Recent reviews by Diana Cavendish

Its good, p[lay it.

Game is fun.

Do to Steam's binary system this game gets a No from me cause I wouldn't recommend it, despite it being a perfectly sound and honest game.

100 Hidden Snails certainly has 100 hidden snails. Normally for a game like this, I'd say it delivers quite perfectly upon its promise of what it is, but even so. Functionally this game is a single static image, through amusing to look at it, it still just an single image. There is very little challenge in finding the snails, and it has zero replay value, at 99 cents I suppose that is an alright value, but still seems high to me for what amounts to a page in a coloring book.

I played about 40 minutes of this game, got all the achievements. None were hard, they all just took time.

Game play: You see snail you click snail.

Story: There isn’t one.

Character design: There isn't any.

Overall, very okay game, easy achievements and one large interesting image. I would not recommend it.

People who I would recommend it to
1) Achievement Hunters

People who should not play this
1) Most People

This is a good game, the real review may come soon.

I like BDSM Waifu, it wasn’t anything special, but it was pretty good for what it is. At the low price tag of 99 cents, it is a satisfying little puzzle game. The lewd images are certainly NSFW but none are strictly porn.

I played about 40 minutes of this game, got 10 out of 10 achievements. None were even remotely hard, they all just took time.

Game play: It is a puzzle game, match the shape to an area and it unlocks a bit of the picture, nothing challenging but, if you like puzzles, it is kind of nice, harder and later stages have stranger and more parts.

Story: There isn’t one.

Character design: It is all cute anime girls, who can complain about that?

Overall, very okay game, easy achievements and some cute images.

People who I would recommend it to
1) Anime Fans
2) Lewdsters
3) Achievement Hunters

People who should not play this
1) Most People

I like God Eater 3, I had a lot of fun with it. I’ve played the prior God Eater games but I didn’t play them as much as this one. At 100 hours in the game, I still have more to do and more I want to do. Its good. It has a redundant feeling now and again if you need that one material and you just can’t get it to drop so you did the same quest a dozen times in a row and you are just frustrated as hell from it, but besides that one aspect of it, dang good game.

I played about 100 hours of this game, got 32 out of 32 achievements. None were very hard to get, but some took a good amount of time. I would not recommend this game to people looking for easy achievements.

Game play: It is the standard affair for games like this, in the same vein as the prior God Eater games and the Monster Hunter franchise. You spend some time in your hub world talking to people, then use your terminal to buy and upgrade gear, and change the skills on your NPC party members (or go online and join up with real people) and then lunch a mission, mission timer is never more than 20 minutes, kill a big creature and repete. I played with all the weapon types a few times to get a hand for them, the slower weapons are harder to fight with but easier to get extra materials with, the fast weapons do less ‘break’ damage but hit a lot more so it is easier to finish the mission. It is a trade off for materials or speed. Most missions have a clear time bonus that gives materials so ultimately it is a player preference in my opinion. All the guns feel wimpy and useless to me so I ended up rarely if ever using them. My biggest complaint about the game is the lack of partners. There are very few NPC operators / Allies to select from. There are so few that I constantly felt like there was one more just around the corner, that never showed up. For reference I beat the main game and both the side options. Traversing the Past and Another Devil (I think that is what it was called).

Story: I liked it. It was ‘feel good’ as heck. The whole thing took awhile to do, but never felt like it was being dragged on. Each set of little missions felt like they were giving just a touch more information and helping you get where you needed to go. The characters for the most part are interesting minus the three brothers. I liked Hugo, Clare, and Ricardo a lot. Phym was interesting. Not to spoil much, but the game does make you, the player extra super special and I always hate that in a game. Though, I do like that your character is a silent protagonist up until the final battle where he or she takes command it was a nice surprise.

Character design: Early game is garbage, and most of the NPC have awful fashion taste but are well animated. By about mid game you actually have some cool clothing options and don’t look like a homeless anime protagonist.

Overall, very good game, not for everyone but few games are.

People who I would recommend it to
1) Anime Fans
2) Monster Hunter Fans
3) Older God Eater Fans
4) Maybe even the Souls crowd
5) Gamers who don’t mind a bit of grind

People who should not play this
1) Impatient gamers
2) Casual Gamers

The Caligula Effect: Overdose is a pretty good JRPG. It is a good game, not great, but I really enjoyed it. Solid characters, neat mechanics, never overtly hard, but doesn’t feel stupid easy. It feels a lot like the Persona games if you are a fan of them, Tadashi Satomi who worked on the first two persona games are involved in this game and that makes sense.

I played 315 hours of this game, got 37 out of 37 achievements. None were very hard to get, but some took a good amount of time. I would not recommend this game to people looking for easy achievements.

Game play: There is a lot, instead of having traditional weapons and whatnot you equip memories and emotions as weapons and armour and that is all kinds of neat. It also has this neat mechanic called the Causality Link. There are 524 recruitable NPCs that you can do side quests with, each one having a small fragment of a class story for each student group. They are neat little things to do,and were a good amount of fun to learn about and play and make the connections between people on the Causality Link. It also has this timing game with the Imaginary Chain for combat, a neat little overlay that predicts how the battle will go and encourages you to make plans around how you and the enemy are knocked around the battlefield to make use of AoEs and other things.

