability to see the results of your choices on the world other than through brief letters/asides Sean receives.

Along with this, the story feels far more inflexible; very few of the choices I make seem to have any impact on what the game ultimately wants to happen, with Daniel often stubbornly refusing to listen to Sean no matter what I tell him to do, forcing the story down its clearly pre-determined path. The writers appear to be under the impression that Daniel’s likable, but almost every misfortune that befalls the brothers seems to be a direct result of Daniel’s stubborn actions, and as a result Sean’s forgiving nature and his seemingly unwavering devotion to his brother becomes painful to watch. It’s true that in these types of games the degree of choice you have is almost always somewhat of an illusion, but Life is Strange 2 is transparent about it to the point where you learn almost immediately after making what’s supposed to be a major choice that it doesn’t matter, that the story will continue heading where it wants to go regardless. Even with its narrative-driven focus, Life is Strange still felt like a video game, whereas Life is Strange 2 sees the series veer much more definitively towards being an interactive movie.

That the intriguing time travel mechanic from the original (along with its gameplay additions, such as puzzles, and the narrative importance that it offered) has been replaced by a very lame “hovering” power not even revealed until Episode 2, one which you’re never really given much control of and which feels more like an afterthought than something truly important. Life is Strange 2’s use of source music, something done so well in the original, feels here forced and much more self-aware, something that I’d say carries over to numerous aspects of this sequel. Sequels are hard, because the developers are under immense pressure to replicate what made the original games so successful, while also providing a new experience and evolving the formula. Life is Strange 2 stumbles a bit with each, delivering a fun and somewhat memorable journey, though one that I can only call a step back from its predecessor.

Despite a rocky start though, Life is Strange 2 does manage to recover. Its shortcomings are evident throughout, especially as it relates to the original game. In going with a story that never stays in the same place for too long, you lose the sense of being part of a world that develops around the decisions that you make. You lose (until you reach the second half of the game) the cast of characters whose relationships and connections you play a role in cultivating. You also lose the very cool and innovative time travel mechanic. Life is Strange 2 attempts to meld all these elements into Sean’s relationship with his younger brother, but Daniel disappointingly just seems to do his own thing regardless, and manages to come across as selfish and irritating in the process. All that said, once it finally hits its groove at Episode 3, Life is Strange 2 managed to hook me. In the end, it’s one that I can say I cautiously recommend to fans of the original, as long as they go into it with the right expectations. Those new to the series I’d encourage to try the original Life is Strange first, because aside from its visuals, it’s a better game in almost every sense. Still, Life is Strange 2 isn’t without its charms and its moments, many of which occurring later in the game, and it’s a journey I’m ultimately happy I went on.

3.5/5

Note; This review is based on the PS4 version

Amazing that it exists. A fun and beautiful indie title that can't quite manage to live up to its predecessors

It’s difficult to put into words the feeling I felt as I held, finally, my copy of the 3^rd installment in the long-running, but long-dormant, Shenmue series.

Releasing nearly 20 years after the launch of Shenmue II, the advent of Kickstarter crowdfunding had finally allowed Yu Suzuki to commence development on the third installment, and, of course, as a fan from back in the day, getting to play the game was something of a surreal experience. Shenmue III was a game that was never supposed to exist, a game that its publishers had forever shunned, a resolution to a cliffhanger ending that would never be resolved.

My reaction to getting to play Shenmue III, after all this time, can only be described as a complicated one. Shenmue I and Shenmue II on the Dreamcast (and Xbox) were my favorite games at the time I played them, and though few games from that era have aged flawlessly, I still feel that way about them today. Majorly ahead of their time, the first two Shenmue games offered a fully living, fully breathing open world to explore, one where every single person you saw could be questioned and interacted with, where nearly every building could be entered, and where an in-game clock and living NPCs going about their daily business kept the world moving. It was in this world that Lan Di, the member of a Chinese cartel, murdered teenager Ryo Hazuki’s father in his dojo, stole the Dragon Mirror belonging to him, and departed into a rainy night. Ryo vowed to get revenge, his journey taking him from his small but bustling hometown in Japan, to the massive city of Hong Kong and the isolated forests of Guilin in mainland China.

Picking up immediately where Shenmue II left off, Ryo and his mysterious new companion Shenhua learn that her father had recently disappeared under mysterious circumstances.  Shenmue III begins in the larger-than-expected Bailu Village, which gradually opens up to you and allows you to explore more and more of it as the first half of the game goes on. The second act sees Ryo and Shenhua journey to the port city of Niaowu, which offers a more exciting and vibrant setting while also exposing many of Shenmue III’s unfortunate limitations.

But first thing’s first. Shenmue III plays at its core similarly to the first two games, in which Ryo wanders through the fully-realized environments, interacting with locals, and learning clues which progress him and the story forward. Most people you see in Shenmue III can be interacted with, and though these interactions take a definite step back from Shenmue II’s, in which you were able to choose between different questions to ask them and even be walked to your destination, it’s still impressive how many people are available to converse with, and how much dialogue (nearly all of it voice acted) the developers have managed to squeeze into a far more limited budget than that of the first 2 Shenmue games. Various action sequences, such as fights or the occasional chase, show up to provide some excitement, but likely for budgetary reasons, these are an incredibly rare occurrence in Shenmue III, giving the game an even more likelihood of appealing strictly to the fans than it otherwise might have had the developers been given more money to play with. Shenmue III is slow, and without the big action sequences and fights to break things up, those who don’t find themselves wrapped up in this world and Ryo’s journey may struggle to see what the big deal is.

