#Old Backloggd Reviews

[melloggd]

Review: Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney

Capcom • Capcom • 2007 • Nintendo DS Read it on Backloggd: (x)

So, here we are. Having written my Dual Destinies review (one of my favorites I've written, still) and almost being finished with Spirit of Justice, I feel its about time I toss my hat into the ring regarding AA4, possibly the most discussed Ace Attorney game of them all. There's a lot to unpack with AA4, and a lot of different ways to unpack it.

After AA1/2/3 wrapped up as a pretty much perfect, concluded trilogy, the 4th game had to be one to really break some sort of new ground, to not just seem as if the franchise was being stretched thin. And to outsiders looking in, be assured: They did far more than just give us a new protagonist. You meet Phoenix only to find out that he's completely changed, the perception of what makes a good defense lawyer has changed, your relation to the prosecution has changed, the story being told and, indeed, the very world of the game has shifted wholly. Its a remarkably ambitious game: One that, rather than just telling another story of a new character's growth like the old trilogy did, chose to readjust the lens of the series to focus far more on the law world at large, whilst subverting player expectations along the way.

I'll drop the dramatics and be blunt: In terms of ambition, ideas and themes, AA4 ranks as possibly my favorite game in the series. But as the finished game we got, I consider it the least enjoyable game in the series I've played.

Yet I can't even be sure if that's a bad thing. Because with so many of the issues I take with the game, there's a fascinating viewpoint that changes it into an interesting positive that also fits right in with the game's general direction of…well, misdirection, and subversion. Simply put, its an artsy game. For example, I noted halfway through my playthrough that the game's repertoire of characters are all mostly annoying, mean, or hard to work with, which leads to me as a player feeling miffed. Yet at the same time, Apollo is living in a new age of distrust and darkness in the legal world. He's living in an age where few feel like they can trust in others anymore, because people like Kristoph who desire results far above truth or fairness rule the justice system: The idea of "evidence" is so easily manipulated, that anyone can escape justice. Thus, Apollo's unable to have his perfect storybook journey of growth and support like Phoenix had because the world around him has changed to be hostile. So, is it really right of me to complain about the game doing what it sets out to do exceptionally well?

On the topic of Apollo himself, its very interesting that he himself is such a passive and static figure throughout most of the game, which underwhelmed me at first. But like I said: This isn't a character-driven story like the Trilogy, so is Apollo's lack of focus a BAD thing? Is the game trying to subvert what came before, rather than running with the tried-and-true optimistic hero's journey, a bad thing? Its a lot of these dilemmas I run into when thinking about the game, and its the reason why I respect it so highly despite the actual process of playing it being a lot more middling than the rest of the series in my eyes.

With all that being said, for as much intent as the game may otherwise have, it IS still Ace Attorney and comes with all the pros and cons of that. The animation is gorgeous, music is stellar, most of the overall mysteries are still pretty fun to unravel, and the whole gameplay of untangling testimonies is as fun as ever. The great fundamentals are still here and keep it enjoyable to play to a degree, and you can even sort of tell a new director is at the helm with this project.

Mitsuru Endo, previously a game designer first and foremost on games like Breath of Fire and Sengoku Basara, really rubs off his love for new gameplay systems and quirks in this game. Like usual for the series though, these systems end up being a mixed bag. Investigating evidence can be pretty fun and is a natural fit for the series, and Percieving is a cool and distinct power, iconic to Apollo. Yet then you have stuff like Ema's Forensics minigames, which feel really out of place and are uninteresting to engage with. There's no puzzle to them, just a good ol' DS touchscreen game. You get the feeling a lot of these things, and the systems exclusive to the third and fourth case, were added as a novelty, as fun toys for the player to engage with rather than being anything substantial…yet at the same time, as a game themed around magic tricks, isn't that heightened interactivity also part of the point?

In terms of writing and general direction, the main thing I think Takumi's games (those being the Ace Attorney Trilogy and The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles) are worse at than his peers' is linking cases together to form a cohesive whole. Takumi excels in writing amazing and deviously clever singular cases, but in all his games its as if he can't resist including one or two bonus cases solely for how cool their mysteries are, rather than thinking of how their inclusion will affect the pacing of the game in its totality. Samurai, Big Top, Masked, Recipe, a lot of the individual mysteries in Ghost Trick, Speckled Band, Clouded Kokoro, the first two cases entirely in The Great Ace Attorney 2…don't get me wrong, I think his works are almost universally fantastic, but at times they can feel disjointed to progress through due to his unashamed love of "filler".

Under Endo's directing, meanwhile, it does feel like effort was placed on giving all cases purpose, reigning in Takumi's style of writing just enough to get the best of both worlds. All cases have substantial meaning, yet are able to be as zany and clever as Takumi always loves to write them. Beyond being a crazy case of solving several crimes at once, 4-2 serves to highlight how much Phoenix has changed and how Trucy helps him. 4-3 features a murder that takes place during a series of live stage performances, asking you to rewatch its footage to catch specific details related to witness testimony. At the same time, it also has a great focus on Klavier as a character, and the corrupt police-force that's been able to thrive in this new age, asking questions on if the law is always just in what it stands for. Yet that being said, we run back to the original issue of fun: Despite its cool themes and depth, 4-3 remains the worst case in any Ace Attorney game to actually play, both because of poor gameplay pacing, but also because the writing doesn't feel fleshed out enough to properly convey its brilliant ideas.

The lack of Psyche-Lockes as well honestly destroys the fun of investigating, and the pacing across all three cases featuring investigations is honestly dreadful. The only substitute present for the lack of Psyche-Lockes is the aforementioned mind-numbing forensics minigames, which do little to help things. Now, I noted in my Dual Destinies review that that game also had underwhelming gameplay, but it to me was salvaged by still having a rock solid, well-paced story pace where things were always happening. The game lacks Psyche-Lockes (for most of it) as well but makes up for it with a steadier stream of discoveries, more interesting 3D crime scene investigations, and so on. Due to AA4s insistence on finding meaning in the mundane, it ends up far less fun to play.

So, its a really tough call. I don't think AA5 or 6 are as ambitious or nuanced in what they want to convey as AA4, yet but they make up for it by having more engaging story events and better pacing across the board, leading to a more enjoyable experience for me. They're stories that are told in a tighter and more fun way than AA4, yet it feels wrong to label the game as "the worst Ace Attorney!!" because, again, it tries so hard and has such a unique flair as by far the most artistic game in the series.

Had this been the final Ace Attorney as originally intended, it would've been an impactful note to end on. But I am glad we did get more games in the series, and it led to great things. The murky law world of AA4 begins to heal across the events of AA5, and AA6 gives you an insight into just how badly it could have escalated, emphasizing a theme of preparing the new generation to solve the issues that are inevitably going to occur through the old generation's stubbornness and evil. Apollo finally becomes a character with agency and goals, Trucy's relationship to the Gramarye's is given a sweet bookend, we get to see how Edgeworth and Klavier handle the growingly unjust law world, Ema is, there, and Phoenix takes on the mentor role he was destined to do.

What I'm saying is: I'm really happy with how AA4, 5 and 6 turned out as a trilogy, even though it makes AA4's ambition stick out in hindsight, and now just exists as "that one weird game" rather than "the crazy rug-pull finale of the series". Despite my grievances with it, I do still love AA4, and I'm glad its resonated with so many people. But its overambition alongside its stumbles, from pretty shallow gameplay additions to bad pacing, keep me from loving it wholesale and having it click entirely. Simply put, a lot of its "but its like this way on purpose"-isms just don't land with me the way they do in games like Suda51's work. Yet it remains Ace Attorney at its core, and the simple fact that they even tried in a series otherwise aiming for as much mass appeal as this one, is worth so much respect. Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is forever going to be a standout game in the series, and for me that's both for better and for worse. Basically, I'm just glad it exists, even if its not for me.

[Play Time: 35 Hours] [Key Word: Overzealous]

[chemicalbrew]

2021 game list

aka 'I finally got tired of having to scroll really far to edit the 2022 list because I wanted originally to fuse two years in one, like a fool'

I'm pretty sure the bulk of this was made in... spring\summer 2021, but there were a bunch of games I didn't write anything for until this year, as will be evident later. This is long as hell, as you would expect.

'Veronica, why didn't you have a 2021 list ready in time???'

A question that nobody asked, but one that really needs answering, because in 2021, I gamed too much, in addition to other things. I'll make additions to the behemoth of a document that never saw the light of day in time in italics.

A lot of things have happened this year. I learned how to swim, for one! I graduated high school, too, and got into my dream university (though, honestly, it's just about as messy as any other uni in the end). I got a reasonably powerful and fully functional PC all to myself (it doesn’t even compare to the old husk I had to use in my school days!) (this year, I finally got a good phone as well, which influenced the current year's list a fuckton). And I could finally fulfill the one dream I held on to for the past two and a half years and get a Switch for myself (insert bittersweet laughing here)!! As a result, when it came to gaming, the possibilities became nigh endless. Instead of praying that a game I kinda like even manages to launch, I could dive headfirst into anything that catches my eye with confidence and no hesitation! I had so many options, in fact, that I ended up making a Backloggd account to assist myself. (yup, still helpful, though I'm much more loose about keeping track of shit now) Almost anything I played that isn’t on this list can be found there, if you’re curious! This, however, turned out to be a double-edged sword. More options means more garbage to wade through, and yet the best games tend to draw you in quicker than you think. (so true bestie)

After this, a list of games that did nothing but disappoint me that year followed. I don't want to dwell on it too much now, but I'll still mention their names:

Night in the Woods (PC, 2017) - I was way too old to be their target audience and came out thoroughly disappointed, especially in the character cast and soundtrack.

Children of Morta (PC, 2019) - the progression is too slow, the cast isn't appealing enough, there's a lot of redundancy to the point where I dropped the game. However, it was fairly pretty and I liked the narrator enough to listen to his extra works.

Spiritfarer (PC, 2020) - best described not as ‘a cozy management game about dying’, but’ as ‘much ado about nothing’. These two reviews give voice to some of my frustrations better than I can. PS. Love lighthearted ableism!

Aria's Story (PC, 2018-2019) - A very little game that has nothing of value to tell you (that hasn't been done to death already) and has cheap jumpscares every five minutes.

Hyper Light Drifter (PC, 2016) - I don’t get this one. The idea of telling a story without words seemed appealing at first, until I realized that I actually need words in my stories!

