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2025 Media Thread - #15

Detective Grimoire (4/28/25) -  Score - 6/10 In 2019 on a whim, I bought a game called Tangle tower. I was intrigued by the fantastic art direction and the Laytonesque mystery story that I had to give it a try. Upon playing it, I was stunned by how much polish this game had. Easily sticking with me to this day, Tangle Tower has made my list of top 50 games and I eagerly await the sequel.

After playing it I learned that it itself was already a sequel. Well, if we want to be technical there was also a flash game that came before that, but I mostly became interested in Detective Grimoire: Secrets of the Swamp. I bought it shortly after when it was on sale… and then sat on it for many years. Not for any good reason mind you, it's just the nature of how playing games can be. You’ve all been there before.

Having finally played it, it’s fine. Don’t get me wrong it’s a short but sweet mystery game. Very short, only lasting around 3 hours total. That said, all the whimsy I experienced in Tangle Tower is here, just a bit understated. The animation and art direction while not as refined is still just as charming. The same can be said about pretty much every aspect of this game. It’s a bite sized detective story and it’s clear they were able to expand on it with its sequel. 

Beyond that I don’t have much else to say. I would recommend checking this game out, but if you like it even a bit please check out Tangle Tower.

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2025 Media Thread - #14

Neon White (4/28/25) -  Score - 9/10

I didn’t know much about Neon White before it won a poll resulting in me streaming it on my channel. I vaguely knew it was a shooter game with a card mechanic and that the writing was not great. It didn’t exactly sound like a game I would like, but since it was on Gamepass at the time I decided it was worth putting on said aforementioned poll. Having played it and eventually beating it nearly to 100 percent completion, everything I just said about it isn’t very accurate.

Neon White at its core is a speed running game. Each ‘world’ is made up of short levels where the goal in most of them is to defeat all the demons and get to the end. You start every level with a katana but as you explore the level and defeat demons you’ll gain access to several other weapons, mostly guns. The guns function as a faster way to attack enemies compared to your sword, but more importantly they have a secondary use. Each weapon type has an effect that kicks in when you discard the card. For example if you discard the standard yellow pistol card, you will gain a second jump upon deletion. The result is lots of interesting movement options that let you blaze through the level. Since you can still use the weapon for a bit before discarding it though, you kind of need to figure out what the intended order of operations is in terms of when to shoot and when to gain extra movement so that you’re able to shmoove through the levels while still reaching the goal. 

The thing is that while in general you can run through the level once and be content, the beauty of the game is that it pushes you to improve. The short levels help a lot in this endeavor, but just how satisfying the game is to control is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. I famously am not big on first person perspective games nor shooter games in general and believe me when I say I enjoyed controlling this game even on a controller. I’m sure it is 100 percent easier on a keyboard and mouse to make quick movements for some of the shots you need to make especially when going for the fastest time, but the fact that they were able to make it feel good on a controller is impressive. At first I mostly just played the levels to beat them, not worrying too much about getting the ideal time. But the more I played the game and the better I got the more I found myself returning to past levels because “well I can definitely do this one faster.”

I think what’s nice about how it handles score attack is that I never really felt pressured to get the fastest possible time. While you do need to make some attempt as you will be gated from continuing if your rank isn’t high enough, the threshold is fairly generous. Getting at least a gold medal was good enough for me on most levels, with me achieving platinum on more than I expected. It very much felt like my choice though, the game never pressured me to be the very best. Heck I never even attempted to go beyond that to some of the secret rankings as that was a bit beyond me. The game even helps you out after so many attempts by giving you a general idea of the route you want to take to get a faster time. Granted from what I've been told, there are even faster routes for those who have mastered the game's mechanics, which is super neat how dynamic these levels can become. The game is just as much about figuring out the puzzle as much as it’s about performing the actions. 

On top of all of this each level contains a hidden gift, which to reach will usually take a different approach of moving through the level. I mostly enjoyed these well enough for that aspect of alternate traversal. Similar to how I felt with Splatoon 1’s secrets though, combing the level for the gift in some cases was very aggravating  especially the ones hidden in locations that are basically unseeable. When the gift was up in a visible location and you just had to puzzle out how to get to it, yea that was my jam.

Story wise, I honestly enjoyed it. I can see and did see where some of the writing could be viewed as too otaku core. But considering I regularly play games like Danganonronpa and AI the Somnium files, this was harmless in comparison to some of those jokes.You basically have a kind of visual novel style story being told about spirits in the after life that honestly ends up having way more meaning to it than I expected going in. Gifts can also be given to characters to unlock optional dialogue and backstory in addition to challenge levels. It serves as a nice breather between action packed levels and I ended the game much more appreciative of the story than I thought I’d be. It is unfortunate though that if you want the best ending, you need to get all the gifts. This is another factor in me wishing all the gift locations were easily found, but getting there was the hard part. Worth noting that the voice acting in this game is top notch, doing a lot of the heavy lifting for making me like these characters.

I feel like I’ve lately not been saying much when it comes to music and visuals because saying “it sounds great” or “it looks great” doesn’t really add much to the conversation. So just assume I think that here. That said I will say the music fits the vibes of this game perfectly and the colorful visuals do wonders at not only helping to make the fast paced levels not feel like a visual mess but also in delivering a game that sticks out compared to the slog of realistic shooters you see all the time.

Overall, if you find yourself as someone who likes speed running or likes games where the act of finishing the level is a bit of a puzzle, check this game out. This game has absolutely been recommended by people before but I’m not sure it was advertised in the right way. Either that or I wasn’t paying close enough attention.  I’m glad it won my poll giving me a chance to try something I probably would have overlooked otherwise.

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2025 Media Thread - #13

Wargroove 2 - The 41 Alliance + Mega Squad Campaign 2 (4/15/25) -  Score - 8/10

Wargroove 2 as you may remember was very much a game I was whelmed by. I loved Wargroove 1 but the sequel's additions left much to be desired, not to mention a story that spits upon the characters of the original. I think I gave it a 7/10 originally because I still enjoyed the core gameplay but in retrospect I would probably give it a 6/10 now. That is to say, I’m not a fan. However it does still retain one of the best elements from the first game, that being the robust campaign creator. It can basically be used to create a brand new full length campaign, though most people won’t use it to that extent. Most people aren’t SMXLI.

History lesson time. Way back in 2009, I was a part of a collaborative youtube studio with a group of friends called Crystal Star Studio. One of those people was SMXLI, who up until this year co-ran a discord server with me that could trace its lineage back to that very same youtube group. When Wargroove 1 came out he got very into creating a custom campaign for it. Drawing from our community, with its vast history full of memes and jokes, he crafted a story which used it as the focus. While some of the nuances of the story as well as some of the inside jokes will be lost on people not in the community, overall I think the first campaign is pretty incredible. While not every map was a winner, the humor was on point and when the map design really hit, it hit hard. Fast forward to 2023 and Wargroove 2 came out. For reasons only known to him, SMXLI decided the first campaign was so good he wanted to try it a second time. So began the year-long development of the second custom campaign. It’s bigger, longer and overall I would say it’s a success. I’m not joking, this game is like 40 hours long. Lots of time went into this project and I’m amazed his sanity remained intact. 

Let’s start with the story, which I’ll try to be vague about if anyone wants to play the game for themselves or would like to check out the videos of my playthrough. Since the game includes me and my friends, it’s hard not to love it. While sometimes the writing tends to over exaggerate characterization at points, (summer being more into candy then in real life or me listing indie games) it always does so in a way that is funny while still being true to real life vibes. Many times me and my friends found ourselves saying “they would say that.”

One thing to note is this game does continue from the last one. There is a recap chapter near the start which will mostly get you up to speed. This also resulted in some creative maneuvering to bring back some characters who were killed off in the first one. Who was revived kind of depended on who was still active in the community. The first one drew mostly from CSS, SM’s Mario trivia contests and the community at the time as well as the Discord server in 2019. Nearly 5 years have passed since then and a lot has changed. The sequel campaign better reflects the current community, which personally I'm glad for. Some people who were a cameo in the first game are full fledged main character status here due to their more active role in the server. That said, while most of the focus tended to be given to more active users, most people in the Discord server got some kind of nod.

Overall the writing in this game was a blast. For those not in our community, some jokes are going to make little sense but most of the humor I think transcends knowledge. You don’t need to know Summer to know that their shenanigans are funny. It’s just that knowing them adds to the humor. Plenty of the jokes also just poke fun at gaming culture or gaming knowledge as well. Plenty of meme and reference humor can be found and very rarely was I not laughing at some silly quip. On top of that, there are so many optional bits of dialogue to be found, many of which are still yet to be discovered. Similar to the actual Wargroove 2, this game also shifts the focus away from mainly playing as Blue Ghost to being able to play as many different characters. Gameplay wise this is straight up an upgrade while also allowing a lot more variety in the character writing. Narrative flow wise, I think it’s hit or miss. Without saying why, there is a section in the middle that I think grinds the plot to a halt unfortunately, resulting in that section feeling a bit more of a slog than intended. Some of this is due to some of the maps in this section as well, but any sense of forward momentum with the plot is non-existent due to the different perspectives. It doesn’t help that most of the game is a flash back. In fact after we finally catch up, by that point there is only a quarter of the game left. I’d argue that some of the middle section could have been cut out in favor of a more lengthy end game. Some of this might be down to personal preference as well. 

I think the bigger issue lies in some of the gameplay choices. Now to be fair, most of the blame is not SMXLI’s. Wargroove 2, as I've said, is a very flawed game. Lots of mechanics were added whether they made sense or not, and very rarely were the mechanics even capitalized on. In that regard SM has succeeded. Frogs, lumbermills, air troopers and krakens get utilized better here than they ever did in the actual campaign. I think in making maps more focused on a certain theme or limiting the amount of units you could use, it made these units and mechanics shine more while not feeling overwhelmed by them. I can not say the same about the item mechanic. In what is perhaps the weakest addition of Wargroove 2, the ability to equip items felt very unnecessary in most of the main campaign. While it mostly was added for the rouge-like mode, they still appear in the main campaign. In most of those maps, items felt not worth going out of your way to grab. Part of this is due to having to waste a turn grabbing the item from an adjacent space as opposed to landing on the item and auto equipping it. Wasting a turn doing this vs just attacking/placing your unit in a better position rarely felt worthwhile. This is especially true for items scattered way off in the far corners of the map. SMXLI, in his defense, does try to remedy this a bit. Whereas in the actual game it felt like the items were just there, he does try to integrate them into the story better in addition to having more thoughtful placement of said items. But plenty of maps still had items in far off places and he couldn’t really fix the wasting turn issue. Because of that, his solution in some cases was to have units starting with an item. Sometimes, this works out very well, like with the necromancer item, or items that just give some kind of boost to mini commanders. However the downside to this is that sometimes this is also applied to enemies as well, sometimes in favor of balance. Due to the game's UI, trying to see what item an enemy has and what it does is very annoying. On top of the fact that when added on to the many units Wargroove 2 has, you start to feel information overload in trying to keep track of what an enemy can do as you're making your moves. This comes to head in one particular chapter where every single enemy has a unique item already attached and new spawns will also have items as well. The result is a long slog of map that will likely have you being blind sided by explosions or extra tough enemies due to just how much information you need to balance. I fully understand what SM was going for here, but ultimately it was just not a fun time and was easily my least favorite map.

Part of that was also due to the bonus objectives the map had. New to Wargroove 2 was the ability to add an objective to net the player one of two bonus stars once accomplished. While I do like this over the speed based reward system of the first game, as mentioned in my review of Wargoove 2 it results in having to re-do the map over and over due to conflicting goals. SMXLI overall handles optional goals much better than that, with pretty much every map being possible to complete in one go. Though, in some ways this ends up being more of a detriment. Many times a map that wouldn’t be too bad to handle normally, became much, much harder when trying to chase after multiple goals. Sometimes the goals would require you to send units in a separate direction and in doing so, caused your forces to be weaker. You could argue that since it is optional, that’s your choice in making the game harder and that’s fair. And if it was just the goals it would be one thing. But like in the first custom campaign there is a hidden space that if landed on by your commander lets you read bonus developer commentary. Some of these spaces however are really far out of the way. Your commander tends to be a powerful unit that can be key to turning the tides in battle. So sending them on a wild goose chase to a random spot on the map can again feel like a waste of a unit. I think my overall issue here is since they all are doable in one go, a lot of players will feel desired to do it in that way. Resulting in a map that is 10 times harder than the intended way of playing. Add on to all of this the fact that SMXLI added back in the S rank from wargroove 2, being rewarded to players who complete the map in so many turns and it just feels like asking a lot of the player. Overall I think the problem is with how long a lot of these maps are designed to be. Having to re-play a map feels bad as a player when it’ll take multiple hours to redo. Ideally what I would have done is one of two things. Either make the maps shorter so that the harder goals are not nearly as tedious or encourage two completely different ways to beat the map resulting in two unique playthroughs. 

Which going off of that, yes these maps are very long. Obscenely so. I think due to SMXLI’s design tastes, lots of standard maps ended up just filled to the brim with enemy units. In most cases these maps weren’t that difficult, just….long. A few of these maps are in that middle section I mentioned, resulting in both the story and the gameplay just dragging a bit. Of course, for me specifically it was 10x worse. The switch version for whatever reason lags during the enemies turn, especially if there are a lot of enemies on screen. The result was that at one point I left for an 8 minute break and when I got back the CPU was just wrapping up their turn. There was no way to skip ahead that I could find, so it made already long maps even longer. That’s not to say that any of the maps are bad, just that they could have been trimmed back a bit either in size or number of enemy units in some cases. 

All of that said, there is a lot to love here. Compared to the first campaign I think the difficulty is overall much easier. Plus with the new check point system, it makes retrying sections more approachable. In the first campaign there were some maps that gave me hell, dying multiple times and having to retry maps over and over. Sure they were shorter than the sequel, but losing never feels good. Here, I only died maybe 5 times overall (give or take) and only one of those felt truly bad (the aforementioned item map.) Some of this was likely me getting better at strategy games but I do think overall Eric has made the game much more approachable to newcomers than the first one.

Part of this is also due to the many themed objective maps that offer a unique take on the gameplay. Easily my favorite part of this campaign is seeing the unique ways SM can take wargroove and change it into a unique experience. Some examples of my favorites are:

Early on there is a heist stage where you can tackle the map in two different ways. I really enjoyed this one and it was an interesting take on the double trouble maps from the first game. 

A fog of war map where you’re defending one point surrounded by enemies but you start with no ‘fog’ and when it does arrive the ‘fog’ turns on and off after the specified number of turns. This results in an interesting defensive map where you need to plan ahead while you can see and then defend during the moments of little vision. 

A map that makes good use of the frogs ability to pull enemies on to incompatible tiles and instantly kill them. Results in a very fun escape map.

A puzzle map where you move units to complete an electrical circuit. Literally just another genre of game.

A map where you choose what units you want from a set of two choices as you make your way up a mountain. 

A map where you collect sap and bring it back to your base. 

Literally a zelda game with mini battles.

I love how far SMXLI pushes this game and when he finds an idea that works, it really works. Most of the standard battles are also fairly solid as well. They aren’t gonna get nearly as much kudos as the innovative stuff, but don’t take this to mean most of the maps were bad. In fact if I was to be honest probably only 2 or 3 of the maps would I say I generally didn’t enjoy. Considering there are over 20 maps, that’s pretty damn good. Overall as a final project before retiring for good (maybe….) SMXLI hit it out of the park. This isn’t to say his efforts are flawless, but for a custom campaign developed by one guy that ends up being better than the actual game it was made in, having some flaws is a minor thing all things considered. Some of the issues aren’t his fault and others come down more to personal preferences. Still I highly recommend fans of Wargroove check this game out. Even without being in the community, there is a lot to love here and it’s easily the most impressive thing about Wargroove 2. 

Also if you do want to check out my play through:

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2025 Media Thread - #12

Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus (3/19/25) -  Score - 7/10

Let’s address the elephant in the room here. It’s hard to ignore that Bo has some of the same elements as Hollow Knight. Bo aims for a very similar visual style and heck even the main character of the game has a design structure that is very reminiscent of the knight. The point is artistically the game is very much similar to Hollow Knight. Gameplay wise, yes it is a metroidvania style game. But that’s where the similarities mostly end. 

Wait……didn’t I write this before….

