I'm back at it again with a review of some beat em ups from my favorite anime,
Fullmetal Alchemist. I first watched it probably back in middle school with the original series, and didn't finish
Brotherhood until college. The action is sweet, I love how alchemy makes sense in the world and is explained by science, and all the characters are great. I really like Greed, if you can't tell from the video.
Anyway, on to the review...
This review first started back in November or October of 2017, back before I had decided to review
Kingdom Hearts RE: Chain of Memories. After
XIII, I decided to up my production of these videos and had several written and recorded. I definitely recall having a
SOCOM retrospective, a
Dirge of Cerberus review, an early prototype for the
DBZ video, and a review for
The Broken Angel all ready to get edited. Nothing from those videos exists anymore, not even the footage I recorded. At the time I had decided to give the game a "Not Worth Playing" rating and had recorded just the first hour of the game. When I decided to review both of these games, I played through the full game and changed my opinion.
Giving the game a second chance taught me to not go into a review with the rating already decided. This will be especially important with the next review, and I don't recall why I even decided to rate
The Broken Angel poorly to begin with. I didn't hate the game when I played it in my youth, but my memory of it probably decayed over time. It wasn't until I trapped a bunch of enemies with a vacuum and blew them up until I realized why I had this split opinion.
As it is, the game is only fine. If you go out of your way to use alchemy whenever possible, it's a lot of fun. When I wrote the review last year I had only experienced the bad parts of the game (maybe because I had already decided to see everything in a negative light). Giving the game a proper chance gave the game the opportunity to remind me why I liked it, although going by other reviews it seems that the consensus is as split as I was.
With
Curse of the Crimson Elixir I had a similar problem with trying to force the outcome of the review. I didn't know if this review was going to be a
Perfect Sequel. I didn't want to have two of that kind of video in a row. especially since I know there's going to be another
Perfect Sequel video coming shortly. Nearly everything about the second game is better than the first one. It's slightly different, and that difference is enough for me to say that each game provides its own experience. Alchemy felt more abundant in
The Broken Angel to the point where you could make it the central focus of your playthrough. The second game had less options with alchemy, but with better overall combat. I like both of them. They're hard sells if you're not a fan of the show, but you don't need to know that much about the backstory to understand what's going on or have fun.
I don't know when the next review is coming, I hope it's soon if I can get the script down. As of this writing the script is in the roughest of shapes, but thats how all of these start. What's important is that I don't rush while avoiding procrastination, and that each review is better than the last.
Until then, have a good day.
