Toy Review: Transformers Generations Legacy United Doryu (Core)

Review:  #851

Name:  Doryu

Brand:  Transformers

Allegiance:  Decepticon

Line:  Generations - Legacy: United

Year of Release:  2024

Size Class:  Core

Mold Status:  retool of Legacy United Snarl

ALTERNATE MODE:

Transforming into a blue and white robotic Stegosaurus, the color scheme can make him look out of place.

While he is generally okay, from the back, you can tell that the hind legs are the robot arms, given that the fists are painted silver and sticks out.

Doryu, being in the Core class, is a small figure, above is a comparison against a Deluxe.

He has no articulation in this mode, all the limbs are basically fixed, any articulation used for robot mode or transformation that's available here is not meaningful at all.

The tail is also a bit stumpy, and as mentioned the robot fists stick out behind, and they make the rear legs kind of too big.

The robot weapon can attach to the back.

To be fair, at this size, and considering what the mold is achieving (three different modes), this isn't a bad beast mode.

TRANSFORMATION:

As expected, he's not too difficult.  The front splits into two to form the robot legs.  While the tail also splits, stand him up, and straighten the rear legs for the robot arms.

ROBOT MODE:

Doryu is a retool of Snarl, so he has very Dinobit-like features, but on the whole, this isn't a bad robot mode.

He has a backpack but since it's hollow and sits somewhat flush to the torso, it's not bad at all.

He gets a new head at least, and it is a very G1-looking head, and looks good.

Size-wise, again, he is a Core class figure so it stands to reason he is tiny.

Articulation is one of the better ones of the set as he has joints for his head, shoulders, elbows (!), hips and knees.

Doryu has two weapons, a scythe and a sword.

He can hold both in his hands, and the scythe is definitely the cooler looking weapon.

The scythe being bigger but not oversized, helps with its menacing feel too.

A strong robot mode, thanks to the extra articulation and cool weapons.

OVERALL:

Doryu is one of the better molds in the set, as he does not feel as compromised as the others.  The color scheme is kind of weird, and it is still had to shake away the Dinobot-like looking modes but it's a solid figure that can stand on its own.

-----------------------------------------------------------

For other Transformers reviews, have a look at this page and this page

Support this blog by purchasing from Amazon using this affiliate link.

(As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases)

Mary Skelter: Nightmares (Vita)

Mary Skelter: Nightmares is a dungeon crawler JRPG for the PlayStation Vita. In it, you take control of Jack, who is in a world that has been taken over by living dungeons. Jack and his friend Alice managed to escape from jail. During the process, Alice discovers that she is a Blood Maiden, someone with the power to kill the monsters of the dungeon, known as Marchens. Jack isn’t completely useless either, as he has abilities unique only to him that can assist other Blood Maidens.

As Jack and Alice find themselves in the city, they are joined by other Blood Maidens. They eventually explore the dungeons and clear them. In the first few chapters, there is a lot of worldbuilding where we learn about the powers of the Blood Maidens. While they can kill Marchens, their blood will eventually send them crazy, into Blood Skelter mode. This is where Jack comes in, as he can somehow prevent the Blood Maidens from losing themselves this way.

The gameplay is a typical dungeon crawler, taking place in first person as you explore the dungeons. Given it is a Vita game, the graphics are not the greatest, but still decent. There are random encounters, as well as dungeon traps, which can be quite annoying. Given the first-person view where you are limited to four directions, it can be difficult to see more of the surroundings than what is right in front of you. It doesn’t help that the map only maps the current square that you’re on, rather than what you can see.

As you explore, there are things you can find such as treasure chests and levers that will open doors. A gimmick here are that Nightmares will appear. Upon which the map disappears, and you need to run away from them. If the Nightmares catch up, you can still try and run away or battle them, but that will only stall them as you cannot kill them unless certain requirements are met. It’s not as tense and urgent as it sounds, but it is also still somewhat annoying. They end up disrupting the flow of exploration, so it sounds like a good unique concept but ends up grating on your patience.

