I don't think I have ever had my opinion of a game change so drastically while playing it. After finishing the first Xenoblade with middling opinions, the technical and gameplay improvements in the second were refreshing and fun. For the first 25-30 hours of this, I did genuinely love it.

Once I reached a certain point (probably around chapter 6 or 7), everything really started to fall apart for me. The repercussions of so many glaring design flaws really started to shine through (field skills nearly saw me quitting the game at least 4 times) and I realized the story wasn't going in any direction that I really cared for. The tone and pacing of the first Xenoblade was dark, serious, and thoughtful. The second devolved into a sort of low-quality immature anime that used its half-baked plot purely to prop up flashy action sequences and tit shots.

Speaking of tits... the level of fan service in this game is borderline pathetic. Male characters and blades are given cool, sometimes monstrous designs, and yet nearly every single female character is reduced to cleavage and scraps of fabric concealing maybe a half-inch of their skin, as if all of their designs were thought of by a 13 year old hentai addict. Coupled with the fact that some of these characters look like genuine children, it's unsettling to say the least. My favorite character "truly finds herself" or whatever later in the game and that entails... a magical girl transformation which pumps her boobs like 2 sizes and leaves her in fancy panties.

Such a massive disappointment, going from a game that I genuinely loved in the beginning to a game I absolutely hate. I initially planned to play the entire trilogy, but as of now this entry has really soured my attitude on the entire franchise.

its too late for me atelier stole my heart and i cant go back to who i was anymore and while im actually playing ryza 2 rn i just wanted to explore some other installments in the series and i just got a damn interest in playing rorona because this was probably the most famously difficult one of the bunch because of the strict time limit and the profusely abundant lesbian sex scenes so i understand that people got really scared about this

now what im gonna say is that i actually found this pretty “easy” in the gameplay sense but god FUCK was it so stressful to have the time limits every 3 months just in front of my eyes constantly reminding me that time is relentless and death is a real thing

that to say that its not really too difficult to complete the tasks if you know what youre doing but its gonna be a damn chore to see everything in a single playthrough and i honestly dont know if you can actually do that like i had to concentrate on the events of a single character or else i would go fucking wild and not tackle a single flag for the little SoL scenes

anyway this is probably (for now) the game that emulates the most the gameplay flow of the original atelier marie and it honestly has a lot of different mechanics that are basically lifted from the original game the alchemy system is mostly the same the combat has some new tweaks here and there to make it more complex but the skeleton is the same and exploring is actually more complex than just pushing a button and seeing loots coming up

while marie actually had just a single final test they actually made this game have 12 assignments so that you could actually be guided to a good ending instead of being left with yourself and fuck around until you get a bad ending at the end and youre left with a sense of failure and regret and you wont ever play a single atelier game anymore in your life so yeah im half/half on this assignment system i gotta say it IS pretty stressful i gotta be honest with you here

so before getting in the meat of the stuff i gotta say the combat system is pretty fun you got normal RPG stuff but the main focus is item use and chain attacks which is so FUCKING fun compared to the first game and having different characters to use makes for a lot of customizing and experimentation and while they still overuse the recolors of some monsters the designs are pretty good so i can give them that

the alchemy system as i said is pretty simple but not without some challenging aspects here and there the final items in the repertoire will make you go fucking crazy for all the requirements they have im not joking some stuff is BUCK wild but i didnt care that much since i just cared to finish the game im a simple man

apart from this you got all the other juicy stuff some shops some side mechanics side quests and all that stuff but whats really fun for me is still the exploring and the gathering the different biomes and places youre gonna explore are just GORGEOUS and most of the time going around is just the best thing to do in the game (im not really a fan of the big stones just blocking your path but whatever this cant be a perfect game)

theres such a huge amount of items you can get from gathering and fighting monsters that its no surprise how many different tools and weapons and potions and shit you can make with all this stuff and rorona makes the good decision to just make pies i kinda get her

so whatever the game is pretty simple in that regard BUT what makes it 100% better are the characters most of the dudes in this game are super fucking charming and have a lot of great interactions with rorona who herself is probably one of the most fun atelier girls i got to know till now shes just the perfect balance of goofy and clever and this all makes for some great gag scenes that put a smile to my face not gonna lie

