Weap0n Reviews

Dune: Part Two (2024)

A Tale of Hope, A Twist in Tragedy

[6/10 · 29 February 2024]

Dune: Part Two comes out in a historic moment where world feel the need of a new Kolossal movie while every other big scale franchises are dooming.

Unfortunately Paul's epic tale suffers of incredibly slow pacing cuts and slow character building sequences. Imagine it takes one hour to get out of the "become the messiah" chapter. I liked the direction and the choice to cut meaningless chatting over a bigger direction with the world showing the events. Dialogues are often over filled with high fantasy terms and nomenclatures which I'm sure will lose the audience many times before you understand you don't actually need to understand what they mean to get the bigger picture.

Casting is probably one of the greatest I have ever seen with many having just a few lines of dialogues and/or not feeling invested in the characters they are portraying.

I can't stand Bautista to be the main villain for the first part of such a movie...Just to be replaced by a random dude with no charm that does a badass show-off for 5 minutes and become our tier S final boss.

World wants Villeneuve to be the new Peter Jackson so hard with articles and adv everywhere over the Net calling it the new 'Empire Strikes Back' but this Dune is a poor contender when put in comparison to any Lord of the Rings.

Horizon Forbidden West (2022 Video Game)

Unpolished West

[7/10 · 7 April 2023]

. story

Before I start with the formal review I just want to say that I am a huge fan of this franchise and I played the original game over 3 times. This review might contain some minor spoilers to story and unlocked skills to give a complete idea of the game. Forbidden West starts right after the epic events of Zero Dawn. Aloy's research have been inconclusive.. and when a new threat in the forms of a vile red plague shows, she is forced to accept Sylens's help and go to the furthest West to see the results of his 6 months of research. Like the first game Aloy finds herself in a multitude of secondary storylines to grants the help of the tribes living in the Westside. This time though everyone knows about her victories in Meridian and this, along with other narrative elements, is sadly used as a convenient escamotage to get straight to the point or avoid a burden to the writers. Of all the new characters introduced in this sequel it is obvious how, apart from Sylens and Erend, Guerrilla still lacks to give a soul and proper characterization. By the end of the game you won't feel a bond with any member of the new crew despite the game featuring over 7 hours of cutscenes with not-so-deep conversations and undeveloped characters who are often forgotten through the game. Villains AND Sylens are quite cool and I wish they had developed them further instead of throwing everything together in the final moments of the game. Everything felt rushed and strong villains are wiped all at once just for the sake of concluding the events. Overall Forbidden West features a mediocre main quest. Aloy is still the stubborn hero we like..sometimes too much and loves to carry the world on her shoulder for the sake of being the hero. Forbidden West lacks tense moments and good side characters and, despite not having a big mystery to unveil like ZD, it just doesn't seem planned from the initial concept of Horizon but instead made-up just for the sake of making a sequel. Whoever is gonna play the future installment will be able to catch-up just by playing ZD and knowing literally 2 facts about FW.

. gameplay

This is where Horizon really shines and Forbidden West just...changed everything. I am going to divide the gameplay part in 3 sub-sections: combat, skill tree/gear and parkour. Starting from the combat part, Guerrilla literally nerfed every weapon to the ground. I understand many people played ZD on the offensive but that's what everyone enjoyed. Running around and placing traps on the go was pure fun. Now Ropecasters hardly keep machines on the ground; Tripcasters don't stun enemies enough which makes it worthless and both have huge reload times along with precision arrows. By the end of the game I was using 3 different bows together to use different type of arrows which made my loadout very redundant. Guerrilla wanted us to use the new weapon skills, valor and traps so much that they killed the old playstyle completely. Melee strategies are gone with machines spamming their attacks over and over stunlocking Aloy to the ground. Most of the times they anticipate our moves and rolls and this make it even more frustrating. Enemies now have multiple variants and cover basically every element which ruined the uniqueness of every single creature in favour of sluggish variety. Going further we have our upgraded skill tree and our personal gear. The skill tree is just an upgraded one from the very basic featured in the first game. This time we also have some passive boost to damage or stamina gauges and we also got some useful abilities and valor gauge which is basically a Super. Problem with all these new skills along with the newly added traps is...the controller mapping. Everything now is messed up and require multiple combo buttons after calling the weapon wheel which I have never seen before in a game and are not intuitive. Afterwards we have gear and looting system. Now gear is definitely more expensive and grindy than the first game and there is also more loot involved; judge depending on your personal choices. Lastly let's talk about platforming and parkour. Forbidden West features different ways of parkour. All very satisfying but extremely unpolished as well. Starting from Aloy's jumps and verticality we can say that almost every jump is inaccurate and frustrating...she just keep falling and spread herself in-between the environment. It feels like all her jumps are scripted to be only in preset places and completely mess up when you derail. Same reason all Aloy animations are not fluid and constantly stutters and lead to very inaccurate movements. Aloy has 4 new special gear that help her for smooth and fast gameplay...or so they should. We have te Igniter and the Vinecutter which do basically the same thing and open up new passages. Then ther other 2 gadget were deeply promoted in the trailers prior the game's release. I am talking about the Pullcaster, the grappling hook in Horizon; and the Shieldwing, the glider from Zelda BotW. They both have serious issues. Although they are extremely useful and fun on paper...they just don't find a role in the game. The pullcaster only works in scripted places and is so underused I even forget to use it when available. They should have enabled it everywhere in the game in conjunction with the Shieldwing to throw Aloy in the sky and then glide her way to the ground. As it is is just useless. Then we have our glider...in a game that is never vertically fun so you will never use it for long distances but just to avoid some cheap damage before a fall. Only when we get the Sunwing to fly around it will have some use...but long from the big scope they intended from the marketing campaign. One mission before the ending we get the Sunwing and the chance to fly... Notable mention goes to the Dualsense. True King of the game with the haptic rumble.

. sound

Dub is on par with the previous entry in the franchise. The original score for the game is just superb. Every encounter and different environment has a special score for the situation. I am in love with Built to Kill in my machine encounters and The World on Her Shoulders when climbing along with No Footfalls to Follow are sensational.

. graphics

Forbidden West is easily the best looking open-world game on console at the moment. Earth is so fascinating and colorful with dense forests, rivers and waterfalls all around us. Sand never looked so real in the desert of Las Vegas. I got lost taking pictures of my surroundings during my 2 runs. Animations are so well done in the in-engine cutscenes...Guerrilla set a new standard for graphics on the new console. Horizon has two graphic mode: performance and resolution. I really wanted to play at 60fps but unfortunately the resolution seemed to be very low on my 4K TV and I had to go for the latter with lower frame rate and animations that looked more clunky but much more fedel textures.

. verdict

Horizon Forbidden West is a good follow-up to the masterpiece Zero Dawn. The most will find it better overall but it is easy to get blinded by the outstanding graphics and just forget about balancing, animations polishing and gears that you rarely find of use. All I have left to say is that I expected Sony and Guerrilla to hire some good writers to build a great storyline to such an enchanted world.

