My sincerest apologies to Subnautica and its fanbase. I really tried, I gave it a more than fair shot, but I just couldn't commit myself to this enough to see it through to the end. Part of it is I just really can't stand survival games; I don't have the creativity or drive to play through them, and I need more concrete goals and a clearer endpoint in order to hold my interest. In the last four months since I started I think I only put in about 15 hours, but within those 15 hours I restarted at least three times due to feeling directionless and not having the patience to grind for materials. Then it dawned on me that I haven't touched the game in 8 weeks, and I have no motivation to go back.

But I'm fully aware this is a me thing. I really have nothing negative to say about Subnautica. I was really hoping to click with the things people talk about with this, I wanted to explore and discover this beautiful underwater world, and feel simultaneously awed and horrified by what lied in its depths, in a similar fashion to Outer Wilds. I know I didn't get far enough, but I just don't have the ambition to trek any longer.

At another time when I don't hate my life and don't feel burnt out on my hobbies, I would like to give this another shot. Until then, I'm moving on to something else

Uncharted has always been the frontrunner of cinematic presentation in video games, but it's always been a backhanded compliment to say that this series' defining quality is how well it imitates something it's not. Like Uncharted 3 before it, Uncharted 4's story, more specifically its dedication to its characters, elevates it as more than just a movie with a half-baked video game on top.

The story is pretty much just the Incredibles: a husband gets drawn back into the life of his glory days, ends up marooned and alone on a tropical island, and is saved by the people who love him. And as someone whose favorite movie is the Incredibles, I'm completely down for this.

The first seven chapters are perfect. The pacing, the amount of gunfights, how it sets up Nate and Sam's backstories, introducing Nadine Ross the scariest badass motherfucker in this series, the gorgeous graphics and aesthetics of its locales, the continually impressive performances and cinematography, how the game shows the passage of time at the auction house and when Nate meets Sam again, the slow mundane moments of chapters 3 and 4, they couldn't make it better if they tried.

The thematic journey that Nate takes, mirrored by all the pirates he's tracking down, isn't subtle but is still perfectly poetic. Despite being just as smart if not smarter than the dead pirate kings they're tracking down, neither of the brothers are wise enough to learn the lesson that all of those pirates failed to learn, and their one-way ticket to self-destruction becomes more and more apparent the deeper they dig themselves. The idea of a pirate utopia is so absurd it's nearly comical, and it makes you wonder how anyone, especially the very pirates who founded it, could possibly believe in such a fairy tale, or be surprised that it ended the way it did. But that absurdity is easy to look past because, like Uncharted 3, the story serves its characters over its plot.

It starts to lose me a bit once chapter 8 hits though. The environments are gorgeous, but the pacing begins to falter a bit as the really open areas of the world tour take a bit too long and yet simultaneously take up a fraction of the game's run time, compared to the island which takes nearly half the runtime. On top of that, the character building is put on the back-burner for too long. Sam is the devil on Nate's shoulder, constantly tempting him more and more to the life he rightfully left behind, disguised behind deceit and false guilt. Elena is the angel, the princess who saves him, despite everything he did to betray their trust. Sully is the Jiminy Cricket on his hypothetical third shoulder, his compass that never forces him in any direction and stays with him regardless, but who does his best to steer him towards what's right. The problem is that we don't get enough of these relationships. Sam and Nate are the most fleshed out, but anytime they're on the brink of real tension or change in their relationship, they discover some new path to the treasure and that moment gets postponed. Elena and Nate have some of the best moments in the franchise; this is my favorite iteration of Elena easily, but their tension is also continually postponed and ultimately unresolved. I had moments where I thought to myself "maybe this is the one that doesn't have a happy ending..." but the game is never bold enough to allow for those conversations to happen. Sully, sadly, also just doesn't get enough. He's just kinda there, but he's still fun at least.

That being said, the epilogue is perfect, as is the climactic final boss. Nothing in this game surpasses the spectacle of Uncharted 3, but it's still fantastic and finishes its thematic journey for its characters. And thank God that it's finally a treasure that doesn't have some stupid magic bullshit that transforms everyone into zombies. It's just treasure, and the true corruption comes from the journey itself. Beautiful.

It's been over a week since I finished this game. I have a lot of thoughts, most of them negative, and I didn't really know how to put them all together coherently. So instead I'm using a format that I've always disliked: a list of positives and negatives. TLDR this game is super cancellable, Persona 5 does 95% of what this game does substantially better, and with how much I disliked the majority of this I'm scared to play Persona 3 and might just watch the movies instead.


