I'm tired.

I went through four 30 – 50 hours long games especially for Azure.

For each game except FC and The 3rd, a lot of stuff triggered me as hell and I was coping about Azure fixing them but it did not happen.

Why are the games paddled with useless stuff story-wisely?

Why do the games abuse of the «someone controls somebody who are themselves manipulated by another person»?

Why do I have to go through a lot of dungeons that have NO reasons whatsoever to exist except grinding?

Why is the narrative outline so repetitive (Even though Azure made it a bit better)?

Why are all the villains just random evil RPG characters (Except for Richard)?

Why do the games always ruin everything they builded up particularly the political stuff just for the sake of throwing plotwists at you and be like «Haahahaha lol I was the villain all along had a plan to gain an immense power to do/for [Insert random stupid motivation(s)]»

The only good thing at the end are the main characters that mostly are rather well written as well as the very fun and dynamic gameplay.

I'm pausing the game for now and will come back some time for the sake of finishing it, but right now I'm angry and saddened by the wasted potential that Trails is.

Giving this game, or at the very least its base campaign, any ranking today feels a bit weird I'm gonna be real.
It's clear this experience extends much further and I do intend to discover where it might lead.
But I still do want to put a small recounting of my feelings about this game up until this point so that I may contrast the quality of it later down the road.

It took me a few months to really get into this game, and I don't blame anyone for immediately shafting it in the opening hours. The controls are clunky, the mechanics are poorly explained, the exploration can be gruelingly slow and a lot of QoL features made specifically to cater to novices are very badly tutorialized, which sucks.
A lot of the early game will be spent navigating from wiki page to reddit questions about the most basic bullshit to your more veteran friend's dms, if you're lucky enough to have such a friend (thanks Alise).
However, and this is where I can't really justify myself, once you're past the stage of second guessing every mouse click, and once you begin understanding the patterns under which the game operates, it's...good?

It's still slow, there are still a lot of things kept from the player for no discernable reason and some of the dungeon design would make the CIA's torture teams blush in embarrassment, but I definitely took enjoyment in the general experience.

The world of Vana'diel is bleak, shrouded in a lot of mysteries and secrets, some of which the main plot does address. Exploring, seeing the sights, discovering more and more of the towns and regions of the world felt like my exploration was being rewarded in kind. It felt good to walk for hours and to finally discover a bustling town of miners embroiled in thinly veiled racial tensions.

And while the plot itself is, quite frankly, a tad basic for what you'd expect from an FF game in the 2000s, there were some genuinely great scenes and set pieces, and the main villain was really poignant? It definitely did struck a chord with me at the very least.

All of this is a rough and general summary of my experience with FFXI's base campaign, and I don't doubt some of my feelings about it will change with the later content. I think XI's a game with a flawed, but fairly decent foundation with an unfortunately alienating new player experience. However, if you do have the patience to surmount those harsh early hours of the game, and a few other stumbles along the way, this game might be worth a shot.

I enjoyed my time with it, playing it for over 100 hours to complete the pokedex, but after that, it is so hard to get back to or replay. The technical flaws are awful, but honestly, the gameplay was sub-par too, with the nail in the coffin being the levels of story objective battles.

The flaws prevent me from enjoying it anywhere close to how much I had the first time. It had novelty, but will not stand the test of time. It's hard to be interested in the DLC at all. I had an incredible time with it on a first playthrough, and I think it's really a shame.

Ya know what fuck it why not make my last review of the year the first Touhou game? I'm taking my sweet time with Final Fantasy 16.

So in my excitement to get more into Bullet Hell games I finally found ways to play the early Touhou Project stuff along with picking up and being gifted a lot of other stuff from rad people/friendos as well!

So when I heard this one wasn't really anything like the other Touhou games I was absolutely fascinated. I love seeing where series start and how they can possibly grow and change from that but especially when people say this game is far more like breakout than anything which is really fascinating. It feels like a basic concept that should be pretty cool!

Unfortunately after playing it it just really isn't in the full execution! It's not like the worst thing ever but it feels like breakout if your ball in breakout killed you for not being precise as hell with every hit with the paddle AND if the ball had more physics based momentum to it. As it goes around it loses its bounce and ya gotta kick and slide your way around which feels good sometimes actually!

But then ya gotta fight bosses that shoot back at ya, so not only do ya gotta worry about their projectiles but ya also gotta worry about not fucking up and accidentally killing yourself in the process which feels real bad at points, so bad that I honestly just kinda gave up. One day I may come back to this and really try harder to push through but honestly I just can't see myself enjoying much more of it.

It feels off in a way where like it's almost to something really interesting but something about it doesn't click and that's a shame. Still glad I at least tried it though!

