I don't think it would be inaccurate to call AER "yet another Journey-like"; it's another atmospheric adventure game that instead of focusing on "fun" gameplay mechanics or the open world formula of side-questing + collecting, simply sets you on your path and encourages you to explore the world around you, complete with minimalist graphics and an often somber yet contemplative soundtrack. The flying controls feel great as you soar across this ruined civilization marked with rubble, ghosts, and decay. Where I think the game falls flat when compared to Journey and ABZU is both the telling of its story and its fundamental temple zones; the story is told with a lot more dialogue and reading than Journey (which I find to be a bit unnecessary when the atmosphere of the longing for the past tells more than enough), and the temple zones require a fair bit of 3D platforming, which I would say is passable but not great because the carried aerial momentum of your basic jump is fairly noticeable and can definitely mess up your platforming. Otherwise, AER has some very cool ideas and tends to execute its airs of nostalgia and solitude quite well, but it can feel a bit droll at times and tends to take time away from what it excels in for more generic fare; it's still worth a look if you're into Journey-likes, but for anyone else, you may find it quite middle of the road.

Prince of Persia The Lost Crown was somehow my first ever experience with the series. I know that this is the only 2d Metroidvania, which is my second favorite genre, but if the other games are anywhere as interesting or as well made as this entry I am itching to dig further into the series.

Sargon is an excellent protagonist and easily the most likable of the immortals. His movement, upgrades, battle abilities everything just feels extremely smooth and leaves every moment a joy to play through. The gameplay is something I can easily point to and recommend for the reason to play this game. I also thought the difficulty was perfect. There are parts that will really test you without being overly difficult but nothing in this game just comes easy either. I feel Ubisoft hit the perfect sweet spot for difficulty here.

You can see they really put in a lot of work studying the greats. The sprawling map riddled with secrets, the potential for sequence breaks, the ahh hah moment when you get an upgrade that will let you solve something that was stored in the back of your mind that you couldn’t get to earlier. The game borrows heavily from Hollow Knight with the wak wak trees being Hollow knights bench, your amulets being Hollow Knights charms, the fighting is definitely different but strangle feels similar, and select special abilities when you have enough ather or in Hollow Knights case souls. The movement however feels like they were very inspired by the Ori series. I don’t want to spoil anything but it truely feels like Ori once you get your last movement ability.

The story is good not great. Many of the turns I felt coming a mile away but it was still enjoyable and a good story. I like that they give you bits and pieces of peoples backstory and the lord through items and tablets and such through the game.

My only two issues are I feel they didn’t explore the immortals more in the beginning which hurts your ability to care for them more which hurts by lessening the things that happen to them through out the story. If we would have grown to love them some story beats would have hit so much better. The second is I encountered several bugs. One where the game just froze when talking to someone costing me progress, one where I went out of bounds through a floor and ended up on the other side of the map, and most importantly one of the side quest is bugged and there is a good chance you get locked out of it causing you to miss 100% and some items as well as a trophy for doing all side quests. Ubisoft does apparently know about this as it is a big across all platforms and is supposed to be getting patched out. If it wasn’t for these two things I would have given this a 5 star rating and I’m sure one of those will be fixed with patches relatively soon.

At the end of the day this game deserves to have its name mentioned amongst the titans of genre: Metroid, Castlevania, Hollow Knight, and Ori. It deserves your attention and is an extremely easy game for me to recommend to any type of gamer. I hope this game get the attention it deserves so we can see more Prince of Persia metroidvanias.

Hey it made my top 100 list:

https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/my-favorite-100-video-game-of-all-time/

And here is where it ranks amongst games I’ve played so far this year.

https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/games-i-played-in-2024-ranked-1/

So…I’ve been putting off this review for a while, it’s mainly because I’ve been afraid, afraid that I’m gonna fuck this review up somehow. But it’s time I face my fears and finally returned to review this game and finish the 90’s sonic games. When it comes to Sonic Adventure 2, I’ve always preferred the original, however I’ve had a slight soft spot for this game and that’s why it has a similar score to SA1. So let’s get into it and see what I can say about a very loved sonic game.

We have quite a few new characters, mainly shadow and rouge. The story is split into the hero and dark sides though they all culminate with the same end. Basically eggman finds that his grandad left him a secret weapon named shadow, who is a hedgehog just like sonic. So him and eggman decide to find all the chaos emerald to conquer the world, with rouge joining later as she secretly works for the government. Later it all culminates in the ark where we find out shadow was doing all this naughty shit because of a girl he used to know, named Maria, told him to help mankind yet he interpreted it differently. Basically getting it completely confused and almost completely obliterating Maria’s wishes. So him and sonic defeat the finalhazard and that’s the end of that for now. And there was a lot of piss on the moon.

In terms of gameplay, it’s similar-ish to sonic adventure 1 with a few very clear differences. The structure is much more linear and follows a straight path. Instead of getting to choose characters, you’ll simply go from one level where you play as someone like sonic and then move onto another with playing as knuckles or someone. After every level as well you are forced to be into the chao garden which I’ll talk about a little bit later. The level types as well are mainly inspired by sa1 or at least the better level types. The sonic levels and knuckle levels made it over and the gamma levels somehow made it through though a little modified to make it fit with tails and eggman’s levels.

The chao garden also makes a return. We have 3 gardens actually: the neutral garden, the hero garden, and the dark garden with the latter two being unlocked after raising a hero and dark chao. you basically just raise the chao like you did in the last game. Raise the insufferable, puny, disgusting, cute, adorable, funny, little guys.

The music is also absolutely brilliant. Crush 40 return to do their work on the game and this is probably the only part of the game which I believe completely outshines the last. The music is phenomenal in every single way. I did like how sa1’s ost did have neat callbacks to the older sonic games, especially sonic cd, but this soundtrack is just absolutely exceptional. If anyone hates city escape then you clearly are just hating for the sake of it.

