PolaroidJack
BACKER
(Finished main game on 3/24, abandoned beating last couple of bosses 3/25)
Had to manage beating the last 25% of this game on a Dualsense with a broken left analog stick, privy to send me forward towards an attack I meant to back up from. Rather than wait out the arrival of a new controller or return it for a fix - I just really wanted to get this game out of the way.
Off the heels of Dark Souls 1, FromSoft had managed to get a hot streak going with its 'Souls' titles. DeS and DS1 managed to entice players seeking out new, harder, wilder challenges that overlay a world brimming with deeper scars. It was a turning point in the games industry during the mid to late 7th generation and FromSoft would be right to keep that momentum going with making a follow up to solidify Souls as a series. Somehow DS2 didn't end the franchise, which is one positive I can say about the game.
I already knew going into this that it was the weird cousin of the series and I would say I'm privy to weird mechanics or janky structure, unfortunately I only came to the conclusion that I don't think there's any single aspect of this game I thought rivaling its kin in quality nor scope. While I haven't played all the games in the series I have played the game to release prior and after this: DS1 and Bloodborne, respectively. The series would go on to evolve and morph into several different forms since then, yet around the time of BB's release I remember discourse surrounding the trio regarding the difference between Dark Souls' reliance on being more patient and slower in your approach versus Bloodborne's more aggressive, tit-for-tat, combat. Where Dark Souls 2 lied in this comparison I don't remember. Hell, across the several years afterward I didn't hear much about Dark Souls 2 outside of memes about how Dark Souls 2 is the 'weirdo' one. It was the only thing I really had to base my expectations on, yet really- what isnt weird about Souls games anyway? Regardless of its notoriety (and a fairly shoddy PC port that had issues with my controller), I tried to remain somewhat bright in my outlook and understand what fans saw in SotFS.
As a starter for this Soulsborne I decided to focus a bit more into a Dex-Hex build compared to the Sorcery-Spellsword in ER and the Pyromancer in DS. I will say, if Magic is what you're looking for this is a pretty good entry, having a lot of variety in its spells. Until Elden Ring this seems to be the title with the most variety and ease of access to its spell selection. Hexes are a neat type of magic, basing its strength off the weaker of your Int/Faith, requiring you to level both simultaneously, but soft-capping early. Once you hit the DLCs this stratagem becomes a little less valuable, so I respec'd into a more DEX focus build. I don't tend to focus too hard on combat in these titles although this time around everything feels much more ‘crowded’ and I'll touch on that later but it's usually a good idea to carry some ranged options, or in some fields of magic, an AOE (thank you Dark Fog...). Most everything surrounding the combat feels about the same as DS1 feels, although certain movements/animations feel just a tad off, even for Dark Souls. Certain hitboxes not feeling right, lotta bad locking on…I dont have the chops to elaborate though so it could just be my imagination.
What I will elaborate on, however, is the enemies with which you apply your combative prowess on. Dark Souls certainly has its fair share of notorious enemies, a grand array of memorable jerks that have just that one move that reaches you, attempting to down an Estus. From the literal Dragon Asses parading in Lost Izalith, the Giant Werewolves in Yharnam, the Caelid Dinosaur Crows- the list goes on.
In Dark Souls 2 many of the enemies reflect the fallen kingdom and the surrounding areas, although coming off of Eldenring and Dark Souls 1 you can just kinda categorize certain mook types and aggressions as the game goes on. Where it starts to falter however is in 3 key details:
1) How many enemies you'll be facing
2) Where many of the enemies are placed
3) How persistent these enemies are
Oftentimes Dark Souls 2 will take an opportunity to present a sort of...scenario. One that feels like it sounded cooler in the level designer's head than in practice. Sometimes it's as simple as crossing a certain boundary and a horde of 4 or 5 enemies descending a tower in the distance to meet you, other times it feels more dubious. There's one instance late in the game where several enemies/beasts are caged up like experiments and a third party is monitoring these trapped monsters. The trope of 'the freed monsters turn on their captors' immediately comes to mind as you pull the lever to free these beasts, not realizing that games sometimes aren't that smart and you now have to contend with the third party and several new monsters aggroing onto you from mimics to ogres. I wouldn't mind, and you get some items out of it but it just feels like there were a lot of 'events' that were meant to be scripted out but just clash with the normal, actual game feel of a Soulsborne. I'll get into some of the 'world/area' event mechanics later but for enemies there's often too many in each area of a given map and often just feel too samey for much of the game.
Maybe a good chunk of that sameness across the enemy types is just how often you fight 'ambush' zombies/knights. I feel like for a good chunk of the game its just contending with these somewhat competent, agile Manikins and Alonne Soldiers and Heide Knights. They aren’t unmanageable on their own but they tend to use much more time/effort to take down than I’d like, especially when managing 2 or 4 of them (those damn Alonne Knights…).
Side note, however you get raided in this game way too often. I swear you get about 2 to 3 an area but it's never consistent as to when these guys might spawn, some areas have multiple invaders in the same area, too?? I'm sure there's story significance but I don't really care because invaders have usually been hit or miss in the series, and mostly miss in this game. The amount of times 'The Forlorn' has shown up eclipses the amount of times I died to most every boss in this game, I wish I were joking. That's not a flex on my skill, this person just shows up 12 times to annoy you.
Dark Souls 1 eventually starts to reuse certain enemies but throughout much of the experience you have pretty distinct and suitable adversities up until Lost Izalith. In addition, there weren't too many places that required you to look around corners and be cautious, other than a few in Lower Undead Burg(?). Here it's just a constant swarm of enemies dropping from out of eyesight tunnels, behind corners, and from several, several feet away. I swear the archers have the most absurd range, they will just continue to fire arrows or projectiles from much farther than you'd think.
Ranged enemies aren't the only ones however as close combat enemies, once proc'd, will also be incredibly tenacious in their pursuit. There are several areas in the game in which you'll prefer to just ignore certain mooks lying throughout a segment of the map, perhaps to backtrack to a sidepath you missed earlier. Careful now, several enemies decided to join you while you weren't looking! The Huntsman Copse I swear has the worst end of this, I've had boss runs where somehow the large Hunters chase behind me, even worse if you decide to be responsible and try to tackle the Executioners that ambush you from the cliffs. There are a lot of boss runs that have this issue, hell there's a lot of just 'running' where you pick up weird stragglers. Add in the factors I mentioned above like how many enemies some sections have and it just gets absurd. At least Fume Knight has a sober bonfire...
I think the primary example of this can be seen in the first area of the game, the Forest of Fallen Giants. Quite immediately there's a few details that feel off about the location, for starters there's an ogre just like, walking around? I don't know why. He just kind of ignores you, so you encounter the first group of enemies, one hiding behind the bridge, and deal with them deftly. You climb a ladder and there's just like 8 of them lying on the ground now, and a couple of firebomb tossers on a ledge. If you go out a side path there's also a cliff side with an item but there's just like a guy there. You can proc him 50% of the time and he just drops down and will chase you up the latter and this becomes every area from here on out. Just running through half a level and not being able to catch a break. Enemies that would otherwise feel fine to face just get super tedious and drag down certain areas of the game that much more. Although the area design is generally shoddy, with or without enemy combatants.
Immediately one of the weakest parts of Dark Souls 2 is the map design- a large step down from 1's intricate world. It's only been a few years since finishing Dark Souls 1 yet it's quickly become one of my favorites in gaming. Looking up from Blighttown and seeing the sky, the cliff and the tree of Firelink Shrine means so much. In Dark Souls 2 so many of the areas you traverse just feel so...disconnected and distant. Certain areas reminded me more of Spyro than of FromSoft, there's a certain style to how varied the level theme and structure are and its just not Dark Souls, or Bloodborne for that matter.
Maybe it's how certain areas in DS1 are connected that makes it feel so much more natural. Getting to Andrei’s Shop from the Undead Parish but also that bonfire acting as a hub leading out to Darkroot Garden and also Sen's Fortress feels amazing. In Dark Souls 2 it prefers to take you through tunnels and elevators and other means of transportation to reach new areas, everything is disjointed and unconnected. This comes to a breaking point after unlocking so many areas and just seeing the list of different, separate areas that feel so far apart... even though the Shaded Woods are just a brief walk away. By the end of the game you will have lit flames atop a large stone map, indicating the defeated major bosses of sections and I just can't point out what these flames are supposed to represent.
I guess the upside is there's a lot of openness as to what direction you can go right off the bat. Usually you head into the Forest into Heide's Tower but from there it's kind of up to you as to what 'Great Souls’' you want to hunt down, it just feels a bit more like I'm stumbling upon these more than anything. From what I saw a lot of people ran straight into Sinner's Rise immediately although after seeing the Flexile Sentry, I thought the area was meant for later. I don't know whether to praise it for its flexibility or prod it for its lacking sensible direction. Certainly other games in the series run into this same problem, no doubt. Bloodborne you might accidentally run into Cainhurst, Dark Souls has most of the Tomb of Giants available after beating Pinwheel but nothing much to do until you grab the Lordvessel, Eldenring is completely open world so you can just hit whatever. Although usually the games have been much more balanced or streamlined as to keep players out through other signs or hints than enemies being harder. Going into the Catacombs is already a farcical task until you gather a way to permanently destroy Skeletons and is completely off the beaten path. Bloodborne's manner of madness along with how each area is connected makes it so it's really hard to just stumble into an area with a higher skill ceiling than others.
I really appreciate how easily areas blend into each other in DS1, and admittedly- the lack of fast travel for the first half of the game feels so much more refreshing. Sidetracking isn't really all that lustrous as straying too far from the main objective of reaching Anor Londo -or hell straying too far from Firelink- seems unwise, so the options aren't really there at all. Why are the New Londo Ruins so easily accessible from the start? Well, while its not intentional you are able to grab an early Estus upgrade by suicide running into the ruins, but the ethereal enemies and lack of any clear objective should clue you in otherwise. On top of that it serves as a nice connecting point between an elevator from the Valley of Drakes, another area that acts more as a highway for other areas' off ramps and the upper end of Blighttown.
Dark Souls 1 also prides itself on not having too much of one 'status' to worry about. Looking back there's a lot of areas and enemies that carry status effects of some sort, but as far as I remember there's only really 1 area for each status? Blightown, the Depths, the Catacombs, each have a focus on one status and after those areas are done you don't have to worry too much from then on. In Dark Souls 2 it feels like there's so many traps and statuses just randomly spread around the place. Several places have poison throughout the area like the Gutter and Harvest Valley, lots of enemies will proc bleed if they attack you, basilisks are just randomly everywhere. This gets incredibly annoying in the DLCs, namely the Sunken King areas where a lot of enemies carry stone status and there’s an entire subsection with statues that just hock stone loogies at you.
I don't even feel as though I hate Dark Souls 1's uncooked latter half as much as I hate the boss fight checklist here in 2. Dark Souls 1 opens on several of your late game bosses totaling the world and bringing about the age you now live in- Nito, Seath, the Witch of Izalith and King Gwyn. The hard thing to really compel with these titans is that by the end of the game these are admittedly...odd fights, bar the games finale. Nito is fine, if easier than I had hoped, but Seath is a complete nutjob being a blind dragon with this eclectic BGM and the Bed of Chaos is a complete disaster of a puzzle boss. They're chumps. They’ve fallen off. They're losers- you're coming in to clean their mess, and by the time you reach Gwyn you're probably just as hollow inside as he is. Whether intentional or not, the latter half of Dark Souls 1 feeling a lot more 'broken' does in a weird way resonate with several of your colleagues also going through their own crises- Solaire either completely turns on you or loses out on his sunlight; most of Siegmeyer’s options end in him dying or resigning that he is too weak compared to you. The two endings are either you burning at the kiln and continuing the age of Fire or breaking the cycle and issuing in the age of Dark. Obviously From Soft didn't have all the time or money to finish up much of the late game and it suffers a lot while playing through, but part of me enjoyed the final stretch being as discombobulated and somewhat more ‘open’ compared to the earlier objectives.
Dark Souls 2 on the other hand, the intro this time around involves an old woman spinning a tale about a long lost kingdom of Drangleic and much of the cast will reference this lost kingdom surely. The main objective is given to you by the leveling up maiden, the Emerald Herald: To gather the four flames from 'Great Ones' that are considered to be reincarnations of the four main baddies from the first game. As you obtain the Sacred Flames, you get interrupted by a massive being named Aldia. He gives some vague explanations and lore regarding your role in all of this, somewhat like Frampt or Kaathe. He's fine but spoiler alert you fight him and its pretty middling, kinda disappointing considering he's the titular "Scholar of the First Sin". Dark Souls 1 might have a pretty light story if you just go through it but its creation mythos feels so ingrained in every step of the process from the intro onward that its easy to discern what's going on. Dark Souls 2 has these weird gaps throughout the journey that make me stop and try and remember what the hell is going on anyway. I pretty much had the jist after all, its just not as interesting as I figured. Yes the Lost Sinner has some neat connections especially with regards to items you find in one of the DLCs no I did not see that because by the time I hit the DLCs that boss had jettisoned itself out of my memory banks.
Padding the journey to claim these sacred flames are a swath of middling boss fights. Keeping a mental note in my mind (tierlistmaker .com on one of 20 tabs on the other monitor) I recorded how I felt about each boss with regard to how fun of a fight they are and the ‘pageantry’ surrounding it. Yet there’s a major quantity over quality issue here, especially in the first half of the game. Until you hit Drangleic Castle the two strongest fights in the game are Pursuer and Smelter Demon among a morass of unremarkable, dull or easy as hell fights. It's hard to even appreciate the former because he just shows up everywhere in the following area to ambush you- funny, admittedly but really tiring.
Much of the game's challenge relied more on obscure prerequisites rather than constant player engagement, or at least the 'facade' of a challenging encounter. Dark Souls 1 works excellently to at least present the "facade" aspect, even if it doesn't execute all that well. While Bed of Chaos or Pinwheel are incredibly flawed either in the complexity, or lack thereof, of the fight, or just a couple of terrible hitboxes, they still have some significance or build up that makes those fights feel justified. In Dark Souls 2, fights like the Covetous Demon, the Royal Rat fights, Demon of Song, several Dragonriders Flexile Sentry, hell some of the ‘Great Ones’ just feel like throwaway fights. They feel more like what would become the minor boss fights in the Eldenring catacombs.
Certainly there's some neat lore connecting the events following DS1 to the destruction of Drangleic thousands of years later, everything is just 'awkward'. This is the awkward middle child between the start of the end in Dark Souls 1 and what I understand to be the near total death of everything in DS3. Again, it feels like there's a neat idea on paper but in execution there's nothing really tying myself to this new foursome of foes. Like of all the guys to get Gwyn's shard its the Old Iron King? Man, what a downgrade.
That said Majula is a strong hub, it feels a bit more 'lively' as a hub than most of your other hubs in a soulsborne title. It's not my favorite but it's a pleasant place to bring people to and unlock new shopkeeps. At the very least I understand the jokes about Eldenring being more akin to Dark Souls 2-2 now.
The other thing that gets brought up regarding Dark Souls 2 was that the DLCs were a step above the vanilla base of the game, 3 flavorful scoops on top of everything else!... Well, I guess they aren't wrong, per se. I'll at least say the DLCs feel like an upward momentum from Sunken to Ivory to Old Iron. A lot of these have shades of what would next evolve into Bloorborne's geometry. In particular Eluem's long castle walls blend into courtyards and branching into lower levels/caves. I did really enjoy rolling that snowball down to make a shortcut- didn't enjoy the Frigid Outskirts so much.
I'll cop to it, there were a few bosses I didn't get around to (namely I got so tilted needing to go back through the Pilgrims of Dark area if you die to Darklurker so I just gave up playing anymore, I saw credits sue me) but hell if I was going to go check out the King's Pets in Frigid Outskirts, namely because of how bad the boss run is. Low visibility, large map, constant ambushing by these Kirin type enemies, not even a bonfire on the map so you have to take a coffin loading screen after each death and all this for what I hear is one of the hardest fights? Two of a boss I already fought earlier? Nah.
Crown of the Old Iron King feels the most consistent in its quality, and its probably the hardest which is an odd balance if I had to say. The worst part about Dark Soul II isn't that its hard, its that its obnoxious. Dark Souls I was likened upon its release as a return to retro style, no holds barred difficulty and yet most of the difficulty throughout the first game felt more like tests of patience, skill and a bit of pattern recognition/manipulation. Arriving at Old Iron King felt like a return to this mindset as you tackle bosses like Sir Alonne and Fume Knight, easily two of the games most fun fights.
I don't really pride myself on not liking video games, I think generally I buy and play games that I think I'd enjoy. Critically, I tend to hone in on aspects I enjoy and I tend to be optimistic on titles despite glaring flaws or shortcomings. Opinions are certainly given, flexible, intangible ideas and I just tend to be easier on titles in general, but sometimes its just that hard to really find the points that gave me a rush to my neurons in a game.
In my head I think about how I felt about Pokemon X/Y across the entire spectrum of the series and that's where I think about it being the 'weakest' of the set. It's still in a series I enjoy across the bar and that generation had additions that were at least tangible throughout the later games. I think initially starting Dark Souls 2 I was wondering if I'd feel a similar sensation, a faint appreciation but lacking the right 'punch'. I can appreciate a handful of fights and the generally laissez-faire structure, but otherwise this is a package too cluttered, too unfocused and too halfhearted in its attempts to recreate the magic of its predecessors.
It's sorta hard to place Dark Souls 2, not because of some conflicting feelings but because it feels a bit hypocritical to the pathos of the franchise. While I still wouldn't consider myself an authority of some sort, much of the enjoyment I've had with the franchise comes from the spectacle, the sense and the sortie of its worlds. There's a tug-of-war sensation to the world of a Soulsborne game- when you've conquered an area you mostly just breeze by it without consequence. Here, rather than allowing you to conquer an area- a lot of enemies end up just despawning after beating them after a certain number of times, instead. As if the game just gives up after so many times. The game isn't so hard, nor is it that different on the surface, yet every corner hides just a tiny bit of faux pas- enough to temper my enjoyment much earlier than I would prefer. Dark Souls' 'Stockholm Syndrome' post Anor Londo, while a blemish on the game and a prime example to game developings' tendency to lose steam in the third act, has somehow shone brightly compared to Dark Souls II's Imposter Syndrome-esque design doc.
For god's sake, they tried making another Ornstein and Smough fight, in a game that already has literally Ornstein in it.
Had to manage beating the last 25% of this game on a Dualsense with a broken left analog stick, privy to send me forward towards an attack I meant to back up from. Rather than wait out the arrival of a new controller or return it for a fix - I just really wanted to get this game out of the way.
Off the heels of Dark Souls 1, FromSoft had managed to get a hot streak going with its 'Souls' titles. DeS and DS1 managed to entice players seeking out new, harder, wilder challenges that overlay a world brimming with deeper scars. It was a turning point in the games industry during the mid to late 7th generation and FromSoft would be right to keep that momentum going with making a follow up to solidify Souls as a series. Somehow DS2 didn't end the franchise, which is one positive I can say about the game.
I already knew going into this that it was the weird cousin of the series and I would say I'm privy to weird mechanics or janky structure, unfortunately I only came to the conclusion that I don't think there's any single aspect of this game I thought rivaling its kin in quality nor scope. While I haven't played all the games in the series I have played the game to release prior and after this: DS1 and Bloodborne, respectively. The series would go on to evolve and morph into several different forms since then, yet around the time of BB's release I remember discourse surrounding the trio regarding the difference between Dark Souls' reliance on being more patient and slower in your approach versus Bloodborne's more aggressive, tit-for-tat, combat. Where Dark Souls 2 lied in this comparison I don't remember. Hell, across the several years afterward I didn't hear much about Dark Souls 2 outside of memes about how Dark Souls 2 is the 'weirdo' one. It was the only thing I really had to base my expectations on, yet really- what isnt weird about Souls games anyway? Regardless of its notoriety (and a fairly shoddy PC port that had issues with my controller), I tried to remain somewhat bright in my outlook and understand what fans saw in SotFS.
As a starter for this Soulsborne I decided to focus a bit more into a Dex-Hex build compared to the Sorcery-Spellsword in ER and the Pyromancer in DS. I will say, if Magic is what you're looking for this is a pretty good entry, having a lot of variety in its spells. Until Elden Ring this seems to be the title with the most variety and ease of access to its spell selection. Hexes are a neat type of magic, basing its strength off the weaker of your Int/Faith, requiring you to level both simultaneously, but soft-capping early. Once you hit the DLCs this stratagem becomes a little less valuable, so I respec'd into a more DEX focus build. I don't tend to focus too hard on combat in these titles although this time around everything feels much more ‘crowded’ and I'll touch on that later but it's usually a good idea to carry some ranged options, or in some fields of magic, an AOE (thank you Dark Fog...). Most everything surrounding the combat feels about the same as DS1 feels, although certain movements/animations feel just a tad off, even for Dark Souls. Certain hitboxes not feeling right, lotta bad locking on…I dont have the chops to elaborate though so it could just be my imagination.
What I will elaborate on, however, is the enemies with which you apply your combative prowess on. Dark Souls certainly has its fair share of notorious enemies, a grand array of memorable jerks that have just that one move that reaches you, attempting to down an Estus. From the literal Dragon Asses parading in Lost Izalith, the Giant Werewolves in Yharnam, the Caelid Dinosaur Crows- the list goes on.
