words have failed me innumerably while trying to define my thoughts on this and i guess it’s because D2 — and by extension kenji edo himself — is totally peerless. a game that exists within a limitless vacuum where time appears to have stopped, only for it to remind you that time does in fact go on and yours spent here won’t be for naught. a study on isolationism, the fruits of regret seeded from obsession, life itself, and most importantly: hope. despite its utter bleakness at points, our cast never lets the flames of discouragement completely engulf them. interesting piece that still only feels like a small glimpse into the expanse of edo’s mind. while his influences can sometimes be easily recognizable, this is still very much his own. ingeniously paints surrealist imagery that both scratches and soothes the nerves. this is a must play for anyone who indulges in the medium looking for greater things, i don’t want to give too much away.

I feel like most Nintendo fans have that one obscure title that they absolutely adore despite how niche of a reach it has. This is that Nintendo game for me. It has a banger of a fighting system that promotes creates loadout-making with a lot of versatility to it in spite of how simple it is, overall. To a point where it almost feels like a mix between a fighting game an a mech game.

Each weapon has its niche purpose. You can stick to a main loadout, but hardly any combination of parts is everything-proof, I simply wish you got new parts at a faster pace or at least that the main story was a little longer, because it's only towards the end and the post-game that you really get an opportunity to think out your matches and figure out a counter-build for your opponent. Though maybe that is for the best, since the postgame content is very much designed for the folks that want to stick around to keep playing. The game isn't the hardest, but it still has plenty of bite, especially for the postgame battles.

Needle Gun ended up being a mainstay for me for its relatively reliable poke but also really smarting when I get a chance to dive in and shoot it point-blank. Ended up switching between Float and Throwing pods, the former for the aerial space denial and the latter for being good at locking opponents into a corner. There's all sorts of combinations to mix and match that it's a delight to toy around and experiment. While some parts are more versatile than others, nothing felt blatantly overtuned and like it didn't have a notable weak spot of some kind. At least apart from illegal parts, but. They're illegal parts. D'uh, they're a little overpowered. I know Custom Robo Arena was a thing and had wi-fi matches, but I swear this game could make for a really compelling competitive multiplayer game in the same vein as a Smash or a Splatoon.

I do think the battles featuring any more than 2 fighters have a tendency to get a little chaotic. While there's no friendly fire for guns, there is friendly fire for bombs and pods, and 4 active fighters at once means there's a lot of explosions happening all over the place and little pods bumming around to a point where I've probably been blind-sided a stray pod from my own ally once or twice. It feels a bit like sensory overload, especially during the 3 vs 1 final boss of the main story.

The characters are delightful, colorful, and expressive. I only wish the main story had a bit more going on so that the plot punches could punch more, cause some of the things fall flat due to ham-fisted foreshadowing and just. Some of the characters not getting a ton of screentime to develop past their very simple anime-esque arcs. But it's hard to complain about the writing when it has so many touches despite it being a mid-to-short-length game. Losing in most games just boots you back to a the last checkpoint, here they have brief what-if scenes. And there's plenty more where that came from, with a lot of amusing character interactions and how each tutorial prompt from Helper Character Harry has a "mock or bully Harry" option where he repeats himself either out of frustration or sometimes just to spite you. And it has one of the best "but thou must" scenes in all the games I've played.

Underrated classic. If you can run Gamecube-level games on your PC, this game runs on Dolphin pretty much flawlessly. Play it.

For the record, if I could go back in time to my gamecube-playing kid self and get him to buy two games that I otherwise wouldn't have, I would 1000% pick this game and gotcha force. The 2000's hit the Custom Robo IP like a bulldozer, as the poppy colorful 90's pokemon-leaning vibes of the N64 game have been replaced with gritter, darker, cyber-coded aesthetics of the grand purple lunchbox. The character designs have gone from your cast of typical plucky pokekids to a bunch of adults that came straight out of a how to draw manga book. Luckily for me, I eat both 90's and 2000's vibes like breakfast so I win both ways, HAH.