Unfortunately, after sonic adventure 2 released, it was soon announced that the Dreamcast would be discontinued and Sega would end up becoming a third party publisher. So sonic adventure 2 ended up being the end of an era, one full of lots and lots of creativity and experimentation. Even though later games would also experiment I felt that it was a lot more grounded through the Sega genesis (mega drive) era to the Dreamcast era. So with that, it ends my talk on some of the main sonic games for now. But who knows, maybe I will talk about 06…nah.

Great story, decent characters, excellent music, chao return, how do you like that Obama?

Ah,Celeste, how much I missed being so bad at playing you...

The fact this was developed in little over a week makes me think that the team at Maddy Makes Games, on top of being masters at design, are capable of bending time and space. Fragments of the Mountain puts a beautiful bow tie to what was already an amazing 2D platformer and an outstanding story, a little treat that feels reminiscent of low poly platformers and the original Celeste itself.

Seeing this collection of memories of the mountain in 3D warms my heart and playing through this sort of open little world —that in retrospect really reminds me of the archipelagos in Bowser's Fury or if all of the Bowser Stages were placed around Tall Tall Mountain from Super Mario 64— is the definition of a blast. Madeline's move set lends itself perfectly to 3D, and even some new tricks are added that fit perfectly and really open up the potential for shmoving. Like yeah, going through the challenges normally is super fun, but it's even more fun to do a little bit of level-skipping and getting a strawberry you REALLY weren't supposed to, if a 3D platformer has those kinds of moments, then you know it's good...

Even at 64 too bits the challenge still feels the same, which at some points it can go a little bit against it since the control never feels as precise as its 2D counterpart, and as much as I love the tape levels and their Mario Sunchine sounding-ass theme, it sometimes feels like you either get the exact angle with the camera you need, or youa re completely screwed... wait a minute... it's exactly like Sunshine now that I think about it!

But what Fragments of the Mountain also has is the heart; never mind how lovably goofy Madeline and the rest of the returning cast look, but the dialogue (which to be honest I didn't expect to be any going in) between these lovable figments, the amazing Lena Raine's OST that brings me back to a childhood I never had and what's possibly the single most adorable Special Thanks section I've seen in my entire life make Celeste 64 far more than a simple tribute, and while it also isn't a full continuation, is amazing endnote that I hope to see one day followed up, and I'd love to see more of this tridimensional small world.

I got my ass kicked, yes, but I welcome it, it's good to have one last little adventure collecting strawberries, flying through feathers and collecting cassette tapes; it's a good final farewell to this mountain, before moving on...

An amazingly put together platformer. This game would be near impossible if they weren’t so generous with checkpoint. But because of these check points it makes tha game go from near impossible to a hard but fair and fun platformer. The story paralleling your trek up the mountain with Madeline’s inner struggle was a nice story. This isn’t going to be a game for everyone due to it’s difficulty but as long as you ok with trial and error and failing until getting better at the game you are in for an excellent time.

If you were to ask a random person in the street which is the best 2D platformer they played in the past years, they will ask you what the fuck are you even talking about, but if you asked the same question to someone that knows a bit about videogames, most people now-a-days will probably point to Celeste, and how not to.

Celeste is so well designed it's scary, every single part of the levels, whether main or secret, is tuned to absolute perfection; everything new is introduced and taught at a perfect pace, you first encounter a cool new mechanic and you think ''Oh, this is cool'' and then BOOM you find yourself flying across the levels, thinking ''Oh wait I may be able to do this'' and you do it and you can, it's a game that makes you be creative and think about the ways you can defeat the level, and that's thanks to the fact that Madeline's base move-set is everything you need: jump, climbing, and a dash, with this three things, the game goes ballistic without never forgetting that core gameplay, which is something that cannot be said about a lot of other games.

And yes, Celeste is hard, VERY hard, in my first playthrough I died about 4,000 times, far more than with other games, so why then while playing, for example, Super Meat Boy I was as rabid as hell, but with Celeste I barely had any stressful moments?

The answer is in how the games presents itself, which is, for a lack of a better word, ''chill'' (no pun intended). Celeste is beautiful, both in looks and sound; it's pixel art it's marvelous, everything looks stylized to the extreme, and that simplistic look helps the game both in how it looks AND in gameplay. And the sound it's almost otherworldly, every sound effect is feels right, recognizable and submerges you even more in this little world, and the soundtrack is honest to god one of the best I've ever heard, period, every song is both memorable and it fits well with each moment, it can be calm, upbeat, oppressive, sad and victorious to a range that's fantastic.

In contrast to all of this, the game's story themes are very heavy, and it doesn't shy away of that. Depression and a sensation of lack of self-worth is what envelopes the game as a whole, but in the end I didn't found myself tearing up sadness, but of joy. Madeline's adventure is one of acceptance of a part that we don't want, of accepting the fact that yes, we may not always succeed, we may sometimes fuck up, but that is a truth that we must accept, and once we do that, we will be able to come up top; this is not the first game to tackle this type of themes, but it was one of the first to tackle it this well both in its story and in gameplay.

I did get mad and stressed ta few times during my time with Celeste, but all of them could be considered my fault. The game really brings home the final idea of doing things at your own pace, the sections where you have to go truly fast and few and far between, respawning is fast as hell and it gives you all the options needed to make this climbing as hard or as easy as you want to. It lets you be you, and never looks down nor up on you for it, it simply has a ton of respect for the player as much as the player has for Madeline.

