I feel like my head is overwhelmed with a ton of different feelings and thoughts on this game, 99% of those thoughts extremely positive and 1% of those thoughts, nitpicky small things that I don't really care about right now because I just loved this game with my entire heart.

The story is for sure a bit Nomura poisoned but I still had a really good time with it, I'm starting with it because I don't have a ton to say partially because spoilers and partially because it's confusing and insane and I'm not qualified to deep dive into all of the differences and what everything means. It's for sure much more well done and interesting than a Kingdom Hearts story but I get a similar feeling where I'm mostly just along for the ride and willing to let there be some bullshit.

The main thing about the narrative and writing that continues to blow me away with these remakes absolutely is the characters and all of the various interactions and moments they all get. I went from knowing and not particularly caring about most of these characters to all of them becoming one of my favorite casts of characters in all of gaming! I don't dislike anyone here, even characters I was a bit worried about being annoyed with like Yuffie or Cait Sith ended up being absolutely wonderful, Yuffie especially ended up being one of my favorites. I have nothing but absurdly positive things to say about each and everyone here, capped off with wonderful performances! I do find it can get a bit on the anime melodramatic on the voice acting side of things but as someone who usually doesn't love that stuff it didn't really bother me at all, again probably because I just love these characters so darn much. It's rare a game can juggle around so many characters and make me feel so intensely attached to all of them! Obviously I have favorites, but I don't think anyone is so far and away above anyone else and that's because they're all so insanely likable and interesting. I could talk for days about how I love all the little aspects of each character and all of the various dynamics like Barrett interacting with Yuffie, Red, or Cait Sith and how it always was a highlight or Tifa and Aerith's genuine friendship or Red XIIIs big character moment I won't spoil, or even Cloud and Yuffie's sibling dynamic but if I get into anymore detail I might never stop. I love all of these guys and even if the story can be a bit convoluted and overwhelming this is some of my favorite character writing in any game ever, it was something I already loved about Remake but it's tenfold here.

Gameplay wise it's even more fun than Remake which was already a pretty amazing Action RPG. It's not too different all things considered, but some new Materia, Synergy Attacks/Commands, and most of all the brand new characters in Red XIII and Cait Sith (not to mention some short really fun playable versions of a couple other characters) all come together to make an already astounding combat system that much better. Synergy Attacks/Commands were probably the biggest thing I kinda refused to learn until I realized they're really fucking good and fun as hell! They generally follow a couple guidelines but are extremely useful and a lot more powerful than I was giving them credit for. There's also a ton of returning and new weapon abilities that are a ton of fun to mess with. Finding a new weapon is always exciting even if the stats aren't great because it means you'll at least get a new attack to unlock and they're all pretty fun and worthwhile. The two new characters are a ton of fun as well! Red XIII pretty instantly clicked with me, but Cait Sith felt a bit awkward for a while. It wasn't until a section where you're forced to be only him did I actually put some time into learning him and end up finding him really cool! Still on the lower end for sure but once you get used to him he's also a ton of fun. Exploration was solid! Each region looks absolutely gorgeous and it's fun to do all the little tasks in each place. I can see someone finding them tedious but they all have an absurd Final Fantasy charm that I never really got bored. I'm also the kind of guy that just loves ticking away at a checklist and this game does it great. Control/Movement during exploration is pretty average, I think I would have preferred a Jump button cause it can feel a bit awkward but I understand why there isn't one. The various Chocobo and their gimmicks are fun to use and the giant monster truck thing you get is silly and fun to use. If I had one complaint it would be that Chadley won't ever shut the fuck up! It's a pretty annoying pace breaker the amount of times he stops you from playing to tell you that you got some good data and to keep up the good work. I wish it was kept to walking conversations or something, I actually like the idea of Chadley and your exploration fueling his research and working towards new materia and such but he stops you so much and it's pretty fucking annoying.

