on a different day i would write something stupid about how accomplished this game is as a work of postmodernism for a game about a cartoon hedgehog but for now maybe not.
what is admirable and remarkable about this game to me, having not played it since i was a child is how much i found every stage sans mad space really well designed. it is often criticised for the non-hedgehog levels being downgraded versions of their sa1 counterparts but i think they still work fine, the design concepts are less immediately satisfctory but the improved level design and controls make for a better overall gameplay experience.
the ambition of the game's narrative is also admirable, but really that was to still be expected from a sonic game, sonic adventure might have been the first mainstream video game to utilise the rashomon effect after all. the inspirations here are probably globetrotting military/spy thrillers which i find interesting considering the game released before the bourne identity would really propel that genre into the cultural foreground again considering bond was in a lull and mission impossible hadnt really broken through too much quite yet. except the globe being trotted is mainly just san francisco including the famous san francisco pyramind. baudrillard's analysis of los angeles comes to mind when i think of that, dont ask me to elaborate.
as a child i was utterly mesmerised by what i thought was a beautifully nuanced story beyond good and evil, and i think thats important. sonic adventure 2 is a wonderful introduction to grey morality as it can be understood by children. many playing this in its target audience would have never questioned the boundaries of morality and legality before, of the role of the state in peacekeeping, of the purpose of policing and militarism, of the responsibility of science. this game welcomes its audience to take on that discourse within themselves if they so choose, it never spoonfeeds its ultimately-basic-to-adults ideas to its intended audience. it just lets it boil and turns the stove off, waiting for the boil to be turned on again slowly and surely as they progress to other, more mature works that may have more concrete things to say about such subjects and eventually to lived experiences of our society where such subjects are unavoidable.

Around the end of the game, when you enter the alternate dimension that the antagonists of the game came from, Cortex remarks that there were supposed to be two dimensions, "but we ran out of time". Due to everything I had been through with this game while playing it, hearing this felt like when your friend makes a self-deprecating joke that's just a little too revealing and makes everyone uncomfortable.

I'm kind of baffled by how many people have given this game a pass when it comes to all its bugs, glitches, and general sloppiness. Don't get me wrong, this is a solid idea for a new Crash game, turning it into a more linear Jak and Daxter has its appeal and makes sense for when it came out. There are little moments where this new format works; when the platforming takes advantage of the more open levels and the crate mechanics of previous Crash games. But these moments don't last long and are replaced with mid-at-best gimmick sections. These gimmick sections start off kind of interesting, but nearly all of them immediately fall into the pitfall of the game's broken nature. Rolling around as a ball is neat until you have to make a precise jump and all of a sudden you launch thirty feet into the air. Rolling Cortex around in a barrel seems promising until one nudge rolls him off the stage immediately. Sliding stages require you to use a jump that only works half of the time, and the Nina Cortex level involves extremely brainless wall-jumping mechanics. Some stuff like Crash having to drag Cortex through levels and playing as Cortex aren't too bad, but man games in this era sure loved just giving as many different types of gameplay as possible, and considering Twinsanity is constantly falling apart, it does not do this game any favors.

But let's focus on just playing as Crash, going through levels with the usual jumping and spinning and whatnot. As I said, it sometimes works, but it often feels like they forced Crash-style platforming challenges into a 3D space and it doesn't feel great. I had several moments of falling into pits due to not being able to judge the distance of a jump, or not being able to see the jump at all, which rarely happened in previous Crash games. The worst part is anything involving platforming on steel crates, on which you can't see your shadow. This makes platforming on such sections a complete hassle, and I often ignored the gems that involved them due to how hard it was to find out how to land properly on them. In general, many of the crate bouncing challenges that are reminiscent of previous games are pretty bad here, and the game is at its best when it just acts like crates don't exist outside of TNT and nitro crates.

I have some other gripes, like how Aku Aku is basically useless since it seems every obstacle is instant death, how dogshit checkpointing can be sometimes (it really is inspired by Jak and Daxter), and the unskippable cutscenes, but really the main reason I can't recommend this game is how broken it is. I had three straight-up crashes/soft locks while playing, one of which sent me way too far back, one moment where I couldn't progress past a combat section because knocking an enemy into a pit didn't count as killing them, and a couple of moments of losing all the music for some time, and several other glitches. So many things just killed me without explanation that I went through most of the game scared for my life that a random seam on the floor would take my last life and send me back to the last autosave. Anyone else jump on that one boss's dead body, thinking it was safe, only to have it kill you and make you do the whole boss again? I could also talk about how the story feels like only half of it was told, the cutscenes that desperately need actual sound effects, and countless sloppy little things.

