This review is like a curse :O I honestly feel like I don’t have much to say about this game. It’s a visual novel that presents a fairly traditional detective story with a paranormal twist. At first, I thought this game would be all about player choice, branching narratives and puzzle solving. The prologue of the game hints at all those things. However, it quickly dawned on me that this was all a mirage.

Paranormasight is a game about curses. You switch between a bunch of playable characters who come into possession of curse stones. Upon fulfilling specific conditions for each stone, these can be used to… kill people :) The prologue introduces this concept by letting the player control a character who obtains a rather powerful stone. It is now the player’s choice to use this power or neglect it.

Or is it?

Even in those first minutes of the game, I was beginning to become a little skeptical. The game makes it seem like you can choose to take someone’s life or spare it by showing a button prompt whenever a curse is ready to be used. So, I tested this apparent level of player freedom. First, I wandered around like a maniac killing everyone in my sight and progressed the game. Then, when the story chart was introduced, I went back to the beginning, this time with the intention to play as the good guy, you know good as in not a maniacal psycho killer. But, alas, the game wouldn’t let me do that. It was all predetermined. The button prompt was displayed, I didn’t push it and yet, the curse was unleashed. I was pretty bummed out by this. Why even introduce an element of player interactivity when it’s absolutely pointless if the player makes use of it or not?

Same goes for the game’s setting or even its entire genre affiliation. What do I mean by these muddled words? Well, on its Steam store page, Paranormasight is described as a horror-adventure game. Watching the trailer and reading the synopsis of the game make it clear that the horror aspect is at the forefront of this gaming experience.

Or is it?

Again, the prologue makes it seem like this is a fitting genre categorization. The game starts off pretty scary. There are moments of genuine horror here. Every scene in Paranormasight is arranged as a first-person static scene. All you can really do is rotate the camera 360° around your point of view, move a cursor and click on items in the environment or click on people to start a conversation. The prologue plays with this simplicity in quite the elegant way. There’s a scene where a character you have a conversation with points at something behind you, their face distorted in sheer terror. So, you sloooowly turn the camera around and BOOM! Playing this at night on my Steam Deck with the lights out made me remember why I usually shy away from horror games that rely heavily on jump scares. But I have to admit that this scene was spooky and well set-up. And it wasn’t just one jump scare. The atmosphere in this first hour of the game is overall pretty dense and eerie. You walk around at night, always on the edge, looking for other curse-bearers to prey upon while not becoming their prey yourself. Sometimes, a scene would change ever so slightly. Is there a shadowy figure in your periphery? Was that there before? What’s that floating in the sky, it looks otherworldly and strange? This is what the prologue feels like.

But sadly, the rest of the game is quite different. Following the prologue, the game focuses more on being a narrative experience rather than a horror game. That’s not a bad thing per se as the writing is pretty strong overall (with some caveat that we’ll get to in just a second). Later on, the horror returns to some extent but it never really reaches the heights (or lows) of the prologue. It really is all about the story. And the story is pretty good. The Seven Mysteries of Honjo are an intriguing foundation for a story about curses, resurrection and the sins of the past. I liked how culturally profound the game is with its countless allusions to the Edo period in Japan and how that age impacted Japanese culture and society. The setting of 1980s Tokyo is very interesting to me. You visit various places of the city and actually learn about their history and how their cultural relevance has changed over the years. Pretty much all of this “educational” content is purely optional. You can read up on the rich lore and history of the places visited if you are interested but you’re not forced to. In its dialogues, the game teaches you the most important stuff that you need to know in order to grasp the story on a fundamental level. But, if you wanna learn more, the archive is always there for you. I loved digging through the texts to learn more about the history and the mythology behind The Seven Mysteries of Honjo. It truly made me feel like a paranormal detective uncovering an old mystery. I was constantly reading up on everything the game threw at me while constructing new theories in my head about how everything was connected. It has been a while since a game’s narrative managed to intrigue me so. It’s one of those games that has you thinking about it even after putting it down. In a way, it reminded me of AI: The Somnium Files which did the same to me. It’s a very well put together story that had me hooked from the start and managed to keep me engaged for the 13-hour runtime of the game.

