There's an argument to be made that competitive Turn-Based games are a lesser alternative to their Real-Time counterparts. Making split-second decisions under pressure is more 'skillful' than sifting through menus, making FPS, RTS, and Fighting games the better choice for competitive gaming. You can force pressure in turn-based games by implementing a time limit on every turn, but that still doesn't account for execution and technical skill. Precise menuing will never be as impressive as landing perfect headshots, nailing difficult movement tech, or micromanaging 100s of units with rapid-fire button presses.

Even if we assume that Turn-Based games are just as competitive as Real-Time games, you have to consider if Pokemon represents the best the genre has to offer. The lack of positioning limits the game's skill ceiling and an overemphasis on RNG undermines strategy by arbitrarily robbing the player of their agency!

But these issues don't bother me too much. It's not the BEST ESPORT EVER, but I still think there's value to Pokemon's combat, even with the obvious design flaws. I really wish Pokemon had some level of positioning (even a grid would be cool!), but the mind games that go into swapping party members add a lot to the skill ceiling. And that's not even mentioning the layered decision making that goes into building a cohesive team. Even if you only pick from a small pool of ~30 'viable' pokemon, the ability to customize movesets, stat distribution, and equippable accessories give players a crazy amount of leeway to come up with their own strategies. If you're willing to think outside the box a little, you can even turn 'low-tier' mons into game winning carries!

While I struggle to accept the game's RNG, I believe inconsistencies resulting from accuracy/damage variation will naturally level out over time, ensuring that better players consistently come out on top.

My biggest concern is the potential for cheating. I'm not referring to manipulating the online client or even generating pokemon for offline events (that's not cheating lol). I'm referring to people making an ass of themselves by using outside influences to get a leg up on live, in-person events.

Game Freak has tried their best to curb any sort of cheating, but there are still obvious holes that anyone can take advantage of. When a person makes a crazy read, is that the result of proper conditioning and outplaying their opponent? What if their motorized butt plug is feeding them all the right moves? Is it hooked up to a super-computer that perfectly calculates the best decisions? Is a team of trained professionals feeding live data through morse vibrations? Maybe someone in the audience is just futzing with the remote?

This uncertainty taints the outcome of every match, undermining good sportsmanship with the presence of filthy cheaters. I still enjoy pokemon casually, but Game Freak will need to implement some sort of wireless signal jammer for me to respect competitive pokemon again

It's kinda baffling to me how this game can actually exist. I don't mean this in a sort of "my cup runneth with art degrees and snob" way that dismisses anyone that likes the game as consumers of the video game equivalent of fast food. There are reasons to like this game for sure. I moreso mean that there's so much that goes on in Tales of Arise where the developers thought, "yes this will make a statement" when all they really did was take a totally centrist approach to things that don't deserve more than a cursory glance and a second of consideration.

Slavery and oppression are the first things that come to mind here. As is typical with many jrpgs, the latter portion of the game spirals into a convoluted pile of jargon and plot devices, but fundamentally preaches safe and inoffensive platitudes and whatboutisms. That last part is a lie, though. I wish I could say that Arise takes the decisively bland but resolute answer to racism and oppression that many other stories do. In fact Arise did have some slightly interesting introspection into what it means to be a slave on a more philosophical level. It all goes wrong when it begins advocating for forgiving our oppressors; when it starts preaching that they are deserving of my sympathy.

The themes of Arise from this point on goes from shallow but acceptable to infuriatingly indecisive and laughable. To repeat myself again, i'm sure the writers of Arise believed they were making a point worth consideration here. In practice it leaves me wondering where the proof-readers during the QA sessions and war-room meetings.

Beyond fumbling the ball on slavery, there's also the issue of the mishandling of other themes like vengeance and co-existence, neither of which are as egregious. I think there is a statement to be made on how Arise attempts to handle isolation and loneliness. There are some dark implications on how this affected a certain character in the party and how developing the support network they needed led to more regret as they walk towards their inevitable demise. Once again, I lied. What I just said wasn't at all something you're shown, and something you're hardly even told through the story. This does not require reading between the lines, but filling between them with orange crayon and claiming it was there from the beginning. I bring this up because it is a bit insulting just how much characterization is conveyed through the characters' over-sensitivity or insufferable demeanor. There isn't re-contextualization, just a bunch of gotcha moments that portray awkward and vapid character interactions as foreshadowing.

I spent more time on the writing than this game probably deserved, and it's kind of laughable i'd give this much of a damn about a game I didn't enjoy. Pondering about and writing about this game might have been a waste of time, "it's just another mcdonald's ass jrpg" would have been a better review truthfully. I did try to enjoy this game though. Quite a few friends adore this game and I tried giving it multiple chances because of it.

One of those chances lies with the gameplay. Yet again though, Arise totally fumbles here. On the surface, Arise's mechanical depth is quite sound. It creates an inter-connectivity between the party and really sells the idea that everyone is contributing to make the team stronger. It does this through its boost mechanic, which is in your best interest to use to extend combos. These can also be used to one shot enemies before they've even reached half their healthbar. Using this mechanic ritually determines how often you can break an enemy's stance, opening them up to more combos. Once again, this is a lie. The issue with Tales of Arise combat lies in a completely static and awful enemy lineup.

Generic enemies tend to fall under 3 molds: dodgey and agile types like wolves and brutes, charge up and floaty enemies, and rolling sonic the hedgehog losers that hit just one second after you're ready to evade their attack. This enemy lineup, without exaggeration, ruins the combat of Arise. Once again, the game feels vapid and devoid of any sort of interesting combat moments because the situations you're put in are almost entirely the same for about 40 hours. The scaling challenge in this game's action combat comes from enemies that are higher level and will almost always body your AI party members no matter how well you plan in advance.

This issue is exacerbated with bosses. Suddenly, Arise stops being this game where challenge dissipates once you master the flowchart that is every combat encounter (a flowchart that never changes across its 40 hours). Now it turns into a realtime potion spamming dodge-rolling clown fiesta, except now you have a bunch of braindead party members that don't get the memo. Bosses aren't a test of skill but a test of how many consumables you've bought on your way to the boss. Let's not even get into all the havoc that the bloated HP bars and the near impossibility of breaking stance has on potentially skill based gameplay.

The inventory system and crafting system are insipidly pedantic and not worth an iota of genuine thought. The game tries to make these interesting by having every piece of equipment aspected to an element. In practice you're just mindlessly scaling up your equipment to go with what gives the biggest numbers. I'm not sure if I mentioned this yet, but number-crunching and stat-stacking ruins any kind of fun character action gameplay Arise is going for.

Sidequests are total filler but i'm not really sure if I should have expected anything less. What I can say though is that what goes on in sidequests are things you already do in the story on occasion. The story itself is peppered with grocery list tasks and obvious attempts to pad the runtime of the game. If Arise was condensed to only include interesting gameplay or story scenarios you'd be left with a pamphlet. This sort of padding applies to the character interactions themselves as so much of them are filled to the brim with useless conversations that don't add an ounce of insight to their personality or history. Though some of this lot can be fun, it never really shakes off the feeling that they are caricatures.

Once again, I could go on and list every single thing about this game. What I want you to picture however: think of every aspect that goes to making a narrative and a game's experience work. Plotting, theming, resonance, mechanics, bosses, combat scenarios, progression, exploration, the works. Now imagine if every single one of those aspects had the consideration that goes into marking off a box in a mindless day-job that pays pocket change. It's filled with grease but nothing of substance. These are the feelings i've had with Tales of Arise. Calling it a fastfood game is giving it too much credit. At least fast-food's convenience is handy when i'm on a crunch. With Arise, all I felt was that my time was neither respected nor given something useful to consider.

