Desnio
78 reviews liked by Desnio
This review contains spoilers
i'm of two minds about Sekiro. at times it feels like a great game hiding inside a mediocre one, and sometimes it feels like a mediocre game hiding inside a great one. there are moments where it is a deeply electrifying experience, and there are times where it feels utterly indistinct from the stock AAA formula.
let's start with the good: the one-on-one swordplay in this game is a delight. on a very fundamental level, it's not too dissimilar from the Batman Arkham combat that took 2010s AAA game design by storm: you have dodges and parries that you use in response to specific diagetic and non-diagetic (glowing swords, markers over people's heads) tells, and maintaining a consistent rhythm of combat builds up a meter that you can use to defeat enemies in one hit. sekiro is much more difficult than it's contemporaries in this style in a way that may obscure this similarity, but it is very much there, and it works brilliantly. sekiro has some of the best one-on-one swordfights in the medium, battles of constant aggression where backing off for even a moment to heal gives your opponent time to recover their posture, where a single mistake on your part changes the game, and where perfection is tantalizingly within grasp once you adjust to the game's rhythms. designers Masaru Yamamura and Yuki Fukuda and their design team - along with the game's fantastic audio and animations - are to be applauded for making a game that is experientally not a thousand times removed from a Batman Arkham/Punch-Out!! hybrid feel utterly fresh and unique. the game's combat admittedly loses something when you aren't up against human opponents: the all-too-frequent times you are up against animals strip away the core loop of perfect parries and well-timed dodges into a much less elegant game of hammering the dodge button to get away from unparseable flails of limbs, but even then it rarely devolves so much that the core enjoyment of the combat is no longer present. it's only once you slink away from a duel, back into the shadows, that the flaws begin to show in the game's technique.
the stealth...exists. i hesitate to call it bad but it's certainly not remarkable: if you've played any AAA open world game made in the past few years you know what you're getting here: hiding in tall grass or on branches and rooftops from patrolling enemies that you can kill in one hit by sneaking up behind them, and some distraction items and moves that you'll rarely if ever use because it's much more effective to just stab them in the back. stealth rarely feels like it is the cornerstone of an engaging encounter - only the sniper miniboss in Ashina Depths really felt like something that I had to make careful and considered use of stealth in order to make it through, and that may just be because I got there far too early - and usually either falls into thinning out a couple of enemies before a fight, or slowly picking them off one-by-one Arkham style. the one interesting thing Sekiro brings to the table is that you can take off one of a bosses (usually two) health bars by getting the drop on them, but this has a knock-on effect for the design of those bosses where if you don't get a drop on them, you just have to fight them twice, with only major bosses having different moves and patterns for different phases. technically speaking this rewards the stealth but I'm very tired of the go-to reward for this kind of AAA game being the ability to skip repetitious content. ultimately, like a modern Assassin's Creed or Horizon: Zero Dawn the stealth here would be unable to carry a full game, and just barely meets the boundaries of acceptability for what increasingly seems like an element these games simply must have.
this feeling of weary obligation manifests narratively as well. thematically, I dig what it is doing. this story about how clinging to life after one's time has passed produces a sickness of the soul that mutilates the self and destroys the world around you to sustain yourself is often resonant and occasionally powerful, but it's the moment-to-moment writing that really lets it down: characters are routinely flat and one-dimensional (the character of Owl is notably ill-served, being absent for almost the entire game before making a bizarre cartoonish turn to evil), the game is too eager to show you it's mysteries to really make the environmental storytelling sing (the monastery is theoretically my favorite narrative arc here but because The Deal is unveiled almost immediately there's no real escalation of information: you learn almost immediately that these guys made themselves into undying monsters through these freaky worms and there's precious little left to discover in the course of your adventure), and the game's refreshingly restrained storytelling for a big AAA game ultimately dooms this narrative to fade from the mind as quickly as it passes through the body. perhaps this could have been solved with more dialogue, but given that attempting to explore the narrative further "rewards" the player with a "true" ending that is total MCU sequel hook rubbish compared to the poignant normal endings, I'm not sure this is a quick fix. I do think the storytelling here is ultimately too slight, as the lack of space given to characters like Genichiro or places like Ashina to be understood as characters who have a coherent belief system or culture or context they are clinging to robs the game of a lot of the resonance it could potentially bring out by boiling things down to the point that the metaphors struggle to be gleamed through the Proper Nouns, but I think the wider problem is this game is far, far too long.
again, this is something sekiro very much has in common with it's contemporaries in the AAA space. Sekiro took me just over 30 hours to finish - with at least 4 hours dedicated to Final Boss Attempts alone because Good God - and I think you could have halved that and it would have twice the impact. i'm not really interested in speculating on what a hypothetical half-long Sekiro would look like, or Sek if you will, but certainly the game as it is empties it's bag of shinobi tricks (generously) about two thirds before the end, and relies on quite a few palette swapped enemies and bosses (it is a crime that the Chained Ogre is in here at all, let alone twice) as well as some truly sloppy designs (Demon of Hatred, Headless Ape) that don't gel at all with the experience the game is aiming for. somewhere in the imagination there exists a 12-15 hour Sekiro that excises the bosses that Just Don't Work, and focuses on the supremely polished, rock-hard core of the game that is consistently electrifying, but instead we have this bloated, confused, game that gets messier the more you step away from that ironclad heart.
inevitably, I am brought back to the question that dominates all my thoughts about sekiro: why? why is Sekiro like this? why did it feel the need to be 30 hours long? most linear action games without Open Worlds tend to clock in at either half of or a third of that length, so why does this have the length of an RPG? speaking of RPGs, why are the countless vestigial elements of currency, upgrades, that do little to enhance the core design here as well? why is this game riddled with unnecessary elements that either do not help it or actively undermine it? i'd almost say that it feels trapped in the poisonous swamp of some other, predecessor franchise from which many of these vestigial design elements originate from, the fanbase of which would expect a game with certain features and considerations and of a certain length, a fandom that would give tremendous benefit to this game by only viewing it through the narrow lens of the other games in this series rather than the wider industry design trends that it is clearly in conversation with, and that Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice ultimately wounded itself in order to accommodate a formula set down by these prior games that the developers are tragically wedded to despite said formula not truly fitting with the core design of this fundamentally distinct experience...but I couldn't possibly think of what that might be. i'm pretty sure from software didn't develop The Surge, after all.
perhaps we should count our blessings: at least it didn't try to infect itself with an Open World.
let's start with the good: the one-on-one swordplay in this game is a delight. on a very fundamental level, it's not too dissimilar from the Batman Arkham combat that took 2010s AAA game design by storm: you have dodges and parries that you use in response to specific diagetic and non-diagetic (glowing swords, markers over people's heads) tells, and maintaining a consistent rhythm of combat builds up a meter that you can use to defeat enemies in one hit. sekiro is much more difficult than it's contemporaries in this style in a way that may obscure this similarity, but it is very much there, and it works brilliantly. sekiro has some of the best one-on-one swordfights in the medium, battles of constant aggression where backing off for even a moment to heal gives your opponent time to recover their posture, where a single mistake on your part changes the game, and where perfection is tantalizingly within grasp once you adjust to the game's rhythms. designers Masaru Yamamura and Yuki Fukuda and their design team - along with the game's fantastic audio and animations - are to be applauded for making a game that is experientally not a thousand times removed from a Batman Arkham/Punch-Out!! hybrid feel utterly fresh and unique. the game's combat admittedly loses something when you aren't up against human opponents: the all-too-frequent times you are up against animals strip away the core loop of perfect parries and well-timed dodges into a much less elegant game of hammering the dodge button to get away from unparseable flails of limbs, but even then it rarely devolves so much that the core enjoyment of the combat is no longer present. it's only once you slink away from a duel, back into the shadows, that the flaws begin to show in the game's technique.
the stealth...exists. i hesitate to call it bad but it's certainly not remarkable: if you've played any AAA open world game made in the past few years you know what you're getting here: hiding in tall grass or on branches and rooftops from patrolling enemies that you can kill in one hit by sneaking up behind them, and some distraction items and moves that you'll rarely if ever use because it's much more effective to just stab them in the back. stealth rarely feels like it is the cornerstone of an engaging encounter - only the sniper miniboss in Ashina Depths really felt like something that I had to make careful and considered use of stealth in order to make it through, and that may just be because I got there far too early - and usually either falls into thinning out a couple of enemies before a fight, or slowly picking them off one-by-one Arkham style. the one interesting thing Sekiro brings to the table is that you can take off one of a bosses (usually two) health bars by getting the drop on them, but this has a knock-on effect for the design of those bosses where if you don't get a drop on them, you just have to fight them twice, with only major bosses having different moves and patterns for different phases. technically speaking this rewards the stealth but I'm very tired of the go-to reward for this kind of AAA game being the ability to skip repetitious content. ultimately, like a modern Assassin's Creed or Horizon: Zero Dawn the stealth here would be unable to carry a full game, and just barely meets the boundaries of acceptability for what increasingly seems like an element these games simply must have.
this feeling of weary obligation manifests narratively as well. thematically, I dig what it is doing. this story about how clinging to life after one's time has passed produces a sickness of the soul that mutilates the self and destroys the world around you to sustain yourself is often resonant and occasionally powerful, but it's the moment-to-moment writing that really lets it down: characters are routinely flat and one-dimensional (the character of Owl is notably ill-served, being absent for almost the entire game before making a bizarre cartoonish turn to evil), the game is too eager to show you it's mysteries to really make the environmental storytelling sing (the monastery is theoretically my favorite narrative arc here but because The Deal is unveiled almost immediately there's no real escalation of information: you learn almost immediately that these guys made themselves into undying monsters through these freaky worms and there's precious little left to discover in the course of your adventure), and the game's refreshingly restrained storytelling for a big AAA game ultimately dooms this narrative to fade from the mind as quickly as it passes through the body. perhaps this could have been solved with more dialogue, but given that attempting to explore the narrative further "rewards" the player with a "true" ending that is total MCU sequel hook rubbish compared to the poignant normal endings, I'm not sure this is a quick fix. I do think the storytelling here is ultimately too slight, as the lack of space given to characters like Genichiro or places like Ashina to be understood as characters who have a coherent belief system or culture or context they are clinging to robs the game of a lot of the resonance it could potentially bring out by boiling things down to the point that the metaphors struggle to be gleamed through the Proper Nouns, but I think the wider problem is this game is far, far too long.
again, this is something sekiro very much has in common with it's contemporaries in the AAA space. Sekiro took me just over 30 hours to finish - with at least 4 hours dedicated to Final Boss Attempts alone because Good God - and I think you could have halved that and it would have twice the impact. i'm not really interested in speculating on what a hypothetical half-long Sekiro would look like, or Sek if you will, but certainly the game as it is empties it's bag of shinobi tricks (generously) about two thirds before the end, and relies on quite a few palette swapped enemies and bosses (it is a crime that the Chained Ogre is in here at all, let alone twice) as well as some truly sloppy designs (Demon of Hatred, Headless Ape) that don't gel at all with the experience the game is aiming for. somewhere in the imagination there exists a 12-15 hour Sekiro that excises the bosses that Just Don't Work, and focuses on the supremely polished, rock-hard core of the game that is consistently electrifying, but instead we have this bloated, confused, game that gets messier the more you step away from that ironclad heart.
inevitably, I am brought back to the question that dominates all my thoughts about sekiro: why? why is Sekiro like this? why did it feel the need to be 30 hours long? most linear action games without Open Worlds tend to clock in at either half of or a third of that length, so why does this have the length of an RPG? speaking of RPGs, why are the countless vestigial elements of currency, upgrades, that do little to enhance the core design here as well? why is this game riddled with unnecessary elements that either do not help it or actively undermine it? i'd almost say that it feels trapped in the poisonous swamp of some other, predecessor franchise from which many of these vestigial design elements originate from, the fanbase of which would expect a game with certain features and considerations and of a certain length, a fandom that would give tremendous benefit to this game by only viewing it through the narrow lens of the other games in this series rather than the wider industry design trends that it is clearly in conversation with, and that Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice ultimately wounded itself in order to accommodate a formula set down by these prior games that the developers are tragically wedded to despite said formula not truly fitting with the core design of this fundamentally distinct experience...but I couldn't possibly think of what that might be. i'm pretty sure from software didn't develop The Surge, after all.
perhaps we should count our blessings: at least it didn't try to infect itself with an Open World.
NieR: Automata
2017
This review contains spoilers
If I came away from my second playthrough of Automata with a stronger sense of what works about it, I'd say this third playthrough (and to clarify, I do mean playthrough in the sense of endings A to E, each time deleting my save file, on top of doing a healthy amount of side content in my third and latest playthrough) has been illuminating in what doesn't really work about Nier Automata. That being said, lemme start off with some new positive takeaways: I actually kinda like a lot of the side quests, the fact they contain both extrinsic and intrinsic rewards makes them feel like a welcome addition -- not all of them landed, but I think my favorite aspect with a few of them was you could get a special ambient music track that plays upon completion. It's cute! I also think the chip system is conceptually one of my favorite ways to customize characters in any game I've played, and it's a lot more engaging than the somewhat odd words system from Gestalt/Replicant. People have talked endlessly about the ludonarrative aspects of the system or whatever, so I won't get into that I just think it's cool as hell!
