With discourse about the best version of Dark Souls II undergoing a small revival following a series of quite bad Youtube video essays, I decided to return to the original version of Dark Souls II for the first time since I first played it. Not only that, I played patch 1.00 with no DLC, whereas the first time I played it was post-Aldia patch, with all DLC. This is Dark Souls II in the raw.

And you know what? Pretty good! Probably a 7/10 rather than the 8/10 I'm giving it here, but the final patch with DLC is an 8/10 for me so there we go.

It's such an oddity of a game. The engine feels completely different to all other Souls titles. The physics are completely bizarre, game-feel is far floatier and clunkier, and the animations are far less accomplished. So many things in this game work completely differently to the others: fog gate, lever, door etc. animations have a couple of seconds where you're vulnerable to attacks, almost all healing occurs over time (even Estus, though it is faster than alternatives), ripostes are just strange, fall damage is done like any other damage type rather than as a percentage, i-frames are tied to a stat! I could go on.

This is not to mention all the strange experimental ideas that never returned, chief among them the new additions in NG+ cycles (and I'm not just talking about better rings here) and the Bonfire Aesthetics which allowed a player who's not really into the whole NG+ thing, such as myself, to appreciate these new additions.

While I could talk about the weirdness and flaws all day, I ultimately love Dark Souls II for these elements. It is completely unique within Souls, and for this reason I find myself returning to it quite frequently. It may not be the best in the Souls series, and in fact might be the worst, but the series as a whole is stronger for the variety it brings.

As for which is the best version, I think I have to go Scholar, though a few areas in the original are better for enemy placement.

The fact that this game feels borderline unplayable in a lot of respects is a huge shame considering the fact that it has a lot of pretty cool, interesting ideas floating around it. Adventure of Link is a game that simultaneously feels like a huge step forward and back for the series in a way that hasn't really happened too often, at least not to this extent. It's hard to deny the total gameplay overhaul that this went to when compared to the first game, being more akin to an action platformer with light RPG elements rather than a top down dungeon crawling adventure, which when combined with the much livelier nature of the world leads to something that feels tonally and atmospherically extremely distant from what was accomplished beforehand. However, I'd argue that despite being a bit more conventional in a lot of respects, it ended up losing a big portion of the more distinct identity that had been previously carved out, feeling as if it much more heavily relies upon NES conventions played straight and in the process immediately losing a lot of its appeal that then wasn't really replaced by something to make it worth the compromise.

The pacing and expected path of progression is an especially anomalous aspect of the experience, as despite being considerably more linear and direct, it feels extremely unintuitive in comparison despite the fact that there are so many more instances of the game attempting to guide you. The elements of obtuse and frustrating NES puzzles feel frequent to the point where almost everything felt like it was just begging you to look up what to do, with whatever contextual clues given being far too minor to actually expect people to know where to go. The world in general loses its appeal with the way that the sense of scope always feels as if it's being trampled on, with the top down overworld going for a more generalised, zoomed out approach that makes things feel more artificial while also removing a degree of detail from where the player is exploring. On the opposite end of this, making the towns take place in the 2D perspective all the time leads to the towns feeling very small and lacking in any sort of character, instead being an assortment of random NPCs and the same 3 houses copy pasted endlessly. This leads to the world feeling rather flat to explore, everything just feels like a game construct without any real sense of flair or framing to add a stronger sense of atmosphere or even a particularly notable aesthetic, and it just makes the player feel rather removed from the experience and makes the whole narrative of the world slowly falling back into the clutches of evil miss the mark.

The combat itself is the main point of contention to me with the way that it's easily the most conceptually interesting part of the game, yet also the most unpleasant thing going on. The enemy design is the main way this falls flat, with the blatant input reading combined with the overly fast, erratic patterns of them all making it feel like it's almost impossible to actually avoid taking damage. It's yet another case where the obstacles just don't feel suitably built around the capabilities of the player, and it's a shame, because with a few tweaks I could see this being really cool. The enemy design is conceptually really interesting for the way that basically all of them feel explicitly designed around the dynamics that could arise from the moveset of Link, with a couple of slower encounters even working really effectively with a good balance between attacking, defending and baiting enemies into leaving themselves open. I saw someone compare the dynamic to something akin to Punch Out and I honestly can see the bones of something like that going on here, especially with the iron knuckles, which just like most of the other enemies, really just has the pitfall of being waaay too fast and unreasonable to actually deal with without using some cheap tactics. The sheer endurance tests that tend to go along with this doesn't help either, especially when the difficulty curve has a mind of its own (death mountain directly after the first dungeon is ludicrous), making it that much harder to want to slog through any of it.

The dungeons also kinda suck for the most part even if I prefer some of them to how they were handled in Zelda 1, usually having a stronger sense of theming the kinds of challenges presented and there being a couple that had just the right amount of labyrinthine qualities to feel exciting to explore. Unfortunately, there's still too many times where you're just moving through these seemingly endless mazes of near identical looking hallways that basically necessitates either painful trial and error suffering or just looking up a guide. I didn't finish the game and frankly don't plan on ever doing that, but I feel like making it through the 4th palace before deciding to quit is enough to get a solidly informed opinion without outright suffering for another few hours. Really wish I could see some more modern takes on this style that just make everything feel a bit more reasonable and engaging to deal with, because this is super cool in concept but just falls absolutely flat when it comes to actually playing it, and it's not even conceptually interesting in ways that could be easily separated from the gameplay that would give me more positive thoughts on the matter.