Positives
I love Kanji; easily one of my favorite characters in a video game that I've seen in years
I didn't like Dojima and Nanako at first, but they both really came around for me
I like the Investigation team collectively, and I think they're a more consistent group of friends than the Phantom Thieves are
Naoto in particular is a well handled character; she's the most important party member to the plot and has several interactions with the main cast long before joining the investigation team, so she doesn't feel like a shallow final party member

The style is pretty good. The TV aesthetic and the yellow color scheme, the menus, the use of horizontal & vertical lines and the use of depth of field lines (idk how to describe this sorry).

The core Persona gameplay loop is just as solid and addicting as Persona 5. The "just one more" mentality is strong with this one.

Even though I'm not a fan of the ost as a whole, there are some undeniable bangers, (Pursuing My True Self, Signs of Love, Specialist, Heaven, Backside of the TV, I'll Face Myself, and Heartbeat, Heartbreak)

Goddamn, do Persona games know how to make incredibly emotional endings



Negatives,
P4 handles a lot of things very sloppily
- None of the side characters are introduced in the plot, making it cumbersome and unintuitive to unlock the majority of the social links
- Both dungeons and social links with party members are locked behind dialogue with NPCs, which is one of the worst parts about the game and is both confusing and pace-breaking
- There are so few things to do in the social sim half of the game that at night and especially when it rains, pretty much the only worthwhile thing you can do is power-level your social stats by shoving meat and rice bowls down your throat
- The randomly generated dungeons and lack of complexity in the battle system make the rpg half of the game uninteresting and only fun by making it as easy possible and steamrolling everything
- The game doesn't really care about the plot until the sixth dungeon, leading to a long time where it feels like there's no momentum in the story
- The villain is a lame twist villain who doesn't give off even the most remote inkling that they're evil until the reveal and then their personality completely changes, and they straight up tell the main characters that they have no motivation for all the murders they commit.
- Some social links seem to retcon themselves by the end in a way that doesn't fully realize the theme of facing yourself, and many characters suffer from a difference in how the game portrays them at the end of their social link and how they interact in the main story/special events.


But there are three enormous problems that made me not enjoy my time with this

The homophobic and perverted tone and "comedy"
- Yes, this game comes out of 2000s Japan and is filled with cringey, dated anime tropes that come at the expense of women and the LGBTQ+ community. Every character, even the gay one, act like talking about sexuality is some unforgivable taboo. It's blatantly and unapologetically homophobic, transphobic, fatphobic, and misogynistic. That being said, the culture around homosexuality and gender roles in Japan is very different than it is in the west, so there’s definitely commentary and intention that gets lost in translation, and it’s possible that this direction was intentional in a way that makes more sense and/or tells a more important message in Japanese culture. However, I still think the portrayal in this game is ultimately antagonistic and needs to be called out, especially since Persona 5 isn't like this and it's good that the series seems to be moving away from it (although I would love to hear a different take on this topic from someone more knowledgable about it than me).
- There's also a section of the game where the high school that the protagonists attend put on a beauty pageant, cross-dressing contest, and a swim-suit competition where the participants (both students and a teacher) are judged by the collective student body. It's so distasteful and this tone persistent throughout the game.

A cast of extremely unlikable and shallow characters
- Yosuke, despite being one of the more complex characters, is one of the main catalysts of this game's ridiculously perverted and homophobic tone; Chie is more childish and obnoxious than Nanako, a literal six year old; Yukiko and Rise are very archetypal and often fail to offer more than a couple running gags as character quirks; Naoto is well written into the story but is just kinda there as far as personality goes, so she ends up feeling inoffensive at best but still ends up as a victim of the game's transphobia and the game hardly does an appropriate job of respectfully addressing her queerness.
- Now for the most part, these characters are tolerable because their worst character traits are not at the forefront at all times. If there's one thing that the game does right, it's making the Investigation team a believable and healthy group of friends, and I found the team enjoyable as an entity that was more than the sum of its parts.
- None of this applies to Teddie, who is an abomination to humanity. In a game filled with one dimensional characters, Teddie takes the cake for being easily the most despicable and least empathetic.
- Kanji is also an exception, but for the opposite reason. Kanji is miraculously an incredibly layered and likable character both in his social link and in the main plot, the only character aside from Dojima who has complex and well developed character growth in their social link, and ultimately feels like he was written for a completely different game and shoved into Persona 4. The contrast between the quality of the writing for Kanji and everyone else is insane.