The chips themselves kinda fuckin' suck though and there really isn't a whole lot interesting they can do, like if Final Fantasy VII only had magic materia or something. By the end of the game you're basically a god if you're building your chip set correctly; spamming berserker mode with A2 is pretty easy when your chips don't let you die! While I'm a Drakengard 3 girl so having intoner mode with some tangible stakes is fucking awesome, there just isn't enough sauce to the gameplay and chips don't do a whole lot to alleviate that due to being boring as fuck in terms of effects, so you're kind of left choosing between busted ass chips or a more frustrating gameplay experience. It makes the shmup sections pretty toothless as well, which already feel especially tiring towards the end since literally nothing changes about them from the first hour all the way into the last.
But don't get me wrong, Nier Automata is still a pretty damn solid game, just in that Final Fantasy VIII/Twilight Princess sorta way where the script feels off at times and the gameplay is wonky or often tedious, but ultimately end up being pretty satisfying aesthetic experiences with several effective moments. The characters are kinda just a mixed bag, 2B had potential, but even with the metanarrative (and eventual in-universe confirmation? idfk the lore i hate lore) that she's a toned down Kainé-like, her best moments are often just her looking cool as hell in a cutscene where she's like cutting a giant robot in half or something, but even then it sometimes ends up feeling like a Disneyland cutscene version of an active gameplay mechanic in Metal Gear Rising. Which has value, don't get me wrong, she is definitely fucking cool, but as a character she's just kinda nothing outside of her lightly implied romantic interactions with 6O and her eventual familial (?) affection for 9S.
9S as the anti-Nier actually works better for me the more I play through this game. Probably one of the most common criticisms of the C&D plotline is that if 9S had just been given the reason why A2 killed 2B that the conflict would have been resolved, but the game itself directly subverts that assumption both when 9S is confronted with truth and still aims to murder A2 and in how it frames 9S's toxic relationship and possessiveness with 2B as bordering on obsessively violent. 9S doesn't respect the bodily autonomy of either A2 or 2B, which one could potentially interpret as a mirror of the average male gamer who might themselves be frustrated with the death of 2B and the loss of a figure of affection/lust. I think that's what it's going for? I like the whole "Shinji Ikari if he had his brain jacked into Reddit" dealie, but again you're either left with something thematically bare on the surface or a theme that assumes the audience to be something that may not really pertain to them. Which is fine honestly, I love throwing whiny incels under the bus as much as the next girl, and I think there's probably more to dig into in that regard, but at the same time Nier Automata can be a bit disappointingly surface level at times despite the implication that there's more going on, but whether due to rushed development or just out of some notion of simplifying the themes for a broader audience it sometimes leaves me more perplexed or patronized than entertained.
Anyways here's some more things that didn't work for me third time 'round that I don't really feel like expounding on too deeply: the children mass suicide scene feels awkward and unearned (though the Pascal's memory wipe aspect kinda works?), I'm increasingly not a fan of 2B's dodge since it's just a Happy Meal version of Bayonetta's Witch Time while also having a pretty unsatisfying animation on top of trivializing any incoming damage, and uh, pretty much anytime they try to do something with YoRHa and the Bunker it ends up being cringy or played way too straight? Like isn't the commander kind of a bad person? Idk man, it's just fuckin' weird! There are similar issues that pop in other Taro titles: some kinda unintentionally fucking bizarre cutscenes in DoD1 and the growth of Gestalt/Replicant's characters' relationships feel a bit rushed in the first half, but those two games have a lot more to make up for that imho.
The most glowing praise I can give Automata is that there's an almost EarthBoundian quality to how each line of dialogue means more than they say, yet the MOTHER series thrives on strong impressions to carry its emotional thrusts across gaps in characterization, which Automata can't quite manage. Like in EarthBound you know that Ness is brave to a fault, Paula is mature for her age and feels like a voice of strength and reason for the group, Jeff is a nerd who's out of his depths but is trying his best (also a softly implied romance with his best friend Tony), and Poo's a prince who everybody loves but has competency to justify the adoration he receives (and really the magic of EarthBound is somebody else might have a different interpretation of said characters, but that just goes to show how impressive it is that Itoi managed to do so much with so little). I don't really get that with every major character in Nier Automata despite them having substantially more dialogue; I couldn't really tell you any specific quality of 2B, 9S (in the first half), and the commander's characterizations. The standouts are probably 6O and Pascal (even if the latter can be a bit dull compared to Gestalt/Replicant's Emil), with 6O's relationship with 2B being particularly meaningful for both characters in a world where they don't have anybody else to lean on, which is kinda dampened by both of them, you know, dying. Square Enix has gotta stop burying their gays...
While I did find dollar store Kainé and Grimoire Weiss in the C&D playthrough pretty cute, A2 and Pod 042's banter feels like too little too late in a game whose moment-to-moment dialogue can feel notably dry compared to pretty much any other game in the series. It would prolly be less noticeable if 2B and 9S didn't often repeat the same kinda predictable lines about "but they are machines they have no feelings...", which ends up being particularly grating after you've just spent 3 hours doing side quests for robots who very obviously have feelings and desires and people they care about!! Overall the way Automata attempts to extend that theme of dehumanizing one's enemies from Gestalt/Replicant by directly confronting the characters with their enemy's inherent personhood is a mixed bag. Sometimes it's effective, and other times it can feel as if it's justifying the violence by portraying the machine's -- and by extension, YoHAa unit's -- personhood as inauthentic. But at the same time I can see how somebody else might interpret that as the creators not wanting to stand on a soapbox and instead opted for a more digestible version of the splotchy morality that the Drakengard series often goes for. I guess it just comes off to me, personally, as sometimes being intellectually incurious of the themes of morality and humanism that it's seemingly trying to tackle.
Automata is still undeniably a special game, but like its creative siblings it's def an imperfect experience. It'd probably be way better if playthrough B was condensed even further, or if the shmup sections were more varied, or any number of other things, but the older I get the less I get hung up on flaws in special games. Why deny ourselves of the parts that do work? There's this one side quest that you can access starting in playthrough A that involves running around a level you've already been to collecting objects that lack even a visual representation within the game engine. It's not particularly difficult and it's over pretty quickly, but it's the ending dialogue that stuck with me. I can't remember the exact words, and I think in this case it shouldn't matter because to me it's the thesis of Automata and something to consider that can enhance one's experience of any given piece of media: disregarding the objective state of a game or film or whatever, it's all happening inside our heads, an abstraction of an abstraction. In the end, it's up to us what to make of it.
The chips themselves kinda fuckin' suck though and there really isn't a whole lot interesting they can do, like if Final Fantasy VII only had magic materia or something. By the end of the game you're basically a god if you're building your chip set correctly; spamming berserker mode with A2 is pretty easy when your chips don't let you die! While I'm a Drakengard 3 girl so having intoner mode with some tangible stakes is fucking awesome, there just isn't enough sauce to the gameplay and chips don't do a whole lot to alleviate that due to being boring as fuck in terms of effects, so you're kind of left choosing between busted ass chips or a more frustrating gameplay experience. It makes the shmup sections pretty toothless as well, which already feel especially tiring towards the end since literally nothing changes about them from the first hour all the way into the last.
But don't get me wrong, Nier Automata is still a pretty damn solid game, just in that Final Fantasy VIII/Twilight Princess sorta way where the script feels off at times and the gameplay is wonky or often tedious, but ultimately end up being pretty satisfying aesthetic experiences with several effective moments. The characters are kinda just a mixed bag, 2B had potential, but even with the metanarrative (and eventual in-universe confirmation? idfk the lore i hate lore) that she's a toned down Kainé-like, her best moments are often just her looking cool as hell in a cutscene where she's like cutting a giant robot in half or something, but even then it sometimes ends up feeling like a Disneyland cutscene version of an active gameplay mechanic in Metal Gear Rising. Which has value, don't get me wrong, she is definitely fucking cool, but as a character she's just kinda nothing outside of her lightly implied romantic interactions with 6O and her eventual familial (?) affection for 9S.
9S as the anti-Nier actually works better for me the more I play through this game. Probably one of the most common criticisms of the C&D plotline is that if 9S had just been given the reason why A2 killed 2B that the conflict would have been resolved, but the game itself directly subverts that assumption both when 9S is confronted with truth and still aims to murder A2 and in how it frames 9S's toxic relationship and possessiveness with 2B as bordering on obsessively violent. 9S doesn't respect the bodily autonomy of either A2 or 2B, which one could potentially interpret as a mirror of the average male gamer who might themselves be frustrated with the death of 2B and the loss of a figure of affection/lust. I think that's what it's going for? I like the whole "Shinji Ikari if he had his brain jacked into Reddit" dealie, but again you're either left with something thematically bare on the surface or a theme that assumes the audience to be something that may not really pertain to them. Which is fine honestly, I love throwing whiny incels under the bus as much as the next girl, and I think there's probably more to dig into in that regard, but at the same time Nier Automata can be a bit disappointingly surface level at times despite the implication that there's more going on, but whether due to rushed development or just out of some notion of simplifying the themes for a broader audience it sometimes leaves me more perplexed or patronized than entertained.
Anyways here's some more things that didn't work for me third time 'round that I don't really feel like expounding on too deeply: the children mass suicide scene feels awkward and unearned (though the Pascal's memory wipe aspect kinda works?), I'm increasingly not a fan of 2B's dodge since it's just a Happy Meal version of Bayonetta's Witch Time while also having a pretty unsatisfying animation on top of trivializing any incoming damage, and uh, pretty much anytime they try to do something with YoRHa and the Bunker it ends up being cringy or played way too straight? Like isn't the commander kind of a bad person? Idk man, it's just fuckin' weird! There are similar issues that pop in other Taro titles: some kinda unintentionally fucking bizarre cutscenes in DoD1 and the growth of Gestalt/Replicant's characters' relationships feel a bit rushed in the first half, but those two games have a lot more to make up for that imho.
The most glowing praise I can give Automata is that there's an almost EarthBoundian quality to how each line of dialogue means more than they say, yet the MOTHER series thrives on strong impressions to carry its emotional thrusts across gaps in characterization, which Automata can't quite manage. Like in EarthBound you know that Ness is brave to a fault, Paula is mature for her age and feels like a voice of strength and reason for the group, Jeff is a nerd who's out of his depths but is trying his best (also a softly implied romance with his best friend Tony), and Poo's a prince who everybody loves but has competency to justify the adoration he receives (and really the magic of EarthBound is somebody else might have a different interpretation of said characters, but that just goes to show how impressive it is that Itoi managed to do so much with so little). I don't really get that with every major character in Nier Automata despite them having substantially more dialogue; I couldn't really tell you any specific quality of 2B, 9S (in the first half), and the commander's characterizations. The standouts are probably 6O and Pascal (even if the latter can be a bit dull compared to Gestalt/Replicant's Emil), with 6O's relationship with 2B being particularly meaningful for both characters in a world where they don't have anybody else to lean on, which is kinda dampened by both of them, you know, dying. Square Enix has gotta stop burying their gays...
While I did find dollar store Kainé and Grimoire Weiss in the C&D playthrough pretty cute, A2 and Pod 042's banter feels like too little too late in a game whose moment-to-moment dialogue can feel notably dry compared to pretty much any other game in the series. It would prolly be less noticeable if 2B and 9S didn't often repeat the same kinda predictable lines about "but they are machines they have no feelings...", which ends up being particularly grating after you've just spent 3 hours doing side quests for robots who very obviously have feelings and desires and people they care about!! Overall the way Automata attempts to extend that theme of dehumanizing one's enemies from Gestalt/Replicant by directly confronting the characters with their enemy's inherent personhood is a mixed bag. Sometimes it's effective, and other times it can feel as if it's justifying the violence by portraying the machine's -- and by extension, YoHAa unit's -- personhood as inauthentic. But at the same time I can see how somebody else might interpret that as the creators not wanting to stand on a soapbox and instead opted for a more digestible version of the splotchy morality that the Drakengard series often goes for. I guess it just comes off to me, personally, as sometimes being intellectually incurious of the themes of morality and humanism that it's seemingly trying to tackle.
Automata is still undeniably a special game, but like its creative siblings it's def an imperfect experience. It'd probably be way better if playthrough B was condensed even further, or if the shmup sections were more varied, or any number of other things, but the older I get the less I get hung up on flaws in special games. Why deny ourselves of the parts that do work? There's this one side quest that you can access starting in playthrough A that involves running around a level you've already been to collecting objects that lack even a visual representation within the game engine. It's not particularly difficult and it's over pretty quickly, but it's the ending dialogue that stuck with me. I can't remember the exact words, and I think in this case it shouldn't matter because to me it's the thesis of Automata and something to consider that can enhance one's experience of any given piece of media: disregarding the objective state of a game or film or whatever, it's all happening inside our heads, an abstraction of an abstraction. In the end, it's up to us what to make of it.
Lies of P
2023
Being the thrifty gamer girl I am, I decided to check this out through Game Pass for $1, and I don't really regret it! There's a few cool expansions on the FromSoft Souls formula here, and I wanna say in a lot of ways the combat is just strictly better than FromSoft's. I'd say it feels a little inelegant, but I appreciate how the game attempts to keep you engaged in combat and incentivizes a healthy balance of guarding and dodging.
It's impressive how well they've replicated the basic framework of FromSoft's games; it almost reminds me of those extremely confident Super Mario 64/Banjo-Kazooie clones of the late 90s and early 00s. But much like those games, even with the new toys Lies of P introduces, the familiarity does start to set in, especially when you're going through the motions of the levels themselves. Oddly, I wasn't really filtered per se -- I beat the first boss second try -- but after I encountered Lies of P's version of a crystal lizard, I made it to a robot bonfire and decided to just throw in the towel.
