ResonanceJay
2001
This review contains spoilers
Before I begin gushing about this game I just want to say that the version I played was the remastered version so my experience might differ from the original slightly.
Final Fantasy X is up there as one of the greatest JRPG's I've ever played. The gameplay, the story, the music, and the world design are all incredible and work together to make a truly special experience.
Focusing on the gameplay specifically, I was a little surprised coming into this game that it did not have the ATB bar like the other Final Fantasy games I have played at this point, but I quickly adjusted to the new style. The game uses more traditional static turn based combat but it adds a turn meter that determines when each character gets an action instead of just having every character on both sides of the confrontation get an action per turn. The turn meter is really a solid gameplay choice in my opinion and really allows for you to control the flow of combat once you get spells like slow and haste, which change up the turn order. Being able to get a combo of both spells going and then being able to just blast the enemy for multiple cycles and get a large amount of damage feels super satisfying. Inversely it can also up the tension exponentially when you can see that the enemy is about to get several turns in a row and you need to hope that they don't manage to wipe your party.
The turn order also ties into another mechanic I'm a really big fan of, party switching. The game lets you swap out who's in your party at any moment during combat (assuming the character isn't at 0 hp or any other state where you can't control them) and it allows you to try interesting new strategies with the entire party instead of just eventually having you stick to just a set party for the rest of the game. It also really helps with trying to level everyone up by letting you switch in a weaker member, let them get a hit, and then switch them back out for someone stronger to deal more damage.
Speaking of leveling this game handles leveling in a different way than most final fantasy's, that being that there technically aren't levels. Instead of levels you get the sphere grid, which is an incredible way of handling RPG stats. Everytime you level up in game you get a sphere level, which you use on the grid to move to different spots and then use spheres gained from battle to unlock new abilities and stats for your party. I really like this approach because it let you fully control how your character evolves and grows over the course of the game and encourages experimenting to try and see what kind of build could work for your character. The grid never feels like you're struggling to make it move forward as long as you're actively fighting monsters on your way through the game either, which also gives a feeling of constant progression which I love personally.
The game also has its own limit break style system known as Overdrives, which I personally think are a really good evolution on the concept. You start off with only being able to charge overdrives through taking damage but as you go through the game and fight more battles you begin to unlock more and more ways to charge them, such as through doing damage to enemies, seeing your party members get damaged, or through healing. This lets you customize your characters further and really set how you think they should function and create your owns kinds of builds and strategies between sphere grid customization and overdrive selection.
Another gameplay system that I think is worth noting before I get to the story is the summons system. You have a character who can summon this game's version of summon monsters, known as Aeons, and then the summons on the field actively fight as if they were their own party member with their own spell lists, overdrives, and health instead of just showing up for one attack and disappearing like in the other Final Fantasy's I've played. This system allows for some really fun strategies and timings of when to pull out a summon to save yourself from a high damage attack or to deal some really big damage yourself over a few turns. Summoning as a mechanic also ties deeply into the story of this game which elevates this mechanic a bit for me; as I tend to like it when game mechanics are important plot wise.
Getting into the story it revolves around Tidus and Yuna, a sports star taken out of his own time and sent a thousand years into the future and a summoner who is training to defeat the ancient evil Sin respectively. They're accompanied by Yuna's guardians, Auron, Wakka, Lulu, Rikku, and kimahri as they all travel across the country of Spira in order to find a way for them to defeat Sin once and for all; as well as a way for Tidus to get home. I'm going to not get too deep into spoilers or specifics for this game because I feel like the story is something that should be experienced firsthand, but I do want to talk about a few spoiler filled points; namely Tidus's relationship with his father Jecht, Yuna's journey, and the reoccuring antagonist of the game Seymour.
Tidus and Jecht's relationship is a big plot point throughout the game, with Tidus slowly discovering more and more about the kind of person his father was as he follows his footsteps throughout Spira and has to struggle to mesh this with his preexisting feelings on his father. What I find really interesting about this is how the game explores the dynamic between the two of them without the two of them meeting in present time until the very end of the game. The game really manages to portray how Jecht and Tidus's relationship was before while also showing how Tidus grows to understand his father and who he was, but still having him be able to acknowledge that even with what Tidus knows now he still can't see his father as a good person. It's a really interesting dynamic that adds a lot of emotional impact to the climax of the game. Tidus's journey of understanding with his father is also interwoven throughout the plot with Yuna's journey to try and stop Sin.
