CallSonicSpeed
2019
It didn't have Baka Mitai but Machine Gun Kiss kicked ass so I give it an 8
I have long history with this game. It was my first exposure to this series, when my brother was playing this on PC. I was too young for this but I didn't care, I was too busy immersing myself into Los Santos with cool cars to steal, big buildings, clothes to buy, activities to do like racing, people to kill plus cheat codes to mess around with and among other things. It was unlike anything I've seen when it came to video games.
I didn't pay attention to the story and the missions, like all other kids back then so I had no idea there were 2 other cities as big as Los Santos but I still had fun exploring the city and messing around, as well as downloading mods to further entice my experience.
Now, after 15 years I decided to come back and give this game a proper finish, play it's main missions and see it's story to the end while doing most of the game's activities. It isn't a 100% playthrough but I wanted to see the most of what the game offers, while doing the main missions in between.
After 40 hours of ingame playtime and having a 76% completion as of writing this, this proper playthrough has solidified San Andreas as not only my most favourite GTA in the series but also my most favourite game of all time. It wasn't how I started playing video games but San Andreas showed me that there was more in games than just playing platformers and very simple children games.
(yeah the gap between educational games and a fucking GTA game is ludicrous but I only remember playing 2 or maybe 3 of those so whatever)
I didn't pay attention to the story and the missions, like all other kids back then so I had no idea there were 2 other cities as big as Los Santos but I still had fun exploring the city and messing around, as well as downloading mods to further entice my experience.
Now, after 15 years I decided to come back and give this game a proper finish, play it's main missions and see it's story to the end while doing most of the game's activities. It isn't a 100% playthrough but I wanted to see the most of what the game offers, while doing the main missions in between.
After 40 hours of ingame playtime and having a 76% completion as of writing this, this proper playthrough has solidified San Andreas as not only my most favourite GTA in the series but also my most favourite game of all time. It wasn't how I started playing video games but San Andreas showed me that there was more in games than just playing platformers and very simple children games.
2006
Much like Yakuza 1, I was fascinated with the things the original PS2 version was attempting to comparison to Kiwami 2. To already add the praise to the already never-ending-list-of-everything-Yakuza 2-PS2-does-so-well list, I very much enjoyed the much improved combat compared to the first game.
The lock-on, while still far from perfect, does it's job way better than it's predecessor. On top of that you have a new selection of moves Kiryu can perform, some of which can be only unlocked through special methods,
like the Komaki Knockback and Firearm Reversal can be acquired from Komaki or a quickstep cancel from a certain video at a video booth that is really OP and allows you to soft-lock enemies by unleashing an endless Rush combo or punish their asses while they attempt to do a combo of their own.
All in all, the combat in the PS2 Yakuza 2 is certainly the best part in comparison to Kiwami 2, when the remake follows a playstyle of that of the sixth entry in the series with a completely different moveset, the original feels snappy, responsive and fast.
Certainly one of the best Yakuzas gameplay-wise.
For the rest, nothing much changes from the remake. The story is a joy to watch and a slight step up from it's predecessor and the sidestories are nice distractions from the main storyline, even if finding them is a bit of a chore and can be permanently missed unless you have a guidebook. There are some fun activities to mess around with in both Kamurocho and Sotenbori,
but alas exploring cities isn't as very much fun as in, say Yakuza 0. The series at that point isn't there yet.
In the end, I greatly enjoyed Yakuza 2. An absolute step-up from the first Yakuza in almost every aspect. I wouldn't say it is the BEST Yakuza game but it is a high tier game nonetheless and that's fine.
The lock-on, while still far from perfect, does it's job way better than it's predecessor. On top of that you have a new selection of moves Kiryu can perform, some of which can be only unlocked through special methods,
like the Komaki Knockback and Firearm Reversal can be acquired from Komaki or a quickstep cancel from a certain video at a video booth that is really OP and allows you to soft-lock enemies by unleashing an endless Rush combo or punish their asses while they attempt to do a combo of their own.
All in all, the combat in the PS2 Yakuza 2 is certainly the best part in comparison to Kiwami 2, when the remake follows a playstyle of that of the sixth entry in the series with a completely different moveset, the original feels snappy, responsive and fast.
Certainly one of the best Yakuzas gameplay-wise.
For the rest, nothing much changes from the remake. The story is a joy to watch and a slight step up from it's predecessor and the sidestories are nice distractions from the main storyline, even if finding them is a bit of a chore and can be permanently missed unless you have a guidebook. There are some fun activities to mess around with in both Kamurocho and Sotenbori,
but alas exploring cities isn't as very much fun as in, say Yakuza 0. The series at that point isn't there yet.
