This will be more of a comment on the Playstation division today and how Team Asobi fits into its context, rather than a review itself. And what game is better than that than a Playstation 5 tech demo that pays homage to the entire legacy and history of Playstation games?

The massive westernization that has been affecting Playstation first party games over the last 10 years really disgusts me. The Playstation studios games, that was so remarkable and present in my life, I no longer recognize. At least the most part of them.

Ready-made formulas for triple A games, whether cinematic experiences, sandboxes with generic exploration that look more like Ubisoft games, or just games as a service, are far from what was Sony's peak in this industry. And dont get me wrong, I absolutely have nothing against these kind of games, in fact, I believe that Naughty Dog, Santa Monica and Insomniac games are among the best and most talented game developers in the world. And that's exactly where I want to get to. Having a library of games that are very similar in design and formula is not a good thing, even if the games were good. But when you uses The Last of Us and Horizon Zero Dawn as benchmarks to be followed for a big part of your games, well...the result doesn't please me at all.

Sure, there are exceptions: Returnal, Ratchet and Clank, Death Stranding are really cool games with a great vision and originality, but as I said, exceptions.

Playstation studios had a vast and diverse library of games. We don't need to go that far, let's take the Ps3 and Vita era, as an example. Demon's Souls, Uncharted, Gravity Rush, Infamous, Little Big Planet, Killzone, Resistance and God of War are just a few examples of first party games from that time that were not only very good, but also had a high degree of dissimilarity between them.

Now, lets rewind the time. Unprecedented experimentation, absurd creativity, unique games that marked an era in their own and irreplicable way, are a great hallmark of Japan Studios, which I consider to be the best Playstation developer of all time. Astro's Playroom, a charismatic and inventive 3d platformer game, was developed by Team Asobi, a new division that was spun off from within Japan Studios. The thing is, games like this are less and less requested by the company directors. The recent announcement of the Astro Bot game, (which looks amazing) seems more like a miracle, and makes it clear that it is very different from the current wave of first party games on Playstation. Yes, let's not be naive, I am fully aware that games like this are not that profitable in the current triple A scenario. That's the reality, and that's the way it is, but yeah, it sucks. And the thought that we probably will have to await years to another game like that just makes me sad.

We are in a nebulous and uncertain moment in the gaming industry, where Playstation is losing its original identity every year with fewer and fewer first party games released, the Xbox division changes strategies with the same regularity as someone changes clothes and seems to have no confidence or certainty in its own future, and Nintendo... it continues to deliver incredible games as it has always done, but it means that it is the same Nintendo as always, a big rubbish anti-consumer company.

However, games like Astro's Playroom give me that spark of hope, especially placing them as the antithesis of current PlayStation studios, and I really hope and wish all the success in the world for Team Asobi.

Chapter One
A child ran off from their village, filled with rage. A petty kind of anger; one that the child would have all but forgotten about the next time you saw them. This next time would never come, though. The child disappeared and in their place stood a Destroyer.

Chapter Two
The village seemed different. Strange new people kept showing up, with pig shaped masks covering their eyes. On the surface, they went about their business and chatted like any other villager but the more mind you paid them, the more their words rang hollow. Their thoughts and jokes seemed inorganic; mass produced even. As these Pigmasks gathered in the village, the original people there felt alienated. An old man, once known for his insights and his sharp wit would get angrier and angrier, lashing out at those around him and eventually leaving. More villagers would follow suit, some of them against their will, as this community they saw as a safe haven to share things they couldn’t share anywhere else slowly but surely became part of that “anywhere else.”
Were these Pigmasks to blame for everything? Or was it merely a case of things that always infested the community finally bubbling up to the surface? And what of the Destroyer, a one-time villager, now hailed as the champion of the Pigmasks?

Chapter Three
A monkey walked through a forest with boxes on their back; head and torso fighting a fierce battle to not fall and hit the ground. This grueling process eventually became routine and the monkey’s body eventually went on autopilot. They had all this time to think about if they’ll ever move past this task and if they’ll ever have a purpose.
Did the Destroyer have the same thoughts in this same forest?

Chapter Four
Another village child was not unlike the one who would become the Destroyer. In fact, you could say that these two village children were a single entity; two sides of the same coin. The Destroyer was the head of this coin, facing up and always the topic of conversation from those who saw this “face.” The tail, stuck to the ground, reveled in the attention the head received. They took glee in seeing friends talk about the Destroyer without any clue of its relation to the one standing near them. They searched for other villagers’ words on this mysterious Destroyer and snuck into houses to see them: the praise, the insults, the natural discussions surrounding this new “symbol” of the village.
This was not healthy for the village child. But still, could you blame them? This sensation of feeling important, even if that importance was just a niche micro-celeb in a small village, was much more comforting than the cold reality of meaning nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Chapter Five
A Pigmask working in a tower was a big fan of a rock band. They were utterly awestruck at the sight of that band’s merchandise on the man that entered the tower earlier that day and could not talk about anything other than that band: expressing their love of the band’s work, idolizing the ones behind it as supposedly great people, and elevating the band to some moral paragon because of milquetoast political opinions in its songs.
The Destroyer was in the tower too, watching this Pigmask’s conversation with mere apathy if not active contempt.

Chapter Six
Sometimes, ghosts of the past appear as reminders of what will never come back.

Chapter Seven
The Destroyer pulled a needle out of the ground and felt nothing. They pulled quite a bit of these needles before but something was different this time. The act was now done only out of some perceived obligation; to the Pigmasks and villagers cheering on or to the fake images of hearts that result from the act. It was time for the last needle to be pulled.

Chapter Eight
The Destroyer laid on the ground motionless as its tail pulled the final needle on its behalf. Its supposed stardom was crushed into not even half a star.
It’s over.

