Let's just get this out of the way in case the title wasn't obvious enough: I fucking hated the block pushing/pulling piece of shit puzzle game part of Catherine. I was terrible at it, the controls were weird, and it wasn't fun. Now, the "action" part of JRPGs not being fun is nothing new. There are several examples of good JRPGs with bland, boring combat. Just off the top of my head Lost Odyssey and Suikoden V were both JRPGs I loved that had some boring ass combat.
Catherine's "action" however, was not just unfun for me, it was actively infuriating. So much so, that I abandoned the game before finishing the story. My real issue with the block pushing shitfest isn't that it was difficult for my dumb brain, my issue is that it existed it all.
Here's the thing: An adult drama RPG in a modern setting that isn't a hentai text adventure? I fucking want that game. A main character that's 32 years old and not a goddamn teenager? Yes, please. I don't need combat, and I sure as shit don't need a fucking puzzle game to suffer through before I can get back to the story. Why can't JRPGs evolve past arbitrarily having shitty action when clearly the main draw is the story and character development? Or at the least couldn't Vincent team up with 3 other Sheep Dudes and fight angry babies and fork wielding witches Persona style?
So I didn't like Catherine, no big deal. I'm just disappointed that someone made a refreshingly unique game that I could've loved and prevented me from enjoying it by shoving a terrible game inside of it.
Trenched is a good game. In fact, if they patch the multiplayer framerate issues I would be hard pressed to find anything negative to say about it past the one major glaring flaw that Trenched has: There just isn't enough game here. Now, you can argue the dollars to hours value ratio all you want. The game is $15 and it can be completed in one afternoon. Whether or not that is a good value is not the point. The point is that with this type of game, a tower defense/ horde mode defense shooter, it is incredibly easy to add replay value. For whatever reason, Double Fine did not.
Jeff touched on this in his review, but I think it needs to be emphasized because it is the one major factor that keeps Trenched from being a 5 star game. Once you've completed the story mode, the only content left for you is to go for gold medals on all 15 of the missions. Playing with 2 friends, I managed to get gold on all but 4 of them the first time through, so it's not exactly a daunting task that's going to add hours of additional replay value. With no higher difficulties to challenge yourselves with, and most damning, no endless survival mode, the replay value just isn't there.
I know it's silly to complain about a $15 game. The thing is, I fucking loved playing Trenched with my buddies. I want to keep playing it, but there just isn't any reason to. You throw in a survival mode and this game becomes the best $15 you can spend and potentially downloadable game of the year. People love that shit, look at that goddamn Nazi Zombie crap. I just don't understand how Double Fine could make a multiplayer tower defense game and not see the value in that. Here's hoping for DLC.
It's not the bot AI, which is actually pretty serviceable. It's not the lack of content, because I honestly (after having played it) would not buy this game for any price. It's not the lame weapon variety which consists almost entirely of ARs and SMGs. It's not any of the things that most people are bitching about.
You know what I like in Halo Reach? Multi-flag CTF. You know what I hate in Reach? 1 flag CTF.
This is why I don't like Brink. Everything boils down to one side plays offense, one side plays defense. Without the dynamic nature of both sides having to play both offense and defense simultaneously like in Multi-flag CTF in Reach or Domination in Call of Duty, it becomes a game of Lemmings and Campers. To me, this is not fun. I don't enjoy throwing myself at an objective when the entire enemy team can just lie in wait, and I don't enjoy sitting by an objective waiting for the next attacker to pop around a corner. Offense becomes frustrating and defense becomes boring. In fact, both sides become boring thanks to the overlong time limits. You get into situations where it becomes clear that the offense is not going to be able to break the defense and look up to see that you're still stuck playing this shitty deadlock for another 8 minutes.
This is why Bad Company 2 has respawn tickets for the attackers. If they're getting destroyed by the Defense the game does not need to go on for the full 15 minutes or whatever. Offense/Defense also worked in BC2 thanks to the large enviroments and the ability to attack the objective from a distance. Brink has neither of these things, meaning the offense will always have to break a room of campers, and do so long enough for someone to plant/hack/repair. Meanwhile, being successful on Defense means sitting in one area watching a timer slowly tick down. Fun.
How do you review a Dynasty Warriors game? It's almost a pointless endeavor. The series has both a diehard fanbase of people that are almost certain to buy each sequel regardless, and a legion of gamers that despise it as if Koei personally takes a dump on their doorstep every time a new Warriors game is released. So what purpose does a review serve for Dynasty Warriors 7? The changes made in each subsequent game are subtle at best, so you already know if you will love it or hate it for the most part. Some media outlets take each release as an opportunity to further mock the series. As a fan of the games myself, I might be tempted to try and convince weary gamers to give DW7 a try. Is either really necessary?