In Dark Souls 2 many of the enemies reflect the fallen kingdom and the surrounding areas, although coming off of Eldenring and Dark Souls 1 you can just kinda categorize certain mook types and aggressions as the game goes on. Where it starts to falter however is in 3 key details:
1) How many enemies you'll be facing
2) Where many of the enemies are placed
3) How persistent these enemies are
Oftentimes Dark Souls 2 will take an opportunity to present a sort of...scenario. One that feels like it sounded cooler in the level designer's head than in practice. Sometimes it's as simple as crossing a certain boundary and a horde of 4 or 5 enemies descending a tower in the distance to meet you, other times it feels more dubious. There's one instance late in the game where several enemies/beasts are caged up like experiments and a third party is monitoring these trapped monsters. The trope of 'the freed monsters turn on their captors' immediately comes to mind as you pull the lever to free these beasts, not realizing that games sometimes aren't that smart and you now have to contend with the third party and several new monsters aggroing onto you from mimics to ogres. I wouldn't mind, and you get some items out of it but it just feels like there were a lot of 'events' that were meant to be scripted out but just clash with the normal, actual game feel of a Soulsborne. I'll get into some of the 'world/area' event mechanics later but for enemies there's often too many in each area of a given map and often just feel too samey for much of the game.
Maybe a good chunk of that sameness across the enemy types is just how often you fight 'ambush' zombies/knights. I feel like for a good chunk of the game its just contending with these somewhat competent, agile Manikins and Alonne Soldiers and Heide Knights. They aren’t unmanageable on their own but they tend to use much more time/effort to take down than I’d like, especially when managing 2 or 4 of them (those damn Alonne Knights…).
Side note, however you get raided in this game way too often. I swear you get about 2 to 3 an area but it's never consistent as to when these guys might spawn, some areas have multiple invaders in the same area, too?? I'm sure there's story significance but I don't really care because invaders have usually been hit or miss in the series, and mostly miss in this game. The amount of times 'The Forlorn' has shown up eclipses the amount of times I died to most every boss in this game, I wish I were joking. That's not a flex on my skill, this person just shows up 12 times to annoy you.
Dark Souls 1 eventually starts to reuse certain enemies but throughout much of the experience you have pretty distinct and suitable adversities up until Lost Izalith. In addition, there weren't too many places that required you to look around corners and be cautious, other than a few in Lower Undead Burg(?). Here it's just a constant swarm of enemies dropping from out of eyesight tunnels, behind corners, and from several, several feet away. I swear the archers have the most absurd range, they will just continue to fire arrows or projectiles from much farther than you'd think.
Ranged enemies aren't the only ones however as close combat enemies, once proc'd, will also be incredibly tenacious in their pursuit. There are several areas in the game in which you'll prefer to just ignore certain mooks lying throughout a segment of the map, perhaps to backtrack to a sidepath you missed earlier. Careful now, several enemies decided to join you while you weren't looking! The Huntsman Copse I swear has the worst end of this, I've had boss runs where somehow the large Hunters chase behind me, even worse if you decide to be responsible and try to tackle the Executioners that ambush you from the cliffs. There are a lot of boss runs that have this issue, hell there's a lot of just 'running' where you pick up weird stragglers. Add in the factors I mentioned above like how many enemies some sections have and it just gets absurd. At least Fume Knight has a sober bonfire...
I think the primary example of this can be seen in the first area of the game, the Forest of Fallen Giants. Quite immediately there's a few details that feel off about the location, for starters there's an ogre just like, walking around? I don't know why. He just kind of ignores you, so you encounter the first group of enemies, one hiding behind the bridge, and deal with them deftly. You climb a ladder and there's just like 8 of them lying on the ground now, and a couple of firebomb tossers on a ledge. If you go out a side path there's also a cliff side with an item but there's just like a guy there. You can proc him 50% of the time and he just drops down and will chase you up the latter and this becomes every area from here on out. Just running through half a level and not being able to catch a break. Enemies that would otherwise feel fine to face just get super tedious and drag down certain areas of the game that much more. Although the area design is generally shoddy, with or without enemy combatants.
Immediately one of the weakest parts of Dark Souls 2 is the map design- a large step down from 1's intricate world. It's only been a few years since finishing Dark Souls 1 yet it's quickly become one of my favorites in gaming. Looking up from Blighttown and seeing the sky, the cliff and the tree of Firelink Shrine means so much. In Dark Souls 2 so many of the areas you traverse just feel so...disconnected and distant. Certain areas reminded me more of Spyro than of FromSoft, there's a certain style to how varied the level theme and structure are and its just not Dark Souls, or Bloodborne for that matter.
Maybe it's how certain areas in DS1 are connected that makes it feel so much more natural. Getting to Andrei’s Shop from the Undead Parish but also that bonfire acting as a hub leading out to Darkroot Garden and also Sen's Fortress feels amazing. In Dark Souls 2 it prefers to take you through tunnels and elevators and other means of transportation to reach new areas, everything is disjointed and unconnected. This comes to a breaking point after unlocking so many areas and just seeing the list of different, separate areas that feel so far apart... even though the Shaded Woods are just a brief walk away. By the end of the game you will have lit flames atop a large stone map, indicating the defeated major bosses of sections and I just can't point out what these flames are supposed to represent.
I guess the upside is there's a lot of openness as to what direction you can go right off the bat. Usually you head into the Forest into Heide's Tower but from there it's kind of up to you as to what 'Great Souls’' you want to hunt down, it just feels a bit more like I'm stumbling upon these more than anything. From what I saw a lot of people ran straight into Sinner's Rise immediately although after seeing the Flexile Sentry, I thought the area was meant for later. I don't know whether to praise it for its flexibility or prod it for its lacking sensible direction. Certainly other games in the series run into this same problem, no doubt. Bloodborne you might accidentally run into Cainhurst, Dark Souls has most of the Tomb of Giants available after beating Pinwheel but nothing much to do until you grab the Lordvessel, Eldenring is completely open world so you can just hit whatever. Although usually the games have been much more balanced or streamlined as to keep players out through other signs or hints than enemies being harder. Going into the Catacombs is already a farcical task until you gather a way to permanently destroy Skeletons and is completely off the beaten path. Bloodborne's manner of madness along with how each area is connected makes it so it's really hard to just stumble into an area with a higher skill ceiling than others.
I really appreciate how easily areas blend into each other in DS1, and admittedly- the lack of fast travel for the first half of the game feels so much more refreshing. Sidetracking isn't really all that lustrous as straying too far from the main objective of reaching Anor Londo -or hell straying too far from Firelink- seems unwise, so the options aren't really there at all. Why are the New Londo Ruins so easily accessible from the start? Well, while its not intentional you are able to grab an early Estus upgrade by suicide running into the ruins, but the ethereal enemies and lack of any clear objective should clue you in otherwise. On top of that it serves as a nice connecting point between an elevator from the Valley of Drakes, another area that acts more as a highway for other areas' off ramps and the upper end of Blighttown.
Dark Souls 1 also prides itself on not having too much of one 'status' to worry about. Looking back there's a lot of areas and enemies that carry status effects of some sort, but as far as I remember there's only really 1 area for each status? Blightown, the Depths, the Catacombs, each have a focus on one status and after those areas are done you don't have to worry too much from then on. In Dark Souls 2 it feels like there's so many traps and statuses just randomly spread around the place. Several places have poison throughout the area like the Gutter and Harvest Valley, lots of enemies will proc bleed if they attack you, basilisks are just randomly everywhere. This gets incredibly annoying in the DLCs, namely the Sunken King areas where a lot of enemies carry stone status and there’s an entire subsection with statues that just hock stone loogies at you.
I don't even feel as though I hate Dark Souls 1's uncooked latter half as much as I hate the boss fight checklist here in 2. Dark Souls 1 opens on several of your late game bosses totaling the world and bringing about the age you now live in- Nito, Seath, the Witch of Izalith and King Gwyn. The hard thing to really compel with these titans is that by the end of the game these are admittedly...odd fights, bar the games finale. Nito is fine, if easier than I had hoped, but Seath is a complete nutjob being a blind dragon with this eclectic BGM and the Bed of Chaos is a complete disaster of a puzzle boss. They're chumps. They’ve fallen off. They're losers- you're coming in to clean their mess, and by the time you reach Gwyn you're probably just as hollow inside as he is. Whether intentional or not, the latter half of Dark Souls 1 feeling a lot more 'broken' does in a weird way resonate with several of your colleagues also going through their own crises- Solaire either completely turns on you or loses out on his sunlight; most of Siegmeyer’s options end in him dying or resigning that he is too weak compared to you. The two endings are either you burning at the kiln and continuing the age of Fire or breaking the cycle and issuing in the age of Dark. Obviously From Soft didn't have all the time or money to finish up much of the late game and it suffers a lot while playing through, but part of me enjoyed the final stretch being as discombobulated and somewhat more ‘open’ compared to the earlier objectives.
Dark Souls 2 on the other hand, the intro this time around involves an old woman spinning a tale about a long lost kingdom of Drangleic and much of the cast will reference this lost kingdom surely. The main objective is given to you by the leveling up maiden, the Emerald Herald: To gather the four flames from 'Great Ones' that are considered to be reincarnations of the four main baddies from the first game. As you obtain the Sacred Flames, you get interrupted by a massive being named Aldia. He gives some vague explanations and lore regarding your role in all of this, somewhat like Frampt or Kaathe. He's fine but spoiler alert you fight him and its pretty middling, kinda disappointing considering he's the titular "Scholar of the First Sin". Dark Souls 1 might have a pretty light story if you just go through it but its creation mythos feels so ingrained in every step of the process from the intro onward that its easy to discern what's going on. Dark Souls 2 has these weird gaps throughout the journey that make me stop and try and remember what the hell is going on anyway. I pretty much had the jist after all, its just not as interesting as I figured. Yes the Lost Sinner has some neat connections especially with regards to items you find in one of the DLCs no I did not see that because by the time I hit the DLCs that boss had jettisoned itself out of my memory banks.
Padding the journey to claim these sacred flames are a swath of middling boss fights. Keeping a mental note in my mind (tierlistmaker .com on one of 20 tabs on the other monitor) I recorded how I felt about each boss with regard to how fun of a fight they are and the ‘pageantry’ surrounding it. Yet there’s a major quantity over quality issue here, especially in the first half of the game. Until you hit Drangleic Castle the two strongest fights in the game are Pursuer and Smelter Demon among a morass of unremarkable, dull or easy as hell fights. It's hard to even appreciate the former because he just shows up everywhere in the following area to ambush you- funny, admittedly but really tiring.
Much of the game's challenge relied more on obscure prerequisites rather than constant player engagement, or at least the 'facade' of a challenging encounter. Dark Souls 1 works excellently to at least present the "facade" aspect, even if it doesn't execute all that well. While Bed of Chaos or Pinwheel are incredibly flawed either in the complexity, or lack thereof, of the fight, or just a couple of terrible hitboxes, they still have some significance or build up that makes those fights feel justified. In Dark Souls 2, fights like the Covetous Demon, the Royal Rat fights, Demon of Song, several Dragonriders Flexile Sentry, hell some of the ‘Great Ones’ just feel like throwaway fights. They feel more like what would become the minor boss fights in the Eldenring catacombs.
Certainly there's some neat lore connecting the events following DS1 to the destruction of Drangleic thousands of years later, everything is just 'awkward'. This is the awkward middle child between the start of the end in Dark Souls 1 and what I understand to be the near total death of everything in DS3. Again, it feels like there's a neat idea on paper but in execution there's nothing really tying myself to this new foursome of foes. Like of all the guys to get Gwyn's shard its the Old Iron King? Man, what a downgrade.
That said Majula is a strong hub, it feels a bit more 'lively' as a hub than most of your other hubs in a soulsborne title. It's not my favorite but it's a pleasant place to bring people to and unlock new shopkeeps. At the very least I understand the jokes about Eldenring being more akin to Dark Souls 2-2 now.
The other thing that gets brought up regarding Dark Souls 2 was that the DLCs were a step above the vanilla base of the game, 3 flavorful scoops on top of everything else!... Well, I guess they aren't wrong, per se. I'll at least say the DLCs feel like an upward momentum from Sunken to Ivory to Old Iron. A lot of these have shades of what would next evolve into Bloorborne's geometry. In particular Eluem's long castle walls blend into courtyards and branching into lower levels/caves. I did really enjoy rolling that snowball down to make a shortcut- didn't enjoy the Frigid Outskirts so much.
I'll cop to it, there were a few bosses I didn't get around to (namely I got so tilted needing to go back through the Pilgrims of Dark area if you die to Darklurker so I just gave up playing anymore, I saw credits sue me) but hell if I was going to go check out the King's Pets in Frigid Outskirts, namely because of how bad the boss run is. Low visibility, large map, constant ambushing by these Kirin type enemies, not even a bonfire on the map so you have to take a coffin loading screen after each death and all this for what I hear is one of the hardest fights? Two of a boss I already fought earlier? Nah.
Crown of the Old Iron King feels the most consistent in its quality, and its probably the hardest which is an odd balance if I had to say. The worst part about Dark Soul II isn't that its hard, its that its obnoxious. Dark Souls I was likened upon its release as a return to retro style, no holds barred difficulty and yet most of the difficulty throughout the first game felt more like tests of patience, skill and a bit of pattern recognition/manipulation. Arriving at Old Iron King felt like a return to this mindset as you tackle bosses like Sir Alonne and Fume Knight, easily two of the games most fun fights.
I don't really pride myself on not liking video games, I think generally I buy and play games that I think I'd enjoy. Critically, I tend to hone in on aspects I enjoy and I tend to be optimistic on titles despite glaring flaws or shortcomings. Opinions are certainly given, flexible, intangible ideas and I just tend to be easier on titles in general, but sometimes its just that hard to really find the points that gave me a rush to my neurons in a game.
In my head I think about how I felt about Pokemon X/Y across the entire spectrum of the series and that's where I think about it being the 'weakest' of the set. It's still in a series I enjoy across the bar and that generation had additions that were at least tangible throughout the later games. I think initially starting Dark Souls 2 I was wondering if I'd feel a similar sensation, a faint appreciation but lacking the right 'punch'. I can appreciate a handful of fights and the generally laissez-faire structure, but otherwise this is a package too cluttered, too unfocused and too halfhearted in its attempts to recreate the magic of its predecessors.
It's sorta hard to place Dark Souls 2, not because of some conflicting feelings but because it feels a bit hypocritical to the pathos of the franchise. While I still wouldn't consider myself an authority of some sort, much of the enjoyment I've had with the franchise comes from the spectacle, the sense and the sortie of its worlds. There's a tug-of-war sensation to the world of a Soulsborne game- when you've conquered an area you mostly just breeze by it without consequence. Here, rather than allowing you to conquer an area- a lot of enemies end up just despawning after beating them after a certain number of times, instead. As if the game just gives up after so many times. The game isn't so hard, nor is it that different on the surface, yet every corner hides just a tiny bit of faux pas- enough to temper my enjoyment much earlier than I would prefer. Dark Souls' 'Stockholm Syndrome' post Anor Londo, while a blemish on the game and a prime example to game developings' tendency to lose steam in the third act, has somehow shone brightly compared to Dark Souls II's Imposter Syndrome-esque design doc.
For god's sake, they tried making another Ornstein and Smough fight, in a game that already has literally Ornstein in it.
Finished 3/9/2024
And with that most of the 'Duel Monsters' era titles have been covered. The only ones left are some of the earlier game boy titles but I'll cover those last probably, for now say goodbye to Yugi on the cover here.
Between this, Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre and now Unicorn Overlord- I've been sort of on a tactics binge (been also looking to check out Front Mission). Strange that not only is Yu-Gi-Oh a pillar of my tactics understanding but its probably now the 2nd largest thus far behind Fire Emblem. With the lack of innovation there is in the card game during this era of YGO, I can't say the same for the games during this era as this is another distinct tactics game for the series. I had half expected this to be similar to how Duelist of the Roses operated but here we don't have nearly as...unique of a concept, but I think something slightly more enjoyable and also surprisingly higher budget.
I was shocked opening this game up and being greeted by Gramps, fully voiced! Prior to this I don't recall there being any voice acting whatsoever in any of the console titles so I was pleasantly surprised when this game had, like, FULL voice acting. There's not much of a story this time around but seeing the characters voice out interactions throughout a battle was a nice throwback to when I watched the anime as a kid.
In addition, this game has a strong premise with regards to its tactics. The objective is the usual- you have a base from which you select and summon a number of units, defeat all of your opponents capsules or defeat the base to win. However, each match has a 'deck limit' of sorts that limits you from taking in only your strongest and generally this isn't an issue as most of the game is utilizing monsters with advantageous attributes to stomp opponents. One thing to note is that there's eight attributes but these interact moreso in two 'wheels' of sorts.
Long story short:
Water > Fire > Grass > Wind > Water
Dark > Earth > Electric > Light > Dark
This leads to some interesting match-ups later on as Light focused duelists will incorporate Earth units as well in an attempt to counter Electric units you bring out.
Units are also fairly interesting in how they move around- generally tactics games have a 'movement' skill in which they operate off a radius on the game's grid. Here it feels more like Chess than fire emblem ever did as units are locked into specific patterns of movement, most akin to Rooks and Bishops moving horizontally or diagonally. There aren't any Knight patterns but a 2-square 'leap' movement in which a unit can hop in any direction but only 2 squares away (more of a dotted O movement than an L). On top of this, units have distinct attack patterns separate from their movement patterns so a unit may have diagonal movement but horizontal attack capabilities.
There are several other variables that arise during play, certain arenas will have a gimmick that alters elements of the field over time, certain tiles give a bonus to specific types, your base that you choose at the start of the game gives a passive buff, it was a much more intriguing game than I had initially thought.
There is a lot of obfuscation that bogs down the experience, on top of being an already clunky to understand tactics game at first. Certain mechanics like Fusion and Evolution require some prior knowledge of both the card game and also some creative thinking (game FAQs). In addition certain stage elements don't really tell you what's going on. Most of it can be inferred, but for example during Tea's stage the lights of the city dim down as the clock strikes midnight- snow begins to fall and holiday music begins to play... I don't really know if this has any effect, like giving your dark monsters a boost but uhhh it was pretty cool!
Lastly while leveling your units is imperative, you get units after battle based off what your opponent owns on top of Grandpa updating his shop roster after you beating each set of five duelists (with some shadow drops I never quite understood). It's important to note that the units you have early on can be useful later on, even if just to fill in gaps and use as cannon fodder as permadeath is not a factor here- thank god. The issue isnt really these cannon fodder but its moreso the mid units that land in a weird limbo where I can't tell if they've been powercreeped out by the new capsules or if I haven't put in the effort to make it good. In my playthrough I ran a Water base and used a number of water units in the start- namely Root Water. This would be my highest level unit for most the game but its usefulness waned as I couldn't find a good place to evolve it into High Tide Gyojin until the last couple of maps. Certainly once it evolved it was actually still comparable to most of the late game units but its just that weird predicament of not really knowing whats 'good' for your point in the game- leading to me buying a lot of new, but untrained units that might not have been all that necessary with proper planning.
Overall I was fairly surprised with how much I enjoyed this over Duelist of the Roses, and nearly most of the other Yugioh titles. While DotR might offer something more akin to a 'card-tactics fusion', Capsule Monster Coliseum feels more balanced and properly structured as a tactics title overall. Played this on my Steam Deck and while there were a few visual issues, especially with certain portraits- many of the stages look pretty great, the fully voiced dialogue is well appreciated and the music is pretty good overall. The thing that kinda tipped this over Duelist of the Roses was thinking about how I left off that game not having gone through Kaiba's (Rosenkreuz) route. Despite this, finishing CMC I found myself more likely to restart my progress and retackle prior stages with a better understanding, or hell try out a playthrough with a different, more useful base 'attribute'. I clocked in around 15 hours by the end, with a few half hours lost due to shoddy attempts so honestly for a tactics game as quick and as neat as this I can't be too upset by some perplexities in its mechanics. I'm glad that one of Konami's experiments to the YGO gaming formula paid off as well, just kind of a shame this also happens to be one of the last of its ilk.
And with that most of the 'Duel Monsters' era titles have been covered. The only ones left are some of the earlier game boy titles but I'll cover those last probably, for now say goodbye to Yugi on the cover here.
Between this, Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre and now Unicorn Overlord- I've been sort of on a tactics binge (been also looking to check out Front Mission). Strange that not only is Yu-Gi-Oh a pillar of my tactics understanding but its probably now the 2nd largest thus far behind Fire Emblem. With the lack of innovation there is in the card game during this era of YGO, I can't say the same for the games during this era as this is another distinct tactics game for the series. I had half expected this to be similar to how Duelist of the Roses operated but here we don't have nearly as...unique of a concept, but I think something slightly more enjoyable and also surprisingly higher budget.
I was shocked opening this game up and being greeted by Gramps, fully voiced! Prior to this I don't recall there being any voice acting whatsoever in any of the console titles so I was pleasantly surprised when this game had, like, FULL voice acting. There's not much of a story this time around but seeing the characters voice out interactions throughout a battle was a nice throwback to when I watched the anime as a kid.
In addition, this game has a strong premise with regards to its tactics. The objective is the usual- you have a base from which you select and summon a number of units, defeat all of your opponents capsules or defeat the base to win. However, each match has a 'deck limit' of sorts that limits you from taking in only your strongest and generally this isn't an issue as most of the game is utilizing monsters with advantageous attributes to stomp opponents. One thing to note is that there's eight attributes but these interact moreso in two 'wheels' of sorts.
Long story short:
Water > Fire > Grass > Wind > Water
Dark > Earth > Electric > Light > Dark
This leads to some interesting match-ups later on as Light focused duelists will incorporate Earth units as well in an attempt to counter Electric units you bring out.
Units are also fairly interesting in how they move around- generally tactics games have a 'movement' skill in which they operate off a radius on the game's grid. Here it feels more like Chess than fire emblem ever did as units are locked into specific patterns of movement, most akin to Rooks and Bishops moving horizontally or diagonally. There aren't any Knight patterns but a 2-square 'leap' movement in which a unit can hop in any direction but only 2 squares away (more of a dotted O movement than an L). On top of this, units have distinct attack patterns separate from their movement patterns so a unit may have diagonal movement but horizontal attack capabilities.
