Having burned myself out on highly (or not so highly) realistic futuristic airship simulators, I was in the market for something simpler, some nice slop, if you will. Luckily, esteemed HaQmaster and RPG Codex fifth columnist @Jenkem recommended me Anger Foot by Afrikaner studio Free Lives, published by known indie dev publisher Devolver Digital. Big thanks to him!

What's the Deal with Anger Foot?

Anger Foot is what happens when a group of Dark Messiah fans get together and ask themselves, "What if the entire game revolved around the kick? And what if there were GUNS? Hey, have you heard of Hotline Miami?" And thus they created this game. You play the role of the titular Anger Foot, green skinned reprobate and the world's least unstable sneakerhead. A resident of the crime infested Shit City, Mr. Foot is an avid collector and thief of rare and valuable sneakers. However, on movie night with his DUMMY thicc girlfriend, gang members break into his home and steal his four precious Preemo Sneakers right back. You are tasked with going after them and retrieving your shoes. Now it will be YOU who breaks into THEIR homes!

What's the Gameplay Like?

The game itself is quite simple. It is structured into five worlds, each about a dozen levels long, in which you are tasked with kicking and shooting your way through several hallways. Your kick is your main weapon, and you'll be using it against most everything, especially closed doors. In fact, there is not a single door you open normally: they're all locked and you're gonna kick 'em all to splinters whether you like it or not. There are also several guns at your disposal, including a flamethrower and a grenade launcher.

Don't mistake this game for a shooter, though. While the gunplay feels rather good, with good sound design and animations, it is clearly not the game's selling point. All enemies die in one bullet and the only difference between guns is their ammo capacity and rate of fire. Most of your enjoyment hinges on how funny you think it is to kick ragdolls around. If you're anything like me, then you'll agree that that shit's cash.

In each level you can earn up to 3 stars: one for completion and an additional two for doing specific challenges like speedrunning the level in a certain time, only using your kicks to kill people, or not killing anyone at all. These stars unlock new sneakers, granting you new abilities. Sadly, most of these aren't worth getting, being gimmicks at best and mere flavor at worst. That's not to say that it isn't funny to walk around in clown shoes that squeak when you run, make cartoon sound effects when you kick someone, and send killed goons flying like balloons you let the air out of. However, it would've been nice if the devs had made an attempt to have the unlocks make you approach the game differently, warranting several playthroughs or something in that direction. As it stands, the system is fine, but I can't help but feel there's some missed potential here.


In addition, many of the game's extra challenges don't cater to the game's strengths at all. Doing a pacifist run is entirely unappealing because kicking things is where 90% of the fun lies, not in the movement or navigation. Speedruns also waste a whole lot of the game's potential. Every level was clearly crafted with great attention to detail, and you'll find little Easter eggs in every little corner; however, in a speedrun, you won't have the time to explore, of course.

Speaking of level design, it is very, very good. It is astounding how the devs manage to do so much with so little. There isn't an incredible amount of enemy variety, but their mechanics and placement make their presence worth more than the sum of their parts. The game is thus a decent challenge, and even somewhat hard at times.

And What About the Presentation?

While I usually wouldn't make a separate section for this, the game's presentation, art style, and soundtrack deserve special mention. As with any action game, its visual and sound are an essential part of what makes it engaging. First of all, Anger Foot has a heckin' chonker of a soundtrack, using eardrum pulverizing beats characteristic of the hardstyle genre. It's use in-game is dynamic, escalating respectively to the current action. It's very well used, I think, and really puts you in the shoes of a crazed killer on a rampage―no pun intended. Have a listen:



As harsh as the soundtrack is on the ears (in a good way), so is the artstyle (also in a good way). Imagine if Gumby did crack or Sesame Street took place in Baltimore. That's what everyone looks like. Shit City is populated by weird looking Play-Doh fent heads and anthro animal people. The obvious contrast between the childish visuals and the game's gritty, if intentionally childish, over-the-top presentation and crass humor is part of the game's dark humor that's injected into every pore of Anger Foot. In total, the game is very stylish and unique in that way. More games should be like this.

Wrapping It Up

Anger Foot is good and thoroughly recommended. It's a fun, decently-sized burst of energetic, high-instinct, low-thinking action that really activates my cave man almonds. If you love ragdolls and funny kicking mechanics, then this will become one of your favorites and an instant classic.

Note 1: I played this game with NISA's official localization, rather than with a fan translation patch as I did the first game.

Note 2: for related woke content in this game, see this post.




