I cannot lie, I'm genuinely very disappointed in this game, especially with a company as consistently strong an output as Vanillaware it pains me that this game really only has those good ass Vanillaware visuals going for it.

In terms of gameplay, the game has a lot of elements that I would generally enjoy on paper, the formations and the way tactics form together should be so much better than it actually is, there's just so many variables to the point that it largely becomes a numbers game since character building, for the purposes of beating the game (played on the second highest difficulty) is really easy and it's not super hard to make even an unoptimal formation just work through sheer force of will, which really harms the strategy layer. Also the real time Ogre Battle style strategy has a lot of problems on its own. The worst being a lot of quality of life issues, such as not being able to see how your formations will do out of deployment, and the battle forecast changing at the drop of a hat. There's so many variables to battles that you can send a battalion over to an enemy where it says it'll be a sure win, and despite seemingly no other circumstances changing it suddenly switches to a stalemate of a battle which is incredibly frustrating for planning purposes, on top of the fact that if you make mistakes there's no backing out. In many ways I can't help but compare this game to the neighbouring turn based tactics genre, where at least I can make an assessment of which move I can take that would be the most optimal, Unicorn Overlord forces you to throw shit out and if it doesn't work then tough shit, which leads to an incredibly unsatisfying tactical experience. Also there's way too many liberation missions, which I know is for controlling the level curve, but even then the level curve is fucking wacked out by the endgame, there's like a 5 level recommended level jump for no reason. Nearly every gameplay element in the game is something that could work but has a botched enough execution that frustrates me because, man, I really do want to love this game.

But most frustrating of all is the story here, the only way I can describe is like bad Fire Emblem. There's a shitload of characters and they all interact with many others in the army but unlike Fire Emblem these characters offer the substance and flavour of white rice, these characters are truly bland in a way that seems almost alien to me compared to the characters in like Odin Sphere and 13 Sentinels. The story is also dead simple but still does a few things that really hurt its narrative, the villains in this game are fuckin terrible and their motivations never amount to anything interesting, meanwhile all the good guys are so generically good that even the bad guys that become good have some crutch excuse like mind control, hostage situation, or some other hackneyed out that prevents these characters from really flourishing. The rapport system is something I usually always like because it gives these characters that don't really interact in the main story a chance to be fleshed out as characters but all it can offer is the most shallow looks at these characters in their totality to the point that they're just functions to me, Armour guy, Horse guy, Bow guy they never offer anything more interesting than hating the evil empire because they're evil and it's just really surprising to see a game with so much love put into the production lean back so heavily on just being so consistently mid.

Just a really frustrating offering from Vanillaware from me, especially for a game that nearly bankrupted the company I expected so much better because this game really only has its visuals going for it, but I can get that from any other Vanillaware game and actually have a good game too.

This was so fucking bad in every regard that I spent its runtime successfully dissociating it from Silent Hill as a concept. "Sure, Ito and Yamaoka are here, but they're hired guns nowadays anyways," I said. It plays like a terrible itch.io or Steam shovelware game, and its mix of incredibly detailed environmental assets (so much unique graffiti!) and horrifically rigged main character model whose hair is clipping through her glasses in every single cutscene in the game gives it a certain Unreal Marketplace Slop atmosphere like those as well. The inciting incident of the plot defeats its own themes and the themes of witches, generational trauma, neglect, and incidents from seven years in the past having unintended consequences make it clear this was written by a guy who wants to be Ryukishi but isn't Him. All of these are so comically bad and dumb that I was able to laugh this off, until the credits song was actually good. The guitars played the Silent Hill riff, and I had to deal with the fact that this is the future of the series. This is what I have to look forward to. I sank into the couch and have not been able to escape.

It’s incredible that the Yakuza Like A Dragon series exists in this form at all. It’s really easy to discuss these games as a simple comeback story where it was saved from (Western) obscurity by grassroots efforts rallying around 0, but the fact that this insane momentum was met by RGG Studio changing the protagonist and turning it into a triple-A turn-based JRPG when the studio has no prior experience making those and conventional wisdom says the genre is utter sales poison is staggering. The last several mainline games demonstrate a remarkable and admirable disinterest in providing fans with what they expected or wanted, which is doubly impressive when the series is so iterative by nature.

Infinite Wealth iterates a lot on its predecessor, especially. It’s still a turn-based JRPG, and its changes are really, really cool. 7 felt like an experiment that had some great moments but didn’t cohere, an exemplification of the divine mathematics that underpin Dragon Quest and the travails that come when they are fucked with too much. Infinite Wealth still has a major debt to DQ (and some tinges of Chrono Trigger-style enemy shuffling) but manages to be much more unique and self-assured.

For starters, the exp curve is just phenomenally well-considered this time. Gone are the days of 7’s stupid-ass back-to-back grinds, and the scaling for exp and job levels means that it’s very easy to catch up and it can be surprisingly difficult to overlevel. In my playthrough, I kept half of the cast with their default jobs and I had the other half level a side job to 30 before swapping back to default. Team OG ended the game with job levels in the forties, and Team FAFO ended the game with a cumulative sixty job levels. I didn’t feel punished for doing either, as each job kit feels well-rounded and useful even without getting into the insane potential added by skill inheritance, but leveling side jobs felt breezy.

Beyond just the math, job design and skills got so much love - each new job has a really cool and distinct aesthetic, a really fun playstyle, and AoE attacks are way more interesting than they were 7. Circle AoEs might have one edge centered on the targeted enemy, making them finickier for selecting a full group but granting finer control over who else to include, granting damage bonuses for initiating the attack from far away, or having a long line start and end at interesting points. Cone-shaped AoEs are a lot more useful-feeling in this game when their far edge can be centered on the targeted enemy instead of the front tip. It all adds up to make lining up attacks require thought and positioning, which is really nice.

