You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/oco.1876/

If you’ve wanted a fair dose of puzzle platforming on the go, you may recognise OCO. Originally released in 2019 on mobile storefronts, it’s a relatively simple one button title where you make a square jump as it endlessly cycles around a circular map. Your aim? To collect all the bits. It’s remarkably simple and, at its core, I think this is a large part of why it was so successful on phones. Coming to PC last week, does it still stand up?

Now it’s probably worth saying this is the first time I’ve seen OCO. While it’s been available since 2019, my interest in mobile gaming only really took off towards the end of last year as I picked up my first gaming phone. Even with it though, I’ve focussed more on high-end emulation. It’d almost feel like a waste of hardware to play something so simple! I fear this was a mistake. Being provided a code for the PC version by the PR for the game, I took it upon myself to try and ultimately buy the mobile version to see how the experience differs and how each version stands to compliment each other.

On my phone the game runs great. It’s something I expect will run great no matter what you’re playing it on, whether it’s a phone or low-end laptop. Starting out, the gameplay is as simple as mentioned earlier; you jump to avoid obstacles and collect bits. Naturally, there are a few other objectives that keep the game interesting. These are the bonus objectives of beating a given level within a “perfect” time, or within a specified number of inputs. These objectives are where the bulk of the puzzling comes in, forcing you to plan your route strategically in oppose to endlessly circling until you eventually hit everything. It’s addictive, as many mobile titles are. Though in the first world you only have basic ground and blocks that propel you in the air on contact, the game steadily builds in more elements as you work your way through it. This keeps the gameplay fresh and allows unique challenges to form around familiar concepts. I confess I’m yet to beat every level, but having sampled a bit of each world, I can safely say the levels are well designed. It’d seem like a waste to rush through them all when I have much more fun playing in small bursts. It’s not to say I haven’t been captivated for a few hours at a time though!

What really makes the PC version of OCO worthwhile for me is the brilliantly simple cloud saving solution. You log in on Steam, and you log in on your phone. And that’s it. When I finish up at my PC and pick up my phone in another room, my progress is ready for me. I really love playing a level or two on my train to work in the morning. Of course, while the game is free on mobile platforms, you will need to buy the Pro version to have access to the cloud saving functionality. This costs the same as the Steam version, at £3.99, but does bring it to the same level in terms of content and removal of adverts. Your achievements also sync across platforms too, which is always nice.

Though I’m having a great time with the standard set of levels, where the game has found and will continue to find its longevity is in user generated content. It’s remarkably easy to make and share your own levels, and it’s equally simple to play the levels of others. I personally found the making process simpler on PC thanks to the more precise nature of a mouse for clicking where you want blocks to go in the circular grid, but it’s perfectly passable on mobile too thanks to being able to zoom and pan with multiple inputs. It was in playing around with the level editor I realised that the music is entirely procedural also, adapting to what you interact with. It’s genuinely fantastic, and matches the gameplay well enough that I thought I was jumping to the music, in oppose to the music changing to my jumps. 

OCO is a game I really do recommend, regardless of which platform you think suits you better. It’s criminal it only has 14 reviews on Steam at the time of writing, and I hope I’ve given people enough insight to give it a shot. It’s a cheap punt on Steam, and completely free to try on mobile. If you enjoy addictive platforming, this is one for you.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/spiritfarer.1873/

Originally released last year, Spiritfarer is hugely acclaimed title looking at death and saying goodbye by combining character driven and management simulation gameplay into one neat package. With the game recently having seen a physical release on PS4 and Switch, I’m jumping in to see exactly what makes this title so beloved to so many.

Starting out with a cutscene, you’re introduced to the world and your role in it by the ferryman Charon. Soon to be departing, you are to be his replacement in fulfilling the last requests of spirits and eventually guiding them to the afterlife. The environmental design and music here are nothing short of magical. There’s an inexplicably whimsical sadness to it all, stemming by in large from the small connection you make with Charon, soon to be severed by his passing. This short encounter encompasses the core gameplay cycle and sets you up with a fundamental understanding of what is to come. You meet a character, you hear their story, and you help them prepare to move on before inevitably guiding them to the end. It’s all here in this first scene, and it pulls you in in a way I haven’t experienced in a long time. Leaving the scene as you paddle your small boat away, the game truly begins.