There are several other variables that arise during play, certain arenas will have a gimmick that alters elements of the field over time, certain tiles give a bonus to specific types, your base that you choose at the start of the game gives a passive buff, it was a much more intriguing game than I had initially thought.
There is a lot of obfuscation that bogs down the experience, on top of being an already clunky to understand tactics game at first. Certain mechanics like Fusion and Evolution require some prior knowledge of both the card game and also some creative thinking (game FAQs). In addition certain stage elements don't really tell you what's going on. Most of it can be inferred, but for example during Tea's stage the lights of the city dim down as the clock strikes midnight- snow begins to fall and holiday music begins to play... I don't really know if this has any effect, like giving your dark monsters a boost but uhhh it was pretty cool!
Lastly while leveling your units is imperative, you get units after battle based off what your opponent owns on top of Grandpa updating his shop roster after you beating each set of five duelists (with some shadow drops I never quite understood). It's important to note that the units you have early on can be useful later on, even if just to fill in gaps and use as cannon fodder as permadeath is not a factor here- thank god. The issue isnt really these cannon fodder but its moreso the mid units that land in a weird limbo where I can't tell if they've been powercreeped out by the new capsules or if I haven't put in the effort to make it good. In my playthrough I ran a Water base and used a number of water units in the start- namely Root Water. This would be my highest level unit for most the game but its usefulness waned as I couldn't find a good place to evolve it into High Tide Gyojin until the last couple of maps. Certainly once it evolved it was actually still comparable to most of the late game units but its just that weird predicament of not really knowing whats 'good' for your point in the game- leading to me buying a lot of new, but untrained units that might not have been all that necessary with proper planning.
Overall I was fairly surprised with how much I enjoyed this over Duelist of the Roses, and nearly most of the other Yugioh titles. While DotR might offer something more akin to a 'card-tactics fusion', Capsule Monster Coliseum feels more balanced and properly structured as a tactics title overall. Played this on my Steam Deck and while there were a few visual issues, especially with certain portraits- many of the stages look pretty great, the fully voiced dialogue is well appreciated and the music is pretty good overall. The thing that kinda tipped this over Duelist of the Roses was thinking about how I left off that game not having gone through Kaiba's (Rosenkreuz) route. Despite this, finishing CMC I found myself more likely to restart my progress and retackle prior stages with a better understanding, or hell try out a playthrough with a different, more useful base 'attribute'. I clocked in around 15 hours by the end, with a few half hours lost due to shoddy attempts so honestly for a tactics game as quick and as neat as this I can't be too upset by some perplexities in its mechanics. I'm glad that one of Konami's experiments to the YGO gaming formula paid off as well, just kind of a shame this also happens to be one of the last of its ilk.
1994
(Finished on 3/1/2024)
Decided to finish this up as I was about to hit '600' played games on here and as it turns out, Final Fantasy 6 is pretty goddamn good.
What do I have to say that people haven't been saying for 30 years? Since I was a kid I've heard nothing but the gold standard for this game, being described as near fine-art levels of excellence with regards to its writing, themes and characters. While I do agree, and I'll go over my own thoughts later, the one thought that stood out finally going through it all these years later was: "man this is just a really fun RPG!".
Leading up to Final Fantasy 6 we had several games that, by all means pushed the rpg genre forward- but to what extent? FF1's D&D like party structure helped mirror the experience of a campaign across a set narrative, while 2 forgoes this, invents a new amorphous stat growth skill system to distinguish party members and rotates across several party members with new 'baggage' in the game's ongoing plot. FF3 forgoes this further by returning to more blank slate characters tackling a 'job' system in which you gradually unlock distinguished jobs, a system that is only expanded on further in FF5- only for the fourth game to stick solely on party members with set classes, a stronger emphasis on the story and more distinguished character arcs. It's a lot of bobbing and weaving between what elements make a Final Fantasy- a topic we see as recently as last year with the release of 16. Early on, however, it was an odd balancing act between thematics, actors and class mechanics- the only thing that stayed relatively static was the iconoclastic future-medieval world and, as Sakaguchi joked: 'blue textboxes'.
I guess by comparison, in the west we at least had a straightforward upgrade from 1 to 2 (4) to what we got as Final Fantasy III (6).
FF6's cast is great- genuinely glad there's a strong mix of characters I already understood were good through osmosis, on top of some surprise stars based on just good they are in battle. Whenever I start an RPG, there's always the thought I have of 'what is my final party gonna look like' and while I had that thought initially this game dashes that thought process pretty quickly. Throughout the first half your party gets split up several times, bringing about their own journeys across the world and meeting new faces throughout. Much of the game is spent divvying up your party either by way of the plot or in the pursuit of several of the games’ character sidequests. I was wondering less and less just how my party would look and moreso what ‘level’ I’d be ending the game at considering how many other characters you’d be palling around with (Around ~35!).
FF7 accomplishes this somewhat similarly, and while I slightly prefer that game’s cast its hampered by a smaller total party, a party size that's one man smaller and the lack of switching out your protag. I love Cloud, we all do -even if you can't admit it- but I do wish I could enter sections just as three of my other members. Here, there’s practically no protagonist. You have 14 total characters by the end of the game and the worst of the bunch are either outclassed or dont have as much use time by the end of the game. Even the primary face on the box art (not Mog, sorry bud) isn’t all that present for most of the game’s adventure. As the game’s second half has our party separate- the character we hone in on isnt Terra but Celes, you don’t have to meet Terra for quite some time in the ruined world.
Honestly I think my biggest complaint is I kinda think there's a lot of fluff spells/skills throughout. It's a weird disconnect coming from 5, which has the capacity to be broken in two, has a lot of moments where you absolutely need a certain party comp on top of quite a weird onboarding process as to what classes are better than others. 6 on the other hand, while not the easiest FF isnt all that complicated throughout most its battles. All things considered I think most of the hardest fights in the game come ‘before’ the game’s actual final boss.
-Strago is a blue mage, now a staple of the franchise...in a game where Gau exists- who is already kind of a pain to understand with all his 'Rage' skills to scroll through and obtain while grinding on the Veldt.
-Cyan is a strong character with a stronger arc...but pales easily compared to Sabin and Edgar on top of coming somewhat after both of these guys. Bushido easily pales in comparison to most of the other character mechanics.
-I don't even really know what Umaro does
-Mog gets points for being a great option as Dragoon but man the Dance mechanic is unreliable
Also while I do like the Esper system a lot I think getting the stat bonus out of levels can be kinda weird when getting back characters you haven’t seen for some time. Once I got to the world of ruin Shadow and Gau were so much squishier/less versatile than other members of the party which kinda put a damper on me wanting to use them regularly. At the very least there’s some pretty good grinding spots for both EXP/AP so its not too hard to get people back on par, I just didn’t feel it super necessary.
Lastly I'll touch somewhat about the story/presentation, but it's somewhat hard to talk about. Namely, its hard to think about something that hasn't already been brought up! I usually don't care about this kind of factor in reviews but genuinely I knew most of this game's plot beats since I was 12. That said, sheesh this game came out in 1994.
The secondary issue in expressing how powerful Final Fantasy 6 feels in this entry's narrative also lies in how much it strides in its world, lore and characters compared to its previous games. 4 pushed the boundaries for how a narrative can be told in this genre, but 6 respects and sits you down on this notion. It's not overtly grimdark, nor too melodramatic- it provides a great deal of whimsy but never edges on cheesy. Its a wonderful blend of fantasy flavors throughout, while offering several highlights that bucked the usual structure of the series up to this point. I strongly envy those that never saw this coming on its initial release.
I'll also admit- I technically played this on the 'Pixel Remaster' version of the game (I just kinda liked this box art more). It's a pretty alright version, although to be honest I figure its not imperative you play the newest remaster. Part of me kinda wanted to check out how certain fights/animations played on the SNES version, and while you can mod the steam version, without these mods you have to deal with some pretty bloated menus and terrible font choices (even with the new update).
Final Fantasy 6, akin to a lot of other titles on the SNES have already had a swath of acclaim since its release and into the years spanning our communication era. It was hard to penetrate what made FF6 so special when first picking it up about 10 years ago, however I'm glad I've not only come around to beating it after so long, but also that I better understand the appeal of FF6 all this time. I expected to come out enjoying the usual things I had heard about the game- the cast, the characters, the music- but finally going through the other 2/3rds of the game I hadn’t previously seen more of it clicked. Every dungeon just has the right amount of new equipment or a new character or a new summon to spice things up, and when the party has so many options to mess around with, FF6 almost never gets stale.
Decided to finish this up as I was about to hit '600' played games on here and as it turns out, Final Fantasy 6 is pretty goddamn good.
What do I have to say that people haven't been saying for 30 years? Since I was a kid I've heard nothing but the gold standard for this game, being described as near fine-art levels of excellence with regards to its writing, themes and characters. While I do agree, and I'll go over my own thoughts later, the one thought that stood out finally going through it all these years later was: "man this is just a really fun RPG!".
Leading up to Final Fantasy 6 we had several games that, by all means pushed the rpg genre forward- but to what extent? FF1's D&D like party structure helped mirror the experience of a campaign across a set narrative, while 2 forgoes this, invents a new amorphous stat growth skill system to distinguish party members and rotates across several party members with new 'baggage' in the game's ongoing plot. FF3 forgoes this further by returning to more blank slate characters tackling a 'job' system in which you gradually unlock distinguished jobs, a system that is only expanded on further in FF5- only for the fourth game to stick solely on party members with set classes, a stronger emphasis on the story and more distinguished character arcs. It's a lot of bobbing and weaving between what elements make a Final Fantasy- a topic we see as recently as last year with the release of 16. Early on, however, it was an odd balancing act between thematics, actors and class mechanics- the only thing that stayed relatively static was the iconoclastic future-medieval world and, as Sakaguchi joked: 'blue textboxes'.
I guess by comparison, in the west we at least had a straightforward upgrade from 1 to 2 (4) to what we got as Final Fantasy III (6).
FF6's cast is great- genuinely glad there's a strong mix of characters I already understood were good through osmosis, on top of some surprise stars based on just good they are in battle. Whenever I start an RPG, there's always the thought I have of 'what is my final party gonna look like' and while I had that thought initially this game dashes that thought process pretty quickly. Throughout the first half your party gets split up several times, bringing about their own journeys across the world and meeting new faces throughout. Much of the game is spent divvying up your party either by way of the plot or in the pursuit of several of the games’ character sidequests. I was wondering less and less just how my party would look and moreso what ‘level’ I’d be ending the game at considering how many other characters you’d be palling around with (Around ~35!).
FF7 accomplishes this somewhat similarly, and while I slightly prefer that game’s cast its hampered by a smaller total party, a party size that's one man smaller and the lack of switching out your protag. I love Cloud, we all do -even if you can't admit it- but I do wish I could enter sections just as three of my other members. Here, there’s practically no protagonist. You have 14 total characters by the end of the game and the worst of the bunch are either outclassed or dont have as much use time by the end of the game. Even the primary face on the box art (not Mog, sorry bud) isn’t all that present for most of the game’s adventure. As the game’s second half has our party separate- the character we hone in on isnt Terra but Celes, you don’t have to meet Terra for quite some time in the ruined world.
Honestly I think my biggest complaint is I kinda think there's a lot of fluff spells/skills throughout. It's a weird disconnect coming from 5, which has the capacity to be broken in two, has a lot of moments where you absolutely need a certain party comp on top of quite a weird onboarding process as to what classes are better than others. 6 on the other hand, while not the easiest FF isnt all that complicated throughout most its battles. All things considered I think most of the hardest fights in the game come ‘before’ the game’s actual final boss.
-Strago is a blue mage, now a staple of the franchise...in a game where Gau exists- who is already kind of a pain to understand with all his 'Rage' skills to scroll through and obtain while grinding on the Veldt.
-Cyan is a strong character with a stronger arc...but pales easily compared to Sabin and Edgar on top of coming somewhat after both of these guys. Bushido easily pales in comparison to most of the other character mechanics.
-I don't even really know what Umaro does
-Mog gets points for being a great option as Dragoon but man the Dance mechanic is unreliable
Also while I do like the Esper system a lot I think getting the stat bonus out of levels can be kinda weird when getting back characters you haven’t seen for some time. Once I got to the world of ruin Shadow and Gau were so much squishier/less versatile than other members of the party which kinda put a damper on me wanting to use them regularly. At the very least there’s some pretty good grinding spots for both EXP/AP so its not too hard to get people back on par, I just didn’t feel it super necessary.
Lastly I'll touch somewhat about the story/presentation, but it's somewhat hard to talk about. Namely, its hard to think about something that hasn't already been brought up! I usually don't care about this kind of factor in reviews but genuinely I knew most of this game's plot beats since I was 12. That said, sheesh this game came out in 1994.
The secondary issue in expressing how powerful Final Fantasy 6 feels in this entry's narrative also lies in how much it strides in its world, lore and characters compared to its previous games. 4 pushed the boundaries for how a narrative can be told in this genre, but 6 respects and sits you down on this notion. It's not overtly grimdark, nor too melodramatic- it provides a great deal of whimsy but never edges on cheesy. Its a wonderful blend of fantasy flavors throughout, while offering several highlights that bucked the usual structure of the series up to this point. I strongly envy those that never saw this coming on its initial release.
I'll also admit- I technically played this on the 'Pixel Remaster' version of the game (I just kinda liked this box art more). It's a pretty alright version, although to be honest I figure its not imperative you play the newest remaster. Part of me kinda wanted to check out how certain fights/animations played on the SNES version, and while you can mod the steam version, without these mods you have to deal with some pretty bloated menus and terrible font choices (even with the new update).
Final Fantasy 6, akin to a lot of other titles on the SNES have already had a swath of acclaim since its release and into the years spanning our communication era. It was hard to penetrate what made FF6 so special when first picking it up about 10 years ago, however I'm glad I've not only come around to beating it after so long, but also that I better understand the appeal of FF6 all this time. I expected to come out enjoying the usual things I had heard about the game- the cast, the characters, the music- but finally going through the other 2/3rds of the game I hadn’t previously seen more of it clicked. Every dungeon just has the right amount of new equipment or a new character or a new summon to spice things up, and when the party has so many options to mess around with, FF6 almost never gets stale.
Japan OCG: November 2004
NA TCG: March 2005
(GOAT era...with some caveats)
All things considered this is an interesting distinction from some of the other card simulators, despite not having any weird gimmick like Duelist of the Roses. This one has more of a story and relies on a lot more story/event checkmarks than prior 'beat X duelists so many times'-type progression. This game leans a lot heavier on covering certain aspects/characters of the anime that just never get shown in these games, such as a segment based around characters from the virtual world arc (Sadly nothing from the Waking the Dragons arc). Sometimes this focus on story leads to neat in-world gimmicks like facing off with Gozaburo during a self-destruct sequence but in-game its represented as the effect of 'Final Countdown'- a spell card with an alternative win condition where the player that activated it automatically wins after 20 turns have passed. Other times it'll focus in on two important characters having a duel- meaning you have to watch two pretty bad AIs autobattle.
Similar to Stairway to the Destined Duel much of your adventuring is based on a map screen, however this time around rather than going district by district- you’re given free range on a new fangled ‘touch screen’ to explore. Mostly this just means you’re dragging a cursor around that goes off as you ‘near’ a duelist in the city. It’s fine, although any duelist on the field will be anonymous until you’ve beaten a specific duelist so many times- at which point they’ll ask if you want to friend them and they’ll reveal themselves on the map anytime they're around. The funky thing is this isn’t truly consistent as certain duelists take more duels to friend you and others just wont warm up at all so there’ll be certain dweebs that’ll just hide around throughout the game. The game’s also got a LOT of really shoddy translation errors- any time you get tired and have to head home for the night your protagonist monologues:
“Let’s already return.”
and heads home. Any attempt to go back outside is then met with:
“I will not go out because slowness today.”
Very strange.
The main issue, much like certain prior games, is- say it with me: "The card variety..."
It's not even terrible here but it takes a long while to get certain cards and its not entirely based on the normal progression of the games, moreso its own made up variety packs. Prior games have done similar 'themed' packs like for ritual monsters and spells but here you have packs that'll have the main gimmick be like 'strong flip monsters' or something more arbitrary. Adding to this is starting with a quite terrible deck- lot of generic beat sticks so you have to morph some kind of synergy based off this and the starting few packs, mostly relying on the usual 'war' Yugioh stratagem and some jank removal cards like <House of Adhesive Tape> (christ) for a while. Eventually as you level up and get access to more packs you will start to get the usual outlines of a deck, although certain things still confused me. Why is there such an immense banlist yet a lot of cards on said list are still regularly pullable? It's such a troll move to pull something like 'The Forceful Sentry', only to see it on the banlist. After a certain tournament you’ll be given the allowance of ‘1 Forbidden card’ per deck which is neat, but this banlist in general isn’t ideal (philosophically speaking, at least- i mean Raigeki banned but not Snatch Steal? What was 2005 Konami smoking?).
Even stranger is how elusive some of these cards. I mentioned 'befriending' a duelist prior, revealing them on the map but after dueling a few times after that- they may offer a card to trade with. Some of these are just plain bad but others are like…trade an Obelisk the Tormentor to Kaiba to get the only Raigeki in the game? Obelisk is already a weird card since you might have to trade a copy of Slifer to Yugi based on what god card Ishizu gives you. Also there’s just a LOT of cards not included in the final game. I’ll get into what point in the meta this stands at but this should be the near end of GOAT format but there’s a lot of deck types you just can't make because certain cards weren’t included. Where the hell were my Blade Knights??
The game isnt all that hard theres only a few times I felt as though I misplayed or didn't draw a great opening hand, but it certainly feels as though you're ill equipped throughout a good chunk of the game. It takes a lot longer than I would have liked to get access to backrow removal that wasn't 'Armed Ninja'. Namely there were two opponents that regularly appeared in the midgame to thoroughly challenge me, the first being Yami Yugi- which feels appropriate. His deck has a lot of the best cards in the game and a lot of synergy for his Dark Magician boss monsters, especially honing in on Dark Magician of Chaos- a spellcaster that banishes any monster it destroys and, on summon, can bring a spell you've used back to your hand. The second, and more infuriating is Rebecca. Her title of “USA Champion” feels appropriate, sure but not in a way I particularly want to deal with. Gravity Bind is the big ugly trap card in the room this time around- a floodgate card that prevents monsters leveled 4 and higher from attacking whatsoever. Not too bad if you have backrow removal but if not you have to wait for its arrival, all the while contending with her strategy to bypass both Gravity Bind and any strong monsters still on your side of the field. Gravity Bind effects count for the person playing it, however for Rebecca this isn't an issue as she has Servant of Catabolism(? sure ?), a level THREE monster that's able to attack life points directly without needing to go through your somewhat beefier monsters.
At the very least, you can certainly decline any match she offers as she doesnt count towards any story progress but man does running into her suck. The last two story duels in-game are also pretty funky but neat as they require you to beat (or in one case, Draw) your opponent with a certain condition. To elucidate on the eclectic difficulty curve of this game- the final boss is NOT all that hard, I had him pinned 3 times over. I say 3 times because it wasn’t until the 3rd time that I was able to draw the specific card I needed to beat the game AND had the board set up in a manner that allowed me to summon said card (spoiler alert: yeah you HAVE to use a god card to beat the final boss or it doesnt count).
This time around I decided to theme my deck more around the 'light' attribute, using mostly equips and some left field cards like 'Hoshninngen' to beef them up. The deck mostly revolved around Thunder Nyan Nyan as the aggro, being one of the first 1900 ATK cards I could get multiple copies of- strong ATK but it comes at the caveat that if you summon any non-Light monster it gets destroyed. Paired well with other cards like Dunames Dark Witch, White Magical Hat and Shining Angel but there's a few DM-era Light cards still missing from the game to keep it from being infallible. Mirage Dragon and Blade Knight would have been incredibly nice but
for some reason these just aren’t included whatsoever despite having been well in the meta at the time this game was released. It was a neat theme to abide by but it took a long while to be consistent with the theme- still had to use some weirdos like Muka Muka or (level 5 2550 atk dude) to fill in gaps. Also added a lot of cards that milled the opponent in an attempt to garner the 'Deck Destruction' bonus points. Added Silent Magician LVL 4 and some stalling cards in an attempt to boost that card up in spell counters so it could level into Level 8- not super useful/intuitive to bring out but it was nice having a boss monster that was sorta on theme. Took a while for good, beefy monsters to pop up like Airknight. Additionally, I was really hoping to see how the ‘Magician’s Valkyria’ lock would happen in game but never got the chance to see it happen.
(also idk something here made me feel like my pulls here were way better than a lot of other games)
So what's new in Nightmare Troubadour card wise? Since 7 Trials to Glory and the rise of Chaos format, quite a lot of change has occurred to the format. However not necessarily with regards to new cards in the format, but in how we value cards- meaning the first dedicated banlist, for cards deemed too powerful for play. 7 Trials utilized a rotating banlist not based on anything but certain cards already thought to be pretty powerful. Here we have the first truly ‘banned’ cards going forward and man is this a fucky set of cards to start getting banned. Yu-Gi-Oh still hadn’t been truly ‘figured out’ by now so there’s a lot of cards still legal here that should really have seen more limitations while other banned cards were probably healthier in my opinion.
