Azdiff
2023
This is the game I've been waiting for ever since I really started to understand the mechanics of Super Mario Sunshine as a kid. The 3D Mario games have always been more or less unmatched in terms of movement in a 3D platformer; right from Mario 64, you have what, seven different types of jumps? Plus the slide? Other 3D platformers didn't even deign to try for that kind of complexity in their movement. Even Nintendo stepped away from that complexity for Super Mario Galaxy, and didn't really return to it until Odyssey. And as much as I love those Mario games, I've always wondered what could be if you took that movement into a different place. I wanted to see a game that really demanded you understand everything you can do with that movement, instead of just letting you play with it as a little treat. A game that builds that movement into its very being.
Pseudoregalia is basically that. Or at least, it's the first version of that I've seen; for all this game's successes, it's also a game that really opens my eyes as to what could be. And given that this is developer rittzler's first "major" release (defining "major" as "it's on Steam", I guess), I'll bet that this game opened their eyes as well. (I'm very much keeping my eyes on their next game, Electrokinetic.) But right out the gate, they got the movement—what I imagine to be the hardest part—right. Every type of jump feels good to use, the options feel intuitive, and understood exactly how I could use each option to get where I wanted to be. A few of the options are basically lifted right out of Mario 64, and they feel just as good here. The one that I really love is this game's wall jump, which is actually a mid-air kick that gives you momentum in a direction you choose, which results in a jump if you hit a wall. This lets you aim back at a wall, giving you a little more control over how you want to use it. This is the realization from Mario I'd been waiting for; countless times in Mario I would wall jump off of a wall that was slightly too tall for me to scale, trying to fade back to get that little bit of extra height to get me over the edge. Or I would try to wall jump in a corner, even though the angles weren't really in my favour. There's creativity all over Mario's movement, and sometimes the exact situation I described would actually work. But usually it didn't, because the levels weren't built for you to be able to do that. Pseduoregalia's are, and so the mechanics give you that particular kind of freedom to match.
Which brings us to the second-hardest part that this game succeeds at: making levels that enourage players to use those movement options. It's tricky; to make a Metroidvania—a 3D Metroidvania, no less—based around movement means that there are inevitably going to be opportunities where it looks like a player can do something, but they actually need a powerup. But you also want that ambiguity, because otherwise the movement's not actually any fun; it's just lock-and-key stuff without any opportunity to actually be creative. I won't say that Pseudoregalia always gets the balance right, but I think the general approach here is correct: err on the side of ambiguity. There are a few sections where I tried, without success, to get past an area I simply didn't have the tools for. But that's okay, because this game is structured in such a way that I didn't even know if something I needed was beyond there. And the game is not so punishing that I felt like I was supposed to do insane feats to complete the game, so I knew there was probably something somewhere else I could use. By the same token, there was an entire somewhat difficult area that would've been a lot easier to traverse if I had an ability I missed earlier in the game, but I still made it through by just being clever with the abilities I had. I thought that was pretty cool.
The game's lack of clear direction is a fair point of contention with some; you're never explicitly told what you're even supposed to be doing in this world, much less where to go. There's no map, and the (well-realized, non-trivially Undertale-esque) low-poly art direction results in a lot of rooms lacking distinctive features. It's very easy to get lost. But I liked that approach for this game. For one, the game's movement options make it so that it's quite easy to navigate the world (especially later in the game), so trying to get back to a familiar location to reorient yourself isn't a huge deal. It's also a relatively small world for a small game (I beat it in a little under 6 hours), so there's not that much to actually learn. With the difficulties mitigated, I liked spending the time to learn where I was and try to figure where I could go and where I hadn't been. Eventually you can start to figure out what you're actually supposed to be doing, and from there things click into place pretty easily.
The rest of the game's aspects—combat, story, whatever—didn't really impress me, but they're also not given much priority in this game. I certainly didn't come here for them, and as it stands they most exist to break up the rest of the action. Fine by me! This game succeeds at something we should have gotten literal decades ago, and it does so in a way that doesn't feel perfunctory. It's not so simple as "Mario 64 Metroidvania", and you can feel dozens of very specific design choices that went into this. I'm so happy I got to play this, and I can't wait to see where rittzler goes from here.
Pseudoregalia is basically that. Or at least, it's the first version of that I've seen; for all this game's successes, it's also a game that really opens my eyes as to what could be. And given that this is developer rittzler's first "major" release (defining "major" as "it's on Steam", I guess), I'll bet that this game opened their eyes as well. (I'm very much keeping my eyes on their next game, Electrokinetic.) But right out the gate, they got the movement—what I imagine to be the hardest part—right. Every type of jump feels good to use, the options feel intuitive, and understood exactly how I could use each option to get where I wanted to be. A few of the options are basically lifted right out of Mario 64, and they feel just as good here. The one that I really love is this game's wall jump, which is actually a mid-air kick that gives you momentum in a direction you choose, which results in a jump if you hit a wall. This lets you aim back at a wall, giving you a little more control over how you want to use it. This is the realization from Mario I'd been waiting for; countless times in Mario I would wall jump off of a wall that was slightly too tall for me to scale, trying to fade back to get that little bit of extra height to get me over the edge. Or I would try to wall jump in a corner, even though the angles weren't really in my favour. There's creativity all over Mario's movement, and sometimes the exact situation I described would actually work. But usually it didn't, because the levels weren't built for you to be able to do that. Pseduoregalia's are, and so the mechanics give you that particular kind of freedom to match.
Which brings us to the second-hardest part that this game succeeds at: making levels that enourage players to use those movement options. It's tricky; to make a Metroidvania—a 3D Metroidvania, no less—based around movement means that there are inevitably going to be opportunities where it looks like a player can do something, but they actually need a powerup. But you also want that ambiguity, because otherwise the movement's not actually any fun; it's just lock-and-key stuff without any opportunity to actually be creative. I won't say that Pseudoregalia always gets the balance right, but I think the general approach here is correct: err on the side of ambiguity. There are a few sections where I tried, without success, to get past an area I simply didn't have the tools for. But that's okay, because this game is structured in such a way that I didn't even know if something I needed was beyond there. And the game is not so punishing that I felt like I was supposed to do insane feats to complete the game, so I knew there was probably something somewhere else I could use. By the same token, there was an entire somewhat difficult area that would've been a lot easier to traverse if I had an ability I missed earlier in the game, but I still made it through by just being clever with the abilities I had. I thought that was pretty cool.
The game's lack of clear direction is a fair point of contention with some; you're never explicitly told what you're even supposed to be doing in this world, much less where to go. There's no map, and the (well-realized, non-trivially Undertale-esque) low-poly art direction results in a lot of rooms lacking distinctive features. It's very easy to get lost. But I liked that approach for this game. For one, the game's movement options make it so that it's quite easy to navigate the world (especially later in the game), so trying to get back to a familiar location to reorient yourself isn't a huge deal. It's also a relatively small world for a small game (I beat it in a little under 6 hours), so there's not that much to actually learn. With the difficulties mitigated, I liked spending the time to learn where I was and try to figure where I could go and where I hadn't been. Eventually you can start to figure out what you're actually supposed to be doing, and from there things click into place pretty easily.
The rest of the game's aspects—combat, story, whatever—didn't really impress me, but they're also not given much priority in this game. I certainly didn't come here for them, and as it stands they most exist to break up the rest of the action. Fine by me! This game succeeds at something we should have gotten literal decades ago, and it does so in a way that doesn't feel perfunctory. It's not so simple as "Mario 64 Metroidvania", and you can feel dozens of very specific design choices that went into this. I'm so happy I got to play this, and I can't wait to see where rittzler goes from here.
It's fine, you know, whatever. It's a slim, action game Final Fantasy XIV quest line that's slightly cheaper than a month's sub costs. Chase some jagoffs around, do a dungeon with exactly three (3) bosses and some trash mobs in between. Whether that sounds compelling is entirely up to you. But man, a little bit of distance makes this gameplay so much less compelling. Too much of this game relies on liberal usage of a generous dodge and managing a handful of cooldowns, done in the exact same way for every enemy. By the end of my main playthrough, I'd chosen a set of abilities that I thought were fun. (Basically revolving around using Lightning Rod and Zantetsuken to make the most out of a stagger.) There was really no point in me trying to iterate on that for a 2-3 hour DLC, and I just kinda did the same thing over and over. Coming to this after recently playing through Kingdom Hearts II, where you have to constantly change your strategies even for some basic encounters, really puts this into focus.
The biggest buzzkill was the first time I staggered the DLC's main boss. I had a Zantetsuken locked and loaded, a Lightning Rod there to cause extra hits and damage, and a Diamond Dust ready to juice up the damage multiplier. (It can go higher in the DLC than in the main game!) I pulled those off, then used Gungnir to prep a second Zantetsuken. But as I watched the animation play out, I realized that I wasn't actually doing any more damage. I'd forgotten! There's hard locks on how much damage you can do, because the fight has to transition to the next phase, make sure you see all the dramatic set pieces.
They are cool set pieces, no doubt. The fluidity and spectacle of some of that boss's animations did leave me awestruck in a couple of cases. But the animators' hard work gets highlighted over the work that I'm trying to put into to enjoy this thing; that all the effort I'd put into doing extra damage meant absolutely nothing. I had to play by the game's timeline, and I just don't know why I'd even bother trying to have fun with the game's mechanics at that point.
There is a lot to like about the main game, but this DLC mostly dragged into focus the things I don't like about it all that much. It's just an extra dungeon with a not-particularly-good story and a boss that cost a lot of money, but doesn't feel very different from any other boss in the game. It feels slightly like an obligation, just something they did because that's what you do with AAA games these days. Presumably the second DLC—which I will play, because I'm an idiot—will be a bit bigger, a bit tastier, will at least have a few new abilities to play with. This just kinda felt like a waste of everyone's time.