Jokes aside, yes this and Nine Sols both came out last year. Around the same time in fact. But while this game in some ways is aping Hollow Knight aesthetically, overall it’s not really the same game…mostly. Unlike with Nine Sols I do think Bo tends to lean too much on adding things because other games had them. Hollow Knight tends to be borrowed from more than others, to the point of this game having an identical sidequest to Hollow Knight. (it also sucks in this game.) In most cases it’s mostly to its detriment. Nothing illustrates this more than it including a playable credit section…in which you can’t interact with anything. You can move and attack, but that’s it. It feels very much like it’s included just because it’s been done in other games. A lot of these superfluous gamer additions could have been cut and nothing would have been lost. 

Oddest of all though is that it takes elements from souls like games, when at its core it is far from one. Death has no impact here, with no penalty or lost loot to recover. Because of this the game feels like its focus is a bit scattered. It adds mechanics like badges and an entire second special attack that mostly go untouched. Combat aside from two battles is a fairly easy affair. To the point that to some extent I wonder if they’re even needed. The main meat of the game lies in its platforming sections. Bouncing with your staff and using your abilities to traverse environments is the bread and butter of this game. It mostly succeeds in this regard. I do think that when it comes to game feel, it takes a bit to get used to how the attacks and movement feel. But despite that I still came away with an overall positive view of Bo’s level traversal. When your pogo technique gets applied to fights it can be fairly interesting but none of the battles lean far enough into really pushing this type of gameplay to its limit.

Story wise it tries to be both more minimalistic in its story telling, akin to Hollow Knight. But then it also acts like you should be super close to these characters you meet. Several characters die and at the end of the game you end up in an afterlife area where you get to see everyone who died being at peace. And Uh, my reaction was basically “who are you people?” I barely had any attachment to any of them, and half of them died as fast as they were introduced.

The point is that I think Bo is a good example of a game whose scattered focus leaves it feeling just good and not great. It never really feels like it’s trying to be its own thing. Unlike Nine Sols that transcends its inspirations, Bo feels a bit tangled in them. It’s strongest element, the platforming, is never really pushed as far as it could be and that’s a shame.  Previous Blog

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2025 Media Thread - #11

Emio The Smiling Man (3/19/25) -  Score - 4/10

When reviewing a visual novel style game, in most cases I think the story for me ends up being more important than the game play. As shown with the first game in this series I was willing to overlook bad game play due to how invested into the story I got. Sadly a good or decent story can be hampered further if the game play and story hinder each other. Sadly Emio has this working against it in spades. I’m not sure where to begin with Emio but I think the best place is with the developers intent. Reading the Ask the Developers interview on the game, it’s clear that in wanting to modernize the game they wanted to make it more approachable. What stood out for me was that they describe the game as an interactive drama. I honestly think this is a great description for Emio, but not a good description for the previous games in the series. Which kind of hits at the root of the problem.

Emio at its heart is an interesting enough story with a super intriguing premise. That being the serial killer Emio. It seems to me that the idea of Emio, a serial killer that leaves paper bags with a smiley face on their victims, was an idea that struck a chord with one of the developers, Sakamoto. And I agree, the idea of Emio is very fascinating and it makes for a good story. If this was any other medium I think I would walk away impressed by the story being told here. Especially from the context of it being a thriller or horror story. While the mystery itself is a bit mixed (more on this later) the core themes of the background to the entire case are very poignant. Without giving much away, the themes of generational abuse touched on in the story and the commentary it provides about the bystander effect will speak to many people including me. Very compelling ideas are presented here and I wouldn’t fault anyone that came away from this story with a large impression made on them. The issue is, this isn’t any other medium. This is a video game, specifically a visual novel. A detective visual novel. A detective visual novel that kind of fails horribly at being such. I think in trying to approach the game more as an interactive drama first and foremost, the result ends up being a game where the detective aspect of it is just kind of slapped on. You could make the argument that I shouldn't be viewing it in the lens of a detective game and while I do agree we shouldn’t fit games into labels they're not trying to be, I don’t really think that’s the case here. Even ignoring the previous games in the series, the game play structure is still set up like you are the detective trying to figure out the case. You’re given menu options that reinforce this mentality. If the game wanted to be more of a thriller, the game play could have supported that in a better way.

On top of the game play dissonance, there is also the fact that they actively worked to make the game much easier to figure out the mystery. In the developer commentary they specifically call out that the developers worked to make the game less obtuse to figure out. Similar to the second game, Emio also suffers from mysteries being way too obvious, while anything that isn’t is impossible to figure out. The game resorts to just dumping that information on you, which is rather unsatisfying. It also feels like a lot of the game is irrelevant.The characters spend a lot of time talking to characters for long stretches that don’t in any way impact the solving of the mystery. Arguably they don’t even add much to the story itself but from a game play standpoint it just feels like a waste of time. Sure you don’t have nearly as many obtuse navigation moments in this game, but sitting through lines of dialogue with insufferable characters arguably feels much worse. Again, as an interactive thriller I could understand some of these scenes for building tension. But the game is constantly at odds with itself on what it wants to be, leading to it feeling disjointed.

At this point sadly I kind of need to talk about spoilers so: SPOILER WARNING As stated before, the Emio idea came before the game and is clearly the reason this game was even made. It’s also…completely irrelevant to the mystery. The mystery begins with a young boy found with a bag on his head, in the same vein as a serial killer over a decade ago. The assumption is that the serial killer is then tied to this current killing as well. So your team then looks into both the urban legend that’s very similar to the killings, the killings themselves, and the school mates of the victim. The issue is that the serial killings have basically nothing to do with the murder of the victim. Because the victim wasn’t murdered, it was a suicide. It was made to look like a murder in order for someone connected to the original killings to flush out the serial killer for personal reasons. This twist in and of itself is honestly great. The problem is the game up to this reveal has been two different flavors. 

The first is talking to the classmates and basically getting nothing on the identity of the murder for obvious reasons. In fact the characters basically figure out what happened  to the student halfway through the game, but are still hung up on it being a homicide. The second is looking into someone connected to the killings as well as the killer themselves. The issue is that again neither of these things is connected. The entire thing is set up as misdirection and even when you figure this out (which I did fairly early) it doesn’t change the fact that you still have to sit through your characters chasing dead ends. You don’t get to play detective, you are just following the characters chasing dead end leads because the mystery isn’t real. Again as a thriller story this works fine. As a game where you are going through the motions of a detective only to basically be misled the entire time… yea it leads to mixed results. To some extent this would be fine, wasting time can be useful in telling a story through interactivity. But the game really loves the Emio idea, it is the core of this game's identity. So it would be one thing for that plot thread to just be a dead end but the game also really wants it to be important. So much so that it takes everything you didn’t figure out about Emio during the game and just…..PLOT DUMPS A 30 MINUTE ANIME AFTER THE GAME CREDITS. No I’m not joking, a new mode unlocks and it is literally 30 minutes of animation explaining the entire backstory of Emio.

The crux of this game's problems is that its pacing is completely all over the place. It drags its feet for so long with no progress and then suddenly out of nowhere you're at the end and the rest of the game is just told to you. In part this is because they didn’t really have a mystery to solve involving the Emio character, but it takes up so much of the game's story. The end result is you get a mediocre detective game about a boys suicide attached to this horror story about generational abuse just slapped on at the end. And don’t get me wrong, it’s a pretty great story all things considered. But they weren’t making a movie about this Emio character or a manga or an anime, or even a horror game. They were making a mystery game and I think it fails because of that. A game of this nature only really excels when the player feels a part of the storytelling process. Sure there are visual novels with very little player interaction and they could have gone in that direction if they wanted to. But instead they took an existing series built around solving a mystery and put this idea into it whether it worked or not. The game wants to both be a Famicom Detective game while at the same time being a vehicle for the Emio idea. And sadly I just think it doesn’t really work and the interactivity doesn’t enhance the story here.

Take the phoenix wright series. I think the playability of those games is so married to the story that when you divorce them you end up with a weaker experience overall. Case and point, the Phoenix Wright anime is very much weaker in almost every way compared to the games. But with Emio, they literally just dump an anime on you anyway. At that point just make this a standard visual novel with little detective work involved or hell, make an anime. At the end of the day sometimes creators have a really good idea they don’t want to let go. And in the defense of the makers of this game, the Emio idea is really good. There's a lot of good ideas in this game when it comes to lore and story. But sometimes if something isn’t gelling together you need to make a change. If your shooter section in your game feels at odds with the rest of the platform based game play, then you need to cut or rework what isn’t working. And here either the Emio story needed to cut the detective game or the detective game needed to rework how the Emio story was integrated. Even if that meant not integrating it at all. I know a lot of people really liked this game and for those of you who did I hope you read this and come away with a better understanding of what you like in media. Because if this very core issue didn’t bother you, that speaks a lot about what you value in games. No game is perfect, and liking a game is merely enjoying the highs enough that the lows don’t matter. For me the poor pacing and mish mashed narrative were too glaring for me to enjoy it on the same level as I did the first two games. I value the mystery aspect too much and as i’ve stated before horror elements don’t do a lot to me. If the Emio character or spooky elements really spoke to you, well I could see that really winning you over due the impact it left on you. I wish I felt the same way because I do think there is a lot to love here. But for me, I can get that impact from other games that don’t suffer from these issues. If this is your first time playing a visual novel game you’ll probably walk away from it blown away and honestly, that’s awesome.

I went into the Famicom Detective games interested in Emio and mostly dismissive of the older games for likely not leaving much of an impact on me. I came away from them blown away by the first game, whelmed by the second and disappointed from the third. It just goes to show you that expectations can very easily be shattered. That said, I'm glad I gave them a try. Even Emio I don’t regret playing, I just wish I loved it as much as others do.  Previous Blog

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2025 Media Thread - #10

Rift of the Necro Dancer (3/18/25) -  Score - 7/10

Guitar hero style rhythm games have always been hit or miss for me. Classic Guitar Hero always felt like the challenge was in managing multiple buttons and less moving to the rhythm, since all the notes are shown ahead of time. In theory someone could just time stuff based on visuals and not based on the rhythm. I think newer games of this type don’t suffer from this as much though. Either that or I've gotten better to the point where I can play on more than just easy. Or Guitar Hero On Tour was bad….one of those likely. The point is, I think Rift of the Necrodancer is a good take on this formula. Trimming the number of lanes down to three really helps in helping me in honing in on matching the rhythm. But I think the bigger thing is it adds a bit of Rhythm Heaven style visual masking by way of the ‘notes’ being enemies. Each enemy has a different behavior, like some needing to be hit twice in a row or switching lanes as they make their way towards you. Because of this, while you can somewhat memorize what each enemy can do, in the heat of the moment matching the rhythm is way more important and helps you in dealing with the bait and switches. This is what I mean by visual masking, as it forces you to not rely on your eyes only. I really appreciate that the game does this. I respect it as a true evolution of the lane gameplay, even more than Theatrhythm in some ways.

But that said, this game is stupid hard. I don’t think I'm horrible at rhythm games but you need to be semi competent to stand a chance at this game even on easy mode. Especially if you bought this game as a fan of Crypt of the Necrodancer. That game has a rhythm component. but I don’t think it’s nearly a deal breaker to be bad at matching the rhythm due to the nature of that game. That’s not the case here. There were several songs I had to play on easy because they got to be a bit much. Though I should clarify that in most cases I could finish the song on harder levels, I just felt bad because my score was very low. It feels like the big appeal of this game is score chasing. Playing a song over and over to get the perfect score. Personally that was a bit much for me and the skill ceiling just felt almost insurmountable at points due to every song being fairly long. Compare it to something like Theatrhythm where getting the perfect score felt much more doable since not every song was a long slog. Even if I didn’t play on the hardest difficulty it wasn’t too hard to perfect most of the songs on my chosen difficulty. Meanwhile, I don’t think I got a single perfect in this game. It’s just very much a rhythm game for rhythm fiends. games fault so I won’t take points off for that. For a lot of rhythm lovers, this game will blow your socks off. It’s a fantastic game but your mileage may vary in terms of how into it you will get. That’s not a bad thing mind you, but to some extent I'm reminded of Them’s Fightin’ Herds, where the game was designed by fighting game experts and at times felt like it alienated anyone who is new to the genre due to the high skill ceiling. That was on top of being a colorful and cute looking game that had character designs that were appealing to more casual players. I don’t think Rift is the worst offender of doing this mind you, but I could see this being a bit of a shock to most new players. This is especially true for the Nintendo Switch only players who likely have only played Cadence of Hyrule (very easy comparatively.)

Beyond the main gameplay though, the story mode also plays host to mini games and boss battles. The boss battles are…fine. They’re quick little rhythm response sections where you need to hit the enemies in order to stun the boss and then attack. Most of them were fairly easy, though one had a very annoying section that felt insanely hard especially when compared to the final boss. The mini games are Rhythm Heaven inspired style games that would have made me still longing for a new one, but thankfully we’ll finally be getting one next year. They’re very cute and a nice breather from the normal songs, which are fairly lengthy. The story itself is cute, but it’s mostly there as just an excuse to move from song to song. It’s nothing that will change your life.

The music of the game by the way is fantastic. Literally no complaints here. It’s what you’ve come to expect from Crypt games musically and I’m here for it. Overall I think this game is a bit too much for me personally. It’s very well done but with the skill ceiling as high as it was and the songs being so long, wanting to re-play them to get good just felt like a big ask. Playing the story mode was a fun time, but that was enough for me. I also had some struggle with getting the input lag delay perfect, but that could not be the

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Watching All of One Piece - Summit War Saga

Alright, I'm finally here (and also caught up after this.) This is a big and heavy saga, so there is a lot to talk about here. Luckily due to the nature of it some stuff will be shorter than other blogs (like the crew section) and others will be a bit longer. But let's just get started shall we. If you missed my thoughts on the previous saga, please click below: The Thriller Bark Saga Standard reminder that this is written for people who also watched the arcs. Spoilers galore. Like seriously this saga more than any others has massive spoilers.

Music

So while there may have been some new background music, i'll be honest nothing stood out that much for me during this section. So we'll just be going over the OPs this time.

This op is very solid. I love the visuals, especially the character role call scenes with the explanatory text in the background. Lots of great character moments too like the devil fruit users being idiots. The song is also a banger (if I like it, the song is usually one i like). B+

This one is....weird. First off the first section is bizarre, but they clearly went this route to be able to include the crew in a way that didn't seem weird when you compare it to the current story events. So putting them in a odd dream like scenario works well enough. The visuals are fun, just considering what is going on in the story there is a bit of a disconnected mood wise. Especially evident when the OP gets to the war section and yea this song and those visuals are hilariously disconnected. But in a lot of ways I do think it works. The dichotomy is intentional and I do think framing it as what Luffy wishes he was doing and where he currently is really hits home how different this part of the story is. Not my favorite OP, but it's decent. B

This one suffers cause i just don't care for this song at all. It's also kind of whatever visually with most of it just being a bunch of characters showing off their power and posing. I do like the visual story telling with Luffy remembering his friends while chasing after Ace, but eh it's easily the weakest of the OPs here. C

The best of the OPS in this set by far. First off song is a banger. On top of that just story telling wise it does a great job of preparing you for what this leg of the story is. Luffy on the start of his two year journey thinking back on his friends and remembering them and the emotional high moments they've had is very good. His friends preparing themself where they all are, wonderful. And the bit in the middle of showing off Luffy's child hood is good and very cute. Just overall a good opening to cap off the end of the first 'half' of One Piece.

Arcs

Alright, uh there is a lot of here. A lot I want to say as well. I'm gonna try to not be too wordy, but there are some things I really need to talk about here for better or worse. One quick aside, yes the first Toriko crossover special aired during this saga as well. I didn't watch this one because it was never Dubbed. But I did want to mention that yes, it does exist.

Sabaody Archipelago Arc

I both have a lot to say for this arc and also very little to say. I think I'm mostly going to talk about this arc more during the character sections. Cause this arc is a whole slew of character introductions on top of a heaping helping of world building. So much of it it's a bit overwhelming. A lot of it is very good mind you, but it's also setting up for events I imagine will happen very far in the future. The start of the arc is interesting for me because I knew about the time skip. I knew they didn't reach Fishman Island until after the time skip. So the entire time I was just waiting for the shoe to drop cause I knew something big was gonna happen. I assume it was gonna happen near the start, but instead no the Duval stuff was really just a lot of building up to the actual shoe. The said, this section is honestly pretty great, if only because one of the funniest jokes in the show is here. The entire time I was like "why does this guy have it out for them" and when it was revealed, LMAO. The next section I love cause I love cool locations and Sabaody is a very cool location. Everything that ends up happening on Sabaody is fantastic to watch. Again tons of character which i'll get into later but the overall events just cement why I love the strawhats and why i'm growing to hate the government and the nobles. What follows with the smack down of most of the pirates is pretty sobering. You realize for the first time that our heroes are absolutely out of their depth and are not ready for the New World yet. But even still, it's heart breaking. Luffy watching each of his crew be sent away and his reaction at the end, just the start of a very emotional arc for Luffy. Very much enjoyed this arc though. It's paced very well, keeps you engaged the entire time and makes you super excited and intrigued for later events.

