It's hard for me to decide which I hate more as a sequel to an FF game I loved, this or X-2. Both of them manage to do what feels like irreparable damage to the epic tales that their predecessors were.

The entire story is founded on a stupid fucking retcon that cheapens the ending of XIII, and it only gets worse from there. I've watched music videos that have a more coherent plot than whatever this pile of shit is. It hamfists in elements of time travel and parallel worlds that are not a part of the original game's mythos at all, brings in an unwanted and unnecessary character for no apparent reason except as the writer's OC in this fanfiction that somehow gaslit its way to official status. Don't be fucking fooled. It's all a sham: the story is nonsensical, meandering and entirely at odds with all that is good in the world. I absolutely despise stories like these that constantly use big words like 'chronicle paradox' and 'forbidden history' and 'spacetime vortex' in a vain attempt to hide the fact that they absolutely SUCK. They suck in every single one of the multiple universes the writers use as an excuse for their storytelling ineptitude.

I couldn't wait for this game to shut the fuck up, I stopped caring entirely. And true, just like XIII before it, it looks dazzling, the visuals are so good that it feels like playing a CGI film, but it's hard to appreciate when it stands for absolutely nothing, and that little shit-gremlin of a moglin keeps yelling KUPO KUPO KUPOOOO in every scene so we can have some kawaii shit to go with the countless layers of obfuscation that drive this plot into the ground. If I had a gun I'd shoot that fucking hell-cherub so fast.

The gameplay isn't good either. I don't begrudge Final Fantasy XIII for its linearity at all; this game on the other hand is filled with false choices that are just time-wasting mechanics posing as open-endedness. For example, early on you're presented with the 'choice' to either fight a boss head-on or walk three paces along an alternative path to get a device that weakens him. My manly nature dictates that I fight him head-on without resorting to trickery, but he will one-hit kill your party, so you're forced to take the second option anyway. Then why is it a choice at all? That's right: to pretend this game isn't every bit as linear as its predecessor, when it is, when it's a fucking SHAM. To waste your fucking time. The game also really likes to recycle its bosses; to interrupt boss fights with cinematic moments and QTEs and cutscenes; to basically do all that video games of this time were derided for in such an especially egregious fashion that even I found them annoying.

The developers go all in on deceiving players into thinking they have any input into the story, by having four dialogue options pop up with a hilariously fancy 'Live Trigger!' splash in every conversation. Fuck them too. I don't get at all what's the appeal of these 'choices' that don't change one iota of the game, and the way they're presented like such a huge feature is amusing to see in the same way watching a Lilliputian attempt to score a three-point field goal would be amusing. Having only two party members and a rotating cast of captive Pokemon doesn't do it for me either. The battle system feels lesser than its predecessor with inconsequential features like Wounds (lowering your maximum HP) put in only for the sake of having more new features.

The music is nice, but I don't feel it melds into the game well pretty often - it's like they composed a lot of good tracks in a vacuum and then overlaid them into the game without too much consideration for context. In a game where the voice actors can't even get the inflections of their lines right, that would be too much to ask.

This game is a disservice and a blight on its predecessor, which I absolutely loved. It should have been left to rot on whatever page of Fanfiction.net it was uploaded to.

In short, I am mildly upset with this game.

There is little I can write about Skies of Arcadia that doesn't make it sound like a generic JRPG. Yet its excellence of execution makes it a quintessential RPG, and one of the best games of all time.

It took me around 35 hours to finish this game. Not for a single minute of that time was I bored, or in need of a break, or lacking enjoyment. Skies of Arcadia Legends has enough content in it for five games; I'm amazed they managed to fit it all on a single GameCube disc.

This game captures the joy of exploration in a way that many games attempt, but few succeed. The simple act of sailing through the skies, or climbing a ladder - seeing the beautiful JPEG skybox stretched out before you - or visiting a new town and seeing the designs and mannerisms of the characters there... it instilled me with such happiness. Skies of Arcadia owes a lot to its lovingly crafted world.

The characters and their motivations are hardly original, but they are so absorbing that it doesn't matter. The game also captures all that was good about anime in the 90s - there is humour, there is friendship, there is personal growth, there is love. The story takes inspiration from classic literature to imbue its characters with pathos and its environments with intrigue. We have a Captain Ahab parallel in Drachma, whose tale ends on possibly a more profound note than Moby Dick itself did; we have the mystique of the 'dark continent' portrayed in Ixa'taka; even Robinson Crusoe shows up at one point.