Obviously, no one sets out to make a game like this on purpose, it was the result of crunch, disputes between different parts of development and with the publisher, and having to scrape together different, unfinished versions of this game that went through multiple changes way too rapidly. There's a version of this game that fully realizes what Traveler's Tales set out to do, and it's sad we'll probably never see it considering the Crash series has both come back and died before it could get to giving this the full-on remake it needs. Some people can enjoy it for what it is, I personally had a rough as hell time and would not recommend this to anyone, especially since emulating it still seems to be an involved process. The music stands out as the only fully realized and wholly enjoyable part of this game. I need to stop trusting the taste of 3D platformer fans though, have you seen the way they talk about this game, it's like they played a different game I swear.

The original Animal Crossing is an interesting case study to me, considering that I've spent plenty of time playing the games after this (Wild World, New Leaf, and New Horizons) before coming back to the source. Right away, I can tell that the sauce is there but it's nowhere as polished as its successors. For example, you can't immediately submit fossils to the museum because Blathers isn't confident enough in his fossil certification; instead, you have to write up a letter, attach the fossil to the letter, and mail it off to the museum to get identified before it gets mailed back, and you also have to wait a day before finding your first fossil before you can mail it off to boot. There's other little things too, like Nook's Cranny being a bit "luck-based" in what tools they'll choose to sell to you first, so you might not get the chance to fish on the first day if it's not being sold, or how the Able Sisters aren't actually selling clothing in the original, just acting as a stand-in for custom designs that are more fully integrated in the sequels. Oh, and there are goddamn mosquitos everywhere that really love to bite me while I'm fishing for coelacanths and harvesting my daily money rock; I swear my budget Ico should have gotten West Nile virus by now considering how many times he's been bit over the past couple of weeks.

And yet, it's in these imperfections and its distinct vibe that the original carves out its niche. Unlike its successors, everyone in the village you move to is at best indifferent and at worst somewhat hostile and cynical of you, the newbie moving in. They don't make any attempts to hide it really; the villagers constantly joke about how they would never forget you when you load up your game again, and some even saw me as this kind of pestilence that existed and wanted nothing to do with whenever I tried chatting them up to see if I could do them any favors. The only guy in town who seems to give a damn about you is a raccoon who is more or less exploiting you for free labor. And yet, there's something oddly comforting about this and the "lack" of things to do in the original Animal Crossing when compared to the games that came after. I never felt like I was being rushed towards some light at the far end of the tunnel or felt disappointed that I didn't make enough progress to hit the next checkpoint, or even a need to make myself presentable and affable to those around me. If they didn't care, why should I? There's a million things to do in New Leaf and New Horizons that kept pushing me forward, and contrary to that, the lack of ambition in the original kept me rooted in the simple daily tasks; I was content just fishing to my heart's desire, having nothing to prove and no one to prove anything to. I may be done with Animal Crossing for now, but I can appreciate how it lets you forget about life for a while. It doesn't need to be something flashy or aspiring: it just is.

is this really a win for klonoa? namco puppeteering his corpse with the prospect of future games that may not deliver or even get made? i'd rather this series die if this is the quality we can expect from it.

nevermind the obnoxious practice of holding series' hostage like this, it's deeply upsetting that the only compromise we get is a butchered representation of what came before. because god forbid people play old playstation games that "look dated" next to other games releasing today despite there not being a good way to experience how the original games were presented to begin with. you'd think more people would push back against this; especially considering the cries for more klonoa content from those who grew up with this series, but to my surprise basically everyone seems to be eating this up no questions asked. every few years this happens, an old series gets a spark of life in miserable fashion and sometimes it leads to something greater, but even with the best outcome i think its a bad precedent to set. sure crash bandicoot 4 crushed all expectations and is in the running for best game in the entire series, but it rubs me the wrong way that it came as a result of scrubbing away the hard work done by the original developers back in the late 90's.