This journey is particularly interesting to me because of context we learn later in the story, that being that Yuna will have to die in order to defeat Sin in the traditional way. Yuna's determination to defeat Sin and do whatever it took, and then Tidus and the group's determination to steer her away from this path and find another way created a really compelling narrative for me and I loved the dynamics that come into Yuna's character and relationships with other characters that stem from this. My favorite scene around this is one on the trek to the final temple where Tidus finds a message sphere that Yuna had dropped that functions as her goodbye to everyone else. It's such a bittersweet moment hearing her talk about her life and her friends like this as a goodbye knowing that by the time anyone sees it she'll already be gone, and it really impacted me emotionally. This journey and how she feels about what is necessary in order to make people happy directly coincides with the main villain of the game, who holds the exact opposite ideology and resolve that Yuna has.
Seymour is this game's Kefka/Sephiroth equivalent (despite not staying around the main plot as long as them), and I think he may stand up there beside them as one of my favorite villains in gaming. Seymour is a troubled high ranking religious leader of the group that regularly sends out summoners to try and defeat sin. Within FFX's story he tries to get Yuna to become his wife so that he can use her to defeat sin and then become the new sin himself to wipe out Spira all together. While this does sound like a pretty basic villain plot, I do think the reasons he does what he does is the most interesting part of him. Seymour parallels Yuna in how their upbringings were and it creates a really interesting dynamic between the two. Both were missing or separated from their parents due to sin, both got dragged into the battle against Sin because of their parents, and both of them ultimately have the goal of freeing Spira from the sorrow that Sin brings; just with different methods of reaching this goal.
The two of them function as different sides of the same coin in their background and their surface level goals, but one key difference lead them down two different paths: Isolation. Yuna grew up and had friends in the form of Lulu, kimahri, and Wakka to keep her happy and to make her want to try and defeat sin to preserve everyone's happiness. Meanwhile Seymour ended up completely alone, and slowly grew to think that the only way to end the sorrow of those in Spira was to end Spira itself; due to noting how those that perished around him stopped suffering when they were no longer living due to the no longer being of this world. Seymour not having anyone to steer him away from that line of thinking and to be there for him is ultimately what turned him into the monster he becomes throughout the story. He and Yuna form an interesting commentary on how one's environment growing up can influence and change the person they will become, and to me it is was handled really well throughout the story and really adds to it overall for me.
One final note on the story stuff that I wanted to touch on was the voice acting. This game's VA tends to get a bad rep for a certain scene (which actually is a good scene in context, people just like to use it out of context because it sounds funny and is easy to dunk on) but I think the VA work for a large portion of the game is really solid. There are a lot of moments where it's clear that the VA's weren't given the proper context for scenes in order to have them properly voice with the correct cadence and tone, but a lot of the really emotional and important scenes still manage to land with great tone and diction. The scene where Tidus finally sees Jecht again hits me really hard due to how Tidus's VA delivers certain lines, which I won't spoil here because again its something that I think needs to be seen to fully understand why its so good in my opinion.
Speaking of sound, the soundtrack to this game is phenomenal. I can't name a single bad track in this game in my opinion, even the sonic adventure esque song during the first two phases of the final boss is kick ass and fun in its own way. I do think this game has probably my favorite rendition of a final fantasy main battle theme as well, but I may be biased in that due to my affinity for trumpets from playing Pokemon Emerald for hundreds of hours growing up.
Finally, the art direction and locations of Spira are just really aesthetically pleasing and I constantly found myself going "man this place is pretty" or "Wow this would be fun to explore if it didn't have giant monsters everywhere". Spira is just such a charming world to me and I loved getting to explore it and see everything it had to offer and seeing all the weird and wonderful things within it. Except for blitzball. Playing that once was enough.
Overall, Final Fantasy X is a game that I cannot recommend enough. There's definitely a reason this game has withstood the test of time and to this day is seen as one of the best games in the franchise, and I think everyone with even a passing interest in JRPG's should give it a shot because it does everything on such a fantastic level. To me, Final Fantasy X is a truly unforgettable experience.
