Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

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Okay so lets dive back into the wild west genre. It’s certainly not my favorite genre by a longshot but this film is based on the famous Butch Cassidy so it should be solid right? Well it does have some nice humor but on the whole this definitely wouldn’t be one of the stronger ones. You’d probably need to either throw more humor in or some more fun gunfighting in place of the rather long chase scene.

The movie starts by introducing us to Butch and Kid who are some of the most notorious outlaws around. Kid is the muscle of the group and everyone fears his gun abilities while Butch is a leader who always has a lot of plans going on. Technically Kid isn’t really a part of the main group and is more of a freelancer but apparently he’s constantly working with Butch so they may as well be a duo. Butch takes out a guy who tries to take over the group and then goes back to robbing trains. What he is not counting on is that the local authorities are getting awful tired of him. They’ve hired an Indian to help them track down the duo and mean to take them down for the count. Is this is for the outlaws?

So right away what I did like here is that the film has a pretty fun sense of humor. There are a good amount of jokes being thrown around the whole time and a lot of them land. For example, the quick fight I mentioned earlier where Butch fights with the guy trying to become leader was clever. He basically used tactics and a quick wit to beat the guy while first making the guy acknowledge that a knife fight has no rules. He completely outplayed the opponent both mentally and physically which is the best way to win.

He may be a planner but Butch gets a lot of respect throughout the movie. He can also fight pretty well with a gun as needed so it’s not like he’s a one trick pony either. He has a good dynamic with Kid that tends to make for a lot of fun banter. They are a really good team there. Then you have Kid who is fun to follow because of his great gun skills. The opening scene where he shoots a guy’s gun off of his belt was definitely impressive. Was he cheating at the cards? Yeah almost definitely I’d say which is why I always wonder how so many people played cards back then.

It feels like everyone was cheating and it would all come down to a gunfight anyway so why even bother right? This is where the film has a bit of a missed opportunity though. We establish early on that Kid is excellent but there aren’t a whole lot of gunfights. Sure we have a solid climax and there are some scattered moments throughout the film but we don’t get anything that quite tops this early scene in the action department. The film used its best scene almost right away.

A good chunk of the film is the duo running away from the Sheriff and his posse. It makes for an interesting bunch of scenes because usually the main characters aren’t on the run for so long but it does drag on a tad. I also feel like they could have beaten the group in a straight fight thanks to the Kid’s skills although he seemed less sure about that. Perhaps if he spent more time training and less time role playing then he would be better equipped to handle such a situation.

It goes without saying that the romance here is pretty awful. The opening role play scene is just brutal to watch and it never really gets better from there. This tends to be another weakness of the wild west genre as the main characters tend to be eager to just have random affairs and have a lot of commitment issues. In part because they likely knew that they could die at any time and also in part because that’s just a very weak justification for what was going on. Not the best look at any point.

I think the film could have used some strong antagonists to make the adventure more memorable. The most memorable character instead was the poor attendant trying to keep the door closed while on the train. I give him a lot of credit for holding his ground even while the main characters were trying to steal all the supplies. Butch is probably right that his boss wouldn’t have had the same fortitude but still the guy does his best and holds the line to the end. I definitely can’t fault him for that and since the main characters are villains you’re actually pulling for him to make the upset victory happen.

I would just say there is always a big difference between bravery and just sacrificing your life for no reason though. There was absolutely no way he was getting out of that situation at this point whether he opened the door or not. Instead all he was doing was potentially throwing his life away. At least grab a weapon or something. His stand ultimately serves no purpose. He may have stayed loyal to the end but those loyalty points don’t work when you’re 6 feet under. There are times to take a stand and sometimes there are times not too. It all depends on the context and of course what you are standing for.

Overall, This may not have been the best wild west title but it had its moments. I’d say it’s reasonably memorable as a whole even if the antagonists weren’t. The movie kept up a pretty good tone with its solid mix of serious adventuring with a little dash of comedy thrown in from time to time. That makes for a good mix in a wild west title and it just needed a little more comedy or a little more action to turn the corner. Still if you like this genre then you should check out the film. I think you’ll have a good enough time here which is what counts.

Makarov Dreyar vs Acnologia

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Acnologia is one of the strongest dragons in all of fiction. His skills are absolutely immense and I don’t see Makarov being able to do much against him. The old guy is really strong and the leader of Fairy Tail for good reason but he’s well past his prime and even in his prime he wouldn’t be able to do much here. Acnologia can pretty much wipe this guy off the map with one full charged energy blast. There’s just not much that can be done about that. Acnologia wins.

