Just a quick summation as I decided to pick up and see what the fuss was about. My experience with roguelites and the like remains a much lesser resume than I'd like as there are many more on the list I would like to partake and revel in. However Vampire Survivor seemed to be the flavored niche of 2022 -despite its December 2021 release- so I figured it'd be a good place to cap off the year.
I knew about its '30 minute time limit' and its reliance solely on a D-Pad and Enter for controls, prior but not much else about its unlocking structure or any goal in which to come to to feel particularly fulfilled in my runs. I figured the only real endgoal at the moment was completion of each level and unlocking what all was currently present in the game. I also knew going in that there wasn't much chance I'd actually want to reach this fairly lofty peak within the timeslot I've allotted myself before the year's end. I had actually prepared myself to finish Neon White for the end of the year to fulfill an arbitrary but some sort of significant 'Top 10 of 2022'. At least, a list in my head at the moment- and one quite incomplete as I have significantly less time now than ever to play much of the headliner games across each year in addition to my catalog resembling more of a never ending conveyor belt of JRPGs I'm too damaged to not be intrigued by instead (Star Ocean 6 I will play you someday).
In the meantime, Vampire Survivors would have to substitute- although its release in 2021 does quite ruin the actual thoughts I had about including it in any list I had boiled up.
I'll admit I'm fluffing up quite a bit before talking up anything about the game and my score may prematurely reveal my intentions but to be quite honest there wasn't much I had critically in mind with this game. I didn't follow too much of the prior discourse surrounding addiction and predatory __________. Sadly I must adhere to a similar philosophy when tackling said discourse that I do when thinking about local politics- that is to say I really dont. I don't really get the idea and personally I don't really wanna dissect the gameplay loop or any heinous ideas or mechanics because beyond this review I don't think I'll ever play this game again because I found myself kinda disappointed after my first '30 minute' run. Prior to this run I was actually quite content with the idea even with its spartan loop. It reminded me of course of several of the flash games from school computer lab 'free-time' sessions from addictingames, kongregate, armorgames, etc. To this extent I would say that Vampire Survivors does succeed in making such a simple premise addicting, enjoyable and easy for anyone to pick up on. This much content for a game that's cheaper than a meal at Taco Bell is quite a boon, although I can't really go much further in my expression for this game as the loop kinda just dies after that first clear. It's kinda lame that characters are bought with money rather than unlocked through any secrets or tricks throughout the map. I guess there's secret bosses and items located on certain stages but I was hoping for something a bit more intriguing with progression. Instead each map kinda just relies on walking around getting the same set of given items that- while ever-expanding over the course of buying characters and upgrading certain items to a given rank- really doesn't feel like a lot. The thing really holding the game back -perhaps I just haven't reached a certain threshold- is that most items really don't feel that good. The appeal of Isaac is that a lot of runs do get filled with trash to middle of the road items that might not feel that satisfying, but there's a good chance you'll get that ONE item that turns the run into the most insane 30 minutes of Isaac in a while. To Isaac's benefit it does have over a decade's worth of content but even in it's early stages there was a huge amount of noticeable variables and playstyles that felt meaningful to a run. By Wrath of the Lamb you had Sacred Heart, Ipecac, Mom's Knife, Guppy Transformation, Brimstone, etc. and this was still super early in the rogue-like revival -before the Rebirth revamp. The most satisfying item in Vampire Survivor meanwhile was... Garlic? I kinda liked the risk of enemies getting close but having a constant AOE with knockback chance around me. Uhhh the Axe? The fact there's so little input in what you do during a run really hurts my desire to go any further, and I know that's kinda the point but nothing else really tickles my brain during the run once I do get all the items or secrets that were in the stage.
I do want to give credit that this is basically the trendsetter for this year, and I can definitely see why the game would be an entertaining loop for some people, and I certainly haven't scratched as much of it as it begs, but I just didnt see fit to continue my playtime of it. Especially since- from the time I had first heard of this game as a 'hit' it was immediately followed by "...and I also played this game that was very much like Vampire Survivors but arguably better!"

What exactly makes a game feel substantial? What makes a game 'high-quality' or 'worthwhile'? Typically, I'm pretty generous with my opinions towards games as my tolerance for certain bullshit tends to land fairly high. Jank in gaming has become a topic concerning gaming for a while as the medium's tactile and performance based systems lend to experiences that are more wonky than just the usual camp of plots and movies or the experimentation/freeform in music genres. Recently it feels as though there's been a bit of an upsurge in the enjoyment of such jank in gaming, the bizarre occurrences of constant glitches and bugs, inconsistent performance, low budget modelling/animations and sluggish gamefeel. Truth be told I do quite enjoy a lot of games with these elements: the No More Heroes games are clunky as hell, Earthbound stands among snes zeniths of the rpg with its vomit color palette and dopey vibes, Super Mario Sunshine is barely Mario game to be honest, the list goes on. Jank is a hard thing to exactly qualify and put into any form of cogent matter. People will always have their own strides and beats to go by, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So what's up with Pokemon, anyway? What has happened with the current state of the series and the bar for quality, exactly? The literal biggest media property in the world and it looks, feels and runs worse than so many other game's I've played this year that aren't even the typical AAA affair. The usual discussion has already been passed around half to death though, most of us know. Graphics look bad -> game runs bad -> buggy as hell -> dev team was split between this and PLA -> game needed more time, etc. All of this is true and more perplexing considering the Game Informer interview that was done explaining that the games and teams really don't have as pressing a deadline as one would ponder, given the amount of times people bring up TPC or Nintendo perhaps wanting to push out games on a yearly basis. The Pokemon Paradox is one I've been tackling on and off over the course of my life as a long time pokemon fan and its one that I don't know how best to tackle given the bizarre nature of the team behind the game and the nature of Pokemon as a series in general. I would absolutely murder several people to obtain some form of design doc for one whole generation of Pokemon just to understand the philosophy of why somethings are set, designed, paced, presented and measured in the way that they are. Perhaps it's not nearly as complex as I think it is but sometimes I think as far back as Gen 2 where several mediocre pokemon get bogged down by having a 'Slow' exp yield, on par with legendaries, despite them not having similar stats or builds (Lanturn???). All in all the series, even at it's height has always had problems and goofs that I can't particularly ignore. Black and White, it's sequels included, also contains its fair share of nitpicks and dips despite them being some of my favorite games of all time. The issue starts to become apparent when these small dips and perplexing choices are compounded by overarching, glaring flaws that have been stretched out pretty much since the games went 3D. A long list of the games 'dumbing down', running poorly, over-polishing, over-reliance on nostalgia, linear objectives and lack of engaging cast have been tossed about since Gen 5 ended (and some will argue started with Gen V, e.g. its linearity). The paradox is that despite these complaints people keep buying these games because they're brainless they're...actually I really don't know. Truth be told I actually skipped out on Gen 8, which I continue to not regret as we progress further from that game's release. What was admittedly an omission of purchasing the game out of spite and stubbornness against GF's lack of growth soon turned into me actually opening up my eyes and just realizing the game just looked really boring and dry, even looking back I'm not sure I really missed out on anything other than having a good reference as to what changed from said games to these current ones (Sidenote: on top of that I was also mentally prepping for the eventual 'sister' game for gen 8- so much for that I guess). That's when I became increasingly confused by people who came back after beating it stating 'it's got problems', as though it didn't seem apparent several weeks beforehand. I was befuddled by people that would continue to complain and bitch about the series all the while continuing to purchase the games, despite how lackluster or dire much of them looked. I skipped out on BDSP as well, only to jump back in with PLA. Despite my own criticisms regarding PLA I could at least remain content having purchased after beating it as at the time it did seem like a new direction for the series and many were praising it's new form, unfortunately it just didn't resonate with me by the end. So then the timeline arrives at Scarlet and Violet to show off what bold directions the series takes with regard to the open world renaissance- for what seems like the third time. A lot of stuff is pretty much riding on this game's release; despite Gen 8's wild area the game still remained fairly linear in its plot progression and PLA's open world left a lot to be desired. Now is the time that Pokemon tackles a truly open world experience.

Honestly, I can't really believe it. Legitimately as I'm typing out my thoughts not just on the game but series up to this point I'm kinda struck perplexed as I can't say I was let down. In fact the best way I can describe my feeling is that my engagement with the game inversely relates to PLA as I felt myself trudging through the first few hours of the game, left thinking "this is it? this is what the open world of pokemon is?" only to end up realizing how glad I am it really is just that, and to focus on just the plot, which ended up being great! To slow down a bit, I believe I mentioned in my PLA review or perhaps in passing with friends but I'm incredibly sick of open worlds by this point. The massive scale, constant barrage of stuff is very much appreciated but I can only handle like, two a year at this point. Even then there's so much I haven't gotten back to like Witcher 3, Death Stranding, any Elder Scrolls that I'm really starving for something way smaller in scale. This is perhaps a bit of cope but unironically thank god I was able to beat this game in like a week's time it's been so long since I was just able to do that, plus there's post game stuff that actually seems really neat this time around!

