#all the little cutscenes they've added

[thunderskiies]

just the cutest fucking family i ever did see

[blueberry-lemon]

An introductory guide to getting into Sonic the Hedgehog...

…if you're a grown-ass adult who is busy and doesn't want to play a bunch of video games but thinks the characters look sorta cool.

If you've ever been curious about Sonic as a series but haven't known where to start, I have some recommendations! I think Sonic is a cool and still somewhat unique thing because it takes cartoony characters (like a Mickey Mouse or Felix the Cat) and lets them jump around in cool action sequences through the lens of a shonen anime. It's colorful and usually pretty light-hearted, and I think the character designs are pretty iconic.

There's two handy places you can start without prior context, to see if it's something you'd be into...

Getting Started: If You Wanna Read Something

The IDW Sonic Comics

There were years of different Sonic comics back in the '90s and early 2000's, but the franchise got a complete reboot and fresh start with IDW Publishing in 2018. If you're looking for the most straight-forward way to get into this world of characters, I think this is a great start. You don't need any prior knowledge whatsoever to crack open issue 1 and get started. All you need to know is "Sonic and his friends protect the world by fighting against an evil scientist named Dr. Eggman, who they just recently defeated after he briefly took over the world."

I love these comics and I feel that the writers and artists who work on it have a really good sense for this series. Reading issues 1 through 12 will get you the first major story arc. If you like it so far, I highly suggest reading up through issue 32, when another major story arc concludes. After that, the world's your oyster! Unlike the tangled web of Marvel or DC comics, IDW Sonic has a very simple and linear reading order. You pretty much just read the issues in order, and occasionally there are spinoff stories that are optional to read.

Getting Started: If You Wanna Watch Something

Sonic Mania Adventures

Maybe comics aren't your thing and you want something even quicker. These are a series of animated shorts that are lovely. Conveniently, they've been compiled together by Sega into one little video right here.

It's a great intro to some of the main characters, and combines cartoon slapstick with some amazing action sequences.

There's also a nice little epilogue short.

Sonic CD's intro cutscene

If I had to pick a single 1-and-a-half minute clip to embody what I like about this series, it would be this very simple intro movie that plays before Sonic CD. Check it out!

Sonic Origins/Sonic Origins Plus Cutscenes

In 2022, Sega released a compilation of the classic Genesis games on modern consoles. In it, they added a few animated cutscenes. You can watch those cutscenes, plus the Sonic CD intro and the Sonic Mania Adventures episodes, all compiled into one handy Youtube video.

Taking The Next Step: If You Wanna Read Something

The Archie Sonic Comics

You might have heard that Sonic had a comic series published by Archie Comics from 1992 to 2016. This was a vast, overarching series that wrote an original story by weaving together ideas from the different Sonic cartoons and games. It went through several different writers, many different artists, and obviously spanned over multiple eras of pop culture.

It's pretty cool! The fact that it was so long-running, and the fact that Sega wasn't very strict with what the writers could do, led to a lot of buckwild lore, new characters, and plot developments. That said, it's also pretty bizarre, complicated, corny, and cringey at times. There is a stretch in the middle that is pretty infamous among fans.

You have a few options for jumping in.

Option A: You can start at the very beginning and read all of it. If you do this, it is going to be like a One Piece / Homestuck / etc. kind of undertaking, and you're going to be pushing through the good and the bad of huge genre and tone shifts. That's your call!

Option B: You can brush up on the main characters on a wiki and then start at Issue 160, when Ian Flynn (who now does a lot of work on IDW Sonic) became the lead writer. More specifically, you can jump in at the start of a new story arc by starting at Issue 175.

Option C: You can start at Issue 252, when there is a universe-altering event that essentially retcons all of the characters and plot threads from the previous writers and starts completely fresh. Easier to keep track of and you won't have to worry about all the previous plot and lore.

If you want something you can read in a single sitting, you should instead read Sonic: Mega Drive, a short-lived miniseries published by Archie that follows "Classic Sonic" characters (aka, the same vibe and art style of Sonic Origins, Sonic Mania Adventures, etc.) It's really great!

Taking The Next Step: If You Wanna Watch Something

Sonic the Hedgehog (OVA) aka "Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie" (1996)

This is, essentially, a 1-hour Sonic anime movie. You can watch it in Japanese or in English. I adore it. It makes up its own lore and continuity so you don't need to know anything before going in, besides generally knowing a one-sentence synopsis of who Sonic, Tails, and Dr. Robotnik are. It's action-packed, well-animated, and has great music. Enjoy! Sonic X If you're enjoying what you've seen so far, and you want something much, much longer...there's an official 78-episode anime adaptation of Sonic called Sonic X. It's an original story that loosely pulls together some ideas from a few of the games. It's mostly intended for a younger audience, but I hear if you watch it in the original uncut Japanese, it feels a little less "for kids."

Other Ways To Get Into Sonic

There's some great video essays on Youtube about the series!

Professional animator Dan Floyd did an in-depth video looking at the highs and lows of Sonic character animation in the games starting from Sonic 1 up through Sonic Forces.

Super Bunnyhop plays through the first level of a bunch of Sonic games to compare how the mechanics, physics, and level design feel throughout the games' history.

Liam Triforce has a great deep dive on the franchise's music.

You can play The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, a murder-mystery-party themed visual novel put out by Sega. It's nice and short, so you can finish it in an afternoon.

If you haven't seen them already, you can check out the live-action/animated hybrid films Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 featuring Ben Schwartz and Jim Carrey, they're pretty good. That Sonic Prime cartoon that's currently on Netflix is pretty good too.

This may sound strange, but honestly you might enjoy poring over the sprite sheets from the old games. In particular, I really like the sprite animations from the GBA games, like Sonic Advance and Sonic Battle.

Sega is pretty lax about allowing noncommercial fan games, so there's at least a hundred different Sonic fan games out there by hobbyist developers. Check out the Sonic Amateur Games Expo and the Sonic Fan Games HQ.

You can watch LPs or cutscene compilations of the games on Youtube! If you watch Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, and Sonic Heroes, you'll get a crash course on most of the characters.

And finally, of course...you can play the games if you want to! There's a number of them that are available on Steam, Switch, Xbox, and Playstation if you don't have access to older consoles.

There's a lot of different angles to come at Sonic as a franchise, and lots of different entry points. Have fun!

[omgkalyppso]

So I really enjoyed the Orc Heritage Armour questline. After getting into dragonflight and Alexstrasza, Kalecgos and Khadgar kind of acting like they'd never met Borgakh (again), being welcomed and greeted by Thrall / Go'el and his family was so fucking delightful.

I'm going to post the screenshots from the final cutscene first and then a few more things with commentary below the cut.

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Be warned it's long. You can press J to skip it on desktop if you open and change your mind.

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Tbh, having not played dragonflight I thought they were about to throw Eitrigg into the Nathanos role and this was going to be related to world quests. I'm glad it wasn't. Eitrigg's history makes me uncomfortable.

I care them.

While I kind of wish they'd let Drek'thar cast from his wheelchair, it's also interesting to think of him having some mobility.

I know some people really don't like Aggra, but I have and do, and I found this delightful. A circle completed.

All the little moments with Durak were very sweet. Very grounding after other story elements in the main plot have gotten so convoluted and absurd.

