Gaming is a frivolous hobby. It is unproductive, unsocial, the industry surrounding it is highly predatory and whatever passes for "serious" or "artistic" discourse is laughably juvenile. Gaming is a hobby that is well left to weird teenagers and children that had no real friends growing up. Playing video games as an adult is nothing but a waste of time.

I was fully prepared to quit gaming, especially seeing as nothing on the current market interests me in the slightest. That was before I came across Blood West, and so I indulged my addiction for the last time for the foreseeable future. Lemme tell you about it.



Blood West is some sort of weird mish mash of whatever genres died a cruel and violent death back in the late nineties and a bunch of other stuff. It's an imsim with a bit of Thief stealth and treasure hunting in there, there's crpg style dialogue trees and the protagonist has the personality of a Build Engine shooter avatar but it's also got a Diablo style inventory system and then there's also some bits and pieces of Stalker in there and even some soulslike elements. Like I said, a buncha stuff.

The game takes place in a weird west setting with the player taking on the role of an undead gunslinger summoned by highly suspect spirits to purge the land of evil and eldritch horrors. The game consists of 3 different and separate maps, divided into their respective chapters, very much how a trooner shooter would divide itself into episodes. In order to progress, you need to fulfil several quests and maybe even do some sidequests along the way. On your adventures, you'll encounter many different enemies, some unique to a chapter, and get the chance to find cool artefacts and unique weapons.

The Primary Gameplay Loop (c) consists of sneaking from location to location and killing shit on the way. The game provides you with a neat selection of ranged and melee weapons so you can kill as efficiently as you can. Stealth is highly encouraged, since even basic enemies are incredibly competent and a head on encounter is always less optimal than taking out an enemy with a critical backstab.



Blood West sports a somewhat unique equipment system, giving you a slot for big weapons and a slot for small weapons. The big slot is reserved for larger melee weapons, namely axes and sabers, and long guns, while the smaller one is where you put revolvers, knives and the odd tomahawk. Ammo is never plentiful enough that you could shoot every enemy you come across, meaning that having a melee weapon with you is almost mandatory. Melee weapons are also the only weapons that can pull off critical sneak attacks, which as mentioned are the preferred way of dealing with the opposition.

The weapons are well balanced for the most part, each type having their own specific niche. However, some niches are smaller than others. Sawn off shotguns for example are terrible, because their range is so short that you may as well be using a melee weapon, which is "free" to use, requiring no precious ammo. They have a niche as an emergency burst damage option when equipping a melee weapon in the big slot but in most close encounters, melee weapons deal more dps and require no reloads. Guns are able to shoot special types of ammunition but the enemies that are best taken out with a silver bullet for example are few and far between. There is exactly one single enemy that requires special ammo to be killed and that one doesn't show up until the last chapter.

The game in general seems very skewed towards melee even when disregarding sneak attacks. As mentioned, they require no ammo and have higher dps than most guns. In a game with respawning enemies and limited ammo, a weapon that is free to use comes out on top even on that virtue alone. The lack of range is rarely an issue, since there are plenty of ways to sneak around and get close in order to deliver a quick kill. During the end game, I ended up stockpiling loads of ammunition because I had gotten the hang of stealth and was rarely using anything other than my saber to sneak kill most things I came across.


Look at how dead that guy is lmao

This is a shame because the gunplay feels great actually. Sound design is good and aiming feels substantial. In a wild western setting I'd have liked more of an incentive to go with a gunslinger sort of build.

When you're not killing things, you'll be exploring whatever area you're currently in. The game does a great job of incentivizing exploration even in places that are off the beaten path because more often than not very useful supplies and weapons will be hidden in some shack or down some hole in the ground that's not marked on your map. The maps themselves contain many interesting sights and feature quintessentially 90s environmental storytelling at times.


Pictured: Environmental storytelling (the horses are dead and there's a broken carriage, meaning the horses mugged the carriage and the carriage killed them both in self defense)

While traversing the prairie/swamp/mountains you'll be constantly haunted by an eerie ambient soundtrack and the weird noises the different enemies make. My favorite one is the one that goes YEEEEEEEHOOOOO (that's not a joke). Speaking of enemies, they're also great. Each of them is given something of a personality with the aforementioned noises and voice lines, their animations and of course their attacks. Since each and every one of them is best approached stealthily however, a lot of their design sadly goes to waste. All backs look the same when you stab them. A notable exception are the Hellbears, late game enemies that are so badass that they're best avoided entirely.


Now that's what I call a stabbed back, fellas.

Blood West contains some very mild narrative rpg elements, giving you the opportunity to roleplay with some NPCs via dialogue. This falls very flat, the only notable NPCs that you may have any attachment to or interaction with are in chapter 2 and they're underdeveloped as all hell. You have a *whispers* woman an alcoholic and a small child.


Truly, the greatest of all eldritch terrors.

The lady is a bitch at first but turns nice when you give her flowers. There's a joke to be made here. The alcoholic is a priest and gives you nothing much of use and the child really is just a waste of space. No meaningful choices and consequences here.


THE HORROR

The voice acting though is surprisingly good. I expected nothing from this midrange indie game but the voice work in there is actually very enjoyable. Still, the roleplaying aspect is woefully undercooked and chapter 3 all but drops it entirely.