The other big aspect of the gameplay is the sheer amount of mini-games here. I'm a guy that absolutely LOVES stupid little mini-games and changing up the main gameplay here and there and this game does it a TON. It's almost all great too, I love how often they have you do a silly little mini-game like shooting boxes on a mine cart ride, a punch-out style fighting game with low poly OG FF7 models, a pretty fun Piano Rhythm game, Chocobo Racing which feels way more satisfying to control than it has any right to, and a ton other I could go on and on about. The two big consistent ones are the returning Fort Condor which is still lots of fun and I like the more offense-oriented changes they made and it also uses the great low poly FF7 models. The new one is Queen's Blood which is an insanely in-depth card game that's a ton of fun! There's over 100 cards and there's a good amount of variance in what they all do. It's pretty fun to make new decks and I always went to do all the new Queen's Blood matches available whenever I got to a new town because I liked it so much. I'm really excited to go back post main story and grind all of these mini-games cause they're genuinely so fun and there's way more than I would have expected.

The music is also WONDERFUL which like, obviously. It's a bit unfair having one the greatest OSTs as a base and a ton of it is pretty new to me but it's just so beautiful. I don't think I emotionally connect with Video Game soundtracks much, there's a ton I love and think are great but they don't grab me emotionally as much as I just think they're sick. This entire soundtrack felt so emotional, I don't know if I'll ever hear Tifa or Aerith's themes again without feeling a bit emotional. The way they weave character themes into the important moments for each character is so insanely beautiful. There's also obviously iconic songs like the battle theme which I'll never get sick of and the insanely beautiful town themes. It'd be pretty tough to find a video game OST on the level of this and it's one that'll stick with me for a long time.

I can't believe this game exists and it feels as large a step above the first game in the remake trilogy which was already a game that really surprised me with my love for it. Direct sequels pretty often end up amazing before later games try a bit too hard to be different and crazy so it shouldn't surprise me as much as it does, but fuck man it's a beautiful feeling to have a sequel absolutely crush it like this game does. For my tastes and opinions there's been a few of those the last few years and it's just so sick. I'm incredibly excited for the third game, it's gonna be tough to live up to this but no matter what I just can't wait to have more experiences with these characters. I could go on for way too long absolutely gushing about this game but I'll leave it at this already way too long review and say I'm so glad these remakes exist and got me into the FF7 universe.

All in all a great experience. I really enjoyed the story, there was a lot of charm to the writing, and even though I knew the combat wouldn't be my favorite the variety of weapons and perks more than makes up for it. My one complaint - the quest log and quest markers would drive me nuts at time. Not every quest goes into your quest log. I walked around for an ungodly amount of time with a suitcase of drugs because I couldn't remember where the NPC said to take it and there was no quest for it. So I guess they are mine now. Other times there are multiple quest markers but no indication about which objective each one is pointing to. This got frustrating in places that felt too maze like on a first play through (The Gomorrah casino for example). I can see why so many people love this game and I definitely think it has been my favorite fallout experience so far.

i might play more with friends, but it's as generic a survival game as you can imagine made by some of the most soulless just doing it for a quick buck devs in the industry. i don't particularly care about the stolen pokemon designs (they are bad though) but the whole game is filled with stolen ideas and concepts with almost no spin on it. i don't doubt people genuinely find it fun, but it's as soulless and greedy as their previous game craftopia but because there's pokemon and they can hold a gun it sold 7 million copies and counting! sad for the industry, and the people acting like this is some special new indie company making a huge ambitious game and not their like 4th asset flip garbage hoping it catches on to make some money is pretty silly. i realize i'm part of the problem playing it at all, even if i did do it though gamepass. also, the gamepass version is behind on updates and entirely broken and pretty unplayable with friends almost certainly on purpose to push people to spend real money for it on steam (which judging by reviews is working!) and that sucks. idk, this is the most bitter i've been in a review and i don't really think less of anyone who is playing it and enjoying it because i understand it's just a kind of fun trendy game but i guess it's just the entire circumstance around this game that really bums me out.

man this game really surprised me. i've played a fuck ton of games, and there's a few of those big iconic industry shaking ones i inevitably missed out on, this being one of them. i find going back to those strange for the most part, i'm not the type of guy to artificially like a game because of what it did for future better games, or what it did for the medium afterwards. i'm very much a "i like this one because it is better!' type of person, it's why i don't give any praise to something like zelda 1 or early metroids, i obviously take when a game came out into mind when thinking about it but i just don't like using it as an excuse to forgive something that (at least, imo) is bad.