Story: It is good! Not perfect, but it is good. I had a lot of fun, learning about being trapped in a virtual world, and learning what has to be done to go home...Or to stay forever. The story lets you explore both sides of the dynamic between both the students united for freedom and for the evil musicians controlling the virtual world. Winning over people to either side is pretty great, it is a very warm experience.

Character design: Honest, meh. The only characters that have anything unique about them are the bosses you fight at various points in the game, everyone else is some variation of high school student.

Overall, I liked it. It was a good game. Not great, but if you like Persona, or are a fan of RPGs and don’t mind a bit of a grind this is a gem.

People who I would recommend it to
1) Persona Fans
2) People who love to Grind

People who should not play this
1) Everyone Else

Trick and Treat - Visual Novel is a Visual Novel, as the name itself says. It is an alright game, very okay. There is nothing super special about it to say, it is okay, I played 70 or so minutes total and was able to get all the endings, none of them stood out as particularly great. For a free game that is fine, but if I had to pay for it I would not recommend it.

I got all five achievements in the game. None are particularly hard to get.

Game play: A functional visual novel. Menu works, sound works, as a bit of a rare thing in it is having a BGM player. I find that pretty neat.

Story: It is okay, core is, you are a guy lost in the woods and you found a strange girl, and from there you start the journey to try and find your way out of the woods. There are 8 endings, most of them, I think 5 are bad ends that result in death. And the others are actual endings. It is all okay, but it doesn’t really do anything special.

Character design: It is fine, it is good, it isn’t bad at all. It doesn’t feel very inspired but it isn’t awful.

Overall, the game was okay. For free there is no reason not to pick it up, but at the same time it won’t do anything special, you have an hour or two to kill and want a cute little story, this is it. Enjoy it.

People who I would recommend it to
1) Visual Novel Fans

People who should not play this
1) Everyone Else

Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius is a Visual Novel with a turn based tactics mini game in it. It is a good treat, the game is a prequel to the full release game, which I have also played. It sets it up well, introduces you to a cast of likable ladies (waifu bait), and heads you in the direction of a good adventure. At the time of this review, I have played just over 9 hours of Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius. It is worth it for the high price of Free.

There are no achievements in this game, so I can’t rightfully claim they are reasonable or not.

Game play: It lacks a lot of depth, but is functional. The visual novel segments are fun, plot heavy, and very rarely feel wasted, from character building to some of the hinted at romance, and the tactics portion is good fun, the harder difficulties actually force you to think and plan and scratch your head at times. My most enjoyed part was the base management sort of side project where you could invest and reinvest into mechs, or the main ship for various little perks in battle. It is a little shallow, but it still is fun to juggle and play with and try to maximize your funds.

Story: It is, at the core incomplete. It has a good bit of fun, and the bits it tells, it tells well, but Sunrider: MoA is a prequel that has the sole job of setting up the next game, and it does so well enough. It invests you in plenty of characters, shows you some interesting plot hooks, and presents some mysteries, and the story you do get sets up the next game well.

Character design is very cute anime girl. My favorite is a girl named Solas, but really there is a girl for everyone, and I’d happily waifu war with anyone for the girls in the game. They all have a sort of casual outfit, and then a pilot outfit that follows the anime trope of ‘Plug suit’. It is a cute game that holds well for most things.

Overall, the game was pretty good, I liked it, and I think most people could find something to like about it.

People who I would recommend it to
1) Waifu Hunters
2) Mecha Fans
3) Visual Novel Fans

People who should not play this
1) RPG fans
2) people looking for plentiful depth in a Mecha sim
3) NERDS!

At the time of writing this review, I have played this game for just over 5 hours, and have gained all the achievements (4430 out of 4430). The generals are this, the game is a Role Playing Game, turn based combat, and made by Tranquility Games, so that sets the standard right there.

Game play: It is a subpar RPG, it lacks a lot of depth, but is functional. It is a lot of just attacking and requires very little planning on how or when to use skills. My go to strategy before hitting the russian wall of untranslated text that made me have no idea where I was supposed to go, was to go big, use all my best attacks and skills every fight. Then just save, sit there, wait to recover all my Health and MP, and do the next fight. I did like the journal and that every character that offered a quest had an exclamation point above their head, it was nice.

Story: It was empty, and bland at least what I got to experience of it. At some point the story starts to be poorly translated, and dialogue becomes loaded with cyrilic and russian characters. Sometimes every other text box. Then, I reached a point where the main storyline was overtaken by it. A quest giver told me I had to do something I think, then it was added as a main story quest to my journal, I looked at it, and it was also written in Russian. So that is when I stopped playing the game.

Character design is meh, as is expected from Tranquility. This is the fifth game of theirs I’ve written a review for (By design, I’m trying to find a better vocabulary to talk about video games with, so these bad games are the vehicle I’m using), and this is not their laziest of their low budget anime rip offs so far. The main character, Sophia, looks rather reused from their other games, and I”m sure some of the other characters are. Sometimes the art styles clash, for example any time a male character has body art, as opposed to anytime a female character does. As far as I know, there was no nudity, and most of the images are just as good if you went to Google and typed in “Cute Anime Girl”.

Overall, the game was poorly translated, and poorly planned. If you are an achievement hunter, and want the easy achievements in this game, look somewhere else. The achievements are linked to a series of empty chests, and it takes a long long time to open them all. It is not worth it even for achievement stuffers.

People who I would recommend it to
1) Literally everyone

People who should not play this
1) Everyone, the game is bad. Boring, and has nothing to offer.