I dropped this game at least three times over the last year, but picked it back up hoping that I could be surprised. As I said, I've had many friends whose opinion I hold in high regard recommend and back this game's corner. Likewise I always had no idea what exactly my problem was with this game until I started writing for it.

What I think I had to realize was that Tales of Arise is emblematic of all my problems with many jrpgs. Between the flowcharty combat, the pointless inventory and character progression, the unrealistic and comedically unsatisfying characterization, nonsense plots that overuse jargon as a substitute for interesting narrative devices, and taking the centrist approach to blatantly awful aspects of humanity.

To go back to the slavery topic, Babylon 5, a story I quite enjoy, has a quote that was all Arise needed to say on the topic. If this quote was the only examination the entire narrative had on oppression, I would still find it preferable to what I got. "I can never forgive your people, for what they did to me. My people can never forgive your people for what they did to us. But I can forgive you." Now, was that so difficult?

Y'know, having now replayed this like, 3 times, one time on hard, doing several entire levels without taking damage I think I can unequivocally say the gameplay in this game is ass outside of the bosses.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance lives and dies on its hype factor, and y'know what, I am completely fine with that. It is a game that is balls to the walls in your face, firing off all cylinders to give you that sweet, addictive dopamine while the funny Darwinian Senator says not to fuck with him, and asking if you want to play hide and seek you little bitch.

Outside of that, a lot of what this game says about the nature of violence and accepting the past I find is pretty relevant, even if the game doesn't go too deep with it like Kojima's works, and of course the spreading of meme culture discussion this game brings up has only made this game remain viral to this day as compilation after compilation of MGR characters cockblocking you have continued to pervade every inch of Youtube and the rest of the internet.

However, this game is very much a pump and dump kind of game. The gameplay just isn't mechanically deep enough to keep players coming back, myself an exception because I WANTED TO PLAY AS SOMBRERO RAIDEN AND GREY FOX, OK, I WANTED MY PEAK FAN FICTION FANTASIES.

If you do decide to replay MGR, I suggest getting the Fox Blade and buying its Special Ability because it trivializes most encounters by basically being an instant kill. That or just refight the bosses, they're easily the best part of the game (minus Monsoon, that fucker can eat my ass).

This review is pretty negative but yeah, the game gets 4 stars from hype alone so I think it's fair for me to be negative about it. The DLC is also pretty good, Sam is fun to use and Blade Wolf has better stealth mechanics than Raiden so it all works out.

A profoundly misunderstood classic that manages to impresses when stacked up against other games of the time, and effortlessly clears most modern attempts at being a satisfying action game. Even beyond the innovation on display (nobody was doing it like Capcom back in the late 90's/early 2000's) I'm consistently swept off my feet at how enjoyable this game is, even after around 8 personal playthroughs and 21(!) years of further innovation and inspiration in the medium. Dante may be a tad heftier than your modern action protag, but it has the side-effect of forcing you to constantly stay glued to encounters in a way I haven't really seen before. You must consider every step you take and every action you make, it's electrifying. I don't have any ill will towards Itsuno for reinventing the series like he did --who wouldn't after being tasked with scraping together the scattered remains of the last title and still having it come out like crap-- but there's still something here that later entries still have yet to recapture for me. It may not have the glitz and glamor of it's many sequels, but what you get instead is one of the most well considered, tightly paced, and highly rewarding gaming experiences out there.

TWEWY is a game I've always heard about, but never played because I didn't have it and I had other RPGs to play. A friend was talking to me about it, and loaned me her copy, so obviously I had to play it, you can't just be loaned a game and not play it, right? Anyway, it took me about a year to even boot the game because I had other RPGs to play.

I knew very little about this game other than it's generally well liked, and I can see why. This is probably one of the most cohesive games in terms of artistic direction, music, mechanics, and story.

I won’t do a plot review in this review, but it’s good enough. It makes room for all the main cast to shine, which works real well because the characters are all really engaging and well written. The story is not subtle whatsoever, but it isn't trying to be. It is trying to portray a very clear message: go out and meet people and get to know them, go make friends, because they make your life better, and you make their life better. The main character, Neku, I feel is reflective of a certain type of teenager -- a teenager I once was, and frankly the story left me wondering how I might have turned out if I had played this game when I was 14. He’s definitely a bit of a loner-trope RPG protagonist, but the writers use this to establish why he’s receiving ESP powers and being forced to work with people, something he’d never do alone.

My favorite characters are definitely Shiki and Beat. I mean, everyone who's played this game loves Beat, and it isn't hard to see why. He’s a chill-as-fuck tough guy who’s just a little dumb and is just so goddamn funny. I love the bits in week three where people will make fun of him and he’ll just be like “Yeah!”, and the classic “Bwaahahaaaa!?” sound clip that plays when he’s shocked. His backstory is a real heartbreaker, too. Shiki’s story in particular resonated with me, Shiki’s envious of her best friend because she is what Shiki is not, or at least what Shiki doesn’t believe she is. I dealt with similar feelings in high school, and that’s why I really think more teenagers should play this game. This game touches on a lot of complex feelings most of us could probably draw parallels to at that age.

The combat is super cool, but I hold the stylus like a fucked-up T-rex so I was ready to be done when the final boss came around. I liked the Reaper fights in particular, where they would switch between light and dark on you and your partner’s screen, so you could spend some time fighting as Neku then some time fighting as your partner. The different partner styles is also cool, but some are a bit easier than others. In terms of ease of getting Fusions from easiest to hardest, I would rank them: Joshua > Shiki > Beat. I pretty much always let them go on auto, but occasionally I would button mash right or left to help out in a particularly tough battle. I’m not good enough at this game to focus on both screens, so I like that this game gives me the option to not focus on it.

In addition to that, this game has a lot of accessibility options. You can play any of the difficulties you want once you unlock them, you can change how long it takes for your partner to go auto again, you don’t even have to win at this game’s minigame, tin-pin slammer, and I know this because I SUCK ASS at tin-pin slammer. Like, Dyson V11 Torque Drive right on the booty cheeks kinda suck ass at tin-pin slammer. I didn’t win a single match. But the game never stopped me for being bad at it’s otherwise optional minigame. I mean, it made fun of me for being bad at it, but I expect that. Maybe next time I play through this game I’ll “git gud”.

There’s some mechanics I barely messed with, like the fashion mechanics. Fashion is your armor in this game, and I messed with that, though I find on Normal you could probably pass on armor beyond that one objective where you have to wear all Mus Rattus gear. You can also totally drip out your characters. The different fashion brands also influence the power your pins have in battle, so you have to keep up with the fashion trends. You can also influence the trends by completing a bunch of battles in the area. But again, I didn’t really mess with this much.

The soundtrack has a lot of earworms. It’s real funky, and in a similar vein to JSR and JSRF tracks, and I feel that’s a product of both games focusing so much on self-expression thematically and being from a time when skaters were the peak aesthetic. In particular, I find myself listening to Calling and Game Over a lot. But I don’t think there’s a song I dislike on the soundtrack. This game’s aesthetic is so sick. I love the punk style to this game, I want to dress like every character in this game, even Shiki, but I think I might be arrested for public indecency if I wore that short of a skirt, so I’ll have to workshop it. I like the part of the Shiki’s week where Neku, a character designed by Tetsuya Nomura, wishes he had more zippers. Did he know all the way back then we’d be clowning on him for his overzealous use of zippers and belts?

