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[PC] Suguri

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[PC] Suguri

Unread postby dai jou bu » 07 Apr 2009 22:34

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Genre: High-Speed Shmup
Developed By: 大題汁 (Daidaijiru; Orange Juice)/Orange_Juice/OrangeJuice
Platform: Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista*
Number of players: 1
Release Date: Comiket 69
Distribution: CD-ROM
Rating: ****** (Videogame art lol)

*- There's a sound issue in Vista where the lock-on ping that's supposed to play immediately after the reticule targets something doesn't execute. The game also freezes up if you try to play the opening video to the game and don't skip to the main menu right away.

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tl;dr version of this review

Watch this and this. If you cannot appreciate how awesome Suguri is in motion, then there is something wrong with you. Also, it’s coming out in the States for only 20 dollars with the excellent soundtrack already bundled with it.

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Acceleration of Suguri was the first game in this series I came across and thought it was completely wretched. I was enjoying the 360 port of Senko no Ronde at the time and people on the Internet were making direct comparisons between the two, so I gave the game a quick shot and approached AoS as though it was a Senko no Ronde clone…

… and I was playing the game completely wrong in the process. Orange Juice has as much right to stand alongside professional top-tier shmup developers because of this game, but it wasn’t until I played the first entry in this series did I realize how close I was to passing up one of the best in the genre I’ve ever played in a very long time.

The game’s title comes from the name of the character you assume the role as: Suguri. This person is no ordinary human as she’s been augmented by her father to have the ability to fly through the skies at hypersonic speeds while easily wielding weapons that should’ve been mounted on a giant robot or a gunship. These augmentations have also allowed her to never age, giving Suguri several millennia to hone her skills down to the point where she can single-handedly take down small squads of well-armed enemies and fly circles around more powerful targets until she wears them down with enough of her own firepower. And she’ll make the entire process look really, really easy despite the fact that she hates having to resort to fighting.

Getting Suguri to make it look easy, however, is nowhere near as simple as it looks. Suguri’s default weapons, for example, force her to stand still until she completes her firing animation. These pauses are usually long enough for enemy projectiles to hit her, so like in Senko no Ronde and Virtual On, she can attack cancel out of them by dashing. Except you can’t attack cancel until that specific weapon used passes the minimum amount of time needed before it’s possible to do so, and you probably timed this incorrectly by a few frames so you’re doomed to get hit by the oncoming projectile. However, you can break free from the current attack animation by using a Hyper Attack without having to use the aforementioned method, plus you’re also invincible for about three seconds the moment the Hyper Attack starts, which can also be attack cancelled after the minimum number of frames needed to pass occurs. Except you hit the wrong target because the lock-on reticule was on a different enemy. And all of this can happen in a span of 2 seconds.

So based on that description, Suguri sounds like it uses about four buttons to play the game: one to fire her weapon, one to dash, one to activate the Hyper Attack, and one to switch targets. In actuality, there’s a total of six different buttons you need to press at a moment’s notice, as there are two buttons to switch targets (one is to switch to the closest, the other is to switch to the farthest), and two different weapons to fire. However, beginners only need to know three buttons in order to survive in this game: Weapon 1, Dash, and Hyper Attack. You probably will never have to manipulate the lock-on buttons because by the time you’re used to the basics of this game, you’ll have memorized the enemy placement by then and developed strategies already on how to take out the first enemy that appears in various scenes within a given stage.

But it’s not enough to know how to fire and destroy enemies, since due to the nature of how Suguri targets and fires at the enemy, they will have more than enough time to flood the screen with their projectiles before you can destroy them all (unless you know what you’re doing, obviously). And unlike most modern danmaku shmups out there, Suguri’s enemies mean business: they will blanket the screen with firepower in such a way that it’s literally impossible to safely navigate through without getting hit at least once, which is exacerbated by the fact the hitboxes of both Suguri’s and the enemies’ projectiles are as big as they’re drawn on the screen. The Hyper Attacks won’t mitigate this problem at all since the enemies will trap her faster than she can accumulate them.

And here’s where the genius of Suguri comes into play. You see, Orange Juice has developed a rock/paper/scissors balance system involving three components: Suguri’s dash, energy projectiles, and ballistics (missiles, mines, giant pieces of flying rock or concrete, etc.). With only a few exceptions, dashing negates ALL energy-based projectiles as they tend to be the fastest moving things you’ll see in the game. Suguri can still crash into ballistics while dashing which tend to be slower to fire and move as though they’re stuck in tar compared to the other class of projectiles, but also tend to hit harder as a result. Like in other shmups, ballistics will also absorb shots and have a damage threshold, meaning that it will explode once it takes more damage than it can handle, except if the final blow was dealt by an energy-based projectile, it will continue to travel along its current trajectory.