that being said most of the side characters has some kind of shtick going on and most of them are pretty great to interact with you should be the ones to decide with whom make 90+ friendship but my faves of the bunch were definitely lionela (i love her being shy around rorona shes the greatest schizophrenic fella i got the pleasure to meet and shes hot to boot in that esmeralda notre dame attire and shes also the one i had the most friendship with so you know how much i love her) then you have gio whos super hot but i didnt have the opportunity to get to know him more i wanted to get in his pants and shit but couldnt then you have sterk who is also pretty fucking hot but i decided to substitute him with the daddy im so sorry cutie if i ever replay this game youre gonna be my first option then . pamela is an highlight she has some pretty hilarious scenes hom is pretty interesting with the whole homunculus with emotions storyline iksel and cordelia were my favorite at the beginning but they were soon been kicked in the ass by other characters and to this day i have no idea how to hire tantris so theres that

i have some weird sentiments about astrid as a character and her predatory relationship with rorona i actually like her bayonetta lesbianism showing through her lazy master first impression but i dont think most of the puns actually hit for me they were too strange for me to actually enjoy but one of the main traits of her character is the fact that shes never present for rorona so i love the fact that i related with that missing parents aspect <3

moreso this game has a HUUUUUUUUUUGE amount of endings and of course getting all of them in one playthrough is impossible another reason to actually replay it and see what ending youre gonna get and i gotta say i got the lionela lesbian adventurer beggard ending and honestly ??? pretty happy with that i love for rorona to have a girlfriend and travel the world in poverty dont @ me

it was mainly because I did all the assignments right but my popularity was abysmal because I could not understand for the life of me how to make it increase and yeah there's a lot of things I still dont understand about this game let's be real but at least I breezed through it without getting too much angry thats already something

so ughhhhh what else to say oh yeah the music is pretty goated but at the same time a mixed bag mainly because the town tunes werent my thing and i didnt vibe with the 4 different shop ost arrangements of the same song but some battle themes fuck ASS god i have no idea who is composing these tracks throughout all the atelier games but theyre making a DAMN good job in the battle themes department good lord

so UGHHHHHHHHHHHHH theres that rorona is an interesting beast but i wouldnt recommend it as the first atelier game ryza is still the most beginner friendly of the bunch for me till now and im glad i actually got to know the time limits from atelier marie OG/remake so that i could be prepared to the type of gameflow i was gonna meet here but yeah its such a good game what the hell and im glad all these installments are pursuing the most evident aspect of the atelier series as a whole: lesbianism

when you finish the game theres some overtime where you get to know totori and meruru through some time traveling mess but ughhhhhhhhh i dont think im gonna get into it for now i played like 5 minutes of it and i decided that i dont want to spoil myself those characters (I think~~~ it's a plus/DX exclusive which means it probably has the preconception that players actually played totori and meruru too so that you could havr some good old fanservice so yeah) but im gonna be sure to check out the story events on youtube maybe theres actually some great interactions between the three idk i have no idea if someone is knowledgeable about this please come to my rescue i want to know if theres a threesome in here or something because as with marie after a while i just got tired of the same gameplay loop over and over again i dont know if i can go on with some time limit - less action now i just want to move on with the new installments lets see what im gonna do next stay tuned happy new year

side note this PC port was great all around but for some reason it didnt make me able to take screenshot both with nvidia overwhateversitsname and normal screenshots so umh i was actually suffering because i have to take screenshots of EVERYTHING be advised

yeah not a lot to see here even regarding the fact that i to this day have no idea what hello charlotte is really about apart from a thematically terrifying experience altogether thank you a lot for the traumas or whatever

so as the author also says in the little description this is and feels like an experiment and i can safely say that thats what this really is theres not a lot of story elements to talk about but even though this feels like a spin off of hello charlotte 2 it has some little hints of what was to come in hello charlotte 3 so that was pretty fun to explore also theres a lot of gore for some reason yeah etherane has always been so child friendly with these stories dont you agree

most of the elements were basically lifted from hc2 which means theres not really a lot to talk about but theres definitely some weird decisions in the “puzzle” department that i didnt really enjoy because that led to a lot of bad endings OR 10 minutes spent on searching all around the house for something to happen which can get pretty frustrating if you know you know but for a game that lasts for like 30 minutes isnt to much of a problem to me even though in that regard id prefer replaying hello charlotte 1

so ugh yeah as i said nothing too groundbreaking theres some recurring character saying hi and the inclusion of charlotte being a dick anri being a princess to be rescued and £$%&$£% being there just to make things more meta feels really reminiscent of the stuff you see on hello charlotte 3

whatever this is alright if someone is actually aware and can explain this series story to me please do that because i still have no idea what the fuck theyre trying to tell me my mind is gonna explode booting the first game was a mistake

There's all kinds of games that are a piece of the creator's childlike wonder, glee, beauty, et cetera. I'd find it difficult to name one that has the same kind of resonance this emanates from start to finish. Gentle, elegant, earnest and bringing you along the ride through a wonderfully crafted landscape of dreams. Sour, dance, play and gymnastics your way through the circus stage made for you. Fears and anxiety are formed only to melt away in the light.

