Fun enough game. Unpolished areas of the presentation were a bit distracting (namely how shiny everything is), but the energetic, Dreamcast soundtrack more then made up for that.
Phasing through the ground is a bit harder to look past, but I think I'd be more bothered by that if I had the desire to perfect this game when it comes to time trials and score. Plus it only happened a handful of times.
Coins and boss fights felt like it was more of an obligation then anything. Really only one (maybe two) bosses had both interesting designs that made great use of the movement systems. Coins on the other hand are used for a shop that has some very menial effects, to the point that I didn't buy a single thing once. It's honestly not too great to have a prominent collectable feel boring to collect.
Really your here to speedrun through the many stages on offer, utilizing the momentum of your dashes and slopes so that your yo-yo ride ability can achieve some ludicrous speeds to skip large sections of the level. The many options you have while airborne can also allow for some clever shortcuts, whether it's simply dashing then comboing with a mid-air swing to fly over several platforms, to figuring out how to use a yo-yo bounce plus wall jump to reach heights that almost seem unintentional.

For what it is, I recommend you take your time your first time through, since mastering the physics won't be a quick learning process. Plus don't go in expecting a platforming masterpiece, it really isn't going for something grand or exceptional. Just sit back and enjoy the show for what it is rather then what it isn't.

Thanks to my partner, I was able to give this game another shot. Good news is that I like it better, bad news is that I still think Oblivion is the better game full stop.

So for context my only exposure to Skyrim was the base game on the PS3 about a decade ago... a decade... crumbles into dust
Many people regard that as the absolute worst version of Skyrim. My god are those load times patience testing. They occur everytime you enter any area (including merely entering and exiting a shop), and the game was as stable as having a game dev job in the western AAA market. You get one of the many crashes and it takes forever to load that last save. Despite all that, I put well over 50 hours into Skyrim as it was the new and exciting game at the time; especially since I loved Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion so much and wanted to fight dragons and have combat that made you feel like you were swinging hunks of metal instead of plastic cosplay swords. Well I got all of that and then some, at the cost of having a manga on standby every single time there was a loading screen. I read and reread so much Naruto and '+ Anima' during those times, that version of Skyrim is dire and should not be approached by any circumstance.

I actually did briefly get Skyrim on Steam last year during my Steam Deck high, but I got second thoughts and returned it even though it was on sale. I wasn't sure why at the time, but I think it's because I could not remember much about Skyrim. I won't say Skyrim is soulless by any means, but so many changes they made in comparison to Oblivion I feel are a step backwards or make the game less memorable.
Fair warning I'll be comparing the two games a lot.

Apparently people got really distracted in Oblivion when talking to a NPC paused the world around yourself as it zooms in onto the NPC's face. Have to say I don't like the alternative where instead Skyrim NPCs just stand in place and are often not taking much, if any, screen real estate (unless you talked to them from very close by). Doesn't help that the NPC models and designs lack a ton of personality that Oblivion had, even if the latter is bordering on the uncanny valley nowadays. Because Oblivion zoomed in on the faces, they had to make the NPCs very expressive and emote with every dialog piece. Their emotions would even change depending on your reputation and affinity towards the player (which can be further changed with bribing, persuasion, or charm spells). Plus nearly every character in a town or city has their own name, their own personal greeting when you first meet them, and you can always ask for rumors they've heard that can lead you to new quests or hints. Not saying Skyrim has none of those characteristics, just that Oblivion has a lot more intimacy with the people you talk to.
And this all without getting into what I feel Skyrim stumbles the most at: Quests. Especially the quest lines involving the factions. Let me paint a picture: you are a mage in Cyrodil. You wish to further enhance your magical prowess, and to do that you want to be enrolled in the Arcane University of the Mages Guild. In order to do that you will need a written recommendation from (almost) every city's Mages Guild. These quests range from pulling a silly prank, recovering a stolen mage staff, thwarting a powerful mage whose also a highwayman with the help of some mage guards from the university, and even discovering that necromancy, that has been banned in this country, still has its claws steeped in the Guild's hierarchy. You have to do so much just to get into the most prestigious and sought-after university any mage would love to be a part of.
In Skyrim you cast a single spell that the gatekeeper gives you and your in the college. Even in context of what the college is, that is so lame and boring.

And that was just one example. The Dark Brotherhood no longer has interesting bonus rewards for completing assassinations in a unique way, the Fighters Guild often has you deal with randomly generated radiant quests for half it's content, and there's not even an arena to speak of. So many quests have such weak storytelling or are extremely basic to complete, not to say Oblivion was perfect in the latter but the former is a key strength of Oblivion to me. To be fair, not every quest is dull. I like how you join the Dark Brotherhood, their version of the Fighter's Guild has werewolves (which are still pretty undercooked from a story perspective, but werewolves are cool), I like how the Daedric god quests can be anywhere in the world instead of at designated shrines, and the conspiracy quest in Makarth is always a highlight with how it changes the rules of how the law normally operates in towns. Still I had to struggle to remember Skyrims quests, whereas I could describe so many of Oblivion's quests off the top of my head... Going inside a artist's painting, calling out the corruption of Cheydinhal with their extreme taxes (which also makes bounties in the town higher till the quest is completed), buying a house that turns out to be haunted with a litch in the basement, thinking your hired to kill some rats when it turns out you have to protect them from mountain lions, discovering the origins of the Arena's Grand Champion which makes him so distraught that he throws the championship match and his life, the unmarked quest at the highest mountain in the game where you discover a invisible monster that slaughtered a couple, killing five guests at a mansion while utilizing their personal biases against one another to divert attention away from yourself; I could keep going you get it already.
My disappointment doesn't end with the quests sadly. So many things that did not return from Oblivion I'm still surprised by, or changes that make playing more annoying then engaging. Like, why can I no longer create my own spells? Why were attributes removed so that I can't increase things such as my carrying capacity or movement speed manually during level ups? Why do merchants have limited number of funds and require me to keep finding new merchants constantly after a dungeon run? And for the love of god, why is the acrobatics stat gone? I love making my character capable of jumping higher then the trees, able to take shortcuts within dungeons and potentially even go out of bounds. Just a lot of fun tools were lost when they made Skyrim and it made playing the game feel far more limiting for a series famous for being able to do what you want, when you want.

And with all that said, Skyrim is fun to play. The way leveling works makes nearly every action feel meaningful. Gold is always in demand, loot can be used for potions, enchantments, crafting, cooking, and smiting which gets you into a mass hoarding mindset. Your consistently working towards something, and growing stronger makes a noticeable difference. Enemies tend to be a lot more aggressive and dangerous then Oblivion, less exploitable A.I. in general (but can still be pretty stupid). Often times though enemies and boss monsters can deal way too much damage and have way too much health. The way scaling works in Skyrim means that there's higher incentives to become strong, but also more frustration when a random dungeon monster has numbers so much better then yours that you have no choice but to leave. That, and the infuriating pre-animated takedowns delivered by the enemies. If you are low on health a enemy can just decide seemingly whenever "Die!" and will lock you into a death animation instantly. It isn't even like it's a grab attack or something, the game just decides to kill you right then and now. The last time I played Skyrim before this was with a mage character, where I didn't invest much into health upgrades. I was fighting this skeleton dragon which was already a tough boss, and I took a lot of damage so I paused the game to fully heal myself with potions. Despite now being at full health, the dragon did an instant-kill animation on my character anyway. Reminder that this was on the PS3 with those grueling load times, and MAN that death was so aggravating that I just stopped playing that character in its entirety. I don't care that these can occur with the player character doing them, these suck so much.
sigh Didn't I say that Skyrim is fun? Well it helped that this playthrough was a sneaky archery build. With the edition of the gane my partner owned I was able to dip my toes into the world of crossbows. I played like it was more of a shooter and it made fighting simple yet enjoyable. I like the variety of crossbow bolts that range in damage and effects. This build especially helped with those dragon fights that are, 80% of the time, just flying in the air. I mean it makes sense from the dragon's perspective, but also I guess get fucked if you are a melee build. But yeah crossbows are cool. I like the perk that allows you to slowdown time at the cost of stamina, able to calmly take out enemies that are making a beeline towards you if you get caught. Stamina in general is a lot more impactful of a resource then in Oblivion, where it affected how often you'd be staggered by attacks and a minor damage bonus depending on how full it is. Using stamina to sprint is a fairly generic mechanic, but if you're in a situation where you have to make a run for it (and you will with how you can randomly encounter powerful foes) then it can get genuinely tense as your stamina rapidly depletes with a angry mammoth breathing down your neck. The perk system is mostly kind of whatever, but it does have a share of interesting abilities that can greatly change how you play the game. The one stealth perk that gives a massive bonus to sneak attacks, but only with daggers, gives that weapon class an interesting niche above others. A heavy armor perk takes the armor rating of your gauntlets and uses that for bonus unarmed damage. Unarmed is not a skill that can be leveled up, but this perk combined with certain races bonus damage with their natural claws can make fun and viable unarmed builds. In fact, that very build was when I first started having fun with Skyrim when I initially played it. Sure it loses viability as the player's level increases, but it's still very silly yet satisfying.
And even though Skyrim is not as much of an RPG anymore, not all of their simplified systems were bad. Consolidating the melee weapon types to just one-handed and two-handed makes more sense then blade and blunt skills, since the former are a lot more understandable in the kind of playstyle they'll offer, whereas with the latter two there aren't slash or bludgeoning damage types in Oblivion that makes a hammer and sword of the same damage values play noticeably different. While speech is very underwhelming when it comes to persuasion checks, combining it with the mercantile skill makes a lot of sense. As Oblivion's mercantile and speechcraft skills were both slow to level up and hardly made a meaningful difference when they did increase. Combining the two allows you to get more out of both while not making things too bloated. I like how bounties are only relegated to each city instead universal across the whole country, which emphasizes how much more isolated the land of Skyrim is in comparison to Cyrodil. The dungeons are a lot more interesting to explore with wider variety of locales, a lot less copy and paste areas (though still not perfect), actual puzzles, and all around greater sense of scale.
Yet with every compliment I have for Skyrim, I also keep thinking about more and more things that bug the crap out of me with this game. Like the menus, I really don't like them. They're too simplistic, boring to look at, and not as intuitive to navigate as they should be. And just... god this game is such a mess to play and write about. I have had sessions where everything is working out and I'm chill, vegging out after a day at work. Just want to play something that ain't too taxing, and Skyrim delivers it's promise. But then I have sessions where the cracks start to get too hard to ignore, and I grow annoyed and bored with the game. For the love of the dragon god, don't play a dedicated mage character on your first playthrough. They are so much work for not enough pay off, just choose a few spells for utility as that's really all you need. And it sucks since magic is so cool in these games but their low armor class, limited magic pool, and lower health doesn't mesh well with Skyrim's design.