Boss Luffy Historical Special

Yea so let's talk about these specials quickly. They're all spread out, with two happening right after Chopper goes monster for the first time back during Enies Lobby, one later on during Enies Lobby and two at the end of Sabaody. All of them feel arguably a little out of place in when they show up, but I guess there used as mini breather specials after emotional moments. That said, they're...fine. It's cute seeing all the characters in a different universe, I'm big on alternate universe stories. But that's really all these are. I didn't find any of them super funny or anything, but they were nice. I feel like the biggest problem is they really don't feel like they should be included as episodes of the show, and as such they kind of feel out of place no matter when you watch them. I enjoyed them well enough, but mostly I did feel like I was kind of just watching them to watch them. So much was happening at the show at this point either during Enies Lobby or Sabaody, taking a break to watch an irrelevant section just feels off. That's about it, i'm extremely indifferent on these. Choppers outfit is very cute though.

Amazon Lilly Arc

I was very worried going into this arc, because Luffy up to this point can be a bit much at times. When he's good, he's very good but Luffy has absolutely had some dumb moments. And considering one of them involved a snake...yea you know I didn't want Snake 2. Luckily my fears were unfounded. I think the "guys have a mushroom" joke was a bit....uncomfortable, but besides that it's a fun breather arc while still driving the story forward. Amazon Lily itself is a fun location, and Luffy was the perfect person to land here (And thank god it wasn't Sanji.) I think though, anything more I would say here would be better served during the character sections, because Hancock is such a major focus of this arc. But yea, there isn't much else I want to say here. It's a good arc transitioning to the next leg of the story while getting us warmed up to a solo Luffy Story. And It excels at that, which I'm thankful for.

The Straw Hat Separation Serials

So for those that don't know, the manga has a series of stories that are told via 1 page per issue, usually revisiting characters from previous arcs. Buggy's adventure and the stuff with Koby at Marine HQ were both derived from these stories. Because of the reception to the Buggy episode (it was really bad) these ended up being phased out of being adapted for the anime. So like Camie was introduced way earlier during Hachi's serial story. It's unfortunate but considering the show already suffers from episodes breaking up the flow, I get it. That said these serial deal with what the other Straw Hats were up to while Luffy was dealing with chasing after Ace. Because of how central to the story they are (and will become) we got two sections of these, one before Impel down and one before Marineford. Overall I really like these. I care a lot about the crew and while i think this section of the story mostly works without them, by the end of it I was really wanting them back. So having these little sections of seeing what they were up to helped in keeping me invested in Luffy's since we got to see that our favorite characters were at least ok. I do think, we honestly didn't need to split these up into two sections, but maybe 8 episodes of these in a row would have also been too much. I think doing 8 before Impel down would have been fine though and maybe even ideal considering later decisions. As for the Arc itself, it's mostly just a chance for use to stay caught up with the other straw hats. The actual stories are, fine but nothing incredible. I think let's break it down by crew member quickly. Nami's is one of my favorites by far. The silly wizard land coupled with Nami's personality led to this easily being the most engaging. Franky's section felt kind of un needed. The most important thing is he landed in Vega punk land but the stuff with Tea Franky just is kind of whatever to me. Sanji hates LGBTQ and I hate him for that. Easily the worst section because....sanji suck guys, he never gets better does he. Good Sanji is a myth. Chopper section is so sad, since it's mostly just him trying his hardest and both the humans and the birds not listening to him. But it's very good to see him. Robin's section is bizarre. It's like she landed in another show. The guest animation obviously doesn't help in this respect. But they spend so much time on this bridge land, so much that she eats into Ussop's time. It's fine and I do like Robin, but I feel like it's a bit much for a side story plot. HERACLES'N (also Ussop gets fat) Zoro's section is, fine. It does make me like Perona a bit more. Clearly she is now Zoro's sister. Other then that, not much else to say about this one. Brook's is my second favorite. IDK something about these cultist seeing him as Lord Satan and him asking them to show them their panties...and then ALL OF THEM do. Like the Panty joke has never really been my thing but it's very funny here. Very great.

Impel Down Arc

I did not expect to enjoy this arc as much as I did. Luffy breaking into a prison by himself with old villains re-appearing. I expected to kind of just not being into it at all. But surprisingly, it's a really solid time. Heck it even improve my opinion of most of the re-appearing character who appear here while also introducing some of my favorite new character in this saga. I do think poison man is a bit...much. Like he seems basically impossible to defeat and not just because Luffy isn't strong enough. He mostly works, especially since we do get a breather from him, but I think he also just feels way to strong. The show has had a problem in general with needing to find bullshit reasons to explain how Luffy can hurt someone hurt someone who either can't be hurt or will hurt you more if you hit them, and clearly their setting up a counter to that. But they're not there yet so in this case Magellen just is this unstoppable force. But in the case of Impel Down, it does work. I just think it when combined with a guy in the next arc shows a lot of cracks in the world building that I'll get to in a bit. But beyond that, this prison is hell. Like literally. I also think it shows how awful the government is. These guys are really incompetent and yet they're also some of the most vile in how abusive they are to the prisoners. I love it then, that the queer community has basically formed their own community in here, hidden away from the overseers, defying them. Thematically it's really cool and from a story perspective it leads to the best part of the arc, where they actually break out of prison. In a lot of ways you could argue this arc ends up a waste of time since Ace ends up being transported anyway, but I think the characters it introduces or re-introduces are worth it. Plus I think it just is really well paced.

Little East Blue Arc

This Anime only arc is kind of bizarre. The way the Segue way into it is fairly flimsy, with Sen Goku's mention of Shiki being the only one to escape Impel Down being used as an excuse to start this loosely connected to the upcoming movie arc. Basically this is the first of several anime arcs that acts as build up for several One Piece movies, with this one being loose set up for Strong World. The thing is, the straw hats are all together here so like, none of this is canon. Still, it's a fun enough time. It does end up connecting to the movie more than you would expect, introducing monstrous creatures and how important East Blue is going to be in the movie itself. Wario and Waluigi are kind of lame villains, and I wish the Grand line members got to do more but it's a fun diversion. I do think it should have been placed....literally any where else but clearly they had to time it around when the movie was being released. As for the movie itself, I won't be doing any big write ups for any of the movies on their own but I will say it was a fun time. It's basically, like a lot of Anime movies, taking an existing arc's themes and applying it to a new scenario. In this case this is very much Arlong Park Redux in a lot of ways. Which, isn't a bad thing at all. Shiki is a fun if dumb villain with a very fun fruit. The fun monster creatures are crazy fun and all the Straw Hats are on point. It's clearly going over the top cause it's a non-canon movie and it knows it (All of the Straw Hats roll up to the enemy lair in suits and wielding guns INCLUDING CHOPPER AND ZORO) but it's really awesome. Highly recommended.

Marineford Arc

Alright, let's rip the band-aid off. I think this is the worst executed arc in the entire show so far, bar none. That doesn't mean there wasn't anything enjoyable here, or that other arcs weren't worse in other ways. But by far this is the most disappointing arc for me because it could have been incredible if the pacing, set up and execution weren't all flawed for various reasons.

Let's break this down point by point. - The placing of this arc is atrocious. What I mean by this is the scale of the battle, where characters are at any time or how much progress they're making is basically never made clear/consistent. Some of this maybe is worse in the anime than the manga, I have no idea but it was easily one of the worst aspects of watching this battle take place. Remember when I said that Enies Lobby's intro battle was great because you knew where everyone was and the gates acted as clear indicators of how much progress they were making? If only that was done here at all. The entire battle starts by having Whitebeards crew enter in the middle of the bay. Then it takes a billion years for them to exit the bay despite a lot of running across the frozen bay. We see the bay from above, it's not nearly that big. The result of this is it's hard to tell if anything substantial is happening. The marines spend a lot of the early war being like "OH no we didn't see this happening" and then just have enough time to set up counter measures because Whitebeard just takes too long. The battle has zero momentum because both sides just let things happen. None of this is helped by a lot of characters just....standing around not doing anything. Whitebeard I kind of get because he's the commander but what the fuck was Marco doing for half the battle. He got one scene fighting an admiral, and then I guess just fucking took a break while half their crew was killed. You know you can fly right? The result is this makes the Whitebeard pirates look incompetent. Like it takes until the end of the battle for Whitebeard to have a game plan of getting Luffy to Ace, but it feels like up until that point they have zero strategy. And you're supposed to be some of the strongest pirates in the new world? The Marines aren't much better despite pushing back. They also spend way too much of the battle just holding back. Literally the fact that they don't kill ace and have to wait for a god damn ceremonial execution is just...why! You turned off the cameras, or at least wanted to. What was the point? At least with the marines you can say the government is incompetent and cruel but still it makes the entire battle feel like high schoolers getting into a disorganized streets brawl instead of it being the 'war of the best.' Ultimately it feels like the point of the battle is just to have clashes that are cool in a vacuum. Oh Mihawk is attacking Luffy, oh Kizaru is fighting Marco, oh Hancock is fighting everyone. But when it's put all together, the whole thing feels like a mess. So many characters also just vanish for several episodes only to appear later to do a cool think. Crocodile is the king of this. Barely is in this arc but he sure does show up to do a neat save. I'm not saying we needed a Hunter X Hunter style break down of when everything was happening with everyone at the same time, but like....something closer would have been nice. Though going off of that.

-The arc in general feels like it's cool on paper but not in its place in the story. The idea of a war between all the powerful forces to cap off the first half of One Piece, yea that's a good idea. The issue is....we barely even know or care about any of these people. It's like we're watching the end to a different show. One solution to the previous point would have been to show multiple perspectives but the truth is Luffy is really the only character we really care about. There are others we care a little about like Iva and Jinbe sure, but like the story up to this point has mostly been about the Straw Hats. This entire saga is a turning point of the story it feels into dealing with the world as a whole and not just the straw hats. But the story hasn't done nearly enough leg work to support this up to this point. It's trying to introduce all these characters in the same breath that it's giving them their ending. And even the ones we know, we don't care nearly enough to follow their perspective in this. Would an episode of just what Crocodile was doing be interesting? Probably not in the current state of the story. If you only care about cool battles and cool moments at face value, this arc will appeal to you. But story wise it feels like there should have been way more build up to this if we were gonna spend this much time following a battle whose conclusion is largely irrelevant to us beyond Ace's fate. - Luffy really needs to stop abusing 'shorten his life' abilities. He does so to an insane degree during this arc and like it makes the emotional impact of any of his decisions mean less and less. Oh he takes more hormones to save his brother but it has consequences that we'll likely never see? Ok why even bother knocking him out at that point then? I get it, you want to show Luffy as both out of his depth but still show how much potential he has in impressing the big names. But like please stop using fake consequences to do so. - One Piece has not earned death. So much of the show has been really bad at showing when an attack is deadly, when someone is actually dead. Having so many fake deaths has not helped this at all. And I'm totally fine with them starting to ramp up the danger and make death an actual threat but you need to lay the framework for that. Having your ancient giant 'die' in battle, then come back, then 'die' again but actually who know kind of illustrates this point the best out of anything else I could say. It makes it so Ace dying kind of feels fake because you've grown so used to character surviving for bullshit reasons that you question why it doesn't happen this time. If up to this point no character had a fake death or character did die but not major ones that would make this work so much better. you'd be more blind sided that a major character could die. But instead you're just dumbfounded that Pell can survive BEING BLOW UP, but Ace dies despite being made of fire. Yes I get it magma is hot, it's still kind of silly especially how fast it happens. If you want to kill Ace and Whitebeard go ahead. But stop making characters survive attacks just because while other attacks kill people...also just because. Jinbe literally has the same thing happen to him as Ace but survives because....Honestly I literally don't know. I guess the wound wasn't nearly as big

-Oda wrote himself into a corner by not establishing Haki way way sooner. This was clearly retconned in and we're seeing a lot of growing pains due to it. They've made Logia too overpowered, having to have silly pokemon like weakness to justify them up to this point. But we're in the middle of Haki being introduced which is really just there to counter shit like that but it's not quite introduced to Luffy yet. The result is we don't know about Haki but Uh the Whitebeard pirates ABSOLUTELY FUCKING SHOULD. So should a lot of people. In Hunter X Hunter, Nen is introduced after the first arc making it clear all true hunters learn how to use nen. We the viewer then just expect everything to know that nen is a thing. One piece in comparison has like 3 different power systems and only one of them is well established. Devil fruits are well done, you eat a fruit you have a power and you have a weakness. Easy to understand, and we also get why not everyone will eat devil fruit due to the major weakness. The 6 powers in the Water 7 arc feel like they're proto nen but they really don't develop into much beyond what you see is what you get. It's hard to tell who can learn these but mostly just the marines. But also like not all of them? It's like you would think all of them just would learn them cause Koby is learning them but I guess the admirals don't need them? But Lucci had a fruit and still learned them so.....yea IDK. Haki meanwhile, while I'll get into it more in the next arc, is being positioned as something the strongest guys learn. Except it's never even after this arc made clear who knows haki. And while i'm sure they'll get better with it in future arcs, it's a major problem that they don't do that here. Why can't Ace use Haki? Or like he can cause he does as a kid but he just didn't train to learn more? Why? or did he and just didn't use it to defend himself? Does Jinbe know haki? Is that why he survived? Do any of the white beard pirate's know Haki? Does the Sea Prison Stone shut it off? I assume not so why didn't marco still fight without it? The result is it makes all of these super powers feel so much more amateur. If Haki was fully established and it's rules laid out then there wouldn't be all this question of why ever single character is suprised by Luffy using Haki, knowing its Haki, BUT NOT USING IT THEMSELVES. THEY GOD DAMN SAY THAT WHITE BEARD HAS COMMAND HAKI AND HE NEVER USES IT. Or if he does, it's never made clear at all. It's just frustrating and easily the most bumpy part of world building by Oda so far. - I'll say this here rather then in the next arc, Ace's back story really needed to be before this arc. In general I would argue we needed way more time with Ace then we had, but at the very least his backstory needed to be before his death. Ace dying and Luffy's reaction is heartbreaking but not having the full context takes some of the punch out of it. Fully getting why Luffy really wants to save Ace and Ace's feelings of low self-esteem don't hit as hard without that context. In fact the ace self esteem stuff just feels out of no where since the last time we really saw Ace besides his fight with Black Beard was him being a cool bad ass in Alabasta. All the stuff with Ace and Luffy is good but it just ends up being dulled a bit.

- The entire pacing of this arc is building up to Ace being rescued and when he is...he's then killed in the most uninteresting way possible. You could make the argument that that's the point, but I just feel that it ends up feeling like he died just to serve Luffy's character development and less because the story built to this happening in a satisfying way. All the previous things I talked about, how powers have been sloppily handled, how death has been handled poorly, lack of time spent with Ace just adds up together to just make the actual moment fall flat. Which sucks because I do think it's a good moment. Hence why I said this arc is the worst executed. It has a lot of good ideas and a lot of good moments but it's like pieces were missing or they were put in the wrong order. There is a universe where Ace's death hits me super hard and makes me cry but sadly that's not this one. Sabo's death hits me harder because it feel properly built up to.

It isn't helped that I knew about it going into this arc. I wish I hadn't but uh when you name and episode and a special spoiling this happening it's really hard to avoid this. If I didn't know maybe some of my issues wouldn't have felt so strong but I'll never know for sure. - Black Beard is an idiot. This isn't really a problem mind you but it is silly how he's built up as this mastermind. In reality his 'plan' was stupid and literally only worked because of Luffy. He should have just died to Magellen.

-Shanks you're not supposed to leave the OP.

-Buggy and Hancock, while I don't hate them here, felt like more wastes of time in an arc plagued with bad pacing and placing. Yes we get it Hancock you love Luffy yes we get it Buggy your an idiot. We don't need you guys eating up screen time.

Overall I hope I kind of get to the heart of what my problems with his arc are. Yes it has cool moments in a vacuum, yes the idea of a massive war is cool. But from a story standpoint it's a collision of the first half and the second half of One Piece not meshing together seamlessly and all the seams are on show here. For a show with such strong characterization, none of that is really on display here and when it is it wasn't properly set up ahead of time. I didn't hate watching it, there was some cool stuff, but ultimately I was more than ready for the crew to reunite at this point and move on to the future.

