In all the time building up to this game and Mario Wonder, I have constantly argued about what "soul" means for a video game. To have a "soul" means to have substance, a reason to exist in the first place, something of inherent value. There are many games I would argue that have a vast "soul," Fallout New Vegas, Lobotomy Corporation, hell, even something like Tsukihime has some value buried deep down inherently. So the question then becomes, what does a game with no "soul" look like?

Enter Sonic Superstars.

While this game may have the facade of Classic Sonic down, it lacks any of the charm that makes any of those titles feel fresh and exciting. Every stage feels dead and lifeless as if they were put into an AI Sonic Level generator and shat out like pig slop; All the most generic and bland concepts. We have bitchless Green Hill, we have bitchless Chemical Plant, We have bitchless Death Egg Zone, everything so utterly devoid of true originality.

None of these stages brought any semblance of joy to me, even with the physics being relatively similar; going through these vapid, boring worlds left me tired and unhappy. While the game isn't offensively bad in the way that something like Sonic 4 is, it represents an arguably worse issue: Pure Unadulterated Mediocrity.

Starting first with the Chaos Emeralds, while the Special Stages are mostly mindless nonsense, the Chaos Emeralds have functions beyond granting you your Super State. Each Emerald has individual powers, a concept not seen since Tails' Adventure on the Game Gear. In theory, these would all be very cool, but in practice, almost all of the abilities are situational at best, and borderline useless otherwise.

What is the purpose of the Vision power when the game doesn't blatantly tell you to use it? Fucking nothing, absolutely nothing. The ability to turn into water is so situational, given that most of the areas in the game don't have water, and it isn't even that helpful when used. I guess the beanstalk one is helpful, but if you play Tails (like me), it doesn't serve much purpose. The ones I got the most use out of were the Screen Nuke (the first one you get for some reason) and the Slowdown Power. The slowdown power was helpful in particular instances in boss fights, and well, the Screen Nuke is part of why this game isn't even worse in my eyes because let's talk about the bosses.

Sonic Bosses have never indeed been the pinnacle of boss fights, especially in Classic, but usually, they were a relatively speedy process. Superstars decides to nix that and make it so that bosses can only be damaged at certain times, removing the strat of multi-hitting a boss that the older games and even Mania used. This results in fights where you must wait before you can do anything. Waiting in a Sonic Game, indeed, we have reached the point of stupidity I didn't think was possible. The Screen Nuke exists because it can essentially chain hits on bosses, annihilating them to make them less lengthy… Not that it matters because some of these later boss fights start getting so long you'd wonder if you're playing Sonic or a JRPG.

Not to mention this game still falls into annoying tropes I hate, like random shmup level near the end of the game that plays like shit and wastes your time. Hell, at one point in the final level, the game has you go through the same four level gimmicks in a row, like three fucking times, and then the next act have you do it all backward; I cannot make this shit up.

I'm sure all this will come across as foaming at the mouth, but you must understand I love Sonic. Sonic is my favorite platformer franchise, and I am so sick of seeing it fall back into mediocrity when games like Mania prove that this franchise can move forward. But here at Arzest, I can see the only thing being moved forward is level gimmick after level gimmick, hell there was even a Gimmick Programmer in the fucking credits.

There are other things I could say: Unlimited Lives is stupid, the character-specific and fruit stages are literal wastes of time, the music is forgettable minus the one Tee Lopes track, and every level looks boring.

The profound lack of soul comes from the fact that Sonic Superstars is what happens when you make a mass-produced Sonic game, gentrified Sonic the Hedgehog. All you have are some dull level concepts and a bunch of wasted potential.

To think I wanted to make a video comparing this game to Mario Wonder… I have to scrap it because it'd be like comparing a Coughing Baby to a Hydrogen Bomb.

Wow, 2003 Capcom sure was a crock of shit wasn't it? This game, Mega Man X7, Dino Crisis 3, etc. It's absolutely amazing the company didn't go under after such an awful display, but I guess that's thanks to Viewtiful Joe.

DMC2 isn't a video game, it isn't an experience for you to get yourself immersed in, or to be thrilled by.

DMC2 is a void that swallows up all enjoyment and entertainment value and puts you in a place where you cannot escape, where you cannot experience anything of value or providence.

I may not have understood how exactly combos worked in DMC1, but you know, at least the gameplay was inherently satisfying. I still felt like I had to avoid attacks, utilize the unique abilities for my Devil Trigger, etc. That game had a crunch to its sound effects too, and music that got you in the mood to kill the hordes of enemies ahead.

DMC2 has none of this. DMC2 plays the game for you. Hold down the X button and watch as you participate in the waiting game. This is how 95% of encounters in this game can be handled. Why bother with swordplay when shooting the enemy can stagger and juggle them in the air indefinitely. This even applies to boss fights.

I just knew, the moment I popped into this game for the second time since I own it on my PC that I was going to feel absolutely drained. By the second half of the game I had begun to abandon the guns to try and give any form of life to this fucking game, but it didn't work. There is no way to make this game any less soulless than it is.

I think for me, the premiere moment of the game's shittiness came to me during this one part where you ride in a train. There are enemies in the train and you are expected to beat them while the train moves to its destination. I managed to beat them very swiftly, but still had to wait a solid 30 seconds for the the train to reach the other side. And in that moment, that's when it came to me:

DMC2 wastes your time.