Same goes for the characters. At first, they seem like your everyday stereotypes that you would expect in a detective story like this one. However, most characters have depth and multiple facets that go beyond their standard tropes. For instance, the old and cynical detective who’s seen it all isn’t just a rude, cold-hearted bastard but shows actual empathy, care and compassion. And it’s not like he pretends to be that hardcore tough guy in the beginning but in the end turns out to be a sweet softie. No, from the very first scene, he is portrayed as a layered character. One that surely has his edges but is still very human at heart. It’s a subtle difference from most character writing that you come across in other games like this and I like it a lot. It makes the characters feel real and relatable and not like templates who undergo the same arcs you have seen a million times before in other games. Mind you, there are still some very tropey characters who really only have like one trait and stay relatively bland for the entirety of the game. That’s ok for me though. As long as a game has some shining diamonds, it’s alright to have some dull pebbles as well.

Paranormasight is a good game. It’s a linear narrative experience with light puzzle elements disguised as a horror-adventure game based on player choice. It’s advertised as something it is not and I cannot shake some resentment I feel for the game because of that. In its early hours, the game is filled with horror, pretty original out-of-the-box meta puzzles and promises of impactful player decisions but drops all of that in favor of becoming a purely narrative experience. Thank God it’s a good one. It’s all about the writing and the writing is the strong suit of this game. Towards the end, some scenes start dragging a bit too much. I felt that, especially in the last third, some conversations would go on forever telling me things I already knew since I had figured out most of the case already. I was glad to find the game not dipping too deep into twisty anime bullshit territory and that it allowed me to solve the mystery based on the information I had. But I had that information about three hours before the curtain fell. Still, there were some surprises left for me and the finale definitely won me over. This world has potential and I’m curious about the sequel that’s apparently in the works. If you have a thing for visual novels with an eerie twist but don’t expect a game as dark as Corpse Party or one with a branching narrative like the Zero Escape games, this might be for you.

A game that was very controversial at the time of its original release for all the wrong reasons. When you boot up Dragon’s Crown for the first time, its striking imagery and distinct art style catch your eye right away. This game looks unlike anything else on the market. That was true in 2013 and, for the most part, it is still true today. I remember the media outcry about this game when it came out. A rather infamous article by Jason Schreier made the rounds and brought a lot of mostly negative attention to this game. As Schreier pointed out in his opinion piece, Dragon’s Crown “features the sorceress, one character from the game. As you can see, the sorceress was designed by a 14-year-old boy. Perhaps game development studios should stop hiring teenagers?” The game’s director and president of Vanillaware, the studio behind Dragon’s Crown, George Kamitani, responded shortly after by making a rather….homophobic? post on Facebook. That post contained an image showing three very muscular, very naked men closely huddled together. It furthermore stated that Schreier may be more pleased with this kind of art. … It was a whole mess. Later, Kamitani apologized and Schreier wrote a more comprehensive article talking about sexism in the video game industry as a whole and problematic imagery and beauty standards portrayed through games like Dragon’s Crown.

