This was one of the worst things I have ever had the displeasure of playing. However, beneath it's surface layer lies an intentionally haunting masterpiece.
The expertly and deliberate use of repetitious gameplay, music, and setting cleverly purloins the player of their sense of self and puts them into Aya's reality. You really feel the pain our heroine feels, distressingly chopping her way from one corridor to the next, hoping for the end to be through that next door and end her suffering.

A truly fascinating and overlooked gem.

my buddy killbutt (he's the biggest tales fan in the world) told me it's the best game he's ever played. normally I wouldn't believe him (he's the biggest tales fan in the world), but he's friends with kanye west, and I really liked his work in the sopranos. so I'm inclined to agree; tales of arise is the greatest game in the

In a perfect world, Tales of would have died with Symphonia and Star Ocean would have been the franchise to survive and prosper.

No, I will NOT take my medication.

the first twewy was a fruit of its age: a game about people trying to connect with each other, understating how bounds are importants and learning to accept themselves. settled in shibuya, the epicenter of japanese youth of it’s époque and pretty much adopting all of its aesthetics too: it’s emo, it’s stylish, it sounds like japanese pop, rap, it has scratches, it isn’t “clean”, it’s urban. even in a nintendo ds game, is a city that felt alive, not only for the care they had with the aesthetics but also because you could scan people’s minds and see their feelings, worries and experiences while living in such a city that shibuya was. it was also a game that could only exist on the nintendo ds: a game about utilizing the ds’ two screens to sustain its message. you played, in combat, controlling both neku and his partner of the week, utilizing your stylus and your d-pad to fight enemies on both “sides” at the same time -- basically you had to take care not only of yourself, but also of your partner, too, and when you were in sync, you could unleash an special power. it was weird, for sure, but it worked well enough to what the game was trying to say. yeah, there’s a mobile and a switch version today -- the last one being, basically, the canon one that leads to this game story -- but the original intent still is the ds one.

now, 14 years later, the context is different: people still have the same problems, but the gravity of this is changed by the internet. your presence online is more valuable than yours offline: is easier to form bounds, since you can find your own niche just searching for some keyword on twitter. is not that people are not afraid of being themselves, is more that they can be anyone today at a level that it’s true identity is messier than their own closets. today, the people you scan don’t care anymore about which CD he should buy at tower records or which clothes she should wear on a date. today they care about which CD is worth enough to be physically buyed and which boy is prettier enough on instagram to be worth a date. neo: the world ends with you is still a game about the importance of connections. not exactly about a protagonist that does not have any, but about a protagonist that must know how important they are. you now play with a whole team instead of a partner and each button of your controller represents both a pin and a player. while it seems strange, it’s actually a show of geniality: it gives the same feeling that you should adjust itself with the most comfortable and ergonomic pins, just like the DS gave, but now in a dualshock 4. you have plenty of options to customize your gameplay and it’s basically “what if control scheme was not a quality of life but instead a central game mechanic”. it is addicting too, you know? testing new pins, seeing they evolve, comparing their animation speed and which one has less friction. it feels really great, principally because you soon unlock a mechanic known as “drop the beat”, where you gain a percentage in order to do a special move. there’s a lot going on in this game’s combat and while some enemies are not That Fun, there are some great bosses at kingdom hearts 2 level of flashy-lasers-gimmicky-thing and overall quality and necessity of mastery of it’s system.

thematically, as i said, is still about the importance of connections, but more about understanding that your friends really does matter for you. instead of the fear of knowing new people, the fear now is of missing those people -- what if your best friend just gets erased? the question about accepting your true identity is still here, too. characters wearing masks to distant themselves from who they really are -- they are in fear of being genuine. what if no one likes it? sending a sticker saying “i love you” on telegram is easier than, actually, saying “i love you” in flesh and blood. you can see how those teenagers are influenced by how the internet treats relationships, in both bad and good ways, and also how the overall communication and relation-between-people have changed since the first the world ends with you released. it also talks about The System and how shit it is, where Higher Classes has shit privileges and can do whatever the shit they want to -- they are on the top, after all. having many teams fighting each other, directly and indirectly, trying to survive a game where it seems impossible to win, is pretty much how capitalism works: sometimes you just have to take care of your own group rather than help everyone in order to survive -- and this sucks. “systematic world, killing me” etc. this system, formed by old rules that doesn’t matter for the ones on top, is also what kills the chance of the youth to express themselves better and be able to have healthier relationships. you can’t just go and blame the one on top, so you just keep quiet. you can’t just go and tell how bad you feel, so you just keep quiet. you can’t just go and tell how much something matters to you, its cringe, so you just keep quiet. in the end, either die quietly or try to change things: if you could turn back time, would you do it right? and even if you don’t, would you mind doing it right, now? going against the system? trying to be yourself a little more? trying to understand others a little more? trying to show love a little more? the world ends with you, so you better change your fate.

Potentially the most well thought out and accessible fighting game I've ever played with one of the most bat shit insane and varied cast of characters I've seen. Seriously, think of a gripe you have with a lot of fighting game mechanics, chances are Killer Instinct has a very intuitive solution for it.
Things people still beg fighting game developers to implement is stuff this game has been rocking since 2013 and is still ahead of the curve with its net code and some genuinely revolutionary things that it has such as the Shadow Labs (Extremely deep AI learning tool to fight data versions of other players offline that's scarily accurate and organic).