Well, I did it.

I 100%ed Stranger of Paradise (all of the achievements anyway).

This epilogue to my initial experience taught me a lot of things, mostly that the Soul Shield is an incredible ability and something I should have touched upon more in my initial review is that it allows you to steal certain enemy abilities for instant use.

This technique essentially makes every class in the game have the subclass of Blue Mage, whose signature ability was copying enemy attacks. I love the Blue Mage and being able to basically always be that class is one of the most fun experiences I've had.

I played a lot of the Sage class and I have to say that Magic is extremely good in this game, I think the charging time is a good balance for just how powerful fully maxed spells are, and you can always cancel the charge into a Soul Shield or Dodge in the heat of battle, so you're never truly locked.

This is definitely the most fun I've had this year, and though the final achievement of grinding a single job to Level 99 was exhausting, I still think this entire experience was worth it.

I apologize if this review is a little less on the in depth side, but this is more of an epilogue than anything.

Jack, you are truly my favorite Final Fantasy protagonist, and it's unfortunate that this game has not been selling well.

Please, please give this game a shot. I swear, it's not just an ironic memefest, it is artwork at its purest form. A genuine, truly mystifying experience.

Well, we are at the end of my little Character Action Game marathon. At the same time this is also my 350th review on the site, so what better game to cap both of these off with than the underappreciated Capcom cult classic, God Hand.

I have known about this game for, I wanna say the past 2 to 3 years thanks to my buddy Simon who showed me of course, the SsethTzeentach Review of the game. What I saw looked like some of the most comical shit ever made in a video game, and made it all the more surprising to me that this was the last game created by its developer, Clover Studios.

My friends have all gassed this game up to me for years now, and so I finally decided that 2022 would be the year I would play God Hand.

So now allow me to make a huge disclaimer: I fucking suck at this game. I doubt that's a huge surprise, God Hand is known to be a very challenging game and it will kick your ass, as it brutally did mine.

So do not take my opinions here as fact, but just as my personal views for my first playthrough, as God Hand is meant to be played many many times.

Right from the offset, God Hand comes at you in full force with its vibes, showing the "Graphic Violence, Discretion is Advised" statement that had been put in both Devil May Cry and Resident Evil games at the time. The image of course showing a screen of our protagonist Gene kicking an enemy in the testicles until his face turns blue.

Then there's the menu theme.

I sat there for a solid 2 and a half minutes just, absorbing the absolute bop that is the menu theme. All of the music in this game is fucking excellent, from the theme of Fat Elvis, this absolute bop filled with Elvis Presley sounding noises and a sensual backing track, to the intense rocking theme of your rival Azel, quaintly named Devil May Sly. It's all fucking phenomenal and gets you in the mood.

Of course, what follows after the music is also one of the funniest games ever made. Usually I find weird voice acting to be laughable for the wrong reasons but here I'd honestly argue that the weirdness is 100% both intentional and what makes the game work. Elvis being the most stereotypical version of a Hispanic male, which I also am (Hispanic, not stereotypical lol), gave me a good amount of laughs as he cracks Spanish curse words calling Gene all sorts of things from "pendejo" to "puta" and all that in between.

There's just so many funny moments, like when you encounter these Super Sentai looking mofos and they have these weird Stich like voices, doing weird poses and then you kick them into the ground like a nail and proceed to stomp their heads into the dirt. Or the scene with Gene kicking the thugs out of the window, and the last thug agreeing to get kicked out midscene with a tiny head nod.

And that humor stays in the gameplay as well. You have various ridiculous moves that you can and will use on your opponents, like your Roulette Moves. These can vary from beam like attacks, a flurry of punches, getting a Home Run with a Baseball Bat you summon, or my personal favorite: Kicking people in the balls.

The attention to detail is great too, because that kicking in the balls move only applies to male characters, and will not effect female or robotic enemies, and a specific boss who lost their testicles in the war.

Going more into the combat, my friend referred to it as a "spiritual sequel to Resident Evil 4", which makes sense given that both are Shinji Mikami titles. Both games work with an adaptive difficulty that changes depending on the skill of the player. It's a lot more subtle in RE4, but in God Hand it is the game.

The better you perform at the game, the higher the Tension Gauge goes up. It grows from Level 1, to Level 2, Level 3 and finally Level Die. Full transparency, the highest I ever got was to Level 2 because even on the lowest levels this game absolutely dominated me with its Alexander the Great obsessed cast of characters.

Combat works as follows: You use the Square Button to use the combo chain, which you can customize, the Triangle Button is your combo cancel move, and the X button is your spacer move, with Circle being your Reaction Command button.

All of the moves, for all buttons except Circle can be customized to whatever you wish. You want your Square Combo Chain to be an assortment of kicks, or a near infinite juggle combo, you can do that. You want your combo cancel to be a Pimp Smack, you can do that. The level of customization is endless, and even outside of that you have direction based moves that can also help you.

Let's say you do a spot dodge, you can press Triangle during it to do a slide kick which can easily knock down crowds of opponents and works great as crowd control option. If you're particularly skilled, you can knock an enemy high up in the air and press Back and Triangle to do a Shoryuken, and chain it multiple times until you do a forward triangle to kick the enemy in front of you, using them as a projectile to knock down other opponents.

