A triumphant return for our favorite bounty hunter

In 2021, the year of long overdue sequels we had a lot of sequels that were over a decade between titles. Psychonauts 2 being 16 years apart from the first title, NEO: The World Ends with You being 14 years apart, No More Heroes 3 being 11 years apart from the second title (though you can argue that TSA also fulfilled the fan's urges during the time here for a full fledged numbered title from Suda51 here) and each one of them as surprisingly delivered considering the climate of bringing back these series and hoping some of the magic is still there for what people want after so long. Metroid Dread is almost a whopping 19 years apart from Fusion which was Metroid 4 and probably the game people have the most eyes on. A lot of eyes were on seeing if MercurySteam can do the series justice and after what seems like a decent showing for Samus Returns, it seems like they learned a lot from the last 4 years and delivered a title that has lived up to the title that is Metroid Dread.

Samus has never felt this flexible and smooth bringing her into the 2.5D space with several options that make traversing through ZDR a much more seamless experience. The addition of a slide feels like a small addition but it actually brings a lot to how Samus interacts with the world and reduces the downtime of going into Morph Ball for a small space that isn't long. The traditional tools of the trade are here such as Space Jump and Speed Boosting but there are also some new tools that bring even more movement options for Samus and bring a much more fluid combat flow with Flash Shift that make dodging attack much more manageable. The bosses in Dread are honestly the most fun I've had in Metroid bosses period. Each boss truly feels like an ordeal and hit pretty hard in a Normal playthrough but the best part is that they are never bullshit considering "No attack is unavoidable shows up as a tool tip during loading after you die to a boss and that couldn't be even more true. Each attempt never felt long and you always feel like you make progress during each attempt to the point sometimes you might be untouchable for a while until you finally beat a difficult boss. There are also specific moments that reward you with a action cutscene of Samus doing some action movie stunts and you can fire missiles/beam shots during this that actually feels rewarding and almost a power fantasy with how flashy and cool these cutscenes make her look. Level design is surprisingly great here since it feels like you're never stuck while still giving you the feeling that you're actually exploring things at your own pace. It's sort of a mix between Fusion being extremely linear to the point of locking doors in specific areas for no reason and Zero Mission where the game is pretty open but you sort of have a clear and cut case on what to do here. In Dread, you will give a hint on what to do next but you won't get any indicator on the map showing you specifically where to go which feels like essentially "go do this and figure out the rest yourself" feeling. The backgrounds themselves are actually full of detail such as animals scurrying about, specific machinery working in the back, detailed environment of ruins in a specific area and even what looks like different pathways that go into the background itself. I feel like the atmosphere is really understated in this game, I personally think Fusion and Super Metroid had it better, credit where credit is due here as there is a lot of moments that add what the game is named after being "Dread". The EMMI sections do a wonderful job of this from an audiovisual standpoint as the muted black and white, the lighting going on and off with various beeps coming from the machines and the EMMI itself. While the initial difficulty of these EMMIs progressing do get harder as they each get a unique tool, if you're good with platforming and have really great reflexes then the "Dread" will eventually get lost on you but fortunately these segments never last long and aren't really punishing as a death will just put you back right before entering the zone. The music is alright here but there are some pretty good mood setting themes such as each visit to the Network Station playing a electronical yet mysterious tune or the Save Station sounding omnious with the background of two chozos in the background. The puzzles themselves for gathering the upgrades are mostly just using a resource to get an upgrade while there are some elaborate puzzles that give you a feeling of satisfaction of pulling it off considering it's a combination of reaction, knowledge about the abilities you have and technique to do it properly.

There are some questionable decisions that I came to think of that I felt like the game added a few too many abilities and didn't put them out properly. You essentially get weaker versions of two iconic abilities you don't get until the end of the game and you rarely really use them since they essentially get phased out pretty quickly. The final item you get sort of feels like a waste considering you don't really use them other than to backtrack for 100% and gathering what feels like pointless upgrades considering you essentially get them at the end of the game. A nitpick is that when you get a specific power up for defeating EMMIs, the whole process is pretty repetitive despite only doing it a few times the whole playthrough and never really changes other than one instance where you have to run and make the perfect amount of space to pull off the damage you needed.

After playing through several games of the series this year (Metroid, Super Metroid, Fusion, Zero Mission in that order), I can understand why fans wanted a new game for so long. A series that created "Metroidvania" along with Castlevania unfortunately being in the background for the last 2 decades. The previous games have made me interested in the series and Metroid Dread has now made me a fan and excited to see what is to come next.

See you next mission, Lady.

Monolith Soft is known for creating some of the most narratively driven and surprisingly mature JRPGs with the Xenoblade series and Xenogears being fairly ahead of its time in overall scope of the story it was trying to tell. Unfortunately in terms of Xenogears, they never really were given the time and scope they wanted and the result was a rushed 2nd disc but still managing to win people over with the world building, music and the story and characters that didn't pull any punches. Xenosaga Episode 1 marks the beginning of Tetsuya Takahashi creating Monolith Soft after disagreements with Squaresoft (at the time) and despite managing to create the decent narrative and cast the studio is known for today, Episode 1 is a rough package to deal with most of the time.

//Story and Characters
Episode 1 has the unfortunate fate of first game in general for the newly formed Monolith Soft and thus there was a lot of world building that had to be down in unfortunate ways. The story itself is actually decent but the biggest problem with it was how it was paced. You will likely a great amount of time long cutscenes most of the time here and for the first 5 hours, it'll be a whopping 75% cutscene ratio and running around hallways back and forth and for the first half of the game, nothing really grand happens other than being introduced to the main cast of characters and fleshing them out a little bit. The cutscenes themselves need a bit of work as the way they're presented just felt really boring to me to the point that I actually fell asleep watching them for what felt like a majority of my time that day playing the game. I digress though as I will say the game does a good job of building up the world nonetheless and leaving things open for the main cast later down the line which is probably intended considering the scope of their games are pretty big as it is. The main cast is actually pretty great with each character having a great amount of depth to them. The english dub does an okay job here and it never really felt like the reason why the cutscenes felt boring sometimes as it is. I just wish the game didn't overload the player initially with cutscenes as it can make the first few hours a huge barrier of entry for some people just wanting to get into the game.