I think a term commonly associated with romance/sol animanga and games is “wish fulfillment.” Now, from my experience, it's a term usually met with some level of disdain or condescension. “Wow what a loser, they need this thing to feel good about themselves.” And, sure, I can understand where that attitude comes from, in fact I'm like that sometimes too. But I feel it's not that simple. People come from different backgrounds, places, and circumstances. Sometimes what we need is comfort from something, even if it isn't real.
Clannad, among many, many other beloved visual novels is boiled down to the common “your friends and family are important, your life is worth living” morals, but is it a bad thing to be so commonly communicated? I would assume that Maeda and the many other writers at Key are trying to convey this, and even if they were or not, intention does not always align with found purpose. Tomoya Okazaki, our protagonist, is a great stand in for players like me to some degree. He's still his own character, but I think him being a loner to align with the usual “wish fulfillment” protagonist role really works to its benefit. No matter your background or role, there is worth in finding friends and family, whether it be genetic or found. It finally gives us purpose to those who feel so aimless in life. Clannad is not simply “wish fulfillment” at play. It's inspiring us to fulfill those wishes ourselves, and fulfill the wishes of others.
I’ve seen complaints about Clannad’s core structure before, as for some people the routes are “not interconnected enough”. But is that a problem? In my opinion, anyway, Clannad is an anthology of the multiple “what if” scenarios surrounding Okazaki’s journey in life. While Nagisa’s route is what leads to the true ending of the story, it doesn’t make the other routes pointless. Regardless of what is the “true” outcome of the story, your experiences and how you see these characters develop will always live on with the player. You get to see Okazaki give these people true happiness in life, and by the true ending, he is repaid for everything he’s done. While in gameplay the route system is a little rough around the edges with much needed polish, I think playing with a guide allows for a very smooth experience.
Playing this after my most prior Key visual novel experience, that being AIR, really opened my eyes to how well thought out and executed much of Clannad is. While AIR suffers from an overly ambitious but ultimately meaningless structure, Clannad takes a safer approach and cuts out any filler. Jun Maeda and his team really wanted to make up for the mistakes of AIR, and you can really tell from how much more polish is applied to this game. Despite this being one of the longest games I’ve ever played, Clannad rarely falls victim to artificial padding. The game gives you and makes proper use of the “skip already read text” feature, which makes hopping into your next route a very quick and easy experience. It helps that the game is split into 10+ routes that all vary in length, meaning I don’t think the game can ever burn you out from a scenario. Each route (with two exceptions, one being entirely optional) is very different overall so nothing is samey either. I’d also like to make note of the amount of content on offer, Clannad is not only long from the main game but has TONS of little secrets and extra blurbs of dialogue to discover, it really feels like the team wanted to put as much as they could onto the disc.
And that’s the overall thing I love about Clannad: it’s very polished. Not perfect, but very damn close. Clannad may seem safe or tropey, but it uses those aspects and pushes them to a wonderful and engaging extent. The current top review tries to make fun of fans of this game and I’d have to say that this person probably has never experienced joy in their life. None of the huge visual novels I’ve played so far have been flops, and Clannad is no exception either. In fact, out of the three (Higurashi, Tsukihime, Clannad) I would say this is my new favorite, and knowing that Key still has some fantastic games in their catalog for me to still try out (Kanon, Little Busters!, and Rewrite) has me so immensely excited. But none of those games, or any visual novels in the future will take away what a special experience Clannad was for me. I had taken a long break from reviews and I needed to get out of that slump, and this game was what inspired me to write a little something again, especially seeing how none of the longer reviews about this game on this site are in good faith. I wanted to fix that. Thank you for reading, and if this review manages to get even one person to fully play through this game, I’ll be happy.

Under the sea, the primordial broth of ages ago, a small organism thought that one day he could do something, instead of just eating and being eaten. What is humanity, if not the struggle to break out of the animosity and cruelty of nature? What started as a simple fight for survival, it became something more.

"I will change the world!"

E.V.O. is the game of all time, for once not meant in a derogative way! It REALLY holds the entirety of existence and worth of life in its palm. I especially enjoyed the way evolution is portrayed, as a stats sheet, narratively and gameplay wise it makes so much sense it's unreal. It’s a short game, but the experience sticks with you on a fundamental level, doesn't overstay its welcome and, once finished, a piece of EVO will be stuck with you forever.

Off you go little man, become the paragon of virtue and love of all creation, against sin and all that is evil.

I'll be brief.

Aren't hobbies supposed to pass time, instead of filling it? What it means to finish a game? Specifically, I almost never finish a game at 100% for lack of practicality, but if you consider the games I play, like Tactics Ogre, and their inane prerequisites for a 100% clear, you can see where I come from. One thing is achievement hunting, one thing is saying "yep, there's nothing else left". Hope I make sense.

Why then does Fire Emblem: Three Houses, or as the fans call it, 100% Walkthrough, ALL ROUTES, keep locking content behind routes? I understand the need to have a complex and definitive experience, with no clear canon, but the clumsiness and game design show another picture. There's three routes in the game, of which ... only one could be considered necessary. Repetitiveness of gameplay loop between monastery trips, fun for the first five minutes, and recycled battle maps can do only so much good for enjoyment.

I felt like I had to play this game just to be done with it and it's not a good indicator of enjoyment and fun. I stepped back, took a break from games altogether, came back last week and cleared all routes. It's frustrating, yes, because there's merit in it. There's a sparkle of good characterization, clear understanding of what makes a good Fire Emblem, but then it's snapped back to reality thanks to awkward choices.

Here's a couple examples:

- I feel like this game is bloated with content, while keeping to a single route and developing that single one Blue Lions would've done wonders, it would've addressed so many odd moments in the other routes as well. No spoilers, but if you know, you know.
- There was no need to choose the route to pick so early in the game. I hope you enjoy playing the same 10-12 chapters each new game!! when there's also BUILT IN a way to borrow units around your level. Huhhhh let me PLEASE have all units have that standard build and let me skip half the game please.
- Map design is barren. There are probably two or three good maps, and while other games in the franchise like Awakening like to at least present you a set piece, Three Houses really likes to put you through unimpressive ground and grass textures all the time.

These kind of flaws really shine through once you realize, in order to experience the full brunt of the game, you have to play through all three four routes. It leads to confusion, it leads to frustration; for goodness' sake choosing the Golden Deer faction because you like their characters (fair enough) is paramount to NOT understanding important plot points because it takes for granted that you've played the other two routes, and now you're ready for a third point of view.