Being able to move around is the most transformational part of the combat changes, easily, but it’s part of a host of other changes that all feel a little small on their own but add up fast. There’s now a proximity bonus for basic attacks that adds in extra hits if they’re made from up close, and getting a proximity hit from behind guarantees crits. Enemy AI is aware of this, and the window to get back attacks is often fleeting at the start of the player’s turn. Having autoattacks be gimped if the party member is pathed far away or wants to hit a specific far-away enemy is frustrating, and there are three major ways to circumvent this - the simplest is to just use a skill to close the gap and do reliable damage.

They can also pick up an environmental object and use that - being able to walk up to ‘em means that they’re an actually valid part of the player’s strategy this time, and on top of their positioning benefits they're a great way to hit elemental weaknesses on people who don’t have certain skills. Otherwise, they can stand nearby another party member and do a combo attack that applies their weapon effects, does full damage at range, and gives their partner a bit of MP back on hit as well. These latter two options are useful and have a variety of obvious applications, but still come with drawbacks - if somebody’s basic attacks do knife or gun damage, then using a ground weapon will override that. Sometimes proximity attacks do way more damage than a combo strike or weapon attack, or the other person in a combo attack will hit an enemy’s elemental resistance and do almost no damage.

On top of all this, there is now a visible knockback indicator for attacks, which adds in yet another layer on top of all of this: knocking an enemy down into a party member does a lot of damage and applies their weapon effect, but knocking them into another enemy does a good bit of AoE, but knocking a large enemy into a wall scores a full knockdown other party members can exploit that otherwise wouldn’t exist. Enemies who block can have their guard broken by either doing a grab-type attack or hitting them from behind; a grab will permanently break it, a back attack will just pierce it for that one attack (and any followups while the enemy is on the ground). This is all then further compounded by the incessant shuffling and jockeying for space that enemies do - every consideration the player will make is based on reading the situation as it exists and trying to capitalize on split-second opportunities. It’s fully turn-based, but it has the pace and feel of an action fight, while retaining the positional focus, comboing, and okizeme of the series’ beat-em-up roots. It’s really fucking good.

The standout is Kiryu’s default job, which exemplifies almost all of this. Style swapping changes the properties of his basic attacks in cool ways on its own; Rush lets him make two weaker attacks per turn, giving him strong AoE or letting him score a guaranteed KO on a weakling before focusing fire on somebody else, Beast lets him do grabs without spending MP and amps up his ability to use ground weapons, and Brawler is the “vanilla” set of attacks that then let him do heat actions under the traditional series rules - be nearby a specific environmental object or otherwise fulfill certain criteria, get into proximity with them, then ace a quick QTE. All three styles get additional action game flair by having their proximity attacks have a short mash or timing prompt, which sells Kiryu both as somebody with a foot firmly planted in real-time and also as a monstrous DPS machine who feels awesome to control.

This mechanical empowerment is contrasted by his narrative role. Ichiban’s stylization as a JRPG hero sells him as somebody strengthened by his friends, but it results in a constant bitter tinge when Kiryu is in the squad. He didn’t always need help, and the character writing does a lot of really satisfying stuff with this disempowerment and reliance for such a stoic, badass lone wolf. Infinite Wealth is a game defined by dichotomies like this - obviously it’s a story split between two countries and two leads, but its themes are equally defined by parallels and mirrors. Everything ultimately comes back to purification or corruption, light and dark, and the terrors and delights of both the past and the future.

It doubles down on everything that makes these games what they are while simultaneously being confident enough to downplay so many of the series’ touchstones, giving the game a feel kinda like a concert that’s half playing the hits and half showing tracks from their next album. The first time a jacket is dramatically removed to reveal the body underneath is an unthinking act of kindness on Ichiban’s behalf, performed without any intent to fight or to show off, but when the player sees the world through Kiryu’s eyes, he can’t help but see ghosts everywhere he goes. These themes of past and future cycles make it hard to not feel a bit of metatext in this being the first full game released after Nagoshi left, and this “changing of the guard” plot can spark worries of being a retread of 7’s themes - and while certain plot elements certainly evoke it, there’s always a knowing tweak to it. 7 is a game about starting over again, of living through a storm and planting seeds for the future once the rubble’s been swept away. Infinite Wealth is more about perpetuating or changing the cycles everyone inhabits - of seeing what’s been done to them and the people before them and trying to break, fix, or continue things.

The returning characters are all well-considered and, equally importantly, most feel unexpected. Few of them feel obligatory, and those that do are given angles and elements that keep them surprising and cathartic nonetheless. Plenty of them have been chewed up and spit back out, some have come back stronger and better, some are indolent, and some lucky few stroll back into the picture feeling just as magnetic and lovable as they were all those years ago. Seeing the game take full advantage of its position as the ninth mainline title in a series stretching back almost twenty years is just as satisfying as seeing how it fantastically it intersects fantastically with the character writing writ large.

Yamai manages to escape the “Majima clone” allegations with aplomb, with a great design, fantastic presence (Koyasu the GOAT), and a satisfyingly mercurial-but-coherent role in the narrative. With the exception of Saeko, whose entire character frustratingly feels like an extension of Ichiban’s arc, literally every single party member is given a lot more to chew on this time. The gap between December 2019 and November 2023 reshuffled a lot and the status quo shifts give people unexpected and lovely positions and angles to view the world. Each little skit and friendship bingo conversation is consistently funny and interesting, and the new party members are literally all bangers. Special shout outs to the job unlock cutscenes creating the implication that Chitose has a Nico Robin-style hyperactive imagination that she does not ever share with anybody; that being said, Tomizawa and Chitose are both incredibly endearing and have a lot of great dramatic and comedic chops. Tomi gets more focus in the front half and Chitose the back, which gives her a bit of an edge in terms of immediate retrospective emotional edge, but both are excellent.

