I had to constantly remind myself that I wasn’t playing a new commercial release but a goofy ass romhack made by a bunch of 4channers. Obviously they’re an incredibly talented group to get this much out of a Pokemon Fire Red rom.

Lets look at the scope for a moment

- 80+ hour adventure
- Completely new pokedex of 386 species
- New postgame locations and gyms
- OST of 200+ songs, some arrangements, some original
- Moves and abilities from future generations, alongside new ones

Incredible things were going on in /vp/ and I can’t really help being left in awe.

The elephant in the room when it comes to Clover is its rather offensive brand of humor, which makes sense considering its origins. To be honest, my sense of humor tends to be a bit on the chaotic side, so I could actually find some enjoyment out of Clover’s writing, even if it was mostly due to the general absurdity of it all. Due the humor, the story is essentially “Random shit happens abd then the game ends” in a way that makes it feel like a very crude version of Earthbound. Despite the aimlessness of the plot the finales of both the main and postgame end up delivering so it still winds up being satisfying enough.

Aside from that, the gameplay is pretty much perfect. The devs managed to establish a good balance between giving the player a sizable amount of powerful options to utilize while keeping the experience consistently challenging. Instead of forging the difficulty through insane stat sponges and unhinged level curves, the game instead employs a soft level curve, a 4 items limitation in battle (No revives either), and much more competent trainer teams and AI. It felt really good to use team builds that would be overkill in any mainline pokemon game and get threatened by teams that are just as powerful. That being said, I don’t think the difficulty ever goes too far. The most amount of attempts I’ve ever put into a mandatory battle was 5, and a couple others took me around 2-3 attempts, but even the easier battles led me into some intense close calls, and every meaningful encounter was engaging in their own way.

I originally expected to spend a couple of hours with Clover before playing it off and on over the course of many weeks. After essentially spending all of my free time playing this with my mind set on completing as much as possible, I realized this is something special. If you enjoy pokemon battle mechanics and don’t mind edgy 4chan themed humor, this might just be a must play game.

I’ll also add that Mozzamazel, Biteki, and Unjoy are my favorites.

(Full disclosure, the furthest I’ve played in the story is Fontaine Act I and I don’t see myself returning for the foreseeable future.)

It’s been a couple of months since I’ve fully moved on from Genshin, and ever since then, I began reflecting on what exactly went wrong. I previously wrote a now deleted review on this site about how Genshin had the potential to be a proper masterpiece, so what exactly happened for my opinion to sour so much?

The culprit couldn’t be the environments and music, those are still top notch and I do kinda miss them. I would say the gameplay got tiresome, and while I do find it annoyingly stiff, I don’t think it was enough to turn me off on the whole game.

It really all came down to one element: the writing. I don’t nessecarily think the story is outright bad, but it does not flow well at all due to its overly long diatribes and pitstops that never fail to overstay their welcome. The story beats are decent, but they would be much cooler if it wasn’t for the main thing that really pisses me off with this game.

Genshin’s character cast might just be one of the most fraudulent casts in any piece of media ever. The characterization is just “This character does this job really well” or “Hey, did you hear about the time they did this?” and its so annoying everytime it happens. I look at the cast and all I see is personality mush. I couldn’t even come up with a proper favorite character because they all feel the exact same to me, even if they aren’t. None of this is helped by the fact that I straight up dislike most of the character designs.

Because of this, a story that I’d usually see as a little flaud but incredibly enjoyable just comes off as mediocre because I fail to really get excited when the characters start actually doing things. Funny thing is that I actually noticed this back when I first started playing, but since this was the first gacha game I ever really got invested in, I thought this was just a symptom of the amount if characters there were and simply expected things to get better. As soon as I started playing Blue Archive, that delusion was shattered instantly. The fact that I like Ako more than any Genshin character really says it all.

I have heard that the story got better the moment I left with the rest of the Fontaine, but I think that even if it is better, it still won’t be in a way that I personally find enjoyable. The game obviously puts a lot of investment into the world building, but sacrificing character quality for that was not a great decision, especially when the world building is so taxing. I play gachas for the story and characters after all, and if I’m rolling for characters for just gameplay reasons rather than actual attachment to them, then what’s even the point.

Aside from how annoyingly heavy the controls can be sometimes, this is a rather solid game. With how addicting the level design is, I can see myself going back to get 100% and the perfect scores for each of the levels. I wouldn’t say I was truly wowed at any moment during my playthrough, but it was consistent enough to keep my attention, and there is still alot of charm to be found with the goofy character designs and NPC dialogue that makes me do a double take. The soundtrack is fantastic too by the way

Funnily enough, this wasn’t the only game I randomly stumbled upon in 2023 that would become one of my favorite games of all time (Shoutout Rabi Ribi).

I have had a ridiculously hard time trying to write a review for Astlibra because whenever I try to bring up the things I like about it my mind starts getting flooded with terms such as “raw” and “kino” and “sovl”. It’s like this game is inducing my brain with data corruption. But really, when a game has an anime opening that it plays at the start of nearly every chapter, how else am I supposed to react?

