Why is this game such a downgrade from the first one? I ask this sincerely because playing this game has caused me to have a bit of a breakdown much like when I played Rondo of Blood for the first time.

I enjoyed Curse of the Moon quite a bit, it was a challenging experience but it never felt like it was overbearingly so. I played two playthroughs of that game on the Veteran difficulty because I felt like it was a fair challenge that never felt truly unpleasant and it was incredibly replayable due to how your characters would allow you to utilize their skills to go through different routes discovering new secrets.

The levels were all well crafted and memorable, the bosses difficult but still fun...

Curse of the Moon 2 kind of just throws all of that out of the window for the sake of "difficulty".

Certain challenges in CotM2 simply revolve around trying to compensate for one character's ability, that being Hachi's invincibility move. It constantly drains Weapon Points though so trying to use it all the time is not the brightest idea but the game just loves making long hallways with several obstacles trying to fuck you all at once with the only solution being Hachi's invincibility.

Instead of being interesting, it comes off as the devs taking a massive shit on the enemy placement that was far better in the first game, where enemies weren't just focused on a singular characters abilities but their combined abilities.

Need a challenge right before the boss door? Put a fuck ton of enemies that can't be reasonably avoided to make the player waste Weapon Ammo using Hachi's invincibility. Truly, an excellent idea rather than something fun or interesting.

None of the stages in this game are particularly thrilling, there's no real set piece that quite got my attention unlike in the first game. No train ride, or climbing up a stormy ship. Instead we get fucking Mario level tropes, back to back. We've got Jungle Land, Followed by The Mine, Followed by Ice Land, Followed by Lava Land. Sometimes the game will even flat out reuse a set piece from the first game, like Level 8 just doing the insect horde thing that Level 8 in the first game did, oh but there's a big orb that chases you the whole level.

Then there's the bosses. Some are just not very interesting, the Dragon-Symbiote and the Alien Soldier looking boss in Stage 4 having really routine patterns that are more dull than anything, and then you have shit like the Pharaoh in Stage 6 which can eat a fucking dick even when you know what you're doing. So much fucking shit on the screen it's basically sensory overload, or the final boss of the second episode reminding me of the True Final Boss of Aria of Sorrow during its first phase... god I just got so tired with this game.

It's not enough that you have to beat the game once, or twice, the game expects you to play through these uninteresting, unfun stages three times facing off against miserable excuses for bosses just to see scraps of new content.

The second episode in particular is where I just called it quits on continuing on Veteran Difficulty because it just didn't feel worth the fucking effort. It would be fine enough if it just took away Dominique, that makes the challenge hard enough but they also take away Zangetsu's new moveset halfway through the run and it just... fucking sucks so much. It's like the devs thought "ah, people will like the game if we just make the difficulty to dick levels without it being remotely interesting."

The characters are easily the best part of the game, I like Dominique, she's essentially Eric Lecarde from Bloodlines but with the ability to heal and a subweapon that works as a one use revive item. Robert is a cool ranged fighter, with his javelin subweapon being incredibly useful and Hachi is a corgi in a mech.

However even then I still have issues: Hachi's hover fucking sucks balls.

This may be a completely personal thing, but I'm used to hovers usually being activated by a second button press in games. You jump and then press the button again holding it down to hover.

With Hachi, you have to hold on the first jump and it feels so wrong to me. It's an issue that is especially exacerbated when switching characters mid jump to try and progress to a different route, since I think the timing for the hover is determined on the jump made before the switch so you have to hold the button while switching and it just feels really fucking weird.

In the EX Episode, which you get after beating Chapter 2 you get the characters from the first game back, which is cool, and you get to explore the levels in whatever order you like... but by this point I was clocked out on this game. I just wanted the trainwreck to stop, because I had stopped having fun midway through Episode 1.

Episode EX then does the tired, terrible practice that many games love to do, a trope I absolutely despised and is alone why I lowered my rating by a star: Throwing in a shmup level at the last fucking minute with no regard to the fact that such a skill set has not been taught to the player throughout the course of this entire fucking experience.

I hate when games do this shit, I hated it in Kingdom Hearts 2, I hated it in Devil May Cry, and I especially hate it in this game. 7 minutes of one of the most mediocre shmup sections I've ever played in a game, with a ship with a large as fuck hurtbox, slippery as fuck controls that don't feel remotely precise, obstacles that blend in with the background, god it is so anti Me-Core I wanted to tear my hair out.

Please, devs. If you're going to incorporate a shmup level at the last second of your fucking game, do me a fucking favor and MAKE A FUCKING SHMUP INSTEAD AND DON'T PULL SHIT LIKE THIS FOR FUCKS SAKE!!!!!!

THIS IS THE MOST TIRED FUCKING TRITE NONSENSE BULLSHIT THAT YOU CAN DO WITH A VIDEO GAME, SHOVING IN A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GAMEPLAY STYLE THAT THE PLAYER HAS NOT BEEN TRAINED BY THE GAME TO DO, EXPECTING PROFICIENCY OUT OF THE UNPRACTICED. IT'S FUCKING BONEHEADED STUPID BULLSHIT THAT IS NEVER GOOD, AND THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR WHY GAMES NEED TO SHOVE IN CRAP LIKE THIS, JUST MAKE A FUCKING SHMUP INSTEAD, I DIDN'T COME TO A CLASSICVANIA GAME TO PLAY A FUCKING SHMUP!!!

All it winds up doing is making me not want to play shmups because it shows an extremely terrible example of the genre. It's like if I tried to sell you a car in the middle of a movie, but the car has square wheels, a broken windshield, and I took a fat shit on the driver's seat. It's unappealing, stop doing it.

I'll acknowledge this rant here is completely petty, but fuck, shit like this has got to fucking stop. It needs to be realized that forcing in unrelated gameplay styles into your game is not a good practice and never was.

All in all what I've come to realize is that I don't enjoy difficult games, honestly I've been dealing with this thought in the back of my head ever since I got called out for not enjoying Order of Ecclesia because it was "difficult". But then I've also played things like God Hand, DMC3, Ultrakill, games that are difficult and that I've enjoyed quite a lot.

And what I've come to realize is that I need to stop playing games to try and feel adequate as a "Gamer". Forcing myself through things like Celeste, Rondo of Blood, etc, doesn't result in a feeling of satisfaction but one of exhaustion and relief that I don't have to go back. And maybe that's fine, maybe I don't have to try and prove myself as a "Gamer", it's not like such a title has any actual value.

