Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles (PS5)
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| hack and slash some demons. |
Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles is a hack-and-slash offering based on the Demon Slayer franchise. I recently got into Demon Slayer as I was reading the manga and the game looked pretty cool. It follows Tanjiro, a young man out to avenge his family death at the hands of a demon, whom also turned his living his sister into one. The game closely follows the plot of the anime and manga up until the Mugen Train arc. You'll be watching a lot of cut-scenes as you get to learn more about the characters and their rather interesting personalities.
The gameplay's rather simple as you get to fight demons in small arenas. You have the standard light and special attacks, block, evade, and tag button to call your partner to perform follow-up attacks. There's an energy gauge in which you can use to pull-off each character's special skills, boost their energy to refill the gauge, and unleash an ultimate attack. You'll be playing through a variety of characters and each have their own play-style during the story. Inosuke and Nezuko were the most fun to play for me. There's also training and challenge modes where you can learn the basics as well as train under certain characters too. Better yet, the game features a Versus mode where you can play against another player.
Hinokami Chronicles nicely captures the look of Demon Slayer as the character models and backgrounds both look great. It ran smoothly on PS5 at 60fps but with some pop-in textures. There's dual Japanese and English audio along with a decent soundtrack that offered some good tracks. For fans of Demon Slayer, the game was a pretty fun one as it adapts the source material really well. It's also a decent game for those who aren't familiar with the franchise and are looking for a light action game.
Ys: Memories of Celceta (PS Vita)
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| Reclaim your memories. |
Ys: Memories of Celceta is an action-RPG from Nihon Falcom, creators of the long-running Ys series. I remember reading about the series ages ago and that a new game released on the PS Vita, so I had to check it out. Just when I was about to beat it, I think I got distracted with a bunch of other games and ended up forgetting about it. So I recently decided to fire up a new playthrough and beat it for real this time!
We follow Adol Christin, a young adventurer suffering from amnesia while exploring the uncharted land of Celceta. He must regain his memories by retreading his quest prior to losing them, meaning exploring Celceta again. This time, he'll be reuniting with familiar faces and soon finds himself wrapped up in a conspiracy that threatens the land. Despite the story being nothing special, I enjoyed meeting the cast of characters such as the burly fighter Duren, skilled hunter Karna, and even Adol himself. Conversely, the villains were a bland pack as their motivations and personalities were shallow. What's worse is that the ending was rushed without a satisfying resolution.
Ys: Memories of Celceta has you controlling three party members as you get to explore and battle enemies as you venture deeper into Celceta. The game's a fast-paced one as you get freely switch characters to unleash a flurry of regular attacks in addition to special skills unique to each character earned as they constantly level up. Treasure chests are hidden in various spots on the map and they include weapons and materials to craft stronger gear, so you'll need to search every corner. Towns have a bunch of NPCs who offer some neat insights, merchants to buy weapons and armors from, and side-quests to accept from the quest board. the latter were passable as they're mundane fetch quests with alright rewards. The dungeons were fun to explore, packing light puzzles, unique enemy types, and boss encounters to keep them interesting.
The game looks good on the Vita with the colorful character models and art-style being standouts. Being that its on a handheld, the visuals can look blurry due to the low resolution screen. The voicework was okay but sparse with few lines being voiced occasionally. The soundtrack was awesome and featured plenty of memorable tracks. Ys: Memories of Celceta turned out to be a really fun time and it seriously got me considering playing more of the series in the future. If you're interested in checking out the game, it recently received a remaster for modern hardware.
Overlord (PC)
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| Command a legion of bloodthirsty minions! |
Overlord is an action-strategy game from Triumph Studios and Codemasters. You play as an evil Overlord and must assemble your group of loyal minions to spread havoc and enslave the masses to expand your domain. It's not often you get to play a game where you're billed as the villain, so the premise initially drew me into playing it. It features a choice system that dictates how evil your character will be. Will you choose to be absolutely pure evil by killing everything in your path or be a merciful ruler by sparing a few people here and there. Along with its dark and goofy humor, it's a game that managed to hook me in.
Overlord plays very closely to Nintendo's Pikmin games, albeit more action-focused. It's what I call edgy fantasy meets Pikmin as you command an army of minions to do your evil bidding. You control the Overlord along with minions simultaneously. The Overlord can do melee attacks and use magic spells while the minions can perform a variety of tasks such as attacking enemies, destroying obstacles, picking up objects, and pulling levers to unlock doors. Different colored minions have their own abilities with the browns excelling in melee damage, reds can throw ranged fire balls, blues walk in waters, and greens being able to enter toxic fumes.
That said, the game has its clunky bits as minions won't always follow commands when told and some NPCs would often block their way. Also, there's no map to track your progress and path in levels, so you'll often being wandering around aimlessly. Overlord was a decent-looking game in 2007 and has aged a bit by today's standards. While the Overlord and minion designs were cool, the rest of the NPCs looked bad with flat backgrounds complementing them. The voice work was average and so was the soundtrack. All in all, Overlord was a great time if you're looking for a more chaotic alternative to Pikmin and it's pretty cheap nowadays.
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