Thank you, Rexxar, for also recognizing a title (Huntmaster). I was really thrown when Khadgar was back to calling you Adventurer and not either Champion, Hero, or My Friend — too open ended for people new to the game!! ^^;

I go back and forth with the Countess from the Court of Harvesters and Huntmaster titles when I run around with Borgakh because while I still hate shadowlands for what it did to the various in game religions (and the orcs especially since I'm biased) I think these titles would mean a lot to her. To be acknowledged and given the promise of authority / contribution / significance wrt Countess, and to be acknowledged by her peers wrt Huntmaster, which is also tied up in my favorite expansion and all the seeds of Horde and Alliance working to a better future together.

When it came to choosing a clan, I imagined Borgakh sharing a look with Aggra about how it was "obvious" that now, given the choice, that she would follow Thrall / Go'el anywhere. But unlike how it presents the player character as having never belonged to a clan, Borgakh has been for Years, headcanoned as part of the Warsong clan. I felt it added depth and weight to her struggles.

And then not only did Thrall / Go'el have The Weakest pitch for joining his clan (undoubtedly because they knew he and the Frost Wolves were going to sweep anyway), but I got to the choice screen and imagined the question for Borgakh as being, "But would I give up a core part of my identity for you?"

She is still part of his Horde, and she would die for him and his family, but I decided to keep her a member of the Warsong clan.

Borgakh has had maxed cooking in this game for like, ever. And that the final trial was to prepare a meal as an offering for her ancestors was something I really enjoyed. That the cookbook included a spicy as hell recipe from the Warsong was a bonus and reaffirmed my enjoyment of maintaining her membership with her clan.

I really appreciated this. After shadowlands? Bring me back to the uncertainty and faith of the past wrt what happens after death and the peace and connection with those lost and those who remain.

That this quest began with the premise that the orcs felt disconnected from each other and their culture and clans and this gathering and a new ceremony to replace the old coming of age ones that an orc could take part in regardless of age was very sweet. I have so many more screenshots of all the smaller npc's and things they've said in case I want to revisit it either for myself or for fic writing in the future. Loved it.

Thank you if you read my rambling.

[lobotemi]

finished canto 5 part 3. screaming adn crying ishmael i love you so much my blorbo

loving how they handled ahab and queequeg, really liked both of their characters, they meshed really well with ishmael (and i loved the parallels between ahab and ishmael throughout part 3)

this canto felt a lot better pacing-wise, it never really felt like a drag for me, none of the fights felt unnecessary and there was always story alongside the fights (which is a good thing for me, might not be for others!!)

CANTO 5 SPOILERS BELOW vvv

gonna talk about my general thoughts!! but FIRST THE MILI SONG IS SO GOOD THANK YOU MILI FOR ANOTHER BANGER, i have a feeling this one's gonna grow on me a lot more than it already has upon some repeated listens

i love how they've been writing the songs for the sinners so far, between two worlds and fly my wings are incredible songs and i can't wait to see what we get for heathcliff's canto because there's so many different directions they could go

dante dropping this fire ass line mid way through lets fucking go dante

i also really liked ishmael's short hair, it was really cute and i really liked the way queequeg and ishmael's relationship was written as well

i was expecting the little gay blue scarf boy but instead we got hermann and i almost got out of my chair and left the room, god i'm excited to see where this goes and what this is leading up to

last thing; god i loved this part of the dungeon. what a wonderful callback to moby dick that they slid in there!!! absolutely love how they've been handling adapting all of these novels so far with respect to the original material while also adding their own, unique spin on it

overall i really, really loved this canto and it is probably my favourite canto so far!!! the story was amazing, ishmael's character all around feels really, really solid and her arc was handled incredibly well, the pacing felt really good compared to the battle slog of canto 4 and i love that they seemed to be experimenting with cutscenes more. so excited to see where they're gonna go with this in the future!!!

looking forward to canto 6, i love that they've made me care about each and every one of the sinners on mephistopheles!!

might make another post soon to compile my full thoughts!!!

[licorishh]

So.

I just finished Act V of the Fontaine archon quest (aka the last one).

I am. Frankly astounded.

Like.

WOW. I am. Wow. The writing. Just. Oh my. Oh my word.

Huge frickin' massive biiiig fat 4.2 spoilers under the cut~

FIRST OF ALL, HOW DARE THEY MAKE ME GO FROM DESPISING FURINA TO ACTUALLY LOVING HER??? I thought she was a bratty little punk up until now but oh my gosh she's actually one of the most fascinatingly deep and dynamic and selfless characters in the whole game what???? HOW DARE THEY??? I was not going to pull for her at all and was gonna save for Ayato but bRUH??? WHAT??? (I also think Neuvillette should go down in history as like one of the most well-written and compelling fictional characters to ever exist, but that's just me, pfft.)

ALSO. THAT LAST CUTSCENE. WITH NEUVILLETTE MAKING THE FINAL VERDICT. I CRIED. THAT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL, DUDE. JUST. AAUGUGHG. The whole time they did the shtick with the Traveler watching Furina's side and Neuvillette talking to Focalors. Just. Ohhhm y gosh. The feELS, SIR. ILLEGAL.

And I already apologized a few days ago for the person I would become if Neuvillette and Navia interacted more and thEN LOOK WHAT THEY DID. LOOK WHAT THEY FREAKING DID TO ME. SHE FELL. HE FRICKIN CAUGHT HER. HE WAS THE ONE IN HER DREAM TRYING TO GET HER TO SAFETY. CAN YOU HEAR ME SCREAMING. THERE WAS MORE THAN THAT BUT I'M TOO SPASTIC AND INARTICULATE TO TALK ABOUT IT ALL RIGHT NOW. JUST. HOW'D THEY MAKE ME EVEN MORE INSANE ABOUT THEM THAN I ALREADY WAS PLEASE WHAT

Kinda sad Wriothesley was barely there, but it was understandable considering he pretty much had the spotlight during the last few quest chains and since he was chilling out in the Fortress the whole time. It made sense. Nice to have Clorinde show up more, though :D

I am so insanely glad that I didn't get anything spoiled for this because blindly reacting to it all was just. So frickin insane. I am just astounded and so so impressed. Literally this game is only getting wildly better every second the story gets more added to it. Like I originally thought it couldn't get better than Liyue, and then frickin Sumeru happened, and then nOW FRICKIN FONTAINE HJAPPENED JUST. UGH. PLEASE. WHAT. HOW. DID THEY. DO THAT. SO WELL. SIR THE WRITING AND THE GENIUS AND THE AAAAGHH

I am amazed by how much character development there was in Fontaine. For the most part, the majority of the characters in Genshin Impact are somewhat one-dimensional (which is fine, because they're still cool), and they tend to lack significant depth. That combined with the fact that the other regions' quests have been pretty tame and really the most major moral dilemmas they've tackled were things like Nahida's predicament regarding how the people viewed her in comparison to Rukkhadevata means that a lot of the time, it's the worldbuilding that really stands out. While Fontaine's worldbuilding was also excellent, they really turned everything on its head by making the characters (specifically Furina, Neuvillette, and Navia) deeply compelling, with all kinds of internal struggles and issues that the game doesn't usually go into. I could give you a whole literary analysis on why Fontaine has arguably some of the best-written characters in the game, but I'll spare you, lol. I also love that they weren't afraid to really dig in and give Fontaine some serious issues and tragedies (Navia's father's death and how the guilt of being the one to issue the verdict weighed heavily on Neuvillette, the prospect of an entire nation being killed because of one mistake the archon made, characters actually dying for once, the issue with the Melusines being seen as outcast and being horribly mistreated, Neuvillette's feelings of being an outsider and unwelcome everywhere he goes, just, MAN).

