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.

This game is incredible.

It starts as a Lemmings ish puzzle game and ends up dipping into tower defense, stealth, RTS, and shmup.

Each new sequence gives you new abilities so the puzzles always feel fresh. Some levels are more frustrating than fun but overall the level design is intriguing and the challenge level felt perfect to me.

All this great gameplay takes place in a perfectly minimalist design on the art, music, and sound front. The story has you, a Shiba inu, redesigning humanity from reformed-antagonistic AI or something like that.

This is the kind of unique puzzle game that people who claim to love weird PS1/2 and Dreamcast games should be loving. It is a pure execution of its gameplay ideals with no care for any extraneous window dressing. I love that this exists and feel spoiled to have gotten it for free with my Playstation subscription.

Didn't mess with VR, not sure how it would enhance and this a 5 star for me without it.

This is the MOST video game I've ever played.

I saw credits on this thing after 105 hours with 45% completion.

I didn't really want a BOTW 2 as I figured roaming the open world again would get tiresome. I was quite wrong. Adding the verticality and the three different flavors of sky, surface, and depth kept things mostly fresh. The cave spelunking was also a good time, until it wasn't.

The building and fusion systems are just incredible and inspired. It's a bizarre idea that the only analogue I can really think of "The Incredible Machine". You have the freedom to build and can make things to move around, solve puzzles, fight enemies, or just be a weirdo. This system is a little clunky but so robust and inspired that it is just a joy to interact with. The ability to fuse monster parts to your weapons also works very well in tandem with the durability system... it's not longer awful if you only have crappy weapons as you can uncrappify them with fusion.

It also makes the bow and arrow such a more interesting system. We used to have fire, ice, and lightning arrows. Now you can attach wings, items to make arrows stronger, eyeballs for tracking, etc.

Wandering around the huge open world, solving the shrine puzzles using the unique and novel building mechanics, and just uncovering really intriguing secrets was a joy.

It wasn't all great!

Firstly, there is just too much stuff. I love this game but 100 hours is a big ask. I'm trying to play some other stuff before I die here! And I really would have liked to see even more but I have to try some other stuff. And thats for 45%.

Secondly, the combat is fairly babyish. Some of the coolest bosses have some Shadow of the Colossus style nonsense you need to do to beat them which is fun. Average enemies are just smacked away with a sword and if you try to engage Dark Souls style with the parrying and evading... it just becomes very clear that the combat is baby Dark Souls if you try to interact with it that way.

Narrative-wise, the world and lore is real neat. The Zonai ruins and sky islands are fascinating. Exposition-wise... I was so bored. There is nothing compelling about the characters and the narrative themes are pretty light and hammered over and over again into your brain. I skipped some of these cutscenes! I didn't like em! To be fair I felt the same in BOTW but I was hoping to see some advancement on that front. There are cool story beats but overall it is really not interesting to me.

Musically, it's about as good as BOTW. The Lookout Landing theme is hot and so is the Rito Village theme but there is a decent amount recycled from BOTW.

I sunk about 85 joyful hours into this and then spent 20 mostly enjoyable hours trying to hit the credits. With any game this long it usually becomes a slog for me at the end but there was just so much genius here and so many amazing things I had never done in a video game with all the building mechanics/puzzles.

A little too much game and open world exhaustion hit but this is a banger and a real accomplishment of game design, especially running on my tired 7 year old launch Switch.

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.

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!

Played through the introduction and first chapter. Started out incredibly charmed and captivated... the presentation is impeccable and the attention to detail astounding.

However, the promise of RPG Time is very much not fulfilled here. This game really functions a show piece for the artistic output of the creators and not an engaging playground for the player.

You make inconsequential choices while Wright walks through the beautiful storybook pages that have been designed for him. The storybook is beautiful but one wonders why make this a game at all? There's no real role for the player to take and the chief feature of this product is the gorgeous art and animation... so I was left wondering what I was even doing?

I wanted to love it but it didn't seem to want to love me back or be much concerned with me at all.

Loved the first 12 hours, begrudgingly enjoyed the following 6.

I didn't have much experience with the original so I was mostly enjoying this one on its own merits same as I had for RE2 and 3.

I really enjoyed the first section of the game. The village was my favorite mix of action, exploration, and adventure.

As the game went on it became more and more actiony and I found myself getting pretty tired of the encounters.

The over the top boss fights were a good time.

Story-wise, very little happened here in the 18 hours my plauthrough took. There is Los Plagas and we are trying to rescue Ashley who is the president's daughter. I was a little surprised by how little depth there was. Not that other Resident Evil games have particularly interesting stories but this one was just smaller and more straightforward than I was anticipating.

The most interesting thing to me playing this was how much modern AAA games have aped this design.

The action set pieces, 3D level design, and sort of forward momentum narrative structure of the game are still basically the blueprint for a modern game. Perhaps having played many games that this influenced dulled some of the effect for me.

Overall I quite enjoyed my experience but I did find the game a bit too long (I feel this for every mainstream big budget game). Curious where Capcom goes from here... Do they do am RE5 remake or just a full reimagining? Either way I liked this enough to stay invested in the modern Resident Evil Revival series.

Sort of lost interest after Act 1.

It's fascinating that it takes so much from FF13, including altering the "hallway" aspect of that game to a literal highway this time. Honestly, I prefer the highway.

The progression system is wild. It's this sort of lovable mess where you are constantly combining/trashing items to level up other items.

The battle system is neat, again FF13-esque, but it does get quite a bit repetitive. I sort of lost steam with it after two hours.

I like how positive and affirming the characters are, however they are a bit excitable for my taste. They are always kind of yelling enthusiastically which was a bit much for me.

This thing is cool! Feels like it should have been a bit shorter. After two hours I felt like I was about 20% done and wanted to be closer to 50% done.

Played up until the "switch".

The music is great, the meta/snarky writing actually worked for me. I just kinda got sick of the level design. Very erratic from screen to screen. Altered between tedious, fun, clever, annoying, easy. Just kind of felt a little whip-lashy.

I was very underwhelmed by the "twist". I thought I would think it was more interesting but I went, "huh, there it is" and put this on my "shelved" list like 2 minutes later.