This isn't so much a review as much as it is a story I want to tell.
(Mild FE4 spoilers)
When I first played Genealogy of the Holy War, I was awed by its enormous cast. The fact that you could use every unit available to you was such an interesting concept to me that I did my very best to try and get every unit either promoted (minus Dew), or married.
And while I found most of the characters to be fundamentally useful including Arden, the blatant joke character, there was a unit that just could not seem to reach any kind of expectation for me.
Have I ever mentioned what my favorite color is on here before? The color is Red, and I've loved the color ever since I was a child. Red has always been a color that for me, represented the coolest possible things: Zero from Mega Man X, Spider-Man, Knuckes, all of these characters I have loved from a relatively young age, and still hold true to me today as representations of the color Red.
And then, then there's Noishe...
Noishe, Noish, Naoise, however the fuck you pronounce it is a character I absolutely despise. They're not cool in any sense, they only have one piece of dialogue in the entire game (two if you have him get married but we'll get onto why that's a mistake), and they can't kill enemies for shit.
Noishe is a Cavalier unit, which is what has given him the claim of being a "good" unit because FE4's maps being so large accentuates the usage of horse units, but in my honest opinion he is worse than most of the infantry units.
He doesn't have the Follow-Up Skill by default, which in FE4 means he cannot double at all, and to make it worse, he has an abysmal starting speed stat of 8, and a growth rate of 20%, meaning that even if you give him the Pursuit Ring that you can find in Chapter 2, he will still not kill units half the time.
While he does start with the Critical skill, which for some would be a good reason to have him marry one of the female units, it's borderline pointless because of how weapon kills work in this game. If you have a weapon that has killed 50 or more units, that weapon comes with the Critical skill inherent to itself.
The only way to make Noishe be up to par is to give him both the Pursuit Ring and the Brave Sword which you can get in Chapter 3 (which is actually 4 Chapters into the game, and only 2 Chapters from the end of Gen 1), but at the same time that requires him to compete with multiple other units who could use those weapons. Personally why would I have Noishe keep the Pursuit Ring when I can give it to the already extremely powerful Lewyn so he can quadruple damage thanks to having the Adept skill (which itself allows Lewyn to strike twice consecutively, that and Lewyn also comes with Critical himself. He can crit and double attack by default already making him leagues better than Noishe), or giving the Brave Sword to someone like Lachesis so she can kill enemies faster and attain that all powerful Master Knight class even sooner? Why should I give power to a mediocre unit when I can have more powerful units be even more powerful?
Hell, Fire Emblem Wiki where I am sourcing the information from says, and I quote "Naoise requires adequate equipment to surpass mediocrity." To that I say, if that is the case... why bother using him at all?
In my first run of FE4 I did everything I could to make this unit work because all of the people I asked said "Noishe is a good unit", but time and time again Noishe would simply not perform, even with things like the Pursuit Ring. He simply had terrible fucking growths.
Even after promoting him to a Paladin, the only use I had for Noishe was letting him be the only unit I didn't reset for. Letting him die to the Mjolnir tome in Chapter 5 so that Sigurd could get the kill.
Ever since I finished FE4 my hatred for Noishe continued to burn. Whenever I played other FEs and saw how the Red Cavalier units in those games were performing far better than he ever did, I just remembered my sheer disappointment and disgust I had with him. He made me feel ashamed of liking the color Red.
And so I finally reached a conclusion. After joking about it for a good chunk of the year, I decided to do the one thing with Noishe that could bring me joy and happiness...
I would speedrun his death.
Yes, what I spent most of today doing was trying to find the fastest, most efficient way to get Noishe killed in the Prologue of Genealogy of the Holy War.
It was adrenaline pumping, figuring out a strategy that required me to sell Sigurd's Iron Lance so Noishe could buy it on Turn 2, allowing for him to attack an ax unit so that he would get two shot on enemy phase and die.
The process took several hours, first I did a 1:35.4 Minute Run where I paused during the cutscene and started at turn one. My buddy Simon told me that wasn't legitimate, so then I moved on to trying to do it legit the fastest way possible.
As the first person to attempt the Noishe Death% Speedrun, I learned a lot about the optimal strategy. It requires skills not tied to Fire Emblem, if anything I'd say it's more akin to Mario Party.
Step 1.
Mash as much as humanly possible.
Mashing the start button is the only way to skip dialogue, and if you do it fast enough, you won't even see portraits of speech bubbles. The scene will simply fade in and out instantaneously.
This is the ideal scenario as given the map movement cutscenes are entirely unskippable, being able to fully skip dialogue scenes is imperative to saving time on the run.
Step 2:
Put everyone except Arden into the castle on Turn 1, while also changing your options as quickly as possible.
In FE4, you cannot change options in the main menu, and are required to do so once you are in play. This requires precision so as to not slip up and accidentally waste time.
The menuing is required simply because removing animations as well as raising enemy speed reduces the amount of time enemy phase takes, allowing for a better time.
Putting all of the units into the castle on Turn 1 prevents enemies from targeting your other units, that way they won't be killed when you send Noishe out on Turn 2 in order to finish the run.
It also allows you to fulfill the requirements for successful completion of the run on Enemy Turn 2 by allowing Sigurd to sell his Iron Lance for Noishe to buy, giving him a disadvantage to the enemy Axe units whom he otherwise would have a high avoid rate against.
That's not Noishe being good but rather Axes' being shit against Swords. Giving Noishe the Iron Lance also gives the enemies as 100% hit rate against him, guaranteeing death in three attacks.
Step 3:
Mash even harder.
This is the second hardest part because after turn one, there is an entire 25-45 second scene where you have no control while characters move on the map and have multiple lines of dialogue. There is even a fight which is animated, even if you have animations off.
Simply mash as fast as you can to skip dialogue so that the movement goes faster, allowing for enemy phase to actually start, which should go smoothly if you successfully menued to make enemy movement faster on Turn 1.
Step 4.
Menu the Iron Lance as fast as humanly possible.
This is the absolute hardest part and requires exact precision. Any mispress and you will doom the run here. You need to go into the castle, sell the Iron Lance with Sigurd, exit out of that menu, and press down to select Noishe.
Then immediately after go and buy the Iron Lance for Noishe, exit that menu and send him out to attack.
Step 5.
Attack the Axe unit closest to the castle.
By attacking this unit with the Iron Lance, you are guaranteed to take 11 damage, which is more than enough for Noishe to get two shot on enemy phase. After the attack, move Noishe to the left close to the next axe unit to deliver the coup de grace.
Step 6.
Watch him die.
At this point, you just watch as Noishe dies painfully to two slashes of the axe, ending your run.
By doing this you will have successfully completed your Noishe Death% run, killing the whitest unit in the army with more effort than it takes to actually beat the prologue of this game.
And I know what you're probably thinking: "Wow, this is such an extremely petty thing to do over a video game character from one game in a franchise of 17 mainline games and multiple spinoffs," and to you I say, yes. Yes it is petty. But it was so worth it.
You can call it petty, you can call it a joke in bad taste, call me a shit eating bastard who is not worthy of the ground upon which he stands or the games of which he plays but that will never make me feel ashamed of the absolute pop-off I had when I got a Sub 3 Minute Run.
Pettiness results in some pretty special moments.
(Mild FE4 spoilers)
When I first played Genealogy of the Holy War, I was awed by its enormous cast. The fact that you could use every unit available to you was such an interesting concept to me that I did my very best to try and get every unit either promoted (minus Dew), or married.
And while I found most of the characters to be fundamentally useful including Arden, the blatant joke character, there was a unit that just could not seem to reach any kind of expectation for me.
Have I ever mentioned what my favorite color is on here before? The color is Red, and I've loved the color ever since I was a child. Red has always been a color that for me, represented the coolest possible things: Zero from Mega Man X, Spider-Man, Knuckes, all of these characters I have loved from a relatively young age, and still hold true to me today as representations of the color Red.
And then, then there's Noishe...
Noishe, Noish, Naoise, however the fuck you pronounce it is a character I absolutely despise. They're not cool in any sense, they only have one piece of dialogue in the entire game (two if you have him get married but we'll get onto why that's a mistake), and they can't kill enemies for shit.
Noishe is a Cavalier unit, which is what has given him the claim of being a "good" unit because FE4's maps being so large accentuates the usage of horse units, but in my honest opinion he is worse than most of the infantry units.
He doesn't have the Follow-Up Skill by default, which in FE4 means he cannot double at all, and to make it worse, he has an abysmal starting speed stat of 8, and a growth rate of 20%, meaning that even if you give him the Pursuit Ring that you can find in Chapter 2, he will still not kill units half the time.
While he does start with the Critical skill, which for some would be a good reason to have him marry one of the female units, it's borderline pointless because of how weapon kills work in this game. If you have a weapon that has killed 50 or more units, that weapon comes with the Critical skill inherent to itself.
The only way to make Noishe be up to par is to give him both the Pursuit Ring and the Brave Sword which you can get in Chapter 3 (which is actually 4 Chapters into the game, and only 2 Chapters from the end of Gen 1), but at the same time that requires him to compete with multiple other units who could use those weapons. Personally why would I have Noishe keep the Pursuit Ring when I can give it to the already extremely powerful Lewyn so he can quadruple damage thanks to having the Adept skill (which itself allows Lewyn to strike twice consecutively, that and Lewyn also comes with Critical himself. He can crit and double attack by default already making him leagues better than Noishe), or giving the Brave Sword to someone like Lachesis so she can kill enemies faster and attain that all powerful Master Knight class even sooner? Why should I give power to a mediocre unit when I can have more powerful units be even more powerful?