Recommended by [maradona as part of this list! ]

As one of the key contributors to the brand identity of Sony’s gaming wheelhouse, Naughty Dog has centered itself as a pillar of prestige gaming, an ideologue pristinely focused on scavenging pop cultural landmarks on a relentless tear to put video games on a creative pedestal, sullying the individuality inherent to the medium in favor of some perceived notion of being considered “art”. Where we find the studio now, aping Indiana Jone’s blockbuster exploits in Uncharted and cutting surface-level highlight reels of post-apocalyptica in The Last of Us, exists primarily as a production house for wannabe-films in the name of cinematic gaming, but tracing back through the history of the developers work shows off a lost pedigree. Severed from the modern image of today, the Naughty Dog of the mid 90s was a beast cut from a different cloth, a proponent of the infamous Mascot Wars that defined the generation.

While the adage doesn't ring true today, the common knowledge of the 90s held that console exclusives and brand identity were the sword and shield brandished by the gaming industry. On the hallowed ground of internet forums, the nu-playground politics of the console war were waged equally in tech specs and pretty faces. By the time Sony entered the fray the battlefield was already established, with Sega and Nintendo locked in an eternal struggle for relevance. Competitors had risen, fallen, and been cast aside, but Sony remained as the last man standing against the twin behemoths. The dual-sided clash saw fit to tear the fate of the console market asunder, rendered desolate in the shockwave of mutually-assured destruction… Until he, the bearer of Sony’s curse, rose from primordial depths. Branded with the mark of enmity, the flag-bearer of PlayStation’s campaign cast a mocking shadow over the decade. Born into strife, with the serrated edge of the attitude era gripped tightly in his paw, Crash Bandicoot dug into his trench, grubby paws grasping for cultural leverage.

Mel Blanc-ian, a comic centerpiece made as much as a figurehead, Crash was the perfect scapegoat, an idol to cherish and ridicule in equal measure. A jester on the battleground of the modern technobandit, the mascot of yore breathed life into the indefinite scuffle that is brand identity. Becoming synonymous with genres and companies all their own, mascots, especially those in the realm of the mascot platformer, became analogous for not only the series and franchises they encompassed, but for the consoles they inhabited as well. Sega had Sonic, Nintendo had Mario, and Sony, fresh out the gate, had Crash Bandicoot, the mass-production beast forged by the wreckage of a thousand prototypes. The role, aside from poking fun at corporate rivals, was purely accessory, but as touchstones in the memories forged in the scorched earth of Gamefaqs forums, the mascot became an inescapable notion.

Years have since passed, and the Mascot Wars have drawn to the close. While some, the ever stalwart, cling to delusions of supremacy, the giants of the conflict settled into uneasy truces. With the three leaders co-mingling, interweaving, the tribalism of the past decades remains spoken in hushed whispers. Sega's great defeat in the Summer of 2001 saw the colossus fall, not by Nintendo's hand, or even by Microsoft's emerald super-soldier, but at the blade of Sony's masterwork, the PlayStation 2. With the fall of the esteemed leader, the war flickered, faded and died. However, for every victory, the heroes of the past are just as easily forgotten: with success coordinated in equal part by masters of tactical espionage and gods of war, the mascots that defined history were brushed away, hardened cynicism overtaking the endearing face of plucky spirit. Crash, Sly, Croc, even the maligned Gex, all shunned by the tides of time.

The era defined by the mascot has long since passed. Yes, false idols clammer to the throne, halls besieged by Hat Kids and Yooka-Laylees, but the original generation has faded, gussied up only to be showboated in recollections and remasterings. The soul, flickering against the growing cynicism of the game industry, now rests as post-ironic detached nostalgia.

…none of this has anything to do with the actual game of Crash Bandicoot, and that’s because there’s very little to say about Crash Bandicoot. Like any property in the 90s that uses the aesthetics of tribal villages, shockingly racist! Literally my only comment on the content of the game itself. ¯\(ツ)/¯

The NES is a system that becomes more interesting to really mull over the more time I spend thinking about games as something that are a holistic experience that can’t be neatly segregated into arbitrary boxes that you can each neatly explain entirely on its own terms. The idea of atmosphere being something that can fall into a separate category to gameplay or narrative for example, is one such example of the inherently flawed way at looking like games like this, rather than seeing them more as a selection of aspects of a title that all inform one another to become something greater than the sum of its parts. All this is to say, that for as janky and unintuitive as it could be in a lot of areas, the NES truly felt like the first home console which designers realised they had the capability to make something that was more than simply “fun”. While there are obviously games before the NES that were able to provide a more nuanced and complex take on games than what you’d typically find at the arcades on early PCs, especially with a lot of those early text adventure games, the NES realising this feels so significant due to it being from the first generation of home consoles to lean a bit heavier into this idea, the first system marketed towards such a wide audience that had a sizeable amount of developers transcending the boundaries they’d set beforehand rather than keeping it to a comparatively more niche crowd at the time. While there were still a lot of holdovers from the arcade era, with a lot of games still focusing intensely on polishing the more pure gameplay experiences, and not just the amount of early turn based JRPGs, but also ones like The Legend of Zelda.

The Legend of Zelda also presents the audience with one of the clearest pictures of the teething problems with transitioning into this different ideology too however, seeing this attempt at creating an expansive world to embody the spirit of freewheeling adventure while still finding one’s footing with an interactive adventure that focuses hard on the interactivity rather than feeling more like the player having to understand exactly what the game is wanting at all times with you simply guiding things along. It’s a tough balance and one that clearly has its elements that work and don’t in the context of this game specifically. There are so many abstract ideas floating around here that are not entirely utilised to their fullest potential, and yet there’s an undeniable creative focus that runs through the entire experience. The world might not be particularly lively, both with the repetitive enemy waves and the almost total lack of characters besides Link himself, but it’s still undeniable that not only does the world feel rather expansive, but there’s a very strong sense of freedom that it provides. The almost total lack of objectives other than the overarching goal of “collect the trifoce pieces and slay Ganon” is an especially worthwhile point of interest for crafting this feeling of freedom with how you approach the game, with very little being actively gated off by needing to accomplish other goals and more accomplishing these goals to get a more concrete sense of knowledge for how to approach certain secrets and puzzles.