9.5/10
Final Fantasy X is up there as one of the greatest JRPG's I've ever played. The gameplay, the story, the music, and the world design are all incredible and work together to make a truly special experience.
Focusing on the gameplay specifically, I was a little surprised coming into this game that it did not have the ATB bar like the other Final Fantasy games I have played at this point, but I quickly adjusted to the new style. The game uses more traditional static turn based combat but it adds a turn meter that determines when each character gets an action instead of just having every character on both sides of the confrontation get an action per turn. The turn meter is really a solid gameplay choice in my opinion and really allows for you to control the flow of combat once you get spells like slow and haste, which change up the turn order. Being able to get a combo of both spells going and then being able to just blast the enemy for multiple cycles and get a large amount of damage feels super satisfying. Inversely it can also up the tension exponentially when you can see that the enemy is about to get several turns in a row and you need to hope that they don't manage to wipe your party.
The turn order also ties into another mechanic I'm a really big fan of, party switching. The game lets you swap out who's in your party at any moment during combat (assuming the character isn't at 0 hp or any other state where you can't control them) and it allows you to try interesting new strategies with the entire party instead of just eventually having you stick to just a set party for the rest of the game. It also really helps with trying to level everyone up by letting you switch in a weaker member, let them get a hit, and then switch them back out for someone stronger to deal more damage.
Speaking of leveling this game handles leveling in a different way than most final fantasy's, that being that there technically aren't levels. Instead of levels you get the sphere grid, which is an incredible way of handling RPG stats. Everytime you level up in game you get a sphere level, which you use on the grid to move to different spots and then use spheres gained from battle to unlock new abilities and stats for your party. I really like this approach because it let you fully control how your character evolves and grows over the course of the game and encourages experimenting to try and see what kind of build could work for your character. The grid never feels like you're struggling to make it move forward as long as you're actively fighting monsters on your way through the game either, which also gives a feeling of constant progression which I love personally.
The game also has its own limit break style system known as Overdrives, which I personally think are a really good evolution on the concept. You start off with only being able to charge overdrives through taking damage but as you go through the game and fight more battles you begin to unlock more and more ways to charge them, such as through doing damage to enemies, seeing your party members get damaged, or through healing. This lets you customize your characters further and really set how you think they should function and create your owns kinds of builds and strategies between sphere grid customization and overdrive selection.
Another gameplay system that I think is worth noting before I get to the story is the summons system. You have a character who can summon this game's version of summon monsters, known as Aeons, and then the summons on the field actively fight as if they were their own party member with their own spell lists, overdrives, and health instead of just showing up for one attack and disappearing like in the other Final Fantasy's I've played. This system allows for some really fun strategies and timings of when to pull out a summon to save yourself from a high damage attack or to deal some really big damage yourself over a few turns. Summoning as a mechanic also ties deeply into the story of this game which elevates this mechanic a bit for me; as I tend to like it when game mechanics are important plot wise.
Getting into the story it revolves around Tidus and Yuna, a sports star taken out of his own time and sent a thousand years into the future and a summoner who is training to defeat the ancient evil Sin respectively. They're accompanied by Yuna's guardians, Auron, Wakka, Lulu, Rikku, and kimahri as they all travel across the country of Spira in order to find a way for them to defeat Sin once and for all; as well as a way for Tidus to get home. I'm going to not get too deep into spoilers or specifics for this game because I feel like the story is something that should be experienced firsthand, but I do want to talk about a few spoiler filled points; namely Tidus's relationship with his father Jecht, Yuna's journey, and the reoccuring antagonist of the game Seymour.
Tidus and Jecht's relationship is a big plot point throughout the game, with Tidus slowly discovering more and more about the kind of person his father was as he follows his footsteps throughout Spira and has to struggle to mesh this with his preexisting feelings on his father. What I find really interesting about this is how the game explores the dynamic between the two of them without the two of them meeting in present time until the very end of the game. The game really manages to portray how Jecht and Tidus's relationship was before while also showing how Tidus grows to understand his father and who he was, but still having him be able to acknowledge that even with what Tidus knows now he still can't see his father as a good person. It's a really interesting dynamic that adds a lot of emotional impact to the climax of the game. Tidus's journey of understanding with his father is also interwoven throughout the plot with Yuna's journey to try and stop Sin.