Dragon Age: Origins (2009 Video Game)

Not-so-Epic Classic Fantasy RPG

[7/10 · 21 February 2023]

Story follows a basic high fantasy plot with a villain's army to defeat. Characters have not much characterization and one to one conversations aren't many through the game. World is pretty much a map with few locations to select and navigate in a straight-foward way. Most of the sidequests are straight stuff and choices ends up to be "kill/esile x character", either way you won't have much impact on the story anyway. The only important choice is for Morrigan and we will see her fate in DA:I at least. Combat is, yet, a standardized RPG with party and skills to develops. Mage, warrior, thief. All with sub-classes with some extra skills. It's nothing new for the genre in the end. Dub is well done but dialogues are not always interesting and basically never surprise the player.

100% Classic RPG. Good or bad, the choice is yours.

Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

After 13 years Cameron forgot Avatar's story

[5/10 · 21 December 2022]

After the first hour which is basically Cameron making photoshots of Pandora the movie begins. We see humans are back to colonize Pandora and the marines from Avatar 1 turned into Na'vi. They waste an infinite amount of money, resources and Na'vi clones just to kill Jake Sully. Point is the whole prologue of Avatar 1 explains how expensive is to create Na'vi clones, something like 5 billion dollars each, they even hire Jake because is cheaper than start from the beginning...and in Avatar 2 they send a whole platoon of Na'vi marines to die in a war against our Jake that has literally no revenue for the humans and the profits they are in Pandora for. No big deaths and most of the legacy characters are forgotten just to give focus to Jake's sons in yet another teen drama adventure with no real content.

Digimon Survive (2022 Video Game)

Definition of Fraud

[4/10 · 29 November 2022]

.story

I loved Digimon Adventure way more than Pokemon back in the day and I suffer to seewhat they did to this franchise between games and anime. Digimon Survive is a fraud. Everyone who watched the trailers was expecting something entirely different than this graphic novel with uber slow pacing dialogues. Japanese games are known to be prolix but here we are talking about hours and hours of text with no point at all. Characters development is actually well done and the cast is as interesting as Digimon Adventure was 20 years ago. Thing is this should have been an anime. Not a game. Most of the choices are barred behing a classic point karma system and to develop most of these choices in good evolutions and game paths you will need a new game plus. Digimon Survive is a great combination of Digimon Adventure meets Higurashi. The more adult tones are was original fans needed to be honest but not in this very cheap and low cost vessel.

.gameplay

Digimon Survive is a streategic RPG. No, it's a graphic novel. You will actully play barely 20% of the game where the rest is just a novel. Point is the game is generally not developed. Most of the combat is a pretty basic strategic RPG with very little depth and most of the evolutions require lot of karma points awhich require mutiple playthroughts. The game features a nagivation system with fixed points like a classic graphic novel and combat is a side-feature totally. Trailers fools us all.

.sound

The soundtrack composition is out of this world for this kind of production. I don't think this game remotely deserved what they have accomplished. Digimon Survive might be tedious to play or to read after hours of plain dialogues mixed with great emotional sequences but the soundtrack never disappoints. It is basically the only upside. It is also almost fully dubbed and in japanese is a great anime.

.graphics

Sprites are in very high quality on PC and the cast's original characterization is on par with Digimon Adventure. Better sometimes even if our survivors looks a bit too similar to their anime counterparts. Everything else is just low res corridors and mixed quality location visited x times during the game.

.verdict

Digimon Survive could have been many things but it is definitely not a videogame. Gameplay sucks and the story although Very interesting is so slow paced you will lose interest and not want to keep going until the end.

Wednesday (2022– )

Leftover Netflix's recipe

[4/10 · 25 November 2022]

I don't even know why bother using the Addams family if all they wanted to make was yet another teen mystery drama.

Netflix used their old bad recipe once again and they basically ticked all the boxes for a tv show that covers every genres.

It's a teen murder mystery comedy romance fantasy paranormal superpowers drama tv show with a sparkle of martial arts and sword combat. Everything is so bad the only very good thing is Jenna Ortega acting and I am sure she will have a bright future. Wished she didn't had to do this as her first main cast role.

Just watch it and forget it. People watched this garbage just because Tim Burton's name is on it.

Gotham Knights (2022 Video Game)

...not the one it needs right now

[6/10 · 4 November 2022]

.story

Batman fights and dies. Gotham Knights opening sequence is a 30 minutes despairing long cut-scene introducing a bleeding Gotham, unable to rise again, with new and old foes that cospiring to take control of the city. The first missions put many interesting characters on the table. Starting from the 4 Knights and Alfred we will have many chances to explore their personalities and inner battle they face after Batman departure. Many villains who, unfortunately, cover a side role in the story have a good narrative foundation and it's a shame just Harley and Freeze have proper questline while Penguin is relegated as NPC for random quests. The game is split between pure action in Gotham and briefing in the Belfry, the Hub where our Knights can interact each other and have some interesting insight and facultative bonding cut-scenes. Most of these secondary conversations explore well the dynamic of the group, their origins and their fears for the future...questions that remains unsolved as the ending completely ignored any growth they had through the game. Talking about the main plots of the game instead, that are summarized in Court of Owls and Talia al Ghul, they could have said loads, but they have chosen to go for less. The first of the two was heavily abused as marketing element for the game. Easy to say that they partially made use of the Court mainly for great darkish atmospheres but the plot never spikes and by the end it feels something is missing. Both these plots eventually converge but without a clear end and felt rushed after an exhausting research for evidences through the course of the game. GK does not share anything with the Arkham series, and not even the lenght, as Gotham Knights will only lasts about 8 hours for the main quest plus about 4 to do the -two- villain sidequests. Most of the story missions require to do some side-quests to find evidence before being attempted. What I didn't like about it that these side-missions are the same we find around Gotham: saving hostages or investigate a crime scene. Variety did kill the main plot by far as we are going to do the same kind of quests, about 4 different types of, in circle. Same goes for Harley and Freeze quests. Despite being composed of 6~ missions each, only 1 and 2 respectively feature exclusive content and fights. Gotham Knights is the classic example of taking advantage of a great content to have a commercial spotlight and then rushing through and make nothing out of it.