As fear as actual SET releases go, quite a large jump from 7 Trials' place in the meta as 4 major sets dropped since. In addition the OCG-TCG finally converged by this point, meaning both utilize the same naming conventions for sets and generally will have the same card sets. Ancient Sanctuary, Soul of the Duelist, Rise of Destiny and Flaming Eternity all released and several cards from these sets ARE in the game…how many of them I used or even saw is another question. I really hope we get to a point in which this stops being the case but the early-mid game reliance on so many of the same ‘core’ cards we’ve been seeing since Eternal Duelist Soul has gotten rough. Part of me is somewhat dreading the shift into GX era games as this is when YGO hits sort of a dead zone when it comes to interesting ‘meta’. If you wanna know the initial tidings of said dead zone, the aftermath of ‘Chaos’ format is the place to go. The four sets I mentioned earlier aren’t terrible, but it takes a while for a really good set to break what feels like a sophomore slump for Yugioh.
(Ancient Sanctuary)
-The ‘Agents’ see sorta niche play, although mostly for fairy support afaik.
-King of the Swamp would later be an important staple for fusion decks, seeing use to this day but dont use it here please.
-Enemy controller is kind of like a legal Change of Heart but requires a tribute.
-Zaborg The Thunder Monarch is easily the most useful card in this set. I played a light deck. Guess what card isnt in this game!! Why the Monarchs have eluded us this far in this journey idk but they’re so cool, why cant I use them
(Soul of the Duelist)
-LV monsters are such a shame. They’re meant to be these monsters that evolve as they stay on the field, but that's the issue. Generally monsters dont stay on the field long enough consistently to justify the effort to evolve these dudes. It’s kitschy at best.
-Mobius the Frost Monarch. No Monarchs
-Ninja Grandmaster Sasuke. Again, why are all the neat light monsters just not in this game wtf.
(Rise of Destiny)
-Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch. : (
-Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive is a weird ass card but hey its a draw 1. Slightly better Skelegel.
-Harpies’ Hunting Ground isn’t like a meta card or anything, only if you decide to play Harpies- oh hey I play Harpies I like this card. The mandatory Spell destruction effect is funny though, meaning if no other spell cards are on the field and you summon a harpy you have to destroy the hunting ground. It's weird.
-Divine Wrath. Kinda bad Solemn Judgment is still a negate ig.
(Flaming Eternity)
-Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys is super cool looking and has a pretty good destruction effect but requires a really specific condition of being destroyed to proc this effect.
-Granmarg the Rock Mo- actually this is the one Monarch yall can keep its okay
-Phoenix Wing Wind Blast is pretty useful to send certain cards back on top of the deck, especially if this outs a big dude or something obnoxious
-Rescue Cat gets REAL useful in later formats, bringing out two Beast monsters when cat is sent to GY. Sadly this doesn’t mean too much until the extra deck becomes useful.
There are other notable cards throughout these sets, but mostly a lot of…weaker versions of cards that just recently got banned or stuff that has yet to be good OR stuff that just isn't in the game. It’s a huge shame considering how explosive Invasion of Chaos was but a lot of this was still R&D I can only assume juggling ideas to see what works.
Nightmare Troubadour isn't the worst simulator I've played thus far, far from it but it's definitely the one that takes the most chugging before it gets tolerable- and it does get more tolerable. Comparing this to the prior game I covered- 7 Trials, I do think I'm more impressed here despite the somewhat slower start. 7 Trials acts much more like an all encompassing simulator, bringing in all these cards, having a lot of pretty unique packs from the get and just honing in on the amount of battling you can do- but it's not a very interesting way to progress to that point in the end game. Meanwhile, Nightmare Troubadour on the contrary has this pretty unique storyline and this feeling of building a unique, holistic deck- although the game itself doesn't have all the pieces I would like. It's missing way too much for me to just pass off, and a lot of these cards would have been REAL nice to have considering the build I was going off of. Still, it's not too hard of a simulator when going through the main game, so having a deck with Axe of Despair equipped Hoshiningen might work for you as well.
NA TCG: March 2005
(GOAT era...with some caveats)
All things considered this is an interesting distinction from some of the other card simulators, despite not having any weird gimmick like Duelist of the Roses. This one has more of a story and relies on a lot more story/event checkmarks than prior 'beat X duelists so many times'-type progression. This game leans a lot heavier on covering certain aspects/characters of the anime that just never get shown in these games, such as a segment based around characters from the virtual world arc (Sadly nothing from the Waking the Dragons arc). Sometimes this focus on story leads to neat in-world gimmicks like facing off with Gozaburo during a self-destruct sequence but in-game its represented as the effect of 'Final Countdown'- a spell card with an alternative win condition where the player that activated it automatically wins after 20 turns have passed. Other times it'll focus in on two important characters having a duel- meaning you have to watch two pretty bad AIs autobattle.
Similar to Stairway to the Destined Duel much of your adventuring is based on a map screen, however this time around rather than going district by district- you’re given free range on a new fangled ‘touch screen’ to explore. Mostly this just means you’re dragging a cursor around that goes off as you ‘near’ a duelist in the city. It’s fine, although any duelist on the field will be anonymous until you’ve beaten a specific duelist so many times- at which point they’ll ask if you want to friend them and they’ll reveal themselves on the map anytime they're around. The funky thing is this isn’t truly consistent as certain duelists take more duels to friend you and others just wont warm up at all so there’ll be certain dweebs that’ll just hide around throughout the game. The game’s also got a LOT of really shoddy translation errors- any time you get tired and have to head home for the night your protagonist monologues:
“Let’s already return.”
and heads home. Any attempt to go back outside is then met with:
“I will not go out because slowness today.”
Very strange.
The main issue, much like certain prior games, is- say it with me: "The card variety..."
It's not even terrible here but it takes a long while to get certain cards and its not entirely based on the normal progression of the games, moreso its own made up variety packs. Prior games have done similar 'themed' packs like for ritual monsters and spells but here you have packs that'll have the main gimmick be like 'strong flip monsters' or something more arbitrary. Adding to this is starting with a quite terrible deck- lot of generic beat sticks so you have to morph some kind of synergy based off this and the starting few packs, mostly relying on the usual 'war' Yugioh stratagem and some jank removal cards like <House of Adhesive Tape> (christ) for a while. Eventually as you level up and get access to more packs you will start to get the usual outlines of a deck, although certain things still confused me. Why is there such an immense banlist yet a lot of cards on said list are still regularly pullable? It's such a troll move to pull something like 'The Forceful Sentry', only to see it on the banlist. After a certain tournament you’ll be given the allowance of ‘1 Forbidden card’ per deck which is neat, but this banlist in general isn’t ideal (philosophically speaking, at least- i mean Raigeki banned but not Snatch Steal? What was 2005 Konami smoking?).
Even stranger is how elusive some of these cards. I mentioned 'befriending' a duelist prior, revealing them on the map but after dueling a few times after that- they may offer a card to trade with. Some of these are just plain bad but others are like…trade an Obelisk the Tormentor to Kaiba to get the only Raigeki in the game? Obelisk is already a weird card since you might have to trade a copy of Slifer to Yugi based on what god card Ishizu gives you. Also there’s just a LOT of cards not included in the final game. I’ll get into what point in the meta this stands at but this should be the near end of GOAT format but there’s a lot of deck types you just can't make because certain cards weren’t included. Where the hell were my Blade Knights??
The game isnt all that hard theres only a few times I felt as though I misplayed or didn't draw a great opening hand, but it certainly feels as though you're ill equipped throughout a good chunk of the game. It takes a lot longer than I would have liked to get access to backrow removal that wasn't 'Armed Ninja'. Namely there were two opponents that regularly appeared in the midgame to thoroughly challenge me, the first being Yami Yugi- which feels appropriate. His deck has a lot of the best cards in the game and a lot of synergy for his Dark Magician boss monsters, especially honing in on Dark Magician of Chaos- a spellcaster that banishes any monster it destroys and, on summon, can bring a spell you've used back to your hand. The second, and more infuriating is Rebecca. Her title of “USA Champion” feels appropriate, sure but not in a way I particularly want to deal with. Gravity Bind is the big ugly trap card in the room this time around- a floodgate card that prevents monsters leveled 4 and higher from attacking whatsoever. Not too bad if you have backrow removal but if not you have to wait for its arrival, all the while contending with her strategy to bypass both Gravity Bind and any strong monsters still on your side of the field. Gravity Bind effects count for the person playing it, however for Rebecca this isn't an issue as she has Servant of Catabolism(? sure ?), a level THREE monster that's able to attack life points directly without needing to go through your somewhat beefier monsters.
At the very least, you can certainly decline any match she offers as she doesnt count towards any story progress but man does running into her suck. The last two story duels in-game are also pretty funky but neat as they require you to beat (or in one case, Draw) your opponent with a certain condition. To elucidate on the eclectic difficulty curve of this game- the final boss is NOT all that hard, I had him pinned 3 times over. I say 3 times because it wasn’t until the 3rd time that I was able to draw the specific card I needed to beat the game AND had the board set up in a manner that allowed me to summon said card (spoiler alert: yeah you HAVE to use a god card to beat the final boss or it doesnt count).
This time around I decided to theme my deck more around the 'light' attribute, using mostly equips and some left field cards like 'Hoshninngen' to beef them up. The deck mostly revolved around Thunder Nyan Nyan as the aggro, being one of the first 1900 ATK cards I could get multiple copies of- strong ATK but it comes at the caveat that if you summon any non-Light monster it gets destroyed. Paired well with other cards like Dunames Dark Witch, White Magical Hat and Shining Angel but there's a few DM-era Light cards still missing from the game to keep it from being infallible. Mirage Dragon and Blade Knight would have been incredibly nice but
for some reason these just aren’t included whatsoever despite having been well in the meta at the time this game was released. It was a neat theme to abide by but it took a long while to be consistent with the theme- still had to use some weirdos like Muka Muka or (level 5 2550 atk dude) to fill in gaps. Also added a lot of cards that milled the opponent in an attempt to garner the 'Deck Destruction' bonus points. Added Silent Magician LVL 4 and some stalling cards in an attempt to boost that card up in spell counters so it could level into Level 8- not super useful/intuitive to bring out but it was nice having a boss monster that was sorta on theme. Took a while for good, beefy monsters to pop up like Airknight. Additionally, I was really hoping to see how the ‘Magician’s Valkyria’ lock would happen in game but never got the chance to see it happen.
(also idk something here made me feel like my pulls here were way better than a lot of other games)
So what's new in Nightmare Troubadour card wise? Since 7 Trials to Glory and the rise of Chaos format, quite a lot of change has occurred to the format. However not necessarily with regards to new cards in the format, but in how we value cards- meaning the first dedicated banlist, for cards deemed too powerful for play. 7 Trials utilized a rotating banlist not based on anything but certain cards already thought to be pretty powerful. Here we have the first truly ‘banned’ cards going forward and man is this a fucky set of cards to start getting banned. Yu-Gi-Oh still hadn’t been truly ‘figured out’ by now so there’s a lot of cards still legal here that should really have seen more limitations while other banned cards were probably healthier in my opinion.
As fear as actual SET releases go, quite a large jump from 7 Trials' place in the meta as 4 major sets dropped since. In addition the OCG-TCG finally converged by this point, meaning both utilize the same naming conventions for sets and generally will have the same card sets. Ancient Sanctuary, Soul of the Duelist, Rise of Destiny and Flaming Eternity all released and several cards from these sets ARE in the game…how many of them I used or even saw is another question. I really hope we get to a point in which this stops being the case but the early-mid game reliance on so many of the same ‘core’ cards we’ve been seeing since Eternal Duelist Soul has gotten rough. Part of me is somewhat dreading the shift into GX era games as this is when YGO hits sort of a dead zone when it comes to interesting ‘meta’. If you wanna know the initial tidings of said dead zone, the aftermath of ‘Chaos’ format is the place to go. The four sets I mentioned earlier aren’t terrible, but it takes a while for a really good set to break what feels like a sophomore slump for Yugioh.
(Ancient Sanctuary)
-The ‘Agents’ see sorta niche play, although mostly for fairy support afaik.
-King of the Swamp would later be an important staple for fusion decks, seeing use to this day but dont use it here please.
-Enemy controller is kind of like a legal Change of Heart but requires a tribute.
-Zaborg The Thunder Monarch is easily the most useful card in this set. I played a light deck. Guess what card isnt in this game!! Why the Monarchs have eluded us this far in this journey idk but they’re so cool, why cant I use them
(Soul of the Duelist)
-LV monsters are such a shame. They’re meant to be these monsters that evolve as they stay on the field, but that's the issue. Generally monsters dont stay on the field long enough consistently to justify the effort to evolve these dudes. It’s kitschy at best.
-Mobius the Frost Monarch. No Monarchs
-Ninja Grandmaster Sasuke. Again, why are all the neat light monsters just not in this game wtf.
(Rise of Destiny)
-Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch. : (
-Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive is a weird ass card but hey its a draw 1. Slightly better Skelegel.
-Harpies’ Hunting Ground isn’t like a meta card or anything, only if you decide to play Harpies- oh hey I play Harpies I like this card. The mandatory Spell destruction effect is funny though, meaning if no other spell cards are on the field and you summon a harpy you have to destroy the hunting ground. It's weird.
-Divine Wrath. Kinda bad Solemn Judgment is still a negate ig.
(Flaming Eternity)
-Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys is super cool looking and has a pretty good destruction effect but requires a really specific condition of being destroyed to proc this effect.
-Granmarg the Rock Mo- actually this is the one Monarch yall can keep its okay
-Phoenix Wing Wind Blast is pretty useful to send certain cards back on top of the deck, especially if this outs a big dude or something obnoxious
-Rescue Cat gets REAL useful in later formats, bringing out two Beast monsters when cat is sent to GY. Sadly this doesn’t mean too much until the extra deck becomes useful.
There are other notable cards throughout these sets, but mostly a lot of…weaker versions of cards that just recently got banned or stuff that has yet to be good OR stuff that just isn't in the game. It’s a huge shame considering how explosive Invasion of Chaos was but a lot of this was still R&D I can only assume juggling ideas to see what works.
Nightmare Troubadour isn't the worst simulator I've played thus far, far from it but it's definitely the one that takes the most chugging before it gets tolerable- and it does get more tolerable. Comparing this to the prior game I covered- 7 Trials, I do think I'm more impressed here despite the somewhat slower start. 7 Trials acts much more like an all encompassing simulator, bringing in all these cards, having a lot of pretty unique packs from the get and just honing in on the amount of battling you can do- but it's not a very interesting way to progress to that point in the end game. Meanwhile, Nightmare Troubadour on the contrary has this pretty unique storyline and this feeling of building a unique, holistic deck- although the game itself doesn't have all the pieces I would like. It's missing way too much for me to just pass off, and a lot of these cards would have been REAL nice to have considering the build I was going off of. Still, it's not too hard of a simulator when going through the main game, so having a deck with Axe of Despair equipped Hoshiningen might work for you as well.
2021
Lost Judgment Finished: 1/21/24
Kaito Files Finished 1/24/24
New Years Eve of 2022 I had spent most of my afternoon finishing off the last few hours of Yakuza 4- a game I found frustrating for most of its run. Thus, I decided to start 2023 off suitably, starting Yakuza 5- a game I found in contrast, full to the brim with excellent moments, sidequests and minigames. It had its shortcomings but a year later I don't feel as though its moments have waned. Its a maximalist nightmare and a dream come true and I still believe it to be my favorite in the series still. A year later, however, I find myself in a similar situation. While I didn't end Like A Dragon Gaiden specifically on new years, it and the playthrough I did of 6 in October had left an admittedly middling aftertaste in the back of my mouth. They weren't bad games but I didn't come out as wowed as some of the other entries in the series- some moments I had expected to be whelmed while others I was baffled I hadn't been spoiled on yet.
Thus, with the start of 2024 I finished off Lost Judgment…a game I actually started a longgg while ago. I started this game around early 2022 (also off the heels of finishing Judgment on new years 2021) and have on/off played it. Really enjoyed it anytime I had it on but part of me wanted to savor it until after I had grinded through the prior games. Two years later:
I think this is at least on-par with Judgment, made stronger by its inclusion of new mechanics, improvements made to traversal and combat, and an overall stronger cast. Judgment was already batting a good average in my opinion with its strong lean into japanese dramas, and Lost Judgment isn't too different but I think this time around but I think there's more of a focus on its strengths than the shortcomings of its predecessor(s). There's a lot less trailing to do, Crane style is a LOT more fun to use in fights- coming off 7 it's a lot easier to traverse Isezaki Ijincho now that you have a skateboard. Coming off Gaiden's combat it felt so nice having three styles that just felt like butter to mess around with. Agent/Yakuza style be damned, nothing feels as good as landing Flux Fissure or ripping items out of enemies hands with Snake style. Fighting just feels GOOD throughout Lost Judgment.
Lot of the cast is great in this, and I think not having to rely on introducing most of the main cast helps a lot. Suguira and Tsukumo branching out into Ijincho, Higashi playing a more supportive role throughout, Saeko and Hoshino being a thing, Kaito my heartsweet. We'll talk about Kaito files briefly here rather than in a separate log.
I'd be lying if I didn't admit I feel the game can be a bit of a slow burn at times. Yakuza/RGG titles have an odd history of pacing, and certainly the openness to explore whichever metropolitan area(s) said title throws your way doesn't help muddy up the sheer amount of stuff that's available in these games. Half hour chapters can feel like they've been going on for a while just because you actually decided to go off and have drinks, start a go-karting venture and end up becoming a local legend for your efforts, it's part of the fun of every RGG title.
Lost Judgment gets incredibly lost in its sauce at points with regards to the amount of stuff you do regarding the school clubs. You have 10 clubs total- 5 major and 5 minor and these act as long-running side cases in a sense. Thankfully none of these are required for main story progression, so you're welcome to finish them at whatever pace you please, or even save it for the postgame. That said, much of the early game is spent at Seiryo High so you might as well check in whenever you see that teal folder icon.
The bottom line is: I think most of these are pretty fun- but this side plot encompasses RGG's minigame philosophy to a T. For better or worse.
Quick Rundown- the major clubs (barring Mystery Club) first, then the 5 minor.
-Dancing is a lot of fun- Yagami popping it like he's in fortnite is the funniest thing.
-Robotics is frustrating as hell at first -please consult the CyricZ doc to save yourself some trouble and it becomes tolerable.
-Biking is WAYYY too long- honestly coulda been fine but it can't hold a candle to 5's taxi racing.
-Boxing took a while for me to get interested but I dig how it feels even if I'm kind of a button masher when it comes to these things. Later fights get pretty tough but they give you an auto win if you can't eke out victory otherwise.
For the 'minor' clubs now, many of these are on the shorter side (kinda).
-Photography is pretty fun, although I wish it were done in a different manner. Some of these had me doing a bit of trial and error and it's not too punishing if you miss the timing but some took longer than I'd like to admit.
-Casino is kind of a joke- quite literally just as long as any other side story.
-Esports is fine, kinda easy even for someone that still doesn't understand Virtua Fighter. -Skateboarding is simpler than I wish, which is disappointing but overall fine.
-Girls Bar? Oh my LORD this one felt repetitive. You have to keep building up relationships with the staff of the bar and honestly these characters are pretty interesting within their substory (ironically not the main target and eventual girlfriend Emily) but actually doing the minigame and filling the meter gets super repetitive, especially since the club has a high entry fee and you have to go in and out of the place constantly to refresh the side quest markers.
Overall this side mode is pretty good, it's just interspersed with some pretty slow moments and some clubs not being as engaging as others. Getting to the end and finishing the MRC makes for a fun way to round out things, though.
The clubs being optional and a bit on the fatty side (in that RGG way I cant help but like) is one thing, but I will say if you decide to go primarily down the main story, Lost Judgment isn’t much longer than others in the franchise. Looking at the general lengths on HLTB, LJ actually clocks in lower than the first game and looking back over my playthrough it certainly felt like it. You dont have the introductory baggage, there’s a lot less trailing missions that take up time, and the use of the skateboard to help speed up traveling from point A to B makes going through Lost Judgment a breeze- comboing with how excellent of a narrative this game provides.
I won’t go too in-depth due to spoilers however I wasn’t expecting anything less than Judgment considering how much I enjoyed that game’s story and the general praise I had heard about this game. Sorry to say, no hot takes here- I really enjoyed how the story unfolds. Lot of the new cast does a great job, Kuwana and Ehara especially- on top of Yagami and returning characters performing excellently. The school bullying angle is one that’s pretty unique not just to the series but also to a lot of games of this type in general. Also makes for a really interesting angle as you play this from the perspective of a near 40 year old man, makes for an interesting counselor/student perspective. All of this spiraling down the usual twists and turns, but ending up in one of the most fun finales in the series.
Kaito DLC:
Honestly, this is how I had hoped Gaiden was presented. It's a brisk 6 to 8 hours and its all the better for not having the usual Yakuza 'fluff'. Even with how brisk Gaiden is compared to other games, it still feels like there's a lot of moments where you're expected to do some Yakuza-minigame-questline or major exploration collectathon. Here the only major collectible are Matsugane crests and these 'strong' encounters that appear after equipping a certain item. No checklists, no side stories, you don't even get SP from restaurants or most activities because you get a ton just from the normal questline. It feels like a breath of fresh air from how massive LJ already is.
In addition to its pacing it expands on maybe one of RGG's most underrated characters: Kaito.
Definitely my favorite character in the entire series, although prior to this he generally just gravitated to me for his blunt yet friendly, brotherly demeanor.
Kaito was an extremely trustworthy guy in the first game and Lost Judgment definitely gave him some great moments too. However the Kaito Files DLC definitely helps show him in a much more involved and unique role, utilizing his own sense of detective work. I'm so glad that he actually has a quality set of skills and isn't just 'I'll solve this case with my fists'. His heightened perception makes for some interesting detective work as he focuses on smells and sounds a lot more than Yagami, and it reminded me a lot of how powerful of a skill perception is in DND/WRPG- it always feels like an underutilized aspect in these kinds of detective games.
