Shadow Hearts Covenant is the type of game that swings for the fucking stars. So absolutely confident in everything it's going for from combat all the way to the endearingly messy but wonderfully heartfelt storytelling.

A story of people doing their best to make it and find their own happiness in a cold world that just keeps throwing ordeal after ordeal at them. In a world that does nothing but take how do you continue on giving yourself to others? Ya just do. Everything about Yuri's story hits for me in just such a special and specific way. Grief is rough and its easy to get lost in. Support systems are important and can help you from ending up completely losing yourself within it.

I love that it even touches more upon the bad people justifying horrible shit to themselves deal that Koudelka strives at and Shadow Hearts stumbled with and nails it pretty hard here (Koudelka still the GOAT at it tho).

I love everything about this games Trigun ass vibes, the warm summertime glow of some of the locations, how beautiful the world is represented. How endearing mostly the entire cast is. Joachim especially is a fucking standout character. Like this game is absolutely not great with queer rep (the man festival is pretty fucking yikes dawg) but Joachim is like a shining beacon of hope within the messiness of it all. He's such a loveable gay himbo and I absolutely want to protect him at all costs, he gets so many fun bits and jokes, so many wonderful character moments. It's definitely a step forward from the first game even with, again, how bad the man festival specifically is (though it's at least thankfully optional).

The music yet again slaps hard as fuck. Complimenting every location and moment almost perfect. My favorites in particular being The Fate Cluster Amaryllis and Evil Gate Opener. It just strikes on so many wonderful levels though I do think that the game's implementation of these themes is a little messy. The dungeon music is fairly uniform in a way that's a little boring after the 5th time you've heard it and the town themes, while VERY good, suffer from unfortunately the same problem. Still amazing but just wish they used a lot of the tracks in much better ways like the first time around.

The combat, oh dear sweet jesus, the combat is so fucking good. They took the rough but fun systems of the original and put them completely within your hands. Every aspect of it is customizable and tweakable to make the game as easy or as difficult as you want it to be. Like I hear FTNW only improves on it and I seriously cannot even imagine how yet and that only gets me more stoked because for me it's so fucking excellent!

The dungeon design would be fine if it weren't for how horrible the map system is honestly. There are some standouts like Mirror Castle but this game would seriously benefit from having a real map and it boggles my mind that it just only has a minimap for navigating around. It's so bizarre especially since the dungeons can loop you around and shit. It's faiiiirly annoying but I can deal with it!

Something about this whole experience hit me in a way that I don't think I'll ever be forgetting anytime soon. Everything about it vibed with me in such a specific way that the first game just didn't at all. This is absolutely one of the best sequels ever made that I've experienced so far at least and I'm so hopeful for Penny Blood if this is the framework they follow (though hopefully with far better queer rep/something more along the lines of Joachim or something.) It's messy, it ain't perfect, but fuck it I love this game a ton. Captured everything I wanted the first game to be and more while also getting me to care far more about aspects of the first that I didn't fully before. Absolute banger.

Karin deserved so much better though like holy shit why did they do THAT.

My full analysis on it is now up if ya wanna check it out!

My first foray with Atelier after several years of saying to myself "I should try those games sometime," and needless to say, yeah, I should have played this sooner.
Buying this game to hold me over on a road trip was the best possible first impression I could get for this game. The lack of access to any sort of walkthrough meant I had to figure everything out myself, and that made things so much more fun. This is the exact type of game that benefits so much from the player experimenting with what they can figure out themselves, adding on several layers of immersion.
Sometimes, I'd spend literal hours, not exaggerating, just making random shit. In all honestly, the combat and story were mostly an afterthought for me, because of how fun it is to just make shit through alchemy with all the stuff I spent the past 30 minutes gathering. This game figured out a way to make doing chores feel rewarding and fun. That's an impressive feat in its own right.
Anyway, I bought the second one, and intend to jump into that after finishing the Xenoblade 3 DLC campaign. Consider me hooked.

Shadow the Hedgehog is a game I really love because I really like the ideas presented here. The morality system that lets you dictate Shadow's allegiance. The branching pathways you can go to not just in the levels, but in the story as well. The unique sandbox gameplay that this game provides makes for a unique platforming experience. The cheesy early 2000s teenager angst soundtrack - everything is here and accounted for, and I love it.

This game falls apart very fast though. I'm not gonna repeat the same things you've heard other people say, but yes - the controls are bad and take getting used to, having to replay the game 10 times for the "true ending" is stupid, the idea of the true ending in general is stupid because it invalidates the morality system as a whole, and just poor decisions made in the game overall.

Shadow the Hedgehog is a game that, in my opinion, deserved a second attempt. I want Sega to try this style of game again because this formula has so much potential. Remove what didn't work in this game, rework the things that sound good on paper but were executed poorly, and improve upon the things that did work.

This style of game needs another chance in the Sonic series.

contrary to its presentation and initial gameplay, chaos legion is nothing like devil may cry

the exaggerated, emo, anime stylings are all there, as is the production of the music (which is fucking awesome) but what starts off as a mindless hack n slash quickly becomes a painfully unforgiving strategy game that's more about bringing the right tools to a fight rather than technical combat or flashy combos

equipping the wrong legions for a boss can be the difference between a 2 minute washout and a 10 minute chipfest, and unfortunately the tutorials do a pretty terrible job of telling you that - they're poorly translated, brief, and barely even helpful in the first place. the actual manual doesn't fare much better, so i strongly recommend checking a player-made beginners guide on gamefaqs unless you get off on trial and error - cause you're gonna be doing a lot of it

highly recommended despite the steep learning curve!

This game starts out weird, gameplay is rough, story is kinda confusing, super useless tutorials ("change crests with the crest change button" oh gee thanks!!), and the game has some moments of frustration involving some regenerators but at the same time i couldn't help but keep playing due to the super bizarre premise while also being the type of game that will reward you for sticking with it. Yes this game has a steep learning curve but once you get used to it, you start upgrading your character and learn what legion is best for the stage it's all smooth sailing from there. One thing consistent about this game is the phenomenal soundtrack composed by the great Hideyuki Fukasawa, from moody to quite epic tracks, it really sets the mood for this medieval-apocalyptic-gone-to-hell setting. All in all, if you have the patience then go for it and most importantly don't go expecting a DMC-like game.