This didn't detract from the overall experience, though. All in all, exploration is fun because it has a purpose and is rewarded, combat is meaty and satisfying enough even with the overly heavy emphasis on stealth and the premise and the little story there was kept me engaged throughout the 20 odd hours it took me to complete Blood West. It has no glaring flaws, nothing in it greatly annoyed me, not even the inventory and I was also greatly immersed within the game world thanks to good visual and sound design.


Relatable.

I wholeheartedly recommend Blood West. I wouldn't call it a hidden gem but it is the kind of game that we have seen very little of in the modern era and it is worth playing for that fact alone. Similar to Stalker it would greatly profit from several iterations and improvements. Maybe we'll see Blood West: Call of Nevada in the future, who knows. In the meantime, I'll return to my retirement from this stupid hobby.






-Humbaba

Every now and then you stumble across a game that time and mankind forgot, a hidden gem or at the very least a diamond in the rough. After all, the gaming industry is not a meritocracy and a game's success does not necessarily correlate with its quality or vice versa.

Anyway, this is Dark Earth, a game made by the French that was forgotten for good reason because boy let me tell you, this thing is booooooooring. Big thanks to @rusty_shackleford though for providing a playable version of the game.



I do not know what Dark Earth is exactly. It's not an rpg, you don't play a role. It's not an action game, despite what the game's underdeveloped combat would have you believe. It's also not a puzzler because there is exactly one puzzle in the entire game. I suppose it's some sort of point and click adventure game that pretends to be something else.

Really, I struggle to write anything about Dark Earth, because there is so little to it. It's very short for one, lasting only maybe 6 hours. There is very little gameplay to speak of, combat encounters are rare and unengaging and as stated previously there are no puzzles that need solving. The moment to moment gameplay involves running around and finding things to give to people. Dark Earth is obtuse on purpose like many games of the time in hopes of padding the game's length. I don't play ball like that and used a walkthrough. This game doesn't tell you shit and just expects you to backtrack through everything without much indication of what to do next.

Critics of the time noted the game's atmosphere and story. The atmosphere is alright, I guess. I like pre rendered backgrounds as much as the next guy but there are very few locations (maybe like 12 in total and you keep backtracking through em) and most of them are some shade of gray or brown or the occasional yellow. They're not very impressive, even for the time. Riven released the same year and blows Dark Earth out of the water.

So let's recap the story. It is very boring. The game takes place in the "Stallite" (some sort of city or whatever) of Sparta in a post apocalyptic version of Earth's future. People worship the sun and outside the Stallite are the "Darklands" where all the monsters live. You play as Guardian of Fire (a soldier) named Arkhan, who is called up one day to guard a door in the sun temple. Suddenly there's a commotion from the other side of that door. Arkhan goes in to investigate and sees some weirdos killing the sun priests.


Look how happy he is

You manage to kill one asshole, the other one spritzes you with AIDS juice and from then on out you're "contaminated". This means that you're turning into a monster if you don't find a cure. That's what some dude named Thanandar tells you anyway after you wake up in the hospital. You spend the next few hours running around the place, eventually uncovering a half baked conspiracy involving your boss, Thanandar himself and this guy to overthrow the Stallite and cover it in DARKNESS(c) or some bullshit:


Fat

Ultimately, all your friends die, you find a secret tomb that contains the cure and that's it. The final battle is you pulling two levers.

Uh, what else... Um yeah, you can turn into a funny looking monster.


There he is

No really, that's all there is to say about Dark Earth. It's a big nothingburger. There's nothing to do, nothing to experience, no replayability, just nothing. You just listen to people talk a lot. Nothing of this game will stick with me. Not recommended.








-Humbaba

Once upon a time, a small indie studio of determined Russians Cypriots sat together with the lads at Paizo, rubbing hands, wheeling and dealing until the Americans would hand over the license to their hit roleplaying system Pathfinder. Fast forward some unknown amount of time and the Cypriots, now collectively known by their gang name "Owlcat" released a classic isometric crpg called Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Then, about a year later, they released it again and this time, it was even in a playable state. Kingmaker was a very good game for what it was, adding more fuel to the furnace that is the crpg renaissance of the early 2000s. Still, Owlcat was not satisfied. "We need to go bigger, better, LONGER!", said Owlcat's leader Mishulin, beat the shit out of 3 employees and ordered the production of the next game in the Pathfinder franchise of crpgs. The result was Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and that's what's getting reviewed now. In short, the game is a masterpiece, a modern classic and the gold standard of crpgs. Spoilers ahead.

Part 1: Whaaaat is this place

Like all good reviews, this one too starts at the beginning. Wrath of the Righteous (henceforth referred to as "Wrathfinder") is a heckin chonker of an rpg, with an average playthrough lasting at least 100 hours, taking the PC from level 1 all the way to max level or even double that, depending. Wrathfinder markets itself as an epic level adventure, eschewing the more typical running around in the woods and killing bears in favor of storming castles and killing demons within the first few hours of gameplay. This irregularity has angered many rpg connoisseurs but the author is of the opinion that this is a welcome change of pace in a genre that has been coasting on nostalgia and imitation for much too long and is in desperate need of innovation. Not every adventure has to begin like Baldur's Gate 1.