Moonlighter (PC, 2018) (confusing gameplay, boring music and plot)

OMORI (PC, 2020) (I think I have an allergy to this game)

Yume Nikki (PC, 2004) (sorry, but nah, I don’t get it)

Long Live the Queen (PC, 2012) (more like Long Live the Guide)

Owlboy (PC, 2016) (why would you do my boy Otis like that? Also, my apologies to Rads)

UnderMine (PC, 2019) (should have been called UnderGrind)

Baba is You (PC, 2019)  (actually not bad, but brain is fry)

Hand of Fate (PC, 2015) (the font hurt me, there’s nothing really good here other than narration)

Minute of Islands (PC, 2021) (should have been a picture book, otherwise it’s a neat interpretation of ‘no man is an island’)

...'okay, but surely not everything you played was garbage?'

Right you are, hypothetical reader! And this is how I would like to introduce what once was the 'honorable mention' section of my record. These notes have actual substance to them and are formatted similarly to my 2020 list! There is a game that is of particular importance (because I ended up playing its sequels in 2022) at the end of this section.

Hades (PC, 2020) [♪ House of Hades]

Yes, I get to put the game of the previous year here again, because it is my list. All things considered, I love Hades too much not to use the opportunity to mention it again! I played it till March to wrap up some of the tasks that are more… out there (learning to play without god mode, chasing extra dialogue, and climbing up in ranks), and it was fun pretty much the whole time. Streaming it was a grand time while it lasted, as well (not very long at all). All the mediocre roguelikes I touched this year fail to measure up to Hades in any capacity. 💖 Still true - my interest in roguelikes\-lites has naturally dropped since then, but Hades' excellency was a major factor in this.

Sayonara Wild Hearts (PC, 2019) [♪ Doki Doki Rush]

Kiss Your Ex And Lie About Your Genre On Steam: the game. The only thing preventing this from being a game that is barely worth mentioning is its really good soundtrack. (I played it about a quarter of the way through before realizing that a far better option than standing still and letting the music play out would be to just watch the whole thing.)

I also like the general style of it and find it pretty unique (even though Katana ZERO did something similar in a much more cohesive and enjoyable fashion), but playing it was an exercise of frustration that prevented me from appreciating the awesome landscapes. Parallel Universes is a pretty incredible level concept, yeah, but I did NOT handle it well.

I didn’t jive with any of the symbolism either (I guess it’s gay though. Good for them), however, I am still glad something as creative as this exists, even if it is clearly not cut out for me. Can’t believe I let this game gather dust for months, when I could have just given up. lol

A Hero and a Garden (PC, 2019) [♪ Shop Bell]

A clever little mix of visual novel and clicker game that manages to have an interesting story, despite starting out with the oldest of cliches (hell yeah, there's a princess!). Music is really sweet too, and even in a runtime as short as ~2 hours, you end up feeling for the protagonist. If you don't have much free time, spend it on this for a complete experience.

Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! (PC, 2021) [♪ Dreams of Love and Literature]

PM died for this.

Ohhh… A horror VN classic… Yeah, sure. It’s actually not that great, but some of the music is downright incredible (i.e. the linked song and about half of the songs added in the new edition), and it was a game that undeniably helped and inspired many people. I can’t say I regret spending time with it, but it didn’t impress me, either. The scares got ever so slightly more predictable over time, and it became clear that all they were aiming for is shock value. This game reminds me of Night in the Woods in the way that it had been severely overhyped by contemporary teenagers.

At least Yuri was pretty, I guess?.. But really, all the girls did was represent some overdone anime -dere cliche. It was very likely done on purpose, which is something to be respected for sure, but the fandom ran with it anyway, cause fandoms be fandoming. Shame! (Monika is the obvious exception, but the way they built her up was through the simplest of text dumps, oh, and they also gave her a Twitter account or something. Come on, get creative!)

Rhythm Doctor (PC, 2021) [♪ Rollerdisco Rumble]

Healing hearts and minds with the power of rhythm, hell yeah! Absolutely incredible concept! Combine that with amazing pixel art and animation that makes the small world come alive, the incredibly flashy aesthetic that draws attention from the outside and utterly fucks with your performance on the inside, and an overall message that both promotes peace and showcases humane struggles of a medical profession… the way it ends up going places you wouldn’t quite expect is just so good. And through all that, the game retains its charm and positive vibe! I want a bigger scope, though – it was over far too quickly. Oh, and a little more accessibility options wouldn’t hurt. 

The flashiness of this game reminds me of Rhythm Heaven trying to mess with the player, but pushed to an extreme, which is delightful. I had to clear most of the later levels with my eyes closed, and rewatching them later was quite an unusual and fun experience!

Coffee Talk (PC, 2020) [♪ Come Closer]

Pretty (the pixel art reminded me a lot of the PC-98, which is never a bad thing. Oh, dithering, my beloved!) and has an atmosphere, but not nearly as impactful as a game from later on this list with the exact same premise.

Can be good for a getaway\escape kinda game, and the decision to focus the soundtrack on the lo-fi genre is wonderful, but the story has no staying power, and not even the ‘make your own latte art’ gimmick ended up working out, because the process would always feel… either too realistic or too finicky, I wouldn't be able to tell. I’m no barista! Oh, and I guess there was some message about overworking employees?.. I literally forgot.

Ys: Memories of Celceta (PC, 2012-2018) [♪ Wise Man]

So, this was my… *checks notes* fifth Ys? I started with Oath (okay… I guess…), then I played I&II (and wrote about that in 2020) and dabbled in Origin (it was… exhausting to play, but well-written), and I played VIII this year before this (more on that later). So I thought I had enough experience (and understanding of the fandom’s general opinion on Celceta) to know what to expect when I began my journey in this game. Boy, was I wrong! But still, it's obvious that the earliest iteration of the party system would be worse than VIII's, and playing the games in the order that I did may have screwed my impression.

First, the good things. I actually grew unreasonably attached to the artstyle of this game. I loved the fresh take on a younger Adol just starting to give in to his lust for adventure, and the other party members had quite good designs too (especially Duran. I dunno, I can’t help but love that husk of a dude). Some of the locations were endlessly charming (I loved running laps around Casnan with its upbeat music and fun NPCs, and was awed by how pretty Danan ended up looking for a Falcom game). The world was decently fun to explore overall, but I think most of that fun came from seeing what is an early draft of what would later become Lacrimosa of Dana.

The music is absolutely lovely! Everyone loves Ys for constantly offering hardcore rock guitar bangers or whatever, and while Celceta isn’t without a couple of these, I ended up appreciating far more how much calmer it sounds as a whole. There are plenty of tracks that offer you much needed downtime, and the sound of the game feels more mellow than your usual Ys soundtrack.

The gameplay\battle system was overall serviceable, with a few nags in its way - movement felt more restricted than before, and breaking enemies’ guard felt more tedious than necessary. But hey, there’s no raids in this game! hahahahaha-

That ending single-handedly ruined a decent game and is as bad as everyone said it was. I broke down in hysterics when it actually happened. Also, I am still mad about getting only 99.3% map completion! That part of the game is crazy!!

Ib (PC, 2012) [♪ Uneasiness]

My memories of this are quite scattered, but I really enjoyed it, so have this heap of thoughts!

Aria’s Story, but good enough to leave an impression on you, since Gary is an actual character. He serves as a great mentor figure – even without coming across as stiff or all-knowing, he has a lot to give and teach Ib, which makes for a good dynamic that contrasts his disheveled looks well. It’s clear he cares about the girl, but is reluctant to show it clearly enough for her to understand fully, but she clings on to him as her last hope anyway. It’s pretty damn beautiful, actually. also the handkerchief in the true ending omg

The other girl with the yellow rose… Mary… good contrasting character, but her betrayal could be seen from a mile away, which, I guess, is the point, but still not satisfying.

Music is somewhat good too, and the game nailed the aesthetic of an art gallery (including successfully subverting expectations).

The jumpscares rely more on the physical suddenness of it all rather than psychological pressure, and it works out really well – even if you’re cringing, your body is affected. Plus, they fit well thematically, given the protagonists’ age. Speaking of which, the ??? thing (if Ib doesn’t know a word, you won’t know it either, basically) is clever, but gets old a little too quickly.

The idea of linking their life energy to fragile but sharp roses is somewhat creative and executed very well, especially regarding Gary’s blue rose.

The chase sequences were kinda annoying, but not nearly as awful as Aria, thank god.

Basically, this was the game that, alongside OFF, convinced me I might be into RPG Maker games, but, unfortunately, I've yet to find anything else that matches Ib and OFF's energy in this niche\'subgenre'. (And of course, this is talking about the version available as freeware, and not this year's rerelease, which I am curious about, but have no plans of playing.)

Butterfly Soup (PC, 2017) [♪ Thought Projection]

The most wholesome VN I have ever seen. The art is very pretty and expressive without being overwhelming (and of course, the focus on purple\pink is extremely satisfying to me personally). Music is cute and never gets annoying; it may be royalty-free, but it was chosen with clear care. 

This game, in my opinion, is genuinely funny without coming across as insincere, and I don’t feel inclined to agree with those who tend to say its ‘uwu humor’ did not age well, because I personally laughed at most of it (the Zero Escape reference got me, man)! And even if I hadn’t, it would still, ironically, fit well with the overall message (which is that growing up and learning new things about yourself is good, and it’s fine not to know what you’re doing for a while, as long as you stay true to yourself and your friends)!

Some of the impact was lost on me due to the focus on America as a setting/baseball, but it's fine, since this focus was chosen with intent. Ultimately, the game carries the same message and does similar things to Night in the Woods, except successfully, without having to rely on random gameplay changes or ‘hip’ artstyle.

Evan’s Remains (PC, 2020) [♪ Whales]

The best thing about this game is its pixel art – just detailed enough for you to appreciate it, but not excessively so. The backgrounds in particular are nothing short of stunning.

Unfortunately, nothing else in Evan’s Remains manages to match that standard. The music, for the most part, is just there, the puzzles, while creative, can be somewhat irritating and repetitive, and the story, while starting out decently, has an ending that might be worse than Celceta’s and ends up making about as much sense. I would recommend you to watch footage of this game, but only if you like pixel art. It won’t take long, I promise.

Platform fighters I tried to give the light of day to

Super Smash Bros. Brawl - fun for just messing around in classic modes like the SSE and Multi-Man Brawl. Really, you can't ask much more of it.

Rivals of Aether - the most polished one that isn't Smash by far, really pretty and fun in general, but a little small in scope. I owe its soundtrack my life (or more accurately, one track. It's legit amazing to study to...)

Brawlhalla - as usual, don't trust a free game to be good. That's all.

