When Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth came out at the end of March, I became a bit of a mad man. For a little over 3 weeks, it was basically the only game I touched. This was from a mix of absolutely loving the game, really being invested in the story, and not wanting to get spoiled accidentally.
While that was a blast for me, I feel much more back in my natural habitat now, which is game hopping. I have been rotating between a few different games and have even played a few demos. Here is a quick round up of my thoughts on what I’ve played.
Stellar Blade
It’s a shame that this game has become part of some weird culture war. There are a few people who are upset about the “over-sexualization” of Eve, the main character. But I’d say there are a lot more people almost desperate for people to be upset about that so they can be outraged back. If any reviewer gives this below an 8.5, there will be culture warriors out to say it is because they couldn’t handle that the game wasn’t “woke.” It’s obnoxious.
I will say, that after playing the 30ish minute demo, I will be surprised if the game doesn’t mostly get 8s and maybe a bit higher. There is some really solid soulslike combat here. Combat feels weighty, and the special skills Eve has feel especially cool. This is mostly parry heavy combat, and landing a perfect parry feels as good as you would hope. There also seem to be a lot of satisfying animations for executing foes that you have staggered through parrying.
There is also one sequence in the demo where you are in the middle of a battlefield, avoiding missile strikes and debris from the wreckage. This sequence in and of itself was OK, but the trailer after you finish the demo seems to hint at several more set piece moments like this. This is a rarity in soulslike games, and with the top tier production values here, I’m excited to see more of these in the full release.
Also, the music deserves praise on its own, as it is absolutely fantastic. The bits I heard would only put this behind Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth for soundtrack of the year so far. The english voice acting was also very solid so far.
I’m coming off Rise of the Ronin, so the slightly slower pace did throw me off a bit. Ronin has some pretty tricky parries, so the very basic enemy attack animations seemed a bit easy to tackle, but this is also an introduction area, so I imagine things will ramp up as the game goes on.
My only other complaint is that neither the story nor the characters were pulling me in at all early on. Once again, there is plenty of time for that to change, but if it stays bad, not being able to skip cutscenes is going to be super annoying. Hopefully, that option is there for the full release. But either way, from what I played, I’d predict this lands at an 80 on Opencritic. That would be a few points shy of Lies of P.
Sand Land
We’ve seen game demos make a big resurgence in 2024. I’d say I’ve enjoyed just about every demo that I have played this year, with the one exception being Sand Land.
Sand Land plops you in the middle of a small section of its open world and lets you explore with no real guidance. I ran across a radio tower that was supposed to allow you to see everything on the map, but I didn’t have one of the correct components to restore it. After 45 minutes of exploring the map, I found a lot of other items, but still not the one I needed for restoring the tower.
Exploring can be a bit annoying, too, as the map is heavily populated with enemies. There can be a bit of mindless fun when fighting those enemies, but nothing felt overly deep or interesting. They also didn’t seem to offer any substantial loot, so it just wasn’t rewarding in the slightest, and I quickly found myself mostly running away from fights.
When you do decide to fight, it will mostly be in vehicles. The game gives you three vehicles in the demo. You have a more standard tank, which mostly entails backing up and rotating your guns as you shoot at enemies. You have a more melee focused mech, which seemed really fun in spurts, but also seemed a lot more limited in tougher fights. And then you have a motorcycle, which is nice enough for navigating around the world, but wasn’t super useful in a fight.
You can also fight on foot, but in the early going, that seemed pretty basic and not nearly as effective as being in a vehicle.
I had some issues outside of combat and exploration as well. I really hated the party dialogue a whole lot in my very short time with the demo. I heard the same conversation bits as much as four times in less than an hour, which is absolutely insane. The environment similarly feels very stale, though that could obviously change as we see more of the map.
There are supposed to be more rewarding action-RPG elements with this game in terms of building up your main city and customizing your vehicles. I’ve also read previews discussing stealth areas and some Zelda elements with its dungeons. That stuff all seems really cool, but none of it is in the demo. I don’t personally have much faith in the combat getting a whole lot better, but if everything else comes together, I could still see this being a solid 7/10 type game. But 6/10 seems more likely to me.
Even if you are interested in the game, you should stay far away from this demo.
Unicorn Overlord
I talked about this game a month ago in my last gaming roundup. At that point, I was 2 hours in, and now I’m 17 hours in. I play this game in short spurts mostly, so it has been slow progress, but I’m pleased to report that I am still having a lot of fun with this.
Most of what I said last time still holds up, so check the original post out if you want my basic thoughts. The main thing that I have to add is that I am very impressed how even as far as I am, new things are regularly being added to the mix. In my last mission, I discovered a brand new unit, and a fog of war element was introduced for the first time as well. The game has done a great job at not getting stale.
I think my only gameplay complaint to this point is that the game hasn’t truly challenged me yet. I’m not some strategy ace, but I’ve been able to win most of the fights in the game pretty easily, with only the final boss occasionally forcing me to stress out a bit. I’m only 17 hours into a game that can easily take 70 from what I’ve read, so there may be more to come there.
Also, I do really wish that the story was a bit more compelling. The main story of the game is that almost every major enemy of yours is being mind controlled by your enemy, and you alone have the power to free them from that control. You free someone from their mind control, they are saddened by what they have done, and then they join you. It’s getting pretty repetitive.
But overall, this is still a very strong game. It nails literally everything else about the combat. There is a lot of stiff competition this year, but I believe that this will likely hold on to be in my top 10 at the end of this year.
Ultros
Ultros is definitely one of the weirdest games I have ever played. From an atmosphere perspective, it feels like a mix of Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, Hollow Knight, and a bit of LSD. It’s bizarre yet intoxicating. I truly never know what I am going to see next as I traverse into each new area.
From a gameplay perspective, Ultros has a lot of surprises up its sleeve as well. After a mostly standard opening area (outside of the general weird atmosphere), the game actually lets you go in any direction you want to reach one of its many objective points. Yet, none of the paths are straightforward or obvious. It’s not always clear which way to proceed. As I kept playing, I realized that this is not a Metroidvania about platforming and combat, like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was earlier this year. This is a Metroidvania about exploration and environmental puzzle solving. In my two hours with the game, those elements seem incredibly strong. I’m very hopeful that all the things this game is good at will hold up throughout the experience.
And it is a good thing because the platforming and combat really aren’t awesome. Fighting is very basic, and can just feel janky at times. Part of this is moments where the art obscures your vision a bit, but a lot of the action just doesn’t feel as polished or responsive as I would like. The game also really encourages you to use different moves on each foe, so you get better items from the kills, but it doesn’t make it perfectly clear how to meet its requirements for each enemy. I’ve had several kills where I felt like I mixed up my attacks well and got “spoiled” loot. And I’ve had kills where I didn’t think I was all that great, but got the “pristine” loot. It’s a really weird mechanic and isn’t satisfying to me in any capacity.
The game also seems to have moments where it resets your stats. This happens to you pretty early on in the game. Apparently, this will be happening more times, but the mechanic still hasn’t been fully explained with how far in I am. It’s a bit annoying to acquire skills and then lose them, so I’m curious if this mechanic will grate on me as I continue to play. There is a resource you get that allows you to keep certain skills over different “loops” as well, so hopefully, that helps dampen some of the potential frustration from this.
Ultros isn’t all that long, so I’m hopeful that I will have a full review in the coming weeks!
Big Nerd Gaming 
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