that being said, sometimes games that have these legacies truly stand on their own as just a really impressive and solid experience. i had something similar when i finally played through castlevania symphony of the night and i absolutely had it here. this game is impressive as FUCK dude. it's kinda mind blowing this is a 1998 game. the story being told being as good and in depth as it is, the way it tells the story with the cutscenes and codec calls, the way this game looks, the way it sounds and how high quality the voice acting is. it's all fuckin crazy!

i'll talk about that stuff a little bit more but the one part that isn't as impressive is unfortunately the gameplay. i'm very much a gameplay first kind of person, so it took a little bit for me to feel like i wasn't really pushing through something i wasn't enjoying but once it picked up it was mostly fine. namely because the bosses are pretty sick for the most part! the first boss, revolver ocelot is one of the worst though which had me extremely weary. thankfully after that almost every boss was pretty fun and had a really cool sense of tension and a sick vibe. vulcan raven, sniper wolf 2, psychomantis, and hte final 2 boss fighters were the stand outs for me though. the moment to moment gameplay was passable for the most part but a bit frustrating and never got outwardly fun. guns felt pretty bad for the most part. the stealth worked pretty well but wasn't particularly special. the camera angles made it a bit frustrating at times but it wasn't a huge deal. i don't have a ton to say about the gameplay cause it clearly was not the focus here but it was servicable, the bosses made it pretty fun at times but generally it wasn't anything i'd be excited to get back to.

i'm not gonna recap the story or anything but man it was just really solid! obviously some parts of it didn't age great, especially anytime a woman was involved. otacon especially left an awful first impression just being like a stereotypical anime head that even actual anime fans would bully into immediately talking about how much he loved meryls ass was lame as hell. the rest of the characters for the most part were really cool and engaging, even otacon redeemed himself a bit by the end. obviously snake was iconic, liquid was a great antagonist, all great stuff! i was very impressed with the quality of voice acting most performances were solid and i can see why so many lines and bits are as iconic as they are. visually i liked mostly everything a lot, the codecs and the little animations they had was a nice touch. the models made it a bit hard to take some stuff seriously, no one having eyes and muscles clipping through bodies was a bit distracting but there was a weird charm to them at the same time. i feel like i shouldn't have liked how this game looks as much as i did but i don't know, it has such a charm to it and holds up really well to me. the music was solid, not a ton of it stands out all that much though aside from the classic music that plays when you get caught. it's really a perfect piece of video game music and really helps build that tension.

it's clear the kind of vision they had for this series especially after having played the arcade original. so much carried over from that i was surprised, but it's also just really cool to see they got to realize that on a much more grand scale. i'm excited to play the rest of this series! i don't know when i'll get to 2, but this was a much stronger start than i was expecting.

This game fucking rocked! I'm very much not a Turn Based RPG guy but man does Mario always find a way to make it fun. It's got me wanting to replay/fully finish all the other Mario RPGs I've played like the first 2 Paper Mario's and the Mario & Luigi games I've missed. Speaking of those games, I don't think this one quite hits that level of the peaks of those franchises, but man it's close enough that I don't think it matters.

I haven't ever played the original but just from what I've seen they've capture the charm and style pretty perfectly. These are some of my favorite models of all the Mario characters ever. They're so cute and charming and well animated. It was a joy seeing new cutscenes or new attacks/animations during conversations or battles. The worlds are also pretty gorgeous, but by far the biggest stand outs to me were the huge variety of enemies and they're incredibly charming and cool designs! I was constantly getting a laugh out of designs, names, and especially the thoughts of each new enemy I'd encounter! I think the amount of character put into each enemy as small as random encounters or as big as bosses is super charming. That's coupled with some really funny writing and very fun and clever visual bits. I got a laugh out of everytime someone questions if I was really THE Mario and I'd just press the jump button for them to instantly trust me. The OST is also absolutely fucking phenonmenal. I think something a lot of people will come to realize, me included is so many insanely great songs come from this game. They're used so often in other games, youtube videos, etc it was kinda insane how many songs I encountered where I went "omg that was from this game??? sick!" LOL.

