"Arcade Spirits" Review

 Publisher:  Fiction Factory Games

Genre:  Visual Novel

Summary:  A new job at an arcade leads to friendships, difficulties, and perhaps a new dream for the future.

Gameplay:  Gameplay consists of choices, which are often designated by tone (unless you turn off the option to view them.)  Choices can also gain approval with characters.  Your character and tone ratings are tracked (with in-game explanation!), viewable at the end of each chapter, and lead to different options and endings.

Style:  The game has an overall video game aesthetic to its text to fit the topic.  The characters are styled well with lots of art and expressions.  The music is good as well.

Story:  Arcade Spirits shines in telling a long, thematic story about finding friendship and purpose while going through the anxieties and depressions of life.  It resonated especially strongly with me, but I imagine anyone who's had strong nostalgia, periods of melancholy, or struggles to find purpose would find something to appreciate.

The game is paced very well over eight chapters, with each chapter feeling like a satisfying chunk of story.  The characters are rich and memorable, even minor ones, and not one feels underused.  The variability offered by the customization for the main character (name, pronoun, and, to an extent, appearance), romance options, and tone choices makes for great replayability as well. 

Conclusion:  Arcade Spirits is a long, fun game with all the emotional highs and lows of a great story and all the variety of a great visual novel.

Quest Analysis: Find Liara T'Soni

This is going to be a friendly rant as much as it is ramble/analysis of the mission to find Liara T'Soni.  First, there's not giving you the exact location, forcing you to search the first time (or cheat.)  That's fine; there are a couple other interesting quests to pick up in the Artemus Tau Cluster.

But then you do land on Liara's world, and something's missing.  Every other core mission, you first land, talk to some folks to get a feel for the place and maybe pick up some side missions, then get in the Mako (Virmire does mix it up and do the Mako first, but it has all the main elements still.) 

This mission, though?  Straight to the Mako.  What happened?  Checking around, it looks like exposition people and all that were planned initially, but it seems strange that of all things in this game this was the bit that was cut.  But what's even stranger is the lack of explanation.  Where are the people on this planet?

I think maybe lore later tries to cover by mentioning robotic mining, but that doesn't explain the clearly for-people mine entrances and lack of anything that looks like remote mining equipment.  And even if there's no miners, why is Liara completely alone?  Surely she wasn't the only one on this expedition?  The only one interested in this ruin?

Would it have been so hard to have a line about her killed team members, or how they fled and left her to the geth?  It would make so much more sense.  Of course, while I'm wishing, it would have been cool to fight mine equipment the geth had taken over, but clearly for some reason time ran out for a lot of things on this quest.

But the ruins look nice, and on the plus side the mission doesn't take too long.  And it's a really nice touch that the longer you take to get to Liara in-game the more delirious she is when you get there.

"Mission--It's Complicated" Review

Publisher:  Schnell Games LLC

Genre:  Visual Novel

Summary:  In order to save the world, you must start a superhero team and ensure two of the heroes form a strong bond.

Gameplay:  You select which missions your superheroes go on and you choose which heroes to pair up for these missions and how they solve them.  This affects both how successfully the mission goes and the strength of the connection between those heroes.  Depending upon their connection, the heroes also have dates which you influence by offering advice.

Style:  The game's cartoon-comic style is wonderfully pleasant and humorous.  Dialogue is handled text-message style, which fits well with the casual atmosphere the game projects.  The music is good and there are lots of fitting splash picture inserts.

Story:  The game has a fun, relaxed mood while still managing to create interesting, detailed characters in the six members of the superhero team.  They have a variety of powers, sexualities, and genders, which makes for good replay value seeing how the various pairings of romance and friendships go.

Conclusion:  "Mission--It's Complicated" is a fun game that goes quickly but offers good characters, great dialogue, and superhero romance.

"Dragon Age Origins Leliana's Song" DLC Review

Publisher:  Bioware

Genre:  RPG

Summary:  Leliana tells the story of how she left being a bard and became involved with the Chantry.

Gameplay:  There's nothing new to Dragon Age:  Origin's gameplay here.  There are usual opportunities to fight or sneak or find objects.

Style:  There are no new locations.  The loading screens and lore entries are told from Leliana's point of view, reinforcing her narration, a nice touch.  Characters are introduced with dramatic splash screens.  This looks cool, but I don't think it quite fits the tone of the rest of the DLC.  The music is excellent.

Story:  It's interesting to play this for the first time, as I have, after Dragon Age:  Inquisition.  It works well to enrich the complex character of Leliana and related aspects of Thedas.

As a character-driven story from Leliana's past, the main events can't change, but there are some choices in Leliana's responses and minor actions that add variety.  The other characters in the DLC are generally interesting.

There's a pleasant ambiguity to the whole DLC (always an issue when you have a rogue narrating in Thedas.)  When Leliana mentioned these events in the core game, for example, they did not take place in Denerim.  (Clearly it does so here so the location assets can be reused, but you can imagine Leliana has reasons.)  It's not even entirely clear to whom this tale is being told--presumably the Warden main character, but others are possible.