It’s a bit difficult to elaborate on why I adore this experience without writing an essay or spoiling the game, but let’s just say that by the end of this 70+ hour journey, no stone will be left unturned, both in terms of gameplay and story. A constant drip feed of satisfaction from beginning to end. This is the type of experience where you take a deep breath as the credits roll and think to yourself “Goddamn, I fucking love video games” and I think that’s beautiful.

After several weeks of playing this game, I’ve decided to actually give Blue Archive a somewhat proper review.

To be honest, I was very distant to Blue Archive when I first started it up. After all, I only really downloaded the game to see if Eden Treaty really was top tier storytelling like I’d heard it was. Pretty much everything else was an afterthought, and I was able to get away with this mindset for a decent amount of time, that is until that one specific story episode that forced me to actually build my characters and level up my account. I absolutely resented BA for this and I still think it was a bit of a fucked up move by the devs, but it also kinda acted as a blessing in disguise. It led to me getting much more involved with the game’s systems, I started getting invested in characters who weren’t in the main story that much, and I was able to derive at least some enjoyment out of the game’s combat. It’s amazing what a great story can do to my motivation.

So now here I am, 64 levels deep, listening to Alkaline Tears and After School Dessert almost daily whilst Ayane’s sweat soaked face graces my main menu. Definitely not the position I was expecting to be in when I saw Mika’s design for the first time and thought she looked pretty.

The story is definitely as good as people say it is. Of course Eden Treaty was fantastic, mainly because the Make Up Work Club is literally just my four favorite characters in a single group, but the other Volumes were no slouch either. After playing Genshin and getting consistently frustrated with how much its writing prodded on and on and on for no reason, a concise story that makes its points quickly while knowing when to have some fun is exactly what I needed. Whenever some goofy or chaotic moment happens and it actually becomes an element of the plot I’m always left with a wide grin on my face, aside from that one case where I both smiled and cried a little (I will never look at ski masks the same way ever again). I once heard the plot be called a children’s story for adults and that’s actually pretty accurate. A chapter will put Sensei and their students through utter hell as they deal with extremely stubborn corporate greed, generational hatred, crippling distrust/paranoia, and the horrors of nihilism, before ending with everyone gathering together to best all the odds as someone declares “THE BLUE ARCHIVE IS REAL”. This is only a slight exaggeration. Also, the characters fill me with so much joy and I would legit take a bullet for about 98% of them.

I will say though, the last thing I expected from this game was me loving Sensei and their role in the story as much as I do. Despite being a self insert, they actually get a decent amount characterization as a bad spender with a childish imagination who is sorta kind of a degen. Basically, your average gacha player. However, in the land of Kivotos where most adult figures for the students are either non existent in their lives or are manipulative bastards, Sensei acts as the guiding light that actually teaches them how to grow and learn from their mistakes, and is willing to put a lot on the line to do so. This does end up leading into most of the students fawning over sensei in some way, shape, or form, sometimes in rather suggestive ways. While this quasi-harem comes off as a bit tacky at first, as time went on I began to completely understand the girls’ feelings, especially after reading Where All Miracles Begin because goodness gracious it cannot be underestimated how life changing Sensei’s actions are there I’m choking up just thinking about it. Shit, I’d probably fall head over heels for Sensei in the students’ position too.

Even though i’m docking a star off for the Hell BA put me through to see through its story, don’t be mistaken. I adore this game about as much as my 5 stars, and am genuinely so happy that I was convinced by the dozens of pieces of Mika art being shoved down my throat to give Blue Archive a shot.

Azusa best girl btw
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Edit: I’m bumping the rating up to 4.5 stars because I get happy every time I think about this game and just 4 stars doesn’t feel right

It should be illegal to make a game with combat this good.

While this game is sick as fuck, it does make me appreciate just how special Rabi Ribi’s exploration and progression actually is. Tevi does have fun exploration and a little bit of nonlinearity but for much less of the game than what Rabi Ribi allowed. Everything else Tevi offers makes up for it though. Great music, diverse environments, fun movement, hilariously absurd customization, and one of the best boss casts this industry has ever seen. I will say that the story was really testing my patience, especially when it hit me with a plot twist that I genuinely cannot believe was written in the Year of our Lord 2023, but the characters are kinda charming so I could tolerate it.

I mean, it’s a decent game, but I can count the amount of stages that I didn’t say “Oh, I guess that’s it” after completing on one hand. The gameplay loop just can’t keep up with the boundless charm the game exudes. I thought that I was just thinking this way because the game is easy, but I didn’t even die in Kirby and the Forgotten Land once until the post game final boss and I consider it to be a much better game, mainly because even the earlier stages have a lot more meat on their bones, making them more exciting to traverse through.

This might sound like heresy, but if Wonder had more traditional level design akin to the ‘New’ games while keeping its style, I think I’d like it more.