Tomizawa’s arc is tied up with the Barracudas, who are kind of a nexus of the game’s more annoying issues. The gang has a really strong and sympathetic hook that is connected to pretty venomous social commentary, but they rapidly recede from institutional relevance and, just like 7, the themes of homelessness, discrimination, and critiquing the lived effects of Japan’s comically harsh anti-yakuza laws (making it basically impossible to have a normal life certainly makes it effective for killing recruitment, but guys seeking a way out certainly have their work cut out for them…) feel under-discussed after the first act. Additionally, while Yakuza has always had a heightened tone, there are times when, regardless of the player’s tolerances, there will be moments that stretch credulity; especially when combat is done with silly costumes. Sometimes it feels weird to talk about America’s crumbling infrastructure and skyrocketing cost of life only to then beat up three Hungry Hungry Homeless.

These are issues, and they deserve mention, but simultaneously, this is the ninth mainline RGG game. Every issue raised so far has been present to some degree or another in quite literally every single game in the franchise. They’ll affect enjoyment to varying extents, of course, but… I wouldn’t get too mad at a fish for being bad at climbing trees, or at least when I’m neck-deep I’d think I know what pitfalls I'd fallen into.

For all the love heaped on the character writing, the main villains really falter, which is unexpected for this series. There’s good villains and bad villains, and certainly sometimes they contrive excuses for a final boss when punching out a businessman would be unsatisfying, but RGG Studio’s been on a hot streak for antagonists for a good while now. The antagonistic forces in this game feel more like an exercise in thematics than they are actually characters. It’s cool to see a contemporary political thriller manage to make themes of corruption, despoiling paradise, and battling against nature feel grounded within a real-world context and not feel too hacky about it, but despite their screentime they have a terminal lack of real presence or sauce. The villains’ big dramatic showcases pale in comparison to both the quiet and loud moments that accompany their underlings and frenemies. They do create good moments by contriving the protagonists into circumstances that showcase their amazing traits and even better voice actors, but the monologues and physical performances shown off could be bounced off somebody I actually give a shit about and I’d be into it even more than I am.

The cutscene direction, as implied above, is excellent. The stunt coordinator for every game since 6 cut his teeth on Mark DaCascos hood classic Drive (1997), a shitload of tokusatsu, and a little old game called Devil May Cry 3, and it lends the cutscene brawls a sense of physicality and flair that a lot of game cutscenes weirdly can’t do very well. The dramatic scenes have astonishingly good blocking and composition. For how many cutscenes are in this game, they find so many great camera angles, poses, and little vocal quavers to give far more weight to far more than one would expect.

It’s easy to gush about this game, and while it has its flaws and doesn’t always favorably stack up to past games, it feels like a chore to discuss them. Sure, Ichiban got a better moment in 7, Kiryu’s finest hour is still (regrettably) the final scene in Gaiden, and the enemy shuffling just inherently means that the combat’s chaotic, uncontrollable nature will create frustrating situations and missed attacks. It’s maybe not as focused as some other Yakuza games? (I mean, not really, lmao, the only games you might be able to argue that for are 2 and 6, and buddy, 2 is not as focused as you remember it being and 6 is just not interesting.) But at the same time, I don’t really give a fuck.

I love Yakuza most when it’s maximalist, audacious, willing to totally fuck with your expectations, and unafraid to be messy. That’s what I associate the series with and that’s what I want with each new game. That’s what I got here. I was so worried that Kiryu’s return would feel cheap, I was worried that losing Nagoshi would rob the games of an ineffable soul, and Gaiden put the fear of God in me that they would retain the godawful grinds that 7 had (if not double down.) Some mistakes it makes are certainly frustrating and I hope that one day the series will move on.

At the end of the day, it’s hard to not root for the game anyways. A game like this is so special to me. It never treats its past as a burden, and it plants one foot after another into an uncertain future with confidence. You can’t always cure stupid, but the way it endlessly strives towards a better and brighter path, unafraid to experience the sad, bitter, silly, and sweet in all its forms… it’s nice to see a game’s ethos resemble its admirable hero so much.

Manages to be an incredibly uneven experience with themes of progression, regression, and alienation, but is somehow not annoyingly self-aware about these issues being so ironically fitting. There are many games in the series I like more than this, but as a showcase of pure excess and indulgence this is fascinating. I love and hate this in about equal measure, but the thing that really frustrates me is my inability to feel strongly about its actual narrative goings-on.

Sure, I shouted and yelled at the stupid overexplained plot twists that make it worse, and I was excited at the setpieces, but it’s scattershot and incapable of selling emotional plot beats or conveying the interesting parts of its themes past expositing about them. Similarly, the underlying mechanics and control scheme are a series best (yes, better than V, fight me) but the dearth of stealth is made more painful when almost nothing is actually tested. Guards are rarely in interesting compositions or threatening patrols, and they’re so spread out that you can get in straight-up gunfights at times and not draw any ire. The few occasions that they break from this (the first part of Act 1, the second half of the final portion of Act 2, the climactic sneaking section in Act 5) are exhilarating and offer the same ass-clenching excitement and complex movement as the very best this series has to offer - as long as you do something other than tranq headshotting, because they decided to give you the MGS2 tranq pistol again except with effectively infinite ammo and a faster tranq time, for some fucking reason.

The narrative has a similar tendency to actively undercut its best elements, and once again you kind of have to go against what it itself is trying to guide you towards to actually fuck with what it’s putting down. MGS’ tonal variety, uncompromising quirkiness, and deeply human immaturity are all important parts of the series, but there’s a usual command of tone that is not present here. The sense of indulgence harms pacing a lot, giving emotional beats plenty of time to go stale before they’re followed up on or just outright ruining moments that the direction is trying to play as something you feel strongly about.

Other games have these issues at times (I’m sorry, Kojima, but I laughed at Otacon shouting “E-E!” when I was twelve and I’ll laugh at it when I’m ninety) but there’s a sense of cohesion and clarity granted by their commitment to a specific narrative and tone. The B&B Unit is the lowest point of mainline MGS because of its failure to do the same. I think what he was going for is conceptually cool; discussing the effects of endless war and using it to convey dehumanization both through literal war machines as well as overt fetishization is not an inherently bad idea, but the final execution fails to evoke any sense of real dissonance or horror because of the comical levels of ogling its blocking and camerawork indulge in. Shoving a woman’s pussy in the player’s face while she cries and vomits doesn’t really make me reflect on much, it just makes me want to fire Kojima out of a cannon into the sun.