The bits and pieces of direction that the game does provide tend to be quite nice as well in striking this balance between nudging you in the right direction without outright tearing you away from feeling as if the player is the one doing all the exploring and uncovering this mysterious world on their own. My favourite way this is done is as simple as numbering each of the dungeons as a way to ensure that the player doesn’t hit a late part of the game, struggle to it a lot, and then begin questioning whether they should be here, rather just straight up informing the player if they’ve gone a bit too far. While a more nuanced, organic approach is likely something that could work in a more modern title with a more conventional sense of how to approach game progression (in this case something that could be utilised in some interesting and effective ways), the fact that so many NES games were as blatantly unforgiving as they were means that this was a worthy compromise to make in order to make the experience as a whole less frustrating while still feeling like a very open experience. In regards to frustration, I’d say that people are often a tad too harsh about how obtuse this game really is, as while yeah, there are a ton of hidden areas that are completely unmarked that lead to secret areas and the like, none of them are actually required to progress and feel closer to additional bonuses towards those who are willing to spend the time to go insane with trying to uncover everything it has to offer. They’re definitely the kind of thing that could be conveyed better for sure, but it never feels intrusive towards the core gameplay, especially when you keep in mind that providing a player this huge area that felt like there could be cool secrets underneath every rock or bush was part of the point.

Outside of this, there are definitely a couple of hints that entirely fly past in ways that feel too out there, especially the infamous one where you need to feed the hungry monster a piece of meat to progress with basically no concrete hints anywhere of this being a thing to do, but a lot of it feels surprisingly intuitive as long as you operate under the logic of the game as opposed to how things would logically work in a more realistic setting. While it can all feel a bit abstract at points, it also feels very cohesive in how it’s presented, with each piece of information being something very tangible to work off of, with a lot only really making sense once you’ve already looked around and found the place to begin with. It feeds into this core design philosophy where the player is meant to explore and discover things for themselves, if you don’t know what something means, check places you haven’t before, try out weird ideas that vaguely resemble the hints given, don’t be stopped by fear of the idea not working, just give it a shot anyway. It’s a bit messy, but it’s undoubtedly both ambitious and something that’s executed way more cleanly than you might expect as long as you go in with the mindset of experimentation being key.

With all that said, while games clearly achieving their goals in certain respects is entirely admirable, it’s not the be all end all of the experience either, as there are a few frustrating points that rear their heads that make exploration feel far less enjoyable than it could be. The biggest issue is with the way combat is handled, Link simply doesn’t have the mobility required to make a lot of the encounters you’ll be facing feel particularly reasonable, and while the game gradually gives you more tools that can lead to slightly more offbeat thinking in how to deal with situations, it’s not enough to fix the fact that there almost feels like a fundamental disconnect between the abilities of the player and the obstacles placed in their way at times, especially on screens that can be flooded by projectiles or enemies that can’t easily be knocked back. This makes the exploration lose some of its lustre when basically every screen is full of the enemies too, sometimes being fun little challenges to take on as you’re progressing, but other times feeling closer to a frustrating hindrance that are there to get a few cheap shots in and not much else, with the attempts at populating the world with these dangerous creatures not entirely working effectively when you’ll be facing the same small group of enemies throughout, with a lot of the visual deviation ultimately being functionally identical, which ends up hindering some of that sense of discovery once you start predicting what’s coming up ahead without much of note beyond the journey to discover the secret to get to that point. Obviously the destination isn’t everything in these games, but when the destination is yet another dungeon that ends up throwing a few too many enemies at you without much to speak of in terms of unique design ideas, it does end up wearing out its welcome a bit. Also very much not a fan of only respawning with 3 hearts whenever you revive, basically makes the iconic sword beam less useful as the game progresses unless you’re willing to grind at basic enemies for a while or go back to a fairy fountain every time you die.

On the whole my thoughts on the first Legend of Zelda are a bit warmer than they originally were, but despite loving a lot of what’s done with the overworld and really encouraging the player to freely explore the world, the combat and dungeon crawling is absolutely infuriating a lot of the time, and there’s an unfortunate amount of time spent with that stuff, so it ends up making for a game I love conceptually, enjoy about half the time, and feel angry at the other half. Incredibly ambitious for an NES game, and one that gets a ton of things right, but it just becomes annoying by the end and it makes the last couple hours feel especially painful. Ton of respect, but that doesn’t always translate cleanly into how much I enjoyed or appreciated the experience of actually playing through it again.

Y'know Chrono Trigger? It's a true classic, but despite being a millennium-spanning, astoundingly scored, perfectly paced epic, it only contains a single line of dialog that I actually remember. There's a little girl standing in an item shop, who, when spoken to, simply exclaims: "Don't overdo it!"

In Earthbound, after Ness obtains the eight melodies, he's transported to Magicant, a realm constructed as a physical manifestation of his memory. This world isn't what you might think based on its premise. Instead of portraying flashbulb memories, the kind commonly believed to shape a person's psyche, the stuff in Magicant seems almost unimportant. We don't learn Ness's origin story, we learn about snowmen that he built and comic books that he read as a child. Magicant isn't filled with the memorable, but instead the arbitrary, a perfect encapsulation of the game it's contained in.