Celeste is not perfect, some of the side content is really whacky to say the least and what it demands of you to reach the final base levels is sometimes exaggerated, and I'll admit some parts of some base levels are not all winners, but that just pales in comparison with the sheer magnitude of the rest of the game. This may not be my favorite 2D platformer ever, but it has some of my favorite moments, this is truly a piece of art worth to be celebrated, and its message almost everyone will found a lesson to be taught, a reason to keep climb.

Just... don't overdo yourself, ok?

Be seeing ya.

At the request of Enix of America, Actraiser 2 ditches its predecessor's careful intertwining of genres to only include the platformer segments, and aside from being super devoid and hollow in comparison, it's also somehow so, so much worse to play. The Master is so fucking slow this time that a wooden crate could beat him in a footrace, and combined with bulky enemies flat out spammed across every level it makes for one of the most miserable platformers I've sat through.

There may be strong graphics and presentation but there is not a moment of enjoyment to be found here for the whole runtime. It's certainly no affront to humanity or anything, but as such a bitterly disappointing sequel it would probably be better off not existing.

I came to a realization that through my goals for 2023, that I only really wanted to play DMC5 instead of the entire series. Unlike my recent trek through the God of War series, I've actually played this series extensively except for this entry. So my excitement for playing this game just took over to skipping 3-DMC.

While this is the best the series has been yet. There are still some personal flaws I didn't enjoy while playing. I did not like the changes to Nero. The Devil Breaker arms and systems, while cool, didn't feel good to me. I hated the finite charges, and having to unlock on to an enemy to oftentimes miss your DB ability annoyed me to ultimately not diving deeper into the system and working it into my combos.

V is another sore spot for me. Claw gripping to read, use all the summons, and actively dodge and lock on was not fun at all. I didn't feel like I was actually hitting or even in combat a lot of the time. I loathed the few boss fights he had, as I could see them being better with another character.

Dante is the best he's ever been. Every weapon is fun to use, Every style is fun to use. Every mission that I played with him reminded me why I love this series so much. That, and the fact that the story went exactly where I thought it was going to go. I enjoyed every second that Dante and the gang were on screen fighting against the obvious antagonist.

Though I can say I was kinda let down. I'm glad I played it. I was just expecting more. Initially, those expectations were met, but my personal dislike for certain play styles just overrode that. The good thing is now that I've beaten it, I can go back through with my two favorite characters, Dante and Virgil.

Dracula, my friend, we sure are in quite the predicament; not only I’ve already defeated you three times each in different games, but it seems that you are quite the persistent rapscallion, and I need you to put you back together just to beat you yet again. Certainly an odd yet pretty fucking funny dance to have… but let’s make it memorable, shall we?

The first Castlevania is pretty straightforward in every sense of the word, a simple tale of a Vampire Killer that goes to Dracula’s lair to defeat him and free the land of Transylvania of its influence, and as many turns and ups and downs as that seemingly never-ending castle had, it still was a linear platformer. If that game attempted to realize a legend or a short myth made NES game, then this follow up tries to do the same for a full-fledged odyssey or saga, but even putting it that way makes it seem lesser than it really is, because in an era in which a surprising amount of sequels were already trying to differentiate themselves from their past outings, Simon’s Quest entirety identity and fundamental design, from the most visible of level lay-outs to the most hidden of secrets, revolves entirely around making Simon’s sad quest for what should have been his highest accomplishment a reality, no matter the cost.

I’ve never felt so conflicted about a game this much since… ever, now that I think about it; I struggle to point out parts of it that I truly enjoyed without also noticing stuff that irks me, I cannot mention definitive flaws without acknowledging that those manage to find some ways to work I adore, it’s a work I value, but also one I can’t really say for sure I enjoyed experiencing, and I cannot promise that I would have come out of this with my sanity intact if I didn’t use certain guides. Castlevania II is a game so unfathomably different to its original, so incomprehensibly ambitious, that I do not know if this is the result of an excellently creative mind or a completely mad one… perhaps both at the same time…

I think the subtitle of Simon’s Quest is the single most simple yet fitting string of words you could ever use to describe this, a true quest across the land of Transylvania with it’s riddles, monsters, secrets, weak to holy water walls and a mysterious ferryman that only brings you to were you need to go if you show him a heart and kneel, with it’s the single most metal thing I’ve ever seen in a NES game now that I think about it but I digress. The entirety of Transylvania is within a grey cartridge and the y and x axis, and it feels real, it shouldn’t, but it does: plagued by sessions changing between screens to make enemies respawn so you can farm hearts, the most of obscure and random of artificial steps you need to take so the game has mercy on your poor soul and lets you proceed, 2 feet deep lakes that immediately kill you unless you have a stone in hand so that the screen can move a bit down; all of this can be found in Simon’s Quest, and it’s as frustrating and mind numbingly complicated as it sounds, it’s not fun, but it somehow feels real.

Arriving at a town bathed in pale moonlight, a town with name and a place, you fight wraiths and dark spirits after the relief of the first sun rays of the dawn, which dissipate the evil for fleeting moments, letting the city breath in peace for the remaining of the day; the townsfolk mutter slowly, yet it feels too fast, to complicated to begin to understand it, others have very few to say, others sell, trade, and in some city even lie to you or spat out completely meaningless words, but after resting in the church (if you are lucky enough to encounter one), you leave once again, to the forests, depths and cemeteries of Transylvania, traversing terra ignota until you energy doesn’t let you act carelessly; perhaps you’ll get to another town, maybe you found the locations of one of the mansions, or maybe the night surrounds you once again, your enemies stronger and fiercer than before, and the only thing you can do is push forward. This, this right here, moments like these are were Simon’s quest has true meaning: the process of finding treasures and items that make you feel as if you were evolving, understanding the tricks and nonsense of Dracula’s curse in your favor, falling from invisible blocks time and time again but learning from it and getting stronger, beat the many mansions and getting Dracula’s remains thanks to the stakes and your own wit that has gotten you this far, and seeing the people of this land scream to you to get out of their town and how you made everything worse as you approach the remains of what was once the count’s Castle. In those moments where the game taps into the fullest potential of this open adventure, asking you to learn from it or fail, that is when Castlevania II achieves utter excellence… but by that you’d have to ignore pretty much everything else.

