Throughout the entire last act of Sons of Liberty I was constantly thinking that I am willing to call this the most essential video game of the century so far. This may be a bold claim in the eyes of some, but this was what MGS2 was able to make me feel. Hideo Kojima tests and challenges the medium of video games in a way I feel hasn't been replicated since. The fact that this game came out in 2001, a mere few months after 9/11, quite frankly blows my mind. It was ahead of its time back then and its ahead of our time now. Its themes of our governments relation to digital information, individuality, free will, truth, and our relation to video games. These themes are already daring on their own, but the way Sons of Liberty is able to cohesively piece them together is nothing short of masterful. However even in the situation, there were brief moments of tranquility and beauty that will still be cherished. Such as climbing down the ladder with Emma with the sunset in focus and the final minutes of the game. Kojima believes in a better future, and we all should too.

The systems are fruitless, the construction is tainted, everyone will use these mechanics of 'justice' for their own ends because they have accepted that where one comes shadow they must also come with shadow. But that doesn't mean that light, that 'truth', doesn't exist. To avert your eyes and act like the pursuit of truth and justice is naive and nothing more, is cowardice. Cowardice at the enormity of the issue, the complexity, the sheer size of the web. We must strive "to keep going down the straight and narrow road."

The politics are all simplified, but I couldn't help but have it hit me within a current situation that has me viscerally frustrated both in my ability to speak and others' ability to speak. In the modern world the idea of acquittal is a self made one in that the players of power and in power will do everything to keep control of the exploits they've crafted to stamp on my rights, so even if one untouchable person was brought down, nothing would change. In a sense, Resolve, asks for some hope in the people to find their way. The comparison is trite if I try to make it any more tangible, it's simply a feeling I had while trying to keep my positivity afloat amongst the sludge of pain recently. I'm not even in a good enough emotional state to try to conclude the train of thought on what I should be doing, it's radicalizing and disgusting to continue to swallow. So really I don't know where I'm going with this to a very insecure extent. I guess what I'm trying to say is that at the least, GAA2 Resolve offers comfort in a belief that we'll get there together again. I doubt me saying that will offer any solace, and it's of no use to others to oversimplify this shit.

But like at some point you have to confront the message of the work, what the characters believe, if you want to talk about it right? "To fight those who dwell in the darkness requires at least some of us to occupy the darkness ourselves." is wrong, that's wrong. It doesn't feel good though. Like an hour and a half ago I watched an excruciatingly fucked up 3 minute video of some absolutely infuriating vein-popping preacher openly saying to kill queer people with the only response being applauding and agreement, and to my side my SO is watching a 5 minute news clip of senator's arguments juxtaposed with other real senators full audibly feigning to care about mental illness of a school shooter to then say trans is the problem. If I loaded up any additional social media right now it would be a hilarious juxtaposition to the game I just played because it would be complete doomscrolling. Because like, what else is there to do? they'll say.

I want Sholmes' ray of light. I want to believe.

A fantastic game just got better.

Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age is an HD remastered version of the original PlayStation 2 game released in 2006. More specifically it's based on the International Zodiac Job System edition previously only released in Japan which balanced out some of the gameplay mechanics among other things to improve the original. This PS4 release with higher quality visuals, remastered orchestra soundtrack and ability to play at X2 and X4 speed is sort of the ultimate release of the game and it is, in my opinion, fantastic.

The story of Final Fantasy XII is a very political one. Set in the world of Ivalice, more precisely the Kingdom of Dalmasca after a war where the Empire of Archadia has invaded and taken over. The characters are an assorted bunch from a pair of orphaned street thieves, a dishonored Knight, a Princess and a couple of sky pirates. They all get brought together for different reasons, some for their honor and duty and others just because they got swept up into events much bigger than themselves in an attempt to free Dalmasca from Archadia's grip. The story isn't a huge world saving quest like many previous Final Fantasy games or other Japanese role playing games in general and I kind of like it for being more grounded in many ways. That's not to say the story doesn't take the player to fantastical places like floating islands or towns full of strange races while fighting fantastical monsters or anything, only that the characters problems and motivations just seem much more realistic than previous games have gone for.

The gameplay on this quest is of course the most important aspect and I thought it was way ahead of it's time when it was released and didn't actually think I would like it, when I finally played it though I loved it. During the parties travels both between cities in the wilds as well as numerous dungeons they will cross paths with many enemies such as wild monsters or Archadian empire troops. During fights or traveling the player can use up to three characters on the field at any one time and as long as they aren't being targeted can be swapped with back up members at anytime. These three members in the field can be swapped between at any point and given orders to attack, use a variety of offensive/defensive and heal items/abilities etc. or they can be set up to automatically perform actions under certain conditions.