Also—small spoiler here—can I just say that rearranging the Omega theme from FFXIV is kinda tacky? They've used it enough times in its original game alone, don't really need to use it here, too. Not even a particularly good arrangement. Bleh.
The biggest buzzkill was the first time I staggered the DLC's main boss. I had a Zantetsuken locked and loaded, a Lightning Rod there to cause extra hits and damage, and a Diamond Dust ready to juice up the damage multiplier. (It can go higher in the DLC than in the main game!) I pulled those off, then used Gungnir to prep a second Zantetsuken. But as I watched the animation play out, I realized that I wasn't actually doing any more damage. I'd forgotten! There's hard locks on how much damage you can do, because the fight has to transition to the next phase, make sure you see all the dramatic set pieces.
They are cool set pieces, no doubt. The fluidity and spectacle of some of that boss's animations did leave me awestruck in a couple of cases. But the animators' hard work gets highlighted over the work that I'm trying to put into to enjoy this thing; that all the effort I'd put into doing extra damage meant absolutely nothing. I had to play by the game's timeline, and I just don't know why I'd even bother trying to have fun with the game's mechanics at that point.
There is a lot to like about the main game, but this DLC mostly dragged into focus the things I don't like about it all that much. It's just an extra dungeon with a not-particularly-good story and a boss that cost a lot of money, but doesn't feel very different from any other boss in the game. It feels slightly like an obligation, just something they did because that's what you do with AAA games these days. Presumably the second DLC—which I will play, because I'm an idiot—will be a bit bigger, a bit tastier, will at least have a few new abilities to play with. This just kinda felt like a waste of everyone's time.
Also—small spoiler here—can I just say that rearranging the Omega theme from FFXIV is kinda tacky? They've used it enough times in its original game alone, don't really need to use it here, too. Not even a particularly good arrangement. Bleh.
Disclaimer: I’m no pro, but I’m also not total trash. I hover around Platinum in the ranked mode, for whatever that’s worth. Basically means I'm not an idiot, but I'm nowhere near being able to make the most of the game's mechanics. So take my opinion accordingly.
Anyway, this is likely the closest a non-Smash platformer fighter has come to being a great game since Rivals of Aether. Well, Rivals is a great game; this isn't quite there, but it's close. It’s got a lot of the same audiovisual issues that plague literally every platform fighter other than Smash, and ultimately its balance and characters doesn’t feel quite as tightly-knit as Rivals (to say nothing of the level of developer support). But things are a little dire out there for platform fighters right now. The last two big attempts at this, the first NASB and MultiVersus, were (at best) well-intentioned messes that very quickly fell apart. Smash Ultimate’s meta has gone to some rough places. Brawlhalla has found plenty of success, though I’m not convinced anyone actually likes the game. Any other would-be contenders like Rushdown Revolt and Fraymakers are having trouble getting off the ground. NASB2 is the first time in a while that one of these games has felt like it had a bit of juice, managing to feel good and successfully push some new ideas into the genre; it’s good, definitely scratching that Smash itch in the way that other games have not. Until the likely-excellent Rivals 2 releases next year, I’ll happily take this.
The first NASB fell victim to, well, a lot of things (namely self-sabotage from their own publisher). But purely from a design perspective, the big problem was that it tried to implement a few too many original ideas, most of which seemed to be just thrown in there without a larger design philosophy in place. The RPS mechanic where certain strong attack directions beat others didn’t actually introduce much strategy; cargo throws are inherently janky; blocking just felt awkward; airdashes quickly led to Rivals hitfalling with extra steps, resulting in a high-APM 0-death fight that wasn’t particularly fun for anyone. All of those options (except for the quite good teetering mechanic) have been walked back to more standardized options akin to Smash, and the game feels much better as a result. (No coincidence that some of the unique options in Rivals are also moving towards the same Smash baseline; Sakurai had a lot of this stuff figured out from the beginning, and has had a lot more time to iterate on the rest.) In the first game, it too often felt like I was fighting against the mechanics; the more standard baseline here gives me a natural baseline where I can better figure out how the rest of the game works. If you’ve played any amount of competitive Smash, regardless of which entry you play, you can hop in here and figure things out pretty easily. Everything feels like it should, with enough unique ideas that the game feels like its own thing.
This game’s big “innovation”, of course, is the slime meter, a mechanic they just borrowed from fighting games. (Which, unoriginal as it may be, it’s surprising it took someone this long to do it. I’ll certainly take it over most of the ‘original’ ideas I see from most platform fighters!) The parts of it that work feel great. Canceling attacks allows for a lot of variety in combo game and advantage state, opening the doors for creativity; meter also builds fast enough that you don’t have to feel like you’ve wasted something if your attempt at improv doesn’t quite work out. The game feels well designed around using the slime-boosted special attacks for recovery, letting you out of sticky situations for a cost. (Some of the unique effects on slime specials are really neat, too; having two variations on each one feels great.) The game really encourages proper use of meter while also leaving a lot of room for experimentation; I walk away from each play session with new ideas to implement for the next time I hop on, and that’s what I ask for more than anything from a fighting game.
That said, there are two elements of the slime meter that I don’t like, both kind of lazily borrowed from fighting games. This game includes a burst mechanic akin to Guilty Gear, managed by the same slime meter as the rest of the kit. Burst works in traditional fighting games because odds are, if you can land the combo once, you can find another way to get damage that still gets you to the same result. In NASB2, burst tends to come out in critical situations that would normally lead to a character dying; you burst when the kill move comes, which can often come out of a confirm that was difficult to land and might not come across as easily, especially if the character fell out of the window for the confirm. It feels too much like a get-out-of-jail-free card, especially because it’s so much harder to bait in this game. You often can’t just pause and block the burst like in a traditional fighting game; confirms are generally more committal, especially if you’re in the air and can’t get back to where the opponent is. Slime presents so many more unique ways to get out of bad situations in this game that burst feels a little cheap, a little too easy compared to the other things you can do.
Similarly, the supers you can do with three bars of slime meter too often gets used for cheese. Like in traditional fighters, these are invincible super attacks that deal a lot of damage (and can lead to kills in this game; basically Final Smashes if they were standardized across the cast to just be cutscene moves that do the same damage and knockback). The key difference is that it’s far more difficult to confirm into them effectively, since startup is slow and there are no moves that would cancel into it without using the meter you need to actually perform the move. What results is a lot of wake-up supers or supers randomly thrown out to punish attempts at spacing a move. It also seems like whiffed supers are basically unpunishable? Lots of invincibility and you can act seemingly immediately after. When someone has three bars and the other person is at kill percent, it feels too often like the game revolves trying not to get hit by that specific option. It feels bad robbing and it feels bad getting robbed.
Doesn’t help that the supers look and sound kind of ugly. Part of the appeal of a super in any fighting game is the pure visual spectacle that goes with it, and that’s hard to convey in a mid-budget game like this. Even landing my own supers, I find I’d like to just hit the “skip cutscene” button. This is of course a problem that spreads across the whole game, but also the entire genre; Smash is to this today the only one of these things to be given a proper AAA budget, and its enormity and attention to detail makes newcomers feel like they have to play catchup and stretch to make their game a little bigger than it really should. The details suffer as a result. Animations don’t line up clearly with hitboxes, moves look like they’re done when they’re not (and vice versa), strong moves don’t have enough impact, it’s difficult to tell when you’re out of hitstun. There’s not a ton of variety in the sound effects—a lot of softballs hitting foam padding—and they generally sound limp and underwhelming. (In fairness, the sound thing is one I’ve only seen Smash excel at.) These presentational things make a noticeable impact on the gameplay; more clarity means it’s easier to intuit what’s happening on the screen, and too often I find myself saying ‘wait, what happened?’
Of course, a game based on Nickelodeon properties also comes with the added burden of appealing to casuals, which inevitably draws away the money into other ventures. The first game completely whiffed that, with a terrible arcade mode and no voice acting at launch. (And when they did add voice acting, I kinda wished they hadn’t.) This game does a much better job with the presentation, and even includes a roguelite campaign mode featuring newly-recorded dialogue from all of the characters. It’s not a great campaign, but how many fighting game single player modes are? This is a problem that plagues the entire genre, and even giants like Capcom fumbled with their well-intentioned-but-kind-of-miserable World Tour mode in Street Fighter 6. Literally the only platform fighter with good single player content is Melee. (Subspace Emissary sucked.) So I will say that I wish all of the money funneled into the campaign was instead spent on fully polishing the sound and visuals, but I understand why the money meant where it did. Though I wonder how much that actually translates into sales? Are a lot of people picking it up mainly for the single player content?
Ah, whatever, not my business. I don’t even really care about representation in the roster; I’ve only ever spent much time with two of the properties represented here, and I don’t feel particularly strongly about either one of them. (Though I get the sense that some of the weirder ‘90s output might be worth looking into.) I’m just interested in how they play. I do wish that some moves and entire characters weren’t so obviously pulled from Smash characters (Granny/Falcon, Nigel/Puff, Garfield and Tigre shines), though I understand why they do that; Smash has taken most of the good ideas for moves already (and even it’s plagiarized itself a few times now), and trying to come up with something fresh at this point often means coming up with something inferior. And ultimately they use those stolen moves as window dressing for more unique core ideas. Most characters have a hook that makes them fun or interesting to play as, and ultimately feel distinct from characters in other games. Mecha-Plankton has Terry’s Burn Knuckle, sure, but his hybrid heavy/zoner/grappler approach is a concept I haven’t seen before. Donatello has Cloud and Sephiroth’s upairs, but otherwise doesn’t zone the way a typical swordie in Smash does. Even Korra—a fairly straightforward brawler who borrows moves from Fox, Mewtwo, Ganondorf, Bayonetta, Joker, and Terry—keeps things fresh between the various elemental effects her kit provides. (She’s the character I’ve been playing the most.) There’s definitely some issues across the roster—some of the high-concept characters are underwhelming in practice, heavies are a little too annoying to fight—but those are the kind of things they can iron out in patches.