.gameplay

Achille's heel by far...Gotham Knights takes the best from the Arkham series and tries to find his own identity. Let's start by saying the approach of loot and RPG elements completely failed. Loot and crafting are rudimentary and barely developed. The result is basically a little number that goes up and up to show power is increasing. Each character shares the level but has own equipment and abilities. As far as it goes for the equipment all you gonna know is that as long as the power number goes up you are fine. There are elemental affinities and are possibly the only good addition to an already perfected gameplay from the Arkham series. Ice blocks enemies and along with confusion is great for insta-grabs. Fire inflicts DOT. Electricity stuns enemies and so on. Abilities are unlocked by a very classic skill tree and each character focuses on his own specialty. Batgirl plays like Batman and is a good all-around character. Robin focuses on stealth despite the game never really relies on it making unnecessary. Red Hood is the bulky one who can fight even with biggest enemies being able to grab them and has also AOEs with mines. Nightwing is largely focused on filling his momentum gauge to abuse the unique abilities. Each character has different ones and are unlocked by progressing the story and completing side-activies/defeating x enemies. Each enemy has different weak points and specific characters have advantage/disvantage against them. This system is done pretty well and despite some enemies being absolute sponges having the correct character makes life a Lot easier. After trying every character and getting the feeling we are introduced to Knighthood abilites. These are hidden behind a complete x side-quests barrier. I heavily advice to change the difficulty to Very Easy and rush through them as you have to complete 10 for each character and it might deplete all your patience. The Knighthood abilities are advanced skills that will make an easy feast of both group or single mini-bosses. Batgirl will unlock a powerful drone Momentum ability and the grappling hook for combat purposes while Nightwind will increase his range of attacks and the number of darts he shoots. Everything will depend on your playstyle because each of them will become a powerhouse after this power up. Knightwood will also unlock an easy-to-move around tool for the Knights. Batgirl will glide like Batman while Robin will teleport and Red Wood will literally jump on air. Most of them are useful but you will mostly use the hook to move around Gotham as it is the fastest method. We sure have the Batcycle but it is not that fast and versatile as being able to move over building and stuff. As I said the game features this level progression system that doesn't make any sense as it is just a +%stats with not good or intriguing passives skills. Lv cap is 30; 40 on NG+. Most of the game's hate goes to the controls and the combat's fluidity. We are all used to Arkham top notch levels so that's what everyone compare this game with. Controls unfortunately are not responsive as we expect from Any game and we are likely to get hit or detected and having nothing but to blame the game. Same goes for the fluidity and the animations which are Extremely cluncky, something that was well hidden in the commercials and might be easy to understand after watching some gameplay videos. Batgirl (or any other chara) will often target the absolute nothing, specific skillsor a grab strike (grabbing an enemy for a kill after depleting 70% of his health) won't trigger. You will also get stuck in the environment countless times and get spotted or Robin will decide to jump in the middle of the arena instead of quietly descend his observation point. All this seems born from a rushed development rather than incompetency as I have no doubt they will fix some of these aspects with future patches. As of now the game is a lot of fun, especially in coop where all the progress and loot are transferred to your own game as well, but at the same time is a huge work in progress and lacks of content. Gotham is beautiful to see but it's empty. There are just 8 main missions with relative side-quests as I explained before and tons of the same kind of beating thugs in the streets...and they always comes is few numbers so you don't even have the nice feeling of fighting hordes like in Arkham. Most of the challenge comes from the two side villains. The boss fights are some of the most spongy things I have ever played in 20 years. It will take a lot of punches to take them down and they hit hard as well. This said they are superb cinematic experiences. Overall Gotham Knights is a very fun game, despite all the flaws..this is just merit of the Arkham series though.

.sound

The Batcycle has the same 2 second loop sound going on and on... forever. The environmental sounds are copy pasted all over the game but they are not bad. Beating a Talon with a grab feels great along with our ranged weapons. Gotham is awfully quiet and empty. BGM has the right mournful tones but I would have overused these themes and pasted all over during the exploration of Gotham to make it more cinematic. VO is ready for an AAA level production. Every single voice actor did an excellent job and I would've gladly watched a movie of this. Batman is dead and you can feel it through their words and emotions.

.graphics

Gotham Knights has some cool features on PC that makes it work stable at rock-steady fps even on old machines. Dynamic resolution worked well indeed. Fighting is not crowded and there are no explosions of any sorts and fps drops mostly when driving the Batcycle..probably Gotham can't load her amazing neon lights and empty streets fast enough. Combat animations are so clunky and chain so badly I could easily say they belong to a PS2 generation game. Main missions and the two side boss fights have some crazy cinematic cut-scenes that frankly surprised me after the mediocrity I have seen.

.verdict

Gotham Knights works. It's not as bad as reviews are saying and the gameplay will probably get fixed overtime. Story unfortunately can't. It is out of focus and rushed. It never peaks despite the numerous cool and deep characters and major events. Gameplay is a mess. Animations are bad and don't flow harmonically but it still plays like Arkham and it's fun with the new abilities and element affinities. Exploring Gotham is fun and fast thanks to the hook, the Knighthoods skills and the Batcycle but there is not much to do. GK is clearly born under a difficult development. Being announced just 2 years ago I am sure they worked under a lot of pressure. Still, we are playing the game, not addressing the behind the scenes and I had more fun with Gotham Knights than many perfectly polished games.

A Plague Tale: Requiem (2022 Video Game)

Don't tell me you're too blind to see

[8/10 · 4 November 2022]

.story

Beginning straight after the events of A Plague Tale: Innocence, Asobo Studio releases the conclusive chapter of Amicia's and Hugo story. Specific mention goes to the absolute absence of any kind of recap or summary of the events of the previous game, bit disappointed about this. Focus of our journey is to find a cure for the Macula, the mortal disease that affects Hugo. Through the game we are going to explore different cities and thanks to conveniently located clues we unveil, step by step, the mystery behind the Macula. Soon to say that the pure plot of APT: Requiem isn't the selling point, especially with this sequel, that I found a bit less inspired and focused on too many secondary storylines and quests. The bond between Amicia and Hugo becomes more and more broken the further you proceed in the adventure and eventually twist in a desperate struggle to find anything for the sake of saving him. I won't spoil much of the story.. but when you are going to play you will notice that most of our actions are rushed, enraged and hopeless...as it is hard to let someone go and accept their fate.

.gameplay

Not much has changed from Innocence. Requiem is basically a more of the same and just improves mechanics of the previous game. In APT Innocence most of the areas were corridors or very limited arenas with a single pathway. This time around, after a quick tutorial phase, we are going to approach a proper stealth game with multiple paths to reach the way out with or without killing. Going Rambo always punish the player, despite being more tha viable, for the waste of resources and the amount of preparation needed to overcome enemies with helm, and later even worse. This because Amicia is not a fighter and it will require both a combination of oil and fire to put them down. We can also counter enemies and take advantage of this to lose our track but overall is better to restart the checkpoint when detected, if playing stealth. Amicia's second offensive weapon is a crossbow for one shot kills but arrows are very, very limited. Also mention to the fact that once an enemy detect us or is killed will chain aggro all the surrounding enemies which will likely find you or make the escape a real hassle. Enemies AI is a rollercoaster and goes from diversify their patrol's path to stare at walls to let you pass easily. Overall it does a good job and later stages with both humanoid enemies and rats will prove a nice challenge to any players. APT: Requiem has a unique and smart skill tree that doesn't uses a classic point system but advances the progress by using different game styles between stealth, killing and alchemy to distract foes.

.sound

Asobo did a wonderful job investing on the VO and the music compartment. Story driven adventure games always need this kind of quality levels to allow more immersion in the world and emphatize with the characters. BGM is divinely orchestrated and range to the different tones of affliction, sorrow and loss of innocents of this sequel. VO is once again top notch with Amicia leading the game to high levels. When her or Hugo, who have the majority of the script, scream or whispers you will easily see the passion they spent on this production.