Anyway, for a more precise rundown on the state of ScVi, I'll start with this: I really did hate that first day or so. The first day was purely just going to the main town getting the three sidequests, getting Miraidon unlocked and beating the first gym. While pushing that Olive was funny I was extremely whelmed by the complete lack of anything on the overworld other than Pokemon. There's items, TMs, gimmeghoul coins(she gimmeghoul til i coin, as my roommate/his gf says) and other shiny pick-ups but like, I was waiting for some other kind of pick up like the Spiritomb spirits or some other objective on the map to tickle my sense of exploration. Admittedly this is about where the explorative aspect of the game ends, there really isn't that much to distract you aside from pokemon and trainers. I was left thinking about how excellently SMTV transitioned into an open world with its litany of collectables and currencies to entice players, as well as the richness of the Ghost of Tsushima with its numerous side missions that can range in rewards like equips and power ups for Jin, which don't parallel well with pokemon obv, or customizations option which I think would have been kinda neat all things considered. I rarely go into any of the boutiques in these games -I just happened upon the 'Daft Punk' gold helmet and ran with that the rest of the game- but I would have liked if customizables were just scattered or rewarded throughout the openworld, maybe for doing side tasks or filling out certain pokemon's dex entries. They had something similar in SuMo where you would get a monetary reward but I wish there was more of a personal request to seek out certain pokemon on certain routes. This is especially the case as I feel as though it's really hard to really know where pokemon are this time around. There's certainly a lot more pokemon this time around and I know a good chunk of where some are but I was kinda pressed throughout the early game hoping I didn't pass a location not realizing it had a pokemon I wanted to catch. One of the benefits earlier pokemon had in its routes was that the litany of trainers in a route could potentially hint at nearby pokemon by including said pokemon on their teams. Here, trainer's are much more thinly spread through a route and have so few pokemon that it's a bit harder to tell what shows up where. Additionally, the map's 'radar' for nearby pokemon is incredibly confusing. I can't tell if Pokemon's pop in/out range is just that picky or if the radar just shows you potential spawns in the nearby area but I remember running around the east coast just trying to find Toedscool for a while despite it being on the radar. By the first weekend of the game's release I had done about two badges, a titan pokemon and was just outside the first Team Star camp with Mela. I wasn't too sure where the hell the game was going at this point and I was hoping anything would spark interest soon.

So that Team Star stuff was actually pretty neat. The actually auto battling through Team Star is kinda whatever but the battle was cool enough and then a flashback happens and I'm kinda stunned. Story? We're getting like a planned story? After this I did the second titan pokemon and Arven reveals his motivation behind wanting to find the Herba Mystica and...character arcs? As stupid as this might sound yeah it's kinda insane when a pokemon game decides to take the bold step of having character and plot events that actually seem thought out. In this particular case we see Team Star forming a year and a half prior, revealing smalls bits over time about the efforts/reasoning behind the creation of Team Star in the first place. With Arven, at first it's vague as to why he wants to collect the Herba Mystica and I was really worried it was gonna remain hands off as to what his motive is until the end but thankfully after the second Titan he reveals his Mabosstiff is ailing and that perhaps the power of the herbs can restore some feeling to his pokemon. Also you unlock movement options for Miraidon through doing this when I learned that the game dodged losing a point. I was honestly really scared riding around at first, I felt like I was gaslit into thinking Miraidon could boost around and fly and swim, but I didn't know where the hell those features where so I was just stuck bumbling around at 20mph as even my roommate was asking "Is that how fast he goes??". Thankfully not, I wish the dash was unlocked from the start but getting your first Titan pokemon done doesnt take too long anyway. Traversal with Miraidon is incredibly strange though, it's absolutely gonna be a speedrunners dream to path out what all can be done with the features it unlocks, learning how to swim, fly and eventually just scale vertical cliffs. By this point the game really does start to open up and I decide to put my foot down and just beeline to every Gym, Titan Pokemon and Team Yell base, and there really isn't anything to distract or impede your progress in that regard. On the one end this makes the plot feel kinda all over the place, and understandably so, it kinda comes with the territory, but also it just leaves a certain freedom to do whatever in however order you want. There's also no scaling of bosses in this regard and I've come to the conclusion that I think that works really well. At any point that I want to restart this game I'm immediately interested in checking out things in a different, stranger order. To that end I do wish there were more trainers littered about, it does feel a bit lighter than I would have liked. It feels like there's less opportunities to fight due to the constraints of battling spaces in this game, purely being out in the field or in given boss encounters. There's not really any building like the battle office in Black/White where it feels like a mini dungeon almost, but it helps as an optional level boost before the third gym. Speaking of, I do wish there was a lot more building interiors in this game, there's a lot of neat cities and towns to explore but there's like a handful of interiors actually present throughout other than the Gym centers, the Academy, one restaurant, the League and your house. Even with as small as that is, I do think interior spaces add quite a bit to a game's exploration. This is how weird it is to talk about Pokemon and specifically ScVi. I'm talking about goddamn houses and interiors not being in the game, and earlier in my playthrough I would have held it at much greater value but after having beaten the game, I don't know to be honest. This whole game should have been the moment that I crack and put my foot down against the clear lack of time and polish abundant throughout the game.

But I kept playing, and to be honestly that does go a long way considering there's a bunch of other stuff on my plate. On top of that, I was slightly surprised by how enjoyable the game became over time. No longer did it feel like I was tolerating the series' mishaps, so long as I stayed on course to the objectives and concentrated on only my team like prior games, I could just get this game done and find enjoyment in just a fine, quick pokemon romp. I would perhaps say that I enjoyed how the plot handled Team Star as an anti-villain, how solid Arven is as a foil and how Nemona and Gym Challenges are just okay. Perhaps I would mention the music being good and the new pokemon being quite a great selection this time around, with neat abilities and typings abound. A pleasantly swift and okay experience compared to PLA and seemingly much more interesting than the two I passed on. Then the last day of my playthrough, my final team consists of:
Skeledirge, Tinkaton, Toedscruel, Dudunsparce, Kingambit, and Cetitan.
For this playthrough and typically most new pokemon games I like to make a habit of choosing pokemon that are new or have some new form by the end of the game, unfortunately it occurred to me way too late in the game that my team composition skills aren't up to snuff as ground and fighting types often gave me kinda of a run for my money. Additionally, my habit to skip over trainers late in the game might have caught up to me as I beat the remaining map objectives and fought the final battles for each of the game's three sidequests. Not all of these are hard per se, but when underleveled a bit I admittedly lost to two of the main character fights (Quaquaval be damned). I wouldn't call ScVi hard, far from it given the amount of exp items that are given throughout but I did appreciate getting my ass kicked for trying to be coy during certain fights, it did seem like some fights were better geared to handle multiple kinds of threats so it wasn't completely braindead like Gen 6. I do wish more trainers near the end of the game utilized items though, that has been sorely missed.

Finally once all the routes are finished, one last task remains: tackling the 'Area Zero' zone that had been brought up time and time again throughout the player's journey. If there's one thing I can say about the plot, I really wish there were some way to splice in more moments like this last 5% of the game because this is what's holding such a tight grip in my mind currently. An idea started wracking through my brain for a while, but I think its safe to say this last chunk of the game might be up there with Gen V's ending both in terms of just doing something completely different but also just in quality character building, and thank god for that. It'll be a while before I say it's better per se but compared to some of the other game's endings it's a far better conclusion to the usual pokemon format, veering way more into pure Sci-Fi RPG territory and concluding with an excellent final boss.

The current state of the series would have feeling a bit dour about the whole situation, Pokemon was once my favorite series in gaming but its been in a rocky state recently, and for a while it felt like it was drifting further away from what I was hoping the games would be. PLA wasn't going to be the final nail in the coffin but it nearly shut the doors on the franchise for me as it quickly turned into a boring slog of a catching simulator with little else to engage with beyond mediocre plot progression and a few clunky action bosses. Scarlet and Violet might have actually been the final nail in the coffin, and for the first few days it nearly felt hammered in. Those first few hours felt the roughest for sure, not even just performance-wise but just in terms of what I was wanting to do or engage with. But I stuck around and saw the game for what it was worth and was eventually floored by what might be my favorite entry since Gen 5 or at least Gen 7. Prior to my venture into Paldea I was hopeful for but hesitant to find a overworld abound with sidequests and distractions and huge maps to scale and a massive 40-60 hour trek through the map. What I got was half that length and something I was actually missing from the series for a while in worthwhile characters and plot, something I really wasn't expecting considering. Continuing to compare this to PLA (sorry it really is my only point of reference for pokemon in the past 5 years), part of that game's problem in engaging with its new character is how redundant each 'story beat' became as it rarely gave me a real reason to care about anyone in the cast or even try to remember any of their names. I thought the game needed voice acting to recapture my attention but no it also needed better writers because I feel the characterization and overall dialogue is a lot better handled, I actually remember their names and motivations! The games still need some kind of voice acting though, please its 2022. Stop having minor characters with singing/performing cutscenes but no voice acting it just looks embarassing. Of course, an ending doesn't make up for the entirety of a game, one that is a bit lacking in many areas, and flawed in others. Yet, I can't remember the last time I was following a pokemon game and was this pleased by where it ended up. I already hated Pokemon Go by the time LGPE came out so I wasn't too engaged with what it tried to do, most what I hear about SwSh sounds more like a braindead disaster, BDSP look like blatant carbon copies of obsolete Gen 4 titles, Pokemon hasn't really felt gripping in a long time. Here, I can finally say that I'm not only fine with the direction that pokemon's taking but I'm really optimistic as to what comes next. I think even with the immense amount of backlash that's popped up with regards to performance, I don't think it'll be left as a slight on the team's record, but instead I hope that it acts as a wake up call for the teams at Game Freak that the next project gets the extra amount of effort into smoothing a LOT of rough edges before launch. Otherwise it's a marked improvement on a lot of fronts compared to prior games in the series, and in my case stuff that I've actually been missing from Pokemon. Despite it's jank, Scarlet and Violet revives an energy to pokemon I haven't felt in a long time.

Japan OCG: September 2001
NA TCG: February 2003

Formats don't really matter for this game anyway since most of the cards here are just the old stuff under a completely different kind of game, but anyway.

This game is so fucked up, I don't really know how best to go about it. It's probably the best of the non-traditional games so far but it's got some perplexing as hell design decisions and progression. Only did one of the two paths admittedly but I might save the other one for a later date.

Basic rundown is that it's like Yugioh but on a strategy game grid, using the same 'fusing from comboing cards' shenanigans from prior games. Main problem comes from how whack getting a proper deck is, it's very hard to tell whether or not the deck im using actually makes sense or not. The 3 starter decks that are presented to you at the start (still only pick 1 of said 3) is based off the player's name, kinda like DQ1, which is neat. First playthrough i tried this on I got the 'Thunder Nyan Nyan' deck leader, an apparently terrible starting choice and that became all the more apparent during the first battle. Upon a restart, I was presented with the Robotic Knight deck leader, a much stronger starting deck. Even still this game does not hold its punches at the start, as the forest based 'Weevil' insert for the campaign just sends out a bunch of stat-boosted bugs and sits by in the corner waiting for his cocoon to hatch.

