How many people don’t know that Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards has mini-games? If you open the options menu, there’s a little 4 player mini-game tab, containing 3 mini-games: 100-Yard Hop, Bumper Crop Bump, and CheckerBoard Chase. I was one of those people until about a week ago, I stumbled haphazardly into the depths of CheckerBoard Chase… To summarize it, it’s a simple Bomberman-adjacent arcade game where characters walk around on a big platform, and whenever you press A you clear out a line of the platform in front of you. The goal is to stay on the platform without falling into the destroyed lines. What would seemingly be a simple, throwaway mini-game developed for some presumedly arbitrary reason ends up having a whole lot of depth when you search for it.

First off, let’s talk about the line-clearing itself. The platform is visually broken into a simple 8x8 tileset, and you clear 1 block wide lines from where you’re standing to the stage’s edge. Clearing a line itself has a bit of startup and animation recovery, so if you and someone else clear lines in each other’s direction, you’ll only barely make it off the block before it falls. If you acted a split second late - you’re gone. You might not even clear the lines at all if you don’t click it fast enough, you’ll get stuck in startup and fall through.

Line clearing itself is a 2 stage mechanic; first a line is highlighted one by one in a split second, then the blocks start falling in order. Because of this, there’s even a sort of proximity system going on here - blocks fall faster the closer you are to the ledge. Not only that, but characters have tangibility to them; you can bodyblock! This means that when you’ve positioned correctly, you can hold someone in a corner and quickly get a confirmed kill on them.

Walking in this game is slow and doesn’t have any diagonal movement, but line clears are can be easily reacted to from afar. It’s about when you choose to walk that the skill lies, as the advantageous and disadvantageous spots on the stage are constantly changing as blocks fall and respawn. Walking for too long can often lead to you being pushed into a disadvantageous position if you can’t defend your own ground, but long stretches of watching are especially important to the end-game as the stage closes in, and bad line clears become more punishable.

If you’ve been locked in the corner, you can clear the spaces on the map where your opponent can get a confirmed kill on you from - if you’re fast enough. Though of course this sort of playstyle is risky, as you’re forcing yourself to stick to what’s usually the corners of the stage, which begin to fall as the match progresses. That’s a comeback mechanic with at least as much design intelligence as Guilty Gear: Strive.

I’ve been able to find a lot of fundamental e-sportsy game design here: from positional advantages to concepts like spacing. This is at the very least an EVO side event-worthy game that can sit in the corner next to Puyo Puyo and those Sailor Moon SNES fighting games!! Breaking this game’s subtleties open and scouring for crumbs of depth can really teach you a lot about the simple arts of game design as a whole. It’s often the rigid, initially awkward aspects of a game that lead to its depth. When analyzing a game as sheerly un-emphasized as a little mini-game hiding under the floorboards of Kirby 64, it’s hard to see where intention starts and ends. Yet ultimately as players it’s our right to breathe meaning into the dusty ashes of whatever we stumble upon. Grassroots is beautiful. Made me feel like a Ryu player circa 1994 on the sticks, feeling out their buttons. “Feeling a standing fierce here” I whisper, eyes shut tightly, as I launch a Waddle Dee into the pit of oblivion

I played Kirby 64 by the way. I don’t remember what happens in it it was a long time ago

A dramatic improvement in some ways, and a notable disappointment in others. I am in love but I am repulsed. I am uplifted but I am confused. I am happy with this, but I am also not.

So much here is so compelling, but so much is equally as ridiculous and stupid and borderline indicative of incompetence in writing a compelling sequel.

One could even say my opinion is cut straight down the middle...?

No number rating. I can't even begin to put my feelings on this game into words just yet.

”There can only be one dragon.”

(To preface, I’d like to state I am aware this game is extremely divisive, and that many prefer the original Yakuza 2. I did not play the original, however — I started with Yakuza Kiwami —, so this review is entirely based on my experience with this remake.)

Yakuza Kiwami 2 is a weird one to review. Like the first Kiwami game, it made perfect sense to exist; it was stuck on the PS2 aside from an HD re-release alongside the first Yakuza on PS3 and Wii U. Plus, with Yakuza 6 releasing the previous year and bringing with it a brand new engine, a remake of the second game which also gave a taste of the Dragon Engine’s capabilities was a sensible decision.

And let’s start with that; the Dragon Engine makes this game play rather differently than its predecessors. For one, the entire world is connected now; loading screens between areas are rare. In addition, there’s a lot more weight to Kiryu here than in previous games, which, personally, made the jump from the first Kiwami pretty difficult, but once I got used to it, it made me feel so goddamn powerful. Finally, this game looks beautiful. The Dragon Engine is really powerful visually, and it’s still the best-looking game in the franchise in my opinion.

