This game comes with plenty of caveats that most people would like you to ignore, but they will still exist which just mind keep in mind.

the combat starts deceitfully simply, despite having a more unusual command menu, you learn that all you need to do is set the attacks and leave the auto battle rolling, then you learn gotta get cards to cash personas, then you learn about mutations, all while having the SMT negotiation system and then there's the rumors system which work on a very esoteric way, if you don't pay attention what type of vendors get the rumors, you won't cash out ideally on the right store to sell your gear an-

you get the point, the game itself in terms of mechanics feels so bloated, you just end up turning your brain off and just getting whatever the game gives you for personas to beat it, it also doesn't help with the amount of combat and stuff to grind on it, the game is not fast enough to keep up with it, leading you to resent a little on how slow it is

yet, despite this, the game delivers incredibly well in terms of story, characters, music, themes, aesthetics and sprite work.

its a very heartfelt story, about chasing ideals, dreams and what matters for your life despite feeling so lost without a goal in mind, every story beat is so interconnected with each other to lead up to its themes, which makes it a very unique game to experience.

so much so, i say that despite the caveats, the game is worthy to experience it.

Considering this is the very first story ever written by Nasu, probably with a few rewrites and the power of hindsight, Mahoyo doesn't really feel like a prequel to everything that was set up on previous Type-Moon entries

It actually feels more like the omega point of the entire franchise with its themes and characters, which you'll immediately notice they get callbacks from Tsukihime and Fate/Stay Night in direct and indirect ways

Mahoyo is a story about the whimsical nature of magic on its last legs, slowly drying out as it has been studied down to a science, making no different that technology used by humanity, contrasting this theme with the rapid growth of urbanization by Japan's Bubble Era consuming its natural habitat for more progress

And yet, despite change being inevitable, it doesn't mean a miracle is impossible, which is the core of Mahoyo's story, a beautifully and surprisingly simple story all things considered

on top of a great presentation that has yet to be truly rivaled besides on other Type-Moon VNs, Mahoyo delivers in absolutely everything it strives for

Also, Fuck Touko Aozaki

A lot of you have never played Gungrave (or watched the brilliant anime) and it shows.

The Gunslinger of Resurrection is back! In my reviews for the VR Gungrave games I mentioned how it felt like Iggymob understood Gungrave but were kinda tied to the VR thing stopping them getting all the way there. This is them getting there. Whether on purpose (of course not) or simply from being a small studio who prior to getting the GG license had only made a terrible WW2 dogfighting game, they've nailed what GG is about. It's about shooting a million dudes. It's about swinging the coffin chained to your arms. It's about transforming said coffin into wild weapons to dish out massive destruction. It's about wondering whether anyone involed in the development has ever heard the word "balance". The PS2 lives on.

But to be serious for a moment, I get why folk hate this. I even get why fans of the original hate it. There's clearly going to be expectations when old games you like in spite of themselves get modern sequels. You hope for the same feeling but in a prettier package. Polished and dolled up. Controls tightened, an all round smoothed out experience. But that isn't to be found here, and folk are right to be disappointed.

Luckily I tempered my expectations heavily and got just the kinda shit I was after. Dodgy voice acting, even dodgier cutscenes. Poor dialogue and grammar. Bunji turning up again because he's so fuckin' cool, new characters that get zero introduction but are supposed to be cared about. It's a mess, and a beautiful one at that. I think I care about Gungrave more than most folk because a single line in this thing put tears in my eyes.

KICK THEIR ASS

Overdose is a good name, because you gonna OD on how much this game abuses you patience with its terrible levels and enemy types custom made to be as annoying as possible.

you gotta ask yourself, how on earth did they saw a game as simple and mindless as the original Gungrave and fuck it up by trying to "outdo it", without noticing their own limitations at all.

also, don't believe the credits, Tsuneo Imahori didn't make any music for this, 80% of game is dead silent.

i was about to make a long bait-y review about people having skill issues, but the game actually needs rebalancing in terms of areas and enemies, they can vicious to the point they aggro at you as hard as Ninja Gaiden enemies but Grave lacks any of the flexibility Ryu Hayabusa has, even if you upgrade your damage at its peak, late game enemies are extremely tanky while they are powerful enough to melt your character if you aren't upgraded fully, which leads me to the following point, the game is expecting you to beat the campaign on sequential order by difficulty for you to actually learn the mechanics with experimentation, getting enough points to upgrade into a proper state AND giving you permanent passives that makes harder difficulties more manageable.

