Well fuck. I'm not surprised that I liked Venba, but I am surprised I liked it this much.

It does feel a bit strange that it took this long for me to find a narrative-based cooking game; most of the cooking video games I've seen are either arcade-scoring style minigame collections (your Cooking Mamas), restaurant management titles like Cook, Serve, Delicious!, or sandboxes that felt so simple and structureless that they basically turned into meme simulators for me past the five minute mark. Conversely, Venba more closely resembles what I expect of my idealized cooking game: it emphasizes the puzzle-like qualities of cooking via mastering techniques at the right time (something that no other game I'm aware of has really capitalized upon) while also using cooking as a narrative vessel to impart past memories of learning/executing recipes and thoroughly exploring culture via the medium of the culinary arts. Granted, Venba's puzzles are easy enough to navigate but still aren't free, and that does wonders in aiding its lean towards storytelling: without spoiling too much, entire sections of recipes are often missing, and thus part of the fun is filling out the gaps as the player to "correct" the dishes. You won't get penalized unlike a restaurant sim though, and that's the fun of cooking! Sometimes, you just want to experiment a little and try out new techniques, and if you mess up, that's just kitchen learning in a nutshell.

What I wasn't expecting though, was just how deeply I resonated with the narrative. My immediate family and I are immigrants, and quite frankly, I've inquired a little here and there about what they've sacrificed to move to the US, but I clearly haven't asked enough. While I've never genuinely felt ashamed of my own culture, I've absolutely felt the pressure to "fit in" and in many cases, felt a bit of the old embarrassment rise up again from playing this game due to how disconnected I've often felt from my old home city versus having now lived in the states for a while. English isn't my first language, but it may as well have been now given my difficulties writing and sometimes speaking my old language, and losing my grasp of all these things that were once more familiar to me has always been a sore point in my life. This game is a reminder to me that even if I may have grown up in an entirely different world than my parents, they're still my family at the end of the day regardless of cultural differences and it's still my past; I might have had years slip by where I chose to remain intentionally apathetic to parts of my family's heritage, but that doesn't mean that I can't start catching up now to try and make up for lost ground.

The game is only about an hour long with just six recipes included (and a couple near the end are a bit too guided), but I'm willing to overlook its brevity because this experience is going to sit with me for a while: it almost feels like it was written for me at times. Definitely one of the best surprises to come out this year. Thank you for the meal, Venba. Think I'm gonna go call my parents now and tell them how much I've missed them.

genuinely delightful. i think it's possible to compare this unfavorably to JSRF but realistically i think it trims a lot of what doesn't work about that game (too many weak, mostly linear levels; finicky platforming) and keeps most of what does, with large-ish zones (expanding outward with completion) and a compelling sense of style even if your favorite bit of stylistic flair from JSRF isn't represented here. i do think it could benefit from a slight increase to speed, especially on the ground where even boosting feels somewhat limp, but otherwise? i think this rocks. probably could use some tutorialization too. nobody seems to know how to get that one graffiti spot in mataan without googling

My first thought was that Bomb Rush Cyberfunk was just going to be a straight spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio Future (which would have been a letdown considering my three weeks of original Jet Set Radio prep), but I'm pleasantly surprised by the blend of mechanics presented! In reality, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk takes the overall structure and aesthetic from Future while borrowing more heavily from original Jet Set Radio's tight level design and intricate scoring mechanics, and dare I say, actually improves upon certain aspects. It does have a few underdeveloped features as a result of its experimentation, but overall, not a bad first attempt by Team Reptile!

One issue that apparently escaped my notice the first time around (I replayed Future recently just to confirm this) was that Future's extremely linear and stretched-out levels resulted in tons of backtracking upon missing objectives/falling off the stage, and led to fairly rigid approaches that really tried my patience upon additional loops. This is fortunately not the case with Bomb Rush Cyberfunk: levels are generally a lot more open with many more shortcuts and are spaced apart carefully to where traversal feels much more free-form. It more closely resembles original Jet Set Radio, especially when you consider how its momentum mechanics complement this design. Future made the speed fairly easy to obtain: jump onto a rail regardless of your momentum, then keep mashing trick to accelerate and never slow down. On the other hand, original Jet Set Radio became well-known for how slow your character would move about unless you actively utilized rails and grindable walls to speed up, and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk takes a modern twist: you need to maintain momentum by either rail grinding and leaning into corners for speed boosts, or by using grounded manuals combined with boost (refreshed from performing tricks) to retain speed.