If anything coming to this bizarre realization is probably for the best, it'll be healthier for me to instead enjoy things catered to me and not to someone who isn't me, difficult or not.

Curse of the Moon 2 still sucks ass though just fucking play the first one instead.

A man stares longingly into the mirror, shadows cast along his face, hiding his intentions not only from us, but from himself...

"Mary... Could you really be in this town?

A woman's reply, a message delivered from the past beckons the man to a mysterious and desolate ruin.

"In my restless dreams, I see that town."

He slowly walks through a fog laden path, unusual sounds echoing as he gets ever closer to his destination.

"Silent Hill."

He arrives at a graveyard on the edge of the lakeside town, a forgotten hallow ground.

"You promised to take me there again someday. But you never did."

The letter guiding him is past tense, the voice deceased. And yet that voice says,

"Well, I'm alone there now... in our 'special place'... Waiting for you..."

Where the horror for Silent Hill 1 came mostly from the visceral and graphic visuals, an intensely industrial soundtrack, and the occult themes, Silent Hill 2's comes from a much darker, more personal place.

Silent Hill 2 at the start gives you a very familiar setup. You are a lone man, entering the town looking for someone, child and wife respectively.

You are, or at least seem to be, a typical everyman. Both Harry and James are very standard American names, with only five letters. Both have a very similar designs, here's Harry's and James'. In fact James looked even more similar in his original design.

Both men had sickly wives who died before the events of the game, both are very awkward in their mannerisms and how they speak, and both are drawn into circumstances they cannot initially fathom.

This is fully intentional.

James Sunderland is specifically designed to make the player think that they will have a similar experience to Silent Hill 1, making the player feel comfortable and safe.

However, as the game progresses, we begin to see how wrong we are.

When we start, James seems like the voice of reason. When he encounters the other lost souls within Silent Hill, he always tries to rationalize their actions, or explain why their way of thinking is wrong. Like when he tries to convince the traumatized and abused Angela Orosco to not commit suicide, or the eeriely creepy murder denying Eddie Dombrowski that he shouldn't kill people just for saying rude things.

Of course, this façade of rationality immediately breaks the moment these characters insinuate that he is no different from them, causing him to get strangely defensive and angry. His tone of voice becoming way more icy, showing a side of James we didn't know was there.

And it's that side of James that makes us realize... this man is hiding something.

His lack of sanity.

This is something you'll start picking up on when you first go through the Woodside Apartments near the start of the game. As you go through, things begin to appear that... don't make realistic sense. Such as the favorite clothes of Mary appearing in front of a spotlight in an empty room. James himself even comments on this, finding it extremely disconcerting.

However, it's once we enter the Otherworld that the clues become more evident. The locales we enter are covered in a gloomy green and blue cloth, different from the harsh orange and red rusty metals from the first game. The cloth stitches together feeling much like that of a solitary confinement cell or a straightjacket.

Now of course in Silent Hill 1 we would simply attribute this to being a part of the dreams of Alessa and her powers distorting the town... but in Silent Hill 2, there is no Alessa.

These dreams belong to James. From the various monsters encountered, to the rain and water drowning out the world, to even an entire character made from his subconscious to try and please him, all of this springs from James' mind.

The most terrifying of all being, of course, Pyramid Head. This thing is terror incarnate. Regardless of the fact that it is slow, and doesn't follow you that frequently through the game compared to contemporaries like Mr. X or Nemesis, it is both thematically and visually much more horrifying.

Every time it appears, things go wrong. It hunts James down like a dog, carrying its gigantic butcher knife or spear. Killing and what appears to be fornicating with the other monsters seen throughout this horrific mental landscape.

There's a point around just halfway through the game, where you get chased by it through a dark narrow hall, and... man I don't want to spoil it but it just... it just fucks me up so bad.

On that same note, you do get a companion character early on and while I initially thought that this would take away some of the isolation that I felt in the first game... man it paid off heavily in the end.

I don't want to go further into what the plot is like, but to summarize, Silent Hill 2's horror is James Sunderland. The darkness that lies within us all, the scary parts of ourselves we hide not just from the world, but from ourselves

This game makes me wonder what my Silent Hill would be like and... man, I'm so glad this shit is fiction.

I don't really know how to define how important this game was to my development as a person in the late 2000s-early 2010s. A lot of my sense of humor at the time was built around what was shown in this game.

It also might be the reason why I have constant suicidal ideation thinking of it because that's all you do in this game. You kill yourself as part of the joke and get a large impact font punchline usually of the edgy shockjock variety.

Not to say I didn't have fun with it at the time, I did, and every so often it would have twists to its setup to provide a different take on its macabre humor, but it's definitely quite juvenile nonetheless.

As some teens edgy flash project that they made for fun, I can appreciate how different it was from the norm, but the humor has definitely aged if not for the edgy jokes than for the sheer amount of references to the Bush Administration.

So I bought this game years ago and never really properly finished it despite getting to Stage 6 on my first go, mostly out of curiosity and what not.

It basically being a Castlevania game not made by Konami but still headed by Iga and video reviews I saw at the time compelled me to give it a shot and now having played it and other Classicvania titles I can safely say this is the one I think does it best.

I think reusing the multiple switchable character aspect from Castlevania 3 plays a big role in why I enjoy this game over something like Rondo. Every character serves a specific role, and no one character supersedes another in regards to combat or level progression.

Zangetsu has the highest damage output, being able to attack at a faster rate than the others, but he can't jump as high as Miriam who also has a longer range whip that does less damage. Neither can utilize the powerful spells of Alfred, but he also can't take many hits or do much in the way of physical damage, and Gebel while having a powerful attack and a bat transformation, cannot use any subweapons of any kind.

This results in you having to strategize for every scenario coming ahead, do you need to cross a large bottomless pit to proceed through the stage faster? Is there an upgrade that requires a high jump and a slide? Is there an enemy who you cannot bypass without freezing them? All these scenarios alongside the game's unique lives system forces you to pick your route accordingly.

On that live system, what makes it unique is that you don't lose a life if one character dies. You only lose a life if all four characters die, but if a character dies you will not be able to utilize them or their capabilities until you either finish a stage or lose your current life.

What this means is that those certain scenarios can become unsolvable if the required character is dead. However instead of being softlocked, you are simply pushed into a longer, possibly more arduous route than you would be. But said route could also contain different secrets and helpful items to give you an advantage.

