Kamen Rider: Memory of Heroez review
Format: PS4 SE Asian edition disc from PlayAsia, non-premium, Japanese with English subtitles
Play time: 10 hours for the story, 20 hours for the platinum
+It's Kamen Rider. It's mostly a W/OOO side story, so it'll have more appeal if you're a big fan of those series. Zero-One is just kind of around.
+Translation for the subs are pretty good. There's a few of our terms in there, which is great. The only real mistake I saw was they mispellIs from Zero-One as Izu. Edit: Actually some lines are missing. Mostly when the enemies are powering up. And attacks aren't subbed either.
-The only original Rider voiced by his actor is Zero-One, who has a miniscule part in this. (I think he shows up in the last third of the game?) We do get M・A・O, Usada Lettuce, Navi from Gokaiger, and a few Kiramager voice actors, but most of the cast aren't really Rider folk. The guy who does Shoutarou sounds good, but the rest are just okayish at best? Most don't sound anything like their original actor.
-It's a cheap tie-in game. It's not bad by any means, but it's only ever just good-enough. There's a lot of niggling little bits that detract from the quality of the game. Sometimes the camera can be abyssmal during fights. The format is entirely composed of "walk three feet, enter a cut scene or a fight, repeat". There's one section that's "a subspace maze" but is really just a bunch of empty combat rooms the developer were too lazy to decorate.
-UI is kind of bad. Luckily they tied the form change to the L1 button so it's easy to swap forms with ease. But to swap characters, to swap equipment ( there's only one equipment slot), or do anything else you have to open up the menu. Also, sometimes they force you to use a particular character, so it would have been nice if they had a "lock equipment to whoever you're playing as" as a feature. They have a stupid name for money and XP in this game, but I essentially had on the equipment that boosted those two gains for the entire game.
-There's an annoying user agreement at the beginning of this game. 1, 2. It looks shitty and they block your ability to stream the game through PSN. One of the main appeals of buying these games for me is to hang out with fans and stuff. I honestly don't know if I'd play any of these new tie-in games if I didn't have an audience.
The combat is alright. It's fun to use Rider moves, but there aren't a lot of enemy variety in the game. The developers clearly like Dark Souls, which is good and adds more combat nuance than before. But the stamina meter is dumb bullshit in implementation at times. The dodging requires stamina and you'll fail dodging often because you ran out. Missing a dodge means missing a chance to riposte which does bonus damage to shielded enemies. Also, some Riders have moves that use a lot of stamina and it doesn't feel good to run out and fail to do moves when you're wailing on enemies.
Sometimes boss enemies have large area attacks that'll hit everything around them. If you have enough stamina to run away or dodge away out of the area, that's okay. But most of the time, you're just going to eat the hit because you're trying to hit the enemy, and your attack animation will lock you in place too long for you to escape. Wah wah. The game's not hard by any means, but these moves do feel unfair in a game where most Rider characters don't have a block mechanic.
There's a parry mechanic where if you dodge an attack late enough, you can hit circle and do a riposte/counter hit that stuns them a bit and allows you to do extra damage. The problem is, the parry window feels too tight and is indicated too far in advance. Most the time, I'd see the ! indicating a parryable attack, and I'll hit R2 to dodge, and then there'd be no way for me to dodge back in to get the counter attack chance. It's like the game wants you to stand there and wait till the last possible second to dodge, usually leading to your character getting hit as a result. I'm no parry god in Dark Souls either, but it feels badly done here.
People have been asking if I recommend the game. Sure, it's pretty fun to play and it is pretty cool to be W and OOO (and other characters). As long as people keep their expectations in check, it is still a moderately cheap tie-in game by Bandai Namco, so the story isn't going to blow your socks off. But the gameplay is fun enough and I did enjoy it enough to grind out the platinum trophy.
I uploaded my local recordings of the streams to this YouTube playlist. In case you want to check out the gameplay or just watch the story vicariously through the videos. I play some random toku songs in the last few streams so feel free to check those out, assuming they're not copyright blocked in your country.