Now this system would be completely worthless if the player didn’t have good control over Suguri’s dashes, which it does by implementing a system that’s similar to Senko no Ronde’s and removing practically all of the penalties associated with dashing. To dash, all one needs to do is press the Dash button, and if Suguri hasn’t locked onto the enemy, the default direction she’ll be heading is a straight horizontal path to the right end of the screen. When there’s an enemy that’s locked on, Suguri’s default dash trajectory will be where the target is located on the screen. The duration of Suguri’s dash will last as long as you hold the Dash button down so you can concentrate on positioning her to safely launch attacks at a target. The rest of the dash system is taken straight out of the rules from Senko no Ronde and Virtual On - Like in those games, Suguri can dash in any direction by first moving in that direction and pressing the Dash button at the same time. She can also turn in the middle of her dash by moving in the direction you want her to go to, and if this method isn’t fast enough, you can also instantly change her vector (called Watari Dashing) like one can in Senko by executing another “dash” in the middle of the current one by first moving in the direction you want her to go to and pressing the Dash button at the same time, which can even be safely done right inside cluster of energy projectiles if you’re fast enough. However, unlike Senko no Ronde or Virtual On, Suguri has more control over her dashes as she can start and stop as she pleases without having to suffer any “freeze time” penalties for doing so as long as the player’s telling her to do is just start, stop, or Watari Dash.

Another important aspect of the dash is Suguri will leave behind rainbow-colored shockwaves. If these come into contact with the enemy’s projectiles (which I’ll call grazing from now on), it will fill up slivers of the Hyper Gauge, which when full, allows Suguri to execute one Hyper Attack, essentially unleashing a powerful variation of her currently equipped weapon. The Hyper Gauge can also be filled up by dishing out damage or taking it (the latter is not a smart idea to do by the way), but since there’s always a lot of projectiles flying on the screen, grazing is the most reliable way to fill up the Hyper Gauge. And since Hyper Attacks are the game’s only “bombs,” you’d definitely want to graze enemy firepower to fill up the Hyper Gauge as much as possible, unless you’ve already maxed it out.

Now here’s where the risks of dashing come into effect. The first obvious one that you’ll encounter with dashing is that Suguri moves FAST. Fast, as in Xadlak Plus and xSynergy Gate fast (except these two games never developed a dash system that allowed you to safely navigate through traditional danmaku at high speeds, thus making it worthless). Fast, as in, she can outrun practically all of the enemy projectiles in the game. Fast, as in, it literally takes less than three seconds for her to go from the left end of the screen to the right. Not only is it FAST, but every time she starts a dash or Watari Dashes, you will be unable to control her until a split-second after she darts off in the direction you wanted her to dash to. I can assure you that this problem will go away over time, but you’re initially going to have trouble trying to position Suguri within small gaps of the enemy’s firepower just to fire off a shot from your favorite weapon and either attack cancel or Hyper Attack out of it before the next wave of bullets hits her.

The second risk of dashing is the Heat Gauge, and this will always be constant regardless of how experienced you are with the game. Every time you start a dash or Watari Dash, the Heat Gauge will jump up 25% which will continue to slowly rise from there for as long as you hold down the dash button and will gradually drop down to 0% the moment you release it. What the Heat Gauge does is scale the amount taken off from the Armor Gauge whenever Suguri’s hit by something (as she’s too cool to use lives), and once the Armor Gauge is gone, your play session is over (… what? This ain’t Senko). The Heat Gauge can rise up all the way to 300%, meaning that if Suguri’s hit at this point, she’ll be essentially taking 3 times the base damage of whatever struck her, which could result in instant death depending on how powerful the attack was. Couple this with the fact that Suguri has no means to recover any damage received for the entire stage and you can see how important it is to not take as many hits as possible, especially at high Heat levels. Now what makes the Heat system brilliant is that at higher levels of play, the player has no choice but to attack cancel as much as possible to maximize their firing rate for a majority of Suguri’s weapons, have enough time to move to the right position on the screen to safely land the next hit on their current target, and graze as much of the enemy’s firepower as possible to accumulate Hyper Attacks which will both protect Suguri and supplement her total damage output.