Inevitably, such patches will eventually render chunks of this review will become irrelevant. Likewise for the development of the game’s meta, although at this point I’m skeptical of any platform fighter that isn’t Smash or Rivals having a meta that lasts longer than a few months. But I do think this is the first time that a new contender has the juice to last long enough to leave an impression. Until these past few years, it was weird how no one was even trying to get a proper platform fighter going; since then, it’s been weird how hard it seems to get one to even feel like a full game. But with this and the forthcoming Rivals 2, things are looking up. Maybe we can finally get a few others to earnestly throw their hat in the ring.
Anyway, this is likely the closest a non-Smash platformer fighter has come to being a great game since Rivals of Aether. Well, Rivals is a great game; this isn't quite there, but it's close. It’s got a lot of the same audiovisual issues that plague literally every platform fighter other than Smash, and ultimately its balance and characters doesn’t feel quite as tightly-knit as Rivals (to say nothing of the level of developer support). But things are a little dire out there for platform fighters right now. The last two big attempts at this, the first NASB and MultiVersus, were (at best) well-intentioned messes that very quickly fell apart. Smash Ultimate’s meta has gone to some rough places. Brawlhalla has found plenty of success, though I’m not convinced anyone actually likes the game. Any other would-be contenders like Rushdown Revolt and Fraymakers are having trouble getting off the ground. NASB2 is the first time in a while that one of these games has felt like it had a bit of juice, managing to feel good and successfully push some new ideas into the genre; it’s good, definitely scratching that Smash itch in the way that other games have not. Until the likely-excellent Rivals 2 releases next year, I’ll happily take this.
The first NASB fell victim to, well, a lot of things (namely self-sabotage from their own publisher). But purely from a design perspective, the big problem was that it tried to implement a few too many original ideas, most of which seemed to be just thrown in there without a larger design philosophy in place. The RPS mechanic where certain strong attack directions beat others didn’t actually introduce much strategy; cargo throws are inherently janky; blocking just felt awkward; airdashes quickly led to Rivals hitfalling with extra steps, resulting in a high-APM 0-death fight that wasn’t particularly fun for anyone. All of those options (except for the quite good teetering mechanic) have been walked back to more standardized options akin to Smash, and the game feels much better as a result. (No coincidence that some of the unique options in Rivals are also moving towards the same Smash baseline; Sakurai had a lot of this stuff figured out from the beginning, and has had a lot more time to iterate on the rest.) In the first game, it too often felt like I was fighting against the mechanics; the more standard baseline here gives me a natural baseline where I can better figure out how the rest of the game works. If you’ve played any amount of competitive Smash, regardless of which entry you play, you can hop in here and figure things out pretty easily. Everything feels like it should, with enough unique ideas that the game feels like its own thing.
This game’s big “innovation”, of course, is the slime meter, a mechanic they just borrowed from fighting games. (Which, unoriginal as it may be, it’s surprising it took someone this long to do it. I’ll certainly take it over most of the ‘original’ ideas I see from most platform fighters!) The parts of it that work feel great. Canceling attacks allows for a lot of variety in combo game and advantage state, opening the doors for creativity; meter also builds fast enough that you don’t have to feel like you’ve wasted something if your attempt at improv doesn’t quite work out. The game feels well designed around using the slime-boosted special attacks for recovery, letting you out of sticky situations for a cost. (Some of the unique effects on slime specials are really neat, too; having two variations on each one feels great.) The game really encourages proper use of meter while also leaving a lot of room for experimentation; I walk away from each play session with new ideas to implement for the next time I hop on, and that’s what I ask for more than anything from a fighting game.
That said, there are two elements of the slime meter that I don’t like, both kind of lazily borrowed from fighting games. This game includes a burst mechanic akin to Guilty Gear, managed by the same slime meter as the rest of the kit. Burst works in traditional fighting games because odds are, if you can land the combo once, you can find another way to get damage that still gets you to the same result. In NASB2, burst tends to come out in critical situations that would normally lead to a character dying; you burst when the kill move comes, which can often come out of a confirm that was difficult to land and might not come across as easily, especially if the character fell out of the window for the confirm. It feels too much like a get-out-of-jail-free card, especially because it’s so much harder to bait in this game. You often can’t just pause and block the burst like in a traditional fighting game; confirms are generally more committal, especially if you’re in the air and can’t get back to where the opponent is. Slime presents so many more unique ways to get out of bad situations in this game that burst feels a little cheap, a little too easy compared to the other things you can do.
Similarly, the supers you can do with three bars of slime meter too often gets used for cheese. Like in traditional fighters, these are invincible super attacks that deal a lot of damage (and can lead to kills in this game; basically Final Smashes if they were standardized across the cast to just be cutscene moves that do the same damage and knockback). The key difference is that it’s far more difficult to confirm into them effectively, since startup is slow and there are no moves that would cancel into it without using the meter you need to actually perform the move. What results is a lot of wake-up supers or supers randomly thrown out to punish attempts at spacing a move. It also seems like whiffed supers are basically unpunishable? Lots of invincibility and you can act seemingly immediately after. When someone has three bars and the other person is at kill percent, it feels too often like the game revolves trying not to get hit by that specific option. It feels bad robbing and it feels bad getting robbed.
Doesn’t help that the supers look and sound kind of ugly. Part of the appeal of a super in any fighting game is the pure visual spectacle that goes with it, and that’s hard to convey in a mid-budget game like this. Even landing my own supers, I find I’d like to just hit the “skip cutscene” button. This is of course a problem that spreads across the whole game, but also the entire genre; Smash is to this today the only one of these things to be given a proper AAA budget, and its enormity and attention to detail makes newcomers feel like they have to play catchup and stretch to make their game a little bigger than it really should. The details suffer as a result. Animations don’t line up clearly with hitboxes, moves look like they’re done when they’re not (and vice versa), strong moves don’t have enough impact, it’s difficult to tell when you’re out of hitstun. There’s not a ton of variety in the sound effects—a lot of softballs hitting foam padding—and they generally sound limp and underwhelming. (In fairness, the sound thing is one I’ve only seen Smash excel at.) These presentational things make a noticeable impact on the gameplay; more clarity means it’s easier to intuit what’s happening on the screen, and too often I find myself saying ‘wait, what happened?’
Of course, a game based on Nickelodeon properties also comes with the added burden of appealing to casuals, which inevitably draws away the money into other ventures. The first game completely whiffed that, with a terrible arcade mode and no voice acting at launch. (And when they did add voice acting, I kinda wished they hadn’t.) This game does a much better job with the presentation, and even includes a roguelite campaign mode featuring newly-recorded dialogue from all of the characters. It’s not a great campaign, but how many fighting game single player modes are? This is a problem that plagues the entire genre, and even giants like Capcom fumbled with their well-intentioned-but-kind-of-miserable World Tour mode in Street Fighter 6. Literally the only platform fighter with good single player content is Melee. (Subspace Emissary sucked.) So I will say that I wish all of the money funneled into the campaign was instead spent on fully polishing the sound and visuals, but I understand why the money meant where it did. Though I wonder how much that actually translates into sales? Are a lot of people picking it up mainly for the single player content?
Ah, whatever, not my business. I don’t even really care about representation in the roster; I’ve only ever spent much time with two of the properties represented here, and I don’t feel particularly strongly about either one of them. (Though I get the sense that some of the weirder ‘90s output might be worth looking into.) I’m just interested in how they play. I do wish that some moves and entire characters weren’t so obviously pulled from Smash characters (Granny/Falcon, Nigel/Puff, Garfield and Tigre shines), though I understand why they do that; Smash has taken most of the good ideas for moves already (and even it’s plagiarized itself a few times now), and trying to come up with something fresh at this point often means coming up with something inferior. And ultimately they use those stolen moves as window dressing for more unique core ideas. Most characters have a hook that makes them fun or interesting to play as, and ultimately feel distinct from characters in other games. Mecha-Plankton has Terry’s Burn Knuckle, sure, but his hybrid heavy/zoner/grappler approach is a concept I haven’t seen before. Donatello has Cloud and Sephiroth’s upairs, but otherwise doesn’t zone the way a typical swordie in Smash does. Even Korra—a fairly straightforward brawler who borrows moves from Fox, Mewtwo, Ganondorf, Bayonetta, Joker, and Terry—keeps things fresh between the various elemental effects her kit provides. (She’s the character I’ve been playing the most.) There’s definitely some issues across the roster—some of the high-concept characters are underwhelming in practice, heavies are a little too annoying to fight—but those are the kind of things they can iron out in patches.
Inevitably, such patches will eventually render chunks of this review will become irrelevant. Likewise for the development of the game’s meta, although at this point I’m skeptical of any platform fighter that isn’t Smash or Rivals having a meta that lasts longer than a few months. But I do think this is the first time that a new contender has the juice to last long enough to leave an impression. Until these past few years, it was weird how no one was even trying to get a proper platform fighter going; since then, it’s been weird how hard it seems to get one to even feel like a full game. But with this and the forthcoming Rivals 2, things are looking up. Maybe we can finally get a few others to earnestly throw their hat in the ring.
