Forza Motorsport 6 Review

   The eagle-eyed among you may remember that I put Forza Horizon 2 in my game of the year list last year, it was fantastic after all, and so I figured it was time to dip my toe in to the main series for the first time. After all, I've got a long history with racing games. When I was younger Gan Turismo 1 and 2 were a couple of of my favourite games. It wasn't just the racing though (good job as looking back the AI on that was pants, but it was a PS1 game I guess), it was buying cars, handpicking races, speciality events, winning cars, different race types and all the other things that went along with it.
   Unfortunately as I've got older I got epilepsy and hence can't drive. so even though all that stuff seemed to awesome to me as a kid, I've grown up in to someone who couldn't give a hoot about cars, there's just no interest there, but as shown last year, I still enjoy racing games. The last straight track racing game I remember playing though was Project Gotham Racing 4 (Xbox's other (now defunct) racing series) and I really did enjoy that, mind you it did come out in 2007, still, I've always liked racing games, so I didn't see why it mattered. Turns out it did matter. I'm racing around these tracks and I just don't care. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate everything that's there and I will go in to more detail, but as I'm racing around these set routes, my mind wonders and I very quickly lose interest. I struggle to see what I used to find so exciting about them as it just seems like it's about learning when to break on corners, and that's it. Sure, you may be sitting there thinking to yourself 'that's what racing is' or 'all videogames are about learning a mechanic' but I think my lack of interest in the subject matter is leading me to boredom (or maybe you're thinking of your own boredom reading this hot mess).
   I want to be positive here though, so I will. If you like cars, I'm pretty sure you'll like this. For one, It looks great (as expected) and the car selection is excellent. Hell, there's plenty of 90's classics from me to choose from that I still have a minor knowledge of  them due to my interest in the past, plus, there's some great GT classics in there, what more could I want than reliving the glory days of GT in a GTO? There's a great tool for livery creating as well that's full of options, and, if like me that seems like too much effort but still want one, you can download livery's that other people have made as well. There's car modding as well that effect your stats that 'gearheads' (that's a term, right?) will appreciate (I assume), but you can also auto mod the car so the computer will do this for you and save the hassle, if like me, you don't care.
   On the positive and gaming side of things, the options are great. There's so many ways of modifying the difficulty for yourself and they've done a great job with this. From the simple aspect of turning the AI difficulty up or down, to things like adding/ removing a racing line, automatic or manual transmission, abs, auto break and plenty more. an added bonus here too is that the more modifiers you turn off, the more prize ( according to the spellcheck here, 'prize isn't a word) money you get for your races, so it pays to be good too (unfortunately only in game, not IRL (unless there's some tournament I don't know about)).
 

    On top of this there's so much to do (if you want). Just the basic game is 6 categories of increasingly powerful cars with multiple tournaments within each, then within these categories there's 6 categories, and you're not 100% complete on that until you win every tournament with a car from every category so if you want to, there's plenty to play. Of course, you can also just do each tournament once which has you complete the game the normal way too. Then there's dozens of special challenges to play too with the likes of car specific challenges, moments from history, side challenges and more to keep you busy.
   Back to my favourite bit now, criticism. Online is terrible. It's just down to luck as to who doesn't get involved in the first corner pileup and then hoping no-one takes you out on any other corner. Don't get me wrong, that's how I race with friends and against AI (as a last resort, I might add) but when there's 24 cars racing and they're all smashing in to each other constantly it's just a cluster...mess?
   Music, what's gone on there then? I can't think of any traditional racing game I've ever played before that hasn't had a proper soundtrack (at least playstation onwards), but this just has some in-house created general background music. Am I supposed to care about the sound of cars? because I don't. And then, there's Top Gear plastered all over the place. I hate Top Gear. What's the big deal, seriously? There's Top gear challenges and James May and Richard Hammond doing voice overs all over the place. I'm so glad that show fell apart

   So what's my recommendation? I guess if you like cars and/or racing games then go for it, the gameplay is about as good as you can get in a racer, but a lack of variety has bored me. If, like me, you've been out of racers for a while, I'd really recommend you don't bother. Because of what I see as a well deigned game for other people but not at all me, I'm going to be less harsh on a score than I could and give it 5/10. Will I get the presumed Horizon 3 next year? Maybe, I did like that last year, a lot, but this has left me with a our taste in my mouth.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Review