Overall, this game is great. It’s definitely worth your time if you’re looking for a game that’s not really like anything else out there in terms of combat and mechanics, or something with a really neat story with very well written characters. Also, Shiki’s save menu portrait is how I look a bacon egg and cheese hashbrown bowl from Waffle House at 3AM.

Spoiler Warning for Strangers of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin, Final Fantasy (1987), and basically the entire franchise

Y’know, it’s funny. When I initially saw the announcement for this game around a year ago, I was absolutely livid. I hated the concept of the game, thought it was going to be a besmirchment of the very first game, especially when I saw that Tetsuya Nomura’s name was attached to it. I hate most of the works I’ve played by Nomura, and I was afraid at first that this game would ruin the reputation of Final Fantasy I, and possibly the entire franchise.

Eventually as more trailers came out, and I saw how absolutely ridiculous some cutscenes were, I warmed up to it and figured I’d be having a good time laughing at it.

Never did I expect this game to deliver the emotional gut punches and resonance that it did, and those very moments as well as the game as a whole served not just to be a love letter to fans of the original Final Fantasy, but to fans of the entire series.

Before you play this game however, I heavily recommend at least playing the original Final Fantasy to fully appreciate the plot and the various references throughout this game. It’s not required, but I would definitely recommend doing so, it isn’t very long by JRPG standards, and it has many rereleases.

We’ll start with the gameplay which I’ll admit was the weakest aspect of the game for me. While there are combos and interesting ways to utilize magic and class skills, a lot of the combat amounts to mashing RB, and then RT, and then the B button. It’s a bit unfortunate given that this game has quite the bevy of available classes, all with unique abilities, but you really don’t do much with them.

I was personally a big fan of the Void Knight class, which is really just the Rune Knight with a more memeable name. You can create a giant rune shield that absorbs magic attacks and gets bigger with the more attacks it absorbs, allowing you to slash with a large magical sword and fire an energy slash back at the enemy, in some cases one-shotting them, which I did with Tiamat when I fought her. Very kino class.

Even though the combat isn’t the most advanced thing in the world, there is something inherently satisfying about seeing Jack crystalize and bash every enemy into a pile of dust and blood. It reminds me a lot of Doom, which I also thought was very relaxing.

Don’t get me wrong though, there are parts where the combat gets pretty difficult. I for the record played on the Action difficulty, which is the Normal Mode of the game. Regular combat usually isn’t super difficult, but some bosses can and will absolutely wreck your shit if you aren’t prepared. A good example is the Dragon Zombie, which if you don’t have White Mage or its promoted classes leveled up, will be hell without Holy Magic to clear up the poison or heal your health. It has a small arena, and shoots out poison goo from almost every attack, which makes it quite the hassle to work around.

Almost the entire final stretch of the game has the difficulty spike up due to more aggressive enemies coming into play and points where you do not have party members. It was a little exhausting, but not enough to ruin the experience I found.

Level Design starts off pretty lackluster with how hyper linear it was, but by the second half of the game there are a lot more branching pathways that loop back into each other, allowing for faster travel through the levels. The levels themselves look absolutely phenomenal, and as we’ll get to in the story, carry a lot of significance for not just the plot, but for the franchise as a whole.

All in all, if you like high octane action with constant snarking by the cast members, you’ll definitely like the gameplay.

Now onto the actual meat of this review, the plot.

At first the game starts out with a really comedic tone, with Jack being the most blunt and hilariously assholish man to ever exist, yet somehow having this underlying belief of comradery with his initial companions, Ash and Jed.

The three strangers meet in front of a castle, and upon showing each other their crystals and discovering their shared goals, the trio makes an immediate friendship as they set off to KILL CHAOS!!

They eventually arrive in Cornelia, and make their way to the king. After bringing up their quest, with the Chancellor questioning the validity of the trio’s claim as The Warriors of Light, the King sends them to investigate the Chaos Shrine. Before they leave, Princess Sarah asks Jack if he could find a knight she knew who went missing. The knight’s name is Garland. Jack makes no promises, and the three set off.

They arrive at the Shrine, kick the ass of a bunch of monsters, and find a man in a large suit of armor, Jack concludes that they must be Chaos, but Jed realizes that their description matches that of Garland. The suited man claims they are to become Chaos, and so Jack decides to kick his ass.

It then turns out that they were neither Chaos or Garland, but rather a young woman named Neon, who was attempting to become Chaos so that the Warriors of Light could come along and kill Chaos bringing an end to its spread. She believes Chaos isn’t really a deity but rather a concept, but Jack is having absolutely none of that so he just plays his Limp Bizkit and fucking leaves.

I will admit that up to this point, I was laughing my ass off. The character interactions felt so awkward that it was honestly hilarious, but now having finished the game it all kind of makes sense.That doesn’t mean these moments aren’t funny, but that in the full context of the plot the awkwardness serves a genuine purpose.

The four return to the King, who now firmly believes them to be the Warriors of Light, and are sent to the small town of Pravoka to speak to the Mayor about the Elemental Crystals that have gone out of balance, in order to fulfill Lukhan’s Prophecy.

Unfortunately, mayor’s dead, the townspeople hate the Kingdom, and the town is now run by pirates, specifically the Captain, Bikke. Back in the OG Final Fantasy I always pronounced his name like Bike, but the actual pronunciation is Bick-kay, which was interesting.

The Warriors go to the Pirates’ hideout to find Bikke and get info out of him on the crystals, which results in a fight between the two groups. After being soundly defeated, Bikke directs our heroes to find the King of the Dark Elves, Astos, who has apparently made a deal with Chaos, as he might have more answers.

So Jack and company make their way to the Western Keep, fighting their way through the colossal fortress and arriving in a throne room to encounter… one of the Black Knight enemies from Final Fantasy II. This was the point where I initially realized this game was going to be more than just a rewrite of the first game. After defeating the Knight, the group highlights how Jack has come back, and that only Jack can fight the way he does. It seems weird given that there’s been no point where we haven’t had Jack kicking massive ass, but this moment was carefully planting seeds for later.

Astos then appears and attempts to introduce himself, but Jack in his usual temperament, backs him the fuck off and demands just the important information. Astos, chuckling in his new, more coy personality which I definitely appreciate, directs the party towards the flying fortress of an ancient civilization known as the Lufenians. The location houses the Wind Crystal, so the crew wastes no time in making their way to it.

After a bit of traveling, they finally warp to the massive scientific facility that happens to be in space, and arrive at the Wind Crystal. They find that it is being protected by the giant, multiheaded dragon, Tiamat. Tiamat reveals herself as one of the Four Fiends, and attempts to slaughter our protagonists, but one Rune Shield Sword Beam later and she’s nothing more than a pile of crystals.

However, upon Tiamat’s death, Jack notices a pixelated phantom showcasing… something that happened in the past, and then a woman appears where Tiamat died. She introduces herself as Sophia, and much like our heroes, she too has an obsession with destroying Chaos, something which starts to feel very… unnatural.

Using a terminal in the crystal’s room, she shows the locations of two of the remaining Crystals, allowing the player to decide which route they want to take.

At this point, my suspicions arose quite a bit. Firstly, one of the key things about Jack, Ash, Jed, and Neon is that their names all fit within the four character limit of the original Final Fantasy, and that their initial classes reflected base classes of that game, Jack being the Warrior, Ash being the Monk, Jed being the Thief, and Neon being the Red Mage (in this game these are all promoted classes, but they’re also the promoted classes these character’s get so it still makes sense). Sophia on the other hand has a five character long name, and is associated with Lances (she can also be a mage, but Lancer is one of her starting classes) which are associated with the Dragoon class, which didn’t appear until Final Fantasy II. There’s also the fact that she also breaks the original Final Fantasy’s norm by being the fifth party member, where the original only had a party of four. It’s just something to put players of the original on their toes, along with the timing of her arrival, but it ultimately serves a different, more obvious purpose.