To be honest, I’d kind of (perhaps naively) assumed that Nintendo was done with 2D Mario. The Super Mario Maker series, alongside the artistic stagnation of the New Super Mario Bros. games, indicated to me that Nintendo were admitting they were out of innovations. Mario Maker gave the ROM hackers and wannabe level designers the framework and mechanics of some of the greatest games of all time and said, “it’s in your hands now.”
But it was silly to assume that was the end; of course there was gonna be more. There will always be more Mario. They just needed a little more time to cook this one up. Quite honestly, the biggest innovation is that they made a 2D game with 3D models that actually looks good. It shouldn’t have taken this long, because the solution was obvious even back when New Super Mario Bros. so garishly debuted in 2006; just animate the models like they’re 3D sprites! It’s a little more complicated than that, of course, but the prominence of key frames is what makes the game look so great, combined with a lively, overdue redesign of the core Mario cast.
The game’s too easy, you say? Well, ignoring whether or not that statement is actually true—while it’s certainly easier than the classic titles, I wouldn’t call it frictionless—who cares? There’s more to Mario than just precision jumps and dodging obstacles. I think anyone who’s played and enjoyed a Mario game in the last 15 years, which have largely been on the easy side, should know this. Nintendo has shown an unparalleled skill for coming up with a concept, giving players fun little ways to interact with that concept, and designing an entire level out of that. The Wonder Flowers are the next logical evolution of that, giving you a little detour to subvert your understanding of the level. A difficulty spike would often detract from that; the titular sense of wonder can’t be achieved without also having some level of comfort with what’s happening on the screen. Likewise, difficulty is most fun when it’s placed within a set of established rules; this game intentionally throws the rules out the window when it can.
Not to suggest that the Wonder Flowers are some kind of revolutionary game mechanic that completely upend the 2D platformer; they’re not too different from some of Rayman Legends’ more inventive levels or even some of the better ideas scattered across the more level-oriented 3D Mario games. The mechanics presented in the Wonder Flower sections are usually not particularly interesting in themselves, and oftentimes they could have easily been slotted into the level without some discrete trigger activating them. The enjoyableness of them comes from the surprise, the shock when you say “I’m walking on the background now?” or “damn, Mario’s going up, up, oh God, he’s in space now”. Actually doing it is only fun on a basic level, but the game’s excellent visuals and the novelty of what’s happeneing elevate these sections just enough to the point that they’re that earn the exact length they’re given. This does make it a little disappointing every time an idea repeats; the second time Mario started walking on the background elicited a muted “oh, this one again”. It’s still fun, because basic motion in Mario is always fun, but it’s fun in a more perfunctory way.
That’s fine, though, because they never overstay their welcome, and most of the game is still basic Mario platforming. That stuff’s all great: running and jumping feels tight; both new and returning enemies and environments constantly give small, fun interactions; the little goodies hiding around each level are well-placed challenges. Very often the game dangles a fun prospect in front of you, and it always lets you act on that and finish it up immediately. This is where some people might call the game too easy, but to me, this is just a steady stream of new, fun things to do. It’s not worse game design, it’s just different design.
Still; I admit I wanted a little more depth sometimes, because for all the creativity Nintendo displays in these level designs, they rarely offer the player the chance to be creative in return. The big promise here is the badges, which you can equip for one unique ability that you can use throughout the level. (Actually, it goes beyond promise to insistence, given that this stupid little bug following you around never misses a chance to ask you if you’d like to change your badge.) With these varying options, each player’s experience with a level could become unique as they use the badges to overcome challenges in interesting ways. Yet this plethora of options clashes with the “wonder” of the level designs, which are usually structured in a very particular way that can’t be altered. Besides, each section has to be designed to be completed without a badge, and even all of the collectables can be obtained pretty easily without any help. (They could be, but in context with the rest of the game’s philosophy, I’d rather just get my treat when I see it, instead of returning to the badge pool to see what would help.) It means that you have to find your own fun with the badges, do your own invisible challenge runs and whatnot. That’s fine for some badges, but most of them are not so unique that they significantly change your understanding of the game. You can’t really do much with the grappling vine or the spin jump unless the architecture is designed to make them interesting, which simply isn’t the case outside of the unique badge challenges. (Though of course, the final final level was a wonderful challenge that uses all of the badges.) Replaying a level with a different badge is not a radically new experience; maybe traversing a specific obstacle is easier, but that’s not interesting. What the badges usually just feel like is a method of cheating, of choosing not to engage with the level’s mechanics and figuring out the path of least resistance. It’s not as fun as it really could be if levels were designed with more player freedom in mind.
But I understand that’s no easy feat, especially within the confines of a relatively tight 2D platformer like the Mario games. It’s easy to sit here and say I’d like something like Super Mario Galaxy 2’s Green Stars, where secret collectables were placed within a level that was not designed around them, requiring players to figure out their own answer instead of finding the One True Solution. (Odyssey’s multiplayer Balloon World is another great iteration of that idea.) But implementing that into a 2D space means rethinking what they look like entirely (at the very least with more space), at which point they effectively stop being a Mario level. Nothing wrong moving past the established Mario format, of course, but I don’t see Nintendo taking such a big leap; at least not yet. They could very well be laying the groundwork for a Mario Maker 3, where I’m sure creative designers could achieve great things. Or maybe they’ll surprise me with the seemingly inevitable Wonder 2. (They’ve already talked up how many ideas they left on the floor with this game, which suggests a direct sequel akin to Galaxy 2.) But for this game, I understand exactly why and how they did everything, and I can’t say I find fault in their logic. I put my time into it, and I don’t think I’ll reach back for it as readily as many of the series’ other titles. But some games are perfectly fine without needing to devote yourself to; sometimes you just want a tasty little treat, and this game gives you plenty.
But it was silly to assume that was the end; of course there was gonna be more. There will always be more Mario. They just needed a little more time to cook this one up. Quite honestly, the biggest innovation is that they made a 2D game with 3D models that actually looks good. It shouldn’t have taken this long, because the solution was obvious even back when New Super Mario Bros. so garishly debuted in 2006; just animate the models like they’re 3D sprites! It’s a little more complicated than that, of course, but the prominence of key frames is what makes the game look so great, combined with a lively, overdue redesign of the core Mario cast.
The game’s too easy, you say? Well, ignoring whether or not that statement is actually true—while it’s certainly easier than the classic titles, I wouldn’t call it frictionless—who cares? There’s more to Mario than just precision jumps and dodging obstacles. I think anyone who’s played and enjoyed a Mario game in the last 15 years, which have largely been on the easy side, should know this. Nintendo has shown an unparalleled skill for coming up with a concept, giving players fun little ways to interact with that concept, and designing an entire level out of that. The Wonder Flowers are the next logical evolution of that, giving you a little detour to subvert your understanding of the level. A difficulty spike would often detract from that; the titular sense of wonder can’t be achieved without also having some level of comfort with what’s happening on the screen. Likewise, difficulty is most fun when it’s placed within a set of established rules; this game intentionally throws the rules out the window when it can.
Not to suggest that the Wonder Flowers are some kind of revolutionary game mechanic that completely upend the 2D platformer; they’re not too different from some of Rayman Legends’ more inventive levels or even some of the better ideas scattered across the more level-oriented 3D Mario games. The mechanics presented in the Wonder Flower sections are usually not particularly interesting in themselves, and oftentimes they could have easily been slotted into the level without some discrete trigger activating them. The enjoyableness of them comes from the surprise, the shock when you say “I’m walking on the background now?” or “damn, Mario’s going up, up, oh God, he’s in space now”. Actually doing it is only fun on a basic level, but the game’s excellent visuals and the novelty of what’s happeneing elevate these sections just enough to the point that they’re that earn the exact length they’re given. This does make it a little disappointing every time an idea repeats; the second time Mario started walking on the background elicited a muted “oh, this one again”. It’s still fun, because basic motion in Mario is always fun, but it’s fun in a more perfunctory way.
That’s fine, though, because they never overstay their welcome, and most of the game is still basic Mario platforming. That stuff’s all great: running and jumping feels tight; both new and returning enemies and environments constantly give small, fun interactions; the little goodies hiding around each level are well-placed challenges. Very often the game dangles a fun prospect in front of you, and it always lets you act on that and finish it up immediately. This is where some people might call the game too easy, but to me, this is just a steady stream of new, fun things to do. It’s not worse game design, it’s just different design.
Still; I admit I wanted a little more depth sometimes, because for all the creativity Nintendo displays in these level designs, they rarely offer the player the chance to be creative in return. The big promise here is the badges, which you can equip for one unique ability that you can use throughout the level. (Actually, it goes beyond promise to insistence, given that this stupid little bug following you around never misses a chance to ask you if you’d like to change your badge.) With these varying options, each player’s experience with a level could become unique as they use the badges to overcome challenges in interesting ways. Yet this plethora of options clashes with the “wonder” of the level designs, which are usually structured in a very particular way that can’t be altered. Besides, each section has to be designed to be completed without a badge, and even all of the collectables can be obtained pretty easily without any help. (They could be, but in context with the rest of the game’s philosophy, I’d rather just get my treat when I see it, instead of returning to the badge pool to see what would help.) It means that you have to find your own fun with the badges, do your own invisible challenge runs and whatnot. That’s fine for some badges, but most of them are not so unique that they significantly change your understanding of the game. You can’t really do much with the grappling vine or the spin jump unless the architecture is designed to make them interesting, which simply isn’t the case outside of the unique badge challenges. (Though of course, the final final level was a wonderful challenge that uses all of the badges.) Replaying a level with a different badge is not a radically new experience; maybe traversing a specific obstacle is easier, but that’s not interesting. What the badges usually just feel like is a method of cheating, of choosing not to engage with the level’s mechanics and figuring out the path of least resistance. It’s not as fun as it really could be if levels were designed with more player freedom in mind.