That's not to say Earthbound is forgettable in any capacity. For my money it's the single most enjoyable journey ever captured in a video game, but, amazingly, the sequence of events is hardly its most memorable aspect. Earthbound isn't one of my favorite games because of Buzz Buzz or the Runaway Five or Saturn Valley or Moonside or Dungeon Man or Giygas's incomprehensible attacks, but because of the stuff that happens in between. Video game comedic writing reached its pinnacle here, and yet the citizens of Eagleland hardly ever tell jokes. Instead, the game's humor primarily comes from unconventional word choice or sentence flow. Animals don't get defeated, they "become tame," enemies approach with their "cohorts," and instead of a game over, you "get your head handed to you." Crows are spiteful, moles play rough, flies are no-good, and mushrooms are ramblin' or even struttin'. A guy in the lobby of a Fourside skyscraper simply states "I'm an elite businessman who works in Mr. Monotoli's office" and it's somehow hilarious. Why would he tell me that? How is so so confident in assessing himself as elite? Wouldn't an elite businessman have anything better to do than stand around and talk to elementary schoolers? Earthbound is typically seen as a child's perspective of the adult world because of stuff like Onett's police force and the Happy-Happy cult, but I'd argue that this theme is more prevalent in its everyday text boxes. No matter how zany or off the cuff any line of dialogue is seemingly written, it's delivered in such a plain, matter-of-fact tone, like this is simply elite business as usual.

This juxtaposition of the absurd with the mundane is so integral to Earthbound that I'm genuinely baffled by those who complain about the game's habit of inconveniencing you. Actually, 'habit' is the wrong word here, because that implies it's not deliberate and that Earthbound doesn't take a great amount of pleasure in bringing itself to a screeching halt. In my Mother review I talked about that game's usage of practical jokes at the expense of the player, a concept that ends up being much more effective here, due to the increased scale. This time, it's established that you're the chosen one on a continent-spanning quest to eradicate the embodiment of evil from the universe, in other words, it's a typical JRPG. But, fans of typical JRPGs don't want to have to withdraw money from an ATM or rely on a deliveryman to store unwanted items. And for good reason, stuff like that would detract from the adventuring, the battling, the questing. Earthbound acknowledges this, and instead seems to question which side is more valuable, which side you're going to take home with you when all's said and done. What do you remember more? Actually fighting Master Belch, or having to stand still for three full minutes in order to get to him? Earthbound's soundtrack is, in my opinion, as essential as any in gaming, partly because of how much it embraces this theme. Hotel music that's eerie instead of welcoming. Desert music that's groovy instead of hostile. Christmastime music that's lonely instead of jolly. Maybe, just maybe, your own home sounds less like anyone else's and more like the overworld of your favorite Famicom game. What exactly DO we take away from our life experiences, anyway?

For having such a focus on inconvenience it's ironic that Earthbound features several quality of life elements that are still missing from modern JRPGs. Encounters that you'd be able to win in one turn are skipped from the overworld. Enemies avoid you once you've defeated the dungeon boss. Multiple normal battle themes. It doesn't feel like it should take an Orange Kid to figure this stuff out. Maybe an Apple Kid, but still. These improvements aren't the game's only twists on an established genre. Limited, character-specific inventories mean that you can't win battles just by hoarding a hundred potions and you're rewarded for taking the time to plan out who carries what. The rolling health bar creates legitimate panic moments where you're left scrambling through menus, trying to use Paula's dying breath wisely. Earthbound's battles are genuinely fun, but the game's sole blemish remains its inability to shake certain JRPG customs. There's too many abrupt difficulty spikes, too many obnoxious status conditions, too many painful dungeons. It breaks my heart, but I can't recommend the game to any and everyone like I can with a Chrono Trigger or with a Mother 3.

Earthbound has my favorite ending out of any, uh, thing ever. And as you might guess, this isn't because of Giygas, although trauma as the final boss of memory is particularly clever, but because of what transpires when he's been prayed away back to whatever dimension he came from. Any promise of a hero's welcome for saving the universe and stuff is put on hold while you're given your final task: walking home with Paula. Retracing your steps back to Twoson and then Onett and realizing that every single person along the way still has their own problems, their own stuff going on, their own lives outside of your little adventure, and the game's true focus becomes crystal clear. And then, Fuzzy Pickles. The cameraman is covertly Earthbound's biggest stroke of genius. Even if he wasn't reincorporated in any capacity, he wouldn't stick out. He'd just be another Mother-ism, a triviality that you may or may not find funny. But, as it stands, the reveal that his pictures decorate the end credits is the most vital part of the whole experience. For a game so insistent on questioning how and why we make memories, the realization that you've been doing it the entire time is the perfect conclusion. The importance of a good upbringing (i.e. a good MOTHER) has always been central to the series, but it's here where this thesis advances. If there's one thing to take away from Earthbound, it's that, while we do stand on the shoulders of giants, those giants may very well be a lot smaller than we realize.

Bottom line? It's the best one they is.

Dark Souls 2 is like trying a different seafood for the first time as a child. Sure, you love shrimp, maybe even some lobster, but now you're presented with a dish of softshell crab. You hesitate, it looks so raw in a way. After much hesitation and pushing from your folks you take a tiny bite, and reel at just how unfiltered the "sea" is in here. There's no shortcuts around it besides completely drenching the thing in butter and salt until it becomes a vehicle for it. But of course, it's only natural for a child to develop comfort foods and breaking habits is terrifying at any age, but it is eternally childish to then proclaim it's the least seafood of the dishes you ate simply because it challenges your expectations. I won't lie and pretend softshell crab isn't particularly raw or gamey when served by itself, but it's also not a particularly offensive flavor if you already enjoy seafood anyways.

So why do FromSoft Souls vets have such a hate boner for the only goddamn entry to have the balls to change something as fundamental as healing, despite begging for them to shake things up a little? Quit whining and eat your food, it's only as cold and unfresh as you let it be.

Bearer of the curse, how little self-awareness ye retained after offing the Lord of Cinder, despite speaking of its messages y' retained none. Go then, kill another 4-5 or what have ye, y've probably already forgotten the man who begged you to just remember his name...

