SCARLET NEXUS

This is more of mixed feelings rather than fully negative, just a heads up. The story is fine. The characters are overall fun if a bit stereotypical. The enemy designs are quite cool. What irks me is the gameplay. The combat by itself isn't bad, and can be fun at times, specially when mixing in those sweet psychic powers and throwing items at the enemies or skills. However... you can't dodge mid combo or even during the recovery frames where you aren't attacking or doing anything, you can't interrupt your combo in anyway... so you are forced to take damage. Why? Why can't you get a skill or perk to let you dodge out of your own attacks? I thought this was an action rpg hack n slash, as its advertised as such. Enemy telegraphs are kinda ass too, specially some bosses. Despite be dropping the game because of the pretty bad combat system, I can see people liking it if they can keep up with such mid gameplay. Maybe the girl plays better, I don't know, I was told to play Yuito first since the other character answers the questions left on his story. Then, my biggest pet peeve. Why can't I play as the other, much cooler characters? Theres a girl with a fire martial arts staff and a guy who becomes steel and punches enemies really hard, and you tell me the one you only let me play as is the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sword dude? Theres an engineer girl with a chainsword!!! Why you make all these cool characters with actually fun looking movesets and I am not allowed to play them?! Its not like Yuito's movelist is bad or anything if a bit uninspired, but why can't I play the other ones?! This is more a -me- thing than a game thing, since I had the same complain when I played Hack GU despite really liking that game. I understand that the game was only designed for us to play as Yuito or Kasane, but I always feel like if you're gonna make such a diverse cast, let us play our prefered playstyle instead of dangling it as just NPCs.

phenomenal game so far. Combat is excellent and rewarding. EDIT— Just beat Yuitos story. the game is so good, wonderful characters if you use your eyes and ears (no, the characters aren’t boring and one note - you just didn’t do any bond episodes.) Starting Kasanes story now and it’s captured me already. also, Dream in Drive is a banger opening. play the damn game

战斗系统有意思，前期有点卡手，但是到了后期技能差不多了人也齐了各种轰杀处决真的爽 两位主角都算是成长系，在成长中让人开始喜欢他们——人机女主在成人，亚萨西男主在承人。其他队友角色也挺讨喜的。 剧情这块把两边串起来的话还算不错，犯了罪当了反派行要么死掉，要么留下来活着赎罪，不过没有老中们喜欢的当场杀伐那么干脆。另外，但是因为是双线藏剧情，玩起来有时候还会有“你他妈在说些什么啊”的黑崎一护体验，特别是男主线。综上，推荐先玩女主线，再玩男主线吧。 话说时空系能力真容易出重男重女啊。 如果喜欢年轻人们喊着友情啊羁绊啊就冲上来了的王道二次元故事的话，本作还是很值得打折买来一玩的。

I wish I liked this game more than I do. The combat got really repetitive for me and I don't find a lot of the characters interesting enough to want to listen to them more than I play the actual game. It does have some legitimate cool moments, it looks good, and the gameplay can be really fun, but I think I found myself wishing I was playing something else most of the time.

9/10 It's 50% manga/visual novel and 50% hack&slash, so the dynamics are similar to Yakuza games': you watch cutscenes, then you do some intense action, then you rest a bit and watch some cutscenes, rinse and repeat. The story is over the top, but fun and interesting nonetheless. Characters are great, too. What I really liked are the (team) bonding scenes. The combat is just the perfect balance between 'smash X' and 'push all the buttons and memorize difficult combos'. Graphics, sounds and music is also great. I've grinded maybe a few hours, but it's absolutely optional, you can finish the game without any grinding, which is good. The only thing that makes my gears grind is the two playthroughs with the two different protagonist: the story and the path of the two crosses each other's several times, the main story is the same, [spoiler]and toward the end of the game, the two protagonists and their teams are joining forces, [/spoiler]so it doesn't really makes sense to go through the whole game again just for some (possible) tiny additional scenes and a somewhat different gameplay (close combat vs ranged combat, and somewhat different skills). Also, it would have been great to have a full motion anime for the cutscenes instead of these still(ish) pictures, but I guess it had to do for budget reasons. I'd love to see a sequel!

Dodge doesn't attack cancel. Absolutely ruins the flow of combat and artificially inflates the difficulty. 7/10 if the combat didn't suck, 3/10 with current combat.

I finished this game twice on PS5. bought it to support the devs. Amazing amazing game. Highly underrated and under the radar.

BORINGGGGGGGG

Hidden gems.

it's like i wished for a tales game on a monkey's paw. So let it be said I got the game because I'm a fan of the tales of franchise and a lot of my friends called it a spiritual successor and in many ways it is by inheriting the worst parts. Okay Pros- The combat is very much like someone combined everything that worked about Tales of Xillia and Zestiria into one system and it's very fun to play with a lot of cool combo tricks that make it really easy to just relax and flow into the button mashing. The soundtrack is pretty fun and a good enough time. The map designs are cool fun Cons- ok for one I mean it when I say this game is like someone heard every complaint ever made about the tales of games and crammed it into one title. For one this game very much plays exactly like tales of xillia 2 in the worst ways. Almost immediately you will notice the maps being repeated over and over and while it's very easy to fall this under the game having a low budget at times I am left to wonder if instead of making long maps that were mostly empty or just long hallways could we not have made shorter but more varied maps as a lot of he side quests or character quests just have you backtracking over the same 5 maps that are mostly just long hallways with no variation. A lot of the side quests also are annoyingly based on killing specific enemies with certain combo finishing moves that require a lot of timing. It's not that it's extremely difficult it's simply it becomes so annoying that unless you're a completionist or are just really good at the combat it's just not worth it. The characters within the game itself are largely flat, uninteresting, and very clearly rip offs of other tales characters throughout the series once you note certain behavioral ticks. Almost all of the game is side content around interacting with these characters and yet none of it actually has an impact if you don't bother engaging with it. In fact the game dialogue is repetitive because of this as the characters will repeat information from the side stories as if it is new. The side stories themselves are also largely just talking head cut scenes that end in running through a map you've already been through multiple times by that point killing enemies. It's almost exactly how the side stories functioned within tales of xillia 2 but these don't even have a broader impact on the plot of the game. The characters overall also don't act as if they live in the world they do. There are so many moments the game stops to deliver exposition or have the characters ask about the world they live in ways that make them seem more like isekia protagonists than child soldiers that have been living here their whole life. It often unnatural and jarring how little the characters know or care about their own world and how it operates. the dual protagonist system creates for a really annoying experience as Yuito is definitely intended as the first time playthrough much like how Jude was for Tales of Xillia and almost all of Kisane's plot doesn't make sense until you backfill it with Yuito's. Kisane and Yuito also just don't have personalities in the first place. There's nothing actually narratively to Yuito or Kisane other than positive boy and sister complex girl and the process means both feel dragged along by the entire plot of the game. Which is stupid. I say this with love the plot is extremely b movie schlock level of nonsense the overall design of everything feels incredibly slapped together at times. It's a cyberpunk world but there's no rhyme or reason for why certain things are just holograms now other than to convey that element. I wouldn't normally complain about this if it wasn't for the fact that the game has really ableist world building logic that it brings into it's plot that makes the use of holograms even more stupid. That's another weird element to this game. It has an extremely weird and at times uncomfortable tone towards disabled people that to me at least is really distasteful. and finally this game has so many ads for its own anime and it's genuinely cringe I won't say there's no reason a person wouldn't like this game just that i don't think it's worth it to buy full price or to 100%.