I understand where the love for the game comes from. The soundtrack is stellar, the game's very accessible and the battles and classes are very hands-off, reward experimentation and being able to influence units' growth is also very fun. The characters and themes of the game give a lot of think about and offer interesting counterpoints to each other in their support conversations and there's no clear best or worst unit in terms of balance, characterization (except a very dull middle aged man) and build. Still, no reason to put permadeath when all characters are supposed to be important, but you do you, "Intelligent" System, this kind of game design doesn't incentivize iron man runs, at all.

I don't want to be bitter, I think I liked this game. I'll talk about the DLC in another review, at least I'll be able to skip all the monastery chicanery and jump straight to the maps, which made me not want to play the game ever again after 200 hours.

People give BioShock shit for this all the time, but DOOM 3 is the actual poor man’s System Shock 2 meets Half-Life!

I can’t understate how bad DOOM 3 is. It's the best example of what would happen if someone looked at both of the previously mentioned games and tried to superficially imitate it without understanding why those games worked so well.

DOOM 3 is one of the prime examples of id Software’s dark age, where basically everyone from the old guard, save for John Carmack and a few others like Tim Willits, had left the company, and thus was gone the personality and charm that made id Software’s prior works so memorable, and was replaced with a studio that seemed stuck in the past and didn’t know how to make games fun anymore, where as Valve continued to rise to the top after the huge success of the Half-Life franchise.

Now, conceptually the game itself does sound interesting, it takes the foundation of the original DOOM games, specifically DOOM 64, which was already leaning into horror with the atmosphere, and goes all the way into survival horror territory, or at the very least, it could have? Because here’s the main problem, DOOM 3 feels very much confused, it doesn’t know what it wants to be, and ends up trying to be three things at once, and failing at all of them as well.

But I guess I’d need to explain why those other games work in the first place, to then explain why this one doesn’t, so here we go fellas…

Half-Life

Arguably the most obvious point of comparison, down to even plot beats being ripped straight from it, Half-Life is known for its masterful use of environmental storytelling and player immersion, taking cues from the original DOOM games and making it much more grounded than “marine tears through demons”, but what truly makes Half-Life Half-Life is its gameplay. See, the gameplay itself isn’t just about running around the map killing monsters, and what in DOOM would be diversions from the core gameplay loop (the key/secret hunting) is integral to Half-Life, between gunfights there are also puzzles and platforming segments, and areas can even vary in how their gameplay is structured, going from survival horror-esque segments in the more claustrophobic segments of the Black Mesa facility, to engaging in firefights with the military and the monsters in the desert and etcetera.

In summary, Half-Life is a game that constantly shifts in pacing to make it never get stale, making it so you are never playing through the same chapter for too long (barring Surface Tension), and since often some sections come with setpieces that excellently manage to introduce you to that one chapter, it makes every one of them stand out from each other.

Also ‘On A Rail’ is a very good level.

System Shock 2

System Shock 2 is a pure survival horror at its core, and it manages to knock it out of the park. Using Thief: The Dark Project’s Dark Engine, enemies have audio cues that instill the paranoia on the player, and creates fear not because of the unknown, but because you know there is a looming threat close to you, but you don’t know where they are exactly, and even rooms that might seem safe could have a Cyborg Midwife rushing to your position and messing with your day, and that’s not getting into how your weapons could jam during battle, or you could run out of healing items, or other unfortunate circumstances, though all put in contrast to the RPG systems that allow you circumvent those situations in a number of different ways. And System Shock 2 is no slouch at storytelling either, and is even stronger at it than Half-Life, still similarly using incredible environmental design and storytelling, but also audio logs that spectacularly capture the horrors of being trapped in a place such as the Von Braun while it goes all downhill, seeing the last words of crewmembers, whether they are dying or being turned into part of The Many, is incredibly chilling, and at times the story can reach even philosophical levels, as questions about being an individual or mistakes from the past start to creep up on the player.

I don’t want this to turn into a full blown System Shock 2 review, so to cap it off, the game consistently manages to create horror both with its narrative and moment-to-moment gameplay, while still giving you the tools to fight back against it, or even outright break it (grenade launcher and full agility go bonkers).

Right, back to sadness and darkness, AKA DOOM 3.

DOOM 3 tries to imitate several aspects of these two games, but fails at almost all of them, especially in its (non-)story. And speaking of which, the story is… Fine? Like, it’s pretty much just Half-Life 1 with a bit of System Shock in there as well for good measure and… That’s it. It just lacks the spark that made either of these games from a narrative perspective so interesting, look at the main antagonist for example, he (and Hell) lacks the complex and downright philosophical overtones of S.H.O.D.A.N and The Many as well as the mystery and visual storytelling of Xen and the black ops. Really, it’s barely above Quake 2 in terms of story, except there are more cutscenes than just the ones between each level.

But yeah, that’s still far better than the gameplay itself, which is, at least for almost 80% of the game, shit.

A lot of the gameplay in DOOM 3 feels like a trickle. The weapons are mostly terrible, lacking the beef that they had in the first three games and at times feeling more like peashooters in comparison, especially the INFAMOUS shotgun, and another problem is that it tries to be a survival horror game where you have to deal with low ammo and such, but at its core it’s still a DOOM game, and those two things gel very badly with each other. The enemy encounters are just very lacking for the majority of the game, just repeatedly reusing the same “Imp appears out of a monster closet/portal to kill ya” at a rate having a drink shot for every time that same setup was used would lead me to the fucking hospital, or the even more obnoxious “small melee enemy spam” that the game loves so much that the game has two different enemy types that serve for literally the exact same purpose, be as obnoxious as Fanboy and Chum Chum, and the few interesting enemies the game uses sometimes are either very underutilized like the Pinky (who has got a radical redesign here), or appear way, way later in the game. The level design is generally very dull and boring, just taking place in very samey industrial corridors that would make Quake 2 look like Pizza Tower, and due to taking place in those very samey industrial corridors, significantly cutting down on opportunities for interesting level design beyond reusing the same incredibly flimsy attempts at horror, and by horror I mean “oh look here’s an Imp just behind that door that you could not possibly predict unless you already knew it was there” kind of thing, and after a quarter of the way through the game, I was just expecting for every two rooms to have something like either of those previously mentioned types of encounters, while all following the exact same structure of “pick that keycard/pda to get through that door”, where as 1, 2 and 64, while still following a similar structure, at least incorporated puzzle elements into the mix to make getting each keycard more challenging than just “go through all of those corridors killing enemies”, and occasions that remotely resemble those puzzles from those games are VERY few and far between.

