The new Jungle area is beautiful. But I imagine it's gonna be a NIGHTMARE to find everything. So many nooks and crannies and all the verticality too with the mushrooms and ropes to climb. I feel like it's gonna be an OCD person's worst nightmare. That being said, it does make getting to points of interest actually fun instead of brain dead "walk there." Finding the mushroom you need to get to and then figuring out how to GET to that mushroom is way more engaging and satisfying.

The enemies look cool but god damn they are all such pain in the asses. Nearly everyone either sits there and just blocks until you attack, or they sit there and wait for you to attack to counter attack. The only other ones are the frogs who turn you into frogs. Seriously, I hate the enemies in this area. (makes it even worse that I wanna try to start using Red more and he requires blocking for his gimmick mechanic and no one freaking attacks!)

The railroaded story segment was fun and I loved how they split the party up until the guys and TEEN GIRL SQUAD. Was fun to have two bosses to fight with both parties back to back.

After beating the boss I am so curious how the hell things are gonna progress forward. Cloud is getting noticeably worse at a rapid rate. He went from just getting Voldemort headaches to full on turning on and trying to kill Tifa. And this was right after she flashed him like, how the hell do you live with that? Jokes aside, how she feels safe with him after that I don't know. And how Cloud lives with that I don't know. Plus the rest of the party saw it so I EXPECT some sort of blow up or at the very least some acknowledgement from the team at some point.

Lastly Sephiroth is confusing me to hell and back. He's real but he isn't? The people in the party can see him, but no one else can? Except for Hojo back in the lab on the camera that one time. Him attacking or damaging the real world is a hallucination but it isn't sometimes? He was able to stab the giant Materia monster and slice it in half and it cried out in pain but it didn't die or have any injuries on it after? And Sephiroth is able to appear anywhere in the real world but also somehow in the actual life stream? And he can control where he appears in the life stream? It's all so damn confusing. Then there's also the fact there's "white" whispers fighting the black ones and the white ones seem to be on the side of the Materia monsters while the black ones are on the side of Sephiroth? But I thought the whispers just fought to maintain destiny? Is it that Sephiroth believes he's destined for something so intensely the whispers manifested as a result of that? Does that mean the Materia monsters did the same? Are there two "destinies" battling it out? I have no idea. All the rules around him seem to confusing and I really really hope it makes sense at some point.

Tutorials are weird. I think this game goes to show that sometimes a tutorial can only go so far to help and can very easily just complicate and confuse things. I found myself overwhelmed by the tutorial and getting confused quite quickly and decided screw it, I'll just jump into it. Luckily, if you are mildly familiar with Poker and the hands you can play, you can pick up on how to play pretty quickly. And it's pretty fun and I get why people say it's addicting.

Only thing is, I can't tell if I'm really bad or if I haven't unlocked many jokers and cards to use. Because I'll find myself usually getting to the third boss and barely getting beaten. But the thing is this thing goes to like 14 bosses and the scores required get so big they require exponent notation to show. So am I just dumb and incapable of finding good combinations to get my numbers high enough? Or is this like Isaac where the cards available to me right now are super basic to make the game easier to grasp and nearly impossible to win? I'm hoping (and based on the game's runaway success) and thinking it's the latter. I'm excited to really sink my teeth into it because it's already really fun but I imagine it'll be a bit of an uphill battle.

Mostly just did cleanup objectives all over the Corel region since I finally have full access to explore the rest of the open world area.

First of all, it's super messed up that one of the first quests they give you in the area can't be completed until like, 17 hours later. They give you the Johnny quest and that first part takes forever, but then in order to finish it you need to leave town, go through like 10 hours of railroaded progression with hiking, cave spelunking, mental abusive townspeople lambasting you, exploring the gold saucer, surviving a shooting, being kidnapped, doing errands for a crime boss, have an emotional boss fight with a ton of cut scenes, outrun the cops, THEN you finally have access to the open map where only after you've beaten ALL of the Fiend Intel objectives do they give you the location of the Tonberry King so you can get his Crown. Holy hell that's so messed up. Glad to mark that one as complete and not see Johnny again. Also holy SHIT they then finally reveal the function of all those collectable trophies and that's just absolutely nuts how much extra content they just drop for completionists.