//Gameplay
The overall gameplay flow consist of a few hubs, dungeons that more act like linear hallways until the final two dungeons of the game, some side quests and activities to do and then the huge plethora of cutscenes during the main story. The battle system itself is very reminiscent of Xenogears itself with the "deathblow" system consisting of using the face buttons on your controller to dictate which action the player does and there are specific combinations that do different actions for each playable character. There are some changes and additions Xenosaga does to this battle system which include the way AP works, the boost system, turn order, the various systems themselves into customizing each character with skills from accessories, sharing their ether spells with one another and improving their special attacks called "Tech Attacks". I think the additions are overall good as they make the game a bit more challenging especially the later boss battles where you have to use every facet of the battle system to come out on top, that said I have my personal grievances with the "deathblow" system in general. I think the novelty of it in Xenogears wore off for me after 30 hours in this game and the novelty of it here wore off even faster considering how I felt that it made every random fight here drag on for way longer than it should. A bittersweet thing is that you eventually get a party member that is extremely strong and paired with a specific accessory (which I didn't get because it required more time in the casino) would essentially break the game in terms of gameplay so there's that. The side activities in the world consist of some side quests and some interesting minigames like going into a casino or operating a drill which I admit I did enjoy the few times I got around to them.

//Music
The overall presentation of music here is a mixed bag but in the weirdest way you can think of. The music itself here is actually pretty good and matches the aesthetic and world that you're in. The main problem is the way the music works when you're actually playing the game. It'll be pretty common that you'll be running around with no music at all and somehow the cutscenes would have most of the music you'll hear in this game. The game only has two battle themes with one of them you'll hear 99% of the time including the bosses themselves and one of them is reserved for the final boss. Granted, these tracks are pretty great but I do wish bosses themselves had a unique track to differentiate the enemies in a sense.

//Art Design
Probably the most subjective thing to discuss since art is different for everyone but I think the overall aesthetic and the art design is good. It reminds me of an late 2000's anime based around in space with how the characters look. The interiors themselves going through the ships look great honestly and some of the dungeons have some interesting interiors themselves too. In terms of the designs, this is probably an early anime aesthetic as it can get but it matches with the whole way the game is presented including the e-mail app feeling something from a late 90's SEGA game (probably Space Channel 5 honestly).

I think Xenosaga Episode 1 had some great ideas here but the execution feels really rough as it is, I didn't expect much considering it's the first game of a trilogy and those games tend to be the most rough ones even though there are some exceptions. The huge cutscene ratio and presentation can easily put some people off but it does have great characters and a huge overarching story that spans 3 games which will be a herculean task if the first game doesn't entrance you and it barely did here for me. It's not a bad game honestly but I can't really tell myself it was good when I got insanely bored during some of the story segments here so just know what to expect here. I expected an average space JRPG and that's really what I got.

New era of demon hunting action

Devil May Cry wasn't always going to be considered its own series as the development origins of the first project of that this was going to be Resident Evil 4 and you can easily tell with the RE-like puzzles and format of wandering around an interconnected building. The visual design also matches this assessment as well but as its own project, Devil May Cry 1 makes a decent first step into what would become an iconic series during the last 2 decades albeit with some rough and weird gameplay design decisions that make this experience a bit more frustrating that it really should be.

The meat of the game here is how the combat plays out and a great chunk of the time, it plays pretty well for their first foray. Sword attacks feel great to land, you can do basic combos in the air and you can use your various guns during attacks to spice things up a little. There are 3 main melee weapons but you'll really end up using 2 during a majority of the game due to them having abilities tied to them which consists of the sword with fast, long reach with an electrical element tied to it and the gauntlets that let you use your hand to hand combat with some flashy moves and consisting of a fire element. You also have a default sword but you don't really use it due to no abilities on it until a certain part of the game. That said, the gameplay itself is great which is the most important facet of an action game albeit some problems I'll go into the next section. The visual level design is amazing and fits into what could've really been an RE spinoff with how the overall flow of gameplay is including examining objects to figure out some easy puzzles. The soundtrack is also pretty great here with some high octane club music when fighting and some eerie ambient music including an interesting piece where you can hear remnants of a ballroom as if it was a paranormal instance. Boss fights are overall good here with some being a bit too difficult just because of what I feel is the biggest thing that annoyed me about this game: the camera.

The biggest detriment to this game is how clunky a lot of the game can be at times in terms of the flow of gameplay at times and just the camera literally being one of the hardest enemies of the game itself. For an example, during one of the final fights of the game where you fight a repeat boss of sorts the camera legit kept getting me killed because of how dodging and how it changes and can screw up your movement due to the movement being relative to the camera's position. Don't be surprised if this camera is what gets you killed 50% of the time as this game is fairly difficult and almost teetering on difficult in the beginning unless you understand patterns and game mechanics which you should be doing anyway as one of the early fights will be a wake up call that you can't get away with just button mashing which isn't a flaw honestly but it might detract some people experience with the game. The game sorta feels like at times it throws some stuff on the wall like underwater combat segments and RE puzzles that albeit sorta fit with the game does sometimes take away the pacing of the game in terms of how an action game should be.

Devil May Cry sorta felt like it has an internal identity crisis during development and I mean despite it was going to be RE4, I don't really blame the devs here. The game is honestly pretty enjoyable despite that but there's still some weird and odd things that will probably make it feel a bit more unique into the other entries where it solidified that it knows what it wants to be at that point.

One button, two perspectives, a wrong direction

Coming into Devil May Cry 2 after just beating the first game, I knew what to expect and somehow also didn't. I knew the game is notorious for being the worst Devil May Cry game by a long mile but I also felt like passionate fans might have exaggerated the details of how awful this game is. It feels like such a far cry from the first game which was sort of rough around the edges already and actually remove most of what made the first game a more solid experience.

Despite the game overall being boring and extremely tedious to play, there are a tiny amount of things this game brings that is just "nice" to have. Switching firearms with the L2 button is nice considering the button was used for the map in the last game and not really needed. There are different animations and moves for shooting in general which is nice but also a blessing and a curse for this game specifically. The camera seems to be improved somewhat here too. The devil trigger customization is a nice touch but in all honestly, I couldn't really care too much for it albeit that it's an improvement to customize in general. The music is okay when you can actually hear it considering the mixing here is awful and drowns out from the sound effects 90% of the time.

Now despite the game actually making some improvements from 1 albeit barely, the game feels downgraded in almost every aspect. Going into gameplay, the most common complaint is how over tuned the guns are and I'm sad to report that you can actually just beat the entire game with just your base pistols. This makes the game extremely easy to play and boring to get through and if you decide that you want to use your sword and just try to ignore the guns, the game is against you in that front too considering a good chunk of the bosses are in the air 80% of the time to the point you're forced to use guns here. To make matters worse, sword slashes here are not as fluid as the first game and feel extremely clunky to pull off. You could argue that the slower slashes could add weight into each slash but it doesn't really fit into an action game that relies on being fast and varied in your actions. The RE influenced level design and interactions are gone here as each level is linear with you visiting various locations instead of the central location of Mallet Island in the first game. That said, the overall visual level design is worse here as you get some generic city, village and oil rig levels with the final few missions being the most creative with its level design. I failed to mention the story and characters in my first Devil May Cry review but I wanted to add that despite the game being initially sparse in story, the ending of the first game was pretty good and added some good character development to the main characters. For Devil May Cry 2, the story and Lucia are pretty forgettable with the main objective is just to kill one bad guy and that's pretty much it, Dante doesn't really develop in this title and it comes across as just another day. I wouldn't have mind this as much if the game was actually fun to play but considering how much of this game feels like it doesn't even matter just makes the overall experience feel extremely disappointing and to the point that I did feel like I wasted my time.

