Small town. A few brahmin herds, and a single watering hole. I step into the musty saloon. A local girl slithers up to me, complaining about her quiet farm life. She tells me about a local Vault - Vault 15. She mentions it by name. I press the "ask about" button and ask her about Vault 15. "Never heard of it" she says. I try to ask her about anything else whatsoever. She's never heard of anything. Alright. Keep your secrets honey... I tell the local gay man, Ian, he will get paid if he follows me forever until his eventual inevitable death. He agrees immediately and eagerly, because I am very "good at speaking".

We wander to the Vault that doesn't exist. We wander back, because we forgot to bring 50 ropes. We try again - the dungeon takes 10 minutes and nothing happens. A weapon is hidden in the bathroom smeared by 10 layers of poop, piss, pixels and blood. We find what we came here for (it's nothing), and go back to town. "Noo you gotta save my girl she's gonna get boiled in shit". I find the raider camp - I tell them I will fuck their mom. They let the girl go for some reason.

8 hours later my dog and all 3 of my friends I tricked in the same way as Ian the Twunk die in a single dungeon because they won't wear any clothes thicker than a dress shirt. It's a Mad Max reference or something. The travel time on the overworld gives me time to think. I think about the giant, barren wasteland. I think about how far and dangerous there is between settlements. I think about how no one has grabbed a broom in 100 years. I think about telling murder mutants where my family lives. I don't know what my meds do and I'm not sure how to find out. I found a backpack in this videogame that I simply couldn't figure out how to use - What? I think about why I have 4 CHA instead of 1. I think about the 2 hours I spent getting this game to run on a modern PC and a 4K monitor. I think about so far only having found one character that allows me to sex and cum in the entirety of California. It's lonely out here. Many games would throw sex and cum at me. Fallout? In Fallout it's about the lack thereof.

Eventually my player character completes their quests and drowns in an ocean of jank - jank that would later continue on through an entire genre shift, a new company, several new engines and somehow be recognizable still as the same old jank. After being stuck for half an hour I had to google an alternate solution for one of the final dungeons because it bugged out on me. Luckily there was one, because many quests don't have that kind of privilege. Some bugs in this game somehow persist in Todd Howards' Starfield. No one knows how. It's beautiful in a sense. A red string of jank.

This game is unfinished - like half the quests have cut content and an entire act of the game got left on the floor. It's a good basis. I hope the sequel will use it well. I hope someone mods it for Steam Deck controls.

What the fuck.. I thought the 3DS was for Pokemonsters and Mario... What is this SOVL....

The vibes are impeccable. The atmosphere is unmatched. The press turn system is, obviously, good. The crits are brutal. The first dungeon is harder than probably all of Persona 5 (random stray slander I haven't played it). The monsters are... PNGs.... The world map... uh.. anyway

The story is mid, but the worldbuilding saves it. It's at least always interesting, but I mean, the overall plot is just SMT like, again, so not much room there. I appreciate the allegories and symbolism and such as always, but it's not exactly a character driven franchise. That's fine.

Surprisingly great English voice acting, particularly Burroughs. I miss her

LIKE A DRAGON GAIDEN: THE MAN WHO THUGGED IT OUT.

Is the game predicated on a plot misstep and everyone in it standing firmly on buffoon business of the Clark Kent variety? Yes. Is it pure bait for suckers like me who eat up nonsense mixed in their GAR plate like peas? Absolutely. But god damn it's ACES from top to bottom. All of what I love about the series is here in spades. K-...Joryu cranks the stoic cool factor all the way up, serving up that satisfying woop-ass straight out the can like its first day out all over again, helping every endearing goofball he can find along the way. Striking character Drama, piercing moments juxtaposed against way over the top set pieces, wacky distractions on every street, and goons at every turn itching to get smacked up by the goa-... sorry, a nameless agent forced to just thug it all the way out in the WORST way for reasons... you know what we don't have time, games too short to worry about all that. Click, bye bye brain I've got pure ludo to bask in. Because that's how we're built. Then we barrel headbutt-first into a knockout ending, might have the best final cinematic yet for the series. Like a cigarette in the clarity of that afterglow I'm winding back down into a 4, but man was it close to 4.5