And the end result is a game that is BORING… Really, really, really BORING. While not having many diversions from the core gameplay loop of killing demons isn’t the worst thing, that gameplay loop in question is so repetitive, irritating and busted that after the first hour it becomes a exhaustive slog, and by the time I beat Hell, I was begging for the game to end there.

And speaking of Hell, I want to dedicate a whole paragraph to Hell, the only level that manages to be almost genuinely good and isn’t boring beyond belief. Hell is the highlight of this game, for starters this level is probably the one that best captures the feeling of being in Hell, possibly in the entire series even. You truly feel like a mere mortal that managed to get into a place no one should ever dare to, and the hellish architecture and art direction of this puts every other DOOM game up until that point to shame (yes, I am being serious), I mean just look at that loading screen, it’s so fucking foreboding and awesome it makes me wish the entire game was half as good as this. And in the gameplay department this doesn’t disappoint either, at the start of the level you are starved of ammo and is already forced to fight a Hell Knight with only your shotgun, and this is the ONLY time in the entire game where the atrocious spread of it actually makes a gunfight in this game more intense. The latter half isn’t quite up there, but it still brings to the table some challenging combat encounters using stronger enemies and more tight levels, and the best part is that it ends before boredom starts to creep up, albeit it ends in a disappointing boss fight like with every other DOOM game before it, but at least the game ends in a high note here…

Too bad it doesn’t end in Hell!

I wish every other level in the game was as good as Hell, especially in the art direction (though there are some that try).

Because in terms of sights and sounds this manages to take Quake 2’s already pretty uneven art style and make it even more bland and uninteresting here. As I said before, most levels are just boring gray industrial corridors over and over and over again, and even when there’s a different room that isn’t just that, it’s still unremarkable due to how everything else blends itself together in my mind, and I don’t think that can attributed solely because of its setting, since later on there a few moments that do try to go for something different and start mixing those industrial corridors with hell and it's pretty awesome, but they are tainted by the fact that at their core they are still those same corridors you have been seeing since the very beginning of the game.

And I don’t think this game’s setting is the root cause of this problem, specifically because if I look at a System Shock 2 (literally), while the game does take place almost entirely in a massive Star Trek-esque starship, every area in the game looks and feels different from one another even if they happen to have a similar color palette, most notably because of how each room is carefully laid out to fit that deck’s purpose, and consequently creates several memorable and noteworthy rooms because of that, and that’s not even getting into all of the body horror galore of The Many. DOOM 3 also aspires to do levels that feel like tangible real places, but it lacks the ability to do something interesting with them, and even when it does, it’s way too late in the game. Going into the sounds, they are just there, and when they aren’t just there, they suck. Again, weapons sound more like peashooters or Nerf guns, but that’s par from the course at this point.

Just before wrapping this up, this game is really not scary, I don’t know if it is because it’s a horror shooter and I am naturally far less scared of games where you can directly fight back against the source of those horrors, but yeah, DOOM 3 failed to scare me at all, most notably because of the overuse of the already mentioned to death monster closet jumpscares that are very flimsy to begin with and quickly become predictable, but maybe that’s just me and in reality this is one of the scariest games of all time according to a professional gaming journalism site like IGN or Kotaku (if the latter is even professional).

I might be sounding (or reading) like a broken record at this point, but yeah, DOOM 3 is really that bad. There are certain things I do appreciate and even like about it (again, the Hell level is great, and it does start to pick up steam at the last quarter), especially their ambition in trying to turn DOOM into pure horror affair, but they are bogged down by literally every other bad thing this game does that it is no wonder people don’t really talk about it in the same way they do about Half-Life 2 or F.E.A.R, or even lesser known ones like Dark Corners of the Earth.

They couldn’t even get killing demons right. I’ve seen bad Devour clones that put more effort into how enemies died than DOOM 3.

Though at least it probably still isn’t as bad as Rage…

A Final Fantasy for fans and first timers indeed: Final Fantasy XV is for everyone, and as a result Final Fantasy XV is for absolutely no one.

Between Square Enix's struggle to acclimate to the development process of seventh-gen hardware, the tumultuous state of the company in the early 2010s, and the Fabula Nova Crystallis brand's hard focus on the mainline Final Fantasy XIII trilogy, Final Fantasy Versus XIII was a game that was impossible to make. Ten years after its inception, Square Enix instead settled on making Final Fantasy XV the only game that any big-name corporation could ever possibly make in the climate of the 2010s game industry.

I admire and respect people's desire to find meaning and personal resonance in what was eventually delivered in Final Fantasy XV - everybody has their slop of choice, and the Heavens above know I am not exempt - but I feel that much of the most generous readings of the game fail to see it for what it is: a recurring trend in the majority of interviews with Hajime Tabata indicate that he was first and foremost interested in creating a game that would be as accessible as possible, reach as wide of an audience as possible, and - naturally, by necessity - sell well. Edges were filed off, idiosyncracy and personal touches were traded for easily-digestible variations on what had become popular in the industry and culture around video games by the point of its rebirth: vacuous and empty open worlds devoid of life beyond their skin-deep beauty. Shallow bonds between shallow characters, the lowest-common-denominator appeal of spending time with the boys or the obvious potential for the yaoi fan demographic masking the blatant misogyny at the core of the script. Entire vertical slices of necessary information and storytelling being absent, surgically removed to be sold back to the player through films, animated adaptations and predatory DLC models. Brand names and corporate sponsorships peppered throughout, to anchor the game to its consumerist ideals and destroy any hope of denying what it is: while all video games are inherently products and thus are necessarily burdened by some degree of cynicism, the recurring inclusion of brand names by Coleman, Nissin, and American Express act a stark reminder that Final Fantasy XV has been accepted by and joined the ranks of its contemporaries as something made to be marketed and sold. Consider that the expanded Final Fantasy XV universe was cancelled and left by the wayside by the higher-ups at Square Enix, while the pay-to-win mobile game still persists to this very day.

