Undeniably sweet, charming and wholesome… even when you spend all of your time drawing dicks, scrawling obscenities, splatter-painting every surface with hideous globs of color, and generally creating a bunch of horrifying MS Paint monstrosities that everyone trips over themselves to praise and fawn over. I vandalized their entire village and they loved me for it.

Deducting one star because of the high number of gamebreaking bugs that continually stymied my progress and made me restart — ESPECIALLY a truly egregious bug that kept freezing up my game during the last boss fight. Totally inexcusable.

In retrospect, I probably should have expected this. I’m a middle-aged man (with almost zero Disney nostalgia) playing Kingdom Hearts for the first time. I’m so far removed from this game’s core demographic, I might as well reside on an entirely different planet. And yet I played it... and yeah, it just wasn't for me.

So yeah. I found this one to be an interminable slog, with mind-numbingly repetitive combat, clunky mechanics, miserable platforming, claustrophobic level design, and a camera that skittered around in a nausea-inducing loop that often sent me to the medicine cabinet, looking for Dramamine. I admire how earnest and genuinely affecting some parts of it are (particularly the ending, which had me blasting “Simple and Clean” on repeat for weeks), but getting to those moments (and hell, finishing the game) often felt like an absolute chore.

At the same time, I'm vaguely curious about picking up Kingdom Hearts II sometime soon? Maybe that's a dumb idea.


This might seem heretical, but nothing about this game really grabbed or captivated me. I’ve been plunking through it on and off for about six months now, and the best I can muster is a distant appreciation for its craft and aesthetics. Everything else—the combat, mechanics, narrative, level design—didn’t really click with me. I kept waiting for something—ANYTHING—to make me stand up and take notice of what so many have described as one of the greatest games of all time — but it never happened. And now that it’s leaving the Playstation Plus network, I guess it’s time to call it quits and move on. Oh well. Different strokes, etc.

I’ve played this before (or rather, I played the fan translated SNES rom from Aeon Genesis) and have long considered it a personal favorite of mine, despite some of its cavernous flaws. The Switch remake doesn’t necessarily fix or sweep all those flaws under the rug, but rather refines some of the mechanics, polishes everything up, and amplifies many of its greatest assets (the soundtrack, in particular, remains as stellar as it ever was). The updated HD-2D graphics are arresting and full of nice, expressive flourishes and the numerous bite-sized vignettes (a multi-genre pastiche, slowly expanding into a glorious gestalt as you hurtle towards the end) are diverse, engaging, and overplump with goofy charm. Above all, Live a Live remains an absolute joy to play, with one of the best endgames I can recall from any J-RPG. And that ending… wowsers. Highly, highly recommended.

I have a somewhat checkered history with FromSoft games.

I started off with Dark Souls. In retrospect, I probably didn’t give it a fair shot. I was perplexed by its arcane difficulty and obtuse design, bouncing off in the middle of the tutorial dungeon. It just didn’t click with me.

Then I tried out Bloodborne. I got a little further this time, finding some degree of pleasure as I mowed through reams of zombie villagers with my sawtooth blade. Then I found the Cleric Beast and he pummeled me into oblivion... over and over and over again. I retreated and turned the game off before I got much farther. This, too, did not click with me.

I gave it one more shot with Elden Ring. I bumbled around for about 10+ hours before finding Magrit, the Fell Omen… and he ground my bones into a fine powder. I felt alienated by the endless praise heaped upon this game. I became a little bitter. I was stymied and flung my controller at the TV. Maybe FromSoft games would NEVER click with me.

Then, based on nothing more than a whim, I gave Bloodborne another shot… and somehow, miraculously, everything fell into place. It finally clicked. I quickly became enthralled with this game, progressing in tiny increments, then in seismic leaps as my skills and familiarity with the combat grew. I slaughtered all of the bosses. I plundered all of its secrets. I rolled credits and wanted more. Against all odds, I had utterly lost myself in this game... and holy fuck, it was a tremendously rewarding experience.

So yeah… I think this is one of my favorite games now. Maybe I should give Elden Ring another chance? I dunno… I’m just glad I finally took the plunge and made it to the other side.