Reviews

Project X Zone is the embodiement of "Style over Substance" where yes it does look cool as hell and the music is awesome but I can only spend an eternity killing over 10000HP enemies that are thrown at me mid-chapter until I inevitably get bored and then realize that that's what I'll be doing for over 40 hours of gameplay.
I'm getting ahead of myself, let's step back for a bit
What is Project X Zone?
It's an turn-based SRPG made by Monolith Soft (which happens to be one of my personal favorite dev teams) that features a crossover between Capcom, Namco and Sega characters, sounds cool right? Well that's because it is cool... until the novelty of the concept ends after roughly 2 hours.
Yes it is cool seeing all these characters come together and interacting with each other, we don't get much of that in stuff like Super Smash Bros but damn how could they make a game like this be so boring to play?
The answer lies in the gameplay.
The gameplay in PXZ is somewhat of a successor of the gameplay found in Namco x Capcom, a PS2 japan-exclusive title which I haven't played so I can't compare to PXZ and Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier, a DS title which I have played and actually I prefer the gameplay in that.
It basically works like a typical Turn-Based SRPG where you could move the charaters around like chess pieces command them to attack, use items, use skills or stay in place.
Simple, right? Well it starts to get more complicated when you go into battle.
You see when you attack an enemy you go into this sorta of a combat mode where the game suddently looks like a fighting game where only you can attack and the enemy does nothing.
In this mode you can attack by pressing the A button and following by pressing combinations of the A button and the D-Pad, by attacking the enemy they go flying onto the wall or up in the air and if you get the timing of your next attack right you'll be able to do a critical hit when they go back down at you. You can also send in support by pressing the L button for the Solo Unit or the R button for the teammates that are next to you in the field, if you combine your attacks with the support you will have this CROSS effect where the enemy is stuck in place and your XP percentage goes up faster or something.
You can execute a Special Attack when you hit 100% and on the field you can execute a Multi-Attack when you have 100% XP which attacks multiple enemies on the field, very useful but the damage you deal isn't very high. You can also use Skills that uses XP Percentage.
While this combat system is quite alright, It does get kinda repetitive when there's like a million enemies thrown at you with extremely high HP that you have to use perfect combos, Critical hits, both suports and the special attack just to kill one of them. I get that there are alot of playable Characters but was adding 30 enemies mid-chapter when I had already killed a couple of 10 really necessary? This is at its worse in the later chapters where it's constantly like this.
The point is that it gets old, and it gets old really fast.

The story was something about worlds merging together and this stone that was behind it and that the 2 original main characters have to team up with all the other heroes from the other worlds to stop this whole thing and have to fight against also villains from these various worlds like Nemesis from Resident Evil 3 for example. It's simple stuff that's presented as a bit hard to follow due to the references and stuff that you would only understand if you played all those games, thankfully I did play most of the games of the characters that are on this game so for me It was fine.

The music in this is very good, great original songs with some good remixes of old songs
There's not much I can say about it, it's just good

I guess that's all I can say about Project X Zone, I had some fun with the game sometimes but it was mostly boring and frustrating at times with all the chapters when you think you're over but then you remember that the title card of the chapter hasn't even shown up yet and then a shitton of high HP enemies show up out of nowhere. It really drags on and on. I feel like you could trim down this game to 20 hours instead of 40 if you removed like half of the enemies.

I really love the Opening animation though, It's animated by TRIGGER so that's really cool.
If I were to rate this game from a 0-10 scale I'd probably give it like a 6/10
I've heard that the sequel is better so I'll play that sometime.

The Good: the gameplay felt fluid, the level of injury to enemies based of where they were shot and what calibre weapon was a nice touch. The game definitely still felt like a max payne game with the gameplay, bullettime felt the best its ever felt imo. The story was solid enough for what it was, and I only had one random glitch once, nothing game breaking, one enemy just turned invisible but still had muzzle flare so like I said, not a big deal breaker. The graphics were nice, cars looked a bit flat, but aside from that it felt like a modern game in terms of graphics. The not so good: the overall feeling of gloom and darkness that made the atmosphere of the first two games just wasn't there the same. Yes Max's dialogue was as Noir as usual (and possibly some of his best dialogue ever) but aside from a chapter or too most the game was a bit too bright and just didn't feel "dark". Also there were no explosives you could have, which, just felt sad at times. Final Verdict: All and all I had a blast with this game, and can safely say too anyone who's either a fan of third person shooters, or fans of the first two games, give it a go. I highly doubt you'll be disappointed; just be aware, it is very Linear, but that was definitely a relief amongst the seas of openworld games out there 8.5/10

I finished Warhammer: Chaosbane mostly out of principal; I paid full price for this ($79.99 CAD!) when it dropped because I'm a huge sucker for Diablo-likes and read a couple fairly positive reviews of this. For a brief moment, it seemed like I had found my new favourite. Chaosbane nails something that a lot of Diablo-likes do not: the feel. It's smooth, plays well, and has overall a really great foundation with solid abilities.

Unfortunately, it suffers hugely from repetition and overall blandness; the story is, well, nothing special would be putting it nicely. The loot is OK but really does not stand out, nor does it really feel like you are optimizing your build in any fun way other than selecting what seems to give you the best boost. I enjoyed the skill-tree and the points-system for your abilities with added some level of strategic thinking to your character.

Otherwise, it's a slog through the same areas over and over again - even within each quest you'll find yourself running through very similar "pieces" I'll say of the layout (almost like everything was build from a small set of area-types so you run up the same kind or stairwell or run around the same kind of corner again and again.)

Honestly, with some work on more varied quests and a better end-game, this would be one of the more solid-feeling Diablo-like ARPGs out there right now. A lower price would have helped, for $15 or $20 bucks this will be a fine distraction but full price was just not worth it. I'd rather steer you towards something like Vikings - Wolves of Midgard to be perfectly honest.