For fans though, the real star of the show is how at least the basics of the Shenmue series have been very well maintained. Wandering through the village and then the city, Shenmue III gives you the ability to gamble and perform part time jobs for money, the ability to play arcade games, and the ability to explore the shops and see the painstaking detail that went into giving each one its own identity. And of course, you have the ability to interact with the NPCs and learn the clues that progress the story forward. This is all still present and still the driving force behind Shenmue III. The game does feel, in many ways, like a solid sequel to the second game, even while it lacks the budget and the massive development teams awarded to its predecessors, which has, inevitably, resulted in a game that doesn’t live up to them, as much as it tries and as much as it makes the absolute most of its circumstances.

Lots of bits of fan service exist, from various items and photos to stories that Ryo recounts to Shenhua about his life in Japan and of the friends he met there. At one point you’re able to buy phone cards to call some of the characters from the previous two games, and though these conversations somehow feel non-cannon and feature (disappointingly) wildly different voice actors who mostly don’t even attempt to sound like their predecessors,  there’s something wonderfully surreal and compelling about the ability to converse with these characters again. Even if, for some reason, the writers have entirely forgotten that Guizhang was supposed to eventually join Ryo in China.

There have been various new features added to Shenmue III, ranging from a brand new fighting system to the need for Ryo to eat food to recharge his stamina (HP) throughout the day. A fun conversation system with Shenhua exists in the first half of the game, which gives Ryo some much-needed development and arguably fleshes him out more than both Shenmue 1 and 2 managed to do. The battle system is under-explained and does take some time to get used to, but manages to satisfy in its own way as the game goes on despite its fairly unforgiving nature. The actual need to train and level up to increase your stats is a cool addition to the series, while the food system unfortunately isn’t, making getting around an outright chore when Ryo runs low on health and is then only able to run for short distances at a time. These types of “running systems” are rarely ever fun in video games, and Shenmue III’s is no different. I’d have happily taken the game without it, and it would have been much better for it. The sidequest system however is very much improved, feeling in some ways similar to how it does in the Yakuza series, and though it’s still sometimes tough to keep track of your various sidequests, Shenmue III represents a big step forward in this regard over its predecessors.

Where Shenmue III lands on most fans’ lists will ultimately depend on how forgiving they are of its more limited nature. Though the environments to explore in Shenmue III are very large and detailed (though, it has to be said, not on the level of Shenmue II’s) evidence of its crowdfunded nature are evident in other aspects. It’s important to bear in mind that Shenmue III shouldn’t exist at all; in its final form, we have a game funded with a very small budget, with a very small development team. Shenmue I and II were given enormous amounts of money and the development support of Sega, who was (at the time) a major console manufacturer. I’m happy that Shenmue III exists, and am 100% sure that its existence as an indie game is a far better fate for it than alternatives, such as Yu Suzuki finishing its story through some sort of movie or comic book, or through the ill-fated Shenmue Online. It’s in this nature that Shenmue III’s definitely successful at what it attempts to do, which is to provide a quality sequel to Shenmue II that delivers a similar experience and brings at least some closure to what fans were expecting.

It's the story, however, where Shenmue III surprisingly disappoints the most. Cutscenes are very rare, with much of the plot progressing through in-game conversations with other characters. When cutscenes do show up, they feel low-budget and amateurish. The villains all fail to generate any sense of presence, ranging from laughably un-threatening gang members (frustratingly referred to as “thugs” for the entirety of the game, a word that feels like it’s said hundreds of times and quickly becomes cringeworthy) to Chi You Men characters who spend almost the entire game off screen. Chai returns from Shenmue I but fails to justify his reappearance and definitely doesn’t live up to the iconic villain’s role in that game. Despite a shockingly anti-climactic introduction, Ren from Shenmue II is handled a bit better as Ryo’s partner in crime while in the big city, though he too isn’t allowed to leave the same lasting impression that he and other previous Shenmue main characters have had. Shenmue was certainly never something like Final Fantasy, but its characters in the past managed to elicit real emotions and leave a mark; for whatever reason, their adventures with Ryo in Shenmue III almost all feel hollow and forgettable. Things progress very little in the “grand scheme of things” by the time the credits roll, with a true howler of a cliffhanger ending that even as far as cliffhanger endings go doesn’t come close to the beautiful ways Shenmue’s I and II wrapped up their stories. It’s a horrible ending by almost any standard, and I’m really hoping for a Shenmue IV, if for no other reason than to have III’s terrible ending not be the last we see of the Shenmue world. QTE action scenes (where button prompts come up in the middle of cinematic chases or fights) happen only a small handful of times over the course of Shenmue III, though this turns out to be a blessing, as they’re all nearly impossible to pull off on the first attempt, with failing-and-memorization seemingly the only way to pass them. It’s disappointing, as the fights and QTEs were some of the best aspects of the previous installments, and they provided much-needed excitement and shook things up gameplay-wise. Here the fights are often where the game gets most of its challenge, and though leveling up makes sense as a way to progress through them in an RPG sense, it’s hard not to feel a sense of dread, rather than excitement, as a result when a fight does show up. Similarly, the less that’s said about the (thankfully only) two puzzles that make their way into Shenmue III, the better. They aren’t good.