-
Very belated update: There is now an exe-level Deadzone fix for PC, huzzah. https://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls2/mods/1200

I've beaten this game three times in the past two months and I'm still in absolute awe that it exists. Every single aspect of it is beautiful, unique, and nigh-perfect in its own way, and it comes together to be even greater than the sum of its parts. It's everything you could ever want from the medium. Every interaction with its world is as harrowing as it is fascinating; every screen and region is breathtaking in its beauty and grandness. It's unfriendly and humbling on every level, but also compelling in a way that little else is. It's fun, it's challenging, it's deeply immersive, it's endlessly replayable, it has an enormous skill ceiling, and it's hilarious to play with friends. Its story is deeply entwined with your gameplay experience and as such is cathartic and meaningful in a way that only games can be; it's complex and nuanced in the emotions it conveys, and as other reviewers have pointed out, it's an almost spiritual experience. It pushes the medium forward with its incredible AI and animation but also questions some of its most fundamental conventions - tight and responsive controls are forgone for floppy and physics-based movement, and its unfairness is a vital part of its themes.

I have a couple of nitpicks - the overabundance of carnivores (mainly in the mid-game) can push the believability of the ecosystem, and juking predators through pipe transitions can trivialize encounters in an overly gamey way - but Rain World is still about as perfect as games come, in addition to being a wholly unique and greatly affecting artistic experience. I don't think I'll ever be able to fully describe how good this game is, no matter how hard I try - you just have to play it. I mean, fuck, am I just supposed to play other games after this? Could you imagine playing Rain World and then picking up some tepid survival game with encumberment and temperature mechanics? I'll be counting the days until Downpour comes out.

Demon's Souls (PS5) is quite possibly the worst example of a remake ever. Bluepoint have completely misunderstood the complex emotions, atmosphere and vibe that makes the original such an incredible piece of art.

To understand why Demon’s Souls (PS5) fails as a remake, we need to look at the contexts in which we view souls games. The prevailing discussion around the soulsborne series categorises their sole existence as games that gamers play to show how good they are at games. This culture pushes away the capacity of discussion around the artistic merits of each individual game and instead pushes people to view the games on an entirely mechanical level. Because of this, the original Demon’s Souls is viewed entirely as a proto-souls, where its merits as a work of art are discarded because the only significance it has as a game is that it created the mechanical basis for “better” games.

While I plan to write another essay on why Demon’s Souls (PS3) is one of my favourite artistic statements in gaming later on, I'll summarise here what makes the original so special. Demon's Souls at its core is a game about human greed and power. We arrive into Boletaria after the main events of its downfall have already occurred and are effectively set to roam around the wastes, picking up clues of what happened along the way. To many Souls fans, the lorebuilding may feel comparatively tame in Demon’s Souls but I personally feel it works to its benefit, as the game expects the player to come to their own terms on what led to Boletaria's destruction. Demon's Souls (PS3) uses full advantage of the graphical standards and techniques of the seventh generation to create a dense atmosphere that feels in line with the circumstances of its world. Boletaria is shrouded by deep fog because the demons are killing the inhabitants of Boletaria to harvest their souls to be consumed by an entity named the old one. The old one was awoken by king allant while his kingdom was in prosperity because he felt that the outer kingdoms in the world needed to be put out of their misery, when they were simply impoverished and in need of support. This contextualises the game’s dense (and arguably limited) foggy graphical style as the direct outcome of the atrocities that happen at the expense of the king’s hubris.

Meanwhile, Demon's Souls (PS5) sheds the visual style of the original to create nothing more than a showcase of modern hardware. Where once was a very uniquely grim colour palette of muted oranges, greens and very occasionally blue is now grey with a bright blue filter over literally everything. The nexus in PS3 is gorgeous, the walls are very abundantly textured, the lighting is subdued and golden runes adorn the floors, which I feel excellently conveys the nature of this being a long forgotten temple existing as an ethereal plane. On the other hand, PS5’s nexus just blasts you with beams of blue light coming from the roof of the structure, with the golden runes now being a weird orange LED colour rather than the ornamented look of the original. Areas in the remake massively suffer from having the lights look like RGB gamer lights than actual lights, which makes any area that tries to contrast two colours with each other look much gaudier than it should. Another horrible example of this is the Dragon God fight, where the pure red hellish look completely annihilates the visual distinction that the fight was trying to make with its contemporaries in the original in exchange for a generic western fantasy volcano area aesthetic. I think the only area that looks visually appealing in the entire game is the outside of Stonefang Tunnel, where the dusty oranges work in the favour of the atmosphere of the level although this is extremely brief and is ruined by the game's lighting of bloodstains and messages.

The UI of Demon’s Souls (PS5) is maybe the most indicative of where Bluepoint have gone wrong artistically. PS3's UI and HUD are extremely unique as far as games go. The font is skeuomorphic to the writing that would actually exist in world. It comes off as incredibly charming and it’s something that only the original Dark Souls (bar remastered) has attempted in the series since. In addition, the textured grey bars of the menus fit extremely well with the overall artstyle of the game. even the muted red they picked for the selection bar fits the palette in a very dulcet manner. The hud itself also fits the game perfectly. it's adorned with these strange silver demon signs which feel like they represent the resurrective pact you have been inflicted with. Meanwhile, PS5’s UI and HUD goes for a modernised, minimalist approach. it’s hard for me to even say anything about it without becoming enraged, this design choice feels like it exists entirely to appeal to the crowd of Playstation fanboys that think completely uncritically about a game unless it has a woman or LGBT person in it. The font in PS5 looks genuinely disgusting, it’s like they tried to reach a middle point with choosing between a fully minimalist sans serif and something like the original but ended up going with one of those original Google Docs ones. The hud elements have flat outlines and colours that massively contrast with the game's visuals. it adds to the visually overwhelming nature of the remake which is kinda oxymoronic to the intent of the minimalist design.

