Originally wrote this:
I dunno man.
The monsters are creepy and the sound design is creepy but the story... I just don't care. I mean it seems like its leading to the idea that these monsters are the manifestation of some psychotic misery of this dude's mind (I'm guessing) and I wasn't really intrigued by that. Gameplay-wise I am also pretty unimpressed. My first three hours looked like this:
1. Watch cryptic and not particularly engaging cutscenes.
2. Wander down the streets and then the apartments scouring and clicking on everything hoping to find the next key to unlock the next door.
3. Beating up on jerks with a stick using awkward controls.
4. Being mildly creeped out by the monster design. I found the monsters in 1 a lot more creepy!
It seems like this game means a lot to a lot of cool-sounding people on the internet... but it ain't doing much for me.
Kudos to the people who made the Enhanced Edition. I didn't really feel compelled from my time with this game but I like that there's a lovingly restored version to play.

Then due to the overwhelming praise this game has received on this site, I gave the game another hour. Nothing changed! If anything I felt more negative. Gave up after getting to the hospital with these thoughts:

I don't like it. I played for around 4 hours. The breadcrumbs this story is dropping are not intriguing me. The creepy setting is not mysterious enough to pull me in. The surreal dialogue feels more corny than profound. The gameplay is shockingly repetitive and boring.

The fog town is cool and the sound design is scary but I'm frankly just finding this to be a watered down and less compelling version of Silent Hill 1.

Killer art style and some genuinely disturbing moments.

I found the ARG stuff tiresome.

**Edit

Thinking more about this game. I really love what this is going for but one of my difficulties with taking the game on its own merits is having no idea how much game there really is.

The narrative bounties of this game are best when you are able to feast on them all and put them together. After getting like 4 endings I had no idea how long it would take to discover the rest on my own. Heading to a guide unimmersed and disinvested me from the story.

Having the Daemon be part of the game is a novel and interesting idea but ultimately I personally don't have much interest in some unknown quantity of the game being hidden from me. I know secrets and things to discover in games have been a thing forever but I guess I just would like some way to make this stuff more transparent as an option.

NES version is legit good in 2023.

The simplicity allows the game to feel elegant and manageable.

Monster sprites are outstanding.

Dragon Quest's feature of keeping your exp when you die make the grind much more tolerable.

Not really a "game" or even really a "game compilation". To my knowledge, this is probably the first true multimedia gaming museum product.

The history of Atari is presented in 5 separate timelines separated into things like arcade, pc, early console.

The artifacts presented here are head and shoulders above any gaming collection I've ever played. Every game has high-res box art and a scan of the original manual.

Newly produced videos with the original designers of the games are presented as necessary context to help enjoy your minutes (that's as long as I spent with any of the games) in game.

Digital Eclipse has even created "re-imaginings of some of the classic games. VCTR SCTR is a genuinely awesome mix of several old Atari shooting games. Haunted Houses is real bad... a fitting tribute to the original.

The collection contains relics of the time such as TV and magazine advertisements, design documentations, and stock footage.

I'm only marginally interested in Atari but the respect given here to game history and honestly to the audience who would consume this product is amazing. I can only hope that this is successful enough to generate more similarly curated museum products, as I would snap buy a curation like this for nearly any company/genre.

This is an absurd product. I might finish this later out of curiosity/my history with the series, but this is definitely not a good game. Made it to main quest like 19/49 and had enough for now.

Cool Things About this Game:

- Eikon battles are a sort of unique spectacle
- Some good tracks
- Battling feels good and boss fights can be pretty tense
- The Attack on Titan Eikon system in the world

Bad Things About This Game

- Sidequests.
It's beat to death in the reactions to this game but it feels like these were put in as a bet or something. The first quest is literally bringing a piece of wood 20 feet. I was genuinely wondering if it was parody or something. I almost liked them because of how insanely bad they are.

- Dumb haptic stuff
This is not really bad in and of itself but when my controller vibrates after Clive puts an item in his pouch... I dunno it's just so fucking stupid.

- The Game of Thrones for Babies dialogue/tone/story
Game of Thrones is already "Game of Thrones for Babies". This is a level below that and it is real, real fucking bad. The dialogue is abysmal and the tone is just trash-tier grimdark.

- The presentation
Maybe I was hallucinating but the cutscenes look like shit? Half the characters look like shit? They said they mo-capped the English actors but the lips don't sync to the dialogue? Usually I wouldn't give a shit but this is clearly a cinematic game so ya gotta give me a cinematic presentation. I have played three Yakuza games and this looks like trash in comparison.

-Lack of Diversity
Honestly we don't even need to get into the politics here. The immediate problem is you will be looking at the most boring fucking white people you have ever seen outside of the main cast. Even some of them!

- Battle System at large
Three flavors here:
1. Regular enemies: mash button
2. Regular bosses: dodge, heal, mash button with some strategy
3. Eikon: Have fun with the light cinematic presentation and button prompts

#1 is most of the game and boring.
#2 is pretty fun but not especially deep
#3 is cool but absurd. Like we have lightly interactive cinema... I mean... they could have just programmed in some better Kaiju stuff? That's not trivial but if it's gonna be the main point of the game we could make it a bit more engaging.

-Frictionless Main Story Gameplay Progression
I was kinda enjoying my time but I realized it was just because this game is so easy to play. Follow the marker to the red tab, mash buttons, read dialogue, repeat. If boss shows up, mash buttons but be smarter. I could stomach this type of system if the story was super cool. It ain’t!

There’s a lot more!
I found this to be an utterly baffling product. I absolutely hated it at first, then I think I started to like it because of how bad it was… then I started hating it again because of how bad it was.