One final obstacle in the way of mastering the game is also something that will be less troublesome after you play the it long enough: getting hit will screw up your timing of everything, because although Suguri will be invincible for a short while after she’s hit, this window of invulnerability is only long enough for you to reposition her by dashing to a safe spot on the screen before returning fire (unless your first reaction is to execute a Hyper Attack). Most novice players will realize this only after they’ve taken three hits in a row because they will first feel the sting of the projectile’s impact on Suguri, which will then prompt them to retaliate as quickly as possible before whatever shot that projectile leaves the screen (something that most of them do very well), which then results in getting hit from another projectile, thus repeating this cycle all over again until either the player wisens up or sees their heroine disintegrate into prismatic confetti.

Those who aren’t put off by Suguri’s unforgiving learning curve in hope of one day experiencing what I was trying to describe earlier in this review will be treated to content whose quality rivals Treasure when they’re at their best. Suguri’s “Story Mode” is an idea similar to what ZUN did to Shoot the Bullet, but can be traced back to Treasure’s first Bangai-O game: you can select any stage you want, but only those that you’ve already unlocked by passing the prior one in the sequence, with each play session beginning the moment you start the selected stage and ending when you either pass it by defeating the boss or fail by dying anywhere along the way. This method encourages players to keep replaying the stages over and over either to refine their strategy and execution of them or to experiment with the new weapons (which are typically based off what the stage bosses used, so in a sense it’s kind of like Rockman) that are acquired either by completing a certain number of play sessions or by successfully passing the stages. Of course, you can choose Arcade Mode instead and play the game linearly without any breaks as well as not having the option to switch weapons between stages if you so desire, but be warned that getting killed once will still send you back to the game’s main menu.

But this idea isn’t what Treasure’s well-known for. It’s the stage layout and the boss encounters, both of which Orange Juice delivers in spades. Stage 3, for example, will start Suguri flying really fast through a canyon and fighting enemies that fire homing missiles at her, which then transitions into one of the canyon’s caves that has her dealing with a miniboss drilling tunnels in it, giving little space to maneuver around its drill bits, the rock debris it throws out in its wake, and the balls of energy it occasionally fires at her. And you have to destroy the stupid thing before you can get to the stage’s actual boss who deploys weapon pods that launch a combination of aimed enemy shots and random solid shells flying at near-dash speeds, making the already hard-as-it-is process of getting enough time to fire a shot safely at her even more difficult. The following stage has Suguri navigating through thunderclouds that shoots aimed lightning bolts at her, which could accidentally electrocute the enemies passing by and damage her in the process if you have her run into them at this point without dashing, with the miniboss being a giant machine constantly spinning around wielding flamethrowers on its tips, which, when combined with its rapid firing rate of energy projectiles, forces you into learning how to take advantage of Suguri’s Hyper Attacks or else she will never have an opportunity to fire at the thing. Destroying this miniboss ejects the stage’s boss who uses strategies like pining Suguri down with her needle-shaped ballistics that treat the edges of the screen as a wall to bounce off from so she can close in on you with a melee strike with one motion or to fly around herself extremely fast while enveloped in an energy field that will damage Suguri upon contact the screen spewing energy projectiles in the process. And that’s before she makes mirror images of herself in order to perform an attack that’s similar to the Guardian’s Knight pentagram laser formation from Thunder Force V. Oh, did I mention that the speed of her attacks are as fast as Suguri’s?

The majority of the game’s music is composed of trance, a genre I really hate because almost everyone I know who listens to the “good” stuff consist of a 20 second loop of music repeated twenty times using generic techno sounds. Despite this, DJ DEKU (simply known as DEKU as of late) has made a soundtrack that not only doesn’t annoy me after thirty seconds with its incessant bass beats, the music matches the theme of the stage very well. Green Bird, the track for the game’s first stage, starts off with a synthesized chorus and violin before moving into a piano melody which after a certain point, sounds vaguely familiar to Key’s opening theme to AIR. The tranquil melody really does a good job over the stage that Suguri’s flying through, which is a quiet forest in the middle of the afternoon that’s suddenly interrupted by an alien invasion causing a ruckus, thus ruining Suguri’s day. Another nice thing about the game’s soundtrack is that not all of it is trance. Impact is a synthesized rock track that would sound very awesome if the composer had access to real instruments and also depicts the 4th boss’ style of hitting hard and hitting fast. Difference starts dipping into Yasuhisa Watanabe territory with his signature space-age sounds right at the beginning of the track combined with a synthesized bass guitar to give you an initial impression that it’s going to sound like electronic jazz, but then merges with DEKU’s chiptune sounds and signature techno trumpet you’ve been hearing in just about every stage prior to this one.

