Recent reviews by Hugoos

100% the demo. Really liked this one, very addicting, I like how you need to search for the tutorial areas to solve different puzzle types. It does have some really challenging puzzles. I've been writing in crosses rather than using the in-game marker because it's much clearer which cells cannot be filled. Controls could use some work, accidentally deleting all your notes, even if you can take them back is quite stressful. Looking forward to the full game.

Fun little Roottrees-like, not as good or long as "The Roottrees Are Dead" but I liked it well enough to recommend it. Certainly worth it if you enjoy these kind of deduction mysteries. I hope the developer considers making more of these.

For context playing Genshin, Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero. I just beat Phantom X up to the current end of content (just before the 2nd palace boss). Phantom X is most similar to Star Rail.

I enjoyed Phantom X much more than I was expecting. The quality is very similar to the Hoyo gachas. The gacha leveling and pulling is almost 1:1 with the Hoyo games, however this one begs a lot more with FOMO packs where you have only a couple of days to buy them. After getting further in they stopped doing it so much, the last one was a "congratulatory" pack for clearing the first palace.

It also has a greater focus on community with guilds and mild competition between PVE rankings of players. These things are of course not really fair as they about who has the biggest wallets (p2w).

The actual game is A-rank Persona 5 if the original was a S+-rank game. The quality is higher than expected and I enjoyed doing the palaces. I think the first palace was better than the 2nd one as the 2nd one has a lot of repetition and easier puzzles. The palaces have a lot of repeated rooms with a slightly different placing of stuff inside them, it doesn't come close to the original Persona 5's hand crafted dungeons but they are enjoyable enough.

Combat is exactly what you would expect of the Persona 5 combat modified to work in a gacha setting.

There are Confidants and City Life but they are compartmentalized into their own section where you can use 5 units of time per real life day (barring using limited items to restore) you can spend time with your confidants, do part-time jobs and clubs.

Of course it doesn't reach the original Persona 5's heights, but I enjoyed it enough that I'll be adding it to the pile of daily gacha's for now.

Pretty fun so far, the different gathering and crafting jobs I've tried feel quite samey at the start, I hope it diversifies more later other than being reskins of the same minigame. There seems to be a lot of content/maps and it's quite addicting. There are some Animal Crossing and city building elements which are interesting and a larger open world which reminds me of Breath of the Wild a bit. I'm sure if you liked the 3DS game you will like this too.

It's a pretty good puzzle game, but some of the randomness and grinding annoyed me to no end in the endgame. Like you might just want to do one more run before bed, but then you find something you need and the conditions are right, but all it requires is an indeterminate amount of rng until you get what you want. And in other games I would just shut the game down and do it on another day, but this game having no auto saves makes it impossible. Then the game kinda forces you to spend potentially hours (plural) or try to get the conditions right again on a next run. It just felt like the game did not respect my time nearing the end for various reasons.

It was still very good for the first 80 hours or so, but the final 20 hours or so just makes me end on a sour note.

Edit about 60 hours in: Sitting here with goosebumps, this game is absolutely amazing, this honestly might be their best work if things continue on this trajectory. Imagine what a mashup between Danganronpa and Zero Escape would look like and you get this game. It is filled with intrigue and mystery and there's never a dull moment in the story. It always moves in surprising ways, so you'll never get complacent. At the same time, it keeps you on the edge of your seat, eagerly awaiting what unexpected place the story will go next. And while all this is going on you are trying hard to unravel the mysteries in your head before the answers are revealed by the game. Highly recommended.

Original:

Great so far, if I'm being honest the gameplay didn't appeal to me on first glance. Since it's a game by Kodaka (Danganronpa) and Uchikoshi (Ever/AI: The Somnium Files, Zero escape), I got it anyway since I enjoy both of their games.

I was hyped when they announced their new studio Too Kyo Games, but so far it hadn't produced anything that really reached up to the standards of the older games by them that I enjoyed.

This game though, so far is pushing those buttons. I'm not very far in, but the game reminds me so much of Danganronpa, it feels like I'm right back home. I'm interesting to see how Uchikoshi's patented writing will emerge eventually.

The elephant of the room for me was the gameplay, this not being a killing game, Ace Attorney-like detective, but a strategy rpg. I went into the game with the mindset that I might have to trudge through those srpg sections to get to the writing I enjoy, but so far it's agreeing much more with me than I had imagined. The game does still have a lot of writing, so it's not like you are only doing fighting, there often is a lot of talking in between like a visual novel, it's very similar to Danganronpa.

