BlacKnight
21 reviews liked by BlacKnight
Signalis
2022
If you are sad that bloober team is going to stomp on everything that Silent Hill 2 is all about with their eventual dogshit remake than don't worry because the best silent hill game made since 3 is right here! Enjoy this game while you can before people try and tell you it’s overrated or nothing but annoying people talk about it and get you mad
After losing my save when the game came out and putting off replaying back to where i was 2 years later i am happy i finally did it. I knew i would love it, i knew it would be amazing and still it blew me away.
After losing my save when the game came out and putting off replaying back to where i was 2 years later i am happy i finally did it. I knew i would love it, i knew it would be amazing and still it blew me away.
Short, simple, and sweet. Pretty easy game but it's targeted towards children so that's understandable. All in all I had a lot of fun with the game; the only time I was bored was when I was doing the detective peach levels. The levels for the most part had nice variety and the set pieces were nice to look at. The boss fights were very good too. After you beat the game you unlock boss challenges which are pretty fun but you also unlock the challenge where you have to find the hidden ninjas in every level. That specific challenge was pretty dull considering most of the ninjas are extremely easy to find. Peach has nice dresses she can unlock to wear throughout the theater and some of the levels. The soundtrack is honestly pretty damn good; I was bopping to the tracks the whole game. This game was good enough to get me interested in other Good-Feel games and I hope this dev makes another Peach game that expands on some of the ideas in Showtime.
Breakdown
2004
I would absolutely love to give this game a higher score but I can't due to it's jank, a really bad padding section, and multiple difficulty spikes. Other than that this is one of the most unique games I've played and I highly recommend everyone to play it. The story was sublime and just so damn cool. With every upgrade you got you felt more like some sort of superhero. When the combat works it works. It's fun fighting against a couple of enemies at a time. It's just when there's several enemies on the screen it's hard to play because of how easy you can get knocked down by an enemy you didn't see. But when the stars align and you fight the enemies properly you feel like a badass lol. The graphics were good for a 2004 game and the art direction was amazing. I really wish this game got a sequel that would've fleshed out and polished this game's general idea and design.
This review contains spoilers
(Spoilers abound) 7.5/10. Would've been at 8/10 if adaptability didn't exist. Dark Souls 2 doesn't deserve a lot of the hate it gets but it is home to some truly baffling design decisions. Despite this, I really enjoyed my playthrough of this game.
For the most part the level design is pretty decent. Lost Bastille, Dragon Aerie, the Gutter, Earthen Peak, and more are all decently designed. They're not great but they're serviceable and enjoyable. But some levels do have wild design choices. In huntsman's copse you unlock a shortcut to go back to the first bonfire.....but right next to that shortcut is the second bonfire. Why? That bonfire is completely unnecessary and this game could've done away with a few bonfires to make the levels more interesting. The dlc areas (shulva, brume tower, and eleum loyce) are home to some of the best level designs in the game. Lots of verticality in the levels, especially in shulva. But the dlc areas are also home to some of the worst level design in ds2 lol. Cave of the Dead, Iron Passage, and Frigid Outskirts are all bad. Yes, they were designed for co-op and no that does not excuse it. Cave of the Dead is very linear and has annoying petrifying statues. Iron Passage has an insane amount of enemies with annoying spells. And Frigid Outskirts is long, hard to see, and boring. You're constantly assaulted by electric reindeers while you cant see anything and then the boss at the end is difficult. And if you die you have to do that whole run again. It's the only place in the game where I think the devs should've added another bonfire.
Moving on to combat. Before you do anything to your character you have to level up adaptability to at least 20 so your agility goes up. Agility governs how many i-frames you get. If it's not high the game feels clunky as hell and it's a chore to play. Once that's done the game is pretty fun. It's not as difficult as later fromsoftware games but that's fine. I don't play these games for intense difficulty; if I wanted that I'd play Nioh. I would've however liked some more enemy variety. Many of the bosses and enemies are humanoids or big humanoids. I would've liked if there were more weird enemies like pisacas or man centipedes. Some enemies also have insane hitboxes. How is it that I'm attacking a mimic from behind its mouth and then it eats me anyway? Or when I dodge a grab from an ogre my character magically teleports to its hands.