I also wanted to mention that for this review, I did not play Lucia's disc and only played Dante's to completion and from what I've heard, it doesn't really save the game that much. Devil May Cry 2 is a disappointing sequel that removed some of the unique charm that the first game had and felt like it was made by a completely different team. A very tedious and boring game that somehow manages to feel extremely unimportant to the point that the 3 hours I put into this game didn't even matter. The game is short enough if you have some morbid curiosity with this game or feeling like a completionist and want to experience every single DMC game like what I'm doing but just keep in mind what you're in for here. This is not a fun experience.

Probably one of the greatest co-op experiences I've had the pleasure of having, It Takes Two manages to provide everything that makes something of this genre and in a co-op setting and flourishes from it. It's surprising a game like this technically came from EA with how its financial structure only promotes you pay for one copy of the game to play with any one of your friends in the world which I think is an excellent move not to mention this game didn't even launch full price and definitely deserves the price and then some compared to other offerings of a higher price.

Compared to Josef Fares' previous efforts, It Takes Two takes a radically different change to an action-adventure 3D platformer that feels great to play as and looks just as well. The level design is excellent and puts some of the most creative 3D platformer levels a run for their money. You'd have some creative uses of using everything you'd have in your traditional home as the basis for some really fun levels and mechanics for each of these levels that work extremely well with your partner and for the level itself. Each level, you and your partner would get a tool that work in tandem with each to complete platforming puzzles that are simple yet clever most of the time. The good thing about these mechanics and the gameplay flow in general is that each tool or mechanic never really overstays their welcome and before you get tired with one, you'd be introduced to completely new mechanics or tools that keeps the whole playthrough pretty fresh. As for the co-op experience itself, it's great to say the least. You're constantly working together and you can't go far or at all without your partner, that said I really do recommend playing this with someone next to you in real life or online via a voice call as you might need to coordinate for some puzzles. In addition, spread throughout the levels are competitive minigames that you can play against your partner for a quick yet fun distraction that are pretty varied as well including an actual playable version of chess. The soundtrack matches the distinct and varied levels and do a pretty great job of fitting each level with an even more unique feel such as a calm and luscious tune during a snow village or some 80's synth during a level based around music instruments and equipment in your house.

Only a few negative things I can really say here with one being how this game handles internet connections and the story in some sense. It does not handle desync really well as it led to some weird moments where the split-screen wasn't accurate for one of us and throwing us off for a good while. This would also lead to HUD glitches as well which didn't happen as often but did happen right before and after a long boss fight so we had to spend more time doing that than we wanted to. The story is alright but it did have an ending I sort of wish was a bit more impactful despite all the characters went through.

It's really had to find a good game you can just play with someone and just have a fun time that isn't just some PVP, MMO, or even PVE from a sense. I do think these games are alright but It Takes Two is a great pace changer from what it means to playing with your friend. I felt like I went on a journey with my friend and we both had a blast and it's hard to get that these days.

Special thanks to kiyoshi of backloggd for essentially being my "wife" throughout this playthrough and the general idea for playing this game. You may have gotten the cool roles throughout the game but I got to be the tomato from Veggie Tales so yeah the game is pretty good if you couldn't tell already.

An oppressive interpretation of a demonic and angelic infused apocalypse

It's rare for me to play a game like this, you know? A game that has taken over my life after a week off playing this game and after it all, I'm sad that I have to return to my old life and say goodbye to this game for right now. Shin Megami Tensei V has been a long time coming since IV and the first HD title in the series in which the series really needed to show up here and it did in spades but not the spades you expected. This game is completely different from what is now the standard of an abundance of cutscenes and story segments that flesh out the world you're in and instead more gameplay oriented experience. What it lacks in a deep and thought provoking narrative makes up for with engaging gameplay on and off the battle, amazing and genre switching soundtrack that probably elevated this game much higher than it should be and is, the level design giving off a moody dread that is hard to come by in this genre of games. I've put around 60 hours exact on this playthrough and have done every sidequest, collected around 170 miman and almost hit level cap without the intention of grinding using the default mitamas spawns and saving them in the end to make things smoother and the weirdest thing is that it felt much shorter than that.

I. Story and Characters
Let's get the worst out of the way here and I will be vague about story details for the sake of being spoiler-free, that said the story could've been told better here. The actual story here is actually intriguing but the problem is that that it's very spare in delivering the info at certain times and insists of huge loredumps between areas that makes the pacing feel weird. I will say that the game does subvert your expectations a bit here, it's not the traditional set up for a SMT game here and I can sorta appreciate that albeit with the problems still standing. What I think is the biggest flaw is that the characters themselves don't get fleshed out here at all, you can probably count how many times you'll talk to them with one hand and they mostly state the same train of thought they had until the end of the game. I found one character really annoying with this and kept mentioning this problem they had for the entirety of the game. Despite all this, it's an SMT game after all so fans of the series can probably already guess where this game story and format is gonna head. That said, the ending I got was actually pretty amazing in terms of the gameplay story segments while the actual cutscenes for the ending were just alright. The soundtrack really elevated these gameplay segments very hard that I almost didn't care about the story itself and was just feeling extremely cool during these segments.

