SP Review: Our Church and Halloween - Story Four (PS4-PS5)

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Sturmvogel Prime
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SP Review: Our Church and Halloween - Story Four (PS4-PS5)

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This is the final stand.
Time to check Story Four of Breakthrough Gaming/ProjectSummerIce's Our Church and Halloween.


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Keep your Bat-wings crossed until tomorrow.
Same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel, same perilous predicament!


This is how you continue the story, busted, jailed, trapped and with Scott planning to conquer the world with his ghosts in this Doc Terror-cliché of a master plan.
Unless James and his friends have a plan, and a really functional plan...


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Looks like this key was left in this room 20 years ago.

Since Marie is smaller than the others she can escape of the confinement with no problems, as if there was a window or something. As soon as you take control of Marie, your first task will be to pick the key and free your friends.
This part of the game will involve a maze navigation in a loop connected 4 room maze. The good news is that the maze is not too complicated and you will find the exit and the key very easily. Right after that you'll take control of James and your duty will be to leave the room and find Scott before he escapes. Although you encounter him, he will capture Erin and you have to save her again. This is where the game will shift the gameplay to exploration and ghost fighting.



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Once again, we have the same battle mechanics from before.

The battle mechanics of this game are the same as Story Two and Story Three, but for this game they're rebalanced one more time as the enemies take even more hits and you'll take more damage, resulting in fights that will take 3 or 4 attacks to take a ghost down.
Something that I've noticed is that despite having two or three characters in your party, only James is the one who fights, defeating the purpose of having a team and a turn-based battle system.



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Next objective: Stop the ship.

After a few battles to obtain a boost of HP, you'll be on the ship, where the objective is to stop Scott from escaping by throwing the Anchor (Not the Anchor Unit, other different anchor), but you have to defeat the ghosts guarding those anchors first, because if you take down a ghost, throw the anchor and face the next ghost, the anchor you've threw will reappear again, probably a glitch that wasn't checked during the game's development. Fortunately, this error doesn't compromise the game's progression and it can be avoided by defeating the ghosts first.



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What's your backup plan, activate Metal Gear and escape with it?

Now that the ghosts guarding the Anchors were defeated and all the anchors have been thrown, it's time to take the steering wheel of the ship and stop Scott from conquering the world.
For his fortune, he has Erin to help him to move the wheel, but for their misfortune, if somebody other than Scott tries to control the ship, it will "crash with the sea". ¿How does a boat crash with the sea?, I guess they're trying to say it will sank into the sea which is more correct, implying some self destruct mechanism or something.



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If we don't make it.
We'll make it.
It's been an honor serving with you, John...


As you take control of the ship ignoring Scott's warnings, the screen fades to white and text takes control of the story, implying the sure-death of the protagonists on the attempt of stopping Scott's ship along with his apparent death.
This is the last time we will see James and the treacherous Scott.



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Looks like they've killed you off.

After the white-out screen, you'll see Marie and Erin talking about a memorial service held for James and Scott.
Looks like the game has just killed you off. But you know, I don't care, since the game was trash already and that means the game is over.



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For us, the storm has passed... the war is over.
But let us never forget those who journeyed into the howling dark and did not return.


Looks like this is the end, as we have this funeral on the top of a mountain as the Pastor, Marie and Erin think James and Scott are dead.
With a cutscene like this, it all points to "The End", Game Over and goodbye, right?


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Sorry kid, your videogame nightmare is not over yet.

When everyone thinks James is dead, the game gaves us the surprise of "He is still alive" like the post-credits ending of Halo 3 where Master Chief is alive in the half of the Forward Unto Dawn that didn't make it to escape, leading to the events of Halo 4. So, this might get interesting as we can continue with the game.



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Inevitably, humanbeings will soon face additional hardships ...

After this cutscene, the game ends on a cliffhanger, but unlike the other three, it doesn't mention nothing about "Our Church and Halloween: Story Five", just "To Be Continued" and it kicks you back to the title screen. So you'll be facing an inminent trash game sequel threat that we don't know if they'll fulfill or now. So, I hope it doesn't materialize, I've already had enough of these trash games.

Also, here's what the ending should be.


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'Nuff Said about all these games.

With the Our Church and Halloween story done by now, there's only a sole purpose for this game: Take all the trophies, and this time will be much easier at the point of you can get them in one run if you don't consume any apples until you get 5 of them, the rest is the usual objective cleared trophy and game clear. When I said it's much easier is because you no longer need to be on a hurry of finishing within the Target Time, because it will take you much more time to finish the game as it involves the player in more battles and time consuming activities like the key maze at the start of the game. Basically, this game is starting to look more like a prototype RPG as it has more complete game mechanics and rebalanced difficulty (no more random holes like in Story One), which is an accomplishment after all the trash I've saw in the previous three games.



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The new Ghost looks quite impressive for a shadow.

While the graphics and sound are the same of the previous three entries, not to mention the music is waaaay too low and I always have to climb the volume on the TV to hear the at least decent enough battle theme.
There's two new ghost designs which are a flat square that could easily be a card and the anchor guardians at the end of the game, which they look well animated as they retain the 3D-ish movement and rotation effect which indicates they're pulling even more of an effort on the game. As I said during my Breakthrough Gaming Arcade reviews, being a low-cost game doesn't mean you have to be horrendous with the overall product, and these improvements are a small, but worthy testimony of that.

In the end, we've saw how Breakthrough Gaming and ProjectSummerIce at least made more improvements to the "game" at this point by rebalancing the fights and making the game a little longer than its predecessors, and this is by far the best they've made.


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A horror gasp is not enough to describe what's ahead...

What happened Shizuka?

*Looks with horror that Breakthrough Gaming has released Get to the Top and two "Breakthrough Gaming: Bowling" games.*

They...are...still...releasing...trash.


*Cuts to a Halo 3 clip*
Arbirter: What is it, more Brutes?
Master Chief: Worse.
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