Lyserg Diethel vs Yoh

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Lysberg is a strong and talented fighter but he’s not doing anything against Yoh here. Yoh is considerably more talented and has a much stronger power level. Lysberg’s strongest Oversoul would likely shatter in one blow from Yoh’s attack. Yoh is also quicker on his feet to come up with plans so ultimately this would be a completely decisive loss for Lysberg. He just doesn’t stand a chance. Yoh wins.

Luffy vs Kizaru

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Lets face it, Kizaru stands no chance against Monkey D Luffy. Luffy is faster, stronger, and more durable. He can tank any attack that Kizaru throws his way and then some. The gap between them is absolutely considerable and you can’t convince me that Kizaru can put up any kind of fight here. Certainly not once Luffy is serious. At that point it’s just a lost cause and he might as well throw in the towel. Luffy wins.

The Curious Cat vs Ruby Rose

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The Curious Cat is a pretty strong creature with a lot of attack options but he’s not taking down Ruby Rose. When Ruby is at the top of her game and firing on all cylinders there are very few fighters who can take her down. The Curious Cat is definitely not one of them. He will very quickly be unable to keep up with her speed and while he has a lot of durability she can chip away at it all day until she takes the win. Ruby Rose wins.

Cha Hae In vs Jinwoo

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Jinwoo has returned for another big win in this fight. Cha Hae In can fight really well to be sure but Jinwoo is the main character of his series for a reason. His stats far outstrip any other opponent in the series. She won’t have the speed to keep up with him for very long and doesn’t have enough attack power to finish him off either. What does this mean? Jinwoo holds all of the cards in this fight and has no real loss conditions. Jinwoo wins.

Jinwoo vs Beru

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Beru is a very powerful creature with abilities that would strike fear into most. That being said, he is not quite ready to take on a fighter on Jinwoo’s level. Jinwoo is one of the more powerful main characters of our time and he surpasses Beru in all combat stats. Beru would barely be able to keep up with this guy’s movements and doesn’t have the durability needed to survive more than a few strikes. This really puts him on the losing side this time. Jinwoo wins.

Temtem Review

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It’s time for another super long Switch game in Temtem. This one’s basically a Pokemon homage for the modern audience. In some ways it definitely surpasses Pokemon like the fact that the story can get a lot more out there but on the other hand it does have some extra issues like endless battles that do bog it down somewhat. So it’s a good game but not nearly as good as it could have been.

The game starts off simply enough with your character getting his first Temtem. He can finally travel the world and fight all of the Dojo Masters. Unfortunately his journey is interrupted by the fact that a big terrorist organization is making a move on the planet. They are building some kind of super Temtem to take over the world. The lead will have to stop these guys while also improving his skills, but what can one kid do?

Basically this is like the plot of the original Pokemon game but with a few additions and twists. Additionally the game definitely has fun being really self aware about the whole thing. You are often given 3 dialogue options, usually a nice one, a mean one, and a random one. I certainly had fun playing around with the responses. Note that this doesn’t actually change the story or anything like that but at the same time it does give the lead some personality. Also the characters do actually react to what you’re saying which is nice. In Harvestella this didn’t really happen as the two options were almost always pretty much identical.

I wouldn’t say that most of the characters are all that memorable but I did like the final boss because of how insane he got and I also enjoyed the general. The rival Max started out good but basically fell off a cliff. Where the game gets a bit dicey is it tries to be as edgy and modern as possible which works in some ways like this game having a body count and you getting to fight unwinnable battles. Where it doesn’t work is with the game getting rather PC and shoving a bunch of iffy romances at your face. The game constantly trying to ship me with the rival was pretty awful. At least there’s always an option for you to tell him to back off or just be really mean to keep it from happening but making that a main plot point was definitely not a good idea. A ton of the NPCs you beat up also have romance drama going on, at least two being story plots you can’t skip so the game wanted you to absolutely know where it stood on the gender politics. It’d be nice if all of that could have been sidelined so I can focus on the actual game!

To the rest of the plot, at least the lead actually has real character and can talk. That’s a big departure from the classic Pokemon games where this was absolutely not the case. Even now Pokemon doesn’t really do that and I think it will be years before it’s ready to be more of a full RPG the way this one was. The game doesn’t want to invite too many comparisons to Pokemon beyond all of the inevitable ones so it does go and switch all of the type advantages. Because of this it took me forever to learn them and even by the end I was mostly working off of memory from when I fought the Temtems. I still couldn’t tell you most of the types.