The general inability to write women as something knowable or as people the male cast are capable of empathizing with is especially dire when motherhood is another one of the game’s main motifs alongside sensation, alienation, progression, regression, aligning the series timeline, misanthrophy, late capitalism, finding confidence in new technology and new people even as the world goes to hell, and, and, and...

As a whole, MGS4 is incapable of combining those threads, as its thematics are sidelined for plot-driven exertion as it attempts the unification of PS1 Tom Clancy theatrics with a cold Baudrillardian cyberpunk thriller, a sixties Bond homage, and Portable Ops into a single aesthetically, tonally, and narratively coherent series. The Metal Gear Solid Timeline was never a major point of consideration prior to this and the desperate attempt to connect it all is mostly accomplished via the majority of the cast being completely different characters with new designs, motivations, voices, and intentions.

Romance in this game is also handled awkwardly. I’m not touching “a man who shits himself for a living negs a woman into marriage” with a ten-foot pole, but it’s worth noting that Otacon’s grief over losing another love interest isn’t really as much about her loss but more because he’s frustrated that he had another woman die before he could fuck them. I think character assassination is cool, sometimes, and I think even Otacon’s plot beat here is something probably with degrees of intentionality, but it is intensely difficult to read charitably when this work is so unempathetic and afraid of its women.

You know a character whose shift for the worse is handled awesomely? Snake! I fucking LOVE Old Snake. His regression from his MGS2 personality into his frostier, more dick-ass MGS1 characterization makes total sense and the Psyche Gauge is a fantastic way to illustrate his insecurity and fragility. His circumstances are horrific, but the reaction to a joke of his bombing is almost as emotionally devastating as discovering he has six months to live and three months before he turns into a WMD. He combines the parallel threads of MGS and remains narratively engaging, aesthetically satisfying, genuinely hilarious, and emotionally-driven throughout.

The sections that connect most strongly to him and his struggle are generally my favorite parts of the game. Act 1 is really cool for how alienated he is from the conflict, being hot-dropped into “the middle east” (where? go fuck yourself, it’s terrorist country and it’s all indistinguishable to an american like you!) and given zero context for the war. The game incentivizes you to make huge shifts in this battle and tip the scales purely out of convenience to your unrelated efforts, and asking myself what I was really doing there was genuinely cool. The aesthetic language of seventh-gen modern military shooters is used to near-parody levels here and is then completely flipped with the insertion of psychotic MGS shenanigans and the protagonist’s frailty. His relationship with Raiden is the most consistently well-written, well-directed, well-blocked, and well-acted shit in the entire game, on top of Raiden’s stuff in this game being the coolest action in fiction. Act 4’s first few minutes got me genuinely wistful and misty-eyed even as I’d only played MGS1 for the first time earlier in the week*, and the final boss is deserving of its hype.

Basically everything to do with Big Boss and his former friends is a swing and a miss. The retcon introduced with Portable Ops is basically what ruined the plot of literally every single game in the entire franchise from that point onwards and I really wish that Kojima just treated it as non-canon and did his own fucking thing. The Christ and Eden symbolism in Act 3 makes me retroactively dislike similar elements in MGS3, even though that was a good deal less annoying about it. The ending’s emotionality is ruined so fucking hard by 25 minutes of exposition about its connection to MGS3 that I genuinely kind of think it should’ve ended at the expected point for the credits.

MGS4 offers an attempt to conclude a series while trying to build sequel hooks for a new generation of designers to take the reins, using the game’s increasing fascination with the PS3’s hardware and gimmicks as a genuine metaphor for learning to accept the present and future for what they are. It’s agonizing that these few moments of optimism go unrequited. This wasn’t the finale, none of the seeds sown here bore fruit, and instead of entering a new era, the same man made games trapped in their own stifling shadows. Instead of facing the future, the tides of the 2010s subsumed another and made alienated, nostalgic, and ultimately desolate attempts at a follow-up.

*Yes, I played every other mainline before starting 1 and 4. I didn’t grow up with a playstation and only recently could emulate MGS4, please understand :meowcry:

this did its job of making me excited for 8 and accomplished very little else.
they are showing a willingness to make kiryu as a character and kuroda as an actor extend way fucking further than he did in the prior seven games - i don't think i can even visualize kiryu so consumed by helpless despair that snot is coming out of his nose as he trembles and weeps for any incarnation of the character prior to this, and that flexibility relative to the series baseline is what i appreciated about ichiban. i was dreading kiryu's return for infinite wealth, but i think they might actually have a real angle for him.

that being said, this game sabotages every part of its narrative, mechanical, thematic, tonal, and character construction for 80% of its runtime in the disgustingly cynical decision to make it a $50 game instead of a focused DLC or interlude. if this game was a DLC that shipped without any side content past substories and the ayame network, but used that smaller scope to tell a focused, well-paced narrative without constant utterly horrific pacebreakers this would be fantastic, and you can very much tell that something of that scope was closer to the original intent than this.

until the literal point of no return, there is not a single plot beat in the entire game that doesn't have 5-30 minutes of utter dead air between it and the next thing of value. i have little interest in these games' coliseum matches and this game makes you do them on literally six different fucking occasions. you constantly go between it and the couch, and it means that you become hyper-familiar with exactly two alleyways in sotenbori as you repeatedly walk back and forth between two points of interest instead of these games' ability to make you ping-pong between a variety of locations throughout the world.

it's a fascinating companion piece to 6, both for the obvious narrative connections, but also in the way that both games are fundamentally compromised. 6's insane ambition and messy development create a seamless experience with chunks missing, and a plot that is essentially white noise as their best-laid plans fizzle apart in the pursuit of pure polygon-pushing. it's something i have sympathy for. gaiden is, instead, something that has flashes of true brilliance and pathos, with a unique atmosphere and a real desire to be connective tissue and closure all at once. its failures come from pure fucking greed and a meaningless search for length over focus. i can't forgive it for the fundamental cynicism of the decision to charge $50 for this

Once the bugs get ironed out, this will be the video game equivalent of House of Leaves: visually inventive, its unique presentation within its medium an artform unto itself, but I don't know if the stuff beyond that will stick in my craw quite like what it draws comparison to.

