For a console that’s been supposedly “dead” for the past 6 years, the Vita still to this day shows significant signs of life. With titles such as Stardew Valley, One More Dungeon, Secret Of Mana, Romancing Saga and many more on the way, the Vita shows no signs of slowing down and Xenon Valkyrie is just the stepping stone of what’s to come.

Story/Presentation

After a breif introduction, Xenon Valkyrie waste no time throwing you right into it’s pixelated world with it’s gorgeous visuals graphics and great audio. Once done gathering in the sights your left with a retro roguelike platformer that incorporates RPG elements which will have you get to the deepest part of the moon and finish the plans of The wicked witch. Xenon Valkyrie looks and run phenomenally on Vita but it’s also worth noting that playing on a PSTV can make the game look a bit unoptimized for big screen play. should be fixed with a day one patch.

Gameplay,

At the beginning of each stage you’ll start at the high point the map, dashing through enemies whilst making your way downward to a teleporter below in order to reach the next stage. Levels are randomly generated so there will never be one clear pattern of making it down of each Level. Think of it as a slower pace Spelunky.

Enemies/boss patterns are simple yet can prove to be difficult to attack with a short range melee weapon. Patience is key on completing every level as you’ll find yourself wanting to rush down as quickly as possible while only killing enemies in reach, paying little to no attention to your health bar. Playing this way could lead to frustration as you’ll find yourself dying multiple times.

Intsend the game will reward you if played with steady pacing, finding chests along the way, collecting XP, Coins and talent points. Which can be used to upgrade your character’s stats and buy new weapons.

They are 3 characters to choose from which one having thier own unique abilities. Fiddling around with them until you find a playing style that fits you will greatly help your experience. Rather if it’s Destroying the landscapes around, finding chests more easily or jumping high enough to reach certain places.

Having once played Xenon Valkyrie on PC I can honestly say that the Vita feels like a better match, as levels are can be completely in quick brusts and can be played as somethings to hop in and out if in between breaks or game titles you’re currently playing. Xenon Valkyrie manages to gets you engaged instantly with it’s perfect mixs of grinding and pacing.

Game Title: Yooka-Laylee
Developer: Playtonic Games, Team 17
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital Download
Battery Life: 3-4 hours
Download: 5.3 GB

Yooka-Laylee is a game with a wide history of hype, disappointment, fixing, and more. In the console world, it was the Banjo-Kazooie 3 that fans wanted to be great, but ended up being dragged down with a plethora of flaws, both technical and otherwise, upon the game’s launch on PS4, PC, and Xbox One.

In the handheld world, Yooka-Laylee being announced for the Nintendo Switch helped breathe new life into the game, with a hopeful fixed and optimized version on its way for console and handheld gamers alike. That, too, led to disappointment for some with the unnaturally-long amount of time and delays that hit the game before finally releasing on the eShop last week.

But, let’s cast aside disappointment and expectations so we can see what’s actually here. This is my Nintendo Switch Review of Yooka-Laylee!

Story

In the world of Yooka-Laylee, a large Bee known as Capital B sets his sights on taking over the corporate world by inventing a machine that will locate and steal every book on the planet in the aim of finding a magical book that allows its reader to shape and re-write reality as they see fit.

The original owners of the book, a lizard named Yooka and a bat names Laylee, find the book and its magical pages flying away, traveling and escaping into mystical Book Worlds inside Capital B’s Office Tower. Aiming to recover their lost book, Yooka and Laylee travel into the Book Worlds to collect all of the lost Pages and reassemble their book before Capital B can.

The premise of the game is a pretty decent setup, but what I enjoy the most out of the story are the tiny dialogue segments with Book World NPCs that reference all kinds of things, from crowdfunding and breaking the third wall to seeing famed indie game character Shovel Knight make appearances and giving Yooka and Laylee quests to carry out. It is a very comical game and all of those little segments are entertaining to see and read.

Gameplay

Being a game meant to recreate and mimic 3D Platformers of old, Yooka-Laylee is a 3D Platformer with combat and puzzle elements and a heavy Collectible System. Like its predecessor, Banjo-Kazooie, you travel through each world to solve puzzles and collect Pages to progress your way through the game.

Before we get into the meat of the game, let’s talk about this version of Yooka-Laylee. On the NIntendo Switch, you get a version specifically modified for the hardware and with all of the updates and fixes the other versions have gotten since release. So, diving in, you get the options to tone down voice mumbling, smoother frame-rate, improved camera controls, etc. This version also sports a SIngle Joy-Con Co-Op Mode, letting a second player jump in and point Player 1 towards objectives.

The basic premise of the gameplay is that you travel through a hub world and unlock worlds, which you can then dive into and explore in and of themselves. Every world has collectible currency used for enhancing your moveset and Pages, which are used to unlock new worlds or expand old ones to increase the amount of collectibles you can gather across the game. If you remember 3D Platformers from the Nintendo 64 like Super Mario 64 and the Banjo-Kazooie games, it’s exactly like how those games progressed, as it was designed to mimic them.

And on the idea of mimicing those older games, Yooka-Laylee definitely does one thing very well, which is making you feel like you’re playing a new Banjo Kazooie game. Everything about the game’s hub world, book worlds, moveset, and even how you fight your bosses feels like you’ve jumped back in time 19 years, but with more modern controls, moves more in tune with lizards and bats than bears and birds, and ease of access through the hub.

One thing I will say is that Yooka-Laylee does make you work for all of your rewards. This is not a game like Super Mario Odyssey where Power Moons were practically given to you just for waltzing down the main path. Every Page/Pagie in Yooka-Laylee has a puzzle behind it, be it a Boss Fight or a platforming challenge/race. That’s not to say the game is hard, but rather that it’s not a cakewalk like Odyssey was.

Another thing I want to go into is length. Hearing that the game only has 5 worlds to explore aside from the Hub World, I was worried that this would be an extremely short experience. However, I was pleasantly surprised to know that I was wrong. Although you can definitely do enough to unlock and dive through all 5 worlds in around 8-10 hours, the game’s final boss is hidden behind a 100-Page Door, which requires and encourages you to explore as much as you can instead of just power-racing through worlds.

With all of that exploration in mind, it took me around 18 hours before I was able to unlock the final boss fight, and well into my 20th hour before I managed to defeat the Final Boss and beat the game. That puts its length right around the same as the length of the original Banjo-Kazooie, despite BK having almost twice as many different worlds to explore.

Controls

Controlling the game isn’t that hard to do. The control scheme actually is pretty nice and is easily explained to you.

The Left Analog Stick is used for moving around and the Right Analog is used for moving the camera. The D-Pad / Arrow Buttons are used for taunts. All four triggers are used as well. ZL and ZR are used to set up special abilities like the rolling dash and flying abilities, while the R trigger is used to center the camera behind your character.

Then comes the face button control setup. B is used for jumping and A is used for using your tongue to grab onto power-ups or puzzle objects. X is used for stun attacks (once you learn them) and Y is used for physical attacks.

While this is all fun and all, the one thing I really don’t like about this game is its Camera. Yes, the camera controls have been significantly improved since its original launch, but the camera is still a huge hindrance on your progress. Very often, it will get stuck on objects in the environment and lock up your screen, removing your field of view and easily ruining many of the more technical platforming sections of the game.

I will not say it’s not better than it was, but it still has a long ways to go before it’s a comfortable camera system.

Presentation

Graphically, Yooka-Laylee looks pretty nice. In Docked/Console Mode, everything looks flawless with no jagged edges anywhere to be seen, while in handheld mode, there is the occasional jagged edge here and there. But overall, it looks very nice and colorful on the Switch.

Frame-rate has certainly improved on the Switch, with it mostly being kept around 30 frame per second. However, to say there are no frame drops would be a very big lie. There are a lot of frame drops across the game and they come in little freeze-like segments. It will be like you are roaming around and fighting off enemies and then the screen will freeze for a second and then resume. It is not excessive as I normally only say this maybe once an hour, but it’s still a little inconvenience and worth noting.

Battery Life

Battery Life is something I was curious about, considering the graphical smoothness of this game, but also with how hard the devs worked to optimize it for the Switch. I was thinking we’d get lower Battery Life, but I was pleasantly surprised. Here are my times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 15 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 18 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 23 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 52 minutes

This was more than I thought, and as with the above, you’ll get 3-4 hours out of each charge. That’s not too bad at all.

Game Title: Blossom Tales – The Sleeping King
Developer: Castle Pixel
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital Download
Battery Life: 4.5 – 6 hours
Download: 390 MB

There is something that can be said about interest in games not just from gameplay and images, but by game artwork / Key Art. I bring this up because there is a game recently made for the Nintendo Switch that appeals to Zelda fans as it is a game that would be referred to as a “Zelda Clone”.

However, what peaked my interest was seeing the game’s artwork of a young girl in anime-style art holding up a sword, ready to strike down monsters. After seeing that, I got interested in this little game called Blossom Tales and now I have a review copy, ready to give my thoughts on this game.

Here is my review of Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

Blossom Tales is told like a Fairy Tale. Two young children are sitting with their Grandpa one night, asking to hear a story they have never heard before.

So, he tells them a tale about a young Knight named Lily. Upon being Knighted, the King is attacked by a Dark Wizard, eternally put to sleep. To help recover the King before the Dark Wizard’s armies take over the kingdom, she ventures out into the world to gather secret ingredients to brew a potion and wake him.

Story in this game is actually one of its most unique features. In Zelda games, you mostly don’t get much story as you travel the world and dungeons, but Lily’s adventures are told by not only the Grandpa from the intro but the two children as well. This also ties into one of the gameplay systems, where you can manipulate how some story events unfold, based on how the kids change up the adventure as it is being told to them.

Gameplay

Blossom Tales is what many people would call a “Zelda Clone”. In essence, it is a top-down action-adventure game made in the vein of the old SNES Zelda title, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. You have an explorable overworld, dungeons to go through, tools to find for puzzles, bosses to fight. Really, it’s a game made to mimic that style of game, similar to Adventure Time: Secret of the Nameless Kingdom for the PS Vita.

The main progression of the game is around exploring the world map, divided into large squares. When you start the game, you go through a tutorial dungeon and are sent to the first story dungeon, then the second, then the third, etc. Like A Link to the Past and many other Zelda games of that type, it’s all about exploration. Exploring the map to find paths that will lead you to your objective.

There are some more modern touches to help with the exploration. Your next objective is always highlighted on the map to show you where you’re going, and there are Teleport Pads littered all over the map, so you can easily teleport to previous locations instead of having to backtrack all the way there all over again.

The rest is basic Zelda formula. Find the dungeon, solve puzzles, get a new tool, use said tool to solve puzzles, fight boss and then find the next dungeon. Even the combat plays exactly like Zelda. Sword Slashes, Spinning Sword Attack from a chargeup. Tools like Bombs and the Boomerang are here and are used remarkably like they do in Zelda.

In fact, sometimes it feels a little too much like Zelda. Adventure Time: Secret of the Nameless Kingdom was, too, but atleast it did have a fair amount of combat-oriented skills that differed from Zelda titles. Here, not so much. It feels like there’s too much Zelda and not enough unique elements.

That’s not to say it isn’t unique, though. One unique thing that does make this game stand out is the Storytelling System. For many combat events, the story will have the two children arguing over what Lily is fighting and the game allows you to choose between different enemy types to spawn in the event and even some Boss Events let you choose what boss is there to fight and that is an extremely interesting gameplay mechanic.

One thing I also want to mention is length. When I was playing Blossom Tales, I felt I was progressing through the game rather quickly, covering 2 of the 3 main dungeons in less than 2 hours of game time. Turns out I was. If you stick to the main quest and don’t do all the side-quests, you can easily beat the game in around 5-6 hours. Very different from the game’s page on Steam with its projected 15 hours of gameplay. That 15 is more for 100% Completionists rather than more casual players just wanting to experience the game’s plot.

Controls

Controlling the game is pretty simple, and to make it even easier, the first dungeon teaches you the controls and your equipped items always have the buttons next to them that uses them, so you won’t forget and accidentally drop a bomb instead of launching an arrow with your Bow.

Since this is based on a Super Nintendo title, you don’t use a lot of the game’s buttons. All four triggers basically have no use in the game. You can move around with the Left Analog Stick or the Arrow Buttons / D-Pad. A is used for slashing with your sword, while X and B are used for your equipped items.

And that’s pretty much it. It’s an extremely simple control scheme.

Presentation

Graphically, everything is set up like an SNES game. EVerything is 2D and sprite-based. The sprites are all smooth, but there’s intentional pixel lines for objects and whatnot. This was intentional and everything looks very polished. It’s really there to give that SNES Zelda feel.

Performance is all good, too. Load Times are maybe 2 seconds a piece and the frame-rate never drops. It really is optimized well, as it should for being a 2D SNES-style game.

Battery Life

Battery Life is one thing in this game that helps it shine. This is a 2D game and it is clear that the developers optimized it very well. Here are my Battery Times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 22 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 39 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 5 hours, 45 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 5 hours, 49 minutes

4-6 hours is a pretty nice Battery Range, so you’re gonna be able to play this game for a nice, long time on a single charge.

