So how do you remake one of the greatest and most iconic games of all time? Well, I’d say you should double down on the things that made it what it was while trying to improve on the elements that have either become dull with age or simply weren’t necessary in the first place. As it happens, Capcom did basically precisely that with Resident Evil 4 Remake.

Gameplay-wise, I was a little worried playing the Chainsaw Demo, as the combat felt a little off, just slightly too much wobble on Leon’s gun, a little too much reaction from enemies, that sort of thing. I did give the demo more than a few runs and this wore off pretty quickly, and definitely did not persist into the full game. Part of it is most likely that the Silver Ghost (now without laser sight at the beginning) just sorta sucks. Everything else is near full upgrade in my mind. The parry adds so much to the gameplay loop and the creative ways in which you can engage a group of enemies, adding another option to Leon’s veritable toolbox of mechanics. The melee attacks all come together even more smoothly than the original, lending a lot of feeling of flow to fights. The guns feel great, the new additions are fun, there’s a ton of variety in how you approach your loadout, all still done through the fantastic attache case.

Graphically they did an incredible job upgrading the visuals, this is a pretty damn next-gen looking game, and the work they put into adding detail to the various important parts of the map is really fantastic. The iconic village looks even more real and lived in than it used to, the castle is huge and imposing, and the island and its labs are a great mix of mechanical and sedimentary. Almost every character looks improved overall.

But all that said, this is not a perfect game. The central change from the original game is obviously Leon’s moving aim system, adapting a variation of RE2’s gun combat from the stand-your-ground system. I don’t actually see this as an out and out negative - RE4R and RE4 are different games, and both will give different experiences, which is a good thing. RE4’s gunplay is a unique, puzzle-like system that gives it a very singular identity. RE4R is going for a more modern action-oriented style, which works to its strengths. I lead with this in the negatives section as I think it’s one thing people will / have focused on in criticism of this remake and I don’t personally agree - both games have their place. For the most part, the things I don’t like are, like the original game, certain setpieces or pacing options. But it’s a give and take! In the original, I hated the hive, the truck section, Mike’s gunship section on the island, a few rooms in the castle, and the entire filler section in the underground on the island. Save for Mike, these have been taken out or vastly altered, which is great. On the other hand, I really dislike the new minecart section, which is pretty dull overall and feels wasted. The double gigante fight with Luis is also pretty mediocre, which results in a perceived dip in quality in Chapter 11 for me. The bosses basically stay a weak point of the game, with the exception of Krauser and Salazar, who were vastly improved. Big Cheese is still pretty lame. If you check my original review, I noted that I felt Saddler should have a second phase in his fight - it seems Capcom agreed! It’s not really a gameplay segment but I was glad to see a big goopy tentacle guy to kill. In terms of tertiary content, I was undecided on whether or not the addition of crafting materials was good or not - giving the player the option to choose what ammo they need in addition to what they’re already picking up is good, but it adds a layer of unnecessary micromanagement that the original seemed to make an effort to avoid. The new shooting range is utterly fantastic fun and a wonderful addition to the Merchant’s character but I hated the randomized charms as rewards. It’s a dull grind and I think they would’ve been better used as rewards for the sidequests.

What Capcom really went above and beyond in this Remake is adding things where they were needed - the village is now a large, fully explorable map. The boat is now controlled and opens an entirely new area. They’ve added a chase sequence in the gorge before the Big Cheese fight, which I thought was excellent. Overall, there’s a lot of very smart reordering of rooms / areas just to make the pacing and flow make more sense. The castle is now more of an actual place and less of a haunted house with bizarro disconnected rooms. That ridiculous aforementioned underground section has been removed entirely, and the minecart appears in a more logical place. There’s a lot of this sort of thing, which is very very smart. Again, there are missing or changed rooms here or there that I was sad to see gone - the shaman who runs around the square room, for example - but it’s not really worth being disappointed by these things.

As the credits rolled and I reflected on my 20-ish hour playthrough, I was shocked to be hit by a full on vocal credits theme - Craig McConnell and Sam Drysdale’s “The Bullet or the Blade.” It’s a pretty good song in general but, more importantly, its placement is immaculate, urging the player to think deeply about the game. But not just the game, but actually the story. The original Resident Evil 4 is a fantastic game, as I’ve noted above and in my original 5 star review, but it lacks something in terms of characterization for Ashley, Luis, background on the village, stuff like that. It gained some of its cult fame from being arcadey, begging for multiple playthroughs and highscore hunting, as it were. This game is no different in that regard, but Capcom have managed to add in enough detail and emotional weight to the characters and story that it now truly works as a cinematic story, and not just a fun action game with sorta relevant background. Ashley’s growth throughout the story, Leon’s struggle with his past, Luis’ redemption, even Krauser’s obsession - they all carry a lot more weight than they ever did in the original, and IMO it lands. Resident Evil 4’s layout was always something magical - the player goes through a triptych of unique, separate locations with a bevy of memorable fights and rooms. The actual structure is sort of comparable to Dante’s Inferno, the player descends (or ascends) through varying levels of hell as Leon learns of the depths to which this Spanish community has been corrupted and bastardized by a cult seeking their own twisted goal. The village will always be the thing this game is known for, and Capcom went the extra mile to add a whole lot more reasons to care about how it came to be what it is.

