Super Army of Tentacles 3: The Search for Army of Tentacles 2

[b]Score – 5/10 (Average)[/b] Super Army of Tentacles 3: The Search for Army of Tentacles 2 is an ambitious game and one that attempts to do many things right: it's a humourous visual novel with RPG elements with a setting that is as far removed from a Japanese high school as you can get. I mean, we're talking about the apocalypse and a world inhabited by creatures from the mind of H.P. Lovecraft here! And yet, the game does have a few issues which prevents me from fully enjoying it; yes, I could've probably got over my lack of knowledge about the Cthulu mythos or the plot from the game's predecessor. I could've even eventually got used to the occasional crappy MS Paint artwork. But when I encountered bugs that prevented me from progressing through the game without continually backtracking and hoping I'd pick the right path the second time round, that was the final straw. It's almost as if I was actually playing a game of Minesweeper, hoping I wouldn't prematurely end the game by stumbling upon a Ren'Py error page. http://www.choicestgames.com/2018/01/super-army-of-tentacles-3-search-for.html EDIT (13/01/2018): The bugs I discovered have been diligently fixed by the developer and are no longer an issue.

It’s 2017 and the Apocalypse is years ahead of schedule and the gods have disappeared. You, a Deep One, have awoken from the Dreamland and must find the Necronomicon before Nyarlathotep, The Crawling Chaos and his 7 gods does and restore things to how they were or bring in a new age. Alright, so SAT3: TST2 is the third VN in the series and it’s not nearly as cool as I made it sound in the paragraph above. This VN is, at its core, pure insanity and chaos. It’s a Lovecraftian adventure where you fight monsters by answering trivia questions (Brush up on your Shakespeare.) and fly around on a floating ship/city while “fighting” Microsoft paint horror monsters and creatures. One moment you’re in Antarctica making friends with a... yeti girl with pointy teeth (?) and the next you’re challenging Alexander Hamilton to a rap battle and signing the declaration of Independence. (Reminder: It’s 2017.) TL;DR: It’s pure insanity and I would only recommend it if you love fever dreams with a Lovecraftian touch; or if you read the other two VN’s in the series and liked them, which prompts the question, WHY? https://i.imgur.com/nxyEHm9.jpg

This is the second entry in the Army of Tentacles series and it definitely improves upon the first. The music is better, the art is better and the jokes are better. The characters are more explored than previously which is very appreciated. The main thing I didn't like was that a lot of the arguments seemed to be very US-centric which as a non-American, was harder for me to answer because we don't learn about American history here. I'd recommend this to anyone who likes visual novels that don't rely heavily on horror or romantic elements. This time, save the world. Also see Cthulhu in a suit. I mean, that's the dream, right?

It's like a mix of rpg & novel games with many good dialogues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0JVwmYbZjU

This game plays a lot like a choose your own adventure visual novel. It has a lot of various places to explore and a multitude of quests to play through besides the main quest line. The combat in the game is either wordplay based or trivia based (much of it being US history). I really enjoyed my playthrough of the game and will likely replay. Even though I've played thru it once, there still were many side quests I could go back in another playthrough to do and various options to drive the story other ways. The humour in the game was a plus for me too.

This game is funny. I think one of the things that it really has going for it is its sense of humor; be it the snarky wit of the main protagonist, the wacky array of supporting characters, or just the self-aware exposition, this is an objectively funny game. It's a tongue-in-cheek parody game filled with nerdy references, and the game rewards you for recognizing them. Not to mention, the story is quite absorbing -- after playing for awhile it became hard to stop -- despite the fact that the game certainly does not take itself too seriously, it's difficult not to get wrapped up in the world building and story arch. That being said, this game is a whole lot of story, a whole lot of jokes, and a whole lot of amusing exposition. That is to say, it's really, really talky. This isn't inherently a bad thing -- but one of my main criticisms is with the way that the frankly epic amounts of written information was handled. It would have benefitted greatly from voice actors, and considering the 1st game was very nicely voice acted, I found the sudden change jarring (despite the fact that even that was a in-joke about sequels). Voicing the cast would have made me feel less like I was reading an interactive sci-fi/fantasy picture book, and more like I was playing a video game. However, if it was impossible to have gotten voice actors for the sequel for whatever reason, then this game very much needed some other way of breaking up all the talking into easy-to-follow chunks. Just having the character's name there above the dialogue box wasn't enough for a smooth gaming experience. Something such as a logo for each character next to their name, a change in font color for each character, or a musical theme (when applicable) associated with each character to indicate when they are speaking would have been helpful. All in all, this is a funny, absorbing game -- depite what seem like budgetary issues with the voice cast not returning, I would very much recommend this game to anyone who likes an engaging parody story.