In general, the copycats simply fail to capture the charm and spirit of Smash Bros, and Brawl is as much of a casual's game as one would expect. :)

All the idle\incremental games that ate up my time this year (yes, I like these too much, I know)

Namely, these, ordered from best to worst:

Kittens Game (actually amazing for killing boredom. the flavor text is extremely cute and the resource management is quite advanced)

Cookie Clicker (the classic. I lost my garden due to mods, and so shall never speak of this wretched curse again)

Tap Wizard (ironically, the only one on the list I'm still playing - now side by side with the sequel. Though the praise I gave to Kittens is still deserved.)

Trimps

Grimoire

Liquids

Exponential Idle

Shoutout to r/incremental_games for enabling me to dive deeper into this toxic, awful, beautiful genre of timewasters :)

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (DS, 2007) [♪ Trial]

AKA ‘the one where Phoenix done fucked up’. First AA I played the Android version of, and it held up pretty well (certainly better than emulating DS via RetroArch)! The remastered graphics annoyed me less than expected, and the gorgeous OST (best in the series so far, unless you count Investigations, and overall a glow-up and joy to my ears [< Still true. I might be ready to shill AA6 music any day, but nothing can top the excellency of AJ music even now.]) has remained intact.

I don't think this game ever reaches the highs that AA3 did, but it is certainly not for a lack of trying. I can understand the sentiment behind 'being done with Phoenix', for sure, and him still being here proves to be a sign for the beginning turmoil of the series and the struggles that Takumi is only now beginning to see the end of with GAA.

I didn’t find myself exactly attached to any of the main characters (okay, maybe Klavier awakened something or other in me, who can say [so valid, but girl... your personal prosecution turmoil is far from over]), but that has been the case for basically the entire main series as well, so that’s not surprising to me personally.

4-1 was more fun than I expected it to be based on popular opinion, and I got a good chuckle out of the ‘’’Russian’’’ waitress and the mental image of hobo!Phoenix eating borsch, but it’s still no 3-1. 4-2 and 4-3 especially were less than impressive, and overall the game got steadily worse over time.

I still appreciated it for trying to pave a new road for the series, for, again, having a fantastic soundtrack, and for making Phoenix into a lovable utter failure (should have stayed that way, his days were indeed over), but… AJ is not the best Ace Attorney by a long shot. 4-4 was pretty damn good though, and I loved how the jurist system was integrated in both story and gameplay, even if the threat it tried to present fell way short. Also, Vera Misham is the cutest girl we’ve ever had to defend.

PS. Klapollo have bigger gay energy than Wrightworth do, fight me. 2022 me here to report that I no longer want to fight anyone, because in the end it turned out I'm the loser who got somewhat into Blackmadhi. And also I now think the two ships in question are about equally good.

Fire Emblem: Awakening (3DS, 2012) [♪ Chaos]

I actually had barely played the game throughout either year, but it still deserves this spot.

A game that aged better than expected. Really fun to play on an actual big screen (and with savestates – the Mila's Turnwheel of yore). Music is still godlike after all these years. Still haven't gotten far enough to marry Chrom, but I was almost there, I swear!! (If you think I care a lot about much else after so many years, you're a fool.)

I don’t have much more to say because a passion for this game has burned within me for years now, and playing it now just matches every expectation of it I used to have. It’s very dear to me, and it’s very good, and that’s good enough.

The actual 2021 list

Rhythm Tengoku (GBA, 2006) [♪ Iai Slash] + Rhythm Heaven Fever (Wii, 2011) [♪ See-Saw]

Rhythm Heaven is a very special, fun and wonderful little series, and I'm happy to say that spending more time with it was the first thing I thought of when I got my new PC.

I played through both Tengoku and Fever this year, but I believe the former is more remarkable because... It's my first time! And the game is honestly a little brutal compared to Fever (thank god for savestates), but it looks somewhat impressive for the GBA, and the music is fabulous, and it's just so exciting to properly see the origins of the best rhythm game series ever. If the ranking system was just a tad less strict, I would have loved to get to know it fully.

However, keep in mind this is the game that has Quiz and an endless game as original as Mr. Upbeat. You can’t have your cake and eat it?..

Anyway, Fever I actually managed to complete without much issues (Working Dough 2 aside. My god, that game can go fuck itself.), which was another longtime dream of mine! Yay!! In my opinion, Fever hits the perfect sweetspot between being so strict you can’t pass a remix and being so forgiving that you don’t feel accomplished unless you get a Perfect (looking at you, Megamix). The games are well-varied as well, although overall they rely too much on holding A+B together… I suppose that is better than motion controls, though!

More about the games themselves: most of them are solid. If you haven’t gleaned this from the first paragraph already, I think See-Saw is actually a classic. My favorite remix has always been the fourth one (kinda obvious if you bother scrolling through the wall of shitposts on my ‘about’ page), and I have a soft spot for all games on that set, too. Love Rap, while not outstanding, actually gave me a lot less trouble than anticipated (following cues out loud helps), and you just can’t have Karate Man beat!

Even some of the more obscure games, like the two-player Pirate Crew (which I played on my own, while emulating two controllers. It’s fun that way, but quite tough!), are well-made and fun! I’m so glad that even… roughly four years later for me, the game managed to deliver.

Trials of Mana / Seiken Densetsu 3 (PC, 2020 / SNES, 1995) [♪ Meridian Child]

Ah yes, the second-to-last good Mana game with a soundtrack that at times outshines Chrono Trigger! (only at times, though.)

Disclaimer: I have only played the remake, and I only did it once (Riesz\Kevin\Angela was my party). However, I watched two playthroughs that covered the other routes, and one of them was of the SNES version of Trials. Yeah, that took a lot of time!..

(Surprisingly enough, that was all past me had left me with. This is where the list in general shows how it ended up unfinished in time! Time to wrestle with my own memories!)

Here's the thing: for the mid-90s, this game is impressive as all hell. And as someone who has considered herself a casual fan of the series for a few years now (Secret being one of the few games I had a good time with on the SNES Classic, and Legend leaving me with a warmth of fondness in my heart), I was unusually, but unsurprisingly, excited to see this allegedly wonderful work come to us in its full splendor. The favorable reviews of the remake when compared against the sheer mediocrity that was their first attempt with Secret didn't help when it came to quelling my hype either.

And then I booted the game and was greeted eagerly with the wonder of a song that is Meridian Child. You bet I looked forward to it!

In the end, though... even the best Mana games just aren't enough to compete with most RPGs of the modern day, or even some contemporary ones. That's not to say I didn't have fun, but you can't deny how basic this game's story, structure and gameplay feel in the 2020s.

I wasn't disappointed with my choice of characters (they made a very cohesive and satisfying team together, based on almost all-out offense), but I did feel like there wasn't much of anything done to make them feel like a well-thought out party narratively. I mean, the team in Secret didn't have that much reason to get together either, but considering how much the game and its fans tout how 'interconnected' the stories are... I think I have a right to feel let down. The gameplay system itself is pretty bare-bones, too - it doesn't feel all that different from the predecessor (I mean, yes, you no longer have to wait to strike at full power, but does that count as an actual change?), and playing it in 3D made me realize how much the charm of the excellent 2D sprites had carried the series all along.

The character designs are... very 90s, for all the good and bad that entails. Angela in particular deserves the small degrees of infamy she got upon the game's release. However, in a complete vacuum, they're quite pleasant (Riesz especially - doubly so in the Star Lancer class she ended up with on my playthrough.), and the way they change together with the classes (the whole idea of a class change in a game that's not strictly about classes like Fire Emblem is great!) is spectacular.

The music is absolutely wonderful, and unlike Secret, the remade versions don't ruin the SFC sound's charm either. Trials was one of the few remakes where I actively made use of the soundtrack version switch! It's still hard to pick a single favorite, even when my excitement about this game has long since quietened. Walls and Steels, Powell, the cheekily-named Secret of Mana (ignore the video title, lol - SE seems to have gotten greedy with copyright strikes in the years since I started this list) and Damn Damn Drum are just a few pieces I have enjoyed for years - both the original and the remade versions.

The logical conclusion here is that in this day and age, this game is nothing more than eye candy, accompanied with Kikuta's finest work. But hey, sometimes that's just what you need, and I enjoyed what it had to offer!

Wandersong (PC, 2018) [♪ Sailing with the Coffee Pirates]

The one thing Wandersong became particularly well-known for is its… energy, in my opinion. On their own, the colorful visuals, charming writing and welcoming music wouldn't amount to nearly as much as they do when they all come together. Fitting for a game whose message is all about the whole world coming together to accomplish what no one could on their own, huh?

This, believe it or not, is the solution to basically every problem - big or small - that plagues the world of Wandersong. Good thing singing is basically all our adorable protagonist* can do! You'll never guess what they end up doing for the world they live in, either!! (save it. they save it.) ...but what matters is that they don't do it alone. (and that they're not the eternally cheerful bundle of energy they always seem to be.)

*I lovingly named them Bong as soon as I saw the opportunity to do so, but I know their actual name is supposed to be Kiwi. I doubt I'll address the character themselves much while writing, but if I do, I'll probably end up calling them the Bard anyway, for simplicity. 'Bong' was funny while it lasted, though!

Call it cheesy, call it overdone - it doesn't change the excellent execution of the ideas brought to the table. Playing this game is like looking back at your younger self who believed in fairytales, and telling them 'no, it's not always like those stories, even if sometimes it seems that it will be. But what you can do is be yourself, and like-minded people will flock to you. And others will have something to learn from your example!'.

Also, you can dab and play Megalovania (if you know how to) in this game. 10/10 meme potential. ...I'm honestly struggling to put my impressions in words - it really is just a warm cup of coffee brewed the right way. It can barely be described any better than a warm way of sunshine. My rambling doesn't do justice to how adorable it was.

Va-11 Hall-A + KIDS! (PC, 2016 + 2018) [♪ Base of the Titans + Her Noise]

Screw it, I don't care what this inclusion says about me. I recognize this has similar pitfalls to the previously shat on Night in the Woods (Jill is barely any better of a protagonist than Mae, only more grounded; the amount of stupid and/or immature jokes is similar, if not worse; the Julianne minigame is super dumb), but listen! I just heard of a visual novel that was inspired by PC-98 graphics and immediately drooled and had to find out more.

The pixel art is indeed immaculate, if not too varied. The music is really good. Might not be something to listen to much outside of the game, but while you play, it ENHANCES the experience ♥ [this is so funny to read to me, considering I Still consider this to be a phenomenal score and have come to enjoy it a ton in 2022, even finding it genuinely inspiring at times. Don't listen to past me, this game is full of bangers.] Not to mention how diverse it can be sometimes — i.e. the track above vs. Snowfall vs. Showtime! [my personal current favorite] That, combined with how you're in charge of what you're hearing most of the time, makes for a very chill experience that manages to reflect what you're feeling impressively well.