Even though those two squabblers kind of came to an agreement, I feel like their discourse overshadowed the entire game coverage at the time. Everywhere you looked, if someone brought up Dragon’s Crown, it was always about its art style and how immaculate or utter garbage it was. In hindsight, I feel like this is such a pity because this game is actually super interesting gameplay-wise but everyone just kept talking about its unhinged character designs. And don’t get me wrong; a review of this game should absolutely talk about its art style, it being such a prominent aspect of Dragon’s Crown. So, let’s get this out of the way quickly. Yes, the art in this game is quite unique. It features over-sexualized character designs in such an exaggerated way, there really is no game out there looking even remotely like this.
The designs can be really out there. The image which springs to mind for most people is probably the design of the sorceress character. This is also the one that inspired Mr. Schreier to write his original article. It features quite the voluptuous woman who loves looking at the player seductively while holding a staff between her butt cheeks. And she’s not the only one designed in that way. There’s a mermaid whose tail begins juuust slightly below her buttocks. Honestly, when I first saw that design, it had me burst out laughing. The male designs are just as over-the-top. There are characters who have layers and layers of muscle stacked on top of each other. There’s a character who’s basically just a big lump of muscled flesh with a teeny-weeny head on top, it’s hilarious.
Not every character looks like that. In fact, there are some designs that are simply beautiful but rather tame regarding their masculine or feminine features. The princess, the elf girl or the wizard all have very gorgeous, very distinct styles but compared to their over-sexualized companions, they almost feel out of place. According to Kamitani himself, his intention was to take traditional character tropes from works like The Lord of the Rings and put his own spin on them by deliberately exaggerating certain physical properties in an almost cartoonish manner. No matter how you feel about the designs Kamitani came up with, you have to agree that he was successful in this respect.
I personally love the art style. I have a thing for games that use traditional art from various periods as inspiration (special shout-out to Joe Richardson and his masterpieces Four Last Things and The Procession to Calvary). Dragons Crown’s style reminds me of Renaissance art, but instead of catholic motifs like the crucifixion of Jesus or the Madonna and Child, you get dark elf girls in skimpy armor and dwarfs with boulders for arms. For some reason, even though it shouldn’t, it kinda works and I dig it. It is unhinged, it is comically over-the-top and it’s horny as hell. In the context of this game though, it works really well. I totally understand if people are repelled by this. I only wished that the entire conversation about Dragon’s Crown hadn’t been about the character designs alone.

So, let’s talk about why this game really rules gameplay-wise. Dragon’s Crown is a 2.5D side-scrolling Beat’em Up game with a strong focus on leveling, looting and replayability. You can choose one of six characters, all offering a unique play-style either focused on melee or ranged combat. Each character has a multitude of actions you can perform to deal with your opponents. Let’s take the Fighter for example, a melee-focused class which is a good starting character for people who play Dragon’s Crown for the first time. The fighter uses a one-handed weapon to attack. You can smash the square button on your controller and pummel enemies to death like that. You can also perform an upward attack, launching enemies into the air. Having done that, you can smash square again repeatedly to attack mid-air. When you’re done, you can perform a downward slam which creates an AOE attack that pushes enemies away. If you feel overwhelmed by a large group, hold the circle button and release a mighty power-smash to deal some serious damage. Or, if you feel the need to defend yourself, you can slide into enemies, dash away or block.
As you can see, the game offers a lot of ways to engage with the combat. And this is just the basic moveset. As you progress through the game, you can unlock additional effects for your moves. For instance, you can upgrade the slide attack to knock enemies down or add a whirlwind-effect to your basic attack. You can turn blocking into a shield-bash that allows you to parry enemy attacks. Or, if you’re a simpleton like me, just upgrade the shockwave-effect for your downward-attack and power-smash and watch hordes of enemies fly through the room.
Keep in mind that I am only scraping the surface of what you can do with a single character. There are 6 classes in total and even though I only tried out a couple of them, I can already tell that they are just as versatile and adaptable as the fighter. It’s crazy what you can do with the characters in this game and the variety of builds you can try out.