Post-War Arc

I mostly really like this arc. The biggest issue I have with is something I already mentioned during Marineford. That is that the Ace and Luffy backstory really should have been before Marineford. For two reasons, the obvious one being giving the moments in that arc proper context. But the other is by this point, I really wanted the crew back together. I really wanted Luffy to be with his friends or at least working to that happening. So while I really enjoyed Luffy's sad backstory I would have enjoyed it more if I wasn't a little bit impatient in wanting to move on with the future.

That said I love a lot of the characters in the backstory and it really does help us in understanding not only Ace but also Luffy better. It's a vital part of the story and I'm glad we finally got a look at Luffy's childhood and what family and friends really means for him.

The part after that is just good. Like in reality not much happens in all the crew making their plans for 2 years but for me it was what I needed. I needed to see my guys, I needed to see them rushing to help their captain. I needed to see them realizing Luffy's message and then changing their plans. It just felt very cathartic after so many episodes of action after action to just have my silly little crew wanting to be friends together.

Also finally we get a little bit of explanation on Haki. Armament Haki, observation Haki and Conquerors Haki. I do feel like making Conquerors Haki only be based on birth is a little silly but I get it, we want these powerful characters to have a bit of justification on why they're the best. It also I think adds into the whole birthright vs found family aspect One Piece has going on so I guess that's fine.

As for the other two, the retcon to end all retcons. Going forward I think it will lead to some cool stuff but yea it makes you question why some people didn't have Haki up to this point.

But yea this is mostly a good cool down from the last arc and made me super excited to jump into the next arc.

Characters

Ok, there is like too many to count here so i'll do my best. I won't cover everyone (Squard is stupid but also too inconsequential to get his own segment) but i'll do my best to talk about the guys who stood out to me. If a character gets a picture either I really like them or really hate them.

New Characters

Duval is so stupid but damn it I kind of love him. Has a really stupid joke attached to him and then goes on to be actually one of the best characters ever, helping the Straw Hats in finding Camie and then protecting the Sunny for 2 years. A real bro.

Camie and Papagu are fun enough characters but they don't do much in this arc other then solving as pieces to move the plot along. I don't hate them mind you but they're important enough that I need to mention them even if they don't stick out much to me.

Rayleigh is awesome. Like I love the old master trope, and he's one of the best. His voice actor is doing a lot of heavy lifting here in english but I just lover his nonchalant personality. Nothing phases this man, and he's going to be a good mentor to Luffy that's for sure. On top of that we get more world building since he was Roger's first mate. Also learning that Crocus was also with Rogers crew is insane and I'm interested to learn more about Roger found. Also since she's connected to him, Shaky is cool.

Law is easily the character I want to see more from. He's super cool, I love his personality and his power seems super neat. I want to know more about why he saved Luffy and more about him in general but I would be shocked if we never saw him again. Very cool dude.

We love Bepo.

So this section in general will just be about the supernovas in general. They're all neat enough and I like them adding more pirates that are on a similar level to Luffy since it will make future arcs way more interesting having more than just the emperors to contend with. Kid is by far the most interesting of the bunch but I'm glad we do get to see a bit about what all these guys can do, like Bonny's age powers and Kid's magnet powers. As individual guys I'm waiting to see more but as a group it led to making sabody a really cool bit of world building, making the world seem bigger than just what the Strawhats saw. Also ancient Zoan first introduced, which is fun.

Fuck all the Slavers

Fuck Charlos. I know he's supposed to be hateble but like, I really hate this man. One of the best punches in the show.

Speaking of punchable faces, this fucker. While not the worst admiral, he's no Aokiji. This man's stupid face and stupid attitude while just killing people makes him immediately hate able.

His nephew meanwhile is kind of whatever, leaving very little impression. Yes he has insane robot Kumas but this is the guy that's the most dangerous by far.

Amazon Lily in general has a great cast as a whole but none of them really stand out on their own. Hancock is also a character I'm kind of mixed on but I mostly like her enough that I did want to talk about her. I did hate her at first with how she treated her people, but her backstory is awful and her falling in love with Luffy is kind of funny. If Luffy wasn't the most asexual person ever it wouldn't work but while the marriage joke can happen a bit too much, for the most part it's funny. I'm still not the biggest fan of her, but I do like her more than I hate her. I also think Granny Nyonn helps because her reactions to Hancock are pretty funny.

This lady though, I hate her. I hate her so much. I know, she's a random Amazon Lily NPC and you probably don't remember her. But I hate her. Her stupid face, her stupid face, every line she says is grating and mocking. Easily my most disliked background character.

His name is Heracles'n! Also most of the characters in the Straw Hat serials are just whatever, but shout outs to the silly wizard man as well.

Most of the villains in Impel Down are, fine. I'm not the biggest fan of any of them and I hate how awful they are as people, but that's kind of the point. This man though, I kind of don't like Hannyabal. He spends most of the arc wanting the warden position and doing nothing to deserve it. Yes that's the point but it gets old after a while. He also has a punchable face (this entire saga has so many punchable people.)

The best of these guys is clearly Magellen, since the sadist and the weird small imp man are either too weird or forgettable. But even then they spend way to much time on his diarrhea so like yea not really big on any of these guys. Impel down is good because of the prisoners and just the escaping in general and less because of any villains.

Iva is great. If you told me One Piece was adding Dr. Frank-N-Furter and they were one of the best characters I wouldn't believe you. I do think injecting female hormone in some random prisoner and guard is a bit...questionable but overall this whole section of this arc is great. Just people who want to be who they are and that's fantastic. The fact that they're a revolutionary and we finally get some pay off to Luffy's dad being Dragon which is the cherry on top. Iva along with two other characters really helps in filing the void of Luffy missing his crew. Also Izuma is awesome as well even if they don't do too much. But i'm sure we'll see them again.

Jinbe is so good guys. Like best new character by far and I can't wait until he joins the crew (yes I know this.) Acts as kind of a father/older bother figure to Luffy and watching him grow to respect Luffy and Luffy listening to him and loving having found a new friend is just so good. The fact that my dude got himself arrested over protesting what killing Ace would do for the sea just already sells me on him but then you give him fishman karate as well! When he joins the crew, he's gonna be very high on my favorite crewmates list, that's for sure.

Why is Oars Jr. real. Like I legit think Oda just wanted to draw more ancient giants because, why is he here. He just feels so unnecessary and also has one other giant flaw. The fact that we need a flash back to him loving his hat Ace made for him to care about him at all hits home how much in general we as viewers don't really care about the White Beard pirates because we barely know them. As for the White Beard crew in general, they're fine but again I don't really care much for any of them on an emotional level. I do like Marco the most of them but again dude just fly up to Ace. You can do it. I also like that mystical Zoan is a thing too, they're really working to make Zoan better than Logia now since they made logia too op.

I loathe this asshole. Like there have been plenty of characters I have hated in this show, sure but this guy. This guy not only is key to making me not like a big moment of the show (ace's death) but he has the most punchable face to end all punchable faces. Guys is one of those fake justice guys who just uses it as an excuse to hurt people and they're the worst. Also his power is stupid. "Oh we already have fire but we want fire for one of the admirals? Ok well here is hotter fire." I hope he dies.

Dadan is the best mom. I love her, and her reaction to Ace's death is heart breaking.

I really like Sabo. Like a lot more than I expected. His entire family is awful and he's horrified by it. His death affecting Luffy and Ace so much also make him way better story wise then anything during Marineford.

The Old Guys

Ok so, no pictures for this section just because there are so many and I already had too many during the new characters section. But have a picture of white beard to represent this section (cause he's old, get it)

It's really cool seeing Hachi come back. He was easily the best of Arlong's crew and seeing him turn over a new leaf is wonderful. I hope we see him in the future as well and i'm sure we will.

Kuma is still an enigma but I believe he must be more of a good guy than a bad guy considering he basically saves the Straw Hats

You might be surprised but Buggy I don't hate Buggy here. I'm still not the biggest Buggy fan, but him stumbling his way into being a famous pirate is kind of funny. It also helps that he spends a lot of time with another character.

Mr 3, holy shit Mr. 3. Apparently I didn't hate him in my Alabasta blog, but he wasn't a character I was like that attached to. But here, hes so good. Pairing him with buggy and making Wax like one of the most useful powers in the show is just so funny in a good way. The fact that he's the reason that they even save Ace is just the cherry on top. I did not expect Mr. 3 to be one of my favorite characters but I love this dumb wax man.

That said, Bon Clay is the MVP of Impel Down by far. The only reason anyone escaped and went above and beyond to help Luffy. In an arc where Luffy was devoid of friends, a familiar face who was friendly with Luffy when they last met was just what he and we needed. Just like Mr. 3 I like him so much more in this arc and I really hope he survives because Bon Clay should join the Straw Hats.

Whitebeard finally gets to show we he's a legend, and it's worth it. Despite my gripes with Marineford as a whole, Whitebeard is awesome. He has a great power, amazing presence and his death speech is on par with Rogers. WhitesBeard's death also isn't nearly as bad as Ace's because his legendary status does enough to make his death leave an impact on us even if it's not on a personal level. We know he is a legend, the world has made that clear and it's also clear his death will leave an impact.

Sen Goku sucks. He's a slimey asshole and even if he means well I hope he dies. His stupid buddah form is over hyped also considering it does nothing.

My heart breaks for Garp. Again I do wish we had the backstory before Marine ford but I do think they do a good job of showing Garp's thought process throughout all of Marineford. Ace and Whitebeard's relationship feels a bit thrown together but Garp at least had some build up in Impel down, and the scene of him sitting next to Ace while the battle is going on, it's good. I'm curious where the story will take Garp but while he's maybe not the best grandpa, he heart is in the right place.

Koby has a really good moment but he also spent most of it realizing that he was not prepared for Marineford. This is a metaphor for how the show didn't do enough to set up marineford. I do think his moment near the end of the arc makes up for it though and i'm curious what he'll do in the future.

Oh right Smoker came back.....that was cool.

OH and the seven warlords uh.......yea they sure were. I will say Doflamigo I'm the most curious about by far. What is his power, what is his end game, who is he working for? The others were just kind of....what you would expect.

No but really why was Shanks out of the OP?

The Crew

Luffy

Luffy is at his peak during this arc. This is his big character arc and despite any problems I have with any of the arcs, Luffy is good through out it all. All of the character development that will come from this or will come from it will be awesome and while I've liked Luffy from the start, I really like Luffy now. His want of friends and why that is just really makes him more relatable and I would say not is the first time he's become more than just a Goku clone. Luffy gets not one but two heart breaking moments here....actually maybe three, which will make his eventual rise to being stronger than ever even more satisfying. Go get your friends Luffy.

The Rest

Look, the crew is all in this and they all do funny stuff in their own islands but overall, none of them stand out more than the others. They kind of act as a collective in this saga and that's fine. Not much else to say here that I didn't say during their serials.

Crew Ranking

Chopper > Luffy> Brook > Nami > Ussop > Franky > Robin > Zoro >>>> Sanji

Yea basically Luffy goes up, some of the others switch slightly but they're also mostly all really good still since we don't get to see much of most of them. Fuck sanji though.

Mysteries and Questions

Ok I do have a few here this time so let's jump into it. 

- What are awakened Zoans? They never explain this. Does this mean Chopper is gonna lose his brain? I don't want him to lose his brain. These guys in impel down were personality less, don't do that to my boy. 

-Why was Bonny crying during the war and what connection did she have to White Beard? Also what will happen to her during the time skip.

-What is the One piece? We know it's real sure but it can't be just a treasure. There is enough foreshadowing that it is connected to the stuff Robin's people figured out so is it like a weapon? a Crown? a giant plug to drain the ocean?

-I want to learn more about the revolution in general. 

-What purpose is Smoker gonna 

-What happened to Morria. Is he dead?

-Will Akoigi become the new fleet admiral? part of me doubts it, he's too questionable in terms of loyalties.

-Who will become the new emperor. I assume Blackbeard but it could be one of the supernovas. 

- Did Sabo survive? I think he did, Its heavily implied Dragon saved him. If he did, he has to see Luffy again right?

-So this is the first time a devil fruit user has died that we've seen right? So my question is will Ace's fruit come back? I imagine it might but we've never really dealt with this before.

-WHAT THE HELL IS D? I WANT TO KNOW THE SECRETS OF D. My thought is maybe it's based on reincarnation of some sort of they're descendants of an ancient race but I really don't know. It does seem to be passed on to children but maybe that's not fully true.

- Why can Blackbeard have two powers? Is it because of his D Body?

Final Thoughts

This is a very highly emotional section of the story. Is it my favorite? Probably not but it's very important clearly. I do like a lot of what was done here, and while I think the execution is very messy, Its still One Piece. It's still enjoyable and I very much look forward to the future. Even if the future has a worst hat. Also since I've made it to the time skip, here is a bonus tier list of all the arcs pre-time skip. If you want an explanation for placement, read the blogs.

[megafreak400]

Watching All of One Piece - Thriller Bark Saga

Quick turn around I know, but as I said before I have a backlog of these to catch up on. Luckily this saga is relevantly shorter compared to what came before and after so this shouldn't be nearly as wordy. If you missed my thoughts on the previous saga, please click below: The Water 7/Enies Lobby Saga Standard reminder that this is written for people who also watched the arcs. Spoilers galore.

Music

Ok we have two pieces of background music to bring up and then the OPs, all of which are bangers.

This is the song from this saga, easily. Not only is this a very story relevant song, but it's catchy as fuck. Everyone loves Bink's brew, it's a classic.

So this is one I'm not 100 percent sure was introduced here but pretty sure it was? The things is I know this song gets used later in the show, but I think it first appears during Zoro's fight with Ruyma. Specifically the part at 3:20 is the section I really love. Just another great battle tune to add to the roster.

Jungle P is a pretty stellar opening. Shows of the Sunny in all its glory and and let's all the Straw Hats get a bit of spotlight. Catchy song as well.

This one though, this is it. A remix of We are but like, it's so good. It also feels like a great celebrations of everything we've gone though up to this point and to some extent a last hurrah for how things currently are (relevant in the next arc.) I most likely my favorite OP of the show so far.

Arcs

The good news is for the most part there is only one arc here, though we do have a few anime only arcs to briefly discuss.

Ice Hunter Arc

An Anime only arc that I honestly quite enjoyed. It feels totally inline with the manga arcs, to the point where i would say this is the most canon feeling of these arcs. I know people love G8, and it's also up there but G8 doesn't have twins who are magnetic because...well they're twins. It just feels totally in line with the shows goofy nature. The entire sub plot of the rest of the crew trying to get the flag back without Luffy noticing, while a bit goofy, totally fits in with the fact that in reality these guys are all a bunch of goofy kids in a lot of ways. Most of them at least, Robin just loves to go along with it.

It's also a good arc to show off the Sunny a bit more. I feel like considering what comes up in the next saga and how little the sunny does in Thriller Bark it's nice for it to get a bit of a spotlight since we just got her. Also giving a tour of the ship is especially nice. I love that Chopper is super excited over his Doctors office. The villains in this arc are fun but honestly until writing this I totally forgot there was phoenix pirate captain and his crew involved as well. So those guys are kind of forgettable.

Overall, it's a fun time and while taking it away wouldn't be a big lose I am glad it was here.

Thriller Bark Arc

So I think I like Thriller Bark way more than most people. You would think with some of the worst villains in the show and being heavily zombie theme that this arc wouldn't be my cup of tea. But IDK man maybe it's simply because it's a funny silly action arc between two very high emotional arcs, but I thought this was a blast. Most of the Straw Hats (MOST) are very funny here, and the introduction of Brook alone I think would make it a win for me. Jokes wise I honestly think it might be one of the funniest arcs. Luffy pushing the Zombie back into the dirt, Franky building a bridge out of nothing, the stupid Straw Hat megazord. I think my favorite bit is Ussop, Name, and Chopper hiding in Kumashi's back and never getting spotted, especially Chopper. And Ussop, holy shit Ussop. If you think he was good in the last saga, he's incredible here. Easily the best Ussop moment in the entire show here. Moria is such a weenie that I think the Staw Hats can be a bit silly and it not be as annoying. I'm not saying there were no stakes but I think compared to every other big arc that stakes of "we need to get our shadows back" is way lower than a civil war or your best friend being ripped away forever.

I do think Moria's power is super interesting for creating the conflict. How the shadows work in making the zombies makes for some interesting scenarios and fights. Fighting an ancient giant with Luffys brain is just something you would only see in this context. I think the threat of Oars is a good one for this arc as well. Again he's a legit threat but he's also stupid as shit for most of it because he's part Luffy. I love the ending though where while yes, Shadow Luffy is needed to soften Oars up, watching the entire team work together to finish Oars off is a delight. I 1v1 battles, don't get me wrong but I love a good raid boss as well. We haven't seen the Straw Hats working together to take down one foe much at all up to this point, so it's great to see it here.