All of these can help to take down the hordes of enemies you face, alongside the power of the God Hand. When you raise your God Hand Meter high enough, you can press R2 to activate the awesome powers of a God, and absolutely decimate your foes. They cannot block the attacks, and you are invulnerable while using it. Truly, an awesome ability.

This does bring up though certain other aspects of your playthrough, resource management. In your first playthrough of God Hand, unless you are some supernaturally gifted God of Video Games, you are going to suck ass. You will often find yourself breaking open various containers be it boxes or jars to get health, Roulette Wheel meter, God Hand meter, and cash. These drops are entirely random, as the game doesn't want you to rely too much on them.

This creates a system I call the "Gamble". Where you have to base your current battle situation around the resources available to you. Do you get a fresh fruit that restores your health while you're topped off and let it sit for later on in the fight, or do you get a Roulette Wheel card. You gotta take the risks and see if you'll survive.

Gambling honestly is a central mechanic to this game even outside combat, your hub for God Hand's sake is a fucking Casino on a remote island. You can play Slots, Blackjack, Poker, or even bet on racing these Poisonous Chihuahuas. (Always bet on Lucky Clover, should be obvious enough). Gambling is a major way of winning money both in combat and out of it, so to say that this game is very much about gambling is correct.

Of course a skilled enough player can work well without luck, but that was not me and it will not be you either on your first go.

In another refreshing sense, God Hand also lets you avoid entire encounters if you have what you need. If you just feel like you want to proceed through a level and aren't locked behind keys or the like, you can easily avoid combat in general. I wouldn't recommend avoiding all combat obviously, but if you're in a risky situation it is a completely valid option for progression. You aren't given a grade at the end of the level, the only thing decided is the bonus money you receive, and when you die you keep any money you gained from before hand. It results in the game not actively demoralizing new players unlike in other CAGs, which I find gives it more of an appeal than most. It also helps that the individual levels are themselves, very short. With there being 9 stages, with various small levels within each. It makes you feel like you aren't losing much progress when you die.

It's shit like this that makes me question how this game flopped. Everything here is incredibly appealing to a casual player, and there's all sorts of tech that more advanced players can learn and master. So why is it that this game got a 3 out of 10 on fucking IGN. You want my guess? The reviewer got to the first boss, thought it was unfair, and dropped the fucking game.

God Hand is a game that instantly brought a smile to my face, and even when I would get frustrated due to the many challenges, there was always a funny moment or a goofy encounter that would soon follow.

You can kick men in the balls, suplex a man in a Gorilla suit, fight Elvis, spank dominatrix women, get your ass beat by actual clowns, and save the world. What here is not at least somewhat entertaining?

Also this game had a ending dance sequence before Bayonetta did, so Bayonetta is easily the inferior copy of God Hand.

I implore you to play God Hand, or else I'll dragon kick your ass into the milky way. I'm Alexander the Great, and this has been God Hand.

P.S.

COME ON, HOW WAS THIS CLOVER'S LAST GAME?!?!?!? YOU KICK MEN IN THE BALLS! YOU KICK MEN IN THE BALLS!!!!!!!!!!

One of my personal beliefs when playing a video game franchise is that the third game should be the point where your series has fully realized itself. Where all the ideas of the previous two entries are refined upon and the flaws fixed or changed.

A few examples of this I can think of are games like Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Kingdom Hearts 2, Metal Gear Solid 3. All three are games that take follow this precedent in how they iterated on the works that came before them.

So, Director Hideaki Itsuno, rebounding with his team after working hard just to fix the mess of Devil May Cry 2 to the condition it is in after the previous Director left the project, decided that Devil May Cry 3 would bring justice back to this franchise...

And it did.

DMC3 is a game that is spectacle in both presentation and gameplay, with the combat feeling absolutely electrifying as you mix and match various combos while switching through your weapons on the spot to build up to that lauded SSS meter. I'm not even a big score guy but when I saw those big red letters and the word "SSStylish!!!", I felt incredible.

The weapons themselves are all very cool, from a triple ended nunchuck to an electric guitar that controls lighting bats. It's all fucking awesome.

But that's not all, with the various styles like Trickster and Swordmaster, you can add even more variety to your playstyle and how you handle the various combat encounters.

I stuck with Trickster for my run because I love the Trickster Dodge, as well as Air Trick, allowing you to teleport above an enemy for an attack, but Swordmaster was also pretty cool with how it adds additional moves in order to increase your combos.

This does lead into one small problem I have with the game, that being that you can only switch styles at the Statues or before a mission. It resulted in me sticking to Trickster not just because of Trickster's moveset but also because it's just a hassle to go all the way back to a Statue to switch my playstyle when I can just stick with one. I have heard the Switch version of the game does allow Style Switching on the fly, but having played the PC Version I had to experience it like this and it resulted in me not fully experimenting.

The story is great, a tale about family and the conflict that comes from that. Vergil in particular is such an amazing character, both with how the narrative handles him and in his boss fights. The way the game introduces him after Dante has fought the first boss (who is not a slouch for the record) is so phenomenally well done with showing what Vergil is all about that I believe it needs to be studied by writers for years to come.

Fighting Vergil is easily when the game is at its peak, though Vergil 2 is my personal favorite. I love Vergil 3 for the emotions it invokes but the arena does not work well around how the Vergil fights usually work and conflicts with the camera.