After 92 hours, I have finished Trails Through Daybreak 2 on nightmare difficulty.

I enjoyed this game more than the first Daybreak game. The combat is actually difficult this time and thus engaging, and the story has a higher percentage of entertaining scenarios and arcs than Daybreak 1.

This game is a direct sequel to Daybreak 1 and should be played after that game (my review of that here).



Gameplay





In Daybreak 1 on nightmare difficulty, once you got past the prologue chapter, there was no real challenge until the final 15 minutes of the game, on the final boss' second phase. There was no reason to buckle down and engage with the systems and spend a lot of time character building, as you could just do whatever and you would be fine. In Daybreak 2, the game was sufficiently challenging all the way to the end. Trails difficulty is usually frontloaded and lets up as the game goes on, and Daybreak 2 is no exception, but I never felt that I didn't have to care about how I built my characters or what actions I was taking during battle. The experience in Daybreak 2 is pretty fun. It is satisfying to be able to stand against these powerful bosses, to make a team recovery, or to have built your characters to wipe out groups of enemies or to stun a boss and deal massive damage. There are fantastic ability animations, VFX, and cutscenes that make it feel like you are playing an episode of an anime or RWBY.


Daybreak 2 has made some tweaks to the battle system. The biggest is that a character can only use 1 S-craft per duration of a boost, which lasts 3 turns (or 4 turns if you use a holo core that extends Boost duration by 1 turn). Presumably, this is to discourage S-craft spamming. However, Daybreak 2 adds a party member who can fuel the party with CP. Instead of spamming S-crafts to prevent your characters from capping CP, you now spam your most expensive normal craft. The duration of combat buffs has been extended by 1 turn. However, I felt they are still too ineffective to be worthwhile to be casting each buff, unless you use Renne, who can give everyone all of the buffs in one turn.

Daybreak 2 introduces a talent tree menu where you can raise the stats of characters' crafts. Presumably, the intent is that you would be able to improve the crafts that have animations you like so you can spam them more often. However, if you use Elaine, then your party will have an overabundance of CP, and the stat improvements of cheaper crafts are not enough to make them worth using over simply spamming your S-craft or your most powerful normal craft.




There are some gripes I had with the battle gameplay. A lot of these are the same issues from Daybreak 1.




The first is that, once again, most bosses do not have any real interesting design to them. Almost all fights boil down to AoEing down lots of adds, sending a tank in to aggro the boss and face him away from the group, while everyone else dishes out damage to the boss. Occasionally, you have to recover your team after being hit by a boss' huge room-wide S-craft. There were three boss battles in the game where you had to do more thinking about how to position your characters and which enemies to attack first (the Van chapter 2 final fight, and the last two main story boss battles). The final boss battle was a pleasant surprise, as it is very elaborate and has the most design to it of any Trails encounter. It would have been nice if more effort had been put into the rest of the game's encounters. Earlier Trails games such as Trails of Cold Steel 1 had more engaging encounters throughout the whole game.




Second, like with Daybreak 1, you spend a lot of time trying to evaluate and pick which Holo Cores (which were called Master Quartz in the six games prior to Daybreak 1) to equip on your characters. However, you can only receive the effects of the Holo Cores if you use boost. In the later half of the game, your characters gain more speed and your designated tank (usually Van) can effectively aggro mobs and face them away from the group, and you once again become starved for S-boost gauge, meaning that you cannot keep the whole party boosted and using their holo cores. So that facet of character building winds up becoming a waste of time. Like with Daybreak 1, you can stack the whole team together so everyone gets cleaved by AoEs and thus fill your boost gauge faster, but this still winds up not being enough to keep everyone boosted. Master Quartz/Holo Cores are such a big part of specializing characters and giving them an identity in battle, like being a dodge and counterattack tank, or being a heavy hitting arts caster, or speedster, or being a powerful S-craft user, etc. Without the Master Quartz/Holo Cores, your characters become a lot more generic damage dealers, and ofcourse, feel significantly less powerful without the stat boost.

Lastly, I am still not quite keen on much time you have to spend mathing out your elemental locked quartz slots and sepith values trying to figure out if you can squeeze in a shard skill. That was tedium from Trails in the Sky trilogy and the Crossbell duology that did not need to be brought back and does not make for a more satisfying character building experience than in the Trails of Cold Steel games.