It's not exactly flawless: the random encounter rate is very high, and the battle animations drag on a bit. The ship battle animations are outright overlong. Some boss fights will take 40 minutes to an hour. But I didn't mind very much. Some games just have 'it' - maybe it's because the battle theme doesn't suck, but even when Skies of Arcadia shows its age and flaunts its dated aspects, it's fun to play.

Yet if I told you this was a turn-based JRPG where you explore the world to find six crystals to stop an evil empire, you'd think it's all been done before. Trust me, it's never been done this well. Skies of Arcadia feels fresh at every turn, and is a fulfilling adventure that should've already been remastered by now. All this game needs is a fast-forward button for the battle animations and widescreen support, and it'll be perfect for a new generation to discover its appeal. Go pester Sega about it.

my girlfriend is a big fan of this series and after trying out a few of the PSP songs, I figured I'd give this one a try. it's got the quality you would expct for an internally-developed sega title and a suprisingly fun selection of songs, even for someone like me who hadn't been into vocaloid before playing this game. the game is played primarily with the playstation face buttons, though you can use the d-pad for the same inputs as well (and are virtually required to for alternating patterns on extreme-level tracks). it's very easy to pick up, and has a solid amount of songs for a game of this era.

what I realized made vocaloids more apt for a game of this nature is the sheer variety in composers, and the freeform nature of how these songs came to be popular. since the vocaloids are just instruments, their sound can be harnassed in a wide variety of genres and moods, and with most of these songs achieving success on niconico, which songs actually blow up is entirely dependent on the fanbase without producers and record labels in the way (as much, anyway). while there's plenty of up-beat pop tracks, there's an eclectic mix of genres here, and songs with unsettling themes that could only be here thanks to the fanbase show up as well.

as for what this game adds over the previous ones: the grading system has been refined, making this a good entry for beginners to try. the percentage cleared needed to pass a song has been lowered, and you can now get percent bonuses from technical zones and the returning chance time sections. the former yields a bonus if a certain section is completed flawlessly, and the latter now can trigger a special event in the PV while also giving a bonus of its own if enough notes are hit. this allows the designers to make it clear which parts you should practice in order to pass or get a Great/Excellent rating. many of the technical zones are played by flicking the joysticks, which is imprecise and yet accounted for by a much more generous timing window than the regular notes.

besides the rhythm game, there's a small life sim mode where you can play with each vocaloid and give them gifts. this is a rather shallow mode, with no emergent interaction with the vocaloids and no point beyond getting trophies tied to the mode. there's also an edit mode like the previous games, and a few other knick-knacks to play around with (live studio mode, a little arcade shooter, etc.). other than for getting trophies, I spent most of my time plowing through songs in the actual game, as there's no instant unlock for the higher levels.

overall this really hooked me on the series thanks to how easy it is to pick-up-and-play on console while also offering enough depth and difficulty. not all of the songs are winners for sure, but there's some insanely fun ones to play in here: remote controller, negaposi*continues, urbandonment, and mmorpg addict's anthem were all ones I've grinded endlessly to get excellents and perfects. would def recommend to those looking to try a new rhythm game series with good song variety.

this game sucks compared to kart, bunch of overly complex changes made to the game making it extremely overwhelming, the tutorial it makes you go through doesn't helps with that feeling neither, and this is coming from someone that has been playing Kart v1 since version 1.2

also, to the dev that thought changing arle's voice to the puyo pop english voicelines was a good idea: go fuck yourself

oh, did i forget to mention that most basic stuff that wasn't locked in kart is now locked behind dumb challenges? THE ABILITY TO LOAD MODS AND PLAY ONLINE IS LOCKED BEHIND CHALLENGES, WHO THE FUCK DOES THAT??? anyways here's a save that has most of the stuff unlocked, grab it while it lasts
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/857867797874212865/1232898299904786462/ringdata.dat?ex=662b2184&is=6629d004&hm=84eb18fc0dbedeae71ae4cc0fd91506e8a705f28243eaf92bafe818c2e8ed22b&

A game by absolute freaks, for absolute freaks. If you don't lab kart racers everyday like they're fighting games and try your hardest to complete EVERYTHING in those games, this game is NOT for you.
Almost avant-garde in how little it cares for the casual kart racer audience, forcing you to complete an excruciating tutorial that can take between 30 minutes and 1 hour. To complete one grand prix before you can unlock multiplayer (or use a cheat code). To complete FIVE grand prixes before you can unlock the ability to use old SRB2kart MODS! (or use a cheat code). To stay with one color for your character unless you collect the others, and collect all 82 to unlock time trials. Never has there been a game so obsessed with making players master its mechanics before letting them play with others, as if they were preparing you for real-life war or something.