One of the fundamental reasons why Demon’s Souls would need a remake is quite honestly the combat. I personally adore it, but it is very clunky and jank and thus doesn’t really allow the general souls audience to engage with the game. This is why I think Bluepoint’s decision to keep combat entirely the same is absolutely baffling. it causes the animations to look horrible with the modernised models and it leaves the game worse off in all aspects. The choice to limit moongrass storage is in theory a good change, but it doesn’t really do anything to alter the game’s flawed healing system and instead just adds more grinding to the game. Bluepoint had the opportunity to do so much more with the combat, to speed it up or to at least rework a few elements but they instead did absolutely nothing.

Finally, I'd like to talk about the audio of both games. Demon's Souls (PS3)’s ost is my absolute favourite of the series. Shunsuke Kida focuses on the ways melody can evoke certain emotions in boss fights to excellent effect, which is made much more potent by the smaller orchestra giving a feeling much more intimate than the other souls games’ soundtracks. As is tradition with this remake, Bill Hemstapat's rearrangements are such an insane downgrade that it’s hard to really understand the thought process behind the choices here. These arrangements feature a larger orchestra with an immense amount of reverb over them that dissociate any emotion or feeling from the tracks at all. For example, the character creation theme in PS3 is a polyphonic and smooth textured synth based composition (unique from the rest of the ost) that gives a very calming, ethereal vibe. On the other hand, PS5 replaces the synths with piano, strings and vocals which just makes the composition lack the solitary and ethereal vibe that made it special. The voice acting of demon’s souls (PS5), while not always as egregious as the other elements of the game, does ruin the ending of the remake entirely. In PS3, when you beat King Allant he says his line in a very solemn tone that feels incredibly impactful knowing his circumstance. Meanwhile in ps5, he sounds like he’s pushing his throat up in order to sound like a muppet. It is maybe the worst attempt at a line read I have ever heard, the fact they put it in the game is absolutely baffling and indicative of how little they care for the emotional clarity of the game.

Demon’s Souls PS5 has ruined a game I hold dear to my heart and the fact it will probably be viewed and used as the main archival for the game (even probably coming to PC at some point) is a tragedy.

For the first hour or so of playing Jet Set Radio, I was fully considering dropping the game soon after. Fortunately I ended up sticking with it, because with a bit more time I finally started to see this as an absolutely fantastic little experience. At its core, JSR is also a game that felt as if it allowed me to better understand certain dichotomies between the game design approach between Nintendo and Sega and how they were able to cultivate a lot of experiences that felt remarkably distinct, each with their own pros and cons to them. While Nintendo tended to approach games largely from the perspective of having a player understand the majority of the game's systems immediately and intuitively to make for something inviting and accessible, Sega consistently seemed to more go for the approach of "Hey, the first few hours of this are going to suck but once it clicks it's the best stuff ever". This feels especially true for this game however, as getting into it proves to be a bit rough due to the control scheme feeling incredibly loose and difficult to handle, with a wide turn radius and a constant sense of momentum that means you can't immediately slow down making it really difficult to start off with as even the most simple obstacles feel like fighting against the game. However, with a bit of time, once you get used to it all, it becomes increasingly clear how so many of the mobility quirks that you have lend themselves perfectly to the level design.

For a movement system that practically requires the player to be getting a bit of a running start to properly gain momentum and actually reach a lot of higher locations, not to mention maintaining this speed for a pretty long time whether you want to or not since rollerskates just tend to do that, it needs to be complemented by level design that supports this, and here's where Jet Set Radio largely shines. Grind rails, secret areas and just your general avenues of traversal tend to be spaced out in such a way where you can flow naturally from one location to another as long as you have a general idea of where everything is. Jumps are spaced in such a way that you'll be finding yourself effortlessly perfectly positioning yourself to barely slow down after a while, it goes from something that feels like it's fighting against the player to something that feels incredibly intuitive, but then also satisfying due to the player knowing how much they had struggled at first to make even the most basic of manoeuvres. It all contributes to a feeling that the game is less interested in seeing you merely beat the stages, and instead wants you to absolutely master them.

This idea of mastery continues to be represented through the way that the enemies within the game are handled, initially seeming like pointless distractions that serve to frustrate and slow you down, but actually being utilised as a clever way to further force the player to understand the levels and plan their routes carefully from the start. Because the intensification of enemy waves is based exclusively off of how many spots you've tagged without the time taken having any bearing, planning is a far more important step to the game than it first lets on, to the point where once you figure out how to approach getting around a stage, the pacing can often feel rather leisurely, with even the most intense waves still being easily managed due to the remaining targets being simple to reach nonetheless. So many elements that initially seem like a hindrance to the Jet Set Radio's experience ultimately prove to contribute to the core gameplay loop in an incredibly organic way to the point where you'll often feel as if you're just being let loose without any real sense of overbearing guidance, even though the game is really nudging you in the right direction for the entire duration.

This reaches its peak with the rival battles thrown throughout the game, that either make you race against someone or just follow what they do, which doesn't only often lead to you being taught about certain tricks to make getting around easier, one example being sliding across walls for extra height, but you'll often be taught about little shortcuts as well. These end up feeling exciting not only because you're being taught about so many things that were always there that you probably just didn't know about, but it all links back into making replaying those stages later all the more satisfying as you once again get to entirely redefine your route with these new tricks and passages in mind, feeding into the remarkable replayability that the game has. Of course, despite all of this, it's still hard to deny that the best aspect of the game for me is just how much insane style it has to it, with the colourful, cel - shaded art making every area be filled to the seams with so much charm, bringing life to what could've potentially been a dreary urban sprawl. The art is further complemented by Hideki Naganuma's amazing soundtrack that takes a lot of cues from instrumental hip hop and the big beat scene to make for one of the coolest OSTs to a game out there, with even the occasional lulls in quality still carrying such a strong vibe to carry the game's aesthetic up into the stratosphere.