Beyond the occasional but very impactful slow-downs or the extremely samey aspect between pretty much every area, mansion and town besides the color palette, which are things that can be justified by how this is a entire open interconnected word running on a NinToaster (I had to throw out an AVGN reference at some point), Simon’s Quest fails in ways that put into jeopardy the very nature it tries to pursue. The design of the landscapes and dungeons themselves lack any of the intrigue and interesting architecture that the original had, and interesting enemy behavior has been thrown out the window in favor of different variables in the ways some approach you; bosses especially seem to have lost all the will to live despite never staying dead, and you know something’s up when that damage you more if you touch them than by their actual attacks, Dracula himself seems like the exception of all of this and the actual most challenging part of the adventure… until you start wailing on him… and you keep stunning him… and he just doesn’t move…. and the battle ends and you win… yeah… Simon’s Quest doesn’t really create challenge through interesting and complicated sections or enemy placement, but rather through endurance, how much patience you have to tackle the same enemies over and over again, how much you can you put up with ledge-jump after ledge-jump, with the only thing changing until the very end and in some very specific rooms being the damage you need to deal to defeat the enemies. The tricks of this land start to grow old and tired after a certain point, and those that don’t are to cryptic to discover them in the first place; I maintain that Transylvania feels real, yes, but does so while going through great lengths to sacrifice every possible aspect that could make it more engaging or fascinating to play beyond the base level, Simon’s Quest exists mostly to itself, but also for its torment, for Simon’s, for ours.

Simon’s Quest aimed for the stars and didn’t land among them, but it also didn’t quite miss, it’s out there, somewhere, occupying a weird space which can be both loved or hated, and in some cases both at the same time. I couldn’t end this review in good conscience without pointing out the many outstanding write-ups that many amazing people have done over here; Vee’s and poyfuh’s are outstanding analysis that value Simon’s Quest in a new light, while others like Kempocat’s view the reasons why the game fails while also recognizing its victories, and these are only a few examples, I’m beyond sure that this page is full of incredible analysis that bring new light to this game, each in a different way. I do no think there’ll ever be a point of consensus surrounding Simon’s Quest, nor I think I want it to, the passage of time has allowed the game to have more and more voices defending it, while others only see it as a mess speaking in moon runes (and rightfully so), and then there’s people kind of stuck in the middle, which I’m part of and I’m sure there are more like me that feel about this one similar to me, and maybe, by managing to create so many perspectives surrounding it, having so many possible interpretations and ways to see a game in which the characters only have one text-box of space to rely weird-ass info, maybe in a way, Castlevania II succeeds, and no matter what else could I say, both negative and even positive, I could never take that victory from it, and I’m so glad it has it…

… tho the endings being decided by how long you take to beat the game is weird as hell, like, ‘’Simon died because of his wounds after the battle’’, what are you talking about? I stun-locked the bastard with the golden knife for the entirety of the fight, the motherfucker didn’t even touch me!! What are you even on abou-

There seems to be a prevailing expectation that as games evolved, they also became exponentially more approachable. Higher budgets resulted in smoother graphics and fewer bugs. More complex controls (adding left/right triggers, then adding one/two joysticks, then dabbling with motion inputs, etc) gave players a firmer grasp over their characters. AI became more predictable as their algorithms became more intricate to capture a wider range of responses. In a sense, as the technology expanded, the resulting products seemingly became more streamlined to better suit the player’s needs while more thoroughly capturing a developer’s vision.

Team Ico has never been about following tradition, however. If anything, the evolution of their titles embodies the regression of player control, choosing to instead utilize technological advancements not just to refine its premise via "design by subtraction" as chump has pointed out, but to deliver an entirely new experience altogether. Ico was a classic tale of boy meets girl; the girl had to be freed from her cage and pulled around the castle, as the boy protected her against everything in her way to prevent her demise. Shadow of the Colossus, however, was a story concerned with the struggle over control. The lone wanderer, in his quest to revive Mono, hunts down various several-story colossi capable of swatting him about like a fly. In the resulting desperate dance of death, he at first struggles to climb their hulking figures, hanging on for dear life until he discovers their weak points and stabs the colossi while they helplessly flail about. In other words, it's a game about trying to regain any semblance of control until you realize after the fact that the only shadow left was the literal shadow cast by Wander over their fallen corpse.

The Last Guardian then, can be thought of as the natural evolution of Team Ico titles, in that it melds previous design sensibilities and thrives off of disempowering the player throughout its entirety. Trico, the player’s companion and a cross between cat and bird, is essentially the analog to Wander’s horse in Shadow of the Colossus, Agro. Fumito Ueda designed Agro as a companion rather than just a vehicle, and had his team develop specific movement algorithms that would allow Agro to steer herself without the player’s explicit control, forcing players to put their trust in their steed during certain fights emphasizing bow aiming. Ueda and his new team at GenDesign iterated upon this idea, explicitly creating environments where the player was forced to rely upon Trico’s actions to progress and thus establish dependency between the boy and his companion.