Hell, Fire Emblem Wiki where I am sourcing the information from says, and I quote "Naoise requires adequate equipment to surpass mediocrity." To that I say, if that is the case... why bother using him at all?
In my first run of FE4 I did everything I could to make this unit work because all of the people I asked said "Noishe is a good unit", but time and time again Noishe would simply not perform, even with things like the Pursuit Ring. He simply had terrible fucking growths.
Even after promoting him to a Paladin, the only use I had for Noishe was letting him be the only unit I didn't reset for. Letting him die to the Mjolnir tome in Chapter 5 so that Sigurd could get the kill.
Ever since I finished FE4 my hatred for Noishe continued to burn. Whenever I played other FEs and saw how the Red Cavalier units in those games were performing far better than he ever did, I just remembered my sheer disappointment and disgust I had with him. He made me feel ashamed of liking the color Red.
And so I finally reached a conclusion. After joking about it for a good chunk of the year, I decided to do the one thing with Noishe that could bring me joy and happiness...
I would speedrun his death.
Yes, what I spent most of today doing was trying to find the fastest, most efficient way to get Noishe killed in the Prologue of Genealogy of the Holy War.
It was adrenaline pumping, figuring out a strategy that required me to sell Sigurd's Iron Lance so Noishe could buy it on Turn 2, allowing for him to attack an ax unit so that he would get two shot on enemy phase and die.
The process took several hours, first I did a 1:35.4 Minute Run where I paused during the cutscene and started at turn one. My buddy Simon told me that wasn't legitimate, so then I moved on to trying to do it legit the fastest way possible.
As the first person to attempt the Noishe Death% Speedrun, I learned a lot about the optimal strategy. It requires skills not tied to Fire Emblem, if anything I'd say it's more akin to Mario Party.
Step 1.
Mash as much as humanly possible.
Mashing the start button is the only way to skip dialogue, and if you do it fast enough, you won't even see portraits of speech bubbles. The scene will simply fade in and out instantaneously.
This is the ideal scenario as given the map movement cutscenes are entirely unskippable, being able to fully skip dialogue scenes is imperative to saving time on the run.
Step 2:
Put everyone except Arden into the castle on Turn 1, while also changing your options as quickly as possible.
In FE4, you cannot change options in the main menu, and are required to do so once you are in play. This requires precision so as to not slip up and accidentally waste time.
The menuing is required simply because removing animations as well as raising enemy speed reduces the amount of time enemy phase takes, allowing for a better time.
Putting all of the units into the castle on Turn 1 prevents enemies from targeting your other units, that way they won't be killed when you send Noishe out on Turn 2 in order to finish the run.
It also allows you to fulfill the requirements for successful completion of the run on Enemy Turn 2 by allowing Sigurd to sell his Iron Lance for Noishe to buy, giving him a disadvantage to the enemy Axe units whom he otherwise would have a high avoid rate against.
That's not Noishe being good but rather Axes' being shit against Swords. Giving Noishe the Iron Lance also gives the enemies as 100% hit rate against him, guaranteeing death in three attacks.
Step 3:
Mash even harder.
This is the second hardest part because after turn one, there is an entire 25-45 second scene where you have no control while characters move on the map and have multiple lines of dialogue. There is even a fight which is animated, even if you have animations off.
Simply mash as fast as you can to skip dialogue so that the movement goes faster, allowing for enemy phase to actually start, which should go smoothly if you successfully menued to make enemy movement faster on Turn 1.
Step 4.
Menu the Iron Lance as fast as humanly possible.
This is the absolute hardest part and requires exact precision. Any mispress and you will doom the run here. You need to go into the castle, sell the Iron Lance with Sigurd, exit out of that menu, and press down to select Noishe.
Then immediately after go and buy the Iron Lance for Noishe, exit that menu and send him out to attack.
Step 5.
Attack the Axe unit closest to the castle.
By attacking this unit with the Iron Lance, you are guaranteed to take 11 damage, which is more than enough for Noishe to get two shot on enemy phase. After the attack, move Noishe to the left close to the next axe unit to deliver the coup de grace.
Step 6.
Watch him die.
At this point, you just watch as Noishe dies painfully to two slashes of the axe, ending your run.
By doing this you will have successfully completed your Noishe Death% run, killing the whitest unit in the army with more effort than it takes to actually beat the prologue of this game.
And I know what you're probably thinking: "Wow, this is such an extremely petty thing to do over a video game character from one game in a franchise of 17 mainline games and multiple spinoffs," and to you I say, yes. Yes it is petty. But it was so worth it.
You can call it petty, you can call it a joke in bad taste, call me a shit eating bastard who is not worthy of the ground upon which he stands or the games of which he plays but that will never make me feel ashamed of the absolute pop-off I had when I got a Sub 3 Minute Run.
Pettiness results in some pretty special moments.
2004
My sister's ex-boyfriend had me keep his character moving so that his game wouldn't log him out. One time while doing so, an enemy spawned and attacked him, resulting in him screaming at me and never letting me touch it ever again. The game looks pretty solid though.
2023
Why play Sonic Superstars when Super Mario Wonder. completely Curbstomps it. Spend your 60 bucks on something good friends.
2007
I played Say It Ain't So with my back facing the screen once. Memorization is cool.
In 1996, the former game magazine now turned game developer, Game Freak, released Pokémon Red Version and Pokémon Green Version in Japan. The games were inspired by the CEO and creator of Game Freak, Satoshi Taijiri's childhood.
In his youth, Satoshi used to explore the forests of his hometown in Japan, catching bugs.
That's right, the phenomenon of Pokémon started with origins as humble as these, and has gone on to become the number one multimedia franchise on the planet.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus is the first Pokémon game to truly capture that feeling of exploration and intrigue as you explore the wild, ancient world of Hisui.
This game combines aspects of JRPGs, Third Person Shooters, Stealth Games, and Open World Sandboxes to give the genuine experience of wandering into the unknown and encountering these deadly and terrifying creatures.
Mechanically, I like how there are multiple ways to take on capturing or distracting a Pokémon. You can throw food in front of them to get the drop on them either in combat or with a more effective Pokéball hit. You can wait until they see you and put some dirt in their eye by throwing a ball of mud in their face to stun them.
I love when games provide multiple ways to surmount an obstacle, it's why I like Fallout New Vegas, and it's something I like in this game.
There is nothing more fulfilling than filling up the Pokédex, and thanks to there only being one version of this game (and I hope it stays that way for the sequels that I hope will be released), every Pokémon (of the Hisui Region) is available to catch.
There are a few snags with that, like Shaymin and Darkrai being locked behind you owning Sword & Shield and Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl respectively, which is scummy, but they are also not required for Dex completion.
Without spoiling anything, the plot is relatively barebones, but I am a fan of the increased stakes. Death is implied to be commonplace and waved around as a normal thing. That isn't to say that just saying the words "death" and "kill" are going to bring depth to a story, but given how it does incite a twinge of fear for the encounters you'll have with Pokémon, I think it works well enough.
The final 3 hours of the main story was some of the most hype shit, I will say that, with the third to last final boss being a borderline shmup in regards to gameplay. It was like Sin & Punishment, but with Pokémon.
Sin & Pokémon.
Graphically I think the artstyle of this game is great, cell shading is definitely a good choice for Pokémon and it really gives a similar vibe to Ancient Japanese artwork.
I will say I noticed a lot of graphical hiccups like grass moving weirdly mid battle, or textures on rocks looking like a chessboard, but these things don't ruin a game for me unless they're directly assaulting my eyes.
At the end of the day, this is the first Pokémon game since Pokémon Heart Gold & Soul Silver to have fully fulfilled me with both the amount of content, and love that I know this franchise can deliver. This is a game I have been waiting for, for 12 long years.
I went into Legends with the cynical view of someone who had witnessed the Dark Age of Pokemon, from Black & White 2 onward. I thought this would merely be another soulless cashgrab pile of garbage like SwSh and Let's Go, but this game genuinely surprised me.
I think Game Freak has found a formula that is worth continuing, and I think that if they can further flesh out the game mechanics and provide us even more options for Pokémon Encounters, we'd finally see an end to the Dark Age.
This is the Pokémon game with the most soul, since Soul Silver.
In his youth, Satoshi used to explore the forests of his hometown in Japan, catching bugs.
That's right, the phenomenon of Pokémon started with origins as humble as these, and has gone on to become the number one multimedia franchise on the planet.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus is the first Pokémon game to truly capture that feeling of exploration and intrigue as you explore the wild, ancient world of Hisui.
This game combines aspects of JRPGs, Third Person Shooters, Stealth Games, and Open World Sandboxes to give the genuine experience of wandering into the unknown and encountering these deadly and terrifying creatures.
Mechanically, I like how there are multiple ways to take on capturing or distracting a Pokémon. You can throw food in front of them to get the drop on them either in combat or with a more effective Pokéball hit. You can wait until they see you and put some dirt in their eye by throwing a ball of mud in their face to stun them.