In the end, I greatly enjoyed Yakuza 2. An absolute step-up from the first Yakuza in almost every aspect. I wouldn't say it is the BEST Yakuza game but it is a high tier game nonetheless and that's fine.
2005
It's interesting to see what the original game does with itself compared to Kiwami 1, which was the version of Yakuza 1 I experienced first. There are few elements and moments the original does better where Kiwami altered them for the worse, but also stuff the remake fares off much better than here. Kinda sucks there is no proper "definitive" way to enjoy Yakuza 1, because for me Kiwami 1 does too little, too much to fix the original.
Regardless, Yakuza 1 on PS2 is far from perfect, obviously. It's cool how a number of staple features and mechanics in later games had their debut in this game but it's clear this is the first installment in the series: janky and mostly experimental. I still had a fun time. Will check out the sequel soon.
Regardless, Yakuza 1 on PS2 is far from perfect, obviously. It's cool how a number of staple features and mechanics in later games had their debut in this game but it's clear this is the first installment in the series: janky and mostly experimental. I still had a fun time. Will check out the sequel soon.
2023
Can they make Sonic Rush 3 instead kthxbye
2023
This game is not funny, just like reddish
This could've been the best thing the Sonic franchise has ever gotten, with revival of multiple playable characters and an overhauled final boss to make the endgame more impactful but it is held by unforgiving, unfair sections like the Trial Towers, the Trials and the unbalanced new guardians. This maybe could've been an 8 if they toned down the difficulty just a little bit but for now it's decent at best.
The technical state of the PC port is clunky and has a few bugs but besides that lies a fantastic game from start to finish. It's not as content-rich as the previous installments but I consider it a high-tier game in the series nonetheless. My only grip is not being able to fight the arena as Ratchet, I get the arena takes place in Rivet's dimension but still.
2012
Final Fantasy Numero Tres!
I did not chose the Pixel Remaster to play this game because I organized my list of what was the best version to play each game in the series in 2020, so before the announcement of the Pixel Remaster. Or simply because I didn't bother spending 15 bucks on Steam so whatever lol.
The story follows a similar formula to the first game, with 4 Warriors of Light being tasked to restore the world balance and obtain 4 crystals with each giving them more power. The original release only had 4 unnamed orphans while in the 3D remake, they have their own separate names and personalities.
Personally I prefer that the protagonists have actual names, since FF2 onwards the series featured characters that have more life to them, making players care about them, so it feels weird to me that 3 omitted this to further push this game as this "FF1 2.0" that 2 didn't. I think they could have just kept the gameplay as is while maintaining the stronger sense of story from the second game but I guess that's all they could've done during the NES era. And even besides that, the story is enjoyable but nothing too groundbreaking and there's a pretty small amount of character interactions between the MCs. Wish there were a bit more of them.
The gameplay introduces a mechanic that will reappear in numerous titles since then: The job system, where now characters can choose 23 jobs during in-game as opposed to the first game's selecting jobs when booting up the game. Now because I skipped 2 and 3 due to my poor first impressions of 1, I got a taste of the job system in 5 instead, where it was more refined and allowed you to take 2 abilites from each mastered job. This game doesn't do that and jobs have to reach level 99 to master, which will reward you with an item so you just have characters stay in those jobs until you decide to change. The 3D remake featured what they called a "job adjustment phase", where characters get a minor stat penalty when switching jobs to maintain the game's balance. Since I didn't bother trying out most jobs (and finding out most jobs are shit anyway), the feature acts more like an annoyance than helpful, although I hardly felt the side-effects when switching jobs.
As for the rest, with what the remake touched upon, well I liked the visuals, keeps that chibi, innocent artstyle that both the classic games and artworks are familar with 'cept including Amano's art. I was never a big fan of 8-bit music in general, I turned my attention to the orchestrated OST instead and find it entertaining to listen while playing, in contrast to FF4's OST where I sticked mainly to the SNES original.
Overall (without going too much in detail cause i'm writing this at 1 AM), Final Fantasy 3 is without a doubt the best of the NES trilogy games, it manages to make the game engaging without being frustrating and bullshit unfair. That is not to say the game was super fun, merely acceptable but often times tedious. If you want to avoid that "tediousness", especially with the 2nd part of the game, you have to grind.
And grind.
I did not chose the Pixel Remaster to play this game because I organized my list of what was the best version to play each game in the series in 2020, so before the announcement of the Pixel Remaster. Or simply because I didn't bother spending 15 bucks on Steam so whatever lol.