II. Gameplay (Battle)
I will state that these opinions on gameplay are stemmed from my normal difficulty playthrough here and your mileage may vary on how underleveled or overleveled you are for these. I think press turn has finally been tweaked to feel more punishing and rewarding here. I found myself feeling more proactive to preventing the enemy from taking precious turns more in recent games and always tried to make the most of mine which is a rarity. The difficulty is great here and actually makes you use every tool you have to progress through, dampeners are a great example of this as they are a cheap item and can prevent specific damage from a hard boss and makes them lose turns too. Magutsuhi actions are a new mechanic introduced in this entry and I like it except the critical one being a bit too good. Don't get me wrong, most of them are pretty great but feel more niche just considering how some of the best moves scale off crits in this game and that charge doesn't 2x your damage anymore. The quality of life stuff from SMT IV: Apocalypse is here such as the Mudo/Hama change and affinities make a return here and make fusion take actual thought again. Smirk is completely gone and I honestly don't miss it either. The bosses for a majority of the game feel like an arduous ordeal for a change instead of just HP sponges that most JRPGs fall in line to. That said, some might say the HP sponge complaint can still be applied here but the bosses here can also kick your teeth here if you're complacent here and that's the important thing. Demon negotiation is changed here to be much easier to grab demons from and focus more on the actual haggling instead of just dumping your items and money and listening to every whim hoping to join you and just for them to leave. There are still ways to screw up negotiation too. I was kinda mixed on the buff and debuffs but I honestly think they're fine considering you get ma- versions soon enough and the game doesn't devolve into a spamfest considering end game buffs are really expensive on MP. On the topic of MP, the great spells are way bigger here. You really can't spam the expensive buffs unless you play into your stock of demons or use Chakra items constantly but I rather use the former here. That said, I actually ended up using my whole stock more instead of just 3 really strong demons for most of the game as my team which I like as it makes the game feel more proactive in battles. The game thankfully doesn't fall into the difficulty curve SMT IV had albeit only gets a bit easier in the end when you can start minmaxing your demons for end game moves and become more flexible than what you're accustomed to up until that point but another thing to remember is that any enemy about perform a crit magutsuhi phase is something you should really respect as they can immediately kill your team and I sorta like that, the threat of dying is always there even when you least expect it. The game makes you respect its mechanics and moves until you can block moves perfectly and mitigate damage well, you really can't be complacent at all here. Another thing I want to mention is the superboss here which isn't Demifiend here, I managed to beat them after hours of creating the perfect demons, several very long attempts with a slightly underleveled party and took me the final time of 67 minutes, over 10 of my demons were depleted of MP or dead along with me having to use all my chakra pots. This is the fight where you really can't have 3 demons only and the game hopes to have reiterated that point for you as I barely beat this on normal.

III. Gameplay (Exploration)
Probably the gameplay aspect no one expected to be as good as it is, the exploration and the gameplay away from the combat. Goes without saying that the exploration is surprisingly dense with the way the levels are designs and rewards you pretty well for doing so as well that compliments your partner in the game, the battle. The demons in the open world and random encounters being a thing also supports this design as well as you won't be bothered by random battles while trying to get to from point A to B. Speaking of the demons, they're the best they looked here and I liked Doi's designs for most of these along with personality in their idle animations that I didn't expect either honestly. In terms of level design, I'll start with talking about the visual design. It's not that varied sadly as it'll feel like a big mix of desert and destroyed buildings but I think it fits how an apocalyptic Tokyo would look. They mix it up a fair bit in the final quarter but I wish they had some more crazy ideas for a bigger chunk of the game. Now into the gameplay aspect of the level design, it's amazing. The layout of each area looks and plays into the traversal of levels like broken buildings leaning into other buildings as a way to get across. There is also an enjoyment to be had when you see a far away item on the map and then being able to plot your way around that makes exploration feel like a platformer at times. The controls are exploring are great too and the jumps always feel concise which is pretty important for getting across certain points. Throughout the game, you'll run into demonic structures called Abscesses and they're essentially "ubisoft towers" with a decent challenge in each one that rewards you with the option of getting important upgrades and some map icons to go explore and check out and gets rid of that annoying fog on your map. The side quests here are actually pretty rewarding as most of them essentially give you access to new magutsuhi skills, money, items that can be used to power you or your demons and sometimes even the demons themselves will join you and most of the time they'll be at a way higher level than you at the time of joining. Not to mention these sidequests have eliminated the need for me to grind along with predetermined mitamas spawn and the rare chance you get them in any encounter. Now I won't say these sidequests are great in any sense other than a gameplay purpose either. Most of the writing in them is charming enough but doesn't do much for me either and some of the quest design is MMO-tier in design like "kill x or collect x items" which isn't very engaging in all honesty. I'm also surprised by the Mitama spawns without the DLC as well and I was getting a fair bit of them except for Gospel items which should rightfully be rare as it is. Save points make a return to Shin Megami Tensei and I never really minded either or but either way, they're very plentiful in the areas as they are so you never lose much progress in the case you get an unlucky death or something. Another important tool for exploration is Quest Navigators and I can't stress enough that you should always have one with you, these little guys and gals will get you some rare items and even some mitama spawns too with the risk of getting ambushed by an enemy party but are honestly worth having around because sometimes you can go an hour exploring like I did and completely forgot to equip one. Relics make a return from IV and IV: Apocalypse and are still your main form of making money but much more streamlined and the action itself is relegated to just passing by a vending machine and pressing A and quickly being on your way, no long digging animation or appraising here which is great. You also have resource orbs that are scattered throughout the map that help keep your topped off but never felt important unless you were in a dungeon that relied on more linear progress to the next save point. Moving onto dungeons now, there aren't many here and I'm sad to say they're pretty lackluster here. They're really just long interconnected hallways with bad gimmicks attached to them. One gimmick is just very annoying to get around and the other dungeon gimmick is useless since you can avoid it by just fighting a strong demon instead from my experience. Also want to mention while I do appreciate they wanted to change the pace from full on exploring, dungeons also remove a lot of the elements of exploration too. You can't bring navigators in and I don't even know if mitamas spawn in there too and just feel pretty boring to run for a legit minute to the next save point with no real thought put into it.

IV. Music
Where do I even begin here? Probably the reason the whole experience was elevated into one of my favorite gaming experiences in recent time. Ryota Kozuka and Toshiki Konishi have knocked it out of the park here as they managed to create what I think is their magnum opus here. Shin Megami Tensei V's soundtrack is incredibly atmospheric, moody and even melancholic to the point some of the music disturbed me in certain parts. You got the kick ass rock music in spades here sure but they also branch out a fair bit here with some electronic music that still manages to feel dark and full of energy, dark and ambient music that sets the mood for the locations you'll visit throughout your playthrough and even some psychedelic rock in an area that sounds like a Tame Impala song going through a rough phase. The highlight of the soundtrack are the unique boss themes here that mix rock with something else that sometimes feels other-worldly and cosmic to represent that we're fighting literal gods and demons here. I want to mention the superboss theme is probably the best example of this if you ever attempt it, the track is ethereal and almost incredibly depressing that it feels like I'm listening to something from a horror game soundtrack. I lastly do want to preface that music is probably the most subjective thing here as people like different genres and all that but I think for genres, I can't find any other genre that would really match how the world is and plays.