Can you tell I enjoyed the Fontaine arc or

[semi-sketchy]

I did it. I'm done with the Final Horizon.

The side stories...alright did anyone else run into issues where voice lines would randomly not play or was that just me? I had to keep reloading saves because it would glitch and be dead silent for like 10 seconds until the next audio file came up.

I heard lots of people didn't really like the writing in this update, but it really was just more of the same from Frontiers. Nothing scenes with poor character voice. Yeah, there were bad lines, but base game had those, too. The cyber corruption Sonic's friends go through is also just as meaningless here as it was in base game.

The biggest part I didn't like was how much this felt like an afterthought, which is because it WAS an afterthought. I didn't think the base ending was spectacular, but it also felt more in line with how the rest of the story was built.

Here, the first cutscene literally just tries to undo the Rhea island scene and everything is so tacked on. Sonic's friends face cyber corruption from interacting with cyberspace? But they're also TRAPPED in cyberspace, so why is this any different to what they've been doing? Weren't they technically helping Sonic get the Emeralds on the other islands, hence getting Emerald rewards for quests?

It's just a lot of fluff masking this basic "earn the respect of the Ancient's pilots to get a new super form that can deal with The End" and...alright. I've never been concerned over power scaling. You don't NEED to go bigger and better every time, all you have to do is make me care about the stakes and you have a good narrative. That final battle made regular Super Sonic look like a pussy so Hyper Sonic Super Sonic 2 could look so much more powerful. And I know why. This is the exact thing Ian Flynn said he wanted, only he skirted around the no Hyper decision by just changing Sonic's eye color.

But really, you have invincible Super Sonic here, WINCING and getting his hands YANKED AROUND by the cyber energy.

TWO ISLANDS AGO he was swinging a giant sword.

But now, he can't even DENT the boss without this power up. This either makes Super Sonic look weak or this stupidly easy titan tied to a rock mightier than a god.

The Sonic X reference though wasn't lost on me and I admit, I thought it was cool. Even if Super Sonic with blue eyes is a bit uncanny.

The fight itself though is...not very well choreographed. I lost my first attempt and still kinda fumbled around because I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Seriously, when was quick cyloop EVER useful in one of these fights? And now I'm required to do it twice with the penalty of failing being forced to redo the Supreme fight AGAIN?

This is a case where Sonic's friends would've been helpful. I know, I know, I got sick of "THAT LOOKS LIKE A HOMING SHOT" very quickly, but a little thing like "Sever that connection!" or "It's down! Get the gun!" would've helped.

Though, I liked the fight alright and it certainly had the spectacle Supreme lacked.

New music was good, though! The vocal theme for I'm With You is 10x better than Dear Father and I LOVED the I'm Here remix.

Overall, I'm...conflicted. I don't think I liked the update? Really I'm trying to recall having fun with it at any point. There were a few cool moments, the Cyclone having that fuck u laser from SA2 was definitely one, but there wasn't a high point, it was just baseline and lower.

It really upset me at a few points and I couldn't even get performatively angry, it broke me and I was just sad, though I kept going. I think I've grown numb to the bullshit. Really, this was just more of Frontiers with some added jank and difficulty.

The worst parts were challenges 2 and 5. Aside from that, there's not really difficulty as much as bullshit and cheap design. Even my brother came in and asked why they stuck this platform you have to glide to at an angle that causes you to slide off. I rage quit 4-H because they ask you to do PRECISE platforming on tiny angled boxes. With physics that make that near impossible. That's bullshit design and not a difficulty issue.

Also, who thought the rescuing animal objectives were a good idea? ESPECIALLY IN 4-H. There's a glitch where when Sonic gets the animal to safety, he stays stuck in carrying mode which means low jump, no boost, double jump, homing attack, you're basically dead in the water. It goes away at certain points, so maybe this was intentional, but also, seriously?

This was a FREE CONTENT UPDATE that they announced a month before it got pushed out, so why was it rushed so badly that the physics sliders don't even work properly for the extra characters?

At the end of the day though, replaying base Frontiers right before this and running into the EXACT same problems made me realize that it's just more of the same. Base Frontiers has some big faults and pretty BS design, it's just dialed up to 11 here.

I don't want to play Frontiers again, much less this update.

[scorndotexe]

☕: Scorn?

oh you wanna hear me talk about scorn? i'll talk about scorn (mild spoiler warning)

scorn is a fucking incredible game. the visuals and art design are gorgeous and exactly my level of fucked up. absolutely astounding visuals. while i love indie games and don't think games need to have good graphics to be good games, it's certainly something to see such a disgusting (complimentary) world in such high quality. nearly everyone agrees on this and the ones who don't just call people freaks for liking it.

everyone blows the "combat issues" out of proportion. sure, i can see how it would be bad if you had to fight all the time, but the thing is you don't have to. it's discouraged. in my opinion, the first step is letting the creatures move out of the way while staying back a little. the second step, if the first one fails, is running away. the last resort is fighting, and often it fails. i briefly got pretty good at the combat before realizing i could just run away from most of the creatures.

but less than smooth combat is a staple of survival horror! while scorn may not be traditional survival horror, it does have some of those elements (just as it has some puzzle elements without being a full on puzzle game).

the puzzles were fine. i'm gonna be honest i looked up walkthroughs for most of them because i'm terrible at puzzles in games despite thinking the genre can be amazing but i didn't feel like it detracted from my experience. however, that doesn't mean that i would have preferred an absence of puzzles. i enjoyed their presence and didn't mind them, though in some cases they could have been better integrated into the world. but that's not a major complaint.

i do think the boss battle is definitely the weakest part of the whole thing. it was a little too long for my taste and the fact that i had to do it, albeit a shorter version, again was annoying. however, it made up for it quickly with some wonderful body horror and narrative. the last few moments of the game were some of the strongest.

speaking of the narrative, holy shit. scorn is so different to every other game you can find, and the way the narrative is presented is no different in that regard. i thoroughly enjoyed it. the wordless storytelling was such a breath of fresh air. too many games these days (and older ones too--thinking of you, alan wake) overexplain every single aspect. it was wonderful to have a game tell you nothing and show you everything you need to be shown. i don't think every game needs to be wordless, and despite my near-constant bitching about cinematic games (and fucking david cage), i don't have a major problem with cinematic games. i do think some just want to be films and don't do enough to be games except drag the story on further than you want them to, but cinematic games are. fine. games with words are also great, you can't just separate "games with words" into its own category. but there's something to be said about how scorn presents itself to you. there's something to be said about how it's on you to observe and interpret and figure things out. a lot of games don't want you to figure them out. they want you to follow the objective markers and watch the next cutscene. it gets tiring, and i don't even play that many games like that nowadays. scorn uses its medium to its advantage.

people have said it's a walking simulator. (bizarrely they've also said the combat was added to stop people calling it a walking simulator. cause that makes sense.) it is not a walking simulator. it has puzzles. it has combat. the story isn't happening at you, you're part of the story.

