Reviews

https://questtozero.com/game-review/ufo-50-review/

UFO 50 is a collection of games released in an alternate-universe 1980s by the fictitious “UFOSOFT”, showcasing a variety of unique games by numerous different developers but which all follow a similar 8-bit aesthetic. Back in the real world, it’s been widely praised by critics and players alike. And I absolutely do not like it at all.

Now UFO 50, on the surface at least, looks like an absolute gem. You can clearly see that it’s been put together as a love letter to the 1980s blocky 8-bit aesthetic. The problem is, these types of games, both in the real world and in the alternate UFOSOFT reality, are often just not very good, generally incomprehensible or just plain infuriating to play. This results in a collection of 50 games where the vast majority I straight up disliked, and the games I did quite enjoy are just not as good as their fully realised cousins already out there.

Out of the 50, I found three games that I enjoyed: Camouflage, a top-down puzzler; Party House, a quirky deck builder; and Rock On! Island, a dinosaur tower defence game. That’s not a great hit rate, especially when I’m in no great rush to continue playing them either.

But let’s at least get some positives out here. Camouflage is a cute (if being brutally devoured by toads can be called cute anyway) little puzzle game where you play as a lizard who is tasked with travelling from one side of an island to the other, via a variety of small puzzle boards. This doesn’t sound too difficult, except whenever one of the menagerie of beasties on each board who want to eat you catch a glimpse of you, they’ll instantly devour you in a pretty grisly way. Your one defence from this is the ability to change colour to match the tiles you’re walking on, making you invisible to the various voracious animals. It’s a nice little brain teaser but isn’t ever too difficult, which is actually quite welcome with how infuriating some of the other games can be.

Party House is actually quite a cool little oddity, essentially a deck builder where you add people to your Rolodex to invite to your titular party house. The aim is to have a four-star party, and only the most expensive friends provide the stars. There are a variety of different mechanics, such as friends who generally provide a lot of positives but also increase “Trouble”, and when you have too much trouble, the police are called out, party shut down, and you get no points or money for that day.

Rock On! Island is a tower defence game, and I’m an absolute sucker for tower defence, always have been ever since the days of Warcraft 2 mods. This is your fairly basic version though, with a few towers – sorry, cavemen – to pick from, who you can power up via placing campfires near them. I probably spent most of my time with UFO 50 in this game.

The whole issue with these games, though, is that there are much better versions of them already out there. Whilst I enjoyed Camouflage, there are many puzzle games out there that provide more of a challenge. Top-quality deck builders are ten a penny on Steam, whilst Party House doesn’t exactly have the depth to keep you coming back. And I love tower defence games, but Rock On! Island is just a very mediocre example of one.

There are, of course, another 47 games here, but the vast majority are platformers of varying kinds, none of which do anything for me. There are the odd RPG or racing game, but again, and I don’t want to keep saying this, there are just better versions of these games readily available.

One thing UFO 50 does have going for it is that it’s a perfect Steam Deck time-waster. I suppose one benefit is, if you’re low on space but want a vast catalogue of games on your Deck, you at least have 50 in one small install size. Officially it only has a Steam Deck compatibility rating of Playable, but I had absolutely zero issues with it.

Even this does not make me able to recommend it though. I respect what the developers were trying to do with UFO 50, I really do. The problem is the resulting games are generally just not very fun, and the ones that are just do not have the scale or depth of their betters to make the package as a whole worthwhile. 

Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition is a hell of a mouthful, isn’t it? Is there a longer title in gaming history, or indeed in all contemporary media? I’m not sure there is, you know. And honestly, I don’t even know what the S stands for, and I’m not sure I even need to know. Anyway, I digress. Dragon Quest XI S (which is what I’ll shrink its ridiculously long title down to going forwards) is my first real foray into the Dragon Quest universe. I mean, I have some knowledge of the series – literally everyone seems to know the famous blue slime for some reason – and I’ve even seen episodes of The Hero Yoshihiko, a Dragon Quest spoof TV show, when I visited Japan, but I’ve somehow never played a mainline Dragon Quest game before.

I’m not entirely sure why either. I have played many a Square-Enix game in my lifetime, so you’d figure Dragon Quest would naturally make its way into my hands at some point. But here we are, with Dragon Quest XI S being my starting point in the long-running 30-plus-year-old series.

On the surface, Dragon Quest XI S is your staple JRPG fare really. You play as the paper-thin, characterless, mute everyman, living in a tiny village along with his mum, going about his boring life on the cusp of becoming a man, but what’s this? It turns out you’re the fabled hero of something-or-other and you’re fated to save the world from the big bad evil! Who could have seen this coming? But there’s a lot of love given to this, on paper at least, incredibly generic tropey story, and whilst the playable hero is generally devoid of all life, the supporting cast of colourful characters really brings the world of Erdrea alive.

Erdrea itself is strangely a world made up of real-world stereotypes, but played out more in a way that celebrates the culture rather than making fun of it. Some of the place names are eye-rollingly pun-tastic though, for example, the very stereotypical-Italian, very Venice-like city of Gondolia *groan*. There are a whole host of terrible puns and dad-jokes, brought to life with full gusto by the voice-over team, who have done a tremendous job, with each city and region having its own accents and quirks.

The cast of side characters is a great mix to counteract the dullness of the main hero. Erik is your rogue with a heart of gold and a deeper backstory about his struggles to get himself and his sister out of poverty. Veronica is a strong-headed mage who has been turned into a child via a magic vase. Serena is one of the weaker characters who I can only describe as a healer who just happens to be the sister of the much more interesting Veronica, and Sylvando is an extremely flamboyant and mysterious circus performer who has a whole quest where you go around collecting young men. I’m not going to lie, it gets pretty damn weird. There are a few more characters who you add to your team over the course of the game, but I’d rather not spoil them here.

The hero and his friends battle the fiends of the world in your typical turn-based JRPG style, but it doesn’t really do anything special; I’d describe it as quite an outdated system more than anything. I found myself playing out the fights on the fastest speed possible, often just to get them out of the way. The one positive to this is that fights are not random and are generally invoked by attacking the enemies themselves whilst running around the world. Levelling is often quite slow, but the game is easy enough that grinding wasn’t required, though it would have been nice to unlock more of the skills on each character’s skill board which makes up the levelling system.

The game runs fantastically well on Steam Deck, with only some slowdown in large open areas, and gets itself a Platinum score on ProtonDB and a Steam Deck compatibility rating of “Playable” on Steam itself, with the advisory that “Entering some text requires manually invoking the on-screen keyboard” – which I personally cannot remember ever having to do, maybe at most for entering your chosen name for the hero himself.

Dragon Quest XI S is, as you’d imagine, a long game, and one I felt overstayed its welcome due to the samey feeling of every battle. There’s a midpoint of the game where you play as each character individually which I found quite a slog, especially after you feel like you’re finally getting somewhere as a team. Once you have completed the game as well, there is a post-credits third act which can take another 10-30 hours to complete; however, I’d had quite enough of the game by then and took the credits as the end for me. I’m sure some people will appreciate getting more game after completing it, however.

Dragon Quest XI S is therefore a solid if unremarkable game, with its gameplay systems and story exactly what you’d expect if you were asked to describe a generic JRPG. What Dragon Quest XI S has going for it, however, is its wonderful cast of characters and original and quirky world, and with that, it becomes something any JRPG fans should experience.

https://questtozero.com/game-review/dragon-quest-xi-s-echoes-of-an-elusive-age-review/