i understand that much of this stems from publishers more than developers (it's not like they've been very forward thinking when it comes to the preservation of old games to begin with) but when companies demand stringent deadlines with no regard to quality control of course the product will come out half baked, no matter how much love was behind the wheel of it. i don't have a bird's eye view on the development of this project, but i can't imagine it was enjoyable or flexible to work under. even if their hearts were in the right place, theres no chance they had the tools needed to really do this series the justice it deserves.

no matter the circumstances though, this is what we're left with. a botched collection of beloved titles that, for the foreseeable future, is the only way to comfortably play these for most people. i'm not upset that it's overpriced or not stuffed with extraneous crap to justify the cost, i'm upset that this is the standard for preservation the industry is setting for itself. who cares about the game's legacy and how it impacted people, just slap a name on it to excite fans looking for to rekindle memories of better days gone by.

best case scenario we get a new sequel out of this collection and it really delivers on fan expectations, but is that really the lesson to be learned here? treat the past as a frivolous step to success so we can move onto the next new shiny thing? i can't help but feel deeply cynical over the industry if this is how we think we should celebrate the past. klonoa deserved better

Save Klonoa #KlonoaSweep buy the games legitimately to support the series and prevent it from another painful death. We could get Klonoa 3.

You know, not to diss the backer who’s review was absolutely damning, but 1) I personally found no issue with the framerate throughout my experience with the game so far, 2) while I do agree that the PS1 version is the best way to play Klonoa 1, I would argue that for newcomers, this is certainly a great introduction to the franchise. Being a port of the Wii version means no skidding on platforms that lead to unfair deaths, and that’s really good stuff. And 3) frankly I don’t care about the DLC costumes because they’re not really the main focus of the game, don’t really provide much enhancement to the gameplay and I prefer regular Klonoa anyways.

The remasters have surprised me with how well they present themselves so far: the graphics are vibrant and colourful, bearing more similarity to the PS1 version; Klonoa’s model is also reverted back to the original design and the cutscene dialogue uses the original PS1 audio (although I would’ve gladly appreciated the quality be upscaled as well). Sure, Klonoa isn’t as expressive as his PS1 sprite counterpart due to the limitations of in-game models, and he no longer says Manyah when he gets hit (a downside of porting the Wii version); the Skip Scene button could’ve been hidden as well, but I don’t think those small nitpicks are worth completely trashing this game for. It still controls fine, plays fine, looks amazing for a Unity Engine port, soundtrack still delivers and Klonoa even has idle animations now! Again, I’m not saying this version is better because the PS1 version is clearly superior, I’m just saying that this is still a perfectly acceptable port of one of the greatest games ever made!

I’ll come back to the game as a whole when I’m done, but I’m labelling this game as my favourite game of all time because I consider both Klonoa games to be that as a collective, and putting the Phantasy Reverie Series as a placeholder works for me.

Not a legitimate review (because I just played the first world of both games), but I want to throw my hat into this ring of fire I see brewing here.

I'm willing to admit that the graphics can look a bit cheap, asset-wise. I personally think that the original Klonoa 1 looks much better than the Wii version (which this game's remake is clearly based off of). I do think that there's an argument to be made against Klonoa 2, dropping that game's cel-shaded characters for more consistent models between the two games. I think the one thing I can unanimously agree on is that the game feels a bit too bright, lighting-wise. Some of that visual atmosphere has definitely been lost in the transition.

But on the other hand, there's an attention to detail that I think would be shameful to ignore. Everything is colorful, whimsical, and animated. For crying out loud, they kept the title screen easter eggs in Klonoa 2. The level design remains untouched as far as I can tell, and that's ok in my eyes because it never needed fixing.

There's still definitely some modern gaming scum dripping off this title though. Extra outfits are cute, holding them as $20 DLC for a $40 game is not. The game assaults you with EULAs once you hit the title screen (no Bamco, you don't get my personal information). I don't know why every cutscene needs the "skip" and "speed up" buttons present at all times. It's not the most distracting thing, but like, shoo, shoo, I'm trying to enjoy the story!

Lastly, I understand the plea for the preservation of the original titles, but I see it from this perspective:

If you want to play the original Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, you have three choices. Buy it digitally for PS3/PSP/Vita (this choice will likely disappear in the near future), sell a kidney so you can afford an official copy, or emulate it. If you want to play the Wii version of Klonoa, you either sell your other kidney, or you emulate it. If you want to play the original Klonoa 2, you either sell your secret third kidney, or you emulate it.

