definitely one of the soundtracks of all time

Played this at a friend's house when I was 11 back in 2005. I was a fan of the anime but this was my actual first experience with any of the video games or the TCG/DCG aspect of it.

While I definitely have alot of nostalgic fondness over this game in particular, playing it nowadays is pretty meh. You only get to fight Joey and the only real incentive to continuing playing is to collect all the cards. It gets pretty old after 2 matches. That being said the presentation is great.

Man, I really, really wanted to like this game, given the fact that I love these type of cozy games but it's just not hitting it for me. The pixel art is good and I can tell there's alot of love put into it but it's just kind of boring. There's potential in the story but never did I actually felt truly compelled by what was happening. The characters also felt extremely bland and the game encourages you to grind friendship with them but there's no motivation to do so when they're just very one dimensional. Not to mention the main attraction of this game, the alchemy, is just... Meh? It's fun for maybe the first few times but it gets old so fast. Treating patients consists of really repetitive minigames that are just a pain to get through. Just an overall disappointment.

What an experience. Yeah the writing and characters are cringey at times (even though I really enjoyed a few scenes) but the game doesn't take itself too seriously so it balances it out. Great soundtrack. Fantastic gameplay. I really want to replay this sometime next year.

See you, heaven cowboy...

Being one of the most unique visual novels I've played so far, Gnosia plays pretty much like Werewolf, with its unique mechanic being looping. You start the game on a ship with no memories and must find the titular bad guys Gnosia (or the other way around if you're Gnosia, killing every human) among the rest of the crew through deduction gameplay, looping back to the start after each successful or unsuccessful run to repeat this process, each loop adding more characters and events that slowly unfold the mystery of Gnosia.

I really love this as a concept and I had a great time figuring out the story, the different character events and endings but I also understand and acknowledge that the loop system overstays it's welcome at around 30 loops in. And if you're lucky enough with RNG and figuring the requirements to some of the events then you may even finish the main story in less than 100 loops but that wasn't the case for me lol (took me 168). And like I mentioned, I loved finding all the endings and events but man some of them were pretty obscure and actually frustrating to get (one example was one event required me to end the game as Gnosia with one specific character alive and for like 8 times I tried getting this event, this same person kept exposing me as Gnosia even though we were supposedly working together against everyone else, leading me to get put into cold sleep everytime. Nearly drove me insane.)

Art and music were a big highlight for me, just beautiful in all aspects. I enjoyed most of the characters, even considering that they don't really have much depth to them aside from brief characteristics and a few lines of dialogue here and there outside of events/endings that alude to their background. Setsu and Remnan were probably my favorites from the bunch.

Overall, it's a game worth experiencing even though I know the loop system will turn alot of people off from picking this up.

went into this with the lowest expectations possible and for the most part I wasn't really into the story but the last 2 hours were actually bonkers and I ended up enjoying the ending! same goes for jack as a protagonist, he's unintentionally funny at times with his dialogue but he's actually solid overall.

combat was pretty good, it was very "nioh" like for a lack of a better comparison and the job system lend to some really fun combinations. all in all I wouldn't say it's among my favorite ff games but for that ending alone it was worth it

Although I still have beef with late game Tartarus feeling repetitive and the Answer apparently being saved for DLC, these negatives are easily overshadowed by how amazing the rest of the game felt. Personally couldn't have asked for a better remake.

The moment man devoured the fruit of knowledge, he sealed his fate. Entrusting his future to the cards, man clings to a dim hope.

Really bad, the worst one yet actually, only fun with another friend. The only time I actually felt any real joy with his game was when the dog showed up and survived.

2019

Interesting but poorly done premise that overstayed its welcome past the first playthrough. 100%'ing this was an absolute drag and I wouldn't recommend unless you're serious about getting all achievements. No matter which ending you go for, the conclusion is kinda ass. Upon replay you'll spend 80% of the time going through the same scenes you CAN'T skip. Some choices made no logical sense to me and the supporting cast is barely there for me to care about. Anyway I usually enjoy these FMV games but this one was by far my least favorite.

Maybe it's because I played The Devil in Me before this one and that one being so horrendous in all aspects that think I genuinely enjoyed this one quite a lot. Loved the overall presentation and personally didn't feel like it was trying to be Until Dawn 2.0.
Characters were a vast improvement over UD too, I found myself liking most of them by the end of the game. Gameplay itself did feel a bit more lacking than usual but I don't really play these games for mind-blowing gameplay either.
My biggest complaint is the ending, as it does feel very sudden and rushed. I also have to mention the motion capture does look very off every now and then, especially the facial expressions of characters looking exaggerated during dialogue.