The idea of the story changing depending on the drinks you mix is interesting in theory, but the way it plays out in practice is just a lot of basic win/fail branching that doesn't ever seem to change more than a few lines most of the time. The script is actually quite robust when you look deep into it, but it's hard to witness while you actually play. This game could benefit from a flowchart to encourage players to explore. (However, Alma acknowledging you're trying to cheer her up with her favorite drink despite her ordering something entirely different – that's good! I want more of that!)

Other things ruining the drink system are:

the fact that the recipes are easily accessible, so unless Jill gets distracted and/or the order is obscure, it's impossible to screw it up or experiment;

it's all revealed at once, which makes gameplay more repetitive than it had to be;

you need a LOT of money, especially if you're buying as much furniture as I did, which further discourages you from experimenting on your first playthrough

A lot of the jokes are (im)mature, hit or miss, and reliant on recent internet culture. There's too many dogs and they're not even funny, either. This is not going to age well, but the game still made me chuckle reliably, dang it!

The world gets a surprising amount of development thanks to Jill's phone apps and exposure to all manner of clients. It's really a shame you don't get to see any of it aside from her bar and room! And despite what I said earlier, it's hard not to get invested in Jill's struggles to live and make peace with herself.

This is far from a masterpiece, but to me it's clear that it's not what it wanted to be – you can feel the developers striving for more, which is a good thing. It makes for a great time with a chilled beverage of your choice and it looks great, I couldn't ask for more!

KIDS! is a fabulous spinoff that is way too good for an April Fool's joke! The art is inspired and cute, the music is just as good as the original and even better at times, and the decrease in mature jokes is honestly refreshing.

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (PC, 2018) [♪ Royal Capital Aigius]

I'm soooo conflicted on this one.

The character/flashbacks artwork is really amazing and I loved it all immediately... but I really can't say the same about the game's actual graphics. They're serviceable, but I wish there were more chances to show off the gorgeous artwork!

Dana might be the best character in the whole series and I fucking love her, but the way she exists in the same game as Sahad is a travesty. Dogi needed to switch places with him and be playable.

Exploring the island is pretty fun for the most part. The way everything's marked on the map makes it rot a little, for sure, but I won't refuse a nice distracting checklist! After all, I play Trails! Unfortunately, the locations don't vary, like, at all (aside from Eternia, which was great), so if you binge this game, you're guaranteed to get sick of greenery and dinosaurs :(

Some of the music is as good as you would expect from an early 10s Falcom game (everything to do with Dana/Eternia, Alone on the Deserted Island, Gens d'Armes, etc). Key word is 'some'. Despite what I just said, I think Iclucian Dance is uh... Flawed. And all music for raids/hunts can die in a fire. In addition, aside from these clearly bad tracks, I have bias against the kind of music Ys uses in general, so in total my OST impression is one big fat 'meh!'.

I like the general idea of abandoned island/castaways, getting them back together and having to figure out what's going on before stumbling onto Dana... Why did this get diluted with thematic clashes ghost pirate ships and silly assassins?

Getting the castaways might be fun, but their actual personalities are unimpressive. I don't want to blow this flaw out of proportion - this is Ys, after all, and it's about as good as I would expect for Ys, but still. The feeling of the whole village bonding is greater than the impressions from its individual residents. Not to mention, it devolved into yet another save the world plot near the end, when I would've preferred something that focused on Dana more than it already did.

Moving on to gameplay... wow, an Ys game that has a party instead of a single playable character works? Kinda. The bare minimum is done to distinguish between characters, and the Flash system trivializes most differences anyway. In the end, only Adol and Dana are actually fun to use. Unless you count spamming the same skill over and over.

Sanctuary Crypt was a very fun optional dungeon with the best boss to boot. Block puzzles soured my impression, though. Meanwhile, most of the other levels are nothing to write home about, if not outright terrible.

And since I have nowhere else to put this: raids/hunts as a whole are unnecessary, grind the slow pace of the game to a halt and are not fun. Also, giving Adol binary and meaningless dialogue options won't make him a nicer character, the outside narrator explaining his thoughts in the older games was better.

Cosmic Star Heroine (PC, 2017) [♪ A Conspiracy]

What do we have here? A very unique battle system that is greatly enjoyable, but really, only in short bursts (a huge part of why I almost burnt out on the game was playing it on Hard / Heroine – made it drag). What makes it stand out is how it elegantly limits your abilities - you can only use each of your equipped moves once, before you have to recharge them by defending. It's a refreshing take, to be sure, but when you play the game for hours on end, it turns into something that feels more like padding than actual mechanic.

There's also a unique soundtrack, which should not really be a surprise, given the composer, but still, you just don't hear stuff like A Firebrand, An Agitator in your everyday RPG! It can feel a little off and cringe-inducing sometimes, but it's honestly just very awesome overall.

The pixel art in this game can be hit or miss, but luckily, it never missed in its most important moments, and character portraits did not fail to please.

That's about where CSH's strengths come to an end, however. When it comes to personalities, everyone is pretty dry and feels like cardboard, but it felt fair to me, since I knew what I was jumping into. And the gorgeous presentation, battle system and decent jokes all outweighed the forgettable plot!!! It was a good time ♥

Pyre (PC, 2017) [♪ Surviving Exile]

Near flawless given what it sets out to do, discounting the slower pacing near the second half. For a pitch as uniquely strange as 'visual novel where you have to play a game of sports-lite about a dozen times', Pyre manages to be incredibly compelling and welcoming to nigh everyone that approaches it, thanks to having what can be graciously called an open-ended story that is, in a way, completely independent from the 'sports'-like parts of the game (you can lose every match and still reach the end), and yet, in a lot of other ways, bound together (hehe) with it so intricately that it might as well count as a gameplay\story integration masterclass. The fates of characters you love riding on your shoulders and the performance you're willing to deliver is a simple, but elegant way to set up the narrative.

And the gameplay itself is... well... it's everything you could want it to be within reason, I guess. On the surface, it's not particularly complicated - you control three characters one at a time to score goals while preventing the AI from doing the same - but the amount of choices given (and supported by the narrative) when it comes to composing your team and letting it grow is surprisingly high. In addition, one of the defining features of Supergiant's games is the freedom they give you when it comes to difficulty, and Pyre is no stranger to this. There's the previously mentioned freely available option to lose, but if that's not enough, Pyre has an always accessible difficulty toggle and the (by this point expected) extra difficulty modifiers.

Of course, one of the biggest reasons Pyre saw success in the first place was its ingenious presentation - it's pretty without being overwhelming with details or feeling pretentious, the character designs stand out on their own while also conveying a much needed feeling of unity... and the soundtrack is one of the best I've heard in a game, period, managing to tie plenty of rather diverse styles, from the gentle vocals used in something like Mourning Song to the appropriately abrupt metal track that is Thrash Pack, together neatly, without clashing or betraying the game's intentions.

And that's without going into how dynamic everything sounds - there's the obvious changes, like the theme song of the Liberation Rites and the (wonderful) ending song changing lyrics depending on who you faced and\or what the outcome was, and the more subtle ones, like Surviving Exile (and most other tracks) having different layers to them that show themselves appropriately, with that track in particular doing a splendid job of both setting the game's overall mood and, well, setting, as well as providing a thematic foundation for three of the game's more important characters.

That's not to say they're given more time than the rest or anything like that - all characters, at least the ones that band together for your cause, are well-written given the short runtime (I always looked forward to talking with the kind and resolute Hedwyn in particular :) ), and even those that face off against you carry just enough intrigue to be interesting and have their own place in this strange little world. Therefore, Pyre excels at selling you the found family narrative, if you're willing to stick to it, not in the least because your role as the Reader in particular is handled so well.

You're basically half of the reason these beings of different walks and ways of life could have banded together instead of resigning themselves to their fate in the first place, they owe a lot to you in that sense, and yet, they make it a point to make sure you stand as an equal among them. They're willing to stand up for you just as much as you are for them, though some might need a little convincing first. It all makes for lovely interactions that enhance the cast and the world around them, while still making your place in it feel unique. Never have I felt so good about being literate, which is a plot point that ends up enhancing the worldbuilding in rather impressive ways - helping you feel closer ties with everything that's happening, since obviously you can read, and making the world around you take shape and feel more real thanks to the Book of Rites. (And of course, the small detail of being able to choose the Reader's pronouns and that change being reflected everywhere, including the music, is just about the cherry on top - I like it because you can use it both to increase immersion and to distance yourself from the narrative as much as you want.)

So yeah! A refreshing experience that never quite falters from start to finish, with a powerful and positive message to deliver... it would have been the game of the year... were I not a Trails fan...

Katana ZERO (PC, 2019) [♪ Katana ZERO]

Yes, I did pick that track to do the 'Fullmetal Alchemist. Fullmetal Alchemist.' thing. But it's also genuinely really good! Although my big faves are Sneaky Driver, Full Confession and Overdose. The soundtrack in general, while hit or miss sometimes, overall has an incredible sound that would resonate very well with younger me, methinks. The heavy reliance on bass and repetition is exactly what I'm here for, and it's a flawless fit for a game that has you spend a lot of time perfecting the execution of each of its challenges – it draws you into the setting and the mood without having an overwhelming presence. I also love the little detail of Zero actually turning it on every level – I admit, it got me pretty pumped across the whole game.

The aesthetic/presentation is top notch, I enjoyed every second of it. Zero's movement looks and feels very fluid, the overall color scheme is just my absolute favorite, and the way it all reminded me somewhat of the glory days of vaporwave was great too. Not to mention that in general, 2D art in games is my jam... I was SOLD!

The gameplay is far from my comfort zone, but I ended up enjoying it more than expected (it almost gave me the worst case of hand cramps I've ever had, that's how addictive it is, lmao). It's a huge shame that I can't think of any other similar games off the top of my head that I would truly get interested in, without having to wrestle with heavy-themed plots or anything similar (because let's face it, this was one of the few games where I didn't bother with engaging with the story. I was here for the spectacle, and boy, on that level it delivered.).

I loved the general cycle of 'start the level, die immediately, start actually plotting a strategy, die as soon as that strat fails you, develop a fully functional plan, spend some more time executing it... wait, I did it! And didn't realize I was holding my breath the whole time! PHEW, time to watch the tape!'. The last level in particular had me feeling like I was pulling off pure miracles just with my guts and reaction, and it's a fantastic feeling! ...and then I watched the speedruns of the game, which show perfectly how tight the execution in this game has to be, and lost my mind, it's crazy.