The highlight of the non-combat gameplay is walking around talking to NPCs and following their storylines, which give the impression that the world is alive. There were several NPC storylines I was quite invested in. Beth's loneliness and struggle to find a good man, and Marguiretta at the department store trying to teach Beth about marriage. The manager of the Weston Department Store struggling to keep people coming in with the advent of the mall and online shopping. Curtis trying to pass the entrance exams to go to a prestigious school. Giodorno the cab driver who tries to give people a good time. The guy going to the clothing store at Trion Mall trying to get dressed up and attract a date. The old film critic at the Espirit Cinema and his staunch opinions. Etc. There is a lot of sincerity and some drama in these NPC storylines. Unfortunately, the vast majority of this game takes place in massive urban cities, namely Edith and Langport. These cities have several districts each inhabited by several dozen NPCs (Langport has 4 districts, Edith has a dozen), and too many of them are available at any given moment. And NPC text can update multiple times per chapter. The result is that the pacing of the game is massively bogged down, as it can take 2 to 3 hours running around Edith talking to every NPC available every time the NPCs update. It is excessive. I would have preferred had this game done what Reverie did and sharply limit the amount of districts (and thus NPCs) that can be accessed at any time, thus cutting the NPC talking part to maybe 30 minutes so the player can spend more time getting on to the exciting adventure stuff.







Daybreak 2 has more minigames. Not only does fishing see a return after its absence from Daybreak 1, the fishing minigame is more engaging. There is also a "hacking" minigame where you have to go through a maze. There are a couple segments where you fly Fio around through air vents or up into the sky. Lastly, there are now quests where you must tail a target without being detected. However, these tailing missions lack challenge to make them engaging, eg, the target turning around to see if he is being followed, suddenly breaking out into a run, wagons or trucks moving and blocking the street, people dropping boxes, etc. I wound up just using turbo mode to speed up the slow walk of the targets and wait for him to arrive at his destination.






The final observation about gameplay is that there are no "big" (relatively) choices in Daybreak 2. Daybreak 1 was notable for introducing some element of choice into the story, with the player being allowed to pick different resolutions to quests throughout the game, which would change Van's Law/Grey/Chaos alignment meter. This had a payoff in chapter 5, when you could then pick different organizations to ally with and which guest party members you got to play with depending upon your alignment scores. Chapter 5 also allowed the player to kill or spare the filler villains of that game. There is no such thing like those choices in Daybreak 2, only being able to pick different endings to sidequests. The alignment meter is still here, but serves no purpose. I wonder whether Falcom has deemed these choices too time consuming to implement and debug (and the expense of voice acting, given that there were four organizations and the player would miss out on some voicelines from the three other routes they didn't pick), or if Falcom simply does not have the passion to attempt this again.



Plot





Daybreak 2's story is thankfully more entertaining overall than Daybreak 1's, which was 110 hours long but overall boring until chapter 5 about 70 hours into the game. Daybreak 2 was 92 hours long, but there are more enjoyable arcs. I quite enjoyed Swin chapter 1 where you face off against monsters that feel threatening. The first 2/3rds of the intermission chapter was fun in its absurdity. Chapter 3 route E and the penultimate dungeon were pretty exciting. The rest of the story was forgettable, but outside of the end of Van chapter 2 it was never aggravating like some prior Trails games have been (including Daybreak 1). Daybreak 2's story is just a fun adventure romp. There are also some funny scenes.

I like the use of visual-novel-style bad ends to further explore the story and what characters would have done in different situations. The bad ends also help make the heroes look vulnerable and the antagonists more threatening, and make the setting feel more open to possibilities rather than sticking to a boring destiny where heroes have plot armor and always win. Some of the bad ends force the hero to rely on cleverness to proceed, rather than just powering up in a shounen battle to win. I feel that some of what happened in the routes should not have been undone.





Daybreak 2 also introduces a few new characters. I quite liked the comedic villainess weapons developer. There is also a duo of repulsive supervillains whom I look forward to seeing get their comeuppance, though sadly this is Trails where hardly anyone is held to account (and if they are, then it is usually the wrong people), so the likelihood of that is slim.

Unfortunately, Trails fans who were looking forward to serious plot advancement will be disappointed again. In regards to Calvard's story, we still have not found anything more about the Oct-Genesis or Mare since Daybreak 1's prologue. There has been no advancement made towards a confrontation with President Gramhardt (every Trails arc culminates in you fighting the country's leadership). There has been no advancement towards the defeat of the overarching Ouroboros villains. And we still know nothing about the impending series-ending apocalypse that was announced in Reverie. Fans who do not care for "filler" could safely skip Daybreak 1 and 2 and not have missed anything important.