DS2 has the most bosses in the souls series so it should've had the most variety of bosses. But again most of them are giant humanoids where you memorize their attack pattern. My favorite bosses in this game were Sinh, fume knight, darklurker, and the executioners chariot. Sinh is a very good dragon boss where you have to be careful with your positioning so you don't get toxin and then be aggressive enough to get some hits in before he takes off flying again. Fume Knight is a giant humanoid but he had an interesting attack pattern and before the fight the player needed to analyze the area and see how they can debuff him. Darklurker has a simple moveset but once you think he's easy he splits himself into two and then the player must keep both his halves in their sight. And then the executioner's chariot is a "gimmick" boss but a good one. The player has to juggle running to the end of the track, dodging the racing chariot, and fighting off skeletons and their necromancers. Once the player reaches the end of the track then they can stop the chariot from racing and then begin fighting the boss. It's fun and it breaks the monotony of memorizing movesets. These are all really good bosses imo that the game needed more of.
Some of the enemy placement in ds2 is baffling. The lost Bastille is home to gank squads where you open a door and 5 enemies (that are tough for that area) come out. Iron Keep has a million Alonne Knights that get aggroed from miles away and will chase the player to the ends of the earth. Iron Keep also has those annoying turtle enemies stuck in really tight corridors. Fighting them there is a gigantic chore where the player just has to wait for their combo to finish. That's all pretty annoying and very unfun. Other than that and some other examples the enemy placement is mostly okay.
Let's move onto NPCs. They suck. Lmfao okay they're not that bad but the NPCs here are much worse than the ones in ds1. (Spoilers for ds1) Ds1 had many NPCs. Most of them felt like you, the player, were just meeting them incidently while they were doing their own quests. Let's use Petrus and Rhea as an example. When you first meet Petrus he's a vendor but he also mentions that he's waiting for some people. After you kill some bosses the people that he's waiting for shows up. They then mention they're going down into the catacombs and next time you visit them only Petrus is back. He seems sus so the player goes to the catacombs and finds out that two of his companions went hollow and Rhea is stuck down there. After killing the hollows Rhea then goes back up to the undead church. Shenanigans happen and the player can decide to kill Petrus to save Rhea. However if the player then buys all of Rhea's miracles Rhea will then disappear to another area and go hollow. As you see these NPCs have their own stories they're going through as the player sets out on their own journey. Siegmeyer, Lautrec, Solaire, Logan all also have intriguing quests. DS2's NPCs don't have a quarter of the complexity ds1's NPCs have.
Most of the NPCs in ds2 you'll meet and they either stay in their area and sell you stuff or they move to majula and sell you stuff. Rosabeth, Chloanne, Carhillion, Magerold, and others just sit there and sell the player items. The only somewhat interesting NPCs are Pate, Creighton, Lucatiel, and Benhart. Pate and Creighton have an interesting quest where Pate had betrayed Creighton and so Creighton is hunting him. When they finally find each other they are fighting and the player can choose who to help. Lucatiel and Benhart are interesting in that they need to be summoned for bosses in order for their quest lines to complete. But at then end of their quests both characters just give you their armor and disappear. No turning into hollows or anything they just vanish lol. There's another npc, Licia, who's implied to be a liar and just wants souls. By finding an item the player can invade her world. But there's no point to that. In ds1 when you invade Lautrec it's because he killed the fire keeper and the player needs her back. It's more personal and interesting. Licia seems like the devs wanted to a Lautrec but didn't know how to make it good.
I don't want to talk too much about the lore and story because I admittedly did not read many items descriptions in this playthrough so I'll just go over some board strokes. In demons souls and ds1 the opening cutscenes introduces the player to the lore and setting of the world. Ds1 shows the player the major players who end up being major bosses in the game. Instead of doing this DS2 takes a more personal approach by stating that the player will lose their memories, humanity, get hollow, and die over and over again. It does next to nothing to set up the actual plot of the game. For that you need to read many, many items descriptions to understand what exactly is going on and hope you understand what Aldia is saying when he starts spouting stuff about the true nature of humanity. I didn't feel like doing that so I can't say if the lore and story is genuinely interesting but I can say it could've been better told to the player.