While the game can be thought of as an inversion of Ico in this sense, its design influence upon The Last Guardian should not go overlooked, particularly in how the game captures Ico’s physicality. Ico’s key strength was establishing a sense of presence through minimalist puzzles that lacked overly gamey elements, namely in how Ico interacted with his surroundings. Players are subtly guided into climbing chains, pulling levers, sitting on stone sofas to save, and most importantly, holding down R1 to hold Yorda by the hand around the castle and pull her out of danger whenever captured. The Last Guardian innovates upon this by combining several of the traversable elements and the companion into one. To better navigate the vast ruins, the boy must guide Trico and utilize their tall body of climbable feathers in order to scale heights, while occasionally dragging around their large tail and dangling it over ledges to safely climb down. Most importantly, you get to pet Trico whenever you feel like it to comfort your friend in both their happiest and most emotionally taxing moments. In both Ico and The Last Guardian, the player’s constant contact with both the environment and their companion keeps them firmly rooted within its constructed sense of reality by regularly reminding them of their companion’s physical presence.

This physicality would not be as significant without the lessons learned from Shadow of the Colossus however, not just regarding AI behavior but also specifically in how it adapts the game’s sense of scale. Trico is large, and the boy is small. As mentioned previously, Trico can utilize their size to lean against walls and give the boy a step up, but they can also utilize their weight to hold down large chains and swipe away at imposing bodies of armor. Meanwhile, the boy is much more agile and can fit into otherwise inaccessible small spaces by Trico, squeezing through narrow tunnels and gaps in metal gates to pull switches and let his partner through. This obvious difference in size creates consistent room for contrast, not just in how the two characters differ in terms of functionality but also in terms of their scale when measured against the traversed liminal spaces of the ruins, constantly transforming from immense empty rooms to constrained and suffocating tunnels and corridors.

What is particularly interesting is not just The Last Guardian’s disempowerment or sense of scale, but rather what it manages to achieve with said elements and the resulting contrast to establish interdependency between the two characters and solidify their relationship. The combat, an almost complete inverse of Ico’s combat, is the most obvious example. Rather than defending Yorda by whacking shadow enemies with a stick, the roles have been reversed, in that the player must rely upon Trico to guard against scores of possessed armor as to avoid getting kidnapped himself. Even so, the game plays around with this idea of vulnerability, shifting the onus of responsibility about as the boy often finds himself in positions where he must actively support or protect Trico, such as disposing of glass eyes that scare his friend or scrambling to pull a nearby switch to lower a bridge and give Trico room to climb up to safety. The game is even willing to occasionally break its own rules to demonstrate how this sense of caring evolves past its defined guidelines. In almost any other game, this mechanical inconsistency would be regarded as a flaw, but it is this sense of doubt that creates room for the relationship to build from in the first place, and is perhaps the game’s most understated strength.

This is not to say that The Last Guardian was bereft of limitations regarding the execution of its ambitious scope. The most pressing challenge that Ueda and his team faced was how to balance its constructed sense of reality with regards to player expectations; that is, it had to find meaningful ways to commit to its vision of establishing the relationship between the boy and Trico while also acknowledging and appeasing players that would otherwise get lost or frustrated. Perhaps the most obvious downgrade from Ico is the presence of constant button prompts appearing on-screen to alert the players on how to better control the boy and instruct Trico; while the frequency of the prompts lessens over time, it is a slight disappointment that the game doesn’t simply force the players to experiment with inputs and commands as a more subtle and trusting substitute. This downfall however, is an anomaly amongst The Last Guardian’s other shortcomings, as it manages to successfully disguise many of its other concessions and limitations. There’s a classic “escape from the collapsing structure” sequence where all you do is hold forward and jump, but the game gets away with it because the player is used to being framed as a helpless participant. There’s occasional voice-over dialogue hints whenever the player has been stuck for a while in the same area, but it feels far less intrusive than Dormin’s repeated and booming hints in Shadow of the Colossus because the game has already established itself as a retrospective re-telling from the now grown boy’s point of view. Trico doesn’t respond immediately to the boy’s commands when being told where to go, but it makes sense that they wouldn’t function like clockwork and would need time to spot and process the situation from their own point of view, so the lag in response feels justified. It doesn’t matter that certain isolated elements of the game would crumble under scrutiny. What matters is that the situational context to allow players to suspend their disbelief is almost always present; in other words, the illusion holds up.

I’m still learning more about the game to this day. There are so many little details that I wouldn’t have spotted upon a first playthrough, and it’s an absolute joy finally getting to gush upon spotting them in replays. Of course it makes sense that you can’t just issue specific commands to Trico at the very start as a sequence-break despite not being taught by the game; after all, Trico hasn’t had time to observe you and mimic your actions to carry out such commands. Of course the hostile creatures that look exactly like your friend behave similarly; how can you then use your preconceived knowledge of their physiology to aid your friend in a fight against their copycat? I also can’t help but appreciate how GenDesign condensed so much learning within its introduction; in the first ten minutes alone, you’re hinted on how to later deal with the bodies of armor (the magical runes that appear before waking up are the exact same as the runes that appear when grabbed, and are dispelled in the same manner of furiously mashing buttons), you get to figure out how Trico’s eyes change colors depending upon whether they’re mesmerized or hostile, and it quickly establishes the premise of building up trust with a very wary creature that’s more than likely to misunderstand or ignore you at first. Combine all of these nuances with the game’s ability to destabilize and diversify playthroughs via Trico’s innate curiosity and semi-unpredictable instincts, and you get a game that becomes easier to appreciate the more the player familiarizes themselves with its inner workings.