.graphics

APT: Requiem is one of the best story driven looking game out there. It improves the corridors of the first game and Asobo smartly shows they can handle much larger areas without any troubles. Unfortunately in-game animations are poorly executed and mediocre at best with characters showing little to zero emotions...apart from a very late game circumstance; in-engine animations are very good and of course Amicia and the other main characters are much believable and pretty much alive. Most of the southern france's outlook we are going to explore in the first part of the game looks pretty much standard without any specific mentions. "Fortunately" the rats are going completely out of control in this sequel and they are going to distrupt the environment in ways you can't imagine. Same goes for the late game stages which take back the recipe of the original game with gory views and darker tones, "thanks" the plague.

.verdict

Asobo Studio made a good conclusion to two splendind characters in a incredibly underused France. Storywise is not better than the first game but closes all the dots and leaves the player satisfied. Stealth and gameplay mechanics are much more refined but still, it is not the selling point.. Atmosphere and Amicia's resolution are what made A Plague Tale a great gem and I am sure they won't be forgotten.

Far Cry 6 (2021 Video Game)

Revolution is a lie

[6/10 · 3 November 2022]

.story

Far Cry 6 is set in the Republic of Yara. Fictional island that resemble Cuba. Our character is Dani, male or female is your personal choice and his background story is as thin as easily forgotten right after the exciting opening game's sequences. Dani is basically the tool, the Pistol of this Revolution against the new tyrant. Since Far Cry 3's Vaas, this series has been known for having great charismatic villains. This year's Far Cry has the honour of featuring Anton Castillo. His role is played by the famous Giancarlo Esposito. The Castillo family has been holding Yara in his hands for generations and thanks to Doctor Reyes invention, a drug called Viviro, the world avoid to put a word on the inner conflict between the Castillo and the rebels. Viviro is basically described as a drug that can cure cancer. Through the whole storyline we can see different characters taking over, most of them with a huge reverence on themes such as racism and LGBT+. Sometimes this all appears all over the place and out of context but we know, it's 2022, and this game wants to be inclusive even at the cost of being ridicolous. This said the game features great cut-scenes and all are pretty well acted despite the plot never really thickens and most of the villains just randomly die and Anton Castillo, like Pagan in Far Cry 4, has not much screenplay. Overall plot and characters are forgettable and just an excuse to go there and do this/that. Side-note: I have never seen so much swearing in a single game. Every single dialogue ends or begins with F words. Also it was a waste to not see Giancarlo Esposito more and with an extended role and dialogues.

.gameplay

Far Cry is always being known for having giant maps and a shooting gameplay that doesn't take itself too seriously. FC6 unfortunately is a huge hole in the water because of bad game-design choices and a map that is too big and too empty and when you combine these two with a lot of backtracking between missions you can clearly see the fun is out of the game. Let's start by the fact that to accept a mission we need to go to the campbase each time and soonafter accepting we have to take a 5-10 minute walk in a map that is hard to navigate with a lot of verticality and a main character with no exploring skills. I said this because Dani can jump, yes, but most of the climbing is scripted and he/she cannot climb when it's not programmed to. Same goes for the grappling hook, whicht is a nice feature but hardly implemented in the course of the game. With such a huge map you expect a good placement of checkpoints and fast travels: that's not happening. More than in a handful of occasions I died and had to walk all the way back to the mission..and FC6 is probably the first time I see an open world game where I cannot change the time of the day. Let's talk about the main missions. Most of them require the player to complete basic tasks like killing a target or collecting intel. Some of them required me to find some sort of collectibles or find specific prompts that were not marked on the map, so, although I like the exploration it ended up being quite frustrating. Missions features always a similar pattern with Dani looking for something, getting ambushed, killing the horde and having to deal with a chopper or a tank that we kill with a single shot of Supremo. This is basically a special move, an Ultimate, to destroy huge threats at once. Far Cry 6 quits the good old skill tree and the outcome is a widely classic gunplay that results very stale and basic, without crazy twists that are left to just a few mods for our beloved guns. I wish they took the risk to create some more creative ones. Sure we get special weapons that fires CDs and fireworks but I liked some crazy skills as well to give some more variety and style to the game. Enemies AI is on of the worst I have ever seen with soldiers charging you with all themselves or completely forgetting you are even there. Most of the challenge lies in the fact that the game is divided using the (in)famous rank level and this might left you out some areas for some time unless you are happy to take lot of damage from dumb enemies. There are lots of checkpoints to conquest and missile bases to destroy to open flyzones but they are so boring to reach, having to walk a lot between them, that it is just not fun. Most of the mini-games are pretty common, copy pasted, unfun stuff. I am talking about race games, hunting and fishing. I really enjoyed Cockfighting though, a very easy copy of Tekken but I am sure there was a lot of controversy about it..

.sound

Voice acting is okaish. Most of the dialogues have a bad, bad writing and are full of swearings and hardly fun or enjoyable. Anton Castillo and his Son, Diego, have probably the best depth scripts but even this doesn't shine with so many games out there focusing on great storylines.

.graphics

Yara is gorgeous and Ubisoft did a lot of work to create a map with lots of vertical options. Far Cry 6 is one of the best optimized game for PC and it features PS controller layout and tons of accessibility options. Most of the character models are well detailed and animated and Giancarlo Esposito is simply a 1:1 game model of himself.

Ubisoft tried to revive Far Cry once again but it is probably time to put it to sleep for some time. Hiring Giancarlo Esposito might have lured some people to buy in this new episode of the franchise but I am sure they have been disappointed and will think about it twice next time.

Biomutant (2021 Video Game)

Wung-Fu Mutant

[5/10 · 22 October 2022]

.story

Biomutant tells the story of a silent mouse-looking mutant, an avatar fully created with a basic in-game editor. The world is populated by many kinds of mutants split between who wants to save and carefully use the planet's resources and who wants to take everything for themselves and see the nature rot. It is clear since the first hours of gameplay that Biomutant doesn't focus too much on the plot. The game is fully voiced by narrator that talks a bit too much sometimes and takes his time despite the world's ending. Our main role in all this is re-enstablish the order by putting down the Wolrd-eaters, giant beasts that will oversee the world once defeated. They will also take the same pose of the four Divine Beasts of Breath of the Wild. We also have to reunite the tribes by fighting three factions of two sides, dark of light, depending on the side we take. Nothing is really well thorough and to be fair I don't complain. It isn't that much interesting. Biomutant is developed by Experiment 101 and some of them were behind the Just Cause franchise which isn't exactly that kind of game you buy for the storyline. When the NPCs are not focused on telling us 100 times our goal or breaking the 4th wall by saying that we need to protect and respect the planet Earth they can be quite funny but they didn't put much effort on developing any of them. Right after the beginning we are asked to choose a side between dark and light that reflects our actions, evil or good. This impacts the Psy powers we can get, despite being able to get the powers of both sides later in the game, and the ending. Don't expect anything mindblowing anyway.