I went back and forth a little bit on what to score this, but I gave the original game a 5 despite the issues I had with it as its overall identity and fun factor reach far above those negatives. I feel pretty much exactly the same about Remake, despite the issues themselves being different. The iconically good core gameplay was treated with the utmost respect, and the additions and changes are overwhelmingly good, with the strength of the story finally coming to light, giving Ashley, Luis, and even Leon all more to do. The wisecracking comments and silly pirate merchant are all still here, perhaps even enhanced by a more seriously considered storyline. As far as I’m concerned, every remake should strive to be this good.

an oddball "grasping towards Souls" title developed by neverland, best known for lufia and rune factory. there's a similar sort of interplay between loadout, upgrade currency, and death mechanics. see if you can spot where it falls apart.

1. you play as a robot that can be equipped with weapons/armor on your head, arms, chest, and legs. pressing the corresponding face button uses the equipment mapped to that body part, with the leg equipment being purely passive and not being mapped to a face button.
2. using equipment raises the heat gauge for that body part. when the gauge is full, the equipment is disabled until the gauge has fully drained. there is also a total usage limit for each weapon, which more or less acts as ammo.
3. double-tapping in any direction causes a roll or dash with full i-frames, and repeatedly tapping in the direction of a roll/dash continues it. each roll/dash raises the legs' heat gauge.
4. the game is arranged into a series of floors in a tower, with the full eradication of enemies on each floor leading to a boss fight that opens a portal to the next floor.
5. there's a single place to save, restore one's health/ammo, upgrade player stats, and equip weapons at the center of each floor.
6. upgrades are conducted via "elixir skin" you receive from killing enemies. health, defense, maximum heat gauge, and weapon slots can all be upgraded in this manner.
7. elixir can also be gained by "restoring" equipment, which basically removes them from your inventory in exchange for a set amount of elixir that depends on the equipment's rarity and strength.
8. killing enemies occasionally drops weapons as well, with certain weapon "combos" activating "overkill" after death that supposedly raises the drop rate.
9. upon death, the player is sent to the first floor of the tower, although all previously opened portals remain. enemies do reappear on previously cleared floors but are randomly distributed. all equipment is dropped as well and is permanently lost.

imagine playing a souls game where taking a death permanently removed all your equipment and forced you to scrounge for more. suffering a death would instantly disrupt your build, forcing you to cobble together a new build from whatever extra equipment you have stored. instead of soul grinding (which is generally unneeded given the importance of equipment on your abilities), you would have to grind back your old weapons, making every death a major setback in terms of time investment. sounds poorly constructed, right? rengoku does exactly that! what's more confusing is that souls and elixir are virtually identical in terms of mechanics, and having all of that dropped on death would be a much more interesting mechanic. you would have decisions to make in terms of cashing in your surplus weapons vs wasting time grinding or hoping that upcoming floors yield enough elixir in the process of clearing them out. it wouldn't necessarily elevate the game, but it would certainly be much more fair to the player and more thought-provoking than what rengoku puts you through, where losing a nice weapon can virtually eliminate your chances of clearing a floor without toiling on the floors below looking for a replacement. even the devs must have recognized this, as they explicitly allow you to keep your equipment upon dying to a boss, removing any penalty from death whatsoever. every other review I read for this admitted that they just save scummed upon death, and I naturally followed suit.

however, some of the other fromsoft-adjacent choices bring some mechanical appeal to this otherwise-unremarkable title. the equipment customization and variety is incredibly flexible in terms of restrictions on body location and how many slots each weapon takes up. with extra slots on a body part, additional weapons can be loaded in as backups in case the primary weapon runs out of ammo. using the limited elixir to determine the distribution of talents to each body part allows for some interesting questions: should one part get extra heat and slots? should one arm get extra heat and the other get slots to give the former a safe and consistent weapon and the latter a deadly but quick-to-overheat weapon? what about leveling up heat for chest armor or dodge capabilities? finding boss weaknesses through exploiting a relatively underutilized elemental system and observing the separate tactics of each involves repeated build customization a la armored core. this is augmented by the fact that every single solitary enemy in the game operates via the same build system that you do, including using the same equipment that you have access to. the dodge/roll is also exceptionally useful, as it not only is extremely responsive, but it also creates momentum that can be preserved while executing attacks if said attacks are buffered into the end of a roll or dodge. gliding around an enemy in sync with one another and narrowing down openings where one can unleash their weaponry feels fluid and rewarding thanks to the generous cancel windows for rolls juxtaposed with stiff, deliberate weapon animations.