   This is the big one for this year, arguably. It's probably not the game I was most excited for but it was up there, and after many years in development and all the issues with Konami and Hideo Kojima it looked like it would never come out, but it's here now (well, 2 weeks ago).
   Before I start I'll go a bit in to my personal Metal Gear history. I never played Metal Gear Solid, Even though I owned a Playstation and it seems to be basically everyone who ever owned one's favourite game. I played the demo that came with OPUKM (Acronym meaning available on request) and liked it, but as you may know, Total Soccer also came on that disc, so... I have seen it be played many years later (like, 2012) but I'm still not really sure what the story was. Anyway, jump forward to the PS2, and I got MGS2, and loved it, easily one of my favourite games on the system, and might have been my favourite if not for the GTA 3 series. Couldn't get in to MGS3 though so gave up a couple of hours in. I never played any handheld games but I did play MGS4, but wasn't particularly keen, I didn't know what was going on in the story and the amount of respawning enemies was nuts.
   Jump forward to ground Zeroes, the overly expensive demo that came out last year and I didn't really like that either, I seemed to be spotted from the other side of the map constantly, and it nearly put me off buying this, but in the end I went for it and here we go.

   Stealth again is the name of the game, and just like every other mgs game (apart from 4 IMO) they've nailed it. Planning, timing, execution are all vital and when it all turns out how you planned it just feels great, I love it when a plan comes together. Of course, that happened to me about twice in the 31 missions in the main game, so, it's a rare feeling. I will be honest though, the majority of the times I was spotted were my own fault. In the first half of the game, I'd sneak expertly through the first 2/3 of the mission until I get spotted, but by that point there was few enough enemies for me to gun them down without issue. Then, as I got further in the game and my relationship with Quiet (your sniper buddy) got to a point where she could 'cover me' and I was able to get her to basically wipe out entire bases, or at least distract them to the point where I could just waltz through the middle and complete my objectives. Sure, I wasn't technically 'spotted' on these missions and I got a few S ranks on missions based on this, but the point was not to kill anyone, bu Quiet did all the biz and saved me time and effort, so I was all for that (do I even like games? I'm always trying to make them easier for myself somehow).
   On the subject of Quiet (although I've started a new paragraph so I guess this is bad grammar, kbfhsbd), the buddy system is of great use. You have to start with a horse, which is basically useless except for travelling slightly faster. Then you find a lost puppy, the cutest thing in a video game since Yoshi's Woolly World. Rescue him and you'll soon have another buddy, D-Dog. He's a lot better as he spots enemies for you and can distract them, the only problem he has is following you around to closely, and not very stealthily. Later you battle Quiet, beat her and after a while she's another Buddy, and IMO the best one, for all the reasons I've said above. The only weird thing is her back story, she's sort of part of the Skulls (more on that later) and doesn't eat and other such things, but more strangely she's really scantily clad. Don't know why, though I guess I should be used to it from other metal gears. You'll unlock other variants on her attire, like being silver, gold (for some reason) or covered in blood (more than once a month) to 'intimidate enemies'. The weird thing with all of these is she's a sniper, so she shouldn't really be seen, so it makes no real sense as the guff says it intimidates enemies. There is also a mini rideable Metal Gear, but I never used it as it can't do awesome stuff by itself like Quiet of DD, so no comment.
   Base management then. It's got these RPG elements, and although there's many aspects to it, ultimately everything is for the benefit of creating new equipment for you and your buddies. I have to mention the Fulton device here, which allows you to capture people, items, vehicles and animals in the form of a big balloon that shoots them in to the sky. It's a fun addition to the game that's just as crazy as you expect something in Metal Gear to be. If you can at some point, Fulton a sheep, the sound is hilarious.

