why do vanillaware titles always cause so much melties LMAOOOOOOO, notice how none of the review bombers have actually talked about the gameplay.

anyways, this shit is really good (so far - only 11hrs in), so if you're on the fence about picking up a cool srpg - i'd strongly say go for this.

also i carnally need berengaria so bad

I'm writing this review 27h46m into the game, at the third to last battle event in the game.

If you've played Fire Emblem Three Houses, the general flow of this game is pretty similar: You go through a calendar scheduling classes for your students, improving their stats and making them learn skills; then about every month or so there's an event where you have to go into combat.

Problem with this game is that the combat is absolutely miserable. Battles consist of the player having to choose from one of four suggestions from your students as to what action to take in battle, and you can only take that one action per turn. Later on there's passive skills as well as some other mechanics that allow you to do some extra stuff per turn but you're mostly limited to one action each turn.

But even then sometimes your students will refuse to suggest using their multi-target skills on groups of enemies or your healer simply will not bring up their healing spell despite stubbornly suggesting using it turns before back when you didn't need it.

No matter how far you get into the game and no matter how many skills your students learn, you will always feel just as weak as you did in your very first fight, and your students' attacks will always feel like wet noodles. However, since the game has pretty little combat all things considered, the game feels the need to make it so that every single enemy in the game takes an obscene amount of time to kill.

The game lets each of your seven students have four different skill loadouts, I suppose the intention being that you must build 28 different loadouts for any possible scenario. The issue being that that is such a hassle to do, and the massive skill list inspires such choice paralysis that I found it very difficult to tackle this the way the game apparently wanted me to.

The game has a system where you can start over from the beginning with several bonuses after each restart so that every future run is easier than the last. I figured this meant it was gonna be a somewhat short game that required several runs to achieve the best ending. However the game ended up being decently long and the bad endings really easy to avoid.

The story was also just deeply uninteresting. None of your students are outright awful characters and I didn't really dislike any of them but they're all pretty dull and generic and this made it pretty hard to care about the story, since the majority of it is so focused on them and their problems.

I was so close to beating the game that I figured I could just power through, but the game hits such a huge difficulty spike in the last few months of the game that I just lost all patience for the game. Enemies were now able to decimate my party with very little effort and battles could easily take over thirty minutes each.

As I said, the story wasn't interesting in the slightest so at that point I felt it just wasn't worth wasting any more of my time with this game.

I was pretty intrigued by the admittedly amazing cover and the raising-sim-like mechanics of the classroom, but I would suggest anyone who's curious about this game to just avoid it.

Batman: Arkham Series Reviews

Cold, Cold Heart is an okay DLC campaign for Batman: Arkham Origins that retells the origin story of Mr. Freeze, one of Batman’s more sympathetic enemies. It’s a step up from Arkham City’s Harley Quinn’s Revenge expansion, but it’s not that much of a step up. It’s still a fairly short campaign that doesn’t really introduce much of anything new or exciting. You do at least explore a couple of new locations, but most of the campaign takes place within just one primary area that you constantly have to backtrack through, as well as back and forth from.

One of the new locations the DLC introduces is actually the inside of Wayne Manor. This is the only time you ever get to experience the Arkhamverse’s Wayne Manor during gameplay, and sadly, you only explore it during the opening sequence. The other location where the majority of the campaign takes place is the GothCorp building. There’s some new combat and predator sections, a new enemy type that’s essentially just a brute with a freeze ray, and a final showdown with Mr. Freeze that’s more or less a repeat of his boss fight in Arkham City but in a bigger arena where you also have to deal with other enemies at the same time. It’s pretty standard stuff, and not much to really write home about.

The game does make a big deal out of Batman’s new thermal suit, but it doesn’t really do anything that Batman couldn’t already do before. You can charge up Batarangs with heat to melt icicles from the ceiling and ice-covered vantage points, you can melt ice that blocks pathways (which uses the same animation as charging something with the Electrocutioner’s gloves in the base game), and it allows Batman to survive in sub zero temperatures. That’s literally it. It doesn’t come with any significant new gameplay addition whatsoever.

The story for this expansion is just a retelling of the Batman: The Animated Series episode Heart of Ice. This is one of the most famous episodes of the show, as it revitalized the character and origin story of Mr. Freeze, and eventually became the standard portrayal of him in both the comic books, and other assorted Batman media. It’s a fine retelling, I don’t think it's better than the actual episode (though if I’m speaking truthfully, I haven’t seen the episode in quite some time). It does end pretty suddenly and unsatisfyingly though.

Unlike Harley Quinn’s Revenge, whose quality I could forgive since its bundled with re-releases of Batman: Arkham City, I can’t really do the same for Cold, Cold Heart, since it never got the same treatment. Still, I think that for all things concerned, it is better in comparison to Harley Quinn’s Revenge since at the very least, it's (mostly) new content. If you don’t already own the season pass for Arkham Origins, this is not at all a must buy or a must experience. It’s pretty much just a worse retelling of one of the most famous episodes of Batman: The Animated Series with some new combat and predator encounters and a slightly different version of the Mr. Freeze fight from Arkham City. There’s not much else to it.

I had always loved JRPGs growing up. I was obsessed with Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy - the classics that defined the genre. Persona wasn't nearly as popular and it had slipped under my radar for years. When I finally caught wind of what these games were, it was honestly the perfect time - I was the same age and in the same year of school as the characters in the game.

It sounds corny, but I had never really connected with a game like this before, or realized that JRPGs could be so versatile. It was the first game I played that tackled the most mundane aspect of growing up - school - but made something fun out of it, and tied it into a frankly touching narrative about living life to its fullest.

Looking back, sure, this game has its flaws. But that first experience was honestly pure magic for me - the soundtrack, the suicidal imagery, the characters - I had never seen a game try anything like it, and it opened up an entire world of related titles for me to get into.

Bujingai: The Forgotten City is best-known today for starring Gackt. For the uninitiated, Gackt is a recording artist who was a pretty big deal in Japan in the 2000s - first as a member of the visual kei band Malice Mizer, then as a solo performer. His handsome face was plastered on billboards, magazine covers, and even a credit card. All the girls wanted him; all the boys wanted to be him. He claimed to be a 600-year-old vampire. Not that that has anything to do with Bujingai.

Gackt is interesting, eccentric, and a bit of an egotist. Given his stranglehold on Japanese pop culture back then, it's no wonder he showed up in a few video games, most notably the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. But before Crisis Core, before Dirge of Cerberus, there was Bujingai.

I played through the entirety of this game in a single session on a warm August morning a couple of years ago. At the time, I had a terrible schedule where I'd stay up all night and sleep in the morning. This meant that immediately after finishing it, I was too tired to write a proper review of it. But luckily, I had given my thoughts, point-by-point, to a fellow visual kei fan as I played through the game. Here they are, unearthed now, for your reading pleasure:

- Even if this game didn't star Gackt, it would still be the most Gackt video game ever made. For starters, the game's save file is over 1 MB large. The PS2 memory card has a total of 8 MB space. This game eats up a whole eighth of your memory card just to save.

- The actual game takes up very little space on the disk. The majority of it is Gackt interviews, press conference videos, and other such 'goodies.' You unlock them by collecting hidden tokens; there are around 15 such videos total. This game was released in the pre-YouTube days, and I'm making myself legitimately sad imagining a desperate Gackt fangirl suffering through this horrible game to collect the WHERE THE FUCK ARE THEY, NOWHERE tokens just so she could see good-quality videos of her idol.

- The coolest part of the game is that it starts off by kicking you straight into the gameplay, no title screen. You get to run around and hack and slash for a bit. Then the opening credits play over a stylized version of your gameplay in the opening level.

- Gackt has no voice work beyond grunts.

- In fact, there's really nothing in the core game itself to suggest that you're playing as Gackt, and early PS2 graphics weren't much for allowing an accurate likeness. They could have said this game was about a guy called Gilles or Gonzales and it would be the same thing.

- This game was made by a toy company.

- The CGI in the game is laughably bad. This game as a whole is such a Z-movie that I believe it would be extremely fun to play while a friend watches so you can laugh at it together.

- Lastly, in true Gackt fashion... this game gives you an interesting combat system and then fucks off with it, leaving you to do platforming with the terrible jumping controls instead. I JUST WANNA DO FLASHY SWORD MOVES FUCK.

- I'm 99.9% sure this game steals its in-game text font from Devil May Cry.

- Whoever designed the platforming sections in the final level, I hope his wife left him.

I give this game one and a half stars. Half a star is only because I enjoy Gackt's music. And no, he didn't work on the music for this game.

