sabe. quando eu tava na metade desse jogo eu estava prontinha pra dizer que esse é meu segundo Kingdom Hearts favorito. mas agora eu entendi porque esse é o título mais divisivo da série.

eu até gosto da dinâmica dos três protagonistas e eu estava mais disposta a gostar de alguns dos mundos presentes por conta das conexões com o primeiro jogo (exceto o do Peter Pan esse é ruim mesmo) mas eu eventualmente comecei a ficar sem paciência com a forma estúpida que Birth by Sleep conta sua história. ver o Xehanort nem tentando fingir ser bonzinho enquanto todo mundo acredita 100% no caráter dele não se torna mais fácil de aguentar quando fica claro que essa estupidez é (meio que) o motivo que leva aos eventos da série inteira acontecerem.

não ajuda muito você ter de repetir 3 vezes o confronto final em Keyblade Graveyard, que é uma luta bem coreografada e bem empolgante na primeira vez, mas que acaba virando rotina já na segunda rodada (e também não ajuda que a abertura do jogo mostra de cara os momentos mais marcantes dela, murchando completamente algo que poderia ter sido surpreendente).

o sistema de combate é interessante pois ele fez as lutas contra os monstrinhos normais (eu sei o nome deles. não me corrija) serem um pouco monótonas no começo de cada personagem, algo que se repete por 3 vezes caso você queira ver a história completa, mas acaba se tornando divertido de aprender e personalizar. fazer o seu deck de ataques é mais engajante aqui do que em Chain of Memories, por exemplo. isso acaba tornando algumas batalhas de chefe bem visualmente eletrizantes. mas aí vem o outro grande problema: os chefes são ruins. especialmente os chefes originais da série. eu escrevi "Vanitas é o pior chefe já feito de todos os jogos que eu já joguei na vida" no meu bloco de notas quando eu percebi que eu estava enfrentando ele pela literal 7ª vez e as vulnerabilidades dele pareciam ter completamente desaparecido.

mas mesmo nas batalhas contra os chefes que não são as piores coisas já feitas, é meio frustrante a quantidade de ataques longos, não bloqueáveis e que podem drenar uma barra inteira de vida, cuja única estratégia é ficar fazendo dodge roll por uma quantidade longa de tempo. a solução seria fazer um grind para que seu nível fique maior e você consiga aguentar e aplicar mais dano, mas ter de começar do zero 3 vezes me tira completamente a vontade de fazer isso, já que todo o meu progresso anterior é invalidado. se tivesse um sistema que multiplica a sua progressão de nível de acordo com a quantidade de saves finalizados presentes na memória do PSP, acho que essa frustração seria mitigada. isso poderia quebrar o balanceamento do combate mas Melding Commands já faz isso se você tem a paciência de conectar os mesmos ataques em todas as rotas. eu joguei uma quantia considerável de Command Board (o clone de Banco Imobiliário/Fortune Street que tem no jogo) para poder subir minhas cartas de nível, de uma forma que se o progresso fosse unificado eu teria uma build relativamente forte. o problema (de novo) é que tudo reseta. eu teria que ter triplicado o meu esforço e eu acho que eu já coloquei todo o tempo que eu quis colocar nesse jogo.

não estou empolgada para Dream Drop Distance, pra ser franca. o emulador de 3DS literalmente não roda ele e se ele tiver chefes tão ruins quanto Birth by Sleep eu não quero jogar ele sem save states. se serve de algo, o meu apreço pelos protagonistas me faz ficar interessada em Kingdom Hearts III.

EDIT: ESPERA. ISSO É UMA PREQUELA. PQ O HUGUINHO ZEZINHO E LUIZINHO ESTÃO AQUI?? ELES SÃO CRIANÇAS NO PRIMEIRO JOGO E 10 ANOS ANTES ELES AINDA SÃO CRIANÇAS?? ESPERA EO TIO PATINHAS

vendo minha namorada jogar isso aqui nos últimos dias, sem colocar a mão no controle e sentir meus receptores de dopamina vibrarem toda vez q eu clicava na cara de um PM durante um shoot dogde, meio q me fez ter a certeza de q esse é um dos AAA mais racistas de todos os tempos.

ao menos na maioria dos jogos onde um protagonista norte-americano detona algum país de terceiro-mundo, ainda parece existir um certo esforço pra n pintar o lugar como um eterno inferno sobre a terra. existe um certo esforço para contratar gente q fala xangainês em Kane & Lynch 2, ao menos inventar um país fictício em Resident Evil 5 ou um monte de banana republics aleatórias nos Jagged Alliances, Far Cries e seus derivados.