The covenants are pretty fun. A lot of them are reskinned covenants from ds1 but that's okay. Having covenants focus on PVP and co-op is a good thing. I really liked the gravelord servant covenant in ds1 but thought it was a shame that it was stuck in ng+. I think the rat king covenant is a good evolution of the gravelord servant covenant especially because you can access it in ng. I liked that they added 2 pve covenants. One of them just makes the game harder which is nice for people who want a challenge. The other one leads to players having to fight tough black phantoms and then eventually fighting one of the better bosses in the game.
I forgot to put this earlier but something I really liked in the game was how there were some giant corpses and big doors hanging around. Towards the end of the game the player is then tasked to acquire some items and go back to those areas. It rewards players for paying attention to their environment and I always love going back to areas to find new things.
So yeah, despite doing a lot of criticisms of this game I really loved it lol. It's got a lot of good things going for it. It's definitely the worst of the soul series but the worst is still pretty good. Not a game to miss if you like soulslikes. Also it has arguably the best fashion.
For the most part the level design is pretty decent. Lost Bastille, Dragon Aerie, the Gutter, Earthen Peak, and more are all decently designed. They're not great but they're serviceable and enjoyable. But some levels do have wild design choices. In huntsman's copse you unlock a shortcut to go back to the first bonfire.....but right next to that shortcut is the second bonfire. Why? That bonfire is completely unnecessary and this game could've done away with a few bonfires to make the levels more interesting. The dlc areas (shulva, brume tower, and eleum loyce) are home to some of the best level designs in the game. Lots of verticality in the levels, especially in shulva. But the dlc areas are also home to some of the worst level design in ds2 lol. Cave of the Dead, Iron Passage, and Frigid Outskirts are all bad. Yes, they were designed for co-op and no that does not excuse it. Cave of the Dead is very linear and has annoying petrifying statues. Iron Passage has an insane amount of enemies with annoying spells. And Frigid Outskirts is long, hard to see, and boring. You're constantly assaulted by electric reindeers while you cant see anything and then the boss at the end is difficult. And if you die you have to do that whole run again. It's the only place in the game where I think the devs should've added another bonfire.
Moving on to combat. Before you do anything to your character you have to level up adaptability to at least 20 so your agility goes up. Agility governs how many i-frames you get. If it's not high the game feels clunky as hell and it's a chore to play. Once that's done the game is pretty fun. It's not as difficult as later fromsoftware games but that's fine. I don't play these games for intense difficulty; if I wanted that I'd play Nioh. I would've however liked some more enemy variety. Many of the bosses and enemies are humanoids or big humanoids. I would've liked if there were more weird enemies like pisacas or man centipedes. Some enemies also have insane hitboxes. How is it that I'm attacking a mimic from behind its mouth and then it eats me anyway? Or when I dodge a grab from an ogre my character magically teleports to its hands.
DS2 has the most bosses in the souls series so it should've had the most variety of bosses. But again most of them are giant humanoids where you memorize their attack pattern. My favorite bosses in this game were Sinh, fume knight, darklurker, and the executioners chariot. Sinh is a very good dragon boss where you have to be careful with your positioning so you don't get toxin and then be aggressive enough to get some hits in before he takes off flying again. Fume Knight is a giant humanoid but he had an interesting attack pattern and before the fight the player needed to analyze the area and see how they can debuff him. Darklurker has a simple moveset but once you think he's easy he splits himself into two and then the player must keep both his halves in their sight. And then the executioner's chariot is a "gimmick" boss but a good one. The player has to juggle running to the end of the track, dodging the racing chariot, and fighting off skeletons and their necromancers. Once the player reaches the end of the track then they can stop the chariot from racing and then begin fighting the boss. It's fun and it breaks the monotony of memorizing movesets. These are all really good bosses imo that the game needed more of.
Some of the enemy placement in ds2 is baffling. The lost Bastille is home to gank squads where you open a door and 5 enemies (that are tough for that area) come out. Iron Keep has a million Alonne Knights that get aggroed from miles away and will chase the player to the ends of the earth. Iron Keep also has those annoying turtle enemies stuck in really tight corridors. Fighting them there is a gigantic chore where the player just has to wait for their combo to finish. That's all pretty annoying and very unfun. Other than that and some other examples the enemy placement is mostly okay.