Another continuing weakness of the Daybreak series is that the core cast of playable characters remain lackluster and disinteresting compared to the side characters or the main casts of prior Trails games. I wish that Feri, Quatre, Aaron, Risette, and Judith were not permanent party members, and that instead, Daybreak had adopted Trails in the Sky's book novel format where Van's story intersects with others and he parties with them and then parts way when it makes sense.

Lastly, the setting of Calvard continues to be dissatisfactorily shallow. Two games and 200 hours into the Calvard arc, and it still feels barely fleshed out compared to Erebonia after Trails of Cold Steel 2. We still do not know of any Calvardian generals. No military installations have been named besides Baratier airbase that was mentioned in Reverie. We do not know of anything that happened in Calvard's history besides the revolution, which is barely fleshed out. We get to see more dojos of Easterner martial arts, but still know nothing about native Calvardian techniques. And so on. Calvard feels like generic modern urban cities that only exist in the present, with some Chinese and Middle-Eastern immigrants bringing their culture with them. The more interesting Calvard that was set up in Crossbell and the Cold Steel games is still nowhere to be found. The Anti-Immigration League finally make an appearance, but do not get any focus, unlike their Erebonian counterparts.



Aesthetics



Overall the same as the first game. High visual fidelity, great lighting, nice cloud effects, good VFX, cool character and creature designs, spectacular ability animations and cutscenes, lots of unimaginative and mundane modern urban cities. There is one brand new town of Messeldam, which generally looks nice, but the presence of modern cars and yachts and smartphones makes it feel like just yet another modern urban city. This game is very heavily centered in modern urban city environments. You do not get to walk out onto the roads at any point (though Daybreak 1 barely had any). Even more so than the Crossbell duology, the Daybreak series lives or dies on how much you like (or can tolerate) modern urban city environments in your fantasy adventure games.

You do get to explore fantastical landscapes in the Marchen Garden, which look very beautiful and are one of the highlights of the game. However, those environments are canonically located in VR and not in the actual setting of Zemuria. I would hope to see this environment artistry carried forward into future Trails games, preferably in the outdoor world of the setting.







There are now 3D water effects, which is a neat improvement.





Music

The music is overall fine. There are a few standout great tracks.






However, I found that most of the battle music was not very memorable, which is unusual for a Trails game. There are some cutscenes that have some odd or ineffective uses of music. The violin in the emotional scene at the end does not work. It is also strange how the penultimate story dungeon has a very exciting track, while the actual final dungeon is forgettable musically. And the tracks for the first and third phases of the final boss are inappropriate (one evokes connotations with a lore group that the final boss is unrelated to, the other is a bad and unimmersive anime insert song).



PC port

The quality is top notch as to be expected from Durante's company. It has all of the standard features we expect from Trails ports: turbo mode, and instantly resuming your save from where you last left off. I had no performance issues, and the stuttering I had in Daybreak 1 during certain craft animations/cutscenes is gone.



Localization

I tried the English dub for a few minutes before switching back to Japanese voices. The characters did not sound very immersive. Good thing too, because I would not have wanted to hear the lolcowlized lines voiced out loud. There are several trendy lines such as "sounds like a you problem" or "rizz" that will not age as well as Final Fantasy or the older Trails games localized by XSEED. It doesn't feel very professional. There is also a lot of swearing in this and taking God's name in vain, and for lines that are voiced. If you played this game with the English dub, you would not be able to keep your window open. Playing with the Japanese voices, it is obvious that sometimes characters are saying something different or speaking in a different way from what the English lines say.






Final thoughts

Overall a 7/10 game. Great aesthetics, fun combat, good music, pleasant characters, a sufficiently fun campaign that is bogged down by too many city NPCs being available to talk to, an undercooked setting, and the intrusion of current year death cult politics. I look forward to the next game, as I hear that there will finally be some plot progression, and it will feature the return of some of my favorite characters. I just hope I am not spending dozens of hours talking to hundreds of city NPCs yet again.

Recommended, but play Trails in the Sky FC and/or Trails of Cold Steel 1 & 2 first, unless this game looks like it really appeals to you.

I know that I said I was gonna retire. One day I'll maybe even keep that promise. In the meantime, I've played another game about building cool flying ships that go pew pew, or BOOM if you're doing it wrong. However, unlike Highfleet (for which I've also written a review that you can read NOW for FREE as usual), you can additionally build ships that drive on dry ass land and ones that don't even move at all, like some sort of tower or something.