Since the game went in the unusual route of having Tiamat be the first fiend fought, which is the opposite of the original, I decided my next Crystal would be the Earth Crystal where I would fight the Lich, who is normally the first Fiend fought in the original.

The plot during this part focuses more on Ash as he starts to regain his memories, remembering his old companions and how he feared them dying and did everything in his power to stop it from happening. This of course conflicts with Jack, who wants solely to focus on the mission and keeps telling Ash that “forgetting is a mercy.” Jed also starts to recover his memory, but gets ignored by the rest of the group.

Eventually they arrive at the Cavern of Earth, a boobytrapped underground temple, which hosts the Earth Crystal. They arrive and encounter the Lich, who has been polluting and rotting the earth with his darkness. He begins introducing himself, and Jack, irritated from the entire experience, jumps to punch the ghastly fiend right in the face while saying “I DON’T GIVE A FUCK WHO YOU ARE!!”

I chuckled, as it was a very funny moment.

After a relatively tough fight, victory is again seized, and another phantom is found where the Fiend was killed. Their build being very buff, much like Ash, as the phantom lies there lamenting the death of their companions.

Eventually the darkness residue begins to move towards the group. Earlier in the story, Sophia mentions that the dark mist that comes from the enemies slain by Jack and the party can mess with their minds, and make them remember things they’re better off not knowing. Ash of course absorbs the darkness with his Crystal, and starts to ease up on the memory stuff, before the party is warped back to the Fortress to go to the next Crystal.

The Fire Crystal comes next, and the party makes their way to the treacherous Mount Gulg. Neon gets a little more characterization here as the crew talks to her about if she is starting to believe that Chaos actually exists and what not.

Our heroes eventually reach the core of the volcano, where they encounter the Fiend of Fire, Marilith. After finally beating her, another phantom is left in her place, with Neon absorbing the dark mist with her crystal. Neon later accepts that Chaos is real, and vows to continue fighting alongside Jack and company. Then, just as the volcano is about to erupt, the heroes are warped back to The Flying Fortress by Astos.

Astos shows them the location of the final remaining crystal, the Water Crystal. Once again, the heroes don’t hesitate to make their way to the Sunken Shrine. On the way, Jed begins to have more doubts about the mission as he begins to recall the past, with Jack becoming more irritable the more the past is brought up.

This culminates in a moment where after killing the Cray Claw, which is a Final Fantasy V boss, Jack tries to absorb the dark mist with his Crystal, but Jed interrupts him, forcing the two of them to have a flashback of meeting each other at some place that wasn’t were they met earlier in the story.

Jack asks if this makes Jed happy and the two reconcile with a fist bump. Eventually they arrive in the Sunken Shrine, a large energy harvesting facility requiring multiple key cards in order to progress, and at the very bottom lies the Kraken.

Neon demands that the Kraken return the Crystal, but the Kraken posits as to why they need it, as they’ve been doing fine without it. This response causes Neon to clam up, but Jed comforts her before Jack goes in swinging. This of course ends with the group having a tough long fight against the mighty Fiend, with Jed absorbing the mist.

Can I just say that Jed’s voice actor, Alejandro Saab (better known as KaggyFilms), does such a phenomenal job voicing the character. Jed is very much the emotional core of the group and the performance makes him both incredibly relatable in both humorous and serious moments. Seeing him develop from the mostly comedic sidekick to a man who wants to know who he is and what his true purpose is just resonates so hard with me and I’m thoroughly impressed with how Alejandro captured the emotions of such a character.

Anyways, after completing the task they set out to do, the party makes their way to Cornelia to find… that it is covered in darkness. The villagers are suspicious of group, claiming that they serve Chaos and that one of them must be an imposter as the prophecy only mentions four Warriors of Light.

This of course pisses off Sophia, who besides Jack, has been the most obsessive in the group about forgetting the past and trying to kill Chaos. This scene, while a little awkward feeling, does elicit a genuine sense of frustration and anger. After everything the player and these characters have been through, seeing that your journey seemingly did nothing hurts quite a bit.

Jack then decides that maybe talking to the King will get them a warmer reception… which turns out to be false as the Chancellor and even the King believe that our heroes are to blame, and nearly has them executed. Luckily, Princess Sarah arrives and manages to convince her father that they shouldn’t expect for the world to immediately improve upon the rebalancing of the crystals.

This manages to save Jack and company for the time being, but that peace is short lived as the pirates from Pravoka have begun wreaking havoc in the city, with monsters appearing as well. This is because the pirates grew impatient with the restoration of the crystals, as the Wind Crystal being restored only made the raging of the seas due to the corrupted Water Crystal more difficult to work with.

The party is then ordered to stop the attack on Cornelia, and as they soon discover, the pirates themselves have been turning into the monsters, due to succumbing to the darkness. This eventually results in a rematch with a possessed Captain Bikke.

After his defeat, Bikke reveals the fact that the impatience of the pirates caused them to be possessed and that while he tried to keep them under control, he too lost control. He went to try and find Astos, but he was nowhere to be found.

Bikke then charges the heroes to find Astos, as he believes he is the only one who can find a solution to the massive spread of the darkness, telling the heroes to follow the ominous white bats that have been spotted throughout the game as they are Astos’ creations. Bikke then passes on while the heroes go seeking Astos.

Eventually they find a large ancient tower, and begin to regain memories about a race of people called Lufenians, with Sophia noting things like how she “never made it this far before”. The group discusses how the Lufenians were apparently a civilization that existed along with Cornelia, but surpassed it in regards to technology until one day disappearing altogether. Yet for some reason, they believe themselves to somehow be connected to the Lufenians in some way, with exception to Neon who says she was born in Cornelia and given a Dark Crystal by Astos at some point in time. She fears she can’t be trusted, but Jack says as long as she’s willing to help them, he has no reason to send her away.

The group begins to think that the darkness could be because of the Lufenians, and continues up the tower to encounter an Iron Giant which has apparently beaten up Astos. After turning the synthesoid creature into scrap, Jack tries to obtain some answers from Astos, especially after he keeps regaining more memories of his connections to Lufenia, and questioning his mission about killing Chaos. Astos tells him he’ll give him the answers he seeks, but only if he kills more creatures that have suddenly appeared in a weird modern skyscraper-like building.

Jack and the crew investigate the location, and start to firmly believe that this is definitely being caused by Lufenian interference, which makes the entire party believe that Astos is in league with the Lufenians and is perpetuating the cycle of darkness throughout the land. After encountering a Behemoth, which Jack recognizes despite never having seen the creature before, he crystalizes it… but then it turns into a makeshift Bahamut, coming with its own Megaflare. After managing to defeat that, Jack regains even more memories, finding out that the crystals he and the others bear are not merely for purifying the Elemental Crystals, but for retaining their memory data, and that Jack’s crystal is now completely full, meaning that he can no longer protect himself from remembering the past.

Our heroes, called “Strangers” by the Lufenians, are apparently a part of a project to find a way to balance light and darkness in the world of Cornelia.They are sent in to prevent the creation of Chaos, which is an element created when darkness mixes with negative emotions as it results in an uncontrollable circumstance, which causes the Lufenians to reset the timeline and send the Strangers back to get better results.

Astos being in league with the Lufenians leads the party to go to an area called the Terra Tortura. This was the part of the game where I fangasmed hard because Terra Tortura is… The Floating Continent from Final Fantasy VI. You have to go and destroy three statues in order to open the main gate, and the statues are directly referencing The Goddess, Fiend, and Demon from that game.

