Recent reviews by Ash

Buggy/Sluggish/Clunky and easy to glitch out and get stuck. Having to force close the game and lose a ton of progress multiple times.
The map set up is poor and obviously doesn't feel well tested because you can get stuck in a wall easily. For rpgmaker games it's a expected (though I have rarely encountered in rpgmaker games that are well tested) for almost $20 it's not. The price should be nonexistent or should be more heavily tested.

Now on to the gameplay. It's not great it's actually pretty basic you attack until you get your special attack and then use it until you win. The monsters are hilariously dumb; they didn't even program in line of sight or monster awareness into the game which has been a easy thing do since rpgmaker 2000, hell even tons of free games have it, but here you can stand right in front of a monster and unless they touch you are ignored. I fail to see even if they even got a real artist for the game because the character art looks like it's done by a generator, and not a pleasing one. These issue become more and more apparent after Chapter 1.

Now the sprites are very good, well done and I like the extra efforts of being able to dive under water and the hair moving in the wind sometimes and the unecesarry but nice item holdup when you obtain a item. I also like when you go in a cave you can still see the snow at the cave entrance. The enemy animations and have them move to hit you is also good. I would have loved for some slight VA on the attack but thats just my prefrence. It also reads my controller well so that was a nice surprise for rpgmaker.
The fishing system is one of the worst I have encountered.
But come on why can't I walk through the tall grass? I hope the further I get it will help me overlock all the issues that shouldn't even be here but at the moment it's an no.

Terrible game. One of FromSoftware's absolute worst, janky and horrible combat even by the worst of soul's standards. Story is also meaningless unless you make sure to read every item and listen to every character which isn't a issue overall but here it's delivered and handled very poorly.
The only good thing this game has done is inspire better ones to come out.
I rarely refund games but I would do anything to refund this garbage.

I also see and find it funny I hurt FromSoftware fanboys little feelings with this review.

With a heavy heart I can't recommend.
It's atrociously buggy.
Let me start with my first major gripe, I can't care that this was a passion project from a small team. I love that they made and that everything the developer had said is amazing but, it's Ui is awful whenever you have to save you can easily accidently load a earlier save, but what makes that a issue is the AUTOSAVE, it is without a doubt the worst AUTOSAVE to have ever existed so if you accidently load a old save it autosaves you right there and bam congrats you just lost 4 hours of effort (this happened 3 times) if you press a button at the wrong time popup messages will get stuck on your screen making you unable to do anything but force close and reload.
Onto the characters the main character is terrible, I mean why did you have to make him look so bland? As fans of Persona each Persona character has a unique appealing look, the MC here has none he is literally what you think the most basic shonen character template would look like. I would much prefer Chani who has a much better design.
The english Voice Actors varies from good to cringey. The japanese are all pretty good.
Brandon James Winckler's brief lines at the end are delivered well but feel sort of out of place. Sadly some of the female Voice Actors just don't seem to be giving it their all, but the male VA are so on point having Aleks Le voice Yohan is brilliant casting (he is also Yuki Makoto's P3R VA) so it made his ending hit harder, his soft tones and deep sad parting words of love are delivered to perfection and by far best in the game. Brandon James Winckler's voicing the MC screaming for him at the end is pitch perfect in the desperation he expresses

You can feel the persona influence in several ways.

Do you remember mementos in Persona 5? Well that's basicially this entire game. Remember in Persona 5 how you just skip days on the calender with a ton of dialogue with no control what so ever? Yeah well there is a ton of that The Battle system works fine and is fluid. The small budget really shines through here because it feels like it. After the accidental hours back reload I wanted to stab myself in the face for having to sit through the same slow dialogue multiple times with no speed up basicially because the coding for this game can't handle it if anything happens slightly too fast it glitches. The dialogue is fine until you read it for the third time in a row back to back. I anticipated this game and wanted to give it a glowing review but as it is I can't. Maybe if I get the desire to sit through the same dialogue for a fourth time and manage to get further I'll like it. But as it is I have no desire to ever try again

The humor is good though. But no I can't recommend this even at the low price.
I hope the company in the future can make a better games.
It's so close to be recommended it really is there are some wonderful brilliant moments but's it's bogged down by others issues due to the budget.