The dialogue system in KZ, while undercooked, is intriguing nonetheless, and some of the optional dialogue can be pretty funny. (Pinkachu, anyone?) In addition, I found it ridiculously hilarious to see СУКАБЛЯТЬ multiple times across this otherwise clearly-not-supposed-to-be-russian-at-all game.

And, despite just saying that I did not care for the overarching story, I have to admit, I was drawn in by the sheer mysterious, yet human-like, presence of Zero as the protagonist. This is a game that's not afraid to be itself, and, for better or worse, it had all the right elements to undeniably suck me in. Playing it even a year later is a feeling so specific and good that I'm stuck yearning for more of it. Maybe one day it'll come in the form of DLC?

OneShot (PC, 2016) [♪ On Little Cat Feet]

This game genuinely was a touching little experience (and you know me, I love me some toying with the fourth wall), complete with adorable pixel art and one of the sweetest protagonists known to RPGs. I know usually people tend to rave about this game (and rightfully so, most of the hubbub is deserved), but personally I'm like 'yeah! I played it! It was fantastic!', and I don't really want to preach to the choir beyond that. I do want to point out that this will probably remain one of my favorite 'meta' gaming experiences, though - this game does not try too hard to appeal to the player (and therefore, it never feels like the narrative is falling flat on its face), and the simple story hook of a lost child like Niko trying to find their way with your help is lovely and effective at keeping you invested. It's just... nice, okay? Sometimes it's enough for a game to be nice.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure (PC, 2011, tr. 2021) [♪ Heavenly Chariot]

There are a couple of points to make about this game:

1. The music in Azure is beyond incredible, and showing off but a single track would be an unforgivable crime. At the same time, it's very easy to just point to the entire damn OST as an example of RPG music excellency. I guess they were not kidding when they said Falcom peaked music-wise right around the time this game came out!! When I talked about Zero, I mentioned that, despite how much I liked that soundtrack, I felt like it lacked consistency to a certain degree, which had hurt it, in my opinion. Azure, looking back, managed to strike the balance between having distinct memorable tracks and staying cohesive as a game soundtrack, which is what, deep down, I was looking for in Zero the year before. I remember laughing to myself about how different my opinions on Trails music tend to be from what seems to be the norm established in the fandom, but playing through Azure was the first time I found myself agreeing with 'the masses'. It's impossible not to adore this soundtrack.

2. The main reason this will never be the greatest of Trails to me is that I believe Azure marks the point in the series where the time put into the game (as a completionist who fishes for everything each Kiseki has to offer) starts to become disproportionate to what you actually get out of it.

To explain: while the main storyline is as well-written and exciting (though in a different way from Sky or even Zero - this game is famous for pulling out all the stops, and starting with a bang while finishing with a series of even bigger bangs) as always, this very likely came at the cost of the usually outstanding dialogue of the NPCs. Each time you go on your routine laps around the region, in any way you can, 90% of the time you will only see characters say one-liners about the current situation. That you just witnessed during the main quest from the perfect viewpoint. With your own eyes. It gets, uh... annoying?

And in addition to that, Azure is crazy about locking DP behind random things. Some of them are easy to figure out, naturally, but you will not be reaching first (or even second) rank without guides. And the biggest reason for this is the combination of ridiculously well-hidden quests and unwinnable battles that give you 5 DP in exchange for burning out on your item stash!! >:( You can be smug about this point, given that this is part of what the whole series is known for, but attaining max DP rank here is definitely more of a challenge than even in its prequel.

If that wasn't enough, there are eleven characters Lloyd can get bonding events with, drastically up from Zero's three for like no reason? Which is clearly designed to entice you into doing multiple playthroughs of a 100+ hours long game! I am not against getting more of beloved protagonists, but this is a very bad way to go about it. [laughs in CS1]

The gameplay here is also something I came to appreciate more a year later, after getting to know CS1. As the saying goes, you don't know what you have till it's gone, and this applies perfectly to the changes made to the battle system, particularly Orbments, over the years. When I played Azure, I didn't think too favorably of the addition of Master Quartz, but it ultimately made for an excellent fit, further emphasizing the combat roles the characters are made to fill while giving you an improved sense of progression with the MQ being able to level up.

All this, combined with the fact that I had been stubborn enough to use Hard instead of Normal (lose-lose deal – on Normal regular encounters wouldn't be as fun, on Hard I get my ass kicked by ultra-strong bosses harder. Retry Offset, I miss you...)... Yeah, that is why I almost broke the game with debug mode during the finale (that boss fight was over-reliant on Burst, I swear), and I have no regrets :p

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Switch, 2018) [♪ Main Theme ~ Piano]

This GIF is actually an accurate summary of how my time with this game went.

I feel like, despite past me claiming that Azure was rightfully the spotlight of her year, the true game of 2021 was this all along. Partially because '21 was the only year when I could enjoy it to the fullest. I don't really want to talk about it much, which is funny when I try to look back at the huge rant I had half-prepared about my love-hate relationship with this game (bring back shielddropping! and good singleplayer! and give us good online!), rife with comparisons to Smash 4 and small things only true nerds semi-competitive players care about, but now it all just reminds me of the Smash Ball-shaped hole I have in my soul.

Maybe in another world, I'll be able to enjoy Smash again. For now, I have to thank Ultimate for making 2021 feel like something I earned. For the greatest soundtrack a game ever could have. And of course, for the Palutena buffs. I still remember when I thought she would never appear again, much less be empowered like she was. 💚

In conclusion, this is a game that can be painful to love, but love persists nonetheless, because there is nothing like Smash Ultimate in the world. ❤ - 2021 me, who was right

[cheeriersandals]

My Return to Blogging.

Recommitting to fixing my internet habits to be little more mindful or meaningful.

I believe this is achievable by following more news sites, blogs and content creators and also by throwing my hat into the ring and contributing myself.

The idea is not to be too self-serious, have fun and avoid any update schedule.

There are a few factors moving me in this direction, I recently found out an old blog account had been compromised. It's a 20 year old password that is mostly unused but still was being used on some site, it was good blackmail bait. I promptly backed up and deleted the account.

This scare encouraged me to compile every blog post I've ever made into one place, spanning roughly 15+ years of takes and this formed my identity greatly.

I'll post a link when I get there, even the drafts held some merit. In the meanwhile, I posted a tonne of small gaming reviews to backloggd. Tracker sites might are the new blog IMO - Letterboxd, Goodreads, etc.

In looking over 15 years of posts, I've scattered my takes all over the place - Wordpress, Blogger, SubStack, Cohost and even here in Tumblr. I'm finding it all overwhelming, while having it all in one place where I can decide what is public or public, and with a timeline is important to me.

While I could recommence on any of these sites, there is no best platform and I found all of them have baggage.

Many have a tonne of customisation options, and tend to measure success by page-clicks or monetary value. It is a useful tool in today's gig economy and many have full-time careers working independently which is great! Just not for me.

Tumblr is niche, but the editing options are simple. I found a theme in 5 minutes and drafted this post super quick.

I can sync this to a mailing list when I get going and when I am ready.

I've been tethered to the internet ever since I knew it existed. It was new and exciting, however today it's ever present and unavoidable - but I can manage how I engage with it, which is enough for me. Thanks for reading this adminposting.

[jaynosurname]

I keep finding old writings in my google doc that I completely forgot I wrote.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN i WROTE ALMOST 3K WORD REVIEW OF PIKMIN 4 AND NEVER POSTED IT????

AND IT'S NOT EVEN THAT BAD.

It just needs some subheadings to organize the massive number of paragraphs. I might actually post this on Backloggd.

[gerhardtz]

i already post my game reviews over on backloggd, steam and how long to beat, but i was wondering if perhaps i should set up a sideblog for it too? idk.

not sure what i'd name it, if anyone has any ideas feel free to let me know. perhaps i'll repurpose my old art blog? seeing as i don't post anything but fanart over there anymore.

[peemanne]

Yakuza 5 Review: Life Could Be a Dream

i'm just copying the intro from the last one AGAIN HA Hey, it's Pee again! So there's this site called Backloggd that's basically just letterboxd for video games and I've been writing a bunch of reviews there, with a bunch of longer ones for RGG games because of course so. I've got one currently cooking for 0 and in the meanwhile, I've decided to put them up here too, for archiving or whatever. I also get to put silly captions on them now. So with that out of the way, here's what's probably gonna stay the longest review, Yakuza 5.

Also might as well plug my backloggd in here if you wanna see the rest of the stuff I've done hehehehehe

This review contains minor spoilers.

Reviewed on Aug 06, 2023

Completed on PC

Rating: 10/10 (5 Stars)

Yakuza 5's just a dream come true, in so many ways. This many protagonists, this many stories and content, and yet all of them just work out to create one of, in my opinion, the best titles in the series. Look, this is... a long game, to say the least. The Yakuza games usually take awhile to beat, even keeping side content to a minimum, but Y5 is just something else. And yet it never feels like it drags on. Yakuza 5 earns that long run time, and it kept me entertained the whole time. The main gameplay in the combat is just glorious. I liked Yakuza 3 and 4's combat, but going from there to 5 was definitely something. With 4 (technically 5 hehe) different fighting styles, Yakuza 5's combat just feels fantastic to play through no matter who you're playing as.

Kiryu's arguably the best he's ever felt in this game, with amazing crowd control, a great variety of heat actions, and bounding throws galore. He's at a very "angry old guy who absolutely does not want to deal with this anymore" point in 5, and that reflects pretty well in his gameplay. Take a look at Essence of Face Grating. Kiryu's just pissed off 24/7, and that makes for some kickass fights. Saejima's basically a step above in every way compared to his gameplay in 4. They patched up some of his big flaws, and elevated just about everything that already worked. The Tiger Dragon Drop is just utterly busted even by counter standards and feels amazing. His charged attacks somehow feel even more satisfying to connect, as do his heat actions. I'd like to highlight Essence of Clotheslining for that. Thanks to the MASSIVLY buffed Herculean Spirit, Saejima in 5 embodies both the unstoppable force and the immovable object roles perfectly. There's also the neat bonus of being able to rip poles out of the ground to end street fights the second they begin. Akiyama... actually feels worse than he did in 4. Still fun, just not quite the same guy who had the coolest moveset in the last game. Wall-bounding's gone, but then in comes his aerial shenanigans. It's pretty cool that this ended up being the precursor for Yagami's juggling in LJ. While it does suck that it's basically unusable against his main boss(es), there is still a lot of fun to be had hanging out in the air while kicking down a group of poor street goons. Akiyama's base kit, even with some of his fancy tech taken away from him, is still just really fun to play with. Speed's the name of the game, and Akiyama's the star. I like Shinada's combat. I like it quite a lot, actually. He's rougher and unrefined compared to everyone else, but he still knows how to dish out the damage. As someone who loves grappling in this game, finding out just about everything in Shinada's kit can link into a grab just made me fall in love with him the second I picked him up. His quickstep attack's a grab, his rush combos can link into grabs, his finishers give way to bounding throws, and so on. Even against bosses, who can break free of them pretty easily, Shinada's kit is still pretty damn solid. And where he lacks in crowd control, comes all his unique tricks with weapons. The sturdy pipe you get from the start alone does so many things for Shinada, between heat actions, crowd control, and knocking people down. I understand that's just not for everyone, but Shinada's kit just clicked with me really well. It also helps that his battle theme is my favorite.