The plot definitely has a bit of a different tone compared to the N64 original, but it still feels like custom robo all things throughout. Like the original game, there's a pretty tight-knit cast of characters that you will keep bumping into time and time again, and many robo-battling tournament arcs, but the actual contents of the story differ drastically. Since the cast isn't a group of kids fucking around with toys, the main cast all works for a bounty hunting agency that fights petty crimes the police can't be assed to work on themselves for meager pay. And the crimes are solved by means of fighting childrens toys-turned psychic cyber warriors, obviously. It's a pretty ridiculous plot and frankly the shit that happens at the end went absolutely NOT as I expected. The actual localization and writing of the game is really goddamn good too, I could tell that the treehouse guys were having a blast with the character writing as there's plenty of funny moments and running gags throughout the game. There's gotta be at least like one kid out there that was changed by playing this, I feel.

As for the gameplay, I'm pleased to say that it's much more polished and balanced than it's ever been. The core gameplay of having a customizable robo with 4 different methods of attack and combo between is intact here, as are the 4-player fights from V2. It really felt like the OP weapons in the N64 game such as the homing missiles and dragon shot were sufficiently nerfed to the point of making most weapons viable. I didn't do the (pretty substantial) postgame stuff so there might be some absolutely busted drops that I am unaware of, but at least doing the main campaign it didn't really feel like I was sticking to the same weapons because they were inherently better than the rest but rather they were the most fluid with my playstyle, and that's a pretty good mark of customizable balance imo.

It's both a good single-player adventure plus an awesome party game. I'm still absolutely baffled how custom robo didn't catch on because this series is like some of the coolest shit dude! I can only imagine the kinds of sleepovers or get-together nights I could have had back in the day if I had this game... Alas, as much as I wish I could say that changes now as I invite all my homies for weekly custom robo nights, adult life don't exactly be that way... Maybe there's a competitive tournament scene out there or something (apparently CEO had a tournament in 2018 at least?) Perhaps in another timeline I could have had this game in its time, but hey man better late than never, yanno?

what in the fuck is nintendo doing by not making new custom robo games

A few months ago an oomf wanted me to play this game and I thought to myself why not because I’ve always wanted to try the game and also eventually play the remake. Live a Live is the kind of game where you can choose between seven different stories in any order so I guess I’ll just go over all of them for the review.

First stop is the Science Fiction chapter. Chose this one first because the robot looked cute, his name is Cube though anyone can be renamed to what you like. Not sure if this one was the best to start off with due to there only being one mandatory fight but that’s ok because the story and atmosphere here is unlike anything I’ve played on the system. With the minimal sound and the 2nd half being intense, it can feel very tense. I’m not sure if the plot of this is referencing something I’m unaware of but this was a great impression of the game and I was really excited to see more. There’s even an optional arcade game to play to do battles but you basically do it for fun. I do like how it’s incorporated for the very end however.

Kung Fu chapter was next and this is where I got introduced to an old man named…wait did he have a name? I know you name like his technique or something that I would never be able to spell but I forgot his name, shoot. Well you’re off to get some younger folks in hopes to pass his technique to them as he’s getting too old. You’ll meet three characters named Li, Sammo, and Yuan. I notice you can have them not join you so I’m not sure if they are mandatory but it’s still nice to get all three. You can even train them though I wasn’t expecting two of the characters to die, only Yuan survived which I thought was intentional but I’ll go over that in a bit. I then kicked the bad guys out and can I say the very end where you kick the main bad guy into the gong is AWESOME! I love that so much. Though I’m sad the old man dies. The chapter was over but then I was told any of the three characters can survive so I redid the chapter and this time had Li live and gave her all of the training making her much better than my weaker Yuan. I do like how there’s some replayability and even a way to possibly improve things if needed. I also like that whoever you beat the mode with now shows up on the chapter select, nice touch!