Let's move onto NPCs. They suck. Lmfao okay they're not that bad but the NPCs here are much worse than the ones in ds1. (Spoilers for ds1) Ds1 had many NPCs. Most of them felt like you, the player, were just meeting them incidently while they were doing their own quests. Let's use Petrus and Rhea as an example. When you first meet Petrus he's a vendor but he also mentions that he's waiting for some people. After you kill some bosses the people that he's waiting for shows up. They then mention they're going down into the catacombs and next time you visit them only Petrus is back. He seems sus so the player goes to the catacombs and finds out that two of his companions went hollow and Rhea is stuck down there. After killing the hollows Rhea then goes back up to the undead church. Shenanigans happen and the player can decide to kill Petrus to save Rhea. However if the player then buys all of Rhea's miracles Rhea will then disappear to another area and go hollow. As you see these NPCs have their own stories they're going through as the player sets out on their own journey. Siegmeyer, Lautrec, Solaire, Logan all also have intriguing quests. DS2's NPCs don't have a quarter of the complexity ds1's NPCs have.
Most of the NPCs in ds2 you'll meet and they either stay in their area and sell you stuff or they move to majula and sell you stuff. Rosabeth, Chloanne, Carhillion, Magerold, and others just sit there and sell the player items. The only somewhat interesting NPCs are Pate, Creighton, Lucatiel, and Benhart. Pate and Creighton have an interesting quest where Pate had betrayed Creighton and so Creighton is hunting him. When they finally find each other they are fighting and the player can choose who to help. Lucatiel and Benhart are interesting in that they need to be summoned for bosses in order for their quest lines to complete. But at then end of their quests both characters just give you their armor and disappear. No turning into hollows or anything they just vanish lol. There's another npc, Licia, who's implied to be a liar and just wants souls. By finding an item the player can invade her world. But there's no point to that. In ds1 when you invade Lautrec it's because he killed the fire keeper and the player needs her back. It's more personal and interesting. Licia seems like the devs wanted to a Lautrec but didn't know how to make it good.
I don't want to talk too much about the lore and story because I admittedly did not read many items descriptions in this playthrough so I'll just go over some board strokes. In demons souls and ds1 the opening cutscenes introduces the player to the lore and setting of the world. Ds1 shows the player the major players who end up being major bosses in the game. Instead of doing this DS2 takes a more personal approach by stating that the player will lose their memories, humanity, get hollow, and die over and over again. It does next to nothing to set up the actual plot of the game. For that you need to read many, many items descriptions to understand what exactly is going on and hope you understand what Aldia is saying when he starts spouting stuff about the true nature of humanity. I didn't feel like doing that so I can't say if the lore and story is genuinely interesting but I can say it could've been better told to the player.
The covenants are pretty fun. A lot of them are reskinned covenants from ds1 but that's okay. Having covenants focus on PVP and co-op is a good thing. I really liked the gravelord servant covenant in ds1 but thought it was a shame that it was stuck in ng+. I think the rat king covenant is a good evolution of the gravelord servant covenant especially because you can access it in ng. I liked that they added 2 pve covenants. One of them just makes the game harder which is nice for people who want a challenge. The other one leads to players having to fight tough black phantoms and then eventually fighting one of the better bosses in the game.
I forgot to put this earlier but something I really liked in the game was how there were some giant corpses and big doors hanging around. Towards the end of the game the player is then tasked to acquire some items and go back to those areas. It rewards players for paying attention to their environment and I always love going back to areas to find new things.
So yeah, despite doing a lot of criticisms of this game I really loved it lol. It's got a lot of good things going for it. It's definitely the worst of the soul series but the worst is still pretty good. Not a game to miss if you like soulslikes. Also it has arguably the best fashion.
Whoa, did some actual effort just go into a Onechanbara game? Alright, so maybe that's not fair. The whole point of these "Simple Series" titles was to be made as cheaply as possible, in order to be sold for as cheaply as possible. Seems like this one had a bit of a hike in budget though, especially compared to the other entries that saw a release here in the West. The enemies and stages still look like Unity Asset Store flips, but the character models for the girls themselves are quality and highly detailed. Plus, it lacks the blurry visuals of and features less repetitive level design than the two Bikini outings. Heck, there's even English voice acting accompanied by writing devoid of the bizarre self-seriousness of its predecessors and packing plenty of playful banter between the four ladies. Stuff that goes a long way towards injecting a much-needed dose of previously sorely missing energetic personality to the mix.