Character creation is obscenely in-depth to the point of being seen as "bloated" by some. Truthfully, much of the class roster exists for the sake of grid filling ("Well, if we're gonna have a fighty rogue then we should also have a fighty wizard, and a fighty cleric...") and many are somewhat redundant or plain illogical. It may be nice to have a thief that can shoot mind bullets but you don't bring along a rogue for magic anyway. Wrathfinder has been referred to as a "buildfag" game and there is a lot of variety in how to build your character. None of the more complicated multiclassing options or prestige classes are necessary to beat the game but the option to go completely nuts is there. You can go 400+ hours in the game without ever dipping into anything but your base class and still get through the game fine. That being said, some classes are strictly better than others and picking one of the worse classes or building it wrong can make the game a great deal more frustrating.

Part 2: Story

The story of Wrathfinder puts the player in the shoes of a quasi blank slate character, who wakes up in the middle of some festival in the middle of the city of Kenabres. Kenabres is located in the vicinity of the Worldwound, a massive gash in the earth from which demons have been springing up for centuries, ruining housing prices in the area. Local Queen Galfrey and her forces have been trying to stop that from happening by launching Crusades against the hordes of the Abyss. Much like the historical Crusades, they delivered no results, in fact the demons seem to be coming out on top by the time the game starts.

The PC, whose motivations for coming to Kenabres are left up to the player's imagination and a single dialogue option at the beginning of the game, soon makes a recovery after being healed by resident silver dragon TERENDELEV (has anybody SEEN her?!). About 3.50 seconds later, the city is attacked by a teleporting horde of demons led by demon prince Deskari, who proceeds to one shot TERENDELEV (bet she didn't SEE that one coming) and chucks the player down a chasm. They eventually make it out and join up with the Crusaders, being appointed it's Knight Commander after it turns out that they are the Messiah or something. From there on out, it is the PC's life goal to exterminate demons and close the Worldwound.

The Crusade is Wrathfinder's big framing device. The Crusade justifies the player's presence as well as the companions' who join you. Many rpgs lack such a framing device. Oftentimes, the PC just seems to be doing it because the player wants to play a game and the companions are just happy to be around and have nothing better to do. Every companion and their personal quest is in some way or another tied to the Crusade and/or the people within it. The PC does not even factor that much into it, aside from being the reason the Crusade is started. This makes every character involved feel plausible because they all have a valid reason for being here.

The demons are an incredibly effective antagonistic force. Very early on, the game establishes that the Crusaders stand very little chance against them. The Abyssal forces are individually much more powerful than the vast majority of units the Crusade can muster, they are more numerous and seem to be always one step ahead. Several NPCs in the early game are rather paranoid about spies and demonic tricks and the game makes them out to be entirely justified. At several points in the game, the Crusaders are completely fooled, ambushed and tricked.

This is important, because in the end, a good rpgs need to be about the player and the player should have a good reason for being the main character. In Wrathfinder, the PC is the only person in the world who can stop the bumbling Crusaders and their incompetent Queen of bungling yet another Crusade. What sounds like common sense, is lost on many rpgs. In New Vegas for example, the PC just goes off to risk their lives to deliver an object, they don't even know is important. That game's premise hinges entirely on it being a video game that's meant to be played with little in-universe explanation. Not so with Wrathfinder.

Tangent: Mythic Paths

The PC, fuelled by so called mythic powers and apparently destined by heaven to defeat the demons, may opt into one of the many "mythic paths", aligning themselves with a selection of outsiders, like angels, fae or *check notes* demons. Wait a minute-

The mythic paths are overall a mixed bag. While providing an incredible amount of replay value, they are very much hit and miss both mechanically and narratively. Some provide very strong combat abilities and alter the story extensively. Others, the late game paths, are only available in the last third of the game and thus impact the story very little. To properly explain, we need to go into specific detail about several different paths. The author can speak on the paths of the Lich, Angel, Legend, Azata, Trickster and Swarm-That-Walks ("Swarm" for short).

Out of the 6 paths mentioned, Lich is easily the weakest. First of all, it is heavily skewed toward spellcasters, martial classes get very little out of it by comparison, limiting build variety. Narratively, the path is awful. The PC is reduced to a lackey of an actual Lich who is oathbound to turn the PC into a lich as well. The Lich is a prick and boring. You consequently spend the entire game building him a house, paying for decoration, amenities and food. Ultimately, the player also has to sacrifice several things in order to not turn into a half-assed Lich and that's it. It would've been much better if the player learned by himself how to become a Lich, learning dark secrets and descending ever deeper down the rabbit hole of lichdom. As it stands, the PC has no agency of his own and does what he does only because some skeleton tells him to.

Contrast this to Legend. Eventually, it turns out that the PC's powers are due to the experimentation of the game's main antagonist Areelu Vorlesh, the architect of the holocaust Worldwound. The player can then decide whether or not to care about the fact that they're not sent by god after all and can either carry on as usual OR they can reject the mythic power and become a Legend. No other path puts as much emphasis on player agency than Legend, making it easily the best path in the game. The PC rids themselves entirely of subversive influence and gets the job done on their own terms. No prophecy, no secret bloodline, just pure fucking gumption.

Then, we have Swarm, which is the biggest waste of potential if there ever was one. Being a late game path, you don't get to spend much time as a walking hivemind but when you do, you become virtually unstoppable. This is the closest you can get to godmode without cheating. However, all the pieces were in places for Swarm to be a fantastic full path like the others.