Frankly, it’s more of a journey than it is a game. Not long after the meeting with Charon, you come across your first spirit and acquire a boat of your very own. The first spirit, Gwen, has a number of small requests to get you used to how the game works, these generally being on of visiting a place or giving her an item. This is where the bulk of the gameplay lies, and I understand if that sounds mundane. To some extent, it is. It all ties together though. To give an item, you may need to refine materials. To refine materials, you may need a building. To get a building, you may need other resources. To get other resources, you may need to forage on an island. And while you’re traveling to that island, you may want to use the time to fish for food, plant crops, or, well, refine materials at the buildings you do have. There’s a simple intricacy to it all that I have to admire; one thing leads to another incredibly well.

With the setting of Spiritfarer being a large ocean with islands dotted around it, you have an issue similar to The Wind Waker presenting itself: you spend most of your time sailing from one place to the next. This ends up being different to Zelda however in how this is an integral part of the game. Instead of traveling being no more than a means to an end, it acts almost as a timer to get things done while you’re waiting to arrive at a destination to do something else. As a management sim, it does an incredibly good job of keeping you busy, while providing you with adequate freedom for your playthrough to feel unique. If I had to pick a flaw here, it would be in the very nature of the game. Though your ship may grow larger as you progress and upgrade it, allowing you to place more buildings on its grid-based deck, things still feel slow, even later into the game. I feel like factory games like Satisfactory and Factorio may have ruined other management sims for me. I’ve come to expect a degree of scaling and automation that likely wouldn’t have fit here. Such things would take away from the personal nature of growing, of refining, of cooking, and then of giving. Were it automated, you’d lose a certain extent of attachment and achievement, detracting from the interpersonal relations the game relies on to motivate you. It’s a flaw for me with how I like to play games, but it’s not something I’d change.

At the centre of the game is its characters though. As you play, every conversation carries a sense of value in it if only for your knowledge that your time with each character is finite. Understanding the point of your journey with each of them is for it to come to an end, you see even the most basic of conversation as something more. You have a build up from meeting them and growing attached to them, to eventually saying goodbye. And this is further elevated by the incredible backdrops and music. I don’t usually talk about graphics and music since they’re just kind of there. A lot of games I could play muted, a lot of games I could see a different art style working just as well as the one used. Not with Spiritfarer. Everything fits together like an intricate jigsaw, to the point that I couldn’t imagine the game missing any part of what’s offered. The physical version of the game that’s recently released is one I really think is worthwhile. Coming with what is a fairly standard soundtrack and art book, you have two of the game’s best components to experience again beyond the game, and I think that’s wonderful.

I’m not going to say Spiritfarer is for everybody. I don’t think that’s the case at all. It’s an incredibly personal journey about death, accompanied by fundamentally solid management simulation gameplay. It’s slow, but not void of content. If you’re the type of person who wants to explore, who wants to see all there is to see, and say all there is to say, you’ll have a marvellous time with the game. It’s one that’ll be in my memory for a good while to come.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/samurai-warriors-5.1871/

It’s been a while since I’ve played a Warriors game. After being disappointed by the latest Hyrule Warriors title in its performance on Nintendo’s hybrid console, Samurai Warriors 5 has had me excited for months. My favourite era of history with the fun and frantic formula I’ve come to love, on systems that are capable of showing it at its best? Sign me up.

Though I’ve been hooked on Warriors titles since the original Hyrule Warriors in 2014, I’ve never had the chance to venture into the Sengoku-era Samurai titles. At the core though, if you’ve played one Warriors game, you’ve played them all, and you’ll know exactly what kind of game you’re in for. This title follows the legendary fool Nobunaga as he takes some of the first significant steps in unifying a nation of warring states. The campaign is broken down into chapters which signify story arcs of sorts, with there being several individual scenarios to play to progress through each. The scenarios play out pretty much how you’d imagine. It’s a relatively large battlefield where you’re guided from point to point completing objectives, all while clearing out hordes of enemies with style.

Playing the first scenario I decided to see how the game fared on hard difficulty, and I can say it’s something I don’t really recommend. As with various other Warriors titles, Samurai Warriors 5 starts out slow. You only have one character, you only have one weapon, your movement is excruciating with no option to run, and your combos are limited. Naturally, it doesn’t stay this way for long. You build up your character choices, your armoury, you level up your characters, but at the start you have a slog. And this slog is only made worse by elevating the difficulty. Where standard enemies would drop in a few hits, they survive for four or even five. Add to this officers that that take upwards of a minute to take down and you have something entirely unlike the Warriors experience I come to expect. If there is a positive to the longer fights against officers, it gives you a good amount of time to learn basic mechanics like parrying and dodging, but it just isn’t worth it. After getting through the first scenario, I dropped the game down to easy, with the intent to return for the harder difficulties when better equipped.

