Arashi: Castles of Sin - Final Cut

Very Unfortunate. Many of the pillars of modern VR you can think of aren't here. Both movement and turning is with the stick only. Any movement or turning in your play space will break your static VR body resulting in comically broken limbs. There seems to be minimum use of physics, other than wall climbing. Combat has no collision, I.E. your sword phases through the enemy's sword. Stealth is uh, very bad, with enemies not responding to sound at all and only being able to see you if you approach them from a straight angle. Basically just a very mechanically challenged game.

Utter let down, not as advertised, the storage space says 40GB but in reality it is just over 7GB where did the rest of the game go? You are basically paying for a quest 2 game on PC it looks nothing like the original pictures and is a low res mess. With no options to change the graphics. I don't want to get stuck with this eye sore, so I'm returning it. Who ever thought it would be a good idea to give PC gamers the standalone version needs their position reassessing. Horrible, don't waste your money, even at £24.99 it is a waste

Completed the game. I had a good time. Super easy, enjoyed the story. It scratched an itch I didn't know I had. With the movement fix, I was moving through so fast I didn't get a chance to appreciate how bad the graphics are, and nor did I care. The art direction is solid throughout and helps convey the sense of place. The game gives reasonable weight between stealth (which I tended to) and murder-hobo. Story. I liked it. Good setting. Good characters. Good campaign premise. Combat - simple/easy. Limited variation in the attacks. Different weapons were easy to find, enough ammo, but not too much scattered hidden in the levels. Different weapons definitely leant to different playstyles and could be used to react to, or create, different opportunities. Boss fights were the most interesting. Blocking is effective, and fast counter attacks seem to be fotm. Shadowy stealth kills work, which is satisfying. Haru is super helpful in combat. Sword play seems overly simplistic. "Accidental" strikes on enemies are too common, just a sword in vicinity of the character is enough. So yeah, keep your distance and don't get too close if you want to feel like you're actually trading attacks and defending. Graphically poor-to-OK. No graphical options to play with. Could look very much better on PC, but at the speed I was moving, it was OK. Artistic direction is consistent throughout, and works very well. Sound - solid. Good VA as much as I can tell understanding not a word of Japanese. I liked the music. Haru's howl was decent. Controllers - It knows I'm using Index controllers which is always a plus in my eyes. (No Index finger tracking - just sayin'). Control scheme / comfort - fine. The devs fixed the terrible smooth loco/turn issue of launch (and mentioned in many reviews). It is now capably tracking head direction. Had to rebind the inventory to thumb-pad. Having on the left joystick press for inv is a non-starter. Setting and level design - seems decent enough. Story sets up nicely, and running through the levels quick adds to the pacing. Some of the views looking up to the palace or castles were decent. The game started with a railroad, which is fine for starting up. It never opens up massively, but there's enough variety in routes to reward a little exploration. I enjoyed running through the stealthy routes, on roof tops, in grass, cheesing up mountains... A few invisible walls, but not too bad. The game is easy to pick up with no problems. Good on-boarding. Setting, pace and story is fine for me. Didn't get much challenge early on, and only died a few times once I got the hang of combat. I can live with the graphics and the sfx. Recommended because I've enjoyed it and stuck with it to play through. But it's no where near as solid as I'd hoped for. And the Haru in game is no where near as good looking as the trailer, but is still a very good dog.

Difficult to play, not because the game is hard but because it never feels like you are in control of the direction you are moving. You would think moving your joystick on your left hand would move you forward, well if you aren't set in a proper way which I can't really wrap my head around you will go sideways in a random direction. I don't know if it is tied to the way you are looking in real life or the way your controllers are rotated or some other random thing. Bottom line is the game needs better locomotion based on either Saints and Sinners or Into the Radius. The only games I know of with really good controller or head-based locomotion. Anyone using an oculus style controller use the developer preset, it worked for me you have to hold X+Y at the same time to use the menu. I am using a Pico 4 and could get past the menu, obviously. I will sit on the game for a week and if nothing changes I will be refunding and re-buy at a time they correct the issues. They should have waited til later in December and game us a playable game.

Movement controls have been updated with the latest patch! Now you move in the direction you are facing for smooth turn.