The game I'm talking about is, of course, Airships: Conquer The Skies, released and developed all the way back in 2015 by my homeboy Dave Stark (we've never met). While superficially similar to Highfleet, it is in fact an entirely different thing. While 'fleet was an intricate futuristic airship navigator simulator, 'ships is best described as a 4X in which you build your own units. This does sound very cool, and it is, but there are several things that hold Davo's digital teenage son back from being the outright indie classic that it probably could have been.

My Time Is Limited, Tell Me What's Going On This Instant!

Rude, but here goes: Airships is set on some sort of steampunk/dieselpunk version of Earth that Lord Stark has created a bit of lore for, but about which I can't be brought to care much. The game explains little by itself and I'm not reading up on any of it. Anyway, this version of Earth contains a substance called "suspendium" that is used to suspend (HAH) ships in the air, allowing them to float in the conquerable skies instead of being confined to Neptune's gated community we mortals arrogantly call the ocean. Curiously, regular waterships are entirely absent. Must be an oversight.

There seems to be a big war going on for who's going to be the next president or whatever, and so you take the role of the ruler of your own little autonomous polity, ready to crush the opposition, or even achieve diplomatic victory, as is standard in any decent 4X experience. You can even choose to be part of a weird eldritch worm cult and win by fulfilling all the conditions of your typical eldritch summoning ritual and doom the planet. Haven't tried that one out myself, but it sure sounds neat.

Yes, Very Nice, But How Does It Play?

Before you head out to conquer the skies, as it were, you may want to learn the intricacies of the ship builder, and there is much to learn. The amount of individual parts is much larger than even Highfleet's, and the fact that stationary turrets and tanks are also a factor means that you must account for combined arms combat. By extension, you cannot just build the super mega death vessel of the everlasting skies like you can do in Highfleet because, even if that one ship is very good at ship vs. ship combat, it might not be equipped to handle aircraft carriers or heavily armored defense towers. Also, instead of just shooting the enemy to dust, you can do boarding actions and capture ships as well. You'll have to deal with smaller traditional aircraft, too, that your huge howitzers will not be able to shoot down, requiring smaller caliber armaments. Conversely, those smaller guns are next to useless against any sort of armor. This lends a great deal of strategic depth to the whole thing, which is greatly appreciated.


The great potential of the shipbuilder is sadly hampered by several other things. First off, I will be clear like Obama and tell you that Airships does not simulate physics. Not realistically, anyway. Everything has a weight, a speed, and all the parts must connect, yes, but you'll find that bombed out towers will not collapse as they would in real life. Hitreg is also a bit wonky, with cannonballs often just disappearing, indicating a miss, and rockets seemingly exploding on target but leaving no mark on a ship's hull. Missed shots won't hit other things behind the intended target, and there is no friendly fire. I, for one, was very disappointed to realize all of this. It's not quite a deal breaker, but it does diminish immersion quite a bit, and seeing shots visually but not actually connecting is extremely unsatisfying.


Once you've built and tested a ship or a tank or two, you can go and try the meat of the game, the much vaunted 4X style map, which comes complete with a research tree, diplomacy, and trade. It moves in real time, too. I'm sorry to say that it is not very good. Let's start with the map:


As you can see, graphically, it's a complete mess. The image may not do it justice, but you can tell absolutely nothing at a glance: not where troops are, not which cities are big and which are small, not what you're currently building and where, etc. It's a disaster. Zooming in closer doesn't really help. You're not notified when a building has finished, or when a ship is done getting repaired. You are notified when enemy fleets are headed your way, but those notifications are so inconspicuous you'll be excused for just missing them with all the other 100 things that are currently happening. Bad marks all around.

The 4X mechanics are rather shallow. The research tree is quite basic, with research going extremely quickly. Diplomacy is VERY basic, being reduced to approval scores, and city building is minimalistic, to say the least. Sid Meier did NOT make this one, that's for sure.

The actual meat, the way I see it, is in the combat that takes place on a designated 2D combat screen. Much to my surprise, combat uses my favorite and objectively the best combat mode ever devised: real time with pause. You select a ship/tank/tower as you would a PC in a CRPG, give it an order to move or attack, and watch it go.


Combat is janky, if you want me to put it in a word. For one, the AI reads your inputs. This means, if you move a ship to be within cannon range, the AI will move out of the way whenever it can and as soon as you issue the order. This does not mean that you'll never hit anything, but it does mean that you'll constantly have to manually order your ship to be within range, as the other asshole keeps inching backwards. You can set your fleet to be AI controlled, but I don't recommend it. Those dumbasses keep crashing into each other. Manually ordered ships have no real pathing and will readily crash into stuff as well, forcing you to do an unnecessary amount of micromanagement.

