It's hard for me to think about what to write about FFX--so much has been said about it over the years! And if I'm honest, so many of my thoughts are so tied up in the experience of nostalgia and of playing it when it was new and I was a young teenager. So in lieu of anything massively interesting to say about its mechanics (which I love), or Blitzball (which I love) or the story (which I love) or the characters (whom I love), I'll just relay some anecdotes from my freshman year of high school in the fall of 2002.

The first in-real-life girl I ever felt anything for (I wasn't out yet, not for a long time) and that I knew I felt things for and I were in that girl's bedroom. We had met at the statewide anime convention earlier in the month and only then realized that we were going to be going to the same High School. We were both nervous and both ended up talking about how what we talked about at the convention was how cool Lulu and Yuna were and how annoying we thought Blitzball was. She turned on her PS2 and loaded her save; it was at the Shoopuf landing. I felt my heart flutter as she ran around.

The first time I ever truly had my heart broken was by the dungeon master of the first D&D campaign I ever played in; I was a sophomore and my Wizard's name was Yunalesca.

The first time I was ever stopped for photos by multiple people in an anime convention hallway and had multiple cameras snapping away like the paparazzi was me cosplaying Rikku; I cut my hair so short my mother cried. I was a Junior in high school.

I love Final Fantasy X. It made an impact on me. I think you should play it if you haven't.

Katamari parece uma ideia que só poderia ter surgido de um jogo indie mais recente, e em uma geração repleta de jogos genéricos, isso o coloca no pódio dos jogos mais únicos que existiram para o PlayStation 2.

A última fase me empolgou muito, tanto pela escala em que o jogo chega, quanto pela excelente trilha sonora tema do jogo.

Já pararam pra pensar que o protagonista é um homicida?

Achei que daria uma nota mais baixa enquanto o jogo aparentava confeccionado limitadíssimo àquele cânone do Zelda ou por uma direção artística super conservadora, etc... Isso foi até descobrir outros quesitos nos quais ele é totalmente iconoclasta. Surpreendente ter cativado a ponto de eu chegar a fazer 100% do jogo pelo simples fato do texto ser em códigos pouco decifráveis, dentro do manual - sabendo, inclusive, que o player irá consultá-lo por conta do mapa ser vinculado a ele.

Talvez aconteça como no caso de Hades e eu ainda aumente um pouco depois de revisar a Lore do jogo(sim, tem bastante).

Por agora vale pontuar um asterisco bem grande quanto às salas secretas porque em algum momento pensei que seria perfeito implementar uma fadinha que segue os movimentos do D-pad pra tornar a sequência mais intuitiva. Talvez ninguém tenha pensado em colocar uma 'Navi' que faz isso, mas se pensaram fica difícil defender.

Ambitious and ultimately flawed, but I still enjoyed playing Contact.

It's certainly one of the most engaging meta-narrative games I've played since IMSCARED, but it also doesn't quite feel like it achieves everything it wants to do with its bridging the gap between Terry, the Professor, and you/me. Very brave and even thought-provoking, but perhaps just a biiiiit surface level?

The gameplay is easily the most divisive part of the game and for good reason. In some aspects, it feels undercooked. A lot of it is tedious and unengaging by design; it doesn't make for a good-feeling game, but it at least has a reason being the way it is. Experience being divided up into over a dozen stats that level up on gameplay context is very cool, but level grinding is very slow and monotonous due in part to large XP gates and the passive combat.

Still, the charm of games like moon and Chulip do exist in Contact, albeit in a less overt way in favor of playing more like a typical RPG. Dialogue is cute, character designs and art style(s) are mostly pleasing to look at, and the environments are genuinely very well-composed for the DS.

I dunno, I think this is just a good, solid game, and I deeply appreciate its ambition. The ending even tugged at my heart just a bit.