An exceptionally mishandled theme that tells a straight up bad message
- Conceptually, the idea that everyone has a dark side that they don't show and that they don't acknowledge to themselves, but that undeniably exists and needs to be faced in order to grow as a person is a great theme. Many great works of art tackle this subject, and video games are no stranger to darker versions of ourselves. Celeste is a masterpiece in part because it handles this theme so well.
- Persona 4's take on this theme is handled poorly and I would argue is an unhealthy message. I have two main reasons for this argument. First, we don't know these characters for long enough to make the shadows seem believable; in fact, they seem completely out of character for nearly all of them. Secondly, the game has absolutely zero subtlety when portraying these shadows. They’re portrayed as being the hypothetical worst version of each character. It's not just out of character, it's comical how they portray these characters' "evil sides."
- The ultimate message with the party members accepting their shadows is that we should accept that these comical portrayals of our worst personality traits and inner thoughts manifested are our "true selves," and that's a bad message; it allows no room for inherent goodness in people and says that we shouldn't believe anyone has any. It's also a bad way for these characters to think about self-image and self-actualization.
- This problem is at its worst with Kanji’s shadow. Again, I’m not knowledgable about how this portrayal would be perceived in Japanese culture at the time of its initial release or now, and by extension I can’t begin to guess precisely what the intention was, but Kanji’s shadow is just the manifestation of his queerness, and putting that on the same pedestal as the portrayals of Yosuke, Chie, and Namatame’s shadow isn’t good. This is a really big point. Personally I'm straight and cisgender, and again have no insight into Japanese cultural understanding of LGBTQ related topics, so if anyone reading this identifies as LGBTQ and interprets this differently please let me know, I'd love to hear another take on this if someone has one.
- But to top all this off, the game retcons itself with Namatame's shadow by saying that the shadows we see are just what our subconscious mind wants to see in these people. All of a sudden it completely shifts how we read into the shadows, the game's approach to writing them, and the presuppositions behind the cast.

I don't know how to go about writing my thoughts on the most critically acclaimed game on Backloggd. How daunting of a task is that?! Especially when, to put it politely, I hold a dissenting opinion. And maybe the only one ever about this game. So, instead of trying, I'm going to copy and paste all the notes I frantically jotted down when I finally finished it at 1:30 in the morning, a play session that was bookended by work the night before and work the following morning. Feel free to read, critique, or ignore at your leisure.


So much irrelevancy to the case
Very frustrating for me in particular. I am not a Skyrim gamer. I do not appreciate when side quests take so much spotlight away from the main quest.
I want to solve this murder. Anything that isn't directly related to that is worthless to me (outside of getting xp). Why should I bother painting walls, looking for imaginary bugs, starting a night club, exploring cursed buildings, attempting to persuade a cargo container to open, or any number of other quests that I never did?
Even the history and world building of Revachol often distracts from the case, although these often provide motivations for key characters and establish the tone of the world, so I'm more forgiving of it. Even if I skim through the details and forget them immediately afterwards.


The ending is amazing
I appreciate how many quests are neatly brought together and wrapped up in the end. It still does not justify the time spent on the quests since they are optional, regardless of how seamlessly they bolster the ending
That said, I love the phasmid


Very respectable above all else
A game that dares to talk about serious subject matter (politics, long-term consequences of our actions/allegiances, corruption, racism, rape victims)
A game that doesn't need to "game-ify" itself with marketable clichés, and is confident in its own identity
A game thats gameplay is reading , yet still embraces interactivity and its inspiration in table-top mechanics to make it something only possible in this medium
Is it the best example of something like this in the medium? No. But it's the exact kind of game that we need more of


The voice acting is stellar, especially the narrator, even if the deliveries often lack a natural-feeling speaking pace.
And also thank god for it, I could not imagine playing through all of this without voice acting


Concept of allegiances is a little half-baked in my opinion. Like, sure narratively maybe my political allegiances say something about me as a player or about my character or some larger thing about my political allegiance itself or the corruption of police, whatever. But at the end of the day, my sole objective is to solve a murder. With a game with this many branching dialogue options, what information I choose to disclose or not disclose to other characters is important, and as this game often shows, people are easily manipulated. Saying the right thing in the right way to the right people gets me to my objective faster. My perception is that my precinct thinks I'm a joke anyway, how much influence over their reputation could my actions possibly have? I guess I think that what politics I choose to "side with" doesn't actually have as much impact as the game thinks it does. What if I just want to role play as a cop who lies? Do the means justify the ends? Does that make me corrupt? Who cares about what a drunk, disgraced cop does anyway? I have no significance here. So long as I can do my job, nothing else matters


I think the game is undeniably pretentious. Maybe its the point? Being an amnesiac protagonist is so overdone, and the ending kinda deus ex machinas some bullshit excuses about why I have the potential to be a complete god at everything despite what an ugly, pathetic, sack of shit I am. The whole limbic system, reptile brain, shenanigans of spouting hopeless cynicism about life circumstances I have no idea about is very pretentious. Please stop attempting to overstimulate and impress me with overly detailed writing and your enormous dictionary and preaching to me the relatively shallow, cynical, and nihilistic perspective on life and the world (the expression, my mysterious ex-lover, all my internal systems, etc.)