Just not feeling it. I like the music. I can't form my opinion about the look? I just genuinely cannot. I'm not compelled to play but I can't really find too much negative to say. I mostly feel uncompelled and unconvinced as to this game's quality either way.

**EDIT:

Thought about it more and I'm feeling real negative after my initial time with the game. Started with Castti and the first thing I had to do was a classic dungeon dive to kill a boss which was OK but the dungeon design is like... sub FF4 level quality. The dungeons/paths I went down were just straight lines with branches for treasure chests. And the treasures weren't very exciting!

The battle system has some cool stuff but I was already getting tired of random encounters after 3 hours. That's not a good sign!

The systems outside of the battles, like the bribing people or selling stuff to people (I got Partitio and Hikari) are just sort of... game design? Like what's the point of this stuff? It just feels inserted into the game to have stuff in the game. It doesn't really serve a fluid purpose.

Also I have decided... I don't like the HD-2D. The name is dumb. And... it looks bad!

The music is amazing I will probably listen to the soundtrack but I can't imagine spending 10 hours in this game, lest the 80 required to do all the stuff.

Tried to go back and complete the original Final Fantasy on NES.

Had a real bad time!

I was mildly enjoying the beginning but the first major fetch quest is such a miserable slog. Its not just the grind that is bad. I got no problem sinking some time into grinding. There are a several factors that led me to need to stop playing:
nonsensical magic system
hideously tedious item system
the boring plot

the mediocre music ( I'm an uematsu fan but I'm not hearing good stuff here)

the ugly aesthetic ( love Amanos work but I just don't think these pixels look good and for Real what is s the deal with red haired fighter)

The long slow stun locking/poison battles.

I actually like that your characters attacks don't carry over to other enemies as a strategic design decision but you just need to pummel too many jerks to be able to appreciate it.

Beat this back in high school and had a passable time, this go around found it intolerable!

It's a super cool game. It looks amazing, the sound design and music are incredible, and the scenario (which one can glean from reading the manual) is some good sci fi stuff.

Unfortunately I found four major flaws in the game design that I caused me to put this down after two hours.

1. You restart with only 30 energy. This means you have to grind up for energy each time. (kill enemies, grab pellet, repeat. It takes longer than you want by a lot)

2. Copy/Paste areas. Like straight up copy/paste. You will see a duplicate of a hallway. It's just not cool. I like making my own map but reusing an area wholesale is uninteresting and oppressive.

3. No door invincibility. This one is little but really annoying. You are not invincible while going through doors. Getting hit during a door transition feels really unfair.

4. Seriously antagonistic enemy placement. Walk through a door and get hit immediately... this is not good lol.

The game has a lot of promise and I'll bet there are some rom hacks that make it much more enjoyable. Gonna roll into Metroid 2 next and check out the GB sequel.

The game looks nice... but it feels a bit too... over-designed. Like the art assets seem to exist to be cool instead of telling a story. This isn't such a bad thing but the story itself, while starting out fun, isn't particularly interesting.

Hanging out as a cat is fun for a while but I wasnt even compelled to finish the five hour campaign. This is a pretty gameplay-light experience with simple puzzles and action sequences. The whole experience just feels a little too slight, there's really nothing to latch on to here.

Final Fantasy IV is neat because the story pacing is absolutely frenetic. Characters die/revive/betray/un-betray you every 15 minutes or so.

The boost of the Pixel Remaster (at least the Switch version) makes the game really easy and snappy. There is almost zero challenge in the game's systems, it's more just trying on turn-based JRPG clothes.

This is a very breezy way to experience the world of Final Fantasy IV and looks good on Switch's handheld screen.

The remixed music is cool... but the original was also great and didn't really need touching up.

I still don't really understand the philosophy of these pixel remasters? I believe there was some talk of making them look better on a modern screen but these sprites are big and chunky... they look like sprites designed for a CRT but on an LED... why not design higher-resolution sprites? I don't hate it I just genuinely do not understand why they have done it. Seems like emulating the original and adding some bells and whistles could have been just about as good? Anyway, this is the modern way to play FFIV and it's a pretty good one!

Led by the dude who designed INSIDE, which I did not like (found it to be more of a switch-pressing simulator than a puzzle game), COCOON shares DNA but is way more interesting to me.

The main concept revolves around different orbs. You carry these around to solve puzzle but the orbs themselves also contain levels. There are fascinating parts in which you nest the orbs, creating worlds within worlds within worlds. It felt similar to INSIDE in that there was little challenge, but different in that the concept was very pleasing to interact with. This is helped by the excellent feedback design. The game has very pleasing sounds and when you are solving a puzzle, the atmospheric synthetic sounds will crescendo. The haptic feedback on the Dual Sense controller was additionally perfect, providing, as it should, a real feeling of connection between game and player.

I also loved the structure of the game. Checkpoints are all at a certain % of completion and progress is displayed a traversed circumference of a circle. This made getting the Platinum trophy a simple, compelling, and pleasing experience.

I found this to be an exquisitely designed modern game, designed to demonstrate a neat concept with a beautifully comprehensive checkpoint system. Greatly enjoyed my four or so hours with this.

It's hilarious that this pseudo-science nonsense was a mainstream video game hit. It's kind of fun in how ridiculous it is. You yell at your DS while holding it like a book. You solve ridiculous little problems quickly. It's a very novel program but it's very clear it is absolutely not assisting your brain in any meaningful way. But there's not too many games where the disassociated 3D head of a Japanese neuroscientist happily sells you on his quack ideas on the piece of software you have for your gameboy.