Skyrim is cheesy popcorn. Delicious and hits the spot, and then you start biting into unpoped kernels, it gets stuck in your teeth, and your mouth drys from the saltiness. But when its working right its addictive and easy to digest. Just sometimes you want more depth in your foods.

Oblivion Count: 15
Skyrim Count: 24

Recent update added the long awaited map, and wow that did so much to make traversal more snappy and less meandering. And I now appreciate this game a lot more to not include fast traveling as I see just how interconnected this map is, with each area connecting to at least three other locations, but often times more.
And movement is still sublime and fun to experiment. New time trials are a nice distraction as they reward you with new costumes and most require multiple attempts to get a good route going.
Much higher recommendation now. And it turns out that tossing your tonfa does have a interesting gameplay mechanic that, while more of a novelty then useful, is still interesting to mess around with.

The dev also updated the Steam pages artwork, which is nice since they didn't like their old one.

Maliciously designed to kill you.
It's banking on you to beat it out of spite. "Oh you just teleported chaingunners behind me after picking up this inconspicuous gun? Well now I'm ready next time, asshole!" It really wants to make you hate these demons with a burning passion. If Doom II was built any easier or laxer then these enemies wouldn't be much of a threat alone, and therefore less memorable. The level design accentuates the demons as scheming yet merciless. This isn't some honorable battle between warriors, this is a hunt for flesh. And there can only be one winner here.

More than many action games is Doom II a test on your memory, reactivity, and resource management. This game is straight up unfair, so you need to keep in mind what gun your currently holding before triggering the trap that killed you earlier. Demons have various levels of health, damage, and mobility; thus misusing and wasting your more powerful weapons will leave you vulnerable for when you really need that rocket launcher or B.F.G. against that Archvile. Sound cues are vital to knowing if a enemy has spotted you, or if a off-screen projectile is flying towards you. The player at least has the newly added super shotgun, though while a extremely powerful gun with good ammo efficiency, can be easy to over rely on. Definitely had times where the intervals between reloading the shotgun got me killed, when I should've attacked more from a distance with the chaingun or stunlocked with the plasma rifle.

But even with the generous usage of quicksaves, this game can get exhausting for a new player. Sometimes you get tired of being made a fool of yourself when the game teleports you into a tiny room with four imps on every side, which then proceed to tear you to shreds. Literally no way to know that was going to happen. The more bullshit people will encounter, the less willing they'll be able to continue with your game. Of course that isn't a universal rule, but there's a fine line between "Fck you, let's try that again!" and "Fck you, I quit!" For better or worse, games just don't do this kind of evil, unscrupulous design anymore.
Like Doom Eternal, I had to take breaks in the middle of levels. But unlike Eternal, it was because I couldn't be bothered at points to drudge through yet another elevator that takes me right into a horde of chaingunners that eat away at my health before I can even see where they are. It's funny how some of the earliest demons, the chaingunners, I find to be more annoying then even the Pain Elementals or Archviles.

Though with that in mind, playing Doom II showed me why this game has remained popular to this day. The enemies with their particular and variable roles, and the weapons with their satisfying designs and function, makes for near-infinite mod level packs with fresh feeling gameplay. Whether you want to have the player cleave through hordes of fodder demons with the B.F.G., or starve them for ammo as they have to whittle down a towering Cyberdemon, modding Doom II levels will live on well-passed any live service game that shuts down (six months after release).

Don't know if I played a good version of Doom II though. I'll be honest when I look up stuff for classic Doom, I get pretty intimidated by the number of ports and re-releases of the game, plus all the hard-core fans mentioning which ports are better then others. I played the standalone release from Steam on my Steam Deck, not sure what people in the community would call that port. I just took the path of least resistance to play the game, so hopefully that version won't make a Doom fan too upset at me. Did come across a few bugs, namely to do with a elevator not triggering and I had to reload my save to get it working again. Also I don't know if this is just a normal Doom thing, but sometimes it can feel pretty stingy when auto-aim will work if you're trying to hit a demon from a large elevation difference. Hard to get into a precise location to hit them when they can attack with their hitscans from wherever they want off-screen. This version of Doom 2 at least had that reticle to light up red if the next shot will hit a target, but it still doesn't change the fact how awkward "aiming" can be in this game.

And lastly, why did 'Into Sandy's City' only play in one level when it's easily the best song in the entire game?

A "rougelike" DLC story for a game that uses that genre in the loosest definition possible.

For brevity sake, check out my review on the base game as this DLC isn't about doing things radically different or new.(https://backloggd.com/u/AlphaOne2/review/971762/) The rougelike is really just randomly generated dungeoneering, with a slightly harsher punishment for death where you lose a lot (or all, depending on difficulty) of your earned force. In case you didn't read the old review or forgot, force is used to progress through the game's skill tree. You earn a looooooot of stat ups using it, and you also use it for unlocking new spells and valuable items. Regardless, everything else you earned prior to death is kept, hence rougelike being a poor descriptor.

Just like the base game, this DLC wants you to become absurdly powerful. Like, the most overpowered character you can possibly be. Able to cast magic that starts as standard fireballs, and end with summoning lasers so large it kills hundreds of enemies off screen as all their loot gets magnetized towards you. All the other progression systems are here as well (equipment leveling, crafting and upgrading, magic leveling, item trading, and so forth). One of the more notable additions is the style system. Think more of a class system in other RPGs, but they don't change your playstyle too much in comparison. Each style comes with their own passive bonuses and one unique skill that's on a short cooldown. A magician can recover the magic meter on the spot, or a samurai will do a iaido slash as the demon gets cut in half a second later, or a assassin will teleport behind the enemy and stab them in the back. They aren't a game changer, but it is fun experimenting with them as leveling up styles will also earn permanent stat ups.

How are the random dungeon exactly? Crude and sloppy, but admittedly pretty fun. Namely due to the enemy placement. Each stratum has 9 floors. Early in the stratum enemies are relatively straight forward and spaced fairly normally. But by floor 6 the dev just seemed to not care anymore and will just randomly place twenty high level monsters in a room that attack the very instant you enter their domain. Doubly worst if these monsters can inflict debilitating status ailments like paralyze or webbed. It's actually comical how little restraint these monster closets get the further you get into the game, and they aren't rare by any means. You start getting into the habit of holding down to immediately readying your shield anytime you enter a new room, cause there's a high likelihood you'll get sucker punched by a horde of photo-shopped monsters on the otherside.
At the same time, this actually makes it pretty fun. There's a great satisfaction overcoming something so blatantly unfair and unhinged, and being rewarded with gold, loot, experience a plenty that hits me in the dopamine tenfold. And even though I played this game on hard, I never died from these relentless ambushes. Certainly came close, but you have plenty of tools to conquer these ridiculous enemy layouts. Magic gives you invincibility frames, which combined with how absurdly busted some spells are makes these things both unfair but also not frustrating.

I am a little disappointed with the lack of new in this DLC. The enemies and many boss fights are recycled from the base game, and the story doesn't go nearly as hard as it either. Though the game does warn that this DLC has massive spoilers if you hadn't played the original, so I unfortunately can't recommend this if it were standalone. This DLC is more of a abridged retelling of the base game, but as a dungeon crawler with a different main character. Again, do not expect anything truly unique.

And you know, if I ever get the hankering for Astlibra Revision again I think I might play this instead. With the nature of the random dungeons, you are experiencing more of forward momentum during your grinding sessions as you descend further down; whereas grinding in the original has you walk back and forth between the same exact areas over and over. Not to mention this is 20 hours versus 50 hours. The DLC is lengthy but not too obscene as the base game, if you feel like replaying it from start to end.

Plus now you can dress up your main character and that shit is a plus in any game ever.

"Really hoping Yakuza 8 makes substantial improvements, otherwise they'll need to have a story with an even bigger gut punch then this one." - AlphaOne2, 2023.
Oh how the Monkey's Paw curls this fine day...

Rating this the same as Like A Dragon 7. If you want the short of this, game is very good but wait for a generous sale. I didn't pay full price as I was gifted $20 from a Steam gift card, but thankfully for you these games tend to go on sale often. Give it time and you'll be set, or pirate bay is always an option I'm not a cop do what you please. Especially if you want New Game plus, which man that DLC shit is rancid, but after 90 hours of playtime I'm not itching to get back into this anytime soon. There really is no need to invest in that crap, the base game is plenty. Maybe too plenty.

Gameplay is a noticeable upgrade. The combat in Like A Dragon 7 became utterly exhausting by the end, wearing out its welcome well before the credits. Infinite Wealth has so many, much needed changes that make combat far more interesting. The general flow is still the same, but there's a lot more intentionality to it.
Firstly the big one: moving your character before selecting an attack. You can now plan where to send a enemy flying; where they could crash into one of their friends to hurt them as well, hit a wall for extra damage, or next to a party member where they'll whack them in midair (assuming they have a high enough affinity). You can perform combo attacks if you initiate an attack next to a party member, or move behind an enemy to guarantee a critical hit. Every character, regardless of their job, can now utilize improvised weapons, and with the addition of moving your characters it is much more reliable to make use of your environment. It saves quite a lot of resources when instead of your fire spell, you could simply swing a giant oil barrel and have it explode on a enemy group for massive fire damage.
There's more clarity when utilizing skills. It will highlight the area of effect of your range attacks, plus show arrows on where enemies will be launched to. It does mean that attacks that effect every character is a lot rarer; whether that's a heal, a buff, or a super move. Sounds like a downgrade but it really doesn't make much of a difference since Infinite Wealth has a smoother level curve then its predecessor. They've more or less gotten rid of the obnoxious jumps in difficulty that plague the endgame of 7, so long as you aren't avoiding every single battle. Though if your someone who likes to do extra content then you'll likely end up overpowered for certain battles. I've had boss fights where the boss only got off one or two attacks before they were already dead. Pretty anticlimactic, but it was my choice with how much unnecessary grinding I did in this game.

