Toukiden 2 Review

Toukiden 2
Developer: Omega Force, Koei Techmo Games
Publisher: Koei Techmo
Platform: Playstation 4 (reviewed), Playstation VITA, PC via Steam
U.S. Release Date: March 21, 2017

So, way back in the beginning of the year I had every intention to do a review of Toukiden Kiwami in some sort of desperate hope to get people excited and pick up Toukiden 2, however my mistake was trying to review a game that was a minimum of a 60 hour commitment, and while that 60 hour commitment was a very worthwhile commitment, it was still a 60 hour commitment.  And while I feel that you should play Toukiden Kiwami, especially if you enjoy the Monster Hunter games, I sadly won't be reviewing that.  Toukien 2 on the other hand, is something I am going to discuss.

The thing I feel that I must clarify, especially when discussing games made by Omega Force, is that I love Dynasty Warriors.  Yes, they're repetitive, yes they campy, but so?  They're fun and they're a good way to unwind and drone after a long day or on a weekend where you feel lazy.  Granted Toukiden 2 isn't much different, however it does take the giant monster killing formula made popular by the Monster Hunter games and adds Omega Forces fast paced combat on top of it, which I feel only adds to the genre in a positive way. While Capcoms slower more methodical approach does have its place, and is very well done in Monster Hunter, Toukiden 2's fast paced platformer-esque craziness is more than welcome because not only is the player quick to respond, but the monsters (or Oni in Toukiden's case) are too.

The game takes place in what I'm guessing to be 19th century Japan, the reason I say this is because an exact date is never given, and due to some story elements makes it difficult to determine exactly, where Oni hunt and attack humans, previously an organization known as "Slayers" hunted them silently from the shadows and protected humanity in secret, however now the Oni have revealed themselves and the Slayers are now out of hiding to protect humanity from their reign of chaos.  You start the game as an elite Slayer who is present and defending an human city during the time known as "The Awakening" when a massive surge of Oni appear to launch an all out attack on humanity.  During the invasion you are sent 10 years forward in time and appear in a small place known as Mahoroba Village where this story takes place.  You must unravel the mysteries around what happened and why you were transported forward in time.  That's all your getting because more would be pretty major spoilers.  Though if you're worried about not having played the first one, while I do highly recommend it, it's not necessary for the story of the game.

For those who are not familiar with these genres of games the idea is that you, the much smaller and more fragile human, and your companions, take the fight to the much larger and more hardy monsters in an effort to beat their pants off and rob them of their bodies to beat even bigger and nastier monters, or all their family, you know, kill the kids with dads head.  Toukiden 2 takes the twist on the game that you're hunting demons and to loot said nasties you must purify their bodies to harvest their resources.  While that seems like a fairly straight forward premise the game throws some curveballs your way in character builds, armor sets, elements and resistances, weapon types, mitama, and the new demon hand. For those who do not know mitama are ancient spirits the player gathers to help them fight the demons, they are sorted into types and have skills based on their type and each has a set of support skills to.  In the first game these were exclusively slotted into weapons, but now in Toukiden 2 you can insert one into your demon hand to gain an additional CD boost, and one into your armor that will grant you a defensive CD.  What is the demon hand you say?  I'm glad you asked.

One of the new additions in Toukiden 2 is the demon hand, in other words its a magical wrist mounted green extendy hand (think those gel slappers) that you can use to close the gap on demons, or tear off body parts.  Its tearing function takes the place of the Unity Gague from the first one and is now an individual gauge based off the players contribution to teamwork.  Once the gauge is full, just activate it and rip them parts off, this is also the easiest way to fully remove a body part and prevent miasma regeneration, and you get bonus loot for it as well.  And if all that wasn't enough the demon hand allows all players to get a height advantage and take combat into the air when a player launches themselves at an Oni.  Overall its a significant improvement in gameplay and a welcome addition.

The game has improved upon itself offering 15 new montsers, mini bosses, hundreds of new armor pieces and weapons, 2 new weapons the whip blade and sword and shield, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.  New vanity items, and open world feel with no loading screens, no more map transitions, and the ability to fast travel from select areas is very nice as well.  Plus you can change equipment without needing to go back to town if you go to one of your bases established in the outworld.  Additionally I would be remiss if I did not mention the fluid quest system, though at times it is difficult to manage and identify where to go.  The game also flaunts a miasma gague that you need to keep an eye on or your character will end up in some serious trouble in the otherworld due to overexposure to the poisonous substance.

