I've always disliked half of this game but after replaying this and Forces back to back I def appreciate the fantastic level design for Classic Sonic's stages WAAAAY more. He might not handle ideally to me but the way his spin dash is so super charged it basically acts like his form of boost and it's very fun to mess around with.

Modern Sonic levels are 10/10 but you already know about that.

Gameplay wise the only problems really are a few of the levels (Planet Wisp is a real wet fart of a stage to go out lmao) and ESPECIALLY the final boss cus good lord that shit is actually garbage.

The writing and overall creative prowess on display really lets this one down for me tho. The rehashed levels idea has definitely not aged the best in my head given the direction Sonic Team took after this game (Sonic going "man this place feels oddly familiar" to GREEN HILL and other moments like that have actually aged like milk lmfao) but I still gotta appreciate how gorgeous the reimaginings of these levels are.

The writing is probably where this game bothers me the most because there was so much potential for cute and fun interactions between the whole cast given the anniversary title nature but good lord this game's writing is dull beyond belief. Ig if you prefer your sonic game to be straight to the point I can understand the appeal but the characters are a big part of why I enjoy these games even in the more flawed stories and this game just gives you nothing to work with.

Basically you play this game the way you play Fire Emblem Fates. Whenever someone opens their mouth you skip that shit and go gaming.

Yeah nah dis my favorite rpgmaker style game by a good margin so far lmao

FANTASTIC cast (TE AMO SLUG, FUGO, CARON, NOEL, JILLIAN, RUSSEL, TOAD, PYTHON ETC ETC ETC), great story filled with so many fun twists and turns, BANGER music, quirky gameplay that keeps you on your toes with variety and fun set pieces

Idk man just hits different, simple foundation but the immensely charming character dynamics and the amount of depth put into every single one of their journeys, just chef kiss

I also relate to Russel Burrows too much that man is literally me

NOW GIVE ME THE TL OF THE REST

Pretty good game.

Went WAAAAY beyond my initial expectations for it. Really broke that "it's just a silly musou spin-off" barrier at its best moments. The 3H cast is still excelent with some characters I'd argue being utilized even better in this game while others go into fresh and exciting new directions.

It's a bit too lenghty for my taste since I'd prefer a game with this kind of simple gameplay to aim for a shorter runtime but it was not obnoxious or anything and New Game + will def make the next routes shorter and more chill

Played Azure Gleam, honestly backfired to go with the Lions this time since from what I think about this route and what I hear of the others it seems to be the weakest one lmao. Wasn't bad at all tho just had a good amount of narrative gripes here and there so I ended up thinking the main plotline was far less interesting than the smaller character conflicts that stuff like the paralogues and supports explored. So yeah just like Three Houses the characters elevate a faulty script, some things don't change.

Some rapidfire things I liked: Shez and Arval are fucking awesome holy I cannot go back to a version of Fodlán without Shez bro they actually elevate this shit so hard, one of the most fun MCs in the series. Byleth being voiced is such music to my ears, all the characters that weren't playable in Houses like Rodrigue and Jeralt were also fun as hell to see, I barely even scratched the Eagles route but I love Monica, music was fire, the elements of base management from Three Houses returning was nice and well done

Plan to do Edelgard and Claude routes in due time (ain't trynna do a whole other 40h musou campaign rn lmao), pretty sure the score is going up once I add those to the full picture

Playing through Drakengard 1 motivated me to face my past demons so this mf was first on the list



To me I can look at FE6 in two ways

As a "sequel" to FE7, man, this game is balls. The gameplay is worse which I mean that's fair because FE7 is a prequel after all but holy shit when it comes to the writing this is EASILY the most boring Fire Emblem narrative of all time and there’re absolute 0 excuses when it comes to that. It's basically gen 2 of Genealogy but you remove the build-up and intricate character work that went into making that game this grand epic tale of heritage and generational conflict, instead they said "hey let's make a game where most of the army are kids and you vaguely hear about their parents but they're not gonna be developed, established or even count as characters!" and even if you try to connect your brain to FE7 to fill in the holes it doesn’t work because the continuity is all fucked in so many ways. Most of the FE7 cast magically disappears, Hector is straight up disrespected, Eliwood is in it for 1 scene, God knows where Lyn is, PENT AND LOUISE ARE ALIVE AND JUST CHILLING IN THEIR HOUSE EVEN THOUGH THE COUNTRY THEY HELP RULE WAS BASICALLY THE MOST AFFECTED BY THE WAR??????