The job system is mostly the same as 7, with the exception of inheritance skills. In 7, specific skills from every job would be permanently added to a character's repertoire when unlocked. It was not only limiting since you couldn't choose what skills to carry over, but if mastered a lot of jobs then your skill list would become very cluttered with all kinds of skills you don't care for. Infinite Wealth instead has every skill from a job capable of being carried over. Now it's up to you whether your chef can football tackle through a crowd of yakuza, or breakdance so hard that they get a speed increase, or take out two revolvers and start blasting their asses. Unlike 7, it really is not necessary for every character to master every job as you can only equip so many inheritance skills (I wished I recognized that sooner, would've saved a lot of time). Your free to unlock any skills that seem interesting or fit your playstyle, but every character's exclusive job keeps their individuality so party members won't lose their own niche.
A much, much appreciated feature is the smackdown. Think Earthbound where if your statistically overpowered than a low level enemy then you can wipe them out instantly. You do receive a small experience penalty from the battle if won this way, but money and items aren't affected. Plus you really shouldn't be grinding on low level enemies to begin with. All it does is save your time, which with how prolonged this game already is, it absolutely needed this.

They haven't fixed everything from 7. Enemies and party members can still get caught on terrain even with being able to position the latter, sometimes a enemy will move out of the way just as select your A.O.E attack so don't end up catching every foe you were hoping for, going for a basic attack can be awkward if you want to be close enough for the proximity damage bonus but there's a nearby weapon that your character would automatically pickup with a element the enemy resists; just in general there's a air of awkwardness and clunkieness to the combat. Far from refined.
At the same time I feel the combat has really found its niche as a something that's very scrappy and fast paced, and occasionally indiscriminately chaotic. I've had times that I accidentally knocked a foe into a pile of explosive barrels which then exploded and caused a chain reaction that left everyone burning to death. Sometimes I would cause unintentional combos with one character sending a foe towards another party member where they would kick the enemy into the wall, and then yet another one would come over and stomped on their balls for good measure. It isn't impossible to get bored of this battle system, but it's a step in the right direction. More control yet just enough randomness in the player's favor to keep things fresh.

Speaking of steps in... a direction, story... yay.
Apologies in advance for the vagueness in this section, but I don't like discussing the finer details of a plot since it's always more valuable to experience it yourself and come to your own conclusions. And my conclusion is that there's too much. Too many characters, too many themes and morals, too many moving parts, too many twists, and so, so many exposition dumps. God damn do characters love to talk about anything and everything. This is a issue in other Like A Dragon games for sure, and that isn't to say every extended dialouge sequence has no reason for existing. But it doesn't help when certain aspects of the plot come with a air of "Out of touch dad explains what is "hip" with the kids these days". Basically there are subject matters that the writers lack the nuance and knowledge to convey correctly, and if you have any basic understanding on these subjects that it can be hard to swallow. They had too much they wanted to say, not all of which was profound to begin with, and it's very noticeable where things got shafted for time. Especially when they're still talking.
I don't know if I'm just more busy nowadays with preparing my new house to move into (shits expensive), but my attention span for plot dumps and exposition scenes has gotten real short. And it's a shame since there are plenty of dialouge pieces that are entertaining and interesting, but that tends to be relegated to the side content.

It wouldn't be Like A Dragon without its minigames and side stories. We got shogi, blackjack, poker, mahjong, other gambling games that I have no clue how to play, batting cages, fishing, randomly generated dungeon crawling, Pokémon Snap but with "weirdos" in Hawaii, swimming and collecting trash, just straight up Pokémon catching and battling but everyone is just some dude, Crazy Taxi but your a food delivery boy on a bike, a online dating sim where you have to make your own profile and even pay (in-game) cash to make your profile nicer looking, and a seriously in-depth Hawaii resort simulator where you gather resources and build your own island paradise for guests as you protect the resort from trash pirates. That last one might as well be its own game cause my god there's so much to it and I don't have all day to explain the intricacies of that. As a whole I enjoyed these distractions quite a lot more then previous titles. The island resort sim especially caught me off guard with how fun I found it to be.
The smaller side quests were alright, but I felt the more emotionally driven ones fell flat to me. I don't know, I find it harder to care when every side character feels the need to explain their whole life story to me at the start of every quest. And I do mean every character. Am I being too harsh? I don't want to come off as someone who tells others how to write their stories, and maybe I was just getting fatigued playing this game, but it's not a good sign when I start skimming your dialouge because it just isn't engaging me.
You know what was? Bingo. Or rather the Bingo Board, where you get to learn fun factoids of your party members while walking across Hawaii. Finding out what they do in their spare time, what food they like, personal grievances they have, flaws they're working on fixing; can't get enough of that small talk. It also improves their affinity stat, which unlocks more inheritance slots your party members can equip, so it's worth going after these. And I will say that this probably the funniest Like A Dragon game I've played yet. The ludicrous scenarios and the utterly bizzare special moves had me chuckling a handful of times. The less serious sidestories and summons especially had me giggling like a idiot.

I'll be real this review was exhausting to make (kind of like this game). There's so much more I was planning to talk about the story side of things and how conflicted it made me. The bit of good with the story made the bad especially stick out, particularly with how characterization flip flop between pretty great to "...huh?" But with this being my third draft of this piece, I've realized that I just wasn't enjoying myself having to talk about the plot. It's funny because this isn't even a story I find particularly offensive or bad as a whole, it feels more confused then anything. Regardless I do feel this a notably better game then 7, and I hope to see more improvements going forward with the series. Just, give it a few more drafts next time around, and maybe tone down the scale.

You also have a playlist you can create, with all kinds of songs from other games, that you can listen during traversal and I want this to be in every game from now on. Let me listen to Open Your Heart in the Elden Ring DLC you cowards.

Once again, I have no one to blame but myself.

I was in the mood for a Action RPG after investing way too much time into Baldurs Gate 3 because I kept making new characters and experimenting with alternative choices, while not actually progressing with new content. It's just a strange quirk I get with those kinds of RPGs. Same thing happened with Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, and Divinity II especially. Digression aside, I wanted to scratch the ARPG itch I get often. I then saw talks of the YS series anytime I look up ARPGs I haven't played before. This isn't my first forte into the series though, that would be with YS Origins. I'll be honest, I don't remember much about that game other then that it was good. I liked what I played, but it didn't stick with me afterwards. It wasn't because of anything it did wrong on a gameplay side, it's just that the story and characters didn't interest me much. I don't know, I feel there's something about that game that I'm missing the appeal of.
Still, a lukewarm first impression is better then a bad one; so why not try another game in the franchise? Out of all the games I looked at, I felt VIII would be the one most up my alley with its action mechanics, and RPG customization and leveling. I knew only a little bit of background going in from the mainline games; such as the main character is named Adol whose a odd "sort-of" silent protagonist, his travel companion Dogi, the soundtrack always goes exceptionally hard, and action is normally kept at a brisk pace. And I thought I knew that these tend to be shorter RPGs, but my 50 hour game file is telling me how much of a fool I was. This game is long, fully-featured, but maybe just a little too loaded.

One thing that I wasn't expecting was the lack of budget. Not a bad thing by any means, more surprising since I assumed a franchise going for this long would have more money going into it. But looking at this game's background more, this came out in 2016 for Vita and PS4. The former explains everything, so expect some very simple and stilted cutscene animations, inconsistently voiced dialouge, and other cost/time saving measures. This is not a crack at the team or the game's quality, this shows me they worked smarter with their constraints as they invested their resources into what Ys VIII excels in. Especially the design of the island and how connected every location feels.
I suppose the most distracting presentation aspect is the voice acting. (Yes I had the dub on. No I will never apologize for being a dubbed degenerative.) Inconsistent is the word of the day. Some aren't too bad. Others are a lot harder to swallow. It felt like some of these actors had only one take to say their lines, or that they weren't clear on the kind of character they'd be portraying. I felt the main characters that you hear all the time were the most well-performed, but there were certainly lines where I'm like "Maybe you could've tone it down". Nothing here felt bad to me, just more distracting.

The story itself, without going into major spoilers, took a while to hook me. There are two plotlines with the Castaway Village being built in order to survive and escape the deserted island the main cast found themselves shipwrecked on, and then you have the backstory of the island itself and the civilization of the previous inhabitants; but I found myself glossing over the latter a lot. I'm not the biggest fan of the "Advanced Ancient Civilization" trope as I'm always more concerned about the present day issues happening to our main cast rather then whatever happened before the main plot began. I've definitely seen it unnecessarily used in many a story where it adds very little to the overall plot but takes up way too much time. I felt myself getting pretty antsy during these sections, but soon enough the game slowly showed its cards and I was all "Ah! That's what you're playing with." The civilization itself wasn't too enticing still, but the way its used to expand on the mysteries infestering in the plot was surprisingly clever and effective. And overall, the story in general became more and more engaging the longer it went on, which made its gradual buildup well worth it.
As a relative newcomer, it is odd that the main character, Adol, is silent but only kind of. He has dialouge options to pick like any RPG protagonist, but he's also shown to speak during combat and will have quips for many things like fishing. Also the fact that he his named Adol. No, not that his name is weird. More that he does have a name that all the characters address him as. Most other RPGs would have the player name the main character if they aren't going to say much anyway; but here you can't since Adol himself is his own character with an already established backstory. It's a real fine-line between a player-insert and having an existing personality, and I was not expecting it to work so well. Even though I don't mind silent protagonists most of the times, there are points when the story actually starts to suffer when your main character doesn't display much emotion or they just blankly stare as other characters have to carry the conversation themselves. Here, it never felt annoying. It was just enough added to make things interesting.

