Always Sometimes Monsters Mini Review

This review was originally published on www.veizy.com but that was deleted, so now it's archived here.

Here is yet another game I’ve played as part of the Veizy.com Steam Summer Sale Playtime 2016, it’s Always Sometimes Monsters, a cool RPG by Vagabond Dog.

Always Sometimes Monsters is a game I had never heard of until news of the sequel was released earlier this year. The sequel looked cool, so I got the original a short while ago, but never got around to playing it. Until now!

In Always Sometimes Monsters you play an aspiring author who’s currently down on their luck and struggling through life. You’re behind on your rent and your landlord is understandably annoyed, so kicks you out of your apartment until you get him his money. To make matters worse, your ex is getting married at the end of the month and has invited you to the wedding! With JRPG-style gameplay, it’s up to you to perform odd-jobs like freelancing at an advertising agency, get your apartment back from the asshole landlord, and make the correct choices that will lead you to a happy life.

The game looks like an RPG from the 16-bit era, with chibi characters walking about, and more highly detailed character portraits being shown during dialogue. The game has clearly been made by only a few people, but the style of the game definitely suits it. One of the first things I did in the game was help out a musician friend prepare for a gig, and there was some awesome chiptune rock played throughout. Yeah!

I found the beginning of the game and the character selection to be really great. After a short prologue, you start the game as one character who is looking for someone at a party. The party is full of people and you can choose whomever you want, with the person you find being the main character for the rest of the game, who then goes looking for yet another person, who ends up being your character’s lover. What I loved about this was it took something very game-y, the character select screen, and turned it into gameplay. I love touches like that in games just because it shows that the creators cared about all aspects of the gamer. It also ties neatly into the game’s themes of choice and consequences, as the initial character you play as is looking for the person they plan on giving a book deal too, showing that it’s not just your choices that are important, but the choices of others too. Art!

Will I be playing more of Always Sometimes Monsters? Yeah, bro. I don’t think I’ve done a very good job of highlighting how weird and interesting this game is. It felt like I was just scratching the surface with what the game had to offer, and it was so different to most everything else I’ve ever played, I am going to play some more. Recommended.

Always Sometimes Monsters Website
Always Sometimes Monsters Steam Page

Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight Mini Review

This review was originally published on www.veizy.com but that was deleted, so now it's archived here.

I am doing a very fine job of thematically linking the games I choose to play in the Veizy.com Steam Summer Sale Playtime 2016. Here’s another game with a colon in the title, it’s Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight! And it’s fun!

Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight is a Metroidvania-style game, in which you play as a small village’s shrine maiden who journeys to the capital to get help with some bad goings-on. Unfortunately for her the capital has horrific problems of its own, such as monsters plaguing the streets. It’s up to you to kill them all!

Reverie Under the Moonlight is the fourth Momodora game, serving as a prequel to the other three, but I had never heard of the series before this popped up on my Steam queue. I’m very glad it did, as this is completely what I want from gaming. The game follows typical Metroidvania tropes, you explore a 2D area with certain parts blocked off until you unlock abilities, and it’s a genre of game I thoroughly enjoy. You are equipped with a leaf as a melee weapon, but as you’re a badass it’s basically a sword, and a bow and arrow for ranged. Both feel really great to use, the sword has real weight to it, and a small combo system mixed in with a dodge roll brings some nice tactics to each fight. In the time I played I went up against quite a few bosses and they were all great, the giant lady above barged her way into a different boss fight and started throwing evil magic at me. I love it!

The art style and animations in Reverie are gorgeous. It has a pixel art style and the animations flow incredibly well. Running, jumping, sword swinging, they all look great and mesh together so well. If there’s one quibble I had with the game’s art, and I do mean quibble, it’s that from what I played, a lot of the environments were a bit grim looking. The game starts in a beautiful forest, but once you get to the monster-infested capital it changes to a very Castlevania-esque gothic style, and I felt that it was a waste of the artistic talent on display. According to the map I only saw about 30% of the world, so it’s entirely probable that things get much nicer looking later on, but I gotta judge what I see. I just gotta!

Will I play Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight again? You betcha! Gameplay was nice and smooth, the animations were gorgeous, it’s just a lovely game all around. I also snapped up a copy of Momodora 3 in the Steam Sale, which is exempt from the Veizy.com Steam Summer Sale Playtime 2016 rules, as it’s a game in the same series, and it would just be weird to start one before finishing the other. Yes, justification.

Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight Website
Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight Steam Page