2. √ Letter (PS4)
3. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (PC)
4. Spec Ops: The Line (PC)
5. Fire Emblem Heroes (Android)
6. Gears of War Ultimate Edition (Xbox One)
7. Onechanbara Z2 Chaos (PS4)
Thoughts (spoiled due to potentially NSFW screenshots)
Z2 Chaos is the latest in the Onechanbara series, which got its start as part of the Simple series of games from D3 - a long-standing budget series that mostly has basic sports or board game titles. It's also where the Earth Defense Force series originated. In a very real sense, it's a video game analog to a B-movie franchise. The U.S. has only gotten a few of the games, which I own as well, but have only really played the first level or so of.
That to say, anyone coming into this game expecting a masterpiece is setting themselves up for disappointment. It's low budget cheese, and revels in it. There's technically a story about warring Vampiric and Baneful Blood clans, and then teaming up to help an anti-zombie organization and other threats and... well...
Someone at Tamsoft framed this and put it on their wall. Pretty Sure.
Mostly, this series sells itself on how the heroines dress...aaaand that's about it.
It's all about practicality.
Gameplay itself is the same combo-centric hack and slash that seems to permeate Japanese games at this point. Sometimes to great extent, like the best Platinum games. Sometimes far less so, like when Platinum games just needs to pay rent. Onechanbara kinda starts at that low end, and then gets worse. It's not the worst I've seen, or even beaten. I beat X-Blades, the main benefit of which is that I can always look at a game and say, well, it's better than X-Blades.
The actual hack and slash is okay, with some highlights. There's a fair bit to unlock, and after the intro section, you actually have all four women to switch between. Like a Capcom vs. game, the characters you aren't using regen health, up to a point. So, you get both a lot more survivability, and a lot more variety in play since you get plenty of opportunity to use all of their weapons. While it's not possible to do all the time, you can frequently have the others come out under AI control to help kill stuff, though they can also wind up taking damage that way too.
Level design, on the other hand, is mostly a steaming pile. It's mostly just corridors or arenas comprised of stock-looking assets that would have looked lazy on Dreamcast, much less PS4. It is budget, yes, but MSRP on this one wasn't quite at the bottom of the barrel either.
The middle section of the game comes across the best, in my opinion. In that, you have five destinations to tackle in any order, all of which have a unique look, enemy types, and bosses. They also have a lot of fodder enemies that make sense for one or two of the areas and not elsewhere...yet show up all over.
Then you get the actual big bad show up, and are treated to several levels that are essentially endurance matches in copy/pasted, generic environments. Kind of like they had some aspirations for making a grander game, then took a cop-out method to pad it out (and it's still only maybe a six hour game or so).
Story sections, such as they are, are largely done in a motion comic style that...mostly just uses the headshots anyway.
I left English voice acting on, though Japanese is apparently an option too. I wasn't exactly worried about nuances in translation, and the VAs seemed like they were having fun. Other than the general lack of clothing, appropriate or otherwise, there's really not much in the way of sexual content, other than jabs about boobs.
Given that the entire speaking cast is women, technically, this means Onechanbara Z2 Chaos passes the Bechdel test with flying colors.
I repeat, flying colors.
That said, if you do happen to want to play without mostly-uncovered asses hanging out and such, you do have the option to dress them all in the schoolgirl outfits. Or go the other route, and have them straddling a banana with strawberries on their nips (if you redeem the CE code, I didn't, because I wanted them to stay classy
).
In that vein, there's actually a fair bit of clothing and accessories to unlock, if you want to complete challenges. I didn't really care, but, if for some reason you want to play the game repeatedly there's stuff to get by doing so.
Overall, really not essential gaming. It's not a terrible way to relax and just button mash, since most of it isn't very hard...but with easily half the game just being a slog, there's certainly better out there for that.
...but, it's still better than X-Blades. >_>b
That to say, anyone coming into this game expecting a masterpiece is setting themselves up for disappointment. It's low budget cheese, and revels in it. There's technically a story about warring Vampiric and Baneful Blood clans, and then teaming up to help an anti-zombie organization and other threats and... well...
Someone at Tamsoft framed this and put it on their wall. Pretty Sure.
Mostly, this series sells itself on how the heroines dress...aaaand that's about it.
It's all about practicality.
Gameplay itself is the same combo-centric hack and slash that seems to permeate Japanese games at this point. Sometimes to great extent, like the best Platinum games. Sometimes far less so, like when Platinum games just needs to pay rent. Onechanbara kinda starts at that low end, and then gets worse. It's not the worst I've seen, or even beaten. I beat X-Blades, the main benefit of which is that I can always look at a game and say, well, it's better than X-Blades.
The actual hack and slash is okay, with some highlights. There's a fair bit to unlock, and after the intro section, you actually have all four women to switch between. Like a Capcom vs. game, the characters you aren't using regen health, up to a point. So, you get both a lot more survivability, and a lot more variety in play since you get plenty of opportunity to use all of their weapons. While it's not possible to do all the time, you can frequently have the others come out under AI control to help kill stuff, though they can also wind up taking damage that way too.
Level design, on the other hand, is mostly a steaming pile. It's mostly just corridors or arenas comprised of stock-looking assets that would have looked lazy on Dreamcast, much less PS4. It is budget, yes, but MSRP on this one wasn't quite at the bottom of the barrel either.
The middle section of the game comes across the best, in my opinion. In that, you have five destinations to tackle in any order, all of which have a unique look, enemy types, and bosses. They also have a lot of fodder enemies that make sense for one or two of the areas and not elsewhere...yet show up all over.
Then you get the actual big bad show up, and are treated to several levels that are essentially endurance matches in copy/pasted, generic environments. Kind of like they had some aspirations for making a grander game, then took a cop-out method to pad it out (and it's still only maybe a six hour game or so).
Story sections, such as they are, are largely done in a motion comic style that...mostly just uses the headshots anyway.
I left English voice acting on, though Japanese is apparently an option too. I wasn't exactly worried about nuances in translation, and the VAs seemed like they were having fun. Other than the general lack of clothing, appropriate or otherwise, there's really not much in the way of sexual content, other than jabs about boobs.
Given that the entire speaking cast is women, technically, this means Onechanbara Z2 Chaos passes the Bechdel test with flying colors.
I repeat, flying colors.
That said, if you do happen to want to play without mostly-uncovered asses hanging out and such, you do have the option to dress them all in the schoolgirl outfits. Or go the other route, and have them straddling a banana with strawberries on their nips (if you redeem the CE code, I didn't, because I wanted them to stay classy
).In that vein, there's actually a fair bit of clothing and accessories to unlock, if you want to complete challenges. I didn't really care, but, if for some reason you want to play the game repeatedly there's stuff to get by doing so.
Overall, really not essential gaming. It's not a terrible way to relax and just button mash, since most of it isn't very hard...but with easily half the game just being a slog, there's certainly better out there for that.
...but, it's still better than X-Blades. >_>b