Similarly this DLC helps Kaito's characterization greatly by showcasing some of his regrets involving his mishandling of a prior relationship and the lengths he’ll go to protect the ones he loves. It’s not all the dissimilar to Kiryu, so don't get me wrong when I say I love Kiryu- however stoicness and legendary status within the ‘RGG canon’ somewhat alienates him as the series has gone on. Kaito, while still a monster of a brawler, still has a lot of humanity that does a lot for me. I wont go too into detail but ramping up towards the finale is a scenario that includes some of the most brutal moments in the series- Kaito being the most emotionally steady in the room hits a lot as he faces down arguably one of the most callous antagonists in the series.
Something about the heat action where Jun backs you up if you get downed and afterwards doing a high five without looking at each other just makes him a dawg. A bro. I love this dude.
Final Thoughts:
Lost Judgment, much like its predecessor- stands tall among the RGG catalog. I think there's some give and take between the two games as to certain aspects however ultimately I do think Lost Judgment is more fleshed out and lacks some of the baggage weighing down the initial setup in Judgment. I’m still gonna give this one some time to simmer before I decide where it sits among my all time favorite games, however there’s not a whole lot I really want to point out and complain about. Yakuza 5 might still remain my favorite in the overall series however Lost Judgment might be right behind it- standing similarly as a maximalist pillar in this already large and bloated series. The best thing I can ask for games like Y5 and Lost Judgment is that they snowball like they do and end just as splendidly.
Kaito Files Finished 1/24/24
New Years Eve of 2022 I had spent most of my afternoon finishing off the last few hours of Yakuza 4- a game I found frustrating for most of its run. Thus, I decided to start 2023 off suitably, starting Yakuza 5- a game I found in contrast, full to the brim with excellent moments, sidequests and minigames. It had its shortcomings but a year later I don't feel as though its moments have waned. Its a maximalist nightmare and a dream come true and I still believe it to be my favorite in the series still. A year later, however, I find myself in a similar situation. While I didn't end Like A Dragon Gaiden specifically on new years, it and the playthrough I did of 6 in October had left an admittedly middling aftertaste in the back of my mouth. They weren't bad games but I didn't come out as wowed as some of the other entries in the series- some moments I had expected to be whelmed while others I was baffled I hadn't been spoiled on yet.
Thus, with the start of 2024 I finished off Lost Judgment…a game I actually started a longgg while ago. I started this game around early 2022 (also off the heels of finishing Judgment on new years 2021) and have on/off played it. Really enjoyed it anytime I had it on but part of me wanted to savor it until after I had grinded through the prior games. Two years later:
I think this is at least on-par with Judgment, made stronger by its inclusion of new mechanics, improvements made to traversal and combat, and an overall stronger cast. Judgment was already batting a good average in my opinion with its strong lean into japanese dramas, and Lost Judgment isn't too different but I think this time around but I think there's more of a focus on its strengths than the shortcomings of its predecessor(s). There's a lot less trailing to do, Crane style is a LOT more fun to use in fights- coming off 7 it's a lot easier to traverse Isezaki Ijincho now that you have a skateboard. Coming off Gaiden's combat it felt so nice having three styles that just felt like butter to mess around with. Agent/Yakuza style be damned, nothing feels as good as landing Flux Fissure or ripping items out of enemies hands with Snake style. Fighting just feels GOOD throughout Lost Judgment.
Lot of the cast is great in this, and I think not having to rely on introducing most of the main cast helps a lot. Suguira and Tsukumo branching out into Ijincho, Higashi playing a more supportive role throughout, Saeko and Hoshino being a thing, Kaito my heartsweet. We'll talk about Kaito files briefly here rather than in a separate log.
I'd be lying if I didn't admit I feel the game can be a bit of a slow burn at times. Yakuza/RGG titles have an odd history of pacing, and certainly the openness to explore whichever metropolitan area(s) said title throws your way doesn't help muddy up the sheer amount of stuff that's available in these games. Half hour chapters can feel like they've been going on for a while just because you actually decided to go off and have drinks, start a go-karting venture and end up becoming a local legend for your efforts, it's part of the fun of every RGG title.
Lost Judgment gets incredibly lost in its sauce at points with regards to the amount of stuff you do regarding the school clubs. You have 10 clubs total- 5 major and 5 minor and these act as long-running side cases in a sense. Thankfully none of these are required for main story progression, so you're welcome to finish them at whatever pace you please, or even save it for the postgame. That said, much of the early game is spent at Seiryo High so you might as well check in whenever you see that teal folder icon.
The bottom line is: I think most of these are pretty fun- but this side plot encompasses RGG's minigame philosophy to a T. For better or worse.
Quick Rundown- the major clubs (barring Mystery Club) first, then the 5 minor.
-Dancing is a lot of fun- Yagami popping it like he's in fortnite is the funniest thing.
-Robotics is frustrating as hell at first -please consult the CyricZ doc to save yourself some trouble and it becomes tolerable.
-Biking is WAYYY too long- honestly coulda been fine but it can't hold a candle to 5's taxi racing.
-Boxing took a while for me to get interested but I dig how it feels even if I'm kind of a button masher when it comes to these things. Later fights get pretty tough but they give you an auto win if you can't eke out victory otherwise.
For the 'minor' clubs now, many of these are on the shorter side (kinda).
-Photography is pretty fun, although I wish it were done in a different manner. Some of these had me doing a bit of trial and error and it's not too punishing if you miss the timing but some took longer than I'd like to admit.
-Casino is kind of a joke- quite literally just as long as any other side story.
-Esports is fine, kinda easy even for someone that still doesn't understand Virtua Fighter. -Skateboarding is simpler than I wish, which is disappointing but overall fine.
-Girls Bar? Oh my LORD this one felt repetitive. You have to keep building up relationships with the staff of the bar and honestly these characters are pretty interesting within their substory (ironically not the main target and eventual girlfriend Emily) but actually doing the minigame and filling the meter gets super repetitive, especially since the club has a high entry fee and you have to go in and out of the place constantly to refresh the side quest markers.
Overall this side mode is pretty good, it's just interspersed with some pretty slow moments and some clubs not being as engaging as others. Getting to the end and finishing the MRC makes for a fun way to round out things, though.
The clubs being optional and a bit on the fatty side (in that RGG way I cant help but like) is one thing, but I will say if you decide to go primarily down the main story, Lost Judgment isn’t much longer than others in the franchise. Looking at the general lengths on HLTB, LJ actually clocks in lower than the first game and looking back over my playthrough it certainly felt like it. You dont have the introductory baggage, there’s a lot less trailing missions that take up time, and the use of the skateboard to help speed up traveling from point A to B makes going through Lost Judgment a breeze- comboing with how excellent of a narrative this game provides.
I won’t go too in-depth due to spoilers however I wasn’t expecting anything less than Judgment considering how much I enjoyed that game’s story and the general praise I had heard about this game. Sorry to say, no hot takes here- I really enjoyed how the story unfolds. Lot of the new cast does a great job, Kuwana and Ehara especially- on top of Yagami and returning characters performing excellently. The school bullying angle is one that’s pretty unique not just to the series but also to a lot of games of this type in general. Also makes for a really interesting angle as you play this from the perspective of a near 40 year old man, makes for an interesting counselor/student perspective. All of this spiraling down the usual twists and turns, but ending up in one of the most fun finales in the series.
Kaito DLC:
Honestly, this is how I had hoped Gaiden was presented. It's a brisk 6 to 8 hours and its all the better for not having the usual Yakuza 'fluff'. Even with how brisk Gaiden is compared to other games, it still feels like there's a lot of moments where you're expected to do some Yakuza-minigame-questline or major exploration collectathon. Here the only major collectible are Matsugane crests and these 'strong' encounters that appear after equipping a certain item. No checklists, no side stories, you don't even get SP from restaurants or most activities because you get a ton just from the normal questline. It feels like a breath of fresh air from how massive LJ already is.
In addition to its pacing it expands on maybe one of RGG's most underrated characters: Kaito.
Definitely my favorite character in the entire series, although prior to this he generally just gravitated to me for his blunt yet friendly, brotherly demeanor.
Kaito was an extremely trustworthy guy in the first game and Lost Judgment definitely gave him some great moments too. However the Kaito Files DLC definitely helps show him in a much more involved and unique role, utilizing his own sense of detective work. I'm so glad that he actually has a quality set of skills and isn't just 'I'll solve this case with my fists'. His heightened perception makes for some interesting detective work as he focuses on smells and sounds a lot more than Yagami, and it reminded me a lot of how powerful of a skill perception is in DND/WRPG- it always feels like an underutilized aspect in these kinds of detective games.
Similarly this DLC helps Kaito's characterization greatly by showcasing some of his regrets involving his mishandling of a prior relationship and the lengths he’ll go to protect the ones he loves. It’s not all the dissimilar to Kiryu, so don't get me wrong when I say I love Kiryu- however stoicness and legendary status within the ‘RGG canon’ somewhat alienates him as the series has gone on. Kaito, while still a monster of a brawler, still has a lot of humanity that does a lot for me. I wont go too into detail but ramping up towards the finale is a scenario that includes some of the most brutal moments in the series- Kaito being the most emotionally steady in the room hits a lot as he faces down arguably one of the most callous antagonists in the series.
Something about the heat action where Jun backs you up if you get downed and afterwards doing a high five without looking at each other just makes him a dawg. A bro. I love this dude.
Final Thoughts:
Lost Judgment, much like its predecessor- stands tall among the RGG catalog. I think there's some give and take between the two games as to certain aspects however ultimately I do think Lost Judgment is more fleshed out and lacks some of the baggage weighing down the initial setup in Judgment. I’m still gonna give this one some time to simmer before I decide where it sits among my all time favorite games, however there’s not a whole lot I really want to point out and complain about. Yakuza 5 might still remain my favorite in the overall series however Lost Judgment might be right behind it- standing similarly as a maximalist pillar in this already large and bloated series. The best thing I can ask for games like Y5 and Lost Judgment is that they snowball like they do and end just as splendidly.
Happy New Years Everybody!
Post Shadowbringers
I'd be remiss to ignore the somewhat awkward placement of these at the start of the review for every expansion, however these segments are always the odd ones to try and explain. The easy way is to just leave it as it blending the finale of the prior expansion to the opening of the next one- although the 'finale' section would make it seem like the first chunk of the post-expansion patches are some sort of giant denouement. Rather, and especially in the case of Shadowbringers, it feels much more like the post-game to an RPG. Prior expansions do have this 'post-gamey' feel to them once you beat the main questline, however they usually take on some kind of 'tying up loose ends' or 'what if' plot beat that's usually interesting but might bring about weird setups or a mission that prolly could have occurred during the main questline.
I'm not sure how best to explain it, trying to compare the different feelings/conflicts between: Heavenswards' Nidhogg fight and the climax of Estinien's struggle/hubris
Stormbloods' Tsuyu arc- including the attempt to rehabilitate a now amnesiac tyrant and the introduction of her step-brother (and soon to be ascian host) Asahi
and finally, Shadowbringers' Warrior of Light arc.
This arc is initially kind of head tilting, mostly dry as you attempt to figure out how to send your fellow Scions back to the main world- things only start to ramp up when the familiar face of Ardbert reappears and voices support to the masses of the First, that anyone can be just like us and be a 'Warrior of Darkness'. I'm so thankful that -almost immediately- most of your comrades decide not only is something off, but that this is probably the work of an Ascian. This would have gotten incredibly corny if Ardbert's sudden resurrection just went ignored or handwaved for even a second.
Soon enough, this is revealed to be the work of Elidibus- an Ascian introduced way earlier in A Realm Reborn, culminating in maybe one of the best boss fights in the game and an excellent conclusion to the Shadowbringers’ content. In retrospect this post-Shadowbringers segment in combination with the expansion itself is some of the best in the franchise. Coming off the initial expansion I certainly thought it was a strong improvement and turn from the prior expansions but this post-game of sorts only nailed it harder how excellent Shadowbringers is as both a revelation and a departure of much of what the prior expansions have been building upon.
Last thing I’ll mention about this segment but, man. Why the hell is ‘The Twinning’ cordoned off to some side quest? This is one of the coolest dungeons in the game, it's got a legendary song and some nutty lore to sort through- you can just straight up miss it by sticking to the main questline which is a complete shame.
However, the journey needs to set its curtain eventually.
Endwalker
Finally I get to see what the big hubbub was- the conclusion to a 10+ year long saga. It's weird to compare, as someone who condensed 7 years of content down into a playthrough lasting over 7 months instead. I kinda figured I’d get around to this sooner or later but it is strange to finally have started and finished this throughout the year. I guess similarly this would have been the year I would have read through a majority of One Piece as well- a lot of grinding through long standing things this year it seems (what lies in 2024…?). Endwalker is a really unfair expansion to talk about and I don’t know if I can really do it justice because I’ll just lay it out.
tl;dr I think it's an incredible finale and maybe my favorite FF thus far
It’s the coldest take I could give but genuinely I can’t fault Endwalker’s main questline too much, its ‘conclusion’ to the numerous plotlines that have continued since A Realm Reborn and even prior was extraordinarily satisfying. It’s a bit easy to feel this way as I’ve enjoyed most of my ride since the beginning, but I wasn’t sure how heavy it would get considering this was still an mmo of sorts. Perhaps the weirdest thing going through Endwalker was the cognitive dissonance of knowing this wasn’t truly the finale, and knowing that in the end everything would be alright. Even so, it impressed me how fulfilling most everything in this expansion was.
Continuing off the threads of Shadowbringers we have the establishment of our main party with a new, more permanent addition of Estinien. Previously we had seen Estinien in his miniature arc infiltrating through Empire facilities, however here is when he starts to really interact as a party member alongside the other scions. He's a lot of fun! Kind of a dipshit, but we roll with it, and he gets a lot of nice interactions with a certain wyvern.
Everyone gets a good amount of time to shine throughout the expansion. The twins get a lot of screen time as they have to contend with their father and his disapproval of the Scions’ actions. Urianger gets some good moments befriending and understanding the loporrits, culminating in a wonderful moment reconciling with the parents of a certain friend of his. Yshtola and Graha, while not having any major throughline are pretty consistent in helping out and giving support towards the main character. Honestly the only Scion here I'm not all that impressed by here is Thancred- you make a quick pit stop back to the First and have a heart to heart with Ryne however it's just you two. Otherwise Thancred doesn't do a whole lot here which is a shame but he was already batting kinda low in my personal character ranking, sorry bud.
With the establishment of our team we set out onto the new expansion and new areas to wander around in and learn about. Shadowbringers was already carrying a strong batting average in terms of interesting areas, however Endwalker might just rival that. The overall 'alien' atmosphere and the bizarre parallels might make the overall lore of Shadowbringer a bit more interesting to think about, however the variety in Endwalker is a bit more appreciated. Further helping these new areas is their introductory cutscenes being narrated by a familiar voice.
I'm just gonna need Emet Selch to voice over parts of the game going forward. Not actually, but anytime he narrates over a scene throughout the expansion it just strikes a lot harder, especially with the areas presented in EW.
Old Sharlayan as the central hub is pretty lovely and I'm glad there’s another coastal hub aside from Limsa Lominsa- wonderful music as well. Connected to it is Labyrinthos, a big favorite of mine. I don't know why but I've always had a fondness for these sort of nature preserve facilities, I can only assume it stemmed from a lot of Pokemon and interests in Zoos/Parks as a kid. Thavnair and Radz-at-Han are pretty strong, bringing a vibrant color palette and a strong reference to Indian culture into FF14. Edging closer into Ilsabard you reach Garlemald- the home of the Empire but maybe my least favorite area in the expansion. It still houses a strong arc in which you have to contend with the holdouts of a Garlean empire, stuck between the destruction of their lands by their own Emperor (Zenos teehee) and the introduction of your forces onto their land. Very funny conclusion to this arc and also an incredible duty here, but very slow at first. The moon. You actually arrive here a bit earlier than I thought you would. The moon…
I won’t talk about Elpis and the final area as much, but bar some of my favorite areas in the expansion as well, not as lively per se but they just hit so hard going through them.
Lotta areas to go through in Endwalker, except its not actually that much more than earlier expansions- they're just a lot stronger this time around. Heavensward and Stormblood each had some standouts but certain areas got to be pretty alike. Shadowbringers brings a much more interesting lore to weave into each area, although it paralleling many of ARR's major hubs means you see the same biomes thematically- deserts, coasts, (pink!) forests, etc. I appreciate Endwalker so much more for having areas that feel just a bit more vibrant and interesting to explore, especially as later events shift the overall tone and nature some of these places bring.
Also major props to @Zapken for gifting me the artbook for Endwalker- lot of wonderful art and illustrations to skim through while going through the expansion (although I had to be wary of spoilers).
Peppering through these areas are many of the expansions' dungeons/instances and to be honest I think if anything is a bit more up and down than the prior expansion its these. Some are just okay, especially the earlier dungeons in the Tower of Babil/Zot but thankfully things ramp up as you go further into the expansion. Prior to starting the expansion there’s a lot of things to assume about where the plot goes but I'm glad that they managed to subvert where exactly I thought they were going with (especially in regards to primary antagonists). Lot of the later dungeons and bosses are incredible, and there’s a lot of super fun duties interspersed throughout- especially the ‘final’ duty of the expansion, woof. I wish I could be a bit more specific, but again super spoilery- I apologize for my very broad raving here.
I pointed out prior in my Shadowbringers review the stronger lean into what feels like a typical RPG format or structure. Obviously the strongest focus on a main party helps but even just the scope of the events feels more tailored towards the usual RPG ‘worldly calamity’ type beat, one that helps refocus and pit the casts against themselves. I guess what I mean to say is previous expansions felt like they leaned much more into the 'MMO'-esque pattern of storytelling, with maybe some different flavorings/through-lines for Heavensward and Stormblood. Of course these build more upon the kind of world that Etheirys is and that’s greatly appreciated but rather than exploring the greater narrative they feel much more like extensions of A Realm Reborn. It isn’t until Shadowbringers that a lot more ‘progress’ gets made with regards to major antagonists goals, wishes and meddling. Here in Endwalker we get to the 'third act' of a vast and, bluntly, bloated narrative and it just feels....strange that it's finally here. Strange that I've gotten to this point finally, and also that I'm here at this point so...early?
There is a weird disconnect to be had going through the MSQ so fast and hitting a final act in several months that others had been waiting years for. Certainly there are other games and media in which this kinda situation occurs, maybe you decided to watch the entirety of the Lord of the Rings movies in one sitting, maybe you played through the entirety of a long running game series, maybe you read the entirety of a long ass shonen manga in a year! Certain things just hit differently when you just accelerate through the years of anticipation and maybe that lessens certain beats but once you’ve hit a finale as jam packed as this it still rocks. Even if I haven’t been playing for 10 years I put a shit ton of time into this goddamn game, of course I’d be a little shook seeing Zenos and my WoL there. You’d have to be heartless not to feel a little excitement. (I still don't know how some people dont like Zenos, jesus christ.)
Footfalls, the trailer theme and major motif thrown throughout the expansion is a great example of this. Already on its own an incredible song to accompany the final expansion for this saga, but in addition incorporating motifs of the previous expansions throughout the game. Several minor characters rally behind your cause- sadly a lack of Shadowbringers screen time due to being literally another realm but even so, you return to see Ryne, Lyna, Feo and some others which is nice.
Going through the expansion itself was the relatively easy part of it all. It has its emotional climaxes and some intense moments throughout the spectrum, but I've gone through worse. Its only now upon typing out this passage and finally putting my thoughts to it that I find myself verily challenged. What did I not like about the expansion? Well I guess there’s some hiccups privy to FF14 and somewhat on and off for each expansion. Still not a fan of needing to finish certain side quests as a prerequisite for the final stretch, especially since I'm not a big fan of Gridania (curse my decision to be a tank). I mentioned earlier the Garlemald stretch being the slowest but even so it climaxes on several really good instances.
…
Genuinely, I'm having a hard time formulating an instance of disappointment or shortcoming with regard to the main expansion. Shadowbringers, similarly, I ended on a strong beat but I did recall some moments of downtime and maybe some areas feeling somewhat bland in places (I love the music Amh Araeng but…). Even though some of the early dungeons are pretty weak compared to the later chunks I would scarcely call them rough, mostly just tricky to wrangle with at first. The biggest struggle with Final Fantasy 14 has been and will continue to be understanding certain boss mechanics on the fly. Sorry! This will continue to be the case.
I will continue to play this game on and off until Dawntrail drops as there’s still plenty of content I haven't done and there’s a lot of classes I wanted to try out, maybe hit cap with. Obviously I still need to do the other patches leading up to Dawntrail as well, and there's a lot of features I haven’t touched yet but it still feels so surreal I guess. I’m glad that I didn’t go through this entirely alone, as I’ve kinda thought I was going to several times prior but having a partner show me/help me out since the beginning certainly elevated both my interest, as well as my ‘involvement’ in understanding the game. I think if I had gone through this on my own it all would have hit similarly, but having someone to share thoughts and reactions with made the journey that much more exhilarating, more engaging -more fun. I’m glad that this long ass journey wasn’t started just on my own whims or some sense of obligation (way back I thought it would have been funny to do all the mainline games in order then hit this eventually), but with someone to share a connection with. Regardless, I had an incredible time throughout the expansion and I’m glad to have beaten it the way I was able to. The journey continues… (eventually)
Final Playtime: 14 days, 22 hours, 35 minutes (358 hours)
Polaroid's Mega Rush to the 2023 End... Game 7...
Last 'game' from 2023 I wanted to cover for this rush through December. I have some other games I'll cover on a top 20 list I'll post around New Years, however I didn't feel the need to write up anything for them in a formal log or something like that.