That's honestly what makes Bloodstained so great, is that it takes the aspects that worked in the Classicvania lineup and improves upon them, and I'm not a big Classicvania guy.

I've beaten this game 4 times at this point, two times on Veteran and two times on Casual, and I had fun all four times.

Veteran is just challenging enough to make you sweat and think, but also doesn't feel like outright bullshit. Casual is a bit too easy though, I will say. Casual just throws healing items at the player and you have infinite lives so if you want my thoughts, just play on Veteran it isn't that hard.

Anyways yeah this is the best Classicvania and yes, I am saying that to piss somebody off.

P.S. Ritual of the Night though... kinda icky.

There's something very wrong with the town of Silent Hill.

From the offset a world covered in endless fog, the only life being those of the inhuman, the subconscious nightmares of a tormented soul.

You, Harry Mason, are trapped in this nightmare. You are just an average man, and you only seek to find your daughter, who went missing after your car crashed on the way into this deserted village.

The unknown creeps upon you with every step you make, harsh static signifying the grotesque have begun the hunt. Can you find your daughter? Will you find her?

The magic of Silent Hill in my personal opinion comes down to the inherent setup. You are playing an average person in way over their head.

Harry is not a Action Superstar, He isn't some magical badass granted the strength of ten men while trying to defend himself from the deadly flesh colored horrors that try to devour him. Harry Mason is a normal, run of the mill family man.

This is shown through many ways, the controls for instance. They are awkward and stilted, Harry turns with the grace of a cafeteria lady placing today's slop on your tray. When you run with him, touching any object in front of him will cause him to bump into it and stagger, which opens him up to be attacked by the enemy.

In any other game, this would be a point of contention but in Silent Hill it is a strength. The awkward nature of the controls is reflective of how awkward it feels to be Harry in this dire and confusing set of circumstances. He is just a regular person trying to find his kid, and in this foggy town, bumping into shit because you can't see it adds to the atmosphere.

The game is also very confusing, which is completely intentional. There will be times where the camera angles change to these very unique, dynamic shots that disorient the player. I think these work to give a sense of anxiety, since now you have to adapt to not being able to see certain things in front of you. Certain puzzles are very obtuse, and while this is a genuine complaint I have with the game, I think it does add to the air of confusion and terror as you begin to feel trapped and isolated in the various locations you visit.

Then there's the voice acting. Many would say it's as awkward and stilted as the controls, and once again I would claim that this is the point. Most characters, especially Harry, speak in a very uncanny, unnatural tone. It gives off this vibe that maybe nobody is what they claim to be, not even the very character we're playing. It makes you question the intentions of every character you encounter, and I think it works to add intensity to the experience.

And to cap it off, the brilliant soundtrack by Akira Yamaoka fits every moment perfectly. From the harsh industrial sounds pushing you where you must go, to the more calm yet sinister tracks, it adds a unique sense of terror to the experience.

Of course I do have a few complaints. Some puzzles are pretty obtuse at points, I think the Zodiac one in particular threw me off because I kept trying to figure out if the pattern was related to the months when it was in fact, an entirely different solution entirely. These aren't so much a problem nowadays since you can look up a hint to the solution if you need it, but I imagine playing the game back in 1999 and doing these might have resulted in some major headscratchings.

Then there's the Boss Fights. They're not good. I accept that they are not the focus of the game and that is completely understandable, but most of them aren't even really a challenge either. It's very much a "shoot them until they die" type of thing, with the only challenge being the boss fight against a corrupted character and that's only because they have a gun.

Want to know my biggest complaint though, and this may sound a bit strange but... the game has too many save points.

Yeah, that is easily my biggest problem with Silent Hill, is that I can over rely on save points and hell, the game even has separate checkpoints where if you die you just start from there. It feels a bit cheap and kind of takes away some of the horror aspect that games like Resident Evil introduced with both limited save points and just limited saves in general.

By the end of Silent Hill I had well over 30 saves, because I am a paranoid fuck, but I still think that limiting that for the player would have made the game even more intense with its horror. Maybe that's what Hard Mode does? I played Normal for this run and while it was challenging, having all those saves kept me from really struggling.

All in all I'm very glad I played this one first, since in truth I don't hear about this game nearly as much as Silent Hill 2, but I've really come to appreciate its vibey horror and just the general aesthetic of such a game.

I look forward to experiencing the horrors of James Sunderland next.

I'm writing this review within minutes of finishing the game and before I write my Portrait of Ruin review because I need to get this off my chest now.

I do not like Order of Ecclesia.

Now, I didn't come into the game hoping I would dislike it, in fact this has been one of the Castlevanias I've been looking forward to the most, though that's more thanks to Shanoa's design and the artstyle than anything else.

My problem with Order of Ecclesia however stems from two things: The heavy limitation on the player's arsenal, and the sluggish pacing of boss fights.

By heavy limitation what I mean is that the game kind of neuters an element of prior Igavanias that I was a big fan of, which is customizing your build, and this comes from the unorthodox way in which weapons are handled.

Unlike in say, Symphony of the Night where you can simply find or buy a Sword of your choosing and use it, Weapons in this game are tied to Glyphs. Glyphs have a random chance to drop from enemies, and when they do, you collect them by holding up on the D-Pad.

Getting a Glyph grants you a new weapon, but the variety is incredibly slim, and it is dependent on how far you are in the game. You can only get certain glyphs from certain enemies, and those glyphs are only gonna be as strong as the enemies at that point.

Which then results in the incredibly sluggish boss fights. Most of the bosses in this game take forever to kill, even when you're using their weakness and avoiding their attacks.

A pinnacle example is the boss Brachyura, the giant blue crab boss in the Watchtower. By this point in the game, I had access to Vol Fulgur, a lightning spell, which happens to be Brachyura's weakness. However, even while I was dodging its attacks, and firing away, the fight still took upwards to 5 minutes of just repeating the same mundane pattern. My friend Simon, who was watching me, commented on how the fight looked extremely fucking boring, and he was right.

Sure, there was the rewarding cutscene of crushing the Crab with the spiky elevator at the end, but it was still a bunch of meandering just to get to that point.

That's not even bringing up the worst boss in the game, probably in all of Castlevania to be frank, Eligor.

Holy fucking shit this is one of the worst bosses I've ever experienced in a video game. It's like the devs saw Shadow of the Colossus and thought they could recreate a Colossus battle on the Nintendo DS.