This is called the gambit system. Each character has a set amount of slots for these gambits which can be set up to target specific enemies, characters or themselves under a variety of conditions to perform an action. For example "Ally health <60% - use potion" so any ally who drops below 60% health that character will automatically heal them with a potion. It's a simple but effective system where you can assign priorities to which gambit they will use over others in different situations gaining both more slots for these gambits as well as conditions to use them and abilities as the game goes on both from leveling up and shops. It is a system people either love or hate but you can turn them off at any tame should you wish and control characters manually. I liked to set up my gambits and have my party take a boss out running on automatic without me even touching the controller if I've done it right but there is some flexibility if you want.

The big change to the game over the original is each character now take on up to two specific jobs that can't be changed, locking in what skills, weapons and armor they can use for the entire game rather than everyone being a jack of all trades super soldier as in the original. This makes for a much more interesting and strategic game where you have to choose characters jobs very carefully as you can't go back once they take on that job. I also found myself swapping between characters a hell of a lot more to use different skills such as various magic or long ranged attacks etc. How everyone plays will be entirely up to your job choices and it makes the party feel a lot more diverse.

Visually this game is just wonderful. It's obviously still a PlayStation 2 game and that must be taken into account but in many places it looks better than some PS4 games. It was cutting edge at the time of release and with higher detailed models, crisp outlines and better colors it looks much better. There are some blurry undetailed textures here and there for backgrounds compared with the detailed character models but all in all FFXII still looks fantastic thanks to it's great usage of color and design. I seriously love the overall art and atmosphere of FFXII from the normal citizens, the races, buildings, armor etc. It all looks great.

The audio and music are also fantastic. The whole soundtrack was re-recorded, you can switch between it and the original in the menu to see the difference and use whichever you prefer. I personally loved the higher quality new soundtrack, the music is exactly the same otherwise which is no bad thing because the soundtrack is great. A nice mixture of more upbeat tunes such as exploring the city of Rabanastre up to the more epic orchestral boss fights. As for the voice acting, I always loved it in Final Fantasy XII and the voice acting is exactly the same, no re-recordings of that. The cast does a great job of all standing out, from the British skypirate (Balthier is the leading man after all) to the enigmatic Vierra and grizzled sounding Knight, each part is really perfect for each character. The only problem is some of the voice acting sounds like it was recorded through a tin can or a tiny room and comes across as a little echoey, it didn't bother me much, just something I noticed people should be aware of.

Lastly on my standard review list is value. I got the platinum trophy in around 110 hours beating all super bosses, doing all optional hunts and side quests. I was however doing this having played it all before and a lot at x4 speed. For someone new to the game that's not hunting out every little secret or trying to take on the 100 levels of trial mode it's still a solid 40 hours experience which at £30 was good value to me.

In conclusion Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age is a great game. It improves on the original balancing out characters and combat with better visuals, improved music, an ability to speed run through the large open areas. It has a ton of content and is just an all round great game. I can see how some people may be turned off by both the gambit system and the story but it's worth a try as you may end up surprised and loving it like I did eleven years ago.

Recommended.

+ Gambit system is excellent.
+ New job selections make for a more diverse party.
+ Great visuals, color and music.
+ Balthier.

- Voice acting is superb but sounds like it was recorded in a small room. May annoy some people though I was fine with it.

Endwalker broke me on many, many levels. It's a beautiful conclusion to the main storyline of final fantasy XIV, and I loved every bit of it. It really ramps up the spectacle for the final chapter and there were many moments I was in awe at what the game ended up doing. And it. Did. Not. Pull. Any. Punches. It is both painful and beautiful in equal measure. I lost how many times it made me cry. It keeps up the quality of combat from shadowbringers, and I can't wait for them to add more in the patch content. If anything, I'm a little bit sad that there will be more expansions and that the game cannot get a definitive conclusion, but I'm happy how they pulled it off.

I'm so divided with this one, like most people, I played Automata first, in 2017, and I loved it so much, I felt so connected with the game, and I was hyped for the remaster to come out since the original version was complicated for me to play, and then 1.22 came out, I finished it nearly 1 year after, I liked it, but that wasn't enough to forgive all of the problems the game have
This game is a repetitive mess, if you want to finish it, you're gonna need some patience in mind, because you're gonna replay most of the game a few times, plus, at a certain point, you'll need to get all of the weapons to continue
And this replay value is just filled with backtracking (I curse you, Junk Heap, you were a mistake)
So, was the last ending worth it ? Not for me. It was satisfying, but not enough to make me think that all of this was worth it.

