Very good.
If this ever gets revived, or a remake gets made, i have a few suggestions on how to improve it.
Make it an open world rythym game, you are able to craft more than one guitar that gives you stat boosts during battles, the guitars would come in various tiers from "EPIC" to "LEGENDARY" i think this would genuinely impact the enjoyment of the game and give it more replay value.
Also make the story more mature, make the characters swear all the time to show you are commited to the vision of the new direction you are steering the series to, and last but not least, UNREAL ENGINE 5. Yea you best believe it would sell TRILLIONS of copies.

there's something particularly grimy about this one that wasn't present in the others. something instigating and coarse and spiteful and reactionary. "language as a virus" as interpreted in the most corrosive way possible. characterized by emptiness; overwhelmingly pro-nothing

HC2 was positioned like an anaglyph where the heightened elements were layered just askew of the seen&felt "human" elements despite their differences, and when paired they were able to speak earnestly to lived experience. HC3 bristles at the very thought; too suspicious and cynical to allow anything to resonate so cleanly; too preoccupied with how earned it is; too uncomfortable with its own audience; too busy wagging its finger at ghosts

this is a work defined by unpleasant, uncharitable metacommentary; the shock of gore, body fluids, and pointlessly cruel backstories amounting to little more than a yawning (bored, boring) void. violent death of the author offered the instant every page's been torn to confetti. one last mean little joke from a particularly mean little game

a neurotic stormcloud reckoning with creation and voyeurism and expectations and consumption. the reclaiming of catharsis thru punishingly overcorrective countermeasure. a last gasp chance to weaponize itself against that what came prior, itself, and the "puppeteer". denouement as calculated sabotage that can't be walked back

rpg maker's BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea - Episode 2 (2014)

In an ideal world, the term "remake" wouldn't be used to refer to games that are just a pre-existing one without a lot of the eccentricities that made it what it is but rather unique reinterpretations in a completely different genre with the gall to make choices as unhinged as making the new protagonist say "Bullshit" and blast a song on his phone that people were tricked into thinking was Limp Bizkit and turning the boss fight you probably forgot about into a fleshed out doomed yaoi storyline. Stranger of Paradise's journey from another nail in an already disappointing E3 to a source of ironic humor to a game sincerely enjoyed by most of those who played it was truly something special and I'm glad I was along for the ride. Every issue I had with the game (the awful loot system, how often it feels like repeating the same lines of dialogue in gameplay sections, etc.) was already outweighed by the sincere charm it has as this weird reinterpretation of one of the most formative works in the RPG genre but man did it stick the landing in that final act. I'm just sitting here trying to process the sheer amount of peak fiction I was hit with in quick succession.

Nothing especially insightful to add on this one compared to my original log, as I think I've said about all that can be objectively said about FFVIII in my previous review - just wanted to say how special an experience this game is to share with a partner.

I've heard plenty of reasonable complaints about how Squall and Rinoa's romance is caught in the middle of a million different things instead of being the main focus like some thinks it should, but in doing so it manages to capture a specific sort of feeling: of being thrust into an intersection of far too many things for any one person to handle, feeling as if it's going to crush you from all directions... and then looking up and finding that someone else has also somehow found their way right where they are, threatened by those exact same burdens and every bit as in need of help as you are. Our two protagonists' private moments alone are few and far between, but they're all the more special for it: just like how we always see Squall's narration as our protagonist but only rarely get to see Rinoa truly open up, it's far too easy to get in our own heads and be left helpless to our limited perceptions of others' points of view. Sometimes you might be surprised what you find on the other end - or on your own.

Anyways, sorry, don't want to get too sappy or mushy to a bunch of people who don't know me or the details of my personal life. Squall is literally me and Rinoa is literally my girlfriend, that's what I'm getting at here.

there's often too much emphasis placed on the value of narrative that is intrinsically gamey - stories that 'can only be told within the parameters and constructs of a game'. the idea here is simple: one wants to demonstrate the value their medium can bring to the table, so naturally any stories that can 'only' exist as a game and would face extreme adaptational hurdles presents the most appealing case for games as art.