I think a lot of criticism for The Last Guardian ultimately comes down to less of what we perceive the game is and more of what we perceive the game isn’t. It’s not a fully player-controlled puzzle-platforming game like Ico, it’s not a puzzle-combat game with spectacle like Shadow of the Colossus, and it’s certainly not a classic companion escort-quest game where you can just order Trico around like a robot and expect automatic results every time. Instead of focusing on the progression of more complex controls and puzzles, The Last Guardian is focused on the progression of a seemingly more complex relationship. I’m not going to pretend that everyone will get something out of this game, as it definitely requires a good deal of patience and player investment to meet the game halfway. It’s certainly more difficult to appreciate given its lack of influence unlike Ico or its lack of exhilarating boss encounters unlike Shadow of the Colossus. That said, it’s this element of danger in its ability to commit to its vision while alienating impatient players that makes it such a compelling title once it finally clicks. Many before me have pointed out how powerful the bond between the player and Trico felt upon learning from others that improperly caring for Trico results in your companion stubbornly ignoring the player’s commands; after all, volume swells cannot exist without contrast to provide room for growth. Perhaps this is why at the end of the day, I find myself transfixed by every word that Fumito Ueda has to offer. In an era where developers feel overly concerned with the best and brightest, he doesn’t seem concerned about what video games mean so much as what video games are. I can only hope that someday, he and GenDesign will return to bring us a new title that captures our imagination as thoroughly as many of his works already have for me.

A little over a year ago I decided to make a conscience effort to fight through my back log as much as possible. To try and stop replaying the same games over and over when there are so many I hadn’t played. One major thing I’ve learned is I will never be able to play every game I want to play before I die. We only have so much time and sometimes you just need to know when to call it and say this game just wasn’t for me. While Kingdom Heart Final Mix was definitely for me but unfortunately the follow up Kingdom Hearts Re: Chained Memories was unfortunately one of those games I had to call and end it early.

The main reason for this is while I in no way think it’s a bad game, I don’t know why they completely changed the action rpg gameplay to a card game you play to battle. I really gave it a fair shot but it just wasn’t a fun or engaging experience. I believe there is a reason Kingdom Hearts never again went back to this type of gameplay in the other dozen or so entries in the franchise. Not only does the gameplay not really hit with me but it felt way to unnecessarily grindy. Between the RNG of the cards you receive and needing certain cards to open certain doors I just didn’t have the patience or want to to finish this game.

I want to continue my journey through the Kingdom Hearts series so I watched a in depth video about the story of Chained Memories and I’m so glad I did because I don’t think I could have played the 25 or so hours of playing cards it would have taken to beat the game. Again I’m not saying this is a bad game or saying I don’t recommend it, just that it’s not for me and that if playing a game of cards to swing your sword against your opponent doesn’t sound appealing it may not be for you either.

Games of 2024 Ranked
https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/games-i-played-in-2024-ranked-1/

Really bizarre game and concept overall, not dissimilar to something like Spore except much earlier. There are times where it feels a bit too grindy, and the bosses are much harder than the actual stages, but ultimately I think it survives the weight of its ambitions. I enjoyed this pretty thoroughly, even if it was rough around the edges and not exactly amazing. I thought it was very fun and rewarding to experiment with all the different evolutionary traits it provides your character. By the end of the game I had become this weird lion-horse hybrid of sorts.

It'll definitely take some patience, especially without savestates, but I would recommend this one. There's not really anything like it from the time.

Humanity sleeps in the machine. It gurgles for breath, suffocating beneath smoke and gunfire within the netherworld. I grip the joystick with hands like claws; the sweat feels wrong, like oil on water. Heads-up display signals flare all around my vision as I wrench the exoskeletal warrior through warehouses, space stations, and forlorn caverns. When the foes aren't robots, they're pilots just as feckless and desperate as I. The job is king—morals are optional. Captains of industry march us inexorably towards doom, and I'm just trying to keep my head down, chin up against the rising tide. The harder I fight, the deeper I explore, the more I sense the great chain of being start to fray.

Armored Core…that pit of vitality lying within the most veteran of mercenaries, and an apt title for the series to follow King's Field. From Software staff would tell us they bungled their way into developing this game to begin with, but it's appropriate they'd shift from one dark fantasy to another. Both series deal in obscure, arcane worlds, just with divergent approaches to non-linearity and game complexity. They started life as 3D tech demos before unfolding into realms of mystery and danger hitherto unseen on consoles—the kind of innovative experience Sony hoped would set their PlayStation apart from the competition. And for all the nitpicks and missed potential I can (and will) bring up, it's impressive how effectively this studio captured the one-man-army appeal of mecha media versus other developers' outings at the time. From a simple animation test to one of the studio's core franchises, it's a hell of a leap. [1]

| From this point on, you are…a Raven… |

Mecha action games on the PlayStation weren't in short supply before Armored Core (AC) arrived, though I'd forgive you for believing that. The earliest examples—Metal Jacket, Robo Pit, and Extreme Power—all featured some amount of mech customization and variety in scenarios, but always with caveats. None of them had the storytelling emphasis that From Soft's game introduced. At most, Extreme Power let players choose which missions to attempt first, acquiring points to buy new parts if successful. But that still lacked elements like e-mail chains and running a deficit after overusing ammo and/or failing missions. Robo Pit introduced the extensive parts system within a 3D versus fighter context, and Metal Jacket focused on simpler open-field battles a la MechWarrior. (Though the latter remains maybe the biggest influence on so many mecha games to come, it didn't receive a PS1 port until the same year as Armored Core.)

If anything, I see a lot of commonality between the first AC and Front Mission: Gun Hazard, the latter releasing in 1996 with some notability. Combining the series' heavy geopolitical tone and intrigue with a game loop and structure akin to Assault Suit Valken, Squaresoft's game reviewed well and prefigured the genre hybrids they'd produce for Sony's machine. Critically, they also reworked the parts-as-equipment framework from Front Mission, balancing it with arcade-style pacing and more wiggle room for players wanting to test drive multiple builds. The trouble with mecha xRPGs, then and now, is motivating constant character creation (aka editing your mecha) in order to complete stages, ideally while avoiding damage and long-term costs that could ruin a playthrough. I have no way of knowing if the original AC devs were familiar with Gun Hazard and how it elegantly solves these issues via its mix of complex story, set-pieces, and missions designed to reward creativity.