I'm obviously a bit late to the party here. There's a lot that's been said about Shadow of the Colossus, and it deserves a lot of the recognition it gets. However, there's also a lot of things that don't hold up very well playing it for the first time now. You can see its influence all over modern games, but that doesn't mean that going back to the source of some of those inspirations is necessarily fun. The core idea here is great, a boss rush with a puzzle slant to the boss design, and a beautiful open world to explore. Unfortunately both of those aspects kind of fell apart for me by the end.

The bosses start out very easy, and you can run through them comically fast. Difficulty ramps up later on, but not in a way that's very fun or engaging. Whenever I got stuck, it was due to a puzzle solution being obtuse, and whether I eventually figured it out, or it was one of the handful of times I ended up looking up how to do something, it almost never felt satisfying to figure out or to actually execute. The last two were especially egregious, and both took way too long to climb back up if you did the wrong thing. The only kind of mechanical difficulty comes from the poor controls, or falling off of a colossus and having to repeat a section, either due to running out of stamina or getting tired of holding the grip trigger. They seemingly decided that you should really feel like you're hanging on for your life by giving you hand pain through the controls. Also while you're on the colossus, it trying to shake you off often seems random or glitchy, and leads to a lot of just holding a direction and hoping it gives you a second to climb, or mashing the button trying to figure out when the opening for your attack is supposed to be. It looks nice, but the gameplay doesn't really line up with that experience. Beyond having to hold down a trigger for 90% of the game, this does a lot of other things with the controls that game devs have mostly learned just not to do anymore, even on the supposedly improved "modern" controls in the remake. The colossi and their environments are suitably impressive visually, and the scale of them is communicated very well. That at least was good enough to keep me going.

The struggles with the controls continue in the open world, where you have far and away the worst controlling horse in any video game and a camera more concerned with cinematic angles than letting you see where you're going. I can understand the idea behind wanting more weighty, realistic, and less responsive horse controls, but they went way too far with it here. If Agro is within 50 feet of even a slight bump in the terrain, much less narrow walls, he'll often refuse to move or go at a glacial pace, and turning feels like you're playing with over a second of input delay. Doing things on horseback like using your sword's guiding light or the bow is also a pain with the way the controls are laid out. The light showing you your next objective is an interesting idea I suppose, but combined with the way the world is laid out and how long it takes to traverse it, it ended up just being an especially annoying objective marker with a lot of trial and error of going down long narrow passages between mountains to find out a full minute or two later that it wasn't the way to go. The world looks nice, but you'll quickly realize there's not much to do or see here. I love exploration in games and am totally fine with it being mostly self-motivated, I definitely wouldn't expect this to be littered with side quests and collectibles like many modern open world games, but it just never really motivated me to explore here. There are collectibles, but they just never really caught my interest and I have no idea what they do. The map feels like just empty padding for the already short runtime.

I'm conflicted on the story, I think the simple setup is cool and worked well, but being given nothing over the course of the game that adds to it starts to feel repetitive, and being taken back to the hub feels like a missed opportunity to add basically anything here. Then at the end there's the big story dump, and I don't know that I really liked where it went. Maybe I would have been more okay with it if there was any kind of natural build up there, or hinting at what was happening, but it's just a long cutscene after the game is over. The pacing felt really off, and I would have been much more okay with the game just ending before any of that and leaving it up to interpretation more.

This review is pretty negative, but I really had an alright time overall. The game kept my attention and I finished it pretty quickly, it just has a lot of issues that I haven't seen talked about much, while its praises don't really need repeating by me. Still worth a try, if for nothing else, at least to see how important it is to gaming history.

It's hard to put into words what hearing "The Place I'll Return To Someday" as I booted Final Fantasy IX almost 20 years after I first played it made me feel. Whenever people bring up IX on the FF discourse, it's inevitable that it will be referenced as the "return to the roots" of the franchise, a celebration and throwback to the old FF style of the NES and SNES day. That would be however selling IX short, as it stands as a wholy unique and standout in the series, filled with a very specific magic and craft not found in the rest of the entries.

Coming at the tail end of the Playstation's life cycle, IX presents itself as the most confident and polished 32 bit FF without the awkwardness of VII's first steps into the 3D age or VIII's identity crisis. Framed as a Shakespearean tale, IX boasts the most lavished and outstanding pre-rendered backgrounds the system can offer, a fantastical believable world to explore drenched in personality, and arguably one of the best soundtracks in the whole franchise, all combining to create an impressive and engaging emotional roller-coaster.