ao menos a maioria dos protagonistas desses jogos n tratam constantemente o país onde estão como uma fossa séptica infestada de malária, pra depois meter um papo pau-mole autoconsciente sobre ser um salvador gringo em território latino-americano. autoconsciência no texto lixo desse jogo n faz lá muita diferença quando claramente nenhum brasileiro fez um proof-reading do roteiro ao menos pros diálogos em português parecerem algo q realmente sairia da boca de alguém. ao menos esses jogos n tem um roteiro do Dan Houser tentando fazer algum comentário real sobre militarização da segurança pública, corrupção ou violência no Brasil sem pesquisa ou vivência alguma. porra, até o Saci-pererê e o Curupira são vilificados aqui! maluquice!

só meio q odeio esse jogo mesmo. e até hj a melhor representação de São Paulo em um videogame é em Incidente em Varginha (1998) pra DOS durante a missão da Praça da Sé. esse sim é kino, viu.

MMX5 marks the "ending" of the X series. Or... at least it should have. But weirdly enough this one seems to have less budget than X4, and not only that but Inafune pretty much cleansed his hands of this project and moved to other ones, leaving a secondary team to having to deal with finishing a series that in theory he started.
So, how does it fare?
This game tries to be heavier in lore than any of the previous X games. Since there's no animated cutscenes in this one, what we get instead are a bunch of dialogue boxes and a somewhat annoying sound to acompany the typing. In one hand, the story is quite simple but the way they go around to explain the events is weird to say the very least. What's the reasoning behind Dynamo destroying Eurasia so it causes a total destruction of the Earth if it drops? Who the hell knows. How did Sigma infect the entire planet with a virus by being destroyed on a statue-sized body? Who the hell knows!
Honestly, the idea of this game feels like a custom D&D one-shot session where your party has to figure out a way to stop the end of the world, while the DM says that "Hey, you can use this cannon to try and destroy that. You can shoot it without any upgrades and it will probably miss, OR you can get all the upgrades and still probably miss, but your character will get stronger!" And to be quite frank, I dig the concept of a time limit. What I don't dig is how even if you do everything absolutely right, the Shuttle still has a small chance to just fail and you go to the Bad Ending route, making you lose Zero in the process. 10 year old me figured that one out the worst way possible. Naturally, the exact opposite can happen and you actually destroy the colony with the cannon, basically allowing you to skip 4 stages! Which... also flabbergasted 10 year old me back then.
Replaying this in the Xtreme difficulty made me notice that even without the enemy drops (and increased enemy presence in the stages), this game is still somewhat easy. It took me some good two hours to beat X4, but this one just took one.
Also, while i dig the concept of the Level System for the bosses, in execution it leaves a LOT to be desired. Locking certain upgrades behind not only the level they are (which is connected to the time remaining before the colony collides) is really frustrating, specially since the game doesn't tell you which part you will get by picking more health or more energy for your weapons.
And if I have to talk about the level design for a bit... some of the levels feel like plainly X4 levels that were scrapped or slightly reworked. The one stage where you use the bike and you can just immediately die is so screwed up for instance.
Still... while it feels like I complained a lot, this is still one of my absolutely favorite games of the franchise.
The team truly tried doing a replayable game where you can get multiple routes and outcomes, and while it's a bit janky, it makes for an enjoyable experience, specially seeing the different outcomes. Hell, the dialogue some of the bosses have if you let the world be destroyed is absolutely sad and dark. Alternatively, seeing some of them getting gradually corrupted over their dialogue is also really screwed up. And then there's the bat boss, who just says SQUEAK WHO CARES and I absolutely giggle everytime I see that dialogue.
On one hand, it's a bit sad that the armor system on this one was swapped for the "two armors, but you cannot use them incomplete", but on the other hand doing the stages as normal armor X is one of my favorite things to do, as it makes the game a biiit more harder to play around (unless you are using the parts upgrades, but still).
The soundtrack in this one, while not as great as X4's, still has some amazing tracks (Sigma Stage 2 is CRAZY), and I do like the way the game sounds, too. Using the japanese voices from X4 instead of the english ones is a very deserving upgrade.
Still, while this one is a 5/5 for 10 year old me, current me understands what makes a great game BE great. In my heart this one is still my favorite, but in terms of quality? Not quite, and I wished they worked on this one just a little bit more.
Naturally, if you do want to play this one outside of the Legacy Collections, I cannot reccomend enough the Improvement Mod that fans made for this one. It polishes that game to such a way it becomes one of the better PS1 Mega Man titles.

"Look, just so you know? This is the last fucking time."
I usually ask myself how the Gamecube remake of Resident Evil 1 became such a masterpiece. Was it because the original PS1 game was somewhat simple in visuals and concept that upgrading it, not only visually but gameplay and narrative-wise, made it seem larger than life? Because honestly, that one is still the gold standard for remakes even today. Get a basic idea and not only make it harder but more interesting for the player to play. Self-defense items, Lisa Trevor, etc.
As for the Remake of Resident Evil 2, as much as I like that one it just misses the mark a bit. Sure, it's a lot more accurate narrative-wise and it ironically enough, gives the police station a lot more life. I do have some gripes with it however, mostly in how the story feels off with both characters fighting pretty much the same Birkin forms.... but still.
The Remake for Resi 3 should've been an easy job. Get the gameplay format of the previous remake and give Jill her action movie-like mobility from the PS1 game, balancing the enemies and world around it, right? Instead, it feels weirdly sluggish to use Jill, at least early on, with you instead of dodging the enemies sometimes just hugging them and taking damage for it. And... welp, no self-defense items this time around. Sure, no breakable knife either but by this point the knife feels "useless" in a way? I dig the critical hit concept for guns, but as for zombies that you "Kill" and usually come back, sometimes their reaction time just feel borderline blink and you miss it, so you take damage again. And... god, Nemesis is both an annoying pushover and one of the easier enemies to deal with. If he hits you, he'll probably triple combo you to death before your character even recovers from the stagger... or you'll throw a frag grenade at him and he'll be temporarily put to rest. The original Nemesis was more of a glorified boss fight with an endurance contest in the middle. And I LOVED that about him. Taking your time to actually try and defeat him with whatever weapon you got felt so satisfying in the original game, and the rewards were absolutely worth the trouble. Here.... welp, he gives you a couple nice upgrades to the pistol.... and ammo. Poor dude became a slightly better version of Mr. X.... from the original Resi 2.
Also for another complaint of mine, why so many 1-hit-kill enemies in this? Welp, when I say "enemies" I generally mean the Hunters. Guess that leap slash thing was always kinda broken, even on the original Resi 1 and 3, but here not only they take ages to kill but the Gamma version can munch you with only one strike. Again, since the game is somewhat balanced around Jill's dodge I can see why they'd do that, but are they just expecting people to master perfect dodges from the get go? And Carlos' bash is pretty cool and all but it falls on the same ground as "miss it against a Hunter and you can kiss your neck goodbye".
Now I think I complained enough about the core gameplay. Which is an absolute shame, because the story here is really fucking good. Jill is amazing in this, Carlos' rework is so cool, I actually give a shit about this brazilian dude now! And Nicholai is such a prick in this. The characters and the city have been drastically improved here, there's a lot of charisma to the little that we see of Raccoon City before we go to the standard Sewer Level(tm) and Secret Lab(tm), but I'll say that this time around it felt satisfactory enough. I wonder how Umbrella Noodles taste like...
Again, this game SHOULD'VE been great. But it felt not only very rushed (The original game took me 4 hours to beat, this one took me 3 hours), but lacked some of the iconic places of the original game (Where's my clock tower...), and... where the heck is the mercenaries game mode?? Oh, they released this alongside a DBD-like live service game that nobody plays...? oh no....
Thank god CAPCOM took the fucking hint and gave Resi 4 Remake the time and treament it deserved. Because when I played this one in 2020, my hopes sure were low afterwards :(
Also what the hell CAPCOM. 2 bucks for the original outfit? What is wrong with yall lmao