Easily save-scummable, disappointingly so. I wish the game would incentivize living with your failed checks in a better way


Game lies to you. Don't know if I like that. I like how it encouraged you to take agency over you interactions with the game and not just exhaustively explore every possible game interaction. It's good for storytelling as well as thought-provoking gameplay decisions. On the other hand, it's stupid. The game constantly encourages you to do things that are in your least interest, and can sometimes feel like a cheap trick or slap on the wrist for not knowing better. Maybe it's even a little demeaning.


The writing is great. No denying that. Very detailed, communicates multiple perspectives well (thoughts/characters). Dialogue is always believable given what we know about the people. The characters are all surprisingly memorable and distinct, despite the large cast.
All that said, a work cannot be saved on writing alone. The pacing is often awful. Every time we meet a new character or find a new area, we have to spend half an hour learning everything they have to say/it has to see. It exponentially worsens the game when you factor for how irrelevant many quests are
Maybe just my playstyle? don't care. Also it's kind of the entire game, and in your best interest to do so, so no, not just my playstyle. I can't justify "oh just don't talk to/click on everything/one." Not engaging with a game is not justification for it doing something poorly


No humor. A little light-heartedness goes a long way to investing me in these people and the world they inhabit that make the tragic moments hit harder

I love Kim (and Titus)
I wish you talked with Kim on the balcony and reflected every night


Characters dying has little impact. Mechanically the only difference is that you can no longer talk with characters, but I feel like that doesn't matter, as many characters I have little interaction with anyway. I found it more impactful when Lisa and Morrell left after failing to discover the phasmid. They felt more "gone" that the characters who died


I believe most of my criticisms are criticisms about the game at its core, which is an unusual perspective for me. Ordinarily my criticism of a game (at least one I ultimately enjoy, if only partially), comes from how the game ultimately feels misguided or strays in some way (Chrono Trigger, Nier: Replicant, Zelda: MM & WW, Donkey Kong Country, Persona 5, Mother 3, Shadow of the Colossus, Owlboy). Otherwise I just hate it/feel indifferent about it.


My appreciation for this will definitely grow, and I may be persuaded to love it more


I feel like Ace Attorney challenged my understanding of the case and was a more effective "detective" game than this. I mostly went with the flow here
The game doesn't really give you suspects. You don't find out who the culprit is until you meet him for the first time. This isn't a detective game about narrowing down a list of suspects. It's a detective game about getting as much information as possible from everyone, and they all seem detached from the act itself. Even the Hardie boys who straight up confess to it. This isn't necessarily a criticism, but something I thought about a few days after playing.

Resident Evil is two very personal things to me:
1) It is the first franchise I've played since getting back into video games as a teenager that I've absolutely fallen in love with;
2) It is the most effective horror I've ever experienced.

It's such a mesmerizing combination of mechanics and atmosphere that creates an authentic and intense sensation of isolation and dread.

For the most part, REmake 2 joins the original remake in impeccable atmosphere. It doesn't capture quite the same tension as the original, but makes up for it with faster pacing, user-friendliness, a more action-oriented campaign, a surprisingly more engaging story, and even more surprising, very high replay-ability.

But despite its drastic shift in tone, it still captures horror and dread well, especially on hard mode (which is the only way to play the game if you ask me), through inventory management, the new over-the-shoulder perspective, its wide array of increasingly terrifying enemies, and especially through sound design.

The game has a few embarrassing problems however. The first of which is that the boss fights are horrible. Every single one. Ultimately satisfying to take down? Yes. But inexcusable in execution, especially the dumb as fuck crane boss.

I'm not a fan of the part where you play as Ada, it's really slow and tedious and reminiscent of the Miles and Mary Jane stealth sections from Spider-Man (2018), but damn does it show how much of a delightful bitch Annette is.

And my biggest personal grievance, the save room theme. There isn't one. It's not the original save them from RE2, and the new 30 second long song only plays the first time you enter a save room. It's incredibly disappointing; the rush of relief you get from finding a save room and hearing that ominous but soothing music was an integral part of the gameplay loop of the first, and not having a real safe theme play in save rooms every time is a tragedy.