It would've been easy: the player discovers the notes of the mad swarm scientist (so far so good) and you're required to do some research on them. Instead of those things not having much effect on the player, they should've taken the place of mythic progression; instead of glowing every once in a while, the player conducts ever more depraved experiments on themselves in a perverted quest towards immortality and unlimited power over mankind. Eventually, the Crusade no longer puts up with their Knight Commander becoming evil and mutinies, putting the player in the dirt, chucking his corpse into the Abyss, so that he may never return. Too evil and ambitious to stay dead, the PC thanks to their previous experiments and black heart attracts a swarm of vescavors through sheer will, is devoured and subsequently reborn as the Swarm-On-Wheels. They then fuck up the Abyss so hard that the demons banish him back out of the Abyss back to Golarion. Then the player evens up with every NPC and companion, ultimately heading to the Worldwound to do the same with Areelu. Badabing badaboom.

The paths also have the chance to make the story make little sense. At some point the Hand of the Inheritor directly intervenes to save the player, because he too thinks they're jesus. Now, this makes sense if the player has chosen the Angel path for example and is radiating holy energies. It makes ABSOLUTELY no sense however if the player is an aspiring lich, unless we accept that Za Hando is dumb enough to believe that his goddess gave her chosen champions necromancer powers, which are outside her portfolio. Granted, Za Hando being an idiot is his in-universe characterization but this seems like an oversight. Especially seeing as many paths have characters that could've just as well stood in for Za Hando (Zacharius for Lich, the CG Goon Squad for Azata etc.)

Tangent End

Anyway, the game's story is well paced, aside from the early game, which really drags its feet especially on replays. The story only diverges with the availability of mythic paths, which only start being a thing about 10 hours in. Owlcat could've really cut down on that and it's surprising that they didn't. Act 4 is divisive, Alushynirra being a sore on the eyes and ears. The author doesn't mind it too much, though it is weird to see that there are cities in a plane of chaos. Then again, that's a problem with the setting, which Owlcat didn't invent. The game loses steam towards the end, as most cprgs do for some reason. The Ineluctable Prison is the game's last highlight and then it's all downhill, with the endgame dungeon being legitimately terrible.

Part 3: Combat

Combat is FANTASTIC and it is the author's view that everyone complaining about it should GIT GUD. Wrathfinder's caught a lot of shit for being allegedly riddled by stat bloat and BIG NUMBERS.

The author disagrees and rejects any notion of the sort. It is very easy to keep up with this supposed bloat, no buildfagging necessary. Combat and encounter design is generally good and fun, carried by fantastic sound design and decent animation work. That's not to say that some encounters don't overdo it a bit but most of those are optional.

If you wanna beat the bloat, you must become the bloat. Luckily, the game gives you tons of build options in order for you to bloatmaxx. There's many broken builds out there that dip and dive into all sorts of classes but again that's not necessary at all. You'll do fine picking a decent martial monoclass and focus on single target burst damage. Gibbing a minotaur for 300 dmg with your halfling deliverer with a vital strike focus never gets old. Neither does sending enemy ragdolls flying off the screen.

It must be said that mages are very disappointing and weak compared to martials. In BG1 and 2 i.e. 2nd DnD, mages were an absolute menace, putting themselves behind about 3.50 layers of protective spells that required several rounds of dispelling by your own wizard. This sort of spell fencing is non existent here and usually a wizard can be geeked by physical damage no problem.

On the other end of that spectrum are the bosses, who are virtually immune to melee combat, having ACs high as the moon, damage resistances and being themselves highly dangerous to engage close up. While this may bum out martial fans, it gives those neglected casters time to shine, because many spells target touch AC and are thus the only thing able to hit and kill a boss.

Part 4: Dungeons, Reactivity and Whatever Else Doesn't Deserve Its Own Section

Dungeons are generally good. There aren't that many traditional dungeons but those that are present are very good. The tutorial dungeon is a very cool underground base of Baphomet worshippers and its decorated in all sorts of satanic shit. Every Baphomet themed dungeon steals the show, especially the Ineluctable Prison. Blackwater is an easy pick for best dungeon for its novelty alone. The game opens the path to Blackwater way too early though, resulting in many underlevelled parties getting bitchlapped immediately, causing bitching among the playerbase.

There's a lot of reactivity to anything that should have it. What stands out is how much reactivity there is to the PCs selection of religion. Granted, some deities have more reactivity than others but some of them get really cool stuff. If you worship Gorum, you get megabuffed during the fight with the dragon during Greybor's quest. If you worship the Godclaw, you get a buff during the Darrazand fight. I'm sure there's other examples as well.

What the game handles extremely poorly though is alignment. Kingmaker suffered from the same problem. Every now and then the game will present you with a alignment coded dialogue option and choosing it nudges the PC's alignment in the given direction.

There's several problems with this. First of all, the options are the most stereotypical shit answers ever. Any evil option is something along the lines of "Durrrr, I HATE everybody and I want to KILL THEM ALL", every lawful option goes like "FOLLOW THE RULES I AM A ROBOT". This isn't exactly compelling roleplaying. The other issue is that the options always nudge you towards the respective neutral alignment. This means that if you're anything but NG, TN, NE, LN or CN you actually never get to play your alignment. There's no such thing as a LG dialogue option in Wrathfinder, so Paladins can go suck a lemon.

I praised the game's plot before and while I stand by that, it must also be said that the writing, that is, the prose is trash. It is offensively bad to the point that anyone with a brain will skip the dialogue on anything beyond the first playthrough. It gets less bad the longer the game goes on but it never surpasses middling quality. Voice acting is equally bad, with a few notable exceptions, like Regill.