It's a mess so I’m mostly looking at it in a vacuum



The early game of this entry is easily the most annoying out of all the games in the series I played. The hit rates are obnoxious and your starting units fucking suck. As the game progresses you still have some really annoying level design but once you get some saucy units and they get beefy yeah, it’s still GBA Fire Emblem so it’s fun.

The plot like I said is a mouthful of nothing. The main antagonists are neat but they suffer from little screen time and Zephiel especially kinda ends up feeling like a plot device towards Idunn even though he’s supposed to be this interesting ideal driven character. Roy and Guinevere are the most boring leads imaginable. Roy especially feels like he was written by an AI that has no agency and just reacts to whatever the plot wants them to do in a text to speech manner. I HAVE NO IDEA WHY MERLINUS IS LIKE THE CO-LEAD TOO BECAUSE HE IS A GOD AWFUL ANNOYING POINTLESS CHARACTER. The cast as a whole tho taking supports into consideration is solid, some hard misses and boring ass supports but some hidden gems as well.

I feel like this would be a strong 5 but man the last 3 chapters (which you need to complete a bunch of stupid requirements to be able to play through, but let’s ignore that) are GREAT. Brunnya’s last stand is dope as hell, the dragon history lesson by Jahn is awesome (I really like Jahn he’s rad) and the final fight with Idunn although a bit too easy imo is really nice. The true ending in particular is fantastic. I truly adore Idunn, she’s so interesting and the conclusion to her journey is satisfying as hell. So yeah, those 3 last chapters at least for now kinda got me by the balls and elevated this real nothing burger of a story that features some cool characters into a nothing burger story that has a pretty sick climax that I still think it didn’t deserve. I hope they remake this game Echoes style one day because the foundation for a fantastic story is there, they just need to stop being hostages of Kaga’s vision of Fire Emblem which is ultimately what brings this game to failure, it’s a poor man’s Kaga Fire Emblem game both in gameplay (some maps are straight up copied from Thracia lmao) and in story.






So yeah the manga is better read Hasha no Tsurugi most of the shit I complained about Hasha goes out of its way to make it good here click this link rn pls
https://mangadex.org/title/d320eeff-08d2-424d-9513-77b17b219354

Perfect remake I'd say, doesn't change much ultimately but the few tweaks are noticeable and the presentation is better while still looking like an authentic artstyle evolution of the og

The new puzzles are fun and the ones that were altered were definitely for the better

Still a banger

I don’t have a dope quote or anything cute like that to start off this review. I’d have to actually scour through all the vapid dialogue to even attempt to find one that would be even remotely neat or memorable.
This is the worst Assassin’s Creed game. It’s honestly not even a competition. This game is borderline worthless and fails at almost everything that it sets out to do.





Are you here for Eivor’s “Raven Saga”? An epic tale of Vikings taking over Medieval England and pacifying it from the clutches of the Saxon King Aelfred? Well, if you think a vapid 60 hours long pseudo political narrative about as deep as a kid’s pool featuring disposable and generic characters that get dropped or killed off at the drop of a hat because that’s how much they matter in the long run, then sure yeah maybe you’ll get what you want here.
Are you here for, you know, “Assassin’s Creed”? Well, I’m very glad to tell you that this game does indeed feature the Hidden Ones, which automatically make this game a “return to roots” according to some. It’s very epic to have Hytham and Basim around, 2 Hidden One companions. The former being a schmuck who doesn’t do anything in the entire game outside of telling Eivor to do literally all his work for him, while the latter is a borderline incomprehensible schizo who’s barely in the game, has absolutely nothing of interesting to say or add and turns out to be maybe the stupidest and most obvious twist villain of all time.
Are you here for a fun video game that feels nice to play and has a very cool open world to explore like Odyssey? Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you bro because this game plays like ass, controls like a boulder and has the most uninteresting setting in the series by a colossal margin.


I could legit end the review then and there since I believe it’s already a perfectly understandable summary on why this game is a colossal turd that easily signals the death of this series. I’m not even mad honestly, 11 games that I really like is a great run when you think about it. However, it is impressive how this game’s conclusion leaves no room for any hopes towards the future. Let’s get into it a bit more deeply, shall we? I’m not going spoiler free for once because honestly, I don’t care and you shouldn’t either. This narrative is not worth worrying about spoilers and I want to dissect its utter insanity.


Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is the 12th game in the AC series. It’s the final chapter in the RPG Trilogy of games, following up on the events of both AC Origins (Past section takes place after Bayek and Ahmunet forming the Hidden Ones) and AC Odyssey (Present section follows Layla Hassan for one last time as the world begins to collapse like in AC3, forcing her alongside Rebecca and Shawn to find a way to stop the catastrophe once again with the power of the Staff of Hermes passed on by Alexios).


I’m gonna go over some of the overall positives first since there really aren’t many this time.


The leveling system from the previous 2 games has been replaced by the power system. This basically exists to cut down level grinding alongside a revised and more streamlined gear loot cycle. It does indeed work and makes the need for level grinding almost nonexistent while also allowing you to feasibly fight underleveled and still have a fair shot at winning (well most of the time). It’s a good change even if it ultimately led me to pretty much not touching this game’s side-quest offerings. However, the devs were probably aware about that fact since the side-quests in this game were pretty much reduced to few minutes long one-off events instead of the beefier short narratives of the previous 2 games. The writing for those most likely got transferred to the Arc system which I will get into later.
The Bayek letter and the Desmond audio files are easily the best parts of the game. 3 audios that have absolutely nothing to do with the actual story of the game. Speaks volumes but they are beautifully written and voiced acted by Abubakar Salim and Nolan North.
This game is pretty, I cannot deny that.
Some gameplay additions like the slide and action wheel are almost useless but they are still welcome.
I like flyting and fishing, easily the most fun side-activities.

Yea that’s all the nice things I have to say. Let’s get into the meat of it.

The gameplay of this game is awful. It is stiff, janky and just not fun at all. Eivor moves like a fucking boulder even after upgrading her mobility and the combat is a tumor half-breed between Origins and Odyssey that just fucking sucks.
The longboat is easily the worst addition tho, what a tacky gimmick. It’s a glorified horse that you sometimes have to use to traverse the rivers of England. There’s no naval combat or anything interesting involved, it’s just letting that shit travel on autopilot to your destination and taking a piss break ig. Same goes for the horses because the number of times I just let mine go on auto to my destination because that shit was super fucking far away in this bloated ass map while I played a gatcha on my phone or something is actually not even funny.
Climbing and traversal feel even worse than in the previous 2 games somehow, it’s floaty and stiff at the same time somehow shit’s actually awful.
I think the whole mentality of looking at games in bad faith by saying “you’re just doing the same thing over and over again” is pretty dumb because you can legit break any game down like that but GOOD GOD, I have never played a game that made me think about how I’m just wasting my time doing the same fucking formulaic shit over and over again for 50+ hours more than this piece of shit.
TLDR; Gameplay garbage.

What about the story?
To which I respond: WHAT STORY?

This game took me 60 hours and I can confidently say if it was around 5 hours long you could achieve the exact same narrative.

Eivor’s character has next to 0 progression until the final HOUR of the game. The main characters that should drive the narrative like Sigurd or Basim DISAPPEAR FOR OVER 30 HOURS AND THEN COME BACK TO STAY FOR LESS THAN ONE. It is such a fucking achievement in storytelling incompetence that it’s astounding.
To break down this narrative into a sentence: Eivor and her brother Sigurd travel from Norway to England in search of Glory.