It might hurt for some people to hear this, but most consumers tend to take the most convenient option. I don't swear allegiance to companies, but I'm personally just glad that these games are being preserved in ANY capacity. I consider the quality high enough to warrant my recommendation. If you haven't played these games and want to know what all the chatter is about, I believe that you're doing yourself a disservice by not picking this up.

EDIT: Finished both titles. I personally found Klonoa 2's remaster more enjoyable. Just make sure to turn off bloom in the settings, it helps combat the extreme brightness. Door to Phantomile was fairly enjoyable, but as a retooling of the Wiimake, I have to say that I still prefer the PS1 original overall. Something felt...off about how Klonoa controlled in that remaster. Nothing unplayable though, I still beat the Extra Vision in just under 5 minutes. I'm an old pro.

"Ready? Go!"
sounds of sporadic plastic clacking
"Game!"
loud sound of plastic thudding against wall
grown men screaming out of anger

"A story is a series of memories. Memories are remembered with other memories, and in turn become memories themselves. If you don't take care to preserve your memories, you'll forget them. So, please tell us frogs your memories of everything so far... That is what people refer to as 'saving'."

This isn't really a review, more of just some...thoughts on this game and my relationship to it. Fair warning, it's pretty navel-gazey and self-indulgent. You may not really get on with this one.

One of the all-time best Hard Drive headlines remains "Huge Earthbound Fan Excited To Play It For The First Time". It's a good gag, an playfully teasing dig that is funny because it's true, and could only come from a place of understanding of the EarthBound/Mother fandom. I know, because once upon a time, I was a Huge Mother 3 Fan Excited To Play It For The First Time.

It's hard to emphasize how much of a fetish object Mother 3 was for the western EarthBound fandom, even for the wider JRPG fandom. I became aware of EarthBound through Smash Bros, as I am sure most people my age did, and was immediately taken in by how out-of-a-piece it was with the rest of Nintendo's stable, and my interest only skyrocketed when I searched the internet and found out that EarthBound was super fucked up and weird and scary in a way only slightly off-beat Nintendo games hyped up by 14-year olds who don't really know anything else could be.

(See also: Majora's Mask, and endless features in Official Nintendo Magazine UK swearing that the ReDeads in Ocarina of Time were the scariest shit in the fucking world man you'd fuckin shit and piss your pants)

And then, of course, there was the sequel on the Game Boy Advance, that never left Japan and never would, implicitly because it would emotionally scar anyone who played it and was even more messed up than it's fuckin twisted predecessor. EarthBound has a habit of being slightly spoken over by many of its most ardent fans, certainly, those I was privy to in my days lurking on noted Haven for Absolute Unhinged Freaks Starmen.net, but Mother 3 was on a whole other level. Everything about this game was spoken of in terms of absurd religiosity, which was only heightened by its relative inaccessibility. Speaking about the game in hyperbolic terms practically became a core tenant of the EarthBound fandom, as if an official translation could be physically evoked out of the ether if enough people were enthusiastic enough for it. Entire swathes of the game were freely discussed, both before and after the (also given a kind of quasi-religious status by the fandom) fan translation were released, spoiling every single conceivable thing in the game in order to entice someone, anyone to give it a go and join the chorus, never quite seeming to realize that, mostly, they were was just talking to each other, and to impressionable 13-year-olds like me.

I swallowed all of this. It was hard not to. I remember one day, on what was probably at the time the most exciting website ever devised, the Smash Bros. Dojo, which contained daily updates for the sure-to-be greatest Smash Bros. ever made when Lucas and New Pork City were announced. To say I lost my shit was an understatement. I freaked out to just about any of my friends who would care to listen, performing the same role of Eulogist that all the people I saw online do for Mother 3, giving away every possible twist and reveal and plot point to people who, maybe might have actually played EarthBound on their own one day and liked it well enough. To say that I was a fan of Mother 3 at this point would be incorrect: I was a religious convert, a cultist, a Happy-Happyist passing down the teachings that I had taken in from sermons of the mount like "Blues Brothers Symbolism in EarthBound". Blue, blue.

I did play EarthBound, and really loved it, mostly because like 80% of the conversation around the game, when I was getting into it, was about how totally fucked up the final boss battle with Giygas is, and the remaining 20% was endless relitigating about why a game so impossibly magical and amazing didn't sell well enough, which carried the implicit conversation with the unreleased status of Mother 3. Because of this, I found so many surprises and things I found personally resonant, things that I had nothing to bring to other than myself. I didn't even have this feeling with the even-more over-discussed Final Fantasy VII because the things culture remembers of that game are bafflingly at odds with what it actually is and what I took away from it when I came to it.