The momentum mechanics go hand-in-hand with the game's combo system. After thoroughly exploring levels to spray graffiti spots for "rep" and completing subsequent score and movement-tech challenges from opposing crew members, your crew must finally confront opposing crews in a crew battle, outscoring them with trick combos in their own territory. The scoring and trick system improvises upon both original Jet Set Radio and Future: in both games, the safest way to score trick points was abusing infinite grind loops and repeating the same tricks/movement over and over. However, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk turns this on its head: you don't get tons of points for doing the same tricks ad-nauseam (since trick value decreases and eventually levels off when used more and more). Instead, the main key to getting points is increasing the multiplier by utilizing unique features of the stage: that is, leaning into tight corners on grindable rails, wall-riding billboards, and going up half-pipe ramps (which are improved over the original game since you can manual up ramps and then air boost off into manuals/rail and wall-grinds, so they can function as part of a combo). The key word is "unique," since utilizing the same set-piece in a held combo will not give additional multipliers, and the same goes for graffiti spots that can now also be resprayed as one-time trick bonuses during continuous combos. As a result, the trick and multiplier staling incentivizes players to fully explore and utilize every set-piece present upon the open stages to create massive combos, made easier thanks to the mid-air dash (which also lets you alter airborne momentum once) and the manual. The only downside here is that the game's circumstances never become difficult enough to necessitate this trick optimization; the story crew battles are pretty easy and I was leapfrogging them using the above strategy (i.e. while other crews were floundering around several hundred thousand, I was well beyond a couple million in score), so unless players are trying to crack the tougher post-game score barriers for optional characters/achievements, they may never need to lean on these strategies at all.

The lack of difficulty serves as a microcosm of this game's unfortunate trend: Bomb Rush Cyberfunk certainly innovates upon many features from the Jet Set Radio games, but I find a few to be undercooked or lacking in execution. The combat's one example: it's not a bad idea in theory (using tricks to both deal damage and maintain score/momentum) and in fact has been proposed before, but its implementation leaves something to be desired. Attacking enemies feels like it has little impact because of the muffled sound-effects, akin to slapping a wet sock on a table. Also, most enemies can be defeated with a single grounded attack into an immediate "corkscrew" jump and then spray-painted in the air. While this graffiti coup de grâce never gets old, it does feel quite difficult in practice comboing in and out of this linearizing technique (since you need to be standing and off your skates to execute, breaking any combo potential), so combat never really flows and the mandatory combat sections in-story feel somewhat superfluous.

Adjacent to this is the heat system, a spin on original Jet Set Radio's enemy escalation during story stages. As your character goes about spraying graffiti, police forces begin to spawn in tougher waves: for example, wave one consists of simple grounded officers with batons and pistols, wave two activates turrets that home-in on the player with chains and slow their movement, and wave three brings in armored forces that can block attacks. I found most of these enemies to be mere nuisances: you can easily skate around and dodge most attacks (except for the turrets, which can be easily disabled with a single attack + spray), and since enemies can't be easily comboed for points and will respawn continuously upon defeat anyways, it's best to just ignore them as is. Again, this is fairly similar to original Jet Set Radio's strategy of outmanuevering enemies since foes there were active time sinks, so this doesn't bother me greatly. Unfortunately, this creates friction with Bomb Rush Cyberfunk's exploration, and not just in the sense that enemies will impede progress. The game requires you to swap between the three different types of movestyle for their different abilities: skateboards can ride on extendable fire hydrants to extend them vertically and reach heights, inline skates can skid on glass to shatter specific ceilings, and bikes can open special garage doors. The only way to switch between characters/movestyles is to go to checkerboard tiles and dance, but the game prohibits switching when there's "too much heat." Thus, you have to de-escalate the heat gauge by entering orange porta-potties (unmarked on the map, so hopefully you remember their locations!). However, they also lock up after a single use, so players have to either outright leave the stages or find a different porta-potty elsewhere to reopen old porta-potties for enemy despawning. I think this could have easily been improved if the heat gauge slowly decreased over time from successful enemy evasion.