Leliana has to leave the ending vague so as not to spoil later plot (if you're playing it early) and because the player in a sense influences the outcome.  Indeed, in some senses the truest ending comes in Inquisition, and that ending also varies with the player's actions.  It's impressive to see a character-driven piece that still allows for player choices, especially considering those player choices are yet to come.

Conclusion:  "Leiliana's Song" is an interesting addition in character and lore to the Dragon Age universe.

"Reflections on the River" Review

Publisher:  Stardust Soda

Website:  https://stardust-soda.itch.io/reflections-on-the-river

Genre:  Visual Novel

Summary:  A witch kidnaps the king and queen's heir in an attempt to get back a magical jewel.

Gameplay:  Gameplay consists of making decisions.

Style:  The game contains excellent character designs that are colorful and memorable.  The settings are as well, and the music is pleasant if not plentiful.

Story:  There's an early fork when the witch decides which person to kidnap, and the game can easily end early after that due to bad decisions, but there are several interesting possible endings that follow thanks to the intriguing characters.

Conclusion:  Reflections on the River offers unexpected stories with good visuals.

"Dragon Age: Origins The Stone Prisoner" DLC Review

Publisher:  Bioware

Genre:  RPG

Summary:  The Warden finds a golem to join their group.

Gameplay:  Shale, the golem, does not equip weapons or armor, but uses special elemental crystals for those purposes.  The golem has its own special ability trees that are different modes geared towards offense or aiding the other characters.  This makes the character different but rather finicky to use in combat (not that it much matters on easy mode.)

Style:  The new areas added to the game are nice.  The Deep Roads section in particular is pretty, given the lackluster presentation of the area previously in the game.

Story:  Shale is a good character who talks with the other party members and comments on events and locations as much as any of the others.  The quest to get the golem is interesting and having the character adds more emotion to the game's golem elements.

Conclusion:  Shale doesn't add a lot to the party mechanically, but is a fun party member providing some neat extra missions and lore.

"Vampire: The Masquerade--Bloodlines" Review

Publisher:  Troika Games

Genre:  RPG

Summary:  After being turned into a vampire, you must navigate the bloody politics of the Los Angeles World of Darkness.

Gameplay:  Vampire:  the Masquerade was the first tabletop roleplaying game I ever played, and this game brought back lots of fond memories.  Character creation is similar enough that I was (again) able to dig up old character sheets and adapt them to create game characters.

Abilities are split between traits (innate abilities like strength or intelligence), feats (learned skills like firearms or sneaking), and disciplines (magical vampire powers, which vary depending upon which type of vampire you choose to be.)  Experience can go towards increasing anything, but costs vary depending upon the ability and how much it's increasing.

The game often does a good job at offering various paths to complete a quest, but there's usually combat involved somewhere.  Combat itself is somewhat awkward, as it's difficult to switch quickly between all the melee, ranged, and magical abilities.  There are only ten hotkeys, and those have to accommodate healing items as well.

Sometimes combat can be avoided via sneaking (and you can instakill when unnoticed behind someone, something I wish I'd learned before nearly the end of my first playthrough.)  Hacking and lockpicking may be needed too.  There are also sometimes persuasion options.

As a vampire, you of course will occasionally need to drink blood.  It's another bar like health and is especially used up by disciplines.  There are a variety of ways to get blood, again adding options.

Style:  This game is atmospheric as all get out.  Through excellent music and design, the settings can ooze creepiness or despair.  The late night streets of L.A. are sleazy and depressing, while skyscrapers loom above in gothic splendor.  People dance in clubs while mysterious whispers murmur through the sewers.

Story:  The story suffers somewhat from the false urgency of the main quest distracting from the sidequests.  At one point, the chain of favors for the main quest was so long I lost track of who I was supposed to be finding to help who do what.  And one particular quest--the sewers--was spectacularly long and underwhelming.  Then the end is a lot of dungeons and lots of things to kill.

Still, the game does excel at offering options and adventures in a dark and interesting world.  You can be a heroic vampire rescuing strangers and only killing when attacked, or an evil seducer who drains without a care.  You can wander off to discover all sorts of supernatural hijinks.  You can solve quests subtly or just murder everybody.

Truly, choices abound, unless you'd like to romance a guy.  I can think of exactly one opportunity to sleep with a guy, and it wasn't exactly a flirting situation.  And it's not like there weren't possibilities!  Why does every other woman hit on my character, but I can't hit on LaCroix or Nines or Reyes?

For that matter, why can I pick up girls in bars but not guys?  There are literally guys there, and I can't talk to them!  It really speaks to a spectacular failure of imagination on somebody's part.  It's pretty clear it never occurred to the developers that someone interested in romancing men would ever play the game.

Conclusion:  It wasn't intentional at first, but when I realized I was only playing the game at night, I continued to do so, it was so fitting.  Despite over-reliance on combat (especially towards the end) and its failure to account for male romance, Vampire the Masquerade--Bloodlines offers an impressive amount of roleplaying options in both gameplay and characterization and takes place in an interesting and different setting.