   The Skulls then are a super powered group of soldiers that have massive health bars, deal massive damage that takes forever to recover from and can teleport. They always come in groups too and are  tough group, just make sure you're loaded up with exclusives and tat Quiet is in position. They also turn other soldiers in to sort of zombies, but they are way easier than regular enemies as they don't shoot, so that's helpful.
   Things that aren't so great then. There's some slow down t times. I was playing on Xbox so can't say if it's true for PC and PS4, but a few times I got spotted or missed a great opportunity due to this. I also found cover sometimes doesn't work great. Approaching cover is supposed to automatically put you in to cover but sometimes you end up just standing by the wall, a button press would have been more effective. I'm going to put the story in here, but not for the reasons you may expect. Sure, the prologue is classic metal gear where it makes no sense and is nuts, but after that there isn't much to it. Just a guy trying to control the world through language and metal gears, but it's very light. I've never been a big fan of the weird Metal Gear stories anyway, but it's still nuts, but there's not much to it. On language, there is a section towards the end of the game where many of your staff gets a disease based on what language they speak and have to quarantine them, individually. I had to individually check each of my 343 staff to see if they spoke Kikongo (whatever language that is) and the 153 that spoke i I had to individually move them in to quarantine. That was both time consuming and annoying.
   On to the final boss, where you fight a Metal Gear. It's very easy (though when he drew his sword I really wished I' researched a Dragon Dagger). Now, I'm not a lover of bosses as I've no doubt said several times before as they just seem to be a test of patience so I was glad for this, but it was a low point to end on as it felt an anticlimax, I much would have preferred a big infiltration mission like the penultimate level, that's where I'd have finished it.
   I am yet to complete 'chapter 2' of the game which takes place after the end of the main story and is mostly redoing old missions with difficulty modifiers. Now, never in my life have I finished a game and then played it through on a higher difficulty so unless I have nothing else to do I'll probably skip it and watch the 'true ending' on youtube, so nothing on that it.
   Overall then, it's a game of fantastic gameplay and well crafted missions that is great fun to play with a few annoying niggles that leave it for me at an 8/10. If you've enjoyed Metal Gear games in the past, play it.
 
   

The Deer God review

   So why am I playing this rather than Metal Gear? For one, as this is this months Xbox 'game with gold' (free for the month) I figured if I finished it quick and wrote it out fast some people may actually be interested in reading about a game that came out in February on Steam as some Xbox owners, somewhere, will wonder what this game is, and if it's any good, whereas if I were writing this in a month then nobody in the world would likely care. So that's one reason, the other? I'm intimidated by Metal Gear. From what I've read about the game so far it sounds so open and massive, with so many ways of doing everything that I'm sort of scared to start it because even for someone who' been playing games for about 25 years, I'm still worried I'll be in over my head.
   But what is 'The Deer God' actually like. A quick cover of what it is then, it's a 2D platformer done in an 8 bit style with 3D backgrounds (looks nice). You ply as a deer (as you may have got from the name) and have to complete a few missions through procedurally generated worlds. There aren't levels per-say, but different environments such as Forrest, mountain, desert, graveyard and others. They just repeat s you go around but each area has different bosses and you can clear each section within about 30 seconds when you get towards the end of the game.
   It's a pretty simple platformer to be honest just wrapped up in some extra bits to make it seem deeper. The actual gameplay is pretty simple for a platformer, jump, dash, shoot fireballs out of your antlers, just everyday deer stuff. There's a few bosses and puzzles to keep it mixed up, but the simple nature of it is fun, reminding me at times of the classic Mega Drive Sonic games as you dash through the areas. The problem with this comes in night times though (because there's day/ night cycles) when you can't really see the enemies and are often dealt damage unexpectedly.

   Some of these 'extra' bits include dealing with hunger, which can lead to a draining or filling on the health bar (and personal annoyance). Also, ageing. When you spawn you come back as a baby deer and aren't as bad ass, and have to wait to age. It's ok though, you can get offspring by meeting a lady deer and getting her to fawnicate ;-) (also there's extra life skulls).
 Ultimately it's worth giving it a go if you got it for free, but I wouldn't pay for it 5/10. It's alright but there's a lot of other platformers out there and you could pick a lot better (but it's free, so, y'know) (also, it's pretty short if that makes you feel any different towards it).