I love when games provide multiple ways to surmount an obstacle, it's why I like Fallout New Vegas, and it's something I like in this game.
There is nothing more fulfilling than filling up the Pokédex, and thanks to there only being one version of this game (and I hope it stays that way for the sequels that I hope will be released), every Pokémon (of the Hisui Region) is available to catch.
There are a few snags with that, like Shaymin and Darkrai being locked behind you owning Sword & Shield and Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl respectively, which is scummy, but they are also not required for Dex completion.
Without spoiling anything, the plot is relatively barebones, but I am a fan of the increased stakes. Death is implied to be commonplace and waved around as a normal thing. That isn't to say that just saying the words "death" and "kill" are going to bring depth to a story, but given how it does incite a twinge of fear for the encounters you'll have with Pokémon, I think it works well enough.
The final 3 hours of the main story was some of the most hype shit, I will say that, with the third to last final boss being a borderline shmup in regards to gameplay. It was like Sin & Punishment, but with Pokémon.
Sin & Pokémon.
Graphically I think the artstyle of this game is great, cell shading is definitely a good choice for Pokémon and it really gives a similar vibe to Ancient Japanese artwork.
I will say I noticed a lot of graphical hiccups like grass moving weirdly mid battle, or textures on rocks looking like a chessboard, but these things don't ruin a game for me unless they're directly assaulting my eyes.
At the end of the day, this is the first Pokémon game since Pokémon Heart Gold & Soul Silver to have fully fulfilled me with both the amount of content, and love that I know this franchise can deliver. This is a game I have been waiting for, for 12 long years.
I went into Legends with the cynical view of someone who had witnessed the Dark Age of Pokemon, from Black & White 2 onward. I thought this would merely be another soulless cashgrab pile of garbage like SwSh and Let's Go, but this game genuinely surprised me.
I think Game Freak has found a formula that is worth continuing, and I think that if they can further flesh out the game mechanics and provide us even more options for Pokémon Encounters, we'd finally see an end to the Dark Age.
This is the Pokémon game with the most soul, since Soul Silver.
2003
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING HATE THIS PIECE OF SHIT GAME IT JUST SUCKS IN ALMOST EVERY FUCKING WAY. THE GAMEPLAY: SHIT, THE PLOT: SHIT, THE SPECIAL STAGES: MAKE ME CONTEMPLATE SELF HARM. THIS GAME IS A FUCKING NIGHTMARE, AND YOU HAVE TO PLAY IT FOUR TIMES TO GET THE TRUE ENDING WHAT A LOAD OF HORSE SHIT. At least the soundtrack is boss.
After Devil May Cry 3 brought about the franchise's redemption arc with its incredibly solid gameplay, a tightly woven narrative, and catchy 2005 vibe music, the question must have arisen as to "where do we go from here?"
And while many would hope the answer would be up, Devil May Cry 4 would ultimately wind up being quite the disappointment as the follow up to my personal favorite of the series.
From the very start of the game there was this awkward emptiness I felt, and it was a feeling that only grew the more I played the game.
Starting with Nero. Nero is not a bad character by any means, in fact I quite enjoy his banter with the various antagonists the game throws his way and he generally exudes a youthful arrogance that reminds me a lot of Dante in DMC3. However it is his motivation that I find lacking, and not in that the motivation is inherently bad but rather, it's very standard and tied to the weakest character in the game.
His undying love for Kyrie, while wholesome and also providing great emotional scenes comes across as very plain for this franchise. It doesn't help that Kyrie herself receives very little characterization outside of "being a nice girl who loves Nero and her brother and is nice." Easily my least favorite (non-DMC2) female protagonist in the series so far, exuding none of the confidence that characters like Trish or Lady have in spades.
It just results in the story feeling rather weak, which given its inherent vibes reminding me a lot of Final Fantasy (but less interesting), resulted in me kind of shutting my brain off at most points.
The game starts with this interesting hook with Dante showing up out of nowhere and killing Sanctus, the leader of a Sparda worshipping cult, which causes Nero to fight him, but eventually it tappers off into an uninteresting conspiracy by the cult to bring life to this giant statue called The Savior.
Hell, by the time Dante becomes the central protagonist, the story kind of just takes a backseat so he can crack his funny pizza man jokes, and only really comes back into play at the very end.
Not that the plot is the most important aspect or even the biggest problem in this game, but rather a piece in a larger set of issues that pervades every corner of DMC4.
The gameplay is incredibly solid, Nero controls very well and I love his mechanics. His affinity for air combat allows him to easily juggle an enemy possibly even indefinitely if you know how to do jump cancelling. His revving of his motorcycle sword (which is fucking awesome in the exact same way as a Gunblade) allows for him to charge up a meter that allows for some useful moves, however it can take time to do so and leaves Nero defenseless... unless you know how to Instant Rev, which if you time after a hit just right, you can instantly fill up one bar of meter(eventually able to upgrade this to the entire meter). However, these moves are honestly limited in their actual usefulness I've found, and it's just more effective to just utilize your regular combos.
Dante is easily my favorite character to utilize in the game, finally having Style Switching which is a major improvement from DMC3. I loved utilizing Swordmaster and Gunslinger for those banging combos, even finding out that Swordmaster has a literal auto-combo that results in Dante swinging his sword like a baseball bat. However Dante's weapon selection is... not great unfortunately. I loved using Rebellion, but Gilgamesh wasn't as fun to utilize as Beowulf in DMC3, and while I liked Lucifer, I simply found that Rebellion was generally the more efficient of the bunch in regards to the sheer amount of combos it has. Same with the guns really, but honestly Ebony & Ivory have always been perfect to use so I have no complaints there.
The problem with the gameplay is honestly the levels themselves. They are very... standard. For comparison, in Devil May Cry 1, the Mallet Island Castle has this dark, creeping vibe that sticks to the player. It is very much drenched in its horror aesthetic as it feels like a genuine location that's been lived in, and serves to show the imposing and oppressive nature that the game and its narrative have.
DMC4 on the other hand is a Super Mario/Sonic game in regards to its levels. You've got your town level, you have your mineshaft level, you have your frozen castle level, you have your hidden factory level, your jungle level, and your holy castle level. These locations are already very uninspired by just being tropes that I could find on TV Tropes if I wanted, but what makes it worse is that you go through all of these locations twice only backwards with Dante.
Of course, this isn't news to anyone who has played the game and contributes to the one, very openly talked about aspect of DMC4:
It's fucking unfinished.
From the fucking stupid as fuck dice mini game (that you do twice for the record, and the second time is tied to the fucking boss rush), to The Savior boss fight just being an utter clusterfuck, the final boss being almost as bad as a DMC2 fight, the game starts strong but shits the bed so fucking hard by the end that when I realized Vergil was just going to go through the exact same campaign, I immediately dropped it to play him in Bloody Palace instead.
The boss fights themselves, minus the snake dragon lady, Credo and Agnus don't even feel designed around Nero's toolkit and fighting them with him just feels unpleasant, where once you fight them with Dante it feels incredibly satisfying by comparison. Maybe this was to show the experience gap between the two, but personally I don't think there's any narrative reason for it.
The music didn't vibe with me as much as DMC3's or even DMC1, which isn't to say I hated DMC4's soundtrack but rather that in comparison it just wasn't that memorable, which y'know, fits the entire game now that I think about it.
DMC4, outside of its combat, is not memorable.
The demons you fight as bosses are all inconsequential randos who have barely anything to do with the plot, the plot itself is very plain, the main antagonist is boring and generic Super Pope, it's all just very forgettable.
It's another one of those games I wish I could love but I just can't, and that is disappointing.
I doubt I'll ever play the story mode of this game ever again, but Bloody Palace will always be there and I will definitely come back to it just for the fun that that mode brings.
The time had come, but this game didn't.
And while many would hope the answer would be up, Devil May Cry 4 would ultimately wind up being quite the disappointment as the follow up to my personal favorite of the series.
From the very start of the game there was this awkward emptiness I felt, and it was a feeling that only grew the more I played the game.
Starting with Nero. Nero is not a bad character by any means, in fact I quite enjoy his banter with the various antagonists the game throws his way and he generally exudes a youthful arrogance that reminds me a lot of Dante in DMC3. However it is his motivation that I find lacking, and not in that the motivation is inherently bad but rather, it's very standard and tied to the weakest character in the game.
His undying love for Kyrie, while wholesome and also providing great emotional scenes comes across as very plain for this franchise. It doesn't help that Kyrie herself receives very little characterization outside of "being a nice girl who loves Nero and her brother and is nice." Easily my least favorite (non-DMC2) female protagonist in the series so far, exuding none of the confidence that characters like Trish or Lady have in spades.
It just results in the story feeling rather weak, which given its inherent vibes reminding me a lot of Final Fantasy (but less interesting), resulted in me kind of shutting my brain off at most points.
The game starts with this interesting hook with Dante showing up out of nowhere and killing Sanctus, the leader of a Sparda worshipping cult, which causes Nero to fight him, but eventually it tappers off into an uninteresting conspiracy by the cult to bring life to this giant statue called The Savior.