Suffice to say, it is a fucking miserably slow and drawn out fight where you have to hope to god that you don't get knocked off his back once you finally get through the front legs, underneath the body, and the hind legs because if you fall you will have to do an entire section over again.

Of course the limited weaponry doesn't help in the monetary regards either. I spent most of this game completely fucking broke because you can't sell Glyphs. Now, the game tries to balance this out by having quests and allowing you to sell little knick-knacks and gemstones, but it's really not enough to be able to afford a suitable amount of potions and food to survive your next encounter.

That is because Order of Ecclesia is very difficult, and difficulty isn't something I absolutely despise but when I don't think it's done well or the challenge isn't made enjoyable then I just don't care for it.

At first it wasn't so bad because the game segments into stages, playing more to Classicvania design rather than Igavania but then at the last minute the game shoves a traditional Metroidvania area on you and its where the problems of the game seem to just skyrocket.

The reason the systems worked before was because you didn't need as much supplies for a level that would only be like 5 minutes, but having to go through an entire Metroidvania section is a lot more than that, especially when the enemies are much harder than they were before.

The funniest thing is that the boss fight before they shove Dracula's Castle in felt conclusive, it felt like an end point, but then the game just keeps going and going and ugh I just burned out hard.

I recognize this review is extremely rambly but I genuinely don't think I can write an organized review about a game that I just wanted to stop playing by the time I got halfway through Dracula's Castle.

Doesn't help that several levels of this game are just straight fucking lines with no interesting platforming whatsoever.

And the kicker is, the Glyph concept is inherently cool. Having every attack be tied to your MP means you would theoretically have to manage how you attack, providing a deep sense of strategy to every encounter but... MP regenerates so fast in this game that it might as well not even fucking matter, wasting a interesting concept.

Honestly this game gets hard carried by its plot and aesthetic alone, everyone has a really good design, and for once it's an amnesia plot that I think is interesting, even having one of the more melancholic endings the series has had.

I would never want to play this again though, god no. There's just no fucking point. It has nowhere near the build variety of either Portrait of Ruin, Aria of Sorrow and especially Symphony.

Even if it fixed the menuing problem that Aria had, I would still much rather have regular equipable weapons that I can sell than what we have here.

This game just feels like a mess, and I feel like dogshit for playing it.

Ah well, what better way to go into Silent Hill I guess.

So, while I know Aria of Sorrow isn't what immediately came after Symphony of the Night I have been drawn to this game for quite some time and felt that after completing the latter game, I would play this.

Aria is honestly a really strange case in that while it does improve aspects from Symphony, most notably the difficulty, it also makes several missteps that result in it being the inferior title.

The game is relatively brisk in its pacing, you will get around the entirety of the castle in much less time than previously which I believe is a good thing. It gives the game a bit more replayability since it's something you can pick up, play and finish within a day.

For the most part level design retains the same level of quality from its predecessors, which does include the long hallways but honestly I've come to just take these as fun parts of the environment. Unlike something like Metroid, this takes place in a castle so it makes sense that there would be more straightforward hallways than on an alien planet.

Soma himself feels good to control, with a very fast walking speed compared to Alucard, but limited in the way of movement options for a decent chunk of the game... and also because of some problematic mechanics.

Let's talk about the Souls. This is a mechanic I think in theory is incredibly cool and interesting. When you kill a monster, you have a chance to obtain their Soul, which grants you different abilities.

For example, let's say you kill an Axe Armor, if you get their Soul, you'll be able to throw axes yourself at the cost of mana.

Of course, you're also limited to three souls for active use at a time, one per classification. Bullet Souls, Guardian Souls, and Enchanted Souls, as well as the additional Ability Souls which are permanent upgrades to Soma's moveset like his Slide and Double Jump.

Where the problem presents itself is in two things.

Firstly, Souls drop from enemies randomly. You are not guaranteed to get an enemies Soul the first time you kill it, or the second time, or the third, or fifth or tenth, or twentieth.
This means you have to grind if there's a specific Soul you want, and you will grind (for reasons I'll get into a bit later) whether you want to or not.

It's a system where while I can appreciate the randomness requiring the player to allocate a Soul to fit the build they're going for, it also just results in a lot of tedium if there's a Soul you desperately need.

Then there's the second issue: Some souls required for map progression... are not made into Ability Souls.

There are souls specifically made for Underwater Travel and instead of being placed in the Ability Souls slots and given the ability to turn them on and off, they are marked as Enchanted Souls. This means that if you already have an Enchanted Soul that you really like using, you have to switch it out every single time you go through one of these sections. This can result in massive stat reduction, and ultimately is just more tedium added to the game that was likely completely unnecessary.

It also results in limiting what the Player will use. For example, near the start of the game, you get the Flying Armor soul, which is a Guardian Soul. It gives you a farther jump distance and a glide. You get other Guardian Souls throughout the game, but if you want to use them, you have to switch out the Flying Armor. Of course, why would you ever want to switch out the ability to glide along with more jump distance and it stacks with your double jump?

The answer is, you wouldn't. Until I got the Giant Bat Upgrade near the tail end of the game which gives Soma perpetual flight for as long as you have mana, I always had the Flying Armor as my Guardian Soul because being able to make long distance jumps is essential in this type of game for the sake of progression.

Returning to the level design though, for the most part it is the same quality as Symphony though I did find several rough patches here and there. Specifically one hallway in the Colosseum area of the game just having one of the largest difficulty spikes I've ever seen. An entire room with spikes, treadmills, Medusa Heads, Valkyries, and a Devil that just feels like a cluster fuck of design, especially with how copy/paste the enemy placement felt... and all it was guarding was a sword weaker than what I had equipped.

The final area also has some really bad enemy placement like a room with 5 succubuses, a Devil Lord, among other enemies just slapped in with no rhyme or reason. The Bat Soul makes it a bit of a non-issue but it is exhausting especially when the game normally has challenging but fair difficulty for the most part throughout.

Bosses are probably what have seen the biggest upgrade from Symphony, as instead of basically being complete jokes, a good chunk of them are decently challenging fights that ask the player to learn their patterns (or Damage Race with Healing Items but that's neither here nor there). Death in particular really kicked my ass when I got to him until I learned how his patterns worked and utilized the slide more efficiently. The normal Final Boss as well was pretty satisfying to figure out, but that's also because you already know how that fight works going into it.

However, the True Final Boss... dear god.

Ok, so from here on we're going into spoiler territory.

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FUCK CHAOS OH MY FUCKING GOD.