This journey is particularly interesting to me because of context we learn later in the story, that being that Yuna will have to die in order to defeat Sin in the traditional way. Yuna's determination to defeat Sin and do whatever it took, and then Tidus and the group's determination to steer her away from this path and find another way created a really compelling narrative for me and I loved the dynamics that come into Yuna's character and relationships with other characters that stem from this. My favorite scene around this is one on the trek to the final temple where Tidus finds a message sphere that Yuna had dropped that functions as her goodbye to everyone else. It's such a bittersweet moment hearing her talk about her life and her friends like this as a goodbye knowing that by the time anyone sees it she'll already be gone, and it really impacted me emotionally. This journey and how she feels about what is necessary in order to make people happy directly coincides with the main villain of the game, who holds the exact opposite ideology and resolve that Yuna has.
Seymour is this game's Kefka/Sephiroth equivalent (despite not staying around the main plot as long as them), and I think he may stand up there beside them as one of my favorite villains in gaming. Seymour is a troubled high ranking religious leader of the group that regularly sends out summoners to try and defeat sin. Within FFX's story he tries to get Yuna to become his wife so that he can use her to defeat sin and then become the new sin himself to wipe out Spira all together. While this does sound like a pretty basic villain plot, I do think the reasons he does what he does is the most interesting part of him. Seymour parallels Yuna in how their upbringings were and it creates a really interesting dynamic between the two. Both were missing or separated from their parents due to sin, both got dragged into the battle against Sin because of their parents, and both of them ultimately have the goal of freeing Spira from the sorrow that Sin brings; just with different methods of reaching this goal.
The two of them function as different sides of the same coin in their background and their surface level goals, but one key difference lead them down two different paths: Isolation. Yuna grew up and had friends in the form of Lulu, kimahri, and Wakka to keep her happy and to make her want to try and defeat sin to preserve everyone's happiness. Meanwhile Seymour ended up completely alone, and slowly grew to think that the only way to end the sorrow of those in Spira was to end Spira itself; due to noting how those that perished around him stopped suffering when they were no longer living due to the no longer being of this world. Seymour not having anyone to steer him away from that line of thinking and to be there for him is ultimately what turned him into the monster he becomes throughout the story. He and Yuna form an interesting commentary on how one's environment growing up can influence and change the person they will become, and to me it is was handled really well throughout the story and really adds to it overall for me.
One final note on the story stuff that I wanted to touch on was the voice acting. This game's VA tends to get a bad rep for a certain scene (which actually is a good scene in context, people just like to use it out of context because it sounds funny and is easy to dunk on) but I think the VA work for a large portion of the game is really solid. There are a lot of moments where it's clear that the VA's weren't given the proper context for scenes in order to have them properly voice with the correct cadence and tone, but a lot of the really emotional and important scenes still manage to land with great tone and diction. The scene where Tidus finally sees Jecht again hits me really hard due to how Tidus's VA delivers certain lines, which I won't spoil here because again its something that I think needs to be seen to fully understand why its so good in my opinion.
Speaking of sound, the soundtrack to this game is phenomenal. I can't name a single bad track in this game in my opinion, even the sonic adventure esque song during the first two phases of the final boss is kick ass and fun in its own way. I do think this game has probably my favorite rendition of a final fantasy main battle theme as well, but I may be biased in that due to my affinity for trumpets from playing Pokemon Emerald for hundreds of hours growing up.
Finally, the art direction and locations of Spira are just really aesthetically pleasing and I constantly found myself going "man this place is pretty" or "Wow this would be fun to explore if it didn't have giant monsters everywhere". Spira is just such a charming world to me and I loved getting to explore it and see everything it had to offer and seeing all the weird and wonderful things within it. Except for blitzball. Playing that once was enough.
Overall, Final Fantasy X is a game that I cannot recommend enough. There's definitely a reason this game has withstood the test of time and to this day is seen as one of the best games in the franchise, and I think everyone with even a passing interest in JRPG's should give it a shot because it does everything on such a fantastic level. To me, Final Fantasy X is a truly unforgettable experience.