What’s crazy to me is how Dragon’s Crown manages to keep things fresh, even 10 or 15 hours into the main game. The game starts off fairly simple. You pick a class, learn the basic moveset and are thrown into the first level. You fight some enemies using your moves, environmental traps or items like crossbows that you can find in chests or loot from enemy corpses. At the end of the level, you fight a boss that requires you to pay attention to its moves and react accordingly. Once you defeat the boss, you get a score, a corresponding rank, some loot and move on to the town area to re-supply, repair your gear and progress the story. For a while that is the basic game loop – prepare for battle in town, maybe pick up a side-quest, go into a level, fight enemies, find loot and kill the boss. Dragon’s Crown only offers 9 stages in total and a final boss level, but the game pushes you to re-visit each level multiple times. Now, you may think that this sounds rather monotonous or even boring. There are only 9 levels after all and the basic progression in the game doesn’t really change all that much.
But Dragon’s Crown always thinks of new ways to motivate players to keep playing. Side-quests require you to interact with certain level elements in new and interesting ways. Sometimes, by progressing a side-quest, you uncover hidden areas or new enemies. Or they challenge you in new ways, for instance taking on a boss solo or defeating that boss within a specific time limit. There are the occasional fetch-and-kill quests as well but I always felt like I could complete them along the way while doing something else. What annoyed me though was the fact that I could only take on 5 side-quests at a time. I wished the game would have let me accept all available quests and then do a full run through all the areas completing everything in one go but alas, you do have to return to the guild every once in a while, to turn in quests and accept new ones. Also, I feel like the game is balanced around solving these quests which kind of makes them mandatory if you don’t want to end up completely under-leveled at the end of the game.
Ok, so optional, or semi-optional quests keep things interesting but what else? Well, once you’re done with all 9 stages, you get a B-Route for each stage. To progress the story, you have to find 9 talismans which are protected by 9 new bosses. So, each level gets another area with fresh enemies, locations and bosses. Neat. At the end of each stage, you now also get the chance to keep on adventuring to another stage instead of returning home, which will raise your reward quite substantially. So, once you collected all of the talismans, you fight the final boss and that’s it, game’s over, right? Hardly, it has only just begun. After finishing the game on normal difficulty, you can go on by switching to hard mode which raises the level-cap, unlocks new quests and introduces a new system – the labyrinth of chaos, which is a random dungeon generator.
So, maybe you see why I never got bored with this game even though it is quite limited in scope. Having 9 stages doesn’t sound like much but Dragon’s Crown always throws something new into the mix to make me want to go again. It also helps that completing a level can be done in about 10 minutes or even less if you’re better than me, so you can decide for yourself if you just wanna play a quick round or take on multiple stages in a row and get a fat bonus at the end.

That’s another thing I really like about Dragon’s Crown, the way it handles your score, ranking and experience points. The score you get at the end basically directly translates into your experience points. You can raise the score in various ways. There’s a skill you can upgrade that turns coins, that are found in the level or dropped by enemies, into score points. There are certain bonuses you get for completing challenges in a stage. For instance, you get a huuuge bonus for completing a stage without taking damage. I love this system. The game really incentivizes you to play well but it doesn’t punish you if you’re not super skilled. If you die in a fight, you can go again until your lives run out. And even if they do, you can pay some gold to go again. And in the end, you are still rewarded and get that feeling of achievement. But let me tell you, nothing feels better than finishing a boss fight with no damage taken, getting that sweet sweet fat bonus at the end and then leveling up like 5 times at once. I didn’t manage to pull that off too often but as I said, it doesn’t matter too much; you still get a reward in the end, just a smaller one. I think this approach is really cool. If you’re looking for that extra challenge, you can go into a stage all alone, fight your way to the end, try to take no damage and get a nice reward. Maybe that isn’t enough of a challenge for you. If you wanna spice things up even more, you can decide to skip side-quests that have already been completed with another character. This way, the game grants you the same amount of skill points you would get for completing the quest normally, but you get no experience points at all. So, you’ll be pretty under-leveled but can still unlock some skills for your character. So hey, why not try to complete a run without any experience from side-quests, relying only on skill points? Sounds like a cool challenge to me.
If you’re looking for a more casual experience, you can summon NPCs or play coop with a friend and take on these bosses together. There’s even cross-play between PS3, PS4 and PS Vita. Yes, you read that right, the PS Vita. Is there any game out there that does that? In any case, what I’m trying to say is that for players of all skill levels, this game has something to offer. You can tweak the level of difficulty in various ways in order to create the perfect challenge and balance for you. And Dragon’s Crown achieves all that quite elegantly without the use of traditional difficulty settings. There are 3 levels of difficulty – normal, hard, and infernal but they are more like game modes, so hard would be like new game plus and infernal new game plus plus. But they don’t really determine how hard the game is, you do, and that’s really cool.