These fairly massive steps forward in the presentation department all feel like a push to attract a larger audience to the property than just horny weebs who don't mind jank. It's a nice effort, but unfortunately the thing that will continue to hold them back from that goal is the gameplay, although it's not as if progress wasn't made there as well. The action has undergone a significant, much appreciated upping of pace into faster and more furious territory. A new move lets you cover distance quickly by allowing you to lunge towards the undead with the push of a button and each swipe of your swords sends bright, flashy colors spilling across the screen. A welcome change from the slow, stiff combat of before. Fun secondary weapons such as giant chainsaws and a knockoff Blades of Athena also provide enough initial excitement to distract you early on from the problems of simplicity that eventually become apparent and keep this from ever sitting alongside the Ninja Gaidens and Devil May Crys of the world. Namely basic enemy types that offer no threat, top "V" rankings that can be easily scored through mere button-mashing, bosses you can't strategize against as there's no way to interrupt their attacks, and worst of the bunch being excessive padding in the later stages against brutally lengthy waves of damage-sponge special monsters. Stuff that turns the mindless entertainment into monotony if you don't regularly step away for a while.
There's certainly no depth to this hack and slasher. Although, if you're looking for some cheap titillation it's got that in spades. I've criticized this franchise in the past for failing to live up to its true raunchy potential. Well, that won't be the case here. Our heroines' swimsuit bottoms don't quite provide the necessary amount of coverage in the back (almost as if they're wearing them backwards or something) so there's always a pretty generous amount of butt-crack on display, their new super-powered forms often reveal their full rear-ends to the player, and there are plenty of naughty, naughty optional costumes to unlock. So, you gamers looking a decent cocktease finally have a viable enough option to pull yourselves off of Bayonetta for a minute. I suppose you could count that as another stride towards this property one day living up to the promise it still shows. It's not quite there yet, but it's getting closer. How mind-numbing it can be at points means the Wii entry remains my favorite. I do appreciate seeing that Tamsoft is making some necessary advancements in an attempt to achieve wider appeal, however.
7.3/10
These fairly massive steps forward in the presentation department all feel like a push to attract a larger audience to the property than just horny weebs who don't mind jank. It's a nice effort, but unfortunately the thing that will continue to hold them back from that goal is the gameplay, although it's not as if progress wasn't made there as well. The action has undergone a significant, much appreciated upping of pace into faster and more furious territory. A new move lets you cover distance quickly by allowing you to lunge towards the undead with the push of a button and each swipe of your swords sends bright, flashy colors spilling across the screen. A welcome change from the slow, stiff combat of before. Fun secondary weapons such as giant chainsaws and a knockoff Blades of Athena also provide enough initial excitement to distract you early on from the problems of simplicity that eventually become apparent and keep this from ever sitting alongside the Ninja Gaidens and Devil May Crys of the world. Namely basic enemy types that offer no threat, top "V" rankings that can be easily scored through mere button-mashing, bosses you can't strategize against as there's no way to interrupt their attacks, and worst of the bunch being excessive padding in the later stages against brutally lengthy waves of damage-sponge special monsters. Stuff that turns the mindless entertainment into monotony if you don't regularly step away for a while.
There's certainly no depth to this hack and slasher. Although, if you're looking for some cheap titillation it's got that in spades. I've criticized this franchise in the past for failing to live up to its true raunchy potential. Well, that won't be the case here. Our heroines' swimsuit bottoms don't quite provide the necessary amount of coverage in the back (almost as if they're wearing them backwards or something) so there's always a pretty generous amount of butt-crack on display, their new super-powered forms often reveal their full rear-ends to the player, and there are plenty of naughty, naughty optional costumes to unlock. So, you gamers looking a decent cocktease finally have a viable enough option to pull yourselves off of Bayonetta for a minute. I suppose you could count that as another stride towards this property one day living up to the promise it still shows. It's not quite there yet, but it's getting closer. How mind-numbing it can be at points means the Wii entry remains my favorite. I do appreciate seeing that Tamsoft is making some necessary advancements in an attempt to achieve wider appeal, however.
7.3/10
Ninja Garden: Dragon Sword has a surprisingly intuitive combat system using the touchscreen controls. The controls are very responsive and I was able to execute all the moves I wanted to do effectively. It really does feel like Ninja Garden but on a DS. It's easier than the console Ninja Garden games. There's a nice enemy variety and plenty of bosses. But quite a few of the bosses are extremely easy. The story is mid but no one plays NG for the story lol. All in all, a decent action game on the DS.