9.5/10
This review contains spoilers
I went into this game not expecting to like it as much as the original trilogy based on how often I see it cited as the where the series went downhill, and while I do have friends that liked this game a lot I still wanted to keep my expectations in check in case this game actually was worse than the the first three Ace Attorney games.
That being said, Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice is just as good as the original trilogy, if not better in some instances, in my opinion.
This game is just absolutely oozing with charm and has so much to love about it. Everything just comes together in such a fun way that really feels well crafted to me. The characters, story, art direction, and music all build off each other to make this game another incredible entry in the Ace Attorney series. I do want to start off by properly talking about the characters though, since in my opinion they're what really elevate this game and are the core part of it.
I will warn that this entire review will be filled with spoilers, since due to the nature of this game it's impossible to talk about without talking about extremely spoilery content so while I will try to avoid spoiling the main plot as much as possible, a good chunk of information about the story and characters will come through here.
Going into this game I was a bit worried about the cast, I've spent the past three games getting used to a certain cast of characters (minus the revolving door of prosecutors) so to suddenly have them uprooted and replaced with a new generation of characters did leave me a little uneasy. I'm glad to say that that worry was unfounded, because man is the cast of this game great.
The replacement for Phoenix in this game, and the game's namesake, Apollo Justice is an absolute gem. He feels distinctly more serious than Phoenix did in his games and I personally felt like it was a good direction to take the character. While Phoenix seemed to just embrace the wacky antics of the Ace Attorney universe's courtrooms right off the bat Apollo seemed to just be blindsided by the kind of shenanigans that happen in the court of law and it's a great thing to see as a contrast to how weird the cases in the universe get. Apollo's surprise at the weirdness of the Attorney world feels like a nice way to relate to new players who might be starting with this entry; but at the same time as someone who's played the games before this one I thought it was a nice (and pretty funny) change of pace to see someone go into what he thinks is a normal trial and then spend the next four trials just going through progressively more bizarre and intricate cases.
Otherwise I do love how Apollo comes into his own as attorney over the course of this game. Seeing him start as a scared first timer who has to have his boss arrested with the help of a disgraced pro and then growing into a confident person in his own right who solves a seven year old case centered around the people from the first case of the game is great and really feels like a great character arc for him; that while not directly about him does feel right to have him at the center of in these instances. Though Apollo is great on his own, he is made infinitely better by his dynamic with Trucy Wright, his co-counsel.
Trucy was a character that I was especially unsure about going into this game. Trucy is the adopted daughter of Phoenix and the head of the "Wright Anything Agency", which is where you work for most of the game. I was a big fan of Maya and Pearl as our co-counsel in the original trilogy so going into this I was worried that I wouldn't like Trucy as much since she didn't seem as interesting from what little I knew about her at the start; but I have to say that Trucy is probably one of the best parts of the game for me. The way she interacts with Apollo and messes with him gives me brother and sister vibes reminiscent of Phoenix and Maya, while also putting their own spin on it and making the dynamic feel like it's own thing even with the similarities to how Phoenix and Maya were.
Outside of her banter with Apollo though she's great on her own. Her way of seeing the world feels deceptively innocent when you first meet her but it becomes very clear as the game goes on that she's wise beyond her years. You're given hints about how Trucy came to be Wright's daughter and other small tidbits about her life through cases 1-3 but once you hit case 4 and get the full picture it really puts into perspective how strong Trucy is as a character and how intense her determination to make others happy is after she's endured so much; yet she basically pushed all that down in order to ensure that she can help Phoenix after his life was ruined. Trucy is a really well written tragic character and I cannot wait to see how they follow up on her story in future games. Speaking of future games, lets talk about a character that we probably won't see much of going forward: This game's prosecutor, Klavier Gavin.
As I mentioned earlier the prosecutors in this series tends to change to a new main one every game, and considering I liked all three before this I was expecting to enjoy whoever the new one was well enough. Enter Klavier Gavin, the best prosecutor this series has seen so far. Everything about this man just hits the right notes for me and it actually kinda surprises me how much I enjoyed him in this game. From the moment you first meet him he just has this aura of "I'm better than you, but like in a respectful way." and it's super interesting to me because of how generally the prosecutors up to this point have been a lot more meanspirited and aggressive at first. Gavin on the other hand, is friendly from the start and makes for a really fun dynamic between him and Apollo.