Each fight with Vergil truly feels like a duel between equals. In a game where you primarily charge at your opponents with lighting fury, Vergil puts you in the opposite position with you on the defensive. It's a really cool way to handle his dominance as the older brother, and only makes it more cathartic when you learn his pattern and punish him with a long chain of combos.

This game has taught me, alongside Ultrakill, that every game should have a Vergil. Characters like him truly test the player's skill and makes them master the mechanics of the game in order to come out on top.

Speaking of Vergil though, there's one other complaint I have specifically about the Special Edition which is his campaign.

I love playing as Vergil, he's cool, but the lack of variety for him with both him having only one style as well as only 3 weapons and not having the same amount of combos as Dante and going through the exact same levels as Dante with no additional cutscenes beyond the intro does make the experience feel hollow.

Also Red Vergil is a little lame compared to actually making a Dante boss fight for Vergil's campaign but in the end it is optional content and small potatoes.

This game's soundtrack is so fucking killer that even as I'm writing this I can't get the words "TO TAKE ME OUT, YOU MUST FIGHT LIKE A MAN!" "YOU'VE YET TO PROVE THAT YOU CAN!"

This game is just coolness personified and I'm glad it managed to save the franchise from the burning dumpster fire that was the last game. The voice acting is great, Reuben Langdon as Dante is incredibly iconic, when he goes up to Vergil and says "How about a kiss from this!" is just so awesome and fits the character so well. Dan Southworth as Vergil is also an amazing choice, his nasally voice fitting the more prideful and snide power-seeking older brother.

I just fucking love this game, its vibes are immaculate. It's challenging, it's engaging, it's Devil May Cry.

And I wouldn't want it any other way.

This review will contain both minor and major spoilers for Tsukihime, I will do my best to not go too deep into major spoilers unless they absolutely need to be talked about.

Content Warning: I’m going to be discussing the following topics: Sex, Rape, Incest, Pornography, and other forms of violence.

I’ll be completely honest… I have no idea how to truthfully go about reviewing this game in its entirety.

It is something with ideas that are vastly engaging and filled with symbolic and philosophical value to me, but also has some of the worst writing decisions I’ve ever seen in a form of media that I’ve ever seen.

It’s a game where when it’s good, it’s excellent. It’s a game where when it’s bad, it’s fucking terrible.

I guess the first thing I’ll tackle is why I wanted to play this game. I’ll start off with the obvious reason. I saw the huge explosion in Neco Arc memes throughout last year and I found myself thoroughly entertained with the strange and zany situations “La Creatura” would find herself in. I had no idea where she came from, and initially I didn’t really care much.

I just thought that she was funny, from videos of her interacting with people on Omeagle to that one video of a Neco Arc nodding its head while the vine boom sound effect would blare loudly.

What got me curious however was my friend, Simon, going through the game. His reactions were so insane, and the dialogue he would share with me was so goofy that I couldn’t help but be interested. I also eventually joined the Discord server which introduced him to the game, Tokyo Millennium, and ultimately found myself beginning my warrior’s journey into the rabbit hole known as the Nasuverse.

I was surprised to find that Tsukihime was made by the same people who made Fate, a franchise I was at least familiar with, despite not having consumed any of the media related to it. It’s such a popular franchise that it was always on my peripheral. So I felt like I was finally getting my true introduction to the work of Type Moon.

Upon playing and finishing Tsukihime, I am left with a feeling of utter confusion and maybe a bit of insanity seeping in.

From here I’m going to separate the review into sections delving into the individual routes.

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Arcueid:
This is definitely one of my two favorite routes in the game, simply because the writing for the growing relationship between the two is so well done. I genuinely felt like these two were meant to be together by the second half of the route given their natural chemistry, they feel like they’ve known each other forever despite having only known each other for like a week.

The lore for this route in particular, while a bit heavy on the exposition, still caught my interest due to how the game’s version of vampires function. Nrvnqsr Chaos in particular was a great antagonist in The Heavy regard. He was written to be such a hateable and disgusting force of violence and terror, and I love how utterly imposing he was. His ability was also incredibly intriguing to me, but going more into that would be veering way more into spoiler territory then I want to go.

I think the weakest aspect of Arcueid’s Route in particular is the actual primary antagonist, Michael Roa Valdamjong. While his lore is very significant, he is an antagonist that has very little presence. While I recognize he also isn’t the primary focus of the route, I still think that his minimal role as well as lack of screen time caused him to lose my interest, and comparing him to Chaos is like night and day. I think he functions better in another route, but we’ll get back to that.

However, the real issue I have with the Arc Route has to do with its portrayal of sexual assault. At a certain point later in the route, there is a moment where the protagonist Shiki attempts to rape Arcueid. This moment comes almost completely out of nowhere, has a visual CG showing Shiki committing the sexual assault (which in turn is an attempt to entice the reader), and gives the player the choice to actually rape her, which while that is the incorrect choice, should never have been an option in the first place.

The scene then ends with Arcueid blaming herself for the sexual assault. It is easily the most upsetting H-Scene in the entire game, and my reaction to it was to rant very angrily to my friends about how absolutely livid I was with that entire moment.

It doesn’t help that within only the span of another chapter, there is another H-scene where Arc and Shiki consensually have sex, which just feels so poorly paced because I cannot actually fathom someone wanting to having consensual sex with the person who tried to rape them the day before.

It’s definitely the most disgusting use of rape in this entire game, and it’s only the second H-scene you will witness period.