and personally i love the story. the dynamic between scornguy and the parasite is so compelling to me, and i do think the ending was perfect. the alternative would have felt much cheaper and unearned to me. and i do love tragedy.

lastly, i don't understand how people actually want a sequel or dlc. did you see that ending. did you understand the themes. what do you think they'll add?? a different ending if you pay 15.99? new guns for 9.99? the "loads of cut content" (there isn't that much--the artbook mostly shows concept art and there are two cut areas, only one of which was cut due to time and financial constraints) for 29.99, messing up the pacing entirely? because it's a well paced game, with a few exceptions.

it's not a perfect game, but which game is? and it's not my favorite game of all time or anything, but it's definitely a memorable experience. i wanna recommend it to people but also i know i shouldn't. please play scorn if you like weird fleshy games. pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease

[azpherambles]

Aaaurrghh its already so annoying people calling fantasy life like animal crossing its noooot

Im already nervous about how little of, yknow, The Lifes the trailer emphasised over... town making? I heard someone say that was a part of the shitty mobile game which. I don't know what to think about that.

Like oh man if you buy this thinking its animal crossing and its a like, singleplayer mini mmo with quests and combat and classes like an mmo... If anything its animal crossing whose more like fantasy life with the crafting from resources around the place...

But also mmmm. If people want more animal crossing and buy it thinking its that and it maybe isnt ridiculously niche anymore and they actually like it so they Make More... mmmm...

But also I'm so afraid of them toning back aspects to make it more animal crossingy... like they didnt show off The Lifes really!! Its called Fantasy Life because its about the Lifes!!!

Anyway if you've never seen it the first game has sickass animated cutscenes that imo really give you a good idea of what the like, actual point of it is about, how all the different Lifes affect each other like well how the carpenter uses the woodcutters wood like yea thats literally how it is its all interconnected!!!

I really hope its just Fantasy Life 2... please please please dont try to radically change it to appeal to a larger audience instead of the originals then it sells like shit cuz both sides are alienated pleaasse...

As much as I loathe the mere existence of the mobile game at least if they've already added this as a core concept (Like it sounds fun, you could already decorate your houses in the first so its not like its New) then like cool, Fantasy Life has townbuilding. That feels organic enough as an addition if its done in its own way. I hope theres still other towns cuz i loooved the different towns. It looked like there is? So i hope its like, you have your own hub island you can do what you want with and then you travel to other prebuilt towns. That would be my ideal.

Also I hope the plot is just as dumb and wholesome as the first. But maybe a bit better integrated into the gameplay and maybe not so dense.

Also maybe make the crafting lives a bit more different but man. Oh man. I don't care if it's the same game again with no improvements or additions. Its just fundamentally directly connected to my brain cells of Things I Enjoy.

[mystery-salad]

1, 5,11, 15,16,17 from gw2 bday asks :3

1.What was the current story release when you started playing?

lsw2 was all that had been released by the time I started, hopped on HoT just a few months into playing when it released!

5. How many hours have you played overall? (/age in game)

On my EU account, I've played for 668 hours!

11. What’s your favourite feature that’s been added to the game since you started?

Legendary Armory my beloved, the main drive that has pushed me to actually flesh out my legendaries.

15. Favourite antagonist?

Another favorite antagonist for me is Joko, even though the fandom tries my fucking patience with the "praise joko" nonstop and the jokes about sexiness and his harem. They've killed the joke at this point who has amazing payoff as an old antagonistic kinds guy from gw1! We really get to explore how far he's willing to go, and we got a good idea of how powerful and controlling he is long before we had to directly face him one-on-one. And that cutscene where he gets right back up is stunninggggggggg, so ominous, felt my stomach drop and half-wondered if we'd be dealing with a horrible internal fight as he tried to turn us into risen or something.

16. Favourite creature?

Another of my favorite creatures are the weirdly dinky lookin coelacanth! Little hammer-head lookin goofs

17. Favourite location?

Another favorite location is the asteroid. That asteroid...

[miloscat]

[Review] Panzer Dragoon Remake (PS4)

A competent, if barebones, Unity remake.

I played Gamera 2000 on a stream recently, which is—among other things—an excellent Panzer Dragon clone on PSX. It got me in the mood for more of Sega's landmark rail shooter series, so I'm starting with the 2020 remake of the original game. This was handled by Polish studio MegaPixel and published by their parent Forever Entertainment; oddly, Sega's name is almost nowhere to be seen here apart from a copyright notice on the title screen.

I did already play Panzer Dragoon, as it was included as a bonus inside Orta, the fourth game in the series. But this feels very different. I remarked on the original game's high difficulty, whereas I didn't have as much trouble with this (apart from a couple of deaths late in the game). Maybe running at a higher framerate helped, or else there were some other tweaks.

Either way, the most notable difference is in the graphics, so let's address that. The higher fidelity of the visuals does a lot of favours to the design work of Manabu Kusunoki who created much of the Mœbius and Nausicäa-inspired look of the original game, helped by the talented artists at MegaPixel who brought this world design into HD. The same can't be said for all the environments, which can have a shiny, fake look to them that you sometimes get in Unity assets. A high level of detail helps to flesh out the world but it can also cause visibility problems with enemies, which wasn't an issue with the simple, blocky graphics of the Saturn game. Overall it's a mixed bag.

The game itself still works as well as it did in 1995. You have a rapid fire shot, good for focusing on weak points or destroying projectiles, and a homing lock-on shot, good for groups of enemies or multi-target bosses. You can spin your view to different quadrants in response to blips on your radar, which is still not my favourite mechanic but it works just fine. The whole thing is over in about an hour—including cutscenes!—making for a short but sweet bout of arcadey action, although I didn't test if easy mode locked you out of half the game in this version.

After clearing the game, you get access to a "Pandora's Box" feature, an idea added in the PC port and sequels which houses game modifiers (many of them returning from the original), including a Wizard Mode-like turbo feature, autofire, god mode, stage select, etc. but not the score attack stage Episode 0, which is unlocked via a different code. The timing on these codes is quite strict, by the way. Also in this menu is a concept art gallery which nicely shows the work the team put into updating the designs, but sadly it doesn't include the captivating Mœbius illustrations seen in the Saturn game's credits and Japanese cover art!

It's misses like this and the environment design that make this fall a little short for me as a remake. If you're not going to truly create the definitive version of the game, then why bother? (Also they should ideally include a playable form of the original game for posterity.) I am a massive Grinch about remake culture so forgive me, but I would much rather have seen this team create an entirely new sequel with more modern design sensibilities and features. It seems like they can handle it. Instead they've done another remake of Sega's House of the Dead and were announced to also be remaking Panzer Dragoon Zwei. Humbug, I say! Well, next for me is the Saturn version of said sequel because old games are still perfectly playable. So there.

[pheonyxian]

Baldur's Gate 3 Sexless Any% Part 3

I think some of my mutuals are using this as an actual way of knowing what BG3 is actually about so I figured I'd use this edition to talk about the plot and npcs a bit. Might slow down or stop these at some point? I thought the original premise was funny but I don't know if it's liveblog an entire 100 hour game funny. Regardless feel free to block the tag I'm adding if you don't want to hear any future rambles. Do love/hate it when a game I didn't intend to like so much gets its grubby mind flayer tentacles wrapped around my brain so hard.