Hell, by the time Dante becomes the central protagonist, the story kind of just takes a backseat so he can crack his funny pizza man jokes, and only really comes back into play at the very end.
Not that the plot is the most important aspect or even the biggest problem in this game, but rather a piece in a larger set of issues that pervades every corner of DMC4.
The gameplay is incredibly solid, Nero controls very well and I love his mechanics. His affinity for air combat allows him to easily juggle an enemy possibly even indefinitely if you know how to do jump cancelling. His revving of his motorcycle sword (which is fucking awesome in the exact same way as a Gunblade) allows for him to charge up a meter that allows for some useful moves, however it can take time to do so and leaves Nero defenseless... unless you know how to Instant Rev, which if you time after a hit just right, you can instantly fill up one bar of meter(eventually able to upgrade this to the entire meter). However, these moves are honestly limited in their actual usefulness I've found, and it's just more effective to just utilize your regular combos.
Dante is easily my favorite character to utilize in the game, finally having Style Switching which is a major improvement from DMC3. I loved utilizing Swordmaster and Gunslinger for those banging combos, even finding out that Swordmaster has a literal auto-combo that results in Dante swinging his sword like a baseball bat. However Dante's weapon selection is... not great unfortunately. I loved using Rebellion, but Gilgamesh wasn't as fun to utilize as Beowulf in DMC3, and while I liked Lucifer, I simply found that Rebellion was generally the more efficient of the bunch in regards to the sheer amount of combos it has. Same with the guns really, but honestly Ebony & Ivory have always been perfect to use so I have no complaints there.
The problem with the gameplay is honestly the levels themselves. They are very... standard. For comparison, in Devil May Cry 1, the Mallet Island Castle has this dark, creeping vibe that sticks to the player. It is very much drenched in its horror aesthetic as it feels like a genuine location that's been lived in, and serves to show the imposing and oppressive nature that the game and its narrative have.
DMC4 on the other hand is a Super Mario/Sonic game in regards to its levels. You've got your town level, you have your mineshaft level, you have your frozen castle level, you have your hidden factory level, your jungle level, and your holy castle level. These locations are already very uninspired by just being tropes that I could find on TV Tropes if I wanted, but what makes it worse is that you go through all of these locations twice only backwards with Dante.
Of course, this isn't news to anyone who has played the game and contributes to the one, very openly talked about aspect of DMC4:
It's fucking unfinished.
From the fucking stupid as fuck dice mini game (that you do twice for the record, and the second time is tied to the fucking boss rush), to The Savior boss fight just being an utter clusterfuck, the final boss being almost as bad as a DMC2 fight, the game starts strong but shits the bed so fucking hard by the end that when I realized Vergil was just going to go through the exact same campaign, I immediately dropped it to play him in Bloody Palace instead.
The boss fights themselves, minus the snake dragon lady, Credo and Agnus don't even feel designed around Nero's toolkit and fighting them with him just feels unpleasant, where once you fight them with Dante it feels incredibly satisfying by comparison. Maybe this was to show the experience gap between the two, but personally I don't think there's any narrative reason for it.
The music didn't vibe with me as much as DMC3's or even DMC1, which isn't to say I hated DMC4's soundtrack but rather that in comparison it just wasn't that memorable, which y'know, fits the entire game now that I think about it.
DMC4, outside of its combat, is not memorable.
The demons you fight as bosses are all inconsequential randos who have barely anything to do with the plot, the plot itself is very plain, the main antagonist is boring and generic Super Pope, it's all just very forgettable.
It's another one of those games I wish I could love but I just can't, and that is disappointing.
I doubt I'll ever play the story mode of this game ever again, but Bloody Palace will always be there and I will definitely come back to it just for the fun that that mode brings.
The time had come, but this game didn't.
2016
Earlier last year I marathoned all three of the mainline Dark Souls games. I started with 2, as that was the first one I owned, moved to 1, and finally went to 3. 3 is by far the weakest entry in the series. It relies way too much on 1 for its lore and narrative, the level design is either overly large and too spread out or overly narrow and tight with very few inbetweens. Areas feel like they take forever to get through, and it has the single worst poison swamp area in all three of the mainline games in Farron Keep.
Even then, that's not my biggest gripe with this game. No, my biggest gripe is the combat. It's too fast paced, to the point where it doesn't feel like Dark Souls anymore. Here's the thing, Dark Souls 1 had the perfect amount of speed for the combat. It wasn't slow as a turtle, but it also wasn't full out Bleach (Tite Kubo be damned). It felt like the kind of combat you would experience in a fantasy world, slow enough for there to be strategy and fast enough for there to be urgency. Then DS2 showed up and made things ridiculously slow to the point of pure annoyance. So, what was the proper response of DS3? To try and be Bloodborne.
Now, I understand that BB is a Souls game, I get it. But that game is built around its speed, with things like the parry system being long ranged. DS3 does not have this, and that is its fatal flaw for me. It tries to be BB and Dark Souls without understanding what makes either of those games work. I'm sorry Miyazaki, but this shit just isn't cutting it for me. I only ranked it lower than 2 because it was the only Dark Souls game to make me genuinely feel like I had to grind for once, something which I only did out of desire in the previous two games.
Dark Souls 3 is a good video game, but for me, it is the worst Dark Souls game.
Even then, that's not my biggest gripe with this game. No, my biggest gripe is the combat. It's too fast paced, to the point where it doesn't feel like Dark Souls anymore. Here's the thing, Dark Souls 1 had the perfect amount of speed for the combat. It wasn't slow as a turtle, but it also wasn't full out Bleach (Tite Kubo be damned). It felt like the kind of combat you would experience in a fantasy world, slow enough for there to be strategy and fast enough for there to be urgency. Then DS2 showed up and made things ridiculously slow to the point of pure annoyance. So, what was the proper response of DS3? To try and be Bloodborne.
Now, I understand that BB is a Souls game, I get it. But that game is built around its speed, with things like the parry system being long ranged. DS3 does not have this, and that is its fatal flaw for me. It tries to be BB and Dark Souls without understanding what makes either of those games work. I'm sorry Miyazaki, but this shit just isn't cutting it for me. I only ranked it lower than 2 because it was the only Dark Souls game to make me genuinely feel like I had to grind for once, something which I only did out of desire in the previous two games.
Dark Souls 3 is a good video game, but for me, it is the worst Dark Souls game.
2022
When I saw that one of my favorite reviewers on the site, Woodaba had made a short visual novel, I knew I had to sink my teeth into it as soon as possible.
Woodaba's writing style within their reviews (both on here and on their Youtube channel) are incredibly captivating, so I was very excited to see how that would translate to something in a VN format.
It translates very well.
From the start Woodaba's prose captured me in building up the mystique of the prologue scene, painting this picture of a dark encounter with something beyond comprehension, and leaving me curious and interested to see where it would build.
As the main story unfolds, the interaction between our protagonist and the dead girl winds up feeling surprisingly natural. The way the two bounce off of each other at first does have the vibes of your traditional comedy anime meeting, but as we get to know more about both characters, it builds to what feels like real people having real conversations about their lives and specifically the impact of the educational system.
Yeah, that's the part I definitely find the most interesting, and I'm gonna say minor spoilers here because its a relatively important theme to the narrative of the game.
Beyond the super-natural horror Woodaba goes for, the very real horror of Holy Ghost Story comes down to how the educational system (in this game it's Ireland but honestly the critique could apply to any country's as far as I'm concerned) fails those trapped within it.
From the endless amounts of all consuming stress to try and satisfy the constant memorization to get the highest exam scores, and such stress burning out young people to the point of total exhaustion.
It's entirely relatable to anyone who has ever been in school ever, while I myself never studied to such an extreme degree, the oppressive nature of school was always felt. The constant clocking in and clocking out and forcing pointless information into my brain was always the worst aspect of the system, making school less about actually learning and more of just being fed as many answers as possible.
Holy Ghost Story in particular criticizes Catholic School and religion in general, as the constant lingering visage of the man on the cross fills the characters with a deep sense of sadness, as if he is guilting them throughout the education experience.
Of course, this could just be how I internalized it, but I much appreciated how this critique wove in with the supernatural elements, giving us both abstract and yet very real, down to earth horror at the same time.
The ending of the game, much like the opening, left me with many questions. However, I think it's good that way. I think a good story always leaves a few things unanswered to let you piece together in your mind.
Of course I don't want to spoil the experience more than I already have so go give it a shot yourself, I think you'll find yourself similarly enthralled as I was.
Woodaba's writing style within their reviews (both on here and on their Youtube channel) are incredibly captivating, so I was very excited to see how that would translate to something in a VN format.
It translates very well.
From the start Woodaba's prose captured me in building up the mystique of the prologue scene, painting this picture of a dark encounter with something beyond comprehension, and leaving me curious and interested to see where it would build.
As the main story unfolds, the interaction between our protagonist and the dead girl winds up feeling surprisingly natural. The way the two bounce off of each other at first does have the vibes of your traditional comedy anime meeting, but as we get to know more about both characters, it builds to what feels like real people having real conversations about their lives and specifically the impact of the educational system.
Yeah, that's the part I definitely find the most interesting, and I'm gonna say minor spoilers here because its a relatively important theme to the narrative of the game.