unfortunately, each floor is "randomly generated" aka it pulls different dull rooms from a pool of ~20, duct-tapes them together, and stuffs enemies with randomized builds in them. what's more, the layouts are not changed on death; they stay exactly the same between deaths. clearing out each floor quickly becomes monotonous through the repeated room layouts and lack of curated encounters. what's more, the weapon balance is incredibly skewed in favor of guns, as individual bullets deal nearly as much damage as melee attacks with a rate-of-fire many times faster than a sword slash or hammer strike. the game opened as a somewhat challenging experience when I actually engaged with the melee combat, but it quickly became identical from enemy to enemy as soon as gatling/machine guns became available. up until the seventh floor (out of eight) you can shred anyone in your way just by DPS racing them with the gun, and the ability to go back to the save point, lock in your progress, and refill all your ammo for free makes it impossible for the game to ever prevent you from cheesing the game like this. of course, the permanent loss of equipment is supposed to counteract this, but consider that each enemy uses the same weapon pool you do, and by extension they also have access to gatling cannons and such that will instantly obliterate any melee-based build. thanks to this virtually any decent build will converge to primarily using guns if you want to compete on the mid-to-high range floors, and those who choose to play by the rules wrt death will be forced to scour lower floors for guns in a game with sparse enemy spawns on cleared floors and low weapon drop rates. it doesn't help that using a particular class of weapon (for example: Bullet) levels up your damage output for said weapon, further pushing your build in favor of whatever weapons you most often kill enemies with. given how quickly guns mow down enemies, it's likely that you will quickly gain even further DPS buffs for said weapon(s), making them even more attractive.

that being said, the groove of combat in the later areas where enemies can live longer than a few seconds benefits greatly from the intuitive, smooth control scheme and variety of different enemy types you'll encounter. it helps that the bosses tend to get exclusive weapons that spices up their particular encounters and makes reaching one a bit more exciting than the usual grind. this was fun for about three hours, upon which I reached the top of the tower and was instantly booted back to the bottom to restart again. yep, to reach the true final boss you have to play through the game again, and the layouts seem more or less identical to how they were on the first playthrough. surprisingly, there's a completely new weapon pool to work with, giving those interested in further experimenting with their kit some juice to keep on playing (while enemies deal plenty of damage thanks to this, some of them have suspiciously low HP values indicating that the full range of "hard mode" buffs may not have been properly implemented). I did two full floors including bosses on this repeat run out of due diligence and was disappointed to find that said bosses had barely changed at all from the first run. even finding online information at all on the second run is difficult; the one gamefaqs guide lists only weapons for the first run, and I didn't read any reviews that mention a second run at all. I'm not getting anything more out of this game, so I'm happy to just call it here and maybe move onto the sequel in the future.

I plan on revisiting the original DS version and making a full review of it there, but tl;dr:

EO1 was already a great game; very solid start to a new IP, if a little rough around the edges. The HD version adds in so many quality of life updates and neat little tweaks, that starting the series "the right way" through the first game is no longer something to avoid. Origins makes EO1 just as accessible as any of the 3DS entries, and though it's not as content rich as the future games, I feel it's an integral part of the EO experience, especially considering the neat plot nuggets it introduces near the end of the game.

Overall, what was once a solid, yet rugged first installment on the DS is now polished and reborn thanks to the HD version. Definitely the best way to play EO1, in my opinion.

Are You Ready Come on! It's Party Time!

step into the ring; IIDX enters its bling era. though the series had evolved into a bastion of capital-h Hard Dance throughout its run, Gold pulls the cheese back in. we're talking old-school rave shit, with gaudy pitch-shifted samples, hoots and hollers, and fat kicks. from the opening shot of your 24 karat gold-plated arena comes an infectious chant from Michael a la mode: "Make it make it money!". elsewhere the artists dip into their goofy side: see dj yoshitaka's ghostbusters remix complete with his own vocal stylings, or kors k's supersaw-laden FIRE FIRE, a veritable pop trance anthem. perhaps the most telling is that this game's VIP ROOM boss song deviates from the usual hardcore, drum 'n bass, and RENAISSANCE to give us a pseudo-remix/sequel of 3rd Style's Sense in Sense 2007, replete with late '80s orchestra stabs yet punctuated by a mid-song shift to dance floor R&B. perhaps the most eclectic entry out of the named styles on ps2.

this is also the first title I've gotten some serious 10* clears on! my DistorteD review was somehow from a year ago? and it makes it painfully clear how steep the difficulty curve is; I had rocketed up to 8* in just three months of regular play and then took the next year basically just to get a handle on 9*. much of it has to do with simply reading the charts more quickly, as the density of later charts (especially once you hit 10*) becomes egregious to the point that lower scroll speeds make the appearance muddled. unfortuantely, while I have ~6 10* clears on this disc, I haven't quite been able to replicate that amount on my other discs... but all things with time. one of the best ways to learn the more unorthodox chords of 10/11/12* is to start playing lower difficulties on random, and I've admittedly been too reluctant up to now to do so. also just like DistorteD CS this release got some lovely home-exclusive collaborations, this time pairing old-school beatmania and DDR composers with IIDX mainstays.

favorite tracks (not including those already linked):
Sota Fujimori - ANDROMEDA II (PSYCHEDELIC SYNTH TRANCE)
Sota Fujimori feat.cyborg AKEMI - Cyber Force (CYBORG TRANCE)
Auridy - Dreaming Sweetness (SCOUSE HOUSE)
DJ YOSHITAKA-G feat.Michael a la mode (RECKLESS RAVE)
kors k - heaven above (FILTER HOUSE)
DJ TECHNORCH fw. GUHROOVY - KAMAITACHI (FREEFORM HARDCORE)
L.E.D. - LASER CRUSTER (NU-SKOOL BREAKS)
Ryu☆ - Second Heaven (HANDZ UP)
dj TAKA - snow storm (TRANCE)
dj REMO-CON vs. dj TAKA - GOLDEN CROSS (TECHNO)
The Plastic Ambition(jun & DJ YOSHITAKA) - Guilt & Love (SHINING RAVE)
SLEDLAKE (SLAKE & L.E.D.) - SEQUENCE CAT (TECHNO)
SADA & SOTA - The Story Begins (EPIC TRANCE)
NAOKI & Ryu☆ fw.さちまゆ - Treasure×Star (DANCE POP SPEED)

any evaluation I have of this game is colored by the fact that it's a faithful translation of katamari to a handheld device. on that merit alone? well done, namco. running this on psp benefits significantly from the original's low-poly style, and in a screenshot you'd scarcely be able to tell the difference between this and its two predecessors. in motion the engine chugs more than on ps2, and the draw distance is noticably lower in certain areas, but these concessions never ruin the primary game experience. the controls do shift away from the traditional twin-stick setup in favor of simulating the same scheme with the d-pad and the face buttons. while the switch to digital control brings a bit of a learning curve, I think it's rather intuitive after a stage or two. what would be the primary issue - the inability to smoothly change a turn radius - is mitigated by the addition of mid-range turning on the shoulder buttons. by adding them into regular turns, provoking turns with them solely, or feathering them throughout a turn, you can approximate the original's turning gradients just fine. I'd even go as far as to say I prefer alternating the up buttons for the dash more than I do pressing the sticks forward rapidly. biggest issue for me is that rolling my thumbs across buttons as required leaves my joints sore after 15-20 minutes of play; I never played more than a stage or two in a single sitting because of this.

I was initially skeptical of the complaints about takahashi leaving, not because I wouldn't acknowledge him as a auteur, but rather because I assumed many of the lead developers must have stayed on. that doesn't seem to be the case? nearly all the katamaris were worked on in some form by NOW PRODUCTIONS, but it seems like they rotated out their developers a lot for various projects. from the namco side, lots of various people who worked on various klonoa or time crisis or tales games got ported over to helm this one. not exactly sure why, although at least some of the leads on the ps2 katamaris didn't stick around in the games industry, so that may explain it. regardless, this is all just me poking around on mobygames, so it's second-hand knowledge on my end.

the general structure of the game is to fulfill tasks by various animals who want islands of specific things: smart objects, heavy objects, warm objects, etc. this makes every primary mission both a traditional diameter check ("get to this size within this time") and also a measure of how many specific objects you picked up in an awkward, poorly communicated way. instead of telling you in real time how well you're doing with a particular theme, you're only told on loading transitions with a ludicrously large score that has to be interpreted for you by the king of the cosmos. it feels tacked on at best given how vague the prompts are, but unfortunately it directly ties to your end-of-level score along with your size and speed. we <3 katamari did this much better by making each individual level more focused in terms of objective and by clearly communicating the rules of a level's theme to you. regardless, in the latter half of the game it feels much easier to hit the theming requirements given that a lot of them are very well-oriented for the 70m+ objects, so it was ignorable to me by that point.

what is more difficult to ignore is the stage design. there are five stages, which comprise a house, a small town (think the start of town from katamari damacy), a larger town (more like the start of the world map from damacy), a city (mid-range area from we <3 without the various cultural objects), and then the world (flat like damacy). while five is a generous amount (esp compared to damacy's three), it quickly becomes apparent that each stage is confined to only one or two different scales. to explain: the house from the original katamari takes you from just a handful of centimeters across to over a meter in diameter; from a table tchotchke to something capable of wrecking the house's structure. the house in me & my takes you up to about 20cm and then ends abruptly, giving you a few rooms to roll around in with no outside area. each of the areas is like this, and while some are better about giving you external areas to explore once you've reached a certain diameter (both town stages are good for this imo, even if the smaller one is really derivative of damacy), overall you'll learn the ins and outs of each area disappointingly fast.

to create full-sized levels, the game chains together these stages as if they were continuous, restarting the clock and revising the diameter goal on each transition. past the halfway point, you will be playing the same three- and four-area sequences back-to-back over and over again. sure, the object layouts and starting areas do change (except for the city area, which is bafflingly prone to repeating layouts ad nauseum), but the small scale thwarts the traditional katamari feeling of starting from a small part of the environment to eventually swallowing a place whole. this also has the effect of ruining any difficulty for the later stages. katamari level design often prioritizes obstacles at lower levels, where tracking your diameter against objects around you is key, while prioritizing space between collectables at higher levels, where efficiently manipulating the massive, unwieldy katamari becomes the primary test of skill. in larger stages where space is still heavily confined, objects are far too close together and you end up absent-mindedly rolling around picking up literally everything in your way. thanks to the time bonuses you can earn from stage to stage (though you can also negate these by simply rolling away before the king gives it to you), I occasionally ended up running out of objects to pick up with 60+ seconds on the clock, leaving me to idly roll in circles until time expired. not really ideal, even if the final stage does give you some more breathing room with a more spacious ocean area.

as a condolence, there are a meager selection of gimmick levels also available, tho no cow or bear stages unfortunately. they're pretty solid overall though! the treasure collection one shockingly uses a unique map where sands envelope you and make it difficult to see what exactly you're picking up. there's a revolving requests one that's also neat in theory where you have 15 or 20 second windows to find and collect certain objects in the world. this falls apart once you reach person size tho, as the game runs out of unique types of objects to give you and instead just asks for children over and over again, of which there are so many that it renders the challenges trivial. one of the ones I'm struggling to remember is just a normal "pick up stuff in this theme" level, and then the other requires you to pick up as much energy in the area as possible and then deliver it to a rocket before it launches a la the light collection for homework level from we <3. not very novel if you've played we <3, but at least it's the most solid use of the city map by far.

What tipped me over from a "huh, neat I guess" reaction to actually downloading and playing this was learning that the game opens with a goofy little personality test (ala the various Dragon Quest 3 remakes) that assigns you one of eighteen (18!) original Stands. On my first playthrough I was assigned "Adam Ant", a long-range swarm-type Stand made of insects. It has low attack power, but it can hit all enemies at once and has a host of status effect, debuff, and damage-over-time skills.

Each Stand also causes various changes in the dialogue and opens up special events and interactions both in and out of battle. For example, Ocean Blue is a Stand that uses long-range water-based attacks, which creates a special event in the battle against the Wheel of Fortune Stand when it attacks by shooting droplets of gasoline. Also, because water conducts the Ripple from Parts 1 and 2, it's possible to learn a unique Ripple-based attack from Joseph.

The slate of original Stands (playable and otherwise) is surprisingly diverse and probably the most impressive thing about the game. A few are clearly store-brand versions of canon Stands, but on the whole they avoid being Mary-Sue-like overpowered stuff that one might expect from a fan project. I could totally see "Quicksilver" or "The Joykiller" popping up as villains of the week in Parts 4-6.

The story, however, is what you might expect from a self-insert fix fic: it goes through the plot of Part 3, but with the player character standing off to the side and commenting on things. Your involvement is fundamentally limited and mostly consists of helping out in fights that characters generally handled solo in the manga. There are a handful of deviation points, though. Instead of Avdol, you can get "killed" by Hol Horse and head on a separate track of chapters through Saudi Arabia to buy a submarine. If you have enough relationship points with Kakyoin, you can believe him when he reveals he has carved the words "BABY STAND" into his arm with a knife. Depending on the specifics of your Stand, you can bypass certain obstacles altogether. Stuff like that.

Not to say there isn't a fair amount of original content in the game, of course. There's a persistent sub-plotline about how/why there's now a 7th Stand user that makes use of various concepts from elsewhere in the JoJo timeline, in a way where I reacted with "sure, alright" rather than "that's dumb". I can at least respect the gumption, you know?

Gameplay wise, between the big Stand fights there are hub zones where you can level grind, hang out with other party members, and do some minor sidequests that often involve original characters as sub-bosses. This is the main way you can fiddle with relationship values, which determine which ending you get. There's something like a dozen different endings, probably more.

Another point of interest for me was the option to play as Josuke from Part 4, which is my favorite arc of JoJo. There's a bit more specificity to Josuke's dialogue and unique events compared to the original protagonist, but not quite to the level that I wish there was. They end up saying "oh no, it happened too fast for us to do anything!" a lot since, well, the plot still has to happen the same way and Josuke's Stand would solve a lot a problems. It's also only available on a NG+ run, which brings up another issue...

Much of the bonus content and other interesting bits and bobs require you to beat the game multiple times. The "best" ending isn't even an option until you've gone through three full runs. The option to play as Josuke and the ability to skip cutscenes aren't available until the postgame developer's room (which you can only enter if you get specific endings), and unlocking them requires spending highly limited tokens that you also need to cash in to enter NG+ in the first place. It's dumb. I used Cheat Engine.

On the whole though, The 7th Stand User is an obvious labor of love, and I had a good time playing it despite my quibbles. I've been on a bit of a JoJo kick in the aftermath of the Part 6 anime ending (finally reading Steel Ball Run and such) and this helped scratch that itch and the JRPG itch at the same time. Might be worth a shot, even if just to see what Stand you get.

you get all your favorite CAG mechanics tossed into a single melting pot and what amounts to a discount bloody palace to test them in. both regular and slash combos, a launcher, multiple aerial combos, killer bee, two different Ultimate Techniques, a dodge roll, a block, a parry, a counter, meter management, a remote insta-kill attack, also probably other shit I'm forgetting (pseudo-stinger?, uh... I think there's a leg sweep?). once you purchase the full toolkit the game becomes a Combo Mad for Dummies playset that lets you fuck around with cool-looking shit for minimal effort.

I originally started on hard and jettisoned my playthrough thanks to the beefy enemies and endless kiting required to deal damage. honestly sort of unplayable if you don't just do quick runs on easy and normal to stock up on orbs beforehand thanks to an overreliance on attack boost upgrades from the shop for nearly everything in the game. a fully upgraded kit will push you far enough to make hard a relatively comfortable experience assuming that you've got a good handle on the enemy attack timings. very hard is where it falls apart... using a very traditional CAG toolkit with a musou enemy count makes any move with an AoE instantly privileged, and then the game really turns into endless kiting. when twenty separate projectile users each stagger their attacks to block out any approach, there's not much you can do but use your second ultimate technique and wind slash everyone from afar.

biggest mechanical issue is the meter management. I've mentioned the ninja gaiden-esque UTs a couple times, but in those games they either required a long charge that left you wide open or orbs left behind by other enemies. here you have a meter that refills on basic attacks and drains via slashes or UTs. however, there's also that remote damage mechanic where any enemy that's been bloodied (aka beat up enough) will be dealt an amount of damage that scales with another meter based on your current combo (aka how long you've lasted without being hit). at the latter meter's top level, bloodied enemies will be instantly killed and release orbs/health/primary meter, and even at its lowest level it'll offer a substantial boost to your primary meter regardless. with the required upgrades, you get a whopping eight+ bars of primary meter to work with, meaning that it almost never runs out. you can more or less just spam UTs over and over again and then press the insta-kill button to refill everything for free. just not really well-designed in terms of how the different mechanics interact; there should have been a greater cost for using your most powerful attacks.

other big issue is the big enemies, who don't stagger at all until bloodied. a lot of the later waves turn into spamming guard-canceled Iai strikes in between enemy movement until they're bloodied and then instantly killing them. sorta undermines the whole cuhrayzee approach the game takes overall since the eye candy evaporates the further in you get. still a pretty cool sandbox for like two hours tho. might've come back to it but my ps+ extra expired :(

rather than place movement on the analog stick, am2 took an unorthodox approach and mapped it to ryo's gaze. through this, the player interacts with shenmue's painstaking representation of urban japan primarily through the act of sight. ryo is a natural observer, of signs, of people, of animals, of forklifts moving to and fro and waves undulating below. when ryo focuses on an object in the world, the player gently melts into his head to embody him. you take his perspective to roll a gacha toy between your fingers, or check your watch, or browse the shelves of a convenience store. this is certainly an ADV of sorts with sprinkles of what would become "open world" gameplay, but first and foremost it is a game of sight and perception. succinctly, it is eyes entertainment.

the meticulous attention to detail and passive nature of play fosters an undeniable sense of atomization. the game does not explicitly critique capitalism, but by creating this diorama-like visage of it, the game uncovers the listlessness at the heart of this era in history. ryo's hero's journey is constantly undermined by his delinquent status, loose social bonds, and overall impotence against forces with greater means than him. outside of the sanctuary of the hazuki dojo, ryo plunges into a world where he can do little but observe those around him. crowds of people, each with unique ways to spurn ryo's questions. when ryo isn't dutifully gathering scraps of information in his notebook, he can do little else other than window shop in a market district enclosed in the influence of former US navy occupation. what can he do other than pour money into pointless tasks and have stilted conversations with his acquaintances? at best he can convert a parking lot into a makeshift practice space for martial arts. in other instances I found myself staring at my phone waiting for buses to arrive or shops to open; would ryo not have done the same to suck up his time had the option existed? there are sparks of life to find, but virtually every point of contact is transactional, every activity is gated by money, every part of ryo's life wilting from his isolation after his father's death.