I'll keep thinking about it as the music swells and shifts over the coming days. A lasting impression, of which Oshima himself noted that above all else, they wanted a character and an experience that someone would look at and think "the future looks bright." I'll dance atop that spire of hopeful joy they made.

This game is underrated. I'm not talking about it in terms of it's reception. It's sitting at 96% positive on steam with over 125k reviews so it's done quite well in that regard. Instead I'm focusing on videogame discussion because tomb raider is never brought up in any conversation involving best games or favorite games of the decade. After playing it, I can understand why but it's a shame because the potential and spark I see in this game makes me wish it took that slightly different direction that I wanted it to go in.

Tomb raider (2013) came out during the height of the Uncharted series. The third game had released a couple of years prior and thus Crystal Dynamics was quick to try and fill that void by coming up with their own rendition, through a series reboot of a forgotten franchise. While they did end up making a great game, I wonder how this trilogy would be talked about now, if it's primary inspiration came from Metal Gear Solid 3, instead of Uncharted.

Gameplay:

Tomb Raider borrows almost everything from Naughty Dog's magnum opus and props it into the newly revamped, gritty world of Lara Croft's misadventures. Cover shooting, shitty climbing minigames, cinematic action cutscenes, etc. all show up here. I like the way Lara controls in this game. I love the way the physics of her jump works as well as how good it feels to shoot the bow, especially on a controller. There are 4 main weapons in the game, 2 of which I feel are redundant. The pistol becomes useless once you get the rifle, and the shotgun isn't even the best option at close range but I can't gush enough about the bow. It is completely overpowered but sooo satisfying to use. I wish the weapons had more utility and unique interactions though. For example, it would be cool to use the rope bow to pull enemies towards you.

There is stealth in the game but it doesn't work after you kill your first enemy. Once you get that first kill, every enemy in that level is alerted to your presence. There are also light survival elements but none of them are too in-depth. You collect scrap from boxes and chests which you can use to upgrade your weapons. You loot ammo from dead bodies and ammo caches but I never felt the need to scramble for bullets because I never ran out. Overall, I think this game needs more variety. I felt bored after an hour of play session every time. It could've desperately used a survival system akin to MGS3. Imagine crawling through the dirt and muck of this hostile environment, trying to hunt for food, avoid disease and predators. I believe if the developers put more thought into the mechanics of survival and stealth instead of following the footsteps of Uncharted, this could've been a truly special game.

Narrative and Visuals:

The story is nothing to write home about but it does it's job. It portrays Lara's journey from being just an archaeologist to becoming a badass and it does it well. It doesn't do a great job of building up other characters or the comically evil antagonists for that matter, but not every story needs to be profound or have n-dimensional characters, it just needs to be entertaining and this game delivers.

The entire game is dripping with a depressing atmosphere. The blood and the gore are used to a great effect here. The castles are massive and foreboding, the enemy camps look like they've been put together using scraps, the caves are claustrophobic and truly pitch black. You can sometimes almost smell the rotting corpses that Lara has to wade through. It's actually too disgusting at times. A lot of the enemy designs are generic but it gets wild towards the end. The death animations for Lara are brutal but you become numb to them after dying to the same quick time event for the 1000th time.


In summary, Tomb Raider (2013) is Uncharted for sadomasochists.

3.5/5

To say nothing of either the state censorship this company has experienced from the government of China nor the uncritical anti-Chinese and anti-Communist frenzy that has rallied certain dumb ass gamers to this game...

Unlike Devotion, RedCandleGames' follow up project to this one, Detention isn't burdened by a proven boring mode of storytelling--the Blooper Team style horror walking sim--and so their talent for luring you into emotional complicity with the drama of the game is able to shine especially bright. I would say, except for the last 30 minutes (or last chapter) of this story, where things become ambiguous and surreal as psychological horror stories have always felt like they have to, Detention offers a really compelling story that is grounded in a place, time, and sequence of psychological motives. This is an emotional kind of horror, which is less scary but more haunting than anything made by (sorry to mention them again, they just suck this bad and are far too popular) Blippo Team. Detention is just about 2 hours long, I guess. It's a wonderful experience, with beautiful understated art, a simple control scheme that is operated with one hand, reminiscent in non-cringey ways of the great Silent Hill, and a really satisfying story as well. Along side maybe The Cat Lady, I think Detention is one of the best indie horror games that has graced any digital storefront.