I'll get to a lot of the other stuff I like during the character sections, like everything with Brook, but overall Thriller Bark is fun. It has some really bad parts (everything with two specific characters) and most of the villains are kind of annoying personality wise, this is true. But for me the highs were enough to over look those parts and I had a fun time doing so.

Spa Island Arc

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Ok but why is Foxy even back? Like legitimately he shows up, gets his ass handed to him and that's it. He's apparently working with the main 'villain', but like the 'arc' is only two episodes and he doesn't do anything really after his initial loss. Beyond the return of the devil though, honestly this arc is very whatever. It's not bad, just a very nothing arc. I honestly think the only reason they made it was to make the joke about the one girl thinking Chopper was a raccoon despite having a racoon dog. Beyond that the father character they flash back to is very boring, the villain is very boring, even the location is kind of boring. I guess it's a little breather before the next big arc but it's arguably the worst of those types of anime only arcs just due to how bland it is. It also does include an episode of Brook interacting with the crew and screwing stuff up. I do like the Brook gets an episode, considering upcoming events. Wish it wasn't him being bad at everything, but it's nice that he got some time with the crew.

The Chopper Man Episode

So this isn't really an Arc, but I did want to mention this episode. Basically they took one of the Straw Hat Theater shorts, The Chopper Man one, and made it a full on show. Very rocky and Bullwinkle like in its world, it's a cute silly special episode. Again nothing incredible but I love Chopper so I won't complain about Chopper getting his own mini spin off.

Characters

Same deal as last time

New Crew

Brook

I think Brook gets the best introduction of any Crew member. You already like him before learning his back story and I think most of the other members can't have that be said about them. Some of his jokes aren't really my thing, and the not having ___ joke does get used a bit too much at times, but personality wise he's one of the more vibrant crew members. I like that he kind of has an edge over the Straw Hats at first in dealing with Thriller Bark due to his knowledge. It gives him this powerful air to him which is pretty neat. And while his sword skills are cool we all know the real reason we love brook. THEY FINALLY GOT A MUSICIAN BABY. On top of that his back story, while being a big call back to a previous arc, is one of the saddest backstories of all time. The fact the mentally he's there at all despite all his trauma is incredible and i'm glad like him that he's still alive. The scene after the battle with Luffy on the piano is one of my favorite moments in the show. Just him reacting to learning his whale buddy is alive and remembers him. That he has something to return to despite it all. It's very good and peak One piece.

Saga Characters

Gecko Moria

Moria is ok as a character. He's lazy as heck and has a really stupid laugh that I kind of hate, but his power is cool. Compare to other main villains of the show he's one of the lamer ones but really its his zombie army that's the true threat. The thing is, despite being the big boss, I feel like we barely see him as a threat. Most of the arc is him lying around letting his zombies or shadow do all the fighting. He finally steps up near the end, but because of this you kind of just forget Moria is supposed to be the big bad. Especially when you know, Oars exists. Perona

Perona is a character who at first I wasn't big on. Her laugh is also a little annoying and her power to just make anyone depressed is more annoying than funny or something to overpower. That is until Ussop enters the scene. Then both her and Ussop are elevated quite a bit. I'll go into it more during his section, but Perona's reaction to the discovery is hilarious. I'm still not the biggest fan of her, but she is easily the best of the villains in this arc.

Hogback

Doctor Hogback sucks and has a bad laugh (so many annoying laughs in this arc), but like he's arguably the best villain in terms of being awful enough to want to defeat but not too annoying to watch. What he did to Cindry is horrible, and his whole desecration of corpses is fucked up. But at least during the arc he's mostly your stereotypical villain in terms of his actions. I think he's worth it to give Chopper his big moment of the arc, but while he's no the worst character here, he's far from my favorite.

Absalom is one of the worst characters in the show. Fuck this guy, I hope he dies. Literally nothing redeeming about this man.

Lola is fantastic, both the zombie version and the real version. I love her crew and how they step up to help during the final battle. I love her determination to not hide as the sun comes up and I love her friendship with Nami. Also her introducing the vivre card is kind of a huge lore building moment, so overall easily my favorite character of this arc.

Most of the Zombies are....fine. They don't really function as characters but more so things to overcome or weird facsimiles of our cast. Like sure penguin dog Sanji is better than normal Sanji, but I wouldn't really call him a character. The only exceptions I would say are Lola (who I mentioned) and Ryuma. Though Ryuma is still mostly just Brook just the fact that his body is a legendary samurai I do think adds to his mystique. Helps that Zoro gets a cool sword from him. But other than that like yea Oars is funny but he's also just big Luffy. Oh I guess shout outs to the monkey spider. It, existed.

The Old Guys

Really the only big one is Kuma, who was technically shown off way earlier. Anyone else who shows up from the past is mostly foreshadowing the next saga and not apart of the current saga. Kuma is a very interesting character already and I'm very curious to learn more about him. Easily the biggest threat to appear on Thriller Bark, but in the end he for the most part let's everyone go free. Some of his motives will learn in the next arc but even then it's hard for me to get a true read on this guy as there is so much we don't know.

The Crew

Luffy

Luffy in this arc is an interesting blend of determined to help his friends and his snake exploring self that wastes time. But in his defense the wasting of time isn't due to lack of trying or being dumb. He spends most of the arc fighting Moria's shadow or lost in the woods after being woken back up. But I think this is fine because it gives the others a chance to shine and again, I feel like the stakes are way lower here so its harder to get annoyed. It helps that like I said he is trying to stop Moria, he just isn't strong enough. This is of course the start though of the viewer realizing that despite how incredible and determine Luffy is, he's still very much a rookie.

Zoro

The one thing you can say about Zoro is he's mostly consistent. Like with Luffy and Sanji he gets taken out for the early arc, but then he gets his cool duel against Ryuma before joining in the combined fight against Oars. Most of that section is Zoro being Zoro, and while it's solid it's nothing that breaks the mold or stands out. There are only so many times he can do a cool sword move before it loses its wow factor. The big moment for Zoro is his interaction with Kuma. And I think for me this moment kind of fall flat. Well, the moment itself is good. Zoro accepting his captains pain to prove to Kuma he's worthy of being second mate and to spare Luffy's life is a good moment. But I think the fact that he gets better so soon after kind of makes it lose it's meaning. Yes, his wounds from this do come back to bite him, but I really think it should have been even more impactful. I think if Zoro was basically incapacitated and unable to move for the next saga, I think the choice he made would have meant more. Again its similar to Luffy shortening his life span. Like it doesn't mean much as a consequence if there are few consequences.

Nami

I continue to think it's insane that people think Nami is too afraid and that's her biggest weakness. Yes her, chopper and Ussop are scared at the start but to be fair, zombies man. But I think that kind of sells her a bit short. Most of the early sections of this arc she's kind of awesome. Befriending Lola, hiding in Kumashi, figuring out where the treasure chamber is, its good stuff. Unfortunately, Absalom and Sanji fuck things up. She spends the second half out of commission and while she's great at the end we just get way less Nami in this arc as a result. When she's good here, she's very good just we really needed that one whole part of the story just to make like Absalom and fucking die.

Ussop

HOLY SHIT, Ussop man. Look it's been no secret that I have not been a big Ussop fan for most of the show. I think understandably so. But like it's clear after his big character moment Ussop isn't the same anymore. And if Enies Lobby didn't make that clear, this arc will.

While I don't think Ussop will ever be my favorite, he is one of my favorite characters in this arc specifically. The early part is mostly standard Ussop, but you can tell he's different. Yea he's still afraid but he's a lot less quick to run and partnering him with Chopper and Nami let's them work together leading to some funny moments. But the second half, god damn. The reveal that Ussop is so hard on himself that Perona's negative hollow has no effect is incredible. The fact that he makes her hollows depressed is hilarious. The fact that she cheers him on due to his low self esteem, it's just all so good. He then goes on to fight her, and he wins! He wins with his strengths, using his tricks to get the better of her. It's so good and makes me so happy that Ussop has stopped trying to compare himself to the other fighters and instead is now on Nami's level of his fighting with his mind more than his muscles.

Sanji

It's weird Sanji wasn't in this arc, not sure what happened to him for several episodes....

Ok yea we know the drill by now. Just when you think he can't get worse.....like my god man. It is not that hard to write a likable character in this show. Why do they fail so hard with this man. Ok let's get the good out of the way...

So the thing is the biggest problem with Sanji in this arc is everything involving Absalom and Nami in the chapel. Everything involving the clear clear fruit and Nami is just, it's bad. If you though Sanji pining after ladies wasn't awful, I feel like even you could admit this was too much.

And the worst part is this is really all he contributes to this arc. He's out for most of the early section and while he does help fight Oars, everyone does that. If you took Sanji out of this arc it would literally be a net positive and that sucks. I want just one arc where he's good, please.

Chopper

Yea, yea, Yea, I know. "Mega, shut up about how much you love chopper." Look, I can't help it. If he stops being good I'll say so but like he gets to be a morally good doctor here. He gets to stand up for his believes, does funny stuff hiding with Nami and Ussop and also he's cute. I will say he does do less in this arc compared to some of the others, but every time he's on screen is a delight. Never sanji my boy, please.

Robin

Coming off of the emotional gauntlet of the last saga, Robin is comparatively more muted. But that's ok, it's fine to give her a bit of a break. She still had a lot of good moments despite that, her interactions with Franky specifically are fantastic. Other then that though I do think she is a little forgettable in this arc. But that's not really a bad thing just that she's taking a step out of the spotlight for the moment. I'm sure she'll be back in the future with some big moments.

Franky

This is Franky's first step into the lime light as a crew member, and he kills it. Like I said with Robin, he has great chemistry with her. I also think he has great chemistry with Brook as well. His funny building antics are great and he's arguably the most useful at fighting during this section of the story. Again beyond that I don't remember him having a specific aha moment. Most of this arc doesn't have many individual fights cause it's mostly zombie survival or the big fight against Oars. So because of that i think most of the Straw Hats end up feeling solid even if most of them don't really stand out. But that's totally fine for this arc, a good thing even.

Crew Ranking

Chopper > Brook > Ussop > Franky > Nami > Robin > Luffy > Zoro >>> Sanji

So the one thing to note here is that while this looks like a big shake up, it really isn't. Pretty much everyone except Sanji is pretty close in terms of how much I like them. The ranking more is about my thoughts of them during this arc in particular. Granted Ussop still gets a big bump as he is no longer stuck with Sanji, he's joined the good guys once and for all. And yea, still some Chopper bias but sue me.

Mysteries and Questions

Same deal as before, since I'm behind on writing these, but there is two things i'm still wondering. - Everything involving Kuma. Like he's the most mysterious character at this point, there is so much more to learn about with him. - Who Lola's mom is. There is no way this isn't going to be important when we get to the new world, it feels like the vivre cards are pretty important plot points considering what we learn about Ace here.

Final Thoughts

This saga is a fun breather saga before the next saga dives into some really heavy world building and trauma. And I'm glad it exists because while there are some iffy parts of this arc, the good out weighs the bad and the end result is a fun arc that allows us to relax for a bit. I'm excited to see where the show continues on to, but Thriller Bark, you were fun.

[megafreak400]

Watching All of One Piece - The Water 7-Enies Lobby Saga

Hi, I'm not dead I promise. The first reason is I got stunned locked for a bit, taking a long 3 to 4 month hiatus on watching One Piece due to a specific arc. After that though I basically got a bit backlogged in terms of all my blogs, partly due to real life reasons and then after wards because I just had too much on my plate I kept putting it off. Full disclosure at the time of writing this I have made it to the time skip. However I will be writing this blog based on what my reaction to things were at the time. For the most part writing this so late is only going to affect the questions segment, since I don't fully remember if I had any questions that ended up getting answered. Still I do apologize for putting these off, especially since this is when some really good stuff starts to happen in the show. Also because I'm realizing this will be useful for all my blogs, here are the previous write ups for One Piece (going forward I'll only post the last blog) The East Blue Saga The Baroque Works Saga The Sky Island Saga Reminder too, i'm not explaining the arcs, this is written with the expectation you watched that saga. So, spoiler warning. Also, this marks the start of the show being in wide screen. Just figured I'd mention that somewhere.

Music

The issue with this section for background music is that A: since i'm way ahead of when I watched this arc it's possible to forget when some new background music was introduced. and B: the longer this goes on with so many track continuing to show up that were introduced from day 1 some stuff can get lost in the deluge at times. So if a song really stands out background wise and I remember it being introduced here (and if I was wrong and it was introduced earlier going forward, don't get mad please) I'll still talk about it but this section will likely be mostly OP's and EDs. Well Ok mostly OPs after this post. For whatever reason the EDs go away, and for a long long while from what i've been told. So enjoy the last few of those while you can. So first off for background music, and both of these are bangers.

It's been a while since we've had a new straw hat theme (or a new straw hat in general) and this theme is fantastic. Up there with rubber wrecking ball, when this song is busted out you know Franky is gonna wreck some shit.

And here we have the theme song of the strongest character of all of One Piece. Perhaps one of the greatest songs in the show (it also had me laughing my ass off) The OPS in this saga are fantastic. I think all three of them are super catchy with fantastical visuals.

Opening 5 is incredible and a fantastic way to herald the wide screen era. Not only is the song catchy as hell but I think in general the animation made for the op is the best in a while.

Brand new world, the 6th opening breaks the curse of even numbered Openings just being...OK. It's one of the best openings in the show, taking what the 5th one set up and surpassing it with a catchier song and even better visuals. It's too bad this opening lasts for a very short period of time, being switched out before enies lobby is even half way through or so.

Crazy Rainbow is catchy, and cute too bad it has no significant visuals for the arc itself. It's not nearly as bland as OP 2 or OP4, not even close. It's just following two fantastic ops so it's gonna be a step down no matter what. But still a pretty fantastic opening. And hey we actually have some EDs that I really liked. This saga really is firing on all cylinders

This song isn't anything incredible, but it shows sad boat so I had to give it a shout out.

This one though is one of my favorite EDs. I love the fan art, the funny animation of chopper flying around and the song is a banger. It's also the final one for a bit, so this is a good note to end on.

Arcs

Same as last time, no summaries just my thoughts on each arc as a whole. There is two things I need to talk about briefly though. The first is Boss Luffy. Boss Luffy is a special sent in an alternate universe in the past, so like no connection to anything currently going on. All the characters from the show are in it just alternate past versions of themselves. I did not watch it at the time of watching this saga because i was made aware future Boss Luffy specials that came out in later arcs and I wanted to cover all of it one go. So if you're wondering why I didn't have a section on it, that's why. The other is the Straw Hat theater shorts. At one point in this saga they had a series of clip show episodes (More on that later) but at the end they had some cute shorts that are kind of similar in nature to Boss Luffy, but like, shorts. Basically the Straw Hat Characters in other timelines or what have you. Like one where they're all monsters, one where they're all house wives or one where chopper is a super hero. They're cute enough but nothing substantial enough that I wanted to do all of them individually and they don't really make up an arc in and of themself. I did want to give them a mention at least.

Long Ring Long Land Arc

Ok.......this arc man. This arc stunned locked me for like at least the entire winter. It didn't help that work was awful this winter due to how bad winter was for us this year (resulting in my hotel being way busier due to and uptick in winter recreation). On top of Skypia, while being ok, not being an arc that really pumped up my desire to consume One piece, this arc being the first one after the last saga just killed all desire for a bit. Which sucks because the land itself is fantastic. I love the long island with the long animals. They're very funny and I will never not laugh at mooooooooole. The issue is what takes place on that island. Foxy might be one of the worst character in the show, or at least the one you groan every time you see. I'll get into him more in the character section, but him and his dang pirate just, suck all joy out of One piece. He's ugly, not funny and just wastes time with his pointless cheating. Toei absolutely made this worse since i've been told they doubled the length of this arc because for some reason they love Foxy. It's like if you took team rocket from pokemon and all their annoyance you can have at them for derailing the current episode, but take out anything redeeming about them. That's the Foxy pirates in a nutshell. I think my biggest problem though is that this entire arc is centered around the possibility of Crew Members leaving the crew due to the nature of the Davy Back Contest. But the entire arc is also spending it's time having the straw hats lose to dumb cheating or shenanigans, trying to be funny and light hearted. But when you introduce the consequence of "you're favorite character is gonna to be gone forever" into the mix it's not funny when Foxy makes them lose a race by freezing them in place. Having chopper cry as a result does not make me happy. It makes me very very angry in fact. Couple that with the next game being Sanji and Zoro arguing while the Foxy Pirates Cheat that way, Yea I wasn't really feeling this. The worst part is you know the status quo is going to be reset at all of this. We know none of the crew leave and that none of Foxy's crew joins the Straw Hats. So it just feels like a waste of everyone's time. Sure it's the journey, not the destination that matters most of the time, but the journey isn't enjoyable. So you can't even be like "well this is rough but they'll come out of it better" because no, things just reset back to zero. It's even dumber because the Straw Hats are looking for a ship wright. And Foxy has a whole dang gaggle of ship wrights. Luffy wins Foxy's entire crew and just.....let's them all go. It just all sucks. Again the arc being doubled didn't help matters. Ironically, the anime only stuff I feel are the better games at least. From my understanding the boat race, the Groggy ball game and Luffy vs Foxy are all in the manga. And while parts of Luffy vs Foxy are cool (like how he wins) I just didn't think the afro gag was funny at all (except Robins reaction to it cause I love Robin) and it was after this arc had already dragged on way too long. The roller blade section (in which they win chopper back before Luffy is stupid and excepts a second round of games) I thought was the highlight. The Straw Hats are work really well here and the cheating isn't nearly as frustrating. The red light green light was mostly funny as was the dodge ball game. This is despite those two taking place in the second set of games. But still the whole thing took way too long and while there are some good character moments with the Straw Hats, it's not worth putting up with Foxy and his stupid slow slow beam. Good thing we never have to see these guys again.