I should go over how I feel about battles real quick now that I talked about a chapter with actual battles all over. Battles are this weird grid system that kind of remind me of Rhapsody if it was an actual good battle system. You can move around as long as another sprite or part of said sprite overlaps it. Moves are dependent on what tiles they can hit so there’s strategy in where you place yourself and learning what moves and distance the enemy can do. You also won’t have to worry about health after battles either as it all gets restored, even death won’t matter as long as someone is alive though I don’t think they get EXP. While the game isn’t too hard, I’d still say it’s good to try most of the time cause it can be easy to game over if careless or thoughtless. You also can run without fail every time which is oddly generous. My only gripes with the battle system is I feel like stat drops aren’t as noticeable as I feel they should though this is probably just a me thing. I also don’t like how the game doesn’t tell you when a move has charge time or even how long it takes. If it does tell you somewhere, I never saw it. Otherwise it’s a fun system and works for a game like this.

Onto the third chapter which was the Old West chapter. Here you come to a town filled with issues and despite the wanted pictures of your character Sundown, it’s up to you to set up traps and stop the bad guys from causing more damage to the town. There’s only three battles in the entire chapter so you’ll mostly be going into the buildings finding items to set as traps with the townspeople helping by setting them up for you. Once the bell rings 8 times, time is up so plan fast and thoughtfully. I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to give npcs specific items to make a trap successful because I only got about half of them down when the bad guys came in. Thankfully the boss is pretty easy once you learn getting up close makes him not do his ridiculously strong gun attack. Once it’s over you have one more gun fight with Mad Dog and he actually dies which makes me kind of sad but at least he kind of got what he wanted? I think. Actually I found out after I beat the whole game you could have kept him alive which I won’t lie, would have done if I knew. At least the chapter ends on a nice note for Sundown as he learns his lesson and says a line which is very rare for him. I Thought the time limit stuff would have caused more stress for me, was pretty enjoyable despite the simple premise.

Going from a simple chapter to another with the Present chapter where you play as Masaru as he wants to be the strongest. Fight six strong opponents and be at the top! Wow there’s actually like a character select here which reminded me of the Rockman games. You’ll be fighting these opponents to acquire their movesets, have them hit you with it and you’ll learn it ASAP! That’s basically all there is to it as you then go to a final opponent and then the chapter is done. Simple and it works but it’s probably in the lower ends of the rankings. Also are the opponents all based off of something? Because clearly Max Morgan is a parody of Hulk Hogan, so I wonder if any of the others are too.

Now we have arrived at the Bakumatsu chapter. You must sneak into a giant building with confusing twists and turns with many bad guys roaming. You’ll either end up a killer, a stealthy ninja, or somewhere inbetween. You’re at least given a cloak to disappear and be undetected and you also run crazy fast. There’s even a super boss in this chapter which is unique for this chapter I believe. Alright we got that out of the way, so let me begin with saying SCREW THIS CHAPTER! SERIOUSLY! This place is not only big and confusing to navigate but it’s filled with so many traps and trial and error it’ll drive you mad at times especially on your first playthrough. I tried to do the stealth route and just don’t do this unless you know how to do it because you can run into so many ways to make it harder or just impossible. You also need to grind for later parts. I had to restart this chapter like 5 times and it got to the point I was gonna give up on the game but I gave it one more try and finally finished it and this time got it right only to get a sword for my troubles. At least future playthroughs will make it less miserable and worse of all, the killer route is even worse and I will 100% never touch that in my life. This chapter sucked.