The simple truth is: These games fill a niche. If the Dynasty Warriors series was a bad first person shooter you could say, "Well why don't you play Battlefield or Call of Duty?" But there is no alternative for marching across an open battlefield and single-handidly beating the everloving crap out of hundreds of dudes. There is no other hack n slash style game that gives you a huge roster of characters to choose from. So yeah, they're kinda bad, but what else is there? The Sengoku Basara and Ninety-Nine Nights games are a nice diversion, but they are released so infrequently that even if they put Koei's games to shame (which they don't in most areas) it would hardly matter. Those of us who who love these types of games aren't going to wait years for another Capcom release when Koei is there to fill the void. So bring on the Dynasty Warriors!
Gameplay
So let's talk about those subtle changes for this year's game. The awful one button Renbu system from DW6 is gone, thankfully, and the little complexity that the combat in Warriors games had is back in the form of tiered charge attack combos. We also have the addition of an improved upon version of the weapon system in Strikeforce. You can equip any character with any two weapons you want, with the exception of two gender specific weapons. I absolutely love this, and hope it remains in all future Warriors games. Each character has a special EX attack that is specific to their default weapon, but who cares, I'm putting gauntlets on Zhu Rong and bodyslamming people, not using her stupid throwing daggers. The characters each have two different Musou attacks in DW7, which adds a nice little bit of variety, as they tend to be different styles (grapple, crowd clearing, etc.). It's also worth mentioning there are an impressive number of grapple attacks in DW7. The aformentioned gauntlet move set has several, and large characters like Dian Wei and Huang Gai have great looking grapple Musous. The spear weapons switch attack is probably my favorite.
Dynasty Warriors 7 is broken up into two modes:
Story mode now puts you in the shoes of specific characters for each battle. An interesting approach that goes a long way in keeping things fresh and furthering character development. This time around you will experience the death of several main characters as they are suppose to have died, rather than being able to play the entire Wu story as Sun Jian and butchering the plot, for example. Story mode does a much better job of actually telling a story thanks to this, rather than in past games where it just felt like you were playing X number of stages as a specific kingdom. The interludes between most battles where you walk freely around your base camp and can have short dialogues with other characters also adds a nice element of charm and immersion.
Conquest mode replaces Free mode in DW7, giving you a large map of China to make your way across by completing missions and capturing cities. You can play as any character on the roster in Conquest mode, though several need to be unlocked first by completing special battles. Overall, I find it to be a much more interesting and enjoyable experience than the old Free Mode, but the simplicity of the Conquest missions does make the absence of the option to play Story missions with any character noticeable. Typically in Conquest missions you can simply rush straight to the main enemy you need to kill and end the mission, where as Story missions have dynamic objectives that need to be completed before the enemy general would be accessible. It would have been nice if the Story missions could've been added to the Conquest board after you have completed Story mode. Quite simply, the Conquest mode missions aren't very exciting, so it ends up being "the mode where I can play as Zhu Rong" rather than something that stands well on it's own. I have to wonder if at some point Koei/Tecmo will simply make Empires the secondary mode instead of a seperate game. Yeah, I know, money.
Visuals
Overall, this is a good looking game. The close-up animations you are treated to when unleashing Musou attack look fantastic (Sun Shang Xiang's are my favorite), and are definitely the highlight of DW7's visuals. I also really appreciate the costume changes returning cast members recieved. The direction they had taken with some of the character's looks in DW6 was not something I was a fan of, so it's nice to see Zhang Fei threw that robe away and Lu Xun isn't pretending to be a Wood Elf, etc. Of course you can chalk all that up to personal preference, and they are releasing previous game's costumes as DLC for those that prefer them. The character models look great either way.
The game is not without it's faults, however. The shadows rendering on characters can be quite jittery, and some of the running animations (which are tied to the weapon you're weilding) are a bit stiff. If you amass enough troops in one area you will also notice the onscreen troop limit in effect as enemies appear out of thin air once you KO some guys to make room.
Sound
Yes, the voice acting is bad. Is it intentionally bad because it's suppose to be hammy? Maybe. Should something ever be intentionally bad? I don't think so. It is what it is though, and I don't think anyone expects good voice acting out of a Dynasty Warriors game at this point. Beyond that, hearing a character say the same line every time you defeat an officer is pretty annoying, and would be regardless of quality.
The music is once again endless guitar solos that have always felt, to me at least, out of place. If you love those rockin' guitar riffs, great. I find myself popping on some headphones usually anyway. You are treated to some nice ominous war drums and the like during interludes in the story mode however, so that's nice.
Overall
They threw in a bunch of new playable characters, gave me my tiered charge attack combos back, made some substantial strides in Story mode, and replaced Free mode with something more involved. The result, for me personally, is a game I really like. I could still sit here and list out things I wish they would change, but that would be silly. I'm just happy these games still get released in the US at all, because I need my Dynasty Warriors fix.
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