Game Title: Nights of Azure 2: Bride of the New Moon
DLC Title: Time Drifts Through the Moonlit Night
DLC Type: New Story Campaign / New Costumes
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Price: $8.99

Nights of Azure 2 is the first niche Gust title I have played on the Nintendo Switch and it was a fun experience to finally play the series in handheld form. After having played it through with the True End and the Extra Dialogue Sequence, I thought I had pretty much done everything the game had to offer.

This past week proved how wrong I was, when I was browsing Reddit and found out that it got not one, but two Story Expansions, in the form of new DLC. More than excited, I hopped onto the eShop, grabbed em, and have been waiting for my queue to open up so I could dive in and start the review process.

This was originally going to be a Double Review for both expansions, but since one was Paid DLC and the other Free, I am going to do them separates. Here is my review of the first Paid DLC for the game, Nights of Azure 2: Time Drifts through the Moonlit Night!

Story

I will try to keep this as Spoiler-Free as possible. I will make a note in the Video Review if it contains any particular spoilers for those who have not finished the base game.

Time Drifts takes place across nearly the entirety of the main quest, with quests from Chapter 2 all the way to right before the Final Boss. A Massive Boat falls from the sky, rocking the entire area and Aluche goes to investigate. Among many powerful Spirits that are forever tied to the world, she crosses blades with a shadowy spectre that looks just like her. Finding out that the Shadow is a tortured soul unable to move onto the Afterlife, Aluche chases after it to find out who they were and how she can help them.

The plotline of this expansion is intriguing as it is tied to the Moon Queen, herself, and answers questions about a couple things in the final dungeon that are mentioned but never really explained in the base game. From a lore perspective, it helps bring the player to a better understanding of why the Azure Moon Apocalypse is happening.

But let’s not just praise it for the sake of it being entertaining. This campaign stems from two dialogue segments that were in the game that were never explained. It almost feels like this should have been a part of the base game and not something that was released months after. I am not saying it ruins this expansion, but it kind of feels like the story was intentionally held back for the sake of releasing this arc as DLC.

Gameplay

The base gameplay formula is not changed by this DLC campaign, but rather it just adds new content to the game that was not there before, such as the cutscenes for the new story sections and whatnot.

As far as what is added here, there is 1 new dungeon that you can explore, known as the Drifting Ark. This place is used in the beginning and ending of this story arc, but it also serves another purpose. It contains 5 rooms, each with respawning versions of most of the game’s major Boss Fights, which creates a new and better way to exploit grinding for experience and levels in the harder difficulties and New Game Plus for those wanting to cap their stats.

The “Boss Rush” dungeon is for outside of this, though. The main task is going around and fighting the Shadow. You fight them a few different times, with them fleeing each time as you learn more about them and their ties to the Moon Queen. As such, you will want to make sure you’ve got New Game Plus or at least 5 spare days from Chapter 7 to use for each of its quests as you need to return to the Hotel between each of them.

As with most DLC Expansions, there is a certain degree of difficulty to these fights as well. While you can definitely win these boss fights around Level 25-30, there is a certain degree of strategy, as the Shadow moves and fights like Aluche does, and has a lot of knock-back attacks, making it very difficult to get close combos together without dodging well or using Rue’s Anti-Knockback Skill.

Now, as far as length goes, that’s one thing that I want to talk about, like I have with the expansions for the Shantae DLC Expansions. Time Drifts costs around $8, and contains around 2 hours of campaign time. This is if you are already in Chapter 7 and don’t spread it out across the campaign. While I did like the expansion, it isn’t that long for how much you pay for it.

This has been the case in all DLC Reviews I have done so far. I don’t know if this will be a big trend or I will need to adjust how I review expansions.

Game Title: The Coma ~ Recut
Developer: Devespresso Games
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital Download
Battery Life: 4.5 – 6 hours
Download: 1.0 GB

Horror Games on handhelds have been a bit of a debate for 2 generations now. We get some, occasionally, but not all that heavy. The PSP got a couple Silent Hill games and the DS got Dementium. Then the 3DS came and got some Resident Evil games and the PS Vita had a few indie horror titles.

So far, the Switch has a few horror experiences to its name, from Resident Evil to its fair share of the indie world. A new indie-type horror game has officially released on the Switch and, after many jump scares and tense nights reminiscent of Corpse Party, I am ready to review this title.

Originally on Steam as The Coma: Cutting Class, this is my review of The Coma: Recut for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

In The Coma, you follow a young Korean High School student who is often pushed around by the local bully and has a big crush on his bombshell of a homeroom teacher. His world is turned upside down when he finds a strange pendant and falls asleep during Exams, only to wake up in a twisted, demonic version of his school, being chased by a deranged version of his teacher out for his blood.

The Coma’s plot is an interesting part of the game and, in parts, reminds me of the original Corpse Party. There is a lot of lore and intriguing aspects of this world known as The Coma and its ties to the real world.

The only thing I don’t like is how abruptly it ended. As you explore the halls of The Coma, you hit a critical point in the story where you begin to find out why you’re in The Coma and a lot of lore seems like is about to be explained, but everything suddenly turns into “everything is falling apart. Hurry and leave” and you have a rushed-out ending that really doesn’t dive into those other elements at all. Even the True Ending just ends at that point, having a quick dialogue about why you get sucked into The Coma without properly explaining things.

Gameplay

The Coma is a side-scrolling survival horror game with puzzle elements akin to old horror games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil but closer in gameplay to games like Claire: Extended Cut. You run through side-scrolling environments, searching for key items and trying to make your way through the school.

Now, the Recut in the name does hint that this is not this game’s original form, and it isn’t. The Coma: Recut used to be The Coma: Cutting Class on Steam/PC. This is a remake of that game with new additions, like redone artwork, new animations, and a new Hide system to aid players in their trek through the monster-filled school.

When a lot of people think 2D and Horror, they think there is no way that game would be scary. After all, it’s just a side-scroller, right? That is where the beauty of the horror element comes into play. Across the entirety of the game, you are being stalked by a killer that looks like Ms Song, your homeroom teacher. Imagine her like Nemesis from Resident Evil 3 but worse. She can appear in any and all hallways and rooms and will come and find you if you stay in one room for too long.

She creates a lot of tension because you cannot fight back against her. Your only option is to run from her and hide in closets, lockers, or by using the new Hide feature. She will follow you, but if she does not spot you going into your hiding spot, she will look around for awhile, and then leave. This is a constant factor in the game, and the first several times you hear that intense, screeching music that signals that she sees you is really creepy and an effective means of jump scares that you know are coming eventually, but the random element means you never know when or where she will appear.

This is so tense because of the health system and the exploration system. Health-restoring items are very rare in the game, and there is a heavy emphasis on slowly navigating the halls of the school to find notes for clues to your objectives and key items littered around boxes and desks. So you need to slowly explore, but spend too long in one place and the bombshell of a killer will be hot on your trail, sending you into a mad dash for the nearest room with a hiding spot, hoping she is not between you and that room and that your stamina gauge doesn’t run out before you get there.

Sound is a key factor in all of this. Listening carefully will tell you clues on when your killer is nearby, and when she is gone. Little details like footsteps nearby can be a big indicator for “Hey, The Killer is close. Get ready to run”. And that attention to the eerily quiet environment adds to the horror feel and atmosphere.

As far as length is concerned, a single run through the game should take you at least 5-8 hours, probably more if you count all of the retries you will end up doing. After that, you have the ability to replay it for different endings, particularly going for the True Ending.

Controls

Controlling this game is pretty simple, for the most part, and every different action is shown to you through tutorial pop-ups.

The Left Analog Stick is used to move around, both in the school and in menus. The Right Analog Stick doesn’t really do anything, but the Arrow Buttons / D-Pad are used for a lot of the menus, like your Inventory, Map, and Current Objective. All of the triggers are used as well. L and R are used for hiding and using the flashlight. ZL is used for a Dodge Roll and ZR is used for Dashing/Running.

Finally, the face buttons. A is used for interacting with objects, and B is used for cancelling actions in the menu. X and Y are only used in the menus, and are used for discarding and cycling through items.

Presentation

Graphically, the game is designed in a 2D almost anime-like art style. All of the visuals look very crisp and very sharp as you play through the game. Although I don’t see much difference between the graphcis of Cutting Class and Recut, that isn’t a big deal since the Switch only has Recut.

Performance is mostly good as well, but I do have a nitpick that really bugged me while I played the game. Frame-Rate and Load Times are all really nice, but there is a significant amount of lag between button presses and some actions actually doing what they’re supposed to do. A lot of times, I will hit Up and it’ll be a couple seconds later that the map shows up. That is annoying but not really a big deal.

However, when you’re running for your life from The Killer and you get 2 seconds of lag between tapping A and your character going into a locker, that is a huge problem as that gives The Killer 2 extra seconds to spawn in the room and see you hide, making them run right to your hiding spot and slicing you up with their murder weapon.

Battery Life

As a 2D game, you can be hopeful about Battery Life. Here are my times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 13 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 26 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 5 hours, 45 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 5 hours 58 minutes

That’s a lot of Battery Life. With this in mind, you can get a large chunk of the game done on a single charge.

Game Title: Nights of Azure 2 ~ Bride of the New Moon
DLC Title: The Foreigner in a Wonderland of Sweets
DLC Type: Story Expansion / New Dungeon
Platform: Nintendo Switch (Also available on PS Vita in Japan)
Price: Free

DLC Reviews are something I’ve been thinking about for the past couple days, ever since I published Nights of Azure 2’s first DLC expansion in the form of a review. More specifically, I’ve been thinking about how I review DLC expansions and really, how much play time should be the required amount per money as far as judging a DLC goes. Granted, the Time Drifts campaign did score higher than the actual game, but I’ve deducted points for time in all DLC expansions I’ve reviewed so far.

Getting past that, a thought in the back of my head, let’s talk about the 2nd DLC Expansion for Nights of Azure 2. We got two Story Expansions in one day, and one of them was completely free of charge. We got the paid one out of the way, so let’s go into the DLC around Eleanor, Azure 2’s “Little Girl” character that looks like someone pulled straight from the Atelier universe.

Here is my review of Nights of Azure 2: The Foreigner in a Wonderland of Sweets!

Story

“The Foreigner” takes place right in the middle of the game’s plot. After you clear Chapter 4, a cutscene with Eleanor will trigger with her jumping off the walls upon discovering the famed “Land of Sweets”, a strange land made almost entirely of sweet food and rumored home to the a legendary ingredient said to make the world’s greatest Chocolate.

Practically begging to be taken there, Aluche agrees to explore this new land to help Eleanor find this legendary ingredient and fulfill her dream as a Chocolate conossieur to bake the ultimate chocolate.

The story of this campaign is entertaining, mostly because it is so different from the rest of the game. Instead of this dire, dark, dreary fight for the survival of the world, you are exploring dungeons with Cake Mountains and an enormous Candy Factory that looks like it was taken right out of the world of Willy Wonka. It’s cute and really gives an Atelier vibe.

Gameplay

Just like the previous campaign, there aren’t many changes to the gameplay system, although this campaign’s Major Boss does add a new Cover system in it’s environment. But you’re still using the same combat system and still roaming dungeons like you normally would.

As far as content goes, The Foreigner adds a new dungeon, new enemies, a new gameplay mechanic, and a new boss. The dungeon, Phantom Dolce Terra (otherwise known to Eleanor as the Land of Sweets), is significantly larger than the previous campaign’s Drifting Ark and is more like a proper dungeon than a small hub for a Boss Rush Mode.

However, the neatest part of this dungeon is the new mechanic it gives. As you explore the various environments within the dungeon, the “Popcorn Machine” from the Candy Factory will constantly go off, trying to repel you from the premises. Just as it sounds, you will constantly have giant kernels of popcorn raining down from the sky that can stagger and damage you, giving you an extra bit of strategy while fighting off enemies. There are environmental effects as well, like Chocolate Fountains giving allies and enemies the Slow/Freeze status ailment while walking through it.

The final piece of the puzzle and another bit of uniqueness and strategy, is the campaign’s boss. When you’re in the final area of Phantom Dolce Terra, you have giant graham crackers that pop out of the ground for you to use as cover, which is built around the boss. You can’t walk up to the boss and start slashing like any other boss fight. It constantly pelts you with bullets, leaving you to do some tricky dodge maneuvers just to reach them, or use the moving graham crackers as cover as you slowly make your way towards them.

On all of this, it’s funny because as far as sheer content goes, it adds a lot more uniqueness than the paid DLC did. Time Drifts added a bunch of story scenes, but really, the only new aspect was the Drifting Ark and the encounters with the Shadow. This one adds quite a bit more uniqueness to the game.

Although that is balanced through this campaign’s length. The Foreigner can be completed in 2 18-minute treks into Phantom Dolce Terra. I believe across the story scenes, prep, and the actual dungeon-crawling, I managed to complete this story arc in around 25-30 minutes. It adds more content to the game, but not more play time. Once you get to the final area of the dungeon and beat the boss, it’s basically over. No quests in other dungeons. No follow-up after you beat the boss.

I may sound like a broken record at this point, but despite being free, a 25-minute expansion for a 25-hour RPG just isn’t very long, especially considering 20 of those minutes are you on a fetch quest to unlock a door.

