Eithi
2021
This review contains spoilers
(Played up to Volume 4 Chapter 2 with Volume 5 on the horizon)
Mid gameplay. Really dislike how much it heats my phone up. The app feels like it's about to break the moment i take my eyes off of it and makes interacting with it a bigger chore than it needs to be. Got that? good.
Blue archive is concerned about our youth from the perspective of someone who's out of it but still hasn't gotten pounded out by the world. It presents a generally idyllic world of cute girls and guns and cool clothes and fun times and contrasts it with the seriousness it takes itself when those elements are taken away from the characters. The player takes on the role of someone who respects the agency of the girls as people and contrasts it with a world that seeks to take away their carefreeness through different elements: debt, security managment, politics, ideology and grief all threaten the daily lives of the students of Kivotos and the game explores the ways these ideas are entrusted to these kids and who's liable for what.
What i found most interesting in this aspect is how the main player character, Sensei, plays into this. As the only human adult in Kivotos, they've been entrusted with the role of an advisor to these girls. Not someone who can manage their lives, but someone they can rely on when the need arises. Sensei is explicitely someone who's against the removal of agency from the characters in the story, someone who's there to help guide the girls into finding and protecting what they personally want but can't bring themselves to admit they want to do. So you get this back and forward with a lot of characters who find their resolve by themselves without needing to be saved by Main Character Man who can save everyone. In a lot of chapters it's very easy to forget they're even in the story as the girls take center stage and do stuff for themselves. It finds this really interesting balance between semi self-insertness and giving them a voice that i found really compelling after years of playing gacha games with no real character to their name.
And this all culminates in Volume Final: a four chapter-long story about Sensei's role in the stories of these characters and how they respond to crises. It's an extremely satisfying end to this part of the story that ties up a lot of loose ends thematically and opens the way for the more mystic elements of the setting to take place in the future.
The real joy of blue archive is set within that framework. It's always bright and poppy and idealistic and always willing to stand up for the kids who don't deserve any of the horrors of the world; and in a real world where it's hard to see that happening to people all over, it feels...reassuring, i'd say, to see someone believe with their whole heart and soul that no, a better world is possible, and it's up to the adults of the world to pave it for the next generation.
Mid gameplay. Really dislike how much it heats my phone up. The app feels like it's about to break the moment i take my eyes off of it and makes interacting with it a bigger chore than it needs to be. Got that? good.
Blue archive is concerned about our youth from the perspective of someone who's out of it but still hasn't gotten pounded out by the world. It presents a generally idyllic world of cute girls and guns and cool clothes and fun times and contrasts it with the seriousness it takes itself when those elements are taken away from the characters. The player takes on the role of someone who respects the agency of the girls as people and contrasts it with a world that seeks to take away their carefreeness through different elements: debt, security managment, politics, ideology and grief all threaten the daily lives of the students of Kivotos and the game explores the ways these ideas are entrusted to these kids and who's liable for what.
What i found most interesting in this aspect is how the main player character, Sensei, plays into this. As the only human adult in Kivotos, they've been entrusted with the role of an advisor to these girls. Not someone who can manage their lives, but someone they can rely on when the need arises. Sensei is explicitely someone who's against the removal of agency from the characters in the story, someone who's there to help guide the girls into finding and protecting what they personally want but can't bring themselves to admit they want to do. So you get this back and forward with a lot of characters who find their resolve by themselves without needing to be saved by Main Character Man who can save everyone. In a lot of chapters it's very easy to forget they're even in the story as the girls take center stage and do stuff for themselves. It finds this really interesting balance between semi self-insertness and giving them a voice that i found really compelling after years of playing gacha games with no real character to their name.
And this all culminates in Volume Final: a four chapter-long story about Sensei's role in the stories of these characters and how they respond to crises. It's an extremely satisfying end to this part of the story that ties up a lot of loose ends thematically and opens the way for the more mystic elements of the setting to take place in the future.
The real joy of blue archive is set within that framework. It's always bright and poppy and idealistic and always willing to stand up for the kids who don't deserve any of the horrors of the world; and in a real world where it's hard to see that happening to people all over, it feels...reassuring, i'd say, to see someone believe with their whole heart and soul that no, a better world is possible, and it's up to the adults of the world to pave it for the next generation.
The perfect video game
2005
Really interesting dive on people who commit their lives to the blade. Liked it a lot
Fun and hilarious adventure game that’s always doing new stuff and doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Kusoge from the 90’s with an alright story and terrible combat but neat character interactions. I love shizuka
Lovely! The cast is incredible and the gameplay loop is immaculate though the actual plot is kinda really boring. I like the combat but it really needs some fine tuning lol. Definitely getting 2 and 3 later on
2006
technically finished around the end of march but no matter
peak videogames
peak videogames
One of the most ambitious remakes ever made. It manages to strike a balance between recreating the feel of the original and having an original voice to FF7 as a 20 year old legacy. Super excited for Rebirth in February
2023
an incredible battle system hampered by the need of being a soshage. Im not one to harp on gacha mechanics much but it really made me sad how a game so confident and fun in itself ended up being the worst kind of mush by needing to concede several aspects of itself to the slog of daily and weekly grinding and the truly terrible duplicate upgrade system. also the end of the snow planet was so terrible it burned me from the game hard. maybe once penacony is done ill go back and see if they got any better
2017
(played it in japanese) king exit is one of those games that truly dont leave your brain. the characters are all charming and interesting, its exploration of a fallen hero in geolouise is truly something to behold and it's really, truly inspiring knowing that all this was made by a single person using rpg maker. the entire ending sequence and the final sections with Louise havent left my mind since i beat it. i cant wait to shill this one to all my friends once the retranslation comes out
im gonna log the first game into this too because i feel both games have the same underlying problems. Mainly that the underlying design of the entire game feels passé and out of touch with what i really like about AAA action games. The game on a moment to moment basis is never unfun but aside from the really pretty winter aesthetic there is just nothing here to really dig into. Also the writing in general is fucking awful dude like jesus christ
Pirate's curse dares to ask the question "what if shantae had a single good game?"
