i don't know if it was some misplaced sense of charity or morbid curiosity, but for whatever reason, i felt the need to boot this up again. i’d broadly say that from the 7 or so hours i ended up playing of it- frankly, several hours too many- it was largely what i remembered, expected, and then even worse some. modern ubisoft games continue to exemplify scope creep in aaa games at some of their worst. it’s the inevitable result of designing your game to be popular first and foremost.

some of the consequences are immediate, easy pickings for anyone even the slightest bit critical. open-world activities that amount to little more than a disconnected series of carny games, movement feeling less consistent than older titles despite its simplification, animations that range from being merely badly implemented to just bad in and of themselves, some of the worst audio i’ve ever heard in a game between the compression, mixing, bugged sound effects, and just generally poor choices for said sound effects, dead-eyed character models and flat cutscene direction, but none of that’s particularly interesting to talk about. i found myself more amused by the way it bends over backwards to tell the player that our raids in the name of colonialism are completely justified and badass. assured that the people we’re raiding are totally bad guys, we swear, but there are some good guys amongst them that just so happen to want to be saved by us vikings.

i’m not one to go for bat for historical accuracy in the series that turned jack the ripper into the scarecrow, nor will i act like it’s anywhere near the first time this sort of whitewashing has happened in assassin’s creed (or quite a few other ubisoft games for that matter). but it’s a stark difference going from altair’s arc of constant uncertainty and questioning of himself, his order, and perceived enemy to this nonsense. just another consequence of having to design for the widest possible crowd, i suppose: the viking power fantasy must come above all else and not challenge the audience to any significant capacity emotionally or mechanically. but as a final twist of the knife, that power fantasy ends up being scuppered by the games overblown scope serving us half-baked combat amounting to eivor windmilling their arms while the sounds of papier mache play off enemies being hit. really just a game that elicits nothing from me but an eyeroll and sigh of sympathy at the thought of hundreds of skilled and creative people working to make something so clumsy and unimaginative.

One of the main Discord servers I'm active in decided to start a gaming equivalent to a book club and chose this first because "niche PS2 game with a moody atmosphere" is like crack cocaine to our primary demographic of trans people with pretentious opinions on games. The first couple days of the month allotted to beating it went well with glowing praise for its combat mechanics, atmosphere, etc. and it seemed like we would have had the right to be contrarians about this overlooked PS2 game secretly being good. However, as the days went by, more and more people started to get filtered in a variety of places: Chapter 3's initial test of your knowledge of the combat mechanics, the Chapter 8 boss, the grind before the final boss. The English version's inflation of enemy stats in comparison to the Japanese version was just too much for us to handle. But when it seemed like no one would be able to beat this game, one brave hero rose up: GingerV
While weaker game club channel posters cowered in fear at the challenge posed by Chaos Legion, GingerV rose to the challenge and opened up a speedrun for the game's hardest difficulty. From there, they not only learned a lot of the game's mechanics that weren't explained well but noticed how odd it was that the run spent 40 minutes on Chapter 5 when its times for the other chapters were usually about 10 minutes. They then realized that these 40 minutes were spent farming health bar upgrades and decided to do the same, giving them the tools they needed to clear the game with little effort. The PS2 action game that filtered a server with several unironic DMC2 fans had finally met its match and could be laid to rest.

Sekiro has such a clear vision and style and is trying new things for From Software in a couple of different vectors. This game plays much differently than Dark Souls and the world building and storytelling are also much removed from From's typical approach. I enjoyed my time with it, but it doesn't work for me quite as well overall.

Sekiro is about parrying in a way that no other souls game is. You will have to rewire your Souls habits to succeed here, but a couple of smart decisions make the onramp manageable. Parry windows are extremely generous and failing usually just means you block (which has other negatives). It is a super interesting combat system that I had a good time learning, despite some of the cracks showing by midgame.
Enemies have poise that you parry, deflect, and clash your way through, whereupon you can score an execution, killing them immediately. Bosses take 2 or 3, usually marking specific delineations for their phases. This is a cool reward moment that makes these fights feel like balletic swords duels when it works, clashing back and forth as you learn their attacks and exploit them. Fights like Jinsuke Saze and O'Rin of the Water feel incredible as you learn their attacks and execute them perfectly. Your first attempt will be 5 minutes of healing, defending, and looking for opportunities while your winning attempt will be 30 seconds of attacks, parries, and executions. I haven't gotten quite this feeling of complete mastery from any other Souls game.
This is unfortunately undercut in many fights by the fact that poise regenerates very quickly when an enemy is at full health, so you will spend much of the battle trying to deal vitality damage to them so that you can finally parry them into an execution. It becomes a tedious and rote exploitation of their positioning and movement that simply doesn't work.
Some unclear UX around perilous attacks makes things a bit more frustrating and fiddly than it probably should be which is exacerbated by the camera and lockon system not playing that nicely with multiple enemies (each of which is doing a perilous attack on you, good luck!).
The lack of any particular ability to customize your build gives the game a very intentional feel, but also made me feel locked into playing a particular way that could sometimes be more frustrating than fun.
The negatives weren't quite enough to ruin the game for me. I did cheat my way through the final boss and don't feel bad about it.