Part 5: Conclusion

Wrathfinder is by no means perfect in any regard. Then again, no rpg is. In fact, many of the classics have glaring problems that the scene has decided to ignore at one point. In comparison to those classics, Wrathfinder easily surpasses any of them. Being better than something made 20 to 30 years ago might sound unimpressive but until Wrathfinder came along, BG2 remained the gold standard of crpgs and that title was released in 2000, with studios like Obsidian utterly failing to live up to it.

What Wrathfinder proves is that isometric crpgs with lots of dialogue and a runtime of 100 hours aren't passé and that they can still be made in this day and age. It is a definite must-have for any monocled and virile specimen and will be fondly remembered by future generations of epic gamers.




-Humbaba

Note 1: this game was reviewed in October 2023 using the 4chan fan translation patch applied to NISA's PC port. As the English voice dub and NISA's localization do not release until July 2024, they are not reflected in this review.

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

Edited thread title to include the English localized title

After 111 hours, I have finished Kuro no Kiseki on nightmare difficulty.

It was overall lackluster. One of the worst Trails games. Not an overall bad game; I enjoyed it enough to finish it and I would rather play this over Western AAA slop (I will be playing Kuro 2 for sure), but Kuro doesn't have the appeal of the Trails franchise.



Gameplay

Aside from the true final boss' second phase, nothing posed a threat to me. I was waiting for that moment when the game would force me to buckle up and get into the nitty gritty of character building and turn based combat, but that didn't happen until the last 15 minutes. That was the only time I had to reload an earlier save and change my build. The gameplay was pretty braindead. For trash, you either run past them to the boss, or you dodge-roll around them, strike twice, dodge roll around, use your stun ability, then press X to enter turn based mode; once in turn-based mode, you just pop Aaron's S-craft and that one-shots the trash, and with the CP charger shard skill Aaron will regen back to 100 CP, so he can S-craft the next trash pack. For bosses, you just buff up and have Aaron kick the boss.

The boss fights were really uninspired. Cold Steel had a few bosses that could jail party members, or the mirrors that were immune to physical or magic damage, or Gareth sniping you from off the battlefield. Well, I guess the devs copy-pasted comrade C's mines from CS1 Chapter 6 for Melchior, but unlike C's, the mines aren't a problem at all: you just pop Aaron's S-craft to get rid of them, or you can just ignore them since they do so little damage. The only time I was in danger of dying was during a dual boss fight if I lowered both bosses below 50% HP, which meant that I would get hit with two S-breaks in a row, but the solution is just to kill one boss first. There were several endgame boss fights where I killed a boss before he even got a turn.

Another issue is the new boost system. Using boost on a character buffs him up, and a character needs two stacks of boost to use an S-craft. Boost only lasts 2 turns at 1 stack, 3 turns at 2 stacks, and regens slowly from dealing damage or being hit. It's basically a second CP bar that fills way slower than CP. Due to this system, you're incentivized not to have a tank who draws enemy AoE attacks away from the group, but instead to have everyone stack together in front of a boss to maximize the number of party members hit by AoEs, and thus fill the boost gauge faster so you can boost your party members and use S-crafts.

Since turn order bonuses are attached to characters and not to turns, and since there are no negative turn order bonuses you need to dodge, there is no turn order manipulation gameplay, which makes the combat feel shallower.




In Chapter 5, you can get two guest party members for a grand total of six characters on the battlefield at once. That was pretty fun, though sadly you could not control the guest party members. I think this highlights that the normal party cap of 4 characters on the battlefield is too restrictive, especially in this Suikoden-esque franchise in which part of the appeal is the huge roster of characters. I would like to be able to fully control six party members at once in future games.

Another issue is that while the combat was fun enough, there was very little of it. The vast majority of my playtime was spent reading text, whereas in prior Trails game there was actually quite a lot of combat to do outside of story.




The only moment in the game where I felt like I could identify where I was in this fantasy world.

The lack of interconnected roads to walk on (you instead just drive to these abstract locations) makes Calvard feel less like a realized fantasy world with a grounding in geography compared to prior Trails games. Even in Cold Steel, when you took train rides to places, there were still routes and you could pick out, "Okay, if I were to just walk a few miles further down that road, I would reach this location from earlier." Calvard doesn't have that.



Plot



Kuro's plot is devoid of tension for most of the game. Early on there is the tension of Agnes coming to Van and the flashback CG of her shocked face reading grandma's diary and not wanting to turn to the police, and Giacomo being killed. It felt like we were uncovering a conspiracy and were at risk of being killed for it, but then that danger dissipates. The story then becomes about lackadaisically talking to NPCs and doing your usual chores of finding people's lost cats, clearing out sewers, testing orbments, etc.

The game suffers from a lot of the same writing issues that plagued prior arcs. Each chapter the villains cause a needless catastrophe and antagonize people for no apparent reason, all in the name of an "experiment" that they could almost certainly do more discreetly without incurring the wrath of every faction in the setting. No, Gerard's "I want to instill fear!" isn't a convincing motivation. You fight the mafia lieutenants or a proxy at the end of a chapter but they escape, so I've accomplished nothing over the first 70 hours. I didn't feel like there was danger or that I was making plot progress until Chapter 5, when a town is nuked, another city may be nuked, we're in a battle royale fighting other factions, and we are now finally taking out the mafia lieutenants, but even the battle royale loses steam as it becomes clear nobody is killing each other in this supposed "death game". The story should have been engaging throughout.




