• 

The Pirate Warriors series and by extension, the Musou genre as a whole has never been one to push its players. You pick a character from a huge pool and completely destroy anything the game throws at you. While this is fun for a while, the uninspired map design and lack of any differing objectives made the Pirate Warriors games get stale quite easily. Pirate warriors 4, however attempts to remedy this with more characters, harder, more interesting levels and the addition of verticality. I’m quite happy to say that this approach works wonders for the game.

The story is a laughably terrible retelling of the story of the One Piece anime, with huge chunks being skipped out, important characters not even having models and any semblance of emotional weight lost through lacklustre animations and other weird changes to the story to fit with what the game has. The game’s original version of the (as yet incomplete) Wano storyline is similarly atrocious and acts as a weird way to shoehorn in characters that serve no purpose, spout a few lines and disappear. It is also the exact same story as Pirate Warriors 3’s version of the similarly ongoing at the time Dressrosa arc; Luffy and co. arrive on island, the beginning plays out as normal, Kuzan and Sabo show up for no reason, Blackbeard shows up for no reason, The crew beat up the arc’s villain and the game ends with the crew  leaving the island after the villain runs away. I wish I was joking. The characters are reduced to a couple of traits at most, which in some cases (I’m looking at you, Franky), makes them completely different to their original counterparts. If you’ve played the previous game, you’d know that this is unfortunately series tradition at this point and it honestly doesn’t impact your enjoyment of the game because the likelihood is that you’ve probably already read or watched One Piece to some degree before playing it.

The gameplay this time around is much stronger. While the game’s core concept remains the same, combine the square and triangle buttons for different combos to eviscerate hundreds of enemies at a time, Pirate warriors 4 streamlines and innovates on its tried and tested gameplay by adding a stamina bar to limit dashing, a jump button for a different set of moves and a skill wheel where you can pick up to four different special attacks that work similarly to an MMORPG’s interface. High damage, strong de-buffs and good healing come at the cost of a large cooldown. There are now four “types” for each character to fit into: power, speed, technical and sky. Power types, like Luffy are focused on high damage output and high defence. Speed types aren’t as strong, but they have the stamina and attack speed to make up for it. Technical types focus around gathering large groups of enemies to beat more of them up at the same time. Finally, sky types have the best aerial moves along with a constant dash. Each of these types comes with a “Full Force burst”, which is a powered up form where power types get increased attack power and agility, speed types get faster and use less stamina, technical types’ status ailment strength is increased and sky types gain the ability to fly. Some characters have special transformations that can change their type and move-set completely, such as Luffy’s Gear 4 transformations and Kaido’s dragon form.

The roster is huge, with 43 (mostly) unique characters from essentials like the full straw hat crew to some more specific picks such as Ivankov or the Vinsmoke siblings. Each character acts as a different playstyle, allowing you to pick the ones that suit how you want to play the game, or you could just play your favourites. Brook, Jinbei, Whitebeard and Cavendish have been some of my favourites. The only characters I haven’t enjoyed playing are Sabo and Niji, which still leaves me with over 40 that I love. I would say that every returning character has benefitted from this game’s additions except for Tashigi, whose move-set used to be based around cancelling to create new combos. You can’t really do that anymore due to the reworked control scheme, limiting her options in battle from what they previously were. The 13 new characters in the game are great too. The addition of giant characters  like Big Mom alongside more unique playstyles of Bege and Bartolomeo more than make up for the loss of 7 of the previous game’s cast that, being honest, I never really played much of anyway, although I know there are a bunch of people who are quite disappointed by their removal.

The game has three different modes: Dramatic log, where you play through the story with a specific set of characters to unlock more characters and levels, Free log, where you replay dramatic log levels with any character and treasure log, where you go through extra levels in the same locations to unlock extra moves, transformations and even more characters.