Actually on that note, most areas in this game are in reference to the other games, most of which is aptly described in the loading screen’s little journal entries called the “Fool’s Missive”. It turns out that the various areas are related to “Dimensions” with those Dimensions being the other games. For example, the Sunken Shrine level is in reference to the Mako Harvesting Factories of Final Fantasy VII, while the Crystal Mirage level is in reference to the worst part of Final Fantasy III. Meaning that the Lufenians have been pulling these areas from those worlds for some purpose.

Back to the story though, once we destroyed all of the statues and unlock the final gate, we finally encounter Astos. He reveals that those white bats that have been following him are actually Lufenians whom he transformed with magic. He was born in Cornelia, but was allowed to travel with the Lufenians to see the various Dimensions, eventually being brought back to be a part of the project as an organic reconnaissance unit. However, after having to see the timeline be reset, and being one of the only characters to retain his memories of the past resets, he has come to hate the Lufenians.

Jack demands that Astos give him a purpose, an enemy to fight, but Astos states that he has no enemy for Jack. Astos then asks who he is to Jack… with Jack recovering some memories about knowing Astos, but his uncertainty leads him to say that he is merely the King of the Dark Elves, and nothing more.

Astos finally snaps, and goes all out against the party. This was easily the second hardest fight in the game for me as Astos is not just capable with magic, but is a master of martial arts and can mix both to deadly effect. However, after his initial defeat, he goes all out and transforms into THE FIRST CANONICAL VERSION OF THE ULTIMA WEAPON!! with a design that mixes the VI, VII, and VIII designs all together, and he uses familiar attacks like Flare Star and Antimatter. Unfortunately, he is much easier as Ultima Weapon Origin, but the fight is still cool as shit.
Astos is defeated, and begins to pass away. Jack tragically regains all of his memories of Astos, things like Jack’s line earlier in the game “Nothing a bit of spit can’t handle” being something that Astos said to him about his own injuries in a previously reset timeline.

Astos initially thought of himself as nothing more than an item to be used whenever the heroes needed, but Jack and the rest of the party grew to see him as a friend, and due to the constant suffering, Jack proposed a plan with Astos and the others to end the Lufenian’s grip over Cornelia for good, utilizing as many exploits as they could like Astos’ retaining his memory.

Before departing back to Lufenia to begin the plan, Jack entrusts Astos to guide the group to this end by any means necessary. Astos states he’ll simply forget, but Jack promises that he won’t.

Unfortunately, Astos winds up being right about his assumption, but does his best to get the warriors on the path towards completing their true goal. However, Astos grew resentful of being forgotten, despite knowing that it wasn’t Jack’s fault, and it led to him giving in to the growing hatred inside of him.

Todd Haberkorn’s portrayal of the character absolutely nails the rage and emotion that fuels Astos’ final speech, and was a mastery of voice work. Usually I can recognize Todd’s voice in most of the things he does, as I’ve usually seen his more comedic high pitch voice roles like that of Jaco and Death the Kid that this deeper, more distant voice he gives to Astos was stunning to me. He truly brings out the anger and frustration of a man who has been through time loop after time loop, abused like a tool by a civilization who sees you as only a means to an end, forgotten by the friends he made who trusted him with their ultimate mission.

As he dies, the Lufenian Bats die with him, and he directs the heroes to fight back against Lufenia and save the Cornelian people from the constant repetition of the timeline.

So, with nowhere to go off of, the heroes head back to Cornelia, which has all but been consumed by the darkness. The King and Queen are dead, along with most of the soldiers. Princess Sarah is alive, but is headstrong in not abandoning her people, something which Jack sees as suicidal… so he punches her in the gut to knock her out. It’s kind of a standard thing in media, but it was definitely not something I expected.

Jack has the soldiers and the party escort the Princess out of the city while he takes on the hordes of monsters on his lonesome. As he does, he winds up rescuing civilians to escape along with the princess.

As they exit the city, the Princess realizes that her initial mentality would have meant the death of her and all of the Cornelians who will depend on her guidance during these times, and the party ponders where they will take the remaining civilians.

However, the darkness winds up being too strong and corrupts the soldiers and the townsfolk, resulting in all of their deaths, including Sarah… who happens to also be holding a Dark Crystal.

Both her and Jack remember one of the timelines that was reset, where the two of them were very close to one another. Jack introduced her to the song that she would go on to play on her Lute in the future timelines. At one point, she asks what his name is, with it being Jack Garland.

At the end of the memory, it is revealed that Jack gave her his previous Dark Crystal so that his memories could be truly restored during the plan he set up with Astos.

She asks him if it was worth it to try and change the world, before passing away in his arms…

What happens next… was probably one of the most heartbreaking moments in any video game for me.

Ash, Jed, Neon and Sophia all turn their weapons on Jack, as Jack questions what is going on. They tell him that he needs to take in the darkness and rage, and begin to attack him.

Jack, or rather you the player, are forced to singlehandedly murder these characters that you have grown to love and care about throughout the course of this game. You don’t want to do it, but they give you no choice.

This was the part of the game where I almost cried, as it was such an utterly painful moment for me. Slowly killing each and every one of the members of the party, doing those critical attacks which no longer feel satisfying but rather agonizing as Jack screams and cries that he doesn’t want to do this, and me feeling in my heart that *I didn’t want to do this.

All of the fist bumps, all of the chitchats while walking through the levels… it was all gone. Jack had to kill them… I* had to kill them, all in order to get the power to defeat the Lufenian’s for good.

To become Chaos.

Jack questions where he should go, before being reminded by a memory of Astos that one of the Lufenian’s primary pickup points was the Chaos Shrine.

The final level is a solemn reprise of the first level, with Jack wandering through the shrine on his lonesome. Muttering to himself about how he’ll make the Lufenian’s pay, how he’ll make them suffer.

He eventually arrives at the pickup point, and enters into the wheatfield seen throughout the game. Voices of Lufenian’s tell him that they’re going to reset the timeline as he screams that he’ll destroy them as he begins attacking their crystal computer matrix.

Suddenly, the darkness within Jack manifests into a physical form that calls itself Chaos. Jack, pissed off and claiming himself to be Chaos, faces it off in the final encounter.

The big meme about this game was all about how the mission was to “Kill Chaos” and stuff, but at the end of the game you do so much more.

You don’t just kill Chaos…





YOU MAKE CHAOS YOUR BITCH!! AND TAKE ALL OF ITS POWERS AS YOUR OWN!! THE LUFENIAN’S TELL YOU THAT THEY’RE IN CONTROL AND YOU SAY “FUCK YOU ASSHOLE, THIS IS MY WORLD NOW!!”

As Jack attempts to destroy them, they disconnect themselves from Cornelia, as Jack gets pulled back in time by the Four Fiends, revealed to be our party members.

The plan was a success. Cornelia is finally free.

They admit that they remembered the plan far earlier than Jack did, as evidenced by those earlier lines like “Jack’s finally back” and “Only Jack can fight like that”, things that in the situation they were initially stated in didn’t make much sense, but those seeds were planted to make that ending twist much more impactful, which is something I love about this game.

It all sets up for a “how” situation, since Jack’s identity was spoiled long before the game came out, and I think the way they handle steadily building up questions for the player is phenomenal.

The group asks what the plan is now, and Jack states that now they’ll be the ones to train the actual Warriors of Light and fulfill the true prophecy, to truly save Cornelia once and for all.

The game then ends with Garland, sitting on his throne, as the Warriors of Light (which includes the specific one from Dissidia) arrive to fight him.

He truly did it his way.