On the whole, while I cannot fault anyone who plays this game and hates it for the way you control your character, it not only is a system that progressively feels better the more you play, but the design of the levels and encounters themselves is absolutely incredible in how it perfectly balances between knocking the player around and silently guiding them into feeling like they're pulling off some absolutely insane stunts. While I already love the game, it's also another case where it almost feels built to be replayed a bunch, and those small annoying moments that appear from time to time are nowhere near enough to tank the experience by very much. Definitely worth a shot especially if you love its aesthetic, and even if you've played it and didn't like it very much, honestly give it another small shot, you might be pleasantly surprised.

Truly one of the most underrated generations in the history of Pokemon. Imagine my plight when I found out that you can't say a single good thing about this game without the terrifying elitist fanbase reminding you that there is a sludge pokemon or a magnet pokemon. I think this really speaks to the tragedy of the lovely region of Kanto, doomed to never be more than the default from which the franchise has turned its back on in order to progress to further pastures. That being said, since it's the Pokemon series, it can't have progressed too far, so even going back now, it ends up being a pretty nice JRPG.

The concept is the same as always, just stripped down to the basics. This comes with a lot of benefits. Don't like Fairies for being too OP? Well they're gone! Want to ban boots or rocks for being too centralizing? Good news! Sick of the Gen 1 pandering? You can't pander to yourself!

One of the greatest benefits is to the Pokedex. A lot of the Pokemon here may seem plain and uh, pretty bad by modern standards, but all the epic mechanics tend to make them much more fun to use in game. Something like Arbok can spend an eternity stunlocking the opponents to death, which may be boring, but is certainly better than whatever it's been doing nowadays with all its sub 100 stats (was gonna say sub 90 but i think one of the new gens buffed its attack by a pretty inconsequential 10 points).

The general power progression is also quite neat. Getting fun moves like Dig or Body Slam way too early reeks of good game design, with the developers giving you the reins to really do dumb stuff, like Dark Souls probably I've never played it but I gotta shout it out right? There really is something viscerally fun about just breaking the difficulty design like this, or say by using a Moon Stone mon. The closest the series ever came to this was the similarly beloved Sword and Shield with the TR system, but that felt a bit grindy and kinda weird for being outside the main progression. But then all the TMs you do get on the main path are garbage like Snore? Seriously? You get rid of Tail Glow, Jump Kick, Assist, and Snatch but this 50 power and only use when asleep guff is worth keeping in?

Not sure where to go from here, but the inventory system sucks. Sorry I can't gas this one up, I guess.

Another benefit to the ingame experience is the groundbreaking non linear nature. Unlike the games which ruined the series, Gold and Silver, as well as their mediocre remakes, the level curve keeps up its pace well enough. The experience is great to customize to fit your own playstyle, such as when I played a monobug run and strategically chose to fight Koga before Erika because ???. The only real level trifles come up in the Elite Four being a pretty big spike, but their movesets are probably bad enough to let you get away with being in the low 50s if you're an epic Pokemon trainer.

Overall, there's just something fascinatingly awful about these games, which is just what makes them so lovable. For a 1996 Game Boy game, Gen 1 is honestly astounding. It must have been a real miracle getting this game to run, so I do feel like there's something off with brushing it aside as "bad glitch psychic op" game. While it kicked off the series, there never really was a generation as odd as this one. Even the out of place real world references make this gen feel like it's in its own little bubble. And in that little bubble, sitting down to experience what started an absolute phenomenon, I find myself enjoying this weird little game with my team of game exploiting creatures, and it's a blast.

I mean... best gen ever besides the almighty gen 5, which introduced Simisear so honestly isn't even fair to compare it to!

In 2020, the Walt Disney Company released “Into the Unknown: Making Frozen 2.” A six part documentary series detailing the trials and tribulations of making Frozen 2. I never saw the actual movie but I think a lot about the documentary. The series tries to clean up the appearances of production, making the process appear seamless and careful. But they always manage to let slip various telling details about the film’s creation. They reveal how cool animations and songs were built before they built the plot, even up to the final months before release. There’s this… naivety in their tone. They gleefully discuss with each other if THIS will be the new Let It Go, completely blind to just how creativity hollow they come across. No one did a bad job, they were all putting in incredible effort. But they were laser-focused on creating the next Big Cash Cow Beloved Success Like Frozen. Not a single person is ever thinking about how to make a new story.

I don’t think the team behind Final Fantasy 8 is as bad as that, really. There’s clearly an intent here to move forward and evolve the franchise. They’ve discovered a new art style and dynamic for its characters. They’re continuing to build complicated political dynamics for the backstory of the world. They’ve polished up their minigames and created a genuinely genius card game with Triple Triad. There’s a genuine passion for these characters and their lives.

At the same time, it’s hard to escape the shadow of FF7. Squall is very much a new Cloud, albeit with a bit more self-awareness than Cloud had. Rinoa is very much a new Aerith, albeit with an arc that shifts into much stranger directions. The supporting cast aren’t copies of other characters, but there’s also not a lot of details into their personal lives when they aren’t on screen. They don’t get complete arcs like FF7 characters do. The memory shenanigans introduced in Disc 2 are nowhere near as developed or thematically important as FF7, but they just sort of decide to take a swing at doing that plot. It vanishes just as quickly as it’s introduced. The villain is introduced with the same overwhelming power and presence of Sephiroth but ends up nowhere near as developed. We never really get to sit down with the Sorceress and be like “hey. What’s going on. Why are you doing this?” We just sort have to guess at what happened to her from context clues. All these half-baked repetitions of old ideas just sort of vaguely stumble around the narrative, taking away from the main ideas.

