Arashi: Castles of Sin - Final Cut Review (FastLawyer)
Experienced on the Meta Quest 3
You can view my full review here: https://youtu.be/RAb60HBBBOU
As far as I can see, only one maybe two people actually reviewed the full game. There's a lot of negative, and positive, reviews of people playing this for less than 2 hours. That's a shame, because this is actually a good game. Now, people are free to write their negative reviews, but you're also free to take them with a grain of salt.
I was expecting this game to be totally terrible seeing the "Mostly Negative" review status currently on Steam. However, this is more than just a decent game. It's a pretty good game, especially if you're new to stealth-action games. This would be the perfect game for those new to the stealth genre. This game is very approachable and very forgiving. As long as you're not totally asleep at the wheel and able to be somewhat observant, you should easily complete this game. It took me around 9 hours to complete this game (taking my time to fully explore).
The best part of this game is all the toys you get to play with, including: bow & arrow, shurikens, blow gun, explosive bomb, smoke bomb, poisonous food (my favorite), and land mines (okay this may be jumping the shark lol). You have Haru, your loyal dog, who you can not only pet, but is also very helpful in taking out enemies. My recommendation is to have Haru sit in a spot where he won't interfere with your stealth.
It's very easy to stay in the shadows in this game as there's lots of areas you can hide in, including tall grass and many, many walls and general shadowy areas. You have an ability to view enemies around barriers that's on a very short cooldown. You also have a grapple hook gun and a ninja jump (short teleport). This game is easy mode. I do wish it had a higher difficulty for those wanting more of a challenge. However, it's fun using all the toys to do as many stealth kills as possible in as many different ways. I recommend using stealth as often as possible, because non-stealth combat is pretty boring. It's just block, keep distance, and counter-attack whenever possible. It never really changes except for the gimmicky boss fights. I did enjoy the boss fights, but once you learned the gimmick, they weren't challenging enough.
The game has great production values. Good voice overs, great musical soundtrack, and a nice enough story. Sure, the story is a played out revenge story, but it's still better than most of the slop that releases in VR nowadays. The visuals aren't the best, but it's also much better than the average VR game release, especially in recent VR history. The spatial audio is just okay, you can hear enemies approaching or leaving, but you can't exactly pinpoint them.
Overall, I had fun. IMHO, this game is much better than the average Steam VR release. I think it got a lot of hate, because of the early on locomotion issues which no longer exist. I also think some people had unrealistic expectations.
Rate 7/10. Perfect game for those VR gamers new to the stealth genre. Stealth hard-core veterans should pass on this one though.
I bought this game! If you enjoyed my review, please consider joining my Steam Curator group Oculus Rift Reviews.