The only complaint I have about Suguri is that it has a convoluted scoring system, but I’m actually lying as I try my hardest not to believe it exists since attempting to follow it will force me to play in a way that I’m not going to really enjoy. Yet I enjoy it somewhat, so I’m torn about this. Like in any contemporary skill-based game, you will be ranked at the end of the stage. But in order for you to get an S Rank, all the game really asks of you is to finish the stage fairly quickly with about 85% or more of the Armor Gauge remaining while gathering a small amount of Damage Points. To get a really high score however, the factor score junkies need to raise the highest is the Damage Points. To start accumulating these, you simply need to hit an enemy. When you do this, a blue meter will appear right below the Heat Gauge with a numerical value right above it displaying the total damage you’ve dealt so far without screwing up. To screw up you need to do one of two things: get hit by an enemy attack or let the meter completely empty, which the latter does pretty quickly. To prevent the meter from completely emptying, you also need to do one of two things: hit an enemy or graze their projectiles, and doing either action will completely refill the meter. The thing that will really aggravate the score junkies is that the stages will have a few empty segments that last long enough for the Damage Point Meter to completely empty before a new target comes out, so they can’t reach the theoretical maximum value of Damage Points for the stage because of this (something that the game’s true sequel addresses, by the way). Also, in order for one to ideally maximize their Damage Points, they need to equip a weapon that deals a TON of damage on a single hit (like the Beam Bazooka) and combine it with another weapon that doesn’t deal that much damage to a target (like the Machine Gun), so can you pelt them first with the weak weapon until you know the next hit will destroy it and then overkill the target with your powerful one.

So even with that “gripe” aside, I’d definitely recommend you check out Suguri. For its original price that I usually saw it for when I was browsing Japanese online shops, 20-something dollars for an experience like this is definitely worth it. I was also going to say how easy it is to navigate through the game’s menus even though it’s in Japanese and there’s even a complete unofficial translation available for you to patch the game into English anyway, but since Rockin’ Android picked up the rights to distribute an official American version of the game, which also packs in the series’ pseudo-sequel, Acceleration of Suguri and X-Edition (its expansion set), as well as the soundtracks for both games (which I’ve been trying to get a hold of since forever) at a price of only a measly twenty dollars, you have no excuse to not play this when it comes out over in the United States.

So save some money, buy the game (or pirate it if you’re too cheap for that), and feel what Suguri feels. Although it will be at first difficult for you, once you understand what I see, you will be unable to resist her charm, and look at every other traditional shmup with complete disdain as not only has Orange Juice produced an awesome game that’s completely different from the genre’s formula, they’ve done so with style.
Last edited by dai jou bu on 13 Apr 2009 18:40, edited 1 time in total.
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Unread postby icycalm » 08 Apr 2009 00:30

The game looks nuts. The second video blew my eyelids off. I'll replace them and come back to you tomorrow with extensive criticisms on the review. It's certainly going on the frontpage, but there's a couple of things we should talk about first. In the meantime, how about some nice screenshots? It's a long review, so we'd need at least maybe five-six of them.
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Unread postby dai jou bu » 08 Apr 2009 00:57

I was going to put the screenshots in the same post, but then the BBS started freaking out on me, only focusing on editing the text at the very top of my post because it can't handle that many characters or something.

EDIT: The reason is most likely IE8 since Firefox isn't having this problem.

anyway, here's the screens:


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If you need more screens, I can get some more later on tonight.

As for the thumbnail for the article then on the frontpage, you can use this one unless it doesn't jive too well with the banner:

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icycalm wrote:The game looks nuts. The second video blew my eyelids off. I'll replace them and come back to you tomorrow with extensive criticisms on the review. It's certainly going on the frontpage, but there's a couple of things we should talk about first.


Yeah, one of the problems I know I have when writing is that I want to include EVERYTHING I know, and cutting out the fat takes a long while for me to do, hence why I posted it here first. Also spotted a few typos that need to be fixed too.