And that's the bizarre part of this game. Certain later levels felt like an absolute cakewalk, hell some took about 3-4 turns of just getting to the opponent and walking over their stuff. Primarily, during the Ishizu stage where the arena is covered in water (i.e. aqua monsters gain bonuses, but machines take a debuff) and 'Crush' (any monster over 1500 atk instantly dies) tiles I just trounced her? Whereas Weevil even upon rematching him later to get certain cards from his win drops was still a pain to get through. I guess in general games such as this would be prone to certain decks just having a better time on certain stages than others but Weevil is deceptively difficult in my experience. Secondly, I can't really imagine how obnoxious this might have been had I stuck with that Thunder Nyan Nyan deck.

On top of just how weird the new concept of 'tile based' Yugioh is, there's a few new mechanics tied to this gameplay that are just odd to tackle. Every card has a 'rank' that can be promoted up to Colonel and as a card obtains certain ranks they get better abilities and bonuses to ease things. Problem: I only had like two of my cards ever rank up. My main cards were fine enough as is so I didn't re-fight characters too much outside of a few times I need a particular card from someone. Rex, in contrast to Weevil, was actually pretty tame and got me the dinosaur half of my Machine deck. This culminating to my non-stop barrage of 'Cyber Saurus' which still only got that card ranked up to First Lieutenant. Thankfully if you are having troubles with a deck build it doesnt seem like there's much limit to what passwords you can put in. I did put in one Dark Hole which proved rather useful, otherwise most of what I had was all I needed.

There's some interesting ideas for fights and concepts but it mostly just feels like a really gimmicky and awkward way to combine Yu-Gi-Oh into a strategy game. Certainly a lot better than Dungeon Dice Monster though.

Utilizing the terrain is definitely the neatest part of the tactics, especially once you have terrain cards of your own to even the playing field.

Also goddamn, the soundtrack though? Like Yu-Gi-Oh usually has some pretty good tracks to listen to throughout the series but this might be the best so far, with a good array of great battle themes and 'story' tracks. Banger intro too.

Overall its a neat ass game but it takes some time to get used to how the game expects you to build a deck and also how the AI's behavior works because they can be admittedly pretty stupid.

Technically finished this on Halloween but had to take time to write this.
After nearly a year's worth of time for this game to settle down and other stuff in my personal life to get arranged, I've finally gotten around to beating Elden Ring.
It's a big and somewhat bizarre game to talk about, given its structure and FromSoft's legacy; I'm not entirely sure how I want to go about reviewing the damn thing. After some thinking, I decided I would just go through and talk about each area and my own experience, giving a short summary of how I felt over the course of the entirety of the game, with some brief pauses here and there to sum up certain points. Even just drafting this, this is certainly the longest review I've probably done and it's certainly a bit much for a game I'm certain isn't my game of the year nor my favorite soulsborne but I thought it'd be only fitting.


[LIMGRAVE]
Beginning my adventure, I decided to take up Astrologer as I was interested to see what kind of magic I'd be getting into. I had only seen limited footage of the game prior and my previous experience with Dark Souls was rather magic-less so I figured now was a good time to pick it up. I hadn't expected the prizes and results I would eventually get. Limgrave is an excellent open world to begin with- with several different side paths and distractions to send you in different paths. Personally I remember only having a few hours before work to start my playthrough and my first day was just wandering that coastline and trying to slay a giant that guarded the slope down, all the while seeing others on my timeline at work go east, north, south and what have you. My only issue with Limgrave was that it felt very easy to miss out important items and persons. I'm a bit biased in this regard as Sellen- the only intelligence teacher in this first chunk I nearly missed until my roommate pointed her out. It's a very 'faith' heavy area which is neat but it does feel very odd just how much of it there is out in the field plus Corhyn just being at the Roundtable from the start, I kinda wish the area was more a bit more diverse from the get-go. Thankfully what vendors are available are there, just easy to miss like in my case.
(Weeping)
Intro to the sorta 'off shoot' and optional regions (like dragonbarrows). It's an interesting detour but understably its more of a grinding spot for those that want to take on Stormhill more easily. Can't remember much about the area itself other than the Leonine Misbegotten boss and Runebears.
(Stormgrave)
The first of the games 'Legacy' dungeons, which act as build ups to the game's major bosses, although early on I didn't really appreciate the locale or Godrick nearly as much. I kinda expected each area to be exactly like this, I guess. My own trip through the castle was fine but finding out there were way more hidden areas than I initially realized after the fact was cool. Margit and Godrick make really excellent first 'big' bosses for the player as they relentlessly pummel you if you try to approach them passively. Both of them are very mobile despite their size and their arena's have cliffs on both sides (Godrick's to my chagrin as I told my friend I died multiple times to which he replied "there were cliffs?"). Several months after beating him I had kinda downplayed him in my mind as, again, I kinda figured much of the game would be similar to Godrick and he was just the first of this kind of fight. Going onward in the game and on top of that, rewatching his battle I forgot how sick it is. Margit is cool but mostly just a test to see how well you can manage delays/dodging/varied attacks while testing how well you've grappled with the new mechanics, but Godrick screaming mid-way through the fight only to chop his own arm off and transition to the second phase by grafting a dragon head is a great introduction to just how insane the shard bosses of Elden Ring get.
This was a wonderful first week of the game being out and everyone who wasn't just completely binging it going "did you see the wolfman?" "Oh shit these spells are crazy good!" "Yeah man, this one cave has this really good weapon!". I remember first beating Margit and it was still the first week or so of the game and just seeing this rat race of ghosts get through the Stormveil castle, platforming across the outside of the walls to get into the interior safely. I was wondering just how the game would evolve from here.


[LIURNIA]
(Eastern Liurnia)
Unfortunately this was when I began to fall off at first. I decided to tackle the right half of Lucaria first although in a really eclectic pattern, kept going into the lake area, back onto the rightmost cliffs, back into the lakes. With how open and sparse some of the locations were, I kept kinda wondering what the hell I was doing and how the hell I could get into the Academy in the first place. If 2022 is the year of anything for me (minus the Yugioh resurgence), it was the year of getting real tired of just blindly exploring open world areas. Between Pokemon Legends (and I guess this upcoming one as well), two Xenoblade games and this game, I really can't spend hours on end just combing every inch for whatever potential trinket is out there. So from here on once I got back to the game I figured I'd only chug as much as I needed to tackle the major bosses and characters of the game.
(Raya Lucaria)
Another Legacy Dungeon real early on. This specifically was when I put the game down for most of the year. I managed to first try the Red Wolf boss and I guess I just wanted to ride that high despite not really knowing how other people felt about it difficulty-wise. But, once I picked it back up and beat Rennala I got sucked back into the world. Rennala is a really cool fight, and it really got me to readjust myself to the combat and mechanics to the game. It took me a while to remember that jumping attacks are good and break poise incredibly well. I was wondering what the hell her deal was while beating the first phase but upon seeing that there was a second phase I started getting the vision. The vision that is who the hell thought it was cool for her to summon all those ads. It is cool but as someone getting back in it took me a moment to realize I should ignore those completely to chase Rennala and earn my respec feature.
(Westen Liurnia)
Took on a new strategy of tackling ER, involving the tactic of just ignoring some things and dashing to what looks like dungeons (semi-successfully). Honestly this area seemed somewhat more interesting than the sparse encounters and somewhat odd geography of the eastern section. Might not have Turtle Pope but it does have the four bellfries (although I missed this entirely) and Caria Manor. Caria Manor is a neat mini-dungeon and contains a lot of neat trinkets and a cool fight with Loretta.
It is a bit ironic, maybe hypocritical that I complained earlier about Limgrave's lack of easy to get sorceries outside of Sellen, but then post-Stormveil has Rogier appear in the Hold and Liurnia is chock full of not just sorceries and Int scaling weapons, but armor that facilitates these builds. I did figure this would pique my interest but again it's become very hard for me to really attach myself purely to explorative curiosity, especially when as early as the first few days people catch on to the reuse/templates of off-road dungeons and field 'fortifications' or villages; this kind of realization that kinda kept me tethered to exploring each and every one of these rather than see what the game was mainly offering. I don't know, my process of exploring open worlds is strange- I distinctly remember missing the intended path toward Kakariko Village in BOTW and missing the upgrade korok entirely until the last bit of the game. Here, I recall missing the whetstone knife that is needed to add arts and affinities to weapons until a friend noticed I never got it in the one area that everyone tackled and went to for training in front of those gates. In a sense I do wish it easier to tell when you've 'completed' certain areas and dungeons. After a while it begins to click just when exactly a section will reward you with it's "main" treasure, but early on it just seemed like some areas didnt house the secrets that I assume would be saved for larger dungeons.