Until Dawn Review

   With Gears of War finally done I could move on to Until Dawn at last, a game I had been pretty excited about for a while now. Though I tend not to like horror games I do like horror movies and the modern rise in 'interactive story' type games, now that Telltale have really popularised that genre in he last few years. Obviously those games are made episodic and fairly cheaply so I was really looking forward to what a well financed, all in one version of those would be as written by horror writers plus voiced and motion captured by real actors (some of whom are fairly famous (Grant Ward)) in an interactive horror film.
   In many ways it lives up to what is to be expected of it, it looks great, the score is incredible, the acting, the voice and mo-cap is great and the setting is great and you get to control all the characters a fairly equal amount of time (provided you don't get them killed too quick), but unfortunately in an attempt to pull apart the slasher film tropes that we've come to expect, they fall headlong in to them.
   The set up is daft for a start (spoilers for the first 10 minutes of the game coming). Last year when the same group of friends went to the lodge, 2 of them got lost and were never found again, yet still their brother (of all people) wants them to go up again this year, and they do, of course. Why would you? As you meet the characters you see there's all the typical American teen horror genre staple characters, the 'cool' guy,the stupid whore, the bitch, the jock, the upbeat one, the nerd (although he's not really that nerdy, but in the bonus content I watched after the actor who played him seemed to think he was (then again a lot of the actors seemed to read more than there actually was in to their characters)), the suspicious one and the 'will they won't they' one. At first a lot of this is endearing as you get to control the characters you usually have to watch, but after a while you just want to kill off all the ones you typically get annoyed by, yet the backstabbing bitch still lived, dammit!
    I don't want to spoil the plot here, as that's basically the whole game, but needless to say it's full of twists, some of which are very predictable, and it's full of people making bad decisions, like going off from a room of 5 people on your own to find some keys on a guy that's probably being eaten in a monsters den because you can't wait 2 hours until dawn when the helicopter arrives, despite the fact you're perfectly safe where you are. Often times too when there are choices, they're both stupid, or it isn't clear what's different between the two.
   Most annoyingly of all though is some of the deaths. I rescued 5 of the 8 in the end, and I accept full responsibility for Ashley's death (such a shame too as I wanted her and Chris to get together) but the other 2 deaths were utterly stupid. I won't tell you who or how, but take heed that sometimes taking the safe paths isn't the best idea and also, see those millions of collectibles dotted around everywhere? well, better get collecting.

   I criticise a lot (I do enjoy it) but there's also quite a lot to like, it's a really strange game of great ideas that are well implemented, and terrible ideas that are terribly implemented. On the good side, they are great at building tension. You're often left walking around dark corridors or mountaintops with just 1 or 2 of you and a flashlight for company, most of the time in an inter gender pairing, hell, it's the best X files simulator I've ever played. Seriously though, these dark walks with eerie noises, wild animals, windy trees and a creepy soundtrack build the tension well. There are also these totems you can find, which are one of the far too many types of collectible, but these are actually good. They show you glimpses in to potential futures (depending on your actions) and clues to what actions you should take in order to not die/ get something useful or numerous other helpful hints. I recommend you watch these and remember them. There is also a great game menu system constantly tracking characters different relationships to each other (as in how they get along with the other individuals) based on the interactions you have between them as well as personality traits. What bearing these have on the game outside of the one on one interviews with the characters at the end I'm not sure but it's still interesting. The same menu also tracks your 'Butterfly effect' decisions so you know where you could have chose to do something else of note so if you wanted to play it again to get a better/ different ending, you'd know where to look (I bet Ashton Kutcher wished he had that handy device to hand).

      The story and characters aren't all bad as well, some are genuinely likeable and some grow on you, Mike for instance, in my mind, turned from being a dickhead 'cool guy' in to a genuine hero. And as for Dr. AJ Hill, urgh. He goes from asking simple questions to someone with a minor mental health problem to forcing a total breakdown on you and going insane. And he only appears to space out the game between chapters (still, he sure knows now I don't like snakes).
   In the end it was an interesting game, I'm glad I played it but I doubt I'll ever pick it back up again 5/10. I'd suggest for the future give Telltale more money to get all the great effects offered here in like acting, visuals and sound whilst leaving the story to them. Maybe supermassive games should give them a call. Thanks for reading cochise and remember, save the upbeat girl, save the lodge...