The gameplay is great here, it's the classic Mario RPG style of action commands to keep it interesting. I do think something like Mario & Luigi has a bit more depth to the action commands but I was still surprised at the amount of variety there was even just in character attacks changing when you equip new weapons. It did make it a bit hard to adjust sometimes but it was also genuinely just pretty cool to see new attack animations and whatnot. The spells didn't have too much variety it was mostly timing an A press, spinning the stick, or mashing A. Geno had a few meter ones that were fun but it was kind of just the same one for like 4 of his moves. They were still consistently fun to pull off and nail perfectly though. I will say, I wish there were a few more spells or at the very least there were a few more character buff spells or something especially for Peach. Not a huge deal, and I didn't mind the biggest focus on standard attacks (at least, for my team of Mario/Geno/Bowser that i ran for most of the game) but still wished for a bit more with the spells. The non combat aspect of gameplay was pretty cool too, lots of fun overworld mini games and platforming to do. I don't think any of them were like absurdly fun but I'm a sucker for random gameplay changes and those were fun distractions. My only negative with the overworld, and I don't entirely know how to convey this or express it but some, I'd even argue, a lot of areas felt very quick and not as grand as I would expected/liked. I don't know if that makes any sense but a lot of times it felt like I just finished an area super quick and there could have been more cool moments or set pieces. To be clear I don't think it's the biggest deal in the world, the entire game was still a joy to play and I think wanting more is overall a good thing instead of something overstaying its welcome but just something I noticed especially compared to stuff like Paper Mario/Mario & Luigi. The postgame was also a lot of fun, some things were insanely satisfying like getting 100 super jumps with mario, and especially the Boss refights. To my understanding those are new to the remake and they were all pretty fun and had new interesting gimmicks! The only postgame thing I kinda hated doing was getting the Star Egg playing that look away game and winning 100 times was pretty boring and unfun. The reward was pretty worth it though so I can't be all that mad.

Really glad I finally played this game! I don't know if I'll ever play the original but this seemed like a really great way to experience an amazing game. It's got me wanting to go on a Mario RPG kick, it reminded me of how insanely charming and fun these earlier Mario RPGs really are. Great time!!!

Well I'll be damned. I enjoyed a turn based RPG. I REALLY fucking enjoyed a turn based RPG. This game is DAMN good. Let me preface this entire review by saying I am the biggest anti-RPG guy in the world. I hate the concept of waiting my turn to attack and having to be patient during combat. Basically my attention span can't take it. However, this game does a lot to keep my goopy goblin gamer brain interested. For one this is a yakuza game, which means it is the silliest, goofiest, not-serious thing in the world. The absurdness of the attacks happening and animations just kept me entertained. Button-prompts to block damage or amplify attacks also made it so I would actually have to pay attention and care about what i'm doing (yes I know thats in a lot of RPGs but idc it just worked well in this game for me). The actual core combat isn't anything that insane. It just mixing in with a lot of other factors kept me enthralled and not getting bored. What also helps is me playing on normal. I kinda breezed through this game without having to go out of my way to grind. There was really only one boss that made me actually had to sit for like an hour and grind a dungeon and I think that's when I enjoyed this game the least. I might've stopped there, if there wasn't another thing that kept me going. The story and characters. I didn't think it was possible for this series to make me get attached to an entirely new set of characters we have never seen before. Yet here I am, enjoyable every bit of dialogue the party members exchange. There's little spots you can find while free-roaming that have your party members share funny interactions that increase bond level. When you increase this bond level to a certain limit you can have a drink with each individual members who share unique backgrounds and substories. And I love each and every second of it. The fact each member also gets their own karaoke song is fucking awesome and I love it. Speaking of characters, we have to talk about the main man himself, Kasuga Ichiban. What a phenomenal character. I fucking love this man, honestly I might enjoy him more than I do Kiryu (maybe just maybe). He's not the same stoic, high-mighty, and wise guy kiryu is. He's just a cocky dumbass who loves his friends, and I love that about him. The fact that all the crazy RPG elements and animations are ENTIRELY in his head due to him playing dragon quest as a kid (also schizophrenia) is the funniest thing ever. If Ichiban dies in battle, you instantly lose the fight because that means his illusion ends. Which from a story standpoint, I fucking love and is hilarious. But from a gameplay standpoint, I hate and think is dumb. The ending to this game is one of the most emotional endings to any yakuza game and that is purely because of how attached I got to Ichiban and the members of this game. I could go on and on about the story but I gotta wrap up. At the time of writing this review, I have finished all mainline yakuza games (A spinoff came out an hour before I wrote this). This entire series is an absolute treasure and I think it's a series everyone should experiences. I am incredibly glad to have played these games and I can't wait to play more future installments. Also this is NOT a shoutout to my friend London who did NOT kind of motivate me to play these games. (In all honestly I started playing these games cause Mang0 played 0 on stream and never finished it which pissed me off cause I got attached to the story)