The lack of both enemy variety AND interesting things to do with the enemies (lack of consistent stuns and/or limb-based damage or hit reactions in general) gets really tedious, and the walk speed is pretty slow relative to the amount of ground these maps want you to cover. They have a "shoot the randomly-determined glowing weak point" mechanic and then make it almost impossible to hit enemies from behind because of their tracking, aggression, and your lack of counterplay.

There's a lot of "but why?"s like it in these mechanics. I really think the pistol upgrade Saga gets that lets you stun enemies with successive headshots should've been a core part of your kit for both, and I STRONGLY question the inclusion of a powerful dodge mechanic that includes an even-stronger perfect dodge. It feels like it's supposed to be your universal stun option, but it's inherently reactive instead of proactive (which, given the lack of other options mid-fight, means everything you're doing past just waiting for them to attack is boring and feels bad) and it also means that ranged enemy types, all one-and-a-half of them, have zero interesting counterplay options.

I'm not sure why they got rid of the "flashlight-is-your-crosshair" conceit they had in Alan 1 when it was distinctive, satisfying, and cool. Inventory management, at least on PC, feels like every interaction has one button press too many, and it's just not very interestingly handled in the first place - it's not as complex as RE4's tetris and it doesn't have the addictive optimization-induced high that successive RE:2 replays tap into. It all being real-time would be cool if you ever had to interact with it in combat, but the hotkeys are generous and the UI is kludgy enough that anything not on them is just not worth equipping mid-fight. Saga's key items list is just flat-out bugged and doesn't remove most of them like it's supposed to, which makes finding the few reusable keys incredibly annoying.

It feels like punching down to write this much about the mechanics when Silent Hill's gameplay is also pretty bad and it's my favorite survival horror series, but Silent Hill is a lot more cohesive with how puzzles, enemy placements, and dungeon designs loop you around encounters (even if they're too damn easy). Alan Wake 2 feels like it wants a lot of Things To Do for the sake of it, and this confounds pacing and requires interactions with the mechanics far more than it or I actually want.

At its (frequent) best, it's instead a set piece-driven linear thrill-ride. Character writing in general touches on cool or relatable conceits and doesn't really know what to do with those ideas outside of these set pieces, even if there are a lot and they're actually sick when they do happen. Alan's plot board allows for a lot of visual inventiveness but runs dry pretty quickly, and it's genuinely astonishing how underused the lamp is after its cool-ass introduction. It entirely ceases to be a resource immediately, and I feel insane thinking about that for too long. His dungeons get progressively shorter as time goes on, or maybe just repetitious enough that I started editing out the downtime in my brain.

Saga's side hews more traditional in structure, aesthetics, and Silent Hill-ass dungeon crawling, and it's generally better for it. Her mind palace mechanic is addictive and rewards engagement with the environment while training the player to be genuinely thoughtful. The route split is strange and outright expects you to finish one side first despite not signposting that, which makes the escalating action that leads into its climax scream to a juddering halt.

I don't want to go into detail with said climax, but I left feeling like it has two amazing ideas with only one getting the execution it deserves. They cooked incredibly hard with tying mechanics, presentation, and narrative to a singular moment of catharsis and then killed whatever momentum built up before or after that before running face-first into an ending that felt like it needed far more deliberation.

My issues with the ending and its narrative momentum were heightened by having a staircase bug out and make me fall through the map every time I sprinted on it, forcing me to lose 2-5 minutes of progress. Remember what I said about walk speed? Still a pretty easy recommend to anybody interested though, and hopefully my issues with the climax get ironed out with NG+ and the DLC. Initiation 4 is worth the price tag on its own. Do wait for bugfixes though, it's really dire.

I really like the way this DLC handles faith in general. It's something messy, conflicting, deeply related to the people interpreting it, and yet it's still treated with sincerity and is shown to be a legitimately redemptive force just as much as it allows unearned clemency and hides developmental backslides. It works nicely with the themes of forgiveness and lost innocence.

It is annoying that it entirely secularizes the faith of the natives, though. I'd much have preferred a wider cosmology (especially because syncretization is such a major emphasis of their culture), but this DLC's scope of writing is pretty tight and I understand the mindset that led them to have everything tie back to the relationships between Canaanites and the people who are inexorably affected by their tendrils of imperialism. That's also why I always get a little annoyed at it being boiled down to "lol white savior" when the entire point is more about how it is impossible to take back that first contact - Joshua Graham is unambiguously, textually, the worst thing that ever happened to the Dead Legs or the Sorrows. The petty feud of a Hegelian LARPer causes real, appreciable harm that is delegated into comforting obscurity, and this largely-pointless conflict harms people well outside its scope. Daniel and Joshua can never actually find the peace they crave, only shades of it that still haunt their dreams. Every action they take here is a supplicative effort to spare their egos from fully reckoning with the ruin they singlehandedly brought these people.

The problem is that this DLC does not give remotely enough voices to the natives because of its tight deadlines scope and that because it's a Choices Matter Roleplaying Game the PC has more sway than any individual voice, and this taints a good deal of its genuinely deep worldbuilding, character writing, and thematics. They have no real agency in the plot and the entire "innocence lost" angle mostly serves to infantilize. I don't think it's ill-intended, inasmuch as it's a victim of just being a DLC and thusly lacking the scope needed to tackle it three-dimensionally and being trapped in the structure of the base game, and I'll fully admit a good deal of this is cope when I know that Josh Sawyer has politics that are resoundly anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and anti-colonialist.

As much as it complicates its main narrative, the DLC's tight focus works to its benefit gameplay-wise. It does not overstay its welcome and is a pure, concentrated hit of Bethesda Dopamine that I sorely desired after Starfield's fast travel-heavy UX nightmare left me in the cold. There's always something cool to look at and something useful to find (if you're in hardcore mode, at least), and the Survivalist's logs is a very large part of why I love this genre. The .45 pistols are so fucking cool (and kinda so fucking busted) that they singlehandedly justify the DLC's existence.