Beyond the super-natural horror Woodaba goes for, the very real horror of Holy Ghost Story comes down to how the educational system (in this game it's Ireland but honestly the critique could apply to any country's as far as I'm concerned) fails those trapped within it.
From the endless amounts of all consuming stress to try and satisfy the constant memorization to get the highest exam scores, and such stress burning out young people to the point of total exhaustion.
It's entirely relatable to anyone who has ever been in school ever, while I myself never studied to such an extreme degree, the oppressive nature of school was always felt. The constant clocking in and clocking out and forcing pointless information into my brain was always the worst aspect of the system, making school less about actually learning and more of just being fed as many answers as possible.
Holy Ghost Story in particular criticizes Catholic School and religion in general, as the constant lingering visage of the man on the cross fills the characters with a deep sense of sadness, as if he is guilting them throughout the education experience.
Of course, this could just be how I internalized it, but I much appreciated how this critique wove in with the supernatural elements, giving us both abstract and yet very real, down to earth horror at the same time.
The ending of the game, much like the opening, left me with many questions. However, I think it's good that way. I think a good story always leaves a few things unanswered to let you piece together in your mind.
Of course I don't want to spoil the experience more than I already have so go give it a shot yourself, I think you'll find yourself similarly enthralled as I was.
2009
I'm not going to make this write-up long or put it on a different document first so I can copy-paste it here, I'm just going to be completely frank.
I came into this game genuinely excited because my friends are very into it, and I was looking forward to a genuinely good and entertaining ride but now having finished it I'm just... tired.
I know that's going to get me a lot of flack and my complaints aren't so much that the game is hard, I didn't expect myself to be good at it but y'know it's made me reflect on things I just don't appreciate about the developer.
Platinum Games' self-mastubatory approach to scoring is just something I genuinely dislike as someone who enjoys playing games simply for the sake of having a good time and having a distraction from the real world. The constant reminder every 5 minutes or less about how well I did in each encounter is both annoying and demoralizing. It's not something I can so easily ignore either given that it takes up the entire screen while blurring it for about 5 seconds.
This constant repeated need to show the score to the player wouldn't be a bad thing if it was either A. Smaller, or B. Something I could turn off, but it isn't and because it happens so frequently it just grew to be more and more irritating as the game progressed.
I already know I suck at the game, I do not need to be constantly reminded that I suck at the game, I can already tell. Having a finger pointed at me and laughed at by the game is just fucking annoying.
Another issue is simply that the game fucking drags so fucking long at points, especially with certain levels which are just entire minigames. I do not think I need to go into excruciating detail into just how awful the After Burner tribute level is, and how it takes what is already unpleasant control change and stretches it to the point of utter absurdity and misery.
I did not buy this game to play fucking After Burner, and having to play it for what feels like 25 minutes is fucking exhausting, especially when the camera angles were giving me motion sickness and I felt like I was going to throw up.
Boss fights are also a fucking drag because Bayonetta's mechanics change to suit these large scale fights and it again, just drags. The only boss fights I genuinely enjoyed were the ones with Jeanne because those don't change the inherently good combat mechanics to compensate for size.
The introduction of new enemies is also cool, but what sucks is how most of the time they're introduced and are already attacking you in the cutscene, which makes the transition back to gameplay where you're expected to immediately dodge extremely fucking awkward and unfair to the player.
And then of course, there's the QTEs, which on the PC version, don't fucking function properly, making some QTEs flat out impossible to pull off.
Does this make Bayonetta a bad game? No, but it was a game that quickly exhausted me with these issues, and really left me wanting to replay DMC1 instead, a game in which I didn't even understand the fundamentals of its combat and yet still had a better time.
A lot of these problems aren't so much reflections of Bayonetta but reflections of Platinum Games' mentality of putting arcade like elements into their games without understanding the inherent satisfaction of that style.
Putting a motorcycle section in your game is cool, making it last 15 minutes is not.
Bayonetta does have style however, and that's something I can't take away from it, but honestly it feels like they put more emphasis on the style than on making the game enjoyable.
I think the reason people think so fondly of another Platinum title, Metal Gear Rising, is that despite that games absolutely abysmal gameplay, it is a far shorter game with less mini-game focus, and boss fights that genuinely feel cathartic and freeing. Bayonetta is the opposite of this, a game with gameplay that is genuinely engaging but is marred by an obsession with avoiding that playstyle for lengthy periods of time, while not having nearly as enjoyable boss design.
I didn't come into this game intending to dislike it, and in fact even now I don't fully dislike the game, but the problems it has, or rather the problems that Platinum themselves have are the reason I don't see myself coming back to this game, or playing Bayonetta 2, at least for some time.
I really, genuinely wish I had enjoyed my time with this, but if I'm playing a score centered video game from now on, it's going to be Ultrakill and not this.
I came into this game genuinely excited because my friends are very into it, and I was looking forward to a genuinely good and entertaining ride but now having finished it I'm just... tired.
I know that's going to get me a lot of flack and my complaints aren't so much that the game is hard, I didn't expect myself to be good at it but y'know it's made me reflect on things I just don't appreciate about the developer.
Platinum Games' self-mastubatory approach to scoring is just something I genuinely dislike as someone who enjoys playing games simply for the sake of having a good time and having a distraction from the real world. The constant reminder every 5 minutes or less about how well I did in each encounter is both annoying and demoralizing. It's not something I can so easily ignore either given that it takes up the entire screen while blurring it for about 5 seconds.
This constant repeated need to show the score to the player wouldn't be a bad thing if it was either A. Smaller, or B. Something I could turn off, but it isn't and because it happens so frequently it just grew to be more and more irritating as the game progressed.
I already know I suck at the game, I do not need to be constantly reminded that I suck at the game, I can already tell. Having a finger pointed at me and laughed at by the game is just fucking annoying.
Another issue is simply that the game fucking drags so fucking long at points, especially with certain levels which are just entire minigames. I do not think I need to go into excruciating detail into just how awful the After Burner tribute level is, and how it takes what is already unpleasant control change and stretches it to the point of utter absurdity and misery.
I did not buy this game to play fucking After Burner, and having to play it for what feels like 25 minutes is fucking exhausting, especially when the camera angles were giving me motion sickness and I felt like I was going to throw up.
Boss fights are also a fucking drag because Bayonetta's mechanics change to suit these large scale fights and it again, just drags. The only boss fights I genuinely enjoyed were the ones with Jeanne because those don't change the inherently good combat mechanics to compensate for size.
The introduction of new enemies is also cool, but what sucks is how most of the time they're introduced and are already attacking you in the cutscene, which makes the transition back to gameplay where you're expected to immediately dodge extremely fucking awkward and unfair to the player.
And then of course, there's the QTEs, which on the PC version, don't fucking function properly, making some QTEs flat out impossible to pull off.
Does this make Bayonetta a bad game? No, but it was a game that quickly exhausted me with these issues, and really left me wanting to replay DMC1 instead, a game in which I didn't even understand the fundamentals of its combat and yet still had a better time.
A lot of these problems aren't so much reflections of Bayonetta but reflections of Platinum Games' mentality of putting arcade like elements into their games without understanding the inherent satisfaction of that style.
Putting a motorcycle section in your game is cool, making it last 15 minutes is not.
Bayonetta does have style however, and that's something I can't take away from it, but honestly it feels like they put more emphasis on the style than on making the game enjoyable.
I think the reason people think so fondly of another Platinum title, Metal Gear Rising, is that despite that games absolutely abysmal gameplay, it is a far shorter game with less mini-game focus, and boss fights that genuinely feel cathartic and freeing. Bayonetta is the opposite of this, a game with gameplay that is genuinely engaging but is marred by an obsession with avoiding that playstyle for lengthy periods of time, while not having nearly as enjoyable boss design.
I didn't come into this game intending to dislike it, and in fact even now I don't fully dislike the game, but the problems it has, or rather the problems that Platinum themselves have are the reason I don't see myself coming back to this game, or playing Bayonetta 2, at least for some time.
I really, genuinely wish I had enjoyed my time with this, but if I'm playing a score centered video game from now on, it's going to be Ultrakill and not this.
An incredibly fun character creator that has one of the more interesting, borderline VN story modes for this kind of game where winning and losing actually determine the storyline that you go through.
The gameplay itself is simpler than SmackDown vs Raw 2006 which I played earlier last month, but still hits the same level of satisfaction when you beat your opponent into a bloody broken pulp and then pin them.
The only other thing of note is that I beat this game while suffering from a panic attack, so truly, anything is possible in the WWE.
I'm still having anxiety while writing this, so that's fun.
The gameplay itself is simpler than SmackDown vs Raw 2006 which I played earlier last month, but still hits the same level of satisfaction when you beat your opponent into a bloody broken pulp and then pin them.
The only other thing of note is that I beat this game while suffering from a panic attack, so truly, anything is possible in the WWE.
I'm still having anxiety while writing this, so that's fun.
That sure was... a video game I guess?
Ocarina of Time has long been lauded as one of the greatest games of all time, and in some aspects it's not hard to see how much influence it would have in the years going forward. It planted the seeds for multiple new genres of the medium, from the Character Action Game to Open World. It's still visually impressive even today, and it has an incredible atmosphere.
But by golly, the flaws of this game are just so many that it almost overshadows the rest of the experience, and what was once impressive in 1998 is not so in 2023.