This isn't just about the fight itself, but rather the chore that is getting to it.

Remember when I said that the random Soul drops are something you will do regardless of whether you want to or not. Well, that's because in order to access the True Final Boss and the True Ending of the game, you need 3 specific souls.

Now, the good thing is that the game gives you these tomes that tell you what the Souls are but also not really because it's kind of vague and the patterns are a bit difficult to make out on the GBA. The other good thing is that one of the Souls required, The Giant Bat Soul, is given to you after a boss fight.

The other two Souls though, you gotta grind for em, and let me tell you it is a pain in the ass to grind for Soul drops. For the record, the Souls you need are the Fire Devil and Succubus Souls, the Fire Devil you can find in the Underground Cemetery, and the Succubus can be found on the Top Floor.

After doing that, which can take a decent amount of time, you have to beat the regular final boss with those Souls equipped, which borks your current build. Then, and only then can you go back to the Floating Garden to access a room leading to the Chaotic Realm.

A positive here though is that you get the best boss fight in the game against Julius Belmont, who is one of the coolest characters in this franchise. The fight is intensely challenging but also super fun, basically being a better version of the Richter fight from Symphony which I can appreciate.

After Julius though... it's kind of a downhill slope.

The Final Area is just a greyscaled reuse of every level in the game, including underwater sections that require you to switch your Souls etc. It feels slapped on especially given enemy placement and the like, and it drags on for longer than it honestly should.

Then you get to the Final Boss itself and... it sucks.

Chaos' First Phase is just a visual mess. The boss blends in with the background of the fight which makes it near impossible to tell what is happening and where to hit them at any given point. Of course, you will learn how to adapt to it but it's still a design choice that just seems... plain bad.

Then there's the second phase and if there's any advice I can give to you, it's that you need to make sure you have as many healing items as humanly possible.

The boss takes minimal damage until you destroy all 4 of the eyes surrounding the arena, and at the same time life draining orbs are continuously getting closer and closer to you, while a bone serpent you can't damage weaves all around and shoots an even bigger life draining orb.

Clusterfuck is all I can say to describe the experience, easily the most haphazard Castlevania final boss I've seen so far.

The saddest thing is, I had the twist of Soma's identity spoiled for me by fucking Super Smash Bros. It's still a cool reveal for what it's worth, but I wish I could've been taken by surprise there.


Anyways spoilers over
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All in all, despite its shortcomings, Aria of Sorrow is still a very engaging time, and very easy to just pick up and play. I would obviously recommend playing Symphony before hand, but still, it's a great time.

Soma Cruz fucking rocks that fit though y'all, like, easily the most fashionable Castlevania protagonist.

Also he has a gun

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!

After finishing Bloodlines, and attempting Super Castlevania IV on the HD Collection and finding that certain platforms were borked, I decided instead to go into Rondo of Blood.

Rondo has always been one of the Castlevania games I've heard of being the best, at least of the Classicvania lineup, and it had the super cool Richter Belmont as its starring protagonist with his awesome design and headband.

So I figured I had something to look forward to... but well, despite the rating I'm giving it this game has kind of completely confirmed that Classicvanias are just not for me.

Starting with the positives, the game looks and sounds great. The game pops with its colors, something Castlevania IV does not do, which gives the castle a sense of life and energy to it that I think is only shared so far with Bloodlines.

The soundtrack is definitely top notch, with a haunting aesthetic mixed with hard guitars and rock that gives it a unique feel within the series prior to Symphony of the Night.

The characters themselves play as they should with a few additions that spice up the gameplay. First off the fact that the characters is plural, as you have the option of playing as either Richter or Maria Renard, one of the four maidens you rescue throughout the game.

Richter controls like your standard Belmont, he's got the usual movement, though he does carry over the more controllable jump from Castlevania IV, giving you more precision with platforming. However Richter also has a few new tricks, those being the Item Crash and Backflip.

The Item Crash is essentially a big old super move utilizing whatever Sub-Weapon you have in your possession (or even without the Sub-Weapon as long as you have enough Hearts Collected). Some are more useful than others, specifically Hydro Storm and Grand Cross (which is reminding me to play more Final Fantasy after this) which are essentially screen nukes. Regardless it's a very cool ability that asks you to manage your hearts in order to use them at the most opportune times in either a difficult platforming section or a boss fight.

The Backflip is exactly as it says on the tin, and is effectively a dodge that Richter can utilize, as well as a way to speed up vertical platforming on stairs and the like.

Then there's Maria. Regardless of what people say after this review cough cough, Maria is a very fun character to utilize, though I can understand the argument of her being broken.

She has a double jump, can move while attacking, has a forward roll for fast horizontal momentum, and can apparently use a Dark Maria mode (I never figured out how to do this but it's something you can do). She has little animal buddies as her subweapons, which includes a Dragon and I guess Gamera? I don't know.

Her ending is also why I brought the game up a star because it was incredibly goofy and charming, basically making up for the parts of the game I didn't like.

As for those parts well, that really just comes down to the levels themselves. Some of them are just not fun to go through.

Stage 4 is just a drag with few checkpoints and a shitton of fleamen, with the level going on for way longer than it needs to, honestly feeling like two levels mashed with each other.

Stage 6 is the boss rush with classic bosses like the Giant Bat and The Mummy, it is also my single least favorite level in the entire game. It's just so fucking exhausting as you have to wait until after killing The Mummy to get any way of healing, essentially making it so that you have to attempt a no damage run for the first two fights because the Mummy has this attack where he sends his bandages to rain down on you with a pattern that I still cannot figure out at this point.

At least once you get to the final boss of the rush, Shaft, and die, you start at Shaft. He's not too bad himself, but trying to beat him immediately after the boss rush is a feat of exhaustion.

Then there's Stage 7. Stage 7 starts with a crumbling bridge with large bats following behind you often with no breaks, and the bats do not die with one hit. Now, you do get the axe subweapon at the start, but trying to platform off the debris while also using the axe and avoiding the bats is just... exhausting.

That's the word I can use to describe my experience with this game, it's exhausting. And you know what, I'll concede that I just fucking suck at this game and the other Classicvanias, but at that same notion even when I succeeded I never popped off, I never felt like the experience was rewarding.

My reaction after defeating Dracula at the end of the game was total silence, as by that point I simply wanted the game to be over.

I still went back and did Maria's ending as well as the Alternate Stages. The Alternate Stages being a cool idea having you fully explore the other levels to find different boss fights that lead to entirely separate levels altogether. I went and 100%ed the game just for the sake of posterity.