One last note on the endings, WHY? Why are they all the same, I mean Yohan's ending works so well and is so damn sad, and fits who he is as a character, but it's the exact same for the female character's and it just doesn't work for them and their voice actors aren't good enough to deliver the same emotion.
Also did the budget run out or what, or was the very last scene added in later due to time constraints because it's not even really animated like the other scenes are its like some weird photoshop flash animation.

I did enjoy the game though.

There is a reason this has been dubbed the absolute worst Square Enix port to exist.

This is bad. This is very very bad. Even after installing improvement mods and changing some Nvidia stats, the game is still not great. Now I don't feel a fps drop in battle or in the game ingeneral however the game feels slower than it should (even when it's not) that could be the age of it but I don't think so, it feels sluggish like running through mud and I don't remember it ever feeling like that. But what really got is that it has frozen twice in diffrent battles erasing progress and then after it freezes it eventually just goes back to the title screen with the battle stats stuck to the screen.
I'm so stupid to ignore all the bad reviews and buy this at full price. Also don't go in thinking it's actually a remaster. It's not. The Battle Sprites look slightly better for some characters and that's your remaster even the world sprites have not been improved, while i hate the FF8 remaster at least it was consistent with world and battle sprites. The fmv scenes are awful, they are so compressed and pixelated they look like utter garbage, think about going on youtube and watching a CC scene in 180p and that what you get here. Some of the new sprites are off center and look goofy and clash with the style of the old sprites that are barely changed the portraits are raised up too much that the top of their head get cut off. Since there has been no patch since April this will most likely never change or get better which is par for the course when Square Enix butchers another port. Emulate the game for a smooth expierence and if you must buy this wait until it's on sale for like $5. It's so sad I never liked this game as a kid and was so willing to give it another shot but this is not it. You shouldn't have to deal with such a mess for a ps1 game that any computer can emulate smoothly.

Most of these problems can be fixed with multiple mods and Nvidia settings. But you shouldn't have to rely on a fan community to make the mods to fix this. It should have been fixed by the actual company.

I want to say I'm not Trans so the game basicially mainly only dealing with how hard is to be trans didn't speak too me at and that's fine I don't need to see myself in a game to enjoy it, but I can't sympathzie with any character in this game at all nor did it make me feel anything like Dontnod usually do and it wasn't fun to play. In fact Tyler the FtM trans character I absolutely despise. Tyler is the biggest whiney c*nt I have encountered in gaming. Even after he chastises people who only knew him as a girl to use his pronouns (Dontnod i love you guys but don't do this) and then the character he chastises goes to the internet and to best of his ability tries to find out how to speak because he doesn't want to upset or offend Tyler, and Tyler still complains and is angry at him the same way he is angry at at someone thats tries to convert him/her. Great job you painted someone who was a bigot and someone who wasnt both as villians and Tyler as the hero when Tyler is a garbage person. This is easily DontNod's worst game by far even if you like it is also criminally short (thank god it's short)
If you dont believe me that Tyler is horrible then during the course of the game you have to trust Tyler or his sister Alyson's recollection/expierence. Guess what? If you choose Alyson's side at any time Tyler complains and you strain their relationship. Basicially if you don't side with TYLER 100% and treat him as a godly gift to us poor mortals you're wrong according to the game. Hmm a Trans person needed constant validation and has to be treated special, I wonder where they got from (every loud trans person) If Tyler is a good reprenstation of the Trans community as some people say this makes me feel bad for those of you in the trans community for the direction the trans community is heading or has already arrived at. Tyler seems like the all day loud twitter tiktok trans person the "agree with me or your a bigot" type.

I hate this game, I hate having to play as Tyler, and I hate the story. Don't waste you time play one of Dontnod's better games.

F U C K Tyler.

Ok I never played the original Nier Gestalt, so it was a new expierence for me. However you can feel the age of this game, It is filled with really bad busy work from your standard early 2000s MMO fetch quest of go collect 10 pieces of meat go kill 8 shadows. A small world that is only like 3 small places and you get spend most of your time running back and forth through them. Why they put such horrible RNG in a game like this is just to cause frustration, wanna upgrade a weapon? Have fun trying to farm 1 item that has a 1% drop rate for the next week, oh but too bad you need 5 of them. The game is fatigue inducing and I would be surprised for anyone to get through it in a quick manor because its kind of boring.. It's a fetch quest game.

