1. Rise of the Tomb Raider
2. Hyperdimension Neptunia Re:Birth 2: Sisters Generation
3. Kingdom Hearts 2.8
4. Atelier Rorona
5. Atelier Totori
6. Atelier Meruru
7. Persona 5
8. Darksiders (Warmastered Edition)
9. Akiba's Beat -
This game. This freakin' game. Such a massive waste of an excellent cast of characters. Beyond the characters, even the battle system showed some potential to be great. Imagine Mode made for some truly adrenaline pumping action with unlimited AP and J-pop blasting in the background, but then that just highlighted how boring the rest of the battle was. Regular attacks barely ever dented an enemy, so most battles were just grinding up to the next imagine mode so you can do some decent damage. Boss fights were even worse since it was waiting for a full imagine gauge to take advantage of damage boosts.
That doesn't even cover other problems with the battle system, like enemies being able to cancel moves far too easily, particularly with casters. Or the fact that there were, like 8 varieties of normal enemies total and everything was just a reskin of one of those eight. And waiting until the very end of the game to give characters access to EX Skills was really dumb. And while it might make a little sense in theory, in practice the idea that AP regenerates slower if it isn't at 0 makes it hard to fight strategically instead of just button mashing.
Then there's the environments. Akiba is a lot smaller in scope than the previous game, with even less reason to explore since all the shops carry the same stuff and the only things that actually happen in the overworld are main events or side stories, both of which are clearly marked on the map with icons and fast travel is just a button press away.
Dungeons weren't much better, being very samey simple mazes with flat floors amidst a themed background and the occasional similarly themed props. Plus the game forces you to revisit them way too often, thanks to some dull filler content and monster hunting side quests that will constantly reward one visit to a dungeon with another quest from that same dungeon. Some of the dungeons had puzzle-type obstacles, but they were very basic things we've seen before, like teleporters and switches that control more than one door.
I really feel like this game could have been good if some of the passion that went into the characters and writing had also gone into making the gameplay decent. As it stands, the experience it offers is tedious, baffling, and drags on for way too long.