[CAELID]
I really wish shit like the chest teleporter was more common. Maybe it is and I just completely skipped much of it but having like a massive trap per region that takes you to an unknown location is super funny. There certainly are more areas later on that utilize the transporters and even a dungeon has several of those trap chests as its gimmick, but some more insane or lucrative/riskier teleports would be fun. Obviously this means my intro to the area was the chest in the dragon-burnt ruins of Limgrave. Only barely explored before beating Rennala, grabbing whatever I saw and immediately I understood the Miyazaki bit of "i can't help myself, the swamps man". It is funny though that the swamp isnt actually all that bad and torrent just lets you run through it.
(The 'dash-through')
Decided to just do a quick runthrough of the area by staying mostly on the main highway and I will say I do like that most of the region's graces are just along that road circling the lake. I figured the dash through would help mediate the 'vibe' i got from other players of how hellish of a place Caelid is, yet it seemed like much of the place was kinda cake. Mostly just needed to not engage with large swathes of the big dogs or birds as multiples of those remain the worst part of the area. Will give props that immediately right of Limgrave is just this hell pit of a location, the first two (three?) places being 'grassy/lakeside/coastal/crags' kinda got old even with how pretty much of the locations are. Caelid being this Blightown 'the area is surrounded by its very own gross filter'.
(Radahn Cake)
It was around this time that I also decided to utilize the re-spec option for ER. Thank god for this, I really don't care for much of the 'dex' options in soulsborne and i figured this would be the time to check it out, turning my Dex points into Str. Whether or not Str ot Dex is better in this game I can't tell ya, but boy do i prefer how it feels. There's nothing more satisfying than just crashing a big hunk of metal over some normal ass dude. This was also around the same time I was told to get the rock spell and boy oh boy is that move good.
This area culminates into a legacy 'event' moment in the form of the Radahn Festival, one of the most hyped and hinted at setpieces in the game as multiple npcs from Alexander to Sellen talk about it. I'm of two mindsets: On one hand they nerfed him so hard. I beat him first try and while I do think I was a bit overleveled I was kinda hoping to fight him a bit more, but I was mostly at a distance seeing my friends pummel him over and over. (Sidenote: bless Patches)
On the other hand, the build up and gimmick of the fight is so unique and the lore behind his existence, being and what happens as he's defeated. Even if I was a bit disappointed by not dying to him, it was a really cool fight and seeing the stars return from his grip felt super satisfying.
(Dragonsbarrow)
That dead dragon with the hundreds of thousands of runes is super funny. That's about all I remember from this area. These mini-areas are super strange with regards to what I should be doing there. Weeping makes a bit of sense given Stormveil is a bit of a spike in difficulty, meanwhile dragonsbarrow I don't know what you do here other than see Gurranq, kill a rune-filled dragon and get the soreseal. (Set-up...)


[Underground Ranni Rivers Sidequest]
(Ainsel alien ant farm boogaloo)
Repeatedly throughout this first half of the game several elevators take you to the bottom half of the world map, several mini river regions that mostly serve as Ranni's sidequest, these are neat little side areas that remind me of some of the later Bloodborne areas. Those ants arent too bad but man do I hate how they look. Thankfully nowhere near as terrifying as Cazadores. Can't remember much about what I was actually trying to get here but the Dragonkin wasn't too hard.
(Siofra and Nokron minotaur)
I got really lost in Siofra trying to light the torches, idk what they were cooking. However, getting back here after several tens of levels only to completely floor the two bosses of Siofra was funny.
After being Radahn and getting to the newly made crater in Limgrave, it was time to explore Nokron. Nokron having an extreme Oolacile vibe at the start is really cool, and getting through the area was pretty alright with a cool Mimic Tear miniboss and another Minotaur/Ancestor Spirit section like Siofra. But then those Gargoyles man. Fuck that Gargoyle boss and everything surrounding it. I don't know why most of the comments I saw about the recommended level was 70 or so and that it should be tackled at all at that point in the sidequest. It seems way more tailored for whenever you want to access the Deeproot Depths later in the game. Otherwise you have to deal with this obnoxious as hell duo fight where both of them start vomiting poison all over the arena and swinging these huge ass hitboxes. This was easily one of the hardest fights for me (Godskin Duo and Crucible Duo be damned) and I don't know if it was my build or my strategy but it really isn't worth doing this fight until way later.
To a certain extent there is no RECOMMENDED level for most of the game outside of whatever you can reasonably kill without wasting several resources. Something I didn't need to think about too often but this more than any other Soulsborne is very lenient with how you progress through the game. Maybe not nearly as open as BOTW but very close considering the few world-state changes and multiple detours around certain dungeons. This is really nice, although I didn't really need to do so as much of the game was actually fairly tame difficulty curve wise. Anyway all you really have to do is u-turn when you get access to the aqueduct and find the ledge that leads to Nokron, which is a neat area full of the silver tears.
(Return to Ainsel and Lost Izal- Lake of Rot)
Honestly despite the kinda obtuseness of the Ranni quest (if I didn't realize/know through osmosis that much of the Ranni quest was based off the river areas I prolly would have saved this until whenever I'd remember they existed), it's pretty fulfilling to have an actual character act as a companion down this section of the river. This whole segment of returning back down to a different section of the rivers and these underground cities but having a mini Ranni to talk to at Sites of Grace makes me wish more of the game had these kinds of companions per area. Ranni getting kinda heated and going "Fine. Fine!.. If you want to know.." when you pry a bit into wanting to learn more about her and her plan is really refreshing compared to the typical souls npc 'cold/aloof/mysterious' act you'd come to expect. Later in the game, Melina does appear more at graces as you close in on the end, which is nice but I kinda wish more of the cast showed up at graces specifically, like a camp chat. I think these games do a good job at having interesting characters but ER specifically has this much more involved and honestly more intriguing cast than the other soulsbornes i've played or seen. All the more it is very funny getting to the end and realizing "oh [spoiler] is kinda going through a cuck thing".
Going down to the Lake of Rot is uhhhhhh.
Man, I have no idea who thought it was a good idea to have a Dragonkin Soldier fight in the middle of a lake of debuff. Otherwise the area isn't too long at least, just gotta deathrun most of the area and not pay too much attention to those insect things at the end. Ansel is a really cool fight though.
Finishing the Ranni sidequest out is very sweet and I wish there was one or two other characters with as detailed a sidequest as this but c'est la vie. Not that I mind much, I obtained the Dark Moon Greatsword and basically pieced together the final parts to my build.

[Random notes intermission]
-Do wish there was a 'new items' menu or indicator.
-The map isn't terrible but sometimes it's very hard to distinguish what direction I'm actually able to go in.
-Some of the overworld music can get kinda grating after a bit
-When people at the start said 'take notes' I didn't quite understand and stopped a few days in. Then I went back to see Miriel only for him to talk about 'Radagon's secret' 70 hours prior and I was like ohhhhhh
-I don't know how they would convey this but i wish it was clearer to determine what attack is what element. These elemental defenses matter about as much as they do in Monster Hunter but if I die to a yellow breath attack, I'd like to know whether my fire defense or my holy defense was the issue or if the breaths are just that strong because good lord.
-I might be a bit worn out of the side dungeons and a lot REALLY like to reuse ideas or assets or bosses, but there are some that like to twist things up in minor details. I did really appreciate the dungeon that opened up into a room that previewed a passage from a later dungeon, more stuff like that would have been neat.
-Along with that note, stonesword keys are a very strange currency to keep track of and determine value of. You end up having quite a few just leftover not even because they want to make sure you can do everything but it feels more like I just stopped caring when i did see stonesword imps



[Altus Plateau]
Again, neat enough location but I think it's just too similar to the grassy, mountainous, ravaged areas akin to Limgrave. At least the lighting change makes itself stand apart from limgrave but with all the lightning in some areas I think it would have been neat if the area was overcast and stormy most of the time. Also not helped that outside of a few encounters most of the enemies feel too samey. Wormfaces are neat. Honestly don't have much else to say as it kinda just feels like Limgrave 1.5. I guess the main thing I got from this area was understanding just how overleveled and overpowering much of the stuff I had was.
(Mt. Gelmir)
In contrast, despite how treacherous the terrain and scaling gets I found myself quite enjoying the Mt. Gelmir area. It does reuse a bunch of enemies and there was one preview of a later enemy that I wish was more prevalent in this area, that being the 'Prelate'. I was kinda hoping most of the enemies would be these kinda fire spewing warriors but nah they get saved toward the end of the game sadly. Hi, Patches!
(Volcano Manor)
Really enjoy the more 'gimmicky' aspects to these legacy dungeons, it reminds me of how different Paper Mario chapters would take on different structures, odd of comparison as that may seem.
Once you finally discover the backroom and enter the actual dungeon its a pretty fun romp across several rooftops and dark passages, with a layer of flowing lava throughout. These early Godskin bosses are fucked up though.
Rya is queen.


[Leyndell]
Neat. More grassy- OOooh never mind. The outer ring of the capital certainly seems more in line with what the Altus Plateau dished out but a lot of other factors begin to converge, Margit shows back up, a lot of prior bosses stop having 'boss' lifebars and are just normal enemies now, and certain plot elements feel as though they begin to converge finally.
(Capital)
This is the part of the game where your mount, Torrent, start's showing up less and less and its a real shame. Obviously much of the game's layouts would be broken if you could just ride around and jump over most of the geometry but it's a large and complex area and I do wish much of it was traversable on horseback. Even if Sellia isn't a 'dungeon' it was nice being able to use Torrent just to jump from building to building. This doesn't feel like a dungeon that much so I think it would have been perfectly fine for most of the outside areas to just be Torrent-summonable. Maybe it was hard to program? Dunno. Neat little evolution on the Anor Londo vibes though.
(Sewers)
Leyndall is fine but uggggggggghhhhh this was getting real obnoxious. In hindsight it's not too bad of an area all things considered but those Revenant dudes are a real pain in the ass. It is very funny that Dung Eater is guarded by a bunch of obnoxious enemies and whenever you meet up with him to give him Seedbed Curses you just torture him. Very fun to do, especially after killing my shrimpin pal. Otherwise it's another souls sewer level. At least this version Mohg was a breeze.
(The throne)
Back to the top the only thing that remained was Godfrey and Morgott. That Torrent thing from earlier is just as bad now since I had to go back and forth a bunch for that Goldmask/Corhyn stuff. At least Godfrey was a joke and admittedly, so was Morgott. This was when I was really getting desperate to get through this as fast as possible as I was nearing my self-determined deadline (before October ended) and thus my strategy became Mimic Tear + Comet Azur for a day or two. This shit is too much. I cannot fathom who in their right mind at From Soft thought it was a good idea to just have a kamehameha, a 10 second 'free fp' buff and a cloning tool just free to use during any boss but I must say it was very funny at least. Shame that Morgott died so fast but I think it's funnier that my man's spent so much time and effort seething only to get melted.