The final chapter was another slog and unexciting. It's a rehash of Tokyo Xanadu's finale, except dragged out for thrice as long. The guys you killed at the end of Chapter 5 come back. Killing them a second time isn't interesting. The story really should have stopped at the final boss. I didn't care for him. He was another nothing villain like Joachim, but once he died, I thought it was time for the game to pack up. The true final boss nonsense embodied the worst of bargain bin JRPGs. I guess I've always disliked Falcom true final boss storylines, but this was Tokyo Xanadu levels of "I don't care" and was a low note to end the game on.

There are pacing issues on the micro level. There is so much talking that it deflates tension within the scene. I killed two bad guys... and then I get a two-minute scene of every party member saying "oh we will bear this burden with you Van". Undercuts the moment.





There is a lot of sloppy writing. There are lots of pointless fights against friendly characters, whether they're wanting a duel with you for flimsy reasons or being mindcontrolled into fighting you. Lots of having to be saved by an old franchise character like Renne or Fie. Shards can apparently do anything, and the writers forget or remember what shards are capable of whenever it is convenient. Van can use shards to stealth? Why weren't characters using shards to stealth in this other situation? Shards can block a barrage from a gatling gun? Why weren't characters using shards to protect themselves in this other situation? Etc. They introduce a new character who is the strongest jaeger in history (despite having never been mentioned before by the many jaegers and martial artists we've interacted with over the past 10 games and 1,000+ hours). He aims a laser gun and pulls the trigger and characters praise him for his "strength". Cloud computing can apparently increase your powerlevel now (lol). Shizuna can successfully copy Rean's spirit unification ability on her first try just by looking at him for 5 seconds. Gramhardt - a normal guy with no superpowers - can intimidate a powerful Anguis to back down with the story having done nothing to justify it (what was stopping Harwood from just dissolving Gramhardt into black goo on the spot?). Etc. It's hard to take anything seriously.



Characters



Aside from Bergard, I didn't really like any of the main party. They're not unlikeable like most of the SSS but they just weren't captivating like the Sky cast or the old Class VII. Several of the characters also felt very derivative of older Trails characters. We have yet another delinquent bad boy. We have yet another little jaeger girl who was disowned by her corps. We have yet another ninja maid working for a big weapons manufacturer with a mysterious backstory. We have yet another teenage tech prodigy (though fortunately Quatre isn't anywhere near as obnoxious sueish as Renne or Tio... yet. Fingers crossed for his backstory reveal in Kuro 2). We yet another demure daughter of the country's democratically elected executive. We have yet another famous female performer who has a secret identity as a masked criminal. Even Van becomes a rehash of Rean towards the end of the game as well. Bergard was the only one who didn't feel derivative, and he was pretty interesting in and of himself, being a retired 69 year old man who is trying to take it easy and is touring the world while he still can.

Kuro suffers from FF12 syndrome: I found the secondary cast like Dingo, Marielle, Alvis, Maxim, Daswani, etc, to be more interesting, and I wish the game had been about them. Van/Dingo/Marielle had more chemistry than the main party members of Van/Agnes/Aaron. It's really disappointing that Alvis was never playable. There were several moments where I thought, "Yes! Alvis is finally going to fight with us!" and then it didn't happen.

Of the three disciples, Hamilton is disappointingly boring. Albert had the classic kooky mad scientist with sideways hair look, Schimdt had that old professor look and was interesting due to his curt and amoral nature, but Hamilton is just... a kindly old lady? Huh?



Aesthetics



Your average Calvardian town.






If only the rest of Calvard was beautiful like Oracion.

The models and lighting look nice. The character cut-ins are now 3D. Character designs are generally good or okay. Sadly every town except for Oracion (and to a lesser extent, Longlai) looks like ugly modernist architecture.



Music

Most lackluster Trails OST thus far. Nothing ear-gratingly bad, but I only found a small handful of tracks worth adding to my favorites playlist. I also wasn't a fan of the anime pop song that was used for the true final boss. A far cry from CS1 and CS2, where most of the OST was really good.



Setting

Calvard feels small, despite being touted as "the biggest country in Zemuria" (a lie easily disproven by looking at the map). In CS1 and CS2, you only explored the Eastern half of the Empire, and you heard about these places in the West that you didn't get to visit: Saint-Arkh, Jurai, Parm, Hamel, Ordis, etc. It made the Empire feel vast. However, in Calvard, I've been to the four corners of Calvard in just one game. The only places left to go are the trading port of Messeldorm, the village of Anchorage, and the airbase mentioned in Reverie. The writers will have to pull never before mentioned, suddenly important cities or bases out of thin air in the sequels.

Lorewise, Calvard is undercooked. In this game, I have learned more about the new foreign countries of Elsaim, Valis, the Holy Isca Empire, the Khurga village, etc, than I learned about the country in which the game is actually set. Comparing Kuro 1 to CS1 is an embarrassment. We knew way more about Erebonia in the 90 hours of CS1 than about Calvard in the 110 hours of Kuro 1. We knew about different emperors and what their rules were like, about different ancient heroes like the Eisenritter or Roland, and ancient catastrophes such as the Dark Dragon, but in Kuro we only know about the revolution (which we already heard of in Crossbell and Cold Steel) and that's it. Kuro 1 is setting up another Calvard vs Erebonia war arc, yet after 110 hours I still can't tell you who Calvard's military leadership is. In CS1 we had Generals Vandyck, Zechs, Craig, as well as Victor and provincial army leaders such as Rufus and Albarea. Who does Calvard's army have? No one. We know Gramhardt has hired foreign mercenaries like Marduk and Ikaruga, but we don't know of any actual Calvardian warriors who are loyal to the state—Zin certainly isn't—or generals. Three new pieces of military equipment are introduced (fodder for Rean to carve up in Kuro 3) but we don't even know how many armored divisions Calvard has, or if they even have armored divisions. We don't know how many military installations Calvard has either, as we don't visit any and none are named.