Even with my criticisms, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk was definitely worth the three year wait. The story isn't anything mindblowing, but it's got some nice twists that are conveyed via these surreal platforming sequences that are a cross between the time rifts from A Hat in Time and a Psychonauts fever dream. I'm pleasantly surprised by a good chunk of the soundtrack too: Hideki Naganuma's three contributions are the obvious highlights, but other tracks like 2Mello's I Wanna Kno and Sebastian Knight's Feel the Funk more than hold their own weight. It's a good mix of upbeat sampledelia hip-hop and chill ambient tunes, with my only real complaint being the lack of guitar-heavy rock tracks like Magical Girl or Statement of Intent... RIP Guitar Vader. Finally, I more than got my playtime's worth out of 100%ing the game, considering all the hidden areas and collectibles to find and just how much fun I had figuring out new ways to string together ridiculous combos. Despite the game's various areas of improvement, I find Bomb Rush Cyberfunk to be a fantastic fresh take upon a beloved franchise that isn't just a homage to Jet Set Radio, but a love letter to classic Y2K counter-culture and skating games as a whole. If you're not a prior fan of the franchise, this might not be the game to change your mind, but if you are, then I see no reason why you wouldn't find some enjoyment out of it. It's no surprise that fans absolutely ate this up, with excitement for the franchise reaching a new fever pitch. Your move, SEGA. Let's see if you guys still understand the concept of love.

I considered strongly putting together a long-form critique of this game, but the most damning statement I could possibly make about Final Fantasy XVI is that I truly don't think it's worth it. The ways in which I think this game is bad are not unique or interesting: it is bad in the same way the vast majority of these prestige Sony single-player exclusives are. Its failures are common, predictable, and depressingly endemic. It is bad because it hates women, it is bad because it treats it's subject matter with an aggressive lack of care or interest, it is bad because it's imagination is as narrow and constrained as it's level design. But more than anything else, it is bad because it only wants to be Good.

Oxymoronic a statement as it might appear, this is core to the game's failings to me. People who make games generally want to make good games, of course, but paired with that there is an intent, an interest, an idea that seeks to be communicated, that the eloquence with which it professes its aesthetic, thematic, or mechanical goals will produce the quality it seeks. Final Fantasy XVI may have such goals, but they are supplicant to its desire to be liked, and so, rather than plant a flag of its own, it stitches together one from fabric pillaged from the most immediate eikons of popularity and quality - A Song of Ice and Fire, God of War, Demon Slayer, Devil May Cry - desperately begging to be liked by cloaking itself in what many people already do, needing to be loved in the way those things are, without any of the work or vision of its influences, and without any charisma of its own. Much like the patch and DLC content for Final Fantasy XV, it's a reactionary and cloying work that contorts itself into a shape it thinks people will love, rather than finding a unique self to be.

From the aggressively self-serious tone that embraces wholeheartedly the aesthetics of Prestige Fantasy Television with all its fucks and shits and incest and Grim Darkness to let you know that This Isn't Your Daddy's Final Fantasy, without actually being anywhere near as genuinely Dark, sad, or depressing as something like XV, from combat that borrows the surface-level signifiers of Devil May Cry combat - stingers, devil bringers, enemy step - but without any actual opposition or reaction of that series' diverse and reactive enemy set and thoughtful level design, or the way there's a episode of television-worth of lectures from a character explaining troop movements and map markers that genuinely do not matter in any way in order to make you feel like you're experiencing a well thought-out and materially concerned political Serious Fantasy, Final Fantasy XVI is pure wafer-thin illusion; all the surface from it's myriad influences but none of the depth or nuance, a greatest hits album from a band with no voice to call their own, an algorithmically generated playlist of hits that tunelessly resound with nothing. It looks like Devil May Cry, but it isn't - Devil May Cry would ask more of you than dodging one attack at a time while you perform a particularly flashy MMO rotation. It looks like A Song of Ice and Fire, but it isn't - without Martin's careful historical eye and materialist concerns, the illusion that this comes even within striking distance of that flawed work shatters when you think about the setting for more than a moment.