Been enjoying it. If your looking for a store driven game that is almost like a novel its a great play. Its funny and pokes fun at alot of Nerd stuff. You will understand once your in :D Pros. Good story, Funny, Intressting toons. Cons. Starts a little slow. Long time till the first health restore point. Litttle Costly but you get alot of game time.

The good: Excellent sense of humor, clever characters, great writing. The game's "battles" are done through arguments and once you figure out the pattern they're not too challenging, and therein lies the fun. You feel so awesome and clever when you figure it out and get through fights flawlessly. There are tons of pop culture references, which are very good at inducing the "oh, I got that!" feeling of superior cultural awareness that a good episode of Mystery Science Theater 2k was so adept at creating. The bad: You will be retreading the same screens over and over as you move from one place to another, "fetch quests" are never very exciting but a menu-based-movement game laden with them introduces some measure of tedium. The ugly: There's a LOT of DLC, though the Black Goat edition fixes this problem, it's approaching Crusader Kings levels here. Unlike CK2 though, the DLC is very reasonably priced and I view many of them more as a way to tip a few bucks to the dev than essential upgrades. The sheer memetic and humor density treads a fine line that some people will no doubt find overly dense, though I personally find it charming. The sort of parodic rapid-fire of jokes where if you don't get or find one funny, another one is right behind, much like parodies like Police Squad (and some people felt Police Squad fell flat for just that reason, too many jokes in too little time) NOTE: there used to be some bugs, but the developer shows an impressive level of dedication to support and polish, supporting the game over a time span that should shame AAA developers that claim product support is "too expensive" over the long term and leave their games unpolished. What I'd pay: I buy every Stegalosaurus game on release, and never regret the money. If you're on the fence discouts are often enough that you can pick it up cheap, and the modular DLC approach with an impressively cheap base game let you try before you really invest, ample DLC means if you find it to your liking you can extend the experience.

So I bought this game following my experience with the first one which I found weird but entertaining. Sadly the followup feels tired and stretched thin. The humor is way less inspired, the use of "Cthulhu Mythos" elements felt irrelevant as art and story status of the beings are way less connected to their original counterparts than in the first one, the dialogue (combat) options felt more random and even more so like game of trivial pursuit than something related to the story or characters (though it was a problem to at some points in the first one). Small nick pick: for some reason (though not surprising after looking at this company's game library) there is an over abundance of Shakespeare references and I mean there are LOTS of them. Those should really have been references to Lovecraft and his circles of associates and friends The combat system is still great and interesting though, but like mentioned before it didn't feel like I was battling anybody through knowledge and logic but just answering trivia questions. There is also a lot of repetition. When you get a random encounter with something you already fought the answers are the same and in the same order and for some reason before fighting the last boss you have to fight all the previous boss and they all have the same answers and in the same order. This was really tiresome and sleep inducing. Let's now talk about the menus: in the first game to move around you had some nice maps to move around, but for this installment they decided to downgrade and go with dialogue menus with sometimes take multiple pages to go through all the options of zone. I think this specific elements represent best the change between the 1rst and 2nd game. For a game build in a visual novel engine there is so many bugs it's uncanny. When I first bought the game I got multiple exceptions that prevented me from starting a new game though this was fixed fast enough. Quest breaking bugs, dead characters joining the party bugs, achievements not unlocking bugs, achievements unlocking without meeting the requirement bugs, etc. etc. Like the first game there some potential here but it's buried underneath all the problems. Stick with the first one if you're into this kind of game.

I love this game so far. Once you get started you'll get sucked into the story and the characters. The writing is well done, the story development is amazing so far. I still have a lot to play but I had to stop to write this. This is a underrated game which should see more light. A game that doesn't take itself seriously is hands down awesome. Granted there is a lot of reading involved but it's worth the buy for the content, the characters and the art. The backgrounds are beautiful, the sprite work lovely. All I can say is Well done.