But I understand that’s no easy feat, especially within the confines of a relatively tight 2D platformer like the Mario games. It’s easy to sit here and say I’d like something like Super Mario Galaxy 2’s Green Stars, where secret collectables were placed within a level that was not designed around them, requiring players to figure out their own answer instead of finding the One True Solution. (Odyssey’s multiplayer Balloon World is another great iteration of that idea.) But implementing that into a 2D space means rethinking what they look like entirely (at the very least with more space), at which point they effectively stop being a Mario level. Nothing wrong moving past the established Mario format, of course, but I don’t see Nintendo taking such a big leap; at least not yet. They could very well be laying the groundwork for a Mario Maker 3, where I’m sure creative designers could achieve great things. Or maybe they’ll surprise me with the seemingly inevitable Wonder 2. (They’ve already talked up how many ideas they left on the floor with this game, which suggests a direct sequel akin to Galaxy 2.) But for this game, I understand exactly why and how they did everything, and I can’t say I find fault in their logic. I put my time into it, and I don’t think I’ll reach back for it as readily as many of the series’ other titles. But some games are perfectly fine without needing to devote yourself to; sometimes you just want a tasty little treat, and this game gives you plenty.
1991
One of the tightest Final Fantasy games, at least in its original SNES incarnation. (Maybe others, too, but I get the sense that some of the other versions dilute the experience with all the extra Stuff.) It’s true that this is a ‘less developed’ Final Fantasy; they hadn’t quite figured out how to make the best of the SNES hardware graphically or auditorily, and there aren’t as many sidequests or battle options as later games would hold. But I’d argue that’s actually what makes it great. Some of the later Final Fantasy games have a tendency to bite off a bit more than they can chew, giving you a plethora of party members with a host of unique abilities that ultimately don’t actually change how you play the game. They suggest depth that I often find isn’t actually there when you’re looking for it, and on that front FFIV is a little more honest. Here’s a game where every character has a defined role, where your party is strictly dictated by the story, that has about three side quests in the entire game (all of which take place very late into the story). The game gives you a limited set of tools, and leaves you to figure it out.
You could also say some of those things about previous Final Fantasy games—FFII is very linear, aside from its weird leveling system—but this, of course, is kind of where the series comes into itself; at the very least, this is as close as you can get to a platonic Final Fantasy game. The first three were all fairly different in ways that didn’t really stick, but this is the real baseline that the series worked from for a while. No job changing or Espers or materia; your characters’ options are all pretty straightforward, and the only real innovation in the formula, ATB, is the only one that actually stuck around essentially unchanged in multiple games. Square leaned into the simplicity for this game, and let different scripted combinations of those mechanics guide each dungeon into a unique experience that I found later games to lack.
A party of Dark Knight Cecil, Rydia, Rosa, Edward, and Yang feels very different from a party of Paladin Cecil, Kain, Cid, Rosa, and Yang; each combination has a different set of AoE attacks, healing abilities, magical attacks, weapon types, and skills. Even fundamentally similar characters, like Rydia and Tellah, function very differently because of their spells and MP pools. Tellah has much stronger spells, but you won’t use them as much during the course of a dungeon, because he has so little MP; Rydia has a lot more MP, but the only attacks that really do anything for most of the game are her high-cost summons that are overkill on most enemies. And over time, those perceptions of the characters change; by the end of the game, Rydia’s summons are useful in general enemy encounters, but they’re also strong enough that you want to save MP for any tougher fights you come across. Some parties have more physical power; some parties give you so many frail characters that you have to put one on the front lines, exposing them to more danger.
This feels like a very conscious effort on Square’s part; characters in the game fake-die so often that it becomes obvious that they’re just trying to come up with a reason to make a new party. (This comes at the expense of the story, which largely stops giving its characters anything interesting to say or do after Cecil’s admittedly striking opening arc concludes with his grand transformation. However: they do ride to the moon on a whale. So that’s pretty cool.) Enough of the dungeons have a unique hook or set of enemies that you have to adapt your play to each area, as well. The Magnetic Cave requires you to unequip all metal weapons, which essentially changes the role of each character in your party for a dungeon (before jerking them back into place for the boss); the Sylvan Cave is rife with status effects and monsters in chests, making it a more difficult test of endurance and item/MP conservation; the Lunar Subterrane has an entire section where regular enemies are minibosses. Not every idea comes off perfectly, and they sometimes verge on annoying, but they always made me think and reconsider my situation given the tools that I had.
I appreciate that constraint; in later Final Fantasy games, the boundless freedom to do any party makeup I want usually means I’m just going to do the same thing every time. (Usually 1-3 physical attackers, a healer, and a black mage. Which is the final configuration in this game, but there were plenty of stops along the way.) This game made me stop to think, and it’s also why I single out the SNES version, which keeps things lean and reasonably difficult. There is no one definitive version of this (even saying 'the SNES version' can mean many different things; I played the US version with the Namingway fan translation), but no matter what, the game’s strengths decidedly do not lie in its story or its characters, at least not to the same degree that other games in the franchise do. This one’s all about the gameplay to me, and while I imagine the other versions hold unique values of their own, I really do appreciate how the SNES version makes a great, constantly changing experience out of so little.
You could also say some of those things about previous Final Fantasy games—FFII is very linear, aside from its weird leveling system—but this, of course, is kind of where the series comes into itself; at the very least, this is as close as you can get to a platonic Final Fantasy game. The first three were all fairly different in ways that didn’t really stick, but this is the real baseline that the series worked from for a while. No job changing or Espers or materia; your characters’ options are all pretty straightforward, and the only real innovation in the formula, ATB, is the only one that actually stuck around essentially unchanged in multiple games. Square leaned into the simplicity for this game, and let different scripted combinations of those mechanics guide each dungeon into a unique experience that I found later games to lack.
A party of Dark Knight Cecil, Rydia, Rosa, Edward, and Yang feels very different from a party of Paladin Cecil, Kain, Cid, Rosa, and Yang; each combination has a different set of AoE attacks, healing abilities, magical attacks, weapon types, and skills. Even fundamentally similar characters, like Rydia and Tellah, function very differently because of their spells and MP pools. Tellah has much stronger spells, but you won’t use them as much during the course of a dungeon, because he has so little MP; Rydia has a lot more MP, but the only attacks that really do anything for most of the game are her high-cost summons that are overkill on most enemies. And over time, those perceptions of the characters change; by the end of the game, Rydia’s summons are useful in general enemy encounters, but they’re also strong enough that you want to save MP for any tougher fights you come across. Some parties have more physical power; some parties give you so many frail characters that you have to put one on the front lines, exposing them to more danger.
This feels like a very conscious effort on Square’s part; characters in the game fake-die so often that it becomes obvious that they’re just trying to come up with a reason to make a new party. (This comes at the expense of the story, which largely stops giving its characters anything interesting to say or do after Cecil’s admittedly striking opening arc concludes with his grand transformation. However: they do ride to the moon on a whale. So that’s pretty cool.) Enough of the dungeons have a unique hook or set of enemies that you have to adapt your play to each area, as well. The Magnetic Cave requires you to unequip all metal weapons, which essentially changes the role of each character in your party for a dungeon (before jerking them back into place for the boss); the Sylvan Cave is rife with status effects and monsters in chests, making it a more difficult test of endurance and item/MP conservation; the Lunar Subterrane has an entire section where regular enemies are minibosses. Not every idea comes off perfectly, and they sometimes verge on annoying, but they always made me think and reconsider my situation given the tools that I had.
I appreciate that constraint; in later Final Fantasy games, the boundless freedom to do any party makeup I want usually means I’m just going to do the same thing every time. (Usually 1-3 physical attackers, a healer, and a black mage. Which is the final configuration in this game, but there were plenty of stops along the way.) This game made me stop to think, and it’s also why I single out the SNES version, which keeps things lean and reasonably difficult. There is no one definitive version of this (even saying 'the SNES version' can mean many different things; I played the US version with the Namingway fan translation), but no matter what, the game’s strengths decidedly do not lie in its story or its characters, at least not to the same degree that other games in the franchise do. This one’s all about the gameplay to me, and while I imagine the other versions hold unique values of their own, I really do appreciate how the SNES version makes a great, constantly changing experience out of so little.
This review contains spoilers
This appears to be the kind of game that inspires people to either laud it as an unimpeachable masterpiece or overrated garbage, and for people to be very hostile towards those with dissenting opinions, so let me give my opinion up front: this game is a tremendous achivement that, nevertheless, has some problems.
Above anything else - above story, or shooting, or even sidequests - this game is an aesthetic marvel. I don't just mean visually, although obviously it's that, too: flowing greenery, bustling cities, detailed clothing and faces, with long stretches of travel that essentially force you to see all the game's gorgeous visuals. It's visually impressive, but the aesthetics reach to just about every other part of the game. The voice acting is superb across the board, towns and cities feel full of life, the score is lush in every scenario. (A great score, and it's awesome that big names like Daniel Lanois, Colin Stetson, and Arca were involved, to say nothing of fucking D'Angelo.) Even the menus look great. People love to talk about the immersive systems in the game - for better and for worse (which we'll get to) - but I find that immersion and aesthetics are one and the same for this game, trying its best to envelop the player in the sensual nature of its world around every corner. This is clearly where a lot of Rockstar's money and its overworked employees' hours went, and for better or worse you can see the results.