The OC PC: RPing through the game as my OC Ank. I wasn't sure if picking an oc with strong psychic powers would rub against the mind flayer plot but so far it's been a perfect choice. Ank is traditionally a villain but I'm not playing a villain for my first play through, so it's been fun to rp him in a scenario where he's g o o d and his life didn't take a turn for the worse. He's also traditionally blind, but obviously the game isn't set up for that. I was originally just imagining cutscenes playing out differently if sight was involved, but maybe it'll be more interesting to consider him in a pre-blinded state. I'm sure certain repeated actions in the ocular region won't have any u n f o r t u n a t e effects.

Mind Flayers: The setup for the plot is that mind flayers have infected you (and your companions, and a large number of npcs) with mind flayer parasites and you have to remove them before you turn into fully grown mind flayers. Except for some reason you haven't turned yet and you get cool psychic powers with them.

The Guardian: In addition to making your own character at start, you also can character create your "guardian." Everyone I know just hits the randomize button because they've already spent an hour fussing over every detail of their character, but I knew this was coming and already planned my guardian out. And uh, like I said, Ank's traditionally a villain and the only guardian-like character he's ever had is uh... I'm going to be honest with you, if the guardian turns out to be the big bad of the game that's going to be funny as all fuck. I'm sure there's very little chance of that though, it's not like there's anything evil about telling you to s h o v e w o r m s i n t o y o u r s k u l l.

Withers: Withers is more of a mechanic than a character. I do want to know his story though. He's an undead or lich or something who will revive dead characters (for a cost) hire generic undead companions (for a cost, I guess if you want to resign your poor companion's unfortunate fate) and change your cast (for the same cost as undead friends.) I guess money still has use in the afterlife. I haven't had to use his services yet but I've had a lot of close calls and dwindling Revivify scrolls so it's only a matter of time.

Volo: Just Gale but a bard. Not a playable character Bard mind you. At least not yet. I don't know what his deal is. He offered to extract the mind flayer parasites with a pair of needles which I almost agreed to to see if he'd actually poke Ank's eye out.

And updates on companion stories:

Shadowheart: Decided that after a week of traveling and nearly dying together it was appropriate to breach topics again. Pretty sure the game expected me to ask these immediately once the option was available but like I said, we respect boundaries in this house. Anyway, Shadowheart's a cleric of Shar, who by context I'm assuming is bad. The way she put her worship didn't sound that bad, about embracing the darkness as a way of stripping falsehoods, right up until she started talking about toppling governments and killing innocents, so I'm keeping her at a 2/10 for being batshit insane.

Also her magical artifact is required for keeping me alive and she stole it and do we really want the e v i l cleric to have that kind of p o w e r over M E?

Lae'zel: Lae'zel sits at the very strange crossroad of honorable and completely ruthless. She's totally fine with killing your enemies but you have to do it the right way, and b r a i n w o r m s isn't the right way. I'd say the right way is whatever works. 7/10

Gale: All of my attempts to pry into Gale's backstory (boundaries? what boundaries?) were foiled by poor dice rolls so no updates on his dark and traumatic past. I did give him two magical artifacts to slurp up because he looked like he was going to die of heat stroke at camp. I've been avoiding spoilers but I had heard that it's hilariously difficult to not accidentally romance Gale due to a bug, and the fact that you can start his romance path without realizing it. Thankfully Ank is smart enough to realize that when you cast spells together that makes the air smell like rosewater it's time to high tail it out of there. 2/10 as smooth as a slip n' slide.

That said, I don't know if it's been patched yet, but according to the internet there's like a 50/50 chance the game thinks we've already banged. Tbd on that one. Sexless any% is slowly turning into Oops! Fucked Everyone thanks purely on technicalities.

Astarion: Based on the way people talk about him I genuinely thought the pompous personality was just a facade and that he'll eventually tip his hand and reveal he's been evil this entire time. But honestly based the bits of backstory he's (refreshingly, compared to the rest of these idiots) given out I think he's just the guy who, once given the keys to power, will drive right off sanity road. Regardless, he used to serve an abusive vampire lord so I guess we're going vampire hunting in the future. 10/10 bad influence gay best friend who tells you to chug and shove parasites up your eyes.

Wyll: Wyll is a warlock who serves a fiend that forces him to hunt down and kill demons, which sounds like a fine deal until some tricky wordplay came in. After refusing to kill Karlach (Tiefling, not demon) his patron changed him into a Tiefling too. Honestly? Upgrade. 6/10 nice guy but surrounded by more colorful characters.

Karlach: Ok here’s why Karlach is a 10/10 character even without taking sex appeal into consideration. She’s a Tiefling who served in some demonic war against her will and had her heart replaced with an infernal engine that constantly burns her and anyone she touches with searing hot pain. Despite this she has constant big sister energy and her biggest complaint is how touch starved she is. I don’t even care if it comes bundled with a sex scene, Karlach is getting a goddamn hug before the credits roll.

[wondrouswendy]

Revisiting Tython

So @rangerzath and I just started playing Tython last night and wooo booooy was it a lot of feels and nostalgia.

I genuinely forgot how good the game looked. Did the game get a graphical update? It feels like it did. Also, did they like... go back and touch up some of these scenes animation wise? We were putting on our thinking tin foil caps and trying to figure out if we were misremembering old scenes or if they genuinely have changed some of the "cinematography" of the old cutscenes.

Coming from playing WoW the last several years, it is kind of just gobsmacking how literally every quest in the beginning is voiced. Really hard to believe any company could budget for this level of voice work. Some of the voice work is a little silly, some of the dialogue is a little repetitive and a tiny bit cringy, but overall I don't mind it at all. We ran the Esseles again, and we were both talking about how cinematic the whole flashpoint is while also feeling incredibly Star Wars(TM). I know the degree of story content doesn't always carry over in the future to the same depth, but I remember enjoying most of the flashpoints we'll be revisiting in the future.

It's been awhile since I played a game all night and was desperate to keep playing more from a story perspective (the last one for me was Yakuza 0). We're playing through the JC story again to everyone's surprise I'm sure, and while a lot of the mechanical gameplay features they've added has been going over my head (wtf is Conquest and why am I getting so much of it), the JC story still is holding up so far.

The funny thing is that for my rewrite of Someone to Fight For, I have a lot of the Act II pieces finished and ready to go. I didn't really write a lot of pieces focusing on Act I, so the new revamped story will have plenty of new chapters to fill in and provide character background. Ultimately I don't know if anyone will read it or care about it as much as @rangerzath and I naturally will given that it's our OCs, but I'm very much enjoying going back and actually writing with a burning passion. I think that was one of my favorite things about SWTOR: how it really drove me creatively and helped me grow as a writer.

[asleepinawell]

Been having a lot of Thoughts about the nier series recently and the larger themes of both games and wanted to jot them down and toss them into the void of the internet.

Massive spoilers for nier automata follow, including for ending e. Do not read this if you ever intend to play nier automata. There are spoilers for nier replicant as well, though not for ending e.

One of the biggest themes both nier games tackle is the tragedy of an uncaring universe. Bad things happen to good people, people who think they're good and doing the right thing find out they were actually committing atrocities, the very idea that there's 'good' and 'bad' people is dissected and rejected. At the end of the day, the universe doesn't give a shit about any of us and none of it matters. Enjoy your existential despair!