The maps this time around feel like maps instead of the squares linked by corridors from the last game. The maps have different floors, require constant monitoring and good knowledge to traverse efficiently, as opposed to the previous game’s layouts which felt like a bunch of indistinct rooms to beat people up in and then forget about. The enemies are also much more capable, with the commanders and bosses having armour that needs breaking in order to do any real damage to them. The addition of large enemies like Jack or X Drake adds another layer of strategy to battles as their shields can only be damaged when they are attacking, so your timing and stamina management are important. Compare this to the last game, where the hardest challenge was trying to beat a level in under a minute and you can see just how much the improvements mean. The downside to this added intricacy is that the game skips huge chunks of the One Piece story out, only covering the Alabasta, Enies Lobby, Sabaody, Marineford, Dressrosa, Whole Cake and Wano arcs, but in my opinion the multitude of well designed levels on each island more than make up for that loss.

The progression system has been changed too. Pirate Warriors 4 abandons levelling up and instead opts for a more customisable progression system. You have a skill tree, but you need to use money and special coins obtained through beating enemy commanders or accomplishing milestones to grow characters. Each character has two individual skill trees and there’s also a shared one to allow every character to have decent enough stats if you want to start using new characters in later levels. The downside to this is that some coins are locked behind the crew level system. The way this works is that when you play as a character or a character assists you in a level, they gain crew points, which increase their level to gain coins, a model and voice lines for the gallery mode alongside costumes. The problem with this is that every NPC also has a crew level and you can’t choose who assists you on any given level, as most of them can only be accessed through the treasure log mode, where your helpers are randomly assigned. This means that if you need Sengoku’s crew level 5 coin, you’ll need to play a ton of the game for the chance to even get him as a friend, let alone to crew level 5. This is made slightly less annoying by the large roster which makes it hard for playing to become tedious, but this forced replayability it is still a huge problem.

The game supports two player local and online co-op for every level, but some can have up to four players online. The Multiplayer works well; it makes the harder difficulties much more manageable with added abilities to revive friends while also being able to control more of the map at any given time. The four player levels are some of the best in the game, with more unique objectives like survival and bounty hunting. Local multiplayer does lower the graphics and framerate, but it is still consistent and doesn’t make much difference regarding the game itself. Additionally, this graphical drop isn’t nearly as atrocious as in Pirate Warriors 3.

As far as the look of the game goes, it does its job. The characters all look like they should, environments are destructible and special moves are massive. All of this comes together to add to the inherent spectacle of the game. Seeing buildings get destroyed alongside the hundreds of enemies you just punched is satisfying to look at. While the animations in cutscenes are jarring due to the strange dissonance of muted and awkward Mocap performances for exaggerative anime characters, the actual in-game animations are all screen accurate and feel right for each character.

The soundtrack this time around is as good as ever, with the metal music of Musou games being nicely combined with the trumpet-heavy big band One Piece style to create a bunch of good tracks that fit the hectic nature of the game. The voice acting is… varying in quality. It’s the same cast from the show, some characters are perfect and then others (looking at you again, Franky) are just odd. Any sound design is buried under the screams of hundreds of enemies and that’s not a bad thing.

One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 is the best kind of sequel; a game that builds upon the strong foundations of its predecessors by adding depth and strategy to what could’ve been a completely mind-numbing experience. Sure, the storytelling is bad, but it’s so bad that it’s good. If you’re a fan of One Piece, I’d absolutely recommend it because it’s the best video game adaptation you can find.

• 

I’m about a decade too young to have grown up on the Sega Mega drive, but I’ve always been fascinated by retro games and so, some years ago I played the Mega drive collection for the Xbox 360.  It was there that I got my introduction to Streets of Rage. I wasn’t very good at any of the trilogy at the time, but I loved the look and feel of the games. I’ve revisited the original games recently and I’m much better at them than I used to be, I have a new appreciation for the music and the series has become one of my favourites on the system. When the fourth game in the series was announced over 20 years after the third game a year and a half ago, I was really excited. I loved the visual style that was shown off and I thought the redesigned Axel and Blaze looked incredible. Now that the game is out, I am so happy to say that my expectations were met and even exceeded in some areas, but the game does have a few kinks that perhaps come with its genre.