So, I think this might finally become the Magnum Opus I was expecting out of Too Kyo when I heard about the new studio.

There was a moment just now when I realized the events and video galleries didn't contain just 12 on each page, but it could scroll down and it actually contains 80 on each page, which get me hyped with the game actually being much more massive than I had imagined. A quick count got me to roughly 2x as many event scenes as Danganronpa V3 and 4x as many videos.

If you want to see more out of these creatives working together, please support the game so this won't become Too Kyo's last game.

Enjoy it after two hours, I haven't beaten Lingo 1 yet, but this one eases you into it more with the new mechanics. Quite challenging already trying to find where to go next.

After 15 hours, I'm starting to get quite addicted now, just one more puzzle. I feel like I might just be scratching the surface of what this game is.

After 18 hours, slowly going insane.

This game is not on the same level of Daybreak I, it should've probably been an epilogue to Daybreak I instead of a full game. Nevertheless, it's still Trails, I liked that they tried to pace it better by having shorter sections. There's definitely some unique sections to the game I haven't seen in Trails before. Ultimately I'd say it's the 3rd worst game of the series (Cold Steel IV and Cold Steel II being the worst and 2nd worst respectively). It feels like the stakes are almost reversed from Daybreak I, like Daybreak I was Azure and Daybreak II is Zero, which feels really weird.

I feel like the character of Van is slowly being eroded away from how he was in Daybreak I, where he was very well written. The Side quests have also become more mellow from what they were in Daybreak I. Like they didn't understand what made Daybreak I so good and they changed Van to be more like Rean.

This is also one of the shortest Trails games of recent years clocking in at a measly 134:26:33 for a full NPC run, roughly 70 hours shorter than Daybreak I and 100 hours shorter than Cold Steel IV.

Still, it's a Trails game and I played it all in one go, there's some advancements of older storylines which I appreciated, so I will still recommend to play it, just know that it's not as good as the first game and has way more filler.

The localization and voice acting work by NISA were on the same level as Daybreak I, which is to say I really enjoyed the way the characters were written in English, and the NPCs all were written well too. No complaints from me here.

Similar to the first game, play that first if you haven't. If you liked The Case of the Golden Idol you will like The Rise of the Golden Idol. I liked that each chapter now has an overarching mystery to solve where you need to combine information from multiple sources to solve it. Sometimes it's a bit tricky getting the right word where you could argue multiple words could technically fit, but the game only accepts one. Maybe I was expecting a little bit more from the story, but it's not a big issue, there's room for more story in the future.

I like how each case is so creatively different from what came before that you're always surprised to how it all relates to the bigger picture. You can't really predict what the next case will be like.

Looking forward to the DLC to expand on the game's story and maybe lead to another sequel down the line. Hoping for some more complicated cases with more screens like The Case of the Golden Idol DLC had and some more creative changes to the formula to keep things fresh.

I have played the tutorial level twice and the second level once. Normally, I don't review games before beating them, but this is not a game that you "beat" in a sane amount of hours. I also like to support the developer to help more people find their game, especially now that they have altruistically made the first two chapters free. I certainly wouldn’t have regretted paying for it, even after just 7 hours.

This is a really addicting (mathematical) optimization game. If you've ever seen those (fake) mobile ads about defeating mobs to grow in power in order to beat stronger mobs with bigger numbers above their heads, this game is sort of like that, but actually really challenging. It's about determining an order of operations that results in the highest score once you reach one of the clear tiles throughout the towers.

These towers are not just singular affairs but challenge you to replay them to clear higher score thresholds. The catch is that beating towers and doing well gives you permanent upgrades, which allow you to get higher scores on all levels, leading to more and better upgrades, thus allowing you to get even higher scores in a continuous loop.

Having (a lot) more meta-progress will allow you to access parts of the tower that are not accessible on a first playthrough, and having more floors and new, better clear tiles will allow you to clear even higher score thresholds.

The number of choices you can make is staggering. Do you kill a mob now, or skip it and come back when your XP is worth 600% more? This might just be the difference between ending your run one level higher and getting a gold medal instead of a silver. The choices can be quite overwhelming, and it's hard to know, for example, whether to use a key now to skip a floor and grab something from a higher level, or just clear the floor first.

The second level did take a while—maybe 4 hours or so—and, considering the number of tactical choices you're making, it did tire me out. Still, I feel there is a niche that will really vibe with this game. I'm not sure yet if that will be me, but so far I am very intrigued by the concept and am especially looking forward to the meta-progression.