But who cares about emotional feelings, I want to feel physical feelings of pain from mashing the 'A' button for fifty hours straight. OK it's not actually that simple, though fuck, some of those fishing mini-games can genuinely be painful with all that button mashing. You have one combo, plus a charged attack after a few seconds of not attacking, a aerial combo, a downwards strike while your descending in the air, four equippable skill moves, and a limit break super attack. Not a lot admittedly, but they're used well enough for the addictive gameplay loop. Build the SP meter with combos and charged attacks to unleash skills, which will then gradually build up your limit break. Skills vary a lot and are gradually earned as you level up and progress the story. SP gain is real easy, which allows you to unload a ton of skill attacks on the enemy at any point. Honestly, the speed at which this happens is why it almost never gets old. You're never waiting to be allowed to perform the cool attacks, and the higher your aggression then the more SP you build, meaning even more devastating attacks. Still enemies are plentiful and often fast as hell, so you'll need to utilize the game's defensive options. You can either dodge at the last second of an incoming attack to slowdown time, or you can guard before being struck to greatly increase your damage for a short period of time. Both provide full invulnerability. I felt the dodge slowdown was kind of vague to initiate. Even after fifty hours I was never quite sure how close I needed to be to the attack, when to dodge, and what direction to dodge to get the slowdown. Most of the times I would activate it by complete accident. The guard felt a lot more consistent though. It's a pretty tight window, but not having your character roll out of the way meant I was able to pinpoint the timing of attacks much more reliably. And because I played Ys VIII on hard, these abilities were a godsend and incredibly satisfying to pull off as messing up resulted in a huge chunk of health disappearing, but it made success a lot more fulfilling.
Many enemies also have weaknesses to specific damage types, which vary between the party members. Using the correct damage type will break the enemy and make them vulnerable to all damage types. I'm fairly neutral about this. It encourages swapping characters constantly, which is thankfully instantaneously, so you can't stick to one playstyle and make the combat feel stale. But at the same time there's not much more to it then that. I was honestly expecting enemies to start having multiple weaknesses that offers more of a choice of which character you wanted to use while still being a restriction to overcome, or maybe they would periodically change their weaknesses, and so on. Yet because battles are lightning quick, it doesn't linger enough to drag the combat, rather its just enough to add some spice to the many, many fights.
While not the most complicated or even my favorite ARPG combat, it does its job as well as I could've hoped. Even with the few recolors, enemy variety is high from start to end. Characters play distinctly from one a other, especially the ones that share the same damage type. The RPG systems are simple enough to not have a laundry list of menus and stats to manage, but offers a decent amount of customization and equipment to sought after in the short and long term that kept me playing.
Speaking of equipment, it's really interesting how, because the setting here takes place on an island after a shipwreck, there's no traditional currency. Rather every armor, weapon, and accessory not found in a chest has to be crafted. Luckily no items are ever obnoxiously rare and the game catalogs where to find what, whether they're harvested in a dungeon or dropped by a specific monster. Will say, I did use the 5th party member constantly as they could steal items from monsters, so not sure if that affected how much I felt compelled to grind for materials.

With all that said, goddamn this game is long. I was interested in playing through most of it, but there's so much to do that I stopped at roughly 90% completion. Did get the true ending, played through a lot of raids, fought a few secret bosses, cleared every quest, and fished till my thumb actually started to hurt. And the story has you backtrack back and forth all the time. If you drank everytime you had to go back to the Castaway Village, I'd be concerned for your liver. But mercifully fast travel is extremely accessible and load times are very reasonable. If not for those two things then this would've been dire. Still there's so much dialouge and story scenes, a lot of them even optional that are dependent on whether you complete quests at the village (which are timed depending on story progress) or giving gifts to the survivors you find on the island. There's a lot to do, and I did start to feel fatigued by the end, though as mentioned earlier I was enjoying the story more as it went on so things certainly could've been worse.

Even after all of this, I feel I still don't fully grasp the appeal of Ys. I did leave a lot unsaid as it would bloat this review far more then it already is, but I came away from Ys VIII thinking "Yeah that was good". Not too dissimilar to how I felt about Ys Origins, though I liked pretty much everything here in VIII more apart from it being a bit too long. But maybe I felt that way as I was intending to have a small in-between game, and not a fully-loaded RPG. That's definitely on me for not looking into its average playtime.

Also I'm shocked by the lack of love I see online for Hummel. He's literally designed to be a fan favorite character who'd get so popular that Ys fans would get sick of seeing him in every game and spin-off.

I don't know about you guys, but this game seems pretty "bass" to me. Hey is that a pipe bo-




After a quick visit for my new robotic armaments, I wanted to say upfront: I don't like rhythm games and Hi-Fi here hasn't changed my mind on that. As a concept and in execution they were always very underwhelming to me, namely for how you're just pressing the buttons the game tells you to press. I'm not so close-minded to think they're all just QTEs, though some sections of this game are more QTEs then traditional rhythm, but regardless they don't embody what I find fun about games as I'm told what to press, when to press, and in a specific order.
But I do love me some action games, and after hearing that you don't have to be a rhythm fan to actually finish this game I decided to dive in. And promptly struggled for nearly three-fourths of the game.

So I picked hardmode for my first playthrough. My thought process was that, while rhythm games aren't my jam (HA!), I also didn't want to ignore half of the games mechanics either. I find that if I'm not punished enough for my mistakes in games then I'm never going to actually improve myself in learning them. Hard mode increases enemy damage, but unlike 'Very Hard' it doesn't make timing to the rhythm any stricter. I felt that was a good compromise, at the time. I don't regret that I did that, but the first playthrough was certainly rough.
I am someone who gets bothered by ranking systems in games. Not that I hate them, but more that I can get too addicted in trying to improve my rankings when there's little reward in doing so. Hi-Fi judges you base on combo, time, and timing. All self-explanatory: vary up your attacks and do harder combos, don't daddle during fights, and... ugh... stay on the beat. This last one really fucked me up. My whole time playing I managed only ONE S-Rank in the timing category for one battle. Most of the time I was on the beat a mere 50% to 60% of the time, though often saw sub-50% which count as a D-Rank. And this weakness of mine bothered me non-stop. Anytime I do try to land my attacks more carefully, I ended up getting the shit kicked out of me since I was not focusing enough on the battle itself. I know in hindsight you usually aren't suppose to start chasing ranks in action games till after the main story, but this just irked me way more then I cared to admit. Really said to my face how I ain't got rythym. Hell, it wasn't just the rankings but the many sections where action is all but absent, and you have to do a traditional rhythm section that I struggled with. Anyone who played this game will know of the one "boss" that is only just this, and I failed at that way more then I'd care to admit.
And I'm explaining how bad I am at (arguably) half of this game because I still ended up having a good time. Sure I would've preferred a lot more variety in combos and combat tech and maybe even more then one weapon, but it still had enough fun to keep me playing to the end, plus some post-game content. The core mechanics were solid enough, the attack feedback is incredible with how the music reacts to your success, the enemy roster has enough nuisances and punching bags to make fighting them cathartic, and heck I really love how every enemy and many bosses can all be juggled. You'd be surprised how often a game allows you to perform some sick ass mechanics on certain enemies, but because it's "imbalanced" they then limit that to the early game; whereas the latter half have foes completely immune to the most fun mechanic in said game. Even the biggest of foes in Hi-Fi Rush can be juggled into the air, so long as you can stun them first. That's perfectly fair and it makes it all the more satisfying to render those asshole robots helpless once you succeed in staggering them.

The action mechanics are all solid, but there's quite a few nitpicks I have that start to add up overtime. The most minor one is the parry, namely that it's given to you way later then I would've like. I suck at timing attacks on the beat, but parrying attacks on the beat was, somehow, way more comfortable and I was actually good at it. I wish you had access to it from the start, even if they wouldn't tutorialized it immediately and let you figure it out on your own. It would've made the second boss way more fun that's for sure.
And before getting into the negatives more, similar to juggling you can parry nearly everything in this game. There's actually a number obstacles and AOE attacks that you can guard against that wouldn't think would be possible. It was damn cool figuring out that I could parry the rotating laser obstacles or the bomb explosions dropped by those drone enemies. But you can also parry something that I don't like about this game, and that's when the strongest enemies initiate a showdown (I think there's a different name for this mechanic but I can't find what it's called). When low on health, a powerful enemy can put you into a force rhythm section where you have to perfectly parry their attacks in order to finish them off. Combined with my poverish rhythm skills and I dreaded these everytime. I ended up dying to the giant samurais so many times because of this mechanic. They do have a tell before unleashing the shockwave that pulls you into a showdown, that can be parried as previously mentioned, but this honestly kills the flow of combat for me as doing them doesn't feel particularly rewarding. To me, I either lose a bunch of health and am now at a bigger disadvantage, or I do complete them and I just skip the rest of their health bar which makes it feel anticlimactic. I think one change would've made this flow way better, and that would be to allow the player to engage the showdown rather then the enemy. That way there would be a risk-reward decision of succeeding in this rhythm mini-game and wiping out a big threat sooner, or play it safe and try to finish it off the normal way. And in my case, I'd likely choose to not utilize it at all since the base combat is a lot more interesting.
A big issue that's been brought up by many is the lock-on, or lack thereof. You have to rely on the autolock to target the right enemy for your grappling hook or your partner attacks. It can and will do things you did not want it do, but I was more bothered by needing to babysit the camera stick if the enemy went off-screen. The camera doesn't always keep to the enemies and it can have you take potshots from attacks you couldn't see coming. Though to give credit where it's due, the game does have clear visual and audible tells for attacks. You will hear "shings" and "beeps" before being struck on the next beat or two. Enemies with projectiles will light up the floor underneath Chai and will change to indicate when and where it'll strike the player. Because of the universal parry, plenty of times I heard a offscreen attack coming and parried on the next beat consistently. Still not ideal to need to make that guesstimate when playing a action game, but they did make some smart decisions to not make it as frustrating as it could have. Plus your normal attacks don't have a ton of stickiness to them, so I was always hitting the target that I wanted in that regard.
And lastly you have partner cooldowns. This isn't a deal breaker to me as it would be for some, but yeah there were times where I needed to make a foe vulnerable with a partner attack but since they were on cooldown I just had to wait in the middle of a fight before getting back to the fun. I made that sound more damming then it actually is since the cooldowns aren't too bad honestly. I do find it strange that you have to use your limited number of equipment slots in order to decrease their cooldowns if you want them more readily available, but by default I didn't think the wait killed the pacing much.

If there's one thing Hi-Fi has done for me, it's that I'm now marginally better at rythym in general. Between the ranking systems as well as the many benefits of timing your attacks to the beat (increased damage and special meter build-up to name a few), plus the parts where I had to rhythm or die, I actually started performing to the beat subconsciously. It was borderline surreal honestly. One of the bigger examples was the dash. It's your traditional dodge with invulnerability frames and the like, but if you can time these dodges on the beat then you can initiate three in a row. This is also the fastest way of moving around, so while you're making your way from one area to the next you're practicing your rhythm simultaneously. Despite its repetitiveness, I never found doing repeated dashes to get a move-on annoying in the least. Rather it was rewarding training.
This feeling of improvement felt a lot different then getting good at other games, as rhythm and music is more universal across the many cultures of our world; it feels like I can appreciate music a lot more now. But again, marginally. I could've played on Very Hard to have less room for error and really have needed to adapt to the beat, but at the moment this is as deep as I'm interested in learning. Any harder and I would stop enjoying myself.