The story is as beat-em-up sequel as you can get. The children of the villain of the old games, Mr X, have come to get revenge and, naturally, the gang must get back together to beat the living daylights out of them. Of course, as mentioned above, you have Axel and Blaze, but this time they’re joined by newcomers Cherry Hunter (the daughter of the first game’s Adam), Floyd Iraia (the apprentice of the third game’s Zan) and even Adam himself is a playable character for the first time since the original game. Along the way they meet a load of characters both new and old in the form of bosses, who this time around may be the most fun lot they’ve ever been.

Of course, the gameplay is the main attraction of the game and Streets of Rage 4 manages to build upon the classic formula whilst modernising it in the best way possible. On the surface, it’s the same old game it has always been; beat the people up and keep moving. As usual, you have your basic attack button, your jump button and your special attack button for offensive and defensive moves along with grabs, throws, countless weapons scattered throughout each level and an extra move you can use by double tapping forward and using the regular attack button. This game adds a second attack when you use a downward attack in the air alongside an aerial special attack, a window to recover health after special attacks, the ability to juggle enemies by bouncing them off walls and a super move that you can use with consumable stars. All of this is complimented by the newly added combo and ranking systems. As you keep hitting enemies, your combo goes up and you get more points if you don’t get hit yourself. It is with the points that you get from levels which are then topped up by points you get from the amount of time you spent on the level, the amount of health you have left and the stars you didn’t use to provide a ranking from D to S . Your score will also be affected if you choose an assist before retrying a level.  your points are then accumulated, and a bar fills up. Filling the bar up unlocks the original 16-Bit versions of nearly every character from the previous games who play exactly as they used to.

But before I get to them, I want to highlight this game’s cast. Axel is how he’s always been, the balanced character that has high attack and decent defence alongside fiery special moves, Blaze is a bit faster at the cost of her attack and defence, with extra attacks when she uses knives and energy based special attacks that are more akin to Street Fighter. Floyd is the slowest, but he is the strongest character with the longest reach thanks to his robotic arms. He has lightning based special attacks. He can move and jump with enemies he grabs, and he can even grab two enemies at once for an extra powerful attack. Cherry is the fastest and weakest character, but she has a sprint, like in Streets of Rage 3 and the most aerial capabilities out of the cast, with her specials all revolving around her guitar. Adam is the middle ground of the cast and the only returning character that feels nothing like his original counterpart. He is faster than Axel, stronger than Blaze and he has a dash to avoid incoming attacks, with specials that are similar to Blaze’s. My favourite of the bunch has to be Blaze. Her move-set is easy to build big combos with and fun to use. Axel, on the other hand is just so slow and can’t hit anything. I thought it was just me, but after unlocking his Streets of Rage 2 appearance, I realised that to me he just feels worse than he used to. His attacks aren’t as strong and there is a massive cooldown after his bigger attacks that allows enemies to gang up on him. I’m not sure where I’m going wrong with Axel, but I can’t seem to get to grips with him.

The game has a fair amount of replay value, having five difficulties (capping at the insanely hard “Mania”), with each difficulty lowering the number of lives you start with and increasing the enemies’ attack power and numbers. The game has a number of modes that you unlock by finishing it for the first time. These include Mania difficulty, stage select, a brutally difficult boss rush and arcade mode, where you have to go through the whole game with only one continue. The game also incentivises replaying levels to earn points to unlock all the classic characters, S ranks, increasing your position on the global leaderboards and then doing it again with all of the different characters.

Streets of Rage 4 isn’t overly reliant on its predecessors, while the gameplay is similar, it isn’t afraid to change it and build upon it. That being said, there is an evident adoration of the original trilogy from the developers with so many overt references, like the secret battles in some levels and subtle nods to the series’ past such as the graffiti and posters throughout the game. The retro characters share this adoration, with details as small as the input delay when jumping as the Streets of Rage 1 characters to make it play just how it used to, regardless of your favourite of the trilogy. Don’t expect to see a playable Ash or Roo though.