Narrative in Sekiro is trying to be more linear and straightforward than other From games and they don't quite deliver. There is a coherent throughline, but a lot of what happens and why is either unclear or based in some lore or actual Japanese history I don't understand. There are side areas, but the progression here feels very linear, with basically one way to go to proceed and a lot of story-based area gating. It is fine for what it is, but trades From's strength (narrative through world-building and inference) for their weakness (narrative through direct linear plotting).

I love the style and look of this game. It has muted visuals punctuated by bold colors and environments that are grounded but extremely surreal. Enemies are all based in Japanese history and myth which gives things an authentic and compelling edge while allowing giant serpents, apes, and monkeys firing rifles to exist believably along with spear wielding samurai and agents of the unexplained "Interior Ministry."
Along with Bloodborne, this probably has the most striking and impressive look of any From game.

I like Sekiro quite a bit, but some of the uneven difficulty, combat system weirdness, and narrative stumbles do mar the experience for me. It is worth playing to see how different this sort of combat can be, but don't feel bad about cheating if things get a bit too frustrating.

Disclosure: I was QA on the original version of this title

I played the original when it came out and I liked it a lot. This is a pretty extensive remaster -- it adds HD graphics as well as retooling the combat system, bringing it closer to some of Vanillaware's more recent titles.

The combat switch up really changes the feel of this game. It is more about racking up combos and juggling enemies. I feel like in the original I spent more time picking my shots and playing defensively. I didn't hate the old combat, but this new version plays really well, and it is cool that you can switch it to classic mode if you prefer it.

This game looked great when it first came out and it looks amazing now in HD. I like these character designs better than most of Vanillaware's other games and they still hold up.

I like the story in Odin Sphere, it is an interesting mesh of different perspectives that come together to give you a broader understanding of everything that is going on. It is cool, but takes a long time to get to its point and some of the chapters feel like they have some filler in order to bring them up to the right size. The writing can also be a bit grating and repetitive at times, though the voice acting is really great.

Odin Sphere is a fun game to play through and has an interesting story. I am glad this remaster exists and that it makes the combat and the game itself a bit more accessible.

Shoutout the translator Anoop couldn't have played it without him. Here's a link to access the site https://web.archive.org/web/20071009051612/http://www.andriasang.com/princesscrown/index.html for the translation of Princess Crown.

I honestly can't believe George Kamitani and his team was able to ship a game in 1997 and look like it came out today. This game's art is a true marvel. The combat I wish was a bit deeper picks it back up with the intricate gear and items you can use (Meteor Spell and Dragon Shield <3). The story gets the job done and the characters are lovable. Gradriel is just a dear and I wish in the future she would return in some way. The music is very good but some tracks are played more than others, the busy town theme is burned into my ears. The sprites are insane man. The demons are cool asf, the griffon design flipped the switch that George is that dude, he does not fuck around when it comes to making hot creatures and women. Love him for that.

After beating Gradriel's story you can also access a few other characters but until someone translates it or I learn the language I won't indulge.
Incase the site is missing a few parts here is where I downloaded Anoop's doc: https://www.mediafire.com/?2cccbljzxbnpcb2

Incredibly strange and interesting action RPG built with the structure of a fighting game (??), its clear that the personality of the proto-Vanillaware team was established early on. Lavish kingdom-fantasy stories of demons and dragons, cooking as a critical mechanic, inexplicably voluptuous women. You can even see the beginnings of Vanillawares patented parallel character storytelling, quite ambitious for such an obscure gem.

In fact its surprising how competent a game Princess Crown is considering how little information there is on it anywhere online. Youd be fooled into thinking it was just some weird rinky dink game that was some studios forgettable first foray into development but theres alot to love here, it is a surprisingly robust game.

I think Odin Sphere really demonstrates the beauty and dangers of Vanillawares commitment to exclusively lush 2D games: on one hand, this creative constraint breeds alot of novel and compelling game design decisions; on the other hand, this can be a costly endeavor if youre not careful about your genre. Without a big budget, Odin Sphere takes some repetitive cost-saving measures that keep it flawed but promising.

For example, circular rooms for a platformer are an extremely smart and elegant solution to the challenge of keeping 2D worlds from feeling like flat planes with unreal perspective. Layered, parallel storytelling with multiple characters also offers an excuse to reuse some assets and enemies while still having an engaging, rich narrative (in some ways even richer than linear storytelling). Odin Spheres issue is a matter of poor foresight.