It's hard enough to make a sci-future this dreadful so enchanting and replayable. Armored Core's semi-linear plot and trickle feed of environmental worldbuilding go far in reifying the player's ascension to ace pilot, a new hero of chaos. People are right to point out the jarring, confrontational "initiation" battle, a middle finger to trends of tutorialization beginning in the mid-'90s. Surviving this teaches one to never fully trust the world they're thrust into, be it the obtuse mecha controls or the machinations of agents, corporations, and other Ravens contracting and challenging you. The fun comes from accepting these additive layers of masochism, a reflection of the decaying worldview which From Soft presents without irony or pomp and circumstance. It's on the player to investigate and understand their predicament. Future series entries add fleeting moments of cooperation and optimism to mitigate the grim bits, but the tone here's consistently muted and adverse. Absent are the triumphant flourishes of Gundam or even VOTOMS, replaced by an engaging but ever-present indifference to the erasure of people and elevation of proxy warfare.

| You have the right…the duty to find out. |

Opening missions in this game settle into a formula of scout, destroy, rinse and repeat, followed by a shopping spree. It's never quite as comfortable as you'd hope; browsing for a new radar attachment after gunning down protesters feels ever so morbid. Nor are you interacting with fellow Ravens during the majority of a playthrough, instead fighting or helping a select few through happenstance. Armored Core keeps players at arm's length from the consequences they wreak upon the world, often chiding them through AI monologues and tetchy e-mail chains. This odd pacing and story presentation lets From Soft transition between unusual missions and plot beats without breaking a sweat. The further you work for Chrome or Murakumo to the other's downfall, the murkier the mystery gets, with ulterior motives of anonymous agents pressuring you into service.

Thankfully there's a decently balanced in-game economy to support the amount of experiments and risk-taking the campaign requires, though not without problems. Buying and selling are 1-to-1 on cash return; you'll never enter the red just through shopping. Instead, the way most players wreck their run is by abusing ammo-based weapons and continuing after failing missions with mech damage. Save scumming isn't a thing Armored Core looks down on, but it will go out of its way to promote ammo-less tactics with energy swords and simply dodging past optional foes. Around halfway through the game, it arguably becomes more important to scour levels for hidden parts instead of relying on the diminishing returns from Raven's Nest inventory. I wish this first entry had done better at keeping the market relevant, but it wasn't to be.

My go-to build throughout the story was an agile, energy-focused quadrupedal range specialist dressed to the nines with secret parts. (If the game let me use the Karasawa with these legs, oh boy would I have been unstoppable!) Sure, there's a lot of fun one can have with beefy machine guns and missile options, but getting the most cash out of missions requires plasma rifles and mastery of lightsaber stabbing to play efficiently. While Project Phantasma struggled to balance the economy back towards non-energy offense, it wouldn't be until Master of Arena that the series largely evened out the trade-offs between common mecha archetypes. For instance, tank-tread mecha in this first game are actually damn powerful due to a lack of movement tricks for the bipeds, but it all falls apart when it's time for platforming or quickly escaping. Bipeds often get the class-favorite treatment in this genre, yet struggle to wield a variety of parts and weapons to handle most challenges this game throws at you later on. That leaves quad-legs builds as the most flexible and resilient option at higher levels of play, a flawed but interesting subversion of what's usually seen in mecha anime and manga. (Ed: Yes, I'm aware reverse joint legs exist. No, I don't use them in a game that punishes jumping all the time. Later AC games handle it better.)

With all these incentives combined, the pressure to learn the classic Armored Core control scheme and physics becomes bearable, if still overbearing. I've come from other tank-y mecha games like Gungriffon, so the adjustment period wasn't too bad for me, but I get why many newcomers stick with analog-patched versions of the earlier entries. Memorizing the timings for boosting before landing to minimize lag, or how to effectively pitch the lock-on reticule and snap back to center, matters more than anything in the first couple of hours. Then add on tricks for circle strafing back away from enemies, often while firing guns or launching missiles, and the combat evolves from awkward plodding into a dance of destruction. And there's no arena mode here to let you practice these techniques in a consistent, scaling environment. A veteran Raven or horse of robots can descend upon you in any of the mid-game/late-game missions, requiring quick reactions and establishing a zone of control (or retreat). It's sink or swim in the truest sense. Past the teething phase, it's easy to return to this control scheme and feel one with the AC, even after years have passed. I won't doubt that full dual-stick analog controls will work even better and enable a longer skill progression, but I adapted to the famous claw-grip style quicker than expected.

| "Pledge allegiance to no one!" |

Any problems significant enough to keep Armored Core below a 4-out-of-5 rating or higher must be deep-rooted in the game's loop and structure; that's sadly true for the level and encounter design here. I'm far from opposed to dungeon crawling in my semi-linear mecha action-RPGs, at least when there's room enough to blast around duels (plus verticality to reduce the claustrophobia). Still, a few too many stages in this debut feel like holdover concepts from King's Field II instead of properly scaled settings to wrangle a mech through. The difference between enjoying "Kill 'Struggle' Leader" and dreading "Destroy Base Computer" boils down to whether or not the story framing is compelling enough to justify zooming through non-descript (though nicely textured) hallways for most of their runtime. Occasionally the designers get clever with metal-corroding gas, inconveniently placed explosives, and other traps to keep the spelunking varied; I had a hoot tearing through the insectoid lairs like I was playing an antique musou game! But later series installments improved these confined missions with more arena-like rooms and affordances to players who make it far in and then can't win due to a sub-optimal build.