Out with the anger and back to enjoying the game with the Prehistoric chapter! This one has a pretty simple plot as there isn’t even dialogue and it’s done pretty well with show don’t tell. The main gimmick is that Pogo can sniff out clouds to find random encounters to get items from. Items can be used for crafting to get better items. Try to experiment as best as you can. This chapter can be pretty humorous though a bit juvenile but look I was just happy to not be doing that damn ninja stuff. It feels kind of weird how I don’t have much to say yet I do really enjoy it. My only real gripe is I wasn’t too big on the party for battles but maybe I was doing stuff wrong. I do appreciate how the game gives you multiple locations to craft and that part where you’re in the dark is rather creative. Overall it’s a fun chapter and it’s probably one of the better ones to do early so I might do that in the future. Though maybe the crafting may be a bit overwhelming, hmm…

Finally here at last, the final chapter left. The Near Future chapter! Now for some backstory, I went into this game pretty blind for the most part but I did know of this chapter. I remember someone did a youtube video about this chapter specifically being terrible. I went in with low expectations and this might be a hot take but this was my favorite! You play as Akira who can read minds and it’s really cool to read npc minds as for the most part they have unique things to say and it really adds a lot to random characters or even important ones. It’s even used to progress the plot at times. You know this chapter is gonna be peak when it has a cool Anime OP song!! It even has lyrics! Sadly no vocals though. The setting is cool, the plot is pretty enjoyable, the world map is neat and unique compared to the other chapters and it’s got a good length. There’s even crafting here too but it’s simpler. With all of the heart pressing scenes near the end, it’s all given an amazing finale where you play in a mecha fighting enemies. OMG it’s sooooo cool! Granted you probably won’t ever lose but I still adore this so much and makes for an excellent finale to the game and chapter. Well actually, this isn’t the end!

Surprisingly you’re given a new chapter out of nowhere called the Medieval chapter. I was a little bit confused especially with my oomf hinting at something might be off with this chapter. It feels very generic like we’re playing the first DQ. You play as a guy named Oersted having to save the Princess from the demon. Okay, not sure if this is how I’d want the game to end but maybe it’s meant to reflect how the very end is the most normal of them all. There are some sad moments like seeing what becomes of the previous hero Hash and even the guy you fought in the beginning dies later on. Once you finally get prepared and beat the hard demon, it’s not actually over. It wasn’t actually him? Guess a good rest at the castle will help. You wake up and see a demon! Die!! Oh, he was actually quite easy wonder why? This is where the whole chapter flips and makes you realize it was never meant to be simple. That demon was actually the King and you killed him, everyone hates you now. You now only have one purpose to live, to save that girl. So, after some depressing and grueling moments fighting phobia enemies. It’s time to fight the final boss and huh it’s that guy that I thought was dead! Even worse, he saved the princess and now I’m seen as the bad guy once more. Killing him does no good as I get shocked to the extreme seeing the princess not only be sad he died but she kills herself! I was actually jaw dropped and wondering what even is Oersted’s purpose now? He asks the same thing and breaks apart, becoming what everyone calls him now, a demon. The demon king is here to cause chaos, the game is still not over.

Before we go on to the final chapter, I should bring up that I was told to try Oersted again for the character selection for the final. I was confused why he was even an option considering he’s evil but I was not ready at all for what I witnessed. There were statues near the demon boss that I was wondering why they looked like the bosses from the 7 chapters. This right here has you as Oersted make every boss kill every character you played as and you do it one by one and it’s really sad to do, doing it earns you a sad end. Though if you want to be an even worse person, have a boss go to low health. Flee will be selectable but it’ll be called Armageddon and you no joke destroy every character and their world one by one. You’re forced to watch this with this serious organ music playing and the entire time I was like “NO WHY!? THIS HURTS TO WATCH!!” except for Oboro, that’s what you get for having a bad chapter. All of that to end on a black screen with credits. Everything has disappeared and I caused it! Probably one of the most depressing bad endings I’ve ever seen and it’s something you have to do. Though I did read this can happen if you lose to the final boss but I wouldn’t know.