In nier replicant, the main character starts off as an optimistic young boy who wants to save, not only his sister, but the entire world. After the time skip, nier is a young man whose optimism has (partially) been tarnished and whose goal has narrowed down to just saving his sister. As you move through each route you understand more and more how tragic the world is and how, despite your best intentions, you are only adding to the tragedy of the world. The original 4 endings of nier replicant are all tragic in some way. Ending D has a glimmer of hope in it in the form of nier being able to save kainé at the cost of his own existence, but it's a bittersweet ending and the world is ultimately doomed anyway.

Which brings us to nier automata. Even more so than replicant, automata hammers home the meaningless of everything, the uncaring universe, tragedy both avoidable and unavoidable. The main characters are locked in an endless loop of violence and despair. The worst that could happen, does, again and again. It thrives off the type of tragedy porn I usually hate.

Except....

Except it doesn't. If endings a and b are the opening statement, endings c and d are the facts and body of the essay, but then there's ending e, the concluding paragraph which takes everything we've been told and gives you the chance to draw your own conclusion from it.

Route e starts after you've gotten both ending c and d and is no longer about the characters in the game at all. Route e is about you, the player, and what you believe. It says "we've given you a story of complete despair, we've shown you the universe is unfair and doesn't give a fuck about you, we've shown you things that end in tragedy. despite all of this, do you still believe it's worth fighting for the hope of something better?"

And then it asks you to prove it.

Route e is the ending every fan has asked for when they've said "I'll fight the creators to give my favs a happy ending." Today is your lucky day!

Route e is the ending credits of the game, except that the ending credits have turned into a bullet hell mini game. In fighting the actual credits themselves, you are fighting the game devs. You are saying fuck you I don't believe that everything is pointless. Fighting for better is always worth it. The meaning that we imbue in life is important to us and that matters.

The bullet hell of the end credits starts out fairly simple and gets harder and harder as you go, lasting something like 15 minutes total, which is a brutally long time to be playing something that requires split second timing and 100% of your focus. It's meant to feel insurmountable, just like the challenges the characters in the game faced (the larger plot challenges, not the combat). You will likely die a lot and check points are few and far between.

But there's more to it than that. The first time you die, a prompt comes up:

And then when you die again:

Except now, there’s a message on the screen. A message that appears to be from another player, somewhere in the world.

And again:

(this one really fucked me up, but that’s for a different post).

And then finally:

(thank you user MR-YE-1996)

When you accept the rescue offer, you go back to the bullet hell again, but now you have a wall of other players around your weak little avatar, shielding you from harm. The music, which has been a single vocal track up until now, gains an entire chorus of voices to represent the army of actual players who’ve shown up to save you (and there’s a lot I could say about the use of the (exquisitely good) music in the nier games, and especially about the difference in lyrical themes between ashes of dreams and weight of the world). Every time a bullet hits one of the players surrounding you, there’s a message saying that user’s data has been lost. Users from all over the world are sacrificing themselves to help you. It’s a very nice, heart-warming moment that you still don’t understand the full impact of quite yet.

After you beat the credits, you’re rewarded by a final cutscene. The android protagonists have been reconstructed and will receive a second chance at life. The narration at this point talks about how life exists within the spiral of life and death we are all trapped in. One of the two pods talking points out that even though the androids are being given a second chance at life, there’s a possibility that things will go just as poorly once again. And the other pod agrees, but adds: “However, the possibility of a different future also exists.”

And then the scene ends with this quote: “A future is not given to you. It is something you must take for yourself.”

And this is really the final conclusion of the game. There is no inherent meaning in the universe, so the meaning we give our lives is the most meaningful thing. (And the ‘you’ here isn’t necessarily an individual either. It can be, or it can be humanity as a whole, or even one group). And you, the player, thought that it was worth fighting to give these characters a second chance, and other players out there in the world thought it was worth helping you to do so.

It’s such a wonderfully beautiful piece of meta interpretation posing as a game ending, and also a departure from the final conclusion of previous Yoko Taro games. It feels like a much more mature and nuanced interpretation of the world than the ending of replicant was (I won’t comment on the new ending e of replicant just yet since it didn’t come out that long ago). (Also, for the record, I love nier replicant and the characters in it with my entire heart. This post is not bashing it).

But the game has one more surprise in store for you. After the cutscene ends, you’re given one last choice. The game asks if you have any interest in helping other players the way you were helped. And if you say yes, you’re told that the only way you can do this is to sacrifice all your save data.

I think that sacrifice hits differently for different people. Some people genuinely won’t mind that at all. As someone who probably still has save data from games I played 20 years ago, it felt like a gut punch. To me, save data represents all the time and emotion and energy I’ve put into a game. Games are so deeply important to me in so many ways and have been since my childhood when they were one of the few ways I could escape from a lot of terrible shit going on in my life. (There’s a reason my blog title is what it is). I could talk a lot more about that point, but I’ll leave it by saying that when I saw what the game was asking of me it felt like someone had knocked my legs out from under me.

For more practical players, it also is locking you out of chapter select, the best way to go back and get all the things you missed and grab the achievements/trophies you still need.

The game will point out that you’ll get nothing in return for this (not a lie, there’s no secret reward), that you will likely never know if or who you helped, that you won’t be thanked, that the person you help could be someone you intensely dislike, etc. And with all of this comes the realization that all those people who came to help you in the credits had already done this. Those people whose data was sacrificed to help you get to the final cutscene had already sacrificed their save data to help you.

We’ve now gone from a world where everything is meaningless, to a world where other real actual human beings out there have sacrificed something that represented hours of their time and a varying amount of emotional investment without any hope of reward to help a stranger see a message of hope.

When I was younger, I was more drawn to dark, hopeless stories. Stories about how dark and meaningless the world was. The world was a terrible place then too. 9/11 happened when I was in highschool (an incident that influenced yoko taro’s creation of nier replicant and had a huge impact on me at the time), the pointless wars that happened after and the recession and a million other things seemed to infuse everything with hopelessness. In that world, stories about everything being meaningless and hopeless felt correct. They felt validating. Yes, everything really does suck that much!

That sort of story lost its appeal for me later on. Pointless and horrible things continued to happen, and still continue to happen. The world events of the last few years have been an unnerving reliving of those earlier years, except even worse. The cycles of tragedy are still there with no end in sight. I’m exhausted from all of it. It really does feel hopeless a lot.

But stories that stop at that point no longer appeal to me. Stories like nier automata--stories that say yes, things are terrible, but there’s always hope, you can create your own meaning, it is always worth it to fight for better even if you fail, your life is worthwhile simply for existing--those stories are the ones I think we all need more than anything.