In fairness, Final Fantasy XVI does bring more than just the surface level into its world: it also brings with it the nastiest and ugliest parts of those works into this one, replicated wholeheartedly as Aesthetic, bereft of whatever semblance of texture and critique may have once been there. Benedikta Harman might be the most disgustingly treated woman in a recent work of fiction, the seemingly uniform AAA Game misogyny of evil mothers and heroic, redeemable fathers is alive and well, 16's version of this now agonizingly tired cliche going farther even than games I've railed against for it in the past, which all culminates in a moment where three men tell the female lead to stay home while they go and fight (despite one of those men being a proven liability to himself and others when doing the same thing he is about to go and do again, while she is not), she immediately acquiesces, and dutifully remains in the proverbial kitchen. Something that thinks so little of women is self-evidently incapable of meaningfully tackling any real-world issue, something Final Fantasy XVI goes on to decisively prove, with its story of systemic evils defeated not with systemic criticism, but with Great, Powerful Men, a particularly tiresome kind of rugged bootstrap individualism that seeks to reduce real-world evils to shonen enemies for the Special Man with Special Powers to defeat on his lonesome. It's an attempt to discuss oppression and racism that would embarrass even the other shonen media it is clearly closer in spirit to than the dark fantasy political epic it wears the skin of. In a world where the power fantasy of the shonen superhero is sacrosanct over all other concerns, it leads to a conclusion as absurd and fundamentally unimaginative as shonen jump's weakest scripts: the only thing that can stop a Bad Guy with an Eikon is a Good Guy with an Eikon.

In borrowing the aesthetics of the dark fantasy - and Matsuno games - it seeks to emulate, but without the nuance, FF16 becomes a game where the perspective of the enslaved is almost completely absent (Clive's period as a slave might as well not have occurred for all it impacts his character), and the power of nobility is Good when it is wielded by Good Hands like Lord Rosfield, a slave owner who, despite owning the clearly abused character who serves as our introduction to the bearers, is eulogized completely uncritically by the script, until a final side quest has a character claim that he was planning to free the slaves all along...alongside a letter where Lord Rosfield discusses his desire to "put down the savages". I've never seen attempted slave owner apologia that didn't reveal its virulent underlying racism, and this is no exception. In fact, any time the game attempts to put on a facade of being about something other than The Shonen Hero battling other Kamen Riders for dominance, it crumbles nigh-immediately; when Final Fantasy 16 makes its overtures towards the Power of Friendship, it rings utterly false and hollow: Clive's friends are not his power. His power is his power.

The only part of the game that truly spoke to me was the widely-derided side-quests, which offer a peek into a more compelling story: the story of a man doing the work to build and maintain a community, contributing to both the material and emotional needs of a commune that attempts to exist outside the violence of society. As tedious as these sidequests are - and as agonizing as their pacing so often is - it's the only part of this game where it felt like I was engaging with an idea. But ultimately, even this is annihilated by the game's bootstrap nonsense - that being that the hideaway is funded and maintained by the wealthy and influential across the world, the direct beneficiaries and embodiments of the status quo funding what their involvement reveals to be an utterly illusionary attempt to escape it, rendering what could be an effective exploration of what building a new idea of a community practically looks like into something that could be good neighbors with Galt's Gulch.

In a series that is routinely deeply rewarding for me to consider, FF16 stands as perhaps its most shallow, underwritten, and vacuous entry in decades. All games are ultimately illusions, of course: we're all just moving data around spreadsheets, at the end of the day. But - as is the modern AAA mode de jour - 16 is the result of the careful subtraction of texture from the experience of a game, the removal of any potential frictions and frustrations, but further even than that, it is the removal of personality, of difference, it is the attempt to make make the smoothest, most likable affect possible to the widest number of people possible. And, just like with its AAA brethren, it has almost nothing to offer me. It is the affect of Devil May Cry without its texture, the affect of Game of Thrones without even its nuance, and the affect of Final Fantasy without its soul.