Game Title: Arcade Archives – Vs Super Mario Bros.
Developer: Nintendo, Hamster
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital Download
Battery Life: 4 – 6.5 hours
Download: 69.8 MB

There is a fair chunk of the Nintendo Switch fanbase that are raving but also complaining about this week’s addition to the Nintendo eShop. Super Mario Bros from the late 1980s finally came to the Switch, so owners of the hybrid system can play the original game, sort of. It was not Nintendo that produced these ports, but Hamster, the company responsible for all of the Arcade Archive games that have been releasing on the Switch.

As you would expect, the NES version is not the version that released, but the Arcade version of the game, named Vs Super Mario Bros. That’s where the divided opinions come from. It is Super Mario Bros, but at the same time, it is different.

But, let’s get to it so you know just what this is and what it entails. Here is my review of Arcade Archives: Vs Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

The story of Super Mario Bros has always been simple, but here is where it has been its simplest. Bowser kidnapped Princess Peace and Mario & Luigi head out through the Mushroom Kingdom to rescue her by searching all of Bowser’s Castles to find the Real Bowser and the Princess.

Story was always light in the NES Mario games, and the Arcade version is no different. You get scenes with Toads in each of the Castles, but nothing beyond that. It’s pretty much all gameplay.

Gameplay

Just like the NES original, VS Super Mario Bros is a 2D platformer with combat elements thrown into the mix. Jumping into a game has you platforming through 8 worlds and fighting off Goomas, Koopas, Lakitus, and more. In that regard, not a thing has been changed between these two versions of Super Mario Bros.

Just like Metal Slug 3, this game has the same Arcade Archive enhancements as that game. That means you can play through the game in its original form, or you can do so in High Score Mode and Caravan Mode, two extra game modes that put emphasis on scores rather than taking it easy to beat the game, especially since one of those modes makes you play with only a 5-minute timer. It also includes customization options, like difficulty settings for lives and the in-game timer and the ability to make Save States.

But let’s not forget that this game has many differences from the original NES Super Mario Bros. “VS” is known as the more difficult game, modified for arcades, no doubt, to get more of your quarters back in the late 1980s. Many stages in the game are replaced by more difficult ones found in Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels and many other stages are modified so that power-ups and platforms are a little more difficult to reach.

But let’s not overdramatize this situation. It is more difficult, but savor a few stages, the game remains to be a relatively casual platforming experience. World 6 has some very tricky platforming in it, but pretty much the rest of the game is not going to test your patience, unless you’re new to platformers. The ability to make Save States at any point of the game makes it even easier to manage those difficult sections. If anything, it provides a nice little challenge for those who never played this in arcades and/or never played The Lost Levels.

Keeping this in mind, you’re playing the same game. You can use Mario for Player 1 and Luigi for Player 2 and put in as many “credits” as you wish for continues, since the Switch has a button for inserting coins instead of a coin slot like Arcade Cabinets do. And playing the game is the same song and dance as always. Jumping around environments, breaking blocks for coins and power-ups, and stomping on enemies until you take on Bowser in the Castles.

Now let’s talk about the big kicker for these Arcade Archive titles: Price and Length. Lots of people know that Super Mario Bros is not a long game. In fact, I would be shocked if it took anyone who’d played platformers before longer than 2 to 2 and a half hours to finish Worlds 1-8, even without using the hidden Warp Points to skip worlds. With Save States being a thing, I would say a single run shouldn’t take more than 2 hours, at the most.

So, we are sitting on a 2 hour experience and a price tag of 8 dollars for the US eShop Customers. I feel like I’m always talking about games costing more than they should for the play time you’re getting, but I have to stress it again. It was the same when Mario Bros came via Arcade Archives and although SMB does have more length than Mario Bros, it’s still only 2 hours for 8 bucks.

Controls

Arcade Archive games can be pretty confusing with controls. Once you get into your game, things play similarly to how their other versions play, but getting to that point can be a bit of a hassle. Since they’re emulating an Arcade Cabinet, there are mechanics for starting the game with Inserting Coins. The devs did not remove these from the game, so when you are at the SMB title screen, hitting almost every button on the system won’t do a thing.

Now let’s get into these controls. The L trigger is used to Add Credits to the game, which lets you get ready to start a new game, and the R trigger is used to initiate that game after you’ve put in however many credits you want. This has always been confusing, because the game doesn’t really tell you how to do this. You just kind of hit buttons until one does something.

Once you get into the game, though, it’s pretty simple. This is a 1980s title, after all. A is used for jumping and Y is used for running. Though I won’t lie and say this is terribly comfortable. I actually went and set B as Jump so the two buttons were closer together with how much the game relies on running jumps for long gaps.

Then you have the D-Pad for moving around along with the Left Analog Stick. Finally the Plus and Minus buttons bring up the Emulation Options. It’s a game that is simple to control, but at the same time, it is made more complicated than it should be.

Presentation

Graphically, I don’t know what to say about this game. It looks good, but at the same time, it looks bad. First of all, let’s talk about the game’s resolution. By default, it is shown in a 4:3 display with borders around the actual game screen. This can be moved to be Full-Screen, but that has it’s own set of pros and cons.

No matter what Filter you use, using this game in Fullscreen Mode looks blurry and very hard on the eyes in TV Mode / Docked Mode. Every time I run it on TVs, big or small, my eyes strain and hurt as I play the game. On the Flip Side, this orientation looks really good in handheld mode, where I have no eye-strain whatsoever. So, the basics is that you need to use 4:3 in Docked Mode, Fullscreen in Handheld Mode.

Performance-wise, there’s not really a lot to complain or nitpick. The sound bug from the NES Original is here where the music cuts out when sound effects like coins and blocks breaking happens, but outside of that, the performance works pretty well.

Battery Life

Being such an old, simple game, Battery Life is really nice for this game. Here are my times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 18 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 49 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 6 hours, 13 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 6 hours, 35 minutes

Given this information, you can actually beat the game up to 3 times with a single charge. You get loads of Battery Life with this game.

Game Title: RBI Baseball 17
Developer: MLB Advanced Media
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital Download
Battery Life: 2.45 – 3.5 hours
Download: 3.4 GB

Baseball games on handhelds have been pretty rare these days, and are more rare than they used to be. The last baseball game I reviewed was MLB 15: The Show for the PS Vita and, since then, no new MLB The Show games have hit Sony’s handheld system. Even more troubling for baseball fans is that MLB 15 is no longer on the PlayStation Store so you can’t even buy it anymore, due to it being a digital-only title.

So, where does that leave us? You’ve got Baseball Riot on PS Vita from 10 Tons Games, but that’s an indie puzzle game, like Tennis in the Face. In Sports Fans eyes, it’s not a real baseball game or a baseball sim.

The answer is on the Nintendo Switch. From MLB Advanced Media, an official partner company with the MLB, itself, released its most recent RBI game on the Switch, which had previously released on the PS4 and other consoles. Being the only real handheld baseball sim to play, we should take a look.

Here is my review of RBI Baseball 17 for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

Due to this game having no story, this section shall remain blank.

Gameplay

RBI Baseball 17 is an arcade-style baseball game. Much like the PlayStation franchise, MLB The Show, you go into baseball games and simulate as you have for years, with controlling batters trying to hit and score and pitchers that try to strike out as many players as possible.

The first thing we need to look at is the first thing that the game will disappoint you with: Game Modes. When you go into the game, you have 3 Game Modes to choose from, but in reality, it is only 2 game modes disguised as 3. You have Exhibition, which lets you play a single game, and Season / Post-Season, which lets you play through an entire season of games with the options of doing 25 games or 16.

But don’t let the game fool you. Season and Post-Season are the same game mode with two different names. You get the same menus and the same games when you play either mode, so you may as well not even have Post-Season as an option.

Now, when diving into a game, it’s pretty straight-forward. You can either simulate the game, which automatically skips the game and uses AI to decide the score, or play the game. When playing the game, you go back and forth between the role of a Batter or Pitcher, so you hit incoming balls or throw the incoming balls.

Of course, you do occasionally swap roles. When the opponent hits a ball you throw, you control the nearest player to where the ball is going to try to catch and toss it, but you mostly play as the Pitcher and Batter.

And that’s pretty much it. My biggest complaint is the lack of features. I compare the game to MLB The Show 15 for PS Vita, which came out a few years ago and, even then, was feature-stripped compared to the PS3 and PS4 versions of that game. Despite being stripped of features, it had a ton of features and options that RBI doesn’t have, like Custom Characters, Home Run Derby, Playing Real Games, and more.

The most prominent feature missing in RBI is Online Multiplayer. The game definitely supports local multiplayer when you go into Exhibition Mode, but the long-awaited Online Multiplayer Game Mode that was added to other consoles back in March of this year is nowhere to be found in the Switch version of the game.

That’s about all I can really say about the game’s gameplay. The control style for the game certainly had a learning curve to it when it comes to knowing when and how to hit and throw balls, but all baseball games are like that. I found it no different from learning how to feel out playing the MLB The Show games.

Since this is also a sports sim, length is hard to gauge. But, let’s talk about a typical Season in Season or Post-Season Mode. One Season uses up 25 games in its default setting. A single inning normally takes around 5-10 minutes or so, depending on skill. So, we clock that as around 45-90 minutes per game. Throw in 25 games and that’s a minimum of around 18-20 hours for a single season. If doing a whole season is your definition of finishing the game, it’ll take you quite a bit of time to do so. While there is no real end-game reward for doing that, it’s difficult to see any other way of “beating the game”, since that’s all you can really do.

Controls

The control scheme for the game is pretty simple and clear, considering the game shows you how to do pretty much everything via on-screen tutorials as you get to various scenarios as you play the game. Plus, you can reset the control tutorials in the Options if you ever forget how to do something.

The Left Analog Stick is used for moving your character around to set up your pitches/swings as well as to angle those same actions once you start them. The L and R buttons allow you to substitute players or see player info from the other team. Finally, the face buttons are used for either stealing or throwing to bases, while B is used for throwing the ball or swinging.

All in all, it’s pretty simple.

Presentation

As far as graphics go, I don’t know what to tell you. We are getting to the point with the Switch where jagged edges sometimes are not even a problem to be looked at, but details. All of the character models and environments in RBI 17 look pretty flawless. No jagged edges anywhere. However, the actual detail of the characters and uniforms have much to be desired.

When you see a character mode, their shirt is plain white instead of having accurate uniform designs, and it just all around has basic detail to it. In comparison, games like Madden NFL 13 and MLB The Show 15 on the PS Vita, a significantly weaker handheld system, have a lot more details than this game does.

As far as performance goes, I have no complaints. FPS is good. Load TImes don’t take too long.

Battery Life

How do you gauge Battery Life for a sports game? Well, one thing is for certain. This version’s lack of Online does mean you can get by only using Airplane Mode when you’re in Handheld Mode. Here are my Battery Times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 46 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 54 minuts

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 24 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 38 minutes

Given this info, you can get up to three and a half hours of Battery Life out of this game. That’s not too bad, and with how bright the game is for Day Games, you can lower the brightness a good bit without worrying about not seeing what’s going on.

Game Title: Romancing SaGa 2
Developer: Square Enix
Platform: Nintendo Switch / PlayStation Vita
Availability: Digital Download
Battery Life: 5 – 8 hours
Download: 1.4 GB (Switch) / 383 MB (Vita)
PSTV Support: No

The Saga series is a franchise that is not often seen in the Western World. A good third of the franchise never left Japan, including the more recent SaGa: Scarlet Grace, made exclusively for the PS Vita handheld.

However, one of the older titles recently got a localization via Mobile platforms and was then ported to several current systems, including two handheld consoles that I heavily support on this website. It took a long time to get the game, but we finally got it.

Coming from the 1990s era of RPGs, here is my review of both the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation Vita versions of Romancing SaGa 2!

Story

Long ago, there were Seven Heroes who saved the world and were prophesized to return one day. You play as the ruler of the kingdom of Avalon in a world where the Seven Heroes do, indeed, return, but resurrected as Demons, bent on World Conquest. You must fight them off as they appear, from generation to generation, to protect the world from their Evil.

The thing that makes this game’s plot unique is its use of Generations. The Seven Heroes appear after long time-frames, each challenges by the different heirs of the Throne of Avalon, giving you several different parties of characters to see continuing to maintain the kingdom, along with the fact that you can choose different heirs for different time periods, having branching story paths that aren’t always the same each time you play through the game.

Gameplay

Romancing SaGa 2 is a turn-based RPG with some light Town Sim elements thrown into the mix. Over the course of the game, you will be exploring dungeons and fighting off enemies, but also managing the funds your kingdom has and what advancements you an make using those funds.

First of all, this is an enhanced port of the original, or a remake to some. When you begin the game, you are given the option of playing the game in its vanilla format from the 90s or with Additional Content, which includes an Auto-Save Feature, and extra post-game content not found in its original release.

When you are going through the game, there is a lot to think about. You have a party of characters during each generation as you develop Avalon and fight off against the Demonic Seven, and you have Avalon, which has a set amount of funds that you can dedicate to researching different aspects of skills, magic, and gear to help you as you fight off monsters and enemies.

This is important because of the Life Point system. Unlike other RPGs, your characters can die, permanently. Whenever they get wiped out in a fight, they lose a point of their LP stat. When that LP stat hits 0, they are permanently dead and cannot be revived by any means. If the Emperor’s stat hits 0, however, you get a Game Over. Even if your other party members are still alive and you have a rare LP-restoring potion, the Main Character dying is the end of the game.