Many will vehemently defend Final Fantasy XV's flaws as unsightly bumps on a more coherent whole, or even defend its flaws as purposeful barbs and thorns on the surface of a carefully-cultivated masterwork. To one extent or another, I can't help but agree: Final Fantasy XV is bad on purpose. However, it was not bad on purpose to prove a point or make some grand artistic statement. Final Fantasy XV is bad on purpose because its audience has spoken, and the industry has no choice but to answer: this is what it means to be a Video Game in the Modern Era. This is what sells. This is what you and I have asked for, and this is what you and I must live with.

I don't know if we necessarily deserve better than Final Fantasy XV, but I do certainly believe that we would all be better off in a world in which we did not allow a game like Final Fantasy XV to become what studios and corporations correctly presume is what audiences are asking for.

Ah Fire Emblem, despite playing your series for about like 7 years, I’ve still barely played any of the games. I wanted to change that, experience most of the series and maybe even rank them. I don’t know if I’ll ever finish the goal but I want to and also want to make a small little “review” I guess just telling how it went for me. Nothing too detailed but just wanna share some thoughts in case people want reasons for my enjoyment or dislikes of a game. But first let’s talk about how starting this series took way too long.

I’ve been wanting to do this since October last year. I was playing FE1 during the time and even got about halfway through the game until I had to get a new computer and realized I never saved the save file on the older one meaning I’d have to do that all over again. I decided to say screw it and play Engage since it got gifted to me. Started in December and after 2 months, I’ve barely played it and just didn’t have motivation. Finally had to just say “alright let’s just do Gaiden!” and here we are.

I should mention that back in 2018 I’ve played and beaten the remake of this on 3DS but my memory is pretty foggy on it. I was dreading this game ngl, this Famicom original along with 5, 6, maybe the shadow dragon remake and Revelations were all games I’ve not really been looking forward to playing in the future. Playing this game surprised me. I forgot just how much different this one was to the previous game. In the end though I was just surprised how I actually enjoyed the game.

One thing I’m glad to see missing is the awful item management system. Granted I’m not big on just only holding one item but I’d take that over how the first game did items. There’s not even a durability system here which is just weird but with the item limitation, I think it makes sense. They also made magic a system that costs your own HP which sounds like a punishing enough reason to not spam it but it can be very broken. Though it does come to one of my gripes.

Accuracy is garbage in this game and I know there are times you miss in FE especially if you don’t accommodate for terrain or use a hard hitting move but I swear it’s just ridiculous in this game. I thought at first it was just a magic thing but it just happens a lot and I swear sometimes my hit ratio is just atrocious, why is it like that? I guess I should be thankful there are no Axe units because I’d probably be never using them if they were in this game.

Units are also a mixed bag as some can be pretty bad even when leveled up like Boey, god I hate Boey. You don’t actually get too many for one party due to the game being split into two groups. That said, there were some fun units. In fact, here are my top 8 units in the game from 8 to 1. Clair, Celica, Silque, Tatiana, Alm, Mathilda, Est, and Delthea. It’s a shame the story and writing aren’t too great and honestly feels rushed. I wish more maps had dialogue because it feels kind of empty without it. There’s also still no supports which I’m wondering when I’ll finally start seeing those.

The maps are something I also feel mixed on. I swear a lot of them are designed to waste your time and I’ll go over why it’s not a big deal but by the late game, they can be long if you don’t have strategies. Some maps in chapter 4 are also just annoying like the swamp. Alm’s team also takes a little longer to really deal with some of the more bad maps but when both teams are good, you really feel like you can do anything.

I’m gonna say it, warp magic is busted. I never realized how good it was but I basically for the last 10 maps just warped strong units to get the job done while Clair flew to wherever. Tatiana was also on healing duty as one white magic spell healed everyone which is busted. Just have Cliff next to hear to heal her too and you’ll make most maps a joke. If it wasn’t for the fact you need to beat everyone to finish a map besides like one in the 4th chapter in Alm’s path, you could beat a lot of these in turn 1. It’s probably the first time I’ve ever felt smart playing these games.

You can find some dungeons to go into allowing at most 10 units to join in the fight and they’re all pretty samey feeling besides like some of the last couple like Lost Woods. Some of them literally exist for you to grind in because you do have to grind in this game. I’d recommend using the Easy mode you can enable by holding start and select on New Game.

There’s also towns to traverse and they’re neat but they feel like an excuse to just get an item or party member. It’s not like Shining Force where they have a lot of NPCs and just places to visit like shops. Funnily enough, this game came out six days before Shining Force 1 on the Mega Drive.

Man, when I was getting near the end, I was nervous. I felt like I wasn’t gonna beat the game after all of that progress but the game wasn't too hard which surprised me. Even the final map isn’t too bad but sadly Gray and May didn’t make it to the very end which made me sad but sacrifices had to be made. I also didn’t like how Jedah couldn’t be hit until every 4 turns because this game doesn’t actually let you view your turn number like the previous game. When I saw Alm throw his shield and stab the final boss and he died I was like “THAT WAS AMAZING!” and just seeing the credits made the journey feel so good to complete. They even have that where they are now and I learned something sad. If a party member dies, it just says they rest in peace and this can even affect other characters. It made Clair sad that Gray was dead and I won’t lie, that kind of whimpered the mood a bit. I didn’t even know these games did that, brutal.

The game graphically looks a little better than last time but still isn’t anything amazing. I was very confused why three of my units started looking like Celica when battling, maybe it was a glitch. They also got better with the portraits feeling more unique even if some are very obvious at being copies of each other. You wouldn’t understand unless you saw some of the ones in the first game. The music however is amazing and won’t feel as repetitive as last time thanks to there being more songs this time around. Kind of crazy how iconic some of these songs would be for a game that’s not well liked.