And I still don't feel like I had a honestly rewarding experience. It's a shame too because I was genuinely looking forward to this game, but I don't know. Maybe there's something wrong with me? Honestly by the umpteenth attempt on Dracula I just started considering that maybe I should just stop playing video games in general. That the medium was just not for me anymore.


That turned out to be false because I then booted up the seminal classic Symphony of the Night and immediately clicked with it within seconds. And if you want my honest opinion, if you're like me and the Classicvania structure doesn't satisfy you, go play Symphony instead. My faith in video games was renewed.

Well, this is the first Castlevania I've ever beaten and I'll fully admit I played on Easy Difficulty for this one because I've never played a Castlevania before and the game is hard as is even on this setting.

I will say I like how this game has a variety of settings going throughout all of Europe during the tail end of World War 1, from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to a Munitions Factory, the stages are all filled with a sense of variety and level themes that make sure they don't get old.

I do wish they kind of did more with it though given well, this game takes place during World War One and yet we only see soldier like enemies in that Munitions Factory I mentioned earlier. You would think we'd find more Soldier Zombies and Ghouls roaming the various locales but there aren't really any and it's a tad disappointing.

As for the gameplay it's a solid platformer, though some levels tend to drag way longer than they need to. Stage 4 in particular felt like it was going on for an eternity as the Stage count rose higher and higher to like fucking, Stage 4-13 or some shit.

I personally played as Eric Lecarde in my run because I just thought the Alucard Spear was a cool weapon and I was correct. His moveset being far more versatile than John Morris was also part of the reason. Eric has a high jump that can damage enemies, his spear can be aimed diagonally and twirled around for some extra style and defense, and he has a longer range.

Not to say I didn't try Morris, I did but I enjoyed playing Eric a lot more, and I like his design a lot as well.

Boss Fights in this game though are very hit or miss I find. You either get something really simplistic or an encounter that absolutely sucks balls.

I think the kicker really goes to the Gargoyle boss fight in Stage 3, as it being so high in the air makes hitting it a pain in the ass with your regular weapon, and the relatively small platform you fight it on doesn't give you much in the way to avoid its attacks.

And that's not bringing up the various stage gimmicks, the worst of which is in the final level. I fully expect the Final Level to be challenging, but I definitely think a reverse gravity section was a bit much just for how disorienting it was and the fact that a sizeable chunk of it is placed over a bottomless pit.

Despite that though the game is definitely a visual treat. The Genesis graphics and colors really make the game pop and the usage of red throughout gives the game an ominous creeping feeling as you make your way to challenge the Prince of Darkness.

All in all, Castlevania Bloodlines was alright. It didn't feel like a stellar experience but I could see myself going back to try the other difficulties given time.

I was planning on writing my Fate/Stay Night review first but given that hyperlinks are broken at the time of writing this, I figured I'd instead talk about this masterpiece.

Minor Spoilers for Disco Elysium btw

Disco Elysium is such an impressive work of writing and player immersion. With every part of the dilapidated district of Martinaise filled with either a deep centuries long spanning bit of lore, or a very bizarre and wacky character who will, somewhere along the line, tie into the main narrative in one way or another.

The gameplay is very much akin to something like the Classic Fallout games, with the isometric perspective and actions being determined by skill checks and dice rolls. Disco Elysium however far improves on this by streamlining its design.

Easily the worst aspect of Classic Fallout was it's incredibly slow and thoroughly unpleasant turn-based combat. Even as someone who enjoys turn-based RPGs, Fallout 1 and 2's combat was just way too monotonous and luck-based to points of absurdity where trying to stab something at point blank range with a knife would have a 70% chance of missing in the early game. Disco Elysium nixes this problem by removing combat in its entirety, and instead makes the skill checks both have more of a focus in terms of engagement and narrative importance.

The Skills themselves take the forms of voices inside your character's head. They all have their own unique characteristics that make them stand out despite having the same voice, and they all contribute in advising what actions they think you should take.

Honestly the general characterization of the game in general is just so good. Everyone feels like someone you could find on the street, from the jerkass third-person speaking brat Cuno to the delusional and tired drunk Idiot Doom Spiral or the weirdly trippy party boy Egg Head. All of them feel real in a way that few game characters often do, and they all have their roles to play in the investigation.

That's honestly my favorite part of the whole game, the fact that all of the most innocuous, seemingly unrelated things will, in some way, shape or form contribute to the main plot in ways that awed me to no end.

That's part of what makes it so special, the fact that this world, this district of Martinaise is so full of narrative threads that tie together in the most insane of ways is just something so delightful that to spoil more would do a disservice to you reading this review.

Play Disco Elysium, explore the streets of Martinaise and uncover the mysteries of both the investigation, and yourself.

P.S.
Kim is the fucking GOAT.

I thought I'd have my Fate/Stay Night review written up first but I think that this'll be faster to do.

Spoilers for Fate/Extra

I have been quite interested in Fate/Extra for some time ever since I found out that Arcueid from Tsukihime was apparently one of the many enemy Servant's you face in the game. That and the concept of battling on the Moon seemed interesting.

Upon picking the game up, what I found was a story of self actualization, and the sacrifices made to reach that point... with a relatively mediocre JRPG combat system mixed in.

I'll start with a few negatives since I'd rather reserve my positive thoughts for a bit later.

The combat in this game is... questionable, I would say that's the right word. It's Rock, Paper, Scissors essentially and while you'll start having absolutely zero info on your opponents patterns, as you continue beating them you will accumulate knowledge both in the game itself and internally so that you can basically do no damage fights.

It was fine at first but as the game goes on it's a system of gameplay that's just more tedium than anything. It's neat that you basically have multiple actions per turn compared to more traditional systems, but eh, I just think the guess work for the RPS is just not that interesting in the long run.

That also moves onto the next issue I have, enemy designs. I'm not talking the enemy Servants, all of those are pretty well designed in my book but the basic Programs, the common enemy of the game, have very boring designs especially considering the environments you go through. This might be a complaint brought on by me playing Etrian Odyssey Untold only a month prior to Extra, but I really feel like there could have been more done to make the enemies pop out and feel more visually diverse than Bird, Bull, Cube. Fate is a franchise with many colorful enemy designs, and I really think it's a missed opportunity that they didn't really go all out here.