FFXV's a ghost game, a haunting. the immaterial remnants of Versus XIII's blighted development history in conflict with the internal nightmare dialectics that inform modern final fantasy. from the weightless combat and absent storytelling to the lifeless world and characters, this is a game defined by nothing. a game that says nothing. a game that does nothing. a thousand ideas, all equally formless and unsatisfying outside of those brief moments before first contact

it's in the dead landscapes dotted with little more than gas stations and rest stops where nameless, faceless motorists drive endlessly from nowhere to nowhere. it's in the way we're told of rich, meaningful bonds without ever seeing them firsthand. it's in the way virtually every interaction prioritizes presentation over active involvement. enormous vacancy disguised by ostentatious pageantry; simulacrum within simulacrum, every moving part uncanny and ersatz. the plot, the road trip, the party, the relationships, the core mechanics — nothing coheres, nothing is substantiated, and nothing feels real. this software isn't real. it doesn't exist

by the midpoint even the pretense of wholeness or congruency erodes entirely. hours and hours of empty spectacle and collapsing narrative slip away and in the unearned pathos of its closing moments you're left with one final display of pure artifice: an ending to a game that never really occurred

Penny’s Big Breakaway is a game I was looking forward to ever since it was announced: a 3D platformer made by some of the Sonic Mania devs and above all, the promise of a game revolving around interesting physics-based level design and controls. An ambitious project behind the cutesy aesthetic, and while I found the end result to be promising, it suffers from some limitations.

In addition to the usual controls in this type of game, Penny can perform 3 different actions: A dash, allowing the character to redirect her trajectory wherever on the ground or in the air, the possibility to use her yo-yo to swing around while midair and gain momentum depending on the timing with which you release the button, and mounting it on the ground, using the speed built with the two previous actions to roll. In term of controls, perhaps Penny feels a little less versatile than what I first thought looking at the trailers, and the main gameplay loop is a bit obvious, but she’s still incredibly fun to maneuver around. There's almost no automation and the degrees of freedom associated with these actions are respected. There is a certain margin for improvement in these sequences, which are necessary to master, as Penny is much slower and, above all, less interesting to control without them. I can't stress enough how good swinging and building momentum feels after understanding these mecanics and this is without a doubt where PBB shines. I should also note the presence of a scoring system which gives you points the more you link these actions without touching the ground directly, but since you can just stop somewhere and chain figures without moving forward, I found it a bit wonky.

The game is divided in multiple worlds, with level design that complement these qualities well. Slopes, jumps or looping, that can be used ingeniously depending on the speed you have upon reaching them, can reveal different passages rewarding the player understanding the core mechanics, in addition to the shortcuts that naturally emerges from this kind of game. When well mastered, Penny brings back a feeling of spontaneity and improvisation, reminiscent of the 2D Sonic philosophy from which this title obviously draws its inspiration. Adding to this, the charming visuals which mostly consist of simple shapes allowing for good readability with clever use of colors giving this game a unique personality makes for a pleasant experience.

To convey these ideas, PBB choose to use fairly open stages structured with side quests (which mostly do a good job at staying on your path while keeping your speed) and collectibles to get more points, and to opt for a fixed camera that guides the player thorough the level. For me, this is when things get tricky. While this design choice certainly makes for a very functional (at least in theory, more on that later) and easy-to-grasp game, it prevents it from really varying itself across each levels, the laters sharing very similar geometry beyond the few nuances that differentiate them on a smaller scale (presence of hazards such as fire, or different gimmicks depending on the world you’re in), and even the sidequests are in reality extremely similar between each levels, making it hard for them to really stand out. This isn’t to say that the level design is uninspired, far from it, PBB certainly feels smooth and goes straight to the point. I understand the choice to go for this safer approach especially for a first game with a small budget, still, I can’t help but sometimes feel like something more substantial could have emerged from this concept and the lack of striking thematic elements across levels can be felt when playing over longer sessions. In fact, a small look at the unlockable bonus stages shows that the devs understand how intricate levels could be with Penny’s movement. With all that being said, optimizing different routes with this kind of mechanics and level design is still a pleasure I can definitely enjoy after beating the game, though I wish the time attack mode was more flourished (there’s no quick restart and you can’t save replays). From what I’ve seen, shortcuts appear naturally without the need to do some crazy out-of-bound stuff, which is a good sign, showing that Penny’s movements and level design alone are enough to bring richness to the game.

Penny’s Big Breakaway sometimes feels like it could have been much more, an impression that is reinforced by the many glitches you can run into (far from making the game unplayable, but still present), its so-so presentation outside of gameplay, or its mediocre to atrocious boss battles (seriously, you can’t give us the traditional “hit this boss 3 times” with this kind of movements), but the overall experience is great and I really want to give my praises to a new 3D platformer that is actually good. I wouldn’t mind a more polished follow-up to this game, and I have trust in Evening Star for the future.

Ok

Elden Ring, is the nice boy in class, he has all the good grades, he's not particularly ugly, he's cultivated, he'll likely gonna get into a good university once he's gonna graduate, he seems to have no flaws, except one, he's painfully boring in its flawlessness

Demon's Souls on the other hand, he's the bad boy , he's dark, sinister, a bit cringe , he has black hair, he makes barely passable poetry , he smokes marijuana and is involved with several case of high school crime, he always brings a guitar and listen to 21 pilot on his airpods, not the kinda guy you should get interrested in, he looks silly , he looks like a fucking looser, he thinks he's goat, but he's not goat, he's just a piece of shit edgy kids and oh my god I hate this guy, but one day you go to a party

Who did you end up in bed with ? That's right , not fucking ER, he's too good for this, It's DeS, you woke up next morning, and he fucked you and you look past the bed border and your mom is lying on the floor , fucked like she never has been before. Then he wokes up with pancackes, kiss you goodbye and leaves you with a teen pregnancy he's never gonna act upon. But the memory of such an experience will last with you for the rest of your goddamn life