This is important, because - sorry - the story isn't great, at least not as good as I think it's aiming to be. I don't just mean how 'shooting' is the only verb most of the story missions wish to use, although there's a reason that's one of the most common complaints about this game. But the actual narrative is repetitive and - I hate to say it - occasionally corny, and people overlook it because the aesthetics are that good. Virtually the entire game is one failed heist after another as Arthur gradually begins to doubt Dutch's decision making. It's easy to forgive, because watching these characters talk and move is always a delight. The only exceptions are the undercooked Guarma arc (which only serves to clearly establish the final divide between Arthur and Dutch, randomly turning into Far Cry for a few hours) and the epilogue, which is very sweet in some parts but very inconsequential in others. Sure, the dialogue is great, which is worth commendation in itself as a hurdle that even games with great stories stumble over. But the dialogue is not in service of a more interesting story.
The entire crux of the story is built around Arthur's reckoning with his place in the world, in 1899 when the days of the Wild West are coming to a close and civilized society is having an easier time closing in on 'outlaws' like him and Dutch. The two main things driving the story, then, are Arthur and Dutch's individual reckonings of this as the only two characters in the story that have known each other since the beginning. Dutch falls into paranoia and fear, clutching the pearls of his former life until he can escape somewhere he wants to stay; Arthur begins to reflect on whether his entire way of life was worth living, trying to ensure others don't make the same mistakes he did. This is a great premise. The way the story enacts that premise is not great, dragging out the same cycles of shooting missions until things physically can't go any further.
What's worse is that the game ultimately boils down to Arthur being a 'good' or 'bad' person, as reflected in a goofy 'good and evil' honour system that's fundamentally no different from Knights of the Old Republic, or Dishonored, or Mass Effect, or dozens of other (mostly Western) games. I don't know what the game is like with low honour, but much like Mass Effect I have trouble imagining the story actually makes much sense in that context. Too many moments in the game boil down to whether or not Arthur is a good person - others (at least with high honour) tell him he is, he continually insists he's not - and because the crux of the story relies on the player 'choosing' his honour level, it merely weakens the narrative commitment (which generally insists he is good, helping John's family escape alive at the end of his life). It becomes a very boring question that the game even makes an emotional climax, echoing back moments of people telling Arthur he's a 'good man' to a saccharine Daniel Lanois song like they're uniting the power of friendship for him to take down evil Micah. (Realistically, it's actually just the game telling the player what ending they're about to get - even though it's barely different - not unlike The Witcher 3 flashing back to Geralt's choices with Ciri, which was just as corny.)
And ultimately any discussion of whether Arthur - or the player, for that matter - are 'good' is irrelevant, because the actual gameplay dictates Arthur be an invincible mass murderer. By the end of the game, Arthur's kill count will have reached high into the triple digits at least. This, of course, is a key video game problem no matter what, and hardly unique to Red Dead. Video games have been asking for our suspension of disbelief on this from the beginning, and discussions about this ludonarrative dissonance were raging since Uncharted, if not earlier. But it feels especially bad in this game because the shooting isn't interesting. It is universally ducking behind cover and trying to find headshots between a handful of different kinds of weapons, the same ones you use in every other shooting game. Between the repetitiveness of the story and the way the shooting undermines the game's core themes, the shooting becomes utterly exhausting after a while.
(That's not the only area where the suspension of disbelief is hard to maintain, by the way. For all the game's immersion, actions in the story often don't have many real consequences. After the conclusion of chapter 3, where you burn down the tobacco fields of the Gray family and incite their ire, the gang relocates to a camp outside Saint Denis that happens to be on the other side of those fields. To get between your camp and Saint Denis, you frequently pass by those tobacco fields as if nothing ever happened there. The story has too many opportunities like this, because you can pay off virtually any of your bounties - have a shootout with the feds in Valentine, then go back and rob their bank, but pay off your bounty and it's as if nothing ever happened.)
It's baffling that the story relies so heavily on shooting, because outside of the main story, there are so many great things to do. It's not an uncommon response to the game's haters to say you have to really do everything but the story to get the most out of it, and while I don't think that 'ignore the main narrative' is the defense people think it is, there's also truth to it. The game is littered with sidequests, many of them perfectly paced so that no character overstays their welcome. The game's short stories are often more amusing and fun than the main story, because you move in and out of peoples' lives and get to know their stories for as much narrative weight there actually is. One of my favourite sidequests involves Arthur going to track down the belongings of an old man who appears to have been betrayed by the government - much like the rest of the Van Der Linde Gang - only to discover he's an ex-slaver, upon which Arthur confronts him and tells him to rot.
Just as important as the sidequests are the smaller things, though. It's a wonderful experience finding a Black woman on the side of the road who needs a ride home, and taking her there as she tells you (with more quality in the voice acting and period-appropriate AAVE than a random encounter ever needed) about her family and what her town is like. Or sucking the snake venom out of a person's leg, to find them later in a town where they'll let you buy a gun on their tab. Likewise, the game's naturalist activities - hunting, fishing, scavenging - are a delight, because there's such a wide variety of things to explore in an environment that provides pure aesthetic pleasures to these activities worthwhile. These are the things that give the world colour, and make the world as wonderful to explore as Breath of the Wild's in a completely different way.
It's a shame that Rockstar didn't write these activities more into their main story. I get why they didn't - there would undoubtedly be many complaints about there not being enough shooting from more casual gamers who just wanted to play cowboy, and big studios often have trouble imagining creative alternatives. But it not only would have resulted in more interesting gameplay, but a more interesting story as well. It seems like they really are going to intersperse the more peaceful activities in the game's beginning, as multiple missions function merely as tutorials for the game's many mechanics and as a chance to get the litany of characters, but that falls away by the third chapter and doesn't come back until the epilogue. The epilogue is where these kinds of activities - working on a ranch, building a house - really shined, and it gave a chance to built a sense of community among all of the remaining characters. These kinds of activities would have allowed some more time with the characters that weren't always out doing the robbing and the killing.
And I do think many characters were disserviced by a lack of attention after Saint Denis. I loved hanging around all the different characters, and the Van Der Linde Gang is rich in different personalities and races. But the focus on the main story makes it so that many of the characters - basically anyone aside from Arthur, Dutch, Micah, John, Charles, and Sadie - get sidelined. We barely learn anything about most of the women in camp, while others have promising starts to their stories at the beginning of the game that rarely amount to much by the end. (If they even make it to the end: I welcome the deaths of many characters narratively, but amidst the everyday bullet hells it usually felt arbitrary as to why someone died, and I felt myself wishing their stories would have amounted to something more interesting, especially because I was personally more interested in characters like Sean and Lenny than some of the game's main characters.) When everyone's choosing sides in the Dutch-Arthur dispute near the game's end, I found myself unsure as to why the people who sided with Dutch were doing so.
It's a shame, because even the characters they do focus on don't always feel complete, either. Dutch's descent into paranoia doesn't hit quite hard enough because we never really got to see Dutch as the inspirational leader that gang always makes him out to be. It seems like he was always this person, which makes it hard to imagine he was ever such a great friend to Arthur. Likewise, Micah always was a shit-stirrer that we didn't like, so him being exposed as a rat bending Dutch's ear doesn't have a great impact. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy spending time with these characters - I did, quite a bit. Some of my favourite moments in the game were going on small side missions with different characters and getting to know them a bit more. The gameplay in those sections was often repetitive, but just having the chance to hang out with the characters were a delight. (And to the game's credit, there are many small interactions that can happen back at camp that give you more of an inkling - they just don't always have enough weight.) But of all of them, the only one I really felt I got to know to an extent that I wanted to was Sadie. It just doesn't feel right that I know more about several characters from sidequests than I ever did about Javier or Bill.
I get why people are quick to call this a masterpiece. It does so much - much more than virtually any other game - and it does a lot of that right. Even the superfluous stuff, like maintaining Arthur's weight or choosing the right clothes for the climate, is largely ignorable for those who don't care. Importantly, though, those things are very much appreciated by those who do care about them, who do get into this sense of being a a survivalist. It really is something you can get lost in, during its best and worst moments; the aesthetics and feel of this game make every moment feel like a delight, so much that even the parts of the game that falter seem good. But that doesn't mean that the game doesn't have those weaknesses, especially when those weaknesses are most highlighted in the core story.
Above anything else - above story, or shooting, or even sidequests - this game is an aesthetic marvel. I don't just mean visually, although obviously it's that, too: flowing greenery, bustling cities, detailed clothing and faces, with long stretches of travel that essentially force you to see all the game's gorgeous visuals. It's visually impressive, but the aesthetics reach to just about every other part of the game. The voice acting is superb across the board, towns and cities feel full of life, the score is lush in every scenario. (A great score, and it's awesome that big names like Daniel Lanois, Colin Stetson, and Arca were involved, to say nothing of fucking D'Angelo.) Even the menus look great. People love to talk about the immersive systems in the game - for better and for worse (which we'll get to) - but I find that immersion and aesthetics are one and the same for this game, trying its best to envelop the player in the sensual nature of its world around every corner. This is clearly where a lot of Rockstar's money and its overworked employees' hours went, and for better or worse you can see the results.
This is important, because - sorry - the story isn't great, at least not as good as I think it's aiming to be. I don't just mean how 'shooting' is the only verb most of the story missions wish to use, although there's a reason that's one of the most common complaints about this game. But the actual narrative is repetitive and - I hate to say it - occasionally corny, and people overlook it because the aesthetics are that good. Virtually the entire game is one failed heist after another as Arthur gradually begins to doubt Dutch's decision making. It's easy to forgive, because watching these characters talk and move is always a delight. The only exceptions are the undercooked Guarma arc (which only serves to clearly establish the final divide between Arthur and Dutch, randomly turning into Far Cry for a few hours) and the epilogue, which is very sweet in some parts but very inconsequential in others. Sure, the dialogue is great, which is worth commendation in itself as a hurdle that even games with great stories stumble over. But the dialogue is not in service of a more interesting story.