Gears of War Ultimate Edition Review

   It's that time of the year again, the time where 3/4 of the games for the year come out in 1/4 of the year because Christmas. I was originally going to start this 'Game season' with Rare replay but it's disappointing nature stopped me from doing so (quick review; old games you have no attachment to don't hold up well), and to write about so many different games would've taken forever, so I've started with the weekend where 4 games I want to play come out in 5 days (looks like Mad Max is going to be missed) and I accidentally started with Gears of War Ultimate edition (I say accidentally because I was more psyched to play 'Until Dawn' but I accidentally sent that t my mothers house, and although I've got my hands on it now, I'd already started Gears by the time I got my grubby mitts on it).
   I suppose the million pound question before I start is am I a pre-existing Gears fan? (as this is a remaster of the 2006 'classic'). No, I wasn't. I didn't play it when it first came out but did pick it up a couple of years later for £5 (or something), played the first couple of chapters, didn't like it and never picked it up again. I figured I must be missing something though, right? It' Xbox's second biggest franchise (by quite a distance mind you) and millions of people can't be wrong, can they? (probably).
   I started and after the same first few missions I was put off for the same reasons I was the first time, just generic cover based shooting, but I'd paid new game money now so I was gonna get my moneys worth here, whether I liked it or not. I ground away and pretty soon I actually started enjoying it, despite all the stupid things about it, the game is actually pretty fun. For a game that's just about cover to cover shooting they do a good job of mixing the game up and providing new locations and gameplay modifications, like dealing with the Kryll, going underground, fighting off giant boss type enemies and more. The gunplay is fun and it's satisfying to unload a clip of ammo in to some Locust scum and watch them explode into a flesh and blood pile.
   I like the way the story of the game is just one mission too (granted, it goes wrong so takes much longer than planned) just like Half Life 2 and you feel like you're going along for this short story that they're on. The only problem I have with the story can be summed up in one word is 'bro'. These people are just hulking masses of men that celebrate when they eviscerate an enemy, love doing man stuff, saying phrases like "yeah, bring it on sucka', this my kind of shit" and don't even get excited when one of their former sports heroes joins them on their adventure. If Juan Pablo Angel had joined me on an adventure I'd have never wanted to get off the Angel-train.

   The other thing I don't get is how there's so many 'stranded' about. How can humans live in this war torn environment relatively safely when enemies can just come up from the ground and some evil bat things tear you apart in the dark? That's not safe living conditions, I'm sure they would've been dead withing a week. It's a very, very mad world on Sera. While I'm on weird things, the game its a huge difficulty spike on the penultimate chapter (when you get on the train), I probably died twice as much on that level as I had the whole game before it, and that final boss, urgh. After googling for help turns out I wasn't the only one who had problems with Raam, bu as soon as I found the Torque bow I did it first time, and the annoyance of having just spent half an hour getting nowhere faded away (somewhat (not at all)).
   The graphics have been caught up with and the game again looks great. also, in a weird turn of events, the levels that have been added in extra here (although they were in the PC release of the game but not the 360 one) have far better team mate AI. I ran in to problems all over the game where the rest of Delta just stood miles behind you and didn't help you from being overrun, or alternatively, ran way too far ahead of you and got shot to pieces. In these extra chapters though it was perfect. Couldn't they have fixed that for the main game at the same time?
   A quick touch on multilayer then. Clearly everyone who was playing online already had done so before because I was getting destroyed the second I moved anywhere, and it took forever to get in to a game anyway. Maybe this should just stay for the original players and noobs like me should say out of it, I'm hardly the worlds biggest fan of online shooters anyway (though I need to be ready for Battlefront).
   Overall then I think the game is pretty good now that I've actually given it a fair chance. Some parts of the game feel a little outdated (you really should be able to destroy cover, glaring omission or what?) but for the most part it's a solid game that make sense to be a big Xbox franchise as it's well made, simple fun. 7/10.