There's also the issue of the game not correctly recognizing when you win. It only seems to award you a victory when the enemy's fleet is actually entirely fucking dead. "Yeah, I know the opposing fleet is burning and has crashed onto the ground, BUT they can still technically shoot at you, should you be dumb enough to come in range, and MAYBE they'll land a lucky hit and set your ammo stores on fire, so uuhh, I'm sorry, but I'm legally not permitted to let you have this one, sonny." One particularly egregious incident was when I had obliterated all but one ship, and that one had been blasted to literally half it's size and had slinked away to the other end of the screen in the chaos. Wondering when I was gonna win, I searched the screen from left to right, only then spotting the harmless flying equivalent of a triple amputee crawling to safety. The game then started counting down for a draw, and I wasn't quick enough to fly to the ship and put it out of its misery. I consequently drew that encounter, meaning I lost, because draws favor the defender. That was stupid.

Damn, Sounds Like It Sucks

Well, uh, a little, yeah. Not to say there's nothing to like here. Shipbuilding and testing, I think, is still very fun, and if you're like me, you'll get 40 hours out of the shipbuilder alone before you ever even touch the 4X aspect. However, you may not be entirely satisfied with how your precious creations handle, or how the campaign is a bit flat.

I give Airships a cautious recommendation. Depending on how you weigh the game's respective drawbacks and advantages, you may get a good time out of it. Sadly, though, I was left a tad disappointed by the whole thing.

Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is an action-adventure/puzzle game released on September 26th, 2024 for the Nintendo Switch. While all Zelda games build off one another in different ways, this entry in the series takes a step back in a way more reminiscent of the older games like A Link to the Past (though it doesn't allow us to name our character like we could in that game).


Before I start the review proper, I'd like to explain what I mean by "Classic Zelda" since I'll be referring to it quite a lot. In a series (especially one as long-running as Zelda), there'll be things you'll come to expect in each title. In Zelda, the expectations are as follows: Swordplay, Dungeons, Puzzle-solving/Puzzle-solving Items, and finally, Exploration.

Each title in the series puts its own spin on these aforementioned elements to keep a veteran player engaged and gauge the interest of newer players wanting to get into the franchise. The "spin" that Echoes of Wisdom (which I'll be referring to as "EoW" from this point forward) puts on this formula, while simultaneously trying to emulate it, is the "Echoes" (which we'll discuss later).


We begin the game not as Zelda, but as Link, the titular protagonist of the series. Part of the reason this was done was to ease players into the game: what better way to do it than having them play as the character they're most likely familiar with? I have to particularly commend the tutorials being done in real-time, as opposed to interrupting the gameplay to explain something basic. Not only is this a godsend for repeat playthroughs, but it also ensures that returning players don't lose interest due to the amount of hand-holding, a crime that's existed in this series for too long.

After Link gets consumed by a rift, and we get escorted to Hyrule Castle after escaping, the King of Hyrule and his court also get consumed by a rift and wrongfully order Zelda to get locked up for creating said rift, the guards understandably become confused at this order but obey regardless. This highlights a positive with the intro that's thankfully consistent through the main quest: all the characters behaving in a way you would expect them to.

It's at the jail cell that you are introduced to Tri, the game's main companion. While he serves a useful gameplay purpose, his characterization is non-existent. I'm not kidding when I say that the only bits of characterization Tri gets throughout the game are learning the definition of a couple of words like "Thanks", and he also gets in the way a couple of times by summarizing certain story interactions moments after they just happened.

It's also in this section that we unlock the ability to "echo" things. Echoes are this game's main puzzle-solving mechanic, but it can also paradoxically serve as the mechanic surrounding combat as well. While I'll discuss its implementation later, I have to criticize Nintendo for sticking with the same horizontal UI that they used for Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom without improving on it at all―while it's fine in the early game when there's not a lot of items to clone, in the mid-to-late game, your clone library increases dramatically and it becomes cumbersome to navigate.


The main issue with the UI is that there's a large amount of screen space that's not being utilized. Throughout my playthrough, I rotated between only 6-8 echoes until I received better versions of them, and this partly had to do with the terrible user experience that the interface provides. There could've been a category for monsters, objects, and elemental mobs/objects on top of each other. They also could've utilized the already existing notebook as a replacement since it's much easier to comb through than the existing UI. This is especially noticeable once you unlock better versions of existing echoes: the game doesn't cull the weaker versions from the list to save space and lessen the load that you have to scroll through.

After we escape the jail cells with the help of Impa, the world opens up.