While the story might seem convoluted, I think the emotional beats hit hard nonetheless. This game did an amazing job at making me feel joy and pain throughout the story, and it really captures the essence of friendship and comradery that some of the best Final Fantasy games are known for.

At the end of the day, while I’m sure a lot of people will simply discount this game for seeming schlocky and being a stupid edgy mess, I think this game tries to do something that a lot of games don’t do anymore.

It tries to be genuine.

I recommend giving this game a shot, though be warned that the PC Port (which I unfortunately played) is incredibly unstable and frequently suffers from crashing, even on high end PCs. You are better off playing the console versions of the game if available.

The people who worked on this game truly created a celebration of 35 years of Final Fantasy that I believe should be experienced by all. A respectable entry in the long lasting series that despite having “Final” in the title, will likely not be ending anytime soon.

They did it their way, and this review is my way of showing my appreciation of a project that I initially doubted would hold unironic value to me.

Well, I did it.

I 100%ed Stranger of Paradise (all of the achievements anyway).

This epilogue to my initial experience taught me a lot of things, mostly that the Soul Shield is an incredible ability and something I should have touched upon more in my initial review is that it allows you to steal certain enemy abilities for instant use.

This technique essentially makes every class in the game have the subclass of Blue Mage, whose signature ability was copying enemy attacks. I love the Blue Mage and being able to basically always be that class is one of the most fun experiences I've had.

I played a lot of the Sage class and I have to say that Magic is extremely good in this game, I think the charging time is a good balance for just how powerful fully maxed spells are, and you can always cancel the charge into a Soul Shield or Dodge in the heat of battle, so you're never truly locked.

This is definitely the most fun I've had this year, and though the final achievement of grinding a single job to Level 99 was exhausting, I still think this entire experience was worth it.

I apologize if this review is a little less on the in depth side, but this is more of an epilogue than anything.

Jack, you are truly my favorite Final Fantasy protagonist, and it's unfortunate that this game has not been selling well.

Please, please give this game a shot. I swear, it's not just an ironic memefest, it is artwork at its purest form. A genuine, truly mystifying experience.

Can’t believe Dunkey really tricked nine million gamers into thinking The Last Guardian was this broken dumpster fire devoid of any fun or joy. Shaking my head. The gaming community really let me down with this one, maybe some other content creator a decade later will realize it was actually good when it’ll be +120$ on retro game store shelves.

Okay, being more rational here, I’ve always found the mixed reception of The Last Guardian to be rather puzzling. You’d think the third game from industry legend Fumito Ueda, the man behind ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, arguably two of the most influential PS2 games ever, would come out with more enthusiasm behind it after its infamously long nine-year development time, spanning a whole console generation. But quite literally the opposite happened. The game was so divisive on its release by critics and audiences it’s no surprise nobody wanted to be the guinea pig that invested their time and money into it. Many of its detractors claimed this was because Trico, the big animal companion and the main mechanic of the game, was unresponsive and unreliable too frequently, giving the player more lack of control than necessary and making playing the game more frustrating than it needed to be. Which I’ve always found that odd because I feel lack of control has always been a major theme in Ueda’s games?

In ICO, you play as a little boy trying to escape a big castle with a girl named Yorda who doesn’t speak the same language and can’t make the same jumps or climbs as you, yet is relied upon to open certain doors to progress your escape. You cannot progress without Yorda, you have to work around her limitations to solve puzzles and protect her from the occasional fight with these shadowy figures. If you go too many rooms too far away from her, you risk her getting captured which kills you. So you have to escort her a lot of the time by hand or yell for her to get her to come to you, which her AI has never really been the best to be honest? It was to the point where Team Ico moved development of the game from the PS1 to the PS2 so they can have more processing power to get her to work and it can still be a bit bumbly and finicky at times. In Shadow of the Colossus, you were this warrior who wandered into a forbidden land to make a deal with a deity to resurrect a girl named Mono from the dead by riding to and killing 16 Colossi, these impossibly towering creatures made of stone and fur. You had to climb on these things and find their weak spots to stab as you wrestle with the overwhelming forces of gravity of these massive creatures trying to shake you off, which oftentimes means you have to hang on for dear life for what seems minutes on end before you can keep climbing as you watch your stamina bar get lower and lower, creating more dread of falling off and having to get back on again. It’s not as if oppression by removing control from the player has never been in Ueda’s previous work before, and these are often aspects I’ve seen praised in these two games, myself included. However, I think these are often overlooked when talking about The Last Guardian because there’s always a sense that you have more kinds of control over your own actions in those games at the end of the day. That you are the one who can hold Yorda’s hand and take her where she needs to be most of the time, that you are the one who made the decision to climb upwards on the Colossi at the most inopportune time. Ueda’s games have always had this near-perfect balance of making the grand scenario more and more learnable while still grounding the player in the reality they’re really in.

This is why I feel The Last Guardian was a harder sell for many people. While I argue the journey itself is more tonally lighthearted than his previous work, The Last Guardian is by far Ueda’s most oppressive feeling game. The boy is not The Wanderer, he’s not even Ico, he’s just about as small and frail as Yorda and can only make the smallest of jumps, hang on the tiniest of ledges, and can push only certain objects around in terrain that scales from tower to tower in a journey that asks you to go higher and higher up the clouds. You more than ever have to rely on your partner Trico, this massive impossible mix of a cat and a bird probably the size of a small house. Only she can make you reach heights you otherwise can’t and make those impossible jumps from tower to tower. Trico is probably the most convincing animal in a video game I’ve ever played, but to some, that’s a burden they can’t deal with. Trico will get hungry so you have to look for barrels sometimes to feed her, Trico will get flustered when she attacks these strange inanimate stone guards so you have to pet her to calm her down, Trico gets scared of these glass windows with eye-shaped designs on them so you have to find a way to destroy them even if you have to do some insane parkour to get to them, Trico will sometimes just flat out ignore your yelling commands by design taking longer to do what the player may see as the simplest of jumps. While Trico is the most relied-on partner character ever in an Ueda game, the boy still has to escort and command this man-eating beast from place to place to solve puzzles or to platform around large jumps. In other words, it’s ICO again, but this time the roles are reversed.

Of course the pitch of “you move an animal around that will act like an animal” was only going to appeal to the most committed to its premise, and it being Ueda’s longest game meant more people were going to fall off of it before they got a chance to see its conclusion. But I feel that aspect also overshadowed discussion of other issues the game has to be honest. You can practically feel its nine years of ambitious development time when the game starts to barely contain its targeted 30fps threshold. The environmental flourishes and details around Ueda’s legendarily creative architecture are jaw-droppingly gorgeous, and as you get higher and higher up the clouds you see more and more of what you maneuvered around down below, but sometimes I feel this hyper fixation on its details mixed with its advanced lighting system can obfuscate puzzle information more often than it needed to, and I feel Team Ico knew this, which is why the game relies on its tip systems too much. There are not only button prompts that appear frequently on the top right of the screen to give clues on what you can interact with, but narration from the boy's perspective will appear similar to Shadow of the Colossus if the game detects the player being on a puzzle for too long. It’s kind of a shame that Ueda’s games still feature these immersion-breaking UI elements present and criticized in Shadow of the Colossus for years with no real way of turning them off, but I feel the game would’ve only been more frustrating on a first time playthrough if they weren’t there. Then there are the occasional physics engine issues that the game will stumble upon, while I found the physics complied with me more than most Havok engine games do to be honest, I did have a moment in my playthrough where when Trico jumped the boy was suddenly teleported upwards which made me fall towards my impending doom, so it’s by no means perfect even if I had a better time with it. The camera is by far my biggest issue with the game. It’s this fickle mistress that only focuses on what it wants to. Sometimes it’ll autofocus on Trico, or the ledge you need to jump on, and sometimes you have to adjust it yourself. Sometimes the camera will get stuck in tight environments with you and Trico which will reset itself with this awkward cut to black which can repeat over and over again rather than just clipping out of bounds to give the player a better view from behind similar to God Hand. The Last Guardian's technical ambitions from its AI to its environments can be seen from a distance as impressive, but its lack of gracefullness at times can also be seen as its downfall, and it’s no wonder why the game had the hardest time sticking with players the most.