Ocean's Dream Arc

This is an anime only arc based on a video game....yes you read that right. Honestly though, this is one of my favorite anime only arcs I think. For a few reasons. 1: It's not that damn Foxy 2: Robin being the only one to not lose her memories I think is really good for her character growth and a great lead up to the upcoming arcs in hindsight. Robin has kind of been somewhat distant from the crew a bit compared to other members, so getting moments like this where she's trying to keep the crew together despite not even having as many memories of each other as the rest of them is great stuff. 3. Seeing how characters react despite their lost memories really reinforces their character arcs and strength of character. Or in one case lack of one. Chopper despite it all still believes in Luffy, really hitting hard how much Luffy accepting him meant and means to him and how much Luffy inspires others like Chopper. Nami goes completely off the rails, which really hits home how much her character has grown because current Nami wouldn't be acting anything like past Nami. And Ussop....really doesn't change too much. He also is hesitant to believe in Luffy (when Luffy gets his memories back) but it's not because of his character growth like Nami but lack of growth. He still has overly low self esteem about his abilities but also it shows there is this divide between him in the crew that exists even when he has his memories. This arc is great at the time and fantastic in hindsight. Unlike Foxy it really sets the mood for Water 7 and I think it's overlooked by people because lol game story.

Foxy's Return Arc

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Ok despite it being awful that these guys come back LITERALLY AN ARC LATER, this isn't really that scary. The actual foxy stuff is only for like two episodes and while it's nothing...good it's mostly harmless. It also has some cute Robin and Chopper moments. This honestly only exists because in the manga they had an encounter with Aokiji at the end of long ring. They still need that encounter cause it's kind of important so they moved it here closer to water 7. So the Foxy coming back stuff is really just a vehicle to lead into this encounter. That said, I hate this man and I hope we never see him again. As for the Aokiji stuff I'll get into it more during character stuff but it's all very much just setting the ground works for....

Water 7 Arc

Here we are, the part of the story many people cite as the high point of One piece. Which....considering how many episodes are left does leave me a bit nervous. Still it's hard to deny that this arc is really good. One thing to mention before getting into the meat of it though is that while Water 7 and Enies Lobby are considered two arcs....they really kind of could just be considered 1 arc in a lot of ways since they're so very connected together. Still fully makes sense why they're divided (similar to Jaya and Skypia proper) so just know I'll be focusing only on the stuff before the sea train reaches Enies Lobby here. Water 7 has everything you love about a peak One piece arc. You have a fantastic setting with the lovely canal based city of Water 7. You have fantastic new characters and allies that grow to be important friends of the Strawhats. You have heart breaking moments, cathartic fights and silly moments a plenty.

I think in trying to break this down I'll go over mostly what I like or didn't like in no real order. A lot of things are happening all at once in this arc, so this is the best way for me to write this section. Again I'm gonna try not to focus on character too much during this section. 1. As mention the town of Water 7 is a fantastic setting. It's sad because Skypia should have also been this but I honestly feel like I feel way more wonder and adventure with the characters exploring this city then I ever did with them exploring Skypia. Probably didn't help that most of the arc took place on a section of earth land. The Venice inspired canal system is great, the tired nature of the city is also great and I love the Yagaras. Also the idea of a Sea Train continues to reinforce the fantastical nature of One Piece. One of the best cities in the show so far. 2. The Galley-La company is great, and while the plot twist of most of them being the villains didn't blind side me as hard (I had a strong hunch due to reasons) it still feels like a betrayal despite only knowing these guys for a little bit. This, on top of the drama with the ship and the drama with Robin you would think would cause overwhelming despair but somehow this arc does a good job of not drowning you in sorrow. 3. Robin leaving ironically feels like it's the least impactful of the events during this arc, at least at first. Up to this point Robin hasn't ever full clicked with the crew as much as I had hoped, she's still felt like she was at arms length. This obviously changes but the initial leaving I think takes a back seat to the more obvious drama over the merry. But it made Chopper sad cause he wanted to shop for book with Robin so, please bring Robin back. It's definitively the scene with Iceberg in his office that really sells me on wanting to get Robin back though. It's a great scene and the entire sequence of events kept me wanting to watch, which you know is the sign of a fantastically paced arc. 4. Small aside, I do think the mask thing is weird. They give Franky a mask and robe at the start, I think mostly to make you think he may be the main villain....but yea sorry I know he joins the crew. and even without knowing that, the disguised don't really work when Kalifa speaks out loud under her robes. Just seems like a bit silly when we mostly only see the villains being the ones wearing the robes and masks. 5. Franky's back story is the saddest backstory ever told. I love Tom and Kokoro, and seeing what happens is just so fucked up. Fuck the government. Sometimes flash back sections can make me a bit impatient to get back to the main arc, despite wanting to know the back story. It really depends on how they're paced. Here I never felt like I wanted to see less of Franky's youth and this in addition to his conversations with Ussop really do wonders and building Franky as more than just a mean pervert that stole their money. 6. It's nice to see the crew ironically working together so strongly in this arc. I know the crew gets divided a bit during this arc obviously, but it felt like in Skypia and even Alabasta that the crew was less working together and more just happened to be in the same place together. Here all of the remaining crew is trying to do what they can to piece stuff together and get back what they lost. This backbone makes it so I never felt like everything was lost because Luffy and Nami and Chopper and all of them didn't stop fighting or trying to do something despite the many pieces moving against them all at once.

7. I obviously knew about the Merry eventually being replace, but it being arguably the main bit of drama for this arc really hits hard. I'll get into it more with Ussops character sections, but I want to make sure you understand that I don't think anything here was done badly. Ussop acting out is frustrating but not because it makes no sense (it makes total sense) or because it's poorly executed. It's a great moment because it makes you just as frustrated and upset as the characters, because of the emotional reasons alone. And that's great, because it could have either made everyone hate Ussop forever or made the whole thing feel like a waste of time and it doesn't, not at all. 8. The entire train section luckily I kept my momentum well enough, but it's by far the weakest part of the arc. Arguably it drags on just a bit too long. While there are some great parts during the build up to the eventual confrontation at Enies Lobby, IDK if it's worth suffering through Noodle Nose to get there. 9. The ghost ship wright is finally explained, and while I guess it makes enough sense, the real pay off for this bit of lore won't be seen until the next arc. 10. I will talk about most of them in characters, but there are so many good characters and love to hate them villains in this arc. All of them are so good, and will remain some of my favorite characters for a long time. 11. Seeing the Franky Family, Straw Hats and Galley-La join together after spending most of the arc fighting each other due to misunderstandings or the Franky Family just wanting money is fantastic. I love a good mass team up and it really sets the stage for how grand the pay off will be. 12. and I think that's the thing. Enies Lobby and this arc are so attached that you really can't separate the two. Water 7 is all build up and Enies Lobby is all pay off. They're both fantastic but it's hard to really praise this arc without talking about the next one and where things end up.

Enies Lobby Arc

Yea this arc is fantastic. Let's just dive into the play by play. The entire battle to get to main building is just lovely. It's very clear where everyone is during this mass battle, and the gates provide barriers to overcome while not slowing the momentum down too much. Luffy rushing ahead is expected but it honestly all works out and leads to his great moment of unveiling Gear 2. Gear 2 is really cool, though I'm a little apprehensive about it taking a toll on Luffys life. I hate it when any show introduces this element to act like a fake consequence to hammer home how dire things are and how much the character is putting on the line. But like if you never see the consequences coming to pass then why even bother having them to begin with. If Luffy doesn't fall dead at the end of the show, then yea it's kind of a dumb plot point. Luffy pulls (and will pull) this move out so much that it gets to the point that he should have have a heart attack before he even gets to the new world (more on that later) Everything leading up to the Strawhats getting to the main gate is fantastic. We saw a bit of it in Skypia, but I really love people other than the Strawhats getting to fight with them and show that they're also pretty strong. The Franky family and Paulie are great fun here. And Sniper King convincing the giants to join is a fantastic call back to little garden while also just increasing their momentum. Also the fact that spandam just is so in denial at any of this being possible on top of leaving the phone off the hook that the straw hats get more momentum is just great. The result is you get this whole full scale battle even though you know cp9 could have stopped it or halted it way sooner. And I like that because after some of the heart ache during Water 7, we need them to feel like their winning and pushing forward. We need momentum. Robin's back story is heart breaking and of course the friends reaction to the government always being her enemy is amazing. Unfortunately this is when the anime decided to shove a bunch of clips shows in due to a schedule change. I mostly skipped through these but it is kind of a pace breaker to include clip shows as official episodes. They have specials for a reason. I get that they wanted to put more of a buffer between them and the manga, but after the fact you could just remove these and have one episode of the straw hat theater and not really lose much. What follows is a fantastic serious of battles (and one really awful one) against Cp9 and like everything about the end of this arc is great. Everyone (except one person) feels like they contribute here. Chopper basically putting his body on the line to win a fight, Nami's fight again kalifa, Luffy vs Lucci. Some of the fights I feel get drawn out too much. I do think Zoro vs Kaku did not need to take the entire arc. I get comedic effect and all that but that one was a bit silly. But overall it's a great time that kept me engaged. I do think the deux ex machina of the merry coming out of nowhere to save them is a bit silly, but I also will allow it because, it's really good and leads to one of the saddest scene in the anime. About a boat. I cried. Talking about this and Water 7 is hard because...there really isn't any big problems or issues with the execution. Like hopefully I've conveyed why I think things really work but for the most part it can be hard to explain why something is good. It's much easier to explain why something didn't work for you (and don't worry, we will get to that in a future sage). So hopefully my take on these arcs reads a bit more than just saying "it's really good." over and over. That said, it's really good.

Post Enies Lobby Arc

I don't have too much to say about this arc. It's good, don't get me wrong but it's mostly just cool down and world building for the future. Very needed and much appreciated but as for as doing a deep dive as a transition arc it does everything pretty much perfect. Seeing Koby again, learning about Luffy's dad, his grandpa and this new world their heading to is all great world building. And seeing the Sunny be built, and everyone in Water 7 giving them a heroes welcome is just nice. One piece is usually always good about giving breaths of fresh air after emotional sections to never make you feel too stifled. And this arc is great in that regard. also the whole crew getting Bounties and Sanji's reaction to his poster is hilarious. Poor Chopper though. Obviously the stuff with Black Beard and Ace is gonna lead to big things, but I'll talk about that more when we get to those related arcs.

Characters

Ok So I'm gonna have a section for the new crew members, new character introduced this saga even if they show up later, any old guys that come back and are important enough to talk about, and the old crew. Hopefully this will be the standard going forward.

New Crew

Franky

We finally get a new crew mate after a long stretch of no new crew mates. And Franky is a fantastic new addition. He's very smart when it comes to building and has a big brother sort of wisdom that i think is very needed to help balance out the crew. He's also very dumb and very funny at the same time, so comedy wise he's a blast. All the moments in this arc where he acts an shoulder to lean on with Ussop and Robin were enough to turn around his initial villain status, as I don't think either of those two would have grown without him. I do think it's a little weird he joins the crew so suddenly after Enies Lobby. Like while he did get close to the Straw Hats a bit, with everything being in the heat of the moment it does feel just a tiny bit forced due to his bounty. But this is a very minor nitpick. Overall Franky is a fun guy and his Cyborg nature adds something new to fights. I don't think I realized the crew was missing someone like him until he finally joined and now I couldn't see them without him.

Saga Characters

There is a lot of these to go through, so no pictures for them because there is just way too many and most of them are saga only.

Granny Kokoro is fantastic. One of my favorite characters of this arc. When you first meet her you assume she's a throw away funny drunk character, but then you realize how tragic her story really is. And her joining the fray and being like a main contributor in rescuing Robin as well as adding new world building due to her being a Mermaid just is the cherry on top of an already great character.

Iceberg is a fantastic brother to Franky and I'm glad that while he is suspicious of the straw hats, he's also a big enough man to admit he's wrong and also help them out. WHAT DO YOU MEAN PAULIE DIDN'T EAT A DEVIL FRUIT?! He's awesome though. At first you think he's gonna be the worst of Galley-La, but nah he's easily the best character of that group next to Iceberg.

CP9 as a whole I'm just gonna lump in together. Because honestly while they do have individual personalities, overall they kind of just function as one force for the Straw Hats to fight. Individually they're not anything special character wise. I do think the special powers is kind of silly (more on this later) and I guess just a way to add a power system that isn't devil fruits. But I still think in the arc it works mostly well. Kaku is very funny due to his giraffe from, easily my favorite of the group. Lucci I think gets over-hyped a bit, but he makes for a good final boss for Luffy to overcome. The others range from kind of whatever like wolf man, some what annoying like kabuki guy and I kind of hate them with fish zipper man. Spandam may have taken the award for the worst character in this show. I hate this man, so much. Luckily he does get his comeuppance, but still him beating on Robin for literally no good reason is jut fucking awful. His father also sucks. This whole family line is cursed and deserves to burn. The franky family as a whole is fantastic. I did not expect to like them, but they really won me over during the battle on Ennis Lobby. Especially the main leader, Zambai, and the two girls Mozu and Kiwi. I don't really have specifics to say about them, just that I love them.

I love Sodom and Gomorrah, and if they had died I would have been so mad that pell lived and they didn't. Kashi and Oimo are funny enough. I imagine we may see them again in the far future, but I honestly have no idea for sure. T bone is great and I hope we see him again, nice to see a good marine once and a while.

Robin's mom cloned herself. Saul is best dad, and the entire backstory of Robin's made me cry. Aokiji I don't have a read on yet. He's and interesting character to say the least but I need to see more before I determine if I like him or not. fuck wanze, fuck wanze, fuck wanze. No, just no. If I ever see Foxy again I will scream. His entire crew is also awful. SNIPER KING IS THE BEST CHARACTER IN THE SHOW. I hope he returns one day. His theme song is amazing, and his moment when he saves robin with his sniper skills is incredible.

The Old Guys

Garp is technically old because we saw him in Koby's one episode, but we get the proper introduction to him here. I think I mostly like him at this point. He is definitely Luffy's Grandpa that's for sure. I want to see more with him but at this point, he's an interesting and fun character. Koby should not have grown this much. How much time has even passed? Granted it's nice to see him again and he even gives us some world building. I'm sure he'll be back again in the future. Helmeppo exists. Black Beard, White Beard, Shanks, Ace and any other big names that show up sprinkled through out here I'm lumping in the category of they don't really get any new character development but something big will be happening soon. So not much to say about them at this point.

The Crew

Luffy

He's much better here then he was in Skypia. No bullshit with being eaten by a snake. In fact this is probably the most serious Luffy has had to be in a long time. His whole interaction with Ussop when it comes to their fight and the subsequent rush to try and figure out if Robin is really betraying them or not puts him to the test and really shows you who Luffy is. Luffy learning new moves by watching his enemies to protect his friends, to the point of literally paralyzing his body for a bit really hits home how much Luffy cares about his friends. I think in previous arcs while I liked Luffy, I felt his goofy nature took too much of a front seat to the point where it negatively affected the plot. I don't feel that's the case here, and Luffy is forced to make difficult decisions and really learn what it means to be captain. And I think he'll be all the better because of it.