Alright time for realsies to do the final chapter and you can choose any of the seven to start it with. I chose Sundown for reasons I’ll explain later. You’re put back into the Medieval chapter to put a stop to Oersted but you won’t be alone as everyone is in the world and you need to find them. Each one has a specific place they’re in and sometimes they won’t just join you immediately. Most of the time you have to fight but there are exceptions depending who you chose. I read getting Sundown is really annoying so this is why I made him the leader. There’s also 7 dungeons to get each character’s ultimate weapon to get them ready for the final boss. There’s even special Ariel items to help you out even more. While you don’t need to recruit everyone if you don’t care for the true ending, they are required for it. You also can only have four in a party so make sure everyone participates at least once. My team was mostly Sundown, Li, and Cube. By the end I had Akira as my last one since I loved his chapter. This chapter can be tough at times and long if you try to get everything or most of it. It’s still an amazing way to end the game and that final boss and ending is amazing too. I especially love when you all go back to your worlds to destroy the bosses again as Oersted is finally beaten for good with dialogue given from the character you chose unless you’re Cube since you know, he doesn't talk. The true ending is a pretty beautiful end to an already amazing adventure and I was happy to see everyone living and continuing on.

To talk shortly about the graphics they’re good but not perfect. There’s a lot of good looking aspects of it but I find stuff like the overworld sprites to be a bit too small and basic. Though the battle sprites are pretty good even featuring a lot of animation and even different angles. The enemies and bosses also look really good. It’s still rather unfortunate it had to deal with the previous SFC RPG being Mother 2. The music on the other hand is amazing, composed by Yoko Shimomura. While it’s not my favorite OST by her, there’s a lot of really good tracks that fit the themes really well. The boss theme is also just a massive banger!! Really my only gripe with the OST is I swear they love using that one sad song for sad moments even when it doesn’t fit with the theme of the chapter. Like why does it play for the Prehistoric chapter? Otherwise, it’s some very good work!

Live a Live for the most part was an amazing experience and is so far as of writing this, a top 10 RPG for me. I think it could have even been a top 5 but that one chapter I hated did bring it down a bit for me. I think I would like it more now that I know how to do it but that doesn’t change the fact it made me actually angry. Otherwise, the game is fantastic and creative. It’s impressive they had such variety and ace it so well for the most part. It’s such a unique experience that I don’t know if I would even want a sequel or a spiritual successor as it just works as a unique piece of entertainment. Though it would receive a modern remake and I’ll be playing that next year and who knows maybe I’ll like it even more. I’m really glad I tried this and you should 100% play this if you haven’t though I’m sure most interested have by now. Nice job Squaresoft for the wonderful game you created!

Going from playing this game on the PS3 to the Series X is, well...forgive me for using the most obvious joke, but

The difference is night and day.

It took over a decade to get technology that caught up to Sonic Unleashed, which is silly to think about, but I'm not going to complain. I'm going to play this game at peak performance, nothing in the way of my judgement. Almost no load times. A perfect 60 FPS. Will this embellish my opinion on the game? Almost definitely.

The daytime stages are considered "Peak Boost Sonic" by many for a justified reason: They are actually that good. The camera work is top-notch, and the gameplay, while fairly linear, is reactionary in the most satisfying way possible. The levels are stylized after real world locations, but they don't hesitate to stretch the laws of reality to make entertaining 3D Sonic setpieces. There's an inherent charm to running down (not) The Great Wall of China or blasting through the local farmers market, but then you're swirling through corkscrew walkways or jumping across ruins with constantly moving platforms. How do normal humans commute on these paths? Who cares, it looks cool as hell! Don't take my word for it though, Sonic loves these stages so much, he can't stop running his mouth! Phrases like "WOO! Feelin' good!" are ingrained into my memory, but his enthusiasm is infectious. It's one of those little things that bring the experience together, I would sorely miss it if it were absent.

