#i only saw the trailer for the new dlc but THE NEW MOVES? WITH HER TAROT CARDS???

[goodollouise]

Oh to be as cool as Amy Rose...

[oodlyenough]

life is strange true colours review

the non spoilery part: i LOVED this game, my personal fave game this year and the first franchise entry since the original that has really resonated with or moved me.

it's a life is strange game through and through, so if you don't like slice of life episodes or bonding with NPCs, it's not gonna be for you. but if you like the franchise, or even if you liked the first game but haven't been interested in/liked the other two instalments, i recommend giving this one a chance. i think it got closer to figuring out the formula while still doing something new and interesting.

more detailed spoilers and opinions:

alex

holy shit i love alex? bisexual chad... my darling... i'm gonna be real, a lot of the trailers and promo for this game made me worried she'd be kind of a dull wallflower Soft Girl character, but she's not! she's so funny, and even parts of her characterization i initially thought were maybe a bit of a stretch ended up making sense as i learned more about her. she stole the show. i straight up forgot how much loving the protag helps enjoyment of these kinds of games lmao ... finally a reason to click on everything in the room: to hear what alex will say about it.

i thought her backstory exploration in ep 5 especially was wonderful and emotive and great. broke my heart and explained so much about her :( baby girl

plot/choices

i loved the mystery. i don't think it was quite as Mysterious as the mystery in lis1, but that was okay, i was still invested in solving it. i also got invested enough in the NPCs around the town to make all the exploration bits really fun. i loved eavesdropping on the sagas of the random NPCs like bald man and ice cream couple... just fun little touches and narratives to follow that i enjoyed.

i really appreciated this script not being afraid to shy away from some messier emotions, even if in some cases i wish we spent more time on them. for example: alex feeling a bit jealous of the other people in town that got to know gabe better than her/spend more time with him than she did. or charlotte hating ethan!!! my jaw dropped, i thought that was so good, what a messy but realistic response.

I'm not entirely sure what all the ramifications of different choices are at this point, fresh off my first play. i ended up getting only part of the council to stand with me (eleanor & duckie) while losing pike and charlotte.

i do wish we saw a bit more fallout or exploration of what taking away emotion DOES. i took charlotte's anger, and obviously it meant she didn't stand up for me in the council meeting, but where does she go from there? does she like... ever return to feeling emotions lmao... I also think we probably should've had the opportunity to do that another time, instead of just 2 isolated events -- I think Diane would've been a good candidate.

the romance

i romanced steph, ofc, but i was surprised during the game how drawn i was to ryan too -- i really liked that Drama of him being the one who cut Gabe free, as well as later the drama of him being Jed's son. UNTIL HE DIDN'T BELIEVE ME... that made me mad lmfao, i have to learn what to do to make him believe me before i play a Ryan route bc i'll kill him lmfao.

the steph/alex romance was sweet... it didn't really, like, Consume Me as a ship, but by the end of the game I was still "aww"ing at their moments in the flashforward. steph was more rounded and flawed than i thought she might be, which i really appreciated! i was worried they'd just make her perfect idealized gf, but she has a bit of a temper and is kind of tempestuous and stuff... liked it. loved her standing up for alex so fiercely and immediately at the council meeting <3 and my main reservation about her in ep 4 was that i wanted alex to stay in haven, so when she offered to stay i was thrilled LOL

one semi-complaint i had was that something i loved so much about lis1 was how max and chloe's relationship was central to the entire game and story, it wasn't some extra thing on the side, it WAS the game... whereas here, the romance routes, especially steph's, felt like sidequests. I wish they'd found a way to incorporate those relationships a bit more into the main goings-on. I also wanted to spend more time with either romance option to feel like I knew them better -- splitting the time between Steph and Ryan means that I came away feeling like I didn't get quite as much of either of them as I would've liked, vs spending almost the entire game with Chloe lol.

however, this ended up not really bothering me too much because I DID really like the core mystery and themes, the exploration of grief and Emotion, etc.

other characters

considering everyone knew going into the game that gabe was going to die, i was impressed with how they did it, and how they managed to get me attached to gabe in a mere single episode. it's a tall order to introduce a character designed to die, who your audience KNOWS is going to die, and still make them work.

i thought this supporting cast was ... maybe the strongest in the franchise? or at least, they created scenarios where i felt invested in multiple people in the town, and was genuinely trying to build decent relationships with most of them. duckie cracked me tf up, i liked eleanor and riley, even diane and jeb were good for their roles. (fuck pike. i signed ur stupid thing and left your emotions alone and you still won't do shit? ACAB!!!) the choice to stay in haven or leave was a little harder than i expected honestly, considering how quickly i let arcadia bay burn to the ground lmfao.

gameplay/etc

also i know the whole internet has been dunking on "empathy" as a super power since the game was announced, and i get that it sounds corny and looks corny in the trailers, but i thought how they did it was really cool. i wish they'd branded it "Mindreading" more than empathy tbh because a lot of the cooler elements of it are more along those lines... using her power to manipulate people, potentially taking people's emotions away and what that does to them... very interesting imo!

i really liked the memory feature!!! cool way to give us character exposition and inform the story while encouraging exploration. finally a collectible that like, expands the story, instead of chloe drawing butts on the wall and sean taking 10 years to draw something.

it's definitely the most evolved-feeling LIS game, which it should be, given it's the newest. graphics looked really nice, loved getting to see the characters actually emote, even if there are still some scenes that were a lil comically blank-faced -- usually NPCs. i actually noticed this with Jed the most, which in retrospect maybe was somewhat intentional?

i had a number of visual glitches, nothing major but a little silly, like T-posing Alex, npcs t-posing in the windows, etc. i'm sure they'll get patched out soon.

anyway... i rly liked this game, i'm excited for the steph dlc and finally feel like i have reason to be optimistic about future LIS instalments. hooray!

[pan0ramy]

re8 thought dump because YE

i feel like this was almost inevitable but idk where else to talk about resident evil village so i’m just going to rant about it here!!! i have,,,, a lot of thoughts on this game after being so excited for it for so long

obviously, massive spoilers if you haven’t finished the game. i feel like i have thoughts on pretty much everything so please please please stay clear of this post if you’re trying to stay blind

otherwise, let me just rant about this game for a bit - mainly the story and characters - because i have Thoughts™

(also i feel like it goes without saying but this will be probably be quite long, so. strap in, ig)

okay SO. the whole intro was pretty interesting - even though we’d seen bits of it in trailers, it was still pretty unnerving and felt like it came out of nowhere. but the first thing that really stood out was the first village section with the hordes of lycans; i didn’t expect this game to start freaking me out so quickly but JESUS my blood pressure went up fast. 

there’s so many of them coming at you at once, and not only have you just lost half your damn hand, you’re not really used to the gunplay at that point AND you don’t have that many weapons at your disposal. so it’s basically just “hey we’re throwing you into this ring of death, good luck surviving!” which... now that i think about it, that really sums up the whole game lol

but for the most part, the early parts of the game are what we saw in the demos, so there’s nothing too new - it was nice getting to see the scene with all four lords and mother miranda, though. i wasn’t sure how the whole chase scene with the lycans would work - i thought heisenberg’s area was going to be some sort of mine, and that the chase would take place there - but it didn’t, and it was interesting regardless of it being so short. 

but the castle. THE CASTLE. 

i would be lying through my teeth if i said i wasn’t excited for dimitrescu like everybody else; i’m firmly in the camp of people who both meme about how attractive she is, and then also the people who legitimately find her attractive, soooo i kinda had high expectations going in? 

and sure, the castle section is only part of the game, but if there’s anything that makes me nervous most, it’s stalker enemies. resi 2 remake was actually pretty tough for me to get through because of how anxiety-inducing mr x was, and even though i don’t feel like she was as present as mr x was, lady d was still great! there were a good few times where you could hear her walking around and you just knew she was searching for you, which was really damn cool.

also, i know capcom had a lot of hype to live up to with lady dimitrescu, but goddamn they did such a great job with her. she’s so imposing but badass and just... really damn cool? like i honestly found myself being excited for her to show up rather than being scared. i just think she’s neat! I MEAN LOOK AT HER.

(also yes i know the whole internet has talked about how attractive she is, but can we just. appreciate that for a second???? she’s gorgeous and yall can’t tell me otherwise. like. bro ik the pronunciation is wrong but the way she says dimitrescu made me GASP i love this powerful vampire woman)

if anything, though, i... actually felt really bad that her story ended up the way it did. i mean, think about it: you break into her house, kill the three people she’s grown to consider her daughters, rob her shit, and then kill her? she technically goes through the same kind of parental grief that ethan does, in a way, which is a really interesting parallel. grief seems to be a theme that capcom really pushed for this game, and it works. 

also, her boss fight design is badass. she’s literally a dragon, how is that not incredible

so the castle was great, where could the game go from here? oh, i don’t know, how about gOOD OLD FASIONED FUCKING TRAUMA.

jesus christ the dollhouse GOT TO ME.

i’m pretty used to horror in general; i love horror games, movies, books, you name it. i’ve gone to horror movies where people have ran out because of fear all while i’ve sat there giggling the whole time. but the dollhouse? that dollhouse is FUCKED. i can’t remember the last time i watched someone play through a horror game and was so... on edge the whole time. the fact that they keep you waiting for so long with nothing happening just... makes the atmosphere incredibly uncomfortable, and then when shit does start going down, it goes down fast. in other words, jesus fucking christ that baby will haunt my nightmares until the end of time

basically capcom managed to make the n*zi baby joke from south park: the stick of truth legitimately terrifying, and i was glad to see donna die. moving on.

moreau’s section is the one i... actually don’t have as many thoughts on. it’s cool, sure, and the whole idea of him turning into a fish when he hits water is neat - it’s definitely a good callback to re4 - but idk, it didn’t really scare me that much. i can see it scaring those with a fear of water or the ocean, for sure, but eh. i thought the designs were cool, but i kinda tuned out a little here.

heisenberg, though, was anything but. the entire time leading up to village’s release, this guy has fascinated me for some reason. i don’t know if it’s because he’s the most normal-looking of the four lords, or the fact that he has telekinesis, or his amazing voice acting (seriously i know some people have shit on his VA but oh my god i adore it) or what, but this guy stood out to me from day one. i even went into the game expecting him not to die tbh. but no, he does, and his fight is pretty damn cool all things considered. only in a resident evil game could you have a mech fight and have it not feel out of place lol

also this line ^^^ legitimately made me laugh so hard i almost choked on my water. THE FACT HE TURNS AROUND AND APOLOGISES SO MEEKLY its fucking hilarious to me

but anyway.

similar to alcina, though, i was left with one big question about heisenberg - what did mother miranda do to him to get him to join her impromptu familly? he said himself to ethan that he didn’t want to join, so what did miranda do that didn’t give him a choice? did he have a family at some point? is he grieving too? what did miranda take from him? i can only hope this gets answered in the dlc, because it’s by far one of my biggest questions surrounding all of this. i may very well have missed it somewhere, and at least we know he has his telekinesis abilities thanks to miranda, but it’s a question that’ll definitely be on my mind going forward.

at this point, though, the story REALLY gets insane. it’s really nice how village decided to just continue on straight from what 7 did, and i’m very glad that everyone’s theories about chris being a werewolf were wrong - it’s a really nice spanner to throw in the works. if anything, the whole revelation of mother miranda disguising herself as mia the whole time since rose’s birth was really cool, and ethan being Mold™ the entire time was pretty neat too - it made a lot of things both in 7 and village make more sense.

what i’m still digesting, though, is the ending.

...man, capcom, you put poor ethan through all of that and then you have the balls to actually kill him? i mean shit, you made us think he was dead for a whole 20 minutes but then nope! he’s alive! but then nope! he’s dead again! i did see someone point out that at least ethan got to go out on his own terms, but dammit i would’ve at least liked for him to get to see mia one last time. i think it would’ve softened the blow a little more. but i guess that ties into the whole grief theming this game has going for it, and like i said, i probably just need some more time to digest it. 

i don’t dislike the ending, it’s just a very big culture shock - it’s definitely a ballsy move, and i really respect capcom for going all out the way they did. they really held back on nothing in terms of this game’s story and i absolutely love it. it was so, so worth the wait in that regard. 

and tbh that’s kinda how i feel about the whole game in general; it was super super good, very much worth the wait, and i absolutely cannot wait to see where resident evil goes from here. i have a gut feeling this’ll end up being one of my absolute favourites in the series, which i know is very high praise, but i really do love it that much. i wasn’t disappointed with much in this game, if anything at all. it’s just a super fucking good video game man idk what else to say at this point

[veinereastath]

Far Cry: New Dawn was a disaster, and here’s why.

Okay, just to be clear - this is my personal opinion, not pure, cold facts that I’m trying to push down people’s throats. I just felt the sudden urge to break down piece by piece my utter hatred towards this game. So, let’s go. What exactly went wrong with it, and why Far Cry 5 was way better? I will try to present my ramblings and point of view by putting both of these games side by side. So, when reading every sentence in this... thing, add in your head a “it’s vei’s opinion” bit to avoid misunderstandings. Thanks in advance! First thing, to make everything clear - Far Cry 5 was not a perfect game. No, actually, it was far from so; there are many games much better plot-wise, with more entertaining gameplay, bigger world, more interesting side quests and so on. But, one thing for sure, this game has a spirit, an unique aura that makes many people want to come back to it and replay it over and over. The way Ubisoft portrayed Hope County is absolutely fantastic - the music, the landscapes, the characters. It was something new, something fresh, and despite quite a lot sceptical voices when the first trailers came out, it turned out really well, and in general, people really liked this game, or loved it even. Yeah, some people hate the endings, the fact that every single one of them is bad one way or the other and that you can’t basically win (I always thought this was fantastic, because, hey, you can’t be a perfect hero every time - even so, I love how this game, Seeds especially, mock the “hero attitude” that protagonist tries to have). But even so, Far Cry 5 was mostly a success, right? And the canon ending when the nukes get dropped seemed to leave a perfect opportunity for a sequel. So, what could go wrong? Well, about that...

1. How long is this game? New Dawn is short. It’s fucking short, because I installed it right after it became available (fun fact, this was the first and the last game I ever pre-ordered, so imagine how excited I must’ve been), and started playing it as soon as I could. In my case, it was around 2-3 am. I had a break then, woke up at 7 am and continued playing. I was playing it slowly - completing the side quests, because I wanted to know what has changed in Hope County, and, of course, I was looking for some easter eggs regarding the Seeds (surprised pikachu - there weren’t any, Old Compound, John’s bunker and Ranch are too obvious).  Took me around 5 hours to move on and actually start playing the main story. I was pretty sure that it will take me at least 10-15 hours to complete it (why was I thinking so, don’t ask me, I guess I still have way too high expectations after what Witcher 3 expansions have shown me). Again, surprised pikachu! I finished the whole game in 16 hours. Sixteen. Including liberating all the outposts (1 star in each, didn’t bother to get 3) and finish all side-missions + driving around the County just to look around. The hell? And it wasn’t a DLC? Just for a little comparison, because, yes, FC5 can also be completed pretty damn fast if you rush it, but my 1st playthrough of it, with all the quests and admiring the landscapes took me 33 hours. Which leads us to the next point on this god forsaken list, and that is... 2. The map.

The next reason why I am shocked this game wasn’t a DLC - the heckitty hecck they did with the map in New Dawn. Radiation zones? Sign me the hell up, they make sense, are cool and stuff, but adding them just so you could bite off half of the original map is stupid, and extremely lazy thing to do. Okay, you can take off some parts, but if you’re doing so, add something new - some new paths, caves, mountain routes, something. And no, expeditions don’t count. To make it worse, the parts that were deleted were one of the best parts of the FC5 storyline. Faith’s Gate, Drubman’s Marina, Jacob’s Armory, Wolf’s Den, and the fucking Veteran’s Center. The opportunity to make this a haunted location with an entertaining quest in it was HUGE and it was absolutely wasted. It’s not like they couldn’t done it, we’ve got the mission in old Joseph’s statue, and the crocodile pikachu in Inquisitor’s Grave (which, by the way, shouldn’t actually exist - this bunker was blown up to pieces, but it seemed pretty decent in New Dawn, there are barely any sings of explosions, not to mention that “The Confession” room is untouched!). You bought this game with an intention to actually go back in time and find out about something that FC5 didn’t tell you? Kekus maximus, you don’t. Have some photographs instead (which are a nice addition, but seem lazy). To give this post even more personal hatred - I really don’t like the Henbane River region, so you could literally hear my heart breaking when I saw that we got 50% of the River, 80% of the Valley and 10% of the Whitetails, which were my absolute favorite. So fun!

3. The Villains. I must admit, in the trailers, back when the hype for this game was insane, Mickey and Lou seemed to be quite interesting. Even though back then it was obvious that Highwaymen won’t have that kind of depth that Eden’s Gate had, it was still something I was looking forward to, even though those vibes aren’t really my cup of tea; but most of my excitement was born from my love for Far Cry 5, so if course I had to try out the sequel. So yes, the trailers were quite nice (just not the live action one - that was a fucking disaster, and killed my hype for a few days afterwards).

Mickey and Lou were quite fun, but to little extent, sadly. I liked their sister-sister dynamics, they really seemed close, and it was nice that shey were so different from each other - Mickey was more calculating, while Lou was living for the action and brutality in itself. The Highwaymen as a faction in itself wasn’t really that great for me, because their only purpose was to cause mayhem, and I simply don’t like something like this. But the sisters were something different, right? No, they weren’t, and that’s the point. I felt like there was little to no depth in their actions - it was all for fun, and I find this just boring and pointless (pr maybe I’m the boring one). I know that this is often how the world works - people take and destroy simply because they can and because it’s considered cool. We suck as a species, that’s official and well known, but I expected something more entertaining from a videogame. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I did. And Mickey and Lou were literally Highwaymen members with a VIP crown above their heads and nothing more. They left their mother? Okay, that is something that could lead to other interesting things. They killed their father for power? Huh, alright, I can work with that. The point is, it didn’t give them that much depth, their main purpose was to plunder everything. Which would be all good and nice if they were some kind of a side-faction. But this was The Villains™, and I wanted to feel something more towards them. And to be honest? I didn’t even hate them. I felt absolutely nothing, they just existed and I didn’t care, because they didn’t make this game interesting. What I will say now may sound brutal, but I will say it: I don’t consider two young people (they were around 19/20) just wanting to blow everything up “for lulz” a good villains. I fucking don’t. It was a huge downfall after what FC5 has given to us. I was just so bored when fighting the Highwaymen, because they were shallow, and their personalities were only focused on one thing. 

Of course, there is also Ethan. Yes, I hate him (he even has a very punchable face, what a coincidence!), but I admit he was somehow a nice touch in this game. Yes, he was a prideful, irritating kid, but while I was just utterly bored by the Twins, Ethan actually managed to make me hate him. The only thing that I’m quite bothered by is that I don’t believe that he’s actual, biological son of Joseph. To put it shortly, and say it louder for the people in the back - The Twins were just meh. Boring. How was the situation in FC5 better? Oh boy.

Putting their obvious... Attractive physical appearance aside, and focusing purely on their personalities, because that’s what I’m trying to explain - they were something else, and something new. Ubisoft took a risk with creating four villains for a single game, because it’s extremely hard to give each one of them the screentime they deserve, and make them interesting and unique. Did FC5 succeed? In a way, yes. I’m not saying that Seeds are absolutely perfect villains (they aren’t), but they can eat Twins for breakfast and still stay hungry. To show you what I mean, have some short descriptions: JOSEPH: Cult Leader, “The Father”, a person who claims to hear the voice of God himself. Someone from a broken family and difficult life, who was in prison (according to song dedicated to him), lost one job after another, lost his wife, killed his daughter, and then formed a religious cult. JACOB: military veteran suffering from PTSD, with a massive knowledge about history and psychology, someone who literally brainwashed nearly half, if not more of the County, and manages to combine religion (something he clearly isn’t really fond of) and personal, darwinistic look on life. JOHN: former lawyer, a person skilled in adapting to any environment, charismatic manipulator abused as a kid, forced to spend most of his life pretending to be someone he hated to be, battled with addictions, emotionally unstable and with sadistic outburts. FAITH: young woman devoid of purpose in life, also battling with addictions in the past, probably on the verge of suicide at some point, who was manipulated (and quite possibly drugged) in order to comply; a broken girl hiding her pain behind lovely smiles. Sounds pretty diverse, right? And I bet that at least one member of this family was somehow entertaining for everyone. Now, here’s what New Dawn has given to us: MICKEY: the more calculating sister; young girl who followed her father and chose brutal life, creating entertainment for herself by making others suffer. Shows some kind of regret when you defeat her by the end of the game. LOU: the more brutal sister; young girl who followed her father and chose brutal life, creating entertainment for herself by making others suffer. Doesn’t show any regrets towards her actions.

And honestly, that’s it. I really tried to write something more for the Twins, but I couldn’t put my finger on anything. That’s all we know. And yes, I know that there is a major difference between them and the Seeds, which is the age gap - FC5 villains are simply older and have more life experience, but honestly, this doesn’t make it better. Mickey and Lou could have much more depth and be far more interesting despite them being young. Age is not a problem in such a case. I suggest to compare Mickey and Lou’s descriptions with the Faith one, since she’s just few years older. There is a difference, isn’t it? And even when playing both of these games, the Seeds just seem to be better developed than the Twins. Ubisoft did something weird, because they managed to focus on four villains and make each one of them interesting in their own way, but made just two main villains flat, and nearly identical. 4. Radio calls. This is a continuation of the point above, because it’s also something I wanted to point out and is connected to the villains of both games. The things you can hear directly from The Twins can be mostly described as “hey rabbit, you’re pissing us off a bit”. Same with the things they say at outposts and direct them to the Highwaymen - it’s always about the same thing, and there isn’t a single line that I found interesting or worth remembering (okay, my bad, the fact that Mickey and Lou seemed to be dissapointed after Nana chose to stick with the Captain rather than them was a nice touch). Meanwhile, I can recite most of the dialogue lines from the Seeds from my memory, and it’s something I could do after 2 playthroughs. They seem to be on a whole different level - and yes, it is true that to some point, the “rabbits” thing is similar to “the weak” theme of Jacob, or “the sinners” in case of John, but it didn’t seem to be that much tiring to hear about. Faith’s radio calls were interesting, because with each one of them you could hear her demeanor towards the Deputy changing - in the beginning, she was friendly, but after you destroyed Joseph’s statue, she was scared, and at the final confrontation - maliciously hostile. Jacob started his radio calls history with a threat towards you, and kind off keeps that all the time, but the closer you get to the final meeting with him, the more... Okay, how the fuck do I describe it in a non-thot way amused (I guess we can call it this way?) he sounded. He was still far from friendly, you still didn’t have any doubts he’s your enemy, but there was something in those radio calls, something that suggested he actually sees the Deputy as something more than just enemy, as a tool he crafted all by himself and he was proud of it. John welcomes you with this cheesy ad at the beginning of the game, and as time goes on, he goes even more obsessed with making you atone and confess; not to mention his absolutely fantastic reactions to stealing his house and destroying his sign. His calls are something unpredictable, because once he’s all official and charismatic, but suddenly he switches to this ominous mode that actually makes you want stop for a bit and look around you, as if he was lurking somewhere. To sum it up, this game made you feel like if you were actually developing some kind of a relationship with each one of the family member. But the radio calls from the Twins seem to be always the same, it’s all about “rabbits” and “problem solving”. Yes, it might've been better if only one sister was all about it, and the other one had something else on her mind, but making them nearly identical was a lazy move.  5. Landscapes.

Far Cry 5 was amazing, because every region was different and had something else to offer. Henbane River was full of Bliss, which created weird hallucinations, Faith dancing around you was also pretty interesting addition, and The Pilgrimage was also a nice touch (I recommend going with it, it’s a really nice experience, actually). Holland Valley was the pure definition of Montana countryside, and it felt fantastic to walk around and see those little farms, cows, windmills and so on. Whitetail Mountains were also something unique, with less open spaces, a huge amount of wildlife, combining massive mountains with deep forests. And even though the colors of this game could be simply described as beige-green, I didn’t really feel bored when wandering around. New Dawn had a cool concept, actually - makind the post-apocalyptic world colorful, instead of making it a grey wasteland was something new and I was excited. And, honestly, I really liked how it all looked like during the first 2 hours of playthrough. After that... I was just so done. The pink colour in itself wasn’t bad, really, but the way they added it everywhere made me feel sick. Those flowers were nearly everywhere and they were always the same. And while I love screenshoting landscapes in games, New Dawn didn’t really felt like something I wanted to spend time on. I like to admire the views of FC5, but not in ND. Combining the small as hell map with nearly the same flowers on your every step was a bad solution. 6. Other. To mention other things - well, I guess we could mention the music, but I feel it isn’t fair, actually. Both games did this well in some way, FC5 songs are certainly something unforgettable, and I mean both the cult ones as well as the OST. New Dawn did what it could - gave Highwaymen music that fits them. The OST, however, isn’t that good. Maybe because it just doesn’t feel unique to me, while the different type of music in each region in FC5 is, for me, unforgettable in many ways.  I won’t really talk about The Deputy >> The Judge metamorphosis, because everyone sees it in a different way. I personally don’t consider it as a bad thing, it’s quite a nice plot twist, and I like it (even though I went with a totally different path with my deputy OC).

Okay, I think it’s time to get to the main point. Why I consider New Dawn as a disaster? The Villains were devoid of any depth and felt exactly the same, the map was small as hell, the story was way too short (and these two things should be enough to make this game a DLC, not an actual installment of the franchise), the landscapes were repetitive, 90% of what was left from FC5 (locations, for example) didn’t get a chance to shine. Just imagine how much more entertaining this game could be if we would find some old recording of the Eden’s Gate songs somewhere. If there were mentions of some terryfingly huge wolves roaming around, if the members of Prosperity actually mentioned something about John Seed (which house they are living in!), if we could visit the remnants of the Faith’s Gate, hear the ominous “Only You” when approaching the Veteran’s Center and read some old notes about experiments that were happening in there, and so on. Basically, the main opportunity that got wasted was focusing on continuating FC5 legacy in a more respectful way. The things I mentioned above seem like small details, but they really could make the experience something else entirely. So, yeah. I hate New Dawn, in case someone didn’t notice. :)

[ladywhaiyvern]

Musings of An Otaku #7- Of Machine Animals and Relics of Old Ones

Ever since life took its course a few years ago, I stepped away from the video game scene to spend time with family. Back and forth hospital trips and long days of surgery among the other stressors of just being in a busy hospital environment would have been a great excuse to lose myself in a game. But for some reason, I just could not for the life of me sit down long enough to get into any games. Mobile games hardly counted in my book. If that was the case then the only “game” I played during that time frame was “Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp.” Hell, that’s the only mobile game I still play now. Religiously. Every day. Do dailies on Pocket Camp and then switch over to New Horizons and do my dailies there. Shit, I wish some of the items they offer in PC were available in NH! I digress. At this point, I had not sat down with say one of the next generation consoles at the time and played a newly released game. 

I guess I am trying to make up for lost playing time now as we are in the middle of pandemic. Limiting the time out in public to essential trips only. No eating out as much as I used to. What better way to pass the time, then catch up on games that I wanted to play but never got around to. Lord knows I have all of them purchased. Just haven’t played a single one yet. Then again, this goes for anything. I still have a very large pile of Anime blu-rays and dvds sitting around that I haven’t touched. Manga on shelves yet to be cracked into. I am working on getting through my Dragonlance books though! Just started book 2 of the Elven Exiles. Things are not looking good for the elves at all. ANYWHO!

Horizon: Zero Dawn. A game I remember seeing trailers and game footage for when it was in development back in the day. I was interested in it then, but then things had happened in life (as I have said). Started picking my way through it early last year. It was different, interesting. Your typical open-world action RPG. Beautiful graphics and landscapes. Didn’t think too much about it as I set it aside for a little while and then came back to it full force. Aloy did not draw me into the world, as much as the lore did. I wanted to find out what the hell happened to the world and why these animal shaped machines were so hell bent on killing everyone. I liked the look of these animal machines. Come on, I absolutely love Power Rangers and the seasons that used animal motifs (or mystical creatures). So, mechanical beasts were nothing new to me. They just were not sentient and hellbent on destruction. I mean, one can argue for a few seasons about it but I’m not here to discuss and argue Power Rangers. This is about Horizon: Zero Dawn. 

I do not recall how many hours I spent going through the main scenario of the game (as I did spend A LOT of that time hiding and planning ambushes on machines). And, well I am the type to go through the entire friggen map and get every single item and complete every quest. Okay, maybe not EVERY quest. I still have the hunting ground trials to do but I’m not really concerned with those as I am getting all the metal flowers, and ancient vessels. What can I say?! I laughed at the recommended level you had to be for the final showdown. I was way over that….and I mean…..wwwwwwwwwwwwwwaaaaaaayyyyy over that. I had the nice ancient amour as well. The one where you had to go around and get the power cells to open up the bunker. The one that has the nice shield factor. Yeah, I liked that. I liked many of the outfits with the added bits and bobs of machines and wiring. It was different and yet still very tribal looking. I also enjoyed the tribal aesthetic. We, as humans went back to the typical hunter/gathering tribal lifestyle after Zero Dawn. Nice to see the different kinships emerge. All the old memories of my cultural anthropology and archeology classes came flooding back which was not bad at all! 

I completed the main scenario the other day and WOW! Overall, that was a damn good game. While I did not connect with Aloy at the start of the game, I did become interested in her side of the story. I mean, seriously she was one of the only people that could unlock things with her genetic connection. The basis of how the world came to be destroyed and basically overthrown by these animal machines is a little on the scary side. We are becoming more and more reliant on technology. And that technology is slowly becoming more and more self aware and sentient. Everything is going that way. Look at our security systems, look at the smart houses, our cars, our smartphones, our smart watches. Machines that help us with cleaning and cooking are completely different then what I grew up with. Machines implanted into the body to help extend someone's life! I saw this first hand with my father and his LVAD (left ventricle assist device). Technology is both amazing and scary at the same time. It can be used for both the good and the bad. Dark and light. Shadow and sun. 

 Shit, I read an article the other day that both China and France are looking to create their own mobile military with biologically engineered supersoldiers. Taken from the New York Post’s article: “The French seek to improve “physical, cognitive, perceptive and psychological capacities,” and could allow for location tracking or connectivity with weapons systems and other soldiers.” https://nypost.com/2020/12/19/france-china-developing-biologically-engineered-super-soldiers/

 And that, my friends, is how the basis of Horizon: Zero Dawn started. No joke, machines built for warfare that went rogue and self-replicated by the use of absorbing plantlife, animal life and human life. Drained the Earth of its resources and caused “Zero Dawn” to be implemented. The basis for these “super soldiers” and “machine warfare” is nothing new to the Sci-fi genre. I mean, it’s been used in many many movie plots, video games, television, anime, manga, comic books and novels. It’s just scary to think that something like this could actually happen. It is not as far fetched as we think. Yes, many of these forms of entertainment have one more aspect going for them that we currently do not. Space travel. Another living planet humans live on. But the overall thought of some rogue machines being capable of self-replication and eradicating human life is still scary. And with any technological form- you know there will be some people who will be dead set on hacking these machines. I mean, even Aloy is hacking the machines to get them onto her side. Which, if you have not overridden one of the bigger machines in the game- it is so worth it! Love just sitting back and watching the machines fight each other! We are not that far from a Cyberpunk dystopian future. Hack the planet! 

I am moving into the DLC of the Frozen Wilds and am pretty close to being done with that as well. As I am enjoying it as I get to play more in this world and explore areas that are new, I am also a little on the disappointed side. I was hoping to learn more about the previous world and it’s demise. Granted, I am not done with the Frozen Wilds. I am in the process of traveling to the Thunderdrum- so I am hoping that will shed some light on these “demonic” machines and maybe expand the lore some more. I am done with the majority of the side quests and gathering the pigments, animal figures, and blue gleam. 

I am really glad that I finally decided to sit down and give this game a try since it’s been on my “to play” list for a few years now. I enjoyed the overall story and despite me not being one to enjoy a whole lot of stealth play- I did enjoy this one. I can definitely see how they set the series up for a sequel. I’m excited to learn exactly where we shall be going in the second game.

[collinnmckinley]

TLOU2 review. *SPOILERS DUH*

DISCLAIMER: These are my opinions and do not have to cross with anyone's. Everyone with their own and I respect them, I hope you do with mine. I will try to keep it short even though the thoughts will be all over the place and I might go off tangents sometimes. Also SPOILERS!!

This game had me go through a lot mentally, I cried, I laughed, I was angry, but mostly I was upset a lot of the time. And I will explain why later on. 

The Last of Us part II was one of the most, if not THE most, anticipated game for me. And I was over the moon when my best friend got it for me. I was happy that I would get to see and play as my favorite characters. But that happiness didn’t last long as the story progressed. But before I delve into the story and talk about the cons I want to talk about the goods and pros of the game.

I wanna start with the graphics, and the visuals of the game. This game has one of the most beautiful visuals and environment details I've seen in a current gen console. Also me having PS4 slim and saying this doesn’t do justice, imagine the game in PS4 Pro with maximum settings. The character models were amazingly crafted, I can’t say this enough but just look how amazing Joel looks here;

Also Maria, Tommy, Ellie, they all looked amazing! God help me because I still can’t get over how beautiful and amazing they all look. And I will keep saying amazing because it is true.

The mocap and voice acting; it is only fair to say that the actors did a perfect job to bring these characters to life and I respect them so much for it, and the animation that came with it was just fantastic. I applaud the animation team for the amount of work they’ve put into this game and I will never get over the fact that it was all made in a computer. It didn’t feel like mo capped at all, it felt legit and real, it felt like I was watching a movie not playing a video game. 

That brings me to the point; this game felt more like an interactive movie than a video game. 60% of the time I was just sitting there bored out of my mind, either because of this reason or that the game gets dragged too long because of the unnecessary gameplay or encounters. Yes it might be a bit too easy to just let the player walk into what they’re supposed to walk to but an encounter every 5-7 minutes? It just gets repetitive and annoying at one point. 

It really felt like an interactive movie with so many cutscenes and unnecessary story telling, it was just plain bad. Sometimes I would be tempted to just skip the cutscenes because of how bored I was getting but then again it was my first play through and I don’t like missing anything (although in this game I would’ve like to miss a lot). I think they forgot what made the first game so good.

The game play was exactly the same as the previous one, plus you are able to crawl, swim and dodge. To think these were innovative is a bit dumb on their part. Before the game came out, or when the gameplay trailer released they were boasting how much better the game play is from the first one, showing off the new workbench. Which btw was very annoying to use, unlike the first game this game took most of the time because of the damn animation. “Oh we want to make the game better, how do we do that? I know let’s add sick animation on the workbench to drag the gameplay time.” I know they were trying to make it realistic but it’s just another one of the unnecessary elements.

I think we’ve started with the Cons already so might as well continue. The game tries and forces you to see each character’s perspective that you end up playing, which are Ellie and Gabby. I still don’t understand why they were trying to force us to like Krabby Patty. She killed Joel and so she’s the bad guy for me, end of the story. NOTHING she did had changed my mind about her, literally nothing. 

The game was supposed to be Joel and Ellie’s story, about Joel’s redemption, about how fractured their relationship gets after the truth was out, and about how they bond all over again when Ellie starts forgiving him. But all of that was sent out of the window when Debby and her gang were brought into the picture. Ever since they were introduced, nothing made me care about a single one of them, on the contrary every character died made me a little happy inside. They wanted to introduce a new character but they introduced ONE TOO MANY The only characters I cared about besides Ellie and Joel were, Tommy, Jesse and Dina. Jesse didn’t have that much screen time but I liked his character because he wasn’t a bullshit one like Debby gang and wasn’t forced for me to like him. 

The fucking sex scene didn’t have to be there, noone wanted or needed to see it and I feel so bad for the actors who had to participate in it all.

The whole Gebb arc was so forced. It made me angrier the more I played as her. Her arc was supposed to be some sort of redemption road for her because of her actions, but it made me hate her more and more. I swear I tried to understand her, like her, see what she saw and why she did what she did but no, nothing could change my mind about her. She couldn’t let go of her anger because she didn’t grieve, she dragged her friends across the country to take her revenge. Not all of her friends agreed with her, because they knew deep down she was wrong, even one of her friends later on said something similar to Gabey at the end of her arc. 

The ending: It was so bad. At first I thought of it as a bittersweet ending, because they gave us that scene where Ellie talks to Joel and she says she wants to try and forgive him. They  almost made us think the game was good and the ending was justified, but it wasn’t one bit. Ellie didn’t get her revenge, Gebby didn’t die, and Ellie just lost everything and everyone while Abby didn’t. And in the end, Geb didn’t even matter in the story. What was the point of inserting her in the story if she didn’t matter anymore, they just ended her arc there (and I hope for their fucking sake they keep it that way). The more I go through the ending the more I hate it. It wasn’t justified at all for Joel sake, but then again it was Ellie who had to come to terms with his death and grieve on her own. In conclusion it sucked.

The game advertisement was so bad. They made us think that Joel was alive the whole game, they made us think that Joel will be our companion the whole game. And the whole time Neil Druckmann was laughing at us in the background. Its false advertisement for the players to buy the game because they know if they exposed even a little bit of the story people will boycott ND and not gonna buy TLOU2, and honestly can you fucking blame anyone?. A scummy move them ND tbh and I will never forgive them for it.

I wonder what the writers were on to write this shitty narrative story killing off one of the most beloved characters in the game like that. They wanted to make an example out of Joel with death. I get it, but this wasn't the way to do it. the more I think about it the more I think it’s so stupid and the shittiest narrative any game has had so far. And for the sake of the fans I just hope to god they don’t make another game or a dlc for the series after how they ended it. 

My conclusion: I was upset most of the time playing this game and didn’t have a good experience for more than 18 hours of it because of what I stated above. it was a grindy experience for me, and my head hurt most of the time because I felt the game like a chore rather than a game, because of how much they kept on stretching it from unnecessary encounters with the enemy to unnecessary amount of cut scenes. Also playing as Dabby made everything 300 times worse for me and I hate her. :)

My rating is 3.5/5, would not recommend buying it full price. 

[imthepunchlord]

For all the new things, I kinda wished they showed all of this before SwSh was released, now it's a bit more pricey and I feel like it's kinda rushed. Also for the Mystery Dungeon, I'm excited for that bit I really hope that include all the starters and non starters as well in the final.

I wish they went ahead and pushed back SaS so it’d be released 2020, with this expansion back already included, and the new places we go to can be unlocked during our adventure or as postgame. I would’ve fine waiting and would’ve preferred it, especially to give them a chance to do more with the main story which is pretty weak and made little sense, and Rose was a very forced in villain. Also made no sense in the story climax. Watching playthroughs and seeing the climax of SaS I’m just... 

Its also frustrating that you get to hear about things happening and not actually witness or help. Like, its nice having adults acknowledge that you’re a kid, don’t worry about it we’ll handle it, but at the same time, that’s a chunk of story we have a right to see, and we’re kids in this game, we don’t always do what adults say we should follow and see what’s going on. That could’ve been something optional. Go to event to see what’s happening or skip it to go to the next gym. 

And this is turning into a rant so I’m going to put this below. For those that just want to read my comments on Mystery Dungeon, scroll down till you get to the Pikachu gif, I’ll talk about it below. 

Also there could’ve been improvements with the rivals. Marnie is suuuuper intriguing and I love her, Bede I also like though that’s more me missing mean rivals and man, he’s a brat and I say that with affection. But in the grand scheme of things, they felt pointless. More could’ve been done to include them. And Hop. God, Hop. I know people like him, but from what I’ve seen, he seems like the most annoying “friend rival” made to date. He does not know what personal space is. He waits for you in front of gyms. He waits for you on new routes. He has to comment on almost every move you make in your fights with him. 

I don’t even own the games but just from the playthroughs I’ve watched I’m just... go away. Leave the lead alone. Everywhere you turn, he’s there, waiting for you. It also feels like he only got endorsed because he’s Leon’s younger brother. There’s nothing about him that I like. And, I don’t know why he gets the other wolf legendary? What makes him worthy?What makes him want to be a Professor in the future? That’s out of nowhere. 

Something more could’ve been done with Hop, maybe an arc of him resenting you a little because every match you beat him, and he’s the Champion’s younger brother and you just seem to stay ahead. Maybe let us have more scene of him talking with Sonia since he’s going to be her future assistant. If he’s going to be constantly stalking us and waiting for us, then yeah, let’s at least better build up where his character will go. 

Then there’s the issue of pokemon. With it pretty much confirmed they just reused models from gen 7, yeah, there’s no reason to not include more pokemon. If not the National Dex, which wouldn’t bother me too much, then go ahead and add about half. At most, I’d love pokemon included that would make the most sense. Like, lion is a big symbol throughout all of Europe. There should be a lion in Galar, either Litleo or Shinx returning if not a new lion pokemon. And with the expansion packs, yeah, they’re already adding 200 each pack. 

And a lot of this dlc should already be in the game. If 400 pokemon are going to be added in, they should already be there. The new Giga forms should already be there and we should’ve seen the Giga Venusaur and Blastoise the same time as Charizard. 

I’m also salty that there’s no going to Kalos. Maybe it’ll be a future expansion, and that’s a dlc I wouldn’t mind, but those are two very linked countries they’re based on. And Galar truly isn’t a big region. The Wild Area isn’t as big as it could be. Like, it doesn’t have to be BotW big, but it could’ve been bigger than what we got. And if not expanding the Wild Area, we could’ve had Kalos as a new region to go to, and more gyms for us to do. 

ALSO.

I am not a fan of you refacing the gyms and having them act as your “Elite Four”. 

They’ve already been fought. Aside from the first two, you’ve already fought all the star Giga forms they have. Its a really lazy decision. At least, you can have the two first gym leaders come in since you didn’t fight their star Giga forms, and include the other two version exclusive gym leaders as the other two. Just for some freshness in this final challenge. 

I know they’re not big on voice acting, but, they should’ve put some form of VA into these games. Its a little awkward to get animated cutscenes and there’s no voices coming forth. And its at its worst when you get to Piers and you see him singing away, I presume loudly, into his mic and its just awkward cause there’s no voice and you can hear him tapping his foot to the music and its just so off putting to watch cause something is missing: a voice! And you know what’s the kicker? Pokemon has included voice acting before. 

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There is no reason to not do something similar, at least for Piers’ intro so its not so awkward to watch. 

And then post game... the official post game... I, I honestly can’t say what is even going on? Those two blonde bimbos, those designs, who agreed to pass them? For sword guy, I don’t know whether I should be laughing or uncomfortable. Its like, an in between especially when his hair flops around. Also, their reasoning, they’re causing chaos in Galar because they didn’t like a book Sonia wrote??? 

The villains in these games are just so dumb.

Like, Rose had a good motive but, he is still forced in. And he activates the climax for no reason. He was promised by Leon that he would help with Eternatus, all he had to do was wait through one match. One match that would’ve been 30 minutes at most, roughly. Yet he couldn’t wait for one match and went ahead and woke up Eternatus, does a video asking for help, and when you arrive, stops you for a battle that doesn’t make sense to have cause he asked for help why is he holding you up with a battle?? 

And Team Yell. Supposed to be like, a 2nd Team Skull and these guys could dream to live up to Team Skull. They can’t. They’re not funny or enjoyable at all. And my friend brought up a good point on the issue of having Team Yell based on punks when they’re supposed to be the “villainous” team. Punks, historically, were rebelling against an unfair system, they were progressive and revolutionary. They stood up for LBGT rights, they stood for having individual freedom, and just wanted to break the restrictions society wanted to place on people, let people express themselves and be who they want to be. 

If you want Team Yell to be a 2nd Skull and play around with punks as their theme, then they should’ve been set up to be red herrings as well. Be wary at first and then later find that they have hearts of gold, and mean well, even if they can be a tad extreme sometimes. And maybe they can help build up the danger of Rose, who in turn wants to paint them in with a bad image since they’re going against him and what’s normal in society. 

Anyway... Sword and Shield honestly should’ve been pushed back. They should’ve been saved for 2020, or even 2021, or however how much time they need. I would’ve been fine waiting. A lot of fans would be. But what we got wasn’t worth the $60 it was being sold at, and definitely not worth the $90 its being sold at with the expansion packs, and as far as I know, these are very, very small areas to explore. Cause as we’ve seen with SaS, they built it up to be big and grand and, well, the Wild Area was smaller than expected and the whole was far shorter than expected. You could beat it in 20 hours roughly. 

I even have mixed feelings on there being no enhanced version, cause these games do have potential, they just needed more time and polish, and then it could’ve worth the $60 price. But also thankful that there’s not another 2nd version and we may be getting a few expansion packs instead. 

Though I do think a lot they’re bringing in should already be in the game. 

Anyway, enough ranting about Sas, onto Mystery Dungeon!

Demo I think could’ve been a little longer, they stop you before you go on the Skarmory mission, I think it could’ve been a better placement to end after the Skarmory mission. 

Anyway, I like the changes so far. I love you can choose a different pokemon if you don’t like what you got from the test. I love that you have an updated move pool, though I feel kinda OP but you also kinda need it for these games cause I remember them being so hard and as a starter that can’t evolve till like, post game, yeah you’re going to need that help. I love that you get to wear a little scarf. Design wise, a little weird at first but it grew on me. Kinda reminds me of Okami. 

By trailer, for sure they’re adding more pokemon in. Lucario is seen in the team, when before, you only saw Lucario as a statue in Red Blue, I believe? Its been a long time. But they only had Gen 1-3 in RB, and Lucario is there so I would think they’d add in a lot more pokemon. 

For starters, I’m hopeful that beating the game, if you replay, you’ll get more options for the starters to play as and have as your partner. I’d loooove to have a chance to play as Popplio. Mega Evolution is confirmed, I wonder if regional forms would also be playable, like if we could evolve into Alolan Marowak or be one of the other two regional Meowths. Otherwise, everyone you could be in the old game is there, with no gender restriction! You can be a female Cubone! A male Eevee! A female Cyndaquil! I’m so happy about that since as a kid, I wanted to play Cyndaquil but never got it in the test and had to look it up and was bummed that it was male only and I wanted to be a girl. 

My biggest hope though is that with this, we’ll have a chance to play two player, since you have a team of two usually, and your friend or sibling or SO can play your partner. 

I am pleasantly surprised with it so far, though I will be holding off when its released in a few months, just going to listen to all reviews once they beat the game and if its very positive, cause SaS had a strong start and then went down hill with Gamefreak rushing it and cutting corners. I’m hopeful for this remake but cautious still. 

[tmartx]

KH3 ReMind New Trailer

Okay so the new ReMind trailer for KH3 ended up dropping for a bit, and it’s got me hyped up sooooo much! There is so much more going on in this DLC that we could have never imagined. Or at least, maybe I didn’t. Not to mention that it seems that all the pieces are starting to line up now and the story is coming together in a full circle. 

[A THREAD]

SPOILERS BELOW HERE! CLICK ONLY IF YOU WANT

First of all we FINALLY have Final Fantasy characters back into the game! I am soooo happy for this fact too! I hope this all means that we get to explore Radiant Garden finally after so long, cause that would be pretty epic. But now that we have them back in the picture, the original Traverse Town crew, it makes me wonder something else. Will we get to see Cloud and Sephiroth again? Will they have another fight? What about Tifa? But not only that, we NEED a KH3 Sephiroth secret boss fight now! It has potential to happen now and I am SO THERE FOR THAT!

Also what is this? VANITAS??? HELLO?? Like, this is the only thing that I can think of with Darkness coming from Ven’s station of awakening. OR. Maybe we are getting the KHUX tie in and it’s showing that Ven has darkness like many of us have thought before? Hmmmm

And now we see that Kairi is in the Final World with Sora. I thought this was very surprising for sure, but I would assume it has something to do with him going to rescue her? Or at least that Sora will probably be changing something and Kairi happens to be there with him. But most importantly of all the stuff with Kairi we have seen, we have PLAYABLE KAIRI! Finally! So happy for this and she is going to be able to show what she can do now. Her moves look great! We see that she’s beating up on old man so I hope he gets what is coming to him. 

Now this part really really had me interested! I am a HUGE Aqua fan so I was so surprised to see this. It seems as though that we are going to get an explanation as to why Aqua was just standing there in the original game and not doing anything and allowed the heartless to take her. I’m so glad they are addressing this too, because I had always been thinking that she had PTSD from being in the Realm of Darkness for so long. So this would make perfect sense as to why she was so scared. Dark Aqua represents her despair, her lowest point. And when she saw all of those shadows, what she was really seeing from her POV was the shadows of herself. It was basically her mind playing tricks on her, but a good way to show that her stay in the RoD had affected her in some way. This is vitally important in my opinion. All the angst is so strong.

Hey look more Aqua! These shots of her smiling are just so pure and bright. I had to just post them. But this moment also is very interesting. Riku asking her if she is sure. Sure about what? And she’s not alone this time? Hello?? What does this mean? I’m excited Aqua will hopefully be getting to do more again as well and I am SOOOO READY!

And here this team attack looks so freaking awesome! Seems that all of the guardians are in Scala though maybe?? Cause they are fighting the Nort vessels that were only in Scala. So that would be soooo interesting to see all of them there and playing a part in the battle. It’s what I wanted to happen sooo much originally. 

Speaking of Scala though, it seems we are going to get to explore it! So happy about this as well. It’s gonna be a good experience. 

Okay Demyx?! What are you planning boy? I really really want to know now. It’s curious that he shows up when the battle is done and is like “I figured you’d be gone by now.” That’s very VERY curious there. I am still thinking that he might be the Master of Masters though. I’m getting some serious “important” vibes from him honestly. 

And then there is THIS. THISSSSS! I am stoked that they showed something like this. Sora talks about following the light and his own heart, and then lights up RIKU’s HEART with his keyblade. Like, this is just an incredible moment here. And I feel that they are really trying to tell us about the love they have for each other. And with the amount of things that we saw in the trailer for Sora and Kairi, and then Sora and Riku, I am convinced they are going to leave things either open-ended, or they are going for the trio method. I’m not really sure and it’s just my headcanon, but I am all for the feels!

This final part though of the trailer really SENT ME! Freaking Yozora WHATTTTTTT?! They are also in the Final World too. It’s so cool though the things that this could mean. Yozora means night sky, and they are in the Final World under that night sky. But not only that, they started SPEAKING THE SAME LINES! “I’ve been having these weird thoughts lately. Like, is any of this for real... or not?” I can’t believe this! This is mindblowing!! WHAT?! Are they from parallel universes maybe? WHAT DOES THIS MEAN????? 

In summary: JUST GIVE ME THE GAME NOW!!! I’M READY! 

January 23 cannot come soon enough! (February 25 for those on Xbox sadly). May your heart be your guiding key!

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

Anons wanted an explanation for the placements I had on my previous tier list, but upon going back and looking it over, I realized that I wanted to move a few characters around, so I ended up getting a new template and remaking it. 

I wrote little bits about each character [yes, each one] below the cut, but be warned, it’s long. 

SS  

“I love you so much that I would sell my soul to make sure you’re happy”

Lee Everett: Lee is a goddamn legend. He deserves to be at the very top. He’s one of the best protagonists I’ve ever played as in a game, his backstory is incredibly interesting, and his relationship with and dedication to protecting  Clementine never felt forced and is one of the highlights of S1. Even now, having replayed S1 a million times, seeing him get bit and slowly become weaker and weaker as he refuses to give up on Clementine still breaks my salt encased heart. Watching him die in the end never fails to put that lump in my throat. I love him.

AJ: I love this kid. I was so worried that they wouldn’t do him justice when the game was announced and I saw the trailer, but I was floored by just how much I grew to love him. He feels like my kid, my responsibility and I want him to grow up strong and smart, but also human. His voice acting is terrific, and I think he’s one of the best child characters we’ve ever been given in video games. His relationship with Clementine rivals Lee and Clem’s relationship and that’s what I wanted. This kid earned his place at the top. 

S4 Clementine: This Clementine is my absolute favorite. While I love all the Clementine’s across the four seasons, I feel like she truly hit her peak in S4. I fucking love her, I’m proud of who she grew up to be, and seeing her journey to this point only solidifies that she’s my favorite. She’s strong and stern, but she has her softer moments with AJ and Louis/Violet, and what else is there really to say? She’s Clementine.  

Louis: ....Do I really need to explain this? I mean, c’mon. If you’ve been following me for a long time- shit, if you’ve only been following me for a few minutes, then y’all know how much I love Louis. I can say with 100% certainty that Louis is my favorite non-playable character across all four games. I’ve made numerous posts, answered over a hundred asks, written thousands of words about him. Everything about him from his character design, his personality, his traumas, his voice acting, his expressions, his relationship with Clementine and AJ and Violet and Marlon and everyone- He’s the best. I love him. 

Rosie: Rosie is the bestest girl in the world. ‘nuff said. 

S

“I fucking love everything about you.”

S1 Clementine: Alright, before y’all come at me with the whole “Why isn’t little baby Clem SS tier you monster??” let me explain: I adore S1 Clementine. She’s still in S tier, after all. However, after playing through these games several times over again, I realize that this really is just the beginning of Clementine’s character and her growth. She’s lovable, she’s cute, and I want to protect her, but she’s not... a compelling character? She doesn’t fully come into herself and develop a stronger personality until S2. Like I said, I still love her and I can’t deny the impact that she had on the characters and us players, but she’s not my favorite Clementine of the bunch. 

S2 Clementine: I fucking love S2 Clementine. I’d actually say that she’s my 2nd favorite Clementine. I give S2 a lot of well-deserved shit, but she is the high point of it all. Something about her character is compelling to me, like how she’s stuck with a bunch of adults who underestimate her yet want her to do everything for them and she just... is so done with it hahaha. But her growth is what it really does it for me. We went from little baby Clementine who whimpered at a small cut on her finger to a Clementine who fucking sews her own arm up, covers herself in walker guts with barely a flinch, can shoot a gun with great accuracy and take down walkers like they ain’t shit, and can survive and make her own decisions. Also, her instant connection with AJ is great. Love it. Love her. 

Javier Garcia: Yo, I love this beautiful man. This man is honestly the best part of ANF, and without him it would’ve been such a shitty game. I found his backstory as an ex-professional baseball player booted from the league for gambling a cool concept. He’s hilarious and charming, too. Honestly, he deserved a better game with better, y’know? The only reason he’s not SS tier is because of the writing and his nonsense with Kate when you don’t want to romance her. It makes it seem like he led her on and then was like “Wait nevermind lol” which is annoying, but other than that, he’s great. Love his relationships with most of the characters, and the ending he got was pretty good. 

James: I don’t talk about him as much as I should because I find James fucking fascinating. If they ever made a DLC or a mini-game for twdg, I want it to be about James and his journey in finding and joining the whisperers, his relationship with Charlie, and how he escaped them. His views on walkers, his survival and killing skills, his past traumas haunting his every moment for fear that he’ll revert back to what he was, his extreme pacifism that ironically turns violent- just what a cool fucking character. And while he has his wild moments [cave scene, anyone? “Oh ouch!” hahahahahaa] he’s still one of my favorites. 

Violet: Oh, Violet. She’s amazing. I love her so damn much. If there’s ever been a character that I see a lot of myself in, it’s her.... which is why I tend to be a little harsh with her sometimes, but I can’t deny that she’s one of the most well-written characters across the whole series. She’s not perfect [both she and Louis do have their tiny inconsistencies that I blame the writing for] but that’s a good thing. And while I don’t ship her and Clementine, I 100% get why a lot of people do. Their relationship is adorable and way more compelling than her previous relationship with Minerva. 

A

“I love you <3″

Carley: My beautiful girlfriend... you were taken away far too soon. Carley’s one of my favorite characters from S1. I wish we could’ve had more time to explore a relationship between her and Lee, but what we did get is enjoyable. She’s a badass, and I will always love the moment she tells Lilly off for being a little bitch, even though it results in her death. Not a day goes by where I’m not salty about that one. 

Molly: Molly’s a goddamn badass. She scales buildings like it’s nothing, she named her weapon Helga, and her backstory with Crawford and her sister is terrific. Also, she’s funny and I love her. That’s that.

Omid: This dude was literally a light in S1. He brought us some humor when we needed it [ “...You broke that dude’s face.” ] and his relationship with Christa was so sweet. Also, him and Lee bonding over being history nerds? Yes, please. It’s bullshit that he was killed off two seconds into S2 but hey... S2 had a lot of bullshit in it so...  Justice for Omid 2k19. 

Luke: *deeeeeeeep inhale* Big Brother Luke did not deserve that bullshit. Literally one of the best characters in S2 and y’all just.... did him dirty like that. And for what? To make room for Kenny and Jane? Bull. Shit. Luke was so damn good, and the only reason he’s not higher is because of what they did to him after ep3. He starts out so kind and supportive and seriously like a big brother character then SUDDENLY he’s stupid and “makes it” with Jane while walkers are trying to eat us and then he gets himself shot and then fucking dies and akjsjdlkjasdkjaslkjasdklerwedascasads- 

S3 Clementine: ...So, here’s where y’all will probably get pissed. S3 Clementine is my least favorite of the bunch. Don’t get me wrong, I still love her and she is still in A tier, but... how do I explain it? She’s in her 13-year-old, emo/angsty phase and it’s hilarious when it shouldn’t be. There are moments where I do become emotional for her, like when David takes AJ away and Javi hugs her, or when Gabe dies and she’s saying goodbye, or when she gets her first period, y’know moments like that! BUT... then we have moments where Javi goes to talk to her and she’s all “HAVING PEOPLE IS GREAT AT FIRST BUT EVENTUALLY EVERYONE DIES” or when she straight up shoots that guy who gave her faulty bullets OR WHEN SHE’S LIKE “IMMA KILL ME A LINGARD” AND.......... it’s too much for me! I can’t take her seriously when she’s this angsty, even when I understand why she is the way she is. Again, to reiterate, I still love her but in ranking all four Clementines, she comes in last for me.... and I can already hear the shit that’s gonna be thrown my way haha

Conrad: The most underappreciated character in S3 and it’s nonsense. Don’t come for me, but this dude is my favorite npc in S3. I love Conrad, and I wish we got more of him. He does have his own little arch if you keep him alive through the end. His grief over Francine is heartbreaking and his downward spiral that leads him to act out and threaten Javi, Clem, and Gabe so that he can get his revenge is wonderful. And btw, he does apologize for pulling the gun on them and makes up for it in the future. And y’know what moves him up into A tier? The moment you let him kill Badger. One of the best kills of the game. I prefer it over beating the shit out of Badger myself. 

Aasim: This boy is my son, and I’m sorry, but he’s really fucking cool. You’ve got this kid who was sent to Ericson for being a pyromaniac [according to Kent, it’s not actually mentioned in game] and grew into this guy who documents everything so that they’ll have a form of history to look back on and help not repeat mistakes. His banter with Louis is funny, and even though he gets fed up with Louis for not taking anything seriously, he still cares deeply about him given how he reacts when Louis loses his tongue. His crush on Ruby is adorable, too. I just love him, he’s great. 

Marlon: Now, originally I put Marlon in a lower tier [the “I like your role in the story” type of tier] but upon reflection I actually find Marlon to be a compelling character. He’s high on the list because of how well he’s portrayed. Marlon has some of the best voice acting across all the games. There isn’t a single moment where I don’t believe what he’s saying, which says something. There are moments where Clementine will say something and I go, “Really? That’s the take they went with? Okay...” but not with Marlon. For only being in ep1, he played his part really fucking well. I won’t defend any of the shit he pulled because it’s awful, but I understand everything he did. He is a coward, a sheep hiding in a wolf’s coat, pretending that he’s got everything under control and putting all the pressure of a leader onto himself and it eventually breaks him. I know they killed him off to further the plot and show how ruthless AJ can be as a child growing up in the world, but I wish he survived past ep1 so that we could really get into the meat of his character. I’ll say it: I love him as fake-friend-to-full-on-antagonistic-character and his role within the story. 

Mitch: I fucking love Mitch and the only reason he isn’t in SS tier is because of how goddamn dirty the writers did him. You give me this boy- this butterknife wielding, foul-mouthed, angry, hilarious, bomb-making boy and make me fall in love with him and THEN YOU KILL HIM OFF IN THE STUPIDEST WAY POSSIBLE. “Oh, lemme just run at the crazy lady with a knife and- OOF! It appears I’ve been throat stabbed bleh-”  I’ve complained about this since ep2, but lemme say it again: Mitch had so much potential to be an amazing character but never got the chance to because we had to add to the death count and make us more afraid of Lilly even though it didn’t do shit because it was a reaction kill rather than one made out of malice. 

Tenn: Tenn is such a tragic character for me. In my personal canon ending, he dies because he was “messing up again” and AJ shot him. This poor kid was so full of hope that the walkers would go away one day, he’s so genuine and never wants to hurt anyone, even if they’re trying to hurt him, and he’s so fucked up from seeing Minerva that he stops thinking and tries to go to her even as she’s being devoured right in front of him. Tenn is like this game’s Sarah, but done right. He deserved better, but he was a well-written character and I love him. His friendship with AJ was so sweet which makes it even more heartbreaking when he dies. Yet another terrific child character. 

B

“I like you and/or your role within the story”

S1 Kenny: This dude is such a chaotic topic. I feel like 90% of the fandom has an incredibly strong opinion on him, and of that 90%, 45% of people absolutely love him and if you say anything negative you’ll get a boat to the head while the other 45% loathe him. Then you’ve got the 10% who don’t have such strong opinions, and that’s where I fall. I like Kenny, and I like S1 Kenny more than his S2 counterpart. He has a great arch throughout the season regardless if you’re his best pal or not. He has some funny lines, some emotional scenes. I’ll never forget the first time I played the scene where Kenny’s crying over Katjaa’s dead body while Duck is laying against the tree on the brink of death. And I definitely will never forget the part where he finds the boy in the attic. Overall, I like him and what he brought to S1. 

Katjaa: She was really sweet and her death broke my heart. I don’t have too much to say about her, but I liked her a lot. She loved her family and met a tragic end. 

Ben: Fucking Ben, man. This poor kid. Another character with wasted potential. I’ve mentioned this plenty of times before, but I wish we could get an alternative ending where Ben was the only one who survived and became Clementine’s new caretaker. There was so much room for growth. He just wanted to help out but kept screwing up and it’s just.... sad. 

Christa: I’ll be honest, the first time I ever played S1, I didn’t like Christa. Something about her rubbed me the wrong way and I didn’t care about her as much as I did Omid. However, the more times I replayed it, the more I grew to love her. She’s strong but sweet, and you can’t deny how much she loves Omid. And while I wish we did get to know what happened to her in S2, I can live with it remaining unknown.  

Chuck: As much as I like our guitar playing hobo friend who deserved so much more, I would probably put him a tier lower if it weren’t for the advice that he gives Lee on the train. Because of him, Lee stopped treating Clementine entirely like a little girl in need of protection and cut her hair, taught her to use a gun, and furthered their communication by building a plan together. Without Chuck and his wise hobo words, Lee might’ve fucked both of them over. Also, Chuck’s pretty badass with that shovel, he got a lot of chuckles out of me, but his death was off screen and disappointing. 

Andy St John: Okay. Okay okay okay. Andy. He is so high here [and so much higher than his mom and brother] because to me, he’s the scariest of the St John’s. Why? Because he’s the most normal-appearing of the three. He acts and talks like any normal guy would. He’s someone that I could see myself running into in real life. He’s so good at hiding how fucked up he is from everyone, unlike his brother who you can just look at and go “hahahahaha no thanks” and his mother who’s character design is just awful. I find him to be the strongest of the three, the smartest and the most dangerous. And the final fight between him and Lee is amazing. I love how you can be so furious with him that you keep punching him even after the prompt goes away and then his face goes all purple and swollen. Easily the greatest antagonist in S1.

Eddie: This dude is the best character to come out of the 400 Days dlc. End of story. 

 Alvin: He gave me a juice box and that automatically puts him here. Real great guy but we didn’t get too into his character. Wish we could’ve, though.  

Rebecca: She grew on me tbh. Didn’t like her in ep1 when she was being all pissy and all, but for the most part, she’s pretty good. 

Mike: I will forever wish the writers went through with the concept of Mike being one of the guys who attacked Christa because then he could’ve had a better character backstory. Regardless, I still like him. He’s pretty funny. 

Nick: Nick? Oh, you mean PURE WASTED POTENTIAL. I mean, they really did give us this super flawed but sympathetic and interesting character and kill him off-screen. They really did that. Honestly, S2 really pisses me off sometimes for the way they treated these characters. It all goes downhill once everyone escapes. Yeah, yeah, blah blah not everyone gets a meaningful death blah blah but y’know what? You can do better than that. I loved Nick and I was so excited to see what they’d do with him in the end but NOPE! Justice 4 Nick 2k19

Pete: What a good dude. He stuck by Clementine’s side even when everyone thought she was bit. Love him. Wish we saw more of him. 

Sarah: Ha. Ha. PURE WASTED POTENTIAL 2.0. What else needs to be said? This girl had the foundation for a great character but again, NOPE! I really liked Sarah! I wanted to teach her to use a gun to protect herself! The loss of her father fucking broke her and it was hard to watch but I wanted more and just ahaklsdjlaskjdlkakjaskjsaadkljas ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh-

Ava: Yo. Ava’s a fucking gorgeous badass. Really liked her and how she was sweet on Clementine. Also, it’s interesting that she stuck by David’s side like that. 

David: I have a lot of mixed feelings about David. On one hand, the complicated relationship between him and Javier is good, even if it’s a little bullshit at times. On the other hand, David’s an asshole.  But he’s a great antagonistic character. I do love that about him. The shit with him and Kate was a little annoying, but only because they didn’t ever elaborate on anything. On what level was the marriage fucked? Was it straight-up abusive? What happened to David’s first wife? Why did Kate and David get married in the first place? I got questions! But, like Javier, I think David deserved a better game with better writing. 

Jesus: This dude parkour kills walkers. Pretty fucking badass. 

Tripp: I feel like I don’t like Tripp as much as some people. I like him fine, but I know a lot of folks gush about him. I think he’s a good dude, a little pushy with Eleanor, but he’s loyal and strong. 

S2 Lilly: I fucking hate Lilly. I hate her so goddamn much. She pushes every wrong button with her bullshit “Where's our new recruits?? Lee would be so disappointed knowing he taught you all the wrong things! You’re one of my people now, Clementine” AND THE GODDAMN “Yes, Ma’am” SHIT. Nothing irks me more than every time someone from the delta acts like Lilly’s the baddest bitch and call her “Ma’am” I HATE IT AND I HATE HER. SHE KILLED MITCH. SHE KIDNAPPED MY CHILDREN. SHE DARES TO TRY AND HURT LOUIS LIKE HE’S NOTHING. AND I HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT HER....... That being said, y’all are probably thinking “wtf if you hate her so much why isn’t she in F tier???” and that’s because no other antagonist in these games has ever gotten this strong of a reaction out of me. Lilly is a damn good antagonist. She’s not perfect, and there are definitely things I would change or add, but she does her job and makes me absolutely livid [yeah yeah I know ha ha ha ha] every time she’s on screen doing her bullshit. I hate her and that counts for something. She’s easily the best “villain” in the entire series. 

Ruby: I love my funny little hot-headed medic. Ruby’s amazing and I love her. 

Willy: This kid really grew on me. I thought he was weird and creepy at the beginning but I adore him now. His brotherly relationship with Mitch should’ve been explored more, and at times his voice acting is kind of jarring, but I still love him. 

C

“You’re fine, I guess...”

Duck: He’s fine. I like Duck. I like the “what if” scenarios we’ve come up with surrounding his character, and his death always puts a lump in my throat, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to say I love him, y’know?

Doug: Again, he’s fine. He has some funny moments when you save him, and he’s got a cool little panda bear on his sweater but... yeah. He’s okay. 

Mark: Oh hai Mark. He’s cool, and the reason he’s not lower is because the iconic moment of finding him in the hidden room with his legs chopped off choking out the words “Don’t... eat... dinner” forever haunts my nightmares. 

Russell: I’m not a big fan of most of the playable 400 Days characters, but I think if I had to pick a favorite, it’s Russell. His backstory of being with the group that believed in the power of 7′s [I think it was 7 I dunno going off of memory here] was cool and his weird thing with Nate was fun and disturbing. He’s a pretty cool character. 

Carlos: I’ve made posts about Carlos before and how I think he had a lot of potential, but looking strictly at his role in the game and I’m left underwhelmed. I did get a lot of shit for where I placed him in my previous tier because he was [and still is] above S2 Kenny but I’m not going to lie and say I like Kenny more than him because... I don’t. I just think Carlos should’ve been given more development.  

Carver: A cool antagonist who was defeated waaaaaay too early in the game. They were doing a fantastic job at making me hate him with his treatment of Clementine, beating the shit out of Kenny, murdering Alvin and pulling all that shit with Rebecca, but killing him off so quickly didn’t make it feel as satisfying. Again, underwhelming. 

Sam: This pup betrayed me and he ain’t no Rosie, but we played frisbee so he gets a C I guess

Gabe: Y’know, Gabe could’ve been so good. But every time I play through ANF, he ends up annoying me more than Ben. What does that tell you? He’s fine, but he could’ve been a lot better. 

Mariana: I’m not so much “meh” on Mari because I think she’s sweet and likable! The problem is I don’t want to put her any higher because really? What did she do? She died horribly because Badger’s a piece of shit. 

Abel: Meh this guy’s garbage. I only put him up a little higher because the scene with him in the basement is really good. 

Brody: Brody is like the Mariana of S4 for me, just a bit better. I do like her. She had some development but her whole purpose was to die by Marlon’s hand and get the plot going. Would’ve loved to learn more about her, but I couldn’t give her anything higher than a C. 

Minerva: Controversial opinion but........ I don’t like Minerva as much as a lot of people do. If I could be brutally honest, if I were ranking these characters solely on how I feel about them without looking at their roles in the games and character development, Minerva would be in E tier at the highest. However, I can’t deny how tragic and complex her character and backstory is. It’s similar to how I feel about Lilly, but different. I think she’s just so fucked up from the delta that she’s become a husk of who she was and it results in her constantly pissing me off with all her shit. Also, the bridge scene alone bumps her up. That shit was crazy in a good yet tragic way. 

Omar: At one point, I forgot Omar existed until he got shot in the leg...... but he’s also God so y’know. I like him but I also had to make up my own little backstory for him so...

D

“Meh”

S1 Lilly: I don’t care about S1 Lilly in the slightest, she’s awful. They made her way more compelling in S4. And she killed my girlfriend which is bullshit on it’s own.

Jolene: If I could rewrite S1, I would’ve thrown out the Stranger and had Jolene be the kidnapper. As Danny said, “What a waste.”

Bonnie: She’s pretty disappointing, tbh. I didn’t like how the game help pushing her onto Clem and overall she’s pretty forgettable. 

Vince: He’s okay, I guess. He killed a dude one time. And shot a guy’s foot off.

Wyatt: “Meh” hahaha Eddie was a cooler character than he was

Jane: I wish Jane had been the Molly of S2 and stayed gone after she left the first time. I like that she taught Clementine some useful survival tactics and that’s what puts her on this tier, but I think we all know how I feel about the whole Jane vs. Kenny thing by now so... 

S2 Kenny: This Kenny actually moved up a tier because I fully took in everything he’s been through thus far and.... “Meh.” I don’t think he’s good for Clementine, I think she and AJ need a group like Wellington. I recognize that he’s a lot of people’s favorite, but like I said above in his S1 counterpart, I’m the 10% that doesn’t have that strong of an opinion on him. I’d much rather discuss other characters over him. 

Sarita: Forgettable, really. Except for when you get the chance to cut her hand off. That fucking scream of hers is anything but forgettable, yeesh. 

Walter: Again, mostly forgettable. His death was sad, and I do think he’s a good example of what happens when you’re too trusting in this world, but overall he doesn’t stand out to me. 

Kate: I probably would’ve liked Kate more if her romance wasn’t so damn forced. She has some funny lines, but she’s also pretty selfish and fickle when it comes to a lot of things. And I will forever be annoyed at her inability to keep her mouth shut about her and Javi’s relationship [or lack of] in front of David. 

E

“I don’t like you but you’re not the absolute worst, I guess...”

Danny St John and Brenda St John: I put these two together because they have the same issue: They’re fucking creepy. Where Andy was normal and deceiving, these two look like they want to cut my legs off and eat them. I think they’re much weaker in character than Andy was, even with Danny’s weird sexual fixation of his gun and Brenda talking about her husband. 

Vernon: He’s not the absolute worst because I do feel a little sympathy for him losing his daughter, but everything else just makes me not like him. 

Shel and Becca: Easily my two least favorite characters in 400 Days. I had no real interest in either of them. 

Arvo: This guy. I didn’t put him in as the absolute worst because of all the unnecessary shit Kenny put him through. No wonder he wanted to get the hell outta there. 

Clint: I literally couldn’t give a single shit about this dude or what happens to him. 

Eleanor: I don’t like Eleanor. I found her annoying. Her one good quality is her want to help people, but that want didn’t do much to help Tripp now did it, Eleanor.

F

“The absolute worst”

Larry: Did you expect anything else? Fuck this guy. 

Stranger: Worst final antagonist ever. You’re telling me I have to fight this Mister Roger’s tootsie pop? I’ll bet you $1 I can do it with one hand. Fuck this guy. 

Troy: Fuck Troy. All he does is smack Clementine around and then get shot in the dick. 

Joan: This lady is a laughably bad antagonist. The worst fucking “villian” jfc...

---

There ya have it. Do you agree, disagree? Maybe a character I found boring you really liked! Maybe you want to tell me why Kenny is the best/worst again!  We can discuss it. 

I’m always open to talking about these characters!

[horny-for-evil]

(SPOILERS) I am by no means a game reviewer. I work at Wendy's for god sake but after playing the first chapter of the kh3 dlc I just need to share my opinion on this game (sorry for long post on mobile).

I got into the series late. I was only 7 when the first game came out. But when I got kingdom hearts I instantly fell in love. Now I wasn't good at the game, i'm still not good, so I never finished the first one. Then I saw kh2 at gamestop. I got that amazing feeling all over again. My mom bought it for me and it was all I would play for like a month. I beat that game and would go back to do the final battle over and over. Even though in general the Disney worlds don't matter in this one they made them feel like they did. You were on a quest to get your best friend back and you were helping others on the way. Normal kingdom hearts. The designs were amazing, the mini-games were fun and it's still one of my favorite games. Then in highschool I saw a trailer for kh3. I was so excited but I'd have to wait till 2019 for that game to actually come out. When it did though I bought the deluxe edition with the pin, poster, and fancy case. I was so excited it was worth any amount of money to me. Then I actually played it. At first I was ecstatic. It was amazing. The Disney worlds were kinda mundane but nothing new. Then I got to Arendelle. That freaking ice maze made me want to quit playing but I powered through. Once I got to the end of the game however......I felt cheated. All the filler bullshit to put everyones hearts back together made me stop playing for awhile. When I finally finally beat the game after a breather it broke my heart. After almost 20 years the game kicks you in the balls and laughs as you writhe in pain. Everyone else gets to be together after all this time. But Sora he makes the ultimate sacrifice. He goes so Kairi can stay. It broke my heart. Then re: mind came out. Sora goes back in time during the final battle to put Kairi's heart back together and it turns into a freaking puzzle game. After you put her heart back together theres another boss fight. I wanted to enjoy her moves so badly but her new design ruins all of that for me. Thats when I had a break down. The terrible writing and absolute bull of the dlc on top of an already crappy day broke me. I didn't want to keep playing but I paid 30 bucks for it so I kept going. After everything they replay the final cutscene again but this time you see Sora and Kairi as well just enjoying their time together. Then as soon as Don't think twice started so did the waterworks. Hikaru Utada's wonderful music has always made me feel. But this song seemed like it was mocking us. "I'm only crying cuz I never thought it'd take this long". Neither did we but here we are. After everything Sora has done for the worlds, for his friends, for the girl he loves he can't even be with them. He's happy to do it because hes such a good kid but it's such a terrible writing choice. If it wasn't for @detectivepanda55561 I wouldn't even be able to finish this disgrace of a game and dlc.

So in conclusion despite what Don't think twice says everything is not fine and I don't think it ever will be again....

[nonsensical-rants]

Expectations for Persona 5 Royal

Well, its been a while. I've been busy with schoolwork and my birthday recently passing so I apologize for that but it has also given me the opportunity to think about a lot of things. Such as the re-release of Persona 5 that was announced not to long ago. Honestly it's one of the biggest titles that I am looking forward to in recent memory. Borderlands 3 is also up there but that is neither here or there. Either way, I wanted to talk about what I want personally for this re-release and the expectations I am placing on it. So, with that said. Lets get started I guess.

Before you ask, no. I have no problems with the design of Kasumi’s Phantom Thief outfit. It fits with the theme of what someone with her mindset and hobbies would see as "rebellion". If you wanna talk about risque, why wasn't anyone talking about the literal dominatrix and whip combo from Ann? It's fine. Nothing else to really say. Though I saw on Twitter that her code name should be Ace, to contrast with "Joker" which I thought was a fun idea.

As one of my favorite JRPG's that I have put three hundred plus hours in, I can say that I am pretty well versed in both the story and game play elements of Persona 5. Am I an expert? Of course not. I have no say in what is actually going to change but a man can hope and dream. So to get started, I am happy with what has been shown in the trailers thus far. Game play seems to be getting even more sleek and has the group attacks that I loved from P4G (Persona 4 Golden). In addition to this, there is the new character! To put it simply, I think shes great based on what we know. Though I am concerned about what elemental type she'll be using against demons. As I have not heard anything concrete about it thus far. My guess would be here Light or Dark? But that's already taken up by Akechi.

Last thing I've seen in terms of game play is that (presumably) all party members will be getting a third persona just like in P4G! This is amazing for me because I felt that some of the designs were lacking when compared to the originals (Captain Kidd looks better than Seiten Teisei in my opinion). Other than that, we are gonna be able to play during the winter months instead of having it end abruptly which is fantastic. I want some kind of confirmation on new events, Haru Okumura getting more development, and maybe even being able to rank up Akechi, and Morgana's Confidant's on our own time. Leaving Morgana's second form Persona until the LAST Dungeon was a huge mistake in my eyes. It made me never want to use the poor cat as the rest of the party was already past their Second Awakening's and beyond powerful in comparison. He was more so left as an out of combat heal-bot. Which no character should have to be designated too.

As for my reason for mentioning Akechi's confidant. It was just.... So obvious that he was the traitor. At least for me, maybe you were surprised. But I immediately noticed the infamous pancake line which got my gears turning. Even before then though it was just suspicious that you couldn't rank up his and ONLY his confidant (besides Morgana like I mentioned, but he was with you from the beginning and hes the mascot. No way would ATLUS make the mascot character be the traitor). I am expecting to see another P4G idea converted to this game, in which Akechi's social link can progress naturally. But it will stop at rank 5/6 until you learn more about him via story beats. And if you reach that point before the story gets there, you can maybe save him?

Lets move onto the story then. I want a proper build up to the confrontation between Ryuji and Morgana, or to just have it removed entirely. It ate up way too much time and it annoys me how much shit Ryuji gets from everyone when he's trying his damnedest. Like yeah a few jokes is fine (especially because hes comic relief I guess?) but having to hear from Palace One: "Oh Skull, you're pathetic" from Morgana over and over, and how the whole team beats him up for saving them, but getting exploded out of the Metaverse? How is that his fault; he was knocked unconscious after Shido's palace and they blame him for not telling them when he physically couldn't! That's not even mentioning how his trauma is kind of underplayed after the Kamoshida arc. But that can be said about all characters after their arc is over. Ryuji deserves better all around.

We need to see more of Shiho! And not just in Ann's confidant. She's officially part of the story and Ann's best friend. Kind of an important character who went through. Just an awful experience. Player's should be getting the occasional update after Kamoshida's palace that she is okay! She attempted suicide and it is rarely mentioned after that point in the game. On my first play though it was all over my mind even after Madarame's confession. Maybe make her a confidant, but with no romance? I feel like it would be in bad taste to try and romance her after what shes been through. She needs more friends and more exposure to help her get back into the society of P5. She wasn't even in the finale where everyone decides to put faith in the Phantom Thieves!

Then there's Akechi, which. Like I said earlier. I think it would be fine if they took another page from P4G but modified it slightly. Similar to Adachi we could hang out with Akechi on our own time, and if we rank up enough before Shido's palace we can try to convince him to rejoin the Phantom Thieves? Or maybe during the end of Shido's palace some "Power of Friendship" shenanigans happen and he's able to defeat his Shadow and continue moving forward. Changing him from Justice to... Something beyond it. I dunno but it would be an interesting concept to see a semi-deranged party member fighting with Loki.

Oh! I almost forgot. For DLC. PLEASE let us be able to choose what music we want to hear for combat. There are some songs that play for combat that I LOVE with all my heart but the outfits associated with them just don't mesh with the style I want to use. Like I wanna hear Mass Destruction while wearing the outfits from Catherine. Or listen to the Persona 1 theme with the Casual summer/winter outfits. And this last one might be a bit much but. Could the ending cards (shown below) match the outfit the characters are currently wearing? In terms of design and style, P5 exceeds in every way but it's always disappointing me that I couldn’t see my band of thieves posing in their Winter suits or P4A outfits.

There are a lot of expectations for this game in my eyes and I hope it can live up to even half of them. Akechi doesn't have to be entirely redeemable. But he shouldn't be batshit crazy. Everyone has problems and he might just need help to work through it. Thats one of the lessons I took away from Persona 3. And it could work well here. With all that said, this game will be an instant buy for me, and I look forward to dumping another 300+ hours and 4 play through's.

It's also a huge shame we still have boring robotic Makoto as a party member instead of actual Queen Hifumi Togo, fight me. Haru is best, followed by Hifumi. There's my controversial take. Have a nice day.

Art from:

 https://www.reddit.com/r/Persona5/comments/7dbm8f/all_out_attack_pt_hifumi/

[simnovels-blog]

EA RANT

Ok so I was reading reblogs and comments under a post that someone created in appreciation for the new Cats and Dogs expansion and calling out people who are crying they aren’t getting what they want. First of all I want to say that I agree that simple hate for something will never get you very far. EA won’t listen to you if you scream in capital letters that you want a different expansion or if you want horses in your game. They will just laugh at you as they cash in their millions in november.

BUT, I do agree with the core of what these people are trying to say. I think it’s better though to form a well thought, well written opinion which explains exactly why Cats & Dogs and the Sims 4 in general is such a disappointment so that everyone, even the die hard Sims 4 fans, understands what these ‘hating’ players are going through. So I decided to post a rant about EA and the direction they took with Sims 4, which will forever make me sad and disappointed and this is why (I’ll add a read more button but please do read more):

First of all: I am 25 years old now. When The Sims was released I was eight and I can still remember very well the first time I played the game at my friend’s house. She was so kind to lend me her disk set so that my dad could copy it (yes, very oldskool, back in the day copying disks wasn’t a crime yet lol). And so i had my very first Sims game and I fell in love with it immediately. From then on, I patiently waited for every christmas, birthday and the Dutch holiday Sinterklaas to ask for new expansions and I played them more than any other game we had. All the way up to Sims 3 Into the Future. Sims was and is my childhood, my teenhood and now even my tweenhood (are those real words? lol). So you can imagine how excited I was when Sims 4 was announced!

Sims 4 looked amazing in the first trailers. I didn’t care for the change in art style. Cartoony would be fine with me because this was going to be a new Sims and it was going to give us even more than what Sims 3 already offered. EA’s campaign focused greatly on the new improved CAS and their emotion system. The way they presented it made it look really cool. It actually seemed like you could knead your sim in any way possible and those emotions felt like a true enrichment to storytellers. As a storyteller, these teasers and trailers and gameplay trailers made me incredibly excited!

I was lucky enough to be asked to review The Sims 4 by my current employer back then a gaming website called XGN.nl (right now it’s just a clickbait SEO mania there but when I worked there back in 2014 they did produce some quality). This meant I received a copy of The Sims 4 for free. This is when I was first encountered with how EA deceived us with their trailers. Every company does this of course, but I had to say it was a great disappointment to try out the new CAS and bump into very strict limits when it came to kneading your sim. The sliders were basically still there, just hidden behind a different mechanic that also didn’t work very well yet (they patched it later). Second of all, the emotion system was completely dominating the game, meaning that sims were ALWAYS feeling a certain emotion. They were never ‘neutral’. Another ridiculous element they added was the sudden change of moods whenever your sim walked into a room with a sculpture or painting that was created in a certain mood. Did your sim’s father die 5 minutes ago? No worries, just take a look at a playful painting and you’re all good again. This was not the emotional system they promoted. This was a mechanic that was way too flexible and not realistic at all even on a cartoony level. It completely destroyed the possibility to make beautiful screenshots and stories of your sims without having to use posepacks and this was exactly what I loved doing.

Of course there were also the other restrictions like the lack of toddlers, swimming pools, dishwashers, pregnancy leave… the super tiny neighborhoods with fixed lots and those horrible loading screens… It was definitely a step back from Sims 3. They did announce they would prioritize performance over content this time, but it seemed to me that they weren’t given the appropriate budget for this game. Even back in 2014 it should’ve been possible to create at least an open neighborhood with lots you could move around to your desire and still imrpove performance compared to Sims 3. Of course that would mean the development cost would be higher so this is where I start my actual rant. I’m pretty sure EA didn’t give them the money they needed to create a proper sequel. EA is notorious for being a cashgrab company and they saw more profit in a low cost model that would attract the new generation who grew up with mobile games and NOT with the older Sims games. They saw money in those teens and younger kids who weren’t in the possession of an up-to-date gaming pc and therefore were used to playing stuff like candy crush on their phone. And of course, they were right. This was a huge group of people it turned out and they considered Sims 4 a success.

But what about their old player base? What about me? What about everyone else that was like me? We had been looking forward to a sequel for five years already. This was no sequel. This was a different game made for different players who never experienced the enormous and free worlds of Sims 3. On top of that, this wasn’t a game for creative people either. They took away create a style, they took away toddlers (thank god they fixed that one though), they made the baby stuck to a crib, they added loading screens, sims would look vastly out of place now if CC’d, everything a creative person loves to do, to direct their game and have all the freedom to create any kind of picture they desire was taken away.

In the beginning I still had hope. I thought: expansions are going to turn this game into something great just like they did with the other series. But even here EA decided to take the cash-grab route instead. Instead of releasing expansions with a decent amount of content they went for the modern way of DLC: add only one or two extra things per DLC. Comparing expansions of The Sims 4 to expansions of The Sims 3 and simply calculating the amount of hours of gameplay each expansion gives if you try out everything once showed how TS4 expansions are only a fraction of what TS3 had to offer. Again: their arguments were about keeping the performance good enough for even low-end laptops. But seriously my phone could probably run TS4 without any lag. This day and age it IS possible to create way more than what they do with the TS4 and still have a decent performance even on an outdated PC. So this had to be a matter of budget. I don’t blame the developers. They get their money from EA. I blame EA for not giving the developers enough money to make a worthy sequel or to make worthy expansion packs. And it’s not just with Sims 4 btw. They completely ruined the Mass Effect series as well with that monstrosity they call Mass Effect Andromeda. If you google a bit about what happened there, you can see how bad management, a low budget and a deadline pushed way too early by EA messed up the entire development of that game. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same thing is happening behind the screens of the Sims 4, but we just don’t know about it.

The worst thing is, at least here in Europe, Sims 4 isn’t any cheaper than Sims 3. Even though the development cost was clearly a lot lower and even though they give us a lot less content, the base game and its expansion packs still cost the same amount as a Sims 3 expansion. You pay 40 euros for Get to Work, which gives you only 3 new careers. This is the same amount you pay for Ambition, which adds so much more. I don’t even want to speak about the Vampires game pack which is the prominent example of how EA decided to cut previous expansions into thousands of little pieces and then sell them for a high price each to get more money.

This finally brings me to the newly announced Cats & Dogs expansion. Again, at least half was cut off the content we had previously gotten in pets expansions and the only new thing they added was a vet career. To make it even worse, cats and dogs won’t be controllable so when the crappy AI abandons you and fucks one of them up, you are basically screwed since you can’t control them to fix the issue. We will have to see about this when it is actually released, but it’s perfectly possible your pet will get stuck in your house somewhere and die of starvation simply because you can’t get to it in any way. Besides this possible issue, it’s another restraint for creators. A lot of stories including pets can’t be made now since the pets can’t be directed into a desirable action or position. I can’t imagine every storyteller is patient enough to wait until the pet performs the desired action by themselves. Back in Sims 2 pet’s weren’t controllable either, but at least they had a cheat so you had the option of you really wanted to. Now they announced they won’t even give us that cheat. This isn’t because they don’t want to give us a cheat, it’s most probably because they never developed the possibility of controlling a pet to begin with. Again, I suspect this was a budget issue. If they wanted to make pets controllable, with their given budget they probably had to cut down on other stuff like autonomous AI. Again, EA decided to go cash grab instead of giving us more options and more freedom to create whatever we want with this game.

They have derailed from a sandbox game into a more RPG/mobile game kind of feel. I just can’t understand why they did that. Did they underestimate the size of their creative playerbase? Did they underestimate how restrictive some of their choices would be? I don’t think so. I think they simply didn’t care. They care about money, that’s what EA is famous for. They have been given ‘awards’ for being the worst gaming company  plenty of times already. Sims 4 is one of the shining bright examples as to why they deserve those awards.

One can only hope that one day a different developer with a less money greedy publisher will pick up Sims where the third series left off and make their own version of The Sims. This already happened with for example Cities Skylines and Planet Coaster, who are succesors of Sim City and Rollercoaster Tycoon created by different companies. But as long as there’s no announcement about such a thing, all I can really do is be sad about what Sims 4 never was and never will be.

[inqua]

Sooo I beat Echoes and it is my favourite 3DS FE game by far.

Extended thoughts under the cut! (no spoilers)

Uhhh I should note that I have never played Gaiden, so this game was completely new to me. And what was also extremely helpful is that aside from what we saw in trailers and character portraits, nothing had been leaked to me like with Fates, which I got spoiled on pretty hard due to it releasing way earlier in JP and US than in PAL regions. Hope western releases will remain like this in the future. I’m no pro or anything, this is just me praising this game, lol.

So the story I’m gonna glance over since the game has only been out for like a week. All I’ll say is that I enjoyed it a lot. It was a classic hero story, which is exactly what I expected given its source material. Slightly predictable? Yes, but executed extremely well. This is showing the perspective of two protagonists with different ideologies done right, unlike in another certain FE game.

The characters are extremely loveable in this one. I love that it wasn’t just about Alm or Celica- the story always managed to involve their closest friends as well, which is great because I usually feel like FE tends to alienate a large amount of its cast. I really do think the voice acting is to thank for bringing the characters to life so well. Gray and Tobin are a perfect example of this: they always comment on Alm’s choices, mention what their stance is on the matter, and bringing up actual good points on why we should choose to take certain actions or not. Of course, they also joke around and bicker a lot and the VA’s seem to have a lot of fun with that, making the characters all the more lovable. So the character interaction is great, but I do have to say I was disappointed by the lack of support conversations? I surely thought Alm would be able to support with all his childhood friends from Ram village at least, or Celica with other important units from her original crew, like Boey, Genny and Saber. Instead, most characters only have the option to support with one or two other units. In the end I don’t mind too much though, because the quality of the voice acting was surprisingly good for the most part and somewhat makes up for it, imo. The main cast usually nailed the dialogue with the right intonation. The voice performance that left me most impressed was actually Berkut’s though; this dude got so into it, it terrified the shit out of me at times, lmao.

Gameplay-wise this game also killed it. I have to admit I played on Normal Classic like the fucking casual filth I am, but I swear, it was only because I didn’t know how much the format would differ from what I’m used to. Also I figured since there are only two difficulty options for this one, I would have a good reason to replay it on Hard soon. Anyway, first of all: thank fucking god, the world map is back. I really like having the option to switch between armies whenever you please and doing things in your own pace, it’s refreshing and motivates you to keep playing. Having Alm and Celica as two lords is fun enough and I’m glad they didn’t force in an avatar character and a marriage system, it really doesn’t need it. Battles are just your classic FE combat, well, Gaiden style of course, but familiar enough nonetheless. I don’t mind the absence of the weapon triangle, as the game still offers enough strategic options with characters only being able to carry one weapon/item at a time and them possessing over several skills depending on the unit/class/weapon. I also like how magic/healing/skills occur in exchange for HP. It forces the player to choose carefully and prevents magic users from becoming too OP. At first I had to suppress the urge to max units’ levels before promoting, but I got used to it fairly quickly, lol. The dungeons are also pretty fun, if not a bit clunky. Idk, to me it was very apparent that this was their first try on this format. I felt like the empty spaces weren’t filled up very well, and moving your character around didn’t always go too smoothly either. I do like the talking/examining à la Ace Attorney thing they added, it allows you to take a break after a long battle.

Y’all have seen the art for this game, it’s fucking gorgeous. I definitely prefer Hidari’s character designs over Kozaki’s for FE, though they’re both great artists. Hidari’s soft and dreamy style seems to really fit Valentia for some reason. The in-game visuals were fantastic too, with the accurate zoom-ins on specific parts of the map returning. But I personally loved the villages especially- they were just really nice and peaceful safe havens showing the beautiful types of environment in Valentia, as well as the differences between Zofia and Rigel. It really helped with the world building of Valentia for me.

Guys, the soundtrack made this game for me. The OST on this game is just so fucking phenomenal, I can’t even describe it. I’m constantly listening to it, even as I write this. The violin game in Celica’s path is so sick; Radiant Ark and With Mila’s Divine Protection never fail to hype me the fuck up to go on an adventure. In Alm’s route it also perfectly nails those triumphant fanfare type tracks you expect in an FE game. Just fires you up to mow down an entire army of big armour clad dudes. But then there’s also these tranquil and nostalgic themes to accompany the villages and touching moments. Also very notable: great usage of vocals in the tracks. I could go on forever, but honestly it has a great variety of tracks just very well done and fitting for whatever their setting is. I had listened to the Gaiden soundtrack (which is also fantastic in its own right) before too, so it was fun hearing all those tunes revitalised. Once again, I feel like FE music just keeps improving consistently. With every instalment I think it can’t get any better, but then I’m proven wrong every time and I love it. God. I just have so much love for this soundtrack. Fuck.

Idk, overall Echoes just feels like one huge comeback to me. Like IntSys proving our elitist asses that yes, they are still capable of making “real” FE games, now shut up and spend the entire game’s worth on DLC, you nerds. No but honestly, I sincerely hope they will continue the trend of remaking older games in this fashion. I’m really liking where we’re heading with this.

On a final note… A moment of silence for my boy Boey… He took one for the team and died in the final battle. Now I have a save slot with all characters alive and well except for him, and it goes against my perfectionist urges, cri. :(

[cosmiciaria]

Final Fantasy XV [long] Review (minor spoilers!)

This is going to be my first review here on Tumblr, and I thought, why not start with something that’s still boiling out there? 

FFXV was many things for me. It was one of the three reasons why I bought a PS4 (the other two being Persona 5 and… eventually, KH3); it was, in fact, the first game I played on that console! I went from having a PS2 to a complete and brand new PS4, and it was all so overwhelming and beautiful for me, that I couldn't not feel amazed by everything.

Ok, so let's clear something out of the table: did I like FFXV? Yes! I thought it was a good game. Was it perfect? Hell no, I'm not blind, people! But, is there anything outside that it's perfect? *cof cof don't throw The Last of Us at me cof*

FFXV was highly expected by the audience, and after '10 years' of waiting, they were thirsty for something innovative, fresh, new, creative and mind blowing. What we did get, nonetheless, was a game that was worth only the four or three years in development that it actually had. The so called Final Fantasy Versus XIII never saw the light of day, much to many people's disgrace, and all those years that supposedly the game was being developed vanished entirely from the face of earth. What happened, we'll never truly know, and one can only speculate.

Me, personally, I wasn't interested in FFvXIII. It wasn't until this game was rebranded as FFXV that it caught my attention. And with each trailer, I grew more and more hyped. I started being a fan of Final Fantasy games in late 2014, when I was in my most stressed month of first year of college, and I needed something to clear my mind after hours of studying. Final Fantasy games showed me that videogames can have plot!, can have good characters!, can have good plot twists!, can rip your heart out and twist it in their hands and then give it back to you all broken and shattered! So, of course I was going to be hyped for this game: it had a prince, it had four handsome characters, it had an awesome car, it had magic and it had crystals. A complete score for me.

FFXV, for those who haven't played it, is about the heir of the Kingdom of Lucis: Noctis. Noctis isn't your average prince: he's more the lazy kind of royalty child. And no, he's not emo. Yes, he likes his hair like that. Yes, he can see through it. Stop considering him as an emo. Play the game, you'll learn why. Anyway, Noctis's kingdom is in turmoil and fighting against the Niffleheim Empire, a technologically advanced country that's using the power of Magitek Troopers to submit as much as Lucis's territories as it can. Only Insomnia, the Crown City capital, remains safe behind its magical walls.

The political truce comes by the hand of Niffleheim chancellor Ardyn Izunia, a very funny character (and funny here meaning strange – oh I'm beginning to sound like Lemony Snicket) who's obviously up to no good. He proposes the marriage between Noctis, the prince of Lucis, and Lunafreya Nox Fleuret, the Oracle of Tenebrae. This is kind of ironic here, because Luna and Noctis knew each other from when they were children, but that's another story. Go watch the anime Brotherhood.

The kingdom of Lucis accepts this truce, albeit with suspicious eyes. Noctis, unaware of his father's true plans, is sent on a trip with his boyfriends – I mean, best friends, to Altissia, the city in which he's gonna marry Luna. He's happy, though. So happy that he even jokes about it to his father.

The moment he leaves Insomnia, all hell breaks loose. His city is attacked, destroyed, massacred, and many other synonyms, and his father dies in battle. The truce was no truce at all, the marriage was a façade, and the whole purpose was to wipe the Lucis Caelum dynasty from the face of Eos. Noctis, with the help of his bros, has to reclaim back his throne (huh, ring a bell? Back cover of the game? No?), by requesting the help of the Six Astrals (a.k.a. gods, a.k.a. gameplay wise, summons) and by seeking the Royal Arms, weapons wielded by Lucis Kings of old, his forebears.

So that's the set up. You start here, and everything goes downhill.

I'm going with the bad news first: what did FFXV do wrong – so wrong that it makes you wanna throw the game and ask yourself 'why did I buy this! This is no FF at all!'?

The FIRST thing this game did wrong was to be rushed. Yes. People are still saying that this game was ten years in development: guess what, it wasn't! Until Tabata relieved Nomura as director, the game was going nowhere. They had little time to create something worth the wait of ten years, and, inevitably, things were going to get crazy for these people working under pressure. I DID feel the game was rushed in the last chapters after leaving Altissia. The chapters that occur on the train feel like a plot device: we're moving, but there's nowhere to go, but the plot goes on, and so you gotta go on too, go with the flow, don't ask questions, just go there, do the thing, come back here, sit down, keep doing it. In one moment, after losing Prompto to that fall and witnessing the demise of Tenebrae (well, 'witness', we arrived just after the attack), I was just sitting there, watching Noctis and Ignis having a conversation and asking myself 'why the hell are we here, where are we heading'. MANY things happen off screen, and it gets on my nerves every time I think about it: the transformation of emperor into Foras, a demon that hunts you down during Chapter 13; the betrayal of Ravus Nox Fleuret; whatever happened to Verstael (is that man still alive? I guess we won't know until Episode Prompto DLC). We also don't get to see the content of Kingsglaive movie and the anime Brotherhood in the actual game, so if you were expecting some kind of backstory for each character, sorry to disappoint you, you gotta watch 'em all.

Actually, I do wanna do a sidenote here: the anime is pretty good. It's short: only an hour long, and it provides you with a lot of info you'll be glad to have. Also, it makes you like the characters even more. Yes, the content should've been there in the game SOMEWHERE (we don't ask for much), but still, it's worth your time. Kingsglaive, on the other hand… yes, it provides with crucial information for the start of the game that you SHOULD know, but that's only some minutes in the movie. The rest is just Nyx's story, and we're not really here for Nyx, are we?

At any rate, the second thing people are complaining more about is the cut content. There are lands and lands and lands AND LANDS of explorable places in the game that you CAN'T reach. They're there, they were supposed to serve some purpose, but you can't touch them. Shuuu. Also, prior to the game, many trailers were released and many scenes shown there didn't make it to the final product. Where is Luna's backstory? Where is that kid Noctis and king Regis scene from the Dawn Trailer? Nope, not for you! Sorry to disappoint ya!

That doesn't bother me too much. I don't pretty much look at the cut content: it's not in the game, it shouldn't be taken into account while reviewing it. But it's there, I guess.

What it actually bothers me a lot, is that you can't control your whole party. You only control Noctis. And that's fine, when you haven't played Final Fantasy Type 0, which was directed by the same man here. And in FF T0 you can control and SWITCH between 14 characters. All the time. Whenever you want. Always. And you're left wondering how the hell was that possible in a PSP game, but not in a PS4 game. I wonder.

The third thing I personally hate about this game, is Luna. Really. She's such a wasted potential that makes me wanna hit something. Period. I shipped Noctis more with the car than with her (joking, actually I ship Noct with Iris, but that's just me).

ALRIGHT, let's go with the good news now! Hell, how did you manage to like the game after all this that you've mentioned?

Like? Like? I LOVED the game!

Bear with me a little longer.

Yes, the game it's flawed in more ways that should've been allowed. But it also does many things well. Very well. The core of the game is on its gameplay: addictive, fun, not so strategic at the beginning, but still worth it. I spent hours killing fiends just to feel the enjoyment of smashing that sword and warping around with the prince of pain! The game has many optional dungeons, and some of them are nightmares made flesh, and if you want even a harder challenge, you have the dungeons inside of the dungeons, which are even more nightmarish! There are optional bosses here and there. It'll take some time before you run out of things to kill in the game. And even then, you can try your platforming skills in the Pitioss Dungeon, although I'd advise you to take it easy, because you're gonna have a bad time. Trust me, I'm an enginstudent of law.

Alright, you don't like the gameplay? Still, there are plenty of things to enjoy. The visuals in the game are awestriking. I used to hate driving in the car, but now, I enjoy the view and I listen to the music of older FF's, because everything there is worth seeing. The amount of details put into the game is amazing: how things get wet when it rains, even the car's glass gets pixelated with drops; how Noctis and the others interact with the environment; how the AI is programmed to make them react to different things in different ways. Even when Ignis, while driving, takes his Ebony coffee, the can doesn't disappear into thin air, but it's instead placed in a coaster in the car. It's a tiny thing, but it's there, people worked on it and it deserves praise!!

Fine, fine, you're not looking for details. Ok. Then you gotta love the characters. The way they interect with each other. Yes, we didn't have backstory for any of them. We don't know where Prompto comes from, or what Gladiolus wants, or why Iginis is likes he is. But, who cares. The time you spend with your bros is where the real trip is. No wonder Tabata said he wanted to make the 'roadtrip with friends' the main idea of the game. You grow fond of them without even noticing it, you start caring for them, even more when bad things start happening to them! Oh, my god, could SOMEONE hug PROMPTO, FOR F*CK'S SAKE HE NEEDS A HUG RIGHT NOW!!

And it's not just the main characters: Aranea Highwind is such a good asset in your party, that people even found the way to force her permanently in your team! (although they say new patches have removed this glitch – unfortunately) Iris Amicitia, Gladio's sister, is also a good change of pace for the male party members. And, hey, what about the main villain? Ardyn Izunia may very well be one of the best antagonists ON EARTH. I just love him so much, him and his plans and his voice actor.

OKAY, you don't like any of this! What about the music? It's gorgeous, it makes you tear up and have goosebumps. I cry myself to sleep with the soundtrack!

Music either…? Alright, alright. Maybe the ending of the game will compensate for something. No? Fine… maybe, just MAYBE FFXV isn't for you. And I'm not judging you!! Between us, my favorite FF is FFX.

Anyway, yes! I loved the game! And I cried a thousand rivers! And I started a new game + right after finishing it while still having tears in my eyes! Because this game, flawed though it is, means a lot to me. Really. It has given me many laughs, many cries, and it has made me feel real friendship. It's been a long time since I don't feel something real coming from a story, but this game has made it.

At the end of the day, this is the story of four friends: Noct, Iggy, Prom and Gladio. It doesn't matter the future of the kingdom. It doesn't matter how this war is going to end. What's important is the time you spend together with them. And how they, slowly but steadily, make their way into the player's heart.

So now, I do have a soft spot for this game in my heart. Although I know it's not perfect, it makes me glad to see how many people out there are still supporting it, and how the development team 'keeps on keeping on, the only way they know how'.

If you ever liked a Final Fantasy game… please, just give it a shot. If not, you can come to me and complain all you want, but don't miss the chance of playing this awesome game.

My final verdict, is an 8 out of 10. Could've been better, but still worth it. Really worth it. 

[fabula-nova-z]

Imo it's unfair to judge FFXV as a ruined game. Tabata worked his ass off to get it ready and there will be free dlc to add meat to the story. Everyone complained abt waiting but when that means the game suffers its the devs fault? Thats bullshit.

Hi there, first of all thank you for sharing your opinion on this Topic! And I want to apologize for my english, because it isn’t my first language. I hope you will understand what I mean.

Just want to warn you that beneath are Spoilers from the Game, so If you haven`t just finisehd it, please don`t read on…

I didn’t really mean to asault Tabata because of XV but I really don’t understand why he needed to change the whole FFXV Project/ Story just because he got to be the new director. I mean the Part with the Camping.

I really enjoyed the first half of the Game, where you were able to truly discover the open world. But the important Thing that was missing, is that the Story wasn`t told properly how it sould have been told. The Story was too rushed. And how you know Story is an important element in Games. Nothing was really explained either. Ignis got blind, Gladio got more scars on his face and on his body and Prompto is born in Nifhlheim. The biggest question is why all this wasn’t explained ingame. So now we have to pay 25 Bugs for the ‘‘Season Pass’‘ DLC. I mean it isn’t that expensive and I think Fans of XV are going to buy it but why wans`t it implemented in the game. It wasn`t even nessecery for the Story, those Events didn’t even have to occur, the Game would go on without Ignis beeing blind…The only thing was that you had to move slower because of it and on top of that Gladio would just yell at you because you are running to fast from the crew away without looking after Ignis.

A second thing that bothered me was that Luna didn’t get enough screen time or at least not enough qualified screentime. Square Enix said that she is one of the strongest Female characters of all FF games or something similar to that. I really believe SE at that point but how should I know when nothing was told from her past/present properly. There were many scenes where we got to see small Noctis and Luna having conversations with each other. But why weren’t we able to actually play through those cutscenes. It would be much better and we could even get more Story out of them. Where were those scense where Luna got abused by this man we got to see in the second Dawn Trailer? Where was the scene where Noctis and Luna meet in Altissia or somewhere else where she was suppossed to give him the Lucis ring? It is okay to delete scenes because of deadlines or less Timemanagement but why should you delete so much important stuff of the Story. Most of the scenes with Luna where deleted just because the Role of a Woman would get in the way.

I am a huge Fan of XV and I waited 3 years for this game. I waited for daily news or rumors on the Game because the Story looked promising and I think it really is, the sad part is that it wasn’t just told right. And to understand XV’s Story you had to watch the Kingsglaive movie or at least Brotherhood to understand the motives of the Characters. Ingame we just got short versions of CGI Clips where we could see how Insomnia has fallen. King Regis was killed in the Mainstory aswell but we never got to know who it was. (In Kingsglaive we know it) InGame you couldn’t even see that Noctis was sad or filled with anger to even search for the Killer of his Dad. We just got some scenes were he got angry and was for a moment desperat but after that, the Game goes on like nothing of this even happened. Back than were the Game was called versus13, Noctis was supposed to be in Insomnia where he saw with his own eyes how Regis got killed and that’s the reason he had to go outside his own City because it got occupied by Niflheim Soldiers.

So that would be it. There are still so many things I could write you, to show how sad I am because of how the Story was told badly. And I’m sorry when some of my points are far fetched but in my opinion FFXV could have been one of the best and darkest Final Fanasy games of all time.

When you have some questions or you disagree with something just write me back :) and p.s sorry for the long text.

[mrauthor3ds]

My Top 6 1st/2nd-party guesses for Smash Switch newcomers

It’s as the title says. I’ll be guessing some six new fighters I’d expect to see if Smash Bros. for Switch is real. And I WILL be ranking these by how probable it would be to see them actually get in.

Now! There are a few ground rules for this list. This is for first- and second-party characters, so no third-party guests here. Secondly, since this is most likely another edition of Smash 4, it may keep the same Assist Trophies, so I won’t include any of those (as much as I’d like to add Waluigi, Tingle, and Takamaru to this list). And third, this is for newcomers, so don’t expect any lost veterans on this list.

...Though I’d also like to see Ice Climbers, Wolf, and hopefully Snake come back.

6: Ninten (Mother/EarthBound Beginnings)

With Ness and Lucas, there’s just one game in the Mother series that’s not shown in Smash’s roster: Ninten, the protagonist of the first game. He could have been considered, though, since the 3DS version got a stage based in a location in Mother (Magicant). But, perhaps time restraints kept him from becoming an immediate reality...much like Lucas.

But maybe he might still happen, especially thanks to the rise in popularity thanks to Mother finally being officially released overseas (as EarthBound Beginnings). It’d just be a matter of finding a good new niche that Ninten could fill and set him apart enough from Ness and Lucas.

I mean, he could use PK Beam (which he originally did in the beta version of the game), and maybe PSI Teleport could get some in-battle use. And maybe other things. Anyway, the reason he’s so low on this list is due to EarthBound Beginnings coming out in June 2015, so that deals a slight hit to relevancy for a polyrep group member. And unless they give Ninten some new stand-out design (many fans would suggest the scarf and shirt worn in the live-action Mother commercial), he’d look too much like Ness to be recognizable.

5: ????? (Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild)

This is the most recent game to be mentioned in this list, because it’s yet to be released. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is coming to both the Wii U and the upcoming Nintendo Switch. So, if Smash is to be expected on the Switch as well, it could help to bring in some advertisement for the highly anticipated Breath of the Wild. If there’s some new character in this title with viable stand-out skills, I can see him/her being a possibility for the roster. Brand-new face AND advertisement! Hey, it worked for characters like Roy and Corrin.

...Of course, we don’t know of very many characters in Breath of the Wild, much less brand-new ones. I guess “Wild Link“, as I’ll call him, could be considered as a special Link clone that builds up his gear in battle. But that’s all I can think of here. When we get more insight on the game, I’m sure more ideas will pop up.

4: Elma (Xenoblade Chronicles X)

What? Elma and not Cross? Why? Well...Elma kinda has a more central role in Xenoblade X’s story, and she has her own set of skills that make her stand out in the team. “But Robin and Corrin are also avatar characters!“ you might say. Well, yeah, but not in the same sense as Cross. Robin and Corrin actually stand out from most avatar characters - they have their own set backstories and personalities, and can do things that no other character can do. Cross, on the other hand, is wholly a player-insert.

Elma is only on the lower half of the list because she’d be part of a relatively new group in the Smash roster. However, that’s fairly minor, and I can’t see many other detriments to her odds. Xenoblade Chronicles X is an incredibly popular Wii U title, as I’ve heard, so it would be fair to give it some limelight.

3: Paper Mario (Paper Mario)

Ah yes, the pop-up book counterpart to Mr. Nintendo himself. I can imagine that we’ve been begging for Paper Mario ever since Brawl. He might have even been considered due to the Paper Mario stage on the 3DS. Perhaps there was animation issues with our slim plumber - he’s got multiple moving flat pieces and that white paper outline, after all, and crumpled animations might have been desired. So that might not have worked in Smash 3DS. The Switch version, however, could still make all this work.

And no, I highly doubt Paper Mario would be some clone of the three-dimensional Mario. With his papery traits, he’s bound to have a lot of tricks that normal-Mario couldn’t do, like the plane form or the Spring Jump. Heck, make him use the hammer more, like the Hurlhammer. Use the Trio Attack hammer for the Final Smash, toss in a Fan Thing, and maybe even a Star Beam, BOOM! Something to please every Paper Mario fan. Iunno.

2: A 7th Generation Pokémon (Pokémon Sun/Moon)

From the second-most recent game in this list, I can see the Pokémon group getting one more rep (or even two) from the new Alola region. I’ve already given moveset ideas for the Grass-type starter Decidueye and the Ultra Beast Nihilego, but I also plan to give a moveset idea for Silvally as well. And a...kinda-joke one for Mimikyu.

Point is...Sun/Moon have received a lot of hype during last year, the 20th year of Pokémon, and divisiveness aside it’s gotten quite a lot of love. I do personally like what it did add to the series, so much that I forgive it for dropping Super Training. Anyway, that’s why I feel a new Pokémon in Smash for Switch’s roster seems likely.

1: Inkling (Splatoon)

And of course, I’m sure a lot of you saw this one coming. A lot of us were obviously clamoring for the squid-kids (or kid-squids?) known as Inklings to join the battle. After all, Splatoon has proven to be a popular stand-out in the multiplayer shooting game field. Could you imagine bringing that inking might to Smash?

But...this didn’t happen for 3DS or Wii U. We did get a free Inkling trophy, though - the only additional trophy that wasn’t related to any of the DLC fighters we got - so maybe they were considered? But they couldn’t work right in the 3DS version...? Well, Switch could be their second chance. And since the Switch reveal trailer included a new version of Splatoon as one of their initial highlights, Inklings could also serve as promotional advertisement for that.

As for what they could do in Smash? Well, I doubt they’d ink the stage itself. That wouldn’t work right for team battles, at least. But they COULD ink their opponents to hinder them.

...So that’s what I’m gonna guess for this list. What newcomers (first- and second-party for this list) can you see being added?