Honestly I hear a lot of people trash the shit out of overwatch 2 but I really enjoyed what I played. Now this is coming from someone who never played the original overwatch and I can definitely see where the haters of overwatch 2 are coming from. Blizzard promised a lot of stuff including a campaign mode that they just gave up on which led to the games not so favourable reputation. It does now seem though that Blizzard is trying to turn the game around now with the most recent updates though. Putting all that aside, overwatch 2 still finds a way to be an incredibly fun and engaging team based shooter.

A fucking weird game. And that's coming from a series that is overall weird to begin with.

Some of the most unhinged heart events in the whole series.
A surpringly high amount of those focus on your DVD player (???)

Weird ass game. A fun take on the world of A Wonderful Life.

I'm reading some of the negative reviews on here and I feel like I played a completely different game than y'all? I went through two routes on here, Mat and Brian, and intend to go back and do more later. I found the writing to be very charming and funny, and the core gimmick of everyone being a single parent to be an interesting dynamic between the characters.

I really like how all the different characters explore their own theme, such as Brian's toxic competitiveness or Mat's social anxiety. If you're going to play this game I would go in expecting to deal with things more along these lines, rather than expecting the game to tackle the myriad of ways homophobia effects gay men in the real world. The game sets itself in a sort of unrealistic but optimistic fantasy, in which you can be gay or trans and find love free of discrimination, and it's one of the things I liked about it.

I think taking the extra step from "this game doesn't portray anything too specific to gay culture" to "this is actively one of the most homophobic games I've played" is an extremely exaggerative critique. I do see the argument that it could be viewed as erasure, and I'm not trying to invalidate anyone for whom that's a deal breaker. However, due to how well I thought it did at dealing with the things it did choose to focus on, as well as laughing out loud at multiple points during my playthroughs, I loved this game overall. I look forward to playing more of this in the future.

Mat is the dreamiest daddy, and I have a band called the Skammunist Manifesto!

The love that older men share together is so desirable to me. I’ve always longed to grow older with another man, with our storgic, companionate love maturing with age. I wish I could say Dream Daddy fits a niche that would appeal greatly to me, but the extremely tacky humor and manufactured conflicts straight out of a family sitcom destroy any genuineness that could be gleamed from this depiction of love. Yes, it’s done on purpose, but ironic shitposting is still shitposting and this desperate effort to create a “safe space” game works against it to feel like some sort of cynical joke with queer men at the butt of it. I know the writers (a straight man and a queer woman) claimed they wanted to avoid writing about experiences they didn’t know, but I honestly would have much preferred they did consult queer men and gave it their best shot instead of this neutered garbage designed to be as straight-ally-friendly as possible at our own expense.

I want to talk about Joseph’s route because it’s the only one that attempts to confront any sort of complicated relationship dynamic, and even its best ending is intentionally dissatisfying. There’s actually a sense of artistic ambition to it in theory, even if it still suffers from horribly stilted writing like the rest of the VN. Yet, the route was torn to shreds even by many fans: it was cruel, it was homophobic, it was bad representation, et cetera. On one hand, I can’t entirely fault people for being unable to recognize this as a commentary on a specific sub-set of queer men that exist when the rest of the game does so much to distance itself from any sense of reality. But, it’s also just so disheartening when people use a fixation on optics and surface-level representation analysis to shout down any story that so much as gestures towards uniquely queer pain.

Nights of Azure 2 is a sequel to the very gay Nights of Azure, and while I don't think there is as much gay romance going on compared to the first game, Nights of Azure 2 has plenty of fan service. Azure 2 also got a revamped combat and servant system along with a whole new map to explore.

Gay romance is always quite hard to determine due to Japanese culture, and while a lot of games certainly flirt with the idea, not a lot of them are set in stone quite like the first Azure game. Azure 2 kinda upped the fanfare and sexiness of yuri action, but largely it feels like it's a step back from the romance angle that was seen in the first Azure game. This change in romance and sexual appeal isn't inherently bad, but it certainly feels like Al, the main protag, is more of a self insert compared to Arnice. On top of that, not much romance is going on compared to appreciation. Simply put, Azure 2 is more like a harem anime and Azure 1 is a romantic drama. Due to this, we aren't given enough time with the main protag and the other girls to really appreciate their dynamic and due to a time limit in the main game, we have to choose carefully we go after.

The combat and servant system is also fairly different, and I don't think it's one for the better. For the most part you use your based sword combos and honestly that's enough to get you through anything this game swings at you. The game also offers you different combat options through servants, but due to also making servants more limited and with added utility, it's never wise to go with two combat servants compared to one's that help you explore more. On top of that, servants level up along side you, and have their own associated level. Due to this, largely you will end up getting rid of any combat servants simply because it requires less backtracking and their levels will fall so far behind they aren't worth taking anymore. In fact, a lot of the game;s problems are pointed solely on the servant level up system. If you take in a weak servant, they die easily and thus you don't have proper back up for a fight, on top of this combat remains stale because you are more likely to have servants that are useful for utility and not combat, and it's just kinda an endless cycle that loops itself.

Trust me on this, you don't want to add more play time to this game due to the limited amount of maps there are. While at first it is a rather neat idea to have separate sections compared to the first's connective map, it soon gets apparent that the game uses certain levels way too often or locks things behind servant based powers in order for you to up your run time and make exploration feel more like a chore at the end.I really wish they added more to this games map, but as it is, even the two DLCs you get with the game don't even boost the count past 10. Don't get me wrong here either, it's not about the size of the maps either, they are all fairly big, but the fact that you only visit one a night and you explore the same ones constantly it just ends up draining you of wanting to play it.

Not that I don't want to talk about Azure's 2 good points, as it does introduce a nice cast of characters with some interesting designs, as well as a neat antagonist with their own love story akin to Arnice, but it's honestly such a little part of the game that it feels like your reward at the end of a punishment. Heck, the biggest reason I kept going with this game is because those story moments are genuinely good and I love seeing the cast of characters interact with each other. Nights of Azure has some amazing lore to it, and the fact it's kinda ruled by lesbians only fancies me more, but as it stands I don't think I could recommend this game to others that just don't care about yuri fan service.