Marvel's Spider-Man (2018) is my favorite game of all time. So needless to say, I had very high expectations for the sequel and was beyond hyped. But even with my expectations as high as they were, Insomniac managed to subvert them numerous times throughout the game. I would even go so far as to say that they completely obliterated my expectations.

As far as my criticisms go, I think the last chunk of story isn't quite as strong or emotional as the first game's, but I still think it's amazing. These problems could've probably been solved with a longer runtime. Miles also isn't given much to do early on in the story. If there was anything that the first game does better, it would probably be the story.

While I do think the spider arm abilities are fun, I have always been kind of against them since they showed the initial trailer for the game. I prefer my Peter to not be tech'd out the wazoo and I've never been a fan of the spider arms in general. The gadgets in this game are also the least Spider-Man like gadgets from the first game. I was disappointed to see that they left out the likes of the impact web and web bomb but kept the concussion blast and knock-up gadget. Both things are fun to use but feel very unlike something Spider-Man typically uses, and I almost never used them in the first game because of that. Since Miles and Peter both have abilities that do the same thing as the knock-up gadget, it felt like a wasted slot. I understand that the concussion blast serves a narrative purpose later on, but they could've saved it for that point in the game and let us swap gadgets in and out like we can with the abilities. In the grand scheme of things, these are very minor issues and mostly come down to personal preference, I guess.

There are small features missing that are present in the previous games that I wish were here. Character bios, replaying podcasts, changing time of day. All aren't super important but it's a shame they aren't here this time around.

Miles' new suit is pretty bad. Insomniac needs to take that shit back to the drawing board.

Even with the small issues I have with Spider-Man 2, I'm in awe at what Insomniac managed to pull off here. To me, this game is nothing short of a masterpiece, and it may have even taken the title of "Favorite Game of All Time" from its predecessor. Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is truly spectacular.

It also has one of the greatest game intros, hands down.

an incredible time! pretty far and away my favorite 2D mario at this point. i still have a bit of a ceiling for 2D mario, especially compared to stuff like DKC2/Tropical Freeze but this game was so absurdly creative and fun to play. controls the best mario has ever felt in 2d, the wonder flower was a ton of fun to see what exciting thing they had in store for a level, the best looking 2d mario, badges are sick and a lot of fun to experiment with. the only big downside here is the bosses, which to be fair is the case for all 2D marios they're always pretty bad but it felt like such a big chance for them to finally knock bosses out of the park and they're just as boring and standard as ever. final boss was neat but still not anything amazing.

this game really has nothing to dislike, i think if you like 2d mario even a little you're gonna have a solid time. there's so much love in every single aspect of this game. it's very hard to not just have a big smile on your face the entire time. i've never been the biggest 2d mario guy in the world but they finally made one i truly fell in love with here.

It’s not at all a shock to me that this is easily one of my favorite games of all time, I was expecting nothing less (which is a stupid and risky mindset to go into a game with I recognize) but despite having the highest expectations possible, this game absolutely demolished them.