That said, the new Pokemon DLC.
The Mystery of Area Zero pertains to not any actual mystery or concern that I had with the location in Scarlet/Violet- but actually the mystery as to why Game Freak decided to call the DLC pack that. If I recommend this expansion it's not really for this through-line that they hoped to staple onto Scarlet/Violet, instead it's because I thought the new area and plot regarding Blueberry Academy's league was interesting enough of an add-on to kinda sorta not really justify the price of the expansion pass. Do I recommend you check the package of both DLCs out? Ehhhhh… only if you want more Sc/Vi, otherwise mostly check it out for the Blueberry Academy.
The Academy League portion is a pretty fun time, pitting you against some of the hardest trainers in the entire series. From basic trainers to the Elite Four themselves you'll face pokemon teams with legitimate synergies and strategies that are really fun to watch play out. I'm not really the kind of Pokemon fan to go deep into VGC-type techs and team compositions but I was really enjoying fighting battles that actually got me to think a few moves ahead. Sorry to say, Pokemon needs to consider switching to (or at least upping the use of) double battles. I think its way more interesting than the usual advantage based single battles and brings out the potential of a lot more Pokemon.
Similar to Teal Mask, I decided to create a new team centered around the expansion and I gotta say for a guerilla team this turned out to be a pretty enjoyable squad.
-Golurk
-Pawmot
-Talonflame
-Hatterne
-Archeludon
-Araquanid
Archeludon turned out to be a pretty surprise hit- I initially hated Duraludon's design and still kinda hate looking at Archeludon but holy hell does it take a beating. It's signature move of Electro Shot being a rain version of Solarbeam with the addition of a Special Attack buff helped a ton during some fights in which rain dance or drizzle was a factor. Golurk has also turned into a big favorite of mine too- not an explosive pokemon or all that impressive in the grand scheme of things BUT, I do think it looks cool as fuck and enjoy its ability that boosts punching moves. Golems are cool.
Yeah, there's not too much to comment on with this DLC, sad to say. Exploring the four main biomes is pretty fun, grinding Blueberry Quests (BBQs) is kinda tedious but easy, and a lot of the unlocks are nice. Also the fanservice in making this pretty Unova centric, in addition to some Alola callbacks is pretty fun.
I do think that this DLC also highlights another aspect as to why Pokemon as an RPG is so fucky- especially nowadays. You get dropped into the Elite Four section and can pick any order in which to fight them as you like. Its kinda weird, we haven't had an Elite Four like this since Gen 7 but hey I'm not complaining I always liked that kinda structure. Unfortunately, because they can be fought in any order, they have fairly equivalent levels ranging from 78-80. This isn't too much of an issue but that damn exp. share... Leveling is a breeze and it becomes pretty easy to catch up on the stat gap pretty easily between the massive exp gains and the constant 'feather' stat growth items littered around the world. It's weird, I don't think levels make or break battles and you can certainly win while underleveled as I did for most of the Blueberry E4 but once I beat most of the members and closed the gap things got significantly easier- the 'Champ' was honestly easier than the rest of the guys. I don't know, I don't hate the idea of an exp share that applies to all of your Pokemon but I wish there was a better way to balance out boss fights.
There’s some stuff after you do a small trek back down into Area Zero for one final ‘raid’ like boss with Terapagos, but I'm kinda burnt on Paldea. I think there’s a lot of stuff that could carry the momentum that the fan service creates but there’s so many irks and shortcomings that keep me from being positive through and through. I thought the base game, while hindered by terrible performance and some shortcomings of the open world structure, did deliver on a satisfying blow and acted as a more holistic (albeit janky) idea as to what a modern pokemon could be. However rather than support this idea and patch up some of the shortcomings, this and the last DLC kinda just exist as a side story with a bit of new content, which is fine but overall underwhelming. That Unova trainer remix fucks though.
Last 'game' from 2023 I wanted to cover for this rush through December. I have some other games I'll cover on a top 20 list I'll post around New Years, however I didn't feel the need to write up anything for them in a formal log or something like that.
That said, the new Pokemon DLC.
The Mystery of Area Zero pertains to not any actual mystery or concern that I had with the location in Scarlet/Violet- but actually the mystery as to why Game Freak decided to call the DLC pack that. If I recommend this expansion it's not really for this through-line that they hoped to staple onto Scarlet/Violet, instead it's because I thought the new area and plot regarding Blueberry Academy's league was interesting enough of an add-on to kinda sorta not really justify the price of the expansion pass. Do I recommend you check the package of both DLCs out? Ehhhhh… only if you want more Sc/Vi, otherwise mostly check it out for the Blueberry Academy.
The Academy League portion is a pretty fun time, pitting you against some of the hardest trainers in the entire series. From basic trainers to the Elite Four themselves you'll face pokemon teams with legitimate synergies and strategies that are really fun to watch play out. I'm not really the kind of Pokemon fan to go deep into VGC-type techs and team compositions but I was really enjoying fighting battles that actually got me to think a few moves ahead. Sorry to say, Pokemon needs to consider switching to (or at least upping the use of) double battles. I think its way more interesting than the usual advantage based single battles and brings out the potential of a lot more Pokemon.
Similar to Teal Mask, I decided to create a new team centered around the expansion and I gotta say for a guerilla team this turned out to be a pretty enjoyable squad.
-Golurk
-Pawmot
-Talonflame
-Hatterne
-Archeludon
-Araquanid
Archeludon turned out to be a pretty surprise hit- I initially hated Duraludon's design and still kinda hate looking at Archeludon but holy hell does it take a beating. It's signature move of Electro Shot being a rain version of Solarbeam with the addition of a Special Attack buff helped a ton during some fights in which rain dance or drizzle was a factor. Golurk has also turned into a big favorite of mine too- not an explosive pokemon or all that impressive in the grand scheme of things BUT, I do think it looks cool as fuck and enjoy its ability that boosts punching moves. Golems are cool.
Yeah, there's not too much to comment on with this DLC, sad to say. Exploring the four main biomes is pretty fun, grinding Blueberry Quests (BBQs) is kinda tedious but easy, and a lot of the unlocks are nice. Also the fanservice in making this pretty Unova centric, in addition to some Alola callbacks is pretty fun.
I do think that this DLC also highlights another aspect as to why Pokemon as an RPG is so fucky- especially nowadays. You get dropped into the Elite Four section and can pick any order in which to fight them as you like. Its kinda weird, we haven't had an Elite Four like this since Gen 7 but hey I'm not complaining I always liked that kinda structure. Unfortunately, because they can be fought in any order, they have fairly equivalent levels ranging from 78-80. This isn't too much of an issue but that damn exp. share... Leveling is a breeze and it becomes pretty easy to catch up on the stat gap pretty easily between the massive exp gains and the constant 'feather' stat growth items littered around the world. It's weird, I don't think levels make or break battles and you can certainly win while underleveled as I did for most of the Blueberry E4 but once I beat most of the members and closed the gap things got significantly easier- the 'Champ' was honestly easier than the rest of the guys. I don't know, I don't hate the idea of an exp share that applies to all of your Pokemon but I wish there was a better way to balance out boss fights.
There’s some stuff after you do a small trek back down into Area Zero for one final ‘raid’ like boss with Terapagos, but I'm kinda burnt on Paldea. I think there’s a lot of stuff that could carry the momentum that the fan service creates but there’s so many irks and shortcomings that keep me from being positive through and through. I thought the base game, while hindered by terrible performance and some shortcomings of the open world structure, did deliver on a satisfying blow and acted as a more holistic (albeit janky) idea as to what a modern pokemon could be. However rather than support this idea and patch up some of the shortcomings, this and the last DLC kinda just exist as a side story with a bit of new content, which is fine but overall underwhelming. That Unova trainer remix fucks though.
2023
Polaroid's Mega Rush to the 2023 End... Game 6...!
Very good point-and-click with maybe only a few hiccups in some of the traversal and puzzling. Thankfully there's not a whole lot of leaps in logic or confusing puzzles, but it would help anyone looking to check this out to have something to take notes with nearby- just in case.
Some of the later areas and puzzles can get somewhat tedious needing to backtrack through several branching rooms (thankfully segmented off after certain progression), but not having a way to recall back to prior interactive machines or what rooms had what puzzles can get kinda meddlesome- especially since you've got three characters to control.
Bone Totem's atmosphere and presentation are really stellar and I enjoyed the overall worldbuilding, especially since I think a lot of it shines without the need to check every PDA that's lying on the ground (these did get really easy to gloss over late in game). It ramps up pretty quickly which I think is fine, dunno if I would have preferred a more mellow buildup but it only gets a lot more dire from there.
I think the two main leads, Charlie and Mac are just okay- kinda got their arc from the get with maybe one or two twists to keep things going but I wasn't blown away. Moses, the tertiary robot bear and friend of their late daughter, I think is the strongest of the trio and his relation to a later character struck a bit more nearing their arc than the rest of the cast- I was kinda surprised.
Very solid horror point and click, would have preferred to finish this closer to October but had some other stuff on my plate around that time, sadly. I think some of the puzzle interaction can get kinda wonky, and some of the later areas kinda drag, but if you need something that oozes in the tense, the gory and the macabre then Stasis Bone Totem provides from start to end.
Very good point-and-click with maybe only a few hiccups in some of the traversal and puzzling. Thankfully there's not a whole lot of leaps in logic or confusing puzzles, but it would help anyone looking to check this out to have something to take notes with nearby- just in case.
Some of the later areas and puzzles can get somewhat tedious needing to backtrack through several branching rooms (thankfully segmented off after certain progression), but not having a way to recall back to prior interactive machines or what rooms had what puzzles can get kinda meddlesome- especially since you've got three characters to control.
Bone Totem's atmosphere and presentation are really stellar and I enjoyed the overall worldbuilding, especially since I think a lot of it shines without the need to check every PDA that's lying on the ground (these did get really easy to gloss over late in game). It ramps up pretty quickly which I think is fine, dunno if I would have preferred a more mellow buildup but it only gets a lot more dire from there.
I think the two main leads, Charlie and Mac are just okay- kinda got their arc from the get with maybe one or two twists to keep things going but I wasn't blown away. Moses, the tertiary robot bear and friend of their late daughter, I think is the strongest of the trio and his relation to a later character struck a bit more nearing their arc than the rest of the cast- I was kinda surprised.
Very solid horror point and click, would have preferred to finish this closer to October but had some other stuff on my plate around that time, sadly. I think some of the puzzle interaction can get kinda wonky, and some of the later areas kinda drag, but if you need something that oozes in the tense, the gory and the macabre then Stasis Bone Totem provides from start to end.
Polaroid's Mega Rush to the 2023 End!! Game 5
Finished: December 24th
I don't really hold much interest in Touhou, nor had I for most of my life, although I've certainly known about it for most of my life- since I first started getting into gaming really. Outside of playing Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil, I haven't really dabbled in the property or read into the lore of Touhou proper...but I do know my Megaten.
What you have here is a best case scenario revival of classic Megami Tensei gameplay, while painting everything with the flair and mythos of the Touhou series. A combination I didn’t really expect yet blends surprisingly well once I started getting into the later sections of the game.
Generally when going back to older SMTs I appreciate them for establishing such strong, abrasive worlds- sending casts into wastelands of a familiar world, getting caught in dogmatic wars fought on loop for time indefinite and metaspace infinite. There’s not a lot of mythos as convoluted and cool as Megami Tensei in the gaming industry and I’m glad that it's persisted as long as it has (if overshadowed by a golden Morgana idol in ATLUS’ office building, but I'll take it).
The issue would just arise from how oddly paced or cryptic some of these games could get. Shin Megami Tensei difficulty remained prevalent throughout the series, however modern gaming design would help alleviate or spice up the monotony. The advent of the 'Press Turn' mechanic along with other unique combat mechanics helped to further distinguish SMT from other franchises with a new array of ways to exploit waves of demons. The older games, by comparison, just get to a point where the combat feels a bit too thin for my liking while dungeons get actively more complex by comparison (or in other cases way too simple if you just Divine Judgment everything).
Where classic SMT remains, a new take on the formula helps breathe some life into the idea, from Touhou of all things. Touhou: ADiA takes many of the mechanical ideas and elements found from the first Digital Devil Story to Strange Journey in 2009- and makes a game that well encompasses while actually avoiding some of the pitfalls I feel these titles all too often dig themselves into.
The general gameplay style reflects the usual first-person dungeon crawling of the older Megami Tensei games, with sparse bases surrounding a dungeon rife with enemies, treasures, NPCs and other opportunities. Your equipment and stats are a mix of several games throughout the series- you don't have to buy individual types of bullets separate from the guns you wield although armor will often come with their own unique properties outside of boosting defense/attack. You generally have less armor than the usual SMT title but there's enough distinguishing from certain armors that you might prefer the cat ears that give a giant AGL boost to something that might have more DEF, but lack that agility boost. Your main character, Sumireko gains abilities and resistances/weaknesses off your Sleepers (demons), however you have to sacrifice them in order to gain them, so use these wisely (or just grind money for database splurging).
The use of Grimoires to toggle on 'risk/reward' type passives is a very cool addition to the mix, and can be well exploited if you know when to turn on certain Grimoires. These can range from 'expands your Map discovery radius but gains less SP throughout battle' to 'Damage against a Sleepers' weakness is further increased, but you otherwise deal less damage' they're a fun way to spice up your dungeon crawling. I would recommend against using the explorer grimoire, alongside a careful use for the ‘Map’ item. Both of these help clear up the map and fully exploring a map does get you a monetary reward, much like Strange Journey. These are fine in practice, especially with clearing out dungeons that are much more obnoxious, although part of the manual cleanup without these tools gains you additional battles with which to gain exp. Exp isn't everything in this game- especially if you're better than I am at party building but its always nice to have the level advantage at all times.
There's maybe a few hiccups in difficulty although I think this happens quite often in these kinda games. Where you have a strong party going through a dungeon or two but run into a snag where you wanna fuse your guys into stronger 'Sleepers' but something about the party composition just isnt giving you the 'Sleepers' you want. I never memorized or figured out a pattern(?) for how you should fuse demons and would often run into this problem of never having a new wave of demons to fuse into, usually just stuck with results that were the same as sleepers from the dungeon I just came in from, maybe one new sleeper? I’m not sure.
The music is mostly fine- there's some tracks early on that feel a bit grating but I was quite elated when- as soon as you hit the halfway point of the game- a new battle theme starts popping up. Always enjoyed whenever RPGs shake up the usual battle themes partway through- and here it happens twice! I would have also liked maybe some better indicators as to who everyone actually was when I was fusing. Somewhat embarrassing on my part, although I still have a hard time remembering most of the characters that weren't from EotSD. On the fusion screen all that's shown is their name and their placement in the party menu, but not levels or any showing of what the characters you’re using look like outside of going back to the status screen. Earlier SMTs also had this trouble before they grew into more iconic designs, with a lot of recolors, some generic looking designs and a lot smaller of a database to choose from- although I would have liked a better indicator as to who I was sending out to be fused not just off name/moveset alone.
Story wise its nothing too complex, and I don’t really know how to comment on any fanservice or continuity or anything like that as someone that is not privy to the Touhou mythos. What I will say is that it somewhat succeeded in piquing my interest for later on- I might actually look further into what Touhou gets into or the importance of certain characters. Why was (X) character the final boss? Why is there a lunar colony with a bunch of rabbits on it (why am I playing another game where this is the case)? What’s up with Torifune? The game itself doesn’t dive too deep into this madness and I think it's better for it, not clogging up the main premise for too many in-jokes or needing to explain everything to the main player if they’re someone like me. Certainly not everything is left in the dark and there’s plenty of nudges I think touhou fans will enjoy but its not too overindulgent which I appreciate, letting this game stand on its own.
Overall, Artificial Dream in Arcadia, while a callback for those longing for another kind of RPG like classic SMT, might ironically serve as a good starting point for those that might wanna try out the old style of Megami Tensei for themselves. It's certainly got its learning curve and a lot of the dungeons can feel somewhat arduous, but with the addition of some Quality of Life features mixed into its mechanics, it doesn't take too long to understand what this particular take is asking of you. I was pretty surprised with how much the game had to offer and how many new things it had to show me- it wasn't a parody like I had been expecting but a full on homage to SMT and hell, the JRPG genre. While not a series I generally have interest in, I'm glad that something I had only seen gifs of during its development turned out less as some kinda gag-crossover, and moreso as a fully realized title that improves upon what it homages.
Finished: December 24th
I don't really hold much interest in Touhou, nor had I for most of my life, although I've certainly known about it for most of my life- since I first started getting into gaming really. Outside of playing Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil, I haven't really dabbled in the property or read into the lore of Touhou proper...but I do know my Megaten.
What you have here is a best case scenario revival of classic Megami Tensei gameplay, while painting everything with the flair and mythos of the Touhou series. A combination I didn’t really expect yet blends surprisingly well once I started getting into the later sections of the game.
Generally when going back to older SMTs I appreciate them for establishing such strong, abrasive worlds- sending casts into wastelands of a familiar world, getting caught in dogmatic wars fought on loop for time indefinite and metaspace infinite. There’s not a lot of mythos as convoluted and cool as Megami Tensei in the gaming industry and I’m glad that it's persisted as long as it has (if overshadowed by a golden Morgana idol in ATLUS’ office building, but I'll take it).
The issue would just arise from how oddly paced or cryptic some of these games could get. Shin Megami Tensei difficulty remained prevalent throughout the series, however modern gaming design would help alleviate or spice up the monotony. The advent of the 'Press Turn' mechanic along with other unique combat mechanics helped to further distinguish SMT from other franchises with a new array of ways to exploit waves of demons. The older games, by comparison, just get to a point where the combat feels a bit too thin for my liking while dungeons get actively more complex by comparison (or in other cases way too simple if you just Divine Judgment everything).
Where classic SMT remains, a new take on the formula helps breathe some life into the idea, from Touhou of all things. Touhou: ADiA takes many of the mechanical ideas and elements found from the first Digital Devil Story to Strange Journey in 2009- and makes a game that well encompasses while actually avoiding some of the pitfalls I feel these titles all too often dig themselves into.
The general gameplay style reflects the usual first-person dungeon crawling of the older Megami Tensei games, with sparse bases surrounding a dungeon rife with enemies, treasures, NPCs and other opportunities. Your equipment and stats are a mix of several games throughout the series- you don't have to buy individual types of bullets separate from the guns you wield although armor will often come with their own unique properties outside of boosting defense/attack. You generally have less armor than the usual SMT title but there's enough distinguishing from certain armors that you might prefer the cat ears that give a giant AGL boost to something that might have more DEF, but lack that agility boost. Your main character, Sumireko gains abilities and resistances/weaknesses off your Sleepers (demons), however you have to sacrifice them in order to gain them, so use these wisely (or just grind money for database splurging).
The use of Grimoires to toggle on 'risk/reward' type passives is a very cool addition to the mix, and can be well exploited if you know when to turn on certain Grimoires. These can range from 'expands your Map discovery radius but gains less SP throughout battle' to 'Damage against a Sleepers' weakness is further increased, but you otherwise deal less damage' they're a fun way to spice up your dungeon crawling. I would recommend against using the explorer grimoire, alongside a careful use for the ‘Map’ item. Both of these help clear up the map and fully exploring a map does get you a monetary reward, much like Strange Journey. These are fine in practice, especially with clearing out dungeons that are much more obnoxious, although part of the manual cleanup without these tools gains you additional battles with which to gain exp. Exp isn't everything in this game- especially if you're better than I am at party building but its always nice to have the level advantage at all times.
There's maybe a few hiccups in difficulty although I think this happens quite often in these kinda games. Where you have a strong party going through a dungeon or two but run into a snag where you wanna fuse your guys into stronger 'Sleepers' but something about the party composition just isnt giving you the 'Sleepers' you want. I never memorized or figured out a pattern(?) for how you should fuse demons and would often run into this problem of never having a new wave of demons to fuse into, usually just stuck with results that were the same as sleepers from the dungeon I just came in from, maybe one new sleeper? I’m not sure.
The music is mostly fine- there's some tracks early on that feel a bit grating but I was quite elated when- as soon as you hit the halfway point of the game- a new battle theme starts popping up. Always enjoyed whenever RPGs shake up the usual battle themes partway through- and here it happens twice! I would have also liked maybe some better indicators as to who everyone actually was when I was fusing. Somewhat embarrassing on my part, although I still have a hard time remembering most of the characters that weren't from EotSD. On the fusion screen all that's shown is their name and their placement in the party menu, but not levels or any showing of what the characters you’re using look like outside of going back to the status screen. Earlier SMTs also had this trouble before they grew into more iconic designs, with a lot of recolors, some generic looking designs and a lot smaller of a database to choose from- although I would have liked a better indicator as to who I was sending out to be fused not just off name/moveset alone.
Story wise its nothing too complex, and I don’t really know how to comment on any fanservice or continuity or anything like that as someone that is not privy to the Touhou mythos. What I will say is that it somewhat succeeded in piquing my interest for later on- I might actually look further into what Touhou gets into or the importance of certain characters. Why was (X) character the final boss? Why is there a lunar colony with a bunch of rabbits on it (why am I playing another game where this is the case)? What’s up with Torifune? The game itself doesn’t dive too deep into this madness and I think it's better for it, not clogging up the main premise for too many in-jokes or needing to explain everything to the main player if they’re someone like me. Certainly not everything is left in the dark and there’s plenty of nudges I think touhou fans will enjoy but its not too overindulgent which I appreciate, letting this game stand on its own.