Tembo the Badass Elephant

   Remember when I said I was going to talk about a further 3 games, well forget that. Yeah I played them but there's not really much to say about them, except that you should've bought 'Saviors' when it was 15p on Steam. I moved on to this game then, after all it is a Sega published 2D plaformer based around speed and you know my feelings on those.
   It's not like Sonic. Despite the gag I made just there and what lots of reviewers are saying. Just because it's published by Sega and about a fast animal doesn't automatically make it the same (can't think of a good analogy). They don't play anything alike. There's plenty of 2D platformers in the world and people just don't say they're all the same. This lazy comparison has annoyed me (clearly) as a massive Sonic fan (from the Mega drive days anyway), granted, it does welcome this comparison for the reasons listed above if you hadn't played this game, but if you have, you'd know there is no comparison to make.
   Hmm, that dragged on a bit. Anyway, getting to the actual game. It starts out great, speeding through the first area of levels, trashing enemies in well designed worlds and having a whale of a time, until you get to the fourth level where you have to have hit a certain amount of enemy kills to progress. Urgh. Then that happens on the fourth level of every wold so you have to keep going back to older levels and making sure you kill off as many enemies as possible to advance. Speaking of replaying levels, the fact that the game lets you replay levels whenever you want but doesn't give you infinite lives is stupid, and I'll tell you why. On level 1, you can easily pick up enough peanuts (you see, peanuts are the thing you pick up in this game to build up extra lives) to gain 2 extra lives every playthrough. That means you can just play level 1 as many times as you need to have enough lives to complete the game, all it does is waste the players time as I had to keep playing level 1 to have enough lives to get past the final boss.

   Speaking of final bosses, and I've spoken enough before about my dislike of bosses as a whole and how I think it's time to move on from them, but my point here is that just like Rogue Legacy a few weeks before it's got a double layered boss, where the first bit is pretty easy but you have to spend ages doing that first section of that boss over and over before you can get to the actual tough bit that you need to get done. Another waste of my time that I'll never get back and could have spent doing something more important like, watching TV or drinking.
   Going back to what I was saying before, the problem is the game kind of changes about 2/3 of the way through, where it becomes more fiddly and the speed element goes from the game so what the initial section of the game did so well vanishes and it becomes something else. It's still not bad though, I should point out, it's just a completely different game. While I'm talking about things that aren't so great about it, it's the start up time. When you fire up the game, it takes forever to load (on xbox one anyway).
   Sill though, it is a pretty well designed platformer, it's worth a play if you like classic 2D platformers, but for a non-fan it won't convert you. It's fine, but I won't remember it in a years time. Decent game, stupid name.

 
 

Massive Chalice/ Rogue Legacy

  At first I wasn't going to write about Rogue Legacy as it's 2 years old and also I was going to write about Massive Chalice last month when it was still free on games with gold so people could have got it free based on my lovely words. Then, over the course of the day I've bought a couple of other games and I have another to play, so I was going to put out a mega post talking about 5 games, but then I figured it'd take forever to write and thus forever to read. Of course, I haven't played those games yet either but suffice to say I've decide to split it in to two.
   Let's keep it interesting first with the more up to date game which is Massive Chalice. I noted down here early through the game to remember to refer to it as 'the poor mans Xcom' but time has proven that to not be true. I mean, for the battles it's true to an extent, I'm not saying these are the only two turn based combat that exist, but it's an easier comparison because half of the game takes place in the improving the future of your team by resource management. Granted this is more old timey than modern to futuristic like Xcom but it's the same idea.
   I have to say that I don't think I really 'got it' for the majority of the game, which mostly didn't cause an issue throughout the game as you'd have to be pretty terrible to fail completely but it did mean the final battle taking forever. Looking back at it, I feel stupid now for making it difficult for myself. You see, the main point of the game is you're trying to defend your nation against some evil monsters while a super weapon that will wipe them out takes 300 years to charge. Every few years you're attacked and have to defend the regions. On top of that you have to make families and grow children to become warriors despite the knowledge they'll get old and die (like all of us) or die in battle. On op of that there's research to be done and help needed to train the kids. Obviously as you level up your fighters in battle the kids they birth are better so you get better levelled recruits as you go on (because games). What I didn't get though, was the benefits of the variants of classes. It seemed you just needed archers (or 'hunters as they're called here) but it turns out alchemists and Cabrejacks (which are melee fighters) are amazingly useful, which I didn't fully appreciate until the final battle and probably could have saved the entire nation had I appreciated it more (see, it's split up in to regions which are attacked multiples at a time but you can only defend one and the others lose some health or whatever you like to call it (this is also just like Xcom)). I could also have levelled up the classes more evenly so the archers weren't super powerful (while still annoyingly inaccurate (but super powerful when connecting)) and the Caberjackers were frustratingly underpowered (although I accept it's my own fault).