Also, the crazy thing about the second video is that's on Normal difficulty. If you're able to clear that stage on Hard, you can challenge their Special difficulty.
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Unread postby dai jou bu » 10 Apr 2009 03:47

Guh, my second video was linked here. I was wondering how all of a sudden I got almost 3000 views for it in less than 24 hours.

I'm half-tempted to set that video to private now because of this quote:

There’s even some hosted on their site to sample ahead of release, though it’s clearly not up to ‘Touhou’ standards. Sadly this one looks to be DVD only as a counter-balance.


Fools. Also, I have no idea how releasing this on DVD counter-balances the standards they're talking about.

EDIT: Fixed the link to the source of quote.
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Re: [PC] Suguri

Unread postby dai jou bu » 13 Apr 2009 18:54

Edited the review again, which ended up being bigger than the last one. Also, for those interested,

dai jou bu wrote:Now here’s where the risks of dashing come into effect. The first obvious one that you’ll encounter with dashing is that Suguri moves FAST. Fast, as in Xadlak Plus and xSynergy Gate fast (except these two games never developed a dash system that allowed you to safely navigate through traditional danmaku at high speeds, thus making it worthless).


These two games mentioned in bold for this quote are free to play. You can check them out if you want.

Xadlak Plus

For xSynergy Gate, you need to go click on the link near the bottom of this page that looks like the image below because the website is anal about direct linking their files:

Image

EDIT: Sweet, I just spotted more grammatical errors that I forgot to edit before I posted the revision. I'll get back to those later.
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Unread postby icycalm » 13 Apr 2009 22:29

Okay, so here are my criticisms. The biggest problem I have with the review, as with the other review of yours I've read, is the structure. It's not exactly a huge problem, and most people's reviews suffer from it, but it would be awesome if you managed to overcome it. It would give your reviews that something extra which would make them a lot more readable and set them on a whole new level, well above anyone else's. Note also that some of my older reviews (Bullet Witch, EDF3, Zegapain XOR and others) also suffer from this problem. It took me quite a while to realize what I was doing wrong and discover how to go about fixing it.

So what is the problem?

The problem, basically, is that you allow the structure of your review to be dictated by the requirements of describing the game, instead of the requirements of criticizing it. You still do provide the criticism of course -- which is good, because otherwise the review would be worthless -- but you do not provide it in the most elegant, most enjoyable and most easily digestible form. I'll give an example. My review of No More Heroes opens IMMEDIATELY with criticisms:

This game fucking sssssssucks and I fucking hated almost every moment I spent playing it. It's nothing more than an ugly, gimmicky, cheap-ass, third-rate, five-dollar GTA knock-off, whose only redeeming feature is its funky comic book vibe, and perhaps also its at-times slightly amusing dialogue.


http://insomnia.ac/reviews/wii/nomoreheroes/

No plot details, no manual regurgitation, no pointless descriptions: I've got your full attention from the very first sentence, and by god I plan to keep it until the very last. If you want to know the pointless details go read Wikipedia -- we both know you are here only for the criticism.

Do I mention things about the plot, the control scheme, etc., in the review?

Sure I do, but only when absolutely necessary in order to make my criticisms, and only AT THE EXACT POINT when these criticisms are made -- not several paragraphs before, nor several paragraphs after.

Check the following paragraph, for example:

In regards to the first point, what's happened here is that the remote/nunchuk functionality is used to mask how terribly shallow the fighting system is. So shallow, that it is quite possible to win half the fights in the game by -- get this -- turning your back on the TV and mashing the A button while vigorously shaking the remote in random directions. There's essentially only one slash and one kick, and the gimmick is that when an enemy is near death you get a prompt to "slash" with the remote in a specific direction to finish them off, though it usually doesn't matter in which direction you slash -- nine times out of ten the game will register a hit regardless of direction. And the various wrestling moves you acquire (which you are prompted to use once you've stunned an enemy with a kick) are yet another smokescreen, since all they do is add variety to the finishing moves, but not to all the fighting that precedes them.


What's happening here is that the descriptions of the mechanics (which are not the point of review) have been blended with the criticisms (which are the point of the review), so that the tedium is kept to a minimum. Because it is tedious to have to read an entire paragraph of descriptions (whether of plot, mechanics, or even personal anecdotes) before you get to the actual criticisms which you are looking for. The reviewer who forces the reader to go through such pointless descriptions effectively forces him to skim.