Yakuza Fury
2005
RGG fell off fr fr
This game is Yokoyama's trick
Shadow Tower: Abyss
2003
This might become my favorite game by From Software. The atmosphere and aesthetics in this game are top tier. It manaages to create a truly alien feeling world that you don't belong in. A dream like qulaity that feels like a location your mind creates in a vivid dream that sticks with you for years. A game that looks and feels like it wouldn't be real. Someone said to me "it looks like something posted on the "games that don't exist" twitter account." and I 100% agree.
The ending is the weakest part of this game. It has me torn between rating this game a 5 like i want to and a 4.5 because the final "area" is a wet fart compared to everything else.
Highly recommend playing it
The ending is the weakest part of this game. It has me torn between rating this game a 5 like i want to and a 4.5 because the final "area" is a wet fart compared to everything else.
Highly recommend playing it
Now that I’ve had a day to sit on my thoughts of the game I will make an actual non-shitpost review.
This game is a mess. I wasn’t kidding when I said this is the MGS4 of the series. An extremely ambitious, earnest, heartfelt celebration of the series that has extremely high highs but also constantly falls on its face with extremely stupid writing.
The pacing is some of the worst we’ve seen from RGG. For a game that can easily be 100+ hours long it is both too long but also too short in areas. It constantly pulls you away from the main story to do very involved mini game/sub system tutorials but then has no time in the final hours to wrap up most of the story. At least 4 of the main characters this game is about don’t show up in the final cutscene. You just have to be told about what they are doing from a mouth piece so we can wrap shit up. Kiryu is just kinda left in this weird limbo as they don’t explain what the fuck got them to this point with an achievement titles “man who reclaimed his name”. It genuinely feels like there is either an entire chapter or at least a huge segment of one missing from the end. One of the main villains just stops showing up for 10+ hours only to be seen again in a cut away and is completely unrecognizable for at least another few hours. They then try to do the coin locker scene again with them and it feels completely unearned because they haven’t done anything. The two main villains you do fight are extremely forgettable and underwhelming. One is given what you’d imagine to be a super important connection to Ichiban but it never comes up. The two share a single cutscene at the start of the game and that’s it. Why was it even a plot point to begin with then???? So many plot threads just go no where or are left extremely unsatisfying as they hand wave them away so it can’t be viewed as “a plot hole”. I seriously think how they structure their stories needs to change because I don’t think the Yakuza writing formula they’ve had for 2 decades translates to a 100 hour JRPG. Imo the best way to enjoy the main story of these games is when you can just progress the plot freely and not be bogged down by side content or busy work. I usually save that stuff for premium adventure so the story isn’t so “start and stop”. But you can’t do that in these games because of the rpg leveling and just how the story constantly blocks you to do other shit I am currently not interested in. No RGG I don’t give a fuck about your Pokémon clone and it’s 30 minute+ forced tutorial I just want to get on with chapter 4 please.
Most of the cast has nothing to do in this game which would be fine if they didn’t force them to have boring ass drink links you need to do to make them objectively better in gameplay.
The gameplay needs massive changes going forward because Jesus Christ was I sick of the multiple grinds it imposes. The long battles they do in this game are terrible. In previous entries you’d have a long gauntlet where you’d have to fight to a location and they do this here but they constantly make you take the most out of the way route and block off better ones with excuses like “there are dudes over there!” Only to send you down an alley with 7 fights. If 9 does the same formula 8 repeated from 7 I might just drop the series. I do not want to go back to scrounging for money and being locked out of jobs till chapter 5 again. I do not want to have to do massive material grinds for good gear. I do not want to have 80% of the moves you get to be fucking useless because they aren’t an AOE and don’t deal elemental damage.
Highlights of this game is everything they do with Kiryu outside of the final chapter. Life links are overall goated outside of some implications of how no one reacting to Kiryu being alive despite you are only able to see them after Kiryu is broadcasted on national news to be alive.
There is honestly too much to talk about with this game So I’m just gonna end it by saying this: I’ll look back on the good in this game as some of the best but I never want to replay this game ever again. Also this game only makes Gaiden look even dumber and further cements it at as a $50 scam. Yokoyama fucking lied Hanawa is not important and he fucking knew that.