The world in EoW plays the most like Classic Zelda, at least on the surface. Despite the map being huge, it's paradoxically more tightly designed due to not having as much "breadth" as is expected of a game in this genre. This limits the scope and allows the designers to make the optional areas in the game a lot harder since players don't have to explore them.

The heart containers are just as satisfying to collect as they've always been (much more than Spirit Orbs), and they're much more well-hidden thanks to the tightly designed environments. One example is a dungeon with an unobtainable heart container placed at the top: the secret to getting this heart container is finding your way to the surface above the dungeon in the overworld and then summoning a Holmill to burrow through the ground, landing right on the heart container. There are many cases in Zelda where the puzzles are more concerned with making you feel smart than actually requiring you to be smart, but, while this is present in EoW, it's much rarer than before.

Echoes are another reason impelling players to explore since unexplored areas could house certain enemies or objects that would help you in a later scenario. I think the most impressive part about the echoes is how they're useful in both 2D and 3D environments; no doubt it took the designers a lot of time to make each echo serve a gameplay purpose in either perspective.

The quests in Zelda games have, unfortunately, never been all that great, Majora's Mask being the peak, and a close second being Breath of the Wild with its many quests involving the player having to use landmarks and directions to complete them. MM's quests were excellent because of how the character progressed through the 3-day cycle, and having to manage your time efficiently was very rewarding. The main issue with Zelda side quests is that they're more concerned with giving the players something to do than bothering to make it enjoyable.

EoW doesn't have any sort of overarching expectations of the player―there are a lot more quests that point you to their destination; however, its quests are usually more involved than Breath of the Wild's. There are 50 side quests and, while some are simple fetch quests to give the player a reason to go echo an item, there are many that have more going on, such as the "Questioning the Local Cats" quest, which has you dress up as a furry cat to converse with other cats to locate the one that belongs to an old man, or the "Zappy Shipwreck" quest, which has you explore a multi-stage ship dungeon with a mini-boss at the end. I think the lack of a wide map contributed to the quality of these side quests since there's a lot more to find on a moment-to-moment basis, and the interconnected nature of the overworld makes it so you're more likely to have already finished these side quests' objectives before even adding them to your quest log.


Collectibles are less of a chore this time around. The stamp guy is charming enough and more stamps are off the beaten path, making it feel even less tedious. Mini-games are more replayable with plenty of new gimmicks to keep players engaged. The drink-mixing mechanic is just as flexible and enjoyable to experiment with as its Breath of the Wild counterpart, all of these serve as a good distraction from the main quest and are short enough to where that players won't get side-tracked completely.



After going through Impa's secret passageway and evading the guards, we travel east to find our first rift, which is this game's reoccurring dungeon type.

It's easy to just say the rifts in Zelda are visually repetitive and grating after a while, even if it has a wildly different interior. But I think this highlights the game's poor visuals more than anything else. The lighting in EoW is very flat and coupled with the lack of artistic "pop" in the models, it makes the graphics feel a lot more "plastic-y" than it's ever been.

I think there's something to be gained with choosing a more low-detail form of texturing and modeling, the gain is that the artists can place more attention on the little stuff while having to spend less time focusing on the stuff that would usually take more work, and while there are some nice details like Zelda having a perpetually frowned face and sweat pours when in the Gerudo region, but these details are few and far between and sometimes have less going on than even the Wind Waker, a game that was released back in 2002.


After we rescue Minister Lefte, it's at this point that we unlock the "Swordfighter Form" (Allowing us to use Link's move set for a limited amount of time) - The saving grace of this ability is that it's of limited use, meaning you have to wait for the right moment to use it since every second counts. However, it has more cons than pros. Firstly: It becomes borderline useless in the mid-to-late-game since you'll always have an echo that could do the same abilities just slightly less fast, and secondly: it removes some legitimacy from Zelda as a protagonist. I have no clue if the designers created Link's move set first and bolted the "Swordfighter form" on as a way to make sure that not all that work was lost for a 3-5 minute introduction. Regardless, I don't think it paid off well.



The dungeons in EoW lack any kind of serious challenge. The closest it comes to this is the Faron Temple. What makes this dungeon a highlight of the game is the simple gameplay scenario it throws the player into. The entire dungeon is very dark and requires careful navigation of the environment to avoid enemies and simultaneously use the echoes to light up a path for the player to get through. But even the best dungeon in the game pales to some of the worst dungeons in Majora's Mask or Ocarina of Time. The major problem with these dungeons is that they feel very underdeveloped, so much so that something as simple as a "dungeon with no lighting" is enough to give players a nice enough break from the routine.

