Has one of the better antagonists and endings in a Yakuza game but is otherwise a side game in every sense. Going back to playing as Kiryu after Yagami is a sharp downgrade and the story is really padded out by bland sidequests that don't even meet the average for the series. Yakuza 6 might have not been a great game overall but it was a great ending for Kiryu so I'm kinda bummed they felt the need to make this game at all. That being said, it is nice to get a few more personal moments with Kiryu after a whole series of his character taking a backseat to political struggles and schemes. Wasn't necessarily bad, but definitely underwhelming.

Radiant Historia is a very cool JRPG. The setting isn't anything special with its magical medieval fantasy war and separation between humans and beastmen and everything, but it's handled in a competent way reminiscent of stuff like Suikoden. Stocke is a great main character who's smart, perceptive, and good at dealing with people. He really fits his role as a lieutenant in the special intelligence unit of the military and it sets him apart from the usual naive shonen protag they like to give you in JRPGs. The political conflict is handled in a compelling way and the time jumping mechanics help make it more interesting as well with the need to make certain choices to get past roadblocks in the plot. It can be a little annoying trying to find the right nodes to jump to for completing quests and things but overall it's cool. The positioning-based grid combat is pretty fresh and setting up big combos on enemies that are clumped together can feel really great. Unfortunately if the enemy is a boss/mid-boss with a lot of HP the fights become a slog and there are a few points in the game where a lot of slow grinding is needed. The voice acting is pretty solid and I'm surprised how much of the dialogue was voiced. I like Eruca's redesign but overall the artstyle of this version is a downgrade from the original and you can only get the original art as DLC which is a shame. I liked the bittersweet ending until I realized I missed one sidequest for the true ending which ticked me off.

Sakura Wars 2019 feels like a modern iteration on the original in every aspect and in most cases it's a notable improvement. The artstyle looks great and the character models are really high quality. I was quite happy seeing the imperial theater in its remade PS4 glory and the other locations look nice too. Even the loading screen looks beautiful. The story retains the soul of the original where it takes a bunch of cliches and bundles them together into a surprisingly charming package with a likable cast of well-designed characters. Out of the protagonists I have experience with, Kamiyama is the most likable of the 3 though I've only been able to experience Ogami's story in 1. I was weary going into the game because of a lot of remarks about the game feeling like it was just made to set up for a sequel but it didn't feel that way to me at all and I quite enjoyed it from start to finish. I think the original revue is used in an interesting way with their mysterious and potentially tragic circumstances, especially with Sumire being the new manager of the theater. I also like new sakura much more than old sakura, especially since she's voiced by sakura ayane MMMMM. I would say the only parts where the reboot falls short of the original are novelty and soulful saturn anime cutscenes. The new combat is a pretty simplistic musou style but the attacks feel good and the presentation is solid. The combat environments could use some more variety though. The music is good and the theme song in particular is wonderful but they do play it a tad too much. Another issue I encountered was that some dialogue choices have really unpredictable results which can be pretty annoying since they put so much emphasis on the relationship-building. Overall I'm very pleased with the direction this new Sakura Wars is taking and I think they've set a really solid foundation for a modern series. I only hope it did well enough to actually get that continuation.

Very neat saturn game. Bulk Slash has soul coming out the ears with its low poly aesthetic, solid soundtrack and seamless integration of the co-pilot's animated portrait popping up on the screen all the time. The combat is decent but the controls take a bit to get used to. The levels are all fairly distinct in terms of design and objectives and the boss fights are pretty fun too. Difficulty is pretty low throughout but that was fine for the style of the game. Couldn't understand the story since it was all in japanese but it didn't seem to matter until the ending anyways and it doesn't seem very complex.

Pretty alright as far as ace combat goes. 6 completely falls flat from a story perspective with uninteresting characters, awkward writing, middling voice acting, poor facial animations, and a ridiculous overuse of the line "dance with the angels" to a cringe degree. From a gameplay standpoint it's great, given that it's ace combat. The first half or so places a bit too much focus on ground targets which can get pretty dull but it picks up later with more mission variety. While the game obviously doesn't look as good as 7, it still looks great and the missile trails in particular look very cool during the larger dogfights. My favorite aspect of 6 is that your team is actually competent and helpful and you can tell they're fighting alongside you all the time. While the story and mission dialogue isn't good in general, Garuda 2 is a good wingman and I did feel for him when he revealed his family died during the war. The music was still good, but unmemorable by ace combat standards aside from Liberation of Gracemeria.

A big improvement over the original in every way. Zwei's gameplay is smoother with faster shots, smoother movement and a better camera. The areas are more visually interesting and the music is great. The story is still pretty simple but it's much better than the first one and easier to follow and care about as well. It's also cool how they incorporate some ground sections for variety. The difficulty feels more fair in this one though the last couple levels can be a pain to get through in one go. Also the final boss fight is awesome. Sega just can't stop pumping out the soul.

While the game is absolutely filled to the brim with soul from its atmospheric cutscenes and artstyle to its cheesy-yet-cool dialogue, I just don't find myself enjoying actually playing it. The bizarre genre mix of racing and JRPG is really interesting but in my experience the JRPG aspect doesn't really do much but drag down the game for me. It's crazy that there's an overworld map with random encounters in a racing game..but I much prefer full-length races and it's annoying to find what you're looking for on the map. It's cool how much you can customize your car with parts won from races and level it up with exp...but it's annoying not knowing if my car is underleveled or if I'm just not racing well enough and you can't directly compare enemy parts to your own before buying them. On top of it all, it's hard not to compare the actual handling to other racing games like ridge racer type 4 and find it pretty stiff. Cool game, wish I liked it more than I do.

More like Nioh 1.5, Nioh 2 is generally an improvement over the first game but the flaws mostly remain the same. I like that I can make my own character this time around since William being a set main character didn't do the first game any favors. The story is a little better but still an uninteresting mix of japanese history and characters you have very little reason to care about. The level design is better but Nioh 2 retains the problem of lacking enemy variety and you generally fight the same things 20 hours in that you fought in the first 2 or 3 hours. The loot system is still completely unnecessary and decreases the value in exploring the levels. The co-op is practically nonexistant but that's more likely the fault of there being so few people helping others out. The AI companions are some of the most incompetent I've ever seen in a video game and serve absolutely no purpose in anything besides a 1v1 human boss fight. The combat system is still fun at its core, but the enemies are radically unbalanced and do far too much damage. What caused me to drop the game was the process of spending 10 minutes fighting a boss or going through a level without any incident, then dying immediately after making one or two mistakes because every enemy can 2-shot you. A ton of enemies and bosses also happen to have extremely powerful grab attacks which is very annoying considering how poor the telegraphing is on most of the attacks in the game. The difficulty just left me feeling tired even when I pulled through in a desperate situation and I just wasn't having a lot of fun. The weapons, while fun to use, have very large skill trees with very few actual useful skills. The fact that they're still each tied to a different stat is also annoying because it basically means you have to build for about 2 weapon types at most, while in something like dark souls you can switch between many different types of strength or dexterity weapons any time throughout the game. The yokai abilities are cool enough but the snake ability is so powerful there's very little reason to use anything else, especially when a good amount of them have lengthy animations that don't make you invulnerable.

The combat system is a slight improvement over the main game and the music is great. Addam is a fun character and Lora's at least more likable than Rex. The story up until the point I played 8 hours in was pretty average and I can't really say I was invested but the character interactions were nice enough and it was cool seeing Jin before he went down the villain path. Unfortunately where Torna takes a big dive is the awful community system and frankly I didn't want to waste a big chunk of my time doing MMO-tier fetch quests with dull NPC interactions just to proceed in the story. It wouldn't have been so bad if it was just getting to level 2 which took a decent amount of time in itself, but after hearing I would have to reach level 4 to finish the story, I lost all interest.

A total blast and nearly unparalleled friend simulator reminiscent of Little Busters but without the whole "ripping my heart out of my chest and stomping on it" part. Majikoi is consistently enjoyable the whole way through with a lovable cast of goofy characters and a very entertaining script. The translation could be a bit meme-y at times but the game's tone was already really silly so it never really took me out of the experience...except when they had the gall to do a "come to the dark side we have cookies" joke. The heroines were all great and had pretty compelling routes that were surprisingly fast-paced compared to other VNs. I also really appreciate the little side routes you can do with the male characters and a few side characters. Moro's in particular was the most hard-hitting route in the whole game. I would say most of the routes, while enjoyable, don't really end on a particularly impactful note. It's not like I'm playing Majikoi to bawl my eyes out but the potential was there after getting me so attached to the characters so it kind of feels like missed potential. One notable complaint I have is that, while it does lead to several entertaining interactions, the story has a tendency to lean too heavily on fight scenes despite a lack of effort to actually narrate the action in an interesting way.

Moro in a skirt > Mayucchi > PREMIUM TIME > Chika > Kokoro > Wanko > Mayo > Miyako > Momoyo > Chris
don't @ me