The game is clearly designed for multiplayer, with four-player local co-op, two-player online co-op and the two-player vs mode. I played through the game for the first time with my brother. When you are playing with other people, the game is even more of a blast. The combo meter is shared between players and for the first time you can turn friendly fire off, so the combos end up becoming huge if you play the game well enough. While we lost quite a few times, I never noticed just how much faster the enemies were when compared to the player because my brother could handle half of the screen while I handled the other. However, when I played on my own, while I still enjoyed myself, the enemies swarmed me, and I just couldn’t fight back. This was especially true against certain enemies like Francis or Garnet, where no matter what I tried, I could only ever barely defend myself with ridiculously precise timing that was difficult even for a seasoned player like me. This isn’t helped by many enemies and bosses having unbreakable super armour, leaving you severely handicapped by playing on your own. While these were much bigger issues when I started playing the game on my own, I have since made much better use of verticality and special moves, making the experience much more manageable, but still not quite enough.

The levels are all engaging, with just about every locale you could ever want from a beat-em-up; the usual shady streets, sewers, a skyscraper, evil castle lairs- y’know, the usual. What makes them different this time is that they’re full of life. You’ll see people eating food, hiding away from all the fighting or just enjoying their time in a sauna. These intricately detailed backgrounds give the game a fun, Metal Slug style charm that is only complimented by the stunning hand-drawn art style. This extends to the characters too, as the animations on the game’s sprites have this incredible fluidity that gives just the right amount of character make their incredible designs pop that much more. On that note, the new characters and enemies fit in so perfectly with the old ones, which just goes to show the level of detail that the team went to when retaining the feel of the original games. While the game’s occasional repeated boss fights are a more negative relic of the originals, this is aa minor gripe at most considering the effort put into every pixel onscreen.

There is a concept art gallery alongside character bios in the extras section of the main menu as well as the choice of dish for your recovery items in the options menu, once again showing the commitment to tiny details that make the game that much better.

The music, as expected, is simply incredible. Every composer’s tracks feel unique enough while still fitting right in with both the rest of the soundtrack and the soundtracks of past entries in the series. Seeing each track progress as you get further into the level makes musical payoffs that much better. My personal highlights have to be the Stage 9 music and the boss tracks from Stages 6 and 11. As if that isn’t enough, you can also switch to the classic soundtrack. Sound design too is as satisfying as ever, with every impact sounding just as glee inducing as they always have been, impressively holding up against the iconic Mega Drive soundscape.

Streets of Rage 4 does its job nearly perfectly. The story works, the characters are varied and interesting and it is both visually and audibly gorgeous. The gameplay takes some getting used to but when it works, it is fluid, effortless and most importantly, fun. It isn’t too pricy and if you stick with it, the game keeps getting better as you keep playing.

While the game hasn’t been localised yet, I looked into Persona 5: Royal as it released in Japan through various livestreams over the past couple of weeks as there was very little comment from Atlus regarding what wasn’t changed, with the trailers only giving some promise that there was any change to the base game to begin with. To my disappointment, I found that barely anything from the base version of Persona 5 was changed to any meaningful degree. Expect spoilers and JRPG speak ahead.

Where do I begin? I watched these livestreams like a hawk, waiting for something, anything different. Every trailer that released after the first made me think that I knew where this was going and I did, but I still had a slither of hope. “Maybe the new party member would join really early and change things from there”, I thought to myself. “Maybe fleshing out Akechi’s confidant would do something meaningful”, “Maybe they’ll fix the clearly rushed second half and its boring dungeon design”. I didn’t want to accept that this was just another cashgrab, adding less than a tenth of the base game to rope in fans with exciting trailers that left just enough to be desired that they’d buy the game again.

I had, shall I say, an “active discussion” with a die-hard fan about this very topic on a youtube comment section, which admittedly is far from the best place do so, but it did help me understand why people fall for such an easy trick. What I seem to gather the most is that people still seem to think that Atlus is this small, almost indie company like they were even in the PS2 era and they seem to forget that they’re owned by Sega.