Overall, Artificial Dream in Arcadia, while a callback for those longing for another kind of RPG like classic SMT, might ironically serve as a good starting point for those that might wanna try out the old style of Megami Tensei for themselves. It's certainly got its learning curve and a lot of the dungeons can feel somewhat arduous, but with the addition of some Quality of Life features mixed into its mechanics, it doesn't take too long to understand what this particular take is asking of you. I was pretty surprised with how much the game had to offer and how many new things it had to show me- it wasn't a parody like I had been expecting but a full on homage to SMT and hell, the JRPG genre. While not a series I generally have interest in, I'm glad that something I had only seen gifs of during its development turned out less as some kinda gag-crossover, and moreso as a fully realized title that improves upon what it homages.
2023
Polaroid's Mega Rush to the 2023 End!! Game 4..!
A fine enough time, I could easily see this being a good gift for a child you might know. Lotta exploration and racing that's only really bogged down by later missions requiring certain side quests before you unlock them. A lot of the time I just sorta looked back on my own childhood and remembered the amount of time I had spend on the Cars (2006) game for Gamecube.
There's some redundancy in missions, the actually building mechanic in your garage can be kinda wonky and I really didn't wanna spend anytime creating a 2K account (please understand), but as far as mainlining this went it was a pretty pleasant 10 hours.
A fine enough time, I could easily see this being a good gift for a child you might know. Lotta exploration and racing that's only really bogged down by later missions requiring certain side quests before you unlock them. A lot of the time I just sorta looked back on my own childhood and remembered the amount of time I had spend on the Cars (2006) game for Gamecube.
There's some redundancy in missions, the actually building mechanic in your garage can be kinda wonky and I really didn't wanna spend anytime creating a 2K account (please understand), but as far as mainlining this went it was a pretty pleasant 10 hours.
2023
Polaroid's Mega Rush to the 2023 End!! Game 3!!!
A charming enough indie with a strong atmosphere and presentation, only held back a pretty standard structure and some later areas being kinda weak.
Initially I enjoyed the limited range and the desire to seek out as much of a profit as I could in one day, although there's not too much of a rush or time limit to get stuff done other than needing to sell fish before they rot on your dinghy. Once you get a good enough engine and you set sail for other islands it feels like the world opens out to you, although once you’ve hit your 2nd of the 4 islands it was kinda clear as to how the rest of the game plays out. At the very least these areas have distinct catches and ideas, although I did prefer the southern two islands to the northern islands, which were more cluttered and required more careful treading lest you damage your hull. The Stellar Basin in particular is a really lovely reef/archipelago area, surrounding the abyssal shelter of a very aggressive, very large cephalopod.
The overall loop of catching fish and dredging is pretty addictive on its own, honestly if you just wanna fish then this is an excellent one to fill out- although for the purpose of progression I didn't feel any desire to complete any particular section. You get other mechanics like crabbing and trawling to help automate the nabbing of marine wildlife, although 90% of the time fishing and getting random treasures sufficed my monetary needs. In addition these mechanics would often get in the way of managing your Resident Evil 4 Attache Case boat storage- you have limited space for everything on the boat, and certain tools and mechanics require a time payment to install as well so choosing between a stronger line or a trawl becomes complicated at first.
While I think the premise peters out by the end of the game -get to the next island, do its main quest, get the trinket and come back to the collector- I think the main gameplay loop is fun enough and there's enough checklists/optional side stuff to go through to fill out the time once you get to the end.
A charming enough indie with a strong atmosphere and presentation, only held back a pretty standard structure and some later areas being kinda weak.
Initially I enjoyed the limited range and the desire to seek out as much of a profit as I could in one day, although there's not too much of a rush or time limit to get stuff done other than needing to sell fish before they rot on your dinghy. Once you get a good enough engine and you set sail for other islands it feels like the world opens out to you, although once you’ve hit your 2nd of the 4 islands it was kinda clear as to how the rest of the game plays out. At the very least these areas have distinct catches and ideas, although I did prefer the southern two islands to the northern islands, which were more cluttered and required more careful treading lest you damage your hull. The Stellar Basin in particular is a really lovely reef/archipelago area, surrounding the abyssal shelter of a very aggressive, very large cephalopod.
The overall loop of catching fish and dredging is pretty addictive on its own, honestly if you just wanna fish then this is an excellent one to fill out- although for the purpose of progression I didn't feel any desire to complete any particular section. You get other mechanics like crabbing and trawling to help automate the nabbing of marine wildlife, although 90% of the time fishing and getting random treasures sufficed my monetary needs. In addition these mechanics would often get in the way of managing your Resident Evil 4 Attache Case boat storage- you have limited space for everything on the boat, and certain tools and mechanics require a time payment to install as well so choosing between a stronger line or a trawl becomes complicated at first.
While I think the premise peters out by the end of the game -get to the next island, do its main quest, get the trinket and come back to the collector- I think the main gameplay loop is fun enough and there's enough checklists/optional side stuff to go through to fill out the time once you get to the end.
2023
Polaroid's Mega Rush to the 2023 End!! Game 2!!!
Its a bit unfair to review since it seems to be going through the works after a rough launch- im sure a lot of it will be ironed out a year or so later. However, even with as large of a bone as I wanna throw to Colossal Order, I really don't see any large reason to pick this up at the moment. Cities 1 is a pretty fun tool to mess around with and I've sunk 80 hours into it which im sure is baby numbers compared to others. It's got the simulator expansion pass mania that many others in the genre are privy too but it was pretty fun whenever a sale went around and i felt like filling an extra 5 bucks to round out my cart on one of these DLCs. I never had the full experience but what I had was enough to make cities of a satisfying size and quality to please the management part of my brain for 10s of hours.
Cities 2, while being in its 'vanilla' state integrates a lot of mechanics from the expansions of 1- some of which I hadnt seen yet, and while these were fun enough to toy around with still didn't make up for many of the issues that are plaguing it since launch and the main question haunting it: why would I play this over CS1 right now? I was hoping to get maybe 15-20 hours in before I logged it but after 11 hours on one city I was pretty content to just go ahead and write down my issues/notes and the overall 'loop' got stagnant.
-Game has several performance issues, my computer isnt beefy but there's no way in hell I should be needing to play this in mostly Low settings. Theres a lotta detail that'd be nice to appreicate but comes at a performance cost.
-Lot of vague 'warnings' and bizarre logic behind the simulation aspects. I still don't really understand the idea behind businesses 'not having enough customers'.
-Lotta buildings feel too misleading of their 'range'. I place a recycling center just outside the scope of my city but none of the vehicles seem to reach a building a few blocks away.
-Lotta buildings are WAY too big for their own good. I never really liked how much space certain specialized buildings took up. Maps are larger but the size disparity just never sat right with me. Skyscrapers can still be 4x4 pencil thin monoliths but for some reason a
-I dont know why they took out the detailed 'profit' and 'population' numbers on the UI
-I don't know why there's WAY less policies this time around, arguably one of my favorite mechanics from the last game
-No 'official' mod support at the moment, there's certainly some out there right now but nothing through the steam workshop
-Traffic is sorta improved but only until you hit a certain population, I ended at around 50,000k people in my city. Parking spaces help but aren't a panacea for your traffic woes.
-The changes made to road editing are also pretty nice although I didn't really notice some of these until much later in my city building.
I'm logging this right now pretty low as I think there just isn't enough at the moment to really compel anyone to try this out immediately. Definitely wait a while before picking this up as it's currently more expensive, and has way less support or functionality than the first cities skyline. Maybe I'll do another log in the future once things that been ironed out but I wanted to cap it here after a month of playing this on and off.
Its a bit unfair to review since it seems to be going through the works after a rough launch- im sure a lot of it will be ironed out a year or so later. However, even with as large of a bone as I wanna throw to Colossal Order, I really don't see any large reason to pick this up at the moment. Cities 1 is a pretty fun tool to mess around with and I've sunk 80 hours into it which im sure is baby numbers compared to others. It's got the simulator expansion pass mania that many others in the genre are privy too but it was pretty fun whenever a sale went around and i felt like filling an extra 5 bucks to round out my cart on one of these DLCs. I never had the full experience but what I had was enough to make cities of a satisfying size and quality to please the management part of my brain for 10s of hours.
Cities 2, while being in its 'vanilla' state integrates a lot of mechanics from the expansions of 1- some of which I hadnt seen yet, and while these were fun enough to toy around with still didn't make up for many of the issues that are plaguing it since launch and the main question haunting it: why would I play this over CS1 right now? I was hoping to get maybe 15-20 hours in before I logged it but after 11 hours on one city I was pretty content to just go ahead and write down my issues/notes and the overall 'loop' got stagnant.
-Game has several performance issues, my computer isnt beefy but there's no way in hell I should be needing to play this in mostly Low settings. Theres a lotta detail that'd be nice to appreicate but comes at a performance cost.
-Lot of vague 'warnings' and bizarre logic behind the simulation aspects. I still don't really understand the idea behind businesses 'not having enough customers'.
-Lotta buildings feel too misleading of their 'range'. I place a recycling center just outside the scope of my city but none of the vehicles seem to reach a building a few blocks away.
-Lotta buildings are WAY too big for their own good. I never really liked how much space certain specialized buildings took up. Maps are larger but the size disparity just never sat right with me. Skyscrapers can still be 4x4 pencil thin monoliths but for some reason a
-I dont know why they took out the detailed 'profit' and 'population' numbers on the UI
-I don't know why there's WAY less policies this time around, arguably one of my favorite mechanics from the last game
-No 'official' mod support at the moment, there's certainly some out there right now but nothing through the steam workshop
-Traffic is sorta improved but only until you hit a certain population, I ended at around 50,000k people in my city. Parking spaces help but aren't a panacea for your traffic woes.
-The changes made to road editing are also pretty nice although I didn't really notice some of these until much later in my city building.
I'm logging this right now pretty low as I think there just isn't enough at the moment to really compel anyone to try this out immediately. Definitely wait a while before picking this up as it's currently more expensive, and has way less support or functionality than the first cities skyline. Maybe I'll do another log in the future once things that been ironed out but I wanted to cap it here after a month of playing this on and off.
Starting: Polaroid's Mega Rush to the 2023 End!! A game-filled December to Remember!!
...or something like that.
I had a larger review in mind however the draft I have of it isn't currently on me and to be honest, there's a lot of other stuff I wanna beat before the year end so I'm going micro for reviews this month.
Like A Dragon Gaiden is: Like A Dragon condensed into as meaty of a package as you can get, without much of the structure to keep it as held tightly as other games in the series. It begins strong enough, has a neat new cast of characters and has a strong enough finale- but what fills this gap is maybe less nutrient dense than the usual affair.
Exploring Sotenbori and having a mini package of the usual Yakuza affair is never gonna be a 'bad' time per se, but there's very little that hasn't been done before and a lot of that 'before' isnt really what I wanna do again. Pocket circuit? Fine. Cabarets? Fun! Mahjong..uhh Darts has a lot of content...?
...
Hey theres still Master System games and Sonic: The Fighters at least!
Actually though the worst part filling in this middle chunk of the game is going to the castle; I really didn't care about most of the content here and the Tournament gets incredibly grating. There's quite a bit I could complain about with this being the primary moneymaker + minigame filling the two ends of the package- the four kings boss fights mostly suck, I don't really know what the hell rumble mode is for, I don't think the 'power' numbers make much sense, I don't like that some allies can just hit and slow you down, etc.
I think this is a Yakuza with a lot of 'fighting' rather than a lot of 'action' and I don't really think that amounts to much in the long run. The agent style is neat but once you get into the late game you can just wash most of it by throwing your cigarette bombs everywhere. Yakuza style is. Also, it doesn't really help that I did plat the game- I had a lot of money to spend on attack upgrades and man does stuff just get washed if you beat Amon as early as chapter 4.
At the very least I will say it concludes on a much more fulfilling and intriguing note. Kiryu's character is finally facing the latter half of his life and its still tackling the stuff he's been wrestling with for most of it. The worlds changed a lot but he really hasn't, and all the baggage throughout his life has remained, compounded as a weight around his neck. He goes through the wringer throughout the game, and with as dispirited as he is, he figures its about time to just accepts what's finally come to him.
....
Now yakuza is still a wacky franchise now, right?
....
I dunno, I don't usually complain about this sort of thing but with how short of a game this is and some of the stuff Kiryu is given, its really hard to appreciate the mellow tones of the game with Kiryu jet-boosting his way into dynasty warrior hordes of goons. Maybe its just because of how condensed this whole package feels that the intervals between free time and story are shorter? Idk. After the final boss there's one final cutscene of Kiryu meditating at the palace and a part of me wondered briefly...what if there's was near zero combat? The gameplay doesn't even need to be interspersed with like, Judgment style investigation, it could honestly be just Kiryu plot/side story with some additional adventure elements, maybe with some of the agent gadgets to play around with. But I guess there's gotta be someone to clean up the yakuza-inundated streets of Sotenbori...
I really think this could have stood as a DLC for 7, or hell 8 even. It's short enough that I appreciate parts of it conciseness (and also the fact that you can plat it in one go), but bloated enough in other parts throughout the middle that I don't know if I really see myself wanting to play this again in the future. Yakuzas are long ass games yet there tends to be a lot of stuff I miss in each title, good for a second playthrough. Here the stuff I missed didn't feel worth checking out and by all means it seems like I've 'completed' it anyway, no need for a Premium Adventure.
Still, if you just glide through the main content you've got a pretty brief adventure, filled with a middling middle chunk topped by overall satisfying last chapter. I wouldn't say don't check this out, certainly not, but I would definitely note it's 'half-gamey' nature, and that the supplemental content for this RGG title isn't nearly as fulfilling as others in the series. Still, really excited for whats to come in Infinite Wealth.
Extra note:
I had a whole section in my initial draft talking about the rise in season pass/expansions/ DLCs as supplemental steps in certain franchises (comparing the content packs of early PC games, the rise of 'cosmetic' DLC like the obvious horse armor bit, into series like Xenoblade or Shovel Knight making what are practically whole ass new games but are considered 'just' expansions). I felt like this would have worked well in describing why this game feels so weird as a 40 dollar title rather than as DLC to something else. Also wanted to play through Kaito Files to compare and contrast with something like this in terms of 'fulfillment', I guess. I don't know, felt like I was getting to in the weeds and these games go on sale for like, Little Caesar prices after a while- the 40 dollar price tag is fine.
Extra (2) note:
This game DOES have Kaito so its at least GOOD
...or something like that.
I had a larger review in mind however the draft I have of it isn't currently on me and to be honest, there's a lot of other stuff I wanna beat before the year end so I'm going micro for reviews this month.
Like A Dragon Gaiden is: Like A Dragon condensed into as meaty of a package as you can get, without much of the structure to keep it as held tightly as other games in the series. It begins strong enough, has a neat new cast of characters and has a strong enough finale- but what fills this gap is maybe less nutrient dense than the usual affair.
Exploring Sotenbori and having a mini package of the usual Yakuza affair is never gonna be a 'bad' time per se, but there's very little that hasn't been done before and a lot of that 'before' isnt really what I wanna do again. Pocket circuit? Fine. Cabarets? Fun! Mahjong..uhh Darts has a lot of content...?
...
Hey theres still Master System games and Sonic: The Fighters at least!
Actually though the worst part filling in this middle chunk of the game is going to the castle; I really didn't care about most of the content here and the Tournament gets incredibly grating. There's quite a bit I could complain about with this being the primary moneymaker + minigame filling the two ends of the package- the four kings boss fights mostly suck, I don't really know what the hell rumble mode is for, I don't think the 'power' numbers make much sense, I don't like that some allies can just hit and slow you down, etc.
I think this is a Yakuza with a lot of 'fighting' rather than a lot of 'action' and I don't really think that amounts to much in the long run. The agent style is neat but once you get into the late game you can just wash most of it by throwing your cigarette bombs everywhere. Yakuza style is. Also, it doesn't really help that I did plat the game- I had a lot of money to spend on attack upgrades and man does stuff just get washed if you beat Amon as early as chapter 4.
At the very least I will say it concludes on a much more fulfilling and intriguing note. Kiryu's character is finally facing the latter half of his life and its still tackling the stuff he's been wrestling with for most of it. The worlds changed a lot but he really hasn't, and all the baggage throughout his life has remained, compounded as a weight around his neck. He goes through the wringer throughout the game, and with as dispirited as he is, he figures its about time to just accepts what's finally come to him.
....
Now yakuza is still a wacky franchise now, right?
....
I dunno, I don't usually complain about this sort of thing but with how short of a game this is and some of the stuff Kiryu is given, its really hard to appreciate the mellow tones of the game with Kiryu jet-boosting his way into dynasty warrior hordes of goons. Maybe its just because of how condensed this whole package feels that the intervals between free time and story are shorter? Idk. After the final boss there's one final cutscene of Kiryu meditating at the palace and a part of me wondered briefly...what if there's was near zero combat? The gameplay doesn't even need to be interspersed with like, Judgment style investigation, it could honestly be just Kiryu plot/side story with some additional adventure elements, maybe with some of the agent gadgets to play around with. But I guess there's gotta be someone to clean up the yakuza-inundated streets of Sotenbori...
I really think this could have stood as a DLC for 7, or hell 8 even. It's short enough that I appreciate parts of it conciseness (and also the fact that you can plat it in one go), but bloated enough in other parts throughout the middle that I don't know if I really see myself wanting to play this again in the future. Yakuzas are long ass games yet there tends to be a lot of stuff I miss in each title, good for a second playthrough. Here the stuff I missed didn't feel worth checking out and by all means it seems like I've 'completed' it anyway, no need for a Premium Adventure.
Still, if you just glide through the main content you've got a pretty brief adventure, filled with a middling middle chunk topped by overall satisfying last chapter. I wouldn't say don't check this out, certainly not, but I would definitely note it's 'half-gamey' nature, and that the supplemental content for this RGG title isn't nearly as fulfilling as others in the series. Still, really excited for whats to come in Infinite Wealth.
Extra note:
I had a whole section in my initial draft talking about the rise in season pass/expansions/ DLCs as supplemental steps in certain franchises (comparing the content packs of early PC games, the rise of 'cosmetic' DLC like the obvious horse armor bit, into series like Xenoblade or Shovel Knight making what are practically whole ass new games but are considered 'just' expansions). I felt like this would have worked well in describing why this game feels so weird as a 40 dollar title rather than as DLC to something else. Also wanted to play through Kaito Files to compare and contrast with something like this in terms of 'fulfillment', I guess. I don't know, felt like I was getting to in the weeds and these games go on sale for like, Little Caesar prices after a while- the 40 dollar price tag is fine.
Extra (2) note:
This game DOES have Kaito so its at least GOOD
2023
Finished on 11/22/2023
Courtesy to Zapken for lending me his copy to play, didn't think I'd get around to it before the end of the year.
I don't wanna get too into the weeds here because there's already been a lot said and done about this game twice-over, however I gotta say they sure made Resident Evil 4. At the very least, they made the Resident Evil 4 that I think should have been made for this current period in gaming- even if that means trimming a lot of the original's fat or creating new problems in the process.
Previously I thought Resident Evil 4 (as played on Wii) was already a near masterpiece when I first finished it last spring, however there were obvious bumps in the road toward the final chapter. Don't think that should discredit it from its reverence, however I did want to keep an open mind whenever I got around to this just for comparison's sake. What I've come to was just about what I expected: Man, Resident Evil 4 is really good!
I think the way I'll set this review up is I'll just list points I was thinking about throughout my playthrough as it compares to the original, rather than my usual structure. I've only really played this and the original, no other REs so I don't have a good idea as to how this feels in the modern RE space but maybe eventually I'll come back to this with a more distinguished idea of where RE4R feels in the overall franchise canon.
-Played on Normal difficulty. Part of me thought to play on professional but figured I'd take the usual path of resistance. Ironically I did still get my ass kicked despite my knowledge of the original (i'm not very good at shooting).
-Dont have any of the final stats from my original run but I kinda felt more secure in my performance in that game than I did in a lot of sections here. Kept running low on ammo, although my accuracy wasn't atrocious.
-Dunno if I really noticed that much Handgun Ammo dropping from the regular case they give you, the other two though were much more generous.
-I think one of my biggest gripes is I thought Leon felt incredibly good to control in the original; here I felt like Leon had weird acceleration/dashing at times which was a pain to juggle or rush over and merc downed enemies.
What I miss:
-The choice after the house between the chainsaw women and the second gigante fight
-The statue chase scene specifically. COWARDICE.
-Better gun ammo drops(??) idk maybe I remember wrong but didnt original drop way more ammo?
-The weird ass lava room detour
-Idk there’s some minor rooms/segments that aren’t really needed for the remake but I kinda miss, like the chairlift area.
-Some of the goofy ass animations for blasting away enemies. I miss the little twirl they did sometimes.
-Regenerators I thought were a bit more creepier to be around in the original. Here, they’re built up a bit more and I think that’s effective but once you actually fight one it's like, alright.
What I didn't miss/what changes I liked:
-That entire underground ancient city segment
-The entire hive area
-Honestly, Incendiary Grenades. I forgot these existed until I looked back at the original RE4.
-Less Luis. While I don't think the mines are that good here I can't help but enjoy having his ass around
-The weird U-3 boss fight
-How the Salazar boss fight felt, the remake's feels way less cramped/don't have to deal with ADDs
-Now you get to control the boat and explore a lot more of the lake area
There’s probably more things I could compare between both games but these were just the main things sticking out by the end.
It is very weird comparing the tone of both games. I think about the throne room scene in both and I think they both work for what they're going for, but it was very distracting going through the remake and thinking "Leon didn't make Salazar throw a tantrum by surviving the fall". At the end of the day while I think the arcady goofiness of the original was a core part of RE4’s charm, I can’t say I don't understand nor do I disapprove necessarily of the tonal shift to something a bit more focused on the actual horror aspect of Los Illuminados and the process/effects of Las Plagas. I think the game leaning ‘single-digit percent’ toward the horror roots of RE4 is a fine decision, and if anything I think validates its distinction from the original, not as a replacement but as a reimagining. I mean RE4 is still playable on every device released after the turn of the millenia so at least anyone can compare and contrast the leaner, more ‘horror’ version to the hoaky charm and genre defining feel of the original pretty easily.