.gameplay

Biomutant plays a lot like Ratchet and Clank. There are different playstyles, given early by choosing different classes: melee, dual, ranged, psyonic. This affects the beginning of the game because later on we will be able to mix them all even though they will still keep some of their identity with some unique perks and skill that will make them more proficient in that playstyle. The most fun part is defeating the world-eaters. Fights are unique and have multiple phases. Point is all of them have the same mission's scheme which require us to find the specific weapon and ammo before the assault. They are not well fused into the story and all we know is we have to defeat them to save the world! In order to defeat some of them we can unlock a mech, an underwater mech and a water bike. Only the latter has a purpose outside this fight. The others are useless and forgotten by the game after we land the relative kill. It was just a waste of time to develop them and all we have are just a couple of cosmetics for them and that's pretty much it. Another main story path wants us to liberate or conquer the different tribes and reunite the world. After taking side of one of two factions, 3 good and 3 evil, we just complete different tasks for them and think it might have any impact in the game. It doesn't. Pad at hand Biomutant is quite fun. Psy and ranged style are more favoured and easy to master. Also playing melee makes the game a very boring hack n slash by smashing buttons and try to parry enemies, which takes a lot of time to master and a 3-button combination to land the complete counter-attack sometimes. Ranged is the way to go but on the long run it becomes just an infinite rolling while shooting type of game. Biomutant has loot boxes hidden in numerous outposts on a medium size world map. I would say it's still big enough to get bored of walking back and fourth despite a good amount of teleports and the map's feature to track all the completed outpost. Crafting is a thing and doesn't require lots of planning to get good weapons with the level of challenge the game offers. Other than fighting there are some mini-puzzles in-between, nothing special but cool enough to deserve a mention.

.sound

Hardly anything much to say. Biomutant is pretty much a flat line in this front. I appreciated the idea of a single narrator for the whole game, well done and gave a unique touch.

.graphics

Biomutant runs pretty well on PC. After some patches most of the bugs are gone but I still had to load a previous savestate when my mech disappeared completely from the game. The worldmap has a good size. The game world is colorful, detailed and all the creatured are well-animated but still looking generic and lifeless. I like this kind of post-apocalyptic saturated colour adventure game but it doesn't have the same soul Enslaved and Horizon showed in the recent past.

.verdict

Biomutant is the first game from Experiment 101, a small studio with many ideas. Unfortunately most of them just drafted and left to die in a shell that wanted to do too much.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (2022 Video Game)

If you can't be true to yourself, then you're doing something Wrong

[7/10 · 12 October 2022]

.story

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 comes from nowhere after XB2 closed every plot in the XB universe. So as you might understand this new entry wasn't absolutely needed from this point of view...but let's start from the beginning. We start our adventure in the world of Aionios. His people are once again divided, fighting each other in an infinite series of plot holes and unnecessary long-drawn scenes. Ops...I meant fighting each other to prolong their life on this world. Yes, because our character live 10 years long and if they don't fight to live another day they just die and never see their Homecoming: a ritual in which they pass away peacefully, a sort of heaven. The general plot isn't even that bad despite hours of cut-scenes with no content, interesting dialogues or any story progression. It is simply overwhelming how the game forces you to stop every 100 meters with a cut-scene that doesn't add any value to the story or to the characters you never care about. Characters that are not even that bad but have this forced Woke background mixed with a forced pairing between them which is not believable or makes any sense. Add the fact that they repeat the same dialogues of finding a purpose on life, friendship, dying soon in every single cut-scene... what XB2 did well was a good balance between plot, characters building and humour moments. Here they have gone 100 steps behind in writing. Even XBX had a poor storyline but found his strength in great world building. Xenoblade 3 lacks any sort of likeable story, interesting characters and even the cameos from the previous titles aren't well mixed in the story and seems just bland fan-service. 2 chapters from the end the writers woke up and throw up all the content they kept till then. XB3 suffers of the same recipe Tales of Arise did some time ago.

.gameplay

Xenoblade 3 makes of quality-of-life improvements is major selling point and with excellent results! To name a fews: we can custom different shortcuts (save, map, party) to the directional buttons; auto-battle agaisnt common mobs that are just boring to fight; give up option; show quest route option, taken from XBX and more. For the first time the party is composed of 6 members plus a hero character that can be switched between a vast selection. These are unlocked with hero quests and reward the relative characters and his class. Classes are back and arts can be mixed and canceled (if you are not a veteran, it means pressing the button at the right timing to fasten the cooldown/gain chain attack bonus gauge) between 6 different ones which makes the combat quite fast and strategic. Add the fact that status and buffs are not as basic as it was in XB2 and you can understand the combat has more depth than in the past. We also have our chain attacks, now not exploitable like the first 2 Xenoblades and the Ouroborous forms that are basically XB3's mechs. They play as normal characters but have a cooldown instead of HPs. Gems are back as well and they needs to be crafted just once to be available for every character and are the only item to craft because there are no weapons and accessories are only dropped/found. Worry not if it seems like a lot to learn because Xenoblade 3 features the best tutorial of the franchise and explains well everything together with a useful Tips submenu. This third entry features all the improvements and fixes to various time-consuming activities that cursed the past games with countless hour of farming. The point is that seems like they focused on the gameplay aspect to cover the incredible misdeeds related to the narrative content.

.sound

I bet most of who plays with English VO will be pleased to know that the british accent is not as heavy as XB1-2. One thing though..at least itused to be good. Unfortunately I dislike most of the voices featured in this chapter. Most of them are so annoying and give a crybaby feel to the already bad written dialogues and characters. Special mentions to the Nopons. After a great Tora we have got Riku and Manana that are arrendous are out of character. Talking about the main score for Xenoblade 3 I don't even want to compare it to X or 2. This episode has the least memorable and more miscellanous JRPGs sounds I have ever seen and it's a first for this series. Even his peaks are not good and it doesn't help to create a good atmosphere for the many dramatic moments this game features.

.graphics

Aionios is, like Bionis and Alrest before, the same kind of world you can expect from a Xenoblade. The major difference from the 2nd Xenoblade is bigger areas and a bigger scope overall that brings back the flavour of the first game that made everyone feel tiny. Unfortunately enemies are not as giant as XB1 but reskinned bigger size enemies. I appreciate there is more verticality and that's a pleasure for exploration and finally a photo mode. We are still far from the detail and love-crafted Myra but we are getting there.

. verdict

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is not a bad game but a skippable one for sure. It has the worst writing in the whole series and one of the worst in the history of Monolith. It is great pad at hand with the most satisfing gameplay but lacks in every other aspect. I doubt the DLCs are gonna fix anything as we don't have a great pool of characters like what happened with Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Torna. Is it the time to leave the main series on a hiatus in favour of the spin-off X maybe?