[Snowy north]
(Moutaintops)
It was around this time that much of the game started to catch back up to me, these last few sections don't hold back when it comes to certain enemies and segments. I was also getting uhhhh more desperate and decided just to skip certain sections, bosses and dungeons entirely. I at least made an effort to get the plat and fight most bosses I come across. Most being an odd term as my decision making process sometimes gets confused and decided to fight the obnoxious as hell Death-Rite Bird but not the 16th dragon I've seen all game. Commander Niall and his fort is neat, but very odd. I never did look into his lore nor do I really care to but I do enjoy his kind of 'lemme just summon MY guys' fights. Otherwise not much else to tackle through the Mountaintops until Fire Giant.
(The other two shardbearers and other two underground areas)
Rykard: Because of the Volcano Manor's structure its recommended to do this once finishing the last assassination in the mountaintops, so im getting around to this now. This was such a cool fight. Again, I think most of the legacy dungeon boss fights are really strong but this is probably my favorite. It's a sick fight where you're required to use the Serpent Killer spear that shoots thrusts of winds while circling the giant serpent. It's not too hard and maybe a bit gimmicky but with how unique it felt by this point I was completely down for it. Also really enjoyed seeing the post-Rykard Tanith bit, what the fuck.
Deeproot Depths: This is such a funny area. I wasn't sure when to tackle this given how much I didn't like the gargoyle fight, but I decided to finish this place and as it turned out it was actually quite tame (minus a crucible knight and a runebear). Not much goes on other than that one side cave with the 5 Ant Queens that just serve to give you the uber-runes that leveled me up like 3 times. Fia's Champions are a funny fight as is that dragon (This was when the comet azur bit really felt like too much so I toned down around here).
Mohgwyn and Palace: Honestly I expected worse with this region but it was actually pretty cool- just don't engage with birds nor skeletons. Although the actual 'palace' part of it is super short I did like traversing the dark cavern and beating the shit out of Varre for fucking up my fingers and calling me bitchless. Mohg is also an extremely fun fight, with a similar 'Margit shackle' situation that's a bit iffy if you didn't go down into the sewers of Leyndall, but Mohg himself commands a lot of cool blood and gravity attacks. Him shouting "Nihil! Nihil! Nihil!" and wiping away my health only for me to continue bonking him in his motionless state was very satisfying. Also very funny that he gets owned in front of the comatose malewife he kidnapped.
(Consecrated Snowfield): Technically entered here before getting to Mohgwyn since the teleporter is here but I figured I'd talk about this after that. Basically more of the mountaintops but more fucky. The first bit is this dungeon with an invisible floor to drop down on and tough tiny dudes the first chunk of the outdoors section is covered in a thick blizzard and the last chunk is a puzzle 'town' with the river 'light the torch' bit but with invisible assassins stalking you down throughout and archers on the rooftops. Thankfully the torches don't die out.


[FINALE]
(Haligtree)
Across the final weekend of October would be my final binge of the goddamn game and there was a lot to cover within such a timeframe, even though there were only a few sections left. I had some of the hardest bosses ahead of me and two major locations to still comb over. Firstly was the Haligtree. This place reeks of Dark Souls design doc, almost to a disgusting tee. This place knows it houses the hardest boss in the game and won't allow you to just waltz right in. The trumpeters from the capital are actually aggroing to you, several enemies are reused from prior areas, there's long stretches of powerful enemies atop complex geometry and layouts, tree branch platforming, trudging through swamps... actually this place does feel like more of an evolution of Lost Izalith than the Lake of Rot bit I made earlier. Even has a section where you have to help a long ongoing NPC questline meet its conclusion but thankfully this isn't anywhere near as rough (even if the opponents you fight are relentless, you just need Millicent to go ham on them and distract the others). At the very least it's a lot prettier of a locale than Lost Izalith ever could be. It was all in all a very funny showcase of the game to show my roommate who had not progressed to this area yet and vaguely knew what all it had in store (iirc he left off in the Snowfields by the time I reached here) and to his girlfriend who was visiting for the weekend (who iirc hadn't played this game). By the time they had left to run errands and spend time to themselves I was progressing further down to...
...Malenia. I have no right to talk about this fight tbh. I got through this in perhaps the worst way one could possibly imagine. Firstly, I actually did pretty well on my second attempt, getting her down to the second phase and some damage before eventually dying. Then a while passes and I get no other progress and decide "you know what? I've never summoned through multiplayer before". Does this end well? Ehhhh, results are mixed. Malenia is an incredibly tough fight and one that I think will be a bane for this build of mine for time to come. It took me a while to realize that shields honestly don't make that much of a difference in some fights (as we get to later) compared to good movement but I really didn't have any plans to switch to something more evasive all the sudden. Also it took me way too long to realize I never did get bloodhound step (...and Punchline). Eventually I did pair up with another jolly cooperator and we do pretty well throughout phase one- when suddenly, Malenia staggers. First phase is near death and I go in to attack. My pal is right beside me and I believe he was going at it to also close the phase off. Screen goes black and it seems as though we're going to phase 2. And yet... her health bar isn't at halfway like usual. It's actually empty, i'm a bit stunned but she's still active, needing just ONE attack to finish her off. Either I go in or my buddy, but sure enough she falls. Bless that fellow comrade in putting this nightmare to rest. We take those.
Now this is gonna sound really absurd and preachy coming from a guy that beat her in the stupidest way possible but also I just don't think its that good of a fight. She's strong. REAL strong. Her lore is cool and she's been built up since the very beginning as this absolute monster of a fight. But...she's honestly not as cool or satisfying as I would have liked. Much of her moveset are these super swift, super strong attacks But there's also so many unique and interesting new movesets or tricks to the other big bosses of the game that Malenia doesn't quite reach. Her second phase is cool (but I guess I barely experienced it) but other than that dive bomb of hers and the bird move (which overstays its welcome after the 10th death) its kinda just a basic fight but she hits strong. Rennala's a great magic/puzzle-y fight with these summons and tricky spells, Godrick's mid-fight roar + self-amputation + dragon graft is a sick as hell phase transition, Rykard and Mohg are these absolute monstrosities of characters and fights with unique counters to their strategy, Radahn is this massive set piece with a sick raid fight and a cool, meaningful resolution when you beat him and the stars are freed from his grasp, Morgott exists. But getting to Malenia and finally beating her I was just kinda like, yeah that was funny and unintentional but i dont know if intentionally beating her would have been more satisfying. For a boss that was hyped up as heavily as her I was kinda just left wishing it was a cooler fight rather than the toughest fight. Maria from Bloodborne I think better fills the vibe as the tough as nails, swift, blood-poison (fire?) fight. I spent way more time malding and getting mad at Maria than Malenia, but I can at least say I felt as though I learned Maria's fight. Additionally, once I learned the parry timing I was absolutely styling on her, which felt much more rewarding. Malenia just has a bunch of too strong, too long moves and an obnoxious health regen gimmick that makes the fight overstay its welcome.
(Fire Giant)
I almost forgot this. Cool fight but laughably easy after Malenia. RIP to two real ones during this section.
(Farum Azula)
Gonna be honest, this zone is really cool looking but big shame its also confusing as all hell to traverse at times. It is really cool that this place has basically been hinted at all game and you see bits here and there about the place, from the Beastman literally in one of the first Limgrave caves to the Belfries portal in Liurnia. It's not the toughest place but it does have some oddities to its design that make it feel more in-line with prior soulsbornes. Primarily neither of the bosses here have Stakes for some reason? Honestly this area wouldn't have felt too bad if I didn't have to run back to the boss each time. Maliketh's isn't too bad, just a bit of a walk. Placid Suck though? Man that was obnoxious, having to take the elevator, send it back up, fall all the way down then do the lying down animation, skip the cutscene was just pretty tedious. Like removing that last part would even be nice. Also feels bad just becuase the boss itself is hard so there's that lmao. Also shoutout to the weird bug where if your bag is full but you beat Bernharl you don't get all of his stuff including the legendary armament. I was really mad when this happened but upon booting up a new game plus to kick his ass in Limgrave I put away some stuff in my box just in case my inventory was still full or something and upon mashing the X button the achievement just popped up? Like I didn't even see the Scepter or whatever I needed from him but sure enough I got the plat. I wish I had more to say about the two bosses here but I was so tired of dragons at this point I didn't think too much outside of wanting to beat him (he's the best one in the game at least) and Maliketh wasn't too bad in my run but I really enjoyed the fight.
(Leyndall again but fucked up)
Still no horse, why? I don't know. There's not much else so by this point I was just beelining to the end.
Hoarah Loux might be the coolest thing I've seen in the soulsborne franchise. I haven't played much of the series but a grappler??? Holy fuck even in death it was so sick seeing this guy go.

