Originally wrote on 11/4/23:

Three hours in and I'm throwing this on the shelf.

I have lots of promises from the internet that there is unbelievable profundity here.

From the text itself... I have 100 floors of fun-ish Sokoban puzzles with some cutscene breadcrumbs and some intrigue that there are purposefully obfuscated mechanics. If there's something spiritually elevating here it ain't calling out to me sorry.


EDIT on 1/4/24:

Well I now love this game immensely. It's absolutely fascinating. It took me a long time to get on board. There are some spoilers here to follow I guess but I also sort of fundamentally disagree with the Internet shouting of "go in blind".

Basically, this is a Sokoban game. Taken as only such, it is fairly unremarkable. The game is not really marketed heavily, so I found out about through Internet ravings of how this game was transformatively awesome. ( I now agree but it took a while to get there)

At first, I only experienced the Sokoban. For the first 3 hours, it was just Sokoban puzzles. I didn't find too much in the game itself to clue me into the fact that there was a really interesting game here. I put my review up here, and encouraged/scolded by @ixchtar , I went back to the game. I put in about 5 more hours of straight Sokoban which eventually turned into VERY HARD straight Sokoban after I went a little further. At this point, I was really trying to like the game so I did a little digging into how to uncover some of its secrets. I learned one key piece of information that I missed and this was enough to make me realize that this game is an exploration/adventure game just as much as it is Sokoban. I then began my journey in earnest. I started over from the beginning and began taking extensive notes, keeping spreadsheets, taking screenshots, recording all my play, marking up things in GIMP, and just sort of having a wild time chronicling every inch of the Void. I played about 30 hours this way and seriously loved it. I have not beaten all the aspects of the game but look forward to doing so. I feel the need to take a break as all this chronicling is a bit brain-intensive.

Anyway! I found the game to be awesome but it almost lost me because I missed a few early-game hints as to what type of game this really is. I feel like it's kind of a shame the game itself didn't help me get on board. Hence my half star docking. It took sort of an arduous amount of effort and a trusting both in the creators and the internet faithful that there was something of great substance and interest here. They're right. This thing is profound and awesome.

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.

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.

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.

It is certainly an ingenious and wonderfully creative product.

That being said, I can't say I really "enjoyed" grilling these sausages or felt like I was really getting much from the experience aside from the satisfaction of completing very difficult tasks.

I admire this creation! But I'd be lying if I said I liked it.

Glorious realization of aesthetic and narrative in the point and click format.

This game evokes the spirit of "NOLAish" (it's more about the folks who are in the surrounding areas) in a way that is pitch perfect to me. (I lived in New Orleans for seven years so I might be wrong!)

The characters are the right type of weird and disgusting to already make the narrative one worth indulging in. Add in a genuinely unique cyberpunk story and some batshit direction and you have an excellent and compelling story.

The story works well enough on its own but it is painted with perfect visuals and audio. The dreary synths capture the mood of the game perfectly and the pixel art captures the Southern Louisiana ageless look in a way that perfectly and subtlety suggest we are several decades in the future.

The puzzles in the gameplay are many steps down from dumb old adventure game logic but also a step up from "I just need to click this thing". They're maybe modern Resident Evil in difficulty if that makes sense. Which felt good to me! I feel like adventure games (and I think this is JRPGs as well) are mostly memorable for their worlds and vibes and this level of puzzle allows you to exist in the world and interact with it interestingly, without resorting to clicking on every nook and cranny.

I got the platinum trophy on PS5 and as an added extra amazing thing this game does there is a "Chapter Select" feature which gives you bookmarks for every 30 minutes of gameplay or so. So you can go back and get all the achievements/ see alternate scenes with ease.

Just a marvelous media product with a genuinely great cyberpunk story and untouchable visuals and audio.

This reasonably upscaled port of Pikmin 1 is a perfect video game.

I had played the original for like three hours in college and I guess I didn't get it.

This time around, everything worked perfectly for me. What I loved:

The tone:
Olimar is in mortal danger but he navigates the world with a childlike curiosity and optimistic sense of humor. Reminded me of a kind of Roald Dahl or other good dark children's lit setting where hope is present in despair.

The time limit:
From the outset you know you have thirty days to get your parts. This adds such a fascinating urgency to everything and forces you to really consider how to spend your time. Should I just stock up on Pikmin today? I need to get at least two parts today. If I just build bridges today I should be OK. This limit keeps everything you do exciting.

The Gameplay -
The way the game slowly teaches you how to use the Pikmin is perfect. The levels are masterfully designed to naturally hint how to build, get over obstacles, and defeat bosses. There are a few tricky puzzles you need to figure out to find some parts but I felt they were all hinted at appropriately. The controls are definitely not perfect and the Pikmin don't follow and listen quite as well as you might hope, but it worked well enough to execute my vision most of the time.

I love how the game keeps the exposition extremely light for a sixth generation title. There is little narrative or cutscene and we get a little journal entry reflection from Olimar each day. Also I love how the game is divided up into days. Each day is timed perfectly to accomplish several tasks and leave you wanting to do more.

I loved everything about this game. Got the good ending after 27 days. Vastly surpassed my expectations and I'm excited to play the sequels.

This is a game in which my jaw dropped and I gasped audibly when I learned things about the world. Not when I was involved in some type of spectacle but simply when I learned information about all the mysteries I'd been flying around and inspecting and experimenting on for hours.

The flow of information and discovery is paced so beautifully: there is always a thread to follow or a new place to explore and doing so is shockingly smooth. The movement is not perfect but given the universe we're exploring it works shockingly well from my perspective.

The only flaws in the discovery were a few instances in which I knew exactly where to go but I didn't know how to trigger some type of event mechanically. I looked these instances up which took the immersion away but was very forgivable given the scale of the product and the team involved.

This is just such a genuinely joyful and artful creation. The game loves you for playing it and I don't know how you can help not loving it back.

I bounced off this game after a few hours the first time I played; was playing right around when my son was born so I guess my brain was scrambled because this thing is an immediate entry in the "video game canon" if such a thing exists.

This is a hot, unique Game Boy puzzle gem.

You play as a mole who can "win" each level by throwing bowling balls at the exits.

Each level contains a bunch of screens, each serving as a mini-puzzle. These puzzles are solved by digging holes, navigating the underground and surface, and hitting the exit with your bowling ball.

The scoring system is very satisfying: if you fully complete a level (clear all screens and get all items) you get 100 points. This feels good.

I did this (got all 100 points) for the first four levels and then sort of lost interest. While I was loving the gameplay I felt pretty satisfied after four levels and things were starting to become just a little bit tedious. There is no rewind feature so if you dig a hole in the wrong place or throw a ball in the wrong spot you potentially need to start over the screen, which does get pretty tiresome.

Overall, this thing is a real good time and I love that it has its own special Super Game Boy border.

The quality of this reminds me of the quality of a random B movie you'd get from the VHS horror section. A fun time: some camp, some nonsense, some genuinely disturbing sections, some jump scares, and a homemade-level production value. The sub-3 hour game is a beautiful thing.

The gameplay here is mostly solving baby-ish puzzles but the allure is the mood and the tone of the aesthetics which work quite well.

What I really learned from this game though is that I need to develop a true video store simulation game. There is a half-baked mechanic where you return tapes to the shelves and I had too much fun doing it.