I like that they're going to do the Erebonia vs Calvard war arc again, though it is hard to get excited for Gramhardt as the villain. We've already had two warmongering demagogues, and Gramhardt isn't very charismatic or intimidating compared to Osborne or even Dieter. He hardly has any groundwork laid for him. Dieter was a successful businessman with lots of connections and lots of money to throw around, and Osborne had 14 years of governorship under his belt, but after 110 hours of Kuro the writers haven't really justified Gramhardt's power and supposed hypercompetence. I don't buy that this guy who was a soldier in the army and just got elected this year holds this much influence over all of these underworld organizations. Still, I do hope we finally get the war arc that CS4 botched. Rean's Tyrfing wielding a sword vs Gramhardt's Zyklas using a hybrid of fist weapons and arts should be a fun fight.



Miscellaneous

I'm glad the writers introduced a new character to do the riddle puzzles instead of bringing back Bleublanc for the Nth time. I thought Percy's puzzles were fun. I just wish you could prevent the sidequest objective markers from appearing on the map, since they spoil the experience.

Master quartz (now called Hollow Cores) having voice AIs is a nice touch.

I like how my party members follow me around in the overworld outside of battle, though I wish NPC guests like Marielle also did that.

It's nice that I can do all bonding events (now called Connect Events) in a single playthrough.

It is disappointing that you can no longer scan enemies and spin their models, nor is there lore on them you can read.

I miss the post-fight skits. Really gave a sense of camaraderie between the characters and some of them were really funny.



PC port

Overall great, except that for some reason the game stutters during some S-craft animations (namely Van's, Feri's, and Aarons, and maybe a few others I'm forgetting) when v-sync is turned on. With v-sync turned off I get no stutters but I do get screentearing which looks bad. I do not have a Nvidia gsync compatible monitor so no idea if that could have fixed the problem. I have a Nvidia 3070 Ti. Kuro got a patch yesterday so this may still get fixed.



TL;DR

• + Good visual fidelity, nicer presentation

• + Combat is serviceable enough

• + Chapter 5 was overall entertaining

• + Secondary characters were good

• + Comedy, might have the most gags of any Trails game I can think of and most of them landed for me

• + Voice acting

• + Overall good PC port (except for the S-craft stutters)

• +/- Main party is inoffensive but not interesting (except for Bergard)

• +/- Lackluster soundtrack for a Falcom game

• - Boring boss battles

• - Visually every location except Oracion and Longlai was ugly; not a fan of the modern art direction

• - 110 hour long game but only the 20 hour long Chapter 5 was engaging.

• - Meh villains

• - Sloppy writing

• - Too many NPCs and they update too frequently, really slows down the game

• - Calvard is spiritually bankrupt and unlikeable compared to prior countries

• - Woke

4chan has finished their fan translation of Kuro 2, so I will be playing that once Durante releases his PC port (probably next year I'm guessing), but I am not invested in this arc like I was in Sky or Cold Steel. Hopefully arc 5 will course correct. The setting of warring villages in the dying East will certainly be more interesting, though that won't matter if we're saddled with the same fundamental writing issues that are plaguing this series. The decline of the gameplay and the music is also worrying.

What is Barotrauma?

A game featuring great atmosphere:



Moments of great tension, allowing one's honor to shine



Betrayal!



Moar Betrayal!



And double crossing!



Barotrauma is a sci-fi submarine simulator, set on the most famous icy moon in our Solar system, Jupiter's Europa. It's a game with a STRONG mp focus, that takes more than one page from Space Station 13 school of design but also features incredible in-depth game play mechanics. The game does have a single player campaign and, contrary to popular belief it's perfectly playable AND completable in sp. The point is, it requires a sufficiently autistic mind to be properly appreciated solo.
Other generic things you need to know before we delve deep is, the game has a sub editor, allowing anyone to modify and design ships from scratch and is also highly moddable. Plenty of great mods already expand the base experience well beyond what's initially offered here.

During game, you assume the role and control directly a single crew member. Your vision, the amount of data you get from the various systems, it's all relative to WHERE you are inside your ship. During sp you can freely switch control among all your crew members and it's very important to do so. When playing mp you assume a specific role and play at the best of your abilities (or not, 'member ss13).
The game has a hierarchy system so, for example, a captain can pretty much access all his ship's systems, rooms and containers, as can any security officer. Medics can access everything related to medicine and toxins but the ship's armory and brig will probably be forbidden to them. A mechanic, usually, cannot tamper with the nuclear fuel storage and so on. Ofc all this is easily by passable in sp but in mp it forces you to play your role or be creative.