God damn, why did I write so much about this game and not have said anything about the presentation? Probably because it's more valuable to experience it for yourself then to read about it.
Well, it knocks it out of the park in so many ways. Everything moves to the beat. Every character, every enemy robot, every action, every machine, the manholes, the designs on the walls, the potted plants. Everything moves to the beat. Even in the crampest of factory hallways and closests tend to have something bobbing up and down. And if there really isn't anything of note, then the player character, Chai, will always be snapping his fingers to the beat, and each of his every steps will synch up to the rhythm too. The world just pops with so many vibrant colors, characters have such memorable designs and facial expressions, cutscenes may turn into a actual cartoon unexpectedly; how is this a game that was kept secret till the day of release?
However, and this may cause me lose any goodwill I had left on this site, but I don't remember much of the soundtrack. Chalk it up to the music being a genre I don't listen to often. It does fit with the tone and setting perfectly, even the licensed songs were added with purpose and not just "this song was in the director's Spotify". (Autocorrect wanted to call Spotify "SpongeBob")

Story: It's good. So are the characters. I don't have much to say honestly. OK some can be borderline obnoxious depending on your tolerance for ironic "bodacious dudes" speech and modern lingo, yet I'm terminally online and a Kingdom Hearts fan so this game couldn't hurt me even if it tried. Well maybe that early game villan doing JoJo poses constantly came close, but everyone has hobby and who am I to judge. Oh wait, you overwork all your employees with unreasonable demands for your multi-billion dollar company? Nevermind, death penalty for you.
Yeah the themes and messages of this game are far from subtle. Even the many journal logs are more of an excuse for gags then added lore like in most games. It actually made me want to read them at least since this game's humor is really good. Especially the slapstick and physical comedy, never got tired of our idiot protagonist getting the shit kicked out of him for his dumbass decisions. Hmm, I guess Chai may be contentious for some as he's the protagonist but also the biggest bonehead I've played as since Yakuza 7. I can't help it though, I really like the guy. Something about his unwavering confidence in himself and for the world around him makes himself really charming. I both love to laugh at him and with him.

It always admirable when a game comes along with such passion and nails everything it sets out to achieve. Polished to a tee (except that one glitch where I got stuck inside a boss) with personality oozing out of every orifice. Even if I inherently don't jive with parts, it's still a game worth rockin' to.

I seriously beat the crap out of this one kid with severe self-loathing issues at his hometown while taking with me a mythical creature that he's been obsessed with all his life, only to then follow him to his own school where I then destroy his whole career in front of a live audience. Oh he tried to fight back; but he couldn't stand up to my twelve foot, one-eyed bear that unleashes a giant laser from the power of a bloodmoon, plus the very same mythical creature from earlier but now she brought a fiery spiked club with his name written on it. This is probably the funniest plot since X and Y.

They couldn't get the landing quite right with Part 2.

Structure of the DLC is pretty much the same as the base game, "do battles against boss characters in any order, then proceed to the finale". I liked the new characters enough but it feels we didn't get enough time with them. Seems like there are post game conversations to be had with them at least, even found out the red-head has a crush with one of the others. That's cute, kind of wish it was integrated into the main story among the many other interactions that I might never see. Plus the plot with Area Zero had nowhere near the punch that the base game had during its finale.

Will give credit though, this DLC doesn't mess around. I personally never came close to losing, but that's only because I'm an obsessive freak who gulps EV trains all their Pokémon, plus alters their natures and hyper trains for perfect stats. But both regular trainers and boss trainers use competitively viable Pokémon and intricate strategies that adds a level of complexity to battle that you seldom see in these games outside the post game. They will use both Pokémon with their hidden abilities and held items that makes them more dangerous. This is ontop of every fight being a double battle which allows for a lot more possibilities for both your opponents the players themselves. As an example, I used a Great Tusk with Earthquake alongside a Levitate Vikavolt with Discharge, meaning that both of their attacks hit both opponents while being immune to each other. Like any Pokémon game, you can still power level your team to crush your foes with raw numbers, but with how high leveled everyone already is it's a lot tougher then usual. What I do like about these battles the most though is that they're also great teaching tools in the ways you can use certain Pokémon. They show you how strong reflect and light screen are, how to utilize terrains and weather, and what moves are great for certain Pokémon.

The BBQ quests are kind of a huge mess and the biggest fumble here. Firstly, don't do what I did and start trying to fill up the Pokedex till you unlock these quests by doing the very first story mission you get. That was a big mistake and wasted a lot of time. These quests are simple tasks that, very slowly, award a currency that's used for basically everything. Do you want to decorate your room? Do you want to change how your player character tosses a Poke Ball? Do you want new photo filters? Do you want to unlock post-game rematches with old Gym leaders and the Elite Four? Do you want to 3D print items, up to and including Master Balls? Then you're going to be grinding out a metric ton of these quests. Every ten small ones gives you one larger quest with a extra payout. For the most part though things are reasonably priced, except for the terrarium upgrades.
SO! Based on the Part 1 of the DLC, I knew coming in that there would be a special Pokémon or two unlocked by reaching a certain percentage of Pokedex completion. That is indeed true. If you catch 200 out of 240 Pokémon, you can catch two new paradoxes. Here's the thing: despite your best efforts in catching, evolving, and trading you can only get about 160. And that's where upgrading the terrarium comes in. For each of the four biomes there is a upgrade to add several wild starter Pokémon from all the past games to catch. Cool, right? It would be if they weren't 3000 points.
Each.
A single quest earns you 20 to 40 points, while the tenth special quest can earn you up to 200 or so. You see the problem, right??
But what can you do to make this tolerable? One is beating every trainer in a biome. Every five or so earns quite a lot of points. Problem: this is one-and-done. Once you exhaust all the trainers then your out of luck. Almost. The real way to wrack up points is to play with friends. There are special multiplayer quests that will earn you an actual reasonable sum of points. What if you don't have friends who play this game or have online?... ummm...
On one hand, this is mostly only a pain for completionists. If you just want to reach the end then you'll need about 200 or so points. That's completely reasonable. On the other hand, Pokémon hasn't had such a pain in the ass economy since the Battle Frontier that gave you pennies for playing battles that feel like their cheating at points. It's a regression that feels very disappointing. I ended up upgrading two biomes and managed to trade for a few more Pokémon to reach the 200 quota. Was it worth it? I don't think so. If you have friends then it's probably much more tolerable. The quests may be short and simple, but they're not interesting challenges and they can make you run all over the place. And and and and! If you want to catch all the past legendries' in the post game, then you need at least some group quests completed. I would not be surprised if these quests get an overhaul in a future patch, cause as they are now they're a unremarkable grind.

But enough of that, can we talk about the Synchro Machine? It allows you take control of any of your Pokémon. "Is it useful?" If you're asking that question then you've already failed. You can toss a ball with ZR and play with it. You can play as a Joltik whose as big as a flea and hops around like a tiny bug. You can play as the slowest Pokémon imaginable or one who zooms through the sky. You can play as a Alolan Exeggutor, the funny tall palm tree dude. It's stupid fun and I wish more games in general had things not tied to any progression or goals but instead just allows you to fool around with something silly. As an aside, I saw online how one person controlled one of their shiny Pokémon and fooled their friends into thinking they found a glitched shiny that they couldn't catch. That's why you do stuff like this. (Also I caught my first shiny in Gen 9, a shiny, female Meowstic (https://www.serebii.net/pokedex-sv/meowstic/#))

Also did you know that Meloetta is in this DLC? Probably didn't since it some cryptic bullcrap you hear on the school playground from a kid who says he beaten every game in existence. No that's not physically possible Michael you stupid ass- erm anyway nice to see devs continuing to include some wild mysteries to their game and see how long it takes for people to find them. Not long in this case, if only this game was made a decade or so sooner then this would've been the wildest shit imaginable.

Wrapping back to the intro here, Kieran is one of the more interesting characters in Pokémon mainline. He's probably one of the more, for lack of better words, realistic characters for his age. I can somewhat emphasize with him as someone who used to have a severe inferiority complex, feeling as if there are people who are factually better then you in every possible way. When that belief embeds itself in your mind it can be hard to pull it back out, taking over every fleeting thought in your damaged head. Still, he's a kid. Completely immature and rash. Lashing out at others who try to look past and question his façade. He uses a Porygon-Z with Adaptability, a Life Orb, and Hyper Beam; in other words, completely fucking overkill. He created a persona of a tough guy when in reality he's a huge dork. He is someone who says "Wowzers" unironically, that's the level we're dealing with.
Whether you actually like him is a different story, for me I was both laughing at and with him. Anytime he gets those distressed anime eyes where his pupils shrink and his eyes bulge is really entertaining. I like the times where he breaks his "badass" caricature and is real bad at recovering from that flub. And you know, even if you do hate him then he's a good foil as he takes his losses really badly. So either way I feel he works as a character.

I will say, maybe I'm a very distrustful person but I counted three characters I was expecting to be twist villains. In hindsight I'm glad that wasn't the case since that might've been pretty lame, but apart from Kieran and his sister Carmine there's a lot of characters that don't get much, if any, satisfying developments or memorable moments. Maybe I'm expecting too much, but Pokémon can and has done better in the past. I don't need a ton of story sequences in a Pokémon game, but I feel a few more here or there would've gone a long way to make this a much more satisfying conclusion to Gen 9.

And what a Gen this has been. It's real close to the apex of the franchise, it just needs more polish in both an aesthetic and technical level. Plus I'm a big advocate for adding voice acting to these games. When there's several cutscenes that show a much a higher level of character acting with them seemingly lip synched to their dialogue, the exclusion makes it all the more baffling. Wishing the devs the best, and here's hoping Gen 10 can deliver something new and exciting.

Also I didn't make Michael up. He was a real kid at Elementary school.
Kids sure are something.