The entire crux of the story is built around Arthur's reckoning with his place in the world, in 1899 when the days of the Wild West are coming to a close and civilized society is having an easier time closing in on 'outlaws' like him and Dutch. The two main things driving the story, then, are Arthur and Dutch's individual reckonings of this as the only two characters in the story that have known each other since the beginning. Dutch falls into paranoia and fear, clutching the pearls of his former life until he can escape somewhere he wants to stay; Arthur begins to reflect on whether his entire way of life was worth living, trying to ensure others don't make the same mistakes he did. This is a great premise. The way the story enacts that premise is not great, dragging out the same cycles of shooting missions until things physically can't go any further.
What's worse is that the game ultimately boils down to Arthur being a 'good' or 'bad' person, as reflected in a goofy 'good and evil' honour system that's fundamentally no different from Knights of the Old Republic, or Dishonored, or Mass Effect, or dozens of other (mostly Western) games. I don't know what the game is like with low honour, but much like Mass Effect I have trouble imagining the story actually makes much sense in that context. Too many moments in the game boil down to whether or not Arthur is a good person - others (at least with high honour) tell him he is, he continually insists he's not - and because the crux of the story relies on the player 'choosing' his honour level, it merely weakens the narrative commitment (which generally insists he is good, helping John's family escape alive at the end of his life). It becomes a very boring question that the game even makes an emotional climax, echoing back moments of people telling Arthur he's a 'good man' to a saccharine Daniel Lanois song like they're uniting the power of friendship for him to take down evil Micah. (Realistically, it's actually just the game telling the player what ending they're about to get - even though it's barely different - not unlike The Witcher 3 flashing back to Geralt's choices with Ciri, which was just as corny.)
And ultimately any discussion of whether Arthur - or the player, for that matter - are 'good' is irrelevant, because the actual gameplay dictates Arthur be an invincible mass murderer. By the end of the game, Arthur's kill count will have reached high into the triple digits at least. This, of course, is a key video game problem no matter what, and hardly unique to Red Dead. Video games have been asking for our suspension of disbelief on this from the beginning, and discussions about this ludonarrative dissonance were raging since Uncharted, if not earlier. But it feels especially bad in this game because the shooting isn't interesting. It is universally ducking behind cover and trying to find headshots between a handful of different kinds of weapons, the same ones you use in every other shooting game. Between the repetitiveness of the story and the way the shooting undermines the game's core themes, the shooting becomes utterly exhausting after a while.
(That's not the only area where the suspension of disbelief is hard to maintain, by the way. For all the game's immersion, actions in the story often don't have many real consequences. After the conclusion of chapter 3, where you burn down the tobacco fields of the Gray family and incite their ire, the gang relocates to a camp outside Saint Denis that happens to be on the other side of those fields. To get between your camp and Saint Denis, you frequently pass by those tobacco fields as if nothing ever happened there. The story has too many opportunities like this, because you can pay off virtually any of your bounties - have a shootout with the feds in Valentine, then go back and rob their bank, but pay off your bounty and it's as if nothing ever happened.)
It's baffling that the story relies so heavily on shooting, because outside of the main story, there are so many great things to do. It's not an uncommon response to the game's haters to say you have to really do everything but the story to get the most out of it, and while I don't think that 'ignore the main narrative' is the defense people think it is, there's also truth to it. The game is littered with sidequests, many of them perfectly paced so that no character overstays their welcome. The game's short stories are often more amusing and fun than the main story, because you move in and out of peoples' lives and get to know their stories for as much narrative weight there actually is. One of my favourite sidequests involves Arthur going to track down the belongings of an old man who appears to have been betrayed by the government - much like the rest of the Van Der Linde Gang - only to discover he's an ex-slaver, upon which Arthur confronts him and tells him to rot.
Just as important as the sidequests are the smaller things, though. It's a wonderful experience finding a Black woman on the side of the road who needs a ride home, and taking her there as she tells you (with more quality in the voice acting and period-appropriate AAVE than a random encounter ever needed) about her family and what her town is like. Or sucking the snake venom out of a person's leg, to find them later in a town where they'll let you buy a gun on their tab. Likewise, the game's naturalist activities - hunting, fishing, scavenging - are a delight, because there's such a wide variety of things to explore in an environment that provides pure aesthetic pleasures to these activities worthwhile. These are the things that give the world colour, and make the world as wonderful to explore as Breath of the Wild's in a completely different way.
It's a shame that Rockstar didn't write these activities more into their main story. I get why they didn't - there would undoubtedly be many complaints about there not being enough shooting from more casual gamers who just wanted to play cowboy, and big studios often have trouble imagining creative alternatives. But it not only would have resulted in more interesting gameplay, but a more interesting story as well. It seems like they really are going to intersperse the more peaceful activities in the game's beginning, as multiple missions function merely as tutorials for the game's many mechanics and as a chance to get the litany of characters, but that falls away by the third chapter and doesn't come back until the epilogue. The epilogue is where these kinds of activities - working on a ranch, building a house - really shined, and it gave a chance to built a sense of community among all of the remaining characters. These kinds of activities would have allowed some more time with the characters that weren't always out doing the robbing and the killing.
And I do think many characters were disserviced by a lack of attention after Saint Denis. I loved hanging around all the different characters, and the Van Der Linde Gang is rich in different personalities and races. But the focus on the main story makes it so that many of the characters - basically anyone aside from Arthur, Dutch, Micah, John, Charles, and Sadie - get sidelined. We barely learn anything about most of the women in camp, while others have promising starts to their stories at the beginning of the game that rarely amount to much by the end. (If they even make it to the end: I welcome the deaths of many characters narratively, but amidst the everyday bullet hells it usually felt arbitrary as to why someone died, and I felt myself wishing their stories would have amounted to something more interesting, especially because I was personally more interested in characters like Sean and Lenny than some of the game's main characters.) When everyone's choosing sides in the Dutch-Arthur dispute near the game's end, I found myself unsure as to why the people who sided with Dutch were doing so.
It's a shame, because even the characters they do focus on don't always feel complete, either. Dutch's descent into paranoia doesn't hit quite hard enough because we never really got to see Dutch as the inspirational leader that gang always makes him out to be. It seems like he was always this person, which makes it hard to imagine he was ever such a great friend to Arthur. Likewise, Micah always was a shit-stirrer that we didn't like, so him being exposed as a rat bending Dutch's ear doesn't have a great impact. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy spending time with these characters - I did, quite a bit. Some of my favourite moments in the game were going on small side missions with different characters and getting to know them a bit more. The gameplay in those sections was often repetitive, but just having the chance to hang out with the characters were a delight. (And to the game's credit, there are many small interactions that can happen back at camp that give you more of an inkling - they just don't always have enough weight.) But of all of them, the only one I really felt I got to know to an extent that I wanted to was Sadie. It just doesn't feel right that I know more about several characters from sidequests than I ever did about Javier or Bill.
I get why people are quick to call this a masterpiece. It does so much - much more than virtually any other game - and it does a lot of that right. Even the superfluous stuff, like maintaining Arthur's weight or choosing the right clothes for the climate, is largely ignorable for those who don't care. Importantly, though, those things are very much appreciated by those who do care about them, who do get into this sense of being a a survivalist. It really is something you can get lost in, during its best and worst moments; the aesthetics and feel of this game make every moment feel like a delight, so much that even the parts of the game that falter seem good. But that doesn't mean that the game doesn't have those weaknesses, especially when those weaknesses are most highlighted in the core story.
The thing that sometimes gets buried when people talk about this game is that as a pure 2D Zelda-esque puzzle game, it's really good. If you come to this game looking solely for that, I think you'll have a good time. That's not the most important thing about this game, but if you tunnel vision on the things that make this game unique I think it can make it sound like an unwelcome experience for anyone who doesn't particularly like colouring or drawing (like me!) or even someone who doesn't figure themselves any kind of creative. So I figure it'd be good to let people know that really isn't the case. Drawing and colouring is a big part of it (and even on a PlayStation controller it's not too bad, as long as you remember to use the touch pad instead of the sticks when you want more speed or precision), but the game has a lot to offer beyond that. This a fun world to explore and collect things and solve puzzles with new abilities that you collect. It's also a really easy world to navigate once you collect a few abilities, so exploring is a lot of fun.
But: when people focus on the game's embrace of creativity and the artistic mind, encouraging even those who don't feel they have any artistic talent (and may not even want to), they're not wrong to do so. You play the game as a player-named character - the default is Pizza, so I'll run with that here - who takes over the role of being the one who colours the world with a magic brush after the previous wielder of the brush, Chicory, finds herself unable to continue the role. Through the course of the game, we see two different forms of artists in Pizza and Chicory that each have their own self-doubts that the game suggests are equally valid. Pizza is a complete amateur, who was only a janitor before picking up the brush; Chicory is a perfectionist who trained her whole life to become this. Pizza is very self-conscious about their lack of trained skill and whether they really 'deserve' to be the one wielder, and because they came into the role at a time of major crisis, they find themselves unsure of their creative chops because they're so busy helping other people and making colours as to how others want. Chicory finds that willingness to help others admirable, because Chicory's vision of art was always very self-centered, to the point that Chicory spiraled into a depressive bout that left her unable to be the wielder that others needed. But as a player with limited tools, you can't help but feel weak next to what you're able to see of Chicory's fantastic art.