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (2017 Video Game)

Don't wish for Forever

[9/10 · 19 September 2022]

.story

Xenoblade 2 takes place at the same time of Xenoblade 1 but in different universes. Worry not, the storyline will explain everything and will make perfect sense. Takahashi is the writer behind it so expect great plot twists and religious references. Where XB1 was a story about revenge in XB2 we go deeper in the emotional spectrum and the main theme is way more adult despite being sold in a shonen coat. The plot is about finding a place in this world, a meaning and someone to create memories with and, in the end, departure without remorses. This concept makes XB2 and his DLC, Torna The Golden Company, Monolith's biggest scope plot since Xenogears. Rex is the main character this time around, a kind-hearted boy that will find himself in a conflict between Aegises, entities with great powers, capable of destroying entire Titans. Yes, because in XB2 there is no more earth to step in...something that will be revealed during the story and people need to live on Titans...much more generic ones than the Mechonis and the Bionis from XB1. Each member of the cast has a peculiar anime personality. This on the outside...because the more you know them in the hours of cut-scenes and their now notorious heart-to-heart system the more you will realize that they are in fact complex characters with well written backstories. There is also plenty of anime humour and harem kind of content between Rex and the many sexualized female characters and seems like they tried to use this factor as secondary selling point and I don't find it a bad choice as XB1's design scared plenty of people and they changed it in the remake. XB2 story will be more impactful based on your age and maturity as some references and subjects will be basically ignored by a younger audience that will probably try to rush through the over 50 hours of gameplay just for the main campaign.

.gameplay

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 changed completely his gameplay from the first interaction. This is what I have heard from other reviews and forums. Truth is that it's a simplified version of the first two Xenoblades...oh, you can't exploit the chain attacks anymore like everyone did in 1 and X. Monolith removed most of the buffs/debuffs system; every weapon is free and we pay just for the material upgrade, the same for every kind of weapon; accessories are our only gear and we have 2 of them; we also went from 8 arts to 3 blade arts and 1 special art for a total of 4. In XB2 our party members are accompanied from a maximum of 3 Blades, characters with elemental type and combat style (Attacker, Healer and Tank) and it works in a way similar to Persona but with fixed arts. We can open core cristals to find new Blades using a classic gacha system to find common and Rare ones, these have unique design, arts and abilities. I'm not contrary to this system if not for the fact that the game auto-saves right before opening these cristals which is something so evil from the developers I still don't understand the reason. Each Blade has his own field skill which is needed to jump or open various doors in the game world. They are upgraded trough a grid system that is pretty addictive with various tasks to complete, all easy to do but hugely time-consuming. Chain attacks are back but the system is simplified from XBX. In all honesty the tutorial is so bad explained it doesn't even let you test the stuff properly and you cannot read it again anywhere...so I had to watch online how to do and works amazingly. We just chain different elemental skills and the last combo of each set gives the enemy a corresponding elemental sphere. Once we press the chain attack button our whole party can attack for as many spheres we have. The damage we can deal is insane even without prep.

.sound

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is not at the same level as X but knows how to excite the player thanks to his shonen epic scenes and the OST is so fitting with his heroic themes. Some easy examples are Counterattack and Incoming!. I can't say the same about the dubbing. I live in UK and I actually like their british accent but something about Rex's voice actor just doesn't work and kills the mood in more than one scene. Despite this most of the other actors did a pretty good job and the humour scenes are quite fun and well acted in english.

.graphics

XB2 is probably a step back from both XB1 and XBX. It doesn't have many big areas like 1 did and it's clearly not open world like X. There are loads of corridors which are locked by different field skills especially in the advanced areas so I suggest to grind a bit. For the first time in the series I haven't found the art direction particularly inspired. It is a very generic fantasy JRPG.

.Torna ~ The Golden Country / dlc content

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 did something many more JRPG should do instead of selling just sexy skins. Do you have a spectacular cast of secondary characters? Do a 20 hours spin-off set 500 years before the main game! Torna is set during the Aegis War between Malos and Mythra. The main characters are Lora and Jin and their dialogues are so well written that this DLC easily outclasses the main games in storytelling because of how dense the events are. Lora, Jin, Addam, Mythra are all astonishing characters anyway and I guess it was pretty easy to make a grand emotional and epic conclusion to the Xenoblade 2 storyline. Gameplay-wise it is also more interesting and dynamic thanks to an healing system based on swapping Driver and Blade together with less Blades to choose from and an even easier system to chain attacks.

.verdict

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 did it again...and if the main campain doesn't quite get there...they do one year later thanks to the release of Torna, the prequel DLC. Monolith nailed it and shows again they are top class developers for the genre. The anime design might not be for everyone but under it these characters have a grown and deep soul that have lot to say. If you like dramatic and intense tones that elaborates on themes such as existentialism, the value of our memories and the bond we connect with mankind...then Xenoblade 2 will touch your heart.

Xenoblade Chronicles X (2015 Video Game)

A Girl's Wing

[9/10 · 14 September 2022]

.story

Monolith develops further the Xenoblade universe concept with this spin-off for Wii U, Chronicles X. They can't stop producing mastodontic JRPGs and XCX is probably their biggest and ambitious of the whole lot. Yes, I am including even the newest installments, 2 and 3. XCX has deep sci-fi tones with modern cities, space ships, even more alien races and fully fledged Skells: staggering giant mechs, playable exclusively in this title. Our adventure begins with the White Whale, a colossal spaceship inhabited by the last humans, survived from a massive alien attack on Earth by hand of an alien coalition called Ganglion. I said "with the White Whale" and not in because while fleeing we are intercepted and the ship land on the planet Mira. Mira is one of the most gorgeous, fully explorable open world I ever played in my gaming life. It gives that feeling that only Breath of the Wild gave to millions of people a few years ago. After some story events Mira will be completely navigable vertically and it just blows your mind for the beauty, and attention to detail. I kept on pushing my character at max speed and that sense of freedom and exploration of a wild land are limitless. This is without a doubt a milestone for the genre. After this short digression, yes, we find ourselves and other survivors on Mira looking for the Lifehold, the last remnant of humanity, containing the remaining humans, still in deep sleep...seems a very accurate reference to the Laplace's Box. This is a short premise for the story. I will avoid any big spoiler. That said XCX is divided into 12 chapters. Unlike Xenoblade Chronicles that featured macro-areas and became a corridor in the final phases of the game, here we have a big open world with missions that progress the storyline. These missions are relatively short and poor of insight content of the world, characters and enemies we have around us. Basically the classic problem of open world games: they can't tell a story. This said I found most of the main characters very intriguing and I would have loved to know more of them other than trivial and childish affinity quest that adds little to nothing. XCX features more than 16 playable characters but the story covers around 1/3 of them; I deeply appreciated this aspect because they could focus more on specific ones while giving a wide choice for the combat aspects. Our main character is silent a la Dragon Quest with the option to interact via multiple dialogue choices that won't change a thing. This to reflect the fact that despite him/her being our avatar is not really the protagonist of the story...which is, in fact, Elma, one of the woman that finds us at the beginning of the story. Also I understand that they probably focused more on the social and online aspect of the game than the single player story itself. It was probably one of the flagship simil-MMO title for Wii U at the time and Monolith tried to make both type of players happy so I can't complain if developers wants to evolve themselves and practice new things.