If I had to speculate, wide open-ended maps are less common here simply due to hardware constraints, be it rendering ACs and other actors in any abundance (regardless of level-of-detail scaling) or the enemy AI struggling with pathfinding in combat on a broader scale. It's a shame regardless since bombarding installations across water ("Reclaim Oil Facility"), going en guarde with a berserker atop a skyscraper ("Destroy Plus Escapee"), and rampaging down public avenues ("Attack Urban Center") offer some of the best thrills in Armored Core. Objective variety and complexity never reaches especially high regardless of mission category, so just getting to rip up groups of MTs, droids, and ACs goes a long way. Defending a cargo train in the desert starts off humble, then escalates to defeating a full-bore Human Plus combatant interceding on the situation. A series of undersea tunnels and chambers, well-defended and secretly primed to implode, threaten to bury you while avenues of escape close off. A select few dungeon crawls also open up in unexpected ways, particularly those set on space stations where vertical engagements come into play. I didn't think mecha and sewer levels could work, but here I am grinning as I pursue Struggle operatives down waterways or methodically undo their bombs within a rat's maze of air treatment tunnels.

Armored Core rarely has bad missions so much as disappointing or overachieving ones, which makes the finale so uniquely odd. By this point, the entropic cycle ensnaring Chrome, Murakumo, Struggle, and adjacent organizations has caused untold devastation across the earth. Now even the Raven's Nest falls, revealed as the illusory sham of governance it always was. Even bit players in the narrative pitch in, waxing over e-mail about the futility of these conflicts and what's really driving it all behind the scenes. So, with all this build-up and conspiracy baiting, I had high hopes for the last hour, wishing for an epic battle and world-shattering revelations to boot. Sure, I got the latter (if in a minimal, trope-adherent form), but instead of satisfying gladiatorial action, I had to ascend the fucking cubes. Everyone's got a horror story about "Destroy Floating Mines", it seems, and I'm just glad to have survived this much awkward, drawn-out platforming using my quad-leg AC. Squaring off against Nine-Ball afterward isn't quite enough to compensate either, not unless you can have an even pitched fight against this iconic rival and win the first couple of attempts. (The penultimate chambers also reflect poorly on the camera's ability to track fast-moving combatants, even if it makes for an exciting sequence.) I can still appreciate how From Soft didn't explicate too much at the end, instead trying to confound players with interesting questions and non sequiturs in the level design itself. It's all a big joke and we get to grimace through it.

| Shape Memory Alloys |

In conclusion, it's a good thing From Soft nailed all their game loop, distinctive mechanics, and interweaving systems here. The original Armored Core is unfortunately limited with how it challenges players, both in level design and mission pacing. Not having an arena to lean on makes completing the missions with maximum efficiency more of a priority, which can lead to excess retries and scrimping on investments in hopes of affording something better later vs. smoother upgrades in the short term. (I do appreciate how only fighting other ranked ACs within missions makes the Ravens' dynamic more hostile and contradictory, but the game does so little to expand on that angle.) These problems sting less knowing that, as a prototype of adventures to come, this game still accomplishes so much with so little.

Not many series strive to reach a profile this high while teasing players with details out of reach and mysteries about its development unanswered. Anyone invested in the wider world Armored Core hints at, from the shadowy groups running these underground beehive cities to the horrors hiding behind Human Plus, has to read through "data books" (artbooks) and track down magazine previews for scraps. We're only now getting English translations of the artbooks and related articles, all of which are coloring the fringes of the AC universe while only letting trace amounts of humanity through the barrier [2]. And as far as these games are concerned, pilots' backstories and white papers on neural augmentation procedures amount to nothing. Heroes and villains drop in and out of history like mayflies—only shocks to the system register on the scale From Soft's using. We're just along for the ride.

It feels like there's still so much else to analyze here: how the studio crowbar-ed their King's Field engine into handling these pyrotechnics, the peculiarities of Human Plus endings as difficulty modifiers, let alone the timely yet appropriate electronica soundtrack. A lot of PS1 releases from this period struggle to make the best use of their developers' skills, assets, and remaining CD space. I wouldn't say Armored Core succeeds at the latter, using only a few FMV sequences at key points in the story, but it's a remarkably lean and appealing game relative to its own premise. Replays come naturally thanks to multiple Human Plus tiers and the freedom to play all missions upon completing the story (plus making new saves to transfer into Project Phantasma). The controls here, though lacking in finesse, carry forward into a good chunk of the later games, with concepts like boost canceling staying relevant even after the switch to analog. Contrast this maturity with all the pratfalls From Soft made during their King's Field days. They'd learned how to not just lead in with a better start, but retain their creative momentum on budgets larger and smaller with each sequel.

Armored Core represents a coming-of-age for the PlayStation as it entered the midpoint of its lifespan, setting a bar other mid-sized studios could aspire to. Its rough edges hardly mar what I'd call one of my favorite experiences in the system's library so far. Maybe I'm going easier on this one due to my enthusiasm for the genre and the myriad themes this game explores, from cyberpunk dystopia to the malleability of history in the post-modern. It could just be that the core game's so, uh, solid after all this time. I chose not to rely on Human Plus for my first playthrough and that might have helped. No matter how you approach the series today, it's awesome to see it debut this confidently, and plenty of players must have thought so too. The Armored Core series became From Soft's backbone for a decade before the Souls-likes came to replace it, and what AC achieved for mecha games (and ARPGs in general) can't be overstated.

| Bibliography |

[1] Alex “blackoak,” trans. “Armored Core – 1997 Developer Interview - Shmuplations.Com.” PlayStation Magazine. 1997. Shmuplations. https://shmuplations.com/armoredcore/.
[2] Reddit. “Translations of Pages 103 to 105 from the Book Armored Core Official Data Book.” Accessed January 14, 2024. https://www.reddit.com/r/armoredcore/comments/x940dj/translations_of_pages_103_to_105_from_the_book/.