   If i were to play it again I'm sure that it would be a breeze as it took me bout 200 in game years to finally figure everything out. Up until that point I'd won every battle without much thought until suddenly the difficulty shot up and from having to mindlessly walk through the battles, serious attention was needed and I needed to have planned my improvements and families better, but I made it through in the end anyway, but I made it difficult for myself. It may seem I'm giving out mixed messages here, but the point is, with some thought put in, the game would be a fun time with a decent challenge, but underestimate it like me and it'll be a challenge where you're archers are so frequently inaccurate that you have to shout in to a pillow.
   Despite all of that it was a good game in the end and i would've recommended it to be played if you could still get it for free. Is it worth however much it actually costs? I'm not totally sure, I know I had a good time with it, but I probably won't remember it a year from now, so take that how you will.

   Okay, I normally hate, hate, hate grinding in games. It's put me off JRPG's for years but the indie darling love this game has been getting over the last few years, and the fact that it's a platformer gave me enough motivation to give it a go. That and the fact that I bought it about a year ago to play on my Vita while I was on a long plane journey, only for for my Vita to break and the game to sit on my hard drive for a hard year and me waiting to be bothered to start it. I'm so bad at starting not new games. I don't know what it is about me, but unless a game had just come out I find it difficult to start a game for he first time.
   That's the back story for you, so I better say something about the game. Basically you're trying to conquer a castle, defeat all the bosses and claim the glory for your family, but you ain't gonna cut it, you will die and have to start over, several times. That's where you bloodline comes in. You've gotta collect gold to help train your family and learn the traits of the enemies and bosses if you're ever going to get past them. At first it seems like an impossible task, and when you go on to every new area you will feel the same, but after time it become possible.
   It's more than just that though, because there's pros and cons of each heir. Firstly there's the type of fighter they are. There's charcters with better health or attacks, or speed or agility or mana or so on, but you'll find out what you prefer and then ultimately, and most importantly, which is more appropriate for each boss. On top of that there's the side weapon/ spell which is more of a personal preference. Beyond that there's weird things like being giant or a dwarf (or, y'know, normal height), being unable to see colours, everything being upside down, being 'the one' (which makes everything futuristic looking), being bald (which makes no impact on gameplay) and many other useful and/ or silly things.

   Beyond that there's challenge rooms to unlock items that can help you throughout the game, like double jumps, sprint dashes, health leach and many more which you can stack up or mix up, depending on your play style, or yet again, what boss you're on. On top of that there's hidden weapons throughout the world and bonus games to help you win more gold and mini bosses to unlock more bonuses.
   It should be noted that the castle randomises on each new entry (unless you use the architect to lock it down but you'll miss out on a lot of gold, though it is useful on bosses) so you'll never know where to go which makes exploration vital, which means you need to get good. I should note though that you only need to beat a boss once and they'll remain dead for good.
   The art style is great and looks like a 16 bit classic but more importantly the game plays great. At some times enemies firing through walls can be frustrating but the platforming is perfect and the combat, though basic, is spot on for this kind of game. Going in I really didn't think It'd live up to the hype, but it honestly did, every great thing you've heard about this game is true, for even the biggest sceptic, like myself.
   You do have to stick with it though, as I said it seems for the first few hours like you'll never be able to do it and hell, by the 4th area, I still couldn't do it, I just had to run through to the boss room because I could barely survive 2 rooms in the dungeon. I'd definitely say this game is worth  try, especially if you're a fan of Metroid-vania types and as long as you have some patience.