It… might be my favorite Ueda game?

It might be too early to tell as I’m writing this, but it just feels right to say. This game just did it all for me. While ICO and Shadow of the Colossus are up there as some of my personal favorite games, I feel The Last Guardian is the most successful in what it sets out to do: to bond the player with its partner character. I never really particularly cared for Yorda or Mono or even Agro as much as I wish I could despite those characters being the central emotional core of the story. While I appreciate the former for its wordless communication between Yorda and Ico along their journey, I can understand the criticisms against the latter. It’s hard to place the corpse of a woman you’ve never interacted with in front of the player and expect them to care, which is why I feel players connected with Agro the horse a lot more since it’s someone you used to venture around the place even if all you did was ride on it and commanded where to go. Trico is that but taken a step further. Yes, Trico acts like a big dumb animal, but somehow managing to get her around these dark tight corridors with traps or these sky-bound vistas feels like accomplishing little miracles one at a time. The game features Ueda’s most creative puzzle design yet, asking the player to constantly think with Trico in mind, and it’s where the rooms where you are alone without Trico are the most pulse-pounding anxiety-inducing. Without that protection from Trico, you are more in danger from other threats like the stone guards or extreme heights you can’t fall on Trico as a failsafe. About halfway through I looked at Trico less like an obstacle and started to look at Trico as the guardian she really is. And you know what I think?

It’s rad as hell! And it’s fun! Seriously! Every time you get Trico to do her earth-shattering cat pounce from one stone pillar to the next it feels like this major accomplishment that the two of you managed to pull off. Every moment you have to climb around Trico when she sees an eye-shaped glass window hung by a stone tower and then get there by doing some mind-bending platforming as you look down at the stomach-churning distance between you and the ground (no seriously, jesus christ lol) and having to jump all the way down on her back is so immensely intense but pulling it off to progress just works. Every time Trico saves you from an army of mysterious stone guards is the ultimate “sick ‘em fido” of video games, yet the game always reminds you to comfort Trico after with a few pets, and maybe pull out a few spears thrown at her body. It’s this dedication the game has with these moment-to-moment connections between you and Trico as you two help each other out closer and closer to the end that makes the later moments where she starts to break design conventions all the more convincing and powerful. The Last Guardian to me is a game of little accomplishments up to the grand finale.

The Last Guardian is not a perfect game, and it’s hardly one I can see the casual player really sticking with very long. Even I had moments where I wished Trico would comply with me more and wished the game’s framerate didn’t give me a headache, but the last three hours of this game to me are borderline perfect, climaxing to Ueda’s strongest story beats yet, somehow managing to top himself with his best ending yet (a man already known for crafting the best endings ever). All the coincidental frustration I had with The Last Guardian seemed fleeting and diminutive. By the end of it, I was more frustrated at being reminded of its dismissive reputation that caused me to hold it off this long. The Last Guardian should be a testament to Team Ico’s mastery of storytelling through game design, rather than be left in the shadows of its predecessor's legacies, but even if it stays within those shadows of obscurity forever, I’m happy to have stuck with the journey through The Nest, atop Trico’s feathery back.

The Last Guardian is a game of accomplishments, and much like ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, stands just as tall as those games do, as the achievement it undoubtedly is.

Devil May Cry 2 is one of the most fascinating missteps I've ever seen. The only thing you ever hear about DMC2 is that it sucks, and it truly does, but the level at which DMC2 utterly butchers everything great about the original DMC1 makes the game feel like a fever dream. Even at the most fundamental level all of Dante's tools from the first game feel incredibly stiff and slow. There's simply no joy to any of his moves.

Somehow this isn't DMC2's biggest shortcoming. That would be the enemies. Sometimes I wonder if the foes in this game were even designed for a game where the player character has firearms, because most enemies don't seem to mind getting mowed down by a hail of gunfire from across the map. This is largely due to two factors. The first is that nearly all enemies lack any kind of a gap-closer. The second is that your guns stun lock most enemies regardless of what they're doing. This means the only challenge combat can give you is from the cheapest methods possible. Enemies attacking offscreen without proper sound cues is quite a popular one. Another is enemies hovering outside of melee range, and having lord-knows how much health. Every enemy encounter is either so trivially short that you'll forget it even happened a minute later, or so painfully drawn out that you'll legitimately start questioning your life choices. I honestly feel like calling the game boring is a massive understatement. I don't think mankind has invented a word strong enough to describe the amount of tedium DMC2 has to offer.

This alternate form of melatonin "only" lasts 4 hours if you're stupid enough to play both Dante and Lucia's campaigns(like me!), but you'll feel like you wasted an eternity on it. Even after all I've said, NOTHING will prepare you for how much of a slog DMC2 is. Most bad games offer some semblance of entertainment, even if it's from unintentional means, but DMC2 offers nothing but regret and absolute bewilderment that this franchise somehow continued after this joyless, aimless mess.

The game's style indicator says "Don't Worry" when you have a D rank, but you should. You really, really should.

In 1996, the former game magazine now turned game developer, Game Freak, released Pokémon Red Version and Pokémon Green Version in Japan. The games were inspired by the CEO and creator of Game Freak, Satoshi Taijiri's childhood.

In his youth, Satoshi used to explore the forests of his hometown in Japan, catching bugs.

That's right, the phenomenon of Pokémon started with origins as humble as these, and has gone on to become the number one multimedia franchise on the planet.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus is the first Pokémon game to truly capture that feeling of exploration and intrigue as you explore the wild, ancient world of Hisui.

This game combines aspects of JRPGs, Third Person Shooters, Stealth Games, and Open World Sandboxes to give the genuine experience of wandering into the unknown and encountering these deadly and terrifying creatures.

Mechanically, I like how there are multiple ways to take on capturing or distracting a Pokémon. You can throw food in front of them to get the drop on them either in combat or with a more effective Pokéball hit. You can wait until they see you and put some dirt in their eye by throwing a ball of mud in their face to stun them.

I love when games provide multiple ways to surmount an obstacle, it's why I like Fallout New Vegas, and it's something I like in this game.

There is nothing more fulfilling than filling up the Pokédex, and thanks to there only being one version of this game (and I hope it stays that way for the sequels that I hope will be released), every Pokémon (of the Hisui Region) is available to catch.

There are a few snags with that, like Shaymin and Darkrai being locked behind you owning Sword & Shield and Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl respectively, which is scummy, but they are also not required for Dex completion.

Without spoiling anything, the plot is relatively barebones, but I am a fan of the increased stakes. Death is implied to be commonplace and waved around as a normal thing. That isn't to say that just saying the words "death" and "kill" are going to bring depth to a story, but given how it does incite a twinge of fear for the encounters you'll have with Pokémon, I think it works well enough.

The final 3 hours of the main story was some of the most hype shit, I will say that, with the third to last final boss being a borderline shmup in regards to gameplay. It was like Sin & Punishment, but with Pokémon.

Sin & Pokémon.

Graphically I think the artstyle of this game is great, cell shading is definitely a good choice for Pokémon and it really gives a similar vibe to Ancient Japanese artwork.