Addendum: Switch Problems
As much as I really enjoyed this game, the game from a technical standpoint isn't perfect or even great in a sense. The game itself runs at barely 30 fps probably around a constant high 20s but it never really affected me that much in the exploration aspect to me at least. The biggest thing I can probably say that will affect how you play is menu lag at times during my playthrough. As this is a gameplay centric experience in a JRPG, menu lag can be very bad for your game but I didn't experience it often or even at all but it did happen sometimes. The game kept up with my pace of "menuing" here if that is a term. The resolution itself is pretty blurry but I feel that's par for the course of huge JRPGs on the Switch these days. I think the worst performance problem I've experience is the final dungeon that dropped my frames very hard a decent chunk of the time. Framerate of the dungeon is all over the place with sometimes it being like in the high 10s which is noticeable and what's worse is that some of the cutscenes in here can also drop frames hard just as bad. I hope they optimize that specific area of the game at least because that's really the only time I felt like "yeah this is pretty bad". I hope this game gets ported just for the fact that I think more people should play this game but I'm getting ahead of myself and I think people should have the choice of being able to play it on any console they want although I tend to prefer JRPGs on Switch personally. With that in mind, these performance hiccups never hampered my experience to the point I was constantly thinking about them until the final dungeon but that quickly went away as it did and I'd probably be complaining more if my "menuing" was laggy to the point that it detracted from the fast gameplay a bit for me considering you're gonna be doing it a lot here.

V. Conclusion
Shin Megami Tensei V is the antithesis of the series going forward and JRPGs in general with a more gameplay centric direction with a surprisingly solid exploration element and an incredibly ethereal and moody soundtrack that immersed me for the week I escaped from the real world. I do also want to say that this isn't a JRPG for everyone and not even for some JRPG fans either, it's a different game in structure and I'm glad it followed through with that. Traversing through Da'at felt like a journey and I can say I'm done with that journey at least for right now. The story and characters aren't gonna win any awards but I'll be blunt here: I don't really care. The rest of the game picked up the slack easily and became one of my favorite JRPGs and Megaten games. I lost myself playing this game and I haven't lost myself in the medium in years like that and reminds me of the old times that a new game would come out during a cold autumn and I'd just lose myself on it as a teenager. I'm glad I managed to relive that for what might hopefully not be my last time.

See you in the new reincarnation of the goddess.

A visual and aural trip through some of Radiohead's best

An ethereal and solemn virtual museum celebrating Radiohead's Kid A and Amnesiac where the virtual visuals work in tandem with the albums perfectly. Originally planned to be a physical museum exhibit in central London, the unfortunate circumstances of 2020-2021 led them to contact a few developers and artists to create a virtual exhibit that they wanted to originally create. I personally think that this is a better result due to the fact that more people can experience their vision and are able to create some visual experiences that is hard to replicate in real life.

You can tell the band worked closely with the developers and artists as they managed to create the exhibit with existing assets in a sense and nothing new and original was created here. Clever use of their multi tracks makes the tracks feel new and familiar too with some exhibits providing some of the most ethereal experiences especially in the How to Disappear Completely exhibits and the Motion Picture Soundtrack finale that emphasizes the harps that felt like I was transitioning to the afterlife.

I don't want to go into the visuals in detail here since I think you should see it for yourself. I was never a terribly huge Radiohead fan but I really do enjoy their work. I was more of an OK Computer kind of guy and Kid A is an album I liked at first but with every listen and as I get older, I sort of like it more and I can say the same here after experiencing this.

I will see you in the next life.

Katamari Damacy is a very hard game to describe on paper. A very original third person "puzzle" game with an eccentric charm that hasn't really been replicated since its 2004 release on the Playstation 2 and now receiving a remaster in 2018 onwards for most modern consoles. A cult classic that can almost represent the japanese indie spirit as the game was barely made from little financial aid Keita Takahashi managed to get for this project and it paid off in something very unique.

The overall premise is pretty simple: The gameplay loop consists of The Prince rolling around a Katamari and gathering various items in the world with said Katamari to replace the stars in the sky after your father, The King of All Cosmos destroys them in sheer recklessness. There is also a subplot involving a family on their way to see their father and one of the kids attempts to warn their mother to no avail. The controls are also pretty simple: you use both sticks to roll around and various commands with the stick to move faster or quick turn. For the most part, controls feel pretty good but slowly gets clunky after you reach a certain size but I think this is intentional as you grow into bigger sizes, it should be harder to wield the Katamari in a sense. The game is enveloped in a charm that is hard to describe, the setting and premise of the world seems to be based on a satirical version of Japan with outrageous things happening in the levels that give some life into the world you're rolling up. It could be a wrestling match in the middle of the road, a graduation ceremony full of delinquents, a bunch of construction workers mining a bunch of rocks upside down as though they are able to stick to walls like Spiderman. I can't forget about the soundtrack here, the music is almost iconic as the game itself with some electronic music, shibuya-kei, and some japanese vocal tracks that really enhances the easy going nature of the game. The only thing in terms of a challenge is that each stage has a timer to complete the stage but from my experience, it's a pretty generous timer so you can always finish with a few minutes left. All of these form a short and uplifting experience that doesn't overstay its welcome and has fun with its world and gameplay elements.

Fortunately the optional levels aren't as fun to me but they aren't required for you to beat the game which consists of the standard objective of gathering diameter. The optional missions have you trying to gather a specific type of item/creature and less so the other mission type where you are required to gather only one of these items. Now the challenge itself for the latter is trying to build diameter and trying to get the biggest one you can without accidentally picking up one, I can appreciate the variety but I didn't find it that fun sadly.

Katamari Damacy manages to be something extremely unique, easy to play, quirky and memorable here. The gameplay loop is satisfying and the game ends and ramps up the difficulty at the perfect time to make a third person puzzle game where the scale just keeps getting bigger with the final stage playing Katamari on the Rocks on the soundtrack as you start from rolling fruit up to rolling islands and kaiju monsters.

Blasting The Moon and The Prince even if we scare the hoes away.

Cruelty Squad is what feels like one of the weirdest first person shooters if not the weirdest first person shooter. The artstyle and vibe comes off of feeling like a bad trip and succumbing to the realities of capitalism. This game is fucking disgusting but that's the point from the couple of hours it took me to get an ending.

The shooting and the overall gameplay is actually pretty good. Shooting feels pretty nice and there's a decent variety of systems to customize yourself with tools, weapons and augments. The way you get these upgrades is essentially being someone that is in the sigma money grindset, making money. You can get money in an obscenely different ways from selling organs of the people you kill to fishing and selling fish on the stock market. The level design is pretty open which gives you a lot of paths to accomplish your goal. The highlight of the experience is the art design and the music and it's actually pretty good even though my eyes were legit hurting during one of the levels and the music sounds like I was on half a CVS pharmarcy while listening to Ex-Military by Death Grips along with some dirty electronic noise but it honestly fits and don't really think I'd want anything different. The dialogue is pretty and also really fucking depressing as it does feel like an all too real and satirical look into how modern day society is now.