This lets them get away with all sorts of things that other companies would get crucified for, such as; announcing DLC for a game that isn’t out yet, charging ludicrous amounts for said DLC, announcing DLC for what is supposed to be the “definitive edition” of the game with no option to make the definitive edition upgrade available to base game owners, not to mention carefully editing their trailers to make it look like there’s more to the game than what’s shown. A prime example of this is the footage they use of new parts of old palaces that are in reality either grappling hook points to skip a section out or a corridor leading to a miniboss.

As far as other parts of the game are concerned, all the other changes make it look like they’re just ways to make the game easier.

For example, the added/moved minibosses provide you with an accessory which gives your party members moves that they wouldn’t have been able to learn otherwise. This is interesting, but it disincentivises party variation, essentially rendering Hifumi’s confidant bonuses that let you change party members mid-battle useless. There is an attempt to combat this with unique skills for each party member’s newly added third-tier persona. These skills include mass buffing, debuffing and damage that wouldn’t be possible otherwise, but it just ends up making the game even easier as it essentially gives you the power to decimate everything with very little effort. I found this especially strange as I felt the base game’s last quarter was trivialised by having stupidly strong personas coupled with these same buffs on just one party member, so I can’t even imagine the complete annihilation of the new palace that these new moves would bring. Another addition is the new showtime attacks, which are sweet, stylish little team-up moves between two party members that do massive damage to enemies… on top of the massive damage you’re already doing to enemies. None of this would be a problem if the game’s difficulty adapted to your strength, but it doesn’t.

The old boss fights are altered to varying degrees in what seems to be an attempt to scale the difficulty, whether that be simply adding a dialogue option mid-battle or changing how a phhase of it works, which only happens once. Other changes include adding an extra move or extending the effect of debuffs, changing weaknesses and adding new elements to pre-existing moves. I feel that These changes are so minimal that I wonder whether they were worth changing in the first place. This lack of difficulty is so prevalent that the new superbosses and DLC boss fights of the previous two persona protagonists that were supposed to be he ultimate challenge of the game have been called underwhelming unless you’re underlevelled. From what I’ve seen, it’s the same strategy of debilitate, heat riser, charge/focus, God’s hand/Blazing hell/hassou tobi that just isn’t interesting after so many uses. It would’ve been much more interesting to see a boss fight that disbled certain moves with near certain death being guaranteed if you tried to use them, which is like older persona superbosses in a way.

I’m sure that the things that have been added are great, the music and visual improvements definitely are, but one extra palace, 12 personas, one new party member and an alive Akechi who are only in the party for that last palace, alongside a couple of fleshed out confidant stories, a new confidant and a new area to explore with minigames which altogether equates to around 10-15 hours of gameplay. This does sound good on paper, but when you consider that the base game took me around 120-150 hours to beat, if not probably more because I died so much, the new content does really seem like less and less the more you look at it, especially when the party members are only available in that last section.

what annoys me isn’t that they have added new content, but that they expect full price for it and the extortionate price of £130 (prior to the Western release, here it is £50, still ridiculous) for all of the DLC when they easily could’ve made the added content a DLC expansion. This is especially frustrating when incredible DLC expansions like Xenoblade Chronicles 2’s Torna expansion similarly come with new characters, challenge battles, sidequests etc. for what was at the time half of the base game’s price. The Torna expansion on its own takes around 20 hours to beat and many more if you wanted to do all of the sidequests. The fact that the standalone physical version comes with the rest of the season pass, which in itself adds a lot of hours to the base version of Xenoblade 2 makes Royal look like nothing in comparison.

To say that Persona 5: Royal is worth £50 at this point is ridiculous, but Atlus still plays the small company card to present the risk to fans of losing the series they love. While what has been added is to the standard of the base game, it should’ve been more. What was changed from the base game isn’t the jarring contrast of real human drama and stupid anime tropes or the corridor-filled second half, the mundanity of the late game on easier difficulties or the unanimously bad fifth boss fight, but rather accessories and powers to increase the mundanity and useless changes to the boss fights alongside agrressive monetisation that have well and truly disappointed me.