fantastic lil rpg filled with scrutinizing detail and whimsy. felvidek is something special, not because it's innovating or groundbreaking (it's neither of those), but because it's just so precise in its execution. you meander around the countryside, uncovering a conspiracy and fighting hussites, cultists, and monstrosities. every horror is paired by absurdity, making the encroaching apocalypse feel like one sick joke. it's a struggle to get by as two dudes with limited funds and equipment, but eventually, you become terrifying. instead of getting bodied by cloaked madmen and brigands, you start leaving limp ragdolls on the way to the tavern. even when you get the fourth party member, they're basically a meat shield since they arent a renowned knight or priest. the old english dialog, amazing outfits, and cultural taboos of the time are all so well-realized that you're further enveloped into the game's world. listen to two priests debate celibacy and sobriety, watch how coffee influences the balkans, and witness medieval confusion after stumbling upon two gay dudes. for about five hours, you'll be wanting more and more, but you can't really get anything else out of it. pavol's story ended where it needed. the burg is saved and the fires of hell are put out.

honestly would be a "perfect" game for me if there was only one gun in the entire game. that shit's too op!!! I mean, it's a gun, so it makes sense lol but having two in one party is such a freebie.

Okay the gameplay is a little braindead and the map design is SUPER "mid budget studio"-core and I have a few rubs about how the final ending goes thematically but on the whole. Shit dude, he did it. Yoko Taro was able to hold back on his hateful urges just long enough to make a really deep, engaging, I'll say even beautiful game. The characters are great, the gameplay while previously mentioned a bit simple is still fun, the music is unbelievably beautiful. This one was really worth my time. Kinda wish I got to choose Gestalt though. just for funny

this may be shocking, but ive somehow avoided a good chunk of the discourse surrounding this game since its release. so when i say that i had low expectations, that negativity mostly stems from the numbing experience that was the first game. but also because of my bottomless ire for neil druckmann. druckmann is a wannabe, constantly wanting to live up to the names of sam lake, hideo kojima, and shinji mikami. in pursuing fame, the fake auteur clutches onto the medium of video games with pitiful fingers. although he and naughty dog catch a lot of flak, the developers deserve credit for their hard work. the game looks outstanding, feels great to play, has some sick art, and has a neat scavenging gameplay loop. but as a director, druckmann deserves all the shit i and other people throw at him. the story's plot is alright, and there are also some good tidbits (ellie's missing fingers at the end was a great touch). however, the gross romanticization of misery and inspiration for the story throws all the good under the bus. the game wants you to feel bad. it wants you to feel bile in your throat, dried blood on your gamer hands, and an uncomfortable twist in your stomach. violence is cruel, revenge is cruel, but to have players succumb to it for 20+ hours paired with the discord of satisfyingly explosive headshots, the last of us part 2 fails to evoke those feelings outside of cutscenes. it fails so badly that dogs are introduced to the combat as a cheap attempt to guilt the player. which is so odd when the story is already geared for emotional compulsion.

the characters you play as are bad people. they are selfish, violent, and vengeful. they have little to no redeeming qualities outside of helping those they care for. and that's the point. i don't understand the bashing of the protagonists for being unlikeable. they're anti-heroes; you're not supposed to like them, but you root for them because of something they've done that shows some glimmer of humanity. that's probably the one saving grace of the masturbatory playtime (inflated by how almost disrespectfully long cutscenes can get). but even then, the game's idf propaganda. one half, it's a venture into a foreign land for blood. the second half, it's a disgusting dehumanization of the palestinian people. druckmann's gone on record citing the lynching of 2 idf reservists as a major inspiration to the story for this game. and it shows because it's so clearly written from a zionist's point of view. "wow look how barbaric and violent these religious zealots are. theyre so transphobic and misogynist! the wolves (IDF stand-in) are normal people; look how cool they are with their militarist regime!" at times it tries to show that the wolves (WLF) aren't as good as they seem, but it's never fairly compared to the seraphites. it's so excessively biased, only making the WLF a full-on enemy in abby's story when she wants to be her own person. it's never a complete decry of the WLF, but it's always a condemnation of the seraphites. at least the game's version of the idf are just as much of a warmonger lol.

if i could strip away the politics and my ingrained distaste for the game's creator, the game is just mid. it's a run-of-the-mill AAA third-person shooter blockbuster. it looks next gen but it plays like Sony's stuck in 2009. there's nothing special going on here. It's the first game with some new guns, skills, and enemies. the level design is improved, but the visual clutter of photorealism sometimes detracts from the enjoyability of exploration. the story did not deserve the gut-twisting and palm-sweating reactions of its players. this game did not deserve to be heralded as the future of video games. neil druckmann did not fucking deserve to be awarded as a legendary "innovator" of games for directing the same game he did 7 years prior. if this is what AAA games are expected to become, i'll just continue digging into my hole of indies and classics. developers are being abused, neglected, and vacuumed into obscurity just to put out something to fulfill the dreams of the vainglorious. the games industry is fucked.

alas, im but a measly gamer... i dont know what's right for gaming. hail druckmann, the savior of the medium! we've truly found gaming's citizen kane! finally, our hobby is legitimized in the world of art!!1! miss me with that bullshit. im going back to silent hill 3 or some other good stuff.

If this game could exist without the baggage of a truly abysmal UI that seems to be actively hostile to the player, I could actually like it. Instead we get the typically juvenile Kojima faire; grotesquely overrated, pseudo-auteur nonsense detracting from an otherwise very novel and fun sci-fi hiking game.

Maybe one day I'll come back to finish, but all I can say is, I have never played a "AAA" game with a UI this incoherent (unintuitive menu organization, piecemeal quest turn ins, map/route tracing systems with absurd button combos just to use basic functionality). For this alone, I was repelled from the game despite really enjoying the traversal and to some extent the world building/setting.

The hiking/traversal parts are all genuinely/shockingly fun. I quite enjoyed the slow, almost meditative nature of walking around. And when juxtaposed with the utterly TERRIFYING ghosts you really feel the stakes. The world is bizarre and not 100% sensical but it IS fully realized. At times it's silly in such a way that detracts from the world building (the bad guy porters are..... addicted to delivering? *eyeroll* ffs).

If someone could remake this game without the overwrought Kojima nonsense and I'd probably 5-star it, instead, you have to fight through it all just to get to the good gameplay. And I'm not sure its worth the hassle.

now that the remake for this and the sequel is out and looks to have shifted more than i expected i decided to go back and replay this (and will play the Wii version of Another Code R) before getting around to the new ones at a later date.

this is about how i remembered it. solid art style, decent music, impressive (but simplistic) use of nearly every feature the DS has to offer. it would be more noteworthy if nearly every facet wasn't improved on massively with Cing's following work with the Kyle Hyde saga.

was less enthused with somehow ending up with the bad ending even though i had investigated and interacted with what i thought was nearly everything in the game up until then. finished that run and followed up with a quicker one today to get the good ending. this has a starred save NG+ system similar to Hotel Dusk so i'll probably be back in the near future to see what changes in a second run on one file.