Despite feeling the gameplay feeling pretty good, I couldn't help but feel a bit tired of the overall package after a while but I did beat the game in one sitting so that is also a factor and trying to take it all in might be too much for some people. Despite my praise for the art design as it feels like how someone that realizes how absurd society and that we're living in a Grand Theft Auto game views, it can be really grating to the point my eyes got pretty strained and had to turn down the brightness after not having this problem most of the game. I think a game like this works well if it was a bit shorter but I can't imagine playing this game for more than 5 hours.

I really don't have much to say in the end here, the game is decent and the pinch of nihilism in me enjoys the concept and themes of this game a lot but I also never want to play this game again. If you love weird shit and want something really fucking different, I think this is one of the better games for that.

SET GOALS. HAVE A TEN YEAR PLAN. INVEST. WAKE UP EARLY. CEO MINDSET. GOOD LUCK.

Objection!

It's hard to go around the gaming space without hearing the iconic "Objection!" line or seen a picture of the phrase stylized in game at least once in your life. Gyakuten Saiban or how the western world knows it, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney actually originated as a GBA title exclusive to Japan until 2005 with a re-release for the Nintendo DS was released for the west at the time. Managing to completely take over the "lawyer video game" genre despite in really being a visual novel with investigative elements, the first entry sets up characters with cases that are never what they are at face value.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is a game you can't find anywhere. The premise is that you're an up and coming defense attorney ready to make a name for yourself as you tackle cases that most normal defense attorneys wouldn't go through the trouble of doing. The stories vary from case to case but most of them are great here including the first case being a good way to settle in the player to the mechanics and the thought process of playing this game like how Phoenix Wright is also settling in with you as it's his first case as well. The characters are unique as well having their own quirks and charm whenever you see them in a new case with relationships with you developing across the cases. The biggest strength this game has is the ability to balance the intense seriousness of murder trials and the goofiness of how the characters are despite the circumstances. Despite the game only using sprites or animated pictures as the representation of the characters, the game does an excellent job of giving each character their own unique way of expressing themselves that manages to come off as humorous. This is also illustrated in the sound effects and soundtrack as well. Sound effects and the music whenever someone is surprised or shocked really immerse you in the story and drama that's unfolding in the courtroom, pondering sound effects come when the game gives you a question that makes you want to find the answer of immediately. The game consists of 2 gameplay phases: Investigations and Trials. In Investigations, you'll be out and about the world trying to find out what exactly happened and gather evidence in hopes of finding the truth of what really happened in the case and to your defendant. Trials is where it all comes to together as you use all the information and evidence you found to prove your defendant innocent and find out the truth of what really happened.

All cases are not created equally sadly. Some are more intense and personal and some of the cases while great in their own right don't have as many personal stakes as some of the other trials will have compared to it. I also wish to talk about Case 5 as well. While Case 5 is a great case, it's way longer than any other case and doesn't really belong in the first game from a gameplay perspective. I felt like Case 4 tied everything really well and while I enjoyed Case 5 after I completed it, it was sort of a jarring experience. Brand new gameplay elements are introduced into Case 5 and while I think the mechanics are cool, it just stands out even more from the rest of the cases as the length of the case itself probably takes half of the game runtime compared to the 4 original cases combined. Not to mention an abundance of evidence compared to the original 4 makes this one a more trial and error experience instead of finding the absolute one that contradicts and prove your claims. Despite my complaints, I wish to reiterate that Case 5 is a great case but with how it's structured completely different compared to the original game, it could've been a standalone experience instead of meshed into the original experience.

I usually have trouble paying attention to games that require a lot of reading and my initial curiosity for the series stems from seeing the setting for Great Ace Attorney Chronicles and finding myself fascinated on how the game will pan out but I wanted to play the original trilogy before diving into that game. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is a charming yet serious game that isn't afraid to make outrageous jokes to break the tension at times. Nothing is more iconic when a revelation comes out and a certain character gets their salary cut again.

Want to switch?

Medal of Honor's finest hour

I remember back in 2002 when I lived in some small apartment sharing a bedroom with my entire family, one night that my stepdad was playing this game while we were suppose to be asleep. He was playing the Arnhem Knights level and the music sort of entranced me to the point that I had this game in the back of my mind until now. Medal of Honor used to be a big name in World World II first-person shooters back in the 5th and 6th generation of consoles with the initial idea coming from Steven Spielberg wanting to create a World War II game that could be shed some information about the war along with being an entertaining experience like Saving Private Ryan was at the time. Medal of Honor: Frontline was the first game without his involvement but I feel like it's the game that encapsulates the whole series the best for me.

Within 5 seconds of starting a new game, you're thrown into a boat on the way to Normandy with no intro or cutscene other than the poor souls on the boat with you. No orchestral movie score for this mission, the gunfire and death is enough noise for this short segment. You see a dude doing the holy spirit a few seconds before his eventual death. At the time, this entire segment was unheard of and it looked so real and seeing it almost 20 years later and it still holds up although I'm sure there are other forms of media that portrays this event well. There isn't much of a story here: you play as a OSS agent from the first game in the series as he goes around the European Front while the final half is focused on one singular important mission. Other than this replay being a nostalgic trip, there is something I came to fully appreciate now that I've learned a lot growing up which is the amazing score by Michael Giacchino. It gives the game a whole other emotional and production value in a sense that it feels like I'm playing a really good World War II movie. You get some angelic choirs in the main menu that feels like a victory theme, some songs that actually sound like something from Star Wars and then you get some slow and solemn songs like Arnhem that drench you in the reality of the situation you're in. You're gonna be mostly alone throughout your adventure doing the impossible but that's how it was during these PS2/Xbox/Gamecube World War II shooters. The gameplay is serviceable to some extent, I didn't have much problems getting used to the controls and they're fully customizable but with that said I still think you should get used to standing still while aiming for better precision because there is no way to change the analog stick's sensitivity. The sound design is something also not to be understated as well shooting guns sound really nice and hitting enemies feels and sounds satisfying during an era where there wasn't any hit markers. A nice touch is the ability to turn off the already minimal HUD that only shows your health and ammo count and have them on when something changes. All of these bring together the movie quality World War II shooter experience that I felt it was during my 8 hours of playtime throughout the campaign.

The only thing I can really say is a bit annoying about these games is the level design and enemy placement. Levels and missions felt like they progressively got harder which I did not mind but you will mostly get sniped from weird spots and it can be hard to get your bearing at times. It also feels sometimes that enemies just become gods at shooting you at Normal difficulty but it never felt too outrageous. You also have to keep in mind this was during a time where an abundance of checkpoints so you had to restart the whole level if you died and these missions can take up to 15-20 minutes if you're careful. It's all mostly some old first person shooter design here that you can eventually overcome but I figured I'd put this here in case someone expected something else.