Out of the entire series, I feel Final Fantasy III being someone's first Final Fantasy game is pretty rare.
I first saw FF III from a old friend who had the DS version, and the first thing they ever showed me was that incredible CG opening. The only other CG opening I saw before was Kingdom Hearts 1, but oh my god this had so many more characters, such grand and lavish environments, cool ass magic and a dude who wields two swords what the hell is this game?? Oh and that music, even to this day I just adore the soundtrack. The town themes, Cid's theme, The Forbidden Land Eureka, Castle Hein, the final boss, and especially the overworld theme 'Eternal Wind'. I'd hear Eternal Wind in my head every time I would walk in my back woods, such an engaging, adventurous piece.
Back to that opening, it painted an exciting but also treacherous adventure, which reflects perfectly when I started playing it after borrowing it from my friend. For someone's first ever turn-based RPG that wasn't Pokémon, this game was hard and unforgiving. There's the fact that dying booted you to the title screen, and that alone was a shock to the system. If I lost in Pokémon I'd just lose a bit of money and could easily continue my journey. Here, no way! I die then it's over. It made the fear of failure borderline overwhelming. If I fuck up then I can lose so much. Not helped by the fact that I was, as the kids say, "bad". I didn't use items, I rarely used magic as they were limited by spell slots and they're much less convenient to recover then using a Pokémon center, I didn't know what any of my stats did, I hardly changed my jobs, and I almost never talked to any NPC who wasn't critical to progression. RPGs can be a challenge of numbers or strategy, but they're also often knowledge checks. And if you are insufficient in knowledge then ideally you should ask the townsfolk for helpful hints. This never occurred to my tiny mind.
So my (literal) dumbass got bodied by so many things. I didn't change all my party members jobs to spellcasters during the points where you had to be small which makes all physical attacks deal 1 damage, I didn't have a scholar who could identify the ever-changing weakness of Hein, and despite how many dragoon equipment they give you for free I never thought to use a dragoon against the infamous Garuda fight. This never dettered me from playing however. It was scary for sure, the next boss fight could kill me without a second thought, but it also engaged me to the game more. Every (accidental) success got me closer to exploring more of this vast world. If I was lucky, I might even find a crystal of light that'll give me brand new jobs for my party. Yeah I didn't change them often, but I usually changed them into either the coolest looking one or the same jobs they had during the game's cg opening. The overwhelming danger of this magical world made it more engaging.
But even as someone with a lot of tenacity as a kid, even I couldn't push through that. If you're familiar with this game, then you know what I'm talking about. A big reason why this should never be your first Final Fantasy game unless you really enjoy sadistic design. The Crystal Tower.
The final dungeon of this game. First some background, by this point you have access to a airship with a free inn. Incredibly valuable if you ever bite off more then you can chew, or just run into dumb luck. You also can only save on the overworld. Mid-dungeon save points weren't a thing till Final Fantasy IV. You probably know where this is going, but let's continue. First is the Great Maze. Not too difficult nor winding, but it does take a while to just run through. You wind up outside for your final chance to save the game before entering the Crystal Tower, but you'll notice that you don't have access to your airship. If you need to heal you'll have to walk through the maze all over again. Bearing in mind if you need to heal then you're probably out of most of your spell slots, so hope you don't run into too many encounters on the way back. I'm not going to walk-through the Eureka section since, while long and difficult, is at least situated at the Tower's entrance. Just know that it's"optional" but has the final tier of spells and the best shops and weapons so NO, do not skip it. Then you have the climb itself. Nothing you wouldn't expect from a last dungeon, longs floors, a lot of floors, encounters with tens of thousands of health that may nuke your party with magic whenever they feel like it, and chests that have the longest most roundabout hallways rivaled only by Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne. An hour later you reach the boss, who of course has Meteor, so hope your numbers are big enough. Beat them after a long fight... now for part two. Now you have to go through even more of this dungeon and fight four more bosses before facing the true final boss, plus the best head piece in the entire game is guarded by clones of the boss from the first part of the tower, AND once you're in part two of this place you can't leave meaning if you die you start aaaallll over again. Bearing in mind that some of these bosses are pretty absurd with their damage output, and in the DS remake that I was playing some of these guys have up to three turns of actions every round of combat. Final boss included.
You can see why young me couldn't do it. Here I am with a dinky wooden sword held together by shoe string and hope as I face against an unflinching sentinel crafted by the arms of a God that spares no thought in killing everything it sees. Someone tries to teach you a new fighting game without ever holding back, your learning by making sure next time less of your bones are broken. Thrown into the middle of the ocean with a compass and a raft board. Find your way home with that. Good luck, jackals (suppose to be "jackass" but that autocorrect is a lot more funny).

So eight years later I finally beat the game.

As much as I would like to tell you it literally took eight years of attempts, no I just put the game down and moved on to other games. At the time I just accepted I wouldn't see the credits, but I got well over 50 hours of enjoyment(?) out of it, so I wasn't too bummed. But then I grew older. Taller. Very marginally more intelligent. By that I meant I could read better and look things up on Google. I learned many things I wasn't aware of. I learned what stats actually did apart from damage. I used jobs like Viking and Monk more effectively for tanking and offense respectively. I was smarter with my magic usage. Items... still weren't used a ton but I now knew how valuable exilirs were. They're the only other way to recover spell slots, but are exceedingly rare so you have to use them only when it matters. And by that I mean only the final dungeon. Also I didn't start back from my old file, but rather I started a brand new game from scratch. Things were already a lot more smoother. Bosses that felt like a gamble if I could beat them as a kid were a lot more comfortable now. I knew where to go for progression so my runtime was a lot shorter. I did grind a lot, but this was still at a time where I didn't have a lot of games. And by the time I was grinding I was already at the Crystal Tower, but have yet to take a real crack at it again. Looking back, I think I didn't want my time with the game to end yet. Didn't want to have less of a reason to dress my guys in funny costumes, to listen to the scariest boss music I ever heard at the time, to admire these chunky-ass DS visuals, and to watch that beutiful CG opening again for the hundredth time. But I did it eventually. It was long, but not the worst. Bosses were still deadly, but I've learned how strong Ninjas were and the power of Black Belts. I also felt Sages were kind of overrated with their low MP, so I stuck with a Devout and Summoner for all my magic needs. It felt more surreal then satisfying watching the end credits. This'll sound ridiculous, but it felt similar to graduating High School. This constant in life was over, so what do I do now without it?

I could just play it again, you dramatic butt!

Joking aside, I honestly felt content in what I played. No feelings of "Thank god that's over", more "It's done." Simple as that. I enjoyed my time with it and now it's time to look for greener pastures. Like a decade later playing the Pixel Remaster of Final Fantasy III. Yeah finally talking about the game this is a review on, but "review" may not be best descriptor for whatever this thing I'm writing is. The best way to describe the Pixel Remaster version is that it's Final Fantasy III but for people who got shit to do. The big thing are autosaves. You die at boss, you can respawn in the room you died at. Also since this is a 2D game with lightning fast animations, battles just fly by. You also have a auto-battle feature to replay the parties previous actions but on fast-forward, allowing for some painless grinding if you feel ill-equipped. Or if you ever feel like saying "screw it" you can jack up the exp and money gains for less time in battles overall, or turn off encounters if they start getting in your skin. I don't feel you need these boosts on a first-time playthrough, but it's there if you want them. The autosaves also help ease the frustration of loosing a lot of progress because "Oh you didn't know your first-time fighting this boss that they have a meteor spell? That's a shame. Die." All around I saw the credits in 12 hours, with the caveat that I've beaten a version of Final Fantasy III before so I knew where to go at all times. If, like me, you have played the DS version then some things will throw you off due to it being based more on the original Famicom version. Namely dungeon layouts and when you obtain certain jobs. They caught me off-guard for sure, but I ain't going to complain getting access to Black Belt much earlier. Music is mostly fantastic, but I'm not the biggest fan of the remix battle themes. The electric guitar doesn't real fit FF III to me, the DS version of the boss theme gave the fights far more tension then the Pixel Remaster. Eternal Wind though, that remake is fuckin beautiful. No notes for that. The Pixel Remaster also has no penalty for swapping jobs. Yes, there's something like that in both Famicom and DS. The former required a currency from battles in order to change jobs, while the latter had your character debuffed for several battles as your character "adjusted" to their new job. I don't think I need to tell you that removing that is unequivocally a good thing even if you are the most hard-core FF III fan.
I am kind of one of those people who feels the autosaves removes a lot of tension from dungeons and boss battles alike, but if I take off my nostalgia goggles for a minute I do acknowledge that a lot of games have done FF III but better, at least in terms of combat and customization. Hell, you'll often hear Final Fantasy V as "It's like FF III but good". And after playing FF V for the first time recently (no I didn't write a review for it), I get the sentiment, though I also feel FF V has also been outdone by many other RPGs. That may imply I feel there's no reason to play either game, but that isn't the case. Even the oldest of games can provide something that nothing of modern times can. There's always a lot of value to be found in anything, or anyone's past. FF V certainly is a lot more manageable if you are coming in from a more modern mindset, but III has merits that have paved a lot for the Final Fantasy series to this day. It's the first game where Dragoons can jump in the air and slam back down with their spear, many iconic jobs like Ninja and Bard got their start here, summoning as a mechanic was new, Moogles exist, even dedicated optional bosses like Bahamut and Leviathan began here.

This is such an odd game to be introduced to Final Fantasy. The plot is simple, progression is just a simple but with a few steps that feel missing, combat is imbalanced with some jobs being relatively underpowered, the game forces you change jobs in several sections so you can't play however you want at times, and the final dungeon alone filters so many people out it's pretty sadistic. I can't say if I'd be singing a different tune for this game if I played it for the first time this year. I first played it in just the right circumstances at just the right age, being incredibly impressionable with a lot of free time and not a lot of other games. It's funny, I could've been playing so many other games at that time and I feel I wouldn't have nearly as much to share about them. Final Fantasy III is far from the perfect game or even one my favorites nowadays, but it was perfect for a young, imaginative kid that had so much more to learn.