Hey, speaking of battle themes, the soundtrack! The RGG game has a great soundtrack, blah blah blah, I'm sure you're used to this by now. But still, I just feel the need to highlight it. I really like the direction they went with the music here. Yakuza 5's soundtrack centers mostly around hard rock, even compared to the rest of the series. And man, it just delivers with every track. It just might be one of my favorites, and again, that's REALLY saying something considering how amazing the composers at RGG are. The street battle themes are just banger after banger. Isolated Fight delivers on the aforementioned "old man kiryu sick of everything" front, and is just a pretty underrated track in general. Hailstorm fits both Saejima and his city perfectly with some amazing riffs thrown in. Affected Fight 1:17. FUNKASTIC HIT sounds like a baseball stadium organ theme and then hits you with a sick ass guitar solo. I accidentally wrote a 24 line segment (spoilers if you click that!) about (almost) all the battle tracks, so I'm just gonna spare you, scrap it here, and tell you that Yakuza 5's soundtrack does NOT miss. Everything, from the boss themes, long battle tracks, side content shenanigans, they're all just amazing. And there's thanks to Haruka's chapter, there's not just some amazing heavy rock tracks, but we basically get a whole CD's worth of J-pop tracks. All 3 of the Princess League songs were amazing and I love them. There's also all the dance battle ones, with a nice little variety to the sounds. I'd also like to shoutout some of the calmer bar tracks like Highway and Silky Night. Adds a lot to the game's atmosphere and are honestly just really nice sounding songs. So, to sum this section up, just about every song in Yakuza 5 can be put into a workout playlist, and it's super duper awesome and cool and radical. The soundtrack's always a highlight for RGG games, but Yakuza 5's is just phenomenal.

The story's usually criticized for having a pretty messy plot. And while I can sort of agree to an extent, there's one thing I think Yakuza 5's story just does phenomenally, and that's the character work. The protagonists are all written fantastically, and a decent amount of the supporting cast are too. Kiryu's characterization in 5 is worth highlighting on it's own: a broken man, still fighting on ever-determined for his family. And they never forget the legend of the Dragon of Dojima, either, especially during the later segments of the game. You really feel for his struggle, and really want to cheer him on as he fights through them. Saejima's pretty well done too, but what I like most about him in this game is how he bounces off everyone else. With Kiryu, with his prison buddies, and especially with Baba. He's actually a lot calmer and pretty chill for the most part which I appreciate, but when he's poked, you'd better prepare yourself for the tiger to roar louder than ever. Haruka's just a great encapsulation of the game's central theme of dreams, and it's nice to see things from her view for a change. Her relationship with Park and the other members at Dyna Chair was pretty sweet. Her chapter's also a nice breath of fresh air, with you not getting jumped all the time. Akiyama admittedly feels sidelined a little, but he's still a fan favorite character for a reason. I love how he and Haruka work together, and it's nice seeing them bond considering the circumstance. RIP Hana though, I can't believe they made her a desk And Shinada. Tatsuo Shinada. Everyone's favorite broke baseball loving goober. I don't trust you as a human being if you don't like Shinada. I'm sorry. Shinada's chapters are honestly some of RGG's best writing. I love his fall from grace and the people he meets down there. I love his relationship with everyone in the town. ESPECIALLY Takasugi. I love how determined he always is. In spite of everything that's happened to kick him down, he always gets back up. As funny as a character Shinada is, he also got some of the most somber moments. There's just so much unapologetic joy from Shinada, and I adored every last second of it. His role in the finale made me tear up a lot, and I honestly don't mind that he hasn't come back yet. As much as it would rock, Shinada's story is finished in my eyes, and they wrapped it up perfectly. Lastly, I'd just like to highlight some of the supporting cast. Katsuya and Watase are honestly just really cool characters. Watase in particular just stole the scene every time he showed up, he really embodied the Omi energy well. As I said before, Takasugi is a perfect character who really complimented Shinada's character well. He goes from shady, untrustworthy douche to reliable and lovable partner pretty fast, and I'm amazed RGG managed to pull that off so well. Nakajima's like, a side-side character, but I'd kill to have a great boss like him. He really sold me on Kiryu's taxi stuff. And lastly my personal favorite supporting character, Baba. I believe he's one of the best in the game. RGG characterized him really well here. His relationship with Saejima was really well done, and everything surrounding him near the end was masterfully done for me. He just feels so human, so vulnerable, and I appreciate that about him. Overall, the story's kind of a mixed bag plot-wise, but, in my opinion, more than makes up for it with some amazing character moments and just characters in general.

Let's move on to the side content. RGG games are no stranger to having lots of it, but the lengths 5 goes through is honestly kind of insane. I can't imagine the completionists were all too thrilled when they got to this entry in particular... You have the mainstays like mahjong and karaoke, but there's also a decent chunk unique to this game, like the noodles minigame, winter combat, the comedy team, and some more. Then there's all the side stories. Fleshed-out minigames for each character to dive in, complete with progression systems and stories. There's taxi driving, taxi RACING, the hunting minigame, Haruka's jobs, and Shinada's unique take on the batting center. There's just so much to do. Like come on, they have TAIKO in this game. That's awesome. You could probably repackage Y5 into a minigame collection and it'd be worth it by itself. There's just so much to do here. As for the substories, they're... alright. I do like them, but there's not really a lot that stand out to me. I do really like some of the more protag-based sweet substories like A Second Haruka or The Letters, though. There's also Shinada's interview which gave us the glorious line "I like to get my balls rubbed at massage parlors. Aww yeah!".

Yakuza 5's a BIG game, in capital letters. And almost everything about it just clicks with me. The music, the characters, the combat, the gameplay, it all just clicks. I understand that not every RGG fan's gonna click with this game as much as I did, and that's fine. But dammit, this game just amazes me with how happy it made me the entire time. A great embodiment of the series thus far, and it's seriously a contender as one of the best for me, in a series FULL of fantastic games.

10/10. This makes the second RGG game that I played the finale during midnight and bawled my eyes out for. I aspire to be a man like Tatsuo Shinada. Thanks for reading me ramble about this long ass game.

[woodaba]

Divinity: Original Sin 2 Review

Note: This review was written in The Past. The opinions within do not necessarily reflect how I feel right now.

Ever since it's release, Divinity Original Sin 2 has been hailed as one of the best western RPGs in recent memory, the highlight of the CRPG resurgence, and is subject to such widespread fondness that it's developers got handed the keys to make an actual Baldur's Gate 3. Which has always flummoxed me, because I played this game at launch and fucking hated it.

A degree of this is that me and the game simply have different priorities. When it comes to a game like this, I want to create a character, a person to embody, rather than being handed one of the DMs shitty edgy OCs to play as, but DOS2 disagrees, and will in fact offer a fairly substantially lesser experience (losing access to multiple sidequests and altering a number of key scenes for the worse) if you don't pick one of it's stable of interminable snarky edgelords. I know that for a lot of people, not having to make a character is actually a plus (i remember all those thinkpieces positing Geralt as proof that player-created characters should be a thing of the past) so you may not find this as immediately distasteful as I did, but I'd expect more people to agree that this game is terribly written.

Every single character in this game feels like someone's edgy OC, but not in an endearing way. There's zero earnestness here, no honest investment in this world or belief that what is happening matters, just a bunch of archly smug edgelords quipping at each other, like a cut of Drakengard directed by Joss Whedon. Lohse was the only character I had any fondness for, and even she has a bizarre edgy streak that feels totally incongruous. These eminently hateable assholes will bring up a theme, float an idea, and then stick their tongue firmly in their cheek and laugh at you for wanting to engage the idea in any meaningful way.

The thing about this game that made me angry was how it brought up incredibly heavy source material on a whim (the first act of the game is you escaping what is essentially a concentration camp and genocide is a major part of the backstory) but utterly refused to engage with it on any level beyond a Redditor smugly correcting the grammar of a post detailing the very real atrocities that exist in our world. It leverages these things purely aesthetically, draping itself in a cloak of the most rancid vibes imaginable. If you're the kind of person who writes entries on TV Tropes about "deconstruction" you probably think it's genius.

CRPGs like this have been described as digital dungeon masters, creating a virtual tabletop space that reveals it's character through what aspect of the experience it chooses to focus on. Icewind Dale focused on pure combat and dungeon delving, Baldur's Gate on the charmingly amateurish emulation of epic fantasy, and Divinity Original Sin 2 focuses on all the ugliest, most cynical, and rotten tropes and expectations that players of fantasy RPGs have come to expect. If it's a dungeon master, it's the kind of guy who describes a field of brutally massacred gnomes while lighting up a blunt.

Oh, but what about dat combat though? Yeah, it's ok. There's fun to be had in throwing a barrel of oil to set on fire, or throwing a barrel of water to electrocute, or teleporting someone far away from you, but thanks to inflated health pools and interminable turn times, all the "creative solutions" that this game's passionate fanbase eulogise about eventually yield to much more standard and predictable turn-based combat with a truly obscene level curve that drags out every single fight to absurd lengths. And even this is being generous, as after the (admittedly, genuinely good) first act the quality of encounters begins to tumble down a cliff before practically giving up entirely by Act Three. I'll fully admit that I turned the game down to easy by that point because I just wanted this obscenely drawn-out overlong game done with already. These people were going to make a tactics game??? Thank god we were spared that reality.

Oh, but it's got co-op! That's fun, that's unique! Yeah, it is, but if you think I'm going to play a story-driven Role Playing Game where only the person who clicked on a character first is allowed to have any input in the story whatsoever, you must have confused me for someone who thinks Travis McElroy's Adventure Zone is good. Co-op was definitely the most fun I had playing this, but at the same time, it did make a game that was already long, slow, and drawn-out even longer, slower, and more drawn-out, a bit like this review.

