essentially toonboom shortcuts and mr. zato negative edge guilty gear are the same thing i will die on this hill

ok wait no; playing zato is actually more like the beautiful clicking into place that occurs when you have a solid amount of knowledge about like maybe 10 nodes, and use like 20 keyboard shortcuts regularly, and you finally open your internet browser to be met with the beautiful precipice that is the toonboom documentation, overflowing with the possibility of different alternate futures where you can reassign any keybind at will, and you daydream about using your playstation controller to apply gaussian blur to a composite for no reason other than because it’s possible, only to be met with the crushing reality that perhaps you aren’t as good at playing zato with only the shoulder buttons and you don’t even have time to be writing a thesis on the relationship between properly timing an aerial invite hell and comboing M/Enter/Enter/controlorcommandA/selectpurple to generate your automatte because they’ve already totsugeki’d you into oblivion and your final is due on wednesday

(this review has been adapted from a twitter thread I've been furiously typing up for the past 20 minutes that you can hopefully, in the distant future, still access here: https://twitter.com/mulletprrince/status/1602366999497248768?s=20&t=EkWMCwGgm4TFSGE8RKDjQA

hashtag shameless self promo for archival purposes)

ugh, hades, my beloved. best dog petting mechanics in any game ever.

I'm the type of person who only really gets into games at certain times, and Hades is one of the lucky few that has claimed that spot on several different occasions in the past couple years I've had it.

While the satisfyingly gameplay is critical to the fact that I enjoy it, what often pulls me back to it are the characters, which are consistently well written and voice-acted, with, by god(s), so much dialogue (I have no clue how they recorded that much).

It'd be kind of silly if I didn't also mention that, while I have a dear friend who disagrees, I absolutely LOVE the little gamey rpgish aspects of the game. I feel like those elements, (mainly talking about all the items you can collect and trade, the variety of boons and weapons upgrades etc) coupled with God Mode make the game really customizable, and help the game work for a variety of different players, possible appealing to different sensibilities in each. It could definitely be executed in a "cleaner" way, but personally, I enjoy a little mess, and seeing the little stack of symbols and numbers on the bottom of my screen when I go to buy something from the house contractor makes me excited.

The best parts of the game however, are the character interactions and the, you know, core game mechanic of annihilating your undead foes with rather punchy punches. Don't get me wrong, at least, in my playthroughs collecting the right amount of darkness isn't top priority (although I have a different friend who considers that at all times! see? different playstyles woop woop)

So, anyway, if you pog out of your mind at a well written story that meshes cohesively with gameplay but also need some quality Beating Up Skeletons Time(tm) in your daily schedule, I'd really recommend it.