Yeah this really isn't for me, sorry

And I hate saying that since this is one of the most unique, creative, and beautiful games I've played in a while. There's layers upon layers of micro-systems and game tech that makes progression far more surprising then any AAA game on the market. It's character and world design is timeless, and incredibly imaginative with captivating portraits and sprite work. Literally anything and everything can be it's own fantasy race in this world. Yet this game asks a lot from the player, but not in time nor difficulty.
This is a PS1 game, which are well known for being experimental and unorthodox (compliment). Seriously, anything goes during that era of gaming. Nowadays there are a lot of "rules" on how to do things. What is considered "good design" or "bad design" feels established and settled, at least when speaking about the big studios. Despite the many, many issues of modern game design, there is some precedent on why games are the way they are now, and that's convenience and clarity. You're almost never lost on where you can go, what you can do, and how to do it. And I feel you need a certain level of tolerance to truly get the most out of this game in particular, if you aren't one to play the more unconventional games often (Hi that's me). If you aren't paying attention, you can skip text directing you on where to go for your current quest and there isn't a way to replay what you missed. Entire sub-systems are locked due to specific quests you may or may not ever complete. Systems and tutorials are explained in text monologues, again sometimes just once, but are also just not the way I learn the best in any context. That isn't to say it's impossible to proceed if you weren't paying attention, but it'll involve a lot of backtracking, repeatedly talking to the same NPC till you exhausted their dialouge, hugging the wall on these beautiful backgrounds to scroll the screen over and find a new area you would've missed otherwise... I hope you don't mind getting lost. And not just with figuring out what to do but also where you are since these dungeons, unfortunately, reuse room layouts within the very same dungeon. It's genuinely disorienting to me, and apart from maybe the first area I could not for the life of me create a mental map of any of these places. Enemies also respawn the instant you leave a room, but thankfully you can disable encounters. However, that actually messes me up even more with my sense of direction because enemy encounters are fixed; so I would walk in a room, see a familiar formation, and realized I've been here before. Not all dungeons are this bad with the issue, but despite the gorgeous art direction, exploring these places grew pretty tiring. What, I felt, tried to be wonderous yet daunting with its winding dungeons, grew to be annoying and directionless. But "directionless" I feel is kind of the point. (EDIT: Not a fan of using the word "directionless" in this context, but for a lack of a better word I guess it works).
Here's the thing, the game's progression is RNG... well sort of. It's technically consistent, but you sure as Hell ain't figuring that out on a first playthrough so it might as well be random. The world map is created by you, and by placing artifacts found by completing quests in different areas onto the map, you can create whatever layout you desire. The placement of these locations influences a lot of things, including what artifacts you receive from a quest and even the availability of quests. I think, without a extremely specific setup, it isn't feasible to find everything on one playthrough (EDIT: It seems straight up impossible actually, game isn't too long for one playthrough so they took that into account ar least According to @moschidae, it is possible to do it all in one playthrough, just have be careful to not softlock any quests. My mistake). Assuming you weren't copying exactly what I did in where I placed my artifacts, your playthrough of this game will be different from mine.
But if that's the case, then how does the main story proceed? It doesn't. That's the crux and, arguably, the main attraction of this game. There isn't a strong central goal other then "explore and adventure". There is a ending, but more than most other games is this a "It's about the journey" game. Annnnd... that's why I didn't jive with this game. I couldn't find a hook to latch onto to keep me engaged the whole way through. That isn't to say there isn't any story to be found. Faaaaaar from it. There's heaps of characters, quests, and lore to sink your teeth into. But everything is more bite-sized. Some quests are multi-parter that carries a more intricate plot, but there's no real central thread connecting them altogether. No not counting your player character, whose more of an observer than someone integral to the world (until someone decides to pull you into the story). That isn't a bad thing, many games do that, but bottom-line my interest in continuing was waning only three hours in since I couldn't find anything that really caught my attention enough for the entire runtime. There were so many neat tidbits, but they weren't enough.
And then there's the gameplay. As mentioned it has tons of mechanics from learning movement and weapon skills, to crafting magic instruments, raising monsters from when they were eggs, creating your own golem with a massively intricate system, and so much more... but this game was way too easy to care about any of that. It comes off as superfluous when I almost never needed the extra help since store-bought weapons and armor was all I really needed. OK, learning skills from how you fight during combat was neat, but stun-locking foes and bosses are way too easy. With the fists especially, you can jab so many things from 100% to death. Plus you have a lot of health and deal a crapload of damage. Why should I invest myself in these systems if the game doesn't put much of a fight? OK, there was one boss that had a shockwave attack that killed me from full health, but after learning it's generous tell I never got hit by it again. I had to look this up as I was scripting this part, and there is a hardmode, but only after beating the game once. Yeah I don't like that. The first playthrough was confusing and unchallenging, I don't have any desire to try it again. While the combat feedback was nice (being able to throw even the biggest of bosses is admittedly pretty cool), it just wasn't enough to make me care about it overall.

I hate writing these reviews since I see the audience for this kind of game. It's a game the gives back the more you put into it. It rewards multiple playthroughs exponentially with new scenarios and surprises. It has a superb soundtrack that I'll probably be listening to for a long time. It's sense of discovery can be infectious for those who love to dive deep into a game. And I normally loves games like those, but man this just didn't do it for me. I didn't enjoy myself much with the initial run, sad to say.

Best advice I can give is to give it a look to see if it looks interesting, but beware as the surprises and secrets are part of its charm. I've seen people absolutely adore this game, this has the potential to be one of your favorite games ever. While yes, that can be said about practically every game, you also won't find a game like this anywhere else.

Ender Lilies proving, once again, that the summoner class of any fantasy setting is overpowered.

Here we have another Metroidvania, which will certainly be a turn on or turn off for you right of the bat. You like map completion? Finding every secret to make yourself stronger? Obtaining major abilities to revisit previously inaccessible areas for more power-ups? Utilizing that power to fight tough bosses? Then this, among many others, are for you.
Of course that's the absolute basics of the genre, so what does this game do to itself differentiate from others? It's primarily related to spirits. You play as a young girl who by herself can't do much, but by purifying bosses and mini-bosses she can have those souls as equippable attacks. They range from sword slashes, to ground slams, throwing knives, homing fireballs, claw swipes, poison gases, spear lunges, parries and counters, volley of arrows, autumonous minions that shoot nearby targets and so forth. You can equip up to six. Most spirits have limted uses and short cooldowns, but few have infinite usage. Honestly I could count the amount of times I ran out of a specific spirit attack on one hand. Breakable objects and red lilies replenish their usage, which are plenty common to come across. As long as you integrate one or two unlimited spirits in your roster you should be good... at least in terms of spirit management.
You kind of need as many variety of attacks as possible since this game ain't easy. I wouldn't call it brutal (with one or two exceptions) but everything here hits like a dump truck. If you're use to more easy-going Metroidvanias, do not tank hits in this game. You do that and you'll be wasting your healing prayers very quickly. This game is at it's best when you crafted a specific move list of spirits to more comfortably clear a area or boss that have been giving you shit. There's at least two or three spirits well suited for each enemy. Some enemies fly overhead, but by depleting their stun bar they will be knocked out of the sky and splat when they hit the ground. Shield enemies need to be dodged behind them during their attacks, or you could use a poison gas spirit that ignores shields, or use a spirit that leaps over their shield and hits them from behind. This game does encourage a lot of cheesing strats. Can't count the amount of times I killed a enemy through a wall by using a long-ranged attack to chip at them from safety, though thankfully the reverse doesn't happen. It's also important to note what spirits keep you in place and what ones you can use while keeping your mobility up. That's the major downside of the unlimited spirits, they require you to stop in place and attack, whereas the limited use ones (mostly) allow you to set them up and keep on the move while they do their thing. In fact, you can summon multiple spirits at once under most circumstances, perfect for when a boss is stunned and vulnerable. Even with these capabilities of your main character, I still feel one or two enemy deals a smidge too much damage. If you aren't finding enough health upgrades then some of these will just two shot you. The ones that come to mind are these enormous mounds of flesh that swipe with a tentacle slam, which I swear that hitbox is way bigger then the animation. And it doesn't help how fast and large that attack is on top of its power. Though in fairness it isn't rare for any hard game to have at least a few of those enemies that are a pain in the ass to deal with. Some might even argue that we need those obstacles that are obnoxious as hell, it creates memorable moments and keeps you on your toes. I suppose I won't forget those mounds of flesh, but I also won't ever forget my embarrassing moments from High School and I don't associate them with the best feelings to put it very mildly.
Exploration is pretty solid all around. Though to get a nitpick out of the way, the game tells you want room you're in on the map, but not it's exact location of where in the room. Say in Castlevania, you have a long vertical room about three blocks tall on the map. Castlevania will adjust your player marker on the map depending on which third of the tall room you're in. Ender Lilies doesn't do that and it can make it difficult to remember where in that specific location you have, and have not been to. Thankfully the map is otherwise very generous. It will change color depending on if there's a item there that you haven't found yet, and it will also show how many doors are in a room even when entering it the first time. It makes it pretty easy to look over your map to find places that you missed or haven't explored in full yet. Makes using a guide less of a requirement, and the few times I did use it was for last minute cleanups by the end.
In fact it was such a smooth ride that I got all 38 achievements in 15 hours. Bearing in mind I knew very little about the game going into it, I bought it on a whim during a sale, so I feel that speaks volumes of it's solid design.
That all said, I believe the visuals and setting of this game are easily it's strongest quality. It's a dark, lonely world. Everything you meet is either a hostile blight, corrupted corpses angry at past trangressions, and sorrowful souls whose regrets chain them to living world. Well "living" ain't the right word here. Every spirit you obtain has a small story of who they were in life, and the major ones even have cutscenes to show more of what the world once was before it all went down hill. Notes that litter the world go into further detail on what has happened, most of it amounting to "We done goofed, yes we sure did". In fairness, when the rain itself carries a infectious blight things are kind of fucked from the get-go. The beautiful 2D visuals really nails the tone. The designs of your spirits range from cool but damaged knights in armor, horrifying creatures with a subtle amount of cuteness, and mutated corpses hanging on by a thread of humanity. The areas you comb are big yet hostile. Corpses contain valuable items for upgrades, but they'll also mutter their last words as you approach them. Mostly their final regrets. Yet like any sorrowful-filled story, it has just enough hope for it to not be too overbearing. Also helped by the short length, since anything that you experience too often lessens the affect they have on you emotionally in time (this is not a life lesson fyi). Even in the most dire of circumstances, hope is always there, even if it takes a lot to realize it.

I enjoyed my time with this game. Maybe not enough for a replay, but I'm plenty satisfied with what I did play. With a few exceptions, I think the difficulty is a good high that requires effort but rarely crosses over to annoying. And while the tone is not something I'm interested in usually, it's no less engaging wandering around a diseased, desolate kingdom as a small defenseless girl... who would actually be defenseless if it weren't for her army of ghost friends.
Now give this game a try before another one of my agonizing High School memories comes out of nowhere to cause psychic dama- AH OH GOD!! WHY?!?

It's a From Software Action RPG (or FSARPG). Not "kind of like Dark Souls", it just is. The controls, the combat, the actions you can do in combat, the inventory system, the leveling system, the way you upgrade weapons, the stamina gauge, the back attacks, the unintuitive jumping; it literally feels like a FSARPG that came from an alternative universe.

Am I complaining? Not at all. Does it do the FSARPG formula well? Pretty much with only a few snags. Is it hard? Not the hardest, but this is coming from someone whose played and beaten all of these games so I'm fairly biased. Does it do anything new? Yes, a lot of things actually.