At one point Daniel tells the player off: "Throughout our history, we have called many places Zion. This valley is full of God's beauty, but it's just a place. Zion is more than this."
I grew up in this part of the country. I used to believe what the Caananites believed. I can't ever go back there, even though those red rocks and blue skies are so comforting to me that these crude Gamebryo replications make me long so much that I ache. I can't ever commit to what guides these men, knowing what it's done to my family.

Even if he's allowed to stick to his morals, though, he can't help it. Even as he builds new lives for himself and those he loves, this place'll haunt his dreams for the rest of his life. Turning your back on Zion always leaves you emptier.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is incapable of escaping comparison to fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons, and it clearly doesn’t want to try. It aestheticizes the act of rolling dice, offers cosmetic skins for when rolling them, and the d20 polyhedron is a core part of its narrative’s iconography. It aims to capture the Dungeons And Dragons Experience, something heavily informed by Critical Role, Community episodes, and broad parodies as much as it aims to capture the 5e player’s handbook.

5e works to take a genre renowned for fiddliness, sand off the rough edges to lower the skill floor even if it harms the ceiling, market it as a beginner-friendly experience even if it lacks common features for any other modern game on the market and has lacking systematization for non-combat sequences, use its unique market position to have eye-catching production values that no other game can attest to, and then have the canny and luck to release right in the middle of a massive upsurge of interest in tabletop roleplay. This, coincidentally, perfectly describes Baldur’s Gate 3 as well.

No game in this genre has had this much effort put into filmic direction and realistic visuals since Dragon Age Origins, and its focus on high-quality cutscenes, voice acting, and motion capture is exactly what was needed to make it sell Elden Ring numbers. Twitter artists’ attention spans have been caught by it in the same personality-altering ways as Mihoyo games and Final Fantasy XIV, which is the true mark of a culturally significant work. Doing mocap for every NPC in the game speaks to its unparalleled ambition and production scope.

Mechanically, the game attempts to offer systemic interactions uncommon to the genre. A confession: I could never get into Divinity Original Sin or its sequel and thus struggle to directly compare its execution. On its own merit, the implementation suffers because of how stifling 5e’s action economy is. Taking two standard actions to throw a barrel and ignite it in a game with a four-man party limit is very rarely the most effective use of a turn, and magic takes forever to start creating interesting environmental effects, by which point it is probably a better use of time to turn one cast Haste on the cracked-out martial class of choice and let them solo the encounter instead.

Martial classes get changes from the 5e PHB which are highly appreciated - general rebalances make some subclasses more compelling, weapon proficiency now grants combat maneuvers with each weapon type that replenish on short rest which allow for debuffs, area-of-effects, and crowd control in ways that are pretty logical for each weapon type, and the oodles of magic items synergize incredibly well with oft-neglected playstyles. An open hand monk with a three-level dip in Thief for the extra bonus action can crack 300 damage per turn by endgame, and if one has, say, a decade of Pathfinder brainrot, that’s deeply satisfying in ways not offered by the uninspiring feat and class feature list.

It’s inherited from the tabletop game, but it’s still disappointing how guided and on-rails character building feels. Feats are hard to come by and are in direct competition with ability score increases, which creates incredible opportunity costs for efforts to go gimmicky. Being guided towards picking one, maybe two build-defining feats and dumping others into ASI feels really bad, and multiclassing means losing out further and subsisting entirely off of choiceless class features or every-so-often subclass bonuses (and 80% of subclasses either have linear progression or are just picking spells with extra steps).

The lack of flavor is reflected in non-combat dialogue choices, which focus on the act of decision-making as a substitute for roleplay. Actual dialogue options are bland, simplistic, and any personality is pre-defined from the player’s chosen origin or class. The focus on full mocap, as much as it means there are truly excellent performances (shoutouts to Astarion), means individual conversations run short and utilitarian. Dialogue often lacks distinct character voice (Astarion and Lae’zel exempted), it instead gaining its sparkle from behavioral tics, quivers in the voice, or sweeping body language. Each line is usually just a short sentence or two, and conversations rarely run for too long.

Similarly, quests are often binary and offer few chances to meaningfully tinker with inputs, outputs, or outcomes, or are obscenely frustrating in the lack of consideration for alternate paths. The quest chain that defines Act 1, a crisis between goblins, druids, and refugees caught in the middle, outright resists any method of play that is not “go to druids, get quest to go to camp, go talk to goblins, kill them where they stand, teleport back to applause.” Narratively, siding with the goblins immediately loses two party members from the player’s ranks and has literally zero in-character justification past moustache-twirling villainy. There is no way to make the tieflings flee ahead of the assault, and they try to kill the PC for suggesting it. Interrupting the druid ritual similarly has no real effect on the outcome. Playing both sides and luring Minthara out into the open grants the player a harder fight with more at risk and less roleplay reason to do it. In the third act, the narrator (assumedly playing the role of game master) drops the artifice several times to clearly explain the binary choice at play and suggest there is no other route, which is, put politely, advice no GM should ever take.

This sense of railroading and resistance to straying from the beaten path is omnipresent, and further hindered by its frankly godawful approach to ability checks. Here is where the fetishization of dice comes to the fore: it outright ignores how 5e is supposed to be played solely to introduce more randomness. The Dungeon Master’s Guide (and 5e’s director) states to use passive checks for rolls that aren’t player-initiated - passive checks working by simply adding ten to the player’s proficiency bonus and deterministically answering whether they succeed. This allows the GM to conceal rolls, a valuable tool, but equally so it being non-random is important. Player’s skill choices and ability spreads affect the outcome when they’re operating on autopilot, not their luck. This is in contrast to ability checks, which are high-stakes and player-initiated.