Now the trick to keeping the descriptions to the minimum and the criticisms to the maximum is to imagine that you are writing for people who have already played the fuck out of the game and know everything there is to know about it. Josh's reviews of Gunstar Heroes and Sonic 2 are great examples of this:

http://insomnia.ac/reviews/megadrive/gunstarheroes/
http://insomnia.ac/reviews/megadrive/sonicthehedgehog2/

... and if anyone needs more information they can go on Wikipedia, or the games' official sites or else some random fansite (and we can of course provide links to all those places in each game's dedicated thread).

So that's the major criticism, though I don't expect you to do anything about it (you'd need to completely rewrite the review, and that's probably not worth it at this point). So just keep it in mind for the future.

Other criticisms:

You need to get over the whole "money" business. For one thing, as I have explained, the subject of game pricing has no place in game reviews. For another, it is really very tiresome having reviewers constantly tell you to "buy this game", "play this game", "download this game" RIGHT THIS MOMENT, etc. etc. This is how most fan reviews end, and really, we could do without it. All we are asking for is your opinion on the game -- whether we actually buy/download/pirate it or whatever, and exactly when, is our own business, and a business on which, since you know nothing about our circumstances (financial, social, personal, or whatever) you are not qualified to advise us. So the last two paragraphs need to go.

And by the way, all talk about localizations, compilations, etc. are also off-topic for the review. I will include a single italicized line at the bottom, saying that the game will be released in the US, etc. etc., but all the rest is forum material -- not review material.

Moving on, some more specific complaints:

and look at every other traditional shmup with complete disdain


Gamefaqs comment pure and simple. If you look "at every other traditional shmup" with complete disdain then you either have terrible taste (in which case your entire review becomes immediately suspect) or you are retarded in some way. Even if Suguri is something genuinely fresh and interesting, that still does not justify looking at ITS PREDECESSORS with disdain. Like I said -- a ludicrous fanboy comment which we need to erase asap and pretend we never saw it.

they’ve done so with style


Style, and I presume you mean aesthetics here, is the one thing you do not touch upon at all in the review, so it's kind of weird seeing you end it with this comment. In any case, I don't see any style at all here: the game is just as ugly as 95% of doujin games out there. And if you've been playing doujin games for too long and have forgotten what style means, here's a couple of quick comparisons to help jog your memory:

PULSTAR
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vs.

SUGURI
Image


LAST RESORT
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vs.

SUGURI
Image

Et cetera, et cetera.

Again, it is a fanboyish characteristic to fall in love with one aspect of the game, and become so blinded by that that you are unable to see the rest of it for what it is. I can level devastating criticisms even at my favorite games, and I feel no sadness or regret for doing so. If you want to improve your reviews this is a skill you need to learn. Your readers will not fail to respect you for it.



So these are my major criticisms. I also want to ask you to clarify a couple of minor points, but I'll edit the review first and ask these questions after. In the meantime, it's best if you don't touch anything and just wait until I am done.
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Unread postby dai jou bu » 14 Apr 2009 00:32

Now that you've mentioned it, I did really go overboard at the end with the fanboy thing. Really didn't think about it much since I was more concerned with a superficial deadline than anything else.

Yeah, I had no excuse for the money/value section; it was there mostly because the fanboy inside me wanted to say how excited I was for the OSTs being bundled with the game. If it weren't for that, then I probably wouldn't have mentioned the US release at all.

As for the style, I threw that at the end and I knew I botched up because I failed to explain that at all throughout my entire review and kept forgetting to remove it. I'll keep that part out then since I can't be bothered with it considering how much of a mess the review is already. Maybe I'll try to explain that when the full version of Sora's released, since it's going to be a lot easier for that game as it looks as nice as Trouble Witches, save for the color palette they decided to use.

Thanks for the criticisms. If I gave something like this to Kurt, he'd give me the thumbs up and say, "AWESOME!" and I wouldn't know what in the world I'm doing wrong, even though I know for sure that something's definitely wrong with my current style of writing. I'll try to keep these all in mind for my review of Acceleration of Suguri.
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Unread postby icycalm » 18 Apr 2009 15:54

Yeah, there's some decent contributions to Kurt's site, which could have been much better with a little editorial nudging. That's why I call his site mediocre. In the end, it's just a private glorified wiki, and it could have easily been so much more.

As for the present review, I haven't forgotten it -- just need to clear up my update backlog and I'll get around to it. There's lots of things going on right now, including a new batch of Videogame Art reviews and the translation of the first issue of Postback.
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