[biolizardboils]

my super-specific Sonic Adventure 1&2 remake wishlist!

welcome back to another episode of me blasting out Sonic drafts I was too scared to post years ago! rev up those light speed shoes cus this is gonna be a long one!

first off shit I’d want in general

retranslated dialogue thats truer to the Japanese originals' tone and keeps the intended subtext

but with the most iconic English lines left in ("Get a load of THIS", "I'll slam dunk it in there"). The Faker scene can stay unchanged, interruption and all

small additions to cutscenes to help explain Little Things people have debated for decades (like whether G.U.N. framed Sonic to cover up Shadow's existence or if that’s just a legitimate plot hole)

all the MIDI cutscene songs redone with real instruments and/or an orchestra! all the other songs are already perfect and Should Not Be Touched

make the Emerald radar beep in time to the level music so it’s less annoying

okay, time for a spicy one: voice acting. hoo boy

Getting the entire original cast probably isn’t possible (for studio and contract reasons, not just Tails’s growing up and Eggman’s dying), and I feel the series’ current cast is just so different in tone and direction that they’d clash with the Adventure era. (will make an exception for Mike Pollock tho, he’s said some iconic Adventure lines already and I loved his take on them!)

So my preference? A compromise: a separate voice cast comprised of whichever OG’s are still game and soundalikes for the rest, complete with an actual kid as Tails. Too good to be true? Probably, but whatever it’s my wishlist

lighting and other subtle effects based on the Dreamcast originals (long story short a lot of these got broken from the GameCube ports onward, there’s video comparisons)

textures remade from scratch cus as much as i love that they used their field trip photos, it probably wouldnt fly today lol

new character models based on Adventure-era promotional artwork! after these games, the characters' proportions shifted over time, giving the impression that they've grown up a little since. it's a very subtle difference, but its enough that just using the now-standard Modern Sonic models would look kinda off

said models shouldn't change between games. like if youre playing SA1 and switch to SA2, the only thing that should change about Sonic is his shoes (before upgrades of course)

speaking of upgrades, an option to remove them visually would be nice, they can get kinda distracting during cutscenes

Unleashed-style redesigns of all the humans!! my heart yearns for it!!!

an option to turn off the Ball of Light/Omochao

the SA2B multiplayer mode but with the SA1-exclusive characters added maybe?

every DLC thing ever reinstated! the extra Kart Races and special Chao as unlockables, maybe the holiday stuff can show up at wintertime NiGHTS style? the Nike one might not be possible tho

Super Sonic/Shadow in normal levels as an unlockable like the Lord intended

Very Important: the game must be revealed with Eggman “hacking” the screens at a public Sega presentation, followed by a trailer that starts with this scene in modern CGI. It’s the hypest way I can think of to do it, and also people could slap A Certain Meme onto it as soon as humanly possible

absolute balls-off-the-walls ad campaign that targets the following demographics: 20-smthns who grew up with a Dreamcast/GameCube, ska enthusiasts, & the entire state of California. more on that here

SA1

fix Big’s fishing. idk how, i haven’t played enough fishing games to know what constitutes a good one, but there’s gotta be something they can do

replace the A-B-C level goals with the 5-missions-each system from SA2 cus it allows for more variety

use the ranking system from SA2 too cus it got used in every game made since anyway

use Generations’s Perfect Chaos design since that’s how he was meant to look in the first place

maybe go the extra mile and add hints of the dark blue armor to his earlier forms too?

finish the unused Sky Chase Dragon and make it a bonus boss maybe??

have Tails look away if Sonic uses the shower in Casinopolis, I know it’s a tiny thing but it always bothered me

make the CD flashback actually look more like CD cus i had no clue that's what it was when i first played it lmao

also make Tails' flashback to when he met Sonic more obviously set in Sonic 2, like Emerald Hill or smthn. this cutscene means a lot to me but its so obvious they just used Mystic Ruins as the bg hfbfv

just. make it more obvious that the Classic games happened? cus that's kinda important to understanding these ones

just generally do better visual storytelling now that the original game's limited animation engine isn't an issue lol

SA2

nerf the Artificial Chaos pretty fcking please

an option to turn off certain upgrades functionally as well as visually? ngl this is for the Magic Hands. to the one person who actually uses them: i’m so sorry but they’re just not popular

either replace the beeping noise Tails/Eggman’s mech makes while targeting with something more subtle or just remove it altogether

get rid of that stream that can sweep you away in the Biolizard fight, like good god it’s hard enough without it

remove that... unfortunate hand motion Sonic and Shadow make when they go Super. you know the one

make an achievement/trophy for waiting till the last minute to beat Finalhazard, so more people can hear that one Shadow line. like that shit should be required reading but i didn't know about it for a criminally long time

this as an unlockable, it’s truly criminal that it never left Japan

redo the Green Hill remix so it actually fits the rest of the game lmfao? something like this

Chao stuff gets its own segment because of course it does

all six Chao Gardens connected by a single Chao World lobby that's accessible from both games!

new unique themes for the SA1 gardens? there’s nothing wrong with the original, but it’d be weird if they all shared a song and the SA2 ones didn’t. the old one can go to the Station Square one

add the Chao Key to the SA1 levels for quicker access like in SA2

new behaviors for Chao to learn, new hats and accessories, new toys, new race courses, maybe new breeds?? new Chao stuff in general!!

make it so animals don’t walk into the garden entrances!! you don't know true pain if you've never tried picking one up, accidentally left the garden, went back in, and the animal was gone

swap out SA1′s racing mechanics with SA2′s. keep the “alternate paths based on stats” thing tho

imagine if you will.... an 8-player online Chao race. imagine the chaos (pun completely intended)

a brand new minigame to join the legendary likes of Racing and Karate! personally id love one based on Chao In Space. like your Chao has to beat the others in a dogfight and its stats determine its ship's stats and weapons

an optional mobile app that combines the VMU’s Chao Adventures and the GBA’s Tiny Chao Garden! maybe with some extra Pokemon Go-ish features??

that’s all i got.... Good God i love these two games. of course they’re not spotless, i just made a long list of issues i have with them. but they’re still important cornerstones of the series in many ways, and it’d be nice to see them remade so people can remember why :’)

months-later edit: added more ideas

[gamer--grill]

Catherine: Full Body game review. Spoiler alert!

Catherine: Full Body is a recreation of the original game Catherine made in 2011 by the game company Atlus, the same creators of the Persona games. It's a very story oriented platform puzzle game and follows the story of a man who's questioning his life and relationships.

Plot

So the story follows a man named Vincent Brooks, age 32, as he struggles with his hesitancy to commit to his girlfriend of 5 years Katherine and with the terrifying nightmares that plague him. At the very start of the game we meet Rin, formaly known as Qatherine, as she's running from her stalker in the streets. Vincent saves her and finding that she has amnesia and doesnt know anything about herself, she gets a job at the Stray Sheep playing piano, she is also Vincent's new neighbor.

2nd, we meet Catherine, a young, sexual blonde who comes into the Stray Sheep and has a drink with our protag. Vincent gets drunk out of his mind and in the morning he wakes up with Catherine naked beside him. He freaks the fuck out and here starts the love square as he struggles to hide his infidelity from both Katherine and Catherine while dealing with his growing affections for Rin.

Gameplay

The real meat of this game is in the nightmare segments. Every night you're transported to a world where you have to climb a tower of cubes before they fall out from under you and you become a heaping plate of sheep meat. And what they don't tell you about the puzzles is THEY ARE HARD, OH MY GAWD! If you play on hard or even normal be ready to throw your controller out the goddamn window and question your life choices bc if puzzles aren't for you then you're gonna have a bad time.