its an extremely amateur project with obvious pitfalls that they could have avoided with more play testing.

so you may be asking, why the hell i'm giving it a good rating?, well it actually is fun on the raw sense of the word, the game has quite a lot of depth to consider it another good entry on the character action genre, now demanding you to learn its mechanics and how to figure out your way in its chaotic set pieces full of enemies who will actually kick your ass if you not paying attention, its an unique game that you rarely see attempted these days, it surpass my expectations of the previous gungrave, which was essentially a braindead shooter with a cool premise and characters (carried heavily by its anime adaptation)

i don't think it deserves to be punch down into oblivion for obvious oversights that will probably be patched out with fan feedback.

a game that captures the feeling of finding a diamond in the rough, but the diamond itself is crusted and a bit shattered, yet, the glimmer it gives is beautiful enough to keep it

as a gameplay experience, you'll probably have to put up a lot thing that will test your patience, like the actual combat or half baked mechanics

yet, downside that would kill any other game, this one just hypnotized me with a great atmosphere and beautiful narrative about human connection, albeit a bit simple for certain tastes

there's nothing quite like, its an unique Fragile Dream of a passionate team.

sitting at the top of a hill littered with 2010s western independent charmers with hamfisted attempts at satire, post-modernism, genre critique, societal reflection and subversive storytelling is this crown jewel; the crème de la crème example of the self-serving haughty pretentiousness of an entire generation of would-be internet geniuses scrolling through tv tropes page by page in hopes to form contrarian opinions on popular media based on the talking points and consensuses of other people. if you're of a certain age demographic, you know this person - the one who parrots the opinions of your nostalgic critics and mr. enters as if the information they siphoned by lazing about youtube in search of a personality might be enough to make someone go, 'geez, this guy KNOWS his stuff' without having to go through the effort of formulating their own thoughts, or even worse, having to experience the media they're responding to the response of firsthand.

doki doki literature club stands as an indulgence of saturated moe-era anime tropes under the guise of a critique of the wikipedia plot summaries of KEY, ryukishi07 and type-moon games without having the slightest bit of humility or self-awareness in its execution. it, its creator, and its audience herald itself as some massive deconstruction of the visual novel form, when in actuality it's about in line with the actuality of what it's criticizing as yiik is with jrpgs. there is no metatextual subversion to be had. doki doki is a children's birthday magician - a couple of flashy tricks capable of fooling someone who doesn't know how ren'py works, but beyond its cheap parlor tricks which might give the astute horror mastery of, say, happy tree friends a run for its money, the title lacks substance, it lacks any form of personality, and it lacks the competence to warrant these mistakes in the face of a greater picture or experience.

i won't even dip into the implications the creator has made about how this game is apparently a very real and serious approach to topics such as self-harm and abuse - as a survivor of both i find these claims bordering on insanity - but i will offer the benefit of a doubt and suggest that maybe this is a product of genuine, ineffable incompetence and misjudgment... rather than one of deep-rooted pretention and narcissism. you could get the exact same experience intersplicing five nights at freddy's jumpscare reaction videos, one of the upteenth saw sequels, and nyan neko sugar girls as one would have playing doki doki literature club, but at the least, the former is shocking, entertaining and funny when it intends to be. do your wallet a favor and pass on this one - and yes, i know it's free.

The story is bland as all hell, the pacing is horrifyingly bad for the most part but everything else managed to hold my attention and it definitely has the best OST of the year, buuut I'd be lying if I said I didn't kinda regret spending a whole £50 on it, it's definitely not worth that much

I have a feeling I'd be much more alright with this game though if it weren't a sequel but rather its own IP, the fact that this is the follow-up to TWEWY urks me because of how much it tries to replicate TWEWY in its narrative, but ends up falling flat because TWEWY was a very character-driven story whilst NTWEWY is very much more focused on the lore/world (not to mention the... much worse character writing lol)

Coco my beloved