Despite his friendliness with Apollo, Klavier still acts as a formidable rival in the courtroom. Calm, collected, yet fierce he challenges you at every turn throughout the three cases he's in. He manages to capture the energy of a friend who wants to push you to be the best that you can be, and the way he starts working with Apollo throughout the trials once the truth starts to become clear is always so much fun. This is due mainly to the fact that much like how being the best and revenge drove the other prosecutors, the main drive that Gavin had was finding the truth. I find this aspect of him really interesting because it's a fresh take on how the prosecutors usually are in this series when you first meet them. He's just a guy who wants the true culprit to be caught, and even if he loses the cases he's just glad that the real criminal got put away. We also actually get to see where Klavier Gavin's quest for truth started in game which is cool; ir also just so happens to coincide with Phoenix Wright's fall from grace.
Full disclosure I knew about old man Phoenix coming into this game, I've seen the design around a lot but I had no idea what the context of it was. Seeing him as the defendant of the first case though, and from there seeing how much he's changed in the seven years since the end of AA3 really caught me off guard and got me extremely invested in the main plot of the game. Slowly being given details about what happened to Phoenix through the first three cases and then having it all be revealed to you in a section where you get to play as him again in case 4 for a flashback was great and I think they did a great job of revealing all the information around what caused him to become this person.
An older, more cynical Phoenix that's been warn down by being framed and kicked out of the job he's dedicated his life too felt like a compelling place to take his character in this game and helped to provide a continuous hook throughout the game of wanting to find out how he became this tired, kinda sad guy after being a lively fun person in the original trilogy. I think what this game absolutely nails about him though is it showcases just how smart Phoenix is. His entire plan to not only clear his name, but finally get closure and justice for the case that ruined him seven years ago was brilliant and showed that while the years had dulled his spirit, they hadn't dulled his mind. Phoenix isn't the only returning character though, he returns with forensic expert Ema Skye who functions as the new detective to help (or hinder you sometimes) you during investigations.
While I did like Ema Skye, I do think she's the one character that didn't reach the same standard of the other new generation characters from me. I still think she was great but the character she was replacing, Detective Dick Gumshoe, was just too good in the original trilogy. Her personality is distinct and different from his enough to make them two very different characters who ultimately function differently and are enjoyable on their own; but it does still feel like she's missing something when compared to who she's replacing.
I will note that while I would like to focus on how all of these characters stand on their own, it is a tad difficult to do so when they are all effectively replacing other characters. It's the unfortunate risk writers run when they try to introduce a new cast to an ongoing series, it can be hard to get out of the shadow of what you've done previously. Ultimately I do think the game for the most part does manage to live up to the expectations of having the same great core cast the trilogy did and I love how all of them are throughout this game's story.
Regarding the story, I really liked how they managed to pull off the style of overarching plot that AA3 did again. I feel like as Shu Takumi worked on the series he became a better and better writer and that is exemplified here. So many small things throughout each case that felt like they would be irrelevant to the main plot of the case all end up factoring in and as I started to realize this it was fun trying to figure out which minute details would become important to the endgame of the case. This game has its fair share of sudden twists and turns throughout the cases like all the other games, and I do love how it all comes together in the end with case 4, which is tied for my second favorite case of the series.
The overarching plot of the game focuses on the mystery of Phoenix's final trial seven years ago and what really happened that day that got him disbarred. I've mentioned it a few times in this review already but the way they managed to weave breadcrumbs throughout every case felt organic and like it was never detracting from the current focus, but still reminding you that plot was still going on in the background. The way everything came to a head in case four was so damn cool and I just absolutely loved how they wrote that entire case. The whole idea of trying to use a jurist system for this case instead of the evidence only approach was a fun idea that I hope continues to show up in future games as it felt fresh and unique in how the case was presented due to it not needing to be won in the same way as every other case so far. Apollo Justice's story is great and definitely a fun time if you decide to playthrough it.
While the story is great, I do think part of what makes this game so great is the presentation.