.gameplay

Xenoblade Chronicles X is the most ambitious yet convoluted JRPG of the last 10 years in this aspect. It wants to appeal drammatically to that range of players that likes loot and heavy customization of every aspect of the game. The characters have 6 pieces of armor, 2 different weapons: close and ranged...all with augments to power them up beyond the level cap, 60, a requisite to have a chance on defeating the strongest optional bosses that let me say are HUGE and in scary locations; going on with the gear subject we have the mechs, fully customizable in their equipment like our character plus their colour palette. Going even further there is our base for missions and online features. To this let's add more with 3 different kind of currency: money, miranium (that is automatically collected from collection point over the map at set amount of time, a feature I find despicable) and tickets and myriads of enemies drops. As you can tell this is too much even for die hard fans of the genre in an era where there should be some simplifications. Let's talk about the main hub: NLA or New Los Angeles is mankind's home. At first is going to seem disorganized and chaotic but with the many, many fast travel point everything is gonna makes sense and be at easy reach to the player after just few hours thanks to being always available on the map in our second screen in the Gamepad. Of course all this loot makes sense in a JRPG that wanted to be more an undercover MMO than the usual single player story driven game. It remembers me the old White Knight Chronicles on PS3 but to work out they both had to be much more popular. This way is just a huge grind festival, and I am not joking, it could require over 300 hours just to gear up for the optional bosses and around 60 hours for the main quest. The first Xenoblade was as huge as this game in relation to main quest longevity and there were plenty of cut-scenes; here you are gonna spend most of this time grinding and working towards the requisites to unlock the story missions before being able to play them. XCX has 4 different kind of mission: story, squad, basic and normal. All of them have requisites before we can attempt them. Story missions are self-explanatory. Squad are relative to the online multiplayer and required to collect tickets, a currency to buy material for the best weapons. They are mini raid to bosses or Tyrant, more powerful version of normal enemies. Basic mission are basically fetch quests, even the game doesn't hide this term and uses it to introduce these to the player. Finally normal missions are the ones that gives some sort of good reward and worth doing despite having lame dialogues and story. We also have affinity quests with out party but even here they lost the chance to dive into these characters and instead we got the usual go back and forth type of quest or kill x enemies or the worst, find x of this/that item. Yes because the playable characters are more than 15 and everytime we want to add one of them we have to go find it in his spot in NLA. This is probable the most frustrating feature of the whole game. Also most of the main game requires you to have Elma and Lin, the only two characters involved in the main story, which makes all the others silent and playable only in side stuff. Mira is divided in segments with each of them hiding a piece of gear, tyrant monster to kill and side-quest to complete in order to raise the survey rate of the planet. Basically is the percentage of completition of the game and seems impossible at the beginning but once the Skell is available won't take long to cover most of the map quickly. There is also a nice feature about the camera, completely customizable in the distance. So we could play with it very close RE4 style or far, far away and see how our Skell is so tiny compared to the magnificent world and some enemies!. The combat system is an enriched version of what we saw in XC1. Chain attacks are now Overdrive and they work in real time rewarding with damage and cooldown multiplier for our Arts...yes, we can do broken things in the endgame. Arts are back with a wider selections and classes are introduced to the game allowing Cross (our avatar character) to be anything you wish, from a high DPS to a support/buffer type of player, each comes with different weaponry, yours the choice. Of course the other playable characters have pre-set classes. They also introduced Soul voices, our companions are going to speak out different dialogue lines during combat and we can chain various buffs using the respective coloured art. Of course we have Skells... they come at a later point in the game and they are a huge help to navigate and they simply deal heavy amount of damage at that point in the game. As you can see the gameplay requires some amount of study to be mastered and before the post-game you will ave just scratched the surface.. so just do yourself a big favour and read the manual if you don't understand something. Trust me, there is no tutorial.

.sound

Xenoblade Chronicles X has a simple but beautiful composition that reflect the charming world of Mira. There are many tracks with great lyrics while they used to do it only for the ending. The way is the leading track with the classic Xeno- tones of sadness and hope. Going with Melancholia, a full track available just for the squad selection menu! This is more hip hop/ rap song. They navigated through multiple genres following their inspiration and because this is what XCX is: a vision of freedom and breathtaking nature. Going foward there is So nah, so fern (Lao's Theme) even character theme songs have their own weight and tell the story that the game couldn't. After listening to the full soundtrack my only question is how they didn't hire Hiroyuki Sawano, main composer for XCX, for the next installments. Same man behind the Spectacular Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn composition by the way. Most of the game is dubbed well, especially Elma and Lin, who has very funny humour moments along with Tatsu, the fellow Nopon of the crew.

.graphics

The graphic jump from XC1 is steep but what is simply outstanding is the verticality of each of the 5 maps. Noctilum especially, a deep forest environment goes deep in the roots and up to the fearsome foliage of an unexplored peak, land of colossal monsters. Flying along "Don't worry" vocals in the background just wishing this game had a 4K rework to enjoy even further the stunning art direction. Monolith declared they had to make a step back from the story development to focus more on the graphic and world setting. Well, if these are the results I can easily say they are beyond every expectations.

Fall (I) (2022)

If only they had the new iPhone 14...

[5/10 · 8 September 2022]

...with the SOS via satellite we would have saved 1 hour and 40 minutes of our lives.

Acting is mediocre although the tension is well reproduced together with a great sense of vertigo and pretty scary for someone scared of heights. They spent too much time covering drama over the phones even in in what could have been their last days alive. The fight with the vulture is pure gold and a state of art sequence that we deserve after over one hour of punishment watching these two. The concept is largely good but there wasn't enought material to do a full movie and the casting choice hasn't rewarded at all.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3D (2015 Video Game)

A Tale of Gods and Revenge

[7/10 · 26 August 2022]

.story

Monolith is back for the joy of all the fans with a new massive JRPG. After their masterpiece, Xenogears, under SquareSoft, and the mixed received Xenosaga they released Xenoblade exclusively for Nintendo platforms. Originally made for Wii, Xenoblade now features a 3DS downgraded port and a Switch remake. Xenoblade follows the story of Shulk, a teenager living his normal and quiet life on Bionis, one of the two fully explorable titans that serves as game world. Bionis and Mechanis, once living titans, fought a tremendous battle in the past, now are host of multiple species along with Homs, Nopon, Hentia and various monsters. Shulk is the main character of this story. An uncommon hero for a JRPG as he has no talent or combat skills and he is not even the classic Chosen hero, although he has some mysterious connection with the legendary Monado, a blade capable of defeating Machinas, a race of evil mech that killed many inhabitants of Bionis. Xenoblade starts with a basic JRPG plot of revenge agaisnt the Machinas that attacked our home, Colony 9, and ends up with a plot agaisnt God itself. Monolith classic formula never fails. Where Xenoblade is a bit lacking is the characters rosters, most of them are derivative and lack of any substance other than having poor and short backstories. The party is composed of 7 members and half of them fit well into the story while the others have minor plot points that are squeezed to the limit just for the sake of giving them a purpose. We also have a Skits system exactly like the one we see in the Tales of franchise but here they are hidden behind some requirements and, other than not being dubbed, these dialogues don't often show that kind of insight I would have expected. Despite sharing the prefix Xeno- in the title there are no connections with the past Monolith titles apart from some similarities like characters with multiple identities. Xenoblade features lots of dialogues and cut-scenes that will keep the players busy for around 45 hours just for the main quest.