Really nothing personal against Lies of P, I just find it hard to imagine it's gonna do anything for me that the FromSoft Souls titles already haven't. If anything, I'm glad this game exists for the people who are still hungry for this style of game, and hopefully steps on FromSoft's toes enough for them to step up their game with Elden Ring 2 or whatever they do next (though I also really wanna see Round8 themselves step up their game on the level design and expanding past the basic souls-like fare in their next game).
It's impressive how well they've replicated the basic framework of FromSoft's games; it almost reminds me of those extremely confident Super Mario 64/Banjo-Kazooie clones of the late 90s and early 00s. But much like those games, even with the new toys Lies of P introduces, the familiarity does start to set in, especially when you're going through the motions of the levels themselves. Oddly, I wasn't really filtered per se -- I beat the first boss second try -- but after I encountered Lies of P's version of a crystal lizard, I made it to a robot bonfire and decided to just throw in the towel.
Really nothing personal against Lies of P, I just find it hard to imagine it's gonna do anything for me that the FromSoft Souls titles already haven't. If anything, I'm glad this game exists for the people who are still hungry for this style of game, and hopefully steps on FromSoft's toes enough for them to step up their game with Elden Ring 2 or whatever they do next (though I also really wanna see Round8 themselves step up their game on the level design and expanding past the basic souls-like fare in their next game).
Baldur's Gate 3
2020
After about 100-ish accumulated hours, I think I've had my fill on Baldur's Gate 3. Some of that is just how much I'm able to tolerate the sort of loosely content-driven nature of the western-developed open world RPG -- which BG3 isn't necessarily open world, I actually really love how tightly designed its overworld maps are, but unfortunately it does happen to share many of the same pitfalls that tend to wear me down in those games like endless vendor trash and dogshit inventory management. But I also feel like there's something missing from the game itself that would elevate the experience to something truly incredible, and I can't quite put my finger on what that could be.
Maybe it's that the game's narrative feels somewhat devoid of meaning or message; it feels like a means to an end for the developers and writers to get to the important combat set pieces. But even then I can respect how difficult that can be to implement in a game that's largely about fulfilling personal fantasies through diverse and emergent gameplay. On the other hand, Larian has kinda compromised true freedom for a facade of sorts, dialogue trees are bland and the dialogue pacing itself can feel jerky and awkward -- and I say this having not played the game as the Dark Urge, so maybe that could potentially alleviate this little peeve of mine -- but it doesn't feel like there's enough functional variance to make that feel more understandable.
I love the party members, but it's disappointing how rarely they ever play off each other. I get that there's so many variables at play that they can't reasonably have a conversation ready for every set of characters in every situation, but even just having banter at the campsite would've gone a long way. The vast majority of the game's dialogue is the game talking at you, but even then it rarely even feels like a conversation. The whole romance aspect is probably the most revelatory of all though: I'm just really, really not a fan of how western RPGs (and a few non-western RPGs like modern Fire Emblem and Persona) implement romance as this utilitarian content thing. I think the only time I've walked away from a modern game with player character romance options somewhat fulfilled was Judy's romance in Cyberpunk 2077 (and even that had its issues, like the "sex" scene that felt like they just stole animations from a Second Life NSFW server). Anyways, my point is kinda just, in the pursuit of making a world where they want you to go about things in your own way, they've created an entire framework that exists purely for the player at all times -- even within the facets of the game that should feel more human.
And before I let this whole thing run away as purely negative, which has not been my intention at all, because ultimately I think very highly of the game and there is A LOT that I do love about Baldur's Gate 3: the main party has cool and distinctive designs, the music (while a bit safe) is always pleasant and appropriately utilized, like I said earlier the scope of the world and the design of its maps are how I wish more modern devs would handle the scale of their games instead of just big open maps, I really enjoy the combat even if the 5e power scaling kinda hurts the pacing more than it helps it, the game is gorgeous on the whole, and I think the voice acting is pretty fuckin' great! The entire package of Baldur's Gate 3 is undeniably incredible; it's a landmark title and it honestly deserved getting so many GOTY awards (though personally I just found 2023 to be lacking in amazing experiences, mostly being a deluge of decent to good titles, and Baldur's Gate 3 was the real standout for me).
But, I think it also has illuminated a lot of Larian's weaknesses if their other games hadn't done so already, and Larian being able to address those or not in future titles is gonna be the deciding factor on if they become the next BioWare/Bethesda (in a bad way). Like, they seem to have solid writers, but the structure of the game just does none of that narrative justice. Dialogue is exhausting and annoying for the most part, more CRPG devs need to do the Disco Elysium thing of putting it in an easily readable sidebar. If what I've heard about Dark Urge origin is to be trusted, it makes me want to see them do something more focused on a specific character framework instead of spreading themselves thin with seven origin characters and a blank slate -- say what you will about the Mass Effect trilogy, particularly its politics lol, but having a singular character anchored into the world was clearly economically effective (in terms of development resources and probably money) for the scale of each project, and effective at allowing the player to roleplay meaningfully at the cost of freedom. Or just lean harder into that freedom aspect, make the dialogue a more meaningful part of the experience, and not just feeling like the part of the game where you have to eat your vegetables before getting back to the good stuff (i.e. murdering all the bad guys on the map).
Maybe I'm talking out of my ass, but I'm at least speaking for what I am personally craving from one of these RPGs. It was a bit frustrating how close BG3 came to satiating this feeling I've been left with post-Mass Effect 3 disappointment, but ultimately BG3 didn't really stick the landing for me and that has kinda sucked, especially when I think it's otherwise a pretty fun experience. Also like, at least allow me to have Karlach, Shadowheart, and Lae'zel be in a relationship if you want the game to be hinged on this design theme of indulgent, hedonistic freedom. Not sure if that's a real complaint or if I'm just trying to find an excuse to bring up gay things in my reviews like usual, I just want to see them all hold hands or something, all these party members very clearly want to kiss each other and Larian won't let them... I don't even really want a romance when I'm playing as Tav (cuz like I said the romance feels so empty when it's just a game talking at nothing lol) I want to see the actual characters be happy with each other!! Idk let Astarion make out with Gale or something, if these people really are so horny, they should canonically be fucking each other too or something, man.
Kinda lost the thread here, but uh, what's something inflammatory I can end this on. Oh, how about: Baldur's Gate 3 is the first game I've ever played that makes content-driven media seem good actually. Hm, too back-handed and maybe not even true. Baldur's Gate 3 is the Chrono Trigger of CRPGS? Not sure what that means tbh. Let's just take a little of both: Baldur's Gate 3 is simultaneously the best Dragon Age game and the best Elder Scrolls game released in the past 15 years. It's also somehow less racist than Mass Effect? Idk man, maybe I should've played Planescape: Torment instead.
Maybe it's that the game's narrative feels somewhat devoid of meaning or message; it feels like a means to an end for the developers and writers to get to the important combat set pieces. But even then I can respect how difficult that can be to implement in a game that's largely about fulfilling personal fantasies through diverse and emergent gameplay. On the other hand, Larian has kinda compromised true freedom for a facade of sorts, dialogue trees are bland and the dialogue pacing itself can feel jerky and awkward -- and I say this having not played the game as the Dark Urge, so maybe that could potentially alleviate this little peeve of mine -- but it doesn't feel like there's enough functional variance to make that feel more understandable.
I love the party members, but it's disappointing how rarely they ever play off each other. I get that there's so many variables at play that they can't reasonably have a conversation ready for every set of characters in every situation, but even just having banter at the campsite would've gone a long way. The vast majority of the game's dialogue is the game talking at you, but even then it rarely even feels like a conversation. The whole romance aspect is probably the most revelatory of all though: I'm just really, really not a fan of how western RPGs (and a few non-western RPGs like modern Fire Emblem and Persona) implement romance as this utilitarian content thing. I think the only time I've walked away from a modern game with player character romance options somewhat fulfilled was Judy's romance in Cyberpunk 2077 (and even that had its issues, like the "sex" scene that felt like they just stole animations from a Second Life NSFW server). Anyways, my point is kinda just, in the pursuit of making a world where they want you to go about things in your own way, they've created an entire framework that exists purely for the player at all times -- even within the facets of the game that should feel more human.
And before I let this whole thing run away as purely negative, which has not been my intention at all, because ultimately I think very highly of the game and there is A LOT that I do love about Baldur's Gate 3: the main party has cool and distinctive designs, the music (while a bit safe) is always pleasant and appropriately utilized, like I said earlier the scope of the world and the design of its maps are how I wish more modern devs would handle the scale of their games instead of just big open maps, I really enjoy the combat even if the 5e power scaling kinda hurts the pacing more than it helps it, the game is gorgeous on the whole, and I think the voice acting is pretty fuckin' great! The entire package of Baldur's Gate 3 is undeniably incredible; it's a landmark title and it honestly deserved getting so many GOTY awards (though personally I just found 2023 to be lacking in amazing experiences, mostly being a deluge of decent to good titles, and Baldur's Gate 3 was the real standout for me).
But, I think it also has illuminated a lot of Larian's weaknesses if their other games hadn't done so already, and Larian being able to address those or not in future titles is gonna be the deciding factor on if they become the next BioWare/Bethesda (in a bad way). Like, they seem to have solid writers, but the structure of the game just does none of that narrative justice. Dialogue is exhausting and annoying for the most part, more CRPG devs need to do the Disco Elysium thing of putting it in an easily readable sidebar. If what I've heard about Dark Urge origin is to be trusted, it makes me want to see them do something more focused on a specific character framework instead of spreading themselves thin with seven origin characters and a blank slate -- say what you will about the Mass Effect trilogy, particularly its politics lol, but having a singular character anchored into the world was clearly economically effective (in terms of development resources and probably money) for the scale of each project, and effective at allowing the player to roleplay meaningfully at the cost of freedom. Or just lean harder into that freedom aspect, make the dialogue a more meaningful part of the experience, and not just feeling like the part of the game where you have to eat your vegetables before getting back to the good stuff (i.e. murdering all the bad guys on the map).
Maybe I'm talking out of my ass, but I'm at least speaking for what I am personally craving from one of these RPGs. It was a bit frustrating how close BG3 came to satiating this feeling I've been left with post-Mass Effect 3 disappointment, but ultimately BG3 didn't really stick the landing for me and that has kinda sucked, especially when I think it's otherwise a pretty fun experience. Also like, at least allow me to have Karlach, Shadowheart, and Lae'zel be in a relationship if you want the game to be hinged on this design theme of indulgent, hedonistic freedom. Not sure if that's a real complaint or if I'm just trying to find an excuse to bring up gay things in my reviews like usual, I just want to see them all hold hands or something, all these party members very clearly want to kiss each other and Larian won't let them... I don't even really want a romance when I'm playing as Tav (cuz like I said the romance feels so empty when it's just a game talking at nothing lol) I want to see the actual characters be happy with each other!! Idk let Astarion make out with Gale or something, if these people really are so horny, they should canonically be fucking each other too or something, man.
Kinda lost the thread here, but uh, what's something inflammatory I can end this on. Oh, how about: Baldur's Gate 3 is the first game I've ever played that makes content-driven media seem good actually. Hm, too back-handed and maybe not even true. Baldur's Gate 3 is the Chrono Trigger of CRPGS? Not sure what that means tbh. Let's just take a little of both: Baldur's Gate 3 is simultaneously the best Dragon Age game and the best Elder Scrolls game released in the past 15 years. It's also somehow less racist than Mass Effect? Idk man, maybe I should've played Planescape: Torment instead.
Lies of P
2023
Deeply impressed how well everything comes together in this game, they manage to convey the satisfaction of fromsoft games while also improving/changing core mechanics and adding other things and it all flows and works together amazingly well. i was blown away by the gameplay and boss/enemy/level design, but what i ESPECIALLY didnt see coming is the story being such a touching and beautiful, thoughtful and emotional play on Pinocchio while also adding so much interesting world building and characterization that just makes my head spin. wish it was a bit harder, but hopefully that comes in the dlc. incredible, play it
Live A Live
2022
This review contains spoilers
A SLIME draws near!
Command?
> FIGHT
OERSTED attacks!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
there's nothing new under the sun.
it's a pithy statement to the point of reductiveness, as such things usually are, but there is a truth to it, not one that condemns, but one that liberates. forgive me for drinking deep of the well of ideology here, but even though all of us may indeed be the products of the words and systems that surround us, no one is quite the same combination of influences as any other, which gives us a wholly unique perspective. but this is also why ensuring our horizons are broad is important, because although we can never widen our scope enough to take in everything, narrowing it in turn only presses the walls in around us, and leaves us with only one path forward.
dragon quest, then, is not a wholly unique game that sprung fully-formed out onto the famicom, but was once that represented a conscious effort to translate a specific mode of game - the popular pc rpgs of the time like wizardry and ultima - and many of the decisions it made clearly have immense thought and care put into them as a result of this, and the result was a game that changed the landscape of the entire industry. but in doing so, it provided a template, a set story for how these things go. defeat monsters. gather experience. explore dungeons. destroy T̵̲̼͆̅͘ͅȟ̸̲̇e̷̡̬̪͛ ̶͙̰͇̍̓̏L̵̪̽̒͌o̷͍͛r̴͖̙͋̾̕d̸̘̜͔̅̋̽ ̷̳͌́̑o̸̪͌̚f̶̗̹͓̆͂ ̶̗̗͊Ḍ̴̪̽͠a̸̙͌̍r̸̜͎̾k̶̻̽.
games that came in dragon quest's wake drew from this story, telling it over and over again. i do not wish to claim here that dragon quest is the only truly original work in the entire jrpg form because that's clearly a completely unhinged and wrong thing to say, but i do wish to argue that the things dragon quest put thought and care into creating were adopted wholesale, without the same level of purposefulness, by many other games, creating an intrinsic language of expectation and reference that in turn provides a bedrock of norms through which audiences and creators can process the form. this is useful, both artistically and financially for both the audience and the artist, but by it's nature it narrows the scope of the form arround it, and allows ideas that were never challenged or interrogated, even ones as simple as defeating enemies to gain experience points, to crystalise around the work, creating something that may indeed be beautiful, but is unmoving, unchanging.
while there are heavier consequences to this - the widespread homogenisation of monetization and progression systems in games undoubtedly is self-served by their uncritical ubiquity, and many stories continue to carry forth regressive ideas built into their hearts because the creators are unaware of them or unwilling to divest themselves from them - one that should also be considered is that the more and more complex the language of norms around a form becomes, the more insular and closed-off it is at risk of becoming.
one need only look at the third most-important JRPG to release in july 2022 to see what this results in: a complete mess of a game, only barely held together by self-justifying tropes and glue that the prospective player - intimately familiar with the construction of and tropes of these games - will simply accept and enjoy singularly. ask a single question about it's world or it's characters or it's plot and it's illusion of cohesiveness will shatter instantly. why does the party react with such horror to someone killing for sport in this cutscene, but will happily recruit the sexy warrior woman who also kills for sport in the very next cutscene? because each one is a trope that carries a set of norms that is implicitly understood and accepted by it's core audience, and proves to be completely baffling to anyone who does not speak this language - or, indeed, Thinks for One Minute.
(i kinda like it though. i am a student of this language, after all.)
the games that result from this aren't necessarily bad, but i think truly exceptional works will strive to be more than the perpetuations of their genre, want to create an experience that aspires to more than simply playing the hits and playing them adequately. because when your path is narrow, there's really only one way forward.
which brings us, at last, to live a live, and to what makes it truly special. while I think this game is clever and inventive constantly, i don't want to let that be mistaken for a game that is unlike anything you've seen or played before. indeed, in many ways, live a live revels in cliche, with each of its scenarios merrily indulging in the rote tropes of its genre. the difference is not merely in the choice to tackle stories that are - still! - rarely glimpsed within the JRPG form, but in how these stories are told. these are not 7 different miniature jrpgs in one - these are 7 stories that, like the original dragon quest before it, think so carefully about each aspect of themselves, and use jrpg mechanics in unique and surprising ways to tell those stories. and because it earnestly and completely invests in these stories, they are brought to new and wonderful life.
i have seen the story of a master training a prospective student to succeed them, but until live a live, i have never so completely been that master, thinking carefully about what techniques most benefit each of the students under my care, and trying to teach what I can in the time I have left. when i see my student finally surpass me, i feel genuine pride, because them reaching Level 9 means so much when I have been stuck in my Level 8 ways for all this time. i've seen heroes scramble to put together traps and tricks in a time limit to defeat an overwhelming enemy, but by utilizing a creative conception of the RPG loop of rifling through chests and cabinets for loot, it becomes realized kinaesthetically in a way i've scarcely seen before. not every chapter is wholly successful - for me, akira's near future anime ova riff does the least work to make the beats it's playing sing with new life by relying on a conception of the cliches themselves as self-evidently worthwhile, in a way that is shockingly prescient of the direction increasingly anime-influenced jrpgs like tales and xeno end up taking - but in almost all cases, live a live's creative use of its mechanics, presentation, and design makes what could potentially be rote stories play in beautiful harmony, a harmony that resounds through the commonalities that exist through the stories. there's nothing new under the sun, after all, and so each of these stories, these ideas, feed into one another across history, ultimately fighting the same enemy - hatred - across all time, as a straight club banger plays over the same fight being fought across the millennia.
live a live's unwillingness to accept for granted the norms of the RPG extends to all facets of it's construction, and the battle system is the clearest case for this. random encounters do exist, but they are confined behind the bars of the kingdom of lucrece, rpg conventions being a malady that haunts that land as a sickness more virulent than any the lord of dark could spread. but even here, you are subtly encouraged to flee from battle much more often than you would in other games of its type, due to both the game's EXP system making rewards for fighting weaker enemies to be so utterly negligible as to be practically nonexistent, and the way it offers rewards for escaping from battles with a certain character. In comparison to earthbound simply skipping encounters when you hit them, whilst still giving you all the rewards for combat, such as they are, live a live instead invites you to exercise your own restraint, to consciously choose to sheathe your sword, which is an interesting wrinkle that adds a layer of intentionality to it's violence once you realize that this isn't one of the long list of other jrpgs where you should never really use the flee button.
the chapters that come closest to being purely normative in their play are prehistoric and near future, but even here, the former invites you to become a hunter by having your nose track encounters in the world, and the latter has enemies patrolling the city streets of neo-japan in such a way that you can avoid confrontation but can also get cornered and blocked off. both are thematic and evocative, as are wild west's maneuver of a long buildup to a single gunfight and edo japan's invocation of the idea that a sword drawn is a conscious decision that invites violence (slightly hampered by certain traps putting you in a position where you have no choice but to draw it), but it's the far future that has the most thoughtful approach to combat in the game: because it mostly doesn't have it.
well, that's not true. you can actually play an arcade game using the game's combat system at almost any time, but it is consciously a distraction, separate from the ongoing concerns of the ship. your role in this chapter is that of a witness: a silent observer to the sci-fi horror film playing out around you. here, live a live demonstrates a remarkable awareness of the limits of it's own form - combat is how you interact with this world and combat won't help you here: all you can do is watch, and make coffee, as personal tragedies play out in front of you time and time again. fittingly for a chapter that takes place at the farthest reaches of time and humanity, far future explores the furthest edge of it's systems by depicting a story somewhat beyond the reach of the framework it finds itself in. like a beacon of hope shot in the night, pleading for a more nuanced world than this one. it's not surprising that the final moments of the chapter have you explicitly use the medium of a video game to kill a nascent life form, nor is it shocking that there is a twinge of regret that this is the only way this could have gone. isn't it a little sad that this is the way games currently are?
each element of the game is so well-considered, so carefully constructed to resonate and cohere with the wider piece and with itself. never is something there simply because it is expected to be there, never is a trope invoked without care or consideration into how it can be made to work with the greater whole. and when assumptions are found to be lacking, where the gaps of implication they leave behind are too big to ignore, they are challenged.
the oersted chapter is something of a flashpoint both for the game's critical legacy - such as it is - and the narrative around it. after a series of adventures that use rpg mechanics in creative and exciting ways to bring these pulp adventures to life, ending with a rote dragon quest riff could only be a bizarre self-defeating maneuver. is it any wonder then, that oersted was doomed? it's easy to look at the final moments of the hero declaring himself odio, lord of the dark, near-exclusively, but it's the moments beforehand - elevated by the remake's tastefully extended script, producing that exceedingly rare remake that i prefer to the original, whilst still having things the original does better - that make it work. the princess' agonised cries over the man she actually loved being murdered by the uncaring mute she was betrothed to because he happened to defeat the man she loved in combat at a tourney followed by her suicide is the real shock of this chapter, one where the care and attention live a live shows to all the cliches it invokes is turned on the dominant form of it's genre, exposing the sexist ideology that persists through dragon quest's vision of the heroic narrative. oersted's blind adherence to the script of his genre might lead to him falling to the darkness, but i will point out that the game doesn't use this to say that dragon quest is evil - this isn't spec ops: the line for jrpgs. the story of a band of heroes setting out to defeat the evil is not the issue: it is doing so unthinkingly, accepting rewards and events blindly, of assuming a love belongs to you simply because you are the hero that is entitled to it. oersted is not evil because jrpgs are evil: he's evil because he didn't think for a single second about the narrative handed to him.
it's why the final chapter itself still plays out like a traditional JRPG: assembling a party and travelling to the final dungeon to defeat the final boss with the power of friendship. but because it earns it, because it does the work to make every single step on that journey, because it refuses to simply take for granted the baked-in assumptions of it's genre and it's form...it works. it feels natural, it feels right. there's a strong argument to be made that live a live is something of a naive idealist in how it argues that the broad arcs of these stories are never irredeemable but are corruptible through thoughtlessness, but when it makes it's arguments with this much care and confidence it's very difficult to quibble with it. i never have to feel like I have to stop thinking, or just embrace that this is the way this story has to go in order to enjoy it, like I might have to do for so many other modern jrpgs, that are so wrapped up in their own convulution that they forget to do the work to actually make you care. as jackson tyler touches on in their own piece on the game, live a live is arguably even better in 2022 than it was in 1994, because of the way the genre has changed and, maybe more importantly, the ways that it hasn't, becoming more and more wrapped up in the snake eating its own tail without bothering to ask why we have the snake eat the tail in the first place, what might be gained by doing something new.
there is nothing completely new under the sun. live a live knows this, and accepts it, but remains inventive, remains questioning, remains determined to push up against the boundaries of what rpgs - what video games - can do, to find new ways to tell old stories, and old ways to tell new stories, playing the old hits with a purpose and style that makes them sing like they never quite have before, and hitting out with some new singles that won't ever leave you. Inspired, and inspiring in turn: live a live is a game to make you love games, a creation to make you want to create, and a memory I don't think I'll ever forget.
Command?
> FIGHT
OERSTED attacks!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
there's nothing new under the sun.
it's a pithy statement to the point of reductiveness, as such things usually are, but there is a truth to it, not one that condemns, but one that liberates. forgive me for drinking deep of the well of ideology here, but even though all of us may indeed be the products of the words and systems that surround us, no one is quite the same combination of influences as any other, which gives us a wholly unique perspective. but this is also why ensuring our horizons are broad is important, because although we can never widen our scope enough to take in everything, narrowing it in turn only presses the walls in around us, and leaves us with only one path forward.
dragon quest, then, is not a wholly unique game that sprung fully-formed out onto the famicom, but was once that represented a conscious effort to translate a specific mode of game - the popular pc rpgs of the time like wizardry and ultima - and many of the decisions it made clearly have immense thought and care put into them as a result of this, and the result was a game that changed the landscape of the entire industry. but in doing so, it provided a template, a set story for how these things go. defeat monsters. gather experience. explore dungeons. destroy T̵̲̼͆̅͘ͅȟ̸̲̇e̷̡̬̪͛ ̶͙̰͇̍̓̏L̵̪̽̒͌o̷͍͛r̴͖̙͋̾̕d̸̘̜͔̅̋̽ ̷̳͌́̑o̸̪͌̚f̶̗̹͓̆͂ ̶̗̗͊Ḍ̴̪̽͠a̸̙͌̍r̸̜͎̾k̶̻̽.
games that came in dragon quest's wake drew from this story, telling it over and over again. i do not wish to claim here that dragon quest is the only truly original work in the entire jrpg form because that's clearly a completely unhinged and wrong thing to say, but i do wish to argue that the things dragon quest put thought and care into creating were adopted wholesale, without the same level of purposefulness, by many other games, creating an intrinsic language of expectation and reference that in turn provides a bedrock of norms through which audiences and creators can process the form. this is useful, both artistically and financially for both the audience and the artist, but by it's nature it narrows the scope of the form arround it, and allows ideas that were never challenged or interrogated, even ones as simple as defeating enemies to gain experience points, to crystalise around the work, creating something that may indeed be beautiful, but is unmoving, unchanging.
while there are heavier consequences to this - the widespread homogenisation of monetization and progression systems in games undoubtedly is self-served by their uncritical ubiquity, and many stories continue to carry forth regressive ideas built into their hearts because the creators are unaware of them or unwilling to divest themselves from them - one that should also be considered is that the more and more complex the language of norms around a form becomes, the more insular and closed-off it is at risk of becoming.
one need only look at the third most-important JRPG to release in july 2022 to see what this results in: a complete mess of a game, only barely held together by self-justifying tropes and glue that the prospective player - intimately familiar with the construction of and tropes of these games - will simply accept and enjoy singularly. ask a single question about it's world or it's characters or it's plot and it's illusion of cohesiveness will shatter instantly. why does the party react with such horror to someone killing for sport in this cutscene, but will happily recruit the sexy warrior woman who also kills for sport in the very next cutscene? because each one is a trope that carries a set of norms that is implicitly understood and accepted by it's core audience, and proves to be completely baffling to anyone who does not speak this language - or, indeed, Thinks for One Minute.
(i kinda like it though. i am a student of this language, after all.)
the games that result from this aren't necessarily bad, but i think truly exceptional works will strive to be more than the perpetuations of their genre, want to create an experience that aspires to more than simply playing the hits and playing them adequately. because when your path is narrow, there's really only one way forward.
which brings us, at last, to live a live, and to what makes it truly special. while I think this game is clever and inventive constantly, i don't want to let that be mistaken for a game that is unlike anything you've seen or played before. indeed, in many ways, live a live revels in cliche, with each of its scenarios merrily indulging in the rote tropes of its genre. the difference is not merely in the choice to tackle stories that are - still! - rarely glimpsed within the JRPG form, but in how these stories are told. these are not 7 different miniature jrpgs in one - these are 7 stories that, like the original dragon quest before it, think so carefully about each aspect of themselves, and use jrpg mechanics in unique and surprising ways to tell those stories. and because it earnestly and completely invests in these stories, they are brought to new and wonderful life.
i have seen the story of a master training a prospective student to succeed them, but until live a live, i have never so completely been that master, thinking carefully about what techniques most benefit each of the students under my care, and trying to teach what I can in the time I have left. when i see my student finally surpass me, i feel genuine pride, because them reaching Level 9 means so much when I have been stuck in my Level 8 ways for all this time. i've seen heroes scramble to put together traps and tricks in a time limit to defeat an overwhelming enemy, but by utilizing a creative conception of the RPG loop of rifling through chests and cabinets for loot, it becomes realized kinaesthetically in a way i've scarcely seen before. not every chapter is wholly successful - for me, akira's near future anime ova riff does the least work to make the beats it's playing sing with new life by relying on a conception of the cliches themselves as self-evidently worthwhile, in a way that is shockingly prescient of the direction increasingly anime-influenced jrpgs like tales and xeno end up taking - but in almost all cases, live a live's creative use of its mechanics, presentation, and design makes what could potentially be rote stories play in beautiful harmony, a harmony that resounds through the commonalities that exist through the stories. there's nothing new under the sun, after all, and so each of these stories, these ideas, feed into one another across history, ultimately fighting the same enemy - hatred - across all time, as a straight club banger plays over the same fight being fought across the millennia.
live a live's unwillingness to accept for granted the norms of the RPG extends to all facets of it's construction, and the battle system is the clearest case for this. random encounters do exist, but they are confined behind the bars of the kingdom of lucrece, rpg conventions being a malady that haunts that land as a sickness more virulent than any the lord of dark could spread. but even here, you are subtly encouraged to flee from battle much more often than you would in other games of its type, due to both the game's EXP system making rewards for fighting weaker enemies to be so utterly negligible as to be practically nonexistent, and the way it offers rewards for escaping from battles with a certain character. In comparison to earthbound simply skipping encounters when you hit them, whilst still giving you all the rewards for combat, such as they are, live a live instead invites you to exercise your own restraint, to consciously choose to sheathe your sword, which is an interesting wrinkle that adds a layer of intentionality to it's violence once you realize that this isn't one of the long list of other jrpgs where you should never really use the flee button.
the chapters that come closest to being purely normative in their play are prehistoric and near future, but even here, the former invites you to become a hunter by having your nose track encounters in the world, and the latter has enemies patrolling the city streets of neo-japan in such a way that you can avoid confrontation but can also get cornered and blocked off. both are thematic and evocative, as are wild west's maneuver of a long buildup to a single gunfight and edo japan's invocation of the idea that a sword drawn is a conscious decision that invites violence (slightly hampered by certain traps putting you in a position where you have no choice but to draw it), but it's the far future that has the most thoughtful approach to combat in the game: because it mostly doesn't have it.
well, that's not true. you can actually play an arcade game using the game's combat system at almost any time, but it is consciously a distraction, separate from the ongoing concerns of the ship. your role in this chapter is that of a witness: a silent observer to the sci-fi horror film playing out around you. here, live a live demonstrates a remarkable awareness of the limits of it's own form - combat is how you interact with this world and combat won't help you here: all you can do is watch, and make coffee, as personal tragedies play out in front of you time and time again. fittingly for a chapter that takes place at the farthest reaches of time and humanity, far future explores the furthest edge of it's systems by depicting a story somewhat beyond the reach of the framework it finds itself in. like a beacon of hope shot in the night, pleading for a more nuanced world than this one. it's not surprising that the final moments of the chapter have you explicitly use the medium of a video game to kill a nascent life form, nor is it shocking that there is a twinge of regret that this is the only way this could have gone. isn't it a little sad that this is the way games currently are?
each element of the game is so well-considered, so carefully constructed to resonate and cohere with the wider piece and with itself. never is something there simply because it is expected to be there, never is a trope invoked without care or consideration into how it can be made to work with the greater whole. and when assumptions are found to be lacking, where the gaps of implication they leave behind are too big to ignore, they are challenged.
the oersted chapter is something of a flashpoint both for the game's critical legacy - such as it is - and the narrative around it. after a series of adventures that use rpg mechanics in creative and exciting ways to bring these pulp adventures to life, ending with a rote dragon quest riff could only be a bizarre self-defeating maneuver. is it any wonder then, that oersted was doomed? it's easy to look at the final moments of the hero declaring himself odio, lord of the dark, near-exclusively, but it's the moments beforehand - elevated by the remake's tastefully extended script, producing that exceedingly rare remake that i prefer to the original, whilst still having things the original does better - that make it work. the princess' agonised cries over the man she actually loved being murdered by the uncaring mute she was betrothed to because he happened to defeat the man she loved in combat at a tourney followed by her suicide is the real shock of this chapter, one where the care and attention live a live shows to all the cliches it invokes is turned on the dominant form of it's genre, exposing the sexist ideology that persists through dragon quest's vision of the heroic narrative. oersted's blind adherence to the script of his genre might lead to him falling to the darkness, but i will point out that the game doesn't use this to say that dragon quest is evil - this isn't spec ops: the line for jrpgs. the story of a band of heroes setting out to defeat the evil is not the issue: it is doing so unthinkingly, accepting rewards and events blindly, of assuming a love belongs to you simply because you are the hero that is entitled to it. oersted is not evil because jrpgs are evil: he's evil because he didn't think for a single second about the narrative handed to him.
it's why the final chapter itself still plays out like a traditional JRPG: assembling a party and travelling to the final dungeon to defeat the final boss with the power of friendship. but because it earns it, because it does the work to make every single step on that journey, because it refuses to simply take for granted the baked-in assumptions of it's genre and it's form...it works. it feels natural, it feels right. there's a strong argument to be made that live a live is something of a naive idealist in how it argues that the broad arcs of these stories are never irredeemable but are corruptible through thoughtlessness, but when it makes it's arguments with this much care and confidence it's very difficult to quibble with it. i never have to feel like I have to stop thinking, or just embrace that this is the way this story has to go in order to enjoy it, like I might have to do for so many other modern jrpgs, that are so wrapped up in their own convulution that they forget to do the work to actually make you care. as jackson tyler touches on in their own piece on the game, live a live is arguably even better in 2022 than it was in 1994, because of the way the genre has changed and, maybe more importantly, the ways that it hasn't, becoming more and more wrapped up in the snake eating its own tail without bothering to ask why we have the snake eat the tail in the first place, what might be gained by doing something new.
there is nothing completely new under the sun. live a live knows this, and accepts it, but remains inventive, remains questioning, remains determined to push up against the boundaries of what rpgs - what video games - can do, to find new ways to tell old stories, and old ways to tell new stories, playing the old hits with a purpose and style that makes them sing like they never quite have before, and hitting out with some new singles that won't ever leave you. Inspired, and inspiring in turn: live a live is a game to make you love games, a creation to make you want to create, and a memory I don't think I'll ever forget.
Lies of P
2023
Here’s a boss fight video I have recorded for this review. It doesn’t necessarily support my thoughts, but in case you want to watch it, here you go: https://youtu.be/ALLPMFvZ0Mo?si=0BJtAlatypNdsbwH
Also, spoiler warning. I’m gonna namedrop every important boss and local so consider reading this after you are done with the game.
What I expected from the demo playthrough was that this game was just gonna be a typical Souls game with a deflection mechanic. What I got in the end with the 30+ hours of journey is that this game is…. still a typical souls game, but with the combination of the best aspects of the modern post-DeS/pre-ER FROM games. Of course, there are some downfalls driven from that scope, but I won’t sugarcoat that my experience with this game was almost close to my first playthrough of Bloodborne. If this game came out in 2015, it would have been my identity to praise this game till death. Of course, this won’t be my game of life, because at this point in my gaming journey, I’m more interested in games that aren’t really souls-like, but there was a spark of joy to have for a long-time fan of the formula.
Lies of P’s thematical structure is similar to BB at first glance. There’s a dying city, there’s also a problem with outbreak of monstrosities, celestial beings behind the veil, yadayda… you know the drill. But once you dive into the game, you can see that the game is trying to convey a different thing while maintaining the value of the traditional Souls game.
In the older Myazaki’s Souls games. There’s a sense that the world in that game is an elaborated place instead of just being a pretty background. When we go back to Demon’s Souls, you might remember that you have to open the giant gate in the castle area, pick up the key and use it to open the doors in the asylum area and activate the mining elevator in the mine area, all for the one purpose: opening the shortcut or the next passage. Even though they are just a little detail, you wouldn’t disagree that this little detail in interactions make each level feel distinguished and elaborated. While this environmental detail is what FROM still excels at, you can’t deny that modern FROM games aren’t really good at delivering that premise as they look more dungeon-y than a thematically accurate place. This aspect got worse after Dark Souls 3 and we all know that Elden Ring introduced soulless manufactured mini-dungeons, which kinda ruined the game as a whole even with the inclusion of Legacy Dungeons.
Compared to this, Lies of P is full of elaborated environmental details and interactions that convey the game feel. For example, one thing you will realize soon is that this game took place around the pseudo-Belle-Époque era. To elaborate it, the game actually introduces levels themed around such as a gigantic factory manufacturing dolls, a gigantic market arcade, and a world expo with grandiose exhibitions. And those levels are, instead of being too dungeon-y, structured like an actual place for that purpose. You have to lower the pipe hanging on the crane to make a shortcut in the factory. You can ride the tram that was shown at the beginning to open a way to the expo. The arcade area is full of little shops that function as ambushes, lootable places, and backdoor shortcuts. In this aspect, Lies of P holds the torch as the best non-FROM souls-like that gave a shit about environments. If I have to nitpick, there are some obstacles that made me question “Why can’t I just jump over this”, but honestly the stronger part is so strong that I kinda forgot about it.
We are still talking about the world-building so I can add more about the thing I liked about Lies of P’s way of distinguishing itself from other FROM Souls games.
Firstly, I think the members of Hotel Krat are much more likable and sympathetic than any FROM’s hub dwellers. In FROM Souls games, after the 4 similar entries, you kinda see the boring patterns of the NPC placements. A calm and cryptic maiden figure that levels you up, A cynical-ass depressed soldier, A bulky blacksmith, and some boring merchants here and there. And you know some of them will go off and die in a ditch at some point. Bloodborne did kinda experimental things with survivors in the chapel, but they didn’t do stuff like that after BB which is pretty weird. While Lies of P still has that cryptic maiden figure, the other NPCs are full of distinguishable characteristics. A nerd girl who is very enthusiastic about gears, A CEO of the puppet industry who has a depressing backstory even with the hilarious facade, a swindler treasure hunter who tries so hard to be known as a real one, and a hotel counter robot that secretly loves the hotel owner. You may say these characters are almost like caricatures, but I personally think some amount of campiness can work as a good contrast in the consistently depressing scenario. Also, the motivations of those characters are well-established compared to FROM game NPCs which require two parts of Vaatividya videos to understand the full context.
Secondly, I think the collectables in this game are pretty neat. Unlike Souls games, there are varied types of collectables to get the lores and trivia behind the world. Message notes, guide tour books, newspapers, advertisement posters, and all that. While there are some Resident Evil documents moments that made me think “There’s no way that people would write this thing before dying lmao”, the varied way of describing the worldbuilding establishes that this world is a place where people actually lived, not a glorified dungeon after dungeon. There were some cute moments too, like the notes from Black Rabbit brotherhood. The message cylinders are probably my favorite addition to this formula since it is thematically accurate and I just like doing the treasure hunt while looking at the visual clues. This game’s strong suit is the environment department, so it works wonderfully when I just can guess the location right away with a blurred picture in the clue. There are also vinyl records to collect which can be played in the hotel lobby. Here’s a thing you should know: this is not the same as the Nier Automata’s jukebox where you can play the in-game themes again. This plays an actual original song just for this sole function! And all the vinyl record music is wonderfully composed fitting to the narrative of certain characters or the general mood so it actually had an intrinsic value for me even if it doesn’t benefit the gameplay department at all. It’s not a lie that I was happier to find records more so than the weapons.
Speaking of weapons, I think Lies of P has probably the best weapon customization in all the souls-likes I’ve played. (I’m only talking about the weapons here. If we are talking about player toolsets as a whole, there are many games that did better than this.) One of the biggest gripes I had with Souls games, in general, is that experimenting with other weapons requires an entire stat rollback or a complete re-upgrade for that new weapon just to make it useful. And even then you are limited to given weapons moves which are pretty basic most of the time. In a way, all the Souls games “build progression” can be boiled down to [Get the base weapon] - [Stick to that weapon till you find a better weapon with the same stat requirements] - [Change it to that new weapon and fully upgrade it] - [Stick to it till the end]. Even with the stat rollback functions, people rarely want to change the gears ignoring the floods of “other options” in their inventory, because trying out other weapons optimally is such busy work to do in the initial playthrough. In an ideal world, we should be able to get the Armored Core treatment where you can pull out every weapon from a cargo, but that won’t happen in the Souls game structure because they need to drip-feed the reward to fill the exploration aspect, like the hidden weapons or upgrade materials.
Lies of P took the middle ground by making the weapon parts combinable. Blades are completely separate from your stat requirement and you can upgrade these parts with moonstones. Handles on the other hand require your stat requirement, but it doesn’t determine the overall power of the weapon and it changes the moveset instead. By combining these two, you can experiment with the builds freely, as your stat requirement or the lack of upgrade materials doesn’t halt you from trying out the weapon customization. For example, you want to try out the drill-like lance which fits your stat requirement. but you may think it is obnoxious to upgrade it from the +1. Then you can just go to the Stargazer, switch the blade to the fully upgraded one, and there you have it! It may have a different speed or attack range, but you still can use the drill lance. By the end of the game, I used 5 or 6 weapons throughout the game without reallocating the stats even once. People say Souls games thrive on build variety, and Lies of P shows how to upgrade the formula to meet that expectations.
If we dig deeper into the combat side, we can find even more interesting changes to the formula. While it is basic, the fable arts and charge attacks are neat additions to the combat system. In a way, this is not a new thing as these things have become standardized since Bloodborne, but these combat options have much more clear purpose in this combat loop - the groggy attack. Unlike the traditional souls games where your basic maneuver leads you to the small victories (enemy stagger) and then big victories(enemy death) in a linear fashion, Lies of P makes you “earn” the small victory by requiring you to do a high skill action: dealing damage with fable arts or charge attacks while the enemy healthbar is glowing white. This mechanic provides two interesting things in your gameplay. Since your fable arts consume the meter and charge attack requires a long start-up time, you have to be more knowledgeable about enemy patterns or your positioning to actually punish, and sometimes you have to make hard decisions as the white bar won’t stay longer. Because some enemies just don’t give you a lot of breathing ground, you have to think about hit trading or ignoring the white bar for now and waiting for the next one.
This interesting dynamics also can be seen from the guard mechanic. Lies of P’s twist on the BB’s regain system is that players can regenerate the lost health by hitting the enemies, but only after you guard the damage. The raw damage will just go straight to the health bar and you won’t get anything after that. However, once you manage to nail down the perfect parry with the guard button, it gives a groggy damage to the enemies and you can also regenerate the lost health a bit, just like when you hit the enemies. But the perfect parry’s frame window is much shorter than Sekiro or Wo Long, so there’s definitely a high-skill ceiling aspect to master this.
This little dynamism makes the game much more than strict whip punishes even if the game is framed as a reactive side on the whole action game spectrum. Also, with this combat framework, the enemies are just fantastically designed. Fitting to the narrative, most of the enemies are malfunctioning dolls or erratic zombies. So most attacks have non-conventional timing with all the twitching joints and irregular steps. Because of this aspect, you can’t just comfortably parry or I-frame dodge every attack from the get-go. You have to consider the enemy attack distance, tracking angle, and your position in the environment to make yourself safe. This is something that lacked in Sekiro where you could comfortably deflect everything (Well, except for some main bosses, mind you!) while being stationary to the point that it feels like a rhythmical Punchout.
The bosses are great examples that elaborate the importance of positioning. The second main boss Scrapped Watchman has insane amount of patterns for an early game boss. It starts out as a simple parry/i-frame dodge test, but then the boss quickly introduces lightning effects on the ground which makes you adjust your movements more thoughtfully. Probably my favorite bosses would be Archbishop and The Swamp Monster. Visually they both look grotesque and cool, there’s a fun aspect of finding a good spot to deflect the attack while maintaining the distance, and also there were some satisfying moments where you have to pull off the groggy attack while the gigantic monstrosity is sweeping around the arena erratically.
Bosses are the highlights of this game, but where the game exceptionally excels at is how they handle the normal enemies. I heard that the director’s favorite Souls game is Dark Souls 2 from some rumors around here, but it surely shows his taste in some areas with an extreme amount of ambushes, traps, enemy compositions, and just a sheer amount of enemy numbers after the mid-game levels. I reviewed in Thymesia that souls-like games really need to grow balls to introduce multiple hazards at once, but they did it with this game. Also, there are just TONS of different mini-bosses. Each of them has borderline-boss-tier move lists hidden in their sleeves, and there is a bunch of new type of elites in one area. And these enemies appear only two or three times in the whole game? This uniqueness makes the area much more memorable than it should be. There’s a swamp level near the end of the game where all the abandoned dolls are gathered and crushed, and there was a unique scary-looking scrapped monkey mini-boss which scared the shit out of me. It has a fun moveset, but also it really elevated the mood of that freakish environment. Considering that most games just try to reuse the elite enemies over and over once it was introduced, I kinda liked the approach here, where it uses the unique enemy sparingly to make the area more special.
However, there are some dirty tricks the game abuses to the point that it kinda soured my enjoyment a bit -which is also the reason why I couldn’t give this game the perfect score-. Even though the game respects your positioning, there are some baffling enemy patterns that are just designed to “hit” you. If you have read all of my other reviews, you know what I’m talking about. It’s the god damn automatic movement assist from the enemy's side. If you ever felt like this game is a bit “floaty”, it’s because of this. Some of the patterns just ignore the context of that animation and slide them to the front so that the attack swing collides with the player. The Eldest of Black Rabbit Brotherhood shows a clear example -even though conceptually, the fight is good-. There’s a vertical strike attack combo which gives you massive damage if you get hit. Looking at the animation, it looks like he is swinging the blade in the same position as the legs are locked in one place, so you think it is safe to distance from him a bit and then prepare your next move by charging up the heavy attack, healing, or grinding your weapons… something like that. But then he slides way further than you anticipated so you get smacked by the chunk of iron, and then stun-locked to death. This dirty trick can be worse if it is combined with red attacks which require you to do a perfect parry or do a manual positioning to negate the damage. If you have completed the game, there’s no denying that Laxasia’s first phase is the perfect example of the great test of spacing, finding the punish window, and parrying. But then the second phase shows up and it forces you to parry the red attack from the sky above and the attack distance is absurdly large and fast that you are forced to remember the exact TIME to parry that attack. Considering that most red attacks so far had some window to play safe, this one felt absurdly forced. At this point, the automatic gap closer became a normal thing in action games built with Unreal Engine (I’m looking at you, En Garde, Sifu, Thymesia, and all that janky shit I played) but I wish this game didn’t abuse this trick at all, because when it didn’t rely on it, it worked wonderfully.
There are more nitpicks to add to this critique, like why are there so many gigantic two-phase bosses, why the puppet king’s first phase is much more interesting than the second phase but then the devs decided to nerf the first phase, why aren’t there many boss weapon upgrade materials in the mid-late game, and why the game didn’t have the interconnectivity of Dark Souls 1 even though there are many oppourtunities with the structures of levels, but even excluding that, there are more reasons to love this game, and it is very cultural one. It might be a cringe reason, but it’s because it’s a Korean game.
You see, I didn’t expect a lot from my home country’s industry. The whole industry here has earned titles like “the gotcha factory of the East”, and “the place where MMORPGs are born and die” and there’s no way I can deny that. It’s a cynical landscape where people’s enjoyment about videogames is heavily concentrated in irl transactions, number crunching and gamblings in disguise. This aspect extends to the indie scene except for some glowing exceptions like Unsouled. But then there’s this game, released by the company built from the web card game in the old days. I was expecting a soul-less clone, a husk of a game with money-grabbing scheme but this actually turned out to be a good game. It also understood the merits of the original Souls games, but it also paved its own ways to twist the source material(Pinocchio) in their unique taste and addressed many issues the original Souls games had. It’s a beautiful holistic combination.
And looking around the forum or communities, even with some mild criticism here and there, it’s quite a scenery to see this game getting big praise from everywhere. Even though I didn’t participate in the development at all, it made me feel happy in some sense. Maybe that subjective thought is the reason why it clouds my “fair and reasonable” eyes to read this game, but what I can’t lie about is that I really really adored this game in the end.
Also, spoiler warning. I’m gonna namedrop every important boss and local so consider reading this after you are done with the game.
What I expected from the demo playthrough was that this game was just gonna be a typical Souls game with a deflection mechanic. What I got in the end with the 30+ hours of journey is that this game is…. still a typical souls game, but with the combination of the best aspects of the modern post-DeS/pre-ER FROM games. Of course, there are some downfalls driven from that scope, but I won’t sugarcoat that my experience with this game was almost close to my first playthrough of Bloodborne. If this game came out in 2015, it would have been my identity to praise this game till death. Of course, this won’t be my game of life, because at this point in my gaming journey, I’m more interested in games that aren’t really souls-like, but there was a spark of joy to have for a long-time fan of the formula.
Lies of P’s thematical structure is similar to BB at first glance. There’s a dying city, there’s also a problem with outbreak of monstrosities, celestial beings behind the veil, yadayda… you know the drill. But once you dive into the game, you can see that the game is trying to convey a different thing while maintaining the value of the traditional Souls game.
In the older Myazaki’s Souls games. There’s a sense that the world in that game is an elaborated place instead of just being a pretty background. When we go back to Demon’s Souls, you might remember that you have to open the giant gate in the castle area, pick up the key and use it to open the doors in the asylum area and activate the mining elevator in the mine area, all for the one purpose: opening the shortcut or the next passage. Even though they are just a little detail, you wouldn’t disagree that this little detail in interactions make each level feel distinguished and elaborated. While this environmental detail is what FROM still excels at, you can’t deny that modern FROM games aren’t really good at delivering that premise as they look more dungeon-y than a thematically accurate place. This aspect got worse after Dark Souls 3 and we all know that Elden Ring introduced soulless manufactured mini-dungeons, which kinda ruined the game as a whole even with the inclusion of Legacy Dungeons.
Compared to this, Lies of P is full of elaborated environmental details and interactions that convey the game feel. For example, one thing you will realize soon is that this game took place around the pseudo-Belle-Époque era. To elaborate it, the game actually introduces levels themed around such as a gigantic factory manufacturing dolls, a gigantic market arcade, and a world expo with grandiose exhibitions. And those levels are, instead of being too dungeon-y, structured like an actual place for that purpose. You have to lower the pipe hanging on the crane to make a shortcut in the factory. You can ride the tram that was shown at the beginning to open a way to the expo. The arcade area is full of little shops that function as ambushes, lootable places, and backdoor shortcuts. In this aspect, Lies of P holds the torch as the best non-FROM souls-like that gave a shit about environments. If I have to nitpick, there are some obstacles that made me question “Why can’t I just jump over this”, but honestly the stronger part is so strong that I kinda forgot about it.
We are still talking about the world-building so I can add more about the thing I liked about Lies of P’s way of distinguishing itself from other FROM Souls games.
Firstly, I think the members of Hotel Krat are much more likable and sympathetic than any FROM’s hub dwellers. In FROM Souls games, after the 4 similar entries, you kinda see the boring patterns of the NPC placements. A calm and cryptic maiden figure that levels you up, A cynical-ass depressed soldier, A bulky blacksmith, and some boring merchants here and there. And you know some of them will go off and die in a ditch at some point. Bloodborne did kinda experimental things with survivors in the chapel, but they didn’t do stuff like that after BB which is pretty weird. While Lies of P still has that cryptic maiden figure, the other NPCs are full of distinguishable characteristics. A nerd girl who is very enthusiastic about gears, A CEO of the puppet industry who has a depressing backstory even with the hilarious facade, a swindler treasure hunter who tries so hard to be known as a real one, and a hotel counter robot that secretly loves the hotel owner. You may say these characters are almost like caricatures, but I personally think some amount of campiness can work as a good contrast in the consistently depressing scenario. Also, the motivations of those characters are well-established compared to FROM game NPCs which require two parts of Vaatividya videos to understand the full context.
Secondly, I think the collectables in this game are pretty neat. Unlike Souls games, there are varied types of collectables to get the lores and trivia behind the world. Message notes, guide tour books, newspapers, advertisement posters, and all that. While there are some Resident Evil documents moments that made me think “There’s no way that people would write this thing before dying lmao”, the varied way of describing the worldbuilding establishes that this world is a place where people actually lived, not a glorified dungeon after dungeon. There were some cute moments too, like the notes from Black Rabbit brotherhood. The message cylinders are probably my favorite addition to this formula since it is thematically accurate and I just like doing the treasure hunt while looking at the visual clues. This game’s strong suit is the environment department, so it works wonderfully when I just can guess the location right away with a blurred picture in the clue. There are also vinyl records to collect which can be played in the hotel lobby. Here’s a thing you should know: this is not the same as the Nier Automata’s jukebox where you can play the in-game themes again. This plays an actual original song just for this sole function! And all the vinyl record music is wonderfully composed fitting to the narrative of certain characters or the general mood so it actually had an intrinsic value for me even if it doesn’t benefit the gameplay department at all. It’s not a lie that I was happier to find records more so than the weapons.
Speaking of weapons, I think Lies of P has probably the best weapon customization in all the souls-likes I’ve played. (I’m only talking about the weapons here. If we are talking about player toolsets as a whole, there are many games that did better than this.) One of the biggest gripes I had with Souls games, in general, is that experimenting with other weapons requires an entire stat rollback or a complete re-upgrade for that new weapon just to make it useful. And even then you are limited to given weapons moves which are pretty basic most of the time. In a way, all the Souls games “build progression” can be boiled down to [Get the base weapon] - [Stick to that weapon till you find a better weapon with the same stat requirements] - [Change it to that new weapon and fully upgrade it] - [Stick to it till the end]. Even with the stat rollback functions, people rarely want to change the gears ignoring the floods of “other options” in their inventory, because trying out other weapons optimally is such busy work to do in the initial playthrough. In an ideal world, we should be able to get the Armored Core treatment where you can pull out every weapon from a cargo, but that won’t happen in the Souls game structure because they need to drip-feed the reward to fill the exploration aspect, like the hidden weapons or upgrade materials.
Lies of P took the middle ground by making the weapon parts combinable. Blades are completely separate from your stat requirement and you can upgrade these parts with moonstones. Handles on the other hand require your stat requirement, but it doesn’t determine the overall power of the weapon and it changes the moveset instead. By combining these two, you can experiment with the builds freely, as your stat requirement or the lack of upgrade materials doesn’t halt you from trying out the weapon customization. For example, you want to try out the drill-like lance which fits your stat requirement. but you may think it is obnoxious to upgrade it from the +1. Then you can just go to the Stargazer, switch the blade to the fully upgraded one, and there you have it! It may have a different speed or attack range, but you still can use the drill lance. By the end of the game, I used 5 or 6 weapons throughout the game without reallocating the stats even once. People say Souls games thrive on build variety, and Lies of P shows how to upgrade the formula to meet that expectations.
If we dig deeper into the combat side, we can find even more interesting changes to the formula. While it is basic, the fable arts and charge attacks are neat additions to the combat system. In a way, this is not a new thing as these things have become standardized since Bloodborne, but these combat options have much more clear purpose in this combat loop - the groggy attack. Unlike the traditional souls games where your basic maneuver leads you to the small victories (enemy stagger) and then big victories(enemy death) in a linear fashion, Lies of P makes you “earn” the small victory by requiring you to do a high skill action: dealing damage with fable arts or charge attacks while the enemy healthbar is glowing white. This mechanic provides two interesting things in your gameplay. Since your fable arts consume the meter and charge attack requires a long start-up time, you have to be more knowledgeable about enemy patterns or your positioning to actually punish, and sometimes you have to make hard decisions as the white bar won’t stay longer. Because some enemies just don’t give you a lot of breathing ground, you have to think about hit trading or ignoring the white bar for now and waiting for the next one.
This interesting dynamics also can be seen from the guard mechanic. Lies of P’s twist on the BB’s regain system is that players can regenerate the lost health by hitting the enemies, but only after you guard the damage. The raw damage will just go straight to the health bar and you won’t get anything after that. However, once you manage to nail down the perfect parry with the guard button, it gives a groggy damage to the enemies and you can also regenerate the lost health a bit, just like when you hit the enemies. But the perfect parry’s frame window is much shorter than Sekiro or Wo Long, so there’s definitely a high-skill ceiling aspect to master this.
This little dynamism makes the game much more than strict whip punishes even if the game is framed as a reactive side on the whole action game spectrum. Also, with this combat framework, the enemies are just fantastically designed. Fitting to the narrative, most of the enemies are malfunctioning dolls or erratic zombies. So most attacks have non-conventional timing with all the twitching joints and irregular steps. Because of this aspect, you can’t just comfortably parry or I-frame dodge every attack from the get-go. You have to consider the enemy attack distance, tracking angle, and your position in the environment to make yourself safe. This is something that lacked in Sekiro where you could comfortably deflect everything (Well, except for some main bosses, mind you!) while being stationary to the point that it feels like a rhythmical Punchout.
The bosses are great examples that elaborate the importance of positioning. The second main boss Scrapped Watchman has insane amount of patterns for an early game boss. It starts out as a simple parry/i-frame dodge test, but then the boss quickly introduces lightning effects on the ground which makes you adjust your movements more thoughtfully. Probably my favorite bosses would be Archbishop and The Swamp Monster. Visually they both look grotesque and cool, there’s a fun aspect of finding a good spot to deflect the attack while maintaining the distance, and also there were some satisfying moments where you have to pull off the groggy attack while the gigantic monstrosity is sweeping around the arena erratically.
Bosses are the highlights of this game, but where the game exceptionally excels at is how they handle the normal enemies. I heard that the director’s favorite Souls game is Dark Souls 2 from some rumors around here, but it surely shows his taste in some areas with an extreme amount of ambushes, traps, enemy compositions, and just a sheer amount of enemy numbers after the mid-game levels. I reviewed in Thymesia that souls-like games really need to grow balls to introduce multiple hazards at once, but they did it with this game. Also, there are just TONS of different mini-bosses. Each of them has borderline-boss-tier move lists hidden in their sleeves, and there is a bunch of new type of elites in one area. And these enemies appear only two or three times in the whole game? This uniqueness makes the area much more memorable than it should be. There’s a swamp level near the end of the game where all the abandoned dolls are gathered and crushed, and there was a unique scary-looking scrapped monkey mini-boss which scared the shit out of me. It has a fun moveset, but also it really elevated the mood of that freakish environment. Considering that most games just try to reuse the elite enemies over and over once it was introduced, I kinda liked the approach here, where it uses the unique enemy sparingly to make the area more special.
However, there are some dirty tricks the game abuses to the point that it kinda soured my enjoyment a bit -which is also the reason why I couldn’t give this game the perfect score-. Even though the game respects your positioning, there are some baffling enemy patterns that are just designed to “hit” you. If you have read all of my other reviews, you know what I’m talking about. It’s the god damn automatic movement assist from the enemy's side. If you ever felt like this game is a bit “floaty”, it’s because of this. Some of the patterns just ignore the context of that animation and slide them to the front so that the attack swing collides with the player. The Eldest of Black Rabbit Brotherhood shows a clear example -even though conceptually, the fight is good-. There’s a vertical strike attack combo which gives you massive damage if you get hit. Looking at the animation, it looks like he is swinging the blade in the same position as the legs are locked in one place, so you think it is safe to distance from him a bit and then prepare your next move by charging up the heavy attack, healing, or grinding your weapons… something like that. But then he slides way further than you anticipated so you get smacked by the chunk of iron, and then stun-locked to death. This dirty trick can be worse if it is combined with red attacks which require you to do a perfect parry or do a manual positioning to negate the damage. If you have completed the game, there’s no denying that Laxasia’s first phase is the perfect example of the great test of spacing, finding the punish window, and parrying. But then the second phase shows up and it forces you to parry the red attack from the sky above and the attack distance is absurdly large and fast that you are forced to remember the exact TIME to parry that attack. Considering that most red attacks so far had some window to play safe, this one felt absurdly forced. At this point, the automatic gap closer became a normal thing in action games built with Unreal Engine (I’m looking at you, En Garde, Sifu, Thymesia, and all that janky shit I played) but I wish this game didn’t abuse this trick at all, because when it didn’t rely on it, it worked wonderfully.
There are more nitpicks to add to this critique, like why are there so many gigantic two-phase bosses, why the puppet king’s first phase is much more interesting than the second phase but then the devs decided to nerf the first phase, why aren’t there many boss weapon upgrade materials in the mid-late game, and why the game didn’t have the interconnectivity of Dark Souls 1 even though there are many oppourtunities with the structures of levels, but even excluding that, there are more reasons to love this game, and it is very cultural one. It might be a cringe reason, but it’s because it’s a Korean game.
You see, I didn’t expect a lot from my home country’s industry. The whole industry here has earned titles like “the gotcha factory of the East”, and “the place where MMORPGs are born and die” and there’s no way I can deny that. It’s a cynical landscape where people’s enjoyment about videogames is heavily concentrated in irl transactions, number crunching and gamblings in disguise. This aspect extends to the indie scene except for some glowing exceptions like Unsouled. But then there’s this game, released by the company built from the web card game in the old days. I was expecting a soul-less clone, a husk of a game with money-grabbing scheme but this actually turned out to be a good game. It also understood the merits of the original Souls games, but it also paved its own ways to twist the source material(Pinocchio) in their unique taste and addressed many issues the original Souls games had. It’s a beautiful holistic combination.
And looking around the forum or communities, even with some mild criticism here and there, it’s quite a scenery to see this game getting big praise from everywhere. Even though I didn’t participate in the development at all, it made me feel happy in some sense. Maybe that subjective thought is the reason why it clouds my “fair and reasonable” eyes to read this game, but what I can’t lie about is that I really really adored this game in the end.
Sea of Stars
2023
I’m not going to lie, the only reason I even play RPGs are for the story. I feel that’s the heart of this genre, but also it’s Achilles’ heel. Nothing ruins a RPG faster to me than a poorly written story and Sea of Stars has one of the worst. The story is a disaster and most of it doesn’t makes sense partially due to the world building which is all of the place and without any clear direction. There are so many plot holes and certain things are just never explained throughout the story and sometimes you’re left with questions that are just never answered.
It also didn’t help that the dialogue in the Sea of Stars had some of the worst I’ve read and is best described as cringe worthy. The entire cast of characters felt like tropes and lack any real depth especially the main two characters, Zale and Valere. Holy shit, these two are some of the most boring characters I’ve ever seen! Neither one have any unique personality traits that make them stand out from the other cast of characters or even one another. Valere and Zale feel like one character most of the time and talk like your local average NPCs.
The ending of the game was extremely unsatisfying and felt so lazy. Granted there is the true ending that you can unlock, but you’ll have to spend several hours by completing specific side quests in order to get it. After watching the ending on YouTube because I couldn’t stand to play this game anymore and I’m glad I didn’t! In my personal opinion, it’s not really worth the time because ‘the real’ ending barely changes anything and the one change there is, takes away the only emotional moment in the entire game.
Another thing that really annoyed me was that the main antagonist didn’t get any real form of retribution in this ending despite all the horrendous things they did to others throughout the story. The worst they got was a case of wounded pride. I’m not saying the villain needed die, but why couldn’t the protagonists trap them in a time loop or something. Honestly, I think I’m putting more thought into this than writer/s did, clearly.
The combat is pretty mediocre and kinda of restrictive. Each character gets three skills and one ultimate which doesn’t really give you whole lot to strategize with and makes the battles repetitive. There are combo moves that you can use, but I found I mostly just used mending light to heal and to boost my ultimate meter. The rest of the combos I found to be kinda of useless. What also brings down the combat is that the fights can go on way too long especially the boss fights. On a bright note is that game gives you relic you can buy in game that make the battles easier.
Even with all this there are some good things in Sea of Stars. Outside of maybe Eastward, the pixel art is probably the best I’ve seen. I enjoyed the exploring of both the dungeons and towns. I found it fun discovering secret rooms and solving the puzzles which in all honesty were kinda of easy. I did find it annoying that in some of the towns you weren’t able to go in half the buildings. Most of the music was really well done and some of the tracks were really catchy. I think that’s mainly from Yasunori Mitsuda’s help with the sound track though.
Overall:
It isn’t enough to have both gorgeous pixel art and a good sound track in an RPG. You need a solid story with compelling characters to really bring it all together. It’s seems to me that Sabotage cared more about the visual aesthetics and the music than the narrative they were trying to tell. Sea of Stars is disappointing as it is soulless, and I’m so glad I played this on Gamepass instead of buying it. What a waste of time! That’s thirty hours of my life I’ll never get back.
Pros:
+gorgeous pixel art
+good sound track
+fun exploration and puzzles
Cons:
-awful story
-dull characters
-cringey dialogue
-lazy ending including the secret ending
-battles go on way too long
-combat feels restrictive
It also didn’t help that the dialogue in the Sea of Stars had some of the worst I’ve read and is best described as cringe worthy. The entire cast of characters felt like tropes and lack any real depth especially the main two characters, Zale and Valere. Holy shit, these two are some of the most boring characters I’ve ever seen! Neither one have any unique personality traits that make them stand out from the other cast of characters or even one another. Valere and Zale feel like one character most of the time and talk like your local average NPCs.
The ending of the game was extremely unsatisfying and felt so lazy. Granted there is the true ending that you can unlock, but you’ll have to spend several hours by completing specific side quests in order to get it. After watching the ending on YouTube because I couldn’t stand to play this game anymore and I’m glad I didn’t! In my personal opinion, it’s not really worth the time because ‘the real’ ending barely changes anything and the one change there is, takes away the only emotional moment in the entire game.
Another thing that really annoyed me was that the main antagonist didn’t get any real form of retribution in this ending despite all the horrendous things they did to others throughout the story. The worst they got was a case of wounded pride. I’m not saying the villain needed die, but why couldn’t the protagonists trap them in a time loop or something. Honestly, I think I’m putting more thought into this than writer/s did, clearly.
The combat is pretty mediocre and kinda of restrictive. Each character gets three skills and one ultimate which doesn’t really give you whole lot to strategize with and makes the battles repetitive. There are combo moves that you can use, but I found I mostly just used mending light to heal and to boost my ultimate meter. The rest of the combos I found to be kinda of useless. What also brings down the combat is that the fights can go on way too long especially the boss fights. On a bright note is that game gives you relic you can buy in game that make the battles easier.
Even with all this there are some good things in Sea of Stars. Outside of maybe Eastward, the pixel art is probably the best I’ve seen. I enjoyed the exploring of both the dungeons and towns. I found it fun discovering secret rooms and solving the puzzles which in all honesty were kinda of easy. I did find it annoying that in some of the towns you weren’t able to go in half the buildings. Most of the music was really well done and some of the tracks were really catchy. I think that’s mainly from Yasunori Mitsuda’s help with the sound track though.
Overall:
It isn’t enough to have both gorgeous pixel art and a good sound track in an RPG. You need a solid story with compelling characters to really bring it all together. It’s seems to me that Sabotage cared more about the visual aesthetics and the music than the narrative they were trying to tell. Sea of Stars is disappointing as it is soulless, and I’m so glad I played this on Gamepass instead of buying it. What a waste of time! That’s thirty hours of my life I’ll never get back.
Pros:
+gorgeous pixel art
+good sound track
+fun exploration and puzzles
Cons:
-awful story
-dull characters
-cringey dialogue
-lazy ending including the secret ending
-battles go on way too long
-combat feels restrictive
Final Fantasy XVI
2023
I considered strongly putting together a long-form critique of this game, but the most damning statement I could possibly make about Final Fantasy XVI is that I truly don't think it's worth it. The ways in which I think this game is bad are not unique or interesting: it is bad in the same way the vast majority of these prestige Sony single-player exclusives are. Its failures are common, predictable, and depressingly endemic. It is bad because it hates women, it is bad because it treats it's subject matter with an aggressive lack of care or interest, it is bad because it's imagination is as narrow and constrained as it's level design. But more than anything else, it is bad because it only wants to be Good.
Oxymoronic a statement as it might appear, this is core to the game's failings to me. People who make games generally want to make good games, of course, but paired with that there is an intent, an interest, an idea that seeks to be communicated, that the eloquence with which it professes its aesthetic, thematic, or mechanical goals will produce the quality it seeks. Final Fantasy XVI may have such goals, but they are supplicant to its desire to be liked, and so, rather than plant a flag of its own, it stitches together one from fabric pillaged from the most immediate eikons of popularity and quality - A Song of Ice and Fire, God of War, Demon Slayer, Devil May Cry - desperately begging to be liked by cloaking itself in what many people already do, needing to be loved in the way those things are, without any of the work or vision of its influences, and without any charisma of its own. Much like the patch and DLC content for Final Fantasy XV, it's a reactionary and cloying work that contorts itself into a shape it thinks people will love, rather than finding a unique self to be.
From the aggressively self-serious tone that embraces wholeheartedly the aesthetics of Prestige Fantasy Television with all its fucks and shits and incest and Grim Darkness to let you know that This Isn't Your Daddy's Final Fantasy, without actually being anywhere near as genuinely Dark, sad, or depressing as something like XV, from combat that borrows the surface-level signifiers of Devil May Cry combat - stingers, devil bringers, enemy step - but without any actual opposition or reaction of that series' diverse and reactive enemy set and thoughtful level design, or the way there's a episode of television-worth of lectures from a character explaining troop movements and map markers that genuinely do not matter in any way in order to make you feel like you're experiencing a well thought-out and materially concerned political Serious Fantasy, Final Fantasy XVI is pure wafer-thin illusion; all the surface from it's myriad influences but none of the depth or nuance, a greatest hits album from a band with no voice to call their own, an algorithmically generated playlist of hits that tunelessly resound with nothing. It looks like Devil May Cry, but it isn't - Devil May Cry would ask more of you than dodging one attack at a time while you perform a particularly flashy MMO rotation. It looks like A Song of Ice and Fire, but it isn't - without Martin's careful historical eye and materialist concerns, the illusion that this comes even within striking distance of that flawed work shatters when you think about the setting for more than a moment.
In fairness, Final Fantasy XVI does bring more than just the surface level into its world: it also brings with it the nastiest and ugliest parts of those works into this one, replicated wholeheartedly as Aesthetic, bereft of whatever semblance of texture and critique may have once been there. Benedikta Harman might be the most disgustingly treated woman in a recent work of fiction, the seemingly uniform AAA Game misogyny of evil mothers and heroic, redeemable fathers is alive and well, 16's version of this now agonizingly tired cliche going farther even than games I've railed against for it in the past, which all culminates in a moment where three men tell the female lead to stay home while they go and fight (despite one of those men being a proven liability to himself and others when doing the same thing he is about to go and do again, while she is not), she immediately acquiesces, and dutifully remains in the proverbial kitchen. Something that thinks so little of women is self-evidently incapable of meaningfully tackling any real-world issue, something Final Fantasy XVI goes on to decisively prove, with its story of systemic evils defeated not with systemic criticism, but with Great, Powerful Men, a particularly tiresome kind of rugged bootstrap individualism that seeks to reduce real-world evils to shonen enemies for the Special Man with Special Powers to defeat on his lonesome. It's an attempt to discuss oppression and racism that would embarrass even the other shonen media it is clearly closer in spirit to than the dark fantasy political epic it wears the skin of. In a world where the power fantasy of the shonen superhero is sacrosanct over all other concerns, it leads to a conclusion as absurd and fundamentally unimaginative as shonen jump's weakest scripts: the only thing that can stop a Bad Guy with an Eikon is a Good Guy with an Eikon.
In borrowing the aesthetics of the dark fantasy - and Matsuno games - it seeks to emulate, but without the nuance, FF16 becomes a game where the perspective of the enslaved is almost completely absent (Clive's period as a slave might as well not have occurred for all it impacts his character), and the power of nobility is Good when it is wielded by Good Hands like Lord Rosfield, a slave owner who, despite owning the clearly abused character who serves as our introduction to the bearers, is eulogized completely uncritically by the script, until a final side quest has a character claim that he was planning to free the slaves all along...alongside a letter where Lord Rosfield discusses his desire to "put down the savages". I've never seen attempted slave owner apologia that didn't reveal its virulent underlying racism, and this is no exception. In fact, any time the game attempts to put on a facade of being about something other than The Shonen Hero battling other Kamen Riders for dominance, it crumbles nigh-immediately; when Final Fantasy 16 makes its overtures towards the Power of Friendship, it rings utterly false and hollow: Clive's friends are not his power. His power is his power.
The only part of the game that truly spoke to me was the widely-derided side-quests, which offer a peek into a more compelling story: the story of a man doing the work to build and maintain a community, contributing to both the material and emotional needs of a commune that attempts to exist outside the violence of society. As tedious as these sidequests are - and as agonizing as their pacing so often is - it's the only part of this game where it felt like I was engaging with an idea. But ultimately, even this is annihilated by the game's bootstrap nonsense - that being that the hideaway is funded and maintained by the wealthy and influential across the world, the direct beneficiaries and embodiments of the status quo funding what their involvement reveals to be an utterly illusionary attempt to escape it, rendering what could be an effective exploration of what building a new idea of a community practically looks like into something that could be good neighbors with Galt's Gulch.
In a series that is routinely deeply rewarding for me to consider, FF16 stands as perhaps its most shallow, underwritten, and vacuous entry in decades. All games are ultimately illusions, of course: we're all just moving data around spreadsheets, at the end of the day. But - as is the modern AAA mode de jour - 16 is the result of the careful subtraction of texture from the experience of a game, the removal of any potential frictions and frustrations, but further even than that, it is the removal of personality, of difference, it is the attempt to make make the smoothest, most likable affect possible to the widest number of people possible. And, just like with its AAA brethren, it has almost nothing to offer me. It is the affect of Devil May Cry without its texture, the affect of Game of Thrones without even its nuance, and the affect of Final Fantasy without its soul.
Final Fantasy XVI is ultimately a success. It sought out to be Good, in the way a PS5 game like this is Good, and succeeded. And in so doing, it closed off any possibility that it would ever reach me.
It doesn’t really surprise me that each positive sentiment I have seen on Final Fantasy XVI is followed by an exclamation of derision over the series’ recent past. Whether the point of betrayal and failure was in XV, or with XIII, or even as far back as VIII, the rhetorical move is well and truly that Final Fantasy has been Bad, and with XVI, it is good again. Unfortunately, as someone who thought Final Fantasy has Been Good, consistently, throughout essentially the entire span of it's existence, I find myself on the other side of this one.
Final Fantasy XV convinced me that I could still love video games when I thought, for a moment, that I might not. That it was still possible to make games on this scale that were idiosyncratic, personal, and deeply human, even in the awful place the video game industry is in.
Final Fantasy XVI convinced me that it isn't.
Oxymoronic a statement as it might appear, this is core to the game's failings to me. People who make games generally want to make good games, of course, but paired with that there is an intent, an interest, an idea that seeks to be communicated, that the eloquence with which it professes its aesthetic, thematic, or mechanical goals will produce the quality it seeks. Final Fantasy XVI may have such goals, but they are supplicant to its desire to be liked, and so, rather than plant a flag of its own, it stitches together one from fabric pillaged from the most immediate eikons of popularity and quality - A Song of Ice and Fire, God of War, Demon Slayer, Devil May Cry - desperately begging to be liked by cloaking itself in what many people already do, needing to be loved in the way those things are, without any of the work or vision of its influences, and without any charisma of its own. Much like the patch and DLC content for Final Fantasy XV, it's a reactionary and cloying work that contorts itself into a shape it thinks people will love, rather than finding a unique self to be.
From the aggressively self-serious tone that embraces wholeheartedly the aesthetics of Prestige Fantasy Television with all its fucks and shits and incest and Grim Darkness to let you know that This Isn't Your Daddy's Final Fantasy, without actually being anywhere near as genuinely Dark, sad, or depressing as something like XV, from combat that borrows the surface-level signifiers of Devil May Cry combat - stingers, devil bringers, enemy step - but without any actual opposition or reaction of that series' diverse and reactive enemy set and thoughtful level design, or the way there's a episode of television-worth of lectures from a character explaining troop movements and map markers that genuinely do not matter in any way in order to make you feel like you're experiencing a well thought-out and materially concerned political Serious Fantasy, Final Fantasy XVI is pure wafer-thin illusion; all the surface from it's myriad influences but none of the depth or nuance, a greatest hits album from a band with no voice to call their own, an algorithmically generated playlist of hits that tunelessly resound with nothing. It looks like Devil May Cry, but it isn't - Devil May Cry would ask more of you than dodging one attack at a time while you perform a particularly flashy MMO rotation. It looks like A Song of Ice and Fire, but it isn't - without Martin's careful historical eye and materialist concerns, the illusion that this comes even within striking distance of that flawed work shatters when you think about the setting for more than a moment.
In fairness, Final Fantasy XVI does bring more than just the surface level into its world: it also brings with it the nastiest and ugliest parts of those works into this one, replicated wholeheartedly as Aesthetic, bereft of whatever semblance of texture and critique may have once been there. Benedikta Harman might be the most disgustingly treated woman in a recent work of fiction, the seemingly uniform AAA Game misogyny of evil mothers and heroic, redeemable fathers is alive and well, 16's version of this now agonizingly tired cliche going farther even than games I've railed against for it in the past, which all culminates in a moment where three men tell the female lead to stay home while they go and fight (despite one of those men being a proven liability to himself and others when doing the same thing he is about to go and do again, while she is not), she immediately acquiesces, and dutifully remains in the proverbial kitchen. Something that thinks so little of women is self-evidently incapable of meaningfully tackling any real-world issue, something Final Fantasy XVI goes on to decisively prove, with its story of systemic evils defeated not with systemic criticism, but with Great, Powerful Men, a particularly tiresome kind of rugged bootstrap individualism that seeks to reduce real-world evils to shonen enemies for the Special Man with Special Powers to defeat on his lonesome. It's an attempt to discuss oppression and racism that would embarrass even the other shonen media it is clearly closer in spirit to than the dark fantasy political epic it wears the skin of. In a world where the power fantasy of the shonen superhero is sacrosanct over all other concerns, it leads to a conclusion as absurd and fundamentally unimaginative as shonen jump's weakest scripts: the only thing that can stop a Bad Guy with an Eikon is a Good Guy with an Eikon.
In borrowing the aesthetics of the dark fantasy - and Matsuno games - it seeks to emulate, but without the nuance, FF16 becomes a game where the perspective of the enslaved is almost completely absent (Clive's period as a slave might as well not have occurred for all it impacts his character), and the power of nobility is Good when it is wielded by Good Hands like Lord Rosfield, a slave owner who, despite owning the clearly abused character who serves as our introduction to the bearers, is eulogized completely uncritically by the script, until a final side quest has a character claim that he was planning to free the slaves all along...alongside a letter where Lord Rosfield discusses his desire to "put down the savages". I've never seen attempted slave owner apologia that didn't reveal its virulent underlying racism, and this is no exception. In fact, any time the game attempts to put on a facade of being about something other than The Shonen Hero battling other Kamen Riders for dominance, it crumbles nigh-immediately; when Final Fantasy 16 makes its overtures towards the Power of Friendship, it rings utterly false and hollow: Clive's friends are not his power. His power is his power.
The only part of the game that truly spoke to me was the widely-derided side-quests, which offer a peek into a more compelling story: the story of a man doing the work to build and maintain a community, contributing to both the material and emotional needs of a commune that attempts to exist outside the violence of society. As tedious as these sidequests are - and as agonizing as their pacing so often is - it's the only part of this game where it felt like I was engaging with an idea. But ultimately, even this is annihilated by the game's bootstrap nonsense - that being that the hideaway is funded and maintained by the wealthy and influential across the world, the direct beneficiaries and embodiments of the status quo funding what their involvement reveals to be an utterly illusionary attempt to escape it, rendering what could be an effective exploration of what building a new idea of a community practically looks like into something that could be good neighbors with Galt's Gulch.
In a series that is routinely deeply rewarding for me to consider, FF16 stands as perhaps its most shallow, underwritten, and vacuous entry in decades. All games are ultimately illusions, of course: we're all just moving data around spreadsheets, at the end of the day. But - as is the modern AAA mode de jour - 16 is the result of the careful subtraction of texture from the experience of a game, the removal of any potential frictions and frustrations, but further even than that, it is the removal of personality, of difference, it is the attempt to make make the smoothest, most likable affect possible to the widest number of people possible. And, just like with its AAA brethren, it has almost nothing to offer me. It is the affect of Devil May Cry without its texture, the affect of Game of Thrones without even its nuance, and the affect of Final Fantasy without its soul.
Final Fantasy XVI is ultimately a success. It sought out to be Good, in the way a PS5 game like this is Good, and succeeded. And in so doing, it closed off any possibility that it would ever reach me.
It doesn’t really surprise me that each positive sentiment I have seen on Final Fantasy XVI is followed by an exclamation of derision over the series’ recent past. Whether the point of betrayal and failure was in XV, or with XIII, or even as far back as VIII, the rhetorical move is well and truly that Final Fantasy has been Bad, and with XVI, it is good again. Unfortunately, as someone who thought Final Fantasy has Been Good, consistently, throughout essentially the entire span of it's existence, I find myself on the other side of this one.
Final Fantasy XV convinced me that I could still love video games when I thought, for a moment, that I might not. That it was still possible to make games on this scale that were idiosyncratic, personal, and deeply human, even in the awful place the video game industry is in.
Final Fantasy XVI convinced me that it isn't.
Darkest Dungeon II
2021
marketing your game as a sequel while it having no similarities to the prequel gotta be one of the worst things ever