Like with my reviews of Yakuza 0 and Kiwami, I won’t bother summarizing the story, as it’s both more complex than the latter and not really worth it for the purposes of this review. The main takeaway I had from it in regards to its theming is the inescapability of family; many of the main characters are either trying to find the truth behind their families, or running away from it to make a name for themselves.

The main example of this is with the game’s main antagonist, Ryuji Goda. Ryuji is extremely popular (and, from what I hear, even moreso in Japan) and, if you ask me, for good reason. He contrasts very heavily with Kiryu — both are legends in the Yakuza world with dragon tattoos on their backs. However, ultimately, both are just lonely men trying to make something out of themselves, with no real family to speak of in the end. In a way, Kiryu and Ryuji are two sides of the same coin, sharing the same sense of honor, fairness, and a desire to escape the past.

The game’s other major character is Kaoru Sayama, an Osakan detective. I don’t intend on dissecting her backstory (as I’d just be talking about over half the game’s storyline, pretty much), but the introduction of a potential romantic partner for Kiryu increased this story’s stakes considerably, and in a good way, in my opinion! Kaoru is central to the plotline, and she (alongside Ryuji), had me engaged in the story the whole way through, and the game even ends with her kissing Kiryu.

The story was clearly written with Kiryu getting a romantic partner in mind, and the idea of a detective and former Yakuza clan chairman being in love could lead to some very interesting plotlines in future games… and these possibilities are completely ruined by her being written out at the start of Yakuza 3. It’s absurdly infuriating and destroys a lot of storytelling potential the ENTIRE franchise had, but I’ll get to it more when discussing the next game; as annoying as it is, Yakuza 3 was the introduction of a new writer, so I can’t blame Yakuza 2 for it.

Kiwami 2 also introduced a 3-chapter long story batch called the Majima Saga, in which you play as fan-favorite Goro Majima. It’s definitely great to play as him again after 0, and the Legend moveset from that game is back with a few changes for the better and a really slick black-and-purple visual effect. The Majima Saga is alright; it culminates in a really good final battle and beautifully ties some loose ends from Yakuza 0, but it’s too short; you can beat Chapter 1 in less than 10 minutes. There is a lot of effort put into side content for it (Majima can do most of the side activities and he even has a brand new karaoke song, Because I Love You), but the main campaign itself is alright. It’s mostly there to explain why the hell Majima’s running a construction company now and what happened to Makoto Makimura after the events from 0.

So, that’s what I intended to talk about regarding the characters and the story’s theming. Thus, I’ll move on to gameplay.

As I’ve mentioned, there’s a lot more weight to the movement here, and that translates to combat. Kiryu feels absurdly powerful here, with a ton of momentum behind his hits. You’re back to only one style — a refined, faster version of the moveset from Yakuza 6: The Song of Life — but, in my opinion, it’s very versatile and incredibly satisfying to use. Combat is a lot more physics based, meaning that kicking stuff around can damage enemies and the enviroment around you. Plus, you aren’t locked into fights anymore; if you don’t want to fight an enemy, you can just run away. The crowd will give way.

The Extreme Heat mechanic from Yakuza 6 is also back. To summarize, once you have a full Heat bar, you can activate Extreme Heat, which makes you considerably more powerful, with some changes to the combos you can perform. The main feature of this mechanic, though, is that connecting some specific hits (such as the end of a Rush Combo) will allow you to keep mashing the button, which exponentially increases damage dealt. It can break fights in half if used right, and some multi-phase bosses can have parts of the fight fully skipped if you use Extreme Heat right.

The leveling system is the one from Yakuza 6 as well, and it’s… pretty bad. There are five different experience types, and the upgrade menu is split into Stats, Heat Actions, Battle Skills, and Life Skills. Different types of orbs go in different menus. In theory, it’s a good way to get the player to engage in the various pieces of side content, but the experience gain is so meager that you’ll likely resort to grinding at restaurants for at least a bit over an hour. It’s tedious. Plus, EVERYTHING is an upgrade in this goddamn menu; while you CAN get some upgrades via a few substories and Komaki’s Training, you don’t unlock them; you just unlock the ability to buy them from the menu, which robs the feeling of progress from completing a challenge if you ask me — after all, you’re not unlocking a skill, just the chance to buy it.

The other main issue I have with the combat is that this game is just a bit too easy. Extreme Heat melts health bars like a hot knife through butter, and if you max out your stats and use certain equipment and/or weapons (on a related note, you can store weapons you pick up in fights by using the d-pad, which is a much appreciated change), you can skip boss fights altogether. I had to refrain from using Extreme Heat during the last two bosses because I beat the third-to-last boss with a single use of Extreme Heat — and that’s after I switched the difficulty to hard (I usually stick to normal).