Hyrule Field. It's big, it's open, and it is almost absolutely barren aside from the few flying pineapples and Stalfos at night time. Sure, it's visually impressive but for the first half of this game it is utterly miserable to go through.
Playing as Young Link is quite the struggle just because moving through that field with him to go anywhere takes forever. You spend most of your time sidehopping which is nowhere near as cool as say, Alucard's Backdashing in Symphony, and just results in the first half of this game having a very sluggish pace.
Compared to other Zelda titles, even Zelda 1, it's just way too fucking slow. Now getting Epona and the Fast Travel Songs does mitigate the issue somewhat but you can only get those in the second half of the game, which means until that point you are stuck with the utterly snail-like Young Link.
Dungeons... god. I can count with maybe 2 fingers the amount of dungeons in this game that I sort of liked, those being Dodongo's Cavern and the Spirit Temple. Everything else ranged from either being kind of dull and uninteresting (Forest Temple, Water Temple), to actively annoying and unpleasant (Fire Temple, Jabu Jabu, Ice Cavern).
As an aside, how the hell is the Water Temple considered the worst dungeon in a game where both Jabu Jabu and the Ice Cavern exist? Jabu Jabu is a aesthetic nightmare with many places that just look the same and enemies you can't hit without the boomerang, as well as being an escort mission, and Ice Cavern... fucking christ, Ice physics with a Link who has some of the most awkward movement in the series... no thanks. Water Dungeon was at most just boring to go through, the switching of the boots was not nearly as bad as I was told. (Even then I liked the Iron Boots because they make funny noises, I guess I'm just easy to please)
Onto the unpleasant dungeons, Fire Dungeon was ass less because of the actual Fire and more because of how terrible Link controls. Link will sometimes just jump if you're even remotely near an edge, and in Fire Dungeon's case that can result in you falling several floors down and having to redo a fuck ton of things to get back to where you were. I genuinely hate having to platform with Link in this game simply because of this. There will be points where Link is landing directly on top of a box and yet he'll still careen to his death. It's fucking irritating.
Spirit Temple was cool at least, since it was one of the few times where the game actually asks the player to use everything in their toolset, and not just as Adult Link but also as Child Link. I wish we had more dungeons that actually incorporated the time travel aspect this game has, but alas we don't get that.
Combat, is mediocre. This isn't really too much of a sticking point since arguably combat isn't that important for Zelda but it was still a little disappointing, especially with the bosses.
There is not a single boss in this game that was genuinely compelling. Just like with the dungeons we have two camps, bosses that were a snoozefest and bosses that were irritating, as well as the additional third group that has both.
Twinrova, god I hate Twinrova. In concept it's a super cool fight, you reflect the magic from the one sister to the sister weak to their magic. The problem is that sometimes you just flat out can't hit the other sister because they are on the other side of the screen. Then the second phase happens and is worse because it just becomes a fucking waiting game of hoping she'll launch three of the same spell so you can absorb it with your shield and hit her with it.
On the opposite camp we have Volvagia... what a nothing fight. There was a point during it where I just stood still for 30 seconds and took no damage, and then I was able to completely body the damn thing.
Even Dark Link was a joke, with me just doing thrust attacks utterly annihilating the poor guy.
Really the only boss I even sort of liked besides King Dodongo was Bongo Bongo, simply because it asked me to use more than one tool which was cool.
The Ganon fight was cool from a visual and thematic standpoint but was also way too easy for a final boss. Maybe that was the point but it just didn't feel satisfying to me.
Minigames. I will now completely break the rational character I've been writing as up to this point to rant about this. I HATE every minigame in this game, and I HATE that Heart Pieces and Ammo Upgrades are locked behind them. Now I'm sure you'll probably say "oh but those are optional" and sure you're not wrong, but I just like having more health you dig? I like to be more capable, and having more health and ammo is a way to doing that. I would complain less if a single minigame in this game wasn't some of the worst shit imaginable.
The bow/slingshot games are easily the worst of the bunch, you have no reticle. In regular combat this isn't so bad since A. Lock-on is available, and B. You are way less limited in your ammo capacity, so you have many opportunities to adjust your aim. Not so with these. Limited ammo, no lock on, and you have to get it PERFECT, which is just the Gonorrhea Icing on this AIDS Cake.
The others aren't much better, Bombchu Bowling can be utter hell until you find a consistent strategy, the Treasure Chest minigame is just pure guess work (unless you've done a dungeon you can only unlock in the second half of the game). The Dampe Racing is a pain in the ass, and isn't optional the first time since you need the Hookshot to progress. The Horseback racing to get Epona just feels tacked on and makes the process of getting her feel slow and repetitive.
Really the only ones that I didn't outright hate were the jam sessions with the Skull Kids and the Frogs.
The least offensive was surprisingly the fishing minigame, was really easy to figure out. (And very obvious that Sonic Adventure stole from it wholesale).
In general I am just a person who hates minigames locking upgrades, as someone who grew up with Sonic and having things locked behind Special Stages I have just always hated the concept. Maybe these won't bug you, but for me they were easily the lowest point of the game, not helped at all by their genuine lack of quality.
So that brings me to my final issue, which is more an issue that encapsulates problems this franchise has more so than anything: Zelda herself.
I think it is kind of ridiculous how whenever Zelda does anything in this game, it backfires horribly. She sends Link to get the Pendants so he can get the Master Sword and stop Ganondorf from getting to the Sacred Realm... only for doing so to result in him getting there anyway, making her entire plan fall apart.
Then there's her as Shiek, who in my opinion is just... such wasted potential. Shiek only exposits to Link and teaches him the Fast Travel Songs. Outside of that, the only thing of note is that Shiek gets her ass beaten by a fucking ghost and then proceeds to do nothing about it. Would it not have been cool to at least have a dungeon where you and Shiek work together? I mean, Jabu Jabu had a similar premise with Ruto and while I think it didn't work there, the potential for a good dungeon using teamwork between you and Shiek would be cool. Unfortunately we didn't get that.
And of course, the moment she removes the Shiek disguise, she is almost immediately captured by Ganondorf. It's just really upsetting.
I won't lie, this criticism is also amplified by things that happen in Tears of the Kingdom, but I can't help but feel like that stuff really started being set in stone with Ocarina.
Zelda is never allowed to have genuine agency, and whenever she is she or the world is always summarily punished for it. Her entire thing ends in three timelines where the world gets fucked over by Ganondorf in some capacity. I can't help but feel like this series reeks of misogyny when the main female lead isn't allowed to be anything but a damsel and can't genuinely do anything without being punished for doing so. It's just a little fucking uncomfortable to me.
This applies to the entire series too, and while talking in Tokyo Millennium I basically came to the conclusion that Zelda is only allowed true agency when:
A. She's in Super Smash Bros.
B. She's not even in the game
C. The Fucking CDI Games
D. Spirit Tracks, where she spends most of the game dead
I just can't help but see these underlying signals Nintendo is trying to send to me which in big bold letters spell out the word "MISOGYNY".
To conclude, I don't hate Ocarina of Time but it sure just is ok. It's so ok, it's average, and arguably that's far worse than just being bad.
I left this game feeling filled but disappointed at the same time. Maybe it's my fault for playing this as a break game from Tears of the Kingdom, which has been an utterly phenomenal time that I genuinely could not put down, and I'm measuring OoT against it but at the same time I feel like I would always be disappointed.
Ocarina of Time has long been lauded as one of the greatest games of all time, but to me it's just another game to checkmark off the list. A game that doesn't impress, but doesn't fill me with pure animosity.
It's just ok.
Ocarina of Time has long been lauded as one of the greatest games of all time, and in some aspects it's not hard to see how much influence it would have in the years going forward. It planted the seeds for multiple new genres of the medium, from the Character Action Game to Open World. It's still visually impressive even today, and it has an incredible atmosphere.
But by golly, the flaws of this game are just so many that it almost overshadows the rest of the experience, and what was once impressive in 1998 is not so in 2023.
Hyrule Field. It's big, it's open, and it is almost absolutely barren aside from the few flying pineapples and Stalfos at night time. Sure, it's visually impressive but for the first half of this game it is utterly miserable to go through.
Playing as Young Link is quite the struggle just because moving through that field with him to go anywhere takes forever. You spend most of your time sidehopping which is nowhere near as cool as say, Alucard's Backdashing in Symphony, and just results in the first half of this game having a very sluggish pace.
Compared to other Zelda titles, even Zelda 1, it's just way too fucking slow. Now getting Epona and the Fast Travel Songs does mitigate the issue somewhat but you can only get those in the second half of the game, which means until that point you are stuck with the utterly snail-like Young Link.
Dungeons... god. I can count with maybe 2 fingers the amount of dungeons in this game that I sort of liked, those being Dodongo's Cavern and the Spirit Temple. Everything else ranged from either being kind of dull and uninteresting (Forest Temple, Water Temple), to actively annoying and unpleasant (Fire Temple, Jabu Jabu, Ice Cavern).