The story follows a similar formula to the first game, with 4 Warriors of Light being tasked to restore the world balance and obtain 4 crystals with each giving them more power. The original release only had 4 unnamed orphans while in the 3D remake, they have their own separate names and personalities.
Personally I prefer that the protagonists have actual names, since FF2 onwards the series featured characters that have more life to them, making players care about them, so it feels weird to me that 3 omitted this to further push this game as this "FF1 2.0" that 2 didn't. I think they could have just kept the gameplay as is while maintaining the stronger sense of story from the second game but I guess that's all they could've done during the NES era. And even besides that, the story is enjoyable but nothing too groundbreaking and there's a pretty small amount of character interactions between the MCs. Wish there were a bit more of them.
The gameplay introduces a mechanic that will reappear in numerous titles since then: The job system, where now characters can choose 23 jobs during in-game as opposed to the first game's selecting jobs when booting up the game. Now because I skipped 2 and 3 due to my poor first impressions of 1, I got a taste of the job system in 5 instead, where it was more refined and allowed you to take 2 abilites from each mastered job. This game doesn't do that and jobs have to reach level 99 to master, which will reward you with an item so you just have characters stay in those jobs until you decide to change. The 3D remake featured what they called a "job adjustment phase", where characters get a minor stat penalty when switching jobs to maintain the game's balance. Since I didn't bother trying out most jobs (and finding out most jobs are shit anyway), the feature acts more like an annoyance than helpful, although I hardly felt the side-effects when switching jobs.
As for the rest, with what the remake touched upon, well I liked the visuals, keeps that chibi, innocent artstyle that both the classic games and artworks are familar with 'cept including Amano's art. I was never a big fan of 8-bit music in general, I turned my attention to the orchestrated OST instead and find it entertaining to listen while playing, in contrast to FF4's OST where I sticked mainly to the SNES original.
Overall (without going too much in detail cause i'm writing this at 1 AM), Final Fantasy 3 is without a doubt the best of the NES trilogy games, it manages to make the game engaging without being frustrating and bullshit unfair. That is not to say the game was super fun, merely acceptable but often times tedious. If you want to avoid that "tediousness", especially with the 2nd part of the game, you have to grind.
And grind.
"That was almost too close! You were almost a Jill Sandwich!"
The voice acting of all time
The voice acting of all time
I wasted 140 hours playing this game and I don't regret every hour of this. This is the most interesting JRPG I've played so far and it's plot, while does go with the traditional "kill god" routine it had very refreshing and unexpected plot points compared to other JRPGs i've played (so 8 Final Fantasy games in a nutshell).
Gameplay isn't something to speak off proudly but isn't completely brain-dead either, it's basically a single-player focused MMORPG gameplay.
This was the 2nd game that make me focused so much on plot, next to Yakuza 0, alongside having very memorable and enjoyable cast with good, albeit rough around the edges, British voice acting. Reyn's "alleyoop", however, is the most funniest shit i've ever heard. Thank you, Monolith Soft.
Gameplay isn't something to speak off proudly but isn't completely brain-dead either, it's basically a single-player focused MMORPG gameplay.
This was the 2nd game that make me focused so much on plot, next to Yakuza 0, alongside having very memorable and enjoyable cast with good, albeit rough around the edges, British voice acting. Reyn's "alleyoop", however, is the most funniest shit i've ever heard. Thank you, Monolith Soft.
2019
Since ChaosX has recently released the Silver campaign to P-06, I feel like it's a good time to tell my personal opinion on this:
This is still Sonic 2006, a game fundamentally flawed in almost every aspect that was never going to succeed well
regardless if the game could've been delayed. It's development behind-the-scenes is still a mystery and the true details regarding what happened might never be rightfully explained, while the info that is purely made-up and has little to no source in certain parts of the development (e.g: It is widely said that the JP Sonic Team that worked on 06 was split in half once they found out the Nintendo Wii was too underpowered to run the next generation Sonic game, so that they could develop a separate title made exclusively for that console aka Sonic and the Secret Rings. This is false. Sonic Team was assigned to work on 2 projects at the same time and no splitting was involved. Sonic Team was already split into multiple different studios prior to 06's production.) continues to be spread and made aware of more people who know nothing about how did the game fell down hard.
The recreation (I am not calling it a remake) does a few good changes and improvements, like looking visually better than vanilla 06 but the core level design stays the same, so it's still the same sluggish, slow and automatic 06 if you had expierence with the original.