Earlier in the year when starting to look at retro titles to play I randomly picked 99: the Last War an arcade title from 1985. The Team Crux after going bankrupt went onto form Toaplan the creators of Batsugun. This is a game I randomly chose from my backlog as a quick title to play between other things which also unknowingly happened to be Toaplan's final game before it went bankrupt in 1994. Many of the employees from there went to form the equally legendary CAVE continuing making arcade shoot 'em ups. CAVE's founding history when you go back through the chain like this is fascinating. A lot of their more famous output like DonPachi and Mushihimesama can find their roots in Batsugun often referred to by people as the first bullet-hell.

For the most part this is a pretty standard shoot 'em up, I mean no insult by that after all I'm looking at this from a view in 2023. I can imagine at the time it would have really been something nuts. You choose from several pilots that have normal attacks and bombs. Where Batsugun is semi interesting in it's design is in the weapon system. Boss and level design aside this is the core aspect of a shoot 'em up that they sink or swim with me personally and this one is pretty good. When enemies are killed you get experience points. Depending on the enemy depends on the points gained. A normal enemy might give +1 but the boss +100 for example. With enough points you can level up your ship up to three times which makes it's main gun more powerful. On top of this you can collect some base power ups to make your gun stronger. This means there is an incentive to play well to level your ship as quickly as possible and that dying isn't utterly punishing in response as you only need collect some power ups but will be fairly powerful regardless. Once you hit that point the incentive for killing for experience will then generate an extra bomb for you to collect. These bombs can be pretty vital for getting you out of situations where you are trapped by a plethora of bright bullets and no where to go. They will clear the section of the map as well as damage enemies at the same time adding some additional layer of strategy to it. Despite the weapon system making you feel like a boss hammering a barrage of bullets and electric lasers the game is far from a push over and at times can get quite hard especially with the bosses health pools and multiple weak points.

It's a fun system and it's backed up by some gorgeous art design, colourful flashy visuals, heavy action and massive bosses. Though I listed this as completing on the Saturn I actually played the arcade version and the Saturn version back to back. I actually preferred the more solid feel of the Saturn version but honestly both versions look and play great to me so whichever you prefer really. The Saturn version does have the Batsugun special Version included with it as a separate game. The special Version gives a shield to take a hit as well as multiple loops building challenge rather than just the straight 5 levels the original game had for those that had more. The Special Version was only semi released due to Toaplan going bankrupt so the Saturn Port was released by Gazelle with it included. Gazelle themselves were made up of Ex-Toaplan staff many of which went to work at CAVE after they closed doors themselves in 2002. All roads lead to Rome? All roads lead to CAVE more like.

So there you are, Batsugun. A great little game, the end of an era but the start of another and it's influence lives on.

+ Excellent art and colourful visuals.
+ Interesting RPG like level up system.
+ Challenging but fair in deaths' and abilities.

Easy games can be fun -- let's get that out of the way -- but Arrow Flash's normal mode is the bad kind of easy: devoid of even the pretense of challenge. You will sit in an empty frame, firing to the right, and once every 5-10 seconds a wave of enemies will come crashing into your bullets, wholly unable to retaliate. You may find yourself dying because your focus floats away to, perhaps, what's for lunch -- and in that regard the "Normal" mode might be the more difficult one here after all.

Bump it up to "Hard," and things get a little, but not that much, more interesting. You have to deal more consistently with enemy fire, though there are still long bouts of nothingness scattered throughout the game's 5 stages. And, adding a frosting of genuine brokenness on top of this cakewalk, you have a special move that makes you invincible and able to run into enemies and bosses for massive damage. The activations of this move are handed out plentifully in the game's "Stock" mode, and in "Charge" mode they're infinite.

So is all of that to say that this is a bad shooting game? Actually, no. It's an aggressively alright one: there's nothing actively frustrating about it beyond the boredom that can ocassionally set in, which the hard mode alleviates enough, at least in my book; and the mechanics it offers (swapping from mech to ship for two different option-behaviors, the aforementioned kamikaze-mode) are enough to provide a fun, if extremely-basic, run to the finish.

If it weren't also nice to look at and listen to, it might get two stars... but fortunately that's not the case. The sprites and cinematics are cool and decently unique (more cartoony than in many stgs), and the music ocassionally got my head bobbing.

It's ok! It's fine! Check it out for an alright, not bad time!