At the end of the day I enjoyed both of them and I kinda don't want to prefer one to the other. Yeah thats right im copping out here, I like both immensely and wont separate them- gaming is weird.
Courtesy to Zapken for lending me his copy to play, didn't think I'd get around to it before the end of the year.
I don't wanna get too into the weeds here because there's already been a lot said and done about this game twice-over, however I gotta say they sure made Resident Evil 4. At the very least, they made the Resident Evil 4 that I think should have been made for this current period in gaming- even if that means trimming a lot of the original's fat or creating new problems in the process.
Previously I thought Resident Evil 4 (as played on Wii) was already a near masterpiece when I first finished it last spring, however there were obvious bumps in the road toward the final chapter. Don't think that should discredit it from its reverence, however I did want to keep an open mind whenever I got around to this just for comparison's sake. What I've come to was just about what I expected: Man, Resident Evil 4 is really good!
I think the way I'll set this review up is I'll just list points I was thinking about throughout my playthrough as it compares to the original, rather than my usual structure. I've only really played this and the original, no other REs so I don't have a good idea as to how this feels in the modern RE space but maybe eventually I'll come back to this with a more distinguished idea of where RE4R feels in the overall franchise canon.
-Played on Normal difficulty. Part of me thought to play on professional but figured I'd take the usual path of resistance. Ironically I did still get my ass kicked despite my knowledge of the original (i'm not very good at shooting).
-Dont have any of the final stats from my original run but I kinda felt more secure in my performance in that game than I did in a lot of sections here. Kept running low on ammo, although my accuracy wasn't atrocious.
-Dunno if I really noticed that much Handgun Ammo dropping from the regular case they give you, the other two though were much more generous.
-I think one of my biggest gripes is I thought Leon felt incredibly good to control in the original; here I felt like Leon had weird acceleration/dashing at times which was a pain to juggle or rush over and merc downed enemies.
What I miss:
-The choice after the house between the chainsaw women and the second gigante fight
-The statue chase scene specifically. COWARDICE.
-Better gun ammo drops(??) idk maybe I remember wrong but didnt original drop way more ammo?
-The weird ass lava room detour
-Idk there’s some minor rooms/segments that aren’t really needed for the remake but I kinda miss, like the chairlift area.
-Some of the goofy ass animations for blasting away enemies. I miss the little twirl they did sometimes.
-Regenerators I thought were a bit more creepier to be around in the original. Here, they’re built up a bit more and I think that’s effective but once you actually fight one it's like, alright.
What I didn't miss/what changes I liked:
-That entire underground ancient city segment
-The entire hive area
-Honestly, Incendiary Grenades. I forgot these existed until I looked back at the original RE4.
-Less Luis. While I don't think the mines are that good here I can't help but enjoy having his ass around
-The weird U-3 boss fight
-How the Salazar boss fight felt, the remake's feels way less cramped/don't have to deal with ADDs
-Now you get to control the boat and explore a lot more of the lake area
There’s probably more things I could compare between both games but these were just the main things sticking out by the end.
It is very weird comparing the tone of both games. I think about the throne room scene in both and I think they both work for what they're going for, but it was very distracting going through the remake and thinking "Leon didn't make Salazar throw a tantrum by surviving the fall". At the end of the day while I think the arcady goofiness of the original was a core part of RE4’s charm, I can’t say I don't understand nor do I disapprove necessarily of the tonal shift to something a bit more focused on the actual horror aspect of Los Illuminados and the process/effects of Las Plagas. I think the game leaning ‘single-digit percent’ toward the horror roots of RE4 is a fine decision, and if anything I think validates its distinction from the original, not as a replacement but as a reimagining. I mean RE4 is still playable on every device released after the turn of the millenia so at least anyone can compare and contrast the leaner, more ‘horror’ version to the hoaky charm and genre defining feel of the original pretty easily.
At the end of the day I enjoyed both of them and I kinda don't want to prefer one to the other. Yeah thats right im copping out here, I like both immensely and wont separate them- gaming is weird.
(Finished on November 8th. Funny how the biggest gap between beating expansions so far has been Stormblood)
POST-STORMBLOOD
Earnestly a bit more interesting than the proper Stormblood package, although extremely back and forth in its mission structure. Wasn't a big fan of the amount of times you have to go back to the Doman Enclave, a place I don't think is on the maps? I don't know why a lot of locations in FF14 are like this. At least you can go through the teleport menu to quick travel there but I primarily go through the map to fast travel.
Maybe its a bit of a cop out to have certain characters just resurrected from their supposed death in the main expansion but I thought their presence here was still pretty enjoyable, and one of said characters’ leads into what occurs later in Endwalker from what I’m gathering at the moment so it makes sense.
4.3 onward is when the bar gets raised, a lot of great quests, a fun trial and one of the first main quests putting you in the shoes of another character- Alphinaud. These duties are really weird at first- swapping out your moveset for a much smaller preset that relates to what these characters’ classes are vaguely, while giving you enough resources to not outright perish. These pop up frequently later on in ShB and I think they improve upon your options a bit over time because controlling Alphinaud at first was very weird. Maybe its because I never played an outright caster? Idk.
Shadowbringers
After all this time, finally- the big one. While Final Fantasy 14 had certainly been met with critical acclaim before this point, it was never quite as...explosive as when Shadowbringers was coming out. Personally this is when I started paying attention, and kept a better mental note about character names', plot beats, general thematics, etc. whenever passing discourse. Nothing too specific, but it definitely helped plant the seeds of intrigue in my head.
I'll want to let some of this digest as I'm going through Endwalker- however this is by and far the best expansion thus far in the game. Not infallible, but way more consistent and focused on its cast and paying off on the more ‘lore’ oriented matters of Eorzea.
ARR obviously feels like a cleaning of the slate and a proof of concept as to how a Final Fantasy MMO after XI should have looked, while setting up ideas for later storylines.
Heavensward branches off into ideas that feel a bit more grounded into the world of Eorzea- looking back on it felt a tad weird as a sequel to ARR but it definitely felt more like a story that wanted to be told- more tangible than what ARR's was promising.
Stormblood recenters the focus on the empire as the main conflict and bolsters them with way more interesting figureheads, although much of it still feels like 'Lyse's' character arc, so your mileage varies with how much you care about her struggle in particular.
What I'm trying to summarize is that the first two expansions- while continuing the main storyline in a meaningful manner and branching into other nations of Eorzea- do feel somewhat distant from A Realm Reborn in their arcs. Much of what ARR sets up will pop up from time to time throughout the last two expansions but it's somewhat hard to keep track of where exactly these lines lead at first. Maybe it’s just because I’m downing the MSQ all at once and missed out on like, a decade’s worth of discourse?
Basically, by the time I was finished with Stormblood I was eager to understand exactly what made Shadowbringers so stand-out, as the other two expansions felt pretty natural in their improvements on a mostly technical and intrigue standpoint. It didn’t take too long -hell, it starts up around the end of the post-Stormblood patches- to see where Shadowbringers deviates as it felt less like an expansion on an MMO and more like the usual JRPG. I finally had a ‘party’, I was working alongside.
It did always bother me that there were a lot of neat characters within The Scions, but typically one or three of these Scions are out of the expansion or frequently dips out of the story. HW and SB have their own kind of JRPG party but it’s usually clear one of the characters present is primarily just for this part of the story, or has to go through their own business before meeting back with our WoL (Estinien shaped description here). In Shadowbringers, its our WoL, all of the scions (bar Lyse) , a secret guest, and a crystal man band together throughout the MSQ and I’m incredibly happy this was finally the case. A lot of the scions finally get their chance to grow and develop from the events that have taken place without much interruption from the expansions’ goals. Like, yeah Thancred shows up in Stormblood and you do a duty where he helps sneak you into Ala Mhigo to save Krile- that's important. But here it’s nice to have moments where we finally get some conversation and back-and-forths between these characters that have been putting in all this effort and grief over, now, multiple worlds. It also helps that now I find the entire cast to be at least pretty good, no Lyse exceptions or characters that seem like they’ll just dip once I end the expansion- I feel like I have a reliable party. Much of the interaction between you and a certain ‘other’ warrior that appears before you, is also fantastic. The theme of survivors’ guilt/ the inability to move on paint themselves wide throughout Shadowbringers.
What’s also great is that the expansion does divide them up- this time by areas in the new “world” of Novrandt. Here’s where the ‘lore’ part of Final Fantasy final hooks me, in particular. Previously, there were already seeds of intrigue here and there, but as I’m mostly going off MSQ it's mostly dashing by certain lore drops and ideas. Here’s when it starts forcing you to get it, no longer are we just dancing around certain ideas, we gotta tackle what’s going on. Novrandt perfectly showcases this as it’s a new world with a new set of rules you have to go through. The races and creatures are called different things, the crystals are differently shaped, there’s a strange ‘void’ surrounding the entire area…the lands of Novrandt are by far some of my favorites in the game. Because of the manner of Novrandt each place has a new, unknown flavor to it while obviously parallelling many of the areas found previously in Eorzea. Each place feels like a weird or, at the very least, more interesting take on the main three hubs from ARR while still maintaining their own identity and core issues. Even the drab and dry Amh Araeng (probably my least favorite area here) manages to have shades of intrigue throughout with its tie to the Flood and the plotline involving those contaminated by the light. The Crystarium also makes for a strong hub centered between each of the areas in Novrandt- dunno if its my favorite thus far but its a warm welcome from Stormbloods’ lack of a clear hub (I guess its Kugane but I didn't feel like we stayed that long there…). Hell even when I thought I was near done with Shadowbringers, it managed to reveal one last location that swept me away in its overwhelming presence.
Complimenting many of the locations throughout Shadowbringers are the instances and trials that sprinkle throughout the adventure. From the starting routes of Holminster Switch under attack from sin eaters to the triumphant climb up Mt. Gulg, many of the dungeons this time around up the ante and there isn't really a weak one in the line up. This is also the ‘formal’ introduction to the trust system- where you can bring along your Scion pals to act as replacements for real people. They’ll also talk from time to time, mostly just natural dialogue, but sometimes commenting on something relating to whichever character you’ve brought in (e.g. Alisaie recognizing a mini boss in one dungeon and momentarily turning dour after defeating it). The trials themselves are pretty good as well, although fairly top heavy all things considered. From expansion to expansion there’s only a few of these, with the post patches adding one or two more to the MSQ but here I was near cap before they gave the second of generally three. It's not really a big deal, but I was wondering when the next big full party fight would be after about half the expansion. Thankfully all of these are also slam dunks, even the “”least plot heavy”” one, Titania, is an incredibly fun romp.
Big ups on the soundtrack this time around too, the composition crew firing on all cylinders this time around. I started enjoying the overworld music. Prior locations sure I thought the music was fine and I’d probably enjoy it going back, but the music in Shadowbringers felt like it was more actively striking interesting chords or taking me off guard. Obviously there’s more rock and electric guitar this time around but even places like Amh Araeng chooses to go with a way more trip-hop(? electronic genres allude me) vibe rather than something more akin to the series’ sweeping orchestra. All of the boss themes this time around are also a big thumbs up.
Lastly, man… Emet Selch. I won’t go too heavy on the details but this was one of the few characters I had always heard about but had very little clarity as to what exactly he was outside of an antagonist. Between him, Zenos and Yotsuyu the cast of main antagonists has gone up drastically. Main thing I’ll say that separates him from the prior two villains is how often he appears. He’s not inactive or even (that) dishonest presence in the expansion, he’s constantly popping up to check in on your party. Again, not wanting to go too far into detail but I enjoy that this ‘type’ of villain is as active as he is in your quest as I feel like these kind of ‘wandering, undying, apathetic yet all powerful beings’ tend to save themselves for the end yet here he’s actively trying to dissuade our party and informing us about his stance- he’s super interesting as a foil.
Shadowbringers' finally feels like the payoff to a lot of what prior expansions have been building toward, which is a funny thing to say given that it feels so distant from the actual conflict on Hydaelyn. I don’t think its my favorite FF experience so far but it could slowly crawl its way upward. There’s still some stretches of downtime that I felt coulda been cut and maybe certain plot beats are pretty easy to guess, as I did pretty often throughout but I really can’t think of a lot of negatives to my time in Shadowbringers. It went by way too fast? Also man! Final Fantasy 14 REALLY likes Dark Knight! I dunno maybe a lot of this stuff hits a lot more having mained DRK; I cannot see myself getting to this point as Monk, lmao (You get a fucking shadow clone at DRK level 80??? Cmon). I hear the patches after this aren’t nearly as strong but I’m almost to the end, at least. I did not earnestly expect to go through this at the start of the year but…damn! Almost to Endwalker…
Oh right, that trailer rules- loved seeing in with a new context but what the fuck were they on spoiling that much stuff lmao.
POST-STORMBLOOD
Earnestly a bit more interesting than the proper Stormblood package, although extremely back and forth in its mission structure. Wasn't a big fan of the amount of times you have to go back to the Doman Enclave, a place I don't think is on the maps? I don't know why a lot of locations in FF14 are like this. At least you can go through the teleport menu to quick travel there but I primarily go through the map to fast travel.
Maybe its a bit of a cop out to have certain characters just resurrected from their supposed death in the main expansion but I thought their presence here was still pretty enjoyable, and one of said characters’ leads into what occurs later in Endwalker from what I’m gathering at the moment so it makes sense.
4.3 onward is when the bar gets raised, a lot of great quests, a fun trial and one of the first main quests putting you in the shoes of another character- Alphinaud. These duties are really weird at first- swapping out your moveset for a much smaller preset that relates to what these characters’ classes are vaguely, while giving you enough resources to not outright perish. These pop up frequently later on in ShB and I think they improve upon your options a bit over time because controlling Alphinaud at first was very weird. Maybe its because I never played an outright caster? Idk.
Shadowbringers
After all this time, finally- the big one. While Final Fantasy 14 had certainly been met with critical acclaim before this point, it was never quite as...explosive as when Shadowbringers was coming out. Personally this is when I started paying attention, and kept a better mental note about character names', plot beats, general thematics, etc. whenever passing discourse. Nothing too specific, but it definitely helped plant the seeds of intrigue in my head.
I'll want to let some of this digest as I'm going through Endwalker- however this is by and far the best expansion thus far in the game. Not infallible, but way more consistent and focused on its cast and paying off on the more ‘lore’ oriented matters of Eorzea.
ARR obviously feels like a cleaning of the slate and a proof of concept as to how a Final Fantasy MMO after XI should have looked, while setting up ideas for later storylines.
Heavensward branches off into ideas that feel a bit more grounded into the world of Eorzea- looking back on it felt a tad weird as a sequel to ARR but it definitely felt more like a story that wanted to be told- more tangible than what ARR's was promising.
Stormblood recenters the focus on the empire as the main conflict and bolsters them with way more interesting figureheads, although much of it still feels like 'Lyse's' character arc, so your mileage varies with how much you care about her struggle in particular.
What I'm trying to summarize is that the first two expansions- while continuing the main storyline in a meaningful manner and branching into other nations of Eorzea- do feel somewhat distant from A Realm Reborn in their arcs. Much of what ARR sets up will pop up from time to time throughout the last two expansions but it's somewhat hard to keep track of where exactly these lines lead at first. Maybe it’s just because I’m downing the MSQ all at once and missed out on like, a decade’s worth of discourse?
Basically, by the time I was finished with Stormblood I was eager to understand exactly what made Shadowbringers so stand-out, as the other two expansions felt pretty natural in their improvements on a mostly technical and intrigue standpoint. It didn’t take too long -hell, it starts up around the end of the post-Stormblood patches- to see where Shadowbringers deviates as it felt less like an expansion on an MMO and more like the usual JRPG. I finally had a ‘party’, I was working alongside.
It did always bother me that there were a lot of neat characters within The Scions, but typically one or three of these Scions are out of the expansion or frequently dips out of the story. HW and SB have their own kind of JRPG party but it’s usually clear one of the characters present is primarily just for this part of the story, or has to go through their own business before meeting back with our WoL (Estinien shaped description here). In Shadowbringers, its our WoL, all of the scions (bar Lyse) , a secret guest, and a crystal man band together throughout the MSQ and I’m incredibly happy this was finally the case. A lot of the scions finally get their chance to grow and develop from the events that have taken place without much interruption from the expansions’ goals. Like, yeah Thancred shows up in Stormblood and you do a duty where he helps sneak you into Ala Mhigo to save Krile- that's important. But here it’s nice to have moments where we finally get some conversation and back-and-forths between these characters that have been putting in all this effort and grief over, now, multiple worlds. It also helps that now I find the entire cast to be at least pretty good, no Lyse exceptions or characters that seem like they’ll just dip once I end the expansion- I feel like I have a reliable party. Much of the interaction between you and a certain ‘other’ warrior that appears before you, is also fantastic. The theme of survivors’ guilt/ the inability to move on paint themselves wide throughout Shadowbringers.
What’s also great is that the expansion does divide them up- this time by areas in the new “world” of Novrandt. Here’s where the ‘lore’ part of Final Fantasy final hooks me, in particular. Previously, there were already seeds of intrigue here and there, but as I’m mostly going off MSQ it's mostly dashing by certain lore drops and ideas. Here’s when it starts forcing you to get it, no longer are we just dancing around certain ideas, we gotta tackle what’s going on. Novrandt perfectly showcases this as it’s a new world with a new set of rules you have to go through. The races and creatures are called different things, the crystals are differently shaped, there’s a strange ‘void’ surrounding the entire area…the lands of Novrandt are by far some of my favorites in the game. Because of the manner of Novrandt each place has a new, unknown flavor to it while obviously parallelling many of the areas found previously in Eorzea. Each place feels like a weird or, at the very least, more interesting take on the main three hubs from ARR while still maintaining their own identity and core issues. Even the drab and dry Amh Araeng (probably my least favorite area here) manages to have shades of intrigue throughout with its tie to the Flood and the plotline involving those contaminated by the light. The Crystarium also makes for a strong hub centered between each of the areas in Novrandt- dunno if its my favorite thus far but its a warm welcome from Stormbloods’ lack of a clear hub (I guess its Kugane but I didn't feel like we stayed that long there…). Hell even when I thought I was near done with Shadowbringers, it managed to reveal one last location that swept me away in its overwhelming presence.
Complimenting many of the locations throughout Shadowbringers are the instances and trials that sprinkle throughout the adventure. From the starting routes of Holminster Switch under attack from sin eaters to the triumphant climb up Mt. Gulg, many of the dungeons this time around up the ante and there isn't really a weak one in the line up. This is also the ‘formal’ introduction to the trust system- where you can bring along your Scion pals to act as replacements for real people. They’ll also talk from time to time, mostly just natural dialogue, but sometimes commenting on something relating to whichever character you’ve brought in (e.g. Alisaie recognizing a mini boss in one dungeon and momentarily turning dour after defeating it). The trials themselves are pretty good as well, although fairly top heavy all things considered. From expansion to expansion there’s only a few of these, with the post patches adding one or two more to the MSQ but here I was near cap before they gave the second of generally three. It's not really a big deal, but I was wondering when the next big full party fight would be after about half the expansion. Thankfully all of these are also slam dunks, even the “”least plot heavy”” one, Titania, is an incredibly fun romp.
Big ups on the soundtrack this time around too, the composition crew firing on all cylinders this time around. I started enjoying the overworld music. Prior locations sure I thought the music was fine and I’d probably enjoy it going back, but the music in Shadowbringers felt like it was more actively striking interesting chords or taking me off guard. Obviously there’s more rock and electric guitar this time around but even places like Amh Araeng chooses to go with a way more trip-hop(? electronic genres allude me) vibe rather than something more akin to the series’ sweeping orchestra. All of the boss themes this time around are also a big thumbs up.
Lastly, man… Emet Selch. I won’t go too heavy on the details but this was one of the few characters I had always heard about but had very little clarity as to what exactly he was outside of an antagonist. Between him, Zenos and Yotsuyu the cast of main antagonists has gone up drastically. Main thing I’ll say that separates him from the prior two villains is how often he appears. He’s not inactive or even (that) dishonest presence in the expansion, he’s constantly popping up to check in on your party. Again, not wanting to go too far into detail but I enjoy that this ‘type’ of villain is as active as he is in your quest as I feel like these kind of ‘wandering, undying, apathetic yet all powerful beings’ tend to save themselves for the end yet here he’s actively trying to dissuade our party and informing us about his stance- he’s super interesting as a foil.
Shadowbringers' finally feels like the payoff to a lot of what prior expansions have been building toward, which is a funny thing to say given that it feels so distant from the actual conflict on Hydaelyn. I don’t think its my favorite FF experience so far but it could slowly crawl its way upward. There’s still some stretches of downtime that I felt coulda been cut and maybe certain plot beats are pretty easy to guess, as I did pretty often throughout but I really can’t think of a lot of negatives to my time in Shadowbringers. It went by way too fast? Also man! Final Fantasy 14 REALLY likes Dark Knight! I dunno maybe a lot of this stuff hits a lot more having mained DRK; I cannot see myself getting to this point as Monk, lmao (You get a fucking shadow clone at DRK level 80??? Cmon). I hear the patches after this aren’t nearly as strong but I’m almost to the end, at least. I did not earnestly expect to go through this at the start of the year but…damn! Almost to Endwalker…
Oh right, that trailer rules- loved seeing in with a new context but what the fuck were they on spoiling that much stuff lmao.