[h1]Experienced on the Meta Quest 3[/h1] You can view my full review here: https://youtu.be/RAb60HBBBOU As far as I can see, only one maybe two people actually reviewed the full game. There's a lot of negative, and positive, reviews of people playing this for less than 2 hours. That's a shame, because this is actually a good game. Now, people are free to write their negative reviews, but you're also free to take them with a grain of salt. I was expecting this game to be totally terrible seeing the "Mostly Negative" review status currently on Steam. However, this is more than just a decent game. It's a pretty good game, especially if you're new to stealth-action games. This would be the perfect game for those new to the stealth genre. This game is very approachable and very forgiving. As long as you're not totally asleep at the wheel and able to be somewhat observant, you should easily complete this game. It took me around 9 hours to complete this game (taking my time to fully explore). The best part of this game is all the toys you get to play with, including: bow & arrow, shurikens, blow gun, explosive bomb, smoke bomb, poisonous food (my favorite), and land mines (okay this may be jumping the shark lol). You have Haru, your loyal dog, who you can not only pet, but is also very helpful in taking out enemies. My recommendation is to have Haru sit in a spot where he won't interfere with your stealth. It's very easy to stay in the shadows in this game as there's lots of areas you can hide in, including tall grass and many, many walls and general shadowy areas. You have an ability to view enemies around barriers that's on a very short cooldown. You also have a grapple hook gun and a ninja jump (short teleport). This game is easy mode. I do wish it had a higher difficulty for those wanting more of a challenge. However, it's fun using all the toys to do as many stealth kills as possible in as many different ways. I recommend using stealth as often as possible, because non-stealth combat is pretty boring. It's just block, keep distance, and counter-attack whenever possible. It never really changes except for the gimmicky boss fights. I did enjoy the boss fights, but once you learned the gimmick, they weren't challenging enough. The game has great production values. Good voice overs, great musical soundtrack, and a nice enough story. Sure, the story is a played out revenge story, but it's still better than most of the slop that releases in VR nowadays. The visuals aren't the best, but it's also much better than the average VR game release, especially in recent VR history. The spatial audio is just okay, you can hear enemies approaching or leaving, but you can't exactly pinpoint them. Overall, I had fun. IMHO, this game is much better than the average Steam VR release. I think it got a lot of hate, because of the early on locomotion issues which no longer exist. I also think some people had unrealistic expectations. [b]Rate 7/10. Perfect game for those VR gamers new to the stealth genre. Stealth hard-core veterans should pass on this one though.[/b] [quote]I bought this game! If you enjoyed my review, please consider joining my Steam Curator group [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Oculus_WMR]Oculus Rift Reviews.[/url][/quote]

Not for the expectation and price vs. what you get... I very much like the cutscenes(/exposition scenes) art style; very beautiful. But they are too long and too much of an info dump - I got lost very quickly. I applaud the studio/devs for doing a game in a native language to its environment rather than placating to the Western "need" for English. I liked the subtitles; easy to read and clear and not in your face. I LOVE: YOU CAN PET THE GOOD BOY!! (But, if we're being honest, its a complete failure to add a doggo in a game and NOT give you the chance to pet it so...) The reason I cannot recommend: The marketing (i.e. the videos and screenshots) are wildly misleading. If this game looked like it does in the marketing I might keep it... But for 30 bucks on Steam? No. But if I were on the Meta store buying a 20 dollar game for my Quest 2? yeah maybe. But on Steam with my Beyond? Nope. Nope! As others have said there's no graphics settings options and its absolutely clear this game was designed for the Quest 2 (not even the 3). The movement is janky and not at all what you expect for this price in 2023. I did find that strafing made it easier but the mechanics are still wrong. You can wield two blades! Wow awesome! but they don't have object collision with each other? WTF? Even BEATSABER lets you taunt your "enemies" and show off by dragging your blades together... this is 100% a requirement in my mind. The climbing needs a lot of work. Titles like The Climb /2 did it far far better, and years ago. I was recommended this game by some YT'er or other and I think I'll have to be more careful with their recs from now on. This game had promise, and if their marketing was honest and the price was lower for the obvious port that it is... it might be worth it. But 25 minutes in and I'm not impressed enough to keep going. It has potential - for Quest 2 though.

[h1] Finally, a full-fledged single player VR game with a narrative campaign, marred by a few glaring issues.... [/h1] [u] THE GOOD [/u] -Graphics; some pretty decent textures given the install size (18gb), great reflections and lighting, some nice small details -Does not seem Questified, or rather, downgraded for lower spec standalone headsets -The Dog is awesome & looks wonderful. Much better then Hellsweeper's pup. Also, giving commands is awesome -Nice narration, lots of high quality artwork, and a pretty deep story so far -Stealth seems legit, enemies have sight cones and awareness markers like MGS [u] THE NOT SO GOOD [/u] -No head-based movement?! -no left-handed option -no graphics settings -optimization isnt so great, micro-stutters here & there, slight lag -player body seems slightly off, arms dont extend as long as my own arms, cant grab shurukens -dog runs right up to enemies, sometimes alarming them without my say so Fix those slight issues and the rest is good

Honestly, I like the game. The levels look cool, the interaction with the dog is neat, fighting is alright. I am glad the devs cared to make a PCVR port at all. I think we all know It's not like they can expect a lot of money there nowadays. Physical turning was already added with the last patch and I would like to see roomscale movement too and a less jittery image overall.

Doesn't work on Pico 4. There is no "menu button" that I can't go into the game. Even I have tried to change controller settings, but failed.