That was incredible but I'm such a coward lol, had to play this in short bursts because I would get so immersed and stressed. Does not help that my name's James too. But yeah, happy to finally know why SH2 is considered one of the best games ever - a real "I get it now" moment. Plus now I can enjoy the OST I loved even before playing this with context. I've already spent hours on further videos and reading like this excellent page: https://www.silenthillmemories.net/sh2/plot_analysis_en.htm

(I know I could've pulled back the curtain and game-ified it by recklessly charging through every new level until dying and reloading saves with enemy + area layouts memorized but I wanted to keep the experience "pure")

Initially I was gonna claim this game is a product of its time with its anonymous, chatless drop-in/drop-out coop style being more novel in 2012, but it seems most first timers still appreciate this in 2024 - kinda surprising. I suppose it was neat reaching the summit with someone I'll never know anything about but am I the weird one for not feeling it was some powerful experience? Blows my mind that some people are moved to tears by this and place it among their favourite games of all time. I truly don't understand that. And I'm not even resorting to the cowardly platitude of it being "just not for me" - I genuinely believe this game is not that special and doesn't merit those kinds of reactions. But hey clearly most disagree, so... I must be the asshole. Pretty audiovisuals tho

Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin (10/10 title) was incredibly charming in its presentation but man the combat felt super clunky thanks to some of the strange unchangeable controls: a single tap in the direction of an attack to parry, double tap forward to dash (hardly ever used this, so useless), and - the worst offender - double tap R1 to dodge. Right up to the very end of the game it felt like I was half fighting against the controls. You better come to a full stop before you use a quick attack or you're locked into a dash attack that has absolutely no follow-up capabilities and leaves you wide open.

Also why were the directional inputs so unnecessarily sensitive? My controller doesn't have any stick drift yet countless times I found myself locked into an animation facing the wrong way. Early on I hated how little you could do to knocked down enemies (without doing fancy aerial juggling stuff with the raiment) but the game would be so brainless if you could just stun lock everything lol

I probably tried too hard to optimize my rice farming considering you have unlimited years to farm but I suppose that was part of the fun (plus how you avoid overlevelling). Farm sim games probably aren't particularly for me though if they're like this half of Sakuna - it was neat and surprisingly deep but I don't find it relaxing or "comfy" thanks to my silly optimization anxiety (le gamers will optimize the fun out of their games)

The story was fine but the point was definitely the characters - Sakuna herself had a very endearing maturation from her arrogant, lazy brat start and there was a nice "found family" vibe with the farming gang humans. Each member of that gang could have used a tad more fleshing out though (I'd happily sacrifice combat missions for more side stories). That one side quest reveal of Yui's origin shocked the hell out of me lmao (those who know, know)

Oh yeah I played with the English dub and Laura Post was fantastic as Sakuna! Rest of the cast sounded solid too, although I never bothered to compare them all to the JP dub

The collectathon stuff slightly overstays its welcome but everything else about this game was great - the vaporwave x lovecraftian visual style, the insane immortal cult setting, the unravelling of an actually good murder mystery, the perfectly pleasant seeming characters almost making you forget the horror of their human farming, the banging music. Good shit

Couple minor gripes - fast travelling should've just been free (bet most players end up not using it until the end of their playthroughs like I did) and meditation could've lasted longer, gets annoying to refresh

Although this game was kind of enjoyable nevertheless, the story takes almost no risks and the characters barely change from start to end with the most sterile romance possible. I still can't take the setting of a super religious space-faring civilization with asteroids full of magical science goo in ruins only discoverable by "witches" singing seriously lol. Not to mention the Chinese clans overly concerned about their nebulous honor. There aren't even terrestial planets anymore only gas giants, does all of humanity really live on those asteroids and space stations now? Where do they grow all their food, or is the entire population in the low thousands? Did the gods genuinely exist and all die or what was with all those hallucinations? Are Jun and Eda reincarnations of Helius and Terra?

Also what's the point of changing Ribaku (Japanese dub) to Jun in the English text? Clashed hard every time Eda said it. And onee-chan --> Eddie, really? Don't think our trio is Ed, Edd, n Eddy

Lastly I'm not docking any points for this but FUCK the speedrun and never-fail-even-once achievements when all cutscenes are unskippable and you have to alt-F4 every single time you lose a dice roll or mess up a puzzle before it autosaves, what a clusterfuck of tedium