Zoro

He's is easily the Strawhat that mostly stay the same in this arc. Like in Skypia, if you liked Zoro you will still like Zoro. Shout outs to his calling out Ussop at the end of the arc though. I do think this is an underrated moment because Zoro despite not showing it often really respects Luffy. He's completely right to point out how Ussop can't just pretend nothing changed, and I really like that he does so. He's basically second in command but I think a lot of people think he's just dumb idiot who swings swords. He has a lot more wisdom to him then you would expect. Other then that, he's just solid throughout but I don't think he really has any moments that are mind blowing. He does spend most of the fight against Cp9 chained to Sniper King, though Zoro using him as a sword is funny. I also really like him passing on Paulie's message of firing Cp9 to Kaku. Other then that though, he keeps being solid.

Nami

Nami continues to just climb up my favorites. She's probably the character who keeps the Straw Hats together the most during their panic to find robin in Water 7. I love her determination after learning what Iceberg heard from Robin, like that's the Nami I love. Hearing people talk about how she's afraid and weak all the time makes me think I watched a different show then most fans. Yea she's not the strongest fighter, but that's what makes her fights so good. She wind using clever strategies and she still puts herself on the line even though she knows she's no Luffy. As a side note, I do love that during the CP9 fights it starts as a 1v1 but the fact that people switch partners to who works better to combat who makes the entire sequence of events very good. Yea Nami doesn't do well against kabuki man, but at least she isn't god damn sanji. She then proceeds to absolutely hand Kalifa her ass, in one of the best battles of the arc. The mirage tempo is right up her alley as a fighting technique, and seeing the new climatec in general was fantastic.

Ussop

Ussop finally gets his character growth and it's about time. This was much needed for Ussop, since he spends so many arcs before this point not underestimating his own abilities, trying to do things not in his wheel house, taking credit for no reason or just trying to run away despite knowing better. Ussop has felt out of his depth for a while, and the events leading up to the Merry needing to be replaced and his loss of their money breaks him. Ussop is 100 percent in the wrong and what he does next. He takes the initiative and manufactures a narrative where he forced his friends to abandon him so that he could avoid his fears of it happening in the future. He makes it Luffy's fault so that he can hide behind that instead of confronting his own insecurities. Compare to Robin, who has the same fear but instead makes a personal sacrifice instead of a selfish one. Ussop then spends most of the arc after that part hiding. His scene with Frank is great mind you, but it also is further proof of his concerns about the Merry being more a scapegoat for his own fears and worries. When he learns about robin, he can't bring himself to face his friends and decides to hide behind a mask. and while it is funny, Ussop is kind of just using it to pretend like nothing has changed. He's trying to just run away from confronting his weakness and acknowledging his strengths. From admitting he screwed up and growing as a character. Him saving Robin was the first step in him knowing what he can do as opposed to what he can't do, but he needs to leave the mask behind. We then see him at the end of the arc, proving that he never lost faith in Luffy, he lost faith in himself. But he also still is trying to not take responsibility for his actions. He hides behind a mask, and spends much of the last arc scheming how to rejoin instead of just apologizing. Only when confronted with the fact that he needs to own up to what he did or his friends will leave does he finally grow as a character. and I'm very excited to see this new Ussop in action. Sanji

Sanji, Sanji, Sanji, Sanji. Is there ever gonna be an arc where you don't suck? Don't get me wrong, I do like it when he does spy shit, I really do. I do think he spends way to much of early Water 7 just not being helpful from our perspective, but I get it he wanted to sneak aboard to the train. And While the train heist ended up a flop, Sanji isn't horrible during this section. His fight with Kalifa though, Holy shit. This might be my least favorite Sanji moment by far. Robin is being taken to an inescapable* prison, time is of the essence. Everyone is fighting for these keys (yes Zoro and Sniper King are being idiots but that's more Sniper Kings fault and to be fair the enemies are also being idiots here so I feel like it's kind of a wash) and what does Sanji do? Fucking can't hit a lady because of Chivalry! What the fuck kind of bullshit is this. That's sexist as fuck, a waste of our time and just a lame way to lose a fight. He does then beat up a wolf man but sorry, that doesn't make up for how supremely awful that moment was to me. He can only get better right?* *This may or may not end up false. Chopper

I love Chopper. I love him so much and he continues to be peak this this arc, and all while wearing a cute jacket. Chopper kicks ass saving Galley-la from the fire, saves Zoro from the chimney (Nami is also good here too, saving Luffy), and that's before we get to Enies Lobby. His moments with the Franky Family's Yagaras is very cute and heart breaking at the same time also. But then we get to his fights against CP9. My dude saves Nami, gets Franky his Cola, and then turns into a monster in a last ditch effort to curb stomp Kabuki man. He then is the reason Nami figures out the Golden Bubbles weakness, while also fixing Sanji. They all would have lost of Chopper wasn't there. He doesn't get nearly enough credit. The poor boy also can't move when he wakes up and it's so sad because you know he's be helping the others fight if he could. Choppy is incredible. Robin

Robin like Ussop gets massive Character development during this section. Up to this point she's been a character that I felt was kind of kept at an arms length from truly joining up with the Straw Hats. Very similar in fact to how Nami was pre-Arlong Park. But the revelations about her past and her want for a family or friends is heart breaking. The fact that she's become someone known for betraying people simply because she had to protect herself after others betrayed her first is just crushing. She's felt that she has to live for her people, but she herself hasn't wanted to until now. To have friends who will say to her "your enemies are our enemies no matter to cost," like that entire scene is incredible. Robin's character can only go up from here, now that her shackles have been freed.

Crew Ranking

Chopper > Nami > Franky > Robin > Zoro > Luffy > Ussop >> Sanji So there is some change here that I do want to explain and maybe the lack of some movement as well. Chopper will always be my favorite (unless they do something horrible to my boys character) so its unlikely he'll ever move. At this point I think I need to put Nami over Zoro for sure. It's not that Zoro got worst, it's that Nami keeps being stupid awesome. She has some really great moments in this saga and continued character growth. Franky is very fun and while I'm not sure if he'll stay this high on the list for long, I think his turn to being a good guy as well as how supportive he is at Robin and his growing love of the straw hats here as well as his backstory just really pushes him as an immediate favorite. Also he funny. Robin arguably could be higher than some due to being the emotional backbone of this arc, and I didn't not like Robin in this saga (as evident by her going up) I just thing the other left a stronger impression on me. Also as this goes on it's gonna be splitting apples and oranges as there is few in the crew I don't like. As mention, Zoro doesn't do anything wrong and has some great moments here as well, it's just a lot of the other crew is really stepping it up. Luffy is really good in this arc and if Zoro wasn't one of my favorites he probably would surpass Zoro here. When Luffy is a bit more serious and not doing stupid shit to delay the plot, I like him a lot. He's in that mode throughout this whole saga mostly, so again don't take this as he's bad here, everyone else is just on point as well. Ussop finally got his character development moment, but because he has some really frustrating if not understandable moments he doesn't move the radar much for me. But this is the best Ussop has been by far and I can see him only going up from here. Yea no sorry Sanji deserves another space separating from Ussop. The only Straw Hat this saga that went down further. AND THERE WAS NO WHERE LEFT TO GO DOWN? You can slot Tyrannosaurs above Sanji if you want. While some of the spy shit he does is good, all of the crap with chivalry is awful and beyond that he spends a lot of the saga off screen (like most of water 7) and when he does show back up it doesn't really amount to much. Sanji just consistently has the worst character of the entire crew by far and even if you wanted to say "well he fights good" uh no he doesn't He had one decent win here but that's not enough to make up for all the stuff he pulled with bubble lady. Maybe he'll get better someday

Mysteries and Questions

ok so as mentioned, I'm technically far ahead of this arc at this point, so I don't know how useful this section is for this blog posts. To be honest I don't think I had a lot of questions at this point beyond what is going on with Black Beard and Ace, stuff about the new world in general and just general curiosity about fish man island. Some of these have already been answered, others less so but overall I know i was left with a lot less questions compared to Skypia since some of those were answered here.

Final Thoughts

This is by far the best Saga of One Piece so far bar none. It has the entire crew working together while still having drama. It has fantastic set pieces, cool fights, funny jokes and heart breaking moments and all with the perfect balance. This is Peak One Piece and I can't wait to see where the show goes from here.

[megafreak400]

🐁⚡🥞🍰🍓😋

[megafreak400]

2025 Media Thread - #9

Who Wants to be a Millionaire (3/15/25) -  Score - 5/10 I wanted to play a trivia game for my birthday so I ended up getting the Switch version of Who wants to be a Millionaire due to loving Millionaires atmosphere. The music, the atmosphere, it’s all such a fun time.

If you have played or seen Millionaire before, this game mostly functions basically the same way. There is absolutely some jank in this game, but some of that is charming, like the wonky voice acting and animation. Questions sometimes felt a bit unfair at points? Like some of the lower tier questions were not even close to easy. There were also a few questions with two answers that were technically correct that just kind of confused myself and my chat as to why the other answer was more correct.

I kind of wished the game had more themed packs? There are some themed packs like Disney or Manga which are super fun. But there are almost too many sports as the default packs.

Unlocking stuff is a little dumb, since you need to use in-game cash to do so, and you earn 1,000 of it for winning the million. Which means it will take a while to unlock all the packs. Well that is unless you cheat lol

For some reason when I set every pack to off except general knowledge, the game freaked out and gave me a template set up with A set as the correct answer every time, allowing me free money. I couldn’t replicate this when I closed the game and tried later sadly. But I took advantage of it while I could to get free money.

All and all though it’s a fun time if you’re looking for a solid trivia game. It’s a completely average trivia game that doesn’t do anything super wrong but isn’t anything mind blowing either. It won’t change your life, because the million dollars aren’t real.

[megafreak400]

2025 Media Thread - #8

Spyro: Year of the Dragon (Reignited) (3/11/25) -  Score - 7/10

Despite owning Year of the Dragon since I bought my used PS2, I’ve never actually played it. I don’t really have an excuse for why, I just never did. Having now finished the game via the reignited version (doing nearly 100 percent,) it’s a fun time. I’m unsure if I like it more than Ripto, though that has the advantage of nostalgia. But if you liked Spyro 1 and Ripto, this game is like the perfect merger of both games. The more free formed collecting of eggs and the egg chases are ripped right out of Spyro 1. But the game still has objectives, mini games and other aspects that Ripto introduced. Power Up gates also exist but they’re not tied to defeating enemies any longer. Enemies now go back to how they functioned in the first game with them dropping gems on defeat. All of these make the game feel like the best of both worlds when compared to each of the first two games. Learning moves is also gone, though this has kind of been replaced by something brand new.

Spyro is no longer the only playable character this time around. Four new playable characters were introduced, along with making Hunter (who is back for some reason) playable in the speedways and Sparx playable for the first time (he can also talk now…cool). While these vary in terms of how engaging their sections can be, I do like that they break up the normal gameplay a bit and help in keeping the game fresh. Shelia is an alpine Kangaroo (don’t question it,) who’s main gameplay element is focusing on jumping to high places and ground pounding enemies. Honestly she’s fine but she’s very much whatever compared to Spyro’s quick moves and gliding. SGT. Byrd is all about flying and dropping stuff below via mid flight on top of also firing off missles. He’s fairly fun, even if his flight controls can be awkward at times. Bently is a smart yeti who….smashes stuff….sure. Honestly he’s fine, though he also lags the heck out of this version when he smashes boulders for some reason. Agent 9 is an insane monkey who makes this game into a FPS  because of course he does, it was the style at the time. Honestly I do think he’s the best of the extra characters, being by far the most unique of the four.

Sparx meanwhile makes the game a top down shooter, which is really cool but unfortunately I didn’t figure this out until very late. Because of the remake adding quick warping, I never returned to the first world directly so I never knew beating the boss unlocked these sections. It’s unfortunate because it also gives Sparxs some useful power ups to aid Spyro in his quest. Hunter’s sections meanwhile are on rails shooting sections of some sort. They're fine, just nothing life changing. As a side note the destroying of enemies challenge in the speedways are much easier this time around, which I very much am in favor of. The bigger challenge now is the races which can be a bit tricky at first. Honestly I eventually enjoyed learning how to cut corners and hitting the speed boosts to get first place during these sections.

There is also Skating because THE 90’S WERE RAD DUDE! I honestly had no idea Spyro could skateboard. And honestly, he probably shouldn't. It’s not too bad, but it can be a bit awkward at points. This is really only an issue in one of the last skateboarding sections where you have to do the tricks while racing. It’s the only part of the game I couldn’t beat, which sucks because for the most part the game is by far the easiest of the Spyro games.

It’s clear late era Playstation realized that making kids cry due to how hard their games were was a bad idea. Not that either of the earlier Spyro games were stupid hard, but Year of the Dragon is much easier than both. Overall I really only struggled with one boss and the aforementioned skating section.I honestly in some respects prefer this to Ripto because it’s way more chill. Honestly beyond the new characters and the merging of the two games though, it’s a Spyro game. There isn’t much more to say beyond that. If you liked the other two you’ll like this one. I did enjoy this one a lot and it may be my favorite Spyro game, but it also very much isn’t doing anything revolutionary.

[megafreak400]

2025 Media Thread - #7

Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind (2/28/25) -  Score - 7/10

The Girl Who Stands Behind is interesting because while it is the second game in the series, it technically takes place before the Missing Heir. For the most part you could have played this one first, but I wanted to play it in the release order. A Lot of people have said this one was the better of the two Famicom games, so I wanted to check it out second so as to not harm my potential enjoyment of Heir. Part of this is because Girl is much better about not letting you get stuck in obtuse situations of how to progress. Granted, much better doesn’t mean not at all. There are still a few sections where I was lost as to how to progress, even if it came up much less frequently than the first game. The issue is, it feels so much worse when it does happen in this game.

The reason for this is that the story is way weaker in this game. It's easy to ignore the annoying gameplay mechanics in the first game because of how engaging the narrative is. There is a sense of urgency to the flow of the game due to developments within the game that keeps you wanting to find out more. In Girl, most of the game is just spent talking to people who give you barely any helpful information, with nothing happening outside of the questioning. Because of this, when you get stuck trying to progress the plot forward via menuing it feels so much worse. I’ve heard people say they like this  game because it endears you to these characters more than the first. I don’t know that I can really agree with that. In the first game, it’s true that a lot of the characters are rich assholes. And yea, I totally get not being into those guys. But there were enough people in the first game that I really did care about, like the butler or the grave keeper or the doctor. You’re endeared to the community because you’re talking to the whole community, so the town feels alive.

In Girl, you talk to a lot of nameless nobody students or teachers and the named characters aren’t much more interesting than them. There are exceptions like Auymi and Hitomi, but for the most part it feels like you're just talking to generic NPCs. I think part of why this doesn’t work is the location and the time. You can only investigate after class, so it doesn’t feel like you’re learning about the school or its community. On top of all of this, for most of the game, almost no helpful information is given by the characters at the school for most of the case. It feels like you’re wasting your time spinning your wheels.

It doesn’t help that the game's mystery is also just poorly told. On top of just the general lack of making progress you also spend a good check of the early game following a clear red herring. I hate it when the Ace Attorney games do this and I hate it here. It’s one thing if it’s a clever red herring you also fall for, but I knew it was the wrong path from the start and it resulted in barely any new information from what we had before.

On top of that, who is behind stuff is mostly easy to figure out. Even if I hate obvious red herrings that waste time, I’ll take that over the opposite. That being the culprit being so obvious you question it being a red herring, but the game instead of having a clever twist just trying to gaslight you into thinking it’s not them despite all the evidence. It makes me feel like i’m taking crazy pills when a game acts like it’s building to a big twist and it’s what you thought it was all along. It’s like instead of having an interesting mystery they think just denying the truth over and over is enough to blind side you. On top of that, Missing Heir was much better about you figuring stuff out as the characters do. Here you spend so much of the game waiting for the characters to catch up to the conclusion you already have. Then on top of all of that, aspects of the mystery are not hinted at at all. You kind of just get all that information just dumped on you by the killer at the very end. It’s stuff you couldn’t figure out because the game just didn’t give you those clues.

It’s unfortunate because there is some stuff to love here. It does focus more on Ayumi compared to Heir, and I do like her relationship with the main character. The game does do some things better gameplay wise compared to the first game, and I do think some of the locations were more interesting when not at the school. But the music, story and characters are all much weaker which is kind of killer for a visual novel.

By the way it should be noted that this game got a remake via the Nintendo Power service (not the magazine, it was like the Famicom disk system but for the Super Famicom). This also means that the Super Famicom Music is also included on the switch remake. This is a neat inclusion that I felt was worth giving a mention. 