Putting this all together means, if you wish to use your sonar, you must be present near the necessary systems with one of your crew members. You wish to shoot from a specific angle? Better have the correct periscope manned then. In sp you can ofc rely on bots, they can be ordered around and be given up to 3 different tasks, in descending order of importance. If you read the Steam forums you'll find plenty of complaints about Barotrauma's bots but that's just because the average gamer is shtoopid. Anyone that has a modicum of experience organizing a fortress of dwarves will have no issues in deciding who should be doing what, with which priority and ultimately how many crew members you need to have your chosen sub function properly (some are fuckhuge and def designed for MP shenanigans, I suggest modded subs for sp, more on that later)

The specific roles you can play as also differ in the initial level of skill (Helm, Weapons, Engineering, Mechanics, Medicine), although you can 'learn by doing' big chunks of skill increase are gated behind talents, specific for each career. Some talents can also unlock special job features (Mechanics being more efficient at disassembling, Clowns [?!] being able to breath underwater, etc) or unique blueprint, like the Cargo Scooter. An underwater scooter that has storage capacity and the ability to float in place to assist you during EVA actions. Because ofc you can exit the sub lmao. There are outposts (inhabited or abandoned), caves. monster lairs and alien ruins to explore. Or you could be just ordered out by your captain to patch a hole in the hull. It's one of those games.

As for the jobs themselves, you can play or hire Captains, Security Officers, Engineers, Mechanics, Medics and Assistants, which are jack of all trades able to grow up into truly weird but very useful characters. Like clowns.*honks*

When you're in game, your screen will look something like this:
In this gorgeous 2d image we have a relatively small-ish sub, being attacked by a relatively dangerous enemy, a Black Moloch. The monster emits emp bursts, which probably disabled every system on board, the sub sank just above crush depth but, luckily was stopped by the tip of an underwater mountain. A few more feet and the pressure would simply crush everything.
There's someone manning the upper aft periscope, armed with a chaingun and everyone else is dealing with faulty electronics + the water gushing in from a couple holes and the broken airlocks. This crew is about to die. The moloch will finish them before they have any chance to recover from this situation. They wasted an incredible stroke of luck (hitting the mountain top) but ignore that molochs are blind and generally peaceful. What they should do is stop shooting, turn off their sonar, turn off their frickin reactor (Hope you have enough o2 tanks or Oxygilite to drop around the sub to keep your men breathing) and wait for the thing to lose interest. Once you stop making sound you're no different than a rock for those things.

After the necessary repairs ofc it's time to give it a couple of railgun suppositories but I'm afraid they won't last this long. Yep, it's one of those games.



The game is structured around campaigns, your goal being to reach the 'center' of the moon itself. There's a pretty decent setting here for a game of this scope, different factions you can be allied or enemy with and a number of different kind of missions, some given, other free form, that you can perform along the way to gather resources, credit and reputation. You move from location to location performing said task along the way, the journey is more important than the destination:
Missions vary quite a bit. You have extermination missions, transport of goods and personnel (and not everyone on board may be trustworthy, even in sp!), clearing monster nests (hard af solo), exploring Alien ruins or salvaging their artifacts and so on. You also get to fight enemy subs from time to time but it's a minor part of the gameplay and being highly dangerous, you'll probably end up nuking them from as far away as possible by alpha striking at the earliest possibility you're given.
I also like to strap c4 charges or dirty bombs on my railgun shells in those cases because fuck you! Yes, you can do that. I told you it's one of those games.


I could spend a few more thousand words on this, really. I could for example tell you how I got the idea to jury rig a proximity sensor system for my sub, connected to an electric coil that automatically discharges, shocking monsters getting too close and how the whole thing started from me wanting to add motion sensors to my inner doors, as I was tired of clicking to open them each time. I could do that but I'm afraid it would just put me on another creativity tangent. There are endless anecdotes I could tell and not enough time to write them all. It's one of those fucking games.





Tl:dr: should you buy Barotrauma?

Answer: No

Dafuq?

Playing Barotrauma sp is for madmen that get a boner from proper inventory management, true resource allocation, memorizing timing for shit and stuff and a load of things normal people find 'boring'. A properly manned sub, even when piloted by a single human player + bots is perfectly capable of dealing with any situation the game can throw at you. Problem is, would you enjoy a game where you must ponder the correct storage solution for your oxygen masks? Decide how many batteries is too many? Check before each departure that every member of your crew is properly equipped, swap out used tanks and replenish ammo?

Bots can do a lot by themselves, they sort things around autonomously, take care of maintenance and are generally able to stay alive (eg a bot that's given the command to fix leaks won't jump into a fire to do that) but you must make sure everything else works and is in the proper place. Enough fire extinguishers? Are they properly spread out for the assigned bot to always have one close by, in case of fire? And so on, you get the gist. It's one of those games.

A modded sub can alleviate a lot of the chores in sp. Some are OP af but there are plenty offering QOL features like, external elevators to quickly drop cargo and reduce the number of trips needed to loot a location or shuttles to navigate into narrow spaces, drones to explore and destroy nests and so on. You'll need to find your sweet spot here but asking around always brings up some legit well designed ships that feel convenient without being a cheat.


What you should do is have a look into it. If anything of what I wrote above piques your interest. Look into the MP scene, it's chaotic and fun but also smart and deep enough to give you great sense of accomplishment, when you save a doomed crew from an impossible situation. Or betray and troll someone to death.
Rigging a detonator to explode when a door is triggered or when a captain orders a sub to descent is easy af, start from there (hint: procuring the tools is the hard part)