But with Mother 3? I can't say the same thing. It's partly because it's a much shorter, more focused game than it's predecessor, it's partially because it stands alongside Far Cry 2 and Dark Souls as one of the most over-analyzed games in existence. But mostly, I think it's because the fandom conversation around this game warped my perception of it and turned every step on the Nowhere Islands into charted territory, where everyone had left their mark, and I had no space to make mine, no space to find myself beneath everyone else.

There are a huge amount of things that I love about Mother 3, so many things that I appreciate, and so many things that make me smile. But I've never been able to feel like my experiences of it were entirely mine. I've never been able to find the unique resonances with my own life or experiences that characterize all of my favorite games. Everywhere I look, every corner I turn on the Nowhere Islands, I see the words of others, the perspectives of others. I look at little elements like the doorknob, and instead of being able to turn it over in my head, and place it within the wider whole, all I can hear is a cacophony of voices echoing throughout the years, the interpretations of posters on Starmen.net, Itoi and Brownie Brown's own comments on the subject, drowning out any thoughts I might have.

Yes, I could definitely discuss my thoughts on the fact that the village of Tazmily was in some way doomed to it's fate from the very beginning because of it's pursuit of an idealized vision of a specifically American past draped in western imagery that conveniently ignores the great darkness of that time in material history...but even this thought echoes with perspectives I've read countless times before. Wess' abuse, the Magypsies as a deeply clumsy but earnest attempt to explore gender non-conformity as it relates to the social and "nature", the way forgetting haunts the entire game world, as if everyone else on the Islands knows what a terrible mistake has been made by choosing to move backwards rather than forwards and desperately wishes to avoid it by enshrining themselves in your memory...it's possible you've read stuff here and thought "oh, that's interesting!" But every time I go to speak, every time I open my mouth on these things the words of others spill out, so ingrained and intertwined that I don't know which thoughts are mine and which thoughts are creeping in from forum threads long, long ago. Playing this game is like playing with a director's commentary track inside my head that I cannot switch off, commenting on the meaning or intent behind every single pixel on the screen, and it's heartbreaking because I truly believe this kind of voracious all-consuming analysis is completely antithetical to why these games are good.

Mother/Earthbound games are free-wheeling, lackadaisical, and rarely concerned with all-consuming arcs and statements. Those things are there, but the real pleasure of playing one of these games is just meeting the weird and wonderful people of this odd and beautiful world. You can see it in the battle system, in how it is playfully carefree with it's rules and rhythms, with many boss battles being beaten after you have technically been dealt lethal damage, but the game is kinda taking it easy until it gets to you. You can see it in the, frankly, absolutely astonishing soundtrack that freely mixes and matches genres and tones and instruments all processed through the woeful GBA speakers. You can see it in how the MacGuffin that dominates the first half of the game's plot is basically forgotten about and never mentioned again afterwards, in the lack of interest in connecting the dots between EarthBound and this game, in how the same reverence that the fandom spaces I hung out in hold this game and EarthBound are viewed with huge scepticism via Porky's Museum of EarthBound ephemera.

Mother 3 is not a religious object of absurd fervour, it's not a mythical Dark Dragon waiting to be unleashed. It's a video game, one that is laid back, at ease and confident in itself. And I wish I could be the same with it, but I can't help but play this game with the same awkward, nervous, stammering energy that comes with meeting an internet acquaintance in person. I wish I could be normal here, I really could! But my brain is too filled with EarthBound fansite trivia, I'm so sorry. Did you know there's an unused sprite that depicts the creation of the Masked Man, but that it was never used because it's probably just too fucked up and scary f-

Boney attacks!

...yeah, ok, I deserved that.

I've read a lot on games I love, and games I don't, but never do I really feel like those perspectives take me over, leave me unable to see the game beneath them. Certainly, my perspective has been altered by the perspectives of others, sometimes for good and sometimes for ill but with no other game do I feel so wholly unable to find myself in, no other game has this opaque wall around it made of What Other People Thought About It. Not even EarthBound has this for me. And it makes me really sad. Mother 3 is a special game. A really great one. And I think I do love it but...it's a love with a lower-case L. Despite it's reputation as a merciless feels machine, my appreciation of Mother 3 is extremely emotionally detached in a way I find kind of upsetting. There are definitely things about it that I feel strongly about, things about it that provoke profound emotion in me, but I wish I had been able to find those things for myself, instead of my love for the game sold to me by overzealous fans.