Oh also it’s actually a dating sim. At the end you get an evaluation on how close you are to Ayumi based on your actions which is kind of insane. This does mean there are some points you can deviate during the investigation, which is kind of cool. Like apparently you can skip some sections of the investigation based on the order you talk to people and I do appreciate aspects like that. I don’t think it really does this much, but it’s hard to gauge to what level they do this on one playthrough. I will applaud it for adding more open endedness to a game genre that was new at the time.

Overall, I didn’t hate this game by any means. But going off of the first game it was much less engaging. The mystery is more predictable while also having parts you just can’t predict. The school setting at points can get old very fast, especially when you keep talking to the same people and getting the same non answers. That said, this didn’t change my interest in playing Emio.

[megafreak400]

2025 Media Thread - #6

Spyro the Dragon (Reignited) (2/25/25) -  Score - 7/10

Spyro the Dragon and I have a unique history similar to what I had with Crash Bandicoot. As a refresher, my younger brothers were given a Playstation One in the early 2000s. Through that I was able to play games like Spyro Ripto’s Rage, which I very much enjoyed. Unlike with Crash though, I did obtain a copy of Ripto’s Rage when I got older. Well, kind of. Pretty sure a similar thing happened where I got Year of the Dragon from a friend and thought it was Ripto’s Rage, but I honestly don’t remember and it could have just been the game I wanted. Either way, whether I got it from a friend or bought it I did have Ripto’s Rage when I got my Ps2 late into college. And for whatever reason I decided to do a Let’s Play of Ripto’s Rage, so you know at the very least it’s a game I enjoyed quite a bit. Spyro gels with me a bit more than Crash since it’s always been more of a chill collectathon first instead of being overly hard. That’s not to say there aren’t hard sections of Spyro games, but compared to Crash it’s night and day. Especially when it comes to their first games in their series. The original Spyro is a game I had never played, but with the reignited trilogy being added to Game Pass I finally jumped in and gave it a go. And overall, it’s fun. I don’t think I enjoyed it more than Ripto, but I appreciate where it differs.

The big thing about the original Spyro is how its levels are designed. Later Spyro games are much more linear affairs in how you progress through the level, with missions and mini games spread throughout. Spyro 1 is a pure collectathon. You need to find the dragons, the gems and sometimes eggs in every level and while the levels aren’t purely open ended there are a lot of branching side paths that sometimes loop back around and other times end up in dead ends. The level design is very much built around using Spyro’s abilities to their fullest. Gliding and dashing to reach sections that maybe you didn’t think you could reach results in kind of an odyssey-like feeling. What I mean by this is that in Super Mario Odyssey, with how incredible Mario's movement options with Cappy can be, there are a lot of sections of the game that feel like reaching them is cheating. But then you get there and Nintendo left behind a pile of coins for you to grab. Parts of Spyro 1 have that same vibe. Tree Top especially gives off this feeling, being probably the level that exemplifies Spyro 1’s design choices the most. It helps as well that controlling Spyro feels good. Dashing and gliding feel fun to control so making a game where using these abilities to their fullest to reward you was a great idea.

Beyond mastering your inherit abilities though, most of the game is fairly easy. Enemies are very rarely hard to deal with. That’s not to say the game is brainless, but compared to some games in the genre it’s more than just making your way through a level collecting what you find as you go. As someone who gets joy out of checking off check lists, it’s a very relaxing game in that regard. While some of the challenging glides and jumps were a bit much, I did appreciate them breaking up the more monotonous collecting. The only aspect that was a bit annoying at points was the egg chasing. There are these egg thieves that you have to dash after and keep dashing after so you can run into them and get an egg back. This wasn’t something Ripto did much beyond maybe one level. Some of the chases were easy enough but some of them were especially annoying. Mostly the one during the final ‘boss’ which felt like it took hours for me to catch up with them. You basically are just barely faster than them, so it can take a bit to catch them if there are no slight cuts you can make on the path. I did get better at attacking those corners though by doing these. And yea the bosses in these games are barely bosses. The final boss is basically just one big chase sequence. I’m ok with this, bosses don’t really ever add much to a game for me. For the most part it’s just a new level where you collect stuff then also take care of this unique enemy at the end, and that’s cool.

I do think something with the camera was up when they were re-making this game. I hate 60fps games, they make me motion sick but this game especially gave me feelings of that at points. Especially the peacekeepers overworld, that was headache inducing to look at. Upond going back in to take photos and comparing it to later games I think i’ve convinced it has something to do with the lighting or something particle based. Just taking the photos made me sick whereas Year of the Dragon was fine. Again the game looks pretty, but if it makes me sick you’re doing something wrong. Keep in mind I did play the remake, so I don’t know if physics and stuff is way different from the original. Toys for Bob worked on this game and from what I remember of Ripto it feels mostly faithful. I know the first game got a lot more touch ups and flourishes compared to the latter two games, so it’s possible the original first game is a bit more jank. But the game feels mostly great to control, Spyro’s model is very cute and I love the credits pictures they added of him hanging out with all the dragons. The Dragons themselves all received unique models too, which while cool is a little weird when they get like one useless line and then just vanish. The music is also very unique and I feel like for the most part the remastered soundtrack is mostly faithful to Stuart Copelands original vision. Spyro’s OST has always sounded nothing like anything else and it gives this game this sort of dreamy relaxing vibe. 

Overall, Spyro is a fun time. It’s not gonna change your life and if you don’t like Collectathon platformers it won’t change your mind. But if you do it can be a cozy time with a cute purple dragon.

[megafreak400]

2025 Media Thread - #5

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir (2/13/25) -  Score - 9/10

The Famicom Detective Club games have always been games I’ve heard about thanks to Smash Bros, but nothing beyond that Ayumi was in the game. They’re a much bigger deal in Japan, but for us it wasn’t until the Switch remakes that we finally had a chance to play them officially in english. While I thought it was awesome that these games were finally coming to NA, I did pass on them at the time. I love visual novels, don’t get me wrong, but a part of me assumed that the story wouldn’t hold up as well in the modern day. Fast forward to last year and a new game in the series, Emio, was announced to be coming out. This got my attention. A modern visual novel by Nintendo and their first rated M game? Yea I was interested, but not enough to jump in right away for two reasons. For one, horror elements can sometimes turn me off on some games despite a lot of the visual novels I love dabbling in them. I think mainly a game with horror elements is fine, a game that’s about the horror in graphic detail is a bit too much. I wasn’t sure what kind of game Emio was gonna be, especially not having played the first two games. The second reason is that even though this was a modern game, I still wasn’t into the Famicom Detective games yet. I probably would enjoy it, but it was still a big unknown to me. So I put it on my Christmas list (which is what I do for any game that isn’t a priority but I am interested in) and let fate decide. Unfortunately, I did not receive the game for Christmas. However I did receive a 50 Dollar e-shop gift card. By this point OdinSpack (good friend and streamer) had done a NTGT contest of games that came out that year and Emio was talked about during that stream. People who were big fans of Emio highly encouraged me to play the first two games to get the most out of it, even if technically it was playable on its own. So with a 50 dollar gift card I decided that instead of jumping right into Emio, I should give the first two a try. If I really hated them I could pass on Emio, but if I loved them then I’d get to it sometime in the future.

The good news is, The Missing Heir had me hooked. Going into it I was expecting a very uninteresting mystery plot but I was surprised by how engrossed I got. The fact that I started it one morning and then stayed up during the day (Night Shift Baby) to finish it should tell you everything you need to know about how into it I was.

The basic gameplay of the game is that you move from location to location, asking people questions. You can also use various actions like thinking or grabbing items to help you in progressing the story as you try to piece together the mystery. If you’ve played Ace Attorney, it’s much more basic in a lot of ways, while still having a similar flow. You’re less solving puzzles and more just progressing the plot while also getting more information that can help you piece together the truth of everything.

The thing is, this game is old. Like yea it’s a remake but the core of the game isn’t changed. And old games sometimes have ... .very obtuse logic. I was able to do it without a guide, but there were absolutely points of the game where I had to basically try every possible combination of options to figure out what the heck would allow me to progress. The worst offender, which I think will get my point across, happens when you're talking to a lady while needing to head to another location at a certain time. Basically you can keep going back to that location but the person you need to meet at that time won't appear. Meanwhile it seems like nothing you're doing with the conversation with the current lady will let you progress. See this is because what you need to do is: back out of talking to her and talk to the butler who is also in the room, back out of talking to the butler and talk to the lady, back out of talking to her again and finally you will get the prompt that it’s now the time you were waiting for. Yea I don’t really blame anyone who gets annoyed with these aspects of the game. The remake is faithful for sure, even when maybe it shouldn’t be in cases like this. That said, the game is short enough and the story is so engrossing that it didn’t bother me too much. The story absolutely carries the game. Even if I question people letting a detective who just got amnesia continue to do his job being a little questionable.

But yea I can’t really say why I like this game’s story without spoiling it, just know despite the story being older than me, I think it still holds up quite well. It’s not the most incredible plot and compared to some of the other visual novels it’s a bit tame in comparison, but something about how the game presents its story just clicked for me. I think it helps that it’s well paced and allows you to figure things out before or around the same time as the protagonist. When playing a detective game this is key to enjoyment for me. I think that in addition to just enjoying the characters in this one really sold me on staying along for the ride. Another nice thing is that you do have the option to switch between the original Famicom soundtrack and the remastered OST, which is always a nice touch. The music is also quite good, especially the investigation theme. Voice acting is also in the game as well, but sadly it’s only in japanese.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised with how invested I was playing this and at this point was absolutely sold on getting Emio. If you’ve played games like Ace Attorney you will enjoy this but I think keeping in mind it predates pretty much any other point and click mystery game helps in keeping expectations in check. I went into this expecting a nothing story and I think that helped me in having the right state of mind to really gel with what they were cooking. If you go in expecting Ace Attorney Investigations 2 2, well then you have no one to blame but yourself at that point. I’m super excited though to check out of the rest of the series.

[megafreak400]

2025 Media Thread - #4

Crystalis (2/8/25) -  Score - 7/10 Crystalis is a game I’ve always heard people praise as a hidden gem on the NES. And having now played it, yea it kind of is. I do think the people that compare it to Zelda are way off though. It’s way closer to something like Secret of Mana then it is Zelda…maybe a little like Zelda 2. Since make no mistake, this is an action RPG. Level grinding is required because if you’re not a high enough level, your attacks just won’t work on some enemies. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. Crystalis has you playing as a young man unfrozen from cryogenic sleep, who sets off to save the world with his magic beam shooting sword. NO IT’S NOT ZELDA GUYS, I PROMISE. As mentioned, defeating enemies does earn you experience, which increases your attack and defense. You can also equip armor and accessories. Some accessories just increase your defense or attack, while others can do unique things like jumping. You can also learn spells which beyond just being helpful (like a healing spell) they’re also used to help progress the game a lot of the time.

The other big feature is the elemental swords. There are four swords (IT’S NOT ZELDA,) that you can acquire that each have a different elemental power. Wind, Fire, Water and Thunder with a final sword near the end of the game (the titular crystalis) combining all the elements. The swords each can get an accessory of sorts that increases their beam charge while also giving them a useful overworld ability. Wind can break cave walls, fire can melt ice, Water can make ice bridges and thunder can break metal barriers. The one thing with the NES version of this game is that enemies also have elemental properties. Which also means they have weakness and resistances to the weapons you use. This means at points (mostly during the middle of the game) you could be in a long dungeon hallway and constantly have to swap between two swords to be able to beat both enemies. Swapping can be a bit of a pain due to the menuing required to swap. Remember this is the NES, so not enough buttons for any sort of quick swapping. The idea of resistance feels a bit ahead of the time, but in some ways it may be a bit too ahead of its time. Resistance in this game mostly just means just no damage will be done to the enemy. If you’re a low level or have the wrong weapon you’ll hear a TINK sound and that informs you that you either need a new weapon or need to grind. This can be a little annoying, but grinding honestly didn’t end up being too big of a deal and the weapon switching, while tedious, was mostly just obnoxious during the middle of the game. Early on you rarely need to switch and later on you end up with a weapon that you can mostly just leave on as the default. The thunder sword by the time you get it just kills mostly everything barring a few exceptions.

The other annoying thing about the game is figuring out where to go. At points progression is locked behind talking to the right person or going to one place before you talk to someone, even if it doesn’t really make sense. Like for example at one point I needed these wise men to teach me a spell. The first time I visited them, they basically told me nothing useful. I then went and found this dwarven village and could basically do nothing there. So finally after trial and error I went back to the wise men and now I could get a new spell that allowed me to progress. Parts like this were aggravating and while I get it’s an old game, trying to figure out what triggers what felt like a huge guessing game. There was also one little thing that really bugged me, which was that you needed to tank overworld damage to advance. Basically there is an item in the in-game manual called the boots, that lets you walk over overworld swamps with no damage. But I ended up getting to a point early on with no way forward except going over the swamp. Not a big deal, it only does a bit of damage. But it felt like I was doing something wrong. Many, many hours of game later I get the ability to fly, so swamps aren’t even an issue. But guess what item you need the fly ability to get. That’s right, the goddamn boots. WHY?! I bring this up mostly to reinforce that while this game does a lot of neat stuff it’s still an NES game. Some of the design decisions can be baffling at times, so if you can’t get past that aspect of it you probably won’t enjoy this one. But beyond the old game jank, the overall adventure is a fun time. While the dungeons are fairly uninteresting maze like straight halls (I swear this makes sense), the overall exploration of the world is enjoyable. Talking to people and figuring out where to go overall was still fun even when I ran into jank and some of the puzzles revolving around which ability or spell to use were clever. Especially the ones involving the disguise spell. Movement in this game in general is also very good, since you move so fast and have a weapon that can attack from afar. Zipping around the world map taking out enemies quickly was a blast and I think that’s probably the reason a lot of people like this game. It also helps that the game's soundtrack is amazing. It’s hard for me to get annoyed when banger after banger is playing in the background.

Overall I think it mostly deserves its status as a hidden gem. Your mileage may vary depending on how much the jank annoys you, but for me it was mostly only bad during the middle of the game. There is enough to love here that I think it’s worth giving it a look.

[megafreak400]

2025 Media Thread - #3

Donkey Kong Land III (2/6/25) -  Score - 7/10

DONKEY KONG LAND III IS REAL (hi styrm). The Donkey Kong Land games are weird. They all feature new level designs, though most take heavy inspiration from their console counterparts. Donkey Kong Land is the most different, with new worlds and level themes. It’s also the worst with a very wonky physics system from what little I played of it. Land II is much better on that front, with a physics system that feels as close to identical to the country games you can get on the Game Boy. It also sticks much closer to the original game level wise, even if the level layouts themselves are different.

Land III mostly follows in Land II’s footsteps. It has pretty much the same physics system and the same level themes as the game it’s inspired by. But technically this game has a slightly different plot, revolving around a contest to find the lost world. It also has a different world map and different level names, even if the level themes are the same. It’s a weird beast in that regard but honestly I think I like this take the best of the three. Similar enough to the original but not too similar to make it feel like an odd port.

Really though, while the visuals are dated nowadays this game is still impressive. When it comes to both looks and  game feel, it basically does feel like playing Donkey Kong Country on the go. That’s pretty incredible and whatever black magic they used to fix the physics engine from 1 deserves accolades. I said as much when I played Land II. It surprised me how enjoyable it was and how good it felt to play. That goes double for this game, it honestly was a fun time. If you like Donkey Kong Country 3, this is mostly more of that just simplified.

While the level design is a bit simpler, the general rhythm of moving fast through a level while getting the bonuses and the DK Koin is still here. While the Koin puzzles are sadly much simpler, some of the bonus placement is a bit devious. Not enough to get frustrated but enough to be like “oh wow, that was a clever spot.” Bosses are also much simpler…and also hilariously much much smaller. Arich the spider especially is stupid tiny here and I love him. Animal buddies also have less complicated movesets, like Ellie only being able to shoot water.

The big thing about this game at the time it was released is that  while the levels aren’t incredible, the fact that it was on the gameboy was mind blowing. Even now it’s still pretty impressive. Even without that factor though, it’s still an enjoyable time. It even has a speed run mode at the end where you do several levels as fast as possible. And as a veteran DKC3 Speed runner, you know I was all in on this. The only complaint I had in this regard is Dixie’s helicopter spin at points doesn’t work when you jump fast, especially when you're used to the SNES game. And in the bobsled levels, some of the hit boxes can be a bit jank. But beyond that, I crushed it. Overall if you’re a fan of the DKC games, you’ll enjoy playing this. It won’t change your life but it will be a cozy romp. If you don’t like the DKC games, then this game will do nothing to convince you otherwise.