A respectable effort from Team Ninja to broach the open world genre with another period piece. The familiarly tight and engaging combat elements have demonstrated to become par the course for TN. Regrettably I think they should focus more on shorter, tighter games, as this one started to grate toward the end in a way the Niohs never did. The elements that usually make open-world games fully engrossing have never really been their strong suit (Worldbuilding, game-long character dialogue, deep exploration, etc). So their first foray into putting more thought into those elements didn't rob from the great combat, but also didn't really serve to enhance the experience enough to make the open world choice a knock-out. Still a worthwhile Slashfest through the end of the samurai era.

terrible thought: the lower class we had been demeaning (vita players) might have been on the right side of history

its 2d air juggle combo game with lite-ivalice art, lite-ivalice story, real-ivalice music - how could i be honestly mad at all

the only things i can really complain about is its small scope, quite a bit of repeating levels and some slow menus, but generally i am cumming . i am comboing and i am cumming. i am doing a cumbo

unfortunately mogs all other personas by having the evoker method being the most kinomatic shit of all time

I can only really compare it to 4 at this point but it's so much more focused and handles its theming much better. some social links are pretty cringekino but another one made me cry . you win some you lose some

ultimately it's just a cool ass game - i wish tartaros was about 70% shorter but nevermind that, ill forgive you.

i then found out that "the answer" that everyone is talking about is approximately 70% more tartaros - i think this was a stupid decision made by an idiot. in fact it might have been the stupidest decision made in japan for all of the early 2000s. i put in about 2 hours before i decided its best played through on a youtube playlist. if i had decided to play it my rating likely would have dropped by at least a full star . thats okay . just dont play it unless youre really really dumb

less of a "sequel to dragon's dogma" and more of a "what if dragon's dogma had a budget"

the peaks are absolutely insane but there's still a lot of conflicting subsystems and rpgjank - i was really hoping for they'd add more non-boss monsters (they added uh.. slimes) so you're not just fighting saurians 80% of the time but alas. the new big guys are really fun and the world design is spectacular. i just be running around looking for caves. i be in the caves, mining, digging- you wouldnt get it.

let me be clear, i like the limited fast travel, i like the friction, i like the only-one-save-file-deal-with-it approach. but i also wish i could, like, ask a pawn to throw me over a river or whatever, and like, maybe access more than 4 abilities without having to go to the Menu Stone. or co-op! imagine co-op! goodness! these are the kinds of things i expected to be expanded - they were not. maybe thats on me.

oh it does also run like shit but like, cry about it....

COME TO REBIRTH WE GOT THE

- 1 gorillion animation dollar budget
- industry standard setters of cutscenes and environments
- ....
- the worst act of the original game
- far cry tower
- far cry outpost
- far cry crafting
- open world with movement worse than zelda on the n64
- seriously, it's like ps1 tomb raider
- 3(!!) great chapters
- 11 uhhh other chapters
- story reliant on having played evercrisis and the free to play mobile battle royale????
- nojima 😡😡😡
- at least 3 hours spent in the materia menu
- the same bosses you fought in remake 3 times, 3 times
- the worst fucking minigames you've ever touched
- all the most annoying characters from anywhere else in the extended series
- benches?
- every action or animation locking you in for several extra unnecessary seconds
- shipbait
- tifa and aerith randomly deciding to act like harem anime characters for like 2 cutscenes
- fans who only read the title of the game and gave 5 stars on release date (all your reviews and ratings should be deleted)
- cait sith...?
- filler filler boat filler filler filler
- michael bay audio mixing
- bloated combat
- the sphere grid for some reason (but worse)
- "ahh cloud-kun you nearly touched mmy l-l-l-lips baka" yuffie
- crate puzzles you solve in 3 seconds and then spend 3 minutes doing

This is not the worst game I ever played, but it might be the most disappointed I've ever been going blind into a sequel of a game I liked. Before leaving a comment, please read the "Common Copes (CC)" section below. Thanks in advance.

COMMON COPES

C: But the original also had this many mini-games!
A: That was a shit part of the original too.

C: But the original also had this much filler!
A: That was shit too.

C: But in the original you also had to fiddle this much with materia!
A: That was also shit. Please just be normal and don't say all these silly things

C: I think this game is awesome man!
A: You must have Gone Gaga!