With enemies falling faster, the game soon picks up pace. Even with limited resources at the start, you feel as though you’re making meaningful progress as things unlock throughout the first chapter. By the end of what is ultimately the tutorial segment, you have far more freedom to experiment and find what’s the most fun for you and then roll with it. The real turning point for me was unlocking Ieyasu Tokugawa and getting to experience his violent and frantic twin blades. Much faster and fluid than Nobunaga’s default odachi great sword, I was instantly drawn in and set to work upgrading the first one I found. Unlike the Nintendo Warriors games I’d mostly played before this, any character can use any weapon. Each character has a preference where you’ll get a mastery bonus, but ultimately, you’re free to use whatever with whoever. It’s fantastic. Where in Hyrule or Fire Emblem Warriors you may have been stuck using a character and by extension, a moveset, you don’t like for various story chapters, you can mix and match here to have as consistent or varied an experience as you’d like. Even if you do find the weapon you think will be the one, experimenting is something I really do encourage, if only for a bit of a break from your regular routine. With the Warriors franchise known for a certain degree of monotony, these small changes can go a long way.

Outside of the main campaign, Samurai Warriors 5 features a secondary mode as most other Warriors titles before it. I have to say this one is a little lacklustre to the other titles I’ve tried. Citadel mode, accessible after completing the first chapter, is really quite a simple concept. You progress through a list of scenarios, each time repelling enemies coming towards your base. If a certain number of enemies get into your base, you lose, and you receive various rewards based on your performance. The rewards in this mode go towards upgrading facilities such as the dojo or blacksmith, to upgrade your characters and weapons respectively. The higher level the facility, the more you you’ll be able to use them. With the way the game is structured, you won’t be able to get the most out of citadel mode right out of the gate. This is because to upgrade structures, your castle rank needs to be of an adequate level, this increasing with progress in the standard campaign. While I do feel this mode can be a little bit of a slog if you’re just going to sit there and try to get through it all in one go, I have to concede that probably isn’t how it’s intended to be played. Instead of thinking of this as a separate entity to the campaign, I feel it’s much better served as a supplement, a break of sorts. It comes again back to the breaking up of samey gameplay by providing a twist, if only a small one. By switching from the campaign as your castle levels up, to citadel mode to increase your facility levels, you have a back and forth that helps keep either mode from becoming stale. On top of that, you’re also rewarded with the time-saves that come from having these facilities upgraded, helping you diversify by training characters and upgrading weapons you perhaps may not have tried before.

Having played the Xbox version of the game on a Series X console, the visual experience was divine. Using Quick Resume I did experience a stutter just after I loaded back into a map, but aside from that the game ran brilliantly. With the game available on such a wide range of consoles though, perhaps most notably the Switch, your mileage may vary. The only real flaw I can take from the presentation is the lack of English dubbing for the dialogue. While this may seem like a matter of taste in many games, the Atelier series notably dropping English dubs in their new titles, this is a case where it has a genuine negative impact. In a game like Atelier, you have voiced dialogue you can read at your own pace. It’s supplementary to the larger game and allows you to better relate with the characters on-screen. In Samurai Warriors 5 you can say this still holds true. Before each scenario, you’re treated to a cutscene, and sometimes in-engine dialogue sequences. These are all fine with subtitles, or the usual dialogue boxes you can advance with a button press. Where things are a little less than ideal is during the gameplay, where you’ll hear a character call out that they’re in trouble, or alert you of a new objective. These are subtitled just the same, but in taking a moment to read them, you’re diverting your attention from the action, which can in turn have a larger impact on your overall performance if you’re trying to work up a high combo for a better score. A dub would have helped tremendously here.

As with any Warriors game though, I dare say this review serves as little more than a reminder a new game is out. At this point, everybody knows what a Warriors game is. Everybody knows of the frantic hacking and slashing through hordes, and everybody knows if it’s for them. If you love it, you’ll love this. If you don’t, this game won’t be the one to change your mind. While the series escalates over time, becoming more fluid and visually appealing, at its core it’s changed less than Pokemon over the years, for better or worse. I had a great time with the game, and hope to see it revisited down the line with an Empires edition to perhaps bulk it out a bit with more secondary gameplay. If you like the Sengoku era and you like hack and slash though, pick this up. You won’t regret it.