And finally, the final boss. Somehow my karma for cheesing much of the game's prior bosses has caught up as I'm stunlocked by Radagon/Elden Beast. Primarily the latter, but because you have to fight both of them sequentially it makes Radagon seem that much harder (beat him my second time but would die several times after). Elden Beast on the other hand turned into a nightmare and I truly don't know how. I guess in general the much 'bigger' bosses have been the biggest pain in this playthrough, from the Gargoyles, the Deathbirds, the Dragons and now this. Im not entirely sure how but something about those holy attacks just sliced through my health like it was nothing. Most of the Elden Beast's attacks are fine but those sword beams it attempts at far distances just two shot me.
It was also at this point I realized just how much of my build was kind of restricting me- one fight before the end of the game. I never did get that bloodhound step, and the more I fought this guy the more I realized I needed a better dodge- not a better shield. During a break in my time between trying out the boss for an hour and the following day I had taken notes in an attempt to soften the blows of these two as they had scared me like no other boss prior. What if I couldn't get it done before my deadline? What if I got stunlocked endlessly for hours on end? How was this so hard? I'm pretty overleveled all things considered. And that's the enigma that is Elden Ring. There's so much variation between builds, experiences, play styles, journeys that people will have vastly differing experiences no matter what. The amount of boss encounters here that have been hyped up for being the most difficult thing in the game, Godskin Duo, Radahn, Mohg, Malekith, Morgott, Loretta (2nd), Hoarah Loux, Fire Giant- had been proven to be quite tame with my build, overall thorough exploring and level beefing, yet the final two have left me in quite a predicament.
Again, perhaps this serves as some kind of divine karma as I attempted to break this game over my knee as a means to get through it as fast yet somewhat thoroughly as possible before the year ends, and so I can move on to other games I need to beat before then. But Radagon has other plans. As I type this out even, I am actually at work bored and without any other tasks, still drafting parts of this review -anxious to get back to the arena and test out my new strategies and plans to finally put the game to rest. Although I am a bit saddened that there was still a lot of side content and build potential that I missed out on. I kinda wish I had changed my build once to try out more of the faith or arcane stuff that I wasn't able to properly utilize. Or some of the other moves or Ashes of War that I never fully checked out. The Dark Moon Greatsword is certainly amazing, I'm never gonna deny that now- and mimic tear is an amazingly busted tear that can tank much of anything and having double the frost weapon is stupidly strong. Using the Jellyfish shield is also quite good, but stronger bosses require you to be more mobile than tanky. Comet Azur is also quite the beast, but when aimed poorly it's often punished by something like Radagon's backhand. Sometimes the best stratagem against a tough opponent just requires some thinking outside the box much like in that Magma Wrym became somewhat easier once my camera was off his ass...camera. CAMERA. So upon this realization I figured the final piece of the puzzle had finally fallen into place. The terrible lock on-

Actually I just needed to switch to rock sling.

Took a few tries but that beast did go down, thanks to a lucky moment where it remained in one place attacking my clone and I could focus on beaming its health down as well. I guess my sword having only a D physical scaling was a bit of a hindrance, once rock sling came into play the dps started to make sense. Also really good since the tracking on those is funny as hell, several times the beast would start flying away and the rocks would just 180 and chase it down.

At the end of the day I do think Elden Ring is still very messy in a few places, all too common to make this feel like an absolute masterpiece immediately despite its ambition. Yet, I can’t remain too contrarian to be completely honest as I am left pretty stunned at just how much From Soft has attempted to not only combine but intensify the best and worst elements of prior games (the worst elements not being extremely bad but…yknow). It’s still a bit in the air as to how I’ll feel about this game since there’s clearly going to be at least one expansion but all things considered I’m glad I chugged and got through this. Fairly certain this is my favorite ‘vanilla’ release of a fromsoft game.

I saw credits. I can't really believe that I saw credits I didn't think the game would just end on that I figured the shit everyone and their mother spoiled was gonna be it but nah. I'll count it as far as 2021 progress goes. I'm pretty disappointed overall, although I know I've still got some extra content left.
Initially when the game came out I was pretty floored just by the premise alone, and it is a really cool one if you're hooked from the start and love collecting pokemon. But for me it just felt like a waste of several upon several hours that became less enjoyable overtime. If I knew any better I would have just bee-lined the story with little attempt to grind pokedex progress. A good chunk of my time just went into wanting to see what kinda team I'd want by the end but looking back I have no idea why I bothered. There's like 15 battles total and only...2? had any kinda difficulty. I guess you have the alpha pokemon as well but like, just avoid that stuff? Come back 20 levels later and rinse them? Yeah sure whatever. Alpha pokemon don't feel too hard either, the game is just weird feeling enough (I'm trying really hard to be nice here) that it feels challenging. Even when you send out your pokemon it's just as simple as ever.
It's weird controls, focus on catching over battling, and other odd changes to the overall formula were already off-putting and maybe I could have kept interest but it really comes down to the story progression. They NEEEED voice actors man, and if they can't get that then either hire better writers or better scene direction or fucking anything. Hell just get someone to smack whoever's idea it was to have like every major chapter cap off at that fucking mochi place. Pokemon has had its flops of stories here and there, and I wouldn't call this one immediately terrible compared to like, X but it's just not engaging until the last chunk. They needed better ways to cap off chapters or engage the player in the mysteries of this place but it just feels like a repeating loop of these speckles of "man, pokemon are cool!" with absolutely zero conflict.
What conflict is present are these constant engagements with pokemon that you probably don't even need to bother with. Earthbound was so progressive for its time...Why the fuck are shinx still trying to attack me at level 10 when I'm like carrying these titans of metaphysical concepts? I get this has been the thing since ever, but like pokemon after a certain rank/level don't just become disinterested with you?
It sucks too because I was actually really positive up until the halfway point, but it just goes nowhere. I can't believe how bored I got over a game that's attempts to build up the lore about one of my most played childhood games. Some of it is certainly there, especially near the end but it made up maybe an hour or two of my 50 hour playtime. It sucks too because despite it's Sinnoh roots I didn't feel much of a nostalgia rush other than maybe the start and entering Mt.Coronet near the end and hearing that theme remixed (for like 20 seconds).
There's a lot of cool QoL here but for each positive change I question why there weren't other things like, a minimap? I played Xenoblade 2 a few weeks after starting this and despite that game's map not being the best it at least had one. Also why is the bag so obnoxious in this game? Just give me like quests that upgrade my bag or some shit I'm tired of talking to this dude for days on end only to continue to fill my bag up with worthless shit.
I'm still the least bit positive because it is a really interesting take on the franchise and there's little bits and pieces of neat ideas. It was always nice to just send out my pokemon and see how my pokemon were growing and seeing them interact in little ways. Also while I didn't do much of the quests it is neat seeing the pokemon that I've interacted with in village quests just hangin around town. I just really wished the actual cycle of each area was better organized. It's not like Zelda where after the plateau you're given your assignment and left off to your own devices to explore to your heart's content. It's not like Elden Ring where the game's immense lore and tendency to sucker punch the player with weird twists, turns and encounters leaves players with a unique story. Hell, its not even like SMTV where you've refined the mechanics after several iterations just to add it to the current trend of these massive open world (segmented or realized), even if that means sacrificing a bit of the typical character or story beats of prior games. It's just an odd, messy attempt at leap to the massive overworld stage, whose substance really didn't stick after the 50% mark. I'll probably get back to it some time but not before the end of the year at least.

Japan OCG: July 2002
NA TCG: Late 2003

Quick rant:
The timeline for Yu-Gi-Oh! games is so fucked up. This is considered Duel Monsters Expert 7 in japan but the prior game I reviewed was considered Expert 5. Not only this, but when Expert 5 got remade in North America, it was an entirely new game just for the NA market, but the two can be considered parallels of sorts. HOWEVER, Expert 6 is a game released in Japan, but YGO: 'Stairway to the Destined Duel' exists not as the parallel to that, but as another game in all markets, considered Expert International. It feels like how Pokemon went from Red/Green to Blue and then to Yellow but in NA its just Red/Blue then Yellow but without the 'English' source code localization reasoning. I raise this issue up as going by the North American release schedule I would have actually played Stairway before this (actually I would have played Duelist of the roses, but hardware/skill issue) but when quickly charting out my play schedule I was going by the japanese release dates of some of these so my intended system going ahead is kinda fucky, rip.

In the long run it doesn't entirely matter anyway, most of these games don't translate as well onto a roadmap of the actual card game meta's history, and this game doesn't help after playing Eternal Duelist Soul.

What strategy and deckbuilding ideas I had fun formulating by the end of EDS basically never popped up throughout the quick jaunt this was. Dark Duel Stories was a game I only briefly talked about comparatively and that's because it was overall too grindy and samey for me to really want to engage with. Here, there's at least enough of a new and interesting enough premise to keep with the program until the end. Unfortunate for this game as I'll harp on for longer about how obnoxious some of the format rules and mindless the strategizing becomes.

Similar to DDS, Sacred Cards is reliant upon the format of an exactly 40 card deck with a cards being chosen on a 'deck cost' limit. Each card has a specific cost and you can only add said based on your 'duelist level', with stronger cards having higher levels and costs. The deck limit and duelist level are increased as you battle of course, but there entails the first problem, these two aren't exactly proportionally rewarded. To put this into perspective, by the 3/4ths part of the game I could fit most anything into the deck level-wise but basically nothing would fit because the deck limit was so tiny. By the end of the game I maybe had 5 cards with an attack above 1500 attack? Its not like most of this matters as a bunch of cards are given nonsense effects because the simplicity of the game doesn't mesh with the actual tcg. No flip summoning, chaining effects, spell speeds, coin flips, you can only have 5 cards in hand, even fusing is gone. Not even the mechanic from DDS/FM, just the whole concept is gone (rituals though!!!(?)).

This whole structure would mean I would have to get pretty creative to make decks by the endgame however right? Of course not, there's about 4 different variations of trap hole that are cheap as fuck for some reason, meaning if you have 3 copies of acid trap hole basically anything your opponent drops dies. There's a bunch of these cards and they just serve to clear up your opponents board while you send out 900 atk nothings to chip away their LP.

Also returning from DDS is the attribute weakness chart to varying degrees of apathy. There's a few times where matches begin with a preset field and you would want to alter your deck to suit the field and take advantage of your opponent's weakness but I considered this maybe twice.

The story follows the Duelist City arc like most things in the Duel Monsters era, but this is the first time we get to control a player going from area to area. There's nothing too special here outside of its crude animations/attempts to mirror the events of the anime. I got lost a few times trying to figure out how to progress the story.

The two saving graces that allowed me to complete this game over DDS and FM are as follows. Firstly, unlike DDS this game's structure isn't as mind-numbing, as it is fairly neat to walk around and engage with an actual story. Secondly, there's a card shop so you aren't 100% reliant on ante card rewards. This also adds to the trivialization of the game but I won't complain.