Then my final major complaint has to do with the Information Gathering. Now, I want to say that I don't think the concept is inherently bad but rather they don't go really go the distance with it in regards to what it could be. You see throughout the various weeks in this tournament, you will be collecting intel on your opponents so you can give them a thorough thrashing at the week's end. The game tries to play this off as being more difficult than it is, when in reality if you're going to the Arena every day, making sure you explore the entire school so as to not miss on events and stuff, you will get all of the info relatively easily.

I think the bigger issue though is that it all winds up feeling very samey. You'll go to the arena, encounter the enemy, get one docket of info. Then you'll have your enemy reveal something about their Servant, get another docket of info and so on and so forth until the final day arrives and you do a mini quiz to ascertain their True Name. It kind of kills the replayability of the game in a way because despite this game having 2 Routes (and 3 Playable Servants) which have separate encounters, the scenarios remain the same.

For example, in Round 4 you'll either face Li'l Ronnie and Lancer or Monji Gatou and Arcueid. Despite being entirely different characters, you'll still fight them on the first day in the arena, you'll still encounter them in the Nurse's Office, and you'll still have the enemy hunt mini game on Day 4 & 5. It results in the experience upon a replay feeling a little dulled out because it's just the exact same scenario but with a slightly different shade of paint.

I'll admit it's not the worst thing in the world, but I definitely hope that the remake irons some of this out and makes a more unique experience for both routes overall so they don't wind up feeling as samey as they do.

Onto the positives, the music in this game is fucking phenomenal, and I am currently listening to the soundtrack as I write this and it definitely is giving me the energy at 5:36 in the morning when I have only slept for like 4 hours max. Personal Favorite Tracks are Battle Theme 2, Dungeon Theme 2B, and Archer, The Hero Nobody Knows. All of the tracks are great though and do a great job illustrating the emotions of any given moment.

The narrative itself is something that I do enjoy quite a bit, even if I don't think it is the greatest story ever. You, Hakuno Kishinami, grow from a blank slate into an actualized person. This is shown in how at the start, your character is relatively flat with not many real character traits to stand out amongst the cast of colorful and zany characters. You are merely fighting to survive, with no greater wish or purpose beyond that.

But slowly, as you continue to struggle and succeed in the Grail War, Hakuno's personality begins to take shape. Their internal dialogue becomes more expressive, and they start having more of their own thoughts and feelings outside of the player. It's a scenario in which the voiceless JRPG protagonist finally gets a voice, and has their own thoughts and ideals separate from the player and I think that's a neat subversion.

The interesting thing is that I find this character growth to actually tie into the dungeon designs themselves. Near the beginning of the game, the dungeons are far more murky and filled with a looming darkness or abstraction that fits with how Hakuno's mindset of that time is like. All of the dungeons being called "Seas" also fits with this. The very first dungeon of the game has you at the very bottom of that sea, surrounded by the wreckage of various ships, with your first opponent being none other than resident shitbag, Shinji Matou.

The dungeon in particular starts with you at the top but has you sink lower as you go to face Shinji. You have the reach the depths of his lowly persona in order to defeat him. The wreckage surrounding you similar to Hakuno's feelings about the end of the Preliminaries, when hundreds of other participants were mercilessly left for dead. It's a good visual indication of our progression through the narrative I find.

By midway through the game, when Hakuno has started truly coming into their own, the dungeons start to become less abstract and begin to take on brighter and more vibrant tones. This is apparent by the fifth dungeon, where you face off against one of the long lasting threats, Julius and Assassin.

By the start of the second floor of the dungeon, you are surrounded with lush jungle greenery, a source of comfort despite facing off against a man who has killed hundreds of other competitors in this bloody war. You have your Servant, and the girl who you saved in the fourth week by your side. Unlike Julius, you are not alone. The lush greenery finally showing an acceptance of the circumstances, and a willingness to push beyond them.

Though if I had to describe a dungeon that I think perfectly encapsulates the themes of the game, that would be reserved for the Seventh. Both floors of the dungeon are vertical climbs to the top, representing the vast disparity in skill, power, and self-confidence between Hakuno and Leonardo B. Harwey, the longest lasting rival to our hero.

The first floor has Hakuno move on from the past via a rematch with Julius, and cement the bond with their Servant with a second fight against the Moon Cell itself. Slowly but surely building them up for that final confrontation.

Then, we arrive at the second floor. The shore of the sea as it were, a beautiful golden waterfall melting in a brilliant sunset. Easily the most gorgeous dungeon in the game, and visually impressive considering the hardware. The sunset beams down on the player like Leo's very presence, but still they climb.

And when you reach the top, you finally surmount him. You knock the crown off the king, and teach him the lesson of defeat. Your journey to self actualization complete.

Of course there's also the actual Final Boss, who is interesting in his own right but... well, he kind of just gets jammed in at the end. It's not like he isn't foreshadowed at all or anything but he is definitely the weakest part of the story for me despite basically being a mirror of Hakuno. It's mostly because we never see his journey to his point, and rather have it exposited to us which kind of makes it hit less hard than it could.

Either way, the actual ending is beautiful and like many other Fate endings, is definitely a highlight.

The characters are all pretty well done, there was no character who I thought was particularly bad or didn't serve a purpose in the grander narrative. I loved both of the Servant's I played with.

Saber's eccentric showman attitude was very pleasant to watch as she brutally roasted the opponents and showed the depths of her affections for Hakuno. And of course, Archer is always going to be my favorite Fate character regardless of his incarnation. His sarcasm is not lost on me, and I enjoy his banter with Hakuno and the enemy servants a lot. That and Unlimited Caladbolg Works is hilarious.

Oh yeah, the Superboss is also very cool... but I have to ask: Why is her attack named Twin Towers?

There's probably a lot more I can say about this game, from how the atmosphere of the school starting from a nice happy place to being an empty shell of its former self is great subtle horror atmosphere at work, or go more in-depth on some characters but as it is now 6 in the morning as I am at this paragraph, I think I will stop for now.

I definitely do recommend Fate/Extra if you're interested. I'm curious to see how they'll adapt it into the remake whenever that comes out, I also wonder if they'll keep Arcueid in that version honestly. Also looking forward to the English Fan Translation of Fate/Extra CCC when that gets finished by the Iwakura folks.

Anyways I should like, maybe go back to sleep... I do need to finish that Fate/Stay Night review though.

So, it's been about a month since I finished playing Etrian Odyssey Untold, and I was initially going to write this review as like a subtweet to a review to the original Etrian Odyssey due to myself thinking said review is spreading misinformation. However, that's not what I want to do and so this will just be a straightforward review, though I will bring up some minor complaints I have with said review regardless.

