i finished this game a few days ago and now that I've truly let it marinate, i can say for sure this is my favorite game in the series thus far, tied with it's predecessor but honestly if you made me choose I'd pick kuro 2.

it really wasn't what i was expecting at all. even after reading many negative backloggd and reddit reviews, i still found the complaints most people made to be big non-issues.

10 games of the same formula, finally broken by the calvard arc, isn't that great! i think its a great change of pace and considering how much i love the ASO, this was the best game to bring about this new meta of focusing way more on characters rather than the story in the sequel of a game.

i'm not the best at writing reviews so i won't get too deep but i just know this game was very fun, interesting and took just the right amount of ambition to not completely rewrite being a trails game. Act 3 is peak btw don't listen to the haters

P.S, SHIZUNA I LOVE YOU SOO MUCH UWAHAHHHHHAHHAAA SAVE ME IN KAI NO KISEKI

I think a lot of people aren't as satisfied with this game because it doesn't advance the overall Zemuria plotline which is fine by me cause I think some of the best games in the series (Sky 3rd, Zero, Kuro 1) don't or barely do at all anyways. This game feels like more of a Kuro 1.5. Spends time fleshing out characters that needed more screen time in previous games, a little more backstory on Van and teasing about his relationship with Elaine which is pretty nice. Kuro NPCs continue to be PEAK and the sidequests were also consistently great. The gameplay has seen a couple balancing changes which made the game WAY more fun than the first to me.

It's a mess at times especially with it's awful act 3 that should honestly make it lose more points but I had such a good time with it that I don't mind.

If Backloggd had a better scoring system I'd give it like an 8.8 or so but I'm giving it 4.5 stars cause putting it next to Hajimari feels wrong.

absolutely one of the most fun games i've ever played. everything feels so good. the music is incredible and puts you in a trance to help you knock out repeated attempts at these levels. this is a game where level design is put front and center to the point where you NOTICE how good it is, because you have to. the game flaunts it - it wants to show you. this window? it's here because the fast way to do this is to not even enter this building but just fall past it, and shoot a rocket through the window to clip the two enemies in here. these enemies? skip them until the very end when a barrel explodes and destroys the platform they're standing on. and everything is so READABLE. even your first time through a level feels fast. you can play so much of the game on reflex, and you glide through the levels shooting enemies and using powers when it feels right, blasting through red barriers and scanning the screen for the next little miniobjective that you are always perfectly equipped to overcome. ultimate flow state game.

also the book of life is i think honestly the best-feeling button press in a videogame. it's so insanely powerful and the levels are still designed to accommodate it. the distances you cover in that chapter are absurd. and the music. thousand pound butterfly is perfect for getting you as wired as possible. i was giggling to myself between stages of that chapter. it's exhilarating.

it's hard for me to write a review about this game. i feel like it was designed in a lab to be optimally enjoyable for exactly me, much like how McDonald's french fries are chemically engineered to be Mathematically and Provably Delicious for the general American public.

i can't talk about Neon White without talking about Arcane Kids. in the mid-10s, being someone who staked a lot of identity into playing games was profoundly embarassing. ignoring the truly heinous shit that goes without saying, year after year, AAA studios continued to pump out "mids at best." on the other side of things, "indie" games were no longer new and were in something of an awkward puberty. i can't tell you how many "physics-based puzzle platformers with a gimmick" i had pitched to me that promised to be Actually Good. they weren't. however, during this time, the Unity weirdos were churning away in their art scenes around the globe. the new derisive joke became "make a game in unity, make a million dollars." of course, the people making these jokes didn't know what they were talking about, but i guess none of us really did back then.

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Arcane Kids existed as something of an antithesis to the games of the time. when we had more than enough pixel-art RPGs, they gave us ZINETH. when we got innundated with walking simulators, they gave us Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective. when indies decided to try and be funny with things like Goat Simulator, we got Sonic Dreams Collection, CRAP! No One Loves Me, and this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RNCyc3hzAw). while a lot of these games were "funny" or "jokes," they always had deeper ideas to them beneath the surface around player agency, the joy of moving your avatar, the love of Videogames As Videogames.

i cannot possibly explain how strange it felt to turn on the game and have the title screen after the intro cutscene splash in with a voice echoing "NEON WHITE" as the moodiest witch house track creeps in through your headphones. the fake scanlines, the neon glow on the characters, the tone, the vibes. i thought to myself, "they finally did it." as i played more, i confirmed my suspicions.