I would be easier on this game but man there wasn't a whole lot to really sink my teeth into. Hell, the Yugipedia article on the game spends a whole paragraph in its opening summary about how you can't use Winged Dragon of Ra because the game does the whole 'don't return you to the menu or let you play freely' bit and you just stay stuck on the credit screen. While I didn't feel the need to beat Forbidden Memories it had immense vibes and a lot of neat feature for the time that would have kept me busy if I had kept it longer as a kid. Once you beat Marik in this game there's nothing else to go off of, no way to just keep battling or reward. It's just a really big step down engagement-wise (also visually, this game looks really clunky) from Eternal Duelist Soul. But hey, it introduced the RPG element in the family of Yugioh games for later games to iterate on, so that's neat.

Japan OCG: May 2001
NA TCG: Late 2002 with some Sprinking of LoN 2003 cards
(Imperial Format)

With the prior two games (im barely thinking about Dungeon Dice Monsters), I found myself interested but ultimately whelmed by the lack of engaging playstyles or cards to work with. What are rather interesting perspectives and introductions to the Yugioh card game don't entirely add up to accurate or fulfilling matches but instead grindfests with a snappy soundtrack. Thankfully by the end of the first year of Yugioh's introduction into the west, fans would be given a chance to play with a GBA simulator of the game, an English 'remake' of Duel Monsters 5: Expert 1 in Japan.
Finally, some good ass Yu-Gi-Oh.

The game plays similarly to Dark Duel Stories, being a 5-duelist 'wave' format, where upon beating each duelist of a wave a certain amount of times unlocks the next tier of hardened duelists from the YGO anime (two wins each, incrementing by one each tier). Thankfully this game does a lot more to substantiate a still early and juvenile format of the card game.
For starters: its actually extremely accurate to the actual format and rulings of the trading card game! Hallelujah. Chains, different spell and trap types, effect monsters, an actual backrow, tribute summons, etc. are actually represented in their purest state. The game isn't without its rulings glitches and mishaps, but its pretty damn close.

Additionally all of these actual mechanics can be felt from the very get-go. Tristan Taylor and Tea Gardner aren't just complete jobbers and will draw good cards. My eyes did bug out a bit upon seeing the ladder drop Gemini Elf, the single strongest vanilla monster at this point in the format. But they'll also drop mystical elves and graceful charities and man, does that remind me: the card pool in this game.

From here regarding later games I might review, I'm uncertain how in depth I'll go into them since early YGO games can get samey, some games might just be 'Its Eternal Duelist Soul' but in March 2003 or w/e format. I'm incredibly worried as to how interesting the GX games will be to talk about, now knowing how middling much of the meta for that was. Thankfully early Yugioh was broad and stupid enough to have incredibly powerful cards around almost each corner. In the prior two games it didn't seem like you had any chance whatsoever to engage with the truly powerful cards as those game's progression systems and mechanics didn't reflect how you would actually play Yugioh in real life. Thankfully two major changes added much to the depth of this:
1) One pack, every duel, 5 cards each. Also after so many matches you can get 'Weekly' magazine packs and tournament packs to add to your repertoire
2) The introduction of cards from the later OCG, or in the west Magic Ruler.
Tracking the release of cards within the Japanese 'OCG' compared to the North American TCG is somewhat nutty, for example 'Jinzo' as a card wasn't released in the TCG until Dec. of 2002, but was included in Dark Duel Stories, Dungeon Dice Monsters and this game prior to its release due to it being a card from 1999 in the OCG. It's why my header above mentions 'sprinklings' as cards like Gemini Elf didn't hit global TCG release until half a year later. The format minutiae is somewhat intriguing to... mostly myself, but its important to note as the prior two battling games either didn't have much of these cards, they were so hard to get due to the grindfest, or just weren't worth bothering with compared to beatdown strats.
It is so satisfying playing a game with:
The Forceful Sentry, White Magical Hat, Waboku, the Jars, Change of Heart, Confiscation, Delinquent Duo, Giant Trunade, Graceful Charity, Snatch Steal, Harpie's Feather Duster, etc. all in like, actual full force.
White Magical Hat is the funniest card and going through this game with even a single copy makes this so much more of a treat than anything so far. Being able to snatch steal an enemy's monster, swords of revealing for stun and attack with white magical hat to discard an opponent's card from hand is the most satisfying experience.
The only awkward part of collecting these cards is that it's incredibly unbalanced. You get card packs over time, many of which mirror real life (japanese) card pools, but its hard to figure out which cards are in what without a guide and a good chunk are duds. It is super fun coming up with strats prior to getting super broken cards, and I even had a Chain Energy/Toll burn strat going at some point, but it's best if you just look to see what packs contain what. Also, many of the card packs require a lot of battling of a random duelist to unlock. I'd say this is really just the game for a young aspirational duelist with a bunch of free time to get through these on weekends or after school, rather than someone going through these games on a whim like myself. But also some of these grindier packs are just not worth the grind (Celtic Guardian as a secret rare for beating Yugi 20 times? really?).
Also while the AI's do have really cool decks and can often put you into trouble, a bit of their 'cheating' nature does shine through near the end. But even weirder is how stupid the AI tends to be? Painful Choice is a funny card to include against computers. 'Pick 5 cards from your deck, show them to your opponent and they can choose 1 for you to draw to your hand. You discard the rest into the graveyard, shuffle your deck'. This card is already incredibly broken but the amount of times my opponent just picked the best card for me to have felt really funny, like yeah ill take that Change of Heart over the Rush Recklessly, thanks Bakura. It is a shame that the opponent kinda 'knows' when you have a Wall of Illusion and they won't bother attacking it because they know they can't kill it and they'll be set back on field advantage, but its not the biggest deal.

My only other complaint -and maybe this will be remedied by the later 'RPG'-ish titles- but it is really plain. I'm not sure at this point if im a big fan of the just standard 'fight this duelist X times' formula, even if its inoffensive.

Overall this is the game I recommend most to anyone that just wants to know the basics of Yugioh, no link summons/pendulums/hand traps/etc involved. Upon looking at Duel Monsters 5 I did wish the west received that game's 'D-Tactics' feature which helped explain some of the game's mechanics as I think that would also help to better explain some of the mechanics and stratagem at this point in the meta. But even without that function this acts so well as a simulator that just basic understanding of the game is all you need for the first two tiers. Really fun game, just really vanilla.

It’s a bit hard to fully divulge my feelings about AI: Nirvana Initiative at the moment, even after a few days of having beaten it (Only just platted it earlier today). What I can say is that this is without a doubt a worthy sequel to the first game, illuminating issues I didn’t think about in the first game and just expanding upon the already intriguing concept.

It’s a hard one to talk about especially as, admittedly, I wasn’t too sure how to feel during the game’s first half. It certainly feels slower and it becomes noticeable how much more linear the story goes this time, as you don’t have a major split down the path like in the first game. Thankfully, much of the set up in this first half isn’t the pseudo-science that had to be explained. Rather much of the early game diatribes actually hone in on the games’ philosophical or thematic beats (i.e. Uchikoshi’s wikipedia spiel on what he learned about buddhism and simulation theory). Unfortunately, going through the first half begins to feel much more like learning certain half-information about the games’ “HB case”. Not to say these bits of info are entirely useless. Upon finishing the game in its entirety does it become apparent how meaningful some of the hints dropped throughout the first half are, it's just a matter of dealing with some of the vague details of the case.

To make up for this slower pace, we start the game with Ryuki, an entirely new character to the series, and a pretty interesting protagonist overall and the result of Yusuke Kozaki’s horny imagination gone rampant, Tama. Shelve the horny though, Tama’s actually pretty fun and her relationship with Ryuki throughout the first half is great. For the second half, playing as Mizuki is also quite the joy even if she isn’t too different from how she was in the first game. Similar to Ryuki, her banter with Aiba is also a joy and it's fun to see the similarities and differences to when Aiba was in Date’s skull.

Much of the first game’s cast returns and some of them kinda just run their same schtick or run a new bit this time around, but to make up for this we have tons of new characters and much of them are enjoyable or (intentionally) despicable. Some of them kinda run the same bit over time but where I think they shine compared to other characters in the first game is that most of them actually have an arc. AI 1’s cast is great but the game itself plays out more like a standard mystery but with branching paths that drop major clues by the end of most of them. Most of the cast throughout doesn’t have much room to develop outside of a handful, the rest kind of just serve their role. AI:NI rather has much of its new additions be the subject to character flaws, traumas, conflicts and relations to explore via the psyncs. Speaking of, I think the psyncs throughout are a massive jump in quality compared to the first. The first’s are pretty fine but much of the second game’s have new gimmicks or neater setups to differentiate them, and they usually have a much better time developing and reaching conclusions for these characters. The first had a couple of stinkers and a few that are just okay, but it was hard to think of my least favorite in this game. Even the more time/action intensive somniums have neater gimmicks to differentiate between them (I keep forgetting how many somniums in the first game are set in the same abandoned factory).

Also I do have to give props to both the cutscene and music direction, I feel like the atmosphere is much stronger for whatever ‘beat’ the game is going for at the time than in the first game. It still has its cheap quality (the ending video played at an extremely lower quality than the rest of the game for me) but this still remains a really great looking game and much of the game’s higher quality cutscenes and somniums are filled with memorable moments. Although admittedly, as much as I like the game’s music it does tend to lull me into a trance during certain investigation segments.

Lastly, I’ll say that the game’s final chunk up and throughout the last bit and into some of the post-game ‘secret hunting’ did a lot in kinda wrapping my opinions as I was going down the game’s trophies. It was already a good expansion on the first game but the last chunk really sealed my liking for this game a good bit more. It might take a bit for me to decide whether this is an all time favorite or not but I'm glad that despite the initial slog I thought the game was going through, it actually ties up pretty well. It’s still Uchikoshi at his hackiest, and there’s a lot of eye-rolling at where the plot gets taken. There’s still way too much horniness and terrible, terrible jokes (even more courtesy of there being a terrible comedian character, Komeji). But this definitely stands as a worthy successor to what I previously called Uchikoshi and his team’s best work.