As an aside, how the hell is the Water Temple considered the worst dungeon in a game where both Jabu Jabu and the Ice Cavern exist? Jabu Jabu is a aesthetic nightmare with many places that just look the same and enemies you can't hit without the boomerang, as well as being an escort mission, and Ice Cavern... fucking christ, Ice physics with a Link who has some of the most awkward movement in the series... no thanks. Water Dungeon was at most just boring to go through, the switching of the boots was not nearly as bad as I was told. (Even then I liked the Iron Boots because they make funny noises, I guess I'm just easy to please)
Onto the unpleasant dungeons, Fire Dungeon was ass less because of the actual Fire and more because of how terrible Link controls. Link will sometimes just jump if you're even remotely near an edge, and in Fire Dungeon's case that can result in you falling several floors down and having to redo a fuck ton of things to get back to where you were. I genuinely hate having to platform with Link in this game simply because of this. There will be points where Link is landing directly on top of a box and yet he'll still careen to his death. It's fucking irritating.
Spirit Temple was cool at least, since it was one of the few times where the game actually asks the player to use everything in their toolset, and not just as Adult Link but also as Child Link. I wish we had more dungeons that actually incorporated the time travel aspect this game has, but alas we don't get that.
Combat, is mediocre. This isn't really too much of a sticking point since arguably combat isn't that important for Zelda but it was still a little disappointing, especially with the bosses.
There is not a single boss in this game that was genuinely compelling. Just like with the dungeons we have two camps, bosses that were a snoozefest and bosses that were irritating, as well as the additional third group that has both.
Twinrova, god I hate Twinrova. In concept it's a super cool fight, you reflect the magic from the one sister to the sister weak to their magic. The problem is that sometimes you just flat out can't hit the other sister because they are on the other side of the screen. Then the second phase happens and is worse because it just becomes a fucking waiting game of hoping she'll launch three of the same spell so you can absorb it with your shield and hit her with it.
On the opposite camp we have Volvagia... what a nothing fight. There was a point during it where I just stood still for 30 seconds and took no damage, and then I was able to completely body the damn thing.
Even Dark Link was a joke, with me just doing thrust attacks utterly annihilating the poor guy.
Really the only boss I even sort of liked besides King Dodongo was Bongo Bongo, simply because it asked me to use more than one tool which was cool.
The Ganon fight was cool from a visual and thematic standpoint but was also way too easy for a final boss. Maybe that was the point but it just didn't feel satisfying to me.
Minigames. I will now completely break the rational character I've been writing as up to this point to rant about this. I HATE every minigame in this game, and I HATE that Heart Pieces and Ammo Upgrades are locked behind them. Now I'm sure you'll probably say "oh but those are optional" and sure you're not wrong, but I just like having more health you dig? I like to be more capable, and having more health and ammo is a way to doing that. I would complain less if a single minigame in this game wasn't some of the worst shit imaginable.
The bow/slingshot games are easily the worst of the bunch, you have no reticle. In regular combat this isn't so bad since A. Lock-on is available, and B. You are way less limited in your ammo capacity, so you have many opportunities to adjust your aim. Not so with these. Limited ammo, no lock on, and you have to get it PERFECT, which is just the Gonorrhea Icing on this AIDS Cake.
The others aren't much better, Bombchu Bowling can be utter hell until you find a consistent strategy, the Treasure Chest minigame is just pure guess work (unless you've done a dungeon you can only unlock in the second half of the game). The Dampe Racing is a pain in the ass, and isn't optional the first time since you need the Hookshot to progress. The Horseback racing to get Epona just feels tacked on and makes the process of getting her feel slow and repetitive.
Really the only ones that I didn't outright hate were the jam sessions with the Skull Kids and the Frogs.
The least offensive was surprisingly the fishing minigame, was really easy to figure out. (And very obvious that Sonic Adventure stole from it wholesale).
In general I am just a person who hates minigames locking upgrades, as someone who grew up with Sonic and having things locked behind Special Stages I have just always hated the concept. Maybe these won't bug you, but for me they were easily the lowest point of the game, not helped at all by their genuine lack of quality.
So that brings me to my final issue, which is more an issue that encapsulates problems this franchise has more so than anything: Zelda herself.
I think it is kind of ridiculous how whenever Zelda does anything in this game, it backfires horribly. She sends Link to get the Pendants so he can get the Master Sword and stop Ganondorf from getting to the Sacred Realm... only for doing so to result in him getting there anyway, making her entire plan fall apart.
Then there's her as Shiek, who in my opinion is just... such wasted potential. Shiek only exposits to Link and teaches him the Fast Travel Songs. Outside of that, the only thing of note is that Shiek gets her ass beaten by a fucking ghost and then proceeds to do nothing about it. Would it not have been cool to at least have a dungeon where you and Shiek work together? I mean, Jabu Jabu had a similar premise with Ruto and while I think it didn't work there, the potential for a good dungeon using teamwork between you and Shiek would be cool. Unfortunately we didn't get that.
And of course, the moment she removes the Shiek disguise, she is almost immediately captured by Ganondorf. It's just really upsetting.
I won't lie, this criticism is also amplified by things that happen in Tears of the Kingdom, but I can't help but feel like that stuff really started being set in stone with Ocarina.
Zelda is never allowed to have genuine agency, and whenever she is she or the world is always summarily punished for it. Her entire thing ends in three timelines where the world gets fucked over by Ganondorf in some capacity. I can't help but feel like this series reeks of misogyny when the main female lead isn't allowed to be anything but a damsel and can't genuinely do anything without being punished for doing so. It's just a little fucking uncomfortable to me.
This applies to the entire series too, and while talking in Tokyo Millennium I basically came to the conclusion that Zelda is only allowed true agency when:
A. She's in Super Smash Bros.
B. She's not even in the game
C. The Fucking CDI Games
D. Spirit Tracks, where she spends most of the game dead
I just can't help but see these underlying signals Nintendo is trying to send to me which in big bold letters spell out the word "MISOGYNY".
To conclude, I don't hate Ocarina of Time but it sure just is ok. It's so ok, it's average, and arguably that's far worse than just being bad.
I left this game feeling filled but disappointed at the same time. Maybe it's my fault for playing this as a break game from Tears of the Kingdom, which has been an utterly phenomenal time that I genuinely could not put down, and I'm measuring OoT against it but at the same time I feel like I would always be disappointed.
Ocarina of Time has long been lauded as one of the greatest games of all time, but to me it's just another game to checkmark off the list. A game that doesn't impress, but doesn't fill me with pure animosity.
It's just ok.
1994
So, I have a massive habit of dropping Metroidvanias. I don't hate the genre or anything, and I 100% respect the impact it has had on gaming as a whole but I just lose interest very quick.
For me, the exploration value of Metroidvanias is lost because I just don't like the feeling of being aimless. It's a very personal issue, stems from chronic depression and a lifetime of existential dread that makes me question my purpose, not the game's fault. So usually when I pick up a Metroidvania and I get lost, I usually wind up finding another game that catches my interest and move to that.
Super Metroid winds up being one of those situations, a game I played about half of in March earlier this year only to drop it to play Competitive Pokémon with my friends. From that initial experience I used a guide, something I find would be frowned upon by most enthusiasts of the Metroidvania genre, but something I had to do to stay fully invested. I wound up pretty happy though with that experience, found a lot of useful things, fought badass battles with space monsters, it was a good time.
Fast forward to today and I have now destroyed Mother Brain and the Planet Zebes all with an 85% collection rate thanks to the StrategyWiki. I may not be the prime audience for Metroidvanias, but the feeling of adrenaline when you're facing a boss like Ridley, or the intrigue of defeating an enemy in an unorthodox way like electrocuting it, unlocking abilities like Screw Attack that make you completely invulnerable, there's a lot of things that give me the player great satisfaction. When the Baby Metroid saved me and gave me Hyper Beam, I was hype as fuck.
Super Metroid is a great video game, but I'm giving it a 4 star rating mostly because the genre doesn't grip me like others do. It's a very personal thing, but I ultimately respect this game and fully plan to replay it someday.
For me, the exploration value of Metroidvanias is lost because I just don't like the feeling of being aimless. It's a very personal issue, stems from chronic depression and a lifetime of existential dread that makes me question my purpose, not the game's fault. So usually when I pick up a Metroidvania and I get lost, I usually wind up finding another game that catches my interest and move to that.
Super Metroid winds up being one of those situations, a game I played about half of in March earlier this year only to drop it to play Competitive Pokémon with my friends. From that initial experience I used a guide, something I find would be frowned upon by most enthusiasts of the Metroidvania genre, but something I had to do to stay fully invested. I wound up pretty happy though with that experience, found a lot of useful things, fought badass battles with space monsters, it was a good time.
Fast forward to today and I have now destroyed Mother Brain and the Planet Zebes all with an 85% collection rate thanks to the StrategyWiki. I may not be the prime audience for Metroidvanias, but the feeling of adrenaline when you're facing a boss like Ridley, or the intrigue of defeating an enemy in an unorthodox way like electrocuting it, unlocking abilities like Screw Attack that make you completely invulnerable, there's a lot of things that give me the player great satisfaction. When the Baby Metroid saved me and gave me Hyper Beam, I was hype as fuck.
Super Metroid is a great video game, but I'm giving it a 4 star rating mostly because the genre doesn't grip me like others do. It's a very personal thing, but I ultimately respect this game and fully plan to replay it someday.