We’ll touch on my overall thoughts on the sex scenes at the very end however.

While still on the subject though, I would be remiss to not bring up a scene near the end of the game where Ciel tries to stop Shiki from going to fight Roa, and in his desperation he threatens to rape her. It’s like, so excessive in my mind and even for such a desperate moment, it still feels like they forced the line to be centered on rape when it could easily be that he could threaten to kill her instead and it wouldn’t lessen the impact of the scene.

I do still think that Arc’s Route has probably the best pacing throughout the entire game, and it was where I was the most engaged.

I think Arc’s True Ending is one of the best in the game and really hits on a poignant emotional level for me. I like the Good Ending as well, but mostly because it makes me happy.

Overall, Arc’s Route is mostly solid, but the negatives that permeate the entire game can be at their utter worse here.

I would rate the route itself as 4 stars.

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Ciel:

Ciel’s Route is usually slept on from what I’ve been told, and I can sort of see the reason why. A good chunk of the route is mostly a repeat of Arcueid’s for the first half of it. There’s also a lot of focus on how much of a missed opportunity it is that Shiki and Arc aren’t together, which is a little further accentuated in that Ciel and Shiki don’t have nearly as good chemistry with each other as Shiki has with Arc.

However, I think the second half of Ciel’s route is excellent and actually makes Roa into more of a sincere threat, despite actually no longer having a physical presence. It was definitely the best usage of his character in the game, and it makes the stakes for Shiki himself incredibly high.

I think Ciel herself is a very interesting character, and the story surrounding who she is and her complicated feelings of what she truly desires in this route creates a unique conflict for the friendship between her and Shiki.

Ciel’s Route also has one of the most introspective True Endings in the entire game which had me on my toes from beginning to end, and genuinely caught me off guard. It was borderline like watching the final two episodes of Evangelion for me, and had me thinking a lot about the meaning of one's own consciousness and desires.

Of course, not all things come out unscathed. There is yet again another moment of sexual assault, fortunately it is not visualized through a CG, but there is a point where Shiki (who is currently in a state of losing his sanity) forces himself onto Kohaku. While the situation is handled far better in comparison to the Arcueid one, since there are genuine consequences for the action taken, and Shiki does not receive forgiveness for the act he committed, it still feels like an excessive use of sexual violence for the sake of shock value. The scene could have easily just had him try to kill her rather than ejaculating on her on top of that. It’s definitely one of the less upsetting examples, but it still feels forced despite it all.

There’s also the topic of the “Roa Boner” or the Broaner as I call it. Basically, in one of the game’s many excuses to have a sex scene, Shiki’s body (currently being possessed by Roa) needs to have a “release” in order to slow down the takeover. Cue the Ciel H-Scene. It’s just one of the really dumb moments that will make you laugh and question who thought it was a good idea to include. It also is part of what makes the Shiki/Ciel relationship feel a little hollow in comparison to Arc’s, in that they need a roundabout excuse to have sex in comparison to just… being in love with one another.

Ciel’s Route also has the worst Good Ending in the game, being almost a borderline parody of itself and it’s very dumb. If it makes you happy, more power to you, but honestly Sun reminds me of some of the stupidest shit I used to watch as a teenager. It’s like watching the like, scene in Evangelion where it’s a typical school day scenario, which in Eva is meant to be this subversive moment that’s self aware. It’s like that but without that self awareness.

I would rate the Ciel Route as 3 stars.

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Akiha:

Ugh.

So, this is the route I honestly don’t want to talk about. Before I played Tsukihime I was told that this route is considered “the best” in the server that introduced me to the game. However, when I brought this up in the Backloggd server, everyone was taken aback questioning how such a viewpoint could exist.

I already had reservations about this route for one obvious reason: It’s the incest route.

Now in reality the characters are not actually related, but the perspective is that Shiki has believed Akiha to be his sister for the past 8 years of his life, and it just makes the whole thing very uncomfortable.

Shiki and Akiha have almost zero chemistry romantically, and while I understand Akiha’s reasoning, in that she knows that Shiki isn’t her actual brother, and that she’s been abused by her father and has to deal with the other SHIKI, she is merely trying to get comfort in the one person she truly cares about, I still can’t help but think that it just doesn’t justify it enough.

Something a friend of mine has said is that the characters of Tsukihime are meant to be subversive, which is true. For example Arcueid. She’s this affable genki girl who you think would get along with anyone, but in reality she’s only acting like that because she has flat out never had friends for her entire life and is still very innocent and naive because of her duty.

Akiha feels like the least subversive of the entire cast, fitting squarely in the tsundere incest sister trope that has been around in Japanese Media for a long time. While again there are reasons for why she acts the way she does, those reasons have also been used in the past in Japanese Media as well for this trope as well as other similar ones i.e. Shinmai Maō no Tesutamento.

The route is also host to both the longest H-scene in the game, and the worst non-sexual assault related one as well. It is such a cringe inducing and painful scene to witness… that you can’t skip the whole way through because there is plot relevant information within the scene. If there’s something I haven’t brought up, it is how amateur the artstyle is. For the most part it isn’t a problem, and I honestly think that it looks pretty good most of the time, but it is at its absolute worst with the H-Scenes and combined with the awkwardness of Akiha’s H-Scene in general just brings nothing but pain.