FE2 may be the blacksheep in this series but I had a good time playing it. Not going to act like I was enjoying it 100% of the time, but I had fun. This was a nice game to play and it’s rare for me to beat an 8-bit RPG. When I saw the ending, I felt proud to beat another one of these games. I hope eventually I’ll be able to beat more of these games, including replaying some of the modern games I’ve beaten. I’m not sure if I can recommend this game because the remake is better, at least in my limited memory I feel it is but this isn’t a bad game. Next I’ll finally be playing the Super Famicom games and I’m hoping to see some cool improvements, maybe it’ll be great?

The worst one, apparently! Gaiden is undoubtedly a weird game and a black sheep, but I'd be very hard pressed to call it bad, or without merits. In fact, Gaiden is actually really cool, and many of its issues are grossly overblown. Just like with FE7, I feel that just because a bunch of fetubers have said it's bad, or pointed out its issues, it's become the general consensus, and in Gaiden's case I personally doubt many of its detractors have even played it because of its infamy. I don't blame them - a clunky, slow, Famicom SRPG with poor balancing and bad map design doesn't exactly sound fun, and it certainly seems like perfect punching bag material, but believe me when I say this; these are not egregious enough to make Gaiden unenjoyable, at least to me. If you want a tldr, I typed up my thoughts in a previous review, which was admittedly very passive aggressive and rude, which I apologise for. I just get heated trying to defend games I like, I suppose. But yeah, Gaiden is actually cool and you're all wrong. (Not really. All opinions are valid but I do heavily disagree with the negative sentiment this game has garnered.)

Gaiden is actually really impressive for a Famicom game of the time. Having a multi-faceted narrative with two ongoing, playable routes is probably the biggest part of Gaiden's identity, and I can't think of any other games from the time that dared to try this, at least within the realm of SRPGs and JRPGs. The world map is also surprisingly detailed, always fully visible, and fully traversible from top to bottom, albeit on a fixed path. I never saw any sprites flicker, and the battle animations are nothing short of eye-candy. I really like some of the attention to detail too, like having Alm and Celica's portraits change slightly on promotion, or the final boss' battle sprite completely changing when weakened. Not to mention the unique animation Alm gets for landing the finishing blow. That shield toss gives me chills and I don't think any other NES game has ever made me feel that.

Although I already knew the gist of Gaiden's narrative, having already played Echoes, I still think it's worth pointing out how good it is, especially by NES standards. What starts off as spearheading an uprising against a corrupt general spirals into the conquest of an entire nation, and wrestling control of the world from Gods back into the hands of humans. If you know me, that last bit is one of my favourite tropes in any form of media, and I think this might be one of the first ever examples of it - so good on Gaiden for starting the trend.

Here comes the hard part, though. Addressing Gaiden's biggest issues is difficult. The common complaints aren't totally unfounded, but they're definitely exaggerated. I guess I can try by getting the most notorious out of the way; the map design.

Gaiden map design is....weird. I don't think it's necessarily bad though. There're lots of open areas, and terrain bonuses are a bit excessive. Map layouts are reused, and some are questionably designed, but it never felt unfair, or unfun, which are probably two biggest contributors to what makes a map "badly designed", at least for me. Obviously this is entirely down to personal opinion. I won't deny some maps could've definitely pissed me off in another timeline, though, like some of Celica's lategame bog maps, or Nuibaba's mansion on Alm's side, but they just didn't annoy me too much, and maps like these are the exception, not the rule. And guys, please stop acting like Celica's route is all boat maps when it only makes up three of like, godknows how many total possible individual encounters there are on her route. Seriously though, Gaiden map design is fine.

"But Gaiden is grindy! The XP payouts suck and you're better off playing on easy mode."

In all of my time playing Gaiden, I only stopped once to grind, and it was right before the point of no return on Celica's route to give a few units that nudge they needed to get their promotions...which I didn't even end up using on the final map. So ultimately, no. Gaiden is very beatable without grinding. Consider that most actions reward your whole party experience, and that's a lot more exp that your units are getting than you realise, even if it initially seems like very little. And before you say grinding is slow in Gaiden, that couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, it's faster than just about any contemporary RPG of the time. The game gives you very easy access to infinite mummy encounters on both routes (maybe to Celica's route's detriment because those graveyard tiles always initiate an encounter) that are guaranteed to give your characters boatloads of experience and in many cases a flat 100 xp.

Moving on to level ups and growth rates; growth rates being low is also a very deliberate design choice. They're there to add variety to playthroughs, and make some units end up potentially better or worse than others, as per traditional Fire Emblem's design philosophy, but only marginally in Gaiden, since promotions automatically bump stats up to class bases if they're lower, as opposed to providing a fixed increase to stats like other games in the series. This means that, actually unlike most FE games, Gaiden has a surprisingly balanced cast. I actually like this approach. It's definitely in line with Gaiden's whole idea of being an SRPG with traditional RPG elements baked in, given this incentivises just levelling your characters instead of relying on random variables, and, again, it makes for a mostly balanced cast. There's no doubt that dread fighters and falcoknights are by far the best promotions, but it does mean that everyone is viable if you invest in them. Regarding characters who don't promote until very late though, like Mae and Delthea, they don't even need the promotion. Being able to use Aura is more than enough. Seriously, everyone in Gaiden gets a chance to shine. Maybe some less than others, though, because of bases or stats that are unchanged by promotions. cough Clive.

"Witches being able to warp to your units is unfair!"