Despite all that it's a "good" game. The VA is great the battle system is great, the graphics are updated but subpar (I'm sick of these older PS2 games not having lip movement and it being excused as it's a PS2 game when dozens of them had lip synching and considering this is updated, meh) Again despite the many many issues I have with this is a good game. It started off great with some Nostaglia Bait for those of you who have actually played Drakengard even if it has no exact place in the game. All I can say is if you liked Automata you might ike this but it's not nearly as good, remember its a old game with updated graphics and that doesnt improve or change any of the 2000 garbage in it.

Honestly skip the sidequest most of them are pointless and cancer. The game is great when your doing the main story and the game is bad when your doing a sidequest. Play the core game which is too short and avoid the sidequests.

RE - REVIEW
In my original review I was very harsh and at the time I stood by everything I said. While Cyberpunk could and would never be the game we were promised and it still isn't, it is however a damn good game.
It took them years and a single expansion to fix alot of issues that plagued it originally.
(I am not even talking about bugs because I never mentioned those in my original review) It took alot of secondary patches to fix problems their in house engine creates, some bugs still appear and can lead to hilarious moments but there is nothing quite broken like before. While I still have a laundry list of complaints against the game and some things I can't believe they didn't change or rectify but alot of it can be overlooked. Now the expansion is terrific and heartbreaking. I don't want to say alot about it as to not spoil on a moment but it's fantastic. So after a disasstrous, launch, a anime, years of patches, and a expansion. It was a incredibly long road to get here but I recommend the game.

So you're not confused this game stars diffrent characters and tells a vastly diffrent story than the original, it's a very good game that will run you through emotions but not quite as much as the first one.

Some of the heaviest moments in the game are sadly run through quickly due to the
"On the road" story, sometimes you never seem to stay in one place long enough to get really invested.
The game does have very beautiful meaningful small moments and unlike the first one choices you make from the start are eventually factored into to small changing details of what ending you get making it easy to miss the ability to get a very particular one completely without replaying and making vastly diffrent choices.
The voice acting like the first one is superb for every character and every line spoken. Roman Dean George and Gonzalo Martin do especially well as the two main characters.

Now back to my first complaint this game is fast, while LiS1 does start the point quickly, LiS2 seems to fast track into the story and that imo is its's biggest weakness is that everything happens fast, however I understand it has to be as every episode takes place in a difffent location with tiny time skips from a week to a month while the first game takes place solely in the same location giving it a slower pace to be enveloped. It makes some big moments seems a little shallow compared to others since the characters have to keep moving.

The music is still superb and the graphics are similiar to LIS1 but updated and improved. The game doesn't quite reach the height of the first one but it is a very very good game and it far eclipses Before the Storm, and if you love the first one you'll love this one.

This is tough one to recommend. Switching to a new main character why sidelining Clementine was a poor decision. While I don't dislike Javi; moving Clem back to a support character that just shows up time from time to make a "important" decision will basicially trap the player further from making actual choices. Despite what anyone says or chooses more than likely you will side with Clementine whether it's a good or bad decision because we have history with her from 2 previous games. It's telltale so do not go into thinking your decisions matter at all, it's all a illusion as it always has been but here you sort of robbed of that illusion. Any choice you made for the ending in Season 2 basicially only manifests in 3 small diffrent physical changes to Clementine and 1 or 2 short memory scenes.

I do recommend it but sidelining Clem should have not been done or she shouldn't have been added at all.
The few brief scenes you play of her just makes me wish I was playing her the entire time.
The graphics have slightly improved from older games but it's still the same old comic book style.

It's not a bad game it's just the same old same old and it is easily the weakest of the entire series and sometime felt like a slog to get through (except for Michonne, which was way worse).

It's also very short, for it to feel so slow to play sometimes the episodes are insanely short.
If you like the other games play it to continue the series it's not as good as 1 and it's not as depressing as 2 and it's not as bad as Michonne.
It's just average. 3/5

It's not that great, Like the first few hours I had a blast but that wore off pretty quickly till it felt like a chore. It's a major step down from the first one imo.