I’ll be completely honest, the Akiha H-Scene broke me completely for the rest of the game. After that scene I could not feel anything for the H-Scenes that came after because Akiha’s is so inherently awful in my eyes that nothing else could offend me more outside of the sexual assault scenes.

The thing is, the Akiha Route still has good ideas despite it all, and that’s honestly what makes the bad parts of it hit worse for me.

I love the early part of the route involving Shiki’s classmate Satsuki turning into a vampire and trying to turn Shiki as well, and how it leads to a long lasting guilt for him when he ultimately kills her. I like how that moment is mirrored in the endings of this route as well. But then there’s also the part in that moment where he decides to kill Satsuki not for his own sake or for realizing that she can’t be helped, but because ”who would Akiha have to protect her”, it just felt like such a forced and awkward moment for me (made especially more clear given how the next two routes handle this exact same moment) given how early in the route it occurs and how unrelated to the current situation it felt.

SHIKI is also a pretty good antagonist in this route, showing exactly how creepy it is to want to bone your sibling (in this case, his actual blood sibling), and is a very hateable and personal enemy. He does a better job than Roa personally in having presence and actually bringing stakes to the plot.

I also think the endings for this route are pretty good as well, as there isn’t a Good Ending but a Normal Ending. Both are tragic, but the True Ending at least has a light at the end of the tunnel that shows that things will be alright. I personally prefer the Normal Ending as it shows the ultimate consequences of the route and paints the incestual love as what it is: inherently toxic.

I also actually like when the route shows the sibling dynamic Akiha and Shiki have rather than the romantic aspect of their relationship, as they actually work well as siblings and they’re written as being understanding and caring of one another while also having that typical conflict.

It’s just a shame this game is an eroge from the year 2000.

This is the one route I hope gets some major changes to it in the remake because I really think that the incest is what ultimately harms this route the most (y’know, outside of the porn). Definitely the weakest route in the game for me.

I’d rate the Akiha Route as 1 star.

Also Akiha has a long ass neck.


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Hisui:

This is the second of my two favorite routes. It essentially takes the best aspects of the Akiha Route, and removes the incestual plot, while also showing a well written and developing relationship between Shiki and Hisui. They are probably my second favorite relationship in the game behind Shiki and Arcueid as their growth feels incredibly natural and results in incredibly heart wrenching moments in the second half.

I really don’t want to spoil much of this route because I think those emotional gut punches need to be experienced blind for the true experience, but trust me, they hit hard.

There’s only two parts of this route I have a major problem with, that being the use of a CG to show one of the characters after they had been raped, which feels like an unnecessary visualization of something that would have been better off not visualized.

The bigger problem is like with Arcueid’s Route, there is a scene where Shiki has the option to sexually assault and rape Hisui. Regardless of what the guide says, I heavily recommend not going with the option to sexually assault, the scene is disgusting and is nothing but pure excess on the part of the writers. It’s incredibly unnecessary and only appeals to people with a very sickening mindset and is absolutely harmful.

There’s also the part where Shiki winds up having consensual sex with Hisui which is another one of those “we made up an excuse so the characters can have sex” moments the game is fond of. It’s a dumb moment but makes sense lore wise, but still feels really awkward.

The endings for Hisui though are spectacular and among the best in the game, in fact Hisui’s Good Ending is easily the best Good Ending in the entire game in my personal opinion.

Outside of that, I don’t want to go further in spoiling the Hisui Route, but just trust me that outside of those negatives I’ve listed, this route is truly an emotional ride from start to finish and absolutely worth it.

I’d rate the Hisui Route 4 stars.

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Kohaku:

As the finale to this lengthy experience, the Kohaku route mostly focuses on tying up the loose ends of all the other routes. While it is a good overall experience, it definitely has a bit of a pacing issue, and Kohaku herself isn’t really much of a focus of it.

However, I still think that the overall relationship between Shiki and Kohaku and how he tries to help her is a very good emotional core, and I think that makes the second half of the route have one of the better payoffs in the whole game.

I do like Akiha as the primary antagonist as her brocon tendencies are accentuated as being unhealthy, and it shows how someone like her could become just as bad as SHIKI if they give in to their obsessions. I think it’s a natural extension of the character we were shown in her route, but fits better here due to being an antagonist.

I do think the ending is a little weak though, mostly in that it doesn’t feel like there are enough consequences for the acts of the characters within the route, but it’s still something that makes me happy overall and didn’t leave me completely unsatisfied.

I’d rate the Kohaku Route 3 stars.

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Discussing the Sexual Content:

As you can probably gather so far, I found that the sexual content in this game was inherently harmful to the story that was trying to be told by Nasu.

A good chunk of it feels extremely indulgent in what I find are the worst aspects of the eroge genre, creating stupid excuses just so characters can fuck, giving the player the choice in scenarios involving sexual assault to appeal to people with a very unhealthy fetish, and ultimately feeling completely unnecessary in the grand scheme of the greater narrative.

This isn’t to say that I don’t want writers to be able to bring up and discuss subjects and themes like sex and the impacts of sexual assault and rape but more in that writers have to be careful when utilizing such concepts because even the smallest misuse can be extremely harmful in the conveyance of them.

I believe Nasu does a mostly poor job at how he conveys these themes, and because of that it results in an experience that will leave most readers extremely uncomfortable and drop the material.