Ok, so, don't count me on this, but I heard that the witch enemy ai was intentionally made to be really stupid and to not be able gang up on your units. Not something I can actually verify, but I think anyone who has played gaiden can safely say that witches are stupid and very rarely actually do anything that could be anything considered remotely strategically beneficial. It didn't happen to me, but I dunno, if it does, Gaiden is one of the few FE games that gives you the luxury of reviving dead characters. Not once, mind you. Up to six times. Three per route, though characters who die on either route can be revived and brought over to the other. Silk seems to be the most common use of this, given warp utility is invaluable and I can't blame people for wanting to skip more than just the maps on Alm's side. Going back on map design though, I think the game gives you two extremely good, high move, terrain ignoring fliers on Celica's route for a reason. Three if you're willing to feed kills to Est for a bit. Her bases are actually pretty respectable.

(Protip, by the way, for people who've decided to read this far - you deserve it: Once you get to chapter 4, do all of Celica's route's stuff until you unlock Alm's promotion, transfer the angel ring over to Alm. Level up Alm a bunch in the ensuing maps thanks to his inflated exp gain and once you get to Nuibaba's mansion, just warp him in on a heal tile and pray he kills Nuibaba with a bow before they can land Medusa. Once they're gone you've practically beaten the chapter, and trivialised one of the most infamous FE maps in the franchise's history. You can reuse this same strategy for the final map, if you keep the angel ring on him long enough. Those boosted stat gains will likely remove any need for the regal sword. Just substitute using a bow for the Falchion, obviously, since it's required to beat the game not counting using nosferatu.)

"But Gaiden is too slow!"

I have genuinely nothing to say other than; "what did you expect when booting up a famicom SRPG"? Of course it's going to be slow, and clunkier than what you're accustomed to. The key factor, I feel, that will decide whether or not you like Gaiden, is your mindset. If you go in thinking it's going to suck, because of its slowness, or stiff controls, or anything else, your brain's just going to keep honing in on those thoughts, and you'll never be able to adapt. Gaiden's controls and speed are something I was able to get used to, and I'm not immune to losing my patience over old SRPGs, or JRPGs, or anything, either.
If it helps, turn off animations. I got through the whole game with animations turned off and only used fastforward maybe a handful of times.

So, is Gaiden better than Echoes? Of course not. The big question though, is "Is Gaiden worth playing?"

Yes. The answer is yes. Form your own opinions, please, I'm begging you. Stop believing word of mouth and try things for yourself before speaking of them as if they're gospel.

I gotta hand it to Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage. It bumped my opinion of Spyro 1 up half a star. That game stuck to its guns as a platformer with simple mechanics. Spyro 2 is constantly changing things up so often that I'm not sure what it wants to be.

Everyone in this game is very chatty, except for Spyro, strangely enough. He never talks back or makes quips, he just silently accepts whatever requests fall upon his shoulders (wings?). I think Tom Kenny voiced more lines for The Professor than the titular purple dragon on the cover of the box, and that's just weird to me. No one ever has anything remotely interesting to say, either. It's a lot of "please do the thing", followed by "thanks for doing the thing, here's the macguffin". I also have to wonder if Moneybags being the embodiment of capitalism was the catalyst for Ratchet & Clank (aside from, y'know, Spyro not being able to hold a gun).

I can at least admire the world design. Every level is made to feel like its own distinct area, with their own inhabitants and culture. Isekai-ing Spyro out of the World of Dragons was a good call in that regard. Instead, we get a variety of fantasy/storybook locales. I just don't think these worlds make for very engaging levels. Every area has its standard, linear platforming challenge. Completing that gets you a talisman, basically the consolation prize. Beyond that are the Dragon Orbs, which you usually earn by completing side-objectives in levels. Some of these are meagre challenges for Spyro's moveset, many of them are just minigame fodder.

I'll admit, there's bothing particularly wrong with this game. It's perfectly enjoyable on most fronts, but it really wasn't what I was hoping for, especially coming off the first game. Spyro's chosen a dark road to travel on: one that prioritizes variety over consistency. I hope he knows what he's getting himself into.

The adventure continues...?

THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON

The dreaded “Blockuza”. An entry fans will write off as being underwhelming, a game you need to get it over with in order to move onto Yakuza 4. Having beaten it, I can kinda understand why this got the reputation it did among the fan base. Getting this straight out of the way, yeah, Yakuza 3 doesn't beat the “Blockuza” allegations. This doesn’t apply to the standard street thugs you brawl, but with bosses who skill check you hard. While I didn’t find this to be as ‘bad’ as people made it out to be, it gets annoying with later bosses since quickstep is borked in the remaster’s PC port, and you’d need to hook up with Tiger Drop and some weapons to counter block effectively. Nothing about this is bad, except for quickstep being nerfed, and in fact I think this lends to Yakuza finally having combat that relies on the player doing more than just button mashing, but it feels arbitrary in order to learn to fight right. Like, maybe not vital information you should keep within the confines of side content, which considering my long trek into these games, I have to get picky about which mountains of minigames, substories, and training seems worth my time. Learning a technique or two which helps keep you up to the pace and flow of combat in this game seems too necessary to not at least drop in the beginning somewhere.

Now, there’s of course the other big thing with Yakuza 3 and that’s the story. Specifically, everything to do with Okinawa, by that, the orphanage, which I’ve picked up is something many fans weren’t too keen on. Look, I hear you; I understand you -- but you are wrong. Yakuza 3 is a game made aware of what the previous entries have done and attempts to really shake things up for a new direction Kiryu’s story will go through. Okinawa serves as an effective opener for many reasons; It’s not Kamurocho again, the conflict is divorced from Tojo Clan crime drama, the scale is more personal because of that, and it puts us into the serenity Kiryu has created for himself by just being a dad. I attribute this being some side effect of a lead writer for the first two entries, a crime novelist, having stopped contributing to the story after Yakuza 2, perhaps taking a bit of that realism or grit with him. Alongside… maybe a few other things, but we’ll get there in a sec. If I were to describe Yakuza 3, it’s the downtime we didn’t know we needed. It’s relaxing, pure vibes, you just want to see Kiryu impart his wisdom and compassion into the orphanage and chill with these little guys. But since this is a Yakuza game, that semblance of peace doesn’t last very long as Kiryu is dragged back in for Round 3 of How The Hell Is The Tojo Clan Still Standing. So… this is where I have to be mean to the story because I don’t want to really, but even I can’t deny that out of the four Yakuza games I have played now, in terms of construction, this is the weakest by far. The best way I can put this is that I absolutely adore the smaller scale Okinawa and the individual emotional character moments in relation to it, some moments here I see as being incredibly important for Kiryu’s journey from now on, but the actual main plot feels like a too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen situation. Like, a very desperate attempt to further raise the stakes in the conspiracy thriller crime drama fashion Yakuza/LAD makes its identity by this point, only they feel so nonsensical and unnecessary. Andre Richardson is the character of all time, but if you strip away most of the subplots and focus it squarely on Mine and his whole deal that forces Kiryu out of Okinawa, then this would be a serious contender for the best story of the franchise. Even speaking for myself, who still really likes the story, oddities, quirks and all, and considers it to be my favorite one so far. Which is part of what makes this a difficult game to personally weigh some conclusive judgment on because there’s a lot to love, but much of it is back saddled by awkwardness that I’m only hoping RGG gets the ball running for something greater in the next entries. Sign of a flawed banger, alright.