Everything here is an improvement on the last, gameplay especially is something I figured would be about as good but holy shit they blew the other 2 games out of the water. Combat feels as smooth as ever but new attack types from enemies, and all new abilities and a parry for the Spider-Men lead to a vast improvement over one of my favorite combat systems in a game already. It never got tiring to nail a parry to lay on damage, the new abilities were incredibly satisfying on their own but also were clearly designed with the idea of comboing them together in mind because that worked exceptionally well! Nowhere did it work better than with the bosses, which oh my GOD are such a vast improvement over the original. I wouldn’t say the bosses in the first game were terrible by any means but they were all pretty damn easy and didn’t stand out too much. The bosses here, especially in the later half of the game are insanely satisfying to play. Fun environmental gimmicks to let you lay on some extra damage, comboing your main abilities to take huge chunks of health, and learning patterns to nail parry chains was all so insanely fun. The main sets of enemies had some upgrades too, not as substantial but there’s a lot more diversity between the varying groups. It feels less like the same 3 enemy types in different outfits but each different clan of enemy feels like it has a different approach or take which is really refreshing. The stealth didn’t have much to improve but web lines add a fun layer of depth to stealth and mitigate that frustrating feeling of an enemy being just out of perch takedown range. Each Spider-Man feels unique as well, obviously a lot of the smaller moves are shared but their unique abilities are a ton of fun! I was a bit worried Peter would feel a bit lesser than Miles going in since I felt Miles was so much more fun in his solo game. They did a great job at making Peter compare though, and by the end with all the Symbiote powers and what not I even ended up having a bit more fun with him, but they’re about as close as possible. The one complaint I do have is the gadgets being as limited as they are. I wish there were a few more, but to be fair the abilities do entirely overshadow them so I get it.

Graphically it’s obviously fucking beautiful. Not only is the standard New York prettier than ever, they also take a lot more chances with what they can do visually. It’s still largely New York but the added islands do a lot for visuals and even just swinging across bridges was a very welcome visual change. They also get crazier with the lasting effects enemies have on the city. I won’t go into too many specifics for spoiler reasons but the way New York looked in the last 3/4 missions of the game was so insanely cool and breathtaking. The new animations for all the abilities and whatnot are beautiful, there’s so many team up takedowns now that look insanely cool, and even smaller things like stopping a car for a small level crime has so much more style and visual flair to it. It’s all an absolute treat to watch.

The story was another improvement to me! I loved everything that was happening, I think i’m very much a hype person so I could see someone not feeling like it reaches the emotional heights of the first and preferring the story there somewhat but either way I think it’d be hard to argue that Insomniac isn’t consistently delivering some of the best Spider-Man stories out there. Miles arc was a huge highlight, there was a period in the middle of the game where I felt like he was being a bit neglected (almost like it was happening in the actual story itself and it was an intentional parallel whaaaat) but by the end of the game he just had such a perfect arc and I can’t wait to see where he goes in future games. I always love seeing Peter become an asshole with the symbiote, I realize the symbiote doesn’t always have to do that but it’s how I prefer it because it’s a funny side of Peter we don’t get to see a ton and it worked really well here. Harry’s relationship with Peter and MJ was a lot of fun to watch, I was enjoying the smaller character moments a ton here. Harry and Peter riding bikes reminiscing about the time they snuck into their old high school, or all three of them at the Coney Island fair having a blast doing all the rides. It was all a lot of fun to watch! The only changes I’d make to the story would be giving more time to things like Kraven and a deeper dive into his mindset. It made a ton of sense, but I feel like we could have gotten deeper into that and his family. I also wouldn’t have minded a bit more of Peter being a dick to Harry, but both of these things IMO aren’t super required, and part of my desire for them is just wanting more video game to be completely honest. The side content I’ve done so far is pretty solid as well, if you’re like me and liked how it was done in the original and love it just being more ways to continue playing the game you’ll have a good time, but I know some wanted an overhaul of the open world content and side stuff which you didn’t really get. Like I said, I love the way it’s done but just figured I’d mention it.

I played Zelda Tears of the Kingdom this year and essentially told myself “yea, it sucks so many games I know i’ll love will come out and won’t compare to this!” Spider-Man 2 being the main game I thought of when I was thinking that. The more I continued Spider-Man though, the more I kept thinking “well, surely this doesn’t keep topping itself? is this really this much better than the first 2?” and it was! It really was! Not that GOTYs matter or anything, especially some random dude on a video game logging sites GOTY, but the brawl between TOTK and Spider-Man 2 is a lot closer than I thought it’d be and if you understand how much I loved TOTK I can’t really believe I’m saying that. There’s a lot of aspects of this game that just feel so perfectly crafted for me and my personal tastes that it leads to a series of games I’ve wanted to be perfected as hard as they have here for a long time and I’m extremely grateful they did. I hope Insomniac makes Spider-Man games forever man they’re just so fucking good.