Completed another Proto relic mission and that one was also fun. But uhhh, WHAT THE HELL. How are they just gonna kick me out and tell me I can't complete the protorelic until an undisclosed time?! Not only were they fun, from where I'm standing now it's kinda dumb that I can't just continue. What the hell, give me my proto relic.

I also while scooting around the desert found the giant sand golem guy pop up and collapse shortly afterwards. I heard him twice before and Red even said to "Look at that" but never saw him. It's a cool little detail he randomly will attempt to manifest and fail while you explore. I love it, such a great detail.

I did the "rest" of the chocobo races and seriously, I want this to be a full game, it's so damn fun. Excited for when more races unlock. I did the rest of the Queen's Blood stuff and man, the cards get wild. I also want a little spin off DLC of just Queen's blood. Or at the very least PvP online matches. I can't wait to get all the cards to make some crazy decks.

Fuck the stupid combat minigame in the Gold Saucer. I don't know why they decided to go with the formula of "Round 1, have the enemies outnumber you 10:1 so you get stunlocked" then have round 2 be an actual fun but difficult fight that takes time and focus to beat but if you fuck up you have to do the stupid first round again. I hate it. I'm coming back later when I'm stupidly overleveled to do them.

I finished up my day by doing the Alexander summon. I had the option to do him on the easiest difficulty but I finally had my Raise Materia so I decided to do it on the hardest difficulty and oh my god, that was one of the funnest fights I've ever had. Seriously; fun mechanics, a fair amount of health, he put out some serious damage too. I managed to beat it first try and it was a nail biter. I went all in to finish him off and I was literally 2 seconds away from a wipe, it was intense and fun as hell. Easily my most memorable fight I've had the whole game and it's not even close.

But on that note, why the absolute fuck is Esuna 12 MP to cast? That's so damn much. The dude stacks 3 debuffs on you and esuna only wipes ONE of them per person per cast. Like what the fuck. 12 MP, an ATP guage, time to cast it, and I need to use it 3 times per person to wipe the effect. I'm sorry but that's dumb as hell.

I enjoyed my first impressions of the Gold Saucer. First of all, the team who designed the hotel room had WAY too much fun. So many great things to interact with and be Jebaited by. It's so full of little details and I loved every second of it. (The chest with googly eyes, the spiders on the bed, THE FREAKING TONBERRY HUMIDITY MONITORING MACHINE)

The minigames were solid too. the StarFox thing was a bit easy, the Queen's Blood challenges were okay (The puzzle ones are better. I personally was getting a little frustrated with the gimicky battles), the racing minigame was fun but I had zero clue what I did that was right and what was wrong that got me enough points for the T3 reward. The fighting minigame was the big confusing one. I LOVE it, but I wish it had a better method to practice the fights. There are clearly some moves that when telegraphed are very similar and you have to pick up on the little details, but it sucks when you don't get them back to back or in a way you can compare them. Sometimes they'll be 2 moves between the similar looking ones and you can't pay attention to the fine details to see what the difference in tell is. Overall it was fun though. Also Dio is great.

The "New Wall Market" is fun too. Gus is a mixed bag. I like and hate him. I love his chaotic energy and the fact while he's clearly lacking morals and a bit deranged, he's logical about what he does. He's not asking for some absurdity or crazy impossible task. He wants something that's relatively simple for our group that benefits him immensely and he's willing to give extremely important to us in return. I mean IRL I would want to murder him considering he would threaten to sell my friends into human trafficking. But as a character in a game I like him. (Minus his whole cringy scatting as he enters a room as if he's singing his own theme music)

We FINALLY get to see Cactuars. I am such a huge sucker for Cactuars. They are the first "staple" FF characters I saw back when I played FF13 back in high school and I fell in love with them. To see them in this game was such a child like experience for me. They're just as goofy and fun and energetic and deadly as I remember. SO glad to be in a part of the game that has them.

Chocobo racing is really damn fun holy hell. Definitely the best minigame to come from the Gold Saucer. It's super simple but is already incredibly fun. I love the fact the maps are interconnected and just route differently and cross over each other in different ways to create new maps. Really creative and smart. I think this could be it's own game if they fleshed this part out, it's already really damn fun as is. The only thing I think that's just bad is the dash feels completely useless. Not only can you just, randomly not use it a lot? But it doesn't boost you across "grass" at a speed that feels like it's worth doing. So the only time you use it is on straightaways, which is boring? I wish they made it so it could be used for shortcuts, or maybe if used in the air gave your chocobo a "flap" to keep it in the air longer to create new shortcuts? Could be really cool if implemented in a way like that but as it is now, the dash is really pointless. But overall, holy hell the Chocobo racing is really really fun.

So we got to the conclusion of the Barret/Dyne arc and I'm really mixed. First of all, I still feel like the town hating Barret is so dumb. I thought maybe the town was in great shape and Barret hated Shinra so he blew up the reactor leading to the town becoming poor and Shinra becoming hostile and releasing Mako into the area putting everyone's lives in danger. THAT would make sense why they all hate him. But apparently he was one of the people who pushed for letting Shinra install their reactor and that was enough to make everyone hate him when Shinra destroyed the town. But it's not like everyone said no and he sold out the town. It was almost unanimous that the townspeople wanted the reactor installed. And even if Barret was the first person to start convincing the town they should make the switch, Barret wasn't the one who razed the town? Barret didn't destroy the plant? Why everyone in town hates his guts and bullies and attacks him because he happened to be one of the people who wanted the town to become more prosperous is so dumb to me.

As for the situation with Dyne, that was rough. I still think it was dumb that Dyna blew his cool because Barret saved Marlene with the belief "Barret stole her." Yeah I know he was clearly losing it and the whole situation with losing the whole town and thinking your wife and child died would mess up anyone's faculties. But he should be ecstatic that his little girl is alive, even if it means he wouldn't want to see her considering the monster he's become. Again, it all does make sense, but I just personally am not a fan of it. I'm not entirely sure what I would have done different. Obviously Dyne needed to die, but that little bit bugs me.

Cait is a WEIRD kit. I like the fact he's RNG but idk, I just don't see myself using him that much at all. Which is sad cause he's so unique and I like him as a character. But he's just too..... odd. I don't know what type of roll I would have him play to be honest.

Lastly, what the HELL is that Goblin dude. Kid G is unsettling as hell man. It's honestly impressive the mishmash of art styles they manage to put together for this game with the normal people, the rustic locations, then they have uncanny valley Moogles looking like they're out of Five Nights at Freddys, and Cait Sith looking like a cereal mascot come to life, now they have Kid G and I don't even know how to describe him besides horrifying. Especially since he has these photo-realistic boxing gloves that have really detailed wear and tear that you can see on the leather. It's so damn weird man. But even though he's weird the protorelic tests with him are SO fun. The Cactuars are so fucking cute man. The way they chant and talk in the cutscenes wanting you to prove yourself had me in stitches. The minigame was fun too once I realized how to do it. Can't wait to do more of them.

I'm so happy the people I love in FF7R are back in this game man. We saw Andrea and Madam M, and now we have Jules again. The whole Gym crew is so great. I have to say though, not a fan of the Haptic triggers for the difficult aspect. I turned them off which is nice they offer the option, but it's made me realize just how gimmicky they are and how they really should be only for basic level stuff. The accelerator for the Segways is awesome, but the fact I have to mash hard and push through the resistance for the situp challenge? Absolutely agonizing.

Also holy hell the Gold Saucer is BEAUTIFUL. I love the aesthetic man, I'm a total sucker for bright neon lights and lively atmosphere like Vegas. Only barely got to step foot inside but the whole cutscene while you ride up to it with the holograms floating outside your ride, and the view as you get closer, it's so damn good. I'm like a giddy child as it approaches.

It's funny how first impressions of something can be good but pivot and 180 so fast. I was loving Fort Condor for the first 3 rounds of it but holy shit that last one has made it absolute hell and the worst part of the game I've played so far. There's no "customization" to the pieces you get to pick. You pick 1 of 4 sets and that's it. Now I'm forced to have units I don't want and it costs me units I desperately need. But the icing on the cake is that not only is it hard already but you have a fucking time limit for no reason. If you don't beat them by the end of the time limit you just lose. And that means you have to sit there and do the whole on the rails segment for 3 whole minutes again and again and again until you win. I had 3 back to back attempts that I needed all of 3 seconds more to win. One attempt I actually killed the boss while the timer had run out and it showed the animation of the boss being defeated but it still counter it as a loss. Fuck this garbage minigame, it's trash and I fucking hate it.

Other than that We did all the rest of Junon. The recruiting soldiers all around the shopping area was cute, fighting Rosche was 10/10 yet again, and I really enjoyed the Queen's Blood Tournament on the ship. It's great having the fun rivalry between the party members for it. Also Red showing up and walking as a biped was wayyy funnier than it had any right to be.

Also I feel super dumb and like I wasted a lot of time. I didn't realize even if people aren't actively in your party, you should attach Materia to them. Turns out they still get AP for the fights and that in turn levels up the Materia. So obvious in hindsight since everyone levels up even if they weren't in the fight. So much wasted AP D:

I'm starting to get a feel for the balance of the game and I'm really unsure of things. Mainly because of Magic. MP feels SOOO limited in this game. I find myself struggling big time to do any magic sustaining over the course of a fight. Be that in the open world where I cast a spell here or there and suddenly I'm out, or in a long term fight I find myself using magic like that stereotypical "ether" that I never use because "what if I need it later?" At this point the ONLY thing I really use magic for is healing. I never use it for offense unless I can guarantee a stagger/pressure. Otherwise it feels like such a huge liability to use it. Aerith has her MP sapping ability but it feels like it takes almost none. And spells, holy hell spells cost SO MUCH to cast. At level 24 Aerith has 49 MP. That means in a boss fight she can cast 5 Cura before I no longer have a healer. And that's if I ONLY have her casting heals and not using her MP for anything else. Then they made it so stronger versions of spells cost 2 ATB gauges to use as well. It's just like, one or two changes I understand but they added all these nerfs across the board. Requires more ATB, spells cost more, you have a much smaller MP Pool.

I don't know, the melee is really funny. Tifa is as badass as before, Barrett is still kick ass (and I never realized it until someone pointed it out but it's really cool how he's a tank who's ALSO ranged) Cloud has all the versatility in the world for melee, it's all good. But it's a little boring. I feel like magic is nonexistent in my play through and it makes me sad. Maybe I'm still going through some early growing pains (I saw Roache but didn't follow behind him in terms of story progression) but as it is right now, it feels a little unsatisfactory. Fights are either literally the easiest thing it the world where I could fall asleep and face roll on the controller to win without taking damage, or the fights are impossible because they're longer fights but I have no resources to sustain and keep my party alive for it long term.

Fingers crossed something clicks in a little bit.

First impressions are good! Very confused about what seems to be an alternate world where Cloud and Zack switched places? Intro is the intro, very slow and while the story is good it was a bit of a snooze fest gameplay wise.

Eventually when I got past the tutorial and got to have Chocobos to ride around on, game got much better instantly. I had a party I could choose the composition of, I had a world to decide where I wanted to go, multiple objectives to choose what I wanted, it was great. Visuals are wonderful, combat's a blast, objectives are fun and rewarding. It's been almost entirely positive.

The only real issue I can see is the weapon upgrade system being replace with the Folio system. The folio system is... fine? It's definitely the most lack luster part of the combat system (especially since I have to be in towns specifically to change it and I can't do it on the fly?) but the thing that makes it truly awful in my opinion is is replaced the weapon upgrade system FF7R1 had. You know, the system where you can choose how to allocate your upgrade points to boost certain damage types, have differnt unique passives, and most importantly increase the amount of materia you can have on your weapons. It feels like they nerfed the hell out of Materia this time around since it's so much harder to equip. I'm running some super bare bones materia right now and I feel so naked and I hate it. When I get more armor it'll be fine and when I buy new weapons that have extra slots it'll be okay. But as it is right now I have so little options and sadly I don't have the option to upgrade weapons to have materia and I hate it. The system that replaced it is lackluster and it's sad to see the change.

But that's the only downside. The positives outweight the negatives by and large and I'm having so much fun with it so far even though all I did was essentially the prologue and tutorial with some "chapter 2" mission objectives.

This game is rough lol. I can't tell if maybe the budget for this one was a bit sparse because it's not the main FF7R, but they still wanted to bring this game to the new consoles to keep new people up to date with all the same info OGs have (Or maybe even update some details/retcon some stuff to go along with the new story they're doing with the remake) or if this is just a VERY accurate 1:1 remake bringing all the dated cutscene direction and jank. All I can say is I'm 100% at this point continuing to play for the relevant story info that'll be needed for FF7R2.

The combat is decent. It's not nearly as fun as FF7R and having it only be you is a bit disappointing, but it does also make it easier for things to be balanced I guess? I spent an hour on the missions cause they were kinda fun and I gotta hand it to them, the rewards are 100% worth doing them for. But I'm trying to B-Line the story in this game in time for FF7R2 and I still have to do the Yuffie DLC. So after that initial hour of missions I haven't gone back to them and have just been moving forward.

The game is very much FF13 in the sense it's a bunch of hallways with the occasional chest thrown here and there off to the side. Genesis is just a worse Urianger the way he quotes poetry all the time, Angeal went full blown 7th grade emo kid the way he is the enemy because he's responsible for all his own despair, it's rough. Also the cutscene quality is SO all over the place. One cutscene you'll have an NPC just, rotate in place then run off in a straight line with the most generic walk that looks like a placeholder, and the next cutscene will look like it was rendered with love and care and look pretty damn good. Then you have some like the fight between Sephiroth and Genesis with Angeal mediating that looks like it ate up all the budget. But even in all the great cutscenes some characters look horribly uncanny.

This game's quality is all over the place. Zack is a great puppy dog character, the combat is pretty fun, the side missions are worth doing, the music is great, but the whole package is meh. If I wasn't doing this for the story info relevant to the main story in FF7R, I would have gotten disinterested in this game and moved on by now for sure.

After having done some research watching videos online I felt a little more comfortable going in and trying to learn some more. I on a whim tried out Azuscena (One of the videos had her for a part of the video and loved her energy in her idle stances) and absolutely loved her. Her alternate stance blocking one of the 3 hit types and parrying the other, I figured she'd be a good beginner character. I worked my way through her move list and the sample combos and felt pretty good overall. Some of them are just so satisfying to hit (the one where she counts is just so fun lol) I definitely feel like I found a character that I enjoy playing period, so now it's the part where I need to actually figure out Tekken's Mechanics well.

I know about highs mids and lows, I know about ducking, I know about tornados, so I get the basics but it's still not known enough to be easy info I can just pull on the fly. That makes it harder to figure out what to learn with her first. Yes yes I know, don't stress to much but it's just how I enjoy fighting games. Before I really start trying to fight even against CPUs, I wanna know what her good pokes are for high mid and low (In case an enemy is covering one or 2 options well and I need the third option just to even get in) I want to learn what her best launchers are starting from high mid and low (to use and abuse until I get to more competent players) and I want to have like 2-3 combos down consistent (to capitalize on when I successfully launch someone) Other things for her are the unique things. Her stance that stops highs makes it so she ends up behind the character, and she has certain grabs and moves that work specifically when you attack from behind, I want to learn those. Besides learning her best highs mids and lows in general, she specifically works well when her back is turned so the work I have is (kinda) doubled in that regard. And before I at the very least shelve this game, I want to land the heat version of her flick taunt to knock the player down. I'll at least be able to walk away from the game feeling accomplished.

All of this is A LOT of information to learn. And even if I feel decent at knowing all of these, all of that shit will fly out the window as soon as I'm actually in a match lol. And I know that, but if I have that knowledge locked away in my brain, as I play more and become more comfortable and go on autopilot for some things, I'll be able to start pulling that other info I memorized and I'll hopefully play better. At that point I'll probably know if Tekken will be a game I stick with or decide that it's not really for me. And if it is for me, then I go back and start either A: Learning her other moves in general and learning the niche situations they're used for or B: maybe try my hand at another character or two to see if they're for me.

This game is overwhelming as hell. 32 characters, and each of them have 100+ moves? good lord. I did do the arcade story mode since that seems to be the true tutorial mode, and it's fine, but too slow for my liking. I'm someone who's decently familiar with fighting games, but just not with Tekken and it feels like the tutorial is made for brand new players.

So after about an hour of the tutorial I went to practice mode and holy cow. I'm realizing that my biggest problem is not even know what "type" of fighter everyone is. Who's the brawler, who's the grappler, who's the sword user (person who wants just a bit of spacing between the two), who's the fast paced user, who's the slow deliberate user. The training mode is nice that you can change the characters from the pause menu, but it's still then going through the overwhelming amount of moves to test and find out who does what. There's all the tools in the world to practice the fighter you want when you know who that is, but figuring it out is a daunting task. I think the best way for me to do that is with YouTube video and asking around on things like discord channels. So I called it after about an hour and a half on my first day.

After playing about 4 and a half online games I realized that the game just isn't for me anymore. I played one game that was pretty close and enjoyable, 2 where I got steam rolled, 1 where we steamrolled, and then the on the fifth one I just realized after getting killed right away 4 times, it just wasn't enjoyable and I was only pushing through hoping I would like it. I think at this point it's safe to say I won't.

I wanted a new shooter to play for some fun filler time when playing games and heard that not only was Halo doing a good job with the battle pass system that no one else was doing, but that the game was just getting better as time went on. Lots of updates that people were happy with that the playerbase (while still meager compared to what Halo used to be) was slowly but surely getting bigger. My first impressions when I finally booted up some bot matches weren't great. The game felt way floatier than I remember the IP being. The controls were weird but that was because I had controller muscle memory and adjusting to M&K would just take time. Weapons were numerous but felt like far too many were just ever so slight differences that it was essentially splitting hairs? The actual turning felt awful too. A lot of old console shooters had an "acceleration" to it where as you turned it would speed up the longer you held it and it honestly felt like that with the mouse. I looked for an option to turn this off but couldn't find anything. (Which is no surprise since the menus for that game are not easy to navigate at all.)
But I just assumed it was growing pains both with the IP being slightly different from what I remembered, and that the controls would be hard to adjust to since I played the game on controller for hundreds of hours as a kid.

This game is adorable! Wonderful first impressions! combat is simple but the enemy variety and aggro range makes it challenging enough. The character designs and personalities are simple but really cute. So is the art style. Upgrading is endless, but in a good way. SO much to choose from. It's funny, when I first started and saw what the debt was I was like "Oh no, the economy in this game is gonna be broken. Money is WAY too easy to come by." But it turns out there's just so many damn things to upgrade and spend money on that it's made for some tough choices.

One thing that stood out to me with this game is that most games incentivize doing combat by locking off progression until all enemies are dead or you get Exp/money for beating them. But this game has them drop materials you need for cooking. So you can ignore enemies you don't need ingredients for, and focus on the ones you do need. You can also ignore and avoid enemies all together to get materials you need for upgrading and building up your restaurant. It's cool being able to avoid every single enemy if you want to but it's not advised unless for specific purposes. It's great. WONDERFUL first impressions.

The only criticism I have is the comboing attacks have a weird issue where they just drop. An ability to hold down the attack button to continue a combo would be wonderful and solve the one issue I have with the game thus far. And even then it's a minor gripe.

It is a Mario game so pretty much most of what I said about the game on day 1, is more or less the same now too. The game is creative, fun, fresh, and beautiful. The only real issues is it still hasn't gotten much harder at all, and the wall jump feels finicky. I'd attribute most of my BS deaths to wall jumps just not registering.

Oh, I did try the online play today. It was pretty cute. The ability to revive other people is nice, and I am a BIG fan of seeing ghosts of other players. Really makes the game feel populated and have a community. It's also funny how it's kinda developed a "meta" in my head. I see the postees all over the place and people have placed them with the intent of them being activated so that they can get their "karma" or just meaningless internet points so I've made it a point to not touch and activate any of them if I have the chance to spite those clout chasing people lol. So if anything they've become an extra objective to ignore and it's made it kinda fun. Also, You can revive other players by touching them, and as the king of the "Fuck Daisy" club, I do everything I possibly can to run away from and avoid Daisy so that she dies. Cause I'm an evil person. It's really fun :) The online is pretty great. Though it does ruin the mystery of the search party levels so I suggest anyone turn online off for those levels if they want to do it on their own.

First impressions are STELLAR. The music and remixes are wonderful, the art direction is PHENOMINAL, the creative variety of characters and levels is absurd, it's all so damn good. Badges are meh but that's because they're usually meant to make the game easier by picking up slack in one department the player might be bad at, and I like to challenge myself (and platformers are the genre I'm best at) so it's really no surprise I'm indifferent to them. Couple things I've noticed in particular.

1. There's no timer on levels. It does make sense because it was just a legacy holdover from older Mario games that always remained there just.... because. The ONLY game that made any actual use of them was Super Luigi U. So it makes sense for it to be gone, and it really doesn't affect me that it's gone because I honestly can't remember a time I was strapped for time in a level, but it still feels weird and a little empty for it to be gone.

2. Most 2D Mario level design (and even 3D design for things like SMG) tends to have a gimmick or mechanic the level is themed around and it amps up in intensity and difficulty by mixing it with different scenarios and enemies and potentially other gimmicks. One thing that's interesting with this game though is the gimmicks most of the time ARE the enemies (Or allies.) The birds that shoot polls, the hippos you bounce off of, the dinos you goat into breaking blocks, the Outamaways that kick the ice blocks you ride on or break. They're either building the environment, breaking it, or a part of it. It's really cool to see the gimmick not just being a static world piece (Though they do keep that sometimes like with the moving platform that breaks over time and you have to add more) but be a creature too since I feel like that takes more time to make. And it definitely makes it more memorable.

3. The wonder flowers seriously are wild. They have such crazy effects that I really can't predict what's gonna happen a lot of the time. They make such fun change ups and remind me of Yooka Laylee and the Impossible lair. It's also impressive since they have to essentially make these levels function properly in 2 ways essentially since you can choose to avoid the flower nearly every time and the map still needs to work.

People said this game was a GOTY contender and I kinda scoffed. A 2D Mario game? Really? They can be fun but that's a bit dramatic. After playing the first 2 and a half worlds I can totally see why people are saying that. Can't wait to get to the harder stuff.

Finally finished the game. Beat hot dommy mommy, beat the "final boss" with his domain expansion, and beat the nameless puppet. Dommy mommy was just damn fun. Still hate that stupid triple dash attack though.