Arcane Kids finally made the game it feels like they had been working toward all these years. blazing fast, huge jumps, easy-to-learn-but-hard-to-master, tight, violent, horny, loud, freaky, all at once. in Mission 11, as breakneck-paced breakcore blasted out of my screen, i screamed aloud in my room to my partner who was watching me play "I. FUCKING. LOVE. THIS. GAME." in time with each click of the RMB that shot me across the map at incredible speeds. in moments like this, you know for a fact that moments like Bubsy pulling out an uzi and a katana at the end of Bubsy 3D or them subjecting a crowd of people at a game conference to vape trick videos that inspired their previous game (https://youtu.be/2pO23GTaBtk?si=ldB9w6CU2UC3TkHI&t=1791) was not just them contributing to the general irony-poisoned sense of humor of the time; they legitimately thought that it was tight as fuck.

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one line from the infamous Arcane Kids Manifesto (https://arcanekids.com/manifesto) that i always think about is "the purpose of gameplay is to hide secrets."

at a time when even FromSoft has started to move away from their smaller, more-focused world design in favor of chasing the lucrative open-world design potential in Elden Ring, it feels amazing that we have a game like Neon White that is about intricately crafted and infinitely replayable level design. after years of waiting, we finally have the one true Indie Puzzle Platformer, but this time it has guns.

the gameplay (for me, usually) fell into a flowchart like this:
-beat a level once and get whatever medal you get
-go back to find the secret gift
-during this second trip, notice which parts of the levels you can skip or save time on that were hidden to you before
-play the level a 3rd time to get a gold medal
-use the hint from the Gold medal to get an Ace medal on your 4th time
-over time, you begin to amass a collection of "hey, did you know this quirk" movement secrets like shooting bullets, bunny hopping after a dash, or sliding with the shotgun's discard

game design that calls attention to itself like this is beautiful. level designers are artists. we've known this since Doom WADs. however, in the time since Doom we've had several games like Gears of War, Halo, and their ilk that said "wasn't the sickest part about Doom being a huge buff guy with loud guns just blasting disgusting freaks and seeing them explode???" while that does indeed whip, Neon White is on the other side of the coin saying "wasn't the best part about Doom the level design and the joy of figuring out how to move as fast as you can through a level???"

after 11 years of watching speedrunning streams nearly every day, Neon White finally made me feel like maybe i could do it too. first you pit yourself against the Ace medal time, then your friends, then the Dev Times, then your own ghost, and then the world. to this day, i have yet to have a global #1, but i've had a #2 and two #3s. i'll keep going though.

[EDIT 7/17/23: i did it :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWT2b9pwRMI]

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Neon White is a love letter in videogame form

A sequel to the amazing Vita classic, Gravity Rush 2 continues the story of Kat and her cat, Dusty, who grants her gravity-controlling powers.

Instead of the classic sequel trend of depowering the main character, Kat starts off feeling strong. Kat’s main power is that she can alter the shift of gravity for herself, so she can fall in any direction. This may sound disorientating, but it feels very natural – I think the gyro enhanced camera causes the natural shake of your hands to make the camera movements easier to understand. Even the new first person mode isn’t too mind-bending.

So as you have the unlocked through the first game, the main focus on this is two new sets of powers: Lunar and Jupiter. Lunar focuses on lighter attacks, but much faster movement, while Juper is slow but hard-hitting. You can swap between these forms extremely quickly with a swipe of the touch pad, making it easy to mix things up in the heat of battle. Some enemies are more suited to certain styles.

The world in Gravity Rush is stunning, gorgeous floating cities (even the lower slums look great) in a sort of semi-comic style. Lots of nooks and crannies to explore as you hunt for gems to increase your powers. Not only are there multiple new vast locations, but the entirety of the map from the first game also makes an appearance.

With a charming story and a wonderful atmosphere, Gravity Rush 2 is a complete joy to play.