The world around you is also great, filled with ambient dialogue from unique, funny, and heartfelt characters. (They actually remind me a lot of the characters in Paper Mario.) There's one person who wants to remember his recently passed friend by decorating the area with plants, and is truly moved when you help him out. Other people who have anxieties or unease of their own are moved by how Pizza is able to push themselves to become more than they once were, even as many people doubted them when they first wielded the brush. One constant source of comfort for Pizza, though, is their family. Their sister is a trained artist who regards Pizza not with jealously but complete support, helping them sort out their feelings when it seems like the world is closing in on them. Their parents are also a constant line of support (quite literally, forming an extremely generous and specific hint system that I was grateful for on a few occasions), who worry about Pizza but also trust them to be able to do what's best for themselves and others.
And of course, Lena Raine's music is a delight! I admit that she was a good chunk of why I came to this game, and on that front I was not disappointed. Since Celeste it seems like she's really upped her arrangement skills, with beautiful interplay of instruments that's often anchored by unique percussion patterns. The music often contains a lush, cute beauty to it, but there's also a sense of unease in this world where the colour has been drained from it, often maintained by the odd percussive patterns. In the main town's theme, for instance, the snare hit gets held off for so long that you're just waiting for it to drop, to the point where the tension becomes the main aspect of the rhythm - but that doesn't stop that eventual thwack from being immensely satisfying. And there are moments, too, when she leans all the way into the darkness of the story, with some tracks being outright dark ambient scariness or drum and bass chaos. Amidst those it often feels like she's calling back to Celeste's music, and honestly I don't think it's simply a matter of Raine having a composing style that she's comfortable with.
I have a hard time believing those musical connections are accidental, because this game has some very distinct similarities to Celeste. This overarching narrative of this game, is very similar: Pizza and Chicory have to discover their confidence and overcome their anxieties much like Madeleine did in Celeste. Along the way, they meet dark doppelgangers that reflect their deepest and darkest troubles, and it's only by learning to accept those as part of their inner being that they can prosper and love themselves. (There's even a snowy mountain that have to climb!) But Chicory carves out its own space, applying those general personal concepts to concrete ends of being a creative person. I might not be a visual artist, but I do like writing, and I found a lot to connect with in both Pizza and Chicory that I didn't personally get as much from Celeste, which left a lot to subtext. That subtext worked tremendously for a lot of people, but I personally appreciated Greg Lobanov's specificity in writing this game: not just platitudes or copying someone else, but a clearly felt point of view. I was really, truly impressed.
But: when people focus on the game's embrace of creativity and the artistic mind, encouraging even those who don't feel they have any artistic talent (and may not even want to), they're not wrong to do so. You play the game as a player-named character - the default is Pizza, so I'll run with that here - who takes over the role of being the one who colours the world with a magic brush after the previous wielder of the brush, Chicory, finds herself unable to continue the role. Through the course of the game, we see two different forms of artists in Pizza and Chicory that each have their own self-doubts that the game suggests are equally valid. Pizza is a complete amateur, who was only a janitor before picking up the brush; Chicory is a perfectionist who trained her whole life to become this. Pizza is very self-conscious about their lack of trained skill and whether they really 'deserve' to be the one wielder, and because they came into the role at a time of major crisis, they find themselves unsure of their creative chops because they're so busy helping other people and making colours as to how others want. Chicory finds that willingness to help others admirable, because Chicory's vision of art was always very self-centered, to the point that Chicory spiraled into a depressive bout that left her unable to be the wielder that others needed. But as a player with limited tools, you can't help but feel weak next to what you're able to see of Chicory's fantastic art.
The world around you is also great, filled with ambient dialogue from unique, funny, and heartfelt characters. (They actually remind me a lot of the characters in Paper Mario.) There's one person who wants to remember his recently passed friend by decorating the area with plants, and is truly moved when you help him out. Other people who have anxieties or unease of their own are moved by how Pizza is able to push themselves to become more than they once were, even as many people doubted them when they first wielded the brush. One constant source of comfort for Pizza, though, is their family. Their sister is a trained artist who regards Pizza not with jealously but complete support, helping them sort out their feelings when it seems like the world is closing in on them. Their parents are also a constant line of support (quite literally, forming an extremely generous and specific hint system that I was grateful for on a few occasions), who worry about Pizza but also trust them to be able to do what's best for themselves and others.
And of course, Lena Raine's music is a delight! I admit that she was a good chunk of why I came to this game, and on that front I was not disappointed. Since Celeste it seems like she's really upped her arrangement skills, with beautiful interplay of instruments that's often anchored by unique percussion patterns. The music often contains a lush, cute beauty to it, but there's also a sense of unease in this world where the colour has been drained from it, often maintained by the odd percussive patterns. In the main town's theme, for instance, the snare hit gets held off for so long that you're just waiting for it to drop, to the point where the tension becomes the main aspect of the rhythm - but that doesn't stop that eventual thwack from being immensely satisfying. And there are moments, too, when she leans all the way into the darkness of the story, with some tracks being outright dark ambient scariness or drum and bass chaos. Amidst those it often feels like she's calling back to Celeste's music, and honestly I don't think it's simply a matter of Raine having a composing style that she's comfortable with.
I have a hard time believing those musical connections are accidental, because this game has some very distinct similarities to Celeste. This overarching narrative of this game, is very similar: Pizza and Chicory have to discover their confidence and overcome their anxieties much like Madeleine did in Celeste. Along the way, they meet dark doppelgangers that reflect their deepest and darkest troubles, and it's only by learning to accept those as part of their inner being that they can prosper and love themselves. (There's even a snowy mountain that have to climb!) But Chicory carves out its own space, applying those general personal concepts to concrete ends of being a creative person. I might not be a visual artist, but I do like writing, and I found a lot to connect with in both Pizza and Chicory that I didn't personally get as much from Celeste, which left a lot to subtext. That subtext worked tremendously for a lot of people, but I personally appreciated Greg Lobanov's specificity in writing this game: not just platitudes or copying someone else, but a clearly felt point of view. I was really, truly impressed.
1996
Nothing that stands out as much as you might hope based on the novel cowboy-fantasy combination: the combat's a little basic, the towns all feel the same, the story has too much lore and not enough character. Really, there's not much of a Western flavour at all beyond Rudy's guns and a few of Michiko Naruke's compositions. ("Wayfarer of the Wilderness", which quotes Ennio Morricone's "Ecstasy of Gold", is a true RPG overworld classic.)
But it's still a pretty good time. The game's biggest strength is its pacing; I played this almost exclusively in one-hour increments, and in just about every single one of those increments I could expect to do a dungeon, go to a new town, wander around the map for a bit, and stop right before the next dungeon. You get a little taste of all the game's flavours in a comfortable portion every time you play, which means I know exactly what kind of fun I'm gonna have every time. (It also means it gets a little wearying towards the end, but at 25 hours or so, it's still a pretty brisk RPG.)
If any one of those flavours dominates, it's the dungeons, which are (likely not coincidentally) one of the stronger areas of the game. Each one's layout teases you enough with different paths that you feel like it's worth exploring for goodies, but not so much that you think you'll get lost or exhausted before reaching the end. Puzzles are well-placed (even if a few are either dull or obtuse) to break up the flow of the dungeon. Even the enemy encounters are designed well despite the basicness of the battle system; it won't take long to figure out a strategy to use against the dungeon's particular combinations of enemies, but you nevertheless need to figure it out.
I just wish I liked just hanging out in the game a bit more. The battles take too long (they shouldn't have been 3D at all, although given the time period I imagine Media.Vision didn't really have a choice) and the music during them is grating. The music in towns are great, but the towns lack personality and your characters rarely do much interesting in them.
This is a game that's remembered, to some extent, as the game that people played while they waited for Final Fantasy VII. But I'd say it deserves better than that; honestly, even if FFVII is more interesting on the whole, I enjoy the moment-to-moment gameplay of Wild Arms a lot more. It's brisk where it matters and doesn't try to do more than it can handle, two aspects that can go a little underrated in RPGs. I had a good time with it.
But it's still a pretty good time. The game's biggest strength is its pacing; I played this almost exclusively in one-hour increments, and in just about every single one of those increments I could expect to do a dungeon, go to a new town, wander around the map for a bit, and stop right before the next dungeon. You get a little taste of all the game's flavours in a comfortable portion every time you play, which means I know exactly what kind of fun I'm gonna have every time. (It also means it gets a little wearying towards the end, but at 25 hours or so, it's still a pretty brisk RPG.)
If any one of those flavours dominates, it's the dungeons, which are (likely not coincidentally) one of the stronger areas of the game. Each one's layout teases you enough with different paths that you feel like it's worth exploring for goodies, but not so much that you think you'll get lost or exhausted before reaching the end. Puzzles are well-placed (even if a few are either dull or obtuse) to break up the flow of the dungeon. Even the enemy encounters are designed well despite the basicness of the battle system; it won't take long to figure out a strategy to use against the dungeon's particular combinations of enemies, but you nevertheless need to figure it out.
I just wish I liked just hanging out in the game a bit more. The battles take too long (they shouldn't have been 3D at all, although given the time period I imagine Media.Vision didn't really have a choice) and the music during them is grating. The music in towns are great, but the towns lack personality and your characters rarely do much interesting in them.
This is a game that's remembered, to some extent, as the game that people played while they waited for Final Fantasy VII. But I'd say it deserves better than that; honestly, even if FFVII is more interesting on the whole, I enjoy the moment-to-moment gameplay of Wild Arms a lot more. It's brisk where it matters and doesn't try to do more than it can handle, two aspects that can go a little underrated in RPGs. I had a good time with it.