As this is one of those games where you are always online, the game is constantly saving. That’s good because the game crashed several times where I definitely would have lost some data but fortunately in this game when you restart it takes you to the exact point where it crashed. Literally if you’re mid battle you will respawn on the same turn within the same battle. So that was definitely cool. You also have a portable Pokemon center of sorts which you can use to recover all of your health once after every poke center visit. This is huge because otherwise I would have to be going there constantly.

As I mentioned earlier there are tons and tons of fights and they generally keep really close pace with your Temtem. So you can probably beat maybe 2 of them before you have to go and heal. So with this item you can do 4 fights before you have to reset. There is no EXP share or anything like that so most likely by the end of the game you will have 2 super powerful Temtem and the other 4 would be fodders. I basically resorted to just catching my last ones in the wild since they would at least be level 70 that way but my main two were both over level 90. This made the final fight tough since there’s a timer and I had to keep on reviving the main two but it worked out.

You need to watch out for the fact that money is hard to come by from Pokemon encounters though. In fact I think you don’t get any money from those so you need to fight with trainers a lot and that money goes really quickly. It makes losing really high stakes since the game saves so often and then you don’t have enough cash to buy more revives. You can always grind out more levels of course if it gets to be too much though. Fortunately I didn’t have to much after the first chunk of the game, for the most part it stays manageable. Just pick your main two Temtem carefully so that you have a balanced form of attack. I used a thunder type and a bug type which covers most matchups.

The soundtrack is a bit more on the forgettable side so you likely won’t be remembering too many themes. The graphics are also not super impressive, they do the job but ultimately I wouldn’t say that they’re high tier or anything. This could pass for a much older game than on the Switch but it feels like it’s an indie title to an extent so this isn’t exactly coming with a Mario budget or anything like that. It could have probably put some more effort into it, but it’s not bad at least.

One thing this game really lacked was a better fast travel system. There are large parts of the game where you’re running from place to place and it just takes a very long time. Being able to teleport to a town once you have been there would be huge. The main Pokemon games have always done this so Temtem deciding not to bring that feature along was a big mistake. Maybe they thought it would feel too similar but there are tons of ways around that and most RPGs have fast travel so it shouldn’t have been a big deal. In short, this game’s biggest weakness is easily that it is missing a ton of quality of life features. It feels a lot grindier than it needs to be with all of the constant fighting and that means there is less time to just enjoy the story even if the story could have also been better. There are a lot of elements that I liked but also things left on the table. For example the climax is a huge missed opportunity. Lets just say that you’re expecting one more huge battle at the end the whole time and then it just doesn’t happen. I was really surprised about that. It may have also been a budget thing but it was absolutely not a good idea.

Overall, Temtem is a good game. It’s held back a bit by how hard the game is being drawn out towards the end though. There are just so many battles. They may not be super tough but you still have to go back to the healing station each time after fighting them and this gets old quick. Especially because the minion spawn rate is rather high too so you have to be running away a lot. This is a game where you will need to have a book or something with you while you are playing for all of the dead time. It’s a turn based combat game after all so there are a lot of animations and the battles tend to be a little on the long side. It could use some Asdivine Hearts quality of life features to cut out animations and speed things up if you ask me. Still if you want a Pokemon type game with a story that can go a bit harder than the main games then this should be right up your alley. It’s not like there are a ton of Pokemon type games out there either so you need to grab each one that you see.

Overall 6/10

Harvestella Review

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It’s time to look at a farming game and this is the first time that I’ve bought one like this. I was a little hesitant because farming isn’t necessarily my thing but I had heard that this game had a really good story and was still in large part a full RPG with lots of combat. So I decided to take the plunge and it really is a great game. Certainly on the long side as it took me over 50 hours though and nearly ended up catching up to Tears of the Kingdom. The Switch has definitely gotten a whole lot of playtime lately!

The basic plot is that one day you wake up in the middle of nowhere during an event call Quietus. You have complete amnesia but fortunately the local doctor nurses you back to health and even gives you a little farm. You are determined to make this the best farm of all! Eventually an alien ship lands and a girl appears from it. She claims to be from the future and needs a way back to her time. So now you have to help her, tend to your farm, and you also need a way to save the world. See these Quietus events are dangerous since if you stand outside during one you could die and they’re happening very regularly now. Something’s up, but what? As you travel to different towns to buy farming ingredients you meet more people to add to your party and find out more about this time traveler. Ultimately the pieces will fit together but you’ve got time.

There’s a lot to enjoy here but the one thing I will take away from the game is that I would have liked more voice acting. For a modern day Switch title it’s pretty odd to just be reading text the whole time. It’s not like they couldn’t have voice acting either since your fairies call out to you every day when you leave the house and when you return. For two of the final bosses we suddenly get full voice acting as well. So to me it just seems like a budget thing or they were hurrying a lot but it’s unfortunate since voice acting could have helped to elevate this further.