.gameplay

Xenoblade is one of the biggest JRPG I have ever played. It features many massive areas to explore, all dense of enemies to defeat of every kind of level, so you might wanna come back later with better gear and, especially, gems. Gems that are not much of use iniatially but that becomes essential for late game and optional high level bosses. These special accessories gives cool stats bonuses like HP/Def UP and Agility, an essential stat that rule the chance to avoid damage. Usually in JRPGs we0 take damage, heal, attack. Xenoblade is nothing like this. It is actually recommended to have a full DPS party that can avoid most of the damage, inflict debuffs and end the combat in a couple of minutes. You will soon notice this approach starting from the fact that there are no consumables in the game or healing item of sort. The combat is similar to many MMO where you select different skills to use from a set selection. Every member has a distinct role but unfortunately some are distinctly better than others. The enemy presence is very, very large through the various areas and it becomes quickly boring unfortunately as there are not many options and all the fights require similar strategies if not at all, just a good gear. Xenoblade has TONS of sidequest. Basically all of them are fetch quest and they murder the spirit of completing them. Yes, especially in late game they offer good rewards but the cost is your mental sanity. Xenoblade offers an affinity system with all the unique NPCs spread around the multiple cities you will explore in your adventure. It is very unfortunate that all these side characters are empty vessels.. otherwise would have been great to talk to each of them and connect them maybe with sidequest of a bigger scope. Despite being a 10+ years old title Xenoblade has some cool features for a JRPG to kill the frustration. I am talking about the chance to save the game anywhere a teleport system with frequent spots. All this goes in favour of a specific matter that JRPGs have never approached before: that something called Exploration. In Xenoblade you will get easily lost and it is nice for once in a non WRPG.. but thanks to what I mentioned before there is no frustration on losing or taking a different path from the main one.

.sound

Xenoblade screams Adventure with every single track of his amazing composition. I think Gaur Plain is easily the best OST for farming I have ever listened to. Like every Xeno- title Xenoblade have a beautiful and emotional ending song. Beyond the Sky is probably on par with Small Two Pieces from Xenogears. English dubbing is globally very good and some of the characters use a funny slang that is hardly forgettable. That said the dialogues are rather meaningless apart from very specific part of the story. The endgame has a very different take on the story, with an epic God arc.

.graphics

I didn't have the chance to play it on Wii so I bought the 3DS version to play it on the go. To be fair it is playable as long as you don't watch the screen or your eyes will bleed from the quantity of polygons and stuff that the poor 3DS needs to load in such a tiny screen. I played it on a regular New Nintendo 3DS but I hardly think it changes that much on a XL model. I am sure I lost some of the charm of this amazingly crafted world just because of it. It is identifiable as a giant aliasing texture with some characters moving in it. Especially when you start one of the huge open world areas of the game everything feels claustrofobic and castrated. Shulk walks rather slowly and I kinda understand that the point is to appreciate the beautiful scenarios and great art design but on 3DS is just painful. My advice is to totally skip this version in favour of the remake for Switch. Xenoblade in meant to be played on a console with a big TV or screen.. but I am still grateful for the effort they made to develop it for portable.

.verdict

Xenoblade is probably the biggest JRPG ever released with a colossal scale that is chained by the 3DS screen and specs. Combat feels repetitive very soon but fights tends to end quickly and it is nice to break the old 'healing formula' we are so used to see in all JRPGs. Characters are not the best out there and the plot neither but the final arc is mindblowing and the player is gonna breath that Xenogears feeling again with an intricate plot that we are going to see expanded in the future installments. OST is a pure masterpiece and a letter of love to all the fans. I am happy Monolith is back on track with the Xeno- titles. We all missed our God Slaying plots, giant mechs, epic soundtracks and a world building that promises a lot for the future!

The Summer I Turned Pretty: Summer Love (2022) Season 1, Episode 7

Crappy but not the end

[8/10 · 18 June 2022]

This TV show seems to forget to have multiple characters that are 15-16 years old and that should act alike. Plot is inconsistent, lacks originality and is a sum of people with gambling and sexuality disorders. I rated this episode so high because the last 10 minutes are so well acted I almost cried. Susannah, Conrad and Jeremiah showed a very deep and emotional moment around their recent discovery and their act is a little gem in this trashy bland love triangle.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)

I need Remake

[7/10 · 12 May 2022]

After watching FB3 I really need a HP remake with this visuals and special effects quality. It's Superb. Overall this movie isn't as bad as they say apart from the Quilin that is a clear deus ex machina and does as tool for the whole plot.

Moon Knight (2022)

Never to be seen again.

[2/10 · 4 May 2022]

Not a great plot.

No at interesting characters and any sort of development.

No to cinematic action sequences.

Not a showcase of the hero called Moon Knight.

We've got what? A miscellaneous drama seen many times before.

Deep Water (I) (2022)

True love can be Poison

[9/10 · 30 April 2022]

Everyone's thinking of solving the mystery behind the characters but the truth is that there is nothing to hide behind a sick love. You may or not understand the reasons behind their actions but they have their motive and you have to accept it. It's a godly crafted thriller movie with 2 amazing actors. It also may differ from the book but who really wants a 1:1 copy of the original opera.

Morbius (2022)

What is necessary?

[5/10 · 5 April 2022]

The full length movie doesn't add anything more to the plot than what the trailers showed. Not a bad movie but an unnecessary one.

As usual the post credit scene hyped but it ain't worth the ticket.

Daredevil: A New Napkin (2018) Season 3, Episode 13

Deal with the Devil

[10/10 · 25 March 2022]

Netflix crafted the best Marvel series yet. In 2022 it's still unbeated and showed that no big budget or fancy special effects are needed to be a masterpiece. Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio are respectively Daredevil and Kingpin deep within their souls and feels their characters in all their shades. I am absolutely thrilled by the cast performance and the 3rd season is an absolute must with the introduction of Bullseye as well.

The Batman (2022)

Pattinson is THE Batman

[9/10 · 4 March 2022]

Pattinson proved once again he is a great actor and deserves to be on the very top. Gotham finally feels true, dark and hopeless. Zoe Kravitz, Paul Dano and the Penguin... Casting choices all ticked the box for perfection. No space for jokes, lots of investigation and no filler super hero action sequences. I think we can definitely say it's a new beginning for the city of Gotham.

Nightmare Alley (2021)

Boringmare Alley

[5/10 · 7 February 2022]

Basically the very first hour is a tedious long backstory of our main cast. After this a cliché of how lying is a bad thing and has consequences with a gruesome finale with some sparkle of morale. One of the worst movies of the year indeed. Great actors and interpretations though.

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

Nothing Will EVER Beat What We Spidey Fans Are Feeling Today

[10/10 · 16 December 2021]

If you're born with Tobey Spider-Man and grown with Andrew you will never, never forget this day. Today I lost my voice at the cinema screaming like a child and I wish I will feel something like this again one day for a movie. 3 is the magic number.

The Last Duel (2021)

The First Feminist

[5/10 · 6 December 2021]

It's ingenious to structure the storyline in 3 distinctive POV of the 3 main characters...if you actually have the material to show new content instead of repeating the same scenes 3 times for each of them. Cast is phenomenal but plot gets repetitive and the climax lasts as much as Jean between the sheets with his wife. Also I didn't like the forced feminist theme and dialogues just to tick the box 'done'