It's like Wacca but flat, and it fucking owns. The tracklist has so many bangers (with surprisingly deep cuts) that I regularly run out of time trying to choose which song to play. My only real complaint with the game itself is if you're playing on a machine with an internet connection, the game adds another ~2 minutes of downtime in between songs due to account progression stuff that I genuinely don't care enough about to give the time of day. At a certain point, it's just funny seeing this battle pass thing level up all the time and giving you countless anime women avatars with massive honkers, but it's like I already have Reimu, why would I need anyone else? Fun game though. Has a very high amount of depth and the skill ceiling seems endlessly high, but at its core, it's very simple and very easy to pick up. Highly recommend.

Shadow of the Colossus was a bit of a love-hate experience for me personally, but overall, I quite loved playing through it. Mostly some amazing boss fights, with innovative and great mechanics, and breathtaking setpieces. In terms of complaints though, some of the mechanics frustrated me to no end. Besides the inherent gameplay jank that comes with the game's age (I can excuse this), I disliked how little the game hardly conveyed information to you on the things you need to do.

I feel a bit ashamed to admit I needed to look up guides to a few of the bosses, but seriously, some of these mechanics I never would have guessed unless I was directly told of them. It made progression sometimes very frustrating. I'm not really talking about navigation and exploration either, those were some of my favorite parts of the game. Most of my complaints lie in the bosses, but besides those complaints, as I don't really feel like getting super specific, when the bosses mechanically clicked, coming out on top at the end of a fight really did feel incredible. It felt triumphant in a way I haven't gotten from a game in a hot minute.

On another note though, it's really cool to think about how influential this game went on to be in the years following its release. Much of said influence went into several of my favorite games ever. Breath of the Wild of course, but besides the obvious, climbing the colossi and following set-out mechanics to come out on top, I was even reminded of my time playing things like Destiny, fighting raid bosses through epic setpieces I still think about almost three years since quitting the game. The comparison may be a bit out there, but it's still a connection I think holds at least some merit.

To put my feelings about this game in more general terms, this is one of those touchstone-type games that people have and will continue to look back on as the start of so many exciting things in the medium. Now that I've played the game, I look at my catalog of everything I played and wonder how many of them wouldn't be there if it weren't for what this game did. Very happy I found a copy and got around to playing it. And that ending was spectacular.

Also posted on my blog :)