Of course, Spoiler Warnings for Etrian Odyssey and Etrian Odyssey Untold.

I had first heard about this game when a friend of mine showed me said review for the original Etrian Odyssey. We had a laugh about how ridiculous we thought the review was, but I didn't ultimately get interested in the game until our friend Alan got to talking about it.

That's when my buddy Simon started his playthrough of the original Etrian Odyssey. The game was very intriguing due to it's nature as a dungeon crawler.

Unlike other Dungeon Crawlers I've played that automatically map for you as you go along, Etrian Odyssey requires the player to chart their own maps utilizing the touchscreen of the DS/3DS. This results in an immersive process I can only compare to how people used to play adventure games back when the Internet was far less accessible and players had to rely on drawing out their own maps to track their locations and findings.

And that was only part of the experience. For alongside navigating blind through these labyrinthian halls of forest, were creatures of pure terror and despair.

FOEs, these imposing Orange Orbs, which contained enemies far deadlier than any other, were plentiful throughout the winding paths and gaping corridors. If you want an accurate description of what FOEs are like, imagine Mr. X from the Resident Evil 2 Remake, but there's more than one and they are everywhere.

Watching Simon wander terrified with his Guild was a sight to behold, and while I was thinking of hopping on the original EO, I quickly changed my mind when I heard this.

Etrian Odyssey Untold's soundtrack, with it's pure orchestrated glory convinced me to play that version, and so I did.

I started the greatest of all the Guilds, the Alan Cock Guild. With myself as the Ronin leader, Alan as our Dark Hunter Mascot, Yuiz as our Masterful Medic, Godman as our Triumphing Troubadour, and Simon as our Helpful Hexer, we were sent out into the Yggdrasil Labyrinth to discover its many environments and venture into its very depths.

At the start, it was brutal. We were barely equipped to fight even the weakest of foes, they weren't so much battles as much as they were fights just to survive. The FOEs were the most terrifying, especially given how the remake opts to show what they actually look like, and because of the use of 3D models, could provide the most terrifying of scenarios like with these Boars shaped like Boulders that wake up when you walk in front of them.

I'd argue that Etrian Odyssey is a better horror game than most on the market. Every new FOE, every new Floor Boss is built up too steadily, and makes encountering them for the first time an absolute shock to the core.

Of course, that only made it all the more satisfying when the Alan Cock Guild grew strong enough to kill these ferocious creatures. As we continued to explore, as Forests gave way to Jungles, and Jungles gave way to Coral Reefs, we got ever stronger.

Along the way, we wind up encountering this Forest Girl who clearly does not want us there. Eventually the Radha, the people who we have been working for the entire game, demand that we do one more thing if we seek to venture further into the labyrinth: "Annihilate the Forest Folk".

So, back onto the minor complaints thing. The review that I read that initially introduced me to this game tried to make this argument that this final mission was Atlus saying that Genocide is good and acceptable. It was also at the point that the mission was introduced that they stopped playing the game.

Now, I'm not going to say Genocide isn't bad, or that the game doesn't have you partake in it. However, I do want to point out that at no point does the game actively relish in the actions.

From the very start of the mission, it is made clear how unsettling this demand is. Quinn, the Mission Giver, is clearly upset about the whole ordeal, mentioning how he "wished they would resolve this peacefully" revealing that the Radha Chieftan, Visil, has been acting strange in regards to these demands.

Throughout the entire quest, it is commented on how your guild does not want to do this, and that the whole thing is a setup by Visil to try and get you killed before you discover more about the Yggdrasil Labyrinth.

The game does not try to glorify the act of genocide, and I think claiming that Atlus was attempting to do so here is disingenuous.

Even then, I'd like to posit this argument. Why is it suddenly that when it is specifically the Forest Folk that it is this moral dilemma?

Think about what you and your party do all game.

From the very start you have been invading the habitats of the various creatures you come across, killing leagues of rats and wolves, slaughtering without end and without mercy. To come to this mission and think that your guild is innocent when they've already decimated an entire eco-system is just a bit hypocritical to be quite frank. (Also just want to say, assuming that Explorers are going to automatically be good is kind of naïve given history, most explorers have done terrible shit.)

And even then, by the end of the game you fight back against those who sent you to commit these heinous acts, and foil their plans with the Yggdrasil Tree.

If I had to make an argument about what I think the game is trying to show is that it shows the results of Capitalism on the environment.

You kill, you take in order to gain wealth and fame for your guild. The entire reason the genocide thing is set up to begin with to get your guild killed is to keep the mystery of the labyrinth going so that more explorers seeking the same fame you do will come to Etria.

More Explorers means more business, and you actively see these effects just by how the Shop's wares increase based on the drops you sell. Watching in real time as you becoming richer makes prices go up, and mercantile empires expand.

But at the end, you turn your back on that. You fight Visil in one last duel and strike him down, ending his plans, and eventually revealing the truth to everyone. Capitalism may have been what drove the guild before, but at the end, you fought to stop the cycle of destruction.

I realize that hey, this is probably an entirely subjective perspective on the whole thing... but I think this idea is interesting to me so I'm sticking with it.

The game is hard, but from the map-making, to the incredible score, to the deeper themes, to the areas themselves being absolutely beautiful, I think it is worth your time.

Also people who think this is boring haven't played enough DMC2.

Anyways this review is probably real messy but I don't think there was much of an overly coherent way of making this. Next review will be more organized.

So this game is finally on here, and I can talk about it.

Firstly, funny story here, I tried to get this game on IGDB several months ago when it came out. I got footage and pictures of the game, but the IGDB person who handled it said "it wasn't a video game". I guess the joke is on them now.

D*SCO(ep) is a audiovisual game experience, with an emotionally dense OST conveying the tale of a dog sent into the vastness of space on their lonesome.

You play a variety of styles, from a single button charge for sending a rocket to the stars, or flying in a 3D space throughout the stars.

The personal highlight for me being Gigaslammer 9000 DX, a sort of Space Invaders inspired game where you hit baseballs at these green enemies and attempt to get the high score. I'm not a score guy, but the crunchiness of the sound effects as well as the intensity of the backing track (which I believe samples Kanye West) gets one in the mood to slam. Here's a video example that I made for IGDB to prove this is a video game.

All in all, a game I think anyone should experience.

I'm glad it finally got on here.