Of course, this is assuming you researched the game and know this happens. If you don’t, you will have a nice character death pop up on you because with all of these detailed gameplay systems comes not a single tutorial or pop-up to let you know your characters can perma-die or that bosses get harder the more you level.

So you think to yourself that all you need to do is grind, but that can actually make the game harder. If you remember Final Fantasy VIII’s little unspoken rule that monsters level up with you, the Main Bosses of Romancing SaGa 2 do this as well. The higher your level, the higher the boss’s level and the harder they will be to take down. So, there is a very high emphasis on equipment and skills over just grinding out levels and trying to max out your stats.

Now, let’s get to combat and difficulty. Combat is pretty straight-forward as a Square RPG. It is turn-based and each character chooses skills or attacks for their turn’s action. That is Final Fantasy 101.

Difficulty, though, is different. SaGa is known to many as the “Hard” version of Final Fantasy, and that is very true in this game. The game’s difficulty spikes a lot, and in a very unbalanced way. You have constant difficulty spikes and the spikes are never similar to one another. It just randomly spikes a little bit or by an enormous margin and has no flow or pattern to it. It makes the game frustrating and causes you to constantly go to your menu and save at almost every twist and turn.

Now, when all is said and done, Romancing SaGa 2 is a very long game. Across the entirety of several generations of party members and taking down all of the Seven, you will be spending around 40 hours or so. Despite being over 20 years old, it takes play time and still stands with handheld RPGs of this day and age.

Controls

The controls for this game are nothing too extensive. It is worth noting that the PS Vita version of this game is NOT compatible with the PlayStation TV. So, if you want the game on the go and the TV without having to buy the PS4 version and use Cross-Save, you will have to hop over to Nintendo and grab the Switch version.

As far as controlling the game is concerned, the two control schemes are not all that different. Moving around is done with the D-Pad or Left Analog Stick. The Start or + button is used for pausing the game and the Triangle/X button is used for accessing and closing the main menu.

The main difference is this. On the Switch, A is used for selecting options in menus and interacting with NPCs and B is used for canceling options. On the Vita, these two are swapped,. X is used for selecting and Circle is used for canceling. This is a typical case of the Nintendo control scheme vs PlayStation control scheme.

Presentation

Visually, the game looks like it did back in the 90s. You have a 2D retro graphics engine to retain the game’s original look as well as to showcase the age of the game for those unaware that it originally released in Japan over 20 years ago.

As far as performance differences are concerned, fps is perfect across both versions of the game. The only difference is Load Times, with the Switch loading battle and areas significantly faster than the PS Vita. To cite a view examples that I timed:

Load to the Title Screen

Switch – 15 seconds
Vita – 25 seconds

Start a Random Encounter Battle

Switch – 1 Second
Vita – 4 Seconds

None of these times are that bad, even that 25 second startup time for the Vita, but it is a difference, nonetheless.

Battery Life

This is a very basic game and, for the Switch owners wanting something to really max out their Battery, this is that game. Here are my record-setting Battery Times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 5 hours, 04 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 5 hors, 30 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 7 hours, 21 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 8 hours, 00 minutes

That’s right. Romancing Saga 2 can get your Switch up to 8 hours of Battery Life, a good 2 hours over the total expected Battery Life from Nintendo, themselves.

Game Title: Tokyo Tattoo Girls
Developer: Nikkatsu Company, NIS America
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Availability: Retail | Digital
Download: 772 MB
PSTV Support: No

Tokyo Tatto Girls is a game that sounds really interesting because it is so different. A game about tattoos is something I’ve not seen in handheld games before, and all of the art and characters just have that cute, anime look that’s made me want the game for quite some time now. Unfortunately, not receiving a review copy from NIS America along with the Boom of the Nintendo Switch has delayed my owning and reviewing of the game.

Upon finding the game on PSN for a measly $19.99, though, I grabbed it, played it, and am ready to give you my thoughts. So, all of you Tattoo Masters out there, here is my review of Tokyo Tattoo Girls for the PS Vita!

Story

A horrible disaster has struck the city of Tokyo, Japan, leaving only young female girls in the city to suffer its fallout. However, the disaster turns out to be a blessing in disguise when strange Tattoos appear on the girls’ bodies, granting them supernatural abilities and powers. Having been sealed off from the rest of the world, the girls begin to make Clans in different sections of the city and run their own Crime Syndicates to create a new life, behind the impenetrable barrier that traps them away from the rest of the world.

In the midst of this New Order, you appear as a Tattoo Artist, partnering with a young girl with a blossoming tattoo, aiming to escape from Tokyo by the only means necessary: Conquering the 23 Wards of the city and banding everyone together to escape from their prison.

I was intrigued by the story scenario at first, but even with this incredibly serious and dark story setting, it just doesn’t keep the atmosphere after that initial introduction. Every time you meet a Crime Boss, they are just young girls doing normal things, like inviting you to a tea party, discussing the beauty of the body, or reading books in a library.

Tying that in with the fact that most of your Partner Choices are less-than-serious girls that strive to be in romantic pornos to try to find their grandparents or little girls that just want to collect cute things, you just forget that the game is trying to be serious and it turns into a cutesy anime about young women somehow taking control of Tokyo through the power of Cuteness, Fashion, and Modeling.

Gameplay

Tokyo Tattoo Girls is labeled as a strategy game with some light Visual Novel elements thrown into the mix. Across the game, you’ll be doing an RTS-style of invasion across the World Map and encountering Clan Bosses through VN-style dialogue choices.

The game works by you invading a territory in Tokyo, and spreading your invasion to eventually own the entire city, not so different from the basic concept of the Empires Game Mode in the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors “Empires” games. However, the gameplay aspect is watching and maintaining the surrounding Wards to make sure they don’t attack you too often.

This is done through the use of commands and PM, the game’s currency. Across the game, you have an “Honor” Gauge, which will decrease as you anger rival clans and provoke them into attacking you, losing fights over turf, among other things. You use your PM to issue commands to prevent this from happening. Commands can be as simple as lowering the Alert status in a specific Ward for a set amount of time, preventing Wars from breaking out for awhile by having Peace Talks, or by using PM to create new Tattoos on your Partner to raise their own stats and speed up the process by which you conquer each Ward.

The Tattoo feature is the game’s core theme, as Tattoos grant magical powers in the world of TTG. They are easily the most expensive usage of your PM, but the most useful. As you enhance your girl’s back with new tattoos, her stats will increase, making it easier to conquer Wards and easier to recruit enemy groups to your side of this Clan War.

The strategy comes into the fact that you only gain so much PM per day as well as the fact that commands have cooldown time before they can be used again. Each day that passes also increases Alertness and Tension with surrounding, unconquered Wards. To expand on this further, the more territories you claim, the more territories around those will become hostile, making you worry about using commands to calm a couple wards to trying to calm up to a dozen at one time.

Once you get to the Conquer Phase for each Ward, you enter a Boss Fight, which isn’t really a Boss or a Challenge because you are not capable of losing to any Clan Boss. You automatically win over every single one of them. The only challenge is picking the more correct of the 3 dialogue choices for why you’re invading their territory to get the best result out of them. It is not unlike choosing the correct dialogue option in a Dating Sim to get the most Affinity Points out of the event. You can’t lose, but choosing a better option grants you special artwork and recovers a section of your Honor Gauge, making it easier to manage your way through the rest of the game.

The bad thing about this is that, outside of issuing commands, there is no challenge to the game and, in some sections, it’s debatable as to whether there is even a game to play at all. You could easily just leave the game alone for the first half of each playthrough and not do a single thing, outside of dialogue choices for the Clan Bosses and you’d be nowhere near the Game Over Point by the time more territories started getting hostile. It’s almost like a Clicker Game where you get no sense of difficulty or interactivity until you’re halfway through the entire game.

And that’s another thing to make note of. This game doesn’t cost much, having a price point of 20 dollars, though it makes you wonder why a game would have a seemingly-permanent price drop from 30 to 20 less than 2 months since it released as a brand new game. The reason for that is most likely tied to its length. A single run through the game on the game’s normal speed (there is normal and a faster speed) will last you maybe 2 hours. Perhaps 3 hours if you do the higher difficulties and spend a significant amount of time in the menus, doing tattoos, looking through the gallery, etc.

To put it bluntly, it’s an extremely short game. While you do have the option of replaying the game with end-game rewards from previous playthroughs, those enhancements will also only server to make the game even simpler and shorter in length, leaving those plays mostly to do quick runs to learn about the other playable characters.

Controls

One thing I have to stress is that this game is not compatible with the PlayStation TV, and this is a big problem. Not being compatible and being touch-heavy is not a problem, but the game is advertised by NIS America and by the game’s own box art as being compatible. 2 months in, there’s been no patch to enable this functionality, so at the point we’re at now, it’s false advertising to the PSTV Community and that is a problem, especially coming from NISA, whom has always been good about enabling that functionality.

As far as controls go, it’s pretty simple once you figure it out. Everything in the game be used with the touch screen, though everything can also be used with the physical controls. You can use the D-Pad to navigate across the map and menus, while the two Analog Sticks can hover the map around on the screen, if any part you want to see if covered up by something. The L and R triggers are used as well, to modify the time settings (Normal Flow, Paused, Fast Flow).

The rest is done with the face buttons. X confirms and interacts with the selected options/ward, and Circle cancels options. Square takes you to your HQ to create new tattoos, and Triangle pulls up information about the different wards. The only thing I cannot figure out how to do with buttons is pulling up the Command List.

Of course, there’s another issue with controls, a lack of a tutorial/explanation. While there is a tutorial to showcase how the battle flow goes, with Alertness, Conquering Bosses, and Issueing Commands, none of the actual controls are explained, leaving you in an RTS situation button-mashing and tapping all over to try to figure out how to do what you want to do.

Presentation

This section is definitely what I’m most pleased with. Graphically, everything is in 2D, but all of the artwork is beautifully done and looks wonderful on the Vita’s portable screen.

Performance is good as well. Load Times are almost instant, no frame-drops. It is, all around, a smooth experience. As it should be, considering the only “renders” in the game are 2D artwork pieces of the characters.

App Title: Hulu
App Type: Video Streaming
Availability: United States
Battery Life: 4-5 hours
Download: 37.5 MB

App Reviews are something I have long-since looked past, especially considering the PS Vita has not gotten a new app in a long time, and the Nintendo Switch has been very slow to get popular media apps, like Hulu Plus or Netflix.

In reality, the Switch got one of these apps almost 2 months ago today. Hulu surprised the entire Switch community when their app showed up on the United States eShop. I’d originally intended to review it right away, but with DOOM out the very next day, it easily got lost in the dust of Doom Fever.

Now that I’ve been hitting reviews much harder as well as having cleared the majority of my backlog, I’m ready to discuss the newest iteration of the famed streaming app. Here is my review of Hulu for the Nintendo Switch!

Design

The app’s design is up to date with other versions of Hulu. Upon launching the app, you will notice that the most recent design overhaul for Hulu Plus on other systems, like Smart TVs and the Xbox One is mirrored in the Switch’s app. It’s worth noting that the PS Vita / PlayStation TV’s Hulu app has yet to receive this new update.

The biggest thing Switch owners will notice is that Hulu does not pop up in your Play Activity. While I am no expert on the inner-workings of the Switch’s UI, it seems that Hulu completely skips choosing accounts/profiles and goes straight into the Switch’s settings to detect your region. This is a bit of a downer for non-North American users, as you cannot pop in an NA account to fool Hulu into thinking you are in North America.

As far as the actual UI goes, you’ve got several tabs across the top to associate with Recommended, Shows/Movies you’ve been watching, Genres, Searching, and Your Profile, plus different categories in the same format below. It brings a very fancier look than its past incarnations, which required signifcant amount of scrolling to get to various genres when you aren’t sure what you want to watch next.

There is one downside to the design of the Switch’s app, though. When you take your system into Handheld Mode, you have the physical buttons on the system to navigate, but there is no sort of touch-oriented control scheme, which all prior handheld versions of pretty much every streaming app have to work with. To drive this point even further, the other streaming app on the Switch, the Nico Nico app, is fully supported by touch controls, so there’s a question on why Hulu doesn’t have it.

Performance

Performance on handheld streaming apps has been known for being very laggy and freeze-happy. The great thing about this app is that it is seamless and runs very smoothly. Due to not choosing a profile, it launches less than a second after you select it from the interface and takes less than 10 seconds to pull up the UI, log you in, and bring up the Lineup of TV Shows and Movies for you to start streaming.

The same seamlessness is present when you’re actually streaming content. Once you start a show, things take over in full-screen and you have your video start to play. In both Handheld Mode and Docked Mode, the video quality of this is very crisp and clear, unlike the lackluster quality of the Nintendo 3DS’s streaming apps.

All in all, with performance, you’ve got a stable, smooth, and high-quality Hulu app on your TV and on the go.

Battery Life

As always, let’s go into the Battery Life of this app. Obviously, you must have Wi-Fi enabled to stream from Hulu’s servers, so we’ll skip the Airplane Mode tests as they wouldn’t make any sense, considering you want Battery time for streaming, not sitting at a menu. Here are my times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 13 minutes
Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 5 hours, 16 minutes

This is pretty good. On a single charge, you’ll get a good 4-5 hours of streaming time. Plenty of time to watch several TV episodes or a couple movies.