Final Fantasy XVI is ultimately a success. It sought out to be Good, in the way a PS5 game like this is Good, and succeeded. And in so doing, it closed off any possibility that it would ever reach me.

It doesn’t really surprise me that each positive sentiment I have seen on Final Fantasy XVI is followed by an exclamation of derision over the series’ recent past. Whether the point of betrayal and failure was in XV, or with XIII, or even as far back as VIII, the rhetorical move is well and truly that Final Fantasy has been Bad, and with XVI, it is good again. Unfortunately, as someone who thought Final Fantasy has Been Good, consistently, throughout essentially the entire span of it's existence, I find myself on the other side of this one.

Final Fantasy XV convinced me that I could still love video games when I thought, for a moment, that I might not. That it was still possible to make games on this scale that were idiosyncratic, personal, and deeply human, even in the awful place the video game industry is in.

Final Fantasy XVI convinced me that it isn't.

it's been a long, long time since i've been this distraught over beating a game, dude. i never had a huge childhood connection to JSR like a ton of people (i played it for the first time a few years back), but even so i LOVE the shit out of this game. like this shit is just DRIPPING with aesthetic beauty. everything from the music, graffiti design, even the phone/map UI feels so perfect. i haven't resonated with a game's art style this hard in forever.

controls are immaculate. it took me a while to get used to JSR's controls but things clicked for me here immediately. the airdash and boost are genius and make just skating around super cool. the way graffiti is unlocked/sprayed is super cool too - it's such a basic thing but it's way better than JSR. honest to god this thing just blows the original out of the water. the story manages to be awesome and touching too, even if it's not super deep on the surface.

sure, it isn't perfect. the combat is definitely as bad as people say it is, and sometimes your heat levels increase WAY too quickly. but like, that's it. in a sea of bullshit soulless AAA games that seem to be everywhere these days, game like bomb rush cyberfunk are there to remind you: video games cool :)

(original review I accidentally deleted)

Basically my opinion on this game is fairly simple, ignoring the bugs and the strange gameplay/design decisions that are rife throughout the game, my take is that BG3 is a great CRPG for both Larian and non-crpg enthusiasts.

However, this title fails for me in a few aspects. Firstly, writing being quite sub-standard both in story and with characters that are quite archetypal or resembling tropes that are done to death (i have a very similar complain with DOS2). Secondly, the gameplay itself (even on tactician) is piss-poor easy with bad balancing between Magic & Melee combats (magic being horrendously overpowered, like wtf is with haste). Lastly, mostly for me, it doesn't innovate or try to challenge the genre or improve it in any way, making the style and approach of the game incredibly safe and simple, the only upside really being polish (which is fine).

These points will not affect all people (obviously), including those who just want a great entrance CRPG that is well-polished and shiny. My issues really come down to the fact that BG3 does not stand out in any way among the CRPGs of recent years whatsoever. Other CRPGs of late like Poe2 and WotR both have the choice between turn-based and real-time, take risks in their gameplay and storytelling, and convince you the worlds are grounded and realistic. BG3 feels too disconnected from both it's predecessors and contemporaries to really feel unique as it just does what is known to be good. Some people may like that simplicity, I am not one of those people.

tldr:
If you are new to "crpgs" or "turn-based party" games, I would give this an attempt, but if you are one that looks for uniqueness in genres and systems or styles that challenge the standard for games (specifically crpgs in this case) this just ain't it.

I want to preface this by saying that through the first 2 acts this game was in contention with octopath traveler 2 for GOTY. Act 3 is probably the singular worst experience I've had with a game like this.

After hours of buggy quests, questionable storylines/challenges, and losing up to 8 hours of savefile progress after my game crashed and my saves became incompatible I can't even truly recommend this game.
It will suck you in and I mean I cannot truly be upset about around 70 hours of great entertainment. Just beware that as it stands the third act is somewhat unplayable unless you are fortunate enough to dodge all the bugs I've encountered.