Now if all of this does sound interesting to you, but you're still not sold on it, Playstation players can play the multiplayer for free via the Toukiden 2 Free Alliances version of the game, and the best part is if you upgrade to a full copy your saved data will transfer with it so you won't loose progress, which gives an appealing way to get friends into the game as well.

While normally I wouldn't recommend Koei Techmo games to those who haven't played them and don't enjoy good mindless platformers, the depth of monster fighting tactics and plethora of options makes this a must buy for anyone who is a fan of the genre.  With all that being said Toukiden 2 gets 8 Slayers, out of 10.

Rantology: What BioWare did to Mass Effect Andromeda and why you should care.

So, over the weekend BioWare issued an update that they will no longer be supporting single player updates.  This news comes after they have fixed the majority of bugs and glitches in the single player game which includes the facial animations (full disclosure this is not something I personally experienced to the degree that most people claim it to be), and the Hainly Abrams thing which I have previously addressed.  I did write a, as of  yet, unposted review of Andromeda, but I may get around to doing that later this week (btw I gave the game a solid 8/10).  That being said, considering the game is a little under 6 months old at this point I'm going to assume that everyone has finished it and I will be discussing spoilers in this post, but incase that's not enough....

********************************SPOILER ALERT*********************************

Now, with that out of the way one of the biggest things that this hits is from a story perspctive, see for those of you who have completed the story, you'll know that the 5th Ark (the Quarians and other minor species like Drell, Hanar, Elcor, additional Volus, Krogan, and Batarians has arriaved in Andromeda, but is at a currently undisclosed location due to issues, presumably from the Scourge that plagues the Andromeda system, and their pathfinder is dealing with the issue.  Now this brings forward the question of their fate, and the fate of their ark on the surface, but bellow that it makes us wonder if there are additional threats, or if the Scourge isn't what it appears to be and something is controlling it, and what the interest in the Quarian Ark is specifically.  Furthermore, in a post credits scene, a kett known as the Primus, who served as the Archons second in command, is observing Meridian, letting us know that we haven't defeated the kett, especially since we know the Archon was considered a rogue threat who stepped out of line in Andromeda to pursue Remnant technology, as we know the kett only seem to be able to absorb biological material, and not synthetic (possible resurgence of the Geth to fight back at them?)  Finally, the third major question left unanswered is the Remnant, who made them, what their purpose is outside of teraforming, is the AI on H-047c related to them in any fashion?  And while a few smaller questions are left unanswered (specifically in regards to the Angara and Krogan) they are nowhere as near as important to the above, at least in my mind.

While story questions are all important, we also need to realize what this can mean for Mass Effect as a whole.  While Andromeda was never release with a specific plan for the series in mind and meant to be fluid, I doubt anyone ever meant for it to be abandoned, especially considering we have been without a Mass Effect game for going on 5 years prior to its release.Yes, we still have other BioWare games like Dragon Age 4 to look forward to, but they just don't fill the void left in our hearts. Why is this happening?  Well from best I can tell it is because of the overwhelming negative feedback focusing on the glitches in terms of facial animations and dialogue, which while I won't say didn't exist, but were never as large of a part of the game as people (mostly those who hadn't touched the game in my experience) would have you believe.  See, when something like this happens on a lesser known series, or a game that is widely regarded as a cherished title by the masses, it doesn't get the amount of negative attention that a game like Mass Effect would with its rampant fanbase of overzealous players.  For example, Dark Souls has a large number of glitches in their invasion PvP system, ones that will actually break the game and make it impossible to have a fair and balanced game, but the response from the internet is one of disbelief and cries for it to be fixed, not widespread criticism, where Andromeda was laughed at relentlessly for a small glitch that didn't break the game, and by most accounts was less than 1% of the overall experience.  Now I'm not saying they both don't need to be fixed, and say what you will for modern release it now, patch it later culture, but the fact that it is an option to be able to fix it is a good them.  But we can also look to the response from the communities for the efforts to fix their glitches.  From Software spent a large chunk of time investigating and banning players who exploited this glitch, and as of the time of this writing I'm not aware of any patches to fix this issue, only to be met with overall praise from the community for such a proactive approach, while Andromeda was met with disdain and criticism for taking less than 3 months to almost completely eliminate the problem, which I need remind you didn't render entire aspects of the game almost unplayable.