The battle system is a lot more normal though, given it is a turn-based system. You can have up to four characters, plus Jack, in your team. Jack only plays a support role, such as using items, guarding a character and some other special abilities. The Blood Maidens on the other hand are the offensive ones, able to attack and other special abilities. There is a simple weakness system, and constantly dealing damage will fill a gauge where the characters can go into Massacre mode, temporarily upping all their stats. The battle system at the end of the day isn’t innovative but it is serviceable.

The difficulty at first seems manageable, and the game allows you to save anywhere, at most times. The caveat being that you need to remember to save because if you die, you will have to reload your save. This can be very annoying and frustrating when you play long sessions and are just exploring and exploring, then you accidentally find yourself in a bad spot and lose hours of progress. This is especially true when there are massive difficulty spikes with the bosses. You can easily be defeating the enemies within the dungeon only to be annihilated by the dungeon boss. Once again, this can feel unfair, even for a dungeon crawler.

Due to the first-person view and fog effects, you cannot see that far ahead of you, and stuff to the left and right. Sometimes you cannot even tell if there is an event or another icon until you’re upon it. There are some annoying gimmicks and features of the dungeons, such as when the Nightmares randomly appear, and you cannot open the menu and thus cannot heal outside of battle. You may be forced into a loss situation which can be very frustrating to lose hours of progress. Other times there may be levers or environmental objects that you need to interact with to weaken the boss, but the game does not explain this well.

The story, despite having a decent start and a good concept, ends up being quite boring. The story to gameplay ratio is not great as the game is heavily geared towards exploration. You will be enjoying the exploration but then the story cutscenes ruin your flow. On the flipside, you tend to explore for too long without progressing the story, this is a hard thing to balance, and the game doesn’t do it well. It takes all the way to the end for real progression, and there is supposedly a big revelation but it kind of comes out of nowhere. It’s supposed to be a twist, but it falls flat.

Despite the developer and the design of the characters, this game isn’t as ecchi as you would expect. There’s an optional minigame that plays on this aspect, but it is easily ignored, and everything else doesn’t suggest it much. Despite the predictable gameplay loop of exploring the dungeon, defeating the boss, and progressing to the next chapter, it is still fun to play. The story takes around 30 hours to complete depending on how much of each dungeon you explore. The dungeons can be huge and take hours each. It can be upwards of 40 to 50 hours if you take your time. There are two endings, a good ending and a bad ending, with the postgame content being a humungous dungeon, with a tiny, tiny bit of plot.

Overall, Mary Skelter: Nightmares is a decent dungeon crawler. It can be brutally difficulty in the beginning but once you get more characters to put into your party, get access to more skills, and have a general idea of how the battel system works, you can easily wreck the normal enemies. Bosses are still tough and the unique aspect of bosses randomly appearing while you’re exploring with no way out can be annoying and pointless towards the end of the game. It’s still a fun enough game to play.

-----------------------------------------------

For other game reviews, have a look at this page and this page.

Support this blog by purchasing from Amazon using this affiliate link.

(As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases)

Toy Review: Transformers Generations Legacy United Gairyu (Core)

Review:  #850

Name:  Gairyu

Brand:  Transformers

Allegiance:  Decepticon

Line:  Generations - Legacy: United

Year of Release:  2024

Size Class:  Core

Mold Status:  retool of Legacy United Scarr

ALTERNATE MODE:

Gairyu transforms into a green and black robotic Ankylosaurus.  Since this alternate mode isn't part of the original Dinobots, he doesn't look like a knockoff redeco.

This is a fairly decent robotic dinosaur mode, although the tail ends in what is obviously a robot fist.

As a Core class figure, Gairyu isn't too big, but he is fairly compact and feels good in hand.

His proportions aren't too bad either, which is surprising.  He doesn't have much articulation, just the legs can swing forwards and backwards.

A decent alternate mode.

TRANSFORMATION:

Detach the tail, and then you can flip the back to form the legs.  Fold out the halves of the remaining part to get the arms.

ROBOT MODE:

Gairyu's robot mode is okay, he looks stocky thanks to the wide shoulders, and bulky limbs.

Look from the back, you can see the hollow legs (due to transformation), and quite a bit of kibble.