So, as good as the gameplay is, and I do have little to complain here, the story and overall writing aren’t particularly original or interesting. Sadly, this aspect doesn’t seem to have been a huge focus for the developer of Dragon’s Crown. The game presents a fairly traditional fantasy plot. There’s a kingdom whose future is at stake as its king disappeared and a neighboring country is planning to use that weakness for its own merit. There is a bit of a “political” plot here, with forces who try to take control from the shadows and two opposing political parties but it all stays very superficial and doesn’t go all too deep. In the end, it all comes down to hunting down powerful artifacts of old and defeating a menacing evil whose purpose is the destruction of mankind. Princesses, knights, dragons and fairies, it’s all here and you’ve probably seen it a million times already.
There is a little bit of writing that I found intriguing though. For every quest you complete, you unlock one of these beautiful artworks and a corresponding text which offers some lore of the world. Most of it is fairly light-hearted or straight-up funny but every now and again, there is a neat little story here. It even gives some of the characters in the game like Morgan, the magic shop owner, or Samuel, leader of the adventurer’s guild, some interesting back-story. So that’s cool. But yeah, story-wise, don’t expect anything too out of the ordinary.
Other than that, I really don’t have too much to complain. I have to admit that there were sections in the game where there was a bit too much going on on-screen and I lost track of where my character was and what was going on. If you play with NPC summons or other players, I feel like this can become a major issue. I started playing this on my Vita and the screen was just a little so small for me to keep track of everything. Doing a full playthrough solo and playing on a bigger screen really helped but still, some sections were somewhat chaotic. By the way, this game runs like a charm on the Steam Deck. I played the PS3 version emulated and had no issues whatsoever.

If you've made it this far into the review, I hope I could convince you to pick up this awesome game if you haven’t already. The Pro-Version is still available for PS4 on the PSN and is regularly on sale for like 5 bucks. It’s a stunningly beautiful game with some of the best music I’ve heard in a while, composed by the GOAT Hitoshi Sakimoto. It has a super addictive game loop, weighty and complex combat and replay-value through the roof. Honestly, I can’t wait to pick another character and go again all the way from the beginning, even though I sank like 20 hours into the game already, it is that fun.
So, even if it’s a fairly traditional fantasy tale, I think it’s a tale worth being told.

The Schreier/Kamitani controversy:
https://kotaku.com/game-developers-really-need-to-stop-letting-teenage-boy-472724616
https://kotaku.com/the-real-problem-with-that-controversial-sexy-video-ga-478120280
https://kotaku.com/the-artist-behind-dragons-crown-explains-his-exaggerat-482450927

As the thrill of having completed yet another goal in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 (THPS 4) washes over me, I stare into the eyes of a skater applauding me in cheerful pride for my achievement. There is a darkness in their blank expression. The music stops and all that remains is the slow but steady sound of clapping hands and a text pop-up that reads Checking Memory Card. I feel awkward. It’s like I should say something but all I can do is wait until the console has finished saving the game.