This brings me to my last point of why you should really care.  Andromeda has set a prescendence, and not the one they were hoping to.  What this proves is that with enough complaints, trolling, rampant meme sharing, and overall shitty attitudes to what really was a solid game, you can effectively bury it and a franchise, because when you complain to an extent and harass a developer you are attacking their heart and soul.  Many developers hold these games close to their hearts, as they can be working on them for close to 70-80 hours a week for over 2 years.  These games are their children, their babies.  They care about them and want to see them grow just as much as we do, but the sheer amount of harassment that Andromeda received, especially from people who never played the game (you know who you are), was too much.  This will only serve to tell people that they can keep doing this to other games and series that they either don't like or have some sort of issue they don't like and it is dangerous. Things like this can lead someone to depression, which is a very serious issue, and while I'm not saying we should ignore issues in our games, we should raise those concerns, but we should do them in a constructive way.  Positive feedback is much more beneficial than negative, think of the last time both has happened and what the outcome was for you?  Now apply that same to these games and their devs, and keep in mind that these games are their passion.

We all love video games, there is no question about that, but the thing is how we address them matters so much more.  The issue surrounding Andromeda is a difficult one, but I believe that we need to learn from it so we call all grow, both the community and devs.  See you next time.

Destiny 2 Beta

*Full disclosure, I played and wrote this the day after the Beta but never got around to posting it for whatever reason.  So with that kept in mind I still wanted to share my thoughts on how I saw it and what is coming this September.*

So, I've made it no secret, for those who know me, that I play Destiny on a somewhat religious basis.  As in, I play it every week and have cleared most of the content and am probably floating around a 95% completion of the game.  So naturally I logged on this week to the PS4 preload exclusive of the Destiny 2 Beta.  And really all I can say is that I'm honestly amazed so far, and not in a bad way.

The Beta offered up 5 things in total, two of them were timed/limited access, the rest are open access for the duration of it.  We got exactly what was shown at E3, 2 multiplayer modes and a strike on open access, the first story mission "Homecoming" on limited access, and a new social space dubbed "The Farm" on a timed trial for an hour on Sunday.  While the content wasn't quite up to what I would have liked (I sincerely wanted a small patrol area to get a real feel for the size of the game, though the strike did do a good job of this), it was still valuable content.  The strike, The Inverted Spire, centered around the Red Legions attempts to retrieve Vex weapons technology from one of their minds hidden beneath the ground on Nessus.  A rather long strike that starts in what I'm assuming is a patrol area, and it was rather smart of Bungie to not give us access to sparrows during this or I would have never actually finished it, though I did encounter some pikes and was able to explore a bit.  The strike shows off how massive Destiny 2 really seems to be, at least if this strike is anything similar to others that we currently see in Destiny right now.

The walk/descent to your destination is quite significant and shouldn't be taken lightly as you needed to traverse literal giant drills to get where you're going.  Another thing that really spoke to how committed Bungie is to Destinys long term viability is how alive this time around feels.  When we loaded in I experienced a couple of different things at different times, from the previously mentioned pikes, to battles between Fallen and Cabal, or Fallen and Vex, and even Vex and Cabal occurring at different places.  The only ways out of the landing zones that I checked were blocked off by walls to prevent players from going to far (or so I'm guessing), but I still had my thirst for curiosity quenched.

Crucible was another matter completely.  While I like the idea of 4v4, I do wish that 6v6 could still remain a thing or even get bumped to 8v8.  Crucible in the Beta was offered in two modes on two different maps (I can't remember their names but nothing really striking stands out about them, they are fun though).  Casual was control, while competitive was the new game mode Countdown.  Countdown was really interesting and reminded me A LOT of Call of Duty, but more hectic and more decisive, especially for the attacking team.  I can really see it being the new norm in Trials, dubbed Trials of the Nine in Destiny 2.  While fun, I did find myself having a lot more fun during the strike.

Finally the last large thing offered was a new social space known as The Farm.  A genuinely open space, with lots of little things to explore and fun to be had, it was nice trying to guess who would be where.  There is a small soccer field in which players can play a rocket league esque game to 3.  The Vanguard have a barn, and Tess Everress has a weird tent thing.  Oh and a holographic engram which was cool.  There was also what appeared to be a new type of sparrow like vehicle, which would be kinda cool just to open up options for travel.

Overall the beta was very well done and definitely has me excite for what's to come.  I hope that it is not a standalone sample because what I saw has true promise.