Got about halfway through before deciding to call it quits. Could have kept going but couldn't shake the feeling that I could be spending this time on an RPG that's less... dull.

I've noticed there are a lot of games ABOUT learning Japanese that are not actual Japanese learning games. This is one of those. If you're the type of person to put "日本語OK" on your Twitter bio because you finished level 5 of Wanikani, I guess you'll enjoy this?

The monsters are designed after kanji, which is a clever idea (though I'm not a fan of what the designs end up being). Other than that it's an RPG Maker game where the collectibles are themed after Japanese vocabulary. Maybe the second half brings it all together and wraps a bow on it. It's hard to imagine, given how empty the first half's story is.

What the back of the box doesn't tell you is this is the "learn to embrace failure" type of meditation, not the "head empty only vibes" type.

Far as I can tell this is the dev's first game, and it shows. It can be hard to figure out the difference between "challenging" and "annoying." That's why I never got that into Mario Maker. So I won't rate it, but I'll leave with this:

I laughed out loud for a while at the ending reveal. Laughter is absolutely not the intended reaction.

I'd grown tired of rogue-lites over the years and I guess it's a great time for indie games to move on from them because this is pretty much the pinnacle. It's the perfect story for this type of gameplay and the perfect gameplay for the story.

And even though I think that story peters out by the time the credits roll, the game is so well designed that I'll be coming back to this for a while. There are tons of tiny choices that tell you the developers are keyed into exactly what they're making. I'm especially impressed by the massive amount of dialogue they recorded to allow the characters to react to every little development (or setback) in the player's journey.

I want to unlock the rest of the stuff. Seems like it'll be a long grind. That's okay, I've got some podcasts to listen to anyway.








oh also there's a fishing minigame

The most over-produced game in history? Full-on opening credits sequence, FMV performances, dynamic music... it presses all my buttons, and I fell in love with it, and then I played it.

So, FMV solitaire. Greg Miller plays the lead role. Unfortunately for him, the other role is played by Inel Tomlinson, who, unlike Miller, is an actor. There's an espionage thriller plot that's equally delightfully absurd and plain confusing. It exists exclusively to build up to a big decision to be made by the player character but not the player, which was disappointing to learn.

The solitaire is quite unsatisfying too. For all the design and mechanics around the cards, it never felt there was much need for them. I tried to use the abilities as much as possible, but always with the assumption that brute-force was a decently efficient backup plan.

There's been a trend of "serious" solitaire-based games lately, and this feels like Bithell saying "I can do that too." He was right, I guess.

Half of all VNs: Women are robots.

The other half: Women are pure, innocent angels.

Planetarian: ¿Por qué no los dos?

This caught my eye during the Steam free demo event, and the full game is essentially just the demo gameplay but longer (that's a good thing). At that time it was called "A Monster's Expedition Through Human Exhibitions," which was a better name although I assume it was changed because "Human Exhibition" has a very real and unfortunate history. Humans ruin everything.

The actual exhibitions are the weakest part of the game and are rarely more than tired observations like "Wow, British people drink a lot of tea, don't we?" or "Aren't pools weird when you REALLY think about it?" But if the exhibitions were the point, they wouldn't be scattered across hundreds of islands and require the visitor to build their own bridges and rafts. It doesn't quite recapture the charm of A Good Snowman, but if that style of puzzle game is up your alley, this is worthy of your time.

I have to assume all the glowing reviews are for the multiplayer because the campaign is just short of abysmal. Repetitive environments to the point where I once actually returned to the beginning of a level because I couldn't tell which way was forward,

both the Flood and Covenant get a new late-game enemy in the form of a hyper-agile bullet sponge which is just no fun to fight,

as a result of that grenades are no longer for clearing out infantry but instead for easily one-shotting heavy enemies,

and a final boss that I beat by complete accident. Still don't know how the fight was meant to go. The campaign has problems communicating with the player the whole way through. Like the time you enter a room where you have to kill all the enemies and Cortana says "let's sit this fight out."

Anyway, the story. I think there's a really interesting comparison to be made between Halo 2 (2004) and Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002). I mean that in both the positive and negative ways. They both go for a dual-protagonist structure juxtaposing two aspects of the story (interesting! good!), and they both get mired down in the politics of their factions (not inherently bad but poorly executed on both fronts!). I think I would rather take Lucas's hokey dialogue than the grandoise nothingness the Covenant leaders spout.

And speaking of the early 2000s, how about those marines? How about Johnson? I said "factions" in the plural earlier but the humans seem to be pretty unified on everything. How about the Aliens, waging a holy war with their... weapons of mass destruction? Is this a stretch? I don't think it's much of a stretch.

I want to keep going but honestly, the comparison to the Star Wars prequels says enough. About the game sure, but mostly about me.