No, that's wrong. It's not the fan's fault. Well, not entirely. I do think that a lot of the conversation with these games is kind of fundamentally opposed to what they actually are in a way that speaks to the relative immaturity of a lot (not all) of the people talking about them at the point in time where their critical reception was still cooling. But ultimately, It's not the fault of people just talking enthusiastically about a game they loved, or at least, wanted to love. Mother 3 is just...as a result of my interactions with it, how long its shadow is cast across my mind as a child...trying to find personal meaning in Mother 3 that relates personally to myself is like trying to find something new in Citizen Kane. When something is that storied, that discussed...what hope do I have?

When people who were there talk about their first interactions with EarthBound, it's so often framed as this unfolding flower of a work, that grew beyond whatever humble thoughts they may have derived from the game's legendarily misguided marketing campaign. They weren't expecting to find one of the best games of all time inside it, but they did. It's the same I feel about when I played my favourite game for the first time. I wasn't prepared for the things it would do and show me. This is not to say that novelty is an inherent facet of a game I love. But at the same time...I don't know how fully I can love something that falls into a dutiful checklist of the things I already expect to find there.

I think Mother 3 is a great game. But I think people should be allowed to find that for themselves, or not if that's how it goes. It is, ultimately, A Video Game, after all, a children's video game at that, the video equivalent of a Ghibli or Pixar film, and not a holy missive from on high. Because I don't know if I feel, in my heart, that Mother 3 is a great game, and I think that's terrible. I think fandom and conversation can be really special, and I hope this doesn't come off as a condemnation of the western Mother/EarthBound fandom. But I think sometimes, Fandom can do terrible things to work, warp it to fit their enthusiasm. I see it in games like Persona 5, Xenoblade, Dark Souls, games that become disseminated by voices that come to dictate the scope of their meaning.

Maybe you would find Mother 3 weird, funny, or heartrending. Maybe you would think of it as super fucked up and nasty and scary. Maybe it will be the saddest thing in the world for you. But I think, as with any game, you owe it to yourself to find out for yourself, rather than have some ageing boomer online tell you what it should be.

It's like the frog. You can dissect it forever, but nothing you learn or examine or analyse will change the fundamental fact that the frog is dead. Wouldn't you much rather meet it for the first time when it's still alive, while it can still save your game?

Finished the middle route and got through about half of the top route before deciding to move on.

The framerate is definitely something to adjust to, but it didn't end up hindering me in most cases. I often found the screen pretty readable in terms of where enemies are and where their projectiles are heading. The main killer for me here is the lack of a reticle and how tilting/rolling feels. Aiming just feels unsure in this game, I eventually got a bit of a feel for it, but I did infinitely better in levels where you go in first person and actually get to have an aiming reticle. There are also these levels where you have to carefully maneuver, tilt, and adjust the speed of your Arwing to make it through tight corridors, and while they accomplish their main goal of making you go "oh shit star wars", they're not very good. As someone whose reference point for Arwing gameplays is Star Fox Assault, the lack of an instant roll is deeply felt, and pulling off a barrel roll in this game never felt right.

Now, all that being said, I did come out of this game fairly positive on a lot of stuff. Obviously, the music rules, nearly every iconic Star Fox song comes from this game, and it all goes in so hard. I honestly do think the look of this game holds up, it creates this surreal world of abstract shapes and strange alien forces, I mean just look at Andross and tell me that doesn't rule. And like I said, with some adjustment, I did acclimate to the game's quirks and enjoyed a decent amount of it. Getting good at this game feels pretty fun. Finding out the way to avoid a lot of the missiles from the second-to-last boss of Venom is to boost forward made me feel like a genius (please don't tell me you knew this immediately).

The thing is that knowing 64 exists and is so much more advanced and developed than this makes revisiting it a bit of a hard sell, but I think it's worth seeking out at least once. I ended up bailing on the second route because the levels went on a lot longer than I liked, so I doubt I'll come back to finish this, but maybe someday.