Game Title: Brave Dungeon + Dark Witch’s Story Combat
Developer: Inside System
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital Download
Battery Life: 4 – 6 hours
Download: 872 MB

When The Legend of Dark Witch graced the PS Vita with its presence, I had a blast playing it, and really wish its two sequels had also come over. Due to that and the mass interest in the Switch since March of last year, I have never gotten around to booting up my New 2DS XL to grab Legend of Dark Witch 2 and 3 to play through.

Though that isn’t to say I haven’t played any other games of the series. There have been two spin-off titles from the Legend of Dark Witch series, and both of them are available to play on the Nintendo Switch. The first is Rudymical, the Dark Witch Rhythm Game, though I have only played the demo of that title.

The other, however, is a dungeon-crawling RPG and really scratched my RPG itch while letting me avoid the grind-fest that is where I am in Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Now that I have completed the game, it is time to review it. First released on the 3DS and now on the Switch with new content, here is my review of Brave Dungeon + Dark Witch’s Story: Combat!

Story

Brave Dungeon tells a tale similar to that of The Legend of Dark Witch. A mysterious item known as Syega appeared in the world that allows human to use magical powers. To go away from the main series storyline, Syega is often channeled and trapped within artifacts known as Magic Items to enable humans to use their abilities without being overwhelmed by the magical energy and those items are hidden in labyrinths found all over the world.

The game revolves around a Treasure Hunters named AI, who travels through the world’s dungeons with the goal of going to the bottom floor of the legendary dungeon Godshill, which no one has ever done.

The only downside here is that the story is pretty light. You are given some intro scenes and some brief scenes before each major boss, but there is a lot of untapped potential, given that all of your party members are previous boss characters from the main series that could’ve been fleshed out in the game, but instead remain silent party members that are just there. If you’re new to the series, you’d never know they aren’t just randomly-generated characters.

Gameplay

This game is actually a collection of two games, so you have to look at them separately. You first have Brave Dungeon, which is a turn-based dungeon crawling RPG. Then, you have Dark Witch’s Story: Combat, which is a card-based game that uses a Rock, Paper, Scissors mechanic to showcase automamous battles.

First of all, what is here in the Switch version that wasn’t in the 3DS version? By getting the game on the Switch, you get a few new party members, including Neville from The Legend of Dark Witch 3, and the whole Dark Witch’s Story: Combat game is completely new as well.

Let’s dive into Brave Dungeon first. The progress of the game takes you back and forth between the 5 dungeons the game offers and the base of operations, where you can customize and enhance your party members.

Let’s start by explaining combat. This is a very light RPG, giving you Skill Points that replenish after every battle called Capacity. In battle, you regenerate a little capacity each turn, and using any skill uses a certain amount of Capacity. Later on in the game, this gets more strategic as you learn skills that have much higher capacity costs and cannot be used very often. The exception is the Revenge / Ultimate Attack. If you get attacked enough, you can use your character’s Revenge Attack, which is basically their Ultimate Attack, always being a super-powerful attack that can either do mass damage to the opposing party or supports/heals your own party.

Like most RPGs, you gain EXP as you fight and will eventually level up. However, leveling only really increases your HP, making you head back to town to spend money on various facilities to increase your other stats. This includes spending to increase their stats manually, creating materials and accessories from your inventory items to enhance them, and trading materials to the Quest Merchant at the Inn for Lunch Money, which is used to randomly increase the stats of one of your party members.

There is also the Magic Item system, which is part of the intro’s story. With enough money, you can buy recharging items that can be used either while exploring dungeons or in combat to aid you, like healing party members outside of using skills or filling your Ultimate Gauge, letting you immediately use Ultimate Attacks.

The idea here is that you need lots and lots of money to keep doing these upgrades, which you’ll inevitably need to get further in the game and eventually reach the Final Boss. To do that, you need to dungeon-raid a lot. And that’s really where the nice and bad thing about the game really comes into play, because going through the dungeons and fighting enemies as you explore is fun at first, but really gets repetitive after you’ve done it for a few hours.

This mostly comes down to the fact that the story of the game comes up in the game’s intro and when you challenge the final boss. For the first 4 dungeons that you’re constantly traveling in and out of as you explore deeper floors, you get no story outside of a wacky “Oh, I found the boss. You don’t look happy. I guess I have to beat you up now” scene at each major boss that doesn’t really add anything to the plot or the characters involved.

So, in essence, you clear Floor 1 of Dungeon 1. Then Dungeon 2. Then Dungeon 3. Then Dungeon 4. Then you repeat that for Floors 2, 3, and 4, until you are finally strong enough to brave Godshill and find/beat the Final Boss. It is definitely fun for RPG fans, but it’s a really big bit of repetition since there is literally no plot point before the very end of the game and despite not really grinding the same area ever, it feels like a grind because of how much you do it and how little story or change there is.

Of course, with all of that repetition, it’s not like this bite-sized RPG isn’t giving you bang for your buck. A single trek across the game’s story should take you at least 6-7 hours and clearing it lets you replay the game with New Game + or reload your save to challenge the Secret Dungeon that contains much stronger enemies and semi-random layout designs and bosses, incorporating some rogue elements from games like The Binding of Isaac and Enter the Gungeon.

And then we have Dark Witch’s Story: Combat. This is a card-based game with autonamous battles. You have an Arena where you can pit your cards against opponent’s, and an organization area, where you can spend money to level up and power up your cards to be able to take on higher-tiers of opponents.

The odd thing about this game is that it utilizes a Rock, Paper, Scissors mechanic. Every card has a RPS play, and that heavily influences how well that card does in battle. You could have the same card as the opponent and have twice its level, but if you choose Paper and they choose Scissors, you might be scraping by with a victory or be completely blown away from that RPS advantage they’re given.

So, this results in the game being an incredibly-heavy grind, which the game’s tutorial even suggests that you do from the get-go. You will be going into one battle and repeating it over and over and over and over to get money to level up your cards to crazy levels just to beat each battle you come across.

As far as play time, this will likely give you an extra few hours on that total play time, furthering the justification for the price point of $8.99 (vs $4.99 for Brave Dungeon on the 3DS), but only if you enjoy grinding and semi-random mechanics deciding your battle outcome.

Controls

Controlling the game is pretty easy, as all of the controls can be done with the actuall buttons on the Switch.

You can navigate dungeons either with the Left Analog Stick, Right Analog Stick, or the Arrow Buttons / D-Pad. The L and R triggers are used for changing the stat display for your party members and the ZL/ZR buttons are used for viewing Magic Items and Equipment, respectively.

Finally, of course, are the face buttons. A is used for selecting options in the menu, and B is used for cancelling options. X pulls up the menu while Y lets you see the map of the current floor you’re on.

Presentation

Graphically, Brave Dungeon does look a little smoother on the Switch than it did on the 3DS. You still have that Retro JRPG look to it with the pixels intentionally made to look like those old graphics, but the look definitely has improved a little bit.

Performance, I have no problems with. It loads quickly and the frame-rate is constant.

Battery Life

Since this is a 2D title of a certain nature, you could expect to get a good amount of Battery Life out of the game. Here are my times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 16 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 31 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 5 hours, 43 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 6 hours, 02 minutes

As you would expect, you can complete a quick run through the game on a single charge. You get quite a bit of Battery Life.

Game Title: Super Meat Boy
Developer: Team Meat
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital Download
Battery Life: 4 – 6 hours
Download: 203 MB

With all of the games coming out on the Nintendo Switch, I am surprised I haven’t done all that many Repeat-Reviews, or reviews of games I previously reviewed on the PS Vita. There’ve been a couple, like Resident Evil Revelations 2, but not nearly as many as I would have imagined I would do by now.

Another is getting added to the list today, as the list of Hard-as-Nails platformers on the Switch continues to go up. While many people put Vs Super Mario Bros in this category, I reserve it for games that are hard outside of just a couple levels. When I think of HAN platformers, there is only one game that immediately comes to mind: Super Meat Boy.

With word of the Super Meat Boy sequel coming to the Switch, it was an obvious choice to put the original game on the platform as well. Now that I’ve re-experienced the frustration, here is my review of Super Meat Boy for the NIntendo Switch!

Story

Super Meat Boy is about a cube of meat named Meat Boy and his friend, Bandage Girl. Once day, Bandage Girl is kidnapped by the nefarious Dr. Fetus and Meat Boy ventures after them to save his friend from the evil Fetus.

The setting of this game is interesting because of how dark and mature it is. For a cartoony platformer, there is a ton of gore, blood, and very messed up themes in all of the cutscenes once you clear the various worlds of the game. It makes the game stand out, but also note that many of the cutscenes can be very sad.

Gameplay

Super Meat Boy is, of course, a platformer. Across the entirety of the game you will be traversing 2D, side-scrolling levels as you chase after Bandage Girl, surrounded by an absurd amount of hazards and traps laid out to make your adventure as difficult as possible.

For previous owners of the game on other platforms, you’ll be glad to know that Super Meat Boy on the Switch comes with an exclusive mode only available on the Switch (at least for right now), called Race Mode, letting you use Local Multiplayer to race for better times through various challenges and stages.

Progression in the game is pretty simple. You spawn in a level and must traverse the stage without getting hit, as even one point of damage to you means instant-death, as if the constant sawblades, missile launchers, and enemies roaming around didn’t give you an indication that this would not be a cake-walk like a Mario game.

Traversing each level is all about learning how physics can affect your character and navigating the level using the physics and wind resistance of your character’s jumps, walks, dashes, and more. You will be using these because once you hit World 2-3, you will have stages where you can only traverse the hazards by using the physics to your advantage, giving you situations where the only way to jump through a narrow space between two spinning blades is by jumping at a certain angle and applying a dash mechanic in mid-jump at a certain point to come through, unscathed.

The difficulty of the game is part of its fame, but it does incrementally increase, giving you a good balance and learning curve. A lot of times, you will start by having only a single “precise” hazard per stage and by the end of the game, you’ll have stages with several that you have to navigate in a single go.

Although the game’s flow you can adjust to, Boss Fights ramp up the difficulty in situations where you not only have to be careful in how you jump and move, but also have a time factor, making you rush and be careful at the same time. Some bosses have you running away from hazards that are constantly chasing you, making you actively see what’s ahead and find the best path as you go, increasing the adrenaline and giving you less time to think and strategize everything.

That all ties into the most frustrating part of the game. The way you learn the stages is by experimentation, which means you’re going to die, a lot. Of course, once you beat the game, you unlock the Dark World, which lets you repeat the stages of the game with an even more extreme difficulty than they had before.

Now, let’s talk about length. The main game has 105 stages, which each take very little time to clear, when you know what to do. If you never died, you could theoretically clear the main game once in around 40-60 minutes. However, you won’t. You might clear some World 1 or 2 stages your first try, but by the time you get to the later worlds, you will likely be averaging dozens of tries per level, which easily turns that 1 hour of completion time into several hours of completion time.

That Final Boss bit is what I think really is the only downer about the game. It is meant to be difficult, but some of the bosses are just overkill. Learning how to do things is one thing, but when you have over a dozen extremely precise jumps with a limited time available to you isn’t hard at first, but after your first couple dozen tries to finish, only to be greeted with yet another stage like it once you reach the end is beyond frustrating. It is one of the only times when I say that a game can be “too” hard.

To give an example, when I first played through this game on the PS Vita, I spent over an hour just on the Final Boss, let alone the other 104 stages, the Dark World stages which add many more hours, and the Epilogue World that unlocks after you beat everything beforehand and is even harder than the main game. It may look like it is light on content, but it is anything but when you factor in the difficulty of the game.

Controls

Controlling the game is pretty simple, and is a nice part of the game because they give you so many options for the few controls there are so you can enjoy comfort, depending on your control style, when it comes to platformers.

Moving around is done with the Left Analog Stick or the Arrow Buttons / D-Pad. Jumping can be done with either A or B, and you can hold down almost every other button on the Switch for dashing. When I say almost every other button, I’m not kidding. All four triggers along with X and Y can individually be held down for dashing. So, they give you tons of options.

Presentation

Graphically, it looks the same as it always has. You have a 2D visual style that fits the overall design of the game and the renders look just as nice in handheld mode as they do in docked mode.

Performance is flawless as well. No frame drops. Instant Loading Times. No freezing. It is just a very optimized experience.

Battery Life

Being a 2D game, you can expect to have lots of escapades into this Tough-as-Nails adventure on a single charge. Here are my times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 13 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 28 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 5 hours, 46 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 5 hours, 58 minutes

As I said above, you get tons of Battery Life with this game. Just be careful not to throw and break your Switch in frustration after 6 hours of dying.

Game Title: Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2
Platform: Nintendo Switch
DLC Title: DLC Bundle / Season Pass
DLC Type: Story Campaign / Playable Characters

I’ve had an itch to do a Dragon Ball-related video on YouTube for a long time now, and I’ve finally found a reason to do so. Although the upcoming Dragon Ball FighterZ is currently not coming to any current handhelds, I took a look back at the last Dragon Ball game I bought, which was Xenoverse 2 for the Nintendo Switch. Since I purchased it, I’ve easily logged over 210 hours into the game.

My initial review of the game skyrocketed in views, now sitting at over 21,000 views and is in the Top 25 videos on my channel for view count alone. One thing I never did, though, was go back and review the Downloadable Content available to the game. Now, I’ve got a chance to do that, with most of my Switch backlog finished and Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth – Hacker’s Memory about to take the stage for my next big review title.