This game took the most from Bloodborne, but sprinkled in Sekiro's guard and parry system. The aesthetics and environment are a lot like a less bloody, less claustrophobic Yharnam from Bloodborne; though no less in a state of "Shit's Bad!" No less an interesting setting with it being inspired by "The Beautiful Era" of France, doubly so with the use of humanoid, mutated puppets as the primary antagonistic force. Offers something that isn't too common in video games while allowing for some elaborate designs that makes progressing through the game more engaging. Also gives the same subtle humor from other the FSARPGs where they'd include some real goofball enemies. The wheel skeletons from Dark Souls 1, the naked giant man that rolls all over the place in Bloodborne, and who could forget the screaming dive bombing ninjas in Sekiro who scream "WHOOAAA!!" Lies of P has puppets who are maids, baby puppet enemies that cry, giant clown robots, puppets that stab with chimney sweepers, police puppets wielding stop signs, and certain late-game enemies that have some seriously styling mustaches.
I'm going to assume you know the general flow of FSARPGs and how the gameplay works, since I'll only go over what's different. Blocking is far more vital to your survival. You take chip damage, but you can recover that damage by attacking back at the enemy similar to the rally mechanic from Bloodborne. If you get hit before that, then that recoverable health is gone. If you don't want to take any damage at all then you'll need to master parrying. Simply block before getting hit to negate any damage and deal stun damage to the enemy. Build up enough stun from successful parries and charge attacks, then they'll fall over for a fatal strike. They'll be on their knees for a while so you'll also have a opportunity to heal, apply a buff, sharpen your weapon and so forth. This knocked down status applies to every boss and enemy, and it especially becomes a godsend in later fights where bosses hurt like Hell with long combo strings that, sometimes, feel they take too long. I get that it's more opportunities to parry and stagger them, but there have been times where I'm like "Can I have my turn now?" You can dodge through attacks, but that won't work with the red attacks. These ignore I-frames and are unblockable, plus they can only be countered by perfect parrying them (or physically moving out of way, but that's much harder when you can't utilize i-frames). It's always nerve-wracking when you see these attacks coming, as more often then not it's "Do-or-Die" when you see the red glow.
Weapons come in handles and blades, apart from boss weapons which are just a single weapon. These handles and blades can be assembled and disassembled to your liking. This allows you to utilize a weapon's moveset that you like but is otherwise lacking in damage with its current handle, or perhaps the blade has a fable art that synergizes well with your playstyle. Fable arts are this game's weapon arts, only that both the blade and the handle come with their own art. Some are big attacks, others help with blocking and defense, couple are buffs; but either way it's another factor to consider when building your Pinocchio (I wrote that, but I don't think they ever call the protagonist that). Ultimately whether you engage with weapon building is up to you, as your more then capable of playing this game with the weapons as they are when you first obtain them.
Not unlike Sekiro's prosthetics, you also have a cool mechanical arm that can do a variety of things. You got grappling hook, an exploding shield, landmines, a gun, flamethrower, or the default iron fist for quick left hook in the face. A lot of them aren't too exciting till they get upgraded, then they can deal some serious damage. Till then it can be easy to neglect them, but perhaps it's because I wasn't accustomed to using them at first.
A big thing to note is how linear this game is. While the world believable and makes positional sense, it is a straight line to the end. There are a lot of optional quests and smaller areas for loot and treasure, just don't expect to find anything too extravagant. I don't mind too much, I don't like missing bosses in FSARPGs, but if you get majorly stuck on a boss then tackling a different area or boss isn't an option. Most major bosses do have summonable NPCs if you are really struggling. I did used them a few times and they do take a lot of the stress off, plus the item used to summon them are everywhere. Makes me wonder if it was even necessary to put in that toll.

I don't have too much say on the story. I'm glad it's a lot more clearer of a plot then other souls-likes, even has characters that stick around for a while as you get to learn a lot about them. This means a lot to FSARPG fans, trust me. There's still a lot of lore notes and background details, but it's only there to get additional info on events rather then being the entire story. Also this is Pinocchio but the game really wants you lie at all times. I get the message, lies are part of what makes us human and this is a twisted version of the fairy tale. Writing this out, the theme of lying actually goes deeper then I thought as I think back at the ending, but of course that's spoiler territory.

So, do you like FSARPGs (I'm sure this will catch on in a few years)? Then give this game a shot. Maybe it doesn't do enough new and some aspects of it can cross the line of "Oh this is literally the same as Dark Souls", but as a action-RPG fan these kind of games are some of my favorites to play. They have just the right amount of push and pull with fantastic player expression that keeps me coming back over and over again.

I would also like to mention that the guide I was following put the clearly bad ending as the "Real" ending and now I am doing New Game plus to get the actually nice ending and it's been a few days but I'm still malding at this and... (EDIT: I got the good ending now. Still a good game)

I, for one, welcome the dev team for not being complete cowards by giving everyone an elephant form. Even at the risk of this being an... awakening of sorts for generations to come.

Mario Wonder sure is a 2D Mario game. Don't expect any massive shakeups to the formula, lest they risk their safe brand of near guaranteed success. Man, making a game to be enjoyable by adults and kids across the entire world sounds like a pain...
The big gameplay addition are Wonder Seeds, which can cause some wacky and amusing effects when found in a level. After a brief challenge you'll collect the seed itself, which are needed to progress through the game, and then revert the level to back to normalcy. Despite what the trailers may imply there isn't a unique effect for every single level in the entire game, but that'd give the impression that there aren't a metric buttload of Wonder Effects that infester every inch of this game. Some add a spin to the platforming with large set-pieces, some turn you into different creatures with their own mechanics, some will make the level harder, others will make the level effortless. I think what helps is that these effects, along with the levels themselves, are over before you know it.
They're a breeze in terms of challenge and length, which is definitely for the best as this is one of the longer 2D games. Not by much, but unlike past entries it doesn't seem possible to skip entire worlds to reach the end (whether it's from secret warp points or some worlds being completely optional). You still have a good amount of wiggle room at least. The Wonder Seed quota isn't too high to need to clear every level, plus you don't need to activate the Wonder Effect in most levels if you so wish. But the fast pacing may also be a result of the easy difficulty of this game. Between the brand new badges, the shop allowing you bulk buy 1-Ups, and the online system it's hard to get stuck on a single level for too long bearing anything in the post game.
Starting with badges, I feel they add a nice bit of player expression on how you want to play. You could increase your platforming abilities or you could make hazards be less lethal, but never both at once. While it would be awesome having a faster dash with a vine grappling hook as coins magnetize towards you, I think one badge apiece makes it a more important decision player as there's a lot to weigh; though you can change after every death if it isn't working out. For being the "Weird" Mario game, kind of wish there were more badges that do wacky or usless things. There's a couple that intentionally make the game more annoying or harder to play, and I kind of wanted to see more of them. Like maybe a badge that rotates the character you're playing every few seconds, or a badge that makes the character tiny; stuff like that.
I feel the shop is a good addition, albeit not executed as well as I would've preferred. It's namely the economy of flower coins, I almost never didn't have enough coins to buy every new badge or Wonder Seed at every shop. Granted I was being thorough with every level, maybe it's a bit more strict if you aren't the explorer type. Regardless I feel flower coins is one of the better motivators for exploration in these levels. Much better then the Star Coins at least.
Then you have what I feel is the most interesting addition, online. It's kind of like Dark So- GUNSHOTS.
While it makes the game even easier then it already is, online was a lot cooler then the previews made it out to be. Reviving players, who are total strangers, after they slip to their death only for them to save me moments later is such a simple yet effective method of comradery that fits with Mario's broadly-accepting tone perfectly. It's constantly picking each other backup from our mistakes with the only real benefit to you is that they might just return the favor. I had levels where people would stand at the end of a tough section and just wait in case someone fell, or sometimes they'd literally sacrifice themselves to revive a player whose timer almost ran out, or the funny moments where the potential savior missed and now both of them lost a life. I wouldn't say this alone made the game great, but if you're usually online adversed I'd recommend trying at least a few levels with it on.

In a interview posted on the Nintendo website, the devs gave an interesting run-down on their methodology, planning, and even a few scrapped ideas. One of the more interesting quotes to me came from when they were discussing the original Super Mario: "...Back then, everything was new and packed with unexpected delights. However, now that Super Mario games have been enjoyed by players for many years, those things have somehow become ordinary". This bizzare world of bouncing shells, coins from floating brick blocks, and clouds with happy faces has become very standard as time has progressed. Though not help by the 'New' series of Mario games that felt like menial extensions from the DS game, which in turn didn't push the envelope much from there (and the general overexposure of the brand). And frankly despite their best efforts I don't think they were able to recreate this sense of enchanting newness that they were hoping for. It feels like a different Mario, but it's still Mario. There's still bouncing shells and floating bricks, with flagpoles at the end of the course and mushrooms that make you grow in size. Nothing short of an utter overhaul of every aspect of Mario could come close to this ambitious goal. But at that point it may no longer be Mario anymore. Maybe the team should do something unrelated to Mario, but sadly our old friend capitalism will piss and shit itself if you're doing anything but the most safe and secured route to success. Doubly so if you are such a monolithic icon like Mario.
Still, to say they'd failed at being especially creative in this title would be foolish. Your mileage may vary on the quality of these additions, but if you can't change the inner core of what Mario is then altering the surface is the next best thing you got. The new visuals and expressiveness of the characters is a refreshing relief after diluted 3D models of the 'New' series. Little details go a long way in bringing the world to life. Goombas react in horror as you're about to stomp them. They will also sit down and stare annoyingly at the screen if they find themselves trapped in a one-block space. Enemies of all kinds have a great "Oh shit!" face when a speeding Koopa shell is about to smash into their faces. This game's love of music and rythym sections are quite possibly the highlight of this game's charm. The talking flowers...I actually really li- GUNSHOTS
The new power-ups are quite possibly the most solid additions to the repertoire thus far. Despite the elephants larger presence (I didn't even plan that pun) I feel no power outshines another. All have their use while being fairly unique in their utility. Maybe the fire flower is weaker by comparison, but it still has the speed and range to have its own niche. I dig the bubble flower having platforming utility, but it's much trickier to pull off compared to past mobility power-ups. You have to be quick to bounce off your bubbles and it feels good when you take shortcuts with clever usage. The drill is insanely fast, can take unique level routes, and is arguably the strongest in terms of how quickly it can kill enemies, but since you have to be approaching from below it may not always be ideal in certain circumstances. And elephants are both fun and funny to control. I like all their additional animations that account for their unique shape, such as when they lower their head slightly if the ceiling is just barely too low or their struggle getting in and out of pipes. Not sure if this unpopular, but the KO arenas were some of my favorite levels. I liked deciding what power-ups and badges to use in order to optimize my route. Being able to hold onto one power-up at all times really adds a lot to planning, whether you want to swap at a specific stage or if you'd prefer it to be more of a backup in case you took damage. The times to beat are just tight enough to push you into being more competitive to achieve all the rewards, while not being so tight as to be frustrating.

Based on what I've played in the past this is probably my new favorite 2D Mario. I'm still not as ecstatic about 2D platformers in general, I'm more of Action and/or RPG person, but I still came away feeling pretty positive about the whole thing. Mario Wonder is ambitious as a Mario game, but something that's truly out there and original will probably be only found in the indie scene. Still, I'm curious if they'll be able to top themselves next time that elevate this from a Wonder to Wonderful.

They not only have elephant Peach and Daisy, but also inflatable balloon forms of them too.
Wonder if they knew what they were doing