Music is a surprising shortcoming in Shenmue III as well, as it’s an area where the series has always excelled. The vast majority of the songs here are re-used from Shenmue II. Though of course these are still great songs, and my heart actually ached when certain ones unexpectedly made an appearance, it takes away much of Shenmue III’s individuality, and reminded me of how incredible its predecessor was at almost every given turn. The handful of new songs created for Shenmue III on the other hand are the least memorable the series has seen, and all prove to be incredibly short and loop irritatingly frequently. It’s undoubtedly for budgetary reasons, which is why it hurts me to be tough on the game for this aspect, but given what a huge role music played in the first 2 installments, I couldn’t help but wish that some of the money that was spent on allowing you to open almost every drawer you see could have instead been spent on creating a full new soundtrack. Debuting in the early 2000s, Shenmue I and II understandably suffered from uneven, at times laughably poor, English voice acting. Shenmue III’s doesn’t reach those lows, though many of the performances do feel flat. Corey Marshall returns as Ryo, which is a great thing for posterity if nothing else. It’d have been nice if other English voice actors (some of whom were very vocal about wanting to return for Shenmue III) were included, or if the new actors had at least attempted to sound like the characters they were voicing. Japanese voices are also available, for those who prefer that.

There are a few other flaws that (similar to the QTE implementation) aren’t due to budgetary issues that I wish had been resolved or handled differently. You can’t skip through the dialogue when talking to NPC characters, which makes asking around occasionally feel like a chore. This is especially true in the city, where many of the NPCs you see wandering around actually can’t be talked to, which is a first for the series. Instead, you’re limited to interacting only with Niaowu’s many shopkeepers, forcing you to sit through their sales pitches before getting any info from them. The new gambling system, which requires you to use “tokens” which are exchanged for prizes, which have to then be sold at pawn shops for cash, feels unwieldy and unsatisfying, as the amount of money you ultimately take home from this 3-step process never feels like as much as I thought it was, taking a lot of the fun out of the gambling mini-games. The game doesn’t tell you whether you already own an item before purchasing it, causing me a ton of frustration when I spent over $1000 on a “new move” only to see that I already had it in my inventory. I wish food had either been less expensive or the exhaustion system had been more forgiving, and the final battle is disappointing, to say the least. The fact that you have to grind for money and win a series of tournament fights, not once but twice, over the course of the adventure is also a shame and feels very uninventive. As I type this, a patch has just been released (2 months after Shenmue III’s launch) which may or may not address a couple of these issues, but as usual, I’ve already long finished the game by this point, so it’s hard to see this as anything but too little, too late.

Moving back away from the negatives, though, Shenmue III does certainly look the part. Developed using Unreal Engine 4, the vistas and scenery are always beautiful. Though the environments ultimately don’t reach the level of detail and activity that Shenmue has previously featured, they still manage to impress, in a huge way, and it’s very hard not to feel the “Shenmue vibes” as you wander around. I did find the design mechanism in which Bailu Village slowly reveals itself to you to be jarring in a series that had previously offered complete freedom almost immediately, but it ends up working well, with the ability to explore more of the village always an exciting thing when it does pop up as the story goes on. In general, despite its flaws, which are plainly evident throughout, Shenmue III is a lot of fun. Progressing the story through detective work remains as satisfying as it did in the first 2 games, and the beautiful and bustling environments are still great to explore. The day and night system returns, albeit with a 9:00 PM curfew (why?) giving many, though not all, of the areas a cool scene when day changes to night.

Shenmue III is in the end a very tough game to review. It’s definitely no Shenmue II….that much is ultimately clear. It isn’t even Shenmue I, in many ways. These two games were made with very different resources and development teams, resulting in gaming experiences that were simply never going to be replicated in an independently-developed, Kickstarter-funded game. At what it is, however, Shenmue III exceeds expectations in many ways, and it’s incredibly surprising what Yu Suzuki and his small team managed to accomplish here. Though it has major shortcomings, including a disappointing story and soundtrack, along with botched QTEs and new features that feel determined to detract from the fun, there’s no denying that Shenmue III provides a beautiful, atmospheric, and in many ways satisfying sequel that manages to at least come close to living up to the nearly impossible expectations that were set upon it.

It’s hard not to wish that Shenmue III could have been the big budget, AAA follow-up that the first two entries deserved. But for what the game is, it delivers beyond what I think anyone could have reasonably expected. It’s far from perfect, but what we have here is a fun, polished, and epic adventure. It’s Shenmue, without a doubt. And that’s something that shouldn’t be taken for granted.

3.5/5

Note; this review is based on the PS4 version