The game's puzzle segments have improved greatly with an additional difficulty setting called Safety where it's impossible for you to die, there's no timer so the floor doesn't fall out from under you, and you have an auto play and skip options so if you're feeling lazy you can have the game play its self or just skip the puzzle entirely. There's also a back camera so if you need to climb to the back of the puzzle you can actually see what you're doing instead of scrambling around like a sheep with its head cut off. The trap blocks are also disabled in Safety mode. After you get to the top of each block tower you'll come to a platform where you can save, talk to people and buy items that help you climb (they bring down your score of you use them fyi.) After that you'll get into a confessioanal booth where you'll be asked a question where you'll have to answer either 1 extreme or the other. This is the main thing that will determine the outcome of the game. This game has multiple endings and depending on what you choose that will decide the ending that you get and the paths you take. There's a total of 14 endings in this game including alternate endings that are exclusive to Catherine: Full Body so this game makes up for its relatively short play time by having high replay value. They've also added new questions to the game so it won't be the same questions that you answered if you played the original Catherine.

There's an option called Remix where there's entirety new kinds of blocks in the puzzles to deal with, I didn't play that but it looked intersting.

Other than the nightmare parts of the game, you spend you're time at the Stray Sheep drinking, talking to you're friends, bar patrons and Rin. You freqently get txts on your phone from all 3 of the girls and unlike the original game you get phone calls now and pics from all of the women, not just Catherine 😈😈. The best thing about the bar is that it's entirely optional. There's no extra fluff you need to slog through. You can just skip entirely passed it if you don't feeling like drinking or talking but it's all so atmospheric that you'll want to do it. Plus drinking more helps you move faster during the puzzles so bottoms up, bitches. 🍸🍺🍻🍷🍹🍶

Character's

I'm only gonna cover the love intrests bc they're the only ones who matter really.

Qatherine (Rin)

Oh. My. God. I can't even begin to tell you how good her story is. Her genuine innocence, kindness and sincerity help Vincent greatly as he deals with the traumatic nightmares and his relationship problems. Early on we can really feel the affection that he has for her and it seems completely natural that they would fall in love. In fact later in the game he kind of admits that he did fall in love with her. This is how good it was, when I messed up and didn't give the right answers for her path to be unlocked I was so pissed off when the cutscene finally came that I would have shouted at my screen if my dad hadn't been sleeping next door to me. Rin also has a unique place in the game. Unlike the other 2, she actually appears in the nightmares and helps you by playing her piano. That added comfort she gives Vincent really adds to her relevance and pefectly supports the way to a loving relationship should you choose to persue one. She's the most fulfilling love option. She's also not human. Or a girl.

Katherine

Katherine is already your long time steady gf when the game begins. Mature and sensible, she almost resembles a mothering role with the protag. She's always worried about him and his drinking habbits and how clean his apartment is. But she's not without her soft side either. She brings him cake and wants to persue a deeper commitment with him. She's very smart and ambitious but also quite understanding when it comes to Vincent's bumbling clumsiness. She truely wants the best for him and their relationship. This is expanded by the memories that are shown to you about their early relationship when they first fell in love. Which didn't happen in the original game. She represents the security and familiarity that comes with having a long time relationship.

Catherine

Catherine isn't actually a human at all. She's a succubus who was brought to specifically temp the protag into a steamy affair. She's described as "his dream girl" and represents the fantasy and freedom that people secretly crave. She's appears unassuming and innocent on the outside but is actually very shrewd and aggressive as shown when she beats the shit out of Vincent in the bathroom of the bar if you choose to break up with her. She also threatens to kill you early on if you cheat on her. She's very emotionally vulnerable and actually falls in love with the protag as the game progresses. If you break up with her she'll beg to stay with you, stateing that "I just wanna be your girl." And that she's ok with you marrying some one else. Then she cries. Then beats you up. It's all very hilarious and strange. Also no one else can see her except Vincent which leads to chaos near the end of the game. Her endings are actually pretty nice so give her some consideration.

Graphics

As this is a ps4 game, it goes without saying that the graphics are better than the original. The cematics really have the polished Persona 5 look to them. The colors are super bright and vibrant it's like a feast for your eyeballs, I just love it. When you do get a loading screen, which isn't often, you get blasted with that signature vibrant pink and the title screen has a whole new look to it. The style is there and I am here for it.

Interesting stuff

These are just things I personally found awesome.

In the begining, the hostess Trisha (she explains the whole story and presents it to you as a soap opera) aknowleges that this game is the new better version of the first.

The cubes with faces on them open their eyes when you stand in front of them.

When you reply to txts in the bar, you don't have to cycle through options anymore, just scroll and select.

There's Persona music on the bars jukebox including the opening song to Persona 5

There's Persona 5 Easter eggs. Just look around. 😉

There's a rich Muslim dude who you get to talk to on the platform after you climb the puzzles so if you're concerned about "representation" it's there.

Overview 8.5/10

Catherine: Full Body is an intersting, unique and stylish game that brings a fresh new concept to gaming and I really recommend it. It's strange and it does what it does and it does it well bc it's not trying to please or pander to anyone. The story is good and the style is showy and I love it.

I hope that you enjoyed this review and that your gamming experience is a little better.

[desertdragon]

Two headcanons

After the events of Shadowbringers and having put all of the residual Warriors of Darkness souls to rest, Vaste finds each Source version of the relic weapons they once used and brings them to the First

She goes to the spot they originally died, by a hill in Kholusia, and stabs each weapon beside one another at the crest- this is their memorial where everyone else let everything they did besides their sins be forgotten

She visits them as frequently as she can and especially to mark milestones in her life, since we see their spirits at the end game cutscene I imagine they're capable of reappearing in the world from time to time, and they'd probably figure out what she's done for them, learn through her that Cylva is still alive too

They talk to her on these occasions, either as individuals or in pairs and as a group, but half the time it's empty, and that's still ok for Vaste because there's still the idea that they're listening whereever they are now- other times when they come down I'm sure they'd check on Cylva now and then too

All she ever wanted was to be their friend, she gets her wish

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Her relationship with her younger brother U'ingwe was very much influenced by the positivity and support her older sister U'rahtalo gave her whenever she was down- with her brother being born rather small and initially reserved even for a Drake, she felt a commonality with them both being separate in some way from the Normal of everyone else (at the time of course she didn't know she was mixed heritage and just figured she'd been born a little different)

In a way interacting with him showed and cultivated the first signs of her ability to lead people through kindness; even after they've separated he embodies her old self, the kinder, open, and more gentle person, back when her worst experience was the guilt after killing an old Sundrake for her huntress trial- that's the person she wishes she still largely was without faking most of it as she tends to now

She would do nearly anything for him and her sister despite the huge differences between their places in life

In the events I have conceptualized for after her goal for a world without Primals and magic, I imagine she slowly relearns those parts of herself, though forever afflicted by her traumas yet working past them with her loved ones and herself- she would vow never to kill again and cultivate life than end it, all the killing during the fighting previous weighs hard on her, there was so much of it it feels pointless and as if she's drowning in death itself seeing so many lives ended, justified or not she'd want an end at last to so much carnage and no more souls added to those haunting her mind after she killed them

I feel like most regular people would think she died in changing the world, so her resolve to be more pacifist just completes the deception that she's just some farmer or whatever exactly she chooses to do as a civilian, that's ok by her, people can have the myth, they don't need to throw themselves at her feet and she never liked that anyway

She wants to go back to being nobody and live life how she pleases above all else