The H-Scenes in general are written is such a blunt and comical way at points that the game literally feels like one of those bootleg porn parodies you would find on Pornhub, it’s so degrading and ultimately meaningless that it almost makes you laugh until it gets specifically awkward and uncomfortable.

This is the part I’m glad to see be gone from the remakes, and I genuinely hope Type-Moon never does sexual content like this ever again in the future, I simply don’t believe they are competent enough at it.

My recommendation for people who plan to play Tsukihime is to hold the Control button when you get to an H-Scene, it fast forwards through the whole thing and is ultimately better than sitting through them like I did. I sat through them so nobody else has to, so please do me a favor and skip the H-Scenes in this game, I’m fucking begging you. Do not let my efforts be in vain.

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Conclusion & Final Thoughts:

I am Shiki Tohno fr fr, as I can see between the lines that fill this entire visual novel. If I were able to cut the bad (pornographic) parts out of this entire experience to make something that feels less over indulgent in its perversion, I would.

Because, underneath all the schlocky porn, the incest, the dialogue where Shiki talks about ejaculating, underneath all of that there is a story here about the meaning of life and how important our choices are and the consequences of our actions.

It is a narrative that speaks to the inherent humanity within me that aspires to be free from depressive and negative thoughts, and all I want is to be able to experience it in the way it was truly meant to be.

That is why I cannot easily recommend Tsukihime as it stands to you, because as it stands its excess involving sex and sexual depravity is just something I cannot wholeheartedly condone.

If you want to give Tsukihime a shot, here is a link to the English Translation website, run by none other than kohakudoori who I would like to thank for giving us all the chance to get the experience of Tsukihime.

I definitely see myself coming back to reread the Arc and Hisui routes in the future because they’re just so damn good, and I genuinely can’t wait until the remakes are fully translated to English, though how long that will be I do not know.

I would like to say thanks to Tokyo Millennium for giving me the brainworms required for this, and my buddy Simon for sharing his experience with me which inspired me to try the game out.

And last but not least, I want to thank you Backloggd, for keeping me sane during this duration of my life, I love you folks.

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P.S:
Fun fact, but you can easily change the music in this game.

If you are going to commit the act of actually sitting through the H-Scenes (I do not recommend nor condone this for the record), I recommend changing Track 5 to any song you choose. Here’s the steps.

1.“Procure” a music track of your liking (I picked a variety, my last one was It Has To Be This Way for that epic final battle against sex.)

2. Change it to a .ogg file. You can do this here.

3. Download the file and rename it to “track05”.

4. Open the “CD” folder in your Tsukihime folder, and put the new “track05” in there.

5. Replace the file.

Then voila, it will play the respective track in place of Track 5. This should help anyone who thinks they have “the balls” to stand up to the terrible H-Scenes.

Anyways, I need to start working on my “How Close Is This Media To Tsukihime” Tier List, so until next time.

Burennya~~

While I have never been in the experiences that Taylor McCue has, which make up the semi-autobiographical narrative of this game, I can definitely relate to the sheer level of trauma and pain that is conveyed.

The visuals express a form of terror and horror that only such experiences could create, and it allows the situation to really sink in deep as you read through these nightmarish scenarios.

My chest feels tight, I want to throw up, the game did it's job at showing me Taylor's pain and sadness of being a sex worker when you don't want to.

The part that I really relate to the most is the feeling that nobody will ever love you because of your past decisions, it's something I've also coped with over these past four agonizing years of adulthood as I've felt entirely alone and unloved because of my failings as a person.

But I think that He Fucked The Girl Out of Me makes the argument that even though that feeling may be there, we should never give into it. Love will find a way, it always has.

I definitely recommend reading this, though do be advised the themes get very intense very quickly, so make sure to check the triggers before you truly get into it.

My original addendum got deleted because I made a rude comment about Arzest and Sonic Team, so I'll omit that and just cut straight to the point:

Trip Mode is an utter travesty that only magnifies this game's problems.

While compared to the character-specific levels that are in the main story, the levels do use far more of Trip's moveset, this is countered by the fact that these levels are so haphazardly designed in ways that are incredibly dickish with no other purpose. The levels in Trip mode actively relish in bullshit, like springs that send you straight into instant death or having you fly into an enemy you couldn't see, which results in these levels feeling more prolonged than they already are.

While using Trip and the increase in obstacles does result in more usage of powers like Slowdown or the Beanstalk, these are still made situational because if you got all the Chaos Emeralds in the main story (which you likely would have given the game gives you ample opportunity to do so), you will have access to Trip's Super Form, which allows you to fly infinitely, taking the piss out of everything.

If it were just this, I would likely have kept my rating the same as I did initially, but the bosses are where Trip's Story truly falls apart. They're more prolonged and still have all of the problems that made them miserable in the first place. In my previous review, I had a comment that said that me saying "waiting in a Sonic game" is terrible. Still, my argument here is when the bosses are designed in a way that actively disregards your time and forces you to have to take an inactive role in damaging the boss, what else am I supposed to think other than that it's a waste of my time? Some of these bosses have downtimes where you can't damage them that range from 5-15 seconds and sometimes upwards to 25 seconds. On the Carnival Zone Act 3 boss, I spent 20 seconds in Trip's super form on top of the boss, unable to damage it. That's not good boss design, especially not in a franchise like Sonic, where in previous Classic entries, it was a viable strategy to try and multi-hit the boss to end it as quickly as possible.