CLOSING THOUGHTS

If this kind of Ubisoft remake happened to my favorite RPG my only review would be a LiveLeak video.

feels like i played this alongside my six year old self. we did it lil' buddy, we finally beat the one game we had no chance in hell of finishing without a gamecube memory card

as with sa1, there's really no point in arguing about this series since the detractors have long made up their shitty minds. sa2's an interesting beast though because it manages to excel just as much as its predecessor... in very different ways!

the speed stages are great, albeit nothing like sa1's. maybe you prefer these more linearly driven, setpiece-focused levels, but i might be partial to having a spindash that can blaze me across entire courses in a matter of seconds. i like going places i shouldn't and being rewarded for it. there's some of that here, but it's not nearly the same. that said, there's no city escape or final rush in sa1 so we'll call it a draw

treasure hunting is improved tenfold. i definitely prefer the newly limited radar system (it makes finding shards early super satisfying) and the overall increased difficulty. especially after knuckles' previous story was an absolute cakewalk. rouge is basically knuckles on hard mode and i generally prefer her side more for that. love her music too, though i wish it was more lyrically driven to better contrast knuckles

shooting's a more mixed bag. tails reps one of the best stages but also most of the worst. eggman on the other hand for the most part lives up to gamma's gameplay well enough - especially once he gets his booster. there's def a sense of flow to these that i feel a solid chunk of people don't give deserved credit because they just wanna go fast and grind rails

...which is a sentiment i don't completely identify with because i feel sa2 is more than the sum of its parts. the narrative is genuinely great and actively shifts moods and gameplay styles accordingly. you're always listening to a banger, you're never on the same sort of stage for more than a few minutes at a time - and you're always pushing closer to one of the greatest fuckin' finales you'll ever find in video games. the quality of direction really skyrocketed here. the last episode's preview alone completely solos every single scene in sa1

one strange oddity though: there's a surprising lack of shadow gameplay here. maybe the devs weren't so confident in him as a newcomer and didn't expect him to be such a hit?

if they knew what was good for them, sonic team would've just made a whole ass game where you play as shadow the hedgehog...

EDIT: after careful deliberation (replaying the shit out of everything) i've decided that i have 0 significant issues with this game. i'm not even standing by what i said about the speed stages before. they're all fuckin' fantastic and i think i might actually prefer these to sa1's (granted i need to spend some more time with that game too for confirmation)

on top of all of what i've said - i've still barely scratched the surface of the chao world content and that on its own is pretty impressive for being in an already tightly-packed game to begin with. how the fuck did this get made in two years?

i also learned last night via the extra video that city escape was inspired by sonic team constantly receiving parking tickets while living in san francisco. that's worthy of some merit on its own

and maybe this is cheating to mention since it's largely battle rerelease content, but i don't care: the multiplayer is some of the most fun i've ever had with a 2-player game

you know what - fuck it, 10/10

EDIT 2: got all 180 emblems. basically a perfect game

Kill the past, Or embrace it. Choice yours and yours alone.

This game is about people that couldn't move on their pasts and their solutions to "dealing with it". So, we, the players, see these events from own eyes and make our own judgment. For the question, the ideology of the "Past". You, the player that seen everything. What do you do with your past? Embrace it? Or kill it? Or move on from it?

Choice is yours and yours for truly. Game is here for one thing and that is giving you multiple perspectives for this ideology and every case is here to support that fact.

I wish gameplay itself was cool as it's concept tho. Since trying out the ps1 armored core games, I didn't thought I would felt this feeling of "just looking of the cover brings me pure FEAR of playing" again.

Because movement sucks ASSSS. Puzzles sucks ASSSS. Mail reading sucks ASSSSS. Sorry, I went a bit rude at there, but really... I have a lot of problems for this game's mechanics and maybe I have even more things to count.

Yes I know the existence of holding skip makes everything go faster but even with that, exploration so damn annoying with tank controls with the inclusion of hard to see interaction symbols also with the combination of finicky interaction mechanics, playing this game feels like a chore to me.

You know, just for this reason I thought about leaving this game couple of times. Especially near the end where every mission just wants you to go around and rub your face to every goddamn wall to find and read trillion amounts of documents or finding millions of interactables to progress.

Excellent character writing stopped me from doing so... Sumio and Kusabi's daily friendly fights... Morishima's anger about his poor life conditions... Hachisuka and Morikawa's unending discussions and How red goes "..." And then goes "....." Really fun dialogues to experience dare I say. Also murder filled detective cases and journalist cases are cream on the cake too with how these two different segments support each other with the "question" part and the "answer" part of it.

But in my opinion, reading a pure visual novel format of it sounds to me more fun experience than playing itself ever again unfortunately.