There I was, utterly and completely defeated after finishing Rondo of Blood. I had honestly believed that maybe I should quit playing video games because I had reached my limits with my lack of satisfaction with that game. I thought that I would never feel rewarded for playing a game after how miserable I was.
Upon booting up Symphony of the Night however, I instantly clicked with it and what followed was a magical experience that reaffirmed my love for the medium and what can be done with it.
My firm belief is that Symphony of the Night takes concepts that Rondo introduced and brings them to their logical endpoint through the shift in genre from Platformer to Metroidvania (I'm not calling them Search Action Games, it's such a boring and dull way to describe a genre built on discovery that I'd literally prefer calling them "Pretzel Games" over that.)
Rondo introduced new movement options and Item Crashes into the formula. Symphony expands upon this by giving Alucard a wealth of movement from his backdash (which can be chainspammed with Shields for quick horizontal movement), to his various transformations like the Wolf and Bat, alongside a variety of spells like using Dracula's own Hellfire move or Soul Steal allowing you to regenerate your health by consuming the life of the enemies around you. The spells themselves require good input (that or the capacity to spam the fuck out of the d-pad like me) like in a fighting game.
Rondo also introduced the Alternate Stages and finding different routes to progress, which Symphony takes to the next level through the Metroidvania style. Having different areas connect in various ways be it unlocking magic doors, or shafts or accessing them via your transformations.
Just via these alone I see Symphony as an evolution of these concepts rather than just a wholesale deviation from Classicvania entirely. It retains the best elements and integrates them in new and exciting ways.
Graphically the game is gorgeous. Out of the Castlevania games I've experienced so far Symphony is the most breathtaking with its incredibly detailed sprites and level backgrounds. Every enemy pops out in just the right ways giving them all sorts of life and energy that I don't think the series had captured quite as well before.
The backgrounds having parallax views of the sky, and at points having 3D renders of parts of the castle like a tower that rotates as you move along the screen just fits with the peak 90s aesthetic.
The soundtrack is damn near perfection, blending haunting orchestral tracks with hard guitar riffs, it's like Rondo's soundtrack on Steroids. The Tragic Prince is my personal favorite track of the game, encapsulating so much of the vibe that Symphony carries throughout. Though the Prologue and Dracula's Castle tracks are both close contenders as well. The game varies from both these hardcore tracks to more atmospheric pieces dependent on the location.
Honestly the only part of the soundtrack I could consider not great is Finale Toccata, but that's only because it gets overused in the Inverted Castle to such an extent that it becomes borderline tiresome to listen to. Not an awful track, there just needed to be more variety for the Inverted Castle.
Back onto the gameplay I will say that if there is one complaint I can understand directed towards this game it is that it is really easy. Symphony of the Night is an incredibly easy game to break over your knee if you have the right equipment, be it rare drops like the Crissaegrim or fixed drops like the Shield Rod and the Alucard Shield.
With such equipment, regular enemies and bosses basically become jokes as they are wiped out within seconds requiring little to no effort or strategy. The final boss can be evaporated within about 3 seconds using either of the weapons I just listed.
For some people that could be a very understandable turnoff but to me I find it fits with the general vibe the game goes for.
Symphony of the Night is a power fantasy game starring an attractive dhampyr prince getting progressively more and more powerful as he explores the expanses of Castlevania and the Inverted Castle until he eventually becomes an untouchable god that all monsters fear. It's just innately satisfying seeing Alucard return to that level of strength after it's been taken away from him.
I guess another thing I can bring up is the Inverted Castle itself. I know that it is a somewhat common complaint from people that the Inverted Castle feels tacked on, and I can understand it. However, upon experiencing it for myself... I can't dislike it to be quite honest.
By the time you reach the Inverted Castle you have unlocked all of the movement abilities required to go wherever you please in whatever order, and any secret rooms you discovered in the Normal Castle will be in their designated reverse locations in the Inverted one, giving you the edge in progression through said knowledge.
If anything the Inverted Castle is probably the purest Metroidvania experience, though I think part of the reason a lot of people dislike it is because Finale Toccata is playing 60% of the time and that can get draining.
However it was in the Inverted Castle that I learned to appreciate my movement abilities specifically the Gravity Jump and the Bat Transformation, as you need them in order to progress through the more unnatural platforming sections.
It's just more Symphony and in my eyes, that can't be a bad thing.
It's really unsurprising that this game along with Super Metroid inspired an entire genre of games to follow, there is just something inherently fun about exploring the unknown and getting stronger as you do it, and with Symphony's build variety and learnable techniques I think it's a game that will provide a different experience every time you play...
And that's not even bringing up Richter mode.
Symphony renewed my faith in video games as a medium, and if there was any Castlevania I'd tell you to pick up no questions asked, it would be this. A damn near perfect game.
=================================================
Demon, death is too good for you!
Upon booting up Symphony of the Night however, I instantly clicked with it and what followed was a magical experience that reaffirmed my love for the medium and what can be done with it.
My firm belief is that Symphony of the Night takes concepts that Rondo introduced and brings them to their logical endpoint through the shift in genre from Platformer to Metroidvania (I'm not calling them Search Action Games, it's such a boring and dull way to describe a genre built on discovery that I'd literally prefer calling them "Pretzel Games" over that.)
Rondo introduced new movement options and Item Crashes into the formula. Symphony expands upon this by giving Alucard a wealth of movement from his backdash (which can be chainspammed with Shields for quick horizontal movement), to his various transformations like the Wolf and Bat, alongside a variety of spells like using Dracula's own Hellfire move or Soul Steal allowing you to regenerate your health by consuming the life of the enemies around you. The spells themselves require good input (that or the capacity to spam the fuck out of the d-pad like me) like in a fighting game.
Rondo also introduced the Alternate Stages and finding different routes to progress, which Symphony takes to the next level through the Metroidvania style. Having different areas connect in various ways be it unlocking magic doors, or shafts or accessing them via your transformations.
Just via these alone I see Symphony as an evolution of these concepts rather than just a wholesale deviation from Classicvania entirely. It retains the best elements and integrates them in new and exciting ways.
Graphically the game is gorgeous. Out of the Castlevania games I've experienced so far Symphony is the most breathtaking with its incredibly detailed sprites and level backgrounds. Every enemy pops out in just the right ways giving them all sorts of life and energy that I don't think the series had captured quite as well before.
The backgrounds having parallax views of the sky, and at points having 3D renders of parts of the castle like a tower that rotates as you move along the screen just fits with the peak 90s aesthetic.
The soundtrack is damn near perfection, blending haunting orchestral tracks with hard guitar riffs, it's like Rondo's soundtrack on Steroids. The Tragic Prince is my personal favorite track of the game, encapsulating so much of the vibe that Symphony carries throughout. Though the Prologue and Dracula's Castle tracks are both close contenders as well. The game varies from both these hardcore tracks to more atmospheric pieces dependent on the location.
Honestly the only part of the soundtrack I could consider not great is Finale Toccata, but that's only because it gets overused in the Inverted Castle to such an extent that it becomes borderline tiresome to listen to. Not an awful track, there just needed to be more variety for the Inverted Castle.
Back onto the gameplay I will say that if there is one complaint I can understand directed towards this game it is that it is really easy. Symphony of the Night is an incredibly easy game to break over your knee if you have the right equipment, be it rare drops like the Crissaegrim or fixed drops like the Shield Rod and the Alucard Shield.
With such equipment, regular enemies and bosses basically become jokes as they are wiped out within seconds requiring little to no effort or strategy. The final boss can be evaporated within about 3 seconds using either of the weapons I just listed.
For some people that could be a very understandable turnoff but to me I find it fits with the general vibe the game goes for.
Symphony of the Night is a power fantasy game starring an attractive dhampyr prince getting progressively more and more powerful as he explores the expanses of Castlevania and the Inverted Castle until he eventually becomes an untouchable god that all monsters fear. It's just innately satisfying seeing Alucard return to that level of strength after it's been taken away from him.
I guess another thing I can bring up is the Inverted Castle itself. I know that it is a somewhat common complaint from people that the Inverted Castle feels tacked on, and I can understand it. However, upon experiencing it for myself... I can't dislike it to be quite honest.
By the time you reach the Inverted Castle you have unlocked all of the movement abilities required to go wherever you please in whatever order, and any secret rooms you discovered in the Normal Castle will be in their designated reverse locations in the Inverted one, giving you the edge in progression through said knowledge.
If anything the Inverted Castle is probably the purest Metroidvania experience, though I think part of the reason a lot of people dislike it is because Finale Toccata is playing 60% of the time and that can get draining.
However it was in the Inverted Castle that I learned to appreciate my movement abilities specifically the Gravity Jump and the Bat Transformation, as you need them in order to progress through the more unnatural platforming sections.
It's just more Symphony and in my eyes, that can't be a bad thing.
It's really unsurprising that this game along with Super Metroid inspired an entire genre of games to follow, there is just something inherently fun about exploring the unknown and getting stronger as you do it, and with Symphony's build variety and learnable techniques I think it's a game that will provide a different experience every time you play...
And that's not even bringing up Richter mode.
Symphony renewed my faith in video games as a medium, and if there was any Castlevania I'd tell you to pick up no questions asked, it would be this. A damn near perfect game.
=================================================
Demon, death is too good for you!