Many people shit on the corny visuals and all that, but all of that's just superficial. Beyond that lies a game that manages to be both simple and intricate simultaneously. The combo breaker mechanic is a genius idea that keeps you on your toes for both the person in advantage, and the person eating an eternal mix up that always makes every match feel extremely different with the sheer variety of mind games and general things you can do with it.

"Should I risk everything and use predictable moves to bait out a breaker? What if I bluff and scare them into doing nothing since they'll think I'll use a counter breaker?"
"Should I go for safer moves but miss out big damage?" etc etc
The scenarios write themselves.

Some newer players write it off as no execution mashing or just being lucky if you guess right and break away from a combo, but that's a severe misunderstanding of how it works. There's 100% execution beyond a certain point that keeps the combo system tense due to some really punishing requirements, some being as tricky as just frame moves (Having only 1 frame to execute a move). As for it being luck based, it really isn't, you can be punished extremely badly if you just mash breakers without thinking, like literally losing an entire life bar levels of damage.

Now I'm gonna just gush about the game instead of defending it from the most common complaints I see.

The cast is so much fucking fun, its gimmicky bullshit galore but in a way that doesn't feel unfun to go against. There's a character that functions like a tag fighter in a 1v1 format with assists and multiple character's health bars to manage for example, shit can get nuts. Or another character that's a weird ass fucking RNG Frakenstein that can completely change gameplans and approach at any given moment and has to bash their head like a dumbass to be able to make the RNG more in their favor at the cost of damaging themselves.

I'm not the greatest player and I'm still a bright eyed puppy compared to all the people still actively playing this but it still manages to be rewarding nonetheless, even when I get the floor wiped with me. The game holds your hand pretty well and tells you very explicitly what you did wrong, such as timing things wrong, etc. You always feel like you learn something new in a match.

Even outside the fun as hell combo system, the normal moment to moment gameplay is fucking awesome and you never feel like you've quite won yet with how easy it is to lose all momentum you have going for yourself, making every match feel like a genuine battle of wits with how intelligently thought out every mechanic is. You can never really steam roll anyone in this game consistently even when you have an entire life bar on them with how easy it is to eat shit off your short comings.

The music too is fucking great, it's some of the hypest and most visceral shit to me with how it dynamically changes off the intensity and actions of what's going on and even has a weird rhythm game-esque element to it at times. It honestly makes me excited every time when absolute banger parts of songs start playing when shit gets really clutch or neck and neck.

To go on another tangent, I absolutely dig the stupid bombastic presentation this game has. It feels like a parody of fighting games with how melodramatic and in your face it is. The characters are a weird mish mash of a child's monster action figures with how shamelessly tropey they are. Not for everyone, and people who prioritize aesthetics in a fighting game rightfully wrote this off, but I love it, this is seriously one of the funniest games to me.
You know how sitcoms or shows in general tend to have fake in universe video games that are really stupid and juvenile? That's basically what Killer Instinct is in that regard.

Yeah, you can probably tell I like Killer Instinct a lot. It's quickly become one of my favorite fighting games and might potentially be my favorite in general the more I let it sit, at least for 2D ones.

A game everyone should play because it teaches you to tamper your expectations when a tiny group of people who played it sing its exaggerated praises. Everything about this game is overblown when I see the 6 or so people that played it before Automata talk about it, both the good and the bad. So I've been interested in playing it for a decade, and I can't say the overblown praise and criticism for it didn't color my expectations somewhat.

First off, the gameplay and sidequests aren't even AS bad as people make them out to be. Combat is largely "baby's first action RPG" and the sidequests are mostly standard boring fetch quests, yes. But the combat is functional and fun enough even if barebones and the sidequests aren't offensive and torturous like people make them out to be, plus they can be nearly completely ignored (though I did a good few, any that didn't need me to go out of my way too much). Bosses however were really pretty cool, even if mostly for the spectacle alone.

Then there's the highly praised music and story. The music is great, and I loved a few of the tracks (even though the game shamelessly overused them) but it's hardly "THE BEST GAME OST OMG IT PROVES GAMES ARE ART!!!!" tier. The story I feel similarly about. It was nice and it had some pretty great moments, but jack shit happens for a lot of the game. Basically the game has multiple "routes" to get through. The first half or so of route A is basically all a prologue with how little happens, mostly being setup. Then the second part of route A has some story but it's still nothing truly amazing until the ending of route A. Route A was by far the longest for me, so that meant that a good chunk of the game felt like it was barely advancing the story. Route B was pretty good though, because it explained the world of Nier more and that is the best part of the game to me. Route C is a pointless waste of time and should've been folded into route B, but it was quick enough.