The actual graphics are really good though. I really like the colors and the overall atmosphere of the game. It has a bit of a sci-fi feel to it even when you’re on the farm because of the crystals everywhere. The visuals and the fun soundtrack do a lot to make this game feel grand. It’s an RPG that is taking itself very seriously and I can definitely appreciate that. As a mild negative it would be nice if the fairies didn’t have to greet you home or say goodbye every time. They only have 1-2 sound clips so this gets really old fast. It’s one of those audio things the devs really need to think about since you will be performing those actions well over 100 times.

The RPG combat is really solid, if a bit complicated. Basically you have around 10 different job classes which all change up your attacks and element type. You can use a sword and just slash away at the enemies or you can use futuristic energy blades to fire at opponents from long range. Each job seems to have some advantages to it. I used the Mage class for around 80% of the game and then went to the fighter and holographic classes for the climax. I didn’t experiment too much with the others but they all seemed pretty fun.

There is a stamina system like Breath of the Wild which can get a little annoying. You can’t regenerate it naturally so the only way is to eat some food or go to sleep and start the next day. Not ideal when you’re in the middle of a dungeon though. Additionally you have a hunger meter so after a point you can’t eat anymore. You want to stock up on fruit juices because those you can continue to have even once your character is fully full. This is probably the main point where the game is being just a tad too realistic. I think the game should have dialed that back a bit.

I’m also not typically a fan of the day system and you can bet that this was not an exception. Having to rush home because the day was ending is not really my idea of a good time. I like to just relax and do things as they come so that goes against my gaming style. I’ll make it work of course but yeah these are all mechanics that I could do without. I suppose the most satisfying part of the farming is gathering resources though. It was always nice to finally build something.

By the end of the game I had completed all side quests and managed to build almost all of the items. So I really got a whole lot done and it shows jut how tough the final boss is because I needed all of that in order to win. I would recommend creating a juicer as early as possible because that is really what let me beat the game. I saved up over 40 fruit juices and had to spam almost all of them in order to win.

You could probably do with less of those if you got more level ups I suppose but I capped out in the early 50s so I didn’t have a ton of health. Without all of the health recoveries I would have certainly gone down. You can only get one juice per day too so the earlier you start the better. I ended up beating the game in around 1 year in-game time since I got to experience each of the seasons once so that was pretty cool.

It goes without saying that there is pretty much unlimited replay value here. You can keep on playing for a very long time as you keep upgrading your farm and getting level ups. I imagine it would take an extremely long amount of time for you to 100% this game but at least you do have a final goal of sorts. So the game never feels aimless. I can’t picture myself ever trying for the 100% but at least it is there should you ever be tempted to try and pull that off. Beating the story was satisfying enough for me.

Finally one of the big things about this game is how you can’t do everything you want to do within the day since it goes fast. You always have to decide between resource grinding, progressing the story, doing side quests, or working on equipment. Some of those categories can be broken down even further as well. I would usually focus on resources since there are always enemies to fight along the way but attacking enemies uses stamina which you need to pick up items so it’s still a tough call. Go with your gut on this one and remember there’s no time limit so eventually you will have what you need to get the win.

Overall, Harvestella is a pretty great game. I do think it survives entirely based on the combat gameplay and the great story though. You really get to know all of the characters after being with them for 50 hours so the climax hits really hard. You also had some tough moral decisions to make and ultimately this was just a very complete story. Ultimately this tells me that I still wouldn’t be fully on board with a big farming title. It doesn’t hold the game back enough to hurt it but it would absolutely be really bad news if the whole game had to rely on that. So if you’ve ever been curious about the genre, check this game out. As long as you like RPGs you will still enjoy it and this way you get to have a taste of what the farming is like. It’s really a full win/win for you. There’s also so much depth to the game that it’s hard to mention it all in one shot so trust me you will come across a lot of things that I didn’t even touch on here. The main thing to remember is that this is a game with a serious amount of grinding so pretty much all power ups and equipment really have to be earned. Prepare for a long journey right there!

Overall 8/10

Dragon Shiryu vs Hiei

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Suggested by Mehama Sadafa Hiei and Dragon are both exceptionally strong fighters with top tier equipment. I would say Shiryu’s equipment is a bit better though and his shield should be able to block Hiei’s strikes. Dragon is also fast enough to keep up with Hiei’s speed and then some. Mix in his much mower powerful attacks and Dragon really has the edge here. I’m not going to say this is a blowout or anything like that but the victor should never be in doubt. Dragon Shiryu wins.