The d20 is an inherently insanely random and swingy die, and even skilled player characters are often at risk of failure. This is exciting in a tabletop game, where failure can have unintended consequences. 5e’s DMG (and its director) knows that failure despite extensive investment can be frustrating, however, and explicitly rules that critical failures and successes should not exist when rolling ability checks. Literally none of these rulings operate as such in BG3. Passive checks don’t exist; everything is rolled. Critical failures and critical successes both apply to ability checks, and success/failure is either strictly binary (either losing out on quest progression or getting sent into combat, or getting exactly what is desired or and/or avoiding combat) or entirely superfluous (a lengthy series of ability checks in its climax has literally zero difference between success or failure in terms of animations, dialogue, outcomes, bonuses, or penalties).

It is a mantra of most actual play and most dungeon mastering guides, regardless of systems, to have the dice serve to amplify stakes but not define the game - only let the dice come out when the outcome is meaningfully uncertain, and when what is being rolled is clearly defined. There is a place for it, and systematizing uncertainty is a key part of what separates TTRPG from improvised narrative (check out Amber Diceless Roleplaying, though!). However, it defining all aspects of player expression is equally poor in execution - it smudges out roleplay, character building, and simple fun to have a high-level master of the craft still muck up something completely mundane - unless there is a factor in the scene to add tension, which rarely occurs in this game.

This is further compounded by the game embracing save-scumming. Unlike many, many other games in the CRPG space (and obviously unlike TTRPG, which is beholden to linear time) the player can quicksave and quickload at any point in dialogue, including on the ability check menu. The only thing stopping them from constant, eternal success is a belief that failure is interesting (it almost never is) or respect for their own time (an assumption challenged by the game’s mammoth length).

This is a sizable pacebreaker, but it’s mitigable by offering the game respect it doesn’t earn. By far one of the most frustrating and runtime-bloating occurrences is inventory management, a symptom of rough edges and ill-conceived QoL decisions colliding messily. Party member inventories are individualized, and logically are taken with them when dismissed. The player can send items to camp at any time (except for the final dungeon, for some reason, despite there being no reason to ever manage your inventory by that point?) and can similarly teleport to camp at almost any time.

These systems interlink to create a system that is fiddly (individual party members may overcap their inventory at any time, necessitating shuffling and sending to camp, and searching the inventory (an already-onerous task due to poor UX and lacking categorization) does not display items from the inventories of camped PCs) but also entirely superfluous (being able to visit camp at almost any time means the player can swap out party members or access their storage equally at almost any time). It lacks any actual difficult decisionmaking about what to bring, as combat-affecting items like scrolls, potions, and grenades weigh fractions of a pound while the limit even for STR-dumping characters is somewhere around eighty.

This has the side effect of completely eroding the feeling of camp as an actual space that inhabits the world, instead coming across as Fable 3’s inventory dimension. Despite its accessibility and lack of immersion, there is no way to quickly dismiss or replace party members past individually walking to each one (which can take 15+ seconds on larger camp maps) and mashing through dialogue. The low party limit means that there is incentive to do this a lot just to play the game and advance quests, but the completely RNG environmental skill checks means there is a want or need to swap people out for another reroll after all the WIS people in the party chunked a perception or survival save, the presence of locked doors potentially incentivizes a pocket Astarion to teleport in, jimmy a trap, and teleport away, and the ever-present horror of realizing the wrong person has a desired item and the player will thus have to cycle through everybody’s inventories one-by-one until it turns up.

The game is obviously not lacking in redeeming value - as a set of encounters it is unreal. Every single fight in the game has a unique compounding factor, and the infrequent instances when enemies are reused it is in very different compositions and contexts. The acting direction really is good, and Astarion might ultimately unseat Daeran as a new favorite in the CRPG canon of prissy assholes who prove that negging really does work. Some quests are enjoyable, even if many ultimately disappoint or get their conclusion swallowed up in the sea of bugs and inconsistent writing that is Act 3.

What it excels at, notably, has little to do with tabletop roleplay (unless your table has trained thespians) and rarely happens in CRPGs. This speaks to its broad appeal, but more notably gets at the heart of the matter: the commercial ideal Dungeons And Dragons Experience is not actually how almost any tabletop game, 5e or not, is played or performed. It is defined by secondary experience via podcasts and television episodes and broad parodies. This, more than anything, is what Larian offers: the ability to play a game that your favorite voice actors play, or to get the Dungeons And Dragons Experience when you’re not in a position to get a group going. It offers the idealized and aestheticized vision of it, even when that idealization makes the game outright worse.

Earlier this year, I played most Armored Core bar the PS3 games in anticipation for this game, though not really out of pure hype, but because I was curious what bedrock of design From Software was working with. I didn’t expect to like them much, as I'm not a big mecha fan and I rarely hear high praise for its gameplay, but I was pleasantly surprised. Armored Core had a great niche in which fast movement did not mean great flexibility. You can boost around at high speeds, but your ability to turn and aim is limited by your mech’s legs and your FCS Lockbox. It was an incredibly compelling way to design a console shooter in which traditional aiming was not the main skill, but instead the usage of movement and positioning to supplement your limited tank controls was heavily emphasized. It tickled a very different part of the brain than most games usually do, and this is not without getting into how deep and detailed the mech-building was and the way in which it very directly affected how you control and move with your AC.

I felt very positive towards Oldgen AC as a whole in spite of some issues with mission design, but I also felt like there was no chance FromSoft could replicate any of this. The core conceit of the system after all was limited and unintuitive controls. Without it, none of this would work, and in the year of our lord 2023 we’ve already had a couple releases whos primary objective to sand off anything awkward to the modern gamer even if it leaves glaring flaws in the design (looking at you, Resident Evil 4 Remake) so I prepared myself for Armored Core 6 to not really reach those same heights.

