Recent reviews by rinimt

You can find my full review here.[www.the-backlog.net]

Disclaimer: I was provided a key by the publisher for review.

Three new army conscripts are already hating their time there. The armour is awful, everyone hates them, and they're just tools to be thrown away. After they're assigned to a "training" mission, one in which the Captain in charge just plans to abandon them partway, things start to change. The animals in the area have been growing larger and more wild, and after the Captain is attacked, they start to get involved in a deeper plot.

Undefeated is an around 6-8 hour turn-based RPG game. Along with Marcus, Bastien, and Fela, you'll gain other companions - some from the army, some from elsewhere - as you try and find out what is happening in the mysterious Wasteland. While it isn't a story that will stick with you forever, it is enjoyable for the time you'll play it. There are some grammatical and spelling errors to be found, along with some places that have a bit of weird pathing. Enemies can either be set to visible or invisible, and you have the ability to choose one of four difficulties.

Undefeated is a slightly shaky recommend from me, but I do recommend grabbing it on sale.

My full review can be found here.[www.the-backlog.net]

Written in the Sky follows the story of 18-year-old Azure. She's bored with her life. There's nothing she enjoys doing. One day she finds an alien box with a ring inside. After that day, everything changes. For the next three days, she'll have a crazy life and have to make a crazy decision.

Written in the Sky is a VN that has no choices... well, one choice. The only "choice' you have to make is whether or not you turn on the 18+ content. This content will add a scene, and that one scene feels like it had the most work put into it. While the writing did feel generally good, the story didn't make much sense at times. There's also a couple locations where I spotted some spelling mistakes, such as "regieme" instead of "regime" and "kind" instead of "king".

Since there's no neutral option on Steam, this one is a shaky recommend from me. The visuals are good (some people do look a lot younger than they are, though it still is a bit weird), but I do wish there was another track or two in the soundtrack.

My full review can be found here.[www.the-backlog.net]

Disclaimer: I received a code from the publisher for review purposes.

The Manten Aquarium has become the host of several urban legends - during a full moon, the water turns blood red, human faces can be seen on the fish, and ghosts can be seen in the tanks. Junior High students Mayumi and Himeno head there, Himeno insisting that they should investigate these legends. What ends up awaiting them is far beyond what either of them could have imagined.

Sound of Drop - fall into poison - is an around 3-4 hour visual novel. The length will depend on how many bad endings you end up getting and your reading speed. If you want to aim for all the endings, you'll be reading for much longer. The visuals capture the scenes perfectly, as do the sounds. While there's no voice acting present, it doesn't need it - the game does perfectly fine without it. While it would have been nice to see more about certain characters, I definitely enjoyed the story. If you're a fan of horror titles and/or visual novels then be sure not to miss Sound of Drop!

My full review can be found here.[www.the-backlog.net]

Disclaimer: I was provided a key by the developer for review purposes.

Vagrant Hearts follows the story of Beatrice and Scarllet as they journey to the Brotherhood. There they'll discover secrets better left hidden, both within the Brotherhood and in the world. While they'll remain separated for most of the game, the story still follows them as they join up with new companions.

Vagrant Hearts is, for the most part, your typical turn-based RPG title. The thing that makes it stand out most is the Crest system. You can equip 4 crests to one character at a time, though the most useful crests are definitely the Light/Dark damaging ones, and those that can cause Paralyze or Poison. Those two status effects are extremely strong and will greatly aid in taking down battles that might otherwise decimate you. Unfortunately with how much the party splits up, Crests will get left behind on the other team, meaning you'll have to balance out who has what.

While I do recommend this title, I recommend trying to find it on sale (as it seems to be on sale frequently enough). The story is enjoyable enough, although there are numerous spelling and grammar errors. There are also a couple sprite issues that come up - two characters still have their white background, with one of them gaining it after not initially having the issue. As said, however, the game is still enjoyable enough, and definitely worth picking up and playing if you can get it on sale.

Just be warned it does leave a major cliffhanger for Vagrant Hearts 2!

My full review can be found here.[www.the-backlog.net]

Hyperdimension Neptunia ReBirth1 heads back to the very beginning of the series. After falling from Celestia, Neptune meets Compa and eventually IF as she works to find Key Fragments that are spread throughout GameIndustri! Unfortunately though, Neptune has lost her memory and can't recall who she is.

ReBirth1 is a remake of the original Hyperdimension Neptunia, and while the original game was a bit of a mess at times to play through, this is not. That doesn't stop ReBirth1 from being pretty hard. You'll find it quite useful to make use of the new Remake system to add in new dungeons so that you can get a bit of an edge on the bosses.

The PC version features some issues however - the lip syncing is a bit off, the game doesn't like to run (without crashing) without being in compatibility mode, and some lines of text get cut off in their text boxes. This doesn't stop the game from being quite enjoyable from the numerous video game references spread everywhere. It does unfortunately seem like we won't see a fix for this PC issues though. Regardless, it's quite easy for me to give this a recommendation with it having both an enjoyable combat system and enjoyable storyline.