Approaching the Werehog on its own merits has brought the cataclysmic side effect of me actually enjoying it. He's a big fluffy boy with funny stretchy arms, a trait that assists him in both combat and platforming. In fact, I'd argue it leans a bit more on the latter. There's a lot of funny moves and combos to unlock, including mechanics such as guard-canceling, and you can get surprisingly creative if you don't just settle on mindlessly mashing out your basic combos. The Werehog is at its best when it's giving you jungle gym-esque obstacle courses to monkey around on. You can find some pretty nifty shortcuts if you're paying attention, too. There's a LOT of stuff to collect if you go looking for it, and you should! Exploring these stages gives you a chance to listen to the phenomenal night stage music, and soak in the moody atmosphere. The night stages are inherently longer and slower-paced, and they serve as a good supplement to the breakneck daytime stages.

Even if the locations in Unleashed are fictional, they're based off of very real locations and cultures. It honestly makes me want to travel abroad. Big Sonic Unleashed fan excited to learn that Apotos is very real. This is the one time in the series where I actually like the presence of humans. They contribute to giving each area their own little slice of culture, and their Pixar-adjacent designs mesh well with Sonic and company. Also, hats off the the entirety of Sega Sound Team. I couldn't possibly name any one person as a figurehead for a soundtrack this diverse in genres, instrumentation, and composition. "Endless Possibility" is definitely a top 3 vocal track on my personal list. Probably even top 1, if I'm being honest!

Out of all the areas though, I feel like the real showstopper is Eggmanland, and I think that's because it's not loosely based on any real world location. It's just the artists flaunting their raw talent. After hours of running through locales filled with nature and society, you're greeted by the one stage that's cold and manufactured. Aside from a menacing piano, the music primarily opts for frantic artificial synths. The stage itself is constantly straddling the line between "comically hard" and "reasonably difficult", a marathon that serves as a test of all your skills. It all culminates in what I think is one of my favorite final levels in any game, ever.

My complicated stance on Sonic Unleashed can be concisely summed up with the antithesis of Sonic: Taking it slow. I like combing the Werehog stages for all their secrets. Hell, I like doing that in the Hedgehog stages too, to an exent. I love chilling in the hub areas, chatting up the locals and watching many of them go on their own little World Adventures over the course of the story. I also never have any real issues meeting the sun/moon medal requirements. I'm thorough in the Werehog stages, and I play the extra acts that show up and nab the medals from those too. Granted, I've played through this game multiple times, so I know to collect medals in anticipation of the thresholds, and I don't hit that roadblock. With the interest of being fair about mentioning the games flaws, here's a wall of general gripes:

-Sonic's drift flat-out doesn't fucking work. Not a fun mechanic.
-Spending time doing requests for the locals is only fun if you're a freak like me and don't expect meaningful rewards. The least they could've done was give you 100-500 EXP for finishing each one.
-The Were:Hedge ratio is (naturally) leaning pretty damn far to the Werehog's side. I get that most people probably aren't going into a Sonic game expecting a 3D beat-em-up, which is where most of the ire comes from. Just because I like it doesn't mean everyone will.
-Yeah, the Werehog battle theme is absurdly overused. The most irritating part about it is the first few seconds of the theme, something you'll hear A LOT as you start and end encounters. What else can I say, aside from "I got used to it."
-The constant quick time events can be a bit much. The doorbell sound effect for succeeding at one probably drove an entire generation of canines up the wall.
-The level order is just bizarre. I think it's like that so you naturally revisit villages as the game's story progresses (and you get a chance to see how the locals react), but it's more confusing to constantly hop around areas like this.
-Hot Dog Missions are terrible. Just unashamed, unoriginal padding. God forbid you want all the cheevos in this game.

I feel like one of the rules of being a Sonic fan is that you have one game in the whole series that you can't get enough of. Well, at long last, I can say without a doubt that Sonic Unleashed is that game for me. This is the last game in the entire Sonic franchise where it feels like they actually had the time and resources to make something with scope. This series never seems to stick to one idea, but every game seems to have its fans all the same. So I'll keep dreaming of a PC port so more people will give this game a second look. After all, the possibilities are never-ending.