Mark my words that this game while currently being hailed as the best game in the series, that its perfect and other things like that will be looked back on a lot more negatively once the honeymoon phase is over, once hypebeasts move onto the next thing, once people won't freakout if you have anything negative to say about it. It won't be a hot take or "being contrarian" to think that the game is mid, super front loaded and falls apart in the end. It's fine if you do think its perfect and its your favorite game or whatever but the amount of people who lose their shit when you have anything negative to say about this game or gaiden is seriously annoying.
This game also made me get into a car accident so fuck it lol
This game is a mess. I wasn’t kidding when I said this is the MGS4 of the series. An extremely ambitious, earnest, heartfelt celebration of the series that has extremely high highs but also constantly falls on its face with extremely stupid writing.
The pacing is some of the worst we’ve seen from RGG. For a game that can easily be 100+ hours long it is both too long but also too short in areas. It constantly pulls you away from the main story to do very involved mini game/sub system tutorials but then has no time in the final hours to wrap up most of the story. At least 4 of the main characters this game is about don’t show up in the final cutscene. You just have to be told about what they are doing from a mouth piece so we can wrap shit up. Kiryu is just kinda left in this weird limbo as they don’t explain what the fuck got them to this point with an achievement titles “man who reclaimed his name”. It genuinely feels like there is either an entire chapter or at least a huge segment of one missing from the end. One of the main villains just stops showing up for 10+ hours only to be seen again in a cut away and is completely unrecognizable for at least another few hours. They then try to do the coin locker scene again with them and it feels completely unearned because they haven’t done anything. The two main villains you do fight are extremely forgettable and underwhelming. One is given what you’d imagine to be a super important connection to Ichiban but it never comes up. The two share a single cutscene at the start of the game and that’s it. Why was it even a plot point to begin with then???? So many plot threads just go no where or are left extremely unsatisfying as they hand wave them away so it can’t be viewed as “a plot hole”. I seriously think how they structure their stories needs to change because I don’t think the Yakuza writing formula they’ve had for 2 decades translates to a 100 hour JRPG. Imo the best way to enjoy the main story of these games is when you can just progress the plot freely and not be bogged down by side content or busy work. I usually save that stuff for premium adventure so the story isn’t so “start and stop”. But you can’t do that in these games because of the rpg leveling and just how the story constantly blocks you to do other shit I am currently not interested in. No RGG I don’t give a fuck about your Pokémon clone and it’s 30 minute+ forced tutorial I just want to get on with chapter 4 please.
Most of the cast has nothing to do in this game which would be fine if they didn’t force them to have boring ass drink links you need to do to make them objectively better in gameplay.
The gameplay needs massive changes going forward because Jesus Christ was I sick of the multiple grinds it imposes. The long battles they do in this game are terrible. In previous entries you’d have a long gauntlet where you’d have to fight to a location and they do this here but they constantly make you take the most out of the way route and block off better ones with excuses like “there are dudes over there!” Only to send you down an alley with 7 fights. If 9 does the same formula 8 repeated from 7 I might just drop the series. I do not want to go back to scrounging for money and being locked out of jobs till chapter 5 again. I do not want to have to do massive material grinds for good gear. I do not want to have 80% of the moves you get to be fucking useless because they aren’t an AOE and don’t deal elemental damage.
Highlights of this game is everything they do with Kiryu outside of the final chapter. Life links are overall goated outside of some implications of how no one reacting to Kiryu being alive despite you are only able to see them after Kiryu is broadcasted on national news to be alive.
There is honestly too much to talk about with this game So I’m just gonna end it by saying this: I’ll look back on the good in this game as some of the best but I never want to replay this game ever again. Also this game only makes Gaiden look even dumber and further cements it at as a $50 scam. Yokoyama fucking lied Hanawa is not important and he fucking knew that.
Mark my words that this game while currently being hailed as the best game in the series, that its perfect and other things like that will be looked back on a lot more negatively once the honeymoon phase is over, once hypebeasts move onto the next thing, once people won't freakout if you have anything negative to say about it. It won't be a hot take or "being contrarian" to think that the game is mid, super front loaded and falls apart in the end. It's fine if you do think its perfect and its your favorite game or whatever but the amount of people who lose their shit when you have anything negative to say about this game or gaiden is seriously annoying.
This game also made me get into a car accident so fuck it lol