The game even opens slowly walking you through every option, unlocking each thing in the menu, everything contextualized with Tails and Eggman speaking to you, as Metal Sonic. Clearly, the devs tried to defeat Sonic Robo Blast 2's unnecessarily long intro cutscene, and in their quest for Genesis nostalgiawanking, they made the awful choice of only having the button prompts of the Genesis controller in menus and tutorials, not a huge issue in controller, it is on keyboard, especially because this game just has way too many mechanics and when you finally have to use an obscure one, you gotta press every key or go to the menu to check what key you assigned as the Y Genesis button.

Back to the tutorial, what did they think they were making here, Final Fantasy XVII?? It doesn't even explain things that clearly and there's so much dialogue, no option to reread, just once and trial and error.
It'd be one thing to make a kart racer with a lot of complex mechanics if they all feel cohesive and the races really push you to your limits, like Sonic Riders or even Bomberman Fantasy Race, but I don't think this is it when the mechanics are like 8 different types of boosts, one for each hazard, a charged melee attack? A parry? Two different types of roulettes that by default you have to stop manually???
A lot of this doesn't even come up in the races, it's for the single-player challenges, if it is in the race, you can also probably brute force it and use boost mechanic #54 instead of boost mechanic #301 as originally intended.

There's potential here, but it doesn't feel as good as SRB2kart to be honest. I gave up at the drift section in the tutorial cuz I just couldn't get it to work and the only drift you HAVE to do to proceed is the ultra charged one that gives you max boost #302! If the kart stops moving while you try to drift you instead initiate, you guessed it, another boost mechanic, one that has its own separate dedicated button so why make the drift worse by putting it on that button as well?

I usually don't rank games if I know that they're just not for me or if I played that little, but I don't see how the things I complain about would really do any good to any game in any genre, and even if all players use a save file with everything unlocked, I'll have to stand my ground unless they rework everything.

They tried to make a kart racer with more complex mechanics than Sonic Riders, and thought they had to have THE MOST mechanics to do that. They saw that some Riders players missed mechanics because of the lack of a tutorial and thought they had to overtutorialize EVERYTHING and demanded they mastered the game before even letting them race.
Don't think this will ever catch on and most will probably continue to just play SRB2kart.

Y’know, I probably would’ve added some checkpoints if my levels were marathon-length slogs with constant one-hit-kill obstacles that supersede the lives system already in place, with buggy mechanics where I can be affected by, say, an enemy blowing wind when I’m not even on the same plane as them, borked controls where I can literally be clicking the bottom of the screen and my spider will still move upwards into an enemy, constant leaps-of-faith where I need to know what’s ahead to make the best decision, and level design where I’m constantly fighting against the game to move forward, but I guess also “if you hit an instant death trap because you were trying to play with the physics in a physics platformer you have to go back to square one” doesn’t really seem like that big a deal compared to everything else. It starts off okay, and relatively simple, even if some of the more technical things are evident immediately, but once things feel a need to get more involved and complex it gets intolerable real quick. I spent, like, half an hour on the first nine levels, found a couple of them to be straining but otherwise bearable, then level ten took like, a whole 40 minutes of making it several minutes in, dealing with all the fiddly stuff, then hitting a one-hit kill or accidentally moving backwards into an enemy. I thought, maybe, like, this was just a low point and that the game would become better once it got all that out of its system. It didn’t. I found out level 11 was even more of that shit and decided, maybe, this wasn’t worth my time. Cowardice, I know, but having beat my head against the wall for 40 minutes only to find that there were more walls made me figure that I’d gotten enough of an impression. I looked at playthroughs of the remaining levels and even watching them felt too tedious for me to wanna stick around to the end.

Ah, Assassin’s Creed 2. The first gaming experience that deeply resonated with me as a kid, even if I could only appreciate only half of it at first. This game was already special to me 15 years ago, but replaying it after getting older and having a better understanding of gaming as a medium, made me realize how much care and love had been put into it and how deep it actually is in some aspects.

This game is just one of these games that makes me “feel” things. You know, how a game can move you, evoke deep emotions within yourself just by sheer presentation alone. Running across Venice’s rooftops, with Jesper’s Kyd’s fabulous soundtrack playing in the background and the sound of the bustling streets below; none of the Assassin’s Creed games have been able to replicate this feeling for me, even if some handle gameplay and story elements better.

This game is our first introduction to one of gaming’s most iconic protagonists, Ezio, who is undoubtedly AC’s most loved protagonist for many reasons: one being that he is just very likable, but also because he got the most room to grow as a character thanks to having three games dedicated to him. Though not being the best part of his story, AC2 is a strong starting point that offers compelling characters and some of the most iconic scenes in the series, as well as a rich narrative that delves into subjects such as the price of revenge, or the struggle to find meaning in a conflict you were thrust into without your approval.