But overall, still absolutely fantastic. I never expected to love Resident Evil like this before getting into the series. Now I wanna play every game in the series and want to chase that rush I get from it. Muah

I think that if there's one statement that sums up Undertale's thematic identity it would be "your actions have consequences." There's a lot that can be said about Undertale and how that direction made it such an important game. What's most interesting about Deltarune is how it directly contrasts the core message of Undertale. Rather than slowly letting you come to the realization of your influence over the world in Underale, this games comes out and immediately tells you its own core message: "your choices don't matter."

As someone who loves to study the work of individual artists/studios and see how their works evolve and what lessons they learn over time, this makes Deltarune immediately interesting to me. How will tobyfox develop this idea throughout Deltarune's lifespan (however long that may end up being) to say something as powerful as Undertale while challenging what Undertale had to say while also not contradicting it? It's a very exciting hook.

Deltarune further differentiates itself by embracing more tropes of RPGs whereas Undertale intentionally subverted the expectations tied to the genre. You have party members in deltarune, you have a magic system (that's actually super cool and would love to see other games expand on), there are no more random encounters, battles start instantaneously like in Chrono Trigger and its many successors, and the battle screens even resemble Final Fantasy instead of Dragon Quest. Deltarune makes it very clear from the beginning that this project is not going to be Undertale 2.0 and I couldn't be happier with the direction it's taking.

All of these thoughts apply to both chapters. My thoughts on chapter 2 exclusively though... I actually like chapter 1 more. I played both chapters the way you're supposed to play Undertale, and that method worked well in chapter 1. I think that, despite a very predictable ending, Susie and Lancer are better written characters than anyone in chapter 2 and the writing both comedic and emotional works better in chapter 1 over chapter 2. I also really don't like the cyber city aesthetic of chapter 2, it's not as interesting of a place to inhabit and very visually dull. I also don't like the music or the side characters kinda at all.

This chapter definitely has stuff I enjoy. The presentation is better overall, I love Queen and all the punch out boss fights, and snowgrave is a completely different beast from the rest of the chapter (I played passive and watched a snowgrave run afterwards), and in both chapters the ending outside of the dark world is the best part. But overall I enjoyed chapter 1 more. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I first played them back to back as opposed to everyone who had to wait three years in between, iunno.

I think I'll save talking about this game for when I finish chapter 2. Right now, I want to put into writing how grateful I am that I played this when I did: in a time when it feels like everything is going wrong. My life recently has been full of disasters so prevalent and so significant that it's hard to find hope, and I'm anxiously anticipating the moment when the next one strikes. On top of that my passion for video games and for art in general feels like it's waning. I'm not sure if it's writer's block or lack of community or mental health or fatigue at the state of the industry or maybe something else, but I don't play and write about games/film/etc with the same enthusiasm and perspective that I had in the past. And then here comes Deltarune, a free burst of fun from one of the most important and influential developers of the last decade. This game in its brief 3.5 hours felt like a reprieve from life, and towards the end I realized that for the first time in days I felt happy. Deltarune doesn't feel frustrating, unfinished, misguided, underwhelming, or shallow. It just feels like a funny, sincere, worthwhile gift.

I know this says nothing about the game itself, and even with all this said, chapter 1 is not some life-changing personal work for me. But it feels like a random act of kindness that completely changes your mood.

Ace Attorney 1 is definitely the funniest game in the trilogy. Justice for All adds so much to the formula, making it a great sequel. Comparatively, Trials and Tribulations seemingly doesn't bring much to the table. It's also (and this might be my hottest take ever) the most forgettable game in the trilogy. I first played all of these games about 4-5 years ago. When I got the HD trilogy last year, I found A.A.1 and JFA great revisits and great refreshers, but ultimately stories I remembered. I can't say the same for Trials & Tribulations. Outside of the basic premise of each case, a few tidbits about Godot, and knowing that this game delves deeper into Mia's significance, I remembered absolutely nothing about it. About a year ago I messed around with a tier list of Ace Attorney characters, and ended up making an entire tier for characters I straight up didn't remember, and all of them were ones from T&T. In the end, I'm thankful for this, because it allowed me to play this game essentially for the first time again. And what I discovered is that, while there isn't much new here, this game still is more than deserving of its reputation because it has the best goddamn story in the franchise by a landslide.