Having played it now, I can call it decent as a brainless mecha-themed action game, though only decent, as even on those metrics it is greatly brought down by poor balancing and some core mechanic weaknesses. It had cool spectacle, and the music was occasionally good, and the plot had enough intrigue going on with answerable questions if you cared to find hidden data logs. The challenge that some bosses give at the beginning was interesting, and I particularly liked the Ibis Chapter 4 boss, who moved too fast to brainlessly shoot at, demanding you wait for openings and keep closing the distance to make sure your shots don't ricochet. Though unfortunately that challenge faded and never returned, even as I completed the supposedly extra difficult content of NG++ and attempted to nerf my own builds to allow the game to shine more while it had the chance, and FromSoft missed the chance of fix Armored Core’s long standing issue of boring mission design, which in some ways is made even worse as they are all made much shorter and less demanding and ammo/repair costs feeling like a complete non-factor to the mission gameplay thus failing to incentivize you to play around saving costs.

The game’s greatest virtue in my opinion is the mech creation sandbox and how much flexibility you have with the ability to place numerous decals anywhere and change the material type of the different metals all over the mech. You can create some very beautifully rendered custom mecha in this game and it makes it easy to get attached to your particular creation if you put some effort into them, and I think that alone can definitely carry a playthrough of this game. However, that about sums up all the nice things I have to say about the game. The actual gameplay suffers and does not justify replaying the game three times to see all the content, and that's what the rest of this review will be dedicated towards.

One of the core issues that hurts this game’s vision is the Stagger system. It acts like a simplified but more extreme version of the Heat mechanic from the older games, however the changes made to it hurt the game’s balance severely. Armored Core 6 rewards the player exponentially for adopting a burst damage based playstyle, often turning fights into complete stomps in favor of the player once you put on a shotgun or grenade launcher. In contrast, anything that doesn't include some form of burst feels heavily undertuned and weak, try playing assault rifles in this game and you will have a bad time for multiple reasons. The issue is twofold here and I will be using it to segue into my other issue with the game’s design.
Stagger leaves the enemy open to critical damage for a small window, and so in order to take advantage of that window, some kind of burst damage is sorely needed. Building Stagger bar itself is also primarily dependent on the damage being dealt, and this makes it so slow damage over time weapons often are bad at causing stagger too, whereas burst damage options will both inflict Stagger very fast while also allowing you deal massive amounts of damage during the window. Finding a build that allows you to take advantage of the stagger system to a reasonable degree while also not completely invalidating the enemies is a far far more challenging task than anything in the game itself. But why balance it like this? Why are Shotguns so obscenely strong?? I suspect the answer to that lies in them being carryovers from Old AC design without much consideration put into how their power changes when the core limitations of tank controls were removed.

In Old-Gen AC, options like a shotgun or a stationary rockets/grenades were much harder to line up the shot for due to the nature of tank controls and FCS. This especially was felt with Shotguns, which demanded you to stick up close to an enemy to get worthwhile damage, which in Oldgen this meant that you were consciously moving into a range where you cannot track your target very well as they can move much faster than you can turn around to chase them, and thus lining up the shot properly took a lot of skill and finesse. Your movement needed to make up for your limited turning and made it so your ability to deal high damage was highly reliant on moving in smart ways, but this conflicted with the demands brought on by needing to dodge enemy attacks and keep yourself out of their sights. This created an incredibly complex dance of challenging priorities that made the high damage feel earned once you manage to land the shots.
However, in the world of Armored Core 6, the mechs are blessed with hard-lock auto aim and insta turning around, nearly all your shots will land, the negligible drawbacks of hard-lock are not felt whatsoever in PvE and the game’s much too stationary bosses. Your movement rarely needs to take into account your ability to land shots, just do whatever it takes to dodge the enemy’s telegraphed cannons and stay close while spamming the shoot buttons.
The assault rifles and other long/mid range options still had a strong place in Old Gen because in order to track targets within your lockbox, you had to keep a certain distance that made their movement manageable, allowing them to be good ways to chip away at enemies with ease. In comparison, AC6 gives you no reason to ever be far from opponents. With the increased power of laser blades, the addition of assault boost kicks, and the bosses who constantly dash up to you for Souls-like melee attacks, there is nearly never a reason to play long/mid range. You need to stay close to even dodge most boss attacks which ask you to hover over them and/or dash past them. It’s telling that most FCS given to you are close-range focused and that Sniper Rifles didn’t even make it into this game.

I find these flaws to be the result of the sacrifices made by the game for the sake of ultra-intuitive controls, but when you take away the entire skill of aiming and the movement, positioning, and weapon balancing factors that come with it, issues like this are bound to bubble up. It's also because of this that none of the mech types really feel as different as they used to, with the controls homogenized the way they are, many of the drawbacks and strengths of different mech-types are not as apparent. Of course the flipside of this is you can now bring a tank leg into any kind of fight you want, whereas Oldgen AC tended to railroad you into making a fast AC if you wanted to deal with its endgame challenges. But unlike this game, Oldgen AC often still had a lot of bite and challenge left to it even when you develop an AC that has the right tools for the mission. That isn’t to say that you can’t cheese difficult fights and challenges with some broken weapons/setups, but you had to go out of your way to make them and most challenges feel beatable without a cheese build, you just need the skills to push yourself over the finish lines. The demands of the build were only one half of the puzzle, but playing well enough to beat challenges was even more emphasized, which I don’t find be the case in Armored Core 6 as the “right build” is both even easier to make and once created, utterly destroys any challenge and doesn’t let me have any fun with the boss. Perhaps this is great for the type of player who likes the power-fantasy of crushing infamous Souls bosses by changing their build, but I was never that kind of player and even if I was, the relative ease and simplicity at which you can create a build that dominates all this game’s content makes even that part of the game unsatisfying in concept.

It's hard to look at the game in a good light after three playthroughs, with the flaws in the game’s balancing and the limited depth of its systems becoming more apparent as I attempted to find ways to make the game challenging. This a game where you never need to worry about anything but dodging once you’re locked on and while yes, the ways in which you dodge in this game are definitely more fun than Souls i-framing, dashing over forward moving attacks that every boss spams is not enough to make me fall love in with a game, especially not with the vast majority of missions being some flavor of “boring” with how little they demand of any of the systems in place. At the very least I hope the way this game introduces mech-building can serve as a nice way to ease players into the older games.