It also introduced many of the mysteries that made the AC franchise and its modern-day story so compelling in the first place: what happened to Altair after he defeated Al Mualim, and why did he write the codex pages? Who was Subject 16, and what did he discover while in the Animus? And who are the precursors that created the apple of eden, and what are they trying to warn us about?

Even outside the story, the game communicates through its visuals and gameplay. How each city has its unique personality, with distinct color palettes and level design, pushing you to adapt, and making the parkour rewarding and engaging. Or for instance, how you can see the color grading of Monteriggioni slowly change and the street becoming busier as you renovate the villa, reflecting its financial state. These are small details, but they matter and show the thought and care that was put into this game and now feel absent in current Ubisoft titles. It just enhances the overall atmosphere and immersion, coupled with the ambient sounds of the city and Jesper Kyd’s mysterious yet elegant soundtrack.

From a gameplay standpoint, AC2 pretty much improves and refines everything its predecessor did. More ways to assassinate your enemies with new techniques and weapons, more ways to interact with the world around you for social stealth. The combat, although simple, is stylish and you’ll find enjoyment in trying to look as cool as possible. The game structure has been made less repetitive and offer more interesting side activities to tackle, such as the iconic assassin’s tombs that are intricate parkour challenges in mesmerizing locations. Though I surely miss the more open aspect of AC1 assassinations that gave much more player agency on how to plan them out.

I will never get tired of this game, even if it's a painful reminder of what Assassin’s Creed used to be. It can be hard to believe that Ubisoft used to make games like these when we look at their current catalog. But even so, this will always be one of my favorite games and a clear example of why I love video games.

The first Nitrome game I ever played! Not for long, though. I'm fairly sure when I found the site I didn't even beat the first level of this before bouncing onto Skywire and Frost Bite, and now, having actually gone through it for the first time… maybe it was for the best that past me didn’t. The core of the game is that it’s a collectathon platformer with a main mechanic of jumping from planet to planet — the gravitational pull and the traversal through the landscape almost make the game feel like a traditional side-scrolling platformer… except that platforms, in this case, are circular, and centre gravity around them as you jump. While it starts well enough, the game starts to show its warts as it goes along. Individual levels veer loooooong — like, 5-7 minutes just to complete it — and not for good reasons: most of what you do after the halfway point is just stand around waiting for planets to come near you, or stand around on moving planets waiting for another go to try and the one star you need to get to complete the level. This could be bearable… if dying didn’t send you riiiiiight to the beginning, forcing you to do the entire process from step one each time. This is even worse given how finicky the platforming can be, or how cycles can sometimes work out that sometimes there’s no way to escape taking damage and the fact that the player jumps upon taking damage can randomly undo progress or immediately lead to more damage and, as a whole, this game… does not feel polished. Or particularly fun to play, after a point. Wouldn’t call it the worst so far, but for the first game I ever played from this company, for the game that, however indirectly, led me to obsessively follow the website (and, in a way, led me to become as active on the internet as I am today)… man, past me could’ve done better.

do have to shout out the music tho

Skywire is a game where you use the arrow keys to move a gondola across a linear path, avoiding all the obstacles in your path in hopes of getting at least one of your passengers to the end of the stage. What initially seems like mostly a matter of proper timing soon, however, betrays a fairly complex system revolving around gravity, and how that impacts your momentum: the path curves up or down, the former causing your gondola to move slower, the latter causing you to rocket forward, even if you’re not holding that specific direction. Soon it becomes a matter of controlling your momentum — knowing how long in advance you need to start climbing something, knowing when exactly to start slowing your roll so that you don’t accidentally veer directly into another obstacle, and, sometimes, knowing exactly when you can abuse i-frames to gun it to the end. Its simplicity is complex, and the varying obstacles are mixed and matched in a way Nitrome is clearly adept at at this point. There are… technical issues — obstacles that spawn right on top of you in a way that’ll force you to lose a life unless you explicitly know they’re coming, obstacles with funky hitboxes that at points guarantee you lose a life when the level forces you close up to them — and there are some levels which are, like, three minutes of waiting for obstacles to go through their cycles (which if you mess up sends you right back to the beginning) but as a whole this is definitely the first game I’d consider to be above 'pretty good': just really solid execution where its quibbles don't hold it back as much. Plus! Iconic music! And uploaded to YouTube with decent recording quality this time! Can’t wait to replay the sequel and remember just how it iterates.