The worst offender of all is Fang the Sniper, who, through some miserable circumstances, has been given the worst boss fight I've seen in a Classic Sonic game. The first fight with him isn't good by any means and has active sections just centered on wasting your time, but the second fight with him in Trip's Story is just one of the dullest, obnoxiously designed fights I've seen in this series, and I am not ashamed to say I haven't beaten it.

It is nothing but instant kill attacks and time-wasting. It is so utterly dull that I wonder what the developers were thinking, making such an atrocious waste of time. Not to mention, it's two phases for no real discernable reason. This brings me to my complaint about unlimited lives: They don't help.

The fact that I get no downtime between boss attempts serves to be more infuriating than helpful, and to top it off; it's fucking redundant in a game that HAS A HUBWORLD WHERE YOU CAN JUST WALK AND START THE STAGE AGAIN. It gives the devs an excuse to keep plopping out these miserably designed stages and fights that serve nothing but to infuriate and agitate.

I'm not finishing Trip mode; I've decided that, ultimately, it isn't worth it. Super Mario Wonder comes out today, and while I got fucked by the shipping, so I'm not getting the game for an extra day, I know that it will be far more worth my time and effort to play.

I have always been a Sonic fan since I was a three-year-old boy playing Sonic 2 for the first time. But if this is how Classic Sonic will be treated from now on, with this level of hollowness and utterly unpleasant design choices, then I firmly believe it should have died after Mania.

If this is the road we're going down, I hope I never see another Classic Sonic game as long as I live.

Sometimes in life, we make what are called mistakes. These mistakes range from a variety of things, and DMC2 is one of them. However I did not genuinely think my fellow Backloggd members would be so evil, so cruel as to wish upon me the experience of playing Lucia's route in Devil May Cry 2.

First off, let me give some compliments.

It's nice that not every single level is just a repeat of the Dante playthrough, providing at least some visual variety, and I like her animations and design more than Dante in this game but that is where the compliments end.

Onto the problems.

The game is still DMC2, which means it basically plays itself and is barely an experience for the player. The levels are dismally boring, the enemy design is basically non-existent, and the music is just white noise.

However Lucia's route provides one feature that makes DMC2 become even more unbearable than it was: Underwater Levels.

These control, so awkwardly, and you are expected to fight a boss fight, an INVISIBLE FISH BOSS FIGHT, which only allows you to lock on sporadically.

Disgust is not harsh enough a word to describe it.

Sometimes I like to ponder the philosophical meaning behind games. What meaning they have to me and others, and the intention of the creators, and their vision.

Do all games have value?

Well, this sure doesn't.

Anyways, I think I really need to get a life, playing games like this are why I'm so out of shape and why I can't seem to be happy.

Next is DMC5 though, thank god.

P.S.
I hate Dante's design in this game, the grey part on the torso looks like a vest without being a vest and it looks so fucking weird and I don't like it god I fucking hate this game, I'm so glad I never have to play it ever again.

Was there ever any value to this game's existence? This is a genuine question I have over this game. Did Super Smash Brothers for the Wii U truly have to exist in this world?

Take away the competitive aspect that all fighting games have and what you're left with what is the most corporate and soulless Super Smash Bros. game in fucking existence.

Sure, you could argue the series has always been this corporatized, actively milked cash cow that has done nothing but drain Masahiro Sakurai and his team of the back half of their lives, but this one to me takes the fucking cake.

The Classic Mode is this bland, move your trophy around the board with no thematic reasoning or purpose behind it. Take on the new Master Hand forms that are just generic shadow monsters ending with this sole tiny core that isn't even satisfying to beat up because it feels like a representation of the creators' giving up.

What about Smash Tour, the most boring and pointless sidemode addition ever, that barely makes any fucking sense and the end result winds up feeling hollow. Even then, that's if anyone wants to play the damn thing.

The artstyle is the worst of it for me, it's just this hollow lifeless standardized HD crap that just feels so flat and awful.

I'll admit, I grew up with Super Smash Bros. Brawl, it's still my favorite of the series even now. Sure it had that overly realistic artstyle where Mario wears denim, and characters slip and slide everywhere but it also had a fucking soul. You could tell the developers wanted to make Brawl the best it could be. I never felt that with 4.

Smash 4 is just the stepping stone to Ultimate that didn't need to be, because regardless of the quality of that game, given the sheer level of content it has it already eclipses Smash 4 several times and then some. Where was the Adventure Mode for Smash 4? We've had an adventure mode in Smash games since fucking Melee in 2001, why didn't Smash 4 have one?

Why does everything in Smash 4 feel like the developers didn't want to make the game?

Outside of that on a more personal level I fucking hate this game. It's my least favorite game yes for those reasons above but how it affected my life in highschool is why I sold the game off and will likely never play it again.

Friends of mine so much more entrenched into the Competitive Scene than I was constantly wound up fighting among each other, within our school gore would be sent due to disputes over the game, friendships were ruined and shit, it was all fucking stupid but at the time it was utter misery that I wouldn't want in my life ever again. It ruined fighting games for me, permanently.

It killed any interest I could have had in that genre by showing me the absolute most toxic direction that playing those games could go.

Smash 4 is the video game equivalent to gonorrhea, because once you have it flushed out of your system, you never want to experience it ever again.