i think this line of thought is suffocating, though. leaving aside the fact that this thwarts and diminishes the potential and creativity of other mediums in adaptation, the kinds of narratives that are lauded for best-in-class video game storytelling are often entirely subservient to structure or gimmick, or engage in reflexive and banal meta exercises. what's more, i'd posit that most (maybe even all) video game narratives are only feasible within the context of video games. taking play seriously means looking for the syntax linking the abstraction of mechanics to traditional forms of storytelling and presentation and the bearing that the coalescence of the two has on emotion and thought.

all this is to say that 13 sentinels represents another homecoming for the 'stories that are beholden to complex ADV structure' genre, and that it distinguishes itself from the usual suspects with nothing but endearing and unrelenting passion for its subject matter while considering some surprisingly insightful meditations on japans relationship to the media environment its fostered since the post-war era. character interactions are really fun and they're easy to get attached to, its breezy and freeform format makes for some incredibly comfortable gaming, and yes - it takes a lot of skill to hold a narrative this ridiculously convoluted together. 13 sentinels is practically bursting at the seams, but it's pretty sharp in how it chooses to disseminate its key narrative points. i also found it refreshing in that its far more shoujo than it is shonen.

this is really more of a pulpy 3.5 than a 4 - it's pretty scuffed mechanically and even structurally. it loses a significant amount of steam in the last quarter of the game (having exhausted a lot of its appeal and doing itself no favours when the emotional resonance the final battle should have fails to land), its RTS component can be exhilirating but fails to integrate itself as essential within the ADV structure and is often unbalanced to its own detriment, and certain characters get relegated to expository mouthpieces with only the occasional bursts of charm buoying their place within the game (gouto being the primary offender here).

still, how can i argue with a game in which ultimately, the brash and youthful human spirit triumphs over the petty squabbles and needlessly labyrinthine overcomplications of adults?

In terms of understanding the all too encompassing 'drive' of consumption, both self made by years and years of false productivity and perhaps even inherently by our own selves, Mr Rainer is the most comprehensive stake on it. On every level even, emotionally, physically, metaphysically, it's all there! And because of that it is so so so draining. It's got buckets of symbolism and weaved online metaphors, it is so Learned on the aftermath of our connected minds and muses poignantly on where that all leaves us.

I think like, just flashing through some highlights real quick:
-the way self-help is recontextualized as a society "sustaining" coping mechanism that at best adds to the noise
-how value is a disgusting mortifying structure that we are required to keep in the back of our minds to exist, where its true attainment is in real connection. And how it's the only real warmth seen in this cold dying world.
-on that topic, how much I really want to just cuddle with Rene right now. Please.
-how each character and thread deals dually with sating hunger as it is in creating more of it
-despite being super gestural about many different things the raw imagery manages to evoke exactly what's happening to you/what you should be thinking about at any given moment
-that this game looks SOOO fucking visually good there's not a thing i can think of since El Shaddai that has swept me off my feet with its incredible choice in style and drawing. Also the music, 'mwah
-that this one managed to make me laugh the most out of etherane's black comedy catalog by embracing my terminally online memetic qualities like personality tests

This is not including lots and lots and lots more to think about!! I don't think I even really scratched the surface on its particularly heavy social media commentary (there are a couple things I won't talk about though because I doubt they'd ever get a real conversation otherwise), or just how the work communicates its lore and world! And how that actually just ends up defining the characters.

God it's SOOO good <3 I'm going to be a rainer stan until I die

The sounds of Flores con Historias end up feeling like an eerie procession, a calm cacophony to horror. The horror of stories left untold and repressed, pierced down and pinned under buckets of pain and intentional misery. And yet despite the timeline in front of me, nothing has changed. In my own country a 50 year tide is threatened to be overturned by a decision that feels progressively powerless to counteract in time. Stories like this are a reminder to fight, for the garden of lively flowers we help live on, hopefully to never see reaped.

Yet still continuously discomforting how the voices of men compound, breaking down so clearly visceral lived experiences like this. "Not nuanced." "Not of sufficient interest". "So clearly explicit and lacking in subtlety." There is not a shred of empathy in those words, there is no understanding of rights and life there is only an impulse to eye roll at stories that do not affect them. Much better to live in detached houses away from the world, letting the violation continue, refuse the memoir for the easier to consume, to play with the world in centrist "high art" but seek nothing of what's real. I am not surprised, but it will forever be continuously torturous. Eventually they will become discarded wastelands, but as of now they make the gripping darkness of these stories more apparent. We have to keep striving to give these flowers light. For a brighter future. Salud.