Dies irae is the story of a man who dreamed. It's as much the story of Ren and Reinhard, Marie and Mercurius as it is of Masada himself.
Incredibly ambitious and a bit too long, it's the game that most expresses the desire to create a story ive played in a while. It mixes everything that's cool in modern japanese urban horror with chuuni media and nazis and ties it all in a story about influences, legacies and authorship. By the end of Rea's route you'll be crying your eyes out at the sheer scale of the monster you just experienced and see it cross yet another mountain before gently decending down into a pristine lake. Play this if you want to experiences the highs and lows of an author with a lot of ambition and the jank to pull it through and fall apart again and again.
Incredibly ambitious and a bit too long, it's the game that most expresses the desire to create a story ive played in a while. It mixes everything that's cool in modern japanese urban horror with chuuni media and nazis and ties it all in a story about influences, legacies and authorship. By the end of Rea's route you'll be crying your eyes out at the sheer scale of the monster you just experienced and see it cross yet another mountain before gently decending down into a pristine lake. Play this if you want to experiences the highs and lows of an author with a lot of ambition and the jank to pull it through and fall apart again and again.
2016
ff15 is a really bizarre and honestly broken RPG narratively. The main story has barely any focus and events keep happening for the sake of having a mini setpiece that barely matters to the ongoing story of Noctis' coming of age story. You kinda just go around with the vague goal of getting to altissia but you spend so much time in Lucis that by the time you do the game ran out of shit to make so they shit out the Altissia portion and the Empire portion in literally 6 hours and it feels like ass. Almost every main story-related event feels disconnected from itself and its very hard to form a satisfactory connection with the chain of events presented.
But the game cares so fucking much about the boys. The character writing is really strong from minute ONE and it never lets up. They're all so strongly characterized through their dialog, actions, animations and you really feel like they're real, actually real friends noctis made that you find midway through and that relationship and how they all interact carries this game hard. When they bicker or joke with eachother you truly believe these four are real people and it's genuienely the best part of the game, which makes the spots where you can see the game shine brighter hurt even more
the first 20 hours/8 chapters are the best part of the game and thankfully its the longest section. The game has a really strong core leveling loop where every system feeds into itself and rewards you with Shit and character moments. You do hunts so you get money and exp, so you can buy better items and ingredients so you can cook them, get great food buffs and go sidequesting for even more exp, all so you can cash it out at the end at a hotel and gain a bunch of levels after hours of questing and adventuring. The EXP banking system is genius because through the recontextualization of grinding as an activity that grows one single number bigger and bigger it feels all the better when you cash it out and get all the rewards at once, rather than getting one level every 20 minutes or so. While this is more or less the same as grinding like that, i think it makes the player engage with the sidequests and side material a lot more since it all feeds back into the number you're actively trying to grow and i really enjoyed taking 3 or 4 hours to do a bunch of side quests and to level up a bunch
its really frustrating seeing the game as it is. not because it could have been versus 13 and been magically better, but because its own attempts at juggling the versus 13 ideas, its own ideas and the very apparent lack of dev time makes me yearn for a version of this game where they did everything they very obviously wanted to do but couldn't
But the game cares so fucking much about the boys. The character writing is really strong from minute ONE and it never lets up. They're all so strongly characterized through their dialog, actions, animations and you really feel like they're real, actually real friends noctis made that you find midway through and that relationship and how they all interact carries this game hard. When they bicker or joke with eachother you truly believe these four are real people and it's genuienely the best part of the game, which makes the spots where you can see the game shine brighter hurt even more
the first 20 hours/8 chapters are the best part of the game and thankfully its the longest section. The game has a really strong core leveling loop where every system feeds into itself and rewards you with Shit and character moments. You do hunts so you get money and exp, so you can buy better items and ingredients so you can cook them, get great food buffs and go sidequesting for even more exp, all so you can cash it out at the end at a hotel and gain a bunch of levels after hours of questing and adventuring. The EXP banking system is genius because through the recontextualization of grinding as an activity that grows one single number bigger and bigger it feels all the better when you cash it out and get all the rewards at once, rather than getting one level every 20 minutes or so. While this is more or less the same as grinding like that, i think it makes the player engage with the sidequests and side material a lot more since it all feeds back into the number you're actively trying to grow and i really enjoyed taking 3 or 4 hours to do a bunch of side quests and to level up a bunch
its really frustrating seeing the game as it is. not because it could have been versus 13 and been magically better, but because its own attempts at juggling the versus 13 ideas, its own ideas and the very apparent lack of dev time makes me yearn for a version of this game where they did everything they very obviously wanted to do but couldn't
I liked it! a little spotty at times but i think overall it hits more than it misses. the bulk of the good writing is in the character episodes and the ending with thorn and i think it worked quite well. very excited to play 2 soon.