My full review can be found here.[www.the-backlog.net]

Disclaimer: I was provided a copy by the publisher for review.

In fault milestone two side:above, you follow the story of Selphine, Ritona, and Rune as they try to travel back home from the Outer Pole. They run into some difficulties, and end up with this full part revolving around their time Port/Neo Sasary. While the start and end felt quite well paced, it did feel like a massive drag in every other part.

The game does have some minor issues. Namely, some lines near the start will randomly repeat, often with a different "speaker" for them. There are also spelling errors every now and then, and on at least one occasion the entirely wrong speaker is said for a line (that wasn't a repeat). Despite that, fault milestone two side:above has a fantastic story - although I felt it had some lacking pacing issues at times - along with amazing graphics and music.

I do highly suggest reading/playing fault milestone one beforehand though, although it is possible to get through two side:above without having done so. After all, that's what I ended up doing. There'll be some bits you still end up confused on, even with the "previously on fault" and encyclopedia available, but the story is still gripping enough.

My full review can be found here.[www.the-backlog.net]

Remnants of Isolation is a 2-hour RPG journey that follows Celesta and Melchior as they try and escape this castle. To escape, they'll need to defeat several guardians to light the different crystals. Once they do that, will the be able to make it out alive?

I generally enjoyed Remnants of Isolation. The combat system was different. Instead of just your regular turn based battle system, you need to plan between the two to set up Spell Fusions. These are essential for surviving through the various battles. To learn your spells, you'll need to find what are called spell cards and then equip them. I found this quite interesting, as it really did lead to having to think up some unique strategies. On the other hand, though, I didn't like the MP system as much, as it felt quite limiting at times. I couldn't cast the spells I needed when I needed to.

While it is a generally enjoyable game, I don't feel it is worth purchasing at the full price of $10 considering the length. If you can find it in a bundle or on sale then definitely give it a try.

My full review can be found here.[www.the-backlog.net]

Secret of Magia is a game that takes hints from several 2D adventure titles such as Ys, the Mana series, and Zelda. What it fails to do is execute these well and the game just turns into a giant mess. In Secret of Magia, you'll experience game breaking glitches, awful hitboxes, poor English, and a game that just isn't very long at all. The game has a grand total of five dungeons available, though only four of them are actually required to beat the game.

One of the things in Secret of Magia that made absolutely no sense to me was why the enemies scaled with your level. I very quickly decided to not even bother with killing anything but what was required to even proceed. When it comes to the bosses, it doesn't even really matter if you're underleveled. All you have to do is stand to the side of where they can hit, and so long as they don't have some sort of area of effect skill they just can't hit you. One NPC remarked that you needed a shield to beat a particular boss. This boss was actually one of the only ones I couldn't abuse this hitbox effect on and I still never even used the shield (playing as a Paladin).

Secret of Magia holds some good promises but completely fails to deliver on them. Many glitches are being left unchecked, such as being locked out of dungeons forcing you to restart the entire game and the Scythe just not being upgradeable. There are much better games in this style out there, so my suggested is to just play those instead and pass on Secret of Magia. Unless, of course, you don't mind smashing your head into awful English and poor hitboxes.

My full review can be found here.[www.the-backlog.net]

Destiny Warriors follows the story of Naruto... Sorry, I mean a group of kids who are training as ninjas. They must complete their missions and report back to their leader. Most of their missions involve tackling the evil ninja rouges (no, not the ninja rogues).

Within Destiny Warriors lies a complete disaster of spelling/grammar mistakes (including the previously mentioned ninja rouges) and an annoying battle system. Do you like getting stun locked? How about frozen? Maybe, perhaps, you also like being paralyzed? Well, all three of these do the exact same thing! Oh and enemies absolutely love to spam them too! Don't bother leveling up either, as all this does is make battles even harder. Enemies scale with you as you level (because, as we all know, this is a completely fantastic system that no game should ever use), except for the fact their stat scaling goes up a lot faster than yours and just manages to turn every battle into a complete chore.

If you value your sanity stay far away from this game.

My full review can be found here.[www.the-backlog.net]

GabeN: The Final Decision begins with the potential launch of the Triple Steam Summer Sale, along with Half Life 3, Portal 3, and Team Fortress 3. However, the Illuminati the interferes, and Gaben (along with Mike) decide to try and get to the bottom of it. It's a story of memes and a lot of battles with fantastical creatures from... fantasy lands?

This game will do a lot to try and burn your eyes with the awful background colour on the UI. You'll also find yourself getting extremely frustrated at the sheer number of encounters as the encounter rate is exceptionally high. At first, the enemies actually do make some sense. Once you get into the random encounters they start just pulling from the stock of RPGMaker assets to fill in. Despite there being several "wings" to the dungeon, one for each element, the enemies are just recolours. There isn't much interesting about the combat as it's usually just a matter of spam attack until you win. Bosses get a bit more strategy in that they involve actually using some skills!

I can't recommend this game at all unless you really want to get into the heavy memes present. Even if you do, I still wouldn't recommend it. Other than the actual enemies that made sense at the start, there really isn't much redeeming about this title.