Playing this game you could really tell Capcom were taking full advantage of the ds's visual abilities. The bounciness and general movement of the sprites, as well as just how clean they look visually, was super neat to me and really made all the fun new character designs pop much more than they would have if they had the more static look of the gba games I feel. The designs are also just all really fun in general as well. I think it says a lot that when trying to think of my favorite design pretty much all of the main cast come to mind. The animations and art are definitely made even greater by the music though, which may be my favorite soundtrack of the series so far.
Like I said with the FFX review I'm not the best at talking about why I like music, I just know when I like something I like something. That being said, I just wanted to say that Apollo Justice's soundtrack is phenomenal. Tracks like their renditions of the cross examination and the cornered themes in this game are some of the best I've heard so far, and new themes such as Klavier Gavin's theme are just incredible. Even if you don't play the game give some songs a listen, they're great.
Though I've spent most of this review talking about aspects of the games that I love, there were a few things about the game that did rub me the wrong way.
I think one of the two places this game is lacking though, are the investigation minigames. This time around during the investigation portion of cases you will often enlist the help of Ema Skye in order to gather evidence left behind at the crime scenes that you couldn't get through normal means. Cases two and four have one or two new minigames that cover gathering evidence in different ways. For example you make casts of footprints in case two, using an X-ray machine to read a letter through an envelope in case four, etc. case three meanwhile has a soundboard that you have to adjust and listen too carefully in order to hear sounds that help build your case in that specific trial. While most of these are fine and not that big of a deal they felt not super fun to play at best and just tedious at worst like with the aforementioned X-ray minigame. While I'm bringing up tediousness, that brings me to my other big problem with the game: repetition.
While this may seem like a petty complaint, I was extremely not a fan of just how often the middle cases would use flashbacks and make us reread parts of the game that we've already read. Or in the case of case three specifically, replay the same clip of video on repeat every two minutes or so during a section that was reliant on talking about this piece of video. I do understand to some degree that it was necessary for people to see the different clues and stuff that they may have missed when they weren't specifically looking for them, but I do think it still went overboard to some degree.
All in all though, Apollo Justice is a lot better of a game than I think its given credit for online. Fun characters, incredible writing, great music and visuals, all ingredients in the recipe for a good Ace Attorney game. Give this game a shot if you're on the fence after the trilogy, it's a great time.
9.5/10
That being said, Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice is just as good as the original trilogy, if not better in some instances, in my opinion.
This game is just absolutely oozing with charm and has so much to love about it. Everything just comes together in such a fun way that really feels well crafted to me. The characters, story, art direction, and music all build off each other to make this game another incredible entry in the Ace Attorney series. I do want to start off by properly talking about the characters though, since in my opinion they're what really elevate this game and are the core part of it.
I will warn that this entire review will be filled with spoilers, since due to the nature of this game it's impossible to talk about without talking about extremely spoilery content so while I will try to avoid spoiling the main plot as much as possible, a good chunk of information about the story and characters will come through here.
Going into this game I was a bit worried about the cast, I've spent the past three games getting used to a certain cast of characters (minus the revolving door of prosecutors) so to suddenly have them uprooted and replaced with a new generation of characters did leave me a little uneasy. I'm glad to say that that worry was unfounded, because man is the cast of this game great.
The replacement for Phoenix in this game, and the game's namesake, Apollo Justice is an absolute gem. He feels distinctly more serious than Phoenix did in his games and I personally felt like it was a good direction to take the character. While Phoenix seemed to just embrace the wacky antics of the Ace Attorney universe's courtrooms right off the bat Apollo seemed to just be blindsided by the kind of shenanigans that happen in the court of law and it's a great thing to see as a contrast to how weird the cases in the universe get. Apollo's surprise at the weirdness of the Attorney world feels like a nice way to relate to new players who might be starting with this entry; but at the same time as someone who's played the games before this one I thought it was a nice (and pretty funny) change of pace to see someone go into what he thinks is a normal trial and then spend the next four trials just going through progressively more bizarre and intricate cases.
Otherwise I do love how Apollo comes into his own as attorney over the course of this game. Seeing him start as a scared first timer who has to have his boss arrested with the help of a disgraced pro and then growing into a confident person in his own right who solves a seven year old case centered around the people from the first case of the game is great and really feels like a great character arc for him; that while not directly about him does feel right to have him at the center of in these instances. Though Apollo is great on his own, he is made infinitely better by his dynamