I’ve had a really fun time with this game! I didn’t get all the subquests and didn’t find all the hidden dialogue, but I got all the optional chapters and clocked in at around 25 hours of gameplay. There’s not much variety in terms of game mechanics or minigames, but the base concept is so solid that I didn’t get tired of it until the very end when I found out I had missed two optional chapters before the end.

The voice acting in this game is amazing. I can’t think of a single instance of dialogue that made me cringe, all the performances are fine at worst and genuinely enhance the game experience at best. Like mentioned previously, it consists mostly of British accents.

Two names I want to highlight are Blake Ritson and Colin Ryan. The former has voiced a couple of Dark Souls characters, Alvis in Xenoblade and Aymeric in Final Fantasy XIV. Here he voices Jirall, a member of another royal lineage set to marry Callista before Zael arrives and messes up everything. He is the usual high and mighty yet cowardly minor member of a rich family you’d expect to see, but Blake really puts on an amazing performance and gives some nuance to his descent into madness.

The latter is most well known for his performance as Alphinaud in FFXIV, and his voice as Yurick here kind of sounds a lot like it (though respecting the nuances of the character). I might be a bit biased because I like Alphinaud, but I also think his performance is very good. He manages to nail the specific kind of apathy someone like Yurick would feel toward the world, and keeps his playful arrogant tone present even after the warming up.

The characters play off each other extremely well. You’d think having two pervert drunkards in your main JRPG party would make the experience unbearable, but my favorite lines of dialogue came from these two. Syrenne is blunt and simple minded (not in a bad way), making her character great for demonstrating how the war affects the common people. Lowell is mostly pure comic relief, but it's a high quality one, and he does have some sentimental moments towards the end of the game.

Dagran is probably the weakest of the cast, but only because his role throughout the story starts to rapidly decline as the game goes along until the very end. A good handful of chapters have him be on the sidelines or completely absent, but for good reason. He’s the most down to earth out of the cast, so his commentary could get boring if it weren’t for the wackier side of the party bouncing off him.

Zael is fine. I can see some people calling him generic or boring, and I wouldn’t exactly disagree. As the main driving force of a JRPG, he’s what you think he’s gonna be. No crazy twists, no super unique backstory – just a boy, his sword and his forbidden love.

When I heard that there were 44 chapters in total, I thought my playthrough would be at least 50 hours long. But the definition of a chapter here is different from the usual JRPG format. A chapter is usually only a couple of combat screens, a full map, or a breather in between those. And I like it! It gives focus to the moment-to-moment gameplay, having each encounter feel unique and well planned. There are no random enemy encounters, but there’s optional ones that you can do as many times as you want.

The combat system is probably the most unique aspect here. It’s mostly in real time, but with a focus on strategy. By default there is no attack button, you simply run up to enemies and Zael attacks them with his blade automatically. You can also use his crossbow to shoot enemies and survey the environment for setpieces that can be used to your advantage.

There’s a variety of enemies, but most of them are humanoid and have a clearly defined role: mage, healer, archer, warrior, or leader. This is where the tactical part of the game comes from. The strategic aspect comes not so much from what attacks you can use, but what kinds of enemies to attack first and how to get to them. If you’re familiar with RPG tropes, you’d correctly guess that killing off the healers and mages is your number one priority. Each enemy encounter has them in unique formations and environments that make that goal different and more difficult each time.

Of course, this system isn’t perfect. Your mages in particular have the tendency to get stuck in positions where their spells are hitting walls instead of enemies, and some of the combat situations are mechanically unfair due to your attacks having lower priority and speed than your enemies later on. But I wouldn’t say it’s a hard game overall – in fact I had a very easy time with it until the final boss. I’ve made use of the optional enemy encounters a couple of times, but mostly because I was excited to see the new combat situations I’d be put in and not for grinding.

The exchange of mechanical depth for positioning and theoretical strategy based gameplay isn’t for everyone, though. I’ve seen some people complaining that the game is too boring or repetitive for them and I can understand that. The controls also aren’t perfect, but I can’t say much since I was using the classic controller setup (and also emulating the game). One thing I’ll say is that aiming sucks with the joystick, and also that, even if having attacks be done automatically is the best choice in my opinion, there are moments where you want to weave through a crowd of enemies but you keep hitting them instead because of the proximity.

The music is fine! A lot of the songs aren’t very memorable outside of the game, but they blend into the environment well enough that they still enhance the experience in the moment. There’s a handful of songs that are memorable even without the gameplay though, such as Dance of the Dead and Invitation to Madness. By the way, the music was composed by Nobuo Uematsu! The Final Fantasy guy.

And finally, the graphics are really pretty for a Wii game! There’s some places where the textures look like mud, and I can’t say I’m particularly impressed with a lot of the character textures, but the environments are very well done. It’s one of the few Wii games that utilizes shaders to their full potential, and it shows. While sometimes they can make the scene just look blurry for no reason (the rain effect in particular is very funny), the lighting is phenomenal and the VFX are pretty elaborate.

There are a lot of minor complaints that pile up and make me not give this game a full rating, but they're very closely tied to the story and if anything I want more people to play this game and give it the recognition it deserves.

This isn’t even remotely as morbid a failure as it’s being made out to be (imo this is far from being the worst platformer of the year, let alone of all time), and they clearly responded to what criticism about the demo they could in the small window of time they had, but this is still a very disappointing release from someone of Yuji Naka’s pedigree. There are some real easily corrected choices here that totally perplex me: why do you need a key to unlock the costume pickups when these keys are, without fail, placed directly next to the box pickups and mindlessly accessible? Why are Balan’s Bouts dreary, maliciously unforgiving QTE sequences instead of cute little rhythm games that would enhance the game’s theatrical motifs? Why do you have to “stock” costumes instead of just being able to swap to them once encountered? Like almost everybody, I have LOTS of problems with the game, but it feels a little cruel and incurious to see people hammer so hard on BW for not being this conventionally engaging mechanically tight platformer (none of Yuji Naka’s games really are lol) when to me it seems like Balan’s priorities… clearly aren’t to be that? I agree that the game fails on its potential in a myriad of frustrating ways, but I’d much rather discuss those briefly glimmering unique elements that could have been pushed further rather than rail on it for feeling “dated” while simultaneously condemning it for not being kinesthetically identical to a legacy platformer series that’s pushing 40.

I think, ideally, the game’s one-button input philosophy and limited level design are intended to create a hyper-accessible fanciful spree of cutesy quick changing aesthetics and encouragement--a sugary character randomizer musically shifting between different flavors of low-stakes whimsy--and thats a vibe outline I can definitely see merit in. Sometimes this almost kind of works: a lot of the costumes are goofy and adorable! It’s genuinely kind of fun to get a new suit and wonder what it can do! There are a few rare moments where the level design and powers are in great harmony and the whacko dancing npcs appear and seem to be cheering just 4 u--u go girl!!! Unfortunately, the levels and costumes rarely feel as exuberant and symbiotic as they should to make something like this work, and the game REALLY underestimated just how meaningful any ability that overwrites your jump function needs to be in order to not feel completely disempowering. It can feel patronizing and dull, but it’s absolutely not some utter atrocity of design; The game is internally consistent and it functions coherently within its own parameters, despite them being pretty mystifying and insipid at times--it’s not some Sonic 06 level technical failure in any regard. I was let down by the mechanics, sure, but my real problem is that the game is rarely as bold and engaging an aesthetic experience as something like Nights or Chu Chu Rocket. However, there are still some bits of genuinely quirky individuality I really enjoyed.

The musical theater aesthetic is a totally bonkers camp delight. Some of the scenarios leading to these redemptive dance numbers are hysterical and charming (I particularly love “girl and her dolphin friend had a falling out (???) and need to reconcile”) Seeing the motion-captured choreo kind of poorly translated onto all these wonky deviantart original character costumes has a synthetic but silly sort of jankiness that fully circled back into an earnest and endearing place for me. The cutscenes are genuinely lovely, and the craftworld sort of cgi stuff they do is great. I kind of love the enigmatic stupidity of the Tower O’ Tims and its ever-expanding marshmallow peep Rube Goldberg device that appears to do nothing but exist for its own sake--I couldnt help but laugh when I spent 10 minutes watching the dumb little critters revolve around in their weird merry go round in order to unlock a third “tim trampoline” i literally never saw any of them use. The soundtrack is unequivocally pretty excellent, although it definitely feels a bit slight on tracks.

I have to wonder what a kid playing this would feel like, someone with a looser outlook about what the genre should do, someone with a less claustrophobic understanding of competence/quality than me--someone who can play games and not even compartmentalize them into genre expectations at all! I’m not even sure those kids exist or would care about this game, but the kind of frustrating letdown experience of Balan was still memorable to me despite itself, and playing it had me thinking about my own processing and approaches to design when playing games. And hey, my partner and I have been swinging our little terrier around and belting the game’s wannabe Idina Menzel gibberish anthems to her for the past week so that’s gotta be worth something right!!!

Surrealism might as well not exist in our pointless efforts to reach realism in the modern day space of video games. While every studio is currently looking to make the AAAA metaverse game that will consume the rest of our lives, this quirky, downright nonsensically designed one-button 3D platformer recalls the glory days of the Dreamcast with a sincerity embedded in its cast of regular folks who just need some cheering up, clearly coming from a place of bizarre, but undeniable empathy via Yuji Naka's direction. If you've played Naka's NiGHTS into dreams... before, you should know what I'm talking about. There is a deep, Seuss-like respect for childish imagination that has no place in our angry, confused current world. Of course everyone hated it.

Shelved for now and rating withheld, which is sad considering it was one of my most anticipated sequels but as far as follow ups go this is particularly weak and uninspired. FAR: Changing Tides is a game content on just sticking with what worked the first time around, but what worked then was reinforced by it's nature as a singular experience and all the element of surprise still safely tucked away under the hood. All of that is gone.

Here it immediately feels like retreaded ground, at around halfway through I felt like I saw nothing new besides the flooded locales and deep sea diving portion of the game which, gameplay-wise, just feels like padding. Going scavenging underwater for fuel resources is such a timely, repetitive endeavour compared to just finding them on the road in the first game.

The aesthetic too, Im not sure why exactly but it just doesn't seem to be working in its favour at all. Looks less painterly, more bland and almost lends it an unfinished quality, like there should be more layers to it... At the end of the day, with a 4 year gap between FAR: Lone Sails and this what we got just wasn't enough. A very disappointing, safe, unadventurous, boring sequel affair.

Maybe I'll pick it back up one day and appreciate it a lot more now with my expectations thoroughly dwindled, here's hoping!

That Nintendo chased the original Skyward Sword with Breath of the Wild makes complete sense in hindsight; Skyward Sword is a tightly crafted game, but after years of dungeons divvied up with fetch quests and plot dumps, the Zelda formula feels its age here. The idea of a shakeup honestly feels welcome to me now.

With that said, I adored Skyward Sword. It has some of the best dungeon designs in the entire series, and a wonderful art style and cast made it easy to feel engaged with Skyward Sword's happenings even during the game's occasional lulls.

I can't speak to the original Wii game's advanced motion controls and excessive use of Fi, but I really enjoyed my time with the game's remastered handheld successor.

What's the most important part of any beat-em up game? Having a good combat system. Yakuza 3 has a dog shit combat system and I have no idea how it got past any sort of quality assurance.

For the most part it's the same combat system except enemies have fucking Royalguard from Devil may cry and block 99% of your attacks and the hits that do land don't deal any real damage at all. I was basically left spamming the charge kick until I unlocked the double finisher.

Square×3, Triangle×2 is the only combo that works, now you'd think that means the first Triangle press breaks enemies guard and the second press does damage but NO! The second finisher I guess because it hits low or something it doesn't get blocked for some reason but despite the fact it worked it felt like a fluke each time. Enemies could block just about anything with their arms you hit them with except blades and bullets (sometimes you might encounter elite enemies with loads of health who could block blades with just their arms) meanwhile you can guard with whatever and they will destroy you with minimal effort.

Wait until I tell you about the FEEL THE HEAT system. After you chip off a majority of a boss's health those 3 words will show up on screen and you mash R2 to gain heat then you get to pick one of three special heat actions to use (Head Press is unlocked by default and the others are unlocked through revelations like many other heat actions). Now you'd think this is supposed to be a finishing move because that's what it does in the other games but here it only does a little bit of damage to them, like about as much as a standard heat action if not less.

This game did a real good job making me not feel like the badass Kiryu is supposed to be.

Honestly everything else about the game is ok but the combat system is actually ass.