it makes sense then that disc 3 represents a significant change for ryo as he shifts into employment at the harbor. his absence of purpose morphs into routine living, and he begins to form bonds with his coworkers. ryo's lack of community ties pushes him into the workforce as a sole reluctant method of social engagement, his ulterior motive to investigate the mad angels aside. at the same time, his time in dobuita becomes severely limited, and the fragments of relationships he formed previously become even more distant. one gets the sense that his lunch break camaraderie and daily forklift races fill part of this void. his primary action becomes moving the forklift and fighting gang members after prior weeks spent primarily with the action of sight, signaling the shift from eyes to hands. the inability of ryo to settle in outside of labor is telling, and the eventual termination of his employment closes this chapter before he quietly sets off on his nomadic quest to find lan di. these were the only solid bonds he had, after all.

where the game inevitably stumbles is in where it artificially blocks these bonds. limited conversations are expected (although frankly these are astonishing for the era), but to lock characterization for a person like nozomi behind phone conversations when she's so easily accessible in the world feels awkward. the game occasionally expects this kind of unusual logic in order to get the most out of its world, with missable, timed events slipping through new players' fingers. however, it's unquestionable that the novelty present at the game's release has persisted thanks to the dearth of those willing to be as daring in its recreation of life. just wish there was one more motorcycle section...

Finally finished this for my 550th log- only took uhhh a year and some months.
Perhaps the most eclectic FF so far. Even compared to earlier FFs it really stands out from the prior FFs but also I can't imagine any of the later games have a tone quite as odd as Final Fantasy V. It jumps from the usual epic grandeur of the series, traveling on Chocobos and Airships, dungeon crawling, building your party and conquering titans. However, it just as easily swaps to these cheesy as hell moments during cutscenes where our cast spouts TMNT and Power Ranger references. Bizarre that this stuff got brought over from the GBA and Smartphone versions but I guess this is just how the tone of FFV will go. Part of me wonders what the game would look like without most of these and I would groan but in truth this game has always felt like some sort of enigma to me. FFs in general have always had a weird vibe in my head with regards to my understanding. I never played any apart from 4 DS as a teen (didn't beat) and then several years later I decided to try this out on the GBA port. If I remember correctly, around the same time I would have been finishing Dragon Quest III so perhaps I was looking for another class customization heavy JRPG? I didn't get too far but since then I've always had a fondness for this one in particular and had since wanted to sit down and fully commit myself to FFV. Over the course of a year and several other FFs later this pixel remaster came out and I put in the time but I did sit down and come back to this one more than I had hoped for. Thinking on Final Fantasies as a whole for a moment, there's only a few of them that really 'stand out' as titans metaphorically, the ones that jump to mind as the name Final Fantasy is brought up. FFIV, VI, VII, and X are usually the strongest in my mind, not so much in terms of quality but typically as the ones most 'stand-out' and typical to the franchise. FFs I-III try to establish a winning formula with what RPGs can manage and do for the times, while 4 sticks to a dedicated cast and decides to tell a focused story, VI and VII remain titans of the franchise with little need for explanation as to why and onward it's kind of a grabbag, although X for some reason always had a fragment in my mind even as kid for some reason. 8, 9 and 12 I don't know much about although they usually fill out a chunk of my mind as wildly differing branches of what I know about Final Fantasy. I could also talk about XIV however as I've yet to dive deep into it I barely understand what's going on whenever people talk about that game considering its 6 versions in. I bring this up because V feels like this really weird side path between Final Fantasies IV and VI, so seeing as how gamers in the west during the 90s going from the former to the latter makes a lot of sense but going from the former to V is an odd path to take when tackling this linearly. You don't transition from tropey but large scale drama to generation-defining epic as smoothly as V, this klutz of a fantasy, decides to place its sweet self between the two entries.

I can't really complain though, this game can get really neat. Neat might be the best descriptor I can give- as its customizable classes aren't necessarily new, considering III DOES exist despite how often I forget it does, AND it often falls into the pitfalls that other class-heavy japanese rpgs do. Yet, this thankfully improves upon III's systems and provides enough tools that it doesn't leave you to dry as often as I convinced myself it would. What I mean by this is that I'm kind of an idiot in a lot of ways. But also! this game does like to play around with its bosses more often, and considering how many options you might have when it comes to classes it might be easy to place yourself in a corner. Quite often bosses would seem way more daunting than they were worth because I didn't take into consideration how many simple ideas just work. A lot of these bosses feel like puzzles, and sometimes the solution is as simple as 'Spellblade + Thundaga is way more powerful than you think' but the game has so many complex build options that I tend to skew into just 'but this thing had bigger number in normal random battle' which would lead to my demise in certain bosses. Other bosses just don't care about having resistances. One particular boss (or trio of bosses) I didn't wanna deal with turned out to be susceptible to Odin's Zanketsuken! Brilliant! This does lead to quite a few moments of complex, fairly frustrating encounters in which I kinda wished my own creativeness would just prevail rather than needing to untangle and cobble together some other strategy because I might have missed a certain blue magic or I don't have an adequately leveled black mage. Or maybe I'd rather perish a slow and arduous death than try to wrap my head around the intricacies of the beastmaster class for 5 minutes. It's not too often but I have the brain disease that makes me want to keep a character as one class as long as they can so that they can be extremely great at one thing, but also to have these classes kept to these characters so as to check out as many classes as possible. Unfortunately there are times where the best solution is to just break this disease and have two characters have the same class (or maybe I accidentally made Faris both the best DPS and the best Mage without realizing it- uh oh).

My main critical problem against the game itself is there are admittedly a few stinker classes. Buff Dancer! Make Berserker more interesting! There are possible ways that these more niche classes could be overhauled or more functional so as to make them stand out compared to more traditional but practical classes like Monk, Summoner or White Mage. Most of the classes work really well and switching from class to class is a lot easier than in 3, although understanding the upsides of certain jobs takes a bit of faith. 'Chemist is one of the best jobs in the game, trust me' I saw, 'Use Zenigage! It's what makes Samurai good!' the daimyo of Bal wailed. Nonsense, all I need is Krile to grab Berserk and stay a monk and do all the work. Dragoon isn't that good? Then how come I can jump? That's rad. (I should note I typed much of this before beating the final boss- a battle I mostly won on...Zenigage + Chemist using Mix! I mostly just didn't wanna rewrite this entire section) I say much of this as admittedly an apology to Final Fantasy V, similar to other class systems in gaming as my strategizing and planning really isn't as complex as perhaps the game would want me to think on. Maybe it's because Final Fantasy was still just a matter of the turn based combat that the class system would have some oddities I didn't take into consideration which kept me from being wholly engrossed in its system and more so entertained. Maybe I sound cheeky in this regard but I did wish my understanding of the classes for FFV was a bit clearer in-game. Mostly I wish the game was just transparent in what abilities I was getting so I could fully realize the utilities of my party and its jobs, but much of it turned into a party of swiss army knives with a little of columns A-C, a specialty in D and what I would have liked to be a mastery in E but a greater need at the moment for said character to be Column F instead. Perhaps better class planning in later replays would greatly trim the sloppy catalog of abilities I ended on, but that's for a later Polaroid. I mostly bring this up not in scathing criticism or in contradiction to its strongest and generally most acclaimed aspect, I mostly bring about my hiccups in the job system- as I admit I'm not certain how I feel about job systems in general at the moment. After sitting on Yakuza 7 for a while, I came to feel generally positive about the idea, but remembering certain flops and hiccups in how some classes progressed, on top of some other oddities regarding battles. Final Fantasy 3, being the first in the series to structure a job system for later games to build upon gets some slack for how early it is, but of course has its own can of worms in terms of balancing. Tactics, while I have yet to beat it, has an immensely deep class system, but gets into the territory of needing some guidance in unlocking other classes to diversify your team. Here in Final Fantasy V, while I enjoy the ease and speed in getting new jobs- as well as the amount of good jobs versus middling; I do think there's a major balancing problem. How come certain classes end on just 'Equip Axes' while others end on borderline game breaking abilities like Rapid Shot. Red Mage has the idea in knowing that to get the insane ability in 'Dual Cast' locked at a 1159 AP level cap but the Ranger’s ‘Rapid Fire’ is not only slightly more practical but only requires nearly half that in 600 ap. By the end of the game and once several classes are mastered, a lot of it starts to click and regular battles begin to become a joke, and I love it. I really just wish I had better planned who was gonna get what classes, as a lot of the late game was spent wondering why I spent as much time as I had in certain classes. Once I had finally sat down and got that chemist class leveled up I finally saw the appeal in abilities like Mix and Revive, but I don’t know why I spend so much time trying to make Berserker work. Hell, I never even got Black Mage maxed out, which felt strange.

Otherwise the game progresses about as similarly as other Final Fantasy, although the last third is kind of the least interesting part, with a late game party change and some pretty lackluster dungeons until the final stretch.

The pixel remastered soundtrack is pretty great, and some of the remastered effects look really great but I'm still on the fence on how the actual spritework looks part of the time. I am disappointed however that the game lacks much of the bonus combat that was added to the GBA and defunct PC release.

Overall I was really looking forward to playing this, and all things considered a lot of the game's charms and structure is very enjoyable but sometimes its quirk gets in the way of taking it too seriously- it still has one last push before it reaches the heights of the series' epic status nowadays. Certainly this and other FFs prior have their stellar moments and memorable moments, but with the help of hindsight and some knowledge of FF6- its hard to really compare most of the stuff that came beforehand. This was definitely my favorite thus far, but the third act and some of the cast really keep it from being my favorite of the bunch. Would still greatly recommend it primarily for its unique battling and progression system.