That's all there really is to say. This game is the most consistent in quality across each case compared to the first two. A.A.1 and JFA built consistency throughout the game in the form of character development (which worked well), but this game does that and has a plot that develops throughout each case. The final case has the most insane premise, mystery, and twists. I don't know how to compare it to Rise from the Ashes and Farewell my Turnabout, but Bridge to the Turnabout does something that those two don't do: its greatness doesn't exist independently of the rest of the game, and its ability to work as a phenomenal case that builds off the rest of the game is commendable. Also, this is the best soundtrack in Ace Attorney, I'm more confident of that now playing it again.

And now that I've replayed the entire trilogy, my love for this franchise feels reinvigorated, but I'm also in withdrawal. What a damn good series this is.

In the last three months, I have spent a whopping six hours on this game. I have had so little motivation to play it, and I feel like I'm forcing myself to get through it because I want to have beaten this game, you know what I'm saying...

The thing is, I loved Re:CoM. I played it four years ago and at the time I liked it more than KH1. There's a lot that I praised the game for back then that I still hold now. The setting and premise are really cool: it's this disorienting castle where Sora slowly loses his memories and has them replaced by fabricated ones. Both Sora and Riku go through much more compelling arcs compared to the original; we get to see this side of Sora that we never see again because of how he's being mentally manipulated, and Riku continues to struggle not only with the darkness but also with himself. On top of that the mystery is more interesting than in the original, and Naminé and the organization are great new characters, making this story overall one that I enjoy much more than the original.

In a way, this game is very ahead of its time. It's a deck-building semi-roguelike, genres that the indie scene would flourish in over a decade after this game came out. Learning new sleights and optimizing your deck to make the most use out of them was what made this game so fun for me when I played the remake. The difficulty balancing is non-existent, as the game is way too hard at the beginning when enemies all have higher value cards than you, and way too easy in the middle and end when you have access to so many sleights that break the game (lethal frame, sonic blade, freeze, raging storm, etc.), but that's the whole fun of it. Learning all the broken sleights and cramming as many of them into your deck as possible was awesome.

What's apparent to me now playing the GBA version is how tedious standard battles are. I surprisingly found the boss fights ok, but on every floor I eventually found myself running away from enemies as much as I could because of how dull and dragged out each one is. What's more frustrating is that you're never guaranteed to have the cards you need to open up new rooms, and it's really difficult to get new attack cards to flesh out your deck with. All things considered I think that Jupiter did a really good job with this game given the hardware it was developed for, but much like The World Ends With You, the gameplay systems are a bit too big for their britches. I think there's a lot of potential with this game, but that potential is handled sloppily, lacks in risk/reward, and doesn't prepare the player properly.

I doubt I will finish this game, despite how much I would like to. I feel like I could say so much more about it, but I'm just not having fun, and it's not worth it to push through for a game I've already played. If I ever pick it up again, I'd rather just play the remake instead.

Underwhelmed. It has its share of quirks that I'm not a fan of, like the shovel being an awkward base attack, the stages dragging on, the bosses being really cluster-fucky, and generally falling victim to a lot of NES-era trappings (bottomless pits, knockback, instakill spikes, infinitely respawning enemies, etc.) rather than surpassing them. Ironically nearly a decade after its initial release it now has an impossibly high reputation much like the games that inspired it, and I'm not at all interested in discussing this game's legacy or importance.

But also, I had fun with this! I love all the influences from so many classic titles, aesthetically its gorgeous and I particularly love the character designs on all the knights, the writing is witty, each stage does a really good job of introducing and challenging you on new concepts, I like the upgrade system and all the challenge stages and all the subweapons, the music is good (but I think I need a re-listen before I call any of it great), I love me a good world map, it's a comfy overall length, and I like the surprising somberness of its ending.

I'm not gonna join the legions of fans who worship it, but I'm not gonna join the factions who hate on it either. I didn't like it enough to be interested in jumping straight into its expansions, but I enjoyed it and I'm glad I've finally played it.

I haven't had this much fun with a game since I first played Katana Zero nearly two years ago! I've played a lot of games that I enjoyed more and thought were better than this in that time, but none that I just wanted to keep playing for hours and hours on end.

There are so many good ideas here. The combat is great; the simplicity of your options (hammer, jump, star power, or item, plus your parter character) combined with the flexibility given to you with the badges allows you to play in dynamic and experimental ways. It's the same system that makes Hollow Knight and Kingdom Hearts so much fun to play.

The action command is also great. It's interesting to compare this to Mario & Luigi. That game is a 2D game masquerading as a 3D game, and this game is a 3D game masquerading as a 2D one. This distinction makes all the difference between these two because in Mario & Luigi, the non-existent 3D space makes platforming awkward and combat confusing. In Paper Mario, there's so much more clarity with depth perception and timing button presses which makes it a painless experience in comparison. I also think it helps that there's a wider variety of action commands to perform and they are generally easier to execute than the ones in Mario & Luigi.

The greatest innovation of this game is undoubtedly the number values. RPGs are inherently number games, every single part of every system is all internal calculations being done by the game (item drops, damage values, stats, spawn rates, mp/stamina meters, inventory space, experience/leveling, hidden algorithms that the player is unaware of, etc.). In nearly every game in the genre, the numbers can get so high that they're practically incomprehensible. Here, you start with 10 HP and you do 1 damage with each attack, but the system is designed around it so these low numbers make perfect sense. There's no armor or accessories to equip, you only have three stats that you choose which one gets increased each level, and there are barely any modifiers to attack and defense, so it's a lot easier to wrap your head around the math in this game, and it also unintentionally criticizes the arbitrariness of numbers in other RPGs.

What I love most though, is the quirky and unique world here. This is the mushroom kingdom with all of Mario's familiar friends and enemies, but all put into one interconnected world and each given the smallest twist to make them weird and different. Your party members are classic Mario baddies but given the most insignificant characteristics and suddenly they're completely distinct. Goombario is just a goomba but with a blue baseball cap and slightly smoother teeth and all of a sudden is the little son of a goomba family. Watt is literally just a lil sparky with a pacifier, it's so genius. It shows that it is not at all difficult to make interesting new characters with the smallest changes.

Furthering that idea of this weird Mario world is the idea that generic Mario characters all live in little towns together. When I met Goombario I thought to myself that it was kinda fucked up how this little goomba kid idolizes Mario and he decides to follow him and be your first party member; this is the man who has killed hundreds of his species before. But then you encounter goombas in battle and you have Goombario tattle them and you realize that just because he's a goomba doesn't mean that Goombario is an enemy per se, and it also means that Mario has no reason to stomp on him. All of a sudden there's the slightest hint of complexity within the world of Mario and subtle stereotypical undertones are now present here. It's really small and not at all addressed by the game but I find it really cool how subtle that notion is and how it exists here.

My one complaint is that we don't get to see your party members in the story hardly at all. If anything they're relevant for the chapter they're introduced in and then they are just along for the ride and say nothing the rest of the game, and that's a shame. I loved Bow, she's a lovable bitch but also has a sense of justice that makes her not annoying, but after chapter 3 she's silent through everything. Watt and Lakilester (which is a genius name btw) get super shafted, especially Watt. These two just show up right before you fight the boss of the chapter and are given little to no personality or role, and that's really disappointing.

Also chapter 6 fucking sucks. And so does chapter 8 but not as much. It's made up for by most of the chapters having really fun stories and places to explore. Chapters 2 and 7 were my favorites.

If there was ever a Zelda game that encouraged me to slow down, explore, and appreciate the world around me, it would be Breath of the Wild. But Wind Waker would take second. Out of all the traditional Zeldas, this is the one that I most enjoyed wasting my time in, if that makes sense. Charting the open seas, filling out the map, and basically ignoring the main quest was easily the most fun part of the game. For me, it was the journey of the Wind Waker that I most enjoyed.

And thank goodness for that, because damn did I hate the destination. Wind Waker has got to have the weakest story in the series. Every other 3D Zelda game has some narrative element that really hooks me. Some more than others, obviously, but there's always at least something: Ocarina of time has a rich thematic story about coming of age, shintoism, and the tragedy of Link having his childhood stolen from him, with the most intimidating iteration of Ganon easily; Twilight Princess has impeccable atmosphere, the best cast of characters in the series, the most compelling introduction by far, and my favorite version of Link; Breath of the Wild has a great setting, a great exploration of how the different places and races of Hyrule interact with one another, and while it has a weak plot, it tells its story through the world and its inhabitants better than any other game; Majora's Mask, for as mad as that game made me, has a tragic core and some of the most beautiful moments in the series. Wind Waker has... a companion who isn't annoying? Yea, that's something.

I'll be honest, nothing about Wind Waker's narrative grabs me. I like the motivation for saving your sister, and I like how expressive Link is. I think both of those things were done better in Twilight Princess though. Sure, Link in Wind Waker emotes more than any other Link bar none, but I know the Link in Twilight Princess much better and have a much better understanding of his dynamics with the people in Ordon Village and see how he reacts when things happen to them. Honestly the character in Wind Waker I feel for most is Link's grandma. Outside of that, I don't find any of the characters to be very memorable (except for the guy who runs the battleship minigame, I relate to him).

The plot similarly is just kinda there. I went through the motions so much when going from place to place, and after Aryll is rescued from the forsaken fortress it feels like there's a huge lack of urgency to continue the main adventure. Sure, Ganon's still a threat, but once Aryll is safe, Link has accomplished everything he's set out to do. Outside of being the reincarnation of the hero, what reason does Link have to go and stop Ganon? To stop him from conquering Hyrule? What is there left to conquer? The world is flooded and everyone lives their lives on their islands almost independently of everyone else. Ganon in OoT, Skull Kid in MM, and Zant in TP all demonstrate the consequences of their rule over their respective lands in a way that Ganon in Wind Waker doesn't. Breath of the Wild doesn't do a great job in this department either necessarily, but Ganon already won there making the stakes much different (plus I'm not going to argue that BotW is a narrative masterpiece). Seriously, am I missing something here? If I'm forgetting something please let me know.

Wanna talk about what else is really weak? How about those dungeons? This is the lamest set of dungeons in the franchise, easily. They're lacking in visual variety, they feel like they all play themselves, and every boss is super disappointing. Shoutout to this game for having maybe the most obnoxious final boss in Zelda history. Seriously, puppet Ganon can kiss my ass. The rest are all really easy, and some suffer from what I'm dubbing "Zelda Syndrome." Have you ever played through a Zelda game and gotten stuck on a puzzle, only to eventually find out that the answer was something you already tried but you didn't quite hit the sweet spot so it didn't work and you assumed that it was something else entirely and then you get really frustrated? Maybe that's just me, but I've experienced this in every Zelda game to some degree except for maybe BotW. Gohma took me an embarrassingly long time to beat because I tried to grapple Valoo's tail but I guess I wasn't close enough because the reticle just didn't appear at first. Oh well.

Speaking of Gohma, another thing that irritates me about this game is how similar it feels to Ocarina of Time. Call me a hypocrite because of how much I love Twilight Princess, but I never hear anyone talk about how similar this game is to its predecessor. It's a direct sequel to the point where the story outright references OoT multiple times, and outside of the fact that you're sailing the ocean in WW, the structure of the journey seems exactly the same. It felt like I was playing a sequel in the same way that a new generation of Pokémon feels like playing a sequel.

Ok, so time to be nice. Did I like anything? Yea, like I said before, the journey itself was fun. I loved sailing to each quadrant of the map and discovering each new island. I couldn't imagine completing this game, but charting the entire sea and finding all the fairies and fighting multiple big octos was cathartic. I hated changing the wind every ten seconds, and at the beginning of the game I was put off by the railroaded nature of the quest for the pearls and all the downtime and the emptiness of the ocean and the terrible pacing and how repetitive all the content in the great sea is, but I came around to it and just enjoyed vibing with the game. I like how the triforce quest is super open ended and you can tackle anything in any way you want, and I like how the fish give you clues about how to proceed with your adventure, that makes it feel like I'm discovering things on my own.

I think the music is alright. It has some bangers like Dragon Roost Island, the first part of the Forest Haven, Aryll's theme, the title theme, and Outset Island, which is probably the happiest song in video games ever, I love it. The rest I could pass on though; never been a huge fan of the Great Sea theme, but I think it fits really well when playing the game though.

The visuals are outstanding too, obviously. I could be really cynical and nitpick some elements that I didn't enjoy about them, but I've been mean enough so I won't do that here.

Aaaaaaaaand yea, I think that's it. I've wanted to play this game for a decade and I'm very surprised by how much I didn't enjoy it. The next Zelda I play will definitely be Tears of the Kingdom, I think I've had my fill of Zelda until that time. Sorry if this is your favorite game and I did almost nothing but talk shit about it; I'm learning more and more that Zelda is a franchise that I have complex feelings about. But lemme know what you think of my takes if you bothered reading this much.

The nicest thing I can say about it is that it's mechanically and conceptually neat I guess. Aside from that, this did absolutely nothing for me narratively or gameplay-wise.

All the puzzles are so easy and dull, most of which going down with practically no effort, and the others taking agonizingly long to finish. There's not a single "A-HA!" moment nor any moment when I was impressed by its creativity.

Now I've never played Half-Life in any capacity, so I have no idea how this connects to anything there, but what this game offers on its own I found equally dull. There's nothing here that grabs my attention despite how hard it's trying to be... something. Does it want to be creepy? Thought-provoking? Dark? Comical? Some combination? Something else entirely? I don't know, and I don't care because it really does not interest me.

Also not a fan of how I was motion sick pretty much the whole time.