I love first person shooters but I sorta felt disillusioned with them in recent years, you rarely get any unique experiences anymore and most of them are just multiplayer driven to the bone. It's a shame what happened with the Medal of Honor series throughout the decades but maybe it'll come back someday. With that said, Frontline was a fun excursion back to my childhood with how well made this game is. The gameplay is decent, the music score is amazing, a lot of details in the levels and enemies and a production value that almost feels unheard of at its time is something I have learned to appreciate.

Victory! "Let's bring 'em home"

A long journey's end giving way for a new beginning

I usually like to review expansions after all of the patch content comes out but Endwalker is an extremely special case. It essentially ends an 11 year story and I personally went through the main story scenario and I'll probably keep this short due to really wanting to be spoiler free for the mass majority of the fans that are still enjoying it.

I won't go too much into story other than it was great, a lot of great moments here albeit with a slow start. The new areas are amazing and manage to keep a different variety in visual and gameplay level design, the soundtrack uses a bit more of the older expansions soundtrack that I would but it does make sense in a thematic sense for me at least and also with that said, the new music is top notch. The main cast gets an extreme amount of love here and there are amazing character moments.

Only thing that I wish is that it didn't invent tailing missions into the game when it never had it in the first place and the slow start for the expansion albeit a lot happens that it never too bad compared to the other expansions.

An emotionally charged finale for Final Fantasy XIV's first major arc and reminds me of why I enjoyed this game for the past 4 years. A surprising nihilistic story with twinges of hope.

Launch Addendum: As of December 5th 2021, it's extremely hard to log into the game as there are ridiculously long queues with the only bright side being that once you're in, you're good to go until you stop for 30 minutes plus from my experience of my long gaming sessions the past couple of days.

That, I can't deny.

Understandably a heavy game but felt surprisingly light

Omori had some cool ideas but sadly felt like it really relied on the shock value of the content here to really have some emotional impact that sadly didn't land with me not to mention just being way too long for its own good.

The game does have a unique art direction/style that does look pretty nice and the music is actually alright but it couldn't save much of the experience for me.

I really feel like this game is way longer than it really should be and feels like a lot of it felt like filler compared to the actual decent moments of the story. The combat having a unique twist still felt really basic and the horror moments just felt completely flat here including specific story elements I don't want to spoil as well.

Omori certainly has the style but doesn't lack any substance that ticks the box for what would be considered a good RPG for me but I get why people like this game considering the content in it.

A solid entry into the up and coming lawyer's saga

Justice for All manages to be a decent sequel for the original Ace Attorney with some weird quirks and more slow pacing than usual here. Cases here are of varying quality with some unique premises for cases combined with some awful characters in a certain case. I will not go too much into the mechanics and gameplay flow of the game as it's mostly the same from the first game albeit with a new mechanic I'll go into depth later.

There's more Phoenix Wright here and for the most part, it's pretty good. Franziska is a pretty great main prosecutor for this game and manages to not be a complete imitation of any previous characters, loved her here. There are some case premises that I can appreciate them doing here as it gives the case a different sort of layout and format sometimes. The final case is an overall amazing case that really brought the suspense that I've grown to love in the series without feeling too forced.

Justice for All introduces a new mechanic into the game called Psyche-Locks which I'm honestly completely mixed on. I like the concept of presenting evidence during the investigation phase to spice up these segments and make you think of how to formulate a theory that will let you get more evidence. What I don't like is that it's pretty punishing and tedious when it stops you in your tracks completely and makes you backtrack more for the right amount of evidence to one shot a lock since you get penalized and have to completely restart it if you screw up too many times. Another weird quirk of this system is that the "health" system also seems to be linked to courtroom penalties which doesn't honestly make sense considering these are different things completely. I also didn't like the music here as much as the first game but I still think it's a solid soundtrack. My main problem is just the cases can feel pretty slow sometimes including the final case felt like it was being dragged out to the point of annoyance but despite that I still think the final case is pretty great as Phoenix Wright gets some great character development.

Despite liking the first game more, I still enjoy Justice for All a fair bit. For the reputation of it being the weakest in the series, it's honestly still a solid Ace Attorney experience that I didn't mind the complaints that much.

Do you finally know what it means to be a "lawyer"?

Desires and Regret

When people think of Japanese role playing games, they think of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Pokemon to an extent and the Megaten series for what I believe are the most popular ones. People in this genre of fanbase uncommonly go outside these main four but there are many series that are popular within the Japanese role playing game community as well like Tales, Xeno series in general and anything Yoko Taro makes. This year I really wanted to try some stuff outside my comfort zone of what I know I would like and wanted to try Caligula Effect 2 out. I'm nowhere near the audience for really niche JRPGs like this that barely make it overseas but I saw some gameplay trailers and thought it looked cool. Playing this game made me realized what it meant for a game to be "anime" in a sense. Not saying it's a bad thing obviously but there's rarely much "anime" stuff here other than the Japanese only voices in a sense and the premise of it being "Japanese high schoolers beat bad guys while still participating in high school". This game is surprisingly relatable to myself and even a lot of people I personally know that go through these specific issues mentioned in the game which was actually surprised considering you rarely go into depth about problems like these in games. Caligula Effect 2 is a great game and from what I know, people that worked on the old megaten games worked on this game. With that said, I'm not gonna mention names of any other games or series past this point because comparing this game to anything else isn't fair and I personally dislike it at this point. Not to mention that I feel a game should stand on its own two legs. With that out of the way, I'll be going into this game with the experience of not playing the original Caligula Effect or Overdose and my opinions will be centered around that.

The World of Redo (Story and Characters)
The best aspect of this game are the characters in my honest opinion, the crown jewel of the whole experience. The main cast have layers to their personality revolving around being in Redo and why they're there in the first place. The aesthetic is also something initially appealed to me and have met my experience of just having a cool cast not to mention the small touches with their designs too. The Japanese voice acting is great with me with distinct voices for each character and just sounding like actual people. I liked the characters so much that I took the time to max out each character's affinity and watched all the character episodes about each of them too. Character episodes are like mini segments that show gradual development through the story which is great. I like that they don't automatically love the protagonist upon them joining the team and they each have their own motives and aspirations for joining you. I won't elaborate more due to spoilers but I'll just say these characters are well written, relatable and full of emotion thanks to the voice acting here as well. The story itself is good and has a simple premise, you and your club members are in a virtual world called Redo and you have to do whatever it takes to escape it. The pacing is a bit slow at the start but it picks up fast enough. The ending is pretty good but I wish it was fleshed out a bit more. I am legit surprised about the quality of both here considering it gives you the premise of "japanese high schoolers" and adds a unique touch to them. Also something I noticed in the dialogue too is that something in the story will happen, I would think "I wonder if they're gonna bring it up" and they actually do soon after which actually helps immerse you in the story. I will also be saving Causality Link for the gameplay section coming up.