The head sculpt is great and very G1 looking.

Size-wise, he is short, above is a comparison against Siege Sideswipe.

Articulation is its weak point, mostly due to having to have a combined mode as well.  He had joints for his head, shoulders, hips and knees.

The tail piece forms his weapon, and there's a barrel on top.

Thus Gairyu can hold it in his hand as a sort of gun, which doesn't work very well given that the fist is clearly visible.

Due to transformation, his arms can flex inwards, which really helps with articulation even though he lacks elbows.

Given the limitations of the size class and what it is trying to do, this is a decent robot mode as he doesn't have too many compromises.

OVERALL:

Gairyu is a solid figure, but only if you take into account that it is in the small Core class, and that it is part of a combiner.  The color scheme is meh, but the sculpting and design is generally good.

-----------------------------------------------------------

For other Transformers reviews, have a look at this page and this page

Support this blog by purchasing from Amazon using this affiliate link.

(As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases)

Upload - Season 2 (2022)

The second season of Upload is shorter at only seven episodes long. Despite the previous season ending on a somewhat big cliffhanger that tried to deliver a lot of shock, and this season opening right after, it feels muted and underwhelming. The twist is nearly immediately undone. From the first season, Nathan had died, and his memories uploaded into a digital afterlife, where he ends up falling in love with his “angel”, a staff named Nora. Unfortunately, Nathan was already with Ingrid, who, despite her narcissism, does genuinely loves Nathan, which makes the love triangle all the harder to watch.

Nathan had slowly fallen for Nora over the course of a season, and the feeling is mutual, yet despite this, both end up moving on from each other somewhat easily. Nora, having left her job and gone off grid, quickly develops feelings for another guy. While Nathan, having resisted Ingrid’s advances at first, does look to have started slowly giving in to it. This makes the relationships feel fickle and shallow, undoing what came before.

This season is slow, and for most of it, it meanders around the more interesting subplot of Nathan’s death, in favor of just… other less pressing side plots. It reveals a bit more of the AI world and how it functions. The worldbuilding is appreciated since there are still a lot of unanswered questions. It continues to play into the nickel and diming of the uploads in this digital afterlife, since they are still paying consumers after all. It shows the result of excessive greed from capitalism, such as updates and patches to the digital afterlife. However, some parallels still don’t quite work when it feels too much like the real world in some things (like the physics), but not in others (like… certain physics).

The focus is on the love triangle between Nathan, Nora and Ingrid. Ingrid is struggling to keep Nathan’s attention onto her, which can be kind of sad. While Nathan is only staying with Ingrid through immense guilt. On the other hand, Nora has misunderstood Nathan’s actions and ends up changing her allegiance to work against the system. These are all typical plot points where each decision is not black and white. The “good guys” are doing bad things, and the “bad guys” may not be so bad. However, this means that after the glamor of the unique concept (being able to upload your consciousness and live a digital life) wears off, this is a somewhat generic show.

Some of the side characters get their fair share of limelight, and you might say that it may be too much in certain episodes. These can be funny but a lot of times, these scenes are distractions that are too unrelated to what’s currently going on and are too far removed. It feels like these side characters might have had too much attention placed on them as they do not feel central or necessary to the plot.

After meandering for most of the season, the last two episodes carries some heavier stuff. There is big progress made in the subplot of Nathan’s death. In the earlier episodes, he had been slowly getting his memories back and piecing together what happened. Towards the end of the season, we finally touch on the reasons why. Equally important, we get a resolution with Nathan and Ingrid’s relationship, and of course, the season ends with a cliffhanger, but one that’s expected, and given how last season’s cliffhanger was resolved, we can guess what is probably going to happen.

Overall, the second season of Upload is okay. The initial interest of the unique premise starts to lose its attractiveness, so the gap in the storytelling is more obvious. At its core, this is like a relationship drama, but even then, there are so many distractions that you feel that most of the season was wasted and nothing much of note happened.

---------------------------------------------

For other reviews, have a look at this page and this page.

Support this blog by purchasing from Amazon using this affiliate link.

(As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases)