Man, remember when Pokémon actually tried? These games used to feel like an actual adventure with dungeon-esque sections and optional content that was cool to discover.

Game Freak will never top the moment in the gen 2 games where you surf to the right of New Bark Town and are told you stepped into Kanto. Then you realize you have 8 more badges to collect. You get to go through Kanto and see what has changed over the years. You also have stuff like the roaming legendary beasts, fighting Red, introduction of Pokémon breeding and shiny collecting, etc. It's kind of crazy how much new stuff this gen had.

Gen 2 was almost too ambitious because it just made gen 3 look lame in comparison. The taking out of features was almost an omen of things to come.

How I learned to stop worrying and love Pizza Tower.

Seriously though, despite being a bit disappointed in my first playthrough, I kept coming back to it eventually in some way. The Noise update gave me another reason to do a full playthrough since he is a pretty different character, and I think that was enough to convince me that this game is actually pretty great. As much as I want to hate it due to its Ohio rizz band kid zoomer fanbase, I really can't. It really is an exceptional game. There's a lot of charm and genuine soul put into this that's very rare these days. I even went for a few P ranks and was surprised by how addicting it was. Definitely don't have the patience to P rank the whole game, but I finally get what people love about this game.

It's still not as good as Wario Land 4 though.

Like many Yakuza/Like a Dragon games, Infinite Wealth has several twists and turns - none greater than my own personal expectations of it. From the announcement, I was disappointed to learn Kiryu would be returning as a protagonist alongside Ichiban. As someone who's only dipped my toes into the series here and there prior to Yakuza 7, I've never really had much attachment to Kiryu, and what I did experience never drew me toward his character. On top of that, I felt the previous game's torch-passing moment from one series lead to another was properly done, and going back to the Kiryu Well felt like a disservice to that moment; that they were almost walking back Ichiban's well-earned place as new main character.

The first half of Infinite Wealth did a lot to assuage those feelings, as it makes clear that this is still Ichiban's journey. Kiryu served as an extension of that, another member of the party. Then, much later, it flips the script again, revealing that Kiryu actually is the co-protagonist and has a journey to go on of his own. But the weirdest thing is, when that moment arrived? I was fully on board. Kiryu's story in Infinite Wealth is extremely poignant, and the way they contextualize his place in this game and his life is wonderfully realized. The split narrative does suffer a bit jumping from place to place, and as a whole Infinite Wealth's main quest feels a bit too much like Scooby Doo running from room to room trying to find the culprits as it spins its wheels killing time. The character work here, not only with Ichiban and Kiryu but also with the new characters introduced, remains top-notch however.

While I think the overall narrative of Infinite Wealth comes up just short of its predecessor (nothing here quite packs the gut punch of learning Ichiban's origins), gameplay-wise things have been kicked up several notches. I really enjoyed the implementation of turn-based combat in Yakuza 7, and for a first effort, it was pretty outstanding. However, the developers took a harder look at what they had and realized more could be achieved here. Infinite Wealth expands its combat by allowing you to position your party members on the battlefield and use both your proximity to enemies and other characters to great effect by comboing them together for extra damage or added effects. It's super fun to get behind an enemy and hit them for extra damage in the back, before pinballing their flailing body into a waiting teammate's attack.

Infinite Wealth is also a massive game, both in scope and content, with the new Hawaii map a treat to explore and littered with little things to do all over the place. It's such a minor mechanic, but being able to wave "Aloha!" to people on the street who then get added to your in-game social media app is just the absolute perfect serotonin boost. I never got tired of it. Then you have the inclusion of the Sujimon and Dondoko Island quests, both of which act as a game-within-a-game and were a ton of fun to jump into whenever I felt like I needed a break from the main story. I still have no idea (even after beating the game) what "Infinite Wealth" is supposed to mean, but you could probably call this game Infinite Side Content instead given all it has to offer.

Despite never being a huge fan of this series before it evolved into a turn-based RPG, I always respected what the RGG team aspired to create with them, and continues to create today. There isn't anything else like these titles out there, from their gameplay to their storytelling to their trademark sense of humor. Everything about these games shouldn't work, but they do. You're constantly hit from one side with melodramatic yakuza monologuing while being assaulted on the other with the most batshit goofy sidequests and game mechanics you can imagine. The best way I can describe it is that these games have managed to achieve ludonarrative enlightenment.

While far from perfect, Infinite Wealth represents so much of what I think video games can and should aspire to be. I cannot think of higher praise than that.

Definitely not as good as kid me thought it was, but still significantly better than the first 2 games.

Chips are better, bosses are generally a lot more fun (barring Bubbleman and Drillman, fuck those two), and the story is a lot more well written and consistent in quality. The net is also a lot less obnoxious to explore, although having to use the Press mechanic constantly kind of ruins the point of the NaviCust system. You may as well just keep Press equipped for most of the game.

Biggest issue the game has is that it ends up having the same issue BN2 had where the last chunk of the game really slows to a crawl and becomes a chore to complete. You have to find a bunch of viruses in the Undernet to fight, then you have to find ranked Navis to fight or do some dumb fetch quest for. The hints they give to find the next one can be ridiculously vague, and I just ended up looking up a walkthrough because I was already tired of the game at this point. It's just way too much blatant padding.

Oh also fuck Bass and Alpha. Pretty awful boss fights to end the game on. At least the ending itself is worth it.

Mass Effect 2 is how you handle a sequel. In fact, it might be one of the greatest jumps in quality from one game to the next I've ever seen. It doesn't opt for the "bigger is better" approach that many sequels take, instead seeking to streamline what worked in the first game while ditching what didn't. In the process, it became a much more focused and enjoyable experience. It concerned itself less with being a subpar KOTOR and doubled down on being what it was really meant to be: a very solid Gearslike. I described the first Mass Effect as being a product of its time in the negative sense, whereas Mass Effect 2 is an example of how that phrase now can be used as a positive: If you're going to borrow from the best of the era, why not the pre-eminent third-person cover shooter that is Gears of War?

In addition to being a much more enjoyable shooter (god damn did they ever improve the feel and sounds of those guns, it makes a huge difference) Mass Effect 2 also nails its tone and setting in a way that makes the first game feel like a Playskool title. It's dark, it's grungy, it's seedy - it's all the little things you really want in a game that traffics in space fantasy. Hell, the massively improved lighting alone does a world of good in setting ME2's atmosphere. From the moment that first setpiece kicks off you know you're playing something that looks and feels much better than what came before.

Then you have your new squadmates. Top to bottom they are far more interesting and complex characters than the majority of their ME1 counterparts, and bring with them problems and scenarios that actually put the morals of your character to the test. This couples nicely with having Shepard be ingrained within a terrorist organization instead of a military one, giving you a more ambiguous but difficult situation to navigate. Also, somewhat surprising to me after my experience with the first game, this setup gave me far more avenues in which I felt like I was genuinely role-playing my character. Being able to play Space Punisher instead of different shades of Space Cop made a world of difference.

Very excited to see how they bungle all this in Mass Effect 3.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is magic. And I don't mean in the sense of Nintendo Magic™ where it's the type of game only they could make (though that's still true). I mean that this game's existence is beyond comprehension; that they could not only make a sequel to one of the greatest games ever released and top it handily but also achieve what it does on hardware that's three generations obsolete while only suffering minor drawbacks. What Nintendo has achieved here is truly awe-inspiring, and Tears of the Kingdom is now unquestionably the benchmark for all open-world games going forward.

However, the story of this game can not be told without dissecting its predecessor, Breath of the Wild. I did not write a review of that game, so in large part, this breakdown of Tears of the Kingdom will also be somewhat of a retrospective of that which came before it. You'll have to forgive me for that. There are also some things I desperately need to get off my chest about how people are now discussing BOTW in the context of its sequel, but I'll save that for later.

Tears of the Kingdom begins quite bizarrely for a Nintendo-produced title, with a walk-and-talk sequence where Link and Zelda explore a new threat that has emerged from beneath Hyrule Castle following their victory over Calamity Ganon in the first game. Honestly, I don't even really have much to say about this choice of setup, other than noting how unusual it is to see it in a Nintendo game. It's also the only time the game employs this method of storytelling. Novel, I suppose.

Under the castle they find the mummified remains of Ganondorf, who quickly establishes himself as a greater threat than we've ever seen him before as he effortlessly and mercilessly destroys the Master Sword, leaving Link for dead and Zelda to disappear into the void below. It's an intense opening that not only hooks you but also gives a reasonable explanation for the ensuing Metroid situation, where Link is robbed of his strength and set back to the status quo so you can begin your journey anew.

Link then awakes high in the sky, in an area very creatively called the Sky Islands, where he is promptly given a new arm to replace the one rotted away by Ganondorf's initial attack. He is told by the spirit Rauru that it's his arm and he'll be watching everything that Link does with it so don't get any funny ideas. (Okay, he doesn't say that, but it's fun to imagine). From here the game transitions into a more familiar setup, where you must venture out into this enclosed tutorial section, discover new abilities, and get reacclimated with how these games work (if you're like me and haven't played Breath of the Wild in ages). You'll spend a good 3-4 hours in this location, which for any game would probably elicit groans upon hearing that, but trust me, it's the most I've enjoyed a tutorial for any game I've ever played.

A big part of that is those powers I alluded to. They form one of the biggest differentiating factors between this game and its predecessor, and they are true game changers in every sense of the term. Not only are they more fun than the powers you got in Breath of the Wild, but they work much better in tandem as well. Sure, the Statis power was a lot of fun to experiment with (and, looking back on it, is probably the biggest reason why Tears of the Kingdom exists), however, it didn't really have much interactivity with your Cryonis power, for example. But in Tears, you'll have to regularly make use of these powers in concert with each other, and by the end of exploring the island, you'll probably have the hang of it. I certainly don't envy the task of teaching players creativity that Nintendo faced in constructing this opening area.

The best example I can give of their success is that early during your trek through the starting islands, you'll come across a Korok that needs to reach its friend. If you're like most social media users, you'll probably torture this guy in as many ways as your imagination will allow, but once you're done with that, you'll notice a steel hook that you can attach to a wooden plank with your Ultrahand ability, then put the Korok on it and have the contraption slide down a rail to meet the patiently waiting friend. Later on in the game, you'll come across a puzzle shrine (which serves the same function they did in BOTW) with a similar concept: get a big round ball to travel down a solitary rail. But this time, you don't have the prefabricated hook. Instead, you have a bunch of steel plating, which you can then fasten together into a makeshift hook, attach the ball to it, and watch it travel to paydirt.

Or, you can do what I did, because I am dumb and slow to learn anything and come up with the most cursed amalgamation of cobbled-together assets that looks like it could topple over at any moment yet somehow makes it down the rail. It's the kind of made-up monstrosity that would put Homer Simpson's Le Grill to shame, but it got the job done god dammit. And the best part? The game is filled to the brim with situations exactly like that. You can be as creative or as boring with your abilities as you want because it feels like the developers looked at the insane bullshit people came up with using the more limited powerset in Breath of the Wild and said "Let's lean into that."

See, in Breath of the Wild, shrine puzzles like that usually had an intended solution. However, you could also brute force a lot of them in ways the developers didn't account for, which naturally was a lot of fun. It was that great feeling of "getting one over" on the person who contrived this puzzle you beat yourself over the head trying to solve for half an hour. But in Tears of the Kingdom, very few of these puzzles seem to have an "intended solution." Instead, they've given you a bunch of tools and said "Have at it, go wild." Many situations are deliberately open-ended to encourage this kind of experimentation, and that not only serves true for puzzles, but exploration as well. The Ascend ability, which you can (near) instantly warp to the top of any roof that's above your head, lets you straight-up break certain locations and get to places far more easily than you'd expect. But again, I don't think the developers mind this at all. It was clearly their goal to massage this mindset into players throughout the game. And the feeling of satisfaction that comes with using these powers in new and unique ways never gets old. Nintendo has created a true open-world playground here unlike anything else out there.

It's quite amazing, isn't it? That there exists a game in the current year that has confidence in its players to give them these tools with minimal instruction and trust them to figure out the solution. If this were any other AAA game, the protagonist would have told you the puzzle solution within five seconds of encountering it. I can think of no better reason for Link to remain mute than this fact alone. Those games treat you like an idiot, but I think Tears of the Kingdom will ultimately prove that even idiots (of which I certainly count myself) can persevere if actually given the chance. And the feeling that comes with it is one of the most rewarding satisfactions a developer can give the player.

Speaking of rewarding, that was the term I loved to use to best describe Breath of the Wild, and now its sequel has made that feeling even stronger. Now, people loved to claim that Breath of the Wild felt "empty" but to me, that was never the case. No matter where you went in that game, you were going to find something. I loved pulling up the map, seeing a unique piece of geography, traveling there, and lo and behold there was something to find. Many times it was merely another Korok, but it was at least something. And it's that joy of discovery and exploration that formed the heart of what made BOTW so special. It was the purest encapsulation of the open-world formula. Any other game would fill your map with icon vomit, showing you where everything in the game is and leaving little to the imagination.

In Breath of the Wild, and now Tears of the Kingdom, you have to discover almost everything yourself. That feeling of wanderlust is unlike anything else I've experienced in gaming; spending five hours getting lost on the way to the next objective but never caring because of all the cool shit I saw in-between. But now in Tears, the rewards for that discovery and wanderlust feel so much more fulfilling, so much more vast. The addition of the cave system alone expands the scope of the game significantly and was one of those things that I didn't realize was missing from the first game until I started exploring them in Tears. On top of that, there is simply a larger array of treasures, items, and enemy variety that you gain from doing all this which ensures it's going to be a long time until you run out of new things to find. It's truly a game where all its systems come together to form one amazing, cohesive adventure.

That leads me into talking about the Fuse mechanic, another one of Link's new powers, in which he can fuse any item he finds onto his sword, his shield, or his arrows, thus greatly increasing your weapon variety too. In Breath of the Wild, every item had a use, but here they all have MULTIPLE uses, so you're never discouraged from picking something up. It also helps smooth out complaints around the durability system, which truthfully was never an issue for me, and I understood and appreciated exactly what it brought to the game. However, there were still times when I felt like I shouldn't be using some of the weapons I found, in case I needed them later. Who knows, for example, the next time I'd come across a fire rod if my current one breaks. In Tears? You have multiple items that you can fuse to any weapon and have an instant fire rod. The same goes for hammers to break rocks, or axes to chop wood. It takes something that wasn't really an issue for me in the first game, yet still had some rough edges that needed smoothing over, and they've done just that here.

The mind-blowing part is that practically all of this is available to you in that tutorial location. It's part of why I mentioned you'll be stuck there for hours but not care because you'll have so much fun discovering all this game has to offer. That said, once you dive off those islands into the lands of Hyrule below, you will discover a very similar story structure to the first game, in which you'll meet some important characters, they'll give you a location in the four main geographic regions to head to, you'll take on a quest to clear a dungeon alongside your friends, and you'll move on to the endgame of defeating Ganon(dorf) afterward. Along the way, you'll discover locations that possess memories of things that happened in the past that are relevant to the current plot, though this time they're not your memories, they're someone else's.

These memories form the bigger story elements Tears of the Kingdom has to offer, and though similar in structure to the first game, I appreciate that Tears doesn't jump into outright spoiling what happens from the beginning like Breath of the Wild does. It made those memories feel less impactful, whereas here they culminate into some fascinating reveals and end with one of the stronger story beats the Zelda series has ever offered. The overall ending to the game, which of course I won't spoil, is truly spectacular as well, a decided step above BOTW and something I would put on par with the ending of Twilight Princess for my favorite moments in the franchise.

Also, like in Breath of the Wild, completing temples (or their equivalent in that game, the divine beasts) awards you with a power, but a new twist on them involves the power also spawning an avatar of the sage you befriend on these quests. These avatars fight alongside you in combat, which is super useful against the larger enemy encounters Tears of the Kingdom loves to throw at you, but also comes with perhaps my only real criticism of this game, which is the clunkiness of their implementation.

Powers are activated by walking up to the sage's avatar and pressing A. However, the avatars act independently of you, so often you'll have to run around and chase them down in the heat of battle to use their ability. This is often more trouble than it's worth, particularly when they are all active at once. I'm sure it's because they ran out of buttons by this point, requiring a more contextual activation, but these powers really needed a more dedicated solution to use them.

There's also one other gameplay element I want to touch on, and that's The Depths. This part of the game, which was barely shown before release and not elaborated on at all by Nintendo, expands the scope of Tears of Kingdom in an almost unfathomable way. Beneath the world map of Hyrule is an ENTIRE secondary world map, exactly as big as the one above it. It's not nearly as dense with things to discover but also offers a completely new way to engage with exploration that I thoroughly loved.

The Depths are dark. Like, pitch-blank dark. It's unnerving and unsettling and you have to light the entire thing as you explore. It's full of gloom, a substance that saps your hearts and ups the difficulty in the process. Twisted and dangerous things are lurking down there too. The first chasm I dropped down (after the initial one that serves as the tutorial), I fell into a boss battle against the strongest version of the big new monster created exclusively for the Depths. I was woefully unprepared but after getting my ass kicked several times, I managed to eke out a win against it and continue my exploration into the abyss. It's one of my best memories of the 150 hours I took to complete the game.

But that exploration of the Depths is what I enjoyed the most about my time down there. Unlike Hyrule, a known and explored land, everything in the Depths is entirely new to Link. You're ostensibly setting foot on a land no one has been to in eons and that feeling of having to carve a path in this harsh environment and see things no one else has was such a fantastic treat that I was not expecting to get out of this. Tears of the Kingdom is one of the biggest games ever created but none of it feels like wasted space; it all has a purpose and is not simply big for the sake of being big.

Now, let's talk performance, so I can circle back around to what I was mentioning before in terms of magic. Tears of the Kingdom runs more smoothly than Breath of the Wild ever did, even after the multiple patches it received. I suppose that makes sense, as they did have years to optimize this engine, but it's still ridiculously impressive when you consider all that's going on under the hood in terms of this game's physics. The rewind ability alone needs to capture the movements and trajectories of all objects in your vicinity for minutes at a time so you can recall them back to their previous state at any moment. Some of the physics-based puzzles in Tears of the Kingdom also seem to exist merely for the flex of doing them, as they'll often appear in just that one part of the game and involve mechanics that have no real use outside that. But to be fair, if I created a game as technically impressive as this one, I'd want to flex too.

It's certainly not perfect, however. Using Ultrahand tends to tank the framerate when first used and the more objects you stick together, the more the game struggles to hold itself stable. Fighting large groups of enemies also causes strain, and isolated areas (like the Water dungeon where, naturally, there's a lot of water physics going on) also dip the framerate to frustratingly low levels. For as ridiculous as it is that this game even exists on the Switch, you will occasionally remember how outdated this platform is and how the rumored Switch 2 can't come soon enough.

That said, I'll take that tradeoff. For everything Tears of the Kingdom has to offer, you largely won't care about slight losses in performance. It's a reminder that creating great games easily trumps these sorts of issues, and even on the Switch you can still construct these amazing clockwork open worlds full of beautiful landscapes, creative gameplay, and endless things to do...or you rest on brand recognition and settle for perpetual mediocrity when designing your open-world title. It's kind of humorous how people were blaming the current state of a popular monster-catching franchise on being a Switch game when six months later an experience like Tears of the Kingdom comes along to show just how much you can still do with obsolete hardware. Please re-evaluate your stance on video games if you think these titles are at all on the same level.

Finally, I wanted to say a few words about Breath of the Wild. Quite frankly, I've been a little ticked off around the discussion of that game in the wake of its sequel's release, with it frequently described in terms like being a "prototype" or a "proof of concept" for what Tears of the Kingdom ultimately became. I think that's a little insulting because a LOT of what makes TOTK special is also what made BOTW special. Many of Tear's strengths are not its own, but either a borrowing or evolution of what the previous game had to offer. Breath of the Wild is STILL one of the greatest games ever made, and it continues to blow my mind how much they got right the first time around despite having to completely reimagine the Zelda formula from the ground up. The feeling of playing it for the first time remains unmatched. Tears of the Kingdom is 100% the better game, but its existence does not invalidate Breath of the Wild, and in fact, I can't wait to go back and explore that game again. It's the ultimate proof in my mind how amazing the formula they've established is, and all I want now is more of it.

So, there you have it. After all these years of waiting, all this anticipation that had accumulated to ridiculous levels, Nintendo has managed to do it again and craft another Zelda title that is worthy of discussion as one of the greatest games ever made. We're only two weeks out from release and I already feel more than comfortable saying that. Bravo, Nintendo. Despite all the frustrations I may have with you as a company, you steam a good Zelda.

P.S. I need Purah carnally.

Color me impressed.

Kingdom Hearts is the impossible game. I’ve been looking back on how the hell something like this came into existence for years and still fail to come up with a proper answer. If Square Enix tried to go through Disney to get something like this made today, Disney wouldn’t even do them the courtesy of laughing at them. Square would just be completely ignored. 2002 Square though? Those guys were kings of the ring. People thought they were the BEST storytellers, the BEST game designers. Nothing could possibly go wrong when it came to a crossover between the biggest name in animation and the biggest name in video game RPGs.

And honestly? Not that much went wrong here. Yeah, I went into this fully aware of the series’ reputation. “It’s convoluted,” they said. “It’s cringe,” they said. Yeah, those things are kind of true, but this first game isn’t dragged down much by some earnest silliness. I’m sure a lot of people decry that this isn’t a more explicit crossover of IPs, as the Disney worlds and characters are isolated from each other and the FF characters are full-on reinterpretations that play pretty small roles, but the presence of the original characters competently stands in for how you might imagine something more explicitly Japanese colliding with western products would go. Having a new character act as the lead allows both newcomers to and fans of one or both of the IPs involved to have some kind of anchor. While the worlds you visit generally retread the content of their film counterparts, they were also an opportunity to see a different angle of each setting and respective principal character, something a kid who knows those stories would probably be wowed by compared to a normal video game adaptation.

Among KH’s many surprises was its combat. Something that was called “mashy” even close to its original release date. While that can be true, and you can have a good enough time just running up against a wall until it breaks, I found the combat’s quirks fun to master. Your basic three hit combo can have its level of commitment reduced by timing swings correctly. Your air combos are faster and can be sped up even further by canceling them with short hops. You have a quick select menu for spells that adds a layer of decision-making to major encounters. You have a spell that grants greater protection from damage but costs more than a normal healing spell. Get caught in the wrong string of attacks and you’ll be reeling over having picked the wrong defensive spell between the two. Your weapon of choice has different passive abilities like a higher critical hit rate or more slots for MP, and comes in a variety of lengths that act as compensation for or counter to their other qualities. So you now have to make a choice over how much keeping a little bit of space between you and a boss means to you.

A bit less intuitive are your party members. By default, Donald and Goofy are programmed to commit suicide in front of you. I understand that classic cartoons are very different from what we expect from our modern, sanitized lives, but watching beloved single father Goofy Goof repeatedly set himself aflame as Bill Farmer screamed in anguish was a little much for me. You will have to set Donald to favor defensive actions to make sure your party is of any use to you.

Outside of wanting to forget Donald's attempts at "help" as readily as Disney wants to forget Song of the South, this simple combat system gives you a surprising amount of control over the flow of fights, and you can make conscious optimizations to reward yourself with more expedient encounters. This includes some added replayability with what kind of build you select at the start, favoring attack, defense, or magic while limiting one of those traits in turn. Beginners are told to pick the shield and discard the staff, while players going for pure speed grab the staff and discard the shield. You can have a pretty distinct experience based on your play style despite seeming fairly limited to start with. I don’t think a game that wasn’t confident in its combat would give me the option to completely disable gaining exp. While I think that is an addition rom the Final Mix version that I played, it’s still a pretty incredible testament to how far this game lept from the turn-based games that inspired it. I don’t think there would be a game that really captured the ideas around Final Fantasy’s active time battle system in a fully real-time format until FF7R, but KH was a strong early outing.

Kingdom Hearts was apparently out to prove it really was an RPG, because unlike most action games, it leads with its weaker material and ends much stronger. A straightforward tutorial is followed up with a leisurely stroll around an island doing some fetch quests. This would be mostly inoffensive, if not for one brief attempt at a “race” that clued me into how odd some of the platforming was going to feel. Sora lands like a rock, so jumping from platform to platform felt far from fluid. This sequence and the optional fight with your friend/rival Riku is meant to be revisited and trivialized on subsequent playthroughs of the game, but I know with certainty I would neve get these right, especially after getting used to my other abilities gained down the road.

Trouble in paradise arises as the island is enveloped in darkness, Sora’s oneitis is whisked away, and Riku is absorbed into a Lovecraftian ether assuring us that he’s just going to ask some perfectly reasonable questions about the history of central banking. The slow pace of the game continues as we are made to walk around Traverse Town. Combat encounters are not going to feel very exciting here. I feel like the game waiting to give you a dodge roll was a mistake. Even when you aren’t getting much use out of it, it can add a bit of dynamism to the flow of each fight. This is where I first picked up on how the game spares me the horror of having to deal with enemies respawning every time I reenter a room. It takes a couple of reentries before they rear their heads again, and they can often be ignored once you know where to go.

So you link up with Donald and Goofy, deciding to need it rather than keep it. You blitz on over to Wonderland, and this first Disney world does a solid job translating the film’s content into a video game setting. It only takes two-ish locales from Alice in Wonderland, the room with the potions and the queen’s garden, but a decent amount of variety is pulled from them. Negotiating with flowers is thankfully straightforward as they will just tell you what they want, so no guesswork is needed. This is one of the better examples of back-and-forth tasks the game is going to burden you with. It’s a short checklist of things that tend to open up a little more of the area as you go. We are not at the worst of this yet. The boss fight here can sadly take a while if you’re a bit sheepish over your capabilities or did not spec into magic. However if you’re willing to just dive in on this lanky fella then it’ll be over quickly.

Your next options are the jungle and the colosseum. The colosseum can come off as a fat load of nothing to those just trying to get through the game normally, but it’s the source of a substantial amount of optional content and some of the game’s best boss fights. If you do not make an attempt at Sephiroth, you will have sorely missed out. Interesting to note that this is actually the first time a character like him or Cloud would even be shown in a real-time format, so it’s no wonder these depictions had such a huge impact on their later incarnations. Though I wouldn’t be a real FF fan if I did not take a moment to seethe over “emo Cloud” being such a cool guy when his original depiction was much more of a dweeby weirdo getting made fun of for trying way too hard to act cool.

The jungle kind of sucks. I have trouble finding much defense for how much needless backtracking there is in this one just to activate cutscenes. In fact it’s often a bit unclear that’s what you need to be doing so you could waste even more time unnecessarily. I have seen some pretty neat optimized routing for this section but it’s sadly not quite enough to salvage it for me. I do get to take a moment to look at Jane, the best Disney girl, so it was kind of worth it in the end. I also got to beat up a leopard, which is something I always wanted to do in real life. Also, did you know that leopards only have a lifespan of 10-12 years? If a leopard killed Tarzan’s parents twenty years ago, then who the fuck did Tarzan kill in the movie?

As another aside, Tarzan claims that the boss here is “ooh ah ooh ah Not-Clayton” but what did he mean by this exactly? Is it a heartless posing as Clayton? Is he merely referencing that Clayton is not alone and is accompanied by a giant chameleon? Is it physically Clayton but possessed or enhanced by the power of darkness in some way? My friend Mike (whom I have blocked on twitter) insists that it is literally not Clayton. I think the following cutscene where the chameleon falls on Clayton implies that it was the real Clayton. If he was possessed, then we have just killed a man who was mostly innocent in this version of the story and even the actions of his own agency could have been manipulated by the heartless. Even Kerchek gets to live here. Clayton was tragically cast as the villain of this story because a higher power deemed it so. In another life, we could have been friends.

Revisiting Traverse Town demands a fair amount of busy work, but you do get to open up an optional minigame world to communist China and climb trees with Xi Jinping and friends. You also get to run into Riku again. It seems that, since we last saw him, Riku has been doing a lot of reading and insists that we should read the passages from Deuteronomy that he texted us earlier. He’s also believing every word from someone who has literal devil horns adorned to her head. I am a huge Sleeping Beauty fan, so getting to see Maleficent be so involved in the greater scope of the game is fun for me, especially since many of the other Disney characters seem more confined to their own worlds.

Agrabah is another generally well designed world. The combat here implements a bit of platforming so you think more about your positioning and try not to fall from your advantageous spot. You also have a nice variety of areas within the streets, outside the Cave of Wonders, the upper level of the cave, the lower level, and the treasure trove. The only thing that’s really missing is the palace interior. You also have to get a truncated version of the film’s character arc for Aladdin, rushing us to his third wish to free Genie. So Al wastes his first two wishes with shit we could have accomplished easily. This is one of those retreads that I accept as a necessary concession. It’s not just the film’s plot, but if you stray too far and have us dealing with like, animated series Aladdin, people who aren’t me wouldn’t be that interested

Jafar’s boss fight is a bit of a dud. The preceding sorcerer Jafar fight isn’t bad, but genie Jafar has the worst aim of all time and you’re mostly waiting for Iago to pass by so you can eviscerate Gilbert Gottfried.

Monstro is one of those worlds I had heard was infamous, only to find it totally inoffensive. It’s a small maze. What was so objectionable about this? Is it just one of those things people blow up because they got lost as kids? Why don’t I hear that about the following world? The fucking water one. Anyway, Riku is here again and this time he’s going on about how his ideology is totally predicated on economic reform only. Pinnochio is here, btw. He and Gepetto have been swallowed up here. Pinnochio is then swallowed up by a big heartless and you have to save him. Now, from my understanding, KH fans like some guy called “Chibi” really enjoy this kind of thing. I am personally not a huge fan of witnessing double-vore, but we end up leaving Gepetto and Pinnochio in this place to supposedly digest for all eternity anyway. Mission accomplished, boys. We entered the belly of the beast and took responsibility for our capital B Being, cleaning our room and slaying the dragon, bucko. (Note: We really will be slaying a dragon later)

The next world is Atlantica. Thankfully this is KH1 so dad is yet to walk in on us having a dance party with Princess Ariel the pretty mermaid. First and foremost, this world is a better example of the abridged/altered plots of the movies. Atlantica wisely ignores the movie’s plot of Ariel wanting to walk on land so she can get laid. However it successfully honors the spirit of the film with its cliff notes still focusing on the conflict between the free-spirited Ariel and her overbearing father, which leads to a deal with Ursula. Maybe praise for such sparse storytelling is unnecessary, but when you have to do something like this eight times per game you should give credit where it’s due.

I’m not really sure how much of Atlantica’s issues are its own versus mine. There are literal arrows pointing me in the right direction for the Final Mix version of this game, and I still managed to get lost trying to find my way back to Ariel’s hideout so I can progress the story. I don’t know how people feel about the swimming here, but it seems deliberately designed to not be as frustrating as underwater segments of the previous era. You move quickly and combat moves about as fluidly as it does on land. Still, the world is a little too large and there are too many enemies to fight per room in order to progress with a shy dolphin to the next area. Twice. I still found this meandering more engaging than the jungle, and I thought it ended pretty strong with both Ursula boss fights. I hear the second one, against giant Ursula, is infamous online for being incredibly frustrating. I’m assuming this must be referencing the original release which has a less free camera, because I found this to be a fun challenge among the required boss fights of the game. There’s plenty of healthy telegraphing of attacks, and conditioning that teaches you to not be greedy with openings. Ariel is also one of the more useful guest party members. I’m sure many peculiar folks online were saddened to find out she did not whip out her feet in this version of the tale, but she can absolutely throw hands.

Halloweentown is here. It is in this game. I liked it. I certainly didn’t dislike it. It’s like if the jungle section was less of a slog. A lot of quick back-and-forth running around to trigger cutscenes before you open up another small area. The combat here against the trash mobs can actually get a little dicey, with these guys who leap down and slash to deal huge damage. So the game is officially not pulling punches at this point. You also have another gimmicky boss fight waiting for you at the end of this segment. While the flow here is notably more in the game’s corner than your own, you still have a lot of control over how quickly this fight concludes. Again, whatever distaste I saw for this online prior to playing for the first time seems to be a projection of childhood frustrations. There’s also an additional fight against a house because the developers really wanted you to appreciate the exterior of this environment and not just run by all the enemies. Fair.

I don’t know if making Neverland the final world in a game about coming of age and loss of innocence was intentional, but I like to pretend it was. Of course, Neverland being last in line here means that apparently Captain fucking Hook has a higher in-universe power level than the likes of Jafar, Ursula, Oogie Boogie, (possibly) Hades, and Not-Clayton. He truly has climbed the competency hierarchy and channeled his inner chaos. Neverland is a fairly brief and confined world, and I can imagine it might’ve been frustrating with the original release’s camera, but it works fine in Final Mix. You are even granted the ability to fly freely here, something the swimming section preps you for. The movement feels very natural even if you only have access to a downgraded version of it outside of this world. Hook’s fight, like several others, is fairly accommodating in granting you extra enemies to beat up on in order to restore your magic. Pan is another one of the more fun guest party members with the ability to freeze enemies in place the way Bobby Driscol wishes he could have frozen time before getting blacklisted. There’s also a pretty neat optional gimmick fight here with a super boss that demands hyper awareness of a ticking clock that will kill your party one by one. It’s a great use of an iconic setpiece from Disney’s catalog.

You get a pocket Tinker Bell here. I have no comment. I just want you to know that you will have Tinker Bell available to summon and there is nothing else to think about in regards to Tinker Bell but she is literally right there in your pocket like seriously imagine though.

Hollow Bastion is where the game goes from pretty good to outright excellent for a while. Your movement is all freed up now, so traversal through the area is about as smooth as it’s going to get. The rooms here vary in size to let you judge the space between you and enemies in a variety of ways. The enemy types are split between bulkier damage dealers and flying enemies, both of which force you to reposition constantly. Beast is here as the only guest party member to not be present in their own world. While I was deprived of a Gaston boss fight, I could still breathe a sigh of relief as the game reassured me that the entire country of France had been obliterated by the Heartless.
The string of boss fights here are all high quality. Dragon Maleficent is a great example of how broken Tinker Bell is, but can be defeated without assistance once you understand that the massive tail whip attack is actually telegraphed. It’s just tough to see because it’s a giant dragon that takes up 75% of the screen. Riku is fully possessed here after going on a rant about how Bob Chapek “cucked out and deserved what he got” without any elaboration. The fight is a 1v1 that puts your understanding of the mechanics to the test. You can either totally crush it or struggle for longer than necessary. The original release is notorious for an unskippable cutscene preceding this fairly tough fight. Although this boss only took me a couple of tries, an unskippable cutscene probably would have made this totally intolerable and borderline drop-worthy as an adult. As a kid in 2002 with much fewer games to play, it would have been incredibly frustrating but probably something I would have stomached.

So Riku is then transformed into a chiseled greek god by the powers of evil and we bail on the Hollow Bastion. After a brief reprieve we dive right back in and head to the endgame so we can take on Ron DarknesSantis and stop him from taking over Disney World. Some of the newer enemies here are a real challenge to get through, but they also outstay their welcome after a while. They have a tendency to shield themselves or outright disappear, so you have to constantly shift focus to new targets and come back to finish off the previous enemy later. It starts out pretty interesting but becomes tiring after a while. The Chernobog reveal completely blew my socks off as I had no idea it was in this game, it helps that the fight itself was pretty damn good. The following room is a seemingly endless gauntlet of enemies that would have utterly destroyed my will to continue had I died in there, on account of the aforementioned defensive enemies, but thankfully I got through it on the first try. Apparently you can also just summon Simba to clear each wave near-instantly. So fuck me.

All that’s left of the game are a couple of fights with Ansem. It’s a pretty strong finish but the second phase is what really feels like the final boss in terms of difficulty. Some might hate the borderline un-reactable attack that virtually incapacitates you and drains your resources to stay alive while it’s active, but I think this lends the encounter a distinct sense of danger not present anywhere else in the game’s required fights. If everyone had something like this, then I’d hate it. As a single endgame boss fight, I love it. A final boss with a few things that are oppressive or unfair makes it more satisfying when you realize they can be beaten. The boss is also very generous with checkpoints and does not force you to redo any phases.

Ansem ends up turning into a giant flesh monster devil god with a sexy Billy Zane proxy attached to it, and watching Donald Duck and Goofy go toe-to-toe with this kind of thing is the stuff not even my dreams could have come up with. I’m sure this bizarre juxtaposition will not become a trend with the series going forward.

Idk the ending is nonsense. Kingdom Hearts is light but also we still have to close that door and Riku has to be on the other side of it rather than just pushing it with you and Michael Mouse is here and we’re gonna explain why he’s shirtless later thank you Nomura very cool.

So suffice to say I was actually pretty pleased with this one. While familiarity with the IPs will certainly enhance enjoyment, and I wouldn’t really recommend the game to someone who hasn’t seen or played any of the source material, it’s shocking to think the aesthetics and gameplay might be enough to carry this experience. If you’re used to more modern games deftly blending snappier combat and customization then you might not click with it, but it’s not hard to imagine why this game is a favorite of so many people who played it near release. Not just because of its recognizable foundations, but because it takes those things and earnestly crafts something totally new and novel with them.

Try not to take its storytelling all that seriously and lecture people over how this ridiculous concept is, in fact, ridiculous to watch unfold. There’s value in the absurd, and not just in an ironic sense. If a group of people made an enjoyable piece of entertainment out of an utterly insane idea with bizarrely broad, abstract, and robotic storytelling that it confidently seems to think is none of those things, then that is absolutely worth giving some thought to, even with a few laughs at its expense.

Westerners once again dabbing on Sonic Team and making a better game than them, on April Fools' Day no less.

More importantly, Jesus Christ why are the Sonic girls so goddamn sexual? Amy, Rouge, and Blaze are literally BUILT for human men. The greatest travesty of all time is knowing that I will never be able to plow each of them for hours on end until I am shooting blanks. That autistic guy who made the top 10 hottest female Sonic characters video and described the Sonic universe as hot chick heaven? Literally did nothing wrong. I fucking kneel.

Anyway, yeah pretty good VN. 2 hours well spent.