Yeah... not counting remakes, this was the last Castlevania game with the classic gameplay, and I have to say that, although I understand that many people are fond of it because it was part of their childhood or because they believe that having a female protagonist saves it, on the other hand, this game sucks and I think nothing justifies it.

Without exaggeration, this game feels like a prototype of Castlevania II Belmont's Revenge (the second GB game, released in 1991), which for some reason 6 years later Konami decided to release to get some easy money. Everything is a big step backwards from Belmont's Revenge, the gameplay feels slower and clunky, the graphics are less detailed, the level design is bland and boring. There's no challenge in the game, sure, you'll die a couple of times, but when you do it will be in the most boring way possible, because the enemies are positioned in ways that are simply annoying, but not challenging. It's too easy, and yet it's extremely tedious to play.

The game has some interesting concepts and mechanics, like for example, to unlock the true ending, you have to get the classic sub-weapons of the series (which for some strange reason you will NEVER be able to use), which adds that exploration factor to the game. The bad thing is that exploring in this game is annoying because of two things. The first is that there are a lot of paths that lead you to dead ends and don't reward you in anything, feeling like a waste of time, and besides that, there are also traps that lead you to some sort of arena where you have to defeat waves of monsters as punishment, and that's not the worst thing, the worst thing is that many times the enemies are positioned on a very small platform where it's hard to attack them since when you defeat them they reappear in the only places from where you can attack them, making you always take damage. They are a real nuisance, as they don't add anything of value to the experience. Secondly, if for some reason you went down the wrong path and forgot one of these special items, you block the possibility of accessing the true ending with no other option but to start from the beginning.

The true sub-weapons in the game are weird, these are powers which are obtained every time you defeat the boss of a level. What I like about this is that you have at your disposal the ability to swap sub-weapons on the fly by simply accessing the menu, however, these powers are very broken, the first one you get freezes time, and there is another one that wipes out all enemies on the screen.

You can also enter a “hyper-powered” mode if you press A+B, in which you are invulnerable to all attacks and greatly increases your movement speed. With this you'll defeat the bosses in no time.

Somehow, I feel that the developers put all those “interesting” elements as a way to “correct” a flaw in the game's design. For example, the powerful sub-weapons serve to compensate for the game's mediocre and annoying enemy positioning. The alternate paths “compensate” for the blandness of the level design. The hyper-powered mode compensates for the slow character movement. But to me, these additions more than fix the game make it much worse, because it implies that the developers knew the game wasn't that good and still decided to keep going.

Yes... I would talk about the story, but it's not worth it, it's sappy, it's nonsense and it's not even canon.

Conclusion
If Castlevania The Adventure was an admirable attempt to adapt the series to the GB (failing in said attempt), 8 years later, Castlevania Legends arrived to give it competition, but this also being the most unnecessary game of the franchise. I wish it was funny, but it's just sad.

At least Castlevania The Adventure is somewhat justifiable because it came out when the franchise was just starting, but this game? it came out after Symphony of the Night, after the classic formula had peaked more than once. Nothing redeems this bad game.

I know this game's structure and pacing is not to everyone's taste, being a fairly divisive game as far as DQ games go, but I do think it is for me. It has an oddly melancholic feel to it permeating most of the stories surrounding the regions you explore, maybe I like it because the seeing the passing of time as something that affects people and places in such a direct way is a theme that always affects me, either way, I vibe with this game. I used to like it fine enough but this replay made me like it a lot more and yes, I do prefer the PS1 version mostly due to the graphical style.

One of those games where I can't see its greatest "flaw" in the moment as anything but a plus in hindsight. At points Portopia is vague and obscure enough to drive you mad. How is anyone supposed to know to search there? How is anyone meant to guess to do that or show that one item at this one place? But what this frustration does is transform what could have been a nice enough detective story into a hypnotic procedural of stasis; an unending loop of the same questions and the same faces, progress never seeming to go anywhere, everything winding back to dead end circles, beautifully reflected in the giant maze of white walls you get lost in during the climax.

It's a game that, whether through frustration or curiosity or glee, inevitably leads to you assaulting suspects for answers. And distressingly...it works.

Okay, asterisk on "you" because one of the many deeply clever things about Portopia is that you, the player character, are not the one who directly does anything. You just tell your subordinate what to do. It's a weird distinction but a VERY important one that raises all kinds of questions w/r/t your role in the story and as the player and what exactly inhabiting a character while playing a game implies narratively.

Anyway, the maze in the basement is without hesitation one of THE great moments in video games. Like, genuinely startling, unsettling stuff. You spend the whole game in menus and simple, colorful illustrations, and then suddenly as you descend below the surface color and life gives way to dead white walls twisting around themselves for an eternity, pathways opening and closing as if the place is alive. It's significant that here is the one time you take actual control. The simplest graphics in the world and yet some of the most effective atmosphere in the medium's history. Like being suddenly sucked into an Akio Jissoji directed nightmare.

One of the most important games of all time thanks to all that it inspired and not an inch of that inspirational power has gone anywhere. Meditative masterpiece. Horii my metaphysical king. Insane stuff