That’s literally it. Along the way Sigurd ends up learning about the ancient civilization and becoming obsessed with it while Eivor struggles with her place in this story as someone who seeks glory but is always second fiddle to her brother. They develop a convoluted hostile relationship with time since Sigurd fears that Eivor wants to hog all the glory for her which makes no sense because at no point does she ever try to do that in the whole game. After 58 hours the game has its climax where they just say fuck it and rip-off the ending of the hit visual novel euphoria. Sigurd and Eivor make amends and decide true glory can’t be physically everlasting, what matters is what you leave behind (admittedly the only nice narrative beat of the game which I did get some enjoyment out of). Then after that nice sequence they get confronted by Basim for some reason and you fight the worst final boss in video game history (NARRATIVELY AND IN THE CONTEXT OF GAMEPLAY), concluding the past narrative.
After that in modern day, Layla’s story comes to an end. A story that had absolutely no roadmap or coherence about a character I barely know outside of the OPTIONAL EMAILS AND FILES YOU CAN READ ON HER COMPUTER DURING THE 3 RPG GAMES. About 30 minutes of the most stupid and idiotic sci-fi jargon and bullshit ensue which is legit just not even worth trying to explain because one of the plot points is STRAIGHT OUT OF FUCKING FATE/EXTELLA.
Desmond is alive and is actually a God who keeps the multiverse in balance (I’M NOT FUCKING JOKING), I guess? Layla is now also a God who helps Desmond, I guess? Basim is in modern day now, I guess? Basim is a sage, I guess? Basim is very clearly going to sabotage the modern-day assassins, I guess? Does any of this mean anything? It does, it signals that the series is officially dead.
The shark wasn’t jumped, the shark got launched straight into space. None of this makes any sense and has absolutely no narrative weight or value. Remember when the animus was just a machine that could read the memories of your ancestors? Now we’re on some straight up Matrix Reloaded bullshit that has absolutely no place in this franchise.
And after all that you still have ONE MORE POST-GAME ARC FOR SOME REASON.
Eivor fights King Aelfred with all her allies, he dips off-screen, bunch of Eivor’s buddies get killed off for cheap shock value. Peak storytelling.
Once that’s done you can go kill all the members of the Order of the Ancients if you want which leads to the 4th ending scene of the game where King Aelfred reveals himself as the mastermind of the Order of Ancients who actually manipulated Eivor to destroy them from inside out in order to give birth to the Templars, this would be cool if I cared about any of this ig.

What a fucking shitshow of a story.
And you may be wondering “But Doti there’s literally a 50+ hour long chunk of the game you just glossed over like it doesn’t matter!”

YEAH, BECAUSE IT DOESN’T.

YOU SPEND 90% OF THE STORY COMPLETING THIS GAME’S “STORY ARCS” WHICH ARE LITERALLY GLORIFIED SIDE-QUESTS THAT VARY FROM BAD TO BORING TO DECENT AT BEST. YOU ARE FORCED TO DO ALL OF THEM WHO 98% OF THE TIME DO NOT MOVE THE GRANDER STORY IN ANY WAY. IT’S FUCKING ASS.

Characters? Idk, Eivor is decent and she has her moments of shine during the 2% of the story where they actually give her something to do. Sigurd is fine. I liked Ivarr and Ceolbert for the few hours they were in it. Hytham was there. Basim is the worst antagonist of all time. I think those are my thoughts, idk I’m kinda tired of even talking about them.

Music? I remember like 2 tracks and I swear they literally just played this one track the whole time in the overworld. Main theme is good that’s it.

Setting? Boring and lame, game being pretty doesn’t make up for it. Big open fields of nothing and 0 tree traversal in an Assassin’s Creed game that mostly takes place in the woods.



Idk this game is both a nothing burger and the most egregious piece of shit of all time. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what made Assassin’s Creed work in the first place and above all, just a shitty game in its own right. Easily one of the most worthless games ever made and one I cannot recommend in any capacity. A melancholic way to end this journey but having the 12th game fumble after 11 good runs is definitely still a very commendable legacy.

5 FUCKING YEARS WHERE THE FUCK IS SAIN FIRE EMBLEM YOU FRAUDSSSSS

Edit: Greatest game of all time I'm afraid.......

Edit 2: THEY FUCKING ADDED MARK FIRE EMBLEM THIS GAME IS SO BALLSY ITS PEAKKKK

Cute little game. A clear reflection on the feelings of isolation and longing faced during the pandemic but with an eldritch doomsday coat of paint that's REALLY reminiscent of Saya no Uta.

As a dog owner I felt the vibe but the presentation was definitely stronger than the writing. Lot of the dialogue felt too on the nose for my taste and the climax twist was muddled.

I feel like they should've sticked to the allegorical pov more instead of actually trying a contrived plot with the eldritch being since the game doesn't have the time to properly develop that (it's literally 30 minutes long, short projects like this should be more focused in order to work) so it got messy by the end.



SPOILER RAMBLE

I interpreted the climax as a possible allegory for the moment the pandemic almost ceased but then resumed shortly after, restarting the cycle and spiralling the main character into a broken and hollow state of repetition but that message is oddly conveyed if that was the intention due to the literal plot conflicting with the irl scenario parallel since I'm assuming the implication is that the dog was already "marked" by the eldritch being and thus the main character ended up leaving his loved one he longed for to her death in order to survive but ended up bringing the dog in unaware of the mark and ironically being saved by a marked entity.