Of course, what elevates IX even further is without a doubt its cast of characters. Moving away from the gloomy and teenager previous two entries, IX presents a group of charismatic misfits straight out of a drama play that have such wonderful interplay and banter between each other. From Zidane's playful flirtishious and carefree nature, to Steiner's obnoxious gallantry and prissiness, to Vivi's bashful inquisite and cowardly personality, it's incredibly easy to fall in love with the cast and care for each of them as the plot gets going.

It's understandable that some might look at IX as the "childish" entry in the PS1 trilogy, since it's presentation and script give a great vibe of fairytale adventuring, but it's within those expectations and constraints that IX shines the most. As the story develops, our protagonists find themselves at numerous crossroads and conflits that speak to their struggles and desires, and the game presents surprisingly poignant and mature subject matters, like confronting one's own mortality, that turn IX into an incredible personal and profound experience.

As our heroes come apart at the end of the first act when things start going south and they reunite back at the start of the third act, it becomes evident to see that IX has a firm grasp on the power of storytelling and uses it to its fullest advantage. Zidane and Garnet's natural relationship development propels the narrative forward beautifully, and the members that progressively get added to your team only end up enriching it, and by the end when IX uses the power of its medium to deliver the "Your're Not Alone" setpiece to answer the age old question of why you should strive to be good, you will know you will carry these characters with you beyond the game.

IX doesnt have the best combat nor the best graphics in the series. It doesnt have the history and influence titles like VI or VII have. The third act isnt as tightly constructed as the previous two, and Amarant gets into the team a little to late for the player to care for him. It's not perfect. But it doesnt have to be. IX is the quintessencial example of "bigger than the sum of its parts", and you will be hard pressed to not feel a tingle of joy mixed with sadness as those credits roll. It was nice to revist Final Fantasy IX, the game that first showed me that there was more to videogames than just levels to be completed. Goodbye, the place I'll return to someday.

The Last of Us Part II is a technical wonder. Naughty Dog made full use of the PlayStation 4’s and Pro’s power!

The voice acting is incredibly strong, the motion capture is pure quality, the graphics and animations are on top and the soundtrack is bombastic.

Most importantly, the story didn’t completely resonate with me, personally. Some directions felt like they were forced and a few characters were written out of character. Sometimes, when they brought up some topics like Lev being a transgender, they didn’t even scratch the surface and I think that is wasted potential.

The gameplay was rather simple and easy, not exactly my cup of tea, but it’s still fun.

One of the best things of this game is its accessibility. It was possible for a blind player to platinum this game and I think that is something each and every single game should at least TRY to accomplish.

EDIT after a replay:
The story resonated with me a lot more, so I’ll give this game 1.5 extra stars.

Though I plan to eventually play all the mainline FF games eventually, what drew me to FFXII initially was the Ivalice setting. Despite having fallen off Tactics, I wanted to see more of that world and XII certainly didn't disappoint.

Throughout the journey, there were a lot of parallels I felt I could draw to Star Wars. From the ongoing conflict between the Empire and the Resistance, to the airship dogfights, to the sky pirates, to even some of the music. The city of Rabanastre and the surrounding jungles, plains, mountains, and cities are all sights to behold. Rabanastre in particular really feels alive with all the NPCs walking about and shops to visit, and lots of clan hunts and hidden side quests are available if you talk to the right people. Outside the cities, each area in your journey is a large sprawling map with multiple zones (think Monster Hunter-style) and it truly feels like a proper adventure.

The gambit system which drives the combat is really cool because it works like a bunch of if-statements, allowing you to effectively program your party to play the game for you. For example, you could tell your white mage that if they see any party member affected with blind then cast blindna on them, or if you see someones health drop below 50% then cast a curaga. It's a fantastic system that you can easily modify and leave on for easy encounters and toggle off as necessary for extended boss fights. This is combined with the license system, which is the successor to the sphere grid from FFX. Each character has a checkerboard-styled grid depending on which job they have been assigned, and each enemy kill awards a number of points to spend on the "license" to use certain spells, abilities, and even equipment. As someone who typically despises grinding, I felt compelled and even satisfied doing so in this game just because seeing my LP increase to be able to fill out the grids to equip new things was so addicting.

The overall story is compelling with a good mix of both your main party's quest and the politics and internal struggles of the Empire. It also caps off in a fantastic way, with one of the better finales I have seen in an FF game so far. I only wish I could speak so highly of your party members' individual story arcs and growth. Only half of them really have meaningful development and a real stake in the plot, whereas the other half kind of feel like they are just there for the journey. It would have been nice to get another game featuring this cast because they definitely deserve another go.