The X series is one of my favorite games ever. I love X1, X2, X4, X5 and X8. While I'm aware this series has flaws, I can't help but enjoy pretty much all games, X7 included, as I like the world setting, characters and the few themes they try and talk about here.
X6 is an oddity in the franchise. As in, this game takes concepts from the previous two games and adds a lot of interesting new concepts and mechanics to them, but it also falls flat on those overly experimental concepts, to the point that it almost expects the player to be using a specific character with a specific armor and parts throughout the game.
X as a core character feels much stronger than in previous games. Now wielding Zero's saber, he's able to do higher damage in close range, and also is able to use a weaker version of X5's Falcon Armor, that plays somewhat closer to the Fourth Armor but with the smaller buster blast.
With this in mind, the intro stage shows nicely how he should be played throughout the game: blocks that can only be destroyed by Zero's saber, air dashing to avoid enemies, ocasionally using the armor's weaker giga attack. And even more interestingly, you're not only introduced to a purple-ish Zero, but to High Max, a robot that X cannot damage with his buster or saber at all. It honestly is a cool intro stage! Hell, might be one of my favorite in the franchise after the iconic first game or the cooler second and fourth game's intros.
Now, the core game is introduced: Fight 8 "Investigators" this time around, as they're researching the "Nightmare", which are not only enemies, but stage-altering effects, that can infect reploids in need of rescue or hinder your progress on a stage. And this is where X6's problems start to show.
In many ways, this reminds me of Simon's Quest almost convoluted and messy way to teach the player on what they should be doing. The level design on most stages doesn't look that interesting, which is a major sin to a platform game like the X series, a lot of leap of faiths that might lead to a falling pit or spike traps, it's either way too hard to reach items or it's so easy it hurts. I do find it funny how you can cheese the Inami Temple's Armor part by gettign hit by the bats twice though.
So, let's talk about one of the main mechanics in this game: Nightmare Virus are enemies that can "possess" endangered reploids, but if you kill them and acquire their soul you can get gradually stronger, being able to install extra parts on X (what is this, dark souls?). And let me tell you: some parts feel almost REQUIRED for you to progress through the game with no problems. In the ice stage Alia mentions the "High Jump Part" (I'll get to the bad translation in a bit), which... you can only get on that very same stage, and if you had defeated the fire boss before.
Speaking of which, Post-Boss Stage Effects from X1 comes back in this! But instead of making places accesible to the player, it just makes your experience a living nightmare!
And speaking of nightmares, the "Nightmare Effects" in this game are the biggest pain in the ass. I don't mind a game trying to make my experience harder by RNG, but some of these just make the stages an absolute hell to go through.
For instance, Nightmare Dark makes the stage pretty much dark, with only a few seconds of light to help you see through. It's frustrating to say the very least, specially if you're attempting to collect all the stage's items.
And most of these can be somewhat avoided if you can understand what's happening, but much like Simon's Quest, this game has one of the worst translations a PS1 game could've gotten. The broken english in this is painful, and sometimes really funny (THE BADDLE HAZ JUST BEGUN).
And honestly, fuck Central Museum. Who in their right mind thought making every single room in a stage being RNG would be a good idea? Sometimes you can get such a bad RNG you'll never find the Dr. Light Capsule, or the Nightmare Teleporter/Another Route. Definitely one of the worst stages in the franchise.
Also, another big problem this game has is the fact that most stages either finish in one run or X will teleport by himself to a new area, but then you have Metal Shark Player's stage, in which the teleporter to the 2nd part of the stage looks the exact same to the Another Route teleporter.
Again, not a big problem since you should try and do the Another Route at least once. Zero is such a broken character it will make your general experience somewhat easier and fun, but... what if you go to it again, only to fight high max without his actual weaknesses (which are already convoluted enough) and you get stuck there dying at least 9 times to him until you can quit and go back to the stage select?
On this run, I actually went out of my way to NOT get Zero back, and play throughout all stages as X, either on Falcon or Blade armor. Again, the fact that the game seems to expect you to be using things like Jumper and Blade's Air Dash just make me wonder how much time they had to test the stages. Some of them are almost impossible to do as normal armor X or Shadow X. Central Museum (again, fuck this stage) has one of the rooms being unpassable as those two armors, since you need at least Falcon's weaker air dash to progress through. Unless the rng helps you and gives you a way out without the air dash!
And... the bosses, my god. They're so bad they barely do anything, and the few that do are so cheap it hurts my soul.
Infinity Mijinion is one of the most annoying bosses in the franchise, which by the point I was going through the stage I just gave up and stood still on one end of the boss room spamming blaze heatnix's sword attack until it died.
However.... I cannot say this game is an absolute mess.
As I mentioned, I really like how X plays in this. And with the right parts equipped, you can breeze through most stages and have fun!
And honestly? I absolutely love the story in this. I think the idea of it taking place after the Eurasia Crash/Destruction makes it more interesting, as X's mind is focused on rebuilding the world and holding Zero's hopes as his own. I also like the idea of the "Nightmare" a lot. The fact that all the Investigators are former Reploids who were destroyed (and most of these by Alia's hands, too!) makes them much darker in comparison to Repliforce's Soldiers from X4 or even the slowly corrupted Reploids in X5. Some of them shouting they don't want to die again can sound odd at first but... when Alia explains their fates, you can understand why they're doing that. Gate is also an interesting antagonist. Mad scientist type that wants absolute power is always a fun trope. Not a big fan of Sigma coming back in this, though. But I dig the fact that he's incomplete this time around. It really feels like we're beating a dead horse by this point.
The soundtrack in this game is fantastic, too! Might be one of my favorite in the franchise. Tracks like the intro stage and blaze heatnix's stage show a lot of quality, and considering this is the same composer as X5, it's a definite evolution.
I cannot say I despise this game. Personally, X3 and X7 are much less interesting games than X6, but this one feels absolutely rushed and messy, felt like CAPCOM was attempting to get some extra money from the few people who didn't own a PS2 yet. So what you get is a game who both tried too hard at being different from the previous games, but failed by not testing out these experiments before release. And yet, if I could I'd replay this again.
Naturally, if you read through all of this, my only advice is that you should get the Improvement Mod for this game. You can change a lot of what makes this game frustrating (the RNG in central museum, for instance) and improve the dialogue, character portraits etc. Sure you'll lose the ZELLLOOOOO but you get a much more coherent story and turned off nightmare effects so your experience is not a pain in the ass.