I will say I noticed a lot of graphical hiccups like grass moving weirdly mid battle, or textures on rocks looking like a chessboard, but these things don't ruin a game for me unless they're directly assaulting my eyes.

At the end of the day, this is the first Pokémon game since Pokémon Heart Gold & Soul Silver to have fully fulfilled me with both the amount of content, and love that I know this franchise can deliver. This is a game I have been waiting for, for 12 long years.

I went into Legends with the cynical view of someone who had witnessed the Dark Age of Pokemon, from Black & White 2 onward. I thought this would merely be another soulless cashgrab pile of garbage like SwSh and Let's Go, but this game genuinely surprised me.

I think Game Freak has found a formula that is worth continuing, and I think that if they can further flesh out the game mechanics and provide us even more options for Pokémon Encounters, we'd finally see an end to the Dark Age.

This is the Pokémon game with the most soul, since Soul Silver.

You see the funny thing about this game is that, if you're not a die hard character action game fan, you may think this game is great, maybe a masterpiece for it's story and Kratos relationship with his son.

If you are a character action game fan you most likely think this game is an overrated clunky piece of dogshit video game. With it's new direction being a complete compromise to the series roots.

I'm somewhere in the middle. It looks great and I do like the story, unfortunately I can't exactly say God of War is a fun game. It's got a horrendous camera that feels the need to always be behind Kratos to keep the cutscenes single-shot rule. It never feels like the encounters are designed around the claustrophobic camera. Not that it matters anyways, since the game feels painfully easy, with challenge only coming from tankier health sponges, or in a horrid twist, the need to swap between weapons to take out certain enemies, similar to the awful enemy design in the DmC Reboot.

It's hard to exactly talk about this game without comparing it to other games or even to it's own series, since it both apes on other successful games while also being a soft reboot except also a direct sequel to God of War 3. What baffles me is the fact God of War took on this new direction except it doesn't really do anything new with it. Which is the main problem with God of War. I'm not opposed to a series trying something new, it's when a series does something new by taking ideas from other series and half-assing them is what I'm opposed to. So it turns what should be a great new adventure onto a sea of new ideas into something I've been on before, in better, more focused forms.

The thing is I can't exactly say God of War is a bad game. It's a perfectly fine product with gorgeous visuals and a neat story, but I can never shake the feeling that I've played it before.

Because of that, allow me to list off games that God of War reminded me of that you should check out instead:

Dark Souls
Devil May Cry
God Hand
Kingdom Hearts
The Last of Us
Yakuza
And, get this one:
The God of War Trilogy.

Mega Man X5 is a game with a lot of inherent potential.

As the intended last game of the X lineup, as well as the intended lead in to Mega Man Zero, this game heralds itself as a celebration of the entire Mega Man franchise to that point.

From the return of familiar enemies and bosses, to weapons referencing other games, Mega Man X5 was meant to be a true finale.

Of course, that didn't happen, because Capcom likes schmoney.

So what we have ultimately here is a lesser Mega Man X4 in regards to levels, bosses, the whole schbang.

Firstly, I'd like to bring up compliments I have for this game before I go more into its inherent problems.

I like the fact that based on whomever you pick at the start of the game, you will have an upgrade for them by default. A tip for new players, never pick Zero for the first Mission. His Z-Buster sucks ass, and picking X lets you have his Fourth Armor by default, which you wouldn't have if you picked Zero.

That leads into my next compliment, I like the fact the game has multiple suit upgrade options for X.

You of course can and should start out with the Fourth Armor, which gives you most of the benefits that it did in X4. It's been nerfed a little bit, no more infinite ammo, but it easily has the best charged Buster Shot in the entire game.

Then you can unlock the Falcon Armor and Gaea Armor. The Falcon Armor, while not having a good charge shot (and you can't charge Special Weapons at all), makes up for it by giving you a near invincible flying animation that can last to what feels like 20 seconds. It makes some stages and obstacles a complete and utter joke, and is also required for other upgrades, but we'll get back on that shortly.

The Gaea Armor by comparison is... kind of fucking useless. You don't have anything but the X-Buster and the Giga Attack, and while the charge is decent, compared to the Fourth Armor and its lingering plasma it's not remotely as competent. It does allow you to touch spikes without being harmed, which makes it more a means to an end to get certain Heart Containers.

And, if you play as Regular X with no upgrades on the third to last stage of the game, you can unlock the Ultimate Armor from X4, giving you access to an infinite Nova Strike, as well as the other benefits of the Fourth Armor. You could also put in cheat codes, but that'd be lame.

The next compliment I have is to the Tri Thunder weapon. It's essentially the Thunder Beam from Mega Man 1, hitting in three separate directions and leaving residue that keeps moving forward if it hits the floor or ceiling. Very good for taking out a lot of enemies, and worked amazingly on most bosses, even those not weak to the weapon.

Another thing I really liked was the scope of the story. Compared to X4's plot which felt kind of stupid (at least because of the dubbing and a lack of explanation for a good chunk of the character's motives), X5's plot while straightforward, has a lot of interesting moments that tie to the Classic Games, as well as connecting the previous X games to this one.

My favorite example is when you fight Volt Kraken, who was a former Maverick Hunter, as X. X apologizes to him for the death of his friend, Launch Octopus (if you didn't know, pretty much all of the Mavericks in X1 were former Maverick Hunters). It was something that just like, got to me as someone who's been playing and replaying X1 for half a decade at this point.

There's also like, the various romantic overtones between X and Zero. Like, I was not expecting it, but seeing X say that him and Zero will be "together forever" was kind of wholesome and shit.

Onto the many many problems with this game, and that means going back to the Suit Upgrades.

I hate that suit upgrades are not put on immediately. I know that it makes sense in regards to the plot, but it is a feature that feels unneeded when you have four other games before hand that have done it one consistent way.

It also makes me wonder why we can't mix and match armor pieces to get like, an optimal setup. I don't know, but it just feels like a missed opportunity to add in some customization to how you play the game.

Level design also took a serious hit, and by that I mean shit like Volt Kraken's stage and Spike Rosered's stage. Volt Kraken's stage starts with a Ride Chaser segment, which is easily the worst part of the entire game, and perfecting it is necessary for getting an armor upgrade. I didn't like the Ride Chaser segment in X4, and I do not like it in this game, especially when the game puts a bottomless pit right in front of you at the word "Go!", it just feels super cheap.

This game also just has a big hardon for spikes, which after a while just doesn't feel like an obstacle and just like they shat them out all over the stage.

On that note, I hate that Armor Upgrades as well as Heart Tanks are all tied to borderline bullshit requirements. Like I said earlier, you need to perfect the Rider Chaser section for an upgrade. You also need to revisit Tidal Whale's stage immediately after fighting him because another upgrade is locked behind his weapon.

Most heart upgrades require a full armor set to even acquire, which just feels cheap compared to how X1 and X2 had a majority of the upgrades available for you just by looking in the right place.

Bosses are either piss easy or take a very long time to defeat with no real in-betweens. I think a good example is the Shadow Devil, who you'll be spending 99% of the fight avoiding by infinitely walljumping in a corner whilst breaking your thumb, only to get two hits on it and then repeating the cycle. The strategy isn't hard, but it feels like it takes an eternity, same with the Sigma fights.

All and all, while I do think Mega Man X5 is leagues better than Mega Man X3 and Mega Man 1 (Edit, I accidentally put in X1 oh fuck lol), it is definitely in the category of Mega Mid, which is unfortunate because this game has so much potential in its gameplay that would have made this a spectacular game if it was fleshed out more.