Just like Fear Effect and Dead or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball, Rumble Roses is a game I remember more for its marketing than any discussion around it. It's one of those games, where the jiggle physics is cranked all the way up, and any opportunity to sneak in a fanservice shot is seized upon with such ferocity you'd think some poor animator had on a collar rigged to blow if they don't fit in as much TNA as possible, like some pervert's version of Speed. Every print ad for games like this was carefully framed to tantalize the teenaged male demographic, with characters pressed together or caught in some compromising pose with "Mario Bros. doesn't have... BOOBS!" written in big blocky letters. Everyone who fell for one of those has a YouTube channel now.

Speaking of YouTubers, my friend and current Xenosaga hype machine, TransWitchSammy, is the only person I've met in my entire life that has actually played Rumble Roses as a proper video game. I still wasn't very interested until she put me in a mandible claw hold and forced my compliance. I had to look up names of wrestling holds for that joke, by the way. I don't know anything about the sport, I just remember seeing Dean Ambrose bring a Coney Island hot dog cart he stole to a match once, and besides that it's periodic updates from Appreciations about what Cum Punk is up to post-WWE.

I am likewise just as uninitiated with wrestling games, but as I understand it, most of them are total garbage. I can't say how Rumble Roses stacks up against its contemporaries or even modern wrestling games, but in isolation, it's got more going on than I initially thought while still not having enough to sustain me beyond clearing 40% of the roster in story mode.

Much like fighting games, which I often describe in how "responsive" they are and how good the impact of landing a hit feels, I'm so much of a philistine here that I can't articulate the more technical aspects of how this game works. I'm no expert on frame timing, I can't count let alone perceive input delay, I navigate these games the same way I would a real fight, all elbows and open-hand slaps (see: button mashing.) But the specials in this game are ridiculous and bombastic in the way real wrestling techniques are, and they look just as likely to cause real, severe, long-lasting damage when executed by a non-professional, so I'd say Rumble Roses ticks the right boxes.

The story is also appropriately bonkers, and I've made several attempts already to describe it as a mashup of wrestling storylines and fighting game narratives but scrapped all that after realizing they're basically the same thing. Dr. Cutter is doing a whole sexy nurse gimmick, but she's also like, brainwashing wrestlers and turning them into heels in an effort to harvest them for her cyborg, and that's something that feels as ripped from the WWE as it does Tekken.

It's just a shame then that Rumble Roses does so little with the heel/face alternate scenarios for each wrestler. Though this does double the size of the roster, each character's second scenario is truncated, with fewer fights and threadbare narratives that amount to an opening and closing cutscene to establish and bookend their gimmicks. Reiko - a certifiable babyface and the lead character - joins a biker gang, and she is completely unconvincing in the role, like a child wanting to be taken seriously. It's really endearing and silly, but you get so little of it. Likewise, there's a real drought of interesting costumes, with each character getting a normal outfit and swimsuit and a single pallet swap of each. Maybe I'm spoiled on Dead or Alive, but I feel like this misses some of the pageantry of wrestling. I just... I wanna dress up the pretty ladies......... .

There are also only three rings to fight in, one of which being a mud pit, and several wrestlers share moves with one another, which resulted in the game feeling a bit long in the tooth after only a few hours of play. The "glass half full" way of looking at this is that my biggest complaint about Rumble Roses is there isn't more of it. This is apparently something Rumble Roses XX addresses, but I've also heard more divisive things about that one... I'd love to say that since I'm buying Xbox 360 games up already that I'd just grab a copy and find out myself, but that thing is 70 damn dollars on average. I like Rumble Roses but not that much.

Anyway, 3/5. Would let Dr. Cutter perform unethical surgery on me.

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?