It’s when the game is embracing that original imagery to create new ideas that it truly seems to soar. While FF8 repeats the FF7 journey into space, they commit so hard to the insanity of “monsters come from the moon” that it wraps around to incredible again. The climatic drama of Squall and Rinoa’s reunion with each other in Disc 3, even as chaos spins down into the Earth and their subsequent heart to heart, is genuinely one of the most gorgeous images I’ve ever seen in gaming. It truly won me over on a couple I felt somewhat neutral on for most of the game. The entire final dungeon and the extremely surreal events around it is a genuine delight and it showcases the real ambition the development team possessed. The entire time travel concepts it throws at you are so completely wild and weird that I wish the game committed more to that weirdness. The story is such a slow burn and so focused on Squall that it takes a while for those bold ideas to come to fruition.

FF8 is really an internal game above all else. For as much as I was initially annoyed by Squall kinda being Cloud 2, the truth is that you get to understand Squall’s internal process earlier than Cloud. Cloud’s a quiet guy. Squall is too, which is why his inner monologues are so essential to his character. You can watch him shift and change and justify himself. It’s genuinely engaging! The problem for me is that Squall’s monologue is so present, we never quite get a look at the internal workings of anyone else except Rinoa and Laguna.

Speaking of which, Laguna is just delightful. I’m sure it’s not a hot take that many people prefer him to Squall. But what makes Laguna work is the fact that his life is constantly falling apart, over and over again, yet he still tries to maintain his good cheer and optimism. You just get moments of a guy’s life. It’s nice.

I talked about the problems with the villain, but Seifer is genuinely a fascinating weirdo. He's a mess of a person who's fixated on the what he thinks he deserves and the delusion he feeds to justify that mentality. He sort of escapes unharmed by the story's end, but at that point its better for everyone that he just goes to retire and become a sad fisherman.

The gameplay is… weird. The Junction system takes a lot of getting used to and I think there has to be a way to pull it off without making me spend so much time in menus. I get the sense that the goal was for players to use magic and MP more. But in action, tying that to your stats means I’m still not using magic. I don’t want my stats to go lower. And then the leveling up system means that the enemies frequently overpowered my lower leveled allies no matter where I was. I generally played FF7 and FF9 remasters on their own terms. But with 8, I eventually had to give in and keep the remaster's invincibility mode on full time just to survive the full game.

I dunno! The whole game is messy and complicated, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Disc 2 and early Disc 3 felt like an arduous slog that I genuinely considered dropping, only to drastically improve post-Esthar and Disc 4. I wanted more and less from this game. I'll probably deciphering my feelings on it for a while. At the very least, I can say they took some swings and some of them landed.

the common sentiment that people voice about kingdom hearts is that "i can't take this seriously, mickey mouse is there." and that is a sentiment that, as a twenty four year old woman with a job and a lot of social commitments and a bit of well-earned cynicism all culminating in the abstract of having Shit To Do (as well as one who believes the walt disney company to be actual, corporeal evil), i wholeheartedly agree with. but i think that it's commonly expressed from the wrong place, or at the very least from a place that lacks the perspective you kind of need to look at kingdom hearts from.

so like, yeah, there's disney shit in here and looking at it with an adult brain it might be a bit difficult to reconcile that with the melodrama and the convoluted lore and that Special Vibe that only Kitase's crew is capable of, but like. i played kingdom hearts when i was six or seven years old, i didn't know that it Wasn't Cool to make mickey mouse into a political figurehead and i sure as hell didn't know what the hell "tonal clash" was. any differences were reconciled purely by my imagination and a willingness to simply go with it and be taken away - and once again, there wasn't really any publisher willing to go for it with their stories and concepts the way squaresoft was in their final years of operation. kingdom hearts is in many ways a complete encapsulation of that squaresoft philosophy of going as far as you possibly can with your ideas no matter how self-indulgent, wacky or dumb they may be, and that's something i really appreciate and a big part of why i cherish what i consider to be the two definitive examples of that, chrono cross and final fantasy viii.

on top of all of that i think the idea of taking all of the silly kid's movie stuff and putting serious storytelling on top of it and trying to inject it with meaningful ideas on dualism and pseudo-intellectual jungian imagery and incredibly (perhaps a bit TOO) sincere displays of intense emotional vulnerability is like, a pretty perfect encapsulation of what kingdom hearts is fundamentally about at its core; that is to say stolen childhoods and lost innocence.

at the end of the day it's a narrative about a bunch of kids who are being manipulated within or otherwise tossed adrift into plans and greater schemes that they don't really know much of anything about and have no reason to know anything about. they're just kids. you can read this as being part of a greater statement on abuse or trauma or just growing up or something, but what's important is that it's saying something losing one's childhood and that meant something to me even if i didn't realize it, as somebody who even at the tender age of six-or-seven was terrified of growing up and was desperate to cling onto what little childhood i had left. again, taking something so innately childish and injecting it with Serious Stuff is a perfect culmination of that idea.

i haven't touched this game (or KH2, which was my favorite as a wee thing) in years and i'm not sure i will, but that's okay, it's not something that's really meant for me anyway. sure, kingdom hearts is schlocky and a bit embarrassingly self-indulgent sometimes and the concept is a bit too ridiculous for me to stomach even now as i've developed a taste for over-the-top chuuni shit (i like tsukihime for christs sakes). but that's fine. it's not for me, it's for six-or-seven year old me and meant to be experienced through a worldview that i'm just not capable of putting myself into anymore.

growing up sucks, and it's important to cherish the innocence of being a kid for everything it's worth, even when that's actively being taken away from you - if not by outside forces then by the passage of time itself.