Much has been said about the quality and customizability of the combat (it's fantastic), but one of my favorite things about the Tactics Ogre is how even though the end results of your decisions might be virtually identical, the writing is elegant enough to obfuscate that into really feeling like player choice is important. Make a decision early on, and character X will leave you, disgusted by your actions; choose the opposite choice, and that same character leaves you - this time, revealing that no matter what choice you made, they'd disagree with it, because they hate your fucking guts. It may feel kind of dishonest, but frankly? That's consistent writing, and I respect it.

Anyway Canopus could split me open like a ripe, juicy coconut 🥥🥥

I am trapped between two worlds

World 1) my partner walked in on me playing this. "it's a puzzle game," I said, remembering how much he enjoyed playing through return of the obra dinn with me. "you like puzzle games. do you want to try this together?" anyway, he sat behind me for a total of five minutes before throwing up his hands in despair and walking out. "I'm not gonna fucking sit here and watch you play snake for hours," he said.

World 2) My friend, who recommended I play this, is very excited to watch my progress as I make the way through; this has been a harrowing experience where he makes soft noises of disapproval as I attempt to lizard brain my way through the puzzles. it is destroying my self esteem and it's not like that was in a good place to begin with

so like, i'm not at a point where i can review this but: please send help

Originally, I wasn't a big fan of the first installment, with its
cloying setting and uneven storytelling. I wasn't expecting
this game to be as good as it is, but I'm happy to eat crow.
on the one hand, the writing is exceptionally good, with a
particularly darker bent than the first game's feel-good tone.
and on the other, the combat is exponentially cleaner and
tighter than any of its modern jrpg contemporaries.
hot take: Temenos and Crick are boyfriends, right?

French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir argues in her 1947 book The Ethics of Ambiguity that 'existence precedes essence;' that the personality and the core beliefs of each human individual is defined through their environment and their actions, and that the challenges that allow those personality-shaping events are the ones that truly test the scope of the limits between their limitations and potential, their past against their future, the comfort of familiarity against the fear of the unknown.

"I Was a Teenage Exocolonist" is a quiet meditation on this and other questions asked by de Beauvoir and her fellow existentialists, packaged stealthily in the wrappings of a Solarpunk-themed dating game. Beneath the cotton candy colored environment of Vertumna and the egregiously tumblr-era character designs lies one of the best narrative experiences I've had in years, one that manages to succeed at the challenge of remaining both replayable and emotionally impactful. IWATE introduces the concepts of string theory, mortality, identity, collectivism, and on and on and on as each character you meet lives, grows, dies, lives again, and becomes a different person entirely.

When asked about the passing of her lover, the famed philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, de Beauvoir simply said "His death does not separate us. My death will not bring us together again. That is how things are. It is in itself splendid that we were able to live our lives in harmony for so long.” Vertumna asks you to spend ten years with it before it lets you go, and readily welcomes you back again for the next loop of a cycle that continues on into infinity. But each of those cycles of ten years creates a unique you, and the life you live with its people is truly splendid.

ps: rex is best boy, even with the dumb tattoo, fight me