The version of this game I played was the pre-definitive edition version, so this may not be reflective of the game as it is now, but the game was already receiving comically overblown praise even before that update, so clearly I'm missing something greater than was added there. Still, my impression of the game was certainly not helped by a final act so unfinished it verged on parody, which culminated in endings that would have grated enough for their abruptness, adolescent nihilism and fascist apologia if they actually Worked. Instead every time I picked an option it gave me a different one and I had to go through each one until it actually gave me the one I wanted, at which point the game called me a fucking idiot for not comitting genocide. 93 on Metacritic.

Most of the time when I don't line up with the wider consensus on a game, I at least understand why people thought that way. I cannot understand why anyone who finished this game left with positive feelings. By the time I finished it, any positive feelings I had about this game were an easy 60 hours behind me. A complete trainwreck on every conceivable level.

This is what y'all played instead of Tyranny? shake my damn head

all that being said the sex scene is so hilariously terrible that it's maybe worth playing just for that so five stars best CRPG of the renaissance

[jesuscrab]

Hypnospace Outlaw - ending thoughs and analisis

(Before reading, consider checking out my general review of the game on my Backloggd. Click to read it!)

(spoilers for Hypnospace below the cut)

Hypnospace’s ending was dissapoitning. All that buildup, all that snooping, and then just... BAM! Credits. Nothing. You solved the utlimate case, bye. But then i started listending to the lyrics of the ending songs, “Millenium Anthem” - and i realized that was absolutley intentional. The major theme in HSO is dissapointment, we see it in a lot of characters. Tim finds a friend in Tiff, and then scares her off, resulting in him lashing out with hacking zane’s page and the MINDCRASH hoax. Fr3zer/FatherFungus is a musician, hopeful for starting a new anti-capitalist movement. Which litterally crashes and burns, casued by the very corporation he was trying to critiscize. Merchantsoft emplyes like Sarah and roddy are disspoainted by their very employer, not caring about the important stuff and users, instead fucking over it’s community and focusing on brands and ads.

Hypnospace users are dissapointed in hypnospace itself - it was supposed to be somerthing new, unique, an amazing new technology chganging the course of humanity. And it’s nothing, it fucking sucks! Unclear rules, lackluster protection and interface, leading to infighting and toxicity, becoming a ceaspool of shit. It’s non-existent security leading to Consuler Ronnies exsistence, it’s alienation of users to the creation of Freelands and later their move to cyberworldz.

Dylan is dissapointed too, i think. This amazing new tech he tried to develop turned out to not only be lackluster - but also dangerous. His grand finale, the 2000 update was supposed to be the hurrah of hypnospace, making it the most important thing on the market! But it backfied in the worst possible way - his hubris and ego causing the death of innocent pepole.

This dissapoited extends to the player, both in and out of the universe. The excitment and promise of the internet policeman, restoring justice and cathing the bad guys - but we end up becoming a glorified moderator, busting an old lady for posting child’s drawings or random kids begin mean to eachother. Our work don’t really matter - is the world really better becuse we banned a lady for using some cash service? I don’t think so.

And this brings us to the ending of the game. After snooping on the hacker logchats, we find out that mindcrash happend becuse of Dylan’s neglegence. I was hoping for some cool cutsene, seeing Dylan broght to justice, cops storming his place, the justice for the innocent victism finally served. But it doesn’t come. Dylan apologizes to the victims, and to us. We don’t get to see what happens afterwards, not an epilogue showing us what happened with him or HAP. It just cuts off - we get nothing, no clousare or anything. We don’t see Tim’s reaction to his guilt begin washed away, if he’s happy or not. Nothing. Bam! Credits. We don’t know how the story ends, but we know one thing. Y2K has let us down.

[melloggd]

Review: Another Code: Two Memories

CiNG • Nintendo • 2005 • Nintendo DS Read it on Backloggd: (x)

After discovering Hotel Dusk, I like many others became enamored by the mystique surrounding its developer, Cing: A tiny team that brought the absolute most out of both the DS and Wii, made 4 Nintendo-published games, and despite that died less than 10 years after being founded.

Out of those 4 games, Hotel Dusk is definitely the most well known, and I absolutely fell in love with it. Beyond the fascinating hardware uses and overall presentation, it was the mood and overall pacing of its story that captivated me. A game relishing in the mundane. Games like Shenmue and No More Heroes captivate me with how they use those chunks of silent, "uninteresting" gameplay to both further enhance the more exciting moments and immerse you more in their everyday worlds. Even Ace Attorney does it in a sense with its investigations.

Long story short: I wanted more Hotel Dusk and decided to try out Cing's first ever Nintendo-published game. And to make another long story short, whilst it definitely shows more rough edges and lack of focus compared to Hotel Dusk, the game's heart is still in the right place.

Its a quirky little game: The textboxes look right out of a flash game, the mouth movements can look flat-out creepy if you pay enough attention to them, and unlike Hotel Dusk most puzzles are moreso there to just...be puzzles, rather than have much of anything to do with the world. Its set up sort of similarly to old-school Resident Evil in that way, I guess. You get a mansion with an assortment of rooms and need to decode how to progress further into the house: Solving a puzzle in the living room gives you a key to a drawer in the office, et cetera.

What really made me draw the Resident Evil connection is the abundance of lore-nuggets sprinkled about: It uses its premise of having two characters with memory issues to let the player ponder over two mysteries at once. Its a neat way to handle the story over its short runtime. Outside of solving that mystery the story isn't all that special on paper, and honestly I mostly played this game as preparation to eventually be able to play Another Code R on Wii.

Yet even in those 5 little hours and all that crust, you can definitely feel the Cing spirit here. The atmosphere of Blood Edward Island in general is fantastic, arguably better than Hotel Dusk, due both to the surprisingly large soundtrack as well as the absolutely brilliant use of the two-screen setups. Its straight-up one of the best Adventure game UI's I've ever used, having a 3D-modelled world on one screen as well as 2D stills of the island's most captivating viewpoints on the other. When paired with the music, it creates a kind of immersion I haven't really felt in any other game, and am sad to realize will probably never be seen in any future games given the 3DS' discontinuation. It really does help sell this abandoned mansion's eerieness to both be able to see it at large and see its more detailed spots at the same time.

What also helps with this is that, for as simple as the story is on the whole and as cutesy as the premise seems (A 14 year old goes investigating with her ghost best friend!!), it touches on some surprisingly dark yet very real subjects, with Ashley reacting accordingly. The writer of all four Cing games, Rika Suzuki, has always emphasized that Another Code is specifically about Ashley's mental state first and foremost, and I feel like these moments of discussing betrayal, suicide, abandonment and grief really tie the game together nicely. But really, what'll drive you through the game is its story and atmosphere, alongside the curiousity of how it'll use the DS hardware next.

With its puzzles feeling so deliberately designed to be "DS gimmicks" compared to the more grounded Hotel Dusk puzzles, it end up feeling somewhat self-aware in a really fun way, like "ooh yeah this puzzle is really clever of us", and you yourself cant do anything but go "yeahh youre right", even when they as puzzles are often not anything special. A lot of the time I'd even argue they're too cryptic for their own good.

The story at large is also like a puzzle in of itself, but with its aforementioned short runtime and constant new little pieces uncovered, alongside just generally pretty sweet little character moments, its very fun to just follow along with. Weird, grounded, silly, ominous, crusty, atmospheric: Another Code is most definitely able to be a lot of things in its runtime. At the end of the day I am still very glad I took the time to play it, if only for the memories it gave me.

[Playtime: 5 hours] [Key Word: Novelty]

[melloggd]

hey all 2 people reading this, sorry shits been dead - havent had any motivation to write reviews and if i wasnt making anything new i didnt really feel like reposting my old ones. but now im gonna change that!!!!

starting today every other day I will share one of my old reviews from Backloggd and eventually catch up with where my reviews are right now.

[woodaba]

The Outer Worlds Review

Note: This review was written in The Past. The opinions within do not necessarily reflect how I feel right now.

The one thing I never expected an Obsidian game to be was terminally uninteresting but that's exactly what The Outer Worlds is. A collection of shallow systems, characters, and quests that sort of affect the illusion of a proper RPG with depth and consequence but in reality offers nothing of the sort. The almost cartoonish lack of depth in the gameplay is mirrored in the story, which is a smarmy and infuriatingly smug monument to Enlightened Centrism that wraps itself in a veneer of anti-capitalist rhetoric so thin that it would struggle to appear meaningfully leftist even to someone who gets all their political opinions from Breadtube. Faux-empathetic South Park politics for the Rick and Morty generation, where picking an actual side is always fucking stupid and you should always strive for a meaningless compromise in order to preserve the status quo. Genuinely astonishing that this came from the same studio that released Pillars 2 just prior, a game that, for all it's issues, actually had the guts to grab you by the neck and tell you to pick a fucking side, to get some god damn ideology, and actually let you meaningfully change the broken world it presented. That game was the real New Vegas 2 you've all been clamoring for, but no one bought it, so I guess we're stuck with this. Nothing else to really say because there's basically nothing else in here. An utterly empty and vacuous game that doesn't even manage to surpass Fallout 4. A snake oil salesman promising you a miracle solution to bring back the Fallout you remember, but get past the fancy logo and uncork that bottle, and you'll find nothing in there but dust and echoes.