I don’t really mind the game being easy, especially because I can still pull off cool moves and I play Yakuza primarily for the characters anyway. However, the easy difficulty makes the few difficulty spikes (in particular the miniboss battles against the Man in Black) rather jarring. Those fights are cool, at least.

Moving on, I’d like to mention the music, mostly because the remake actually replaced some tracks from the original entirely. For instance, North Menace, an aggressive, industrial rock track, was replaced with a more techno-y track with rock instrumentals, Unity of Metal. Hit & Kill and Evil Itself, themes for unique bosses, were scrapped entirely in favor of Rebellious Phase, which is this game’s generic boss theme. There’s a few more examples of this occurring, but it seems the goal here was to make the soundtrack more in-line with the techno sound introduced in Yakuza 6. Whichever you prefer is subjective; I think both soundtracks have their merits, but I really wish Evil Itself wasn’t replaced; the rapping in that track is very cool. There’s also some licensed music that was cut from the western release — use a mod to put them back in; the generic emo rock or whatever it is that replaces them is awful.

Side content is good, as always. The main side story this time is the Cabaret Club minigame from Yakuza 0 making its return. I didn’t bother much with it, as I’d already grinded way too much of it for a lifetime in 0. There are also Bouncer Missions; basically, those are missions where you travel from point A to point B and cannot refill your health at any time. Some missions have special conditions added on top, and you’re encouraged to use the boatloads of weapons you come across in them. They’re very cool.

Furthermore, there’s the Majima Construction minigame, which is an RTS subgame with its own storyline. Spoiler alert, I didn’t bother — I don’t do well with those kinds of minigames, and I’d rather just fight those enemies with the standard beat ‘em up gameplay anyway.

There’s plenty of substories, too, which lead to four superbosses this time once they’re all complete. Not much more to say than that, although you no longer need to scramble for a substory finder; available substories appear on the map once you get the Substory Finder upgrade, which is thankfully really cheap to get. The substories themselves are of very good quality, although I can’t think of many standouts. Embracing My True Self is a notable one for both developing Yuya (a minor character in every game, but still one of Kiryu’s friends) and for featuring a trans woman, which is really cool!

All in all, Yakuza Kiwami 2 is an excellent remake. This game’s story is a favorite of many (mine included, tied with the first Kiwami), and the remake definitely does it justice, even if it’s sad seeing how the romantic undertones between Kaoru and Kiryu were shoved aside in the next game. While the gameplay has its flaws (particularly the atrocious leveling system and underwhelming difficulty), it’s still balanced most of the time, and the snappier, even more brutal Heat Actions are still very satisfying to pull off, which leads to the fastest Yakuza game thus far. The Majima Saga, as short as it is, is worth it alone solely because of how beautifully it ties up some loose ends from 0 — it honestly made me cry at one point.

this game FUCKS and HAS SEX, but i have a few issues with it;
one) i think this game can get a bit visually busy in multiplayer when each char has similar body types, outside of april and splinter (this probably would've been fixed if casey was unlocked from the start)
i think taunting is a bit too powerful and lead to alot of instances where i'd spam taunt in downtime
but these downsides don't really take away from what is a really awesome game with tons of visual flair and is tons of fun, i reccomend getting it if you want a game to play thru with friends

Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow started a series that would end up becoming a monolith of game history, but it’s not easy to tell what game design landed them in the hall of fame at first glance. Monster collection RPGs had already been an established sub-genre in Japan, after all. Though when I look back to what first transfixed me about Pokémon, I see one obvious lead. Pokémon really felt like it was my own journey, and then its social aspects let me compare my journey to others. Your Pokémon adventure wasn’t going to be exactly like anyone else’s, and every team member would have a history and grow up by the end of the game—And then you fight! Pokémon had delicately sprinkled Tamagotchi game design over a fine foundation of D&D era team building concepts. Alongside this, the games focused on a modern day setting in which you’re a kid growing up in an urban fantasy world, where everyone is in on the same thing as you. Pokémon had this fantastical sports fantasy-esque pitch to it; it didn’t even need a compelling villain for the setting to immediately bring something vivid to the eyes of many.

You explore this setting through a grid-based constant overworld, with towns connected to each other through straightforward routes. Certainly a casualization compared to other RPGs of the time, but it’s a choice that has aged very well. Even some Final Fantasy games are built like this now! Pokémon Red and Blue have solid pacing as well, Gyms lay out an easy-to-track goalpost of progress. More uniquely in comparison to games to come, Red and Blue follow a very strict formula of having dungeons between every single Gym (although the game doesn’t make you do them exactly in that order). There’s some clear game designerly intent behind the early dungeons: Viridian Forest teaches you to manage your health against status effects in larger areas, Mt. Moon forces you to deal with encounters before you obtain repels, and Rock Tunnel teaches you the importance of Hidden moves. Unlike future games, there’s also a ton of variety in what order to play through the game. Everything from Celadon to Fuchsia can be played in whatever order – you can go to every area in the game (except the League) with only 4 Gym Badges. The best part of this isn’t just the non-linearity, it’s that there’s always going to be trainers you can fight if you’re under-leveled.

Fighting in the singleplayer campaign of this game is split between unique battles and taking your time to get some catches. Especially returning to this game immediately after playing Pokémon Legends: Arceus, it’s easy to see that catching in this game is a bit messy. On one hand, catching is a pure numbers game, with catching being available at any percentage of health, but damage and status effects making Pokémon easier to catch. This is good, since catching would be a very monotonous process otherwise. On the other hand, the game’s math encourages brute forcing a bit too much, especially when weakening a Pokémon you want is so scary with the damage potential of random critical hits. Beyond the faults in the experience of catching itself, Pokémon catching feels inherently rewarding. Knowing that any Pokémon you capture could become essential to your experience makes completing the Pokédex feel worthwhile.
Though for all of the aspects of personalization to feel rewarding, the battles need to work well, and they’re decent. More than later games, the combat is slow paced and often broken down by things like Wrap and sleep status effects. You don’t get strong elemental attacks until much further into the game; there’s a big chunk of time where a lot of Pokémon fight with strong normal type attacks instead. This makes the game feel a bit more methodical at times, and makes the game feel much duller at other times. Pokémon is an easy game, unless you don’t want it to be easy. I didn’t grind at all in my latest playthrough, and I beat the final boss with all of my team being 20 levels below their opponents, and that was pretty satisfying.
What really sets apart Pokémon from other RPGs is that you could take your Pokémon into battles against your friends. It’s hard to rate Pokémon PVP, because there’s so many factors to what makes battling friends interesting that exist outside of the PVP itself; the balancing is literally what you and your friends decide it to be. Having that option really just heightens the whole experience, the feeling that every choice matters because you could eventually take these Pokémon into a fight for real. It’s really the type of game design you see in a lot of games now, having something you can really apply your game knowledge to in a meaningful way beyond just the campaign of a game itself.
This game also has some glitches, it’s kind of infamous for it at this point. Most of the glitches you see in a run are miscellaneous rushed programming resulting in faulty mechanics. The most interesting bugs you can find are things you have to do very intentionally – usually defined by memory manipulation. I think it’s a bit of a stretch to seriously critique this game as buggy when most of the faults of the game are oversights that you might not even notice in the runtime of a single playthrough. Personally, I love a lot of the weirder, harder to activate glitches. Something about manipulating the game into getting weird things to happen was so intriguing to me after playing it normally for so long. But I certainly wouldn’t want stuff like Focus Energy not working to persist into future games, it is a flaw.

The game’s presentation has aged dubiously. The overworld looks totally fine for a Game Boy game, but some of those Pokémon sprites were really weird. Even the Yellow version keeps the old back sprites, which often display the design incoherently, even having factual errors about them. The music sounds pretty good though; not exactly good in quality as Link’s Awakening for example, but it’s a deservingly iconic Game Boy soundtrack.
Finally regarding Pokémon Yellow version itself, this isn’t a luxury definitive edition or anything. It reminds me of a holiday themed reskin of a game; it has that amount of substance to it. It would’ve been worth critiquing back in the day as a shallow re-release, but these days it’s fair to regard it as the best version to replay the games through by default. Those new battle sprites are just that good.

The real thing that makes Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow so interesting to go back to is that everything that I’ve ever loved Pokémon was in this game already. The feeling of going on a personal adventure with a team that I had nicknamed and given personalities to. The social aspects of the game that allow me to heighten my experience through friends. Everything was already here, from the very beginning. If anything, that’s probably why these games become so easy to compare and downplay compared to sequels; Pokémon is still about these exact same things, it’s just better at them now. But just as Pokémon already had everything it’s ever been good at, it already was a game you didn’t have love everything about. You didn’t have to play Pokémon for the collecting, you didn’t have to play it with friends, you didn’t even have to feel invested in your team, you could just play it, and it’d be a good role playing game. You could play it again, and have a completely different experience, and you’d know it was one of the best experiences on the Game Boy. You could even play it now, despite all that lost polish, and you could appreciate that this game knew exactly what it wanted to be.

YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is an experience unlike any other. It's hard to begin to put the game into words. I think a lot of critics are quick to dismiss YIIK because of it's pretentious title, ridiculously unlikable protagonist and the ongoing controversy surrounding the game over time - some of which is justified, some of which is blown out of proportion. These things are true, unfortunately. The subtitle of YIIK is ridiculously pretentious, and regardless of intent the protagonist, Alex, is deeply, deeply unlikable. But what more is there to YIIK? I think what is here conveys more than a failed pretentious JRPG-wannabe meme game. This game IS saying things, and I think considering just how much of a process this game was for the developers - who saw their own mother die during production of the game - it would be disrespectful for me to disregard their intentions and attempts at making meaning through the gameplay and the story. So, forgive me if this is a long review beforehand.

YIIK focuses on a year in the life of Alex Eggleston, the most average young adult white dude to have probably ever been conceived. We all know someone like Alex YIIK (which is what I will be calling him in this review.) Vapid, yet confrontational. Smug, yet substanceless. Every human flaw you can imagine, Alex YIIK has it in droves, and he doesn't really have much in the way of positive attributes to like him. Why do people... LIKE Alex YIIK? What are his positive traits? He's never succeeded at anything worthwhile, he's not kind or big-hearted, he's not particularly smart or attractive. As a result, Alex YIIK, our protagonist, is the walking flaw. He's an amalgamation of everything that could possibly be wrong with a human being. The creators know it, and they make it very clear after a while. He's a pretentious little brat, who thinks the world revolves around him.

You might think it's a bit weird that I've gone on to talk about this first before talking about the gameplay, or the overall plot - but it's important to understand that if Alex YIIK does not work, this game does not work. If this game cannot make Alex YIIK into a deep and substantial character with a strong role in the story then it's game over. The whole game revolves around him. A lengthy amount of what I'm saying is going to be about him.
So, how does Alex YIIK play out? How does he fit into the story? ... Good question.

The idea of the story presented by YIIK is that Alex YIIK is explicitly a bad person. All of these negative traits are not a byproduct of poor writing, they are intentional. So, the story necessitates that he grow and become a kind person who cares for his friends and appreciates the world around them. It's a simple moral. Alex YIIK starts off the story by being a bad friend, bullying Rory, and berating his mother for not doing good enough. At the end of the story, YIIK is clear - Alex YIIK is a terrible guy, and he has hurt all of his friends and family. He knows it, and he makes a vow to change. So, we have an arc. How does the story actually engage with this, and importantly, can a story like this work in the first place?

You'll quickly notice that every question you can ask of YIIK leads to another one. This is because YIIK is very poorly written. It's an undeniable feature of the game that no amount of reduced monologue options (yes, that is a real feature) can fix. YIIK is convoluted, often needlessly, requiring you to interrogate every aspect of the text with a fervor to understand basic things about it. Despite what detractors would have you believe, this has nothing to do with postmodernism. It has everything to do with incompetence. Characters recite wikipedia articles to Alex YIIK about the mechanisms of metaphysics, Alex YIIK goes on borderline nonsensical tirades to the audience about whatever the hell he feels like and the two endings presented are incredibly abstract in an uninteresting and somewhat lazy way. So, decoding Alex YIIK and the story itself is needlessly hard, because YIIK tells its story very poorly. Again, the memes are right, and funny. "Vibrating With Motion" is more than just a meme, it's an indicator as to how the game's writing fails.

However, despite this, I think Alex YIIK does KIND OF work as a protagonist. His unlikability is undeniable, but the story does have a few very compelling ideas working with him.
A) Alex YIIK's unlikability is very, very well established. The story constructs his role well, and a lot of his internal monologues provide this increasingly frustrating sense that Alex YIIK knows what he is doing is wrong, but that his arrogance won't let him stop. It is genuinely harsh and sometimes almost personal to see him be a fuck-up. They wrote the most unlikable man in the world, to great effect.
B) The idea that Alex YIIK REALLY IS THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE is deeply, deeply fascinating. The world does revolve around Alex YIIK, and it's something that Alex YIIK explicitly rejects. But really, all he is rejecting is the responsibility and the acknowledgement that comes with. He was fine with acting like he was the only one who mattered until responsibility came with it. So, when he faces the facts? When he realises that his presence in the universe is what will tear everything apart, and then he sees it happen? That's incredibly emotionally damaging for Alex YIIK, and does GENUINELY humble him. I like that. It's a good subversion.
C) The game essentially ends on the twist that you, the player, are the Alex YIIK of your own dimension. That sounds... ridiculous. That's because it is. It does really add to him, though. Alex YIIK goes from an unlikable bastard, to an uncomfortable mirror. Somewhere, in another universe, you could have been Alex YIIK. Exactly like him. Earlier, I mentioned that we all know someone like Alex YIIK. That someone is us. Alex YIIK has flaws so numerous, inevitably, we will see that flaw in ourselves. This is really cool. I think it explains why Alex YIIK is so viscerally hateable. It's like looking into one of those mirrors that makes you look fatter than you really are. Everybody laughs at a hall of mirrors, but if you're afraid of being fat, seeing that in the mirror can be quite impactful and scary. Alex YIIK is that for every flaw a person can have. That's scary, and quite powerful. I like that a lot.
D) The ending of the game does hold Alex YIIK accountable for being such an asshole. I have my issues with the ending but Alex YIIK doesn't get off scot-free. Just the opposite, he gets punished extensively.

That's what I like about Alex YIIK. I think he's a very interesting character when viewed through these specific ideas. However, uh, while I think these ideas really work, there is a story going on around him that he does not work in.

Alex YIIK has friends who seem to forgive him for everything and treat him like some kind of saint. Why would he even have friends who care about him? He's done nothing to earn their respect and friendship. He has no redeeming qualities at all. Yet, even when he shows basically no reform and offers weak-willed half hearted apologies, everybody falls to their feet to pray for him. This is really stupid. The rest of the cast will consistently break character just to puff Alex up. It just runs in contrast to the game's themes. Alex YIIK has to care for his friends, be a nice guy and do for them what they do for him - he can't be totally unlikable all the time and have people fall at his feet. This happens for the whole story, to the point where it gets all of his friends killed. This is what really instigates his change, but this is only for the final few hours of the game. They sell it, but it's already too late. Alex YIIK does go through development before that point, becoming marginally nicer - but it's not enough of a constant change to lead to this kind of Persona 4 style friendship group that support each other all the time. Especially not when Alex YIIK can make one of the characters kill themselves. Which, disregarding the obvious tastelessness on display, is absolutely terrible - and is tolerated by the main cast. It just doesn't work out. Alex YIIK develops in a way that feels totally disconnected from the rest of the cast, and it seriously kills the theme of the game.

In summary on Alex YIIK himself before I talk briefly about the rest of the cast, Alex YIIK simultaneously works, and yet, he doesn't. He's a great character concept carrying poignant ideas throughout the story, even if he's written poorly - but he is in total disconnect with the world around him. This kills him as a character, and makes him feel more like he is being celebrated for being a bad person, rather than growing - which he needs to do for the story to function.

The rest of the cast are rather hit or miss. I was a really big fan of Rory and Claudio. Rory is a sweet but really depressed guy who's struggling with his mental health after the death of his sister. He doesn't know how to cope, and this has led him to the point of delusion - when he meets the cast, he almost seriously hurts them because of this delusion. This plunges him into depression when Alex YIIK screams at him, telling him nobody cares about his dead sister. A lot of the game is helping him cope, and becoming a better and more confident person who can help others. He's sweet, and I like him. Claudio, on the other hand, is a mature black man who runs a record shop and is super into weird anime. He's really chill and respectful, and he doesn't like to lose his mind over anything. He's got a business of his own, a comfortable adult life, and he's happy that way. I like that. He's a good contrast to Alex YIIK - when he isn’t breaking his character to lick his boots. The rest of the cast suck and are boring. Most of them are just exposition dumps. Michael especially is probably the most boring fictional character ever, despite being a clear expy of Yosuke from Persona 4. I found most of them grating, with Rory and Claudio being the only major exceptions.

I still haven't talked about the gameplay yet, and it's for good reason. It REALLY sucks. Everything is based on little QTE minigames, and all of them are very unfun and repetitive. These minigames are clearly inspired by Mario and Luigi, but they lack the diversity to keep them interesting. Instead, you are doing the same QTE on loop with little to no strategy. It's just painfully boring, and that is all there is to it. Add on the uninteresting dungeons that do little of note with their puzzles as well as mind-numbing grinding requirements throughout the game, and actually playing this game is terrible. The gameplay just isn't up to par.

The music, on the other hand, is somewhat solid. It's all hit or miss with this game, but I think this soundtrack does land some good ones. Alex's theme is actually pretty good, and it makes for a good leitmotif that reappears throughout the game in various new contexts. A lot of the battle music is really awesome, and diverse, due to the huge amount of composers who worked on the game. Some of the tracks are still really bad, though. The soundtrack lacks consistency and cohesion outside of Alex's motif, which is definitely a result of numerous composers who were working on different pages. The visuals are particularly striking and memorable, too. I really liked them, they really do encapsulate post-modern visual design, conveying many emotions and scenarios through minimalism and surrealism. It's a cool visual fulfillment of post-modernism inspired by post-modern paintings and artists.