So, let’s get started. Instead of making half a dozen reviews for each individual DLC pack, I’m going to divide this into two sections. First for the DLC Bundle / Season Pass for the initial set of DLC, and again next month for the two “Extra Pack” sets, which can also be bought together.

Here is my review of the “DLC Bundle” of Dragon Ball Super packs for Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 for the Nintendo Switch!

**SPOILER WARNING! The rest of this section contains spoilers for Dragon Ball Super. If you have not watched the first 4 Story Arcs of Super, SKIP THIS SECTION**

Story

Within this DLC Set are two new Story Scenarios that can be accessed as a continuation of the “Time Patrol” Story Campaign from Xenoverse 2’s storyline.
Scenario #1 takes place during the Universe 6 Tournament of Dragon Ball Super’s “God of Destruction Champa” arc. Goku is missing from the tournament, with You having to fulfill his role as Universe 6’s Hit, Cabba, and Frost appear to be under the control of an evil force. Taking the stage with the other Z Fighters, you must free them from the control of evil and restore the timeline to its proper course.

This scenario is unique in that it turns the tournament into a Tag Team match rather than 1 vs 1 but you really don’t see much of the U6 arc here. Players that have yet to play Dragon Ball Super will be a little confused as they go through this storyline.

Scenario #2 takes place during the Future Trunks arc of Dragon Ball Super. As Goku Black follows Future Trunks through time and back, he is amplified by the dark energy of the Demon Realm and the Time Patroller jumps in to ensure the Z Fighters victory, from the present timeline all the way to the Future Timeline.

Although, most of this arc remains unchanged from what is shown in Super, this one is especially nice for the DLC because you fight 4 missions and see almost the entire arc. In comparison, the Universe 6 Tournament DLC only showcases a small part of its own arc so they really expanded upon how much story content they show in this DLC Story Arc.

Gameplay

The gameplay of the game has not changed, but what we should go over is just what these sets of DLC adds to the game that wasn’t there prior. Although many people argue that the Switch version should’ve had DLC Packs 1-4 packed into the base game, that isn’t what happened, although the Xenoverse 1 Story Campaign DLC was free for the first month the game was out.

To quickly go over what we are getting here, the DLC Bundle costs roughly $22 USD if you buy it through the Japanese eShop like I did, and contains the following content and more:

– 9 Playable Characters
– 2 Story Arcs
– 2 Stages
– 12 Parallel Quests
– 22 New Skills for CaCs
– 11 Outfit Sets

Of course, that is a boatload of new content, especially for a fighting game. You can easily compare those 9 playable characters for 20 dollars to the recent Pokken Tournament DX DLC announcement that gives you only 2 new characters for 15 dollars. But still, comparing this DLC to overpriced DLC is hardly a way to fairly look at this content. Let’s dive a little deeper into the quality of this DLC.

So, we have 2 Story Arcs going across 7 total missions with cutscenes along the way. Then we have 12 new Parallel Quests, each with new skills, equipment, and Super Soul accessories to grind for to get to drop. FInally, on the meat of the DLC are 2 new Mentors, each with new sets of CaC Skills to teach you.

Tallying up the amount of length you’ll get out of this DLC is easy to put in hours upon hours upon hours, mostly due to the fact that getting Bojack to Teach You requires you to do an absurd amount of TP Medal Grinding, but let’s not put that into account for now. Outside of Bojack’s pre-requisite, the idea of getting all of the new PQ drops and completing the new story campaigns as well as at least playing around with the new characters, I would put Completion Time at around 5-10 hours, depending on how lucky you are with the PQ drops.

So, in essence, you get over half a dozen new characters for competitive Multiplayer along with a potential 10+ hours of new content for Single Player to assist in Story Expansions and CaC customization.

Game Title: Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth – Hacker’s Memory
Developer: Media Vision, Bandai Namco
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Availability: Digital Download
Download: 2.6 GB
PSTV Support: Yes

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth really made a name for itself when it released on the PS Vita and PS4, even cementing itself as the best Digimon game of all time, according to Watch Mojo’s list of the Top 10 Digimon Games. Its unique melding of standard JRPG storytelling with a revised and deep party management and evolution system easily made it one of the must-have games for JRPG Vita gamers.

Naturally, when a sequel was announced, people got very excited, especially when it was confirmed that not only its PS4 version, but Vita release would also be coming West (unlike the Vita version of Digimon World: Next Order, which did not release in the West). Several months later, we have it and it has surprised many people with what it contained.

That is, of course, because the game is actually a sequel and not just the original game with a few extras, which a lot of people still believe that it is. Whether you believe that or not, it is time for me to give my thoughts. Here is my review of the PS Vita and PlayStation TV version of Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth – Hacker’s Memory!

Story

Although classified as a sequel, Hacker’s Memory takes place at the same time and in the same world as the original Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth. The setting is a world where EDEN, a VR-based network has transformed computer servers and social media into 3D, explorable cyberspace worlds, full of normal folks and hackers who use Digimon to fight in turf wars and break into websites to gain information and even other user accounts to use for their own purposes.

In this game, you play as a young man whose account is stolen, leading to severe social seclusion and him joining up with a hacker group that is a contractor for solving issues in EDEN. As he dives into the world of hacking to gain back his virtual identity, he and the rest of the group becomes involved in the events surrounding EDEN, the Digimon, and the entire world as the events of Cyber Sleuth play out.

Despite being a sequel, you have limited exposure to the characters and events of the original game. Hacker’s Memory has its own, unique cast of characters and a storyline that is connected to, but at the same time, separate and its own thing from the story of Cyber Sleuth. As such, you need not play the original game if you wish to, instead, start with Hacker’s Memory.

Gameplay

Just like the original game, Hacker’s Memory is a turn-based RPG with monster-catching, party management, and some strategy elements thrown into the mix. Despite some new elements, you will still be running around digital dungeons, fighting in turn-based combat, and scanning/collecting different Digimon to evolve and use in your party.

Although you cannot consider this game an enhanced version of the old game in terms of story, you essentially can in terms of gameplay as most elements from the old game have been brought into this new one. As far a NEW features go, though, there are more than 80 new Digimon that’ve been added to the game and more on the way via free updates/patches for Hacker’s Memory. Most notably here is the new Sistermon Digimon line, which is completely new to the franchise. There are also new strategy-based fights known as Domination Battles.

These Domination Battles take place on large grids and have characters moving around and taking control of grid spaces for points. Earn enough points and your team wins, and you must also fight with enemy players in proper turn-based battles to take over enemy zones. These are very strategic and are thrown at you in several major story events.

Outside of that, most of the changes are more in terms of balancing and convenience with some Digimon easier to digivolve than in Cyber Sleuth, although many of the Over-Powered Digimon like Lilithmon are still OP. There’s also a new option from terminals where you can purchase Digimon from the Black Market, so you don’t need to go and grind early-on for certain lower-tier Digimon for getting what you want in your party.

The way the Evolution and Party Management system works has remain unchanged, though. Hacker’s Memory still has level and statistic requirements for higher evolutions, and many of the really note-worthy Digimon still require the grinding for those higher ABI stats. If you thought you wouldn’t be grinding with evolving and de-evolving for ABI and those higher-tier Digimon, that is still here. Your WarGreymons, OmniShoutmons, and Dianamons will still require all of that ABI grinding.

Just like in Cyber Sleuth, that’s the only real downside to the game. While it’s true that you don’t technically have to grind to complete the game, it is far easier with the better Mega Evolutions. Even with only a single OP Digimon and the others just normal Ultimates and Megas, it can still be quite challenging to finish the game. So, while it’s not required if you’re just looking to beat the game, it is certainly recommended.

Speaking of grinding, let’s talk about the game’s length. As a true sequel-like game, Hacker’s Memory is a pretty large time-sink. I cleared the game in slightly under 65 hours, but I would easily give 10-15 of those hours to me senselessly grinding to get my Digi-Crush Lilymon, among others in my final party. So, without grinding, I’d put Story Completion at around 50 hours, which is pretty long for a handheld RPG.

Controls

First of all, PlayStation TV owners will be very happy to hear that Hacker’s Memory is compatible with the PlayStation TV / PS Vita TV.

The control scheme hasn’t really changed from the first game, though. You use the Left Analog Stick or D-Pad to move and the Right Analog Stick to spin character models during the menu screen. L and R each have Guard and Escape options in combat. Then the face buttons interact with everything else. X and Circle let you select and cancel options in the menu or NPCs on the map. Square pulls up Dungeon Skills and Triangle pulls up the Customization Menu.

Presentation

Graphically, the game’s engine is interesting. Cyber Sleuth was an amazing PS Vita engine, as it made the game look nearly flawless in a visual sense, not to mention recreating series-faithful attack animations. Hacker’s Memory’s graphics are a little downgraded from the original game, but you can’t tell if you’re playing on the PS Vita. On the PSTV, it can be looked at and seen, but on the smaller screen, it doesn’t look any less crisp and smooth.

I have no issues with performance, either. The frame-rate is steady and I have yet to have any loading or crashing issues, despite the fact that one of the patches that’ve come out since release had notes about improving stability

Game Title: Under Night In-Birth Exe Latest
Developer: Arc System Works, PQube, Aksys Games
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Availability: Digital Download
Download: 3.1 GB
PSTV Support: No

Arc System Fighters are the talk of the gaming world right now, with Dragon Ball FighterZ out and their first huge cross-over coming this Summer. While Switch handheld fans are looking forward to the latter, gamers who still have their Vita lying around somewhere can jump into Arc System Fighting Action early, as one of the franchises included in BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle just hit the Vita and PS4 this week in both North America and Europe.

That game is the latest update for Under Night In-Birth, the oddly-named Arc System Works game from the PlayStation 3 era that just seemed to drop under the radar until recently. With new characters, balancing, and especially a Visual Novel-style Story Mode, Vita fans may want to take note.

Without further delay, here is my review of Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late[st] for the PlayStation Vita!

Story

There are two realms in the Under Night universe. The real world and the “Night”, a world filled with strange energy that allows monsters called Voids to pass through into our realm. These monsters feast on the souls of humans who wander through a portal into the Night, killing many and corrupting others, bestowing upon them supernatural energy known as EXS, turning them into Weilders, otherwise known as In-Births.

These In-Births create organizations and flaunt their magical powers, fighting in Turf Wars with other organizations and some seek even greater power. The story of Under Night In-Birth revolves around one such leader that aims to gain Ultimate Power to destroy all who stand against her in the Night and many groups and clans that mobilize to stop her

As great as that summary may seem, Under Night’s first two versions dropped terminology in the Arcade Mode Story Scenes, but offered little to no explanation of any of the organizations, powers, characters, etc. It was a fighting game where the story made no sense because nothing was explained to you. This version, however, gives us Chronicles Mode, a 22-chapter Visual Novel that gives you backstories for all playable characters, an origin story into the lore of Under Night’s world, and explanations of how everyone gets to where they are when the Arcade Mode’s story begins.

I loved the info and lore dump of Chronicles Mode, but there is a rather obvious nitpick that I need to make here. The game’s translation is full of typos and errors. I don’t typically get bothered if there’s an incorrect word or spelling mistake here and there, but there are a lot in this game. After about 4 chapters of the VN Mode, I started counting and by the time I finished the story, I’d come across well over 120 mistakes, from spelling errors to incorrect word placement.

Do note that this is based upon the Europe version of the game. I do not know whether or not the Aksys Games NA version is the same, but I’ll definitely let you know once I find out.

Gameplay

As many like to claim, Under Night In-Birth is a 2D Fighting Game that doubles as a Visual Novel. You play the game by going through the game’s many game modes to fight in 2D fighting battles with various combos and other elements, plus a standard Visual Novel style of gameplay when going through Chronicles Mode.

Speaking of Chronicles Mode, this is the 3rd version of Under Night In-Birth after the original game and the PS3 update dubbed Exe: Late. This new version adds new playable characters, balancing issues and, most importantly, a new Story Mode known as Chronicles Mode, adding a huge amount of backstory and lore, not only cementing this game as a time-sink, but also preparing gamers for the Under Night characters that are to appear in this year’s upcoming cross-over, BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle.

The other Game Modes are your typical 2D Fighting Game scenario. You have a bunch of game modes, like Arcade Mode for the game’s Story Finale, Training for learning characters, Time Attack Modes for a different way of playing, a Gallery for media and, of course, Ad Hoc and Online Multiplayer Modes to play against other humans instead of just the game’s AI.

While Chronicles Mode is a full VN without any fighting thrown in at all, the other game modes utilize a 2D fighting system very similar to the likes of Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, and other Arc System Works games. You have three different kind of attacks and all of the characters come with their own combos that chain together differently.

What makes this stand out from many other fighters is how well it is balanced. Characters combo differently and require you to actually learn their combos outside of low-difficulty runs to see the Story aspect of Arcade Mode. The game’s main heroine, Linne, proves to be easy to link combos with button mashing with while the more minor characters like Yuzu or Phonon prove to be a much more difficult challenge to learn to be competent with.

Outside of combos, there are other gameplay systems like the EXS system where you can charge up your energy, similar to how you can charge Ki in Dragon Ball fighting games and enter special modes where your character-oriented Ultimate Attacks can be used for huge amounts of damage.

