There was a moment in the game where a minigame pop in and suddenly Agnes Tachyon wanted me to get her a plushie from the crane machine.

at the very last attempt, I managed to get a plushie of herself.

seeing her holding it with her face full of joy, on that very moment.

"i get it."

This game comes with plenty of caveats that most people would like you to ignore, but they will still exist which just mind keep in mind.

the combat starts deceitfully simply, despite having a more unusual command menu, you learn that all you need to do is set the attacks and leave the auto battle rolling, then you learn gotta get cards to cash personas, then you learn about mutations, all while having the SMT negotiation system and then there's the rumors system which work on a very esoteric way, if you don't pay attention what type of vendors get the rumors, you won't cash out ideally on the right store to sell your gear an-

you get the point, the game itself in terms of mechanics feels so bloated, you just end up turning your brain off and just getting whatever the game gives you for personas to beat it, it also doesn't help with the amount of combat and stuff to grind on it, the game is not fast enough to keep up with it, leading you to resent a little on how slow it is

yet, despite this, the game delivers incredibly well in terms of story, characters, music, themes, aesthetics and sprite work.

its a very heartfelt story, about chasing ideals, dreams and what matters for your life despite feeling so lost without a goal in mind, every story beat is so interconnected with each other to lead up to its themes, which makes it a very unique game to experience.

so much so, i say that despite the caveats, the game is worthy to experience it.

on my most negative, i would call this a very low budget unity remake which looks less unique compared to the original and can't hold a candle to the old CG cutscenes

but it manages to being as fun as the original and keeping its whimsically pure atmosphere while being a very fun 3D platformer, also showing even more mercy compared to the original when it comes to getting all the collectible fruit and even make moves like the rev roll and dot bomb more useful for general situations

worth trying even if you lack any attachment to the original

a massive improvement in terms of story beats by having an interesting angle to take the virus into something actually messed up

too bad they swap being deeply into copying Vaas to just copying Far Cry 3's style of gameplay of exploration, you won't be able to have the same exploration you had on the base game because of the lack of buildings to do parkour, a big shame, but it still well made map and removing Rais out of the equation is a huge boost in quality, i wished there could be a best of both worlds situation between the base game and this one

you know, this was bound to be a fantastic game if it wasn't for the fact someone on the writing team saw Far Cry 3 and really wanted Vaas Montenegro as their villain, turning what could possibly be a interesting premise into fully focus and showing how "super cool and edgy" their big bad man Rais is, to the point he hijacks the plot and any plot threads remaining get forgotten, by the time you finally remove him from the plot, the game is already over

Besides that, this game is a huge improvement over their previous games by a lot thanks to their introduction of the parkour system, which really opens up the possibility in both movement and combat, allowing you to down right style on the hoards of zombies, the day and light is a nice mix up to keep the stress up even if you get on a comfortable level, all while the progression system feels very satisfying as you start as a weakling who struggles to deal with one single zombie to a complete killing machine who can chain breaking necks

i only wish it didn't had a complete tunnel vision on this stupid story

from incredible well made sprites that are 100% smooth, rocking good music and combat asking you to style on enemies to both look cool and survive, it goes above and beyond despite being a relative unnoticeable title among the genre, that's without accounting a lot of stuff it leaves you to do, like actual branching paths, more endings and lots of modes

the fact this was done all by a single guy and his musician friend really puts into perspective everything involving about this game. colored me impressed

One of the cruelest games in terms of mechanics and how it contextualized.

Repeating the same days to achieved maximum efficiency, pushing your senses into their absolute limit as you spin countless plates at the same time to achieved an ideal result, All while you use esoteric mechanics to suppress or appease the many abnormalities and worse that comes loose, That's without accounting the amount of bugs and spaghetti code that makes the game give you memory leaks or just get bugged on extremely nasty ways.

Every character will be doubtful on you, feeling contempt at your attempts to keep this work going despite all the pain you causing.

even if you achieve on reaching the final days, you aren't allowed to get a real ending

yet, once you go beyond the surface level and get to understand your situation, about everyone being deny of their own ideals by such a cruel and uncaring world.

An Ideal Blossoms in you.

It will become your fuel, Because once the story gives you full context, The difficulty won't be learning the mechanics nor abnormality quirks, It will challenge you to prove your will, Enough to make you go insane at the sheer lack of mercy even if you are well prepared.

But you will get support from those you gave hope.

Your ideal will show there's meaning to all that effort you putting on this.

A Hundred Good Deeds will make it all worth it.