[woodaba]

Heaven Will Be Mine Review

                     ------------------------LUNA-TERRA------------------------ Soaringly, defiantly, almost certainly the best prose I've ever seen in a Visual Novel. In what is so often an insular, overwritten form that constantly fails to leverage the advantages of, y'know, visuals in order to trim their ludicrously overwritten manuscripts (feel confident in saying Umineko's much-memed length could be halved if you cut out the explanations of things we can see with our eyes and repeating the same descriptions over and over again), the density and gravitational weight of HWBM's beautifully poetic prose shines like a star about to go supernova. Each line says something important, something meaningful, and it's central metaphors are so perfectly pitched and utilized that the clarity of the text is never in question, even deep into an in-universe e-mail about the metaphysics of generating miniature black holes in the ruins of Side 3. I know not everyone gets on with the writing here, but for me, this was so frequently beautiful and impactful that it blows most traditional novels I've read in the past few years out of the water. The incredible music doesn't exactly hurt, either. Weighty and important yet flippant and understated. As heady and political as it is emotional and introspective. It's everything I want to be able to write like.                             ------------------------PLUTO------------------------ As pointedly political as the best of Gundam and as nakedly personal as the highest highs of Evangelion, Heaven Will Be Mine is remarkable in its understanding of what Mecha means, an understanding that eclipses much of the work that so visibly inspires it. Heaven Will Be Mine is about bodies, and takes a transhumanist perspective of our own bodies to discuss both broad, heady concepts of imperialism, as well as how we ourselves characterize, well, our selves. Who am I? Am I these hands, these eyes, this flesh, or am I less, just the thoughts that exist behind my AT Field. Is everything else is just an endless layer of shells built to protect it? Or am I more than that, the words you read now, the voice I speak and the things I create? The reviews I write, edited and carefully constructed to present a meaning I want to present, the videos I make, a series of images that tell the narrative I want to tell, all of these things are as true a Me as exists. When I take a selfie, and edit it, erasing beard shadow and smoothing out the bags under my eyes, I'm not creating an inauthentic self, I'm showing you a truer me than a simple photo could, a picture that shows you what I value, what I want you to see and what I want you to Not See. Is Earth the ground we walk on? Or is it everything we look up to and crave, the planets we've named, the stars we've numbered and categorized the heavens that we want to be ours? Our culture is an udurgh - a thing that contains many things - expanding beyond its borders imperceptibly, imperialism of thought and metaphysics that claims all that exists as territory that belongs to it or will belong to it. Heaven Will Be Mine gets it. At almost every turn, it understands. It knows that mechs are guns. It knows that the Gundam is the White Devil. It knows that we could have made them look like anything, but we made them look like us. And it knows that we love them anyway. There's a lot to think about, and a lot to say when it comes to this game. But more than anything else, Heaven Will Be Mine stands as absolute proof of the necessity of diverse voices telling diverse stories. Neither Tomino nor Anno could have told this story, and asking them to is ridiculous. It's a story we have to make for ourselves, using what the things they created told us to say something new. Eternally glad there are other queers who think about Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack as much as I do.                             ------------------------SATURN------------------------ at the time of writing, well. it's a bad time to be writing. the uk's systemic pervasive transphobia has reached a fever pitch, and currently both the party in government and their supposed opposition trade in barely-concealed terf ideology designed to dehumanize trans people and make us inverse. in the part of the uk's earth where I live - ireland's terra, uk's earth - there is literally no hope for trans people, as we have exactly one gender clinic in the entire country, and they aren't taking consultations. it is impossible to transition right now without obscene wealth and stability that the vast majority of trans people do not possess. and don't even get me fucking started on the wave of nakedly evil anti-trans legislation that is hitting the USA right now. fuck me. we live eternally reminded of how much they hate us. how much they hate what we are, and what we want to be. and the few of us that do become accepted, that let themselves fall into the gravity well of their expectations, prostrating themselves before their culture, only highlights how inhuman they think of us. and in art, in fiction, time and time again, they tell us about the way queer people should exist, hidden in the margins, their queerness incidental rather than defining, something that just exists. the message is clear. either we be who we are on their terms, or we aren't allowed to be here at all. Fuck. That. they think we're not like them? that we're something else, something inverse, inhuman? fine. let's be "inhuman". let's be new genders and pronouns and names. let's change into new angles, new shapes. let's be loud and obnoxious and screamingly gay. let's find out just how inverse we can be.                         ------------------------TRUE-END------------------------ I cannot tell you how much I love this. But I tried my best. A new all-time favorite.

[woodaba]

Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes Review

A legendary parody of Metal Gear Solid that surely ranks up there as one of the funniest games ever made. Few games have communicated comedy through their gameplay mechanics as effectively as killing Revolver Ocelot in about 5 seconds by just going into first person mode and shooting him.

Yeah, obviously it's not the way you should play Metal Gear Solid, because it isn't Metal Gear Solid. It's The Twin Snakes. And it's hysterical.

The cutscenes especially are absolutely incredible. If you complain about Snake surfing on a missile you are factually a loser I'm sorry to be the one to break it to you

[woodaba]

Shenmue Review

When I finished the first half of Shenmue 1 & 2, I felt no desire to move on to the next installment. The idea that there are 5 or 6 or however many more planned entries in this saga seemed ludicrous to me. Not because the game was bad, the opposite in fact: Shenmue 1, on it's own, already told a genuinely powerful, succinct, and standalone story of a boy who gives up his girlfriend, hometown, and life to pursue a meaningless quest for revenge that will destroy him.

It's been two years since I played this, and I still don't really want to play the sequels. Everything I've heard about them tells me that they are just elaborations on what was already here. Shenmue makes you fall in love with it's town, a space better realised than any game up to this point, so it can make you understand what Ryo is throwing away when he finds those sailors and gets on that boat, but also why he does it. The game is both celebratory and revealing in it's mundanity. When you're spending an hour on a forklift, knowing that this was your life if you were to stay here, wouldn't you go on a quest to escape it?

It's just really good. A classic, but not really in the ways anyone told me it would be. Know when to leave well enough alone, Suzuki.

[woodaba]

Nier Gestalt Review

Note: This review was written in The Past. The opinions within do not necessarily reflect how I feel right now.

this isn't really a review so much as it is an emotional plea as to the value and worth of NieR Gestalt. i feel compelled to talk about what made this game so special to me when I played this over 10 years ago now, before NieR becomes completely subsumed underneath the shadow of its vastly more financially successful follow-up. the original nier is an important game to me, and I refuse to let it be forgotten or replaced.

------[a] requiem for smokin' sick style------

the combat is good, actually. and i'm tired of pretending it's not.

maybe it's just because I've spend a disproportionate percentage of my time online hanging with people who think KH2FM and DMC4 are the peak of video games and anything that isn't trying to emulate them is a fundamental failure, but it feels like this is the one stick absolutely everyone beats this game with and it's disappointing.

when Nier hits someone with his sword in this game, there's almost a full second of frame pause as the weapon cleaves into a shade and lets loose abject fountains of blood that paints the environment around the now dismembered spectral body. when he uses magic, he summons a horde of blood spears that obliterate anything they hit. it is one of the most casually violent feeling things in the entire world and it absolutely owns. when this game recontextualises it's violence (refreshingly without falling into "you enjoy the killing" played-out shite), it lands harder than so many other games because of how genuinely violent all this feels, and manages to accomplish it without the cartoonish viscera of something like The Last of Us Part 2.

yes it is stiff and clunky. no, you will not make skillvids of this online. i beg of you, expand your definitions of what makes combat in a game good beyond that narrow field. no other game can be Devil May Cry 4, not even Devil May Cry 4.

------1,312 years [b]efore its time------

representing the satisfying midpoint between the interminable bansky-esqe "makes u think..." philosophy 101 drivel of Automata's lowest points and the insufferable edgelord tendencies of Drakengard 1 & 3 that tended to bury the things about those games that were genuinely interesting, Nier is everything I find enthralling about the DrakenNier games without the things that have ultimately led to me walking away from every other Taro joint feeling disappointed and unfulfilled.

2010 was a really long time ago. NieR came out before The Last of Us, before Bioshock Infinite, before Spec Ops: The Line, before the explosion in indie scene that led to more diverse voices getting a platform on itch.io and steam. maybe taking that into account can help explain why NieR completely changed the way I thought about games. it challenged what i thought video games could be. the way it flirted with different genres and forms was utterly captivating. nier felt like a game from the future or a different dimension. and now it isn't nearly as impressive, sure. it's been mapped out and explained and recapped by people trying to hurry you onto the next, less interesting game. everyone knows about ending D, everyone knows about the drakengard connection, everyone knows about the other routes. but I didn't. when I first played this game, and finishing it unlocked a new game+ that let me hear what the enemies had to say? my tiny 14-year old brain just about exploded, and opened a third eye to just what video games could do. maybe for you the game that did this was killer7, or deus ex, or undertale, or breath of the wild. for me it was NieR.

in a way, this is the real shame about automata, and the way square enix responded to its success. the game itself is fine, good even. but the way in which people have used it to turn this game into a footnote that should be skipped, skimmed, or otherwise treated as a mere prelude to the game about the robots in fetish outfits saying "wot if ur mum ran on batteries and went on about the ship of theseus" is profoundly neglectful.

yes i am being reductive and mean about NieR: Automata. if squeenix wanted me to not do that, they should have been less reductive about this game.

------the [c]ase for papa nier------

when people talk about the story of NieR, it's often the subversive or Lore aspects that are talked about the most, about the details of Project Gestalt and it's implications for the themes and what the ending means and things like that. which is all fine and good. but i think it's worth noting that NieR also just has one of the best parties I've ever seen in a JRPG. weiss. emil. kaine. kaine, most of all. they're all wonderfully well-drawn, complex, and deeply human characters, complete misfits that find a place to fit in each other. it's one of the core appeals of the entire genre and NieR just knocks it out of the park, and (setting aside the fact that I think the game has much more engaging things to say on the subject of parental love and it's toxicity than sibling love) that's why Father Nier matters so much.

because brother nier? he fits. he's a young jrpg hero on his way to save his sister with his party in tow. this is a darkness to him, but he is, overwhelmingly, the normalcy at the heart of the cast. he fits in as a JRPG hero. father nier, though? father nier doesn't fit. nothing about him fits. he's a hideous trollman who makes incredibly earnest speeches about friendship. he is a world-weary and cynical man who takes time to garden and help everyone in his home village. he is just as much of a misfit as the rest of this party, and thus, fits in with them perfectly. he makes this collection of off-the-wall characters, these people that fit absolutely nowhere else in this world, into a family that finds themselves, a place to belong, and people they love, in each other. he is what drives this party dynamic to heights that spoke to me in ways that i didn't really understand at the time, and that is why he will always matter to me.

brother nier is fine. he's cool. he's got some of his own stuff that's interesting.

but he's not my papa nier.

[woodaba]

God of War (2018) Review

Note: This review was written in The Past. The opinions within do not necessarily reflect how I feel right now.

an appalling, self-righteous, insecure act of apologia for a generation of emotionally distant fathers that characterizes motherly love and affection as smothering, manipulative, and toxic, whilst characterizing casual emotional neglect and abuse as Good, Actually. god of war 4 is just as sexist as the earlier games in the series, it's just more crypto about it, and the vast swathes of people taken in by this completely surface-level nuance baffles me to a degree not seen since DmC: Devil May Cry was hailed as the "more mature" reboot that series needed despite the existence of a literal sniper-rifle abortion scene and the fact that every single female character in it was called "whore" ad nauseum. the "one take" gimmick is just that: a total gimmick, adding absolutely nothing to the story and in many ways detracting from it. the staccato nature of this journey, of going up and down the same mountain and teleporting all over the place is only made more absurd by the camera framing this as an uninterrupted trek which it clearly is not. also it plays like ass and you fight the same boss twenty times. i hope you like that animation of kratos slamming a big pillar down on an ogre because you're going to see it an awful lot.