Before concluding this section, how long is this game? I spent a lot of time making sure to get accurate readings of the different chapters of Chronicles Mode as well as the Arcade story for each of the 20 playable characters. If you want to see the entire storyline, the game should take you no less than 25-30 hours, which is more than twice the amount of content length the previous versions of Under Night had to offer. If you get into lore, you’ll have a lot to do and see.

Controls

Many gamers will be sad to know that this game is NOT COMPATIBLE with the PlayStation TV. There is no real reason for this, but as of right now, the Europe Version I reviewed is not compatible with the PSTV.

Controlling the game is pretty easy. Once you’re in combat, you can use the Left Analog Stick or D-Pad to move and all the other buttons are used for attacks. The face buttons are used for each type of attack and the shoulder buttons are shortcuts for combo attacks, like hitting Heavy and Light at the same time.

If it doesn’t fit your style, the game lets you fully customize the controls to however you wish to have them, even giving you options to use the touch screen for certain button combinations.

Presentation

The graphics of this game is something that has bugged me since I first booted it up. When you go into battle, the battle renders look very unpolished. They’re full of jagged edges and blurriness. Despite this being a 2D game from last gen, it lacks the polish of previous PS Vita Arc System games, like BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma. It looks more like a PSP Arc System game. This doesn’t hurt the fluidity of combat, but it just doesn’t look nearly as good as even the original PS3 game did.

The Visual Novel mode, however, looks exceptional. All of the backgrounds and character renders in Chronicles Mode look absolutely perfect.

Performance is something I have no issues with. I’ve played the game for well over 30 hours at this point, and I’ve never had any problems, be it loading sequences, or frame-rate.

Game Title: Lost Sphear
Developer: Tokyo RPG Factory, Square Enix
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital Download (Retail Version Sold Out from SE’s Website)
Battery Life: 4 – 5.5 hours
Download: 2.4 GB

The world of RPGs has been working towards bigger, more action-based games for several years now. Final Fantasy XV extended that franchise’s dive into Action RPG gameplay. Fallout quickly turned from turn-based combat to Action-based Shooter RPGs once Fallout 3 happened. Etc.

The days of retro turn-based combat aren’t completely gone, though. A few years ago, Tokyo RPG Factory, along with publisher Square Enix, brought back gameplay from the likes of Chrono Trigger in the form of I am Setsuna, which was a launch title for the Nintendo Switch and further cemented that platform as a new RPG Handheld after the Vita version of the same game never came to the West.

This year, the same developer tried their hand at another game of the genre. Going off of the groundwork that I am Setsuna created for it, here is my review for the Nintendo Switch version of Lost Sphear!

Story

In Lost Sphear, the world is slowly disappearing from existence. People, places, animals, and more are becoming “Lost”, misty remnants of what they once were. With more of the world becoming Lost, the various countries of the world seek the source to put a stop to it and restore Peace.

You play as Kanata, a young boy with the strange ability to manifest Memories and restore the Lost back into the world, undoing the damage being done around the globe. Heralded as a Beacon of Hope, Kanata is recruited by the local country and goes on a journey to restore the rest of the world and find the source of the “Lost Phenomenon”.

The plot of Lost Sphear is one of its best qualities, as the idea of things becoming Lost and being restored to life is an interesting plot point. The only thing I don’t like about the plot is its pacing. The first 10-12 hours proceeds like a normal JRPG, and then almost at random, the main villain appears, the story completely shifts away from what you were doing and goes straight to a quick backstory for them and throws you at the “Final” battle.

The story does redeem itself afterwards with a False Ending and a complete Third Act that has better pacing, more twists in the story, and a more proper final confrontation, but the way they treat the 2nd part of the story just gives you a strange, rushed feeling before that Third Act starts up.

Gameplay

Lost Sphear is a turn-based RPG, much in the vein of games like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy IV-VI, and even has a little bit of Xenogears thrown into the mix as well. You traverse an overworld map, explore towns and dungeons, fight in turn-based battles, ride in Ships and Airships, and everything else that was a staple back in those days.

Main progression in Lost Sphear is similar to I am Setsuna, with you traveling across a World Map and advancing the story as you reach new towns, dungeons, and locations all with their own Story Arcs and Boss Fights that are put in your way.

What makes Lost Sphear unique are its different gameplay mechanics, some of which are enhanced from those in I am Setsuna and others that are similar to both newer and older RPGs. The system that returns from Setsuna is the Spritnite System, where you exchange materials for Spritnit Orbs that let your characters equip new skills.

The new systems are where the more uniqueness is, though. On the World Map, you are able to restore “Lost” areas of the world by creating Artifacts from Memories dropped from Monsters. These Artifacts then have Battle Effects that aid you in combat, like support damage at the start of battle, being able to see enemy HP gauges, or providing higher critical hit rates under certain conditions. These becoime essential later on when you have access to the whole map and can create multiple to stack effects.

The other new systems are through combat, the Angle System as well as the Momentum and Vulcosuit systems. The way attacks work in Lost Sphear remind me of the standard combat system in the Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth games. Your attacks have ranges and you can freely walk around the map when you attack to get as many different targets in your range as possible, making essentially anyone capable of using AoE attacks just when launching a standard physical attack.

As you fight, you build up Momentum and, when a character’s Momentum Gauge is full, you can initiate Momentum Mode with a real-time button input when using an attack or skill for more damage or equipped skill effects. Then we have Vulcosuits, which are reminiscent of Xenogears. At any time in combat, you can equip large Mech Armor Suits that increase your stats as well as giving you the ability to perform special Multi-Character Finishing Attacks. All of your skills are different, depending on what character you do the attack with and many of these abilities can be found and unlocked as you traverse the World Map.

The only thing about gameplay I didn’t really care for was the lack of use in the Vulcosuit System. You’re introduced to it and you are given ability upon ability for it as you explore the game’s world, but story scenes are the only times these suits are actually “needed”. Even in Boss Fights that tell you that you have to use the Vulcosuits to win, the moment you start the battle, I found myself performing significantly better by switching them off and using the normal Momentum system. It just felt like the concept was there, but lacked any sort of push to actually use it.

One thing we definitely want to cover before closing this section is length. I am Setsuna was criticized by many for being a short RPG, barely exceeding 15-20 hours of total length. When I was nearing the end of the Second Act and got the “False Ending” after only around 16 hours, I was worried that Lost Sphear would suffer from the same length problem. Thankfully, the story easily lasted me 14 more hours before I finally managed to beat the Final Boss on the Normal Difficulty Setting.

So, if you’re worried about overall Play-Time, not counting the Post-Game Dungeons that unlock special bosses and equipment, Lost Sphear should last you at least 30 hours on the Normal Difficulty Setting.

Controls

Controls for this game aren’t that much different form I am Setsuna, outside of features that are available here that weren’t there in Tokyo RPG Factory’s last game.

Moving around is done with the Left Analog Stick and the Arrow Buttons / D-Pad is used for navigating menus. The L button is used for equipping your Vulcosuits, and R is used for bringing up Party Chats that remind you of where your next Story Objective is.

The rest is done with the face buttons. A selects targets and talks to NPCs, B cancels options, X pulls up the menu, and Y gives you various menu and Airship options as you progress through the game, which I won’t specify to avoid Story Spoilers.

Presentation

Graphically, they improved the visuals. In I am Setsuna, it was extremely difficult to see details on the character models outside of Handheld Mode, but the graphics remain unchanged between the two game modes in Lost Sphear, giving you the same ease of details in both Docked and Undocked Modes.

The performance I have no problems with, either. The frame-rate is a steady 30 fps and I have experienced no glitches, crashes, freezes, or any other performance issues for the 30+ hours I’ve spent with the game.

Battery Life

Battery Life is also something Tokyo RPG Factory has improved upon. I am Setsuna had a Battery Range of about 3h46m to around 5h20m. For Lost Sphear, here are my times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 06 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 15 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 5 hours, 16 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 5 hours, 31 minutes

This isn’t a huge increase, but 10-15 minutes of extra battery does show that the developer has improved a little on Switch optimization since Launch Day.

Game Title: Psycho-Pass Mandatory Happiness
Developer: 5pb, NIS America
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Availability: Retail, Digital Download
PSTV Support: Yes

Visual Novels are something that I like getting into, when I want to do some reading and really dive deep into the plot and lore of the stories they tell. Sometimes, it’s because of romance between characters but other times, it’s the story itself that captivates me.

Recently, I played through Under Night In-Birth’s Chronicles Mode, which was like an extensive Visual Novel that showcased that game’s world and it gave me an itch for more VNs. Thankfully, a VN I’ve been interested in for a long time was free on PlayStation Plus last month, and it had just been sitting on my Memory Card, waiting to be played.

As a part of an anime franchise I have already watched and enjoyed, here is my review of the Visual Novel, Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness!

Story

Psycho-Pass’s setting is a world where a computer intelligence now governs everyone’s well-being by judging their mental states as Hues, similar to color changes in a Mood Ring, deeming them fit or unfit for society, offering counseling for those at risk or lableing particularly unstable citizens as criminals and dealing with them as such.

Mandatory Happiness takes place during an unspecified slot of time during the first eight episodes of the Psycho-Pass anime series. The plot revolves around two Inspectors, whom join the Public Safety Bureau for a set number of cases involving a renegade Artificial Intelligence known as Alpha, showing the entire Unit’s investigations into many crimes as they seek to stop the perp responsible.

The plotline of Mandatory Happiness is good in that it not only gives readers a taste of the cruel and messed up world the anime first showcased, but it caters to a lot of series fans, bringing its few original characters in with nearly the entire cast of Season 1 of the anime, including Main Characters like Akane.

What I don’t like about its storyline is part of what I’ll talk about in the next section, regarding the game’s length, but also that newcomers to the series really don’t get much explanation outside of term definitions as you play through the game.

It’s definitely a game made for previous fans of the anime and, without spoiling anything, I would not suggest you play the game until you watch the entire 1st season, as it spoils what is arguably the biggest plot twist of Psycho Pass.

Gameplay

Psycho Pass MA is a Visual Novel, so you’ll be spending most of your time reading through dialogue scenes as the plot plays out. The interactive parts of the game mostly come from dialogue choices and story branches you can navigate through as you play the game, moving the plot forward in different directions.

Speaking of Direction, you can play this game as one of two characters, the female Inspector Nadeshiko, or the male Enforcer Tsurugi. However, both characters join the same group. Outside of some scenes and perspective dialogue, you’re mostly seeing the same story play out, just from a different perspective.

What really gives you branching paths are the choices you make as you play through the game. Each investigation you enter has a lot of choices, which could be as simple as whether or not you take a mental supplement to improve your mood or as intense as choosing whether you reason with or physically assault a group of rioting students. All of these choices are important as they will eventually decide which Ending Path you go through and will also dictate how long the game is.

Aside from all that, you have a lot of information thrown at you since this game doesn’t really have a “Welcome to the World of Psycho-Pass” introduction area. The game throws terms like Sibyl System, Dominator, Latent Criminal, and Enforcer like they’re common knowledge, only to have them pop up in the Tips section of the pause menu for you to read up on, yourself.

There’s good and bad about this system. It’s good that all of these terms have explanations for you to read through, but the text is so small that even on the PlayStation TV, it’s extremely hard to read it without hurting your eyes. It’s like they intentionally made the text of the explanations half the size of all other text just so you never have to scroll through the descriptions of each term or person.

That’s also going into the fact that the game never explains this to you. It just pops up with Tips on the top of the screen each time one unlocks and expects you to just know you can then tap Square to open the Main Menu and go into the Tips section to find more information about what was just said. Like most VNs, the game mechanics are not explained to you at all, and this felt crucial considering that’s what was supposed to clue newbies in on everything about Psycho-Pass.

Now, going away from that, we come to the biggest complaint about this game from Day 1 and one that I agree with: Game Length. Psycho Pass MA is one of the shortest VNs I have ever experienced. Across the entirety of the game, I barely spent 5 hours going through the entire game for the True Ending, and that’s with the extra chapter built into that path. If you were to not get the choices just right for the True End Path, you would get the Normal/Bad Ending after only about 3 hours of game time.

The problem with this is that you’d essentially be chucking out $40 for 5 hours of content. Of course, if you got it for free last month off of PS+, then that’s not a big deal, but even after all this time, you’ll still be spending $30-40 for 5 hours of content, regardless of platform and that’s a pretty tough choice for putting your money into.

Controls

First of all, Mandatory Happiness is 100% compatible with the PlayStation TV, so Vita TV owners can enjoy this Crime-based Visual Novel on the go and on the big screen.

As far as the actual controls, there arent many. The D-Pad is used for navigating menus. The X button selects options, Circle cancels options, Square opens the Main Menu and Triangle opens up the Story Log. That’s pretty much it. If there are any other controls that were also not explained, I didn’t come across them while I played through the game’s plotline.

Presentation

Graphically, I didn’t find anything wrong with the game. All of the environments and the character renders were drawn with good detail and the returning characters looked faithful to their anime counterparts.

There is nothing wrong with performance, either. Although I didn’t like that the game prevents people from taking screen-shots, there were no actual problems with frame-rate, freezing, or crashing.