The Catharsis Effect and Causality Link (Gameplay)
For my opinions of the gameplay segment, I will mention that the difficulty I played this game in was the first two dungeons on Normal and the rest on hard as recommended from someone that is fairly knowledgeable about the game but he's also a big fan. The gameplay consists of a maximum of four party members with a mix of turn-based and real time battle. Fighting enemies consists of picking moves from specific categories, each with different principles and effects and you can plan when you exactly enact these moves as well. The whole system feels like a Rube Goldberg machine of a system where you can plan specific moves to perfectly compliment each other and it's really satisfying when you pull this off. An example is having a character counter an upcoming attack which would launch them in the air, following by planning another team member to do aerial strikes which allow them to trigger yet another damaging move smashing them to the ground and they finally following up with an attack that does better damage to someone on the ground. The whole reenactment before committing to the moves proves this. Battles can be initially pretty long from my experience as you're getting used to the battle system but you get decent experience gains so you really never had to grind in this game. Boss battles themselves are a decent challenge and when I see the gameplay system shine the most as you can set up some absurd damaging combos with the exact perfect setup. Another mechanic that helps with this and just as important is the "Floor Jack" mechanic. A bar that fills up upon meeting specific conditions and collecting rifts throughout the world will allow you to interrupt the flow of time and summon χ to provide buffs, removes your cool down and allows your four party members to act immediately upon activation. I believe this is an amazing mechanic that makes battle more dynamic and rewards perfect timing and can even save you if you're in a tight spot. I also liked that characters learn new moves at a decent pace and you always feel like you get a good flow of new tools. This also applies to getting party members with brand new and unique move sets as well. I enjoyed the battle system but I feel like there's some quality of life stuff it could use like passing your turn to another members when starting a battle or an enemy bar to know what move an enemy is gonna do instead of just waiting for them to enact it in the planner. I did sort of get tired of regular battles after a while but the auto battle system helps in this regard but found it weird you can't auto all of them but I'm sure there's a reason for that. Dungeons are mostly a simple affair, no real maze like approach here other than a few segments if anything. They are essentially rooms and hallways but they do look nice, I don't really mind this approach but I feel like they are a bit longer than they should be. The final dungeon is great though, still long but appropriate considering it is the final dungeon in a JRPG. Not to mention it had the perfect amount of challenging enemies that were actually above my level in the end considering I was overleveled without grinding before the penultimate dungeon. The highly challenging set of enemies in each dungeon was a great challenge and helped keep my attention through each dungeon. I do sort of wish there was decent tools for avoiding enemies, the escape command when you get into a fight is too slow considering I can press auto battle and defeat said enemies before escape finally activates. Trying to navigate around enemies also just feels finicky and getting into a fight just means I have to beat it considering the former sentence. Sad to say I think the side quests are probably the Achilles' heel of the whole game but I have done a decent chunk of them just for the protagonist's stat boosts. I will say the Causality Link system is a really cool concept with how you can figure out mini stories and the huge variety of NPCs out there in Redo. A great chunk of the game is being out there in Redo and talking to the various NPCs and doing the side quests but the whole process felt pretty tedious. Traveling around the map is slow since you move at a default run speed and moving to different zones takes you to fairly lengthy loading screens a lot of the time at least on Switch. The fast travel works around having to be in a save point which are commonly placed but the problem is the process. Allow me to provide an example: You accept a side quest which has you talking to someone else in a different area, sounds simple enough right? Well first let's go to a save point and teleport back to the hideout, we have a loading screen here and now we're back at the hideout, now we talk to χ and ask her to take us to said area for the side quests, we are now at another loading screen, we have now arrived at the area and if you're unlucky and we probably are which means we have to find another save point to teleport to the specific room within that area, yet another loading screen, we finally talk to the person with a specific stigma and we now have to reverse the process to complete the quest since we have to talk to the original person. Honestly a nitpick but just having to go into a menu to equip something temporarily for a quick interaction just to unequip it is pretty annoying the amount of times I had to do it for these quests. Granted though most of the side quests are pretty simple in nature as well and how I've managed to complete most of them is just talking to someone for the first time and starting their quest and fortunately already having the item or prerequisite to complete it immediately. Causality Link also accompanies the side quests here with how the rewards unlock profiles that tell you more about specific NPCs which can actually be pretty interesting. There's honestly a lot of NPCs in this game so I can only imagine how many side quests are in this game and have writing for each of the profiles and quests themselves. Another cool quirk is that you can even text these people predetermined questions and get some unique responses out of them. I can't say I know if every person is unique and I rather not personally test this theory.

The Obbligato Musicians (Music)
The soundtrack is pretty unique for a JRPG and makes sense thematically as it's mostly idol, j-pop and vocaloid influenced from what I can gather. The vocal tracks are good here, they're pretty catchy and have decent production behind them. The boss tracks themselves are really good and amp you up during these segments. xxxx_xx_xx and Miss Conductor are great tracks overall but the standout track throughout the whole game has to be Singi and specifically the χ version. I failed to mention in the gameplay section but I mostly this version of Singi for the "Floor Jack" mechanic for most of the game considering it was the only one that boosted attack at the time and just a banger overall that I never got tired of hearing. I swear I'm not an idol or vocaloid fan in disguise but my brain reacted to the songs well so I don't know what to tell you. Only real complaint about the music is the dungeon tracks feeling a bit repetitive throughout the game. So let me explain how music works in the flow of gameplay in a dungeon, you have the instrumental playing while traversing but when you get into a battle, the vocals come on which is honestly a great touch. My main problem is with the instrumentals and me feeling like they used the same piano in almost every instrumental. The other tracks where regular stuff happens are alright honestly, nothing really to write home about here but they get the job done and better than no music. Nonetheless, a great soundtrack overall and I can see why people like it a lot, it's full of energy.

Reality (Conclusion)
People probably see this game think it's "oh I'm not too big into anime" and ignored it and maybe people don't really think that way at all but I admit I did. I remember just having a tiny interest in the game until I saw it one day and I just went for it, bought it at full price at a Target. I think the funny thing is even after beating this game and expressing how much I overall enjoyed this game that I still don't hold too much of an interest playing the first game and specifically Overdose. Caligula Effect 2 is a gem in the rough of JRPGs this year and there was some pretty great games this year. The gameplay is great, the characters are extremely relatable to the point that I saw myself in one of them. If you value character driven JRPGs or want to go outside of the box, give this game a shot even if you aren't into the aesthetic. It just might surprise you.

I have no regrets playing this game.