Does it sound like I mostly thought the story was just kinda alright with some pretty great moments? That's how I feel. This is in part because I just couldn't get too attached to the characters in the game, even Yonah. But I thought the world and setting were cool as fuck, so now I have to read some supplemental materials that actually sound way more interesting to me than what the game's story actually was. I also just didn't care much for Ending C but it was nice and Ending D fell completely flat to me but had a cool gimmick. Again, these two endings seemed to expect me to have more attachment to the characters than I ever felt. And that's talking about the main cast, whenever an scene expected to care about some tertiary character it fell flat. And I guess that's how I can sum up my take on the story: it seemed to expect me to care more than I ever did but it had some really cool unique moments and a very interesting world that carried the whole thing for me.

So yeah, I guess that's it for me. Everything about this game is extremely exaggerated when talked about by its fans and a lot of things just fell flat for me, but it was an overall enjoyable game that I'm glad I put up with in the end.

I'm not one for more traditional JRPGs generally, so me giving it a 5/5 should say something.

I loved this game all the way through. The chararacters are entertaining, the combat and job systems are fantastic, the music is excellent and there is a lot of meaty side content to enjoy. It also has some QoL features that I kinda wish all JRPGs had, such as x2 and x4 battle speeds and being able to change the frequency of encounters at any time. It also has some pretty nice social features, allowing players to use their friends' job levels or share useable to in-battle abilities, though I ignored the former because it felt a bit silly and I didn't want stupid Miis on my menu.

I also found the game fairly challenging on Hard, though a couple bosses did have really long fights in the first half. But it was SO satisfying to figure out how to beat bosses with the proper strategy and setup, even more so in the second half where you have more tools and such. Highly recommend not looking up strats online and figuring out your own way to beat the bosses. Though I do feel the endgame was kinda broken, as you have so many potentially broken setup possibilities, but it was a joy figuring those out too and trying to efficiently kill bosses. With the right setup, you can even Auto through some of the harder fights in the game (not counting the Nemesis obtained from the social features, which are a marked step up in difficulty).

The story, while nothing special at first and certainty not without its flaws in writing, was pretty cool, with an amazing finale. People love to complain about the later half, though, but I find the complaints as grossly overblown as Dark Souls' difficulty is. At worst, you can rush though the so called repetitive part really quickly as long as you have good strategy against the bosses. I'd also say this later half is not even a half, and more of a quarter. Unless you go for the side content, that is, but the side content during this part is actually really fucking great, specially in the last two chapters. Though I do feel a couple of the chapters could've been folded into a single one, I feel that they kept it how it is mostly to prevent missable content. And even then, there's still a brand new side quest during those, so whatever. So I can kinda see why people get filtered by it, but at the same I find the reaction extremely overblown.

Story aside, I found the characters extremely entertaining, though they're not particularly depth or anything. But I'm not one to think depth = good and simple = bad. The main players have enough depth for what they are, and they get more development through side content, with some really cool backstories too. I loved the asterisk bearers, all of them being very amusing in their own ways.

Music I touched on but I wanna repeat that this game's soundtrack is excellent. It feels like a bit of a crime that such a good soundtrack is limited by the 3DS, which has both low audio quality and low volume on headphones (at least my 3DSXL does). The one flaw the OST has it that it is very short. It's about 2 hours of music, for a game that I played for nearly 120 hours. I wish there was more to it just to alleviate repetition, but the soundtrack is so good it never tired me.

The voices also sound pretty compressed, probably because the game is nearly fully voiced save for generic NPCs and party chars, in both English and Japanese, while being a long-ass JRPG that has to fit within the limitations of the 3DS. Could've probably been alleviated by making the JP voices free DLC instead of bundling them in, but whatever. The compression kinda has some charm and it's not too bad. Voice acting itself I thought was pretty great (played in English) save for Agnès, but her voice made me laugh often enough that I can't be mad at her.

Gameplay is some of the most fun I've played in a turn-based JRPG. The job system is just fantastic, and the nice twist of the Brave Points elevated it further. You can use up (Brave) or store (Default) Brave Points to get up to 4 turns in a row, being able to go into a turn debt by braving into the negatives or play it safe by saving them up first by defaulting (which works as guarding too). BP are unique per character, also. It's just really fun because you have to think about when to Brave and when to Default, and the system extends to bosses so they play with the same rules as you, more or less. On top of combat itself being great dun thanks to BP, the job system is just highly satisfying as you mix and match the abilities of different jobs to come up with builds and setups. Finding a proper synergy is half the fun! There is also very little grinding, and even if you choose to grind it just goes by incredibly fast with x4 battle speed, auto (which repeats the last set of actions you did) and +100% encounter rates.

So yeah all in all, easily one of my favorite JRPGs. Kinda in shock that anyone involved with the boring slog that was 4HoL managed to make such a good game! Also in shock that people filtered so easily by the later "half" of the game.

Despite the pain the game's advertising constantly mentioned, my first time through the game had me completely hooked to a point all I really cared about was experiencing everything the game had to offer. That doesn't mean there's no pain to be had. Other than the difficulty, which can easily blindside the player if they're not careful, the game isn't bashful about dealing with difficult topics that most people shy away from in stories within any media. Lisa is a difficult game not only to play, but to recommend to others. Most people aren't looking for a game that tackles heavier themes, but to those who are the game's narrative becomes engaging quickly leaving players with a constant need to move forward.