Game Title: Bayonetta
Developer: Platinum Games, Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital Download (Included in Physical Version of Bayonetta 2)
Battery Life: 2.75 – 3.5 hours
Download: 8.5 GB

There are lots of Nintendo franchises that gamers love to talk about: Mario, Kirby, Zelda, Xenoblade Chronicles, Fire Emblem. This past generation they added a new franchise to that list, giving Nintendo’s arsenal of exclusives a sexy M-Rated game for fans that don’t just want to play kiddie games anymore, and they even threw its main character into the last Super Smash Bros game, Bayonetta.

Of course, what many people don’t know is that Bayonetta did not start off being exclusive to Nintendo. It actually started as a PS3 and Xbox 360 game, the latter being available for backwards-compatible play on the Xbox One. It wasn’t until its sequel was made that Nintendo secured exclusivity over Bayonetta and her action franchise.

That couldn’t stop with the Wii U, though. With Bayonetta 3 in development for the NIntendo Switch, they saw it fit that they bring the other games to the Switch as well, essentially removing Bayonetta 2 from being a Wii U exclusive to a Nintendo Console exclusive.

To start off my coverage for the series, here is my review of the Nintendo Switch version of the original Bayonetta!

Story

In the world of Bayonetta, there once lives two clans that governed history. The Lumen Sages had dominon over the powers of Light and the Umbran Witches had dominion over the powers of Darkness, before getting involved in a war and ultimately wiping each other from the face of history.

Present Day focuses on a survivor of the Umbran Witch clan, a leather-clad magical witch known as Bayonetta. The plot followers her as she travels in search of a stone tied to her past, in the hopes of figuring out who she is and shooting, slicing, and smashing her way through hordes of deformed angels, hell-bent on removing her from the World of the Living.

Story is one of the big focal points of Bayonetta’s campaign and the lore sets up an interesting world with demons and angels outside of how most games portray them. Bayonetta, herself, is a unique protagonist being a heroine skilled in the dark arts of summoning evil demons to devour and mutilate angelic monsters. It’s a reverse of what you’d normally see angels and demons associated as.

Before ending this section, it is worth noting that this series is famous for its sex appeal. Bayonetta is filled with eye-candy and a lot of sex humor thrown into most of the story scenes before boss fights. At first, this seems to be a bit over-the-top, but the further you get into the story, the less the game forces all of that onto you, as opposed to the game’s underlying story and lore.

Gameplay

Bayonetta is like Platinum Games’ response to games like Devil May Cry and God of War. It is a 3D action game based around performing attack combos and, more importantly, dodging and learning how to fight the hordes and bosses headed your way. Imagine God of War with flashier combos, more weapon types, and a bigger focus on platforming and you’ve basically got Bayonetta.

Before diving into the game, Bayonetta received exclusive Nintendo content when it released on the Wii U. While the Switch version doesn’t bring anything new, outside of portability, the 4 Nintendo-themed costumes are here again, letting you swing around the Master Sword, shoot shots from Samus’ Arm Cannon, and summon Bowser in the special Zelda, Mario, and Metroid costumes.

Progression in the game takes place in chapters, which are large, explorable stages filled with collectibles, monster hordes, and their own share of platforming. Your task is to navigate through each environment and reach the next story scene, which pushes the story and the stage, itself, forward. It’s not all that different from DMC or GoW, just that you go back to a Chapter Select Menu after completing each chapter, rather than getting a story scene and immediately continuing where you left off.

When you come across monster hordes, which will be relatively often, you’ll fight them off with a combination of Melee Weapons, Dual Firearms, and special Powers. You have 3 attack buttons for this purpose and are able to string together different combos depending on what weapons you’re equipped with and how much area you have to fight. You unlock various weapons as you play through the game, but you can also temporarily pick up and use weapons used by most of the monsters you fight, giving you a lot of different fighting styles to choose from.

But even more important than the combat system is the Dodging System. The game is built around dodging with precise timing against almost every enemy in the game, as dodging certain attacks initiates what is called Witch Time, which temporarily freezes time for the enemy, allowing you to freely string combos to rack in damage while they’re helpless. This is important because many enemies just don’t have long openings to do this and many bosses don’t either. The game is built around this system and it is to be used as much as possible.

This is the big thing that I feel sets this apart from other action games of its kind. In God of War, you don’t have to use your dodge. You can just pick your combos and stay long-range and be fine, but in Bayonetta, you can’t. Melee is where all of the decent damage is and the bosses just aren’t realistically doable without Witch Time, so you essentially have to think and figure out how enemies and bosses fight in order to dodge them with accuracy. You have unlimited continues so even if you die, it’s not a big deal. It just lowers your overall Rank for that stage.

As you fight through Monsters, you’ll earn Halo Rings, which are used as the game’s currency. The Shop that you can visit sells items that help you through stages, New Techniques to add to your arsenal, new costumes to change Bayonetta’s look, and other features that will unlock as you play through and beat the game.

As an action game and it being on a handheld, we have to ask about the game’s length. While it is true that this was originally a PS3 and Xbox 360 game, how much time will it take you to run through the entire Story Campaign of this action game? On the Normal Difficulty, I cleared the Final Boss after around 15 hours of Game Time, so it should take you at least that long, unless you play on the Very Easy difficulty setting. Once you beat the game, you unlock Hard Mode, a bunch of Costumes in the Shop and, if you got high enough ranks, a second playable character.

Controls

Controlling the game is simple enough, and the game explains it to you pretty well. One nice touch is that the Switch version has touch controls (I don’t know if the Wii U version did or not), enabling you to string combos together and do QTEs with the Switch’s touch screen instead of using the buttons on the Joy-Cons.

The Left Analog Stick is used for moving and the Right Stick for moving the Camera. The Arrow Buttons / D-Pad are used for equipped items. The four triggers are also used. The L and R triggers are used for taunts and lock-ons, ZL is used for switching weapons, and ZR is used for dodging.

Then come the face buttons. X and A are used for punching and kicking attacks, B is used for jumping, and Y is used for various actions with NPCs, objects, and sometimes Quick-Time Events. + opens the Pause Menu and – opens the Customization menu.

Overall, it’s not too hard to learn and all of it is explained to you during the tutorials.  The Camera, on the other hand, is a problem.  Throughout the majority of the game, the camera follows you pretty well, but in the Non-Giant Boss Fights, it constantly will get caught on walls, zoom in on you, and all around not stay focused on your opponent, which is very frustrating.

Presentation

Graphically, this game looks fine in gameplay. There are some small jagged edges here and there but they are mostly impossible to see outside of cutscenes. But speaking of that, cutscenes are where things don’t look as nice. All of the pre-rendered scenes have a bit of a blur effect to them that the rest of the game doesn’t have. It looked as it they took them straight from the previous versions of the game, rather than refining them for the Switch.

Performance, however, is exceptional. Whether you’re in TV Mode or Handheld Mode, the game runs at a flawless 60 fps at every single point where there’s gameplay. They really did a good job of optimizing the game for this reason.

Battery Life

As far as this goes, I wasn’t expecting miracles considering what kind of game this is. You’ll get more than Zelda, but not by a huge margin. Here are my times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 48 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 52 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 19 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 27 minutes

So, you’ll get around 3 to 3 and a half hours out of Bayonetta. For reference, Zelda’s max is 3 hours, 12 minutes, so there’s definitely some better Battery Life to be had here. But, as I said above, not by a huge margin.

Game Title: Secret of Mana
Developer: Square Enix
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: No

Back when I reviewed Adventures of Mana for the PS Vita, I dived into the realm of a reality when it comes to remakes of old, classic games. It was an exact replica of its original form with updated visuals, and it came with all of its own deadly faults. It is very much a message that when all of these RPG fans want remakes of old games like that with no changes, it isn’t what they really want.

Now we have a remake of another Mana game in the same sort of form, and it only reinforces my thinking of that exact message of remakes with little change isn’t always that good of a thing. Secret of Mana, heralded as one of the greatest SNES RPGs and arguable any RPG of all time, is now available on the go via the PS Vita (and in console form with the PlayStation 4) and we are going to take a look at it.

Here is my review of Secret of Mana for the PlayStation Vita!

Story

Although part of the Mana series, SoM stands on its own two feet, needing no knowledge of the other games. Long ago, the power of Mana was abused by humans in creating weapons of mass destruction, leading the Gods to send monsters to annihilate them for their arrogance. Ages later, with the powers of Mana dwindling and humans still recovering from the war with the monsters, a young boy finds the Mana Sword, the instrument that saved humanity, and is chosen to weild it to prevent another war from happening.

The plot of Secret of Mana is enhanced in this version with some better dialogue and translations than the original had along with fully subbed and dubbed voice acting. Although you can definitely tell the game’s age in how the story is told, it is definitely told and understood better in this version than the original game.

Gameplay

This is an Action RPG, featuring real-time combat and overworld exploration. As you go on your journey to restore power to the Mana Sword, you will be traversing a large overworld, towns, and dungeons, along with fighting off monsters that attack your party in almost all of those locations. It is very similar to Adventures of Mana in this regard.

The biggest question is how the remake is different from the original. Outside of dialogue, not a whole lot is different. The UI for the customization menu has a bit of a different look, but it navigates mostly the same as before. The main difference, though, is combat. In the original game, you only had one physical attack per weapon, but in this game, you have a few from a simple slash, a stabbing technique for the sword, and a finishing jump attack depending on your angle when you attack.

Onto the actual game, progression is done as you explore the World Map and head towards story objectives to not only push the story forward, but get you tools needed to get to further areas, such as having to run through Gaia’s Navel to get the Axe so you cut down the Trees in the Haunted Forest that leads towards its main dungeon and boss. Like Zelda, you have a lot of progress points of going through one place to get the tools needed to access another. Otherwise, you are free to explore the World Map as you see fit, whether you are progressed in the story or not. Just know that you will have to go back to where the story tells you to go for tools needed for later areas in the game.

Of course, finding these places is the hard part. NPCs give you a general sense of where things are, like heading West from this town to get to this dungeon, but actually getting there is a matter of moving around and memorizing the map as it’s never as simple as just heading West and you suddenly appearing exactly where you need to be. There is a lot of exploration involved and the vague hints do lead to a lot of confusion considering dungeons are not labeled on the map or when you enter them. Going into a dungeon might not even be where you need to be and you won’t know until you traverse it and find no new story segments.

Next, let’s talk about the combat of this game. This is mostly unchanged. You have a Stamina Gauge that slowly refills. Whenever you attack, the gauge empties and any attacks you make while it is charging will be significantly weaker than by waiting for it to refill. It is like the difference between doing 5 damage per attack and 40 damage per attack, so it is always best to wait for it.

This being unchanged leads this system to feel very slow and sluggish. Although this can be balanced through using spells from other party members while you recharge, you essentially run up and attack and then wander around, dodging and waiting until you can do a single attack again. Just like in the original game, this can lead to frustration with the harder bosses considering there is no dodge mechanic and whether you dodge their big attacks is completely dependent on whether your evasion stat has been leveled enough to have a higher chance of them missing.

Of course, this means that this is just like the original game with a graphical facelift. For some fans of the original, this is a good thing as the classic remains just like the classic was with the 3D enhancements bringing the game to life. Even the pacing of movement and attacking remains unchanged from the original, truly bringing the same feel the original game did despite not being 2D in the nature of the sprites.

As with the original, this game is decently lengthy for an RPG. Over the course of the entire game, it should take you somewhere between 20 and 30 hours to finish it, which mostly depends on how easily you get lost and whether or not you rely on a guide during those times. Either way, you will get plenty of time out of this game, considering it is not full-price on the Vita, coming it at $29.99 instead of the standard $39.99.

Controls

Controlling the game isn’t too hard. However, unlike Adventures of Mana, this game is Not Compatible with the PlayStation TV. There is no reason it can’t work. They just decided not to do it, which was clear when the websitte for the Japanese Version has been throwing this information around for months now. As unfortunate as it is, you can’t play this game on your TV without a hacked PSTV or buying the PS4 version.

As far as the actual controls go, it’s not terribly complex. The Left Analog Stick is used to move around and the D-Pad for navigating menus. The L and R buttons are used as shortcuts for weapons, items, or spells. The touch screen isn’t really used at all in the game.

That just leaves us with the face buttons. X is used for physical attacks, Circle can be held for dashing, Square pulls up the main customization menus, and Triangle pulls up alternate menus, like the Spell List.

This scheme isn’t really hard to use, but like exploration, none of it is explained to you. I figured all this out just by randomly hitting buttons. This is an older game, but that still doesn’t make it less confusing.

Presentation

Graphically, this remake looks pretty nice. The 3D style of the Adventures remake showcases itself here and the Vita’s graphics doesn’t look that different from the PS4 version’s graphics. I didn’t see a single jagged edge as I played through the game,

The only thing I don’t like about graphics is how little the renders actually animate. The game has cinematic cutscenes where the characters are shown as they talk, but nothing about them moves. Their eyes don’t blink. Their lips don’t move as they talk. They just kind of stand there making a pose as the voice-acting plays out for them, which is rather strange.

With performance, there is also something to be discussed. The game tries to maintain 30 fps as you play through the game, but it just can’t. In some rooms, it does stay steady, but if you’re anywhere near any body of water, the frames dip in the 20s very easily. If you throw a ton of enemies on top of that, it tanks even lower than that which is very rough considering this is an Action RPG with a heavy emphasis on real-time moving and attacking.