This happens every time I finish a goal in the game. In older titles of the series, saving the game could be done after each run. A run in a traditional Tony Hawk’s takes two minutes, during which the player has to complete a list of set goals like beating a certain high score or collecting some items scattered in the level. In THPS 4, this structure is fundamentally broken up for the first time in the series. Instead of going for two-minute runs again and again, you can now visit levels as persistent worlds. There is no more time limit nor a fixed list of goals that are given to you right from the start. Instead, you’re dropped into a level and have to figure things out on your own. You pick up missions from NPCs standing around. Those range from simple high score or combo missions to pretty creative stuff like helping a prisoner to escape from Alcatraz.
I am fond of the overall mission design. I feel like the developers put a lot of effort into pacing the experience just right by switching up more traditional goals and more out-of-the-box stuff. I always felt entertained even after picking up the S-K-A-T-E letters for the 100th. time because there were always new and interesting missions tossed into the mix as well. On top of that, every now and again, you can engage in a number of mini-games that can earn you additional cash. Some of those are pretty innovative and fun like playing tennis. Others are a bit more… dated? Like, there’s a mini-game that lets you bet money on girls slapping the shit out of each other….yeah, some aspects of this game and the overall skating culture at the time haven’t aged particularly well. Apart from that, the main missions are really fun though. And hey, nobody forced me to sit through a somewhat awkward saving sequence after every goal achieved, so that’s kinda on me.

I feel like THPS 4 may be a strong contender for the best level design in the series. There is a certain flow in each and every level that never really stops. If I want to, I can go on and on and on forever, jumping and grinding my way through cities, skate parks, a shipyard! and more. Tony Hawk’s games are usually pretty good with this but I feel like THPS 4 perfected the formula in this regard. What I really like is the fact that they brought back cash as collectible items. At first I thought this was a step back from THPS 3 which got rid of this system. I thought it was just a way to bloat the game by adding a bunch of collectibles that served no real purpose besides buying some optional cosmetics or whatever. However, cash is actually pretty important in this game going so far as to unlock entire levels in the endgame. In the levels themselves, seeing a banknote flying around in the vicinity actually encourages exploration and experimentation. There were so many moments that had me thinking “How the hell am I supposed to get there?”. Then I started looking around the level and tinkering with the environment until I got that sweet sweet stack of cash. So besides the main missions and mini-games, this system added another layer of player motivation that kept me re-visiting levels and exploring them to the fullest.
Unfortunately, even though the levels are amazing gameplay-wise, they tend to be on the bland side of things visually. Everything is a bit too gray for me, a little too washed out and just … drab. Before this game, I finally finished Tony Hawk’s Underground for the first time which is known for its grounded, urban and not so colorful art style. Seriously, compared to THPS 4, that game looked like a pride parade to me :D It’s hard to explain but I feel like this game’s visuals suffer a lot from this design choice. I’m not saying every game in the series needs to be as colorful and bright like Underground 2 but I do feel that THPS 1-3 and Underground found a perfect balance which is lost in THPS 4.

Thankfully, the same can’t be said about the music. The score of every THPS game is legendary imo but man, this one really knocks it out of the park. When I heard the first notes N.W.A.’s Express Yourself, I instantly started nodding my head to the beat like the cool 16-year-old I never was. And they are not the only big names here, AC/DC, System of a Down and many more contribute to a really awesome soundtrack. It’s a weird mix that shouldn’t work but in a Tony Hawk’s game, it all comes together beautifully.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 rules. It’s a transitional game that marks the switch from traditional mission-based THPS games to the open-nature free roaming Underground sub-series and beyond. It combines aspects of both game design approaches and most of it works really well. The level design is great, the missions are fun and the music phenomenal. Some innovations like skitching, spine transfers and the removal of a time limit would shape the series for good and it all started here. I wish the game would be more colorful or generally more interesting on a visual level. Having played the Underground games before, it’s also pretty weird to have a Tony Hawk’s game with a career-mode, but no story-mode. The progression in the game doesn’t follow any narrative thread and it does feel like something is missing here. I guess that’s what the developers realized too when they developed Underground and added a story full of drama, tension and one of the most hateable antagonists of all time. THPS 4 doesn’t have any of that. It’s a traditional Tony Hawk’s game with the prospect of things to change. And it’s one of the best.