The "Penultimate" final boss was also really fun. Though he was a bit of the pain in the ass cause he swung his weapon from his right side, and my weapon blocked a lot of real estate on the screen to see the incoming attack. Took a while to get used to the timing for parries but once I eventually did, that boss was REALLY fun. And the switch to the boss using Domain Expansion Unlimited void was really cool as well. Overall a really fun fight that took some time to master, but not a frustrating amount of time.

Now the nameless puppet, this one pissed me off a lot and I'm not entirely sure why. I think it's because he does so much damage and it relentless with his hits. I feel like if I ever make one mistake and let him get in one move, he puts me at kill range. And all his moves are so flashy and visually overloaded it's hard to predict the impact timing for parries. And he's also so relentless that it's hard to find time to heal when he lands that one hit. This all adds up to nearly always being on the edge of death with a constant pressure to heal, leaving almost no time to attack. It was so tilting. I also think the character's simple design and small stature made it really hard for him to have tells for what attack he was about to use, so I could prepare a parry. Just a lot of really frustrating little things all over. It was a really cool thematic fight, the first phase was really enjoyable, but the second phase was tilting. I don't even really know how I beat it, I just kinda mashed block and got lucky enough to parry somewhat frequently.

However the unforgivable thing is what happened after. When you beat the nameless puppet, there's lore and content and collectables and achievements to obtain back at the hotel. However before the game drops you off there, it asks if you want to start new game plus. I was under the impression if I said no, it would kick me back out to the menu, and loading the game up would put me right outside the nameless puppet fight. So I chose do NG+. That saved the game and locked me out of all post game lore and bonuses. That's so beyond fucked up. Why the absolute fuck wouldn't the game just drop you back off at the hotel and then the next time you boot up the game have it offer NG+? Or have a letter from Sophia that you can interact with that asked to initiate NG+? The way it presented it was REALLY unclear and I'm honestly really pissed I didn't get the few things that were available as a reward for beating the game. The devs REALLY fumbled that one in an infuriating way. But overall, I had fun with the game.

This part of the game, this catherdral type of building on the water side, underneath the weird cloud that's absorbing all the Eres in the area, the camera is really starting to piss me off. Holy hell the enemies keep rushing me and I try to back up a bit or they knock me back, and I find myself being shoved into walls so frequently and the camera just doesn't know what to do. And again, this game is all about parrying, so being able to see the enemy tells to know when to parry is kinda important. But I can't do it because the camera will not move. I also find myself getting body blocked so damn much. So when I'm up against a wall and I can't see so I try to roll to position myself better to see, the enemy's body just locks me in place until I get Wombo Combo'd and die. It's really tilting. And it's happening a lot all of a sudden. Last area is really lacking polish there.

Other than that I'm stuck on Laxasia. It's actually a really damn fun fight. She's really aggresive, in your face, tons of parrying. It's great. Only issues are the one stupid move where she rushes you down three times and grabs you. It's so fucking hard to time the parry and she chases you for so far it feels so bullshit and it pisses me off every time she catches me. The other annoying thing is she has a volley of like 12 sword slashes, and they feel so satisfying to parry all of them and it's great for building up stagger. But for some reason, 1-2 of them will just miss every time for some reason. It actually throws off my timing because I don't "hear" the parry go off so my brain delays a bit and freaks out when it doesn't go off and I end up miss-timing the following parry input. It's annoying.

But another cool mechanic she has is if you parry her weapon enough to break it, it forces her into phase 2 which is SOOO cool. But then you have the double edged sword of another 2 phase fight. Which again, I really like 2 phase fights, but then you have the frustration of getting good at phase 1, and just want to practice phase 2 but have to spend 7 minutes just to get to that point to practice it. And it's HARD. She hits like a train and is SO much faster. I have mixed feelings about it but I really enjoy the fight so much overall. Hopefully tomorrow I can beat it.