So what's left to say about YIIK? Honestly? A lot. Maybe one day I will make a full-on video essay on this behemoth. It's a complex beast, and I'm glad I sat down and really gave it a chance. However, it also really, really sucks. It sucks to see a game that I personally find myself morally agreeing with in many ways just... suck so much shit. But still, I think there is something to be learnt from this. I think just like how Alex YIIK represents our worst insecurity - YIIK itself is no different. Anybody could have made a game like YIIK - ambitious, with a lot to say, that falls short for one reason or another. I feel for the developers, because I think they had a lot of ideas and everything just kind of came crashing down on them. Their heart was in this, and so was their passion. It just hasn't born out. It can happen to anybody, it really can. I don't fault them for this game. I don’t fault Alex YIIK entirely, either. Because in both cases, it really can happen to anybody. We’ve all got a bit of Alex YIIK in us - and we all have the potential in us to make something like YIIK, for better or for worse. This isn't just a "quirky Earthbound-inspired RPG,” like many people insist that it is. This is a uniquely bad game - something that could only come from passion, and love.

So, YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is bad. Really bad, actually. But it is genuine. ACKK Studios was making what they wanted to make. This is an earnest trainwreck, rather than a cynical attempt at a generic, indie RPG. Maybe that brings you comfort. Maybe that makes the game even funnier. Personally, I think that makes this whole thing hurt just a bit more.

Super Smash Bros. is such a unique slab of video game history. I’d like to think one of the reasons so many people care about Smash Bros. is because it’s a game that made people want to care about games. Super Smash Bros. Melee presented its players with so many interesting characters, and history books worth of information on every series within, and that grew with every sequel. The passion that Smash Bros. carries for other video games is contagious. The game design is also memorable; Smash games are sandboxes of silly interactions, and have a lot of intelligent design to make fighting games more accessible. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate isn’t about reinventing any of this, but it is the biggest game yet.

The most defining trait of Smash Ultimate is the unique nature of its roster. The game debuted through a fantastic trailer titled “Everyone is Here”, revealing that every character that had ever been playable will be playable. This fantastically combines the sentimentality of fighting games: the attachment we get to characters who score us wins, and the sentimental feelings we hold for those series we love. When Everyone is Here was revealed, I was dumbfounded that Pichu was going to return to the series, a joke character I had grown attached to when I played Melee. Everyone has a main, and everyone gets to banner themselves through that main.
This also results in a new issue, in that the developers clearly had to prioritize quantity over quality. Why are there four Fire Emblem characters that are modified versions of each other, but Ganondorf doesn’t even play like he acts in Zelda? This is reasonable critique, but also feels like a worthwhile sacrifice. The hypothetical perfect Smash game wouldn’t have Everyone is Here, it wouldn’t need it; but Smash Ultimate puts it to great use. It honours Nintendo’s history, Smash’s history, and most importantly, a player’s own history. I may have tried Pichu in Melee in the first place because I loved Pokemon. But when they returned to Smash, I thought of my memories of messing with them in Smash more than my memories with Pokemon.
The game released 6 new characters, and 5 echo fighters. The most fundamental of these characters to my experience was Ridley. He was added due to fan requests, an important part of Smash Ultimate’s identity. He has this uniquely rugged bait-and-punish playstyle; Ridley in Smash made me feel like I was playing how Ridley would play Smash. According to the in-game statistic tracker, I had played Ridley for 65 hours, and 3 minutes. If Ridley wasn’t in this roster, I would’ve lost those hours of gameplay, which is longer than the entire runtime of some of my favourite games. If there’s any reason to believe in the power that a single character can hold, and why ‘Everyone is Here’ is a big deal, it’s that. The other new characters were fun as well: I enjoyed the Castlevania characters quite a bit, and King K Rool’s animations oozes personality.
Smash Ultimate would then enter a long DLC phase that lasted over 2 years, becoming the majority of the time we’ve had with this game so far. The most noticeable trait of the DLC was the quantity of characters from non-Nintendo series. By the end of this DLC, Smash Bros would have 18 non-Nintendo characters, which is more than the entire roster of the first Smash Bros. game. This rippled through the conversation around the game. When Smash Bros. could give us these exotic characters in rapid succession, I began to feel confused on what I even wanted from the game. Just the DLC for this game alone makes any thoughts I had about how Pichu in a new Smash game would be “awesome” sound unimaginative. I’ve recently seen conversations about how Banjo & Kazooie were the least memorable characters added in the DLC, but I can relate to those who wanted them. Banjo & Kazooie was what you’d consider a shocking luxury inclusion before we knew Smash could be this.
Smash Ultimate’s DLC lineup isn’t a linear representation of video game history, it’s more like someone’s personal video game best-of compilation. While the Dragon Quest Heroes and Steve are video game all-timers, the rest are from B-list obsession worthy game franchises. Smash Ultimate doesn’t live up to the idealistic idea that Smash Bros. could be a museum of global video game history, but these inclusions are very memorable either way.
Those DLC contains the most complex Smash Bros. characters yet. The DLC’s character kits are explosive culminations of game design inspired by their respective series, packed together to create unique play styles. Smash 4 set out to flesh out the series’ variety of play styles with its archetypal inclusions, and Smash Ultimate’s DLC often feels like much more inspired and refined takes on those archetypes. In comparison, most launch characters feel primitive. The most obvious flaw in this game design is that the DLC often relies too much on meters and second forms as a mechanic.

The roster is where the most innovation lies within Smash Ultimate, but there are iterative gameplay improvements as well. Smash Ultimate’s engine is a mid-ground of previous Smash Bros. game’s traits. The ending lag that moves have is so much faster in this game that it feels like they intentionally didn’t want any attack to feel committal. The lagless gameplay results in punishing an opponent's bad moves being downplayed by the game’s mechanics. Though, the changes to the speed of lag and being hit allows for Smash Ultimate to speed up the pace of the gameplay a lot. The game is just fast enough, but not too committal so that planning ahead and focusing on your opponent’s actions are easier for a broader number of players. While the game could definitely have some more momentum to its movement, it reaches a sweet spot of speed and ease of player control.
The game also has 115 stages, another boast used to justify the title of ‘Ultimate’. Almost every stage has been visually revamped, and they all look pretty. The new stages the game released with are only okay, but some of those DLC stages are great. The game also improves omega forms, introduces battlefield forms, and adds a ‘hazards off’ toggle, which allows for these stages to be experienced in many ways.
Then there’s the centerpiece single player mechanic, Spirits. Through several modes, including the game’s Adventure Mode, you experience many Spirit Battles. Spirits seem to use a rather low CPU level, no matter what rank they are. They dodge around, reading your inputs, but never seem to play that great. These matches are so stilted, they feel like puzzles where you equip the right thing and mash away. I messed around with equipment sets to see if I could have an optimally fun experience, and the best I got was from simply using the spirits the game recommended me. If there’s anything to like about spirits as a collectible in comparison to trophies, it’s that seeing illustrations by a large collection of artists conveys the diversity of styles between games better than character models do. The descriptions being gone is a huge loss, though.
Spirits just aren’t luxurious enough to be a centerpiece for a game like Smash Bros. Ultimate. They’re out of place, and don’t work as an incentivizing reward at all. There are other single player modes in the game, but all of them are bland. Smash Ultimate’s Classic and Spirit modes both constantly reference things, but the references are shallow. Trophies made me want to try new things, Spirits and references made me feel out of the loop.
This results in Smash Ultimate’s most pivotal flaw, that despite the incredibly dense amount of content it holds in its core gameplay, there aren't that many valuable ways to interact with that content. The single player content is mediocre, and the online netplay is aggressively terrible. The best way to play Smash Ultimate is through its main mode– Smash. And that main mode, while fulfilling its exact purpose, has proven itself to not be accessible enough. This has rightfully formed cynicism in the community for the game, and the truth is that everyone would hate it if this game wasn’t so dynamic. Smash became the most successful fighting game series exactly because it was multifaceted, because its ruleset customization allows for it to be played in so many flavours. Even if you only played the game with one ruleset for the entirety of your time with it, there’s more variety in this game than most other fighting games in general. Just one mode and some bad netplay was enough to form some great memories with the game.

Near the end of the final Smash Ultimate presentation, a list of statistics began to play, showing the numbers of how many characters, stages, spirits, and other things were contained in the game. During that presentation, a looming feeling formed in my mind, as I had realized that I had experienced this before, 6 years ago at another Smash presentation. In that moment I knew that one day, Smash Ultimate would also be nothing but statistics in the back of my mind, downplayed by fans in comparison to whatever game came next. The path to iteratively improving on Smash Ultimate has become rather clear, as its flaws have shown themselves over time. Smash Ultimate’s title of “Ultimate” has a deadline on it, and I’m sure the developers knew that as well. The game came out in a time in which the primary traits of Smash are now less unique. Crossovers are now a staple of our current brand of pop culture. Platform-fighters are a legitimized subgenre, one that has brought several games with fresher ideas than any individual mechanic Smash Ultimate brings. This made me wonder what made Smash Ultimate unique in this modern ecosystem, and why I kept coming back to it. And I knew that I wouldn’t have kept playing it, if not for the memories the game had flowing through its DNA. I knew I wouldn’t have wanted to keep playing if not for how I saw something new every time I played. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate celebrates old memories so that I can keep wanting to make new ones.