Takumi understander (I wish I could give this game a little bit of a higher score but some of the character routes pacing.....ABYSMAL) tho it made me love Chaos;Child even more than I already did through the introduction of more background which is 10000% a plus and as a standalone story it's brilliance. At the time I don't imagine much of any VNs were doing what it accomplishes with its ever present & heavy atmospheric tones of sheer vulgarity and dull isolationism.

At first I was honestly disappointed that Desire Blue Sky never plays in this game due to my hype throughout the years I stalled this game coming across it but it didn't even matter in the end, A Will absolutely bangs. Speaking of which, too bad a 'certain company' has yet to patch out the glitch that interrupts the ending scene from, ya know... actually playing!

Congrats on Falcom resisting the pressing urge to implant an asinine brother sister romance plot within the confines of the story, I'm prouder than they could EVER know and I haven't even played a Trails game just yet.

ANYWAY wow I was pretty blown away by this one, I didn't expect to have nearly as much fun as I did with it. It encourages exploration as well as playing the game to it's fullest like far too few JRPGS can accomplish these days and the gameplay loop is beyond addicting as a direct result. Every little moment feels beyond satisfying and engineered to help cultivate the sense of community this game is trying its damnedest to get across with its not too slow, but not too fast and furious pacing. Although it's player choice whether or not you do every quest and go out and gather materials to keep the game's loop in perpetual motion this is a case where I'm glad my propensity for playing games is inherently slanted towards doing as much as I can before I finish it up. That's how rewarding it feels to go from combat/exploration/material gathering to another glimpse at the excellent story & character development unfolding at a steady pace. I truly enjoyed getting to know and experience the lives of each one of the castaways, speaking to everyone immediately once a new dialogue was available just to cover all of my bases fostered a sense of curiosity at how they must've lived before becoming stranded on the cursed island of Seiren. I had immersed myself fully into their mannerisms and ways of living that I feel I, along with Laxia, came to further understand the complexity of those around me. How our own unique circumstances shape us into the people we will be for the rest of our lives, how everyone is different, and grasping that... really is just half the battle towards understanding another human beings soul.

Everything about this game hit for me all in all and it's gotten me a LITTLE too hyped, perhaps, to play the other Falcom games so I'm gonna try to temper my expectations as best I can and go into each one with a fresh mindset, hopefully able to experience each one with the same sense of amazement and fresh inquisitiveness I was YS VIII.

High-key star struck by this game !!! It does its best as an open world foray for the series and succeeds in many respects, although it definitely fails in others. Despite it's give or take nature I had a ton of fun with the game and hope the Sonic Team keeps the momentum up going forward because they've got a solid foundation they could build on here

The portals superseded all other aspects for me all in all tbh which is too be expected and may require an imminent Generations replay to fully comprehend why I loved them so much I just wanted MORE of those...

Like A Dragon Ishin: The Man Whose Name Was Repeated A Thousand Times

Besides that I wish I could give this game a higher score. It's got everything you could ever want from your typical RGG Studio experience and more, complete with goofy side content that I shirked the main story for at every single opportunity possible, funky dialogue & digs on popular figures of the time period (i.e. Souseki Natsume who would've been exactly 1 year old at the time of the games' release) that I was beyond happy to see returning to what in my head, i imagined to be a game that would take itself 'too seriously', but nope, it's still a tried and true RGG game at heart. Another Life was lots of fun as well, giving an ample incentive to visit it at every opportunity possible; even though Haruka had no factor into anything outside of those scare side content segments some of those scenes though scant, were very well implemented.

SAKAMOTO RYOMA was of course every bit the Kiryu I'd come to know and love over the course of such a spanning saga of games and so understandable was easily my personal favorite character, who else could it be, really. BUT OKITA THOugh damn I love that man a hell of a lot, he and Ryoma going on quirky and sometimes heart wrenching escapades together warmed me down to my very core, especially considering who the former is based after.

In the thick of my issues with the game, however, lies the story. I just couldn't connect with everything going on, the pacing felt contrived and all over the place, none of the characters besides the aforementioned Ryoma and Soji felt substantially developed or explored on deeply enough for me to care, and all-in-all the game just left me feeling empty by its conclusion, all due to my inability to feel for much of anything there. I have plenty of gripes with this game but in the end, I can't hate or even dislike it. The side content truly kept me hooked and coming back for more, and I did most of the dilligence records (~80%) as well as over half of the completion list which alone took me a looot longer than I initially projected. And speaking of the content off the beaten path, I can with full confidence express I learned MUCH more about the Edo period than I knew before, so since I've was watching Gintama in tandem with playing this game, it actually BOLSTERED my enjoyment of that show even more which,, is pretty funny lmao... the different sides of the Shinsengumi such as Hijikata's softheartedness being a major aspect of his personality reminded me a ton of the not selfsame Hijikata I knew from Gintama.

I'll end this review here, I've def written an entire essay and a half at this point but my feelings on this game are so beyond complicated Idk I just felt I had to place them somewhere, even if onto the isolated box of a video game logging website.

I have now officially experienced the Hikkikomori route + all the side content available there as well as the main route and all the side content available there as well and can confidently state without a doubt, this is my favorite video game

If I had to put it in words... the staying power has superseded all the greats among what I personally love. This game was presented to me at, a confusing point in my own life, where I needed some sort of outlet to deal with my issues... well, being that this story helped accomplish that as well as invading my own headspace (hi-fricking-larious I know) for months on end after the credits initially rolled I knew it was something I'd hold dear to my heart for years to come. And, yeah, two years later it's still all that and more to me.

HIGH-KEY the greatest game in the series, what a ride Capcom has been through over the past four years remaking all the good Resident Evil games... since they've run out of ones most people enjoy I assume this train has finally trekked through its final locale lol

For serious though this game is just brimming with insanely good ideas to make the game feel fresh to veteran players, once the credits rolled I was just thinking to myself "well damn now all the people who've yet to play the original can go do that now!" Because they just feel like two separate entities VIBES wise. It's amazing how they straight up said we're gonna make one of the most groundbreaking games of its time in 2005 and then pretty much do it again but better. Although the adjective groundbreaking may not apply so much nowadays... they went insane on this game.