Many of the other story dungeons lack any kind of challenge or cut off right before it gets any good. I'd rather an experience be too short than too long so I wouldn't get on these dungeons' cases too much... if not for Hyrule Castle falling into this category as well. Hyrule Castle is typically the highlight of many Zelda games because it's usually followed by a final boss fight that is a culmination of everything the player learned so far, but that's not the case. Even if it's just as short as the other dungeons, the missed potential here is almost criminal.

It's also during these segments that the music in the game becomes the most static part of the entire experience. While I wouldn't call any of the soundtracks bad, they're forgettable, which is a disappointment. They're expressive enough, but there's nothing in the game that'll stick to you like Majora's Mask's "Final Hour" or Skyward Sword's "Guardians Awaken" theme.


After obtaining the three Prime Energies of the Goddesses, they explain to her that Null resided in the void that existed before reality, consuming life when it developed to remain the only being in existence. The Goddesses created the universe over the void to seal away Null, causing it to resent them. The story plays itself similarly to Classic Zelda as well. It's minimal but not non-existent since it serves as an important setup for the player. Watching Link save you before briefly getting consumed by a rift as well should motivate new players to want to save him, especially veteran players who grew fond of playing as him throughout the series.

This is another reason why, despite me saying that Hyrule Castle is a huge missed opportunity, it's still a good dungeon for what it is, and it could've certainly been a lot worse, having Zelda and Link on opposite sides of the same dungeon doing drastically different things is interesting, it's not hard to imagine ourselves in Link's shoes as he's mowing down dozens of enemies since that's something we've grown used to doing with the same character throughout the franchise. It's also partly why the boss fight with Null is as good as it was as well. It feels like a culmination of everything the player has learned throughout.



Overall, I think EoW is a fun little game for what it is. It's easy to just call it a knock-off of Link to the Past, A Link Between Worlds, or Link's Awakening, but it tries to put a spin on the formula that hasn't been attempted in nearly 20 years, and for that, I commend it, especially when they nailed a hell of a lot more things right than wrong.

Like a lot of the Zelda games, it exhibits an extraordinary amount of missed potential, which makes some of its shortcomings even more disappointing. A lot of its dungeons could do with making them that little bit more diverse, mechanically and narratively. Having the mini-dungeons be more challenging wouldn't have hurt either - however, the puzzles in this game are a step in the right direction, with the imaginative level design at times making it very hard to put down the controller.

I would recommend EoW to returning veterans who would like a more modern spin on the Classic Zelda formula, and I'd recommend it to the newer fans to get a dose of what the older games were like, before Breath of the Wild.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this game from the developer.


Somnus bills itself as a puzzle game, but it plays more like a spot-the-difference game. You are dropped into the game with little explanation, finding yourself in the dining hall of a medieval castle. A family is frozen in mid-prayer, and two doors each offer a way out. However, regardless of which door you choose, you're returned to the same dining room. Each time you re-enter, a mannequin holding a numbered sign greets you.



In my own play, after a few minutes of aimless wandering, I recalled the hint on the Steam store page: "If there's an anomaly, turn back. If not, move forward." With that, the game's objective became clear, and I quickly finished it in under ten minutes.



Most dining rooms are unchanged, and you only need to move forward to progress. However, some contain a difference - an anomaly. In these rooms, you must turn back. Otherwise, the counter, represented by the mannequin with the numbered sign, resets to zero. Successfully navigating 14 such dining rooms without a mistake leads to victory.



Most anomalies are not subtle and are easily spotted. The scene is so clear that you will often anticipate the location of an anomaly even before discovering it. I encountered only very few that weren't immediately identifiable.



Even at the budget price of $3.99, I would struggle to recommend this game in its current state. While I appreciate the concept, it feels underdeveloped. The lack of a connecting story or any memorable scenes leaves the experience feeling unfinished. The anomalies, which are meant to be the most important gameplay elements, are neither cleverly hidden nor particularly interesting. To make this game worthwhile, it needs a substantial addition of content. Whether that's a compelling narrative, more challenging and engaging puzzles, or a broader scope with more scenes, something fundamental would need to change.


Somnus attempts to create a horror atmosphere with unsettling anomalies, such as the boy's sudden, direct stare. However, these attempts fall flat. The static, empty scene quickly becomes monotonous, and the short, generic music loop fails to build any real tension.

As it stands, you'll get perhaps five minutes of mild curiosity, and then it's over.