After my first session of Dokapon, I put a review up on this site maligning how I had been dead for about a quarter of the playtime thus far, beset by a whole pile of RNG bullshit and being fucked over by every other player in the game. I was having a fun time but sheesh.

Oh, how little i knew.

Dokapon Kingdom's sheer chaos starts at a level that makes Mario Party look like checkers. From week 1, straight up murder is on the table, with all players having the ability to fight both each other and enemies within a RPG battle system which is, of course, heavily luck based. All the while you're meant to be clearing towns of monsters and doing quests to earn the highest monetary worth.

And then things get worse.

The sheer amount of things that WILL fuck you over in full playthrough of dokapon, often completely out your control, is remarkable. The game will both continually mess with you with random events, broken enemies, stupid locations which are hard to get to, random drops, etc, whilst also giving your fellow players all the tools to make it worse. Want to send a killer robot after your friends? Sure. Want to nuke your friend across the map with magic? Go ahead. Want to ruin two sessions' progress for everyone by forcing them to your current position? Yeah.

With Dokapon, it's not a question of will you get fucked, it's when, and how. And somehow, I have no idea how, the game constantly one-ups itself. Just when you think it can't get any more stupid, it does. This is partially due to the map opening up slowly throughout the game, giving access to more places to lose, more insane dungeons to get caught up with, more places to be crabs in a bucket together. And it's an absolute riot.

I think the genius of Dokapon is that it gives you just the right amount of control. It's an RNG-fueled madness festival for sure, but the game lets you influence things, lets you play in enough different ways, lets you go about enough diferent means to progress and raise your own stonks that there's a true tension to when the best laid plans of mice and men fall apart, or very occasionally, don't.

During the 30 hour ish playthrough we did, there were just too many great moments to count. So many story arcs of each of us all murdering each other as we pursued one goal, so many times where we just murdered each other for dubious reasoning, about 10 different truces and agreements broken, a lot of lying, a lot of begging, a fair amount of stealing, a few times sparing people by exchanging their deaths for putting poop on their head and only two or three complete collapses of the economy.

I could not begin to tell you how fun it is. After a first session where i was feeling kinda peeved at the game, I slowly began appreciating the absurdity, and when it was at my expense, I started laughing more. And somehow, between all it's randomness it did tend to even things out and make for a game that was tense and surprisingly close the whole entire time, even after 700 turns - which is a testament for how good a manged chaos it pulls off, and maybe also a testament to how much we enjoyed fucking each other over constantly.

Of course the game has plenty of problems. Many of which are intwined with it's benefits. If you don't have the right sort of environment for this I think it could legitimately make you lose friends (which to be fair, is advertised). There's a level of camraderie needed at some point, and you kinda need to understand that being murdered is really quite funny. If you take this game too seriously, and focus too hard on the ultimate winner, you will not have the best of times.

There's also just a fair amount of broken stuff, and weird balance. There's a handful of routes to effectively infinite money that you basically need to ban as a house rule, Magic is either incredibly busted or useless iwth no inbetween as a stat, and a couple of the super secret classes are weirdly useless despite being a massive pain in the arse to even obtain. It's kinda dubious and i'd chalk up a lot of it to this game effectively being a straight remake of the original Super Famicom Dokapon - warts and all.

A natural consequence of the game system is also that the endgame gets a little stalemate-heavy if you're trying to guarantee first place. Because the game finishing relies someone beating the final dungeon and getting the big final reward, but that also takes quite a while, it creates a game state where it's arguably best to let some other fucker do it. It's not a huge issue, but I think it's something i'd probably house rule around in the future.

But who cares about that, because this game is incredible. It really did not take long for Dokapon Kingdom sessions to become the highlights of my week, eventually trying to sneakily suggest the sessions happen more often than usual in our group chat and finding that, for some fucking reason, everyone was as ok with that as I was.

I have outright never had as much fun in a Multiplayer game. It's a game where i got 30 Hours plus of scheming, dying, killing, and most importantly, laughing my ass off. Yes, you probably a group that is level-headed enough to not actively want to kill each other afterwords. But as a lens for sheer absurdity, comedy, and extracting the best moments out of group interactions, I am not sure i will ever experience something again quite like Dokapon Kingdom.

It is an absolute masterpiece.

Special shoutout to fellow players:
Sombes (This was her fucking idea)
Arnust (Schemer and no balls)
Tacos (Banged his head on the table at least once this playthrough)