Sonic's gameplay is a mish-mash of SA1, 2, Heroes and even Unleashed, he's faster than vanilla but he's still slow, Shadow's gameplay is similar only if Sonic had more combat moves (Chaos Boost if cool tho), and Silver's gameplay is the worst of the 3. Never liked the telekinesis in previous releases and I still don't like it here.
Blaze is without a doubt the best character in the game lol
This is still Sonic 2006, a game fundamentally flawed in almost every aspect that was never going to succeed well
regardless if the game could've been delayed. It's development behind-the-scenes is still a mystery and the true details regarding what happened might never be rightfully explained, while the info that is purely made-up and has little to no source in certain parts of the development (e.g: It is widely said that the JP Sonic Team that worked on 06 was split in half once they found out the Nintendo Wii was too underpowered to run the next generation Sonic game, so that they could develop a separate title made exclusively for that console aka Sonic and the Secret Rings. This is false. Sonic Team was assigned to work on 2 projects at the same time and no splitting was involved. Sonic Team was already split into multiple different studios prior to 06's production.) continues to be spread and made aware of more people who know nothing about how did the game fell down hard.
The recreation (I am not calling it a remake) does a few good changes and improvements, like looking visually better than vanilla 06 but the core level design stays the same, so it's still the same sluggish, slow and automatic 06 if you had expierence with the original.
Sonic's gameplay is a mish-mash of SA1, 2, Heroes and even Unleashed, he's faster than vanilla but he's still slow, Shadow's gameplay is similar only if Sonic had more combat moves (Chaos Boost if cool tho), and Silver's gameplay is the worst of the 3. Never liked the telekinesis in previous releases and I still don't like it here.
2018
It didn't had Baka Mitai in a karaoke minigame 6/10
2019
ALL OF THESE THOUGHTS RUNNIN' THROUGH MY HEAD
ARM ON FIRE, VEINS BURNIN' RED
FRUSTRATION IS GETTIN' BIGGER
BANG, BANG, BANG, PULL MY DEVIL TRIGGER
ARM ON FIRE, VEINS BURNIN' RED
FRUSTRATION IS GETTIN' BIGGER
BANG, BANG, BANG, PULL MY DEVIL TRIGGER
Yeah I can see why people don't like the junction system and the game as a whole, it limits and streamlines gameplay a bit too far. The system can also be easily broken with crazy ass op spells early-game, Triple Triad and abusing Limit Breaks like there's no tommorrow (if you spell Aura and have high Strength stat for example, you pretty much wipe the floor with ANY enemy, including bosses).
The story was decent but I wasn't really invested into it. Graphically it was quite detailed for PS1 standards, they stepped up with artstyle after FF7, further pushing the new direction the series was headed.
I only wish they didn't experiment this much with the formula because I don't see how this is meant to allow more Player customization, like sure you can now decide which character should have what magic and what stats to increase, there's more player freedom for that...once you find out you are disallowed to use magic whatsoever because you are losing your increases to your stats and from what i've gathered from my expierence, you absolutely need to junction HP, Strength and Magic early on and soon all main 5 stats if you even want to survive bosses.
Overall, the game was alright for me. Another 2nd Final Fantasy that tries to experiment with the FF formula,
only to experiment too much that results with the game
being either confusing for casual players, refines the mechanic from last game or two and doesn't change much, besides maybe not having a strong story or very memorable cast (FF5) or just straight up tedious to play (FF2).
Oh yeah and the remaster is awful, trying using mods but the game lags and had it's own issues too (crashing at the beginning of Disc 2) which...why has no one tried to fix it before??
The story was decent but I wasn't really invested into it. Graphically it was quite detailed for PS1 standards, they stepped up with artstyle after FF7, further pushing the new direction the series was headed.
I only wish they didn't experiment this much with the formula because I don't see how this is meant to allow more Player customization, like sure you can now decide which character should have what magic and what stats to increase, there's more player freedom for that...once you find out you are disallowed to use magic whatsoever because you are losing your increases to your stats and from what i've gathered from my expierence, you absolutely need to junction HP, Strength and Magic early on and soon all main 5 stats if you even want to survive bosses.
Overall, the game was alright for me. Another 2nd Final Fantasy that tries to experiment with the FF formula,
only to experiment too much that results with the game
being either confusing for casual players, refines the mechanic from last game or two and doesn't change much, besides maybe not having a strong story or very memorable cast (FF5) or just straight up tedious to play (FF2).
Oh yeah and the remaster is awful, trying using mods but the game lags and had it's own issues too (crashing at the beginning of Disc 2) which...why has no one tried to fix it before??