Rest in Peace, Kazuki Takahashi

Was planning to save logging this until a little later, maybe after the first year anniversary but I figured it was as good as ever to write up some thoughts about Master Duel and, in particular, how it led me to rediscovering my love of the card game.

Prior to me downloading it, I had only ever played the card game via Dark Duel Stories, Forbidden Memories, a few casual battles i played as a kid, one GBA game I downloaded a rom of and a bit of Duel Links which is a different, speedier format from the norm.

Needless to say, much of my enjoyment in getting back into Yugioh through my college years came solely from the anime rather than the actual card game. I kinda assumed if you missed out on years of TCG history it'd be a pain to catch up so I never bothered until Master Duel. Even downloading this was basically a whim as I saw there was a free bonus for psplus owners on 50 tickets (these end up sucking), I figured I might as well check this out in case I was interested at a later date.

Upon doing the tutorials the game just bombards you with a deluge of gems and it was easy to get suckered in from there. This on top of the mobile version coming out a week or so afterward meant that I'd be spending most of my downtime at work (and admittedly time i was working) on this app.

What kept me hooked was doing the other solo training tutorials and learning the few summoning mechanics i had not yet understood. All this time I thought XYZs and Links were this extra layer of nonsense and yet they end up just being these pretty cool mechanics that are pretty easy to combo/integrate into a deck, it felt super rewarding finally understanding what these meant (pendulums are still weird). The solo decks/campaigns are also a nice touch as they give you a good look at the various legacy archetypes and also fuses some of these stories with other similar archetypes, like a loaner deck with a mix of Gladiator Beasts and Tri-Brigades.

This also being based on the OCG (Yugioh's 'Asian territories' division as opposed to the western TCG formats) makes this an interesting game as you run into cards that are banned or more limited than western tournament play. I'd be lying if I didn't say I love the Maxx "C" mindgames.

The look and music to the game are also extremely appreciated. As the battlefield become more destroyed as a sides' life points drop, both players have a little buddy that cheers them on (thanks sangan), various key monsters upon summon will play a summon cut-in with high-res animated/tweened art of the monster...and the current track playing shifts into a much more upbeat version of the song. Yasunori Nishiki did an excellent job with the dueling music, as each theme puts me in the mood to duel and as the battle progresses the theme gets tenser and tenser.

The game does need a lot to integrate a lot more modes/formats that anybody can try out on a whim. Right now its just ranked modes, solo campaigns and the monthly 'event' formats. While I dont have too much problems with ranked (admittedly im not good enough to stick around platinum or higher for too long), I do wish there was a format/mode better suited for decks i build that I know aren't suited for meta specifically. There's also a lot of bot problems that arise every now and then, which always ruins the mood.

All in all this is the best official simulation of the game currently and even with its F2P/MTX nonsense and meta-power creep shenanigans, ive been putting a lot of time into this as a downtime game. You do get a ton of gems at the start but I do wish getting the optimal 1000 was a bit easier as dailies are kinda lackluster. Not helped by the fact there's a ton of different archetypes I want to check out. Been mostly using plant archetypes and Harpies but I've been wanting to check out Spyrals, Darklords, Toads, Burning Abyss, Marincess, The Weather, way too many archetypes.

I think the moment everything started to click and I began to fall in love with the game was upon building my Rikka deck. A waifu deck certainly, but as this 'secret' card pack was one of the first to appear for my account I thought I'd try it out since it looked more unique at first glance. As it turned out they weren't half bad- but not meta shattering, which fits into my playstyle just fine. What really made me fall in love was running into intimidating boss monsters with effects like 'Cannot be destroyed by battle or card effect' or 'Cannot be targeted', etc. As it turns out Rikka's have a lot of effects that wipe monsters off the board but their effect text specifies Tributing rather than destroying monsters. This one difference means the difference as cards like 'Rikka Flurries' mean once I tribute a monster from my side of the field (easily done with this archeype's playstyle), I can activate Flurries to have my opponent 'tribute' a monster of their own choice. This card isnt OP and can be countered fairly easily, but its those loopholes and combos in card effects that make this game that much more engaging to me.

I'm hoping Konami does a lot more to fix some of its rewarding issues, expand its format options and do a lot more to encourage unique deck building, as I've had a blast returning to the card game through this.

Completed this a few days before posting this review, as I wanted to sit and think about this before making a definitive opinion as it was weird heading into this game. As a whole its the (mainline) Yakuza game I've heard the least about aside from the PS2 versions of 1 and 2, and also the one arguably considered the weakest by most fans. Contrary to this my friend circle has lauded this entry with praise, considering this one of the strongest in the series.
The gamut of opinions I've heard about Yakuza 3 runs fairly wide, and on a base level I can understand how weird of a game it might feel compared to the other entries and the remakes. Yet I kept getting engrossed in the spirit of Yakuza, just the general enjoyment of walking around the hub and helping out the townsfolk. Upon thinking about how this compares to other entries I've played, it also crossed my mind that I didn't have as many hurdles or hang-ups that I had with the two Kiwami games. Both of these are enjoyable in their own rights but the remakes still have some echoes of their original selves that tended to trip up my engagement with them.
On the other hand, this is without a doubt the most distinct Yakuza i've played and that actually ties into my personal engagement to the game. The midpoint of the story was about where I kinda blurring together story beats and I didnt nearly care much about anything but the story, although hanging with Rikiya is a cool bit. Okinawa on the other hand is an incredibly nice change of pace though, and while it's a lot slower at points I really enjoyed 'dad'-Kiryu caring for the orphans and just helping around. Kiryu learning about and getting to know the local culture, the Ryudo family, and just learning how to take care of several children was such a good departure from the last few RGG games I've played.
'SOUL' is kind of a meme word at this point and is way too vague for the sake of a review, yet the atmosphere of Yakuza 3 and the kind of story it's trying to tell by the games final few chapters feels a lot more heartfelt, and I think that's resonated a bit more to me than the earlier two (if we talk the remakes) did. To the point in which we see Kiryu actually begin to ugly cry over a character's death (one I was surprisingly not spoiled on), I was kinda surprised throughout the game that people were as divisive on this as they were.
Obviously, this does have a much weirder feel than pretty much every other accessible Yakuza. Combat involves a lot of enemies that constantly block, Kiryu runs like a man on a mission and a lot of the physics in minigames are janky as hell (heaviest bowling pins known to man). Yet it was funny to adapt to this and kinda just take the game for what it was at the time of its original release.
I also wanna give props to the music. Yakuza games are never usually lacking in the sound department but there are some super great tracks throughout, Bruise probably being my favorite Yakuza battle theme so far, and Y3 also uses my favorite kind of musical trope for a final boss/segment in a game, elevating that whole sequence in ways I didn't expect. Hell, even the title theme gets some extra love as it changes after a cleared save which I thought was sick.
Don't have much else to say and I'll probably go back at some point to finish up a lot of the side stuff I glossed over. Really great cast, incredible vibes, super different story, good music and just a really unique departure from most of the yakuza games I've played up until now.

Won't say too much about this as there's a lot of spoiler stuff I'd rather not get into even with the spoiler warning tag but easily the best work of Uchikoshi's, not even close.

I enjoyed 999 and I can kinda understand why people enjoy VLR (personally I didn't) but I think this is a far stronger cast and story he's put out than any of the Nonary games. On top of that I didn't hate nearly any of the 'Somnium' sections of the game as opposed to some of the nonary games' puzzle rooms which I thought were pretty hit or miss.

Its still an Uchikoshi game at heart so its filled to the brim with contrived/stupid plot points, characters and jokes but I think it's tied together by writing that takes its time more often to actually develop said characters meaningfully. I liked quite a bit of the nonary characters through and through but if I had to be honest there's only a handful that I truly cared about or enjoyed thoroughly. Like comparing Date to Junpei doesn't feel too fair because Date has way more time to talk about his shenanigans/vices/bits than Junpei can being in a sinking ship, but ultimately that's why AI is gonna stick harder in my head than most of the nonary titles. There's way more down time for a good chunk of the cast to actually get thoughts out and talk about their lives and role in the greater narrative ̶r̶a̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶e̶r̶r̶u̶p̶t̶ ̶m̶e̶ ̶a̶b̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶h̶o̶w̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶g̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶a̶n̶g̶e̶n̶t̶i̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶r̶e̶l̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶m̶e̶t̶a̶p̶h̶y̶s̶i̶c̶a̶l̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶c̶e̶p̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶u̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶r̶y̶ ̶f̶u̶c̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶v̶i̶s̶u̶a̶l̶ ̶n̶o̶v̶e̶l̶ ̶k̶n̶o̶w̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶m̶a̶n̶ ̶y̶e̶t̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶b̶a̶r̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶r̶e̶l̶e̶v̶a̶n̶t̶ ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶s̶o̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶a̶c̶t̶u̶a̶l̶ ̶g̶o̶d̶d̶a̶m̶n̶ ̶p̶l̶o̶t̶. Hell even the corny jokes hit harder as the game goes along since you revisit locations constantly and there's usually a few running gags that felt rewarding to see each time they changed the flavor text.

Date and his gang are an enjoyably obnoxious mix of cringe and stupid non-jokes that I honestly can't help but love. Aiba and Mizuki are extremely good foils for Date's cringe/perverted/dad-joke tangents, and Iris is pretty good at deflecting these as well during her route.

Somnium sections are alright although I do think the """time limit""" they impose, while not too bad, does hamper enjoyment. There's times I know one option might lead to funny bit/flavor text, but I don't have much time on the clock to waste on them. Thankfully its easy to super speed through dialogue/scenes you've already seen but I wish you could explore somniums more thoroughly without worrying about spending too much time.

I think the best thing I can about AI is that when I finished 999 and got partways into VLR I started thinking they could have just stopped at 999 and it would have felt stronger (hell if VLR was stand alone i feel like it could have been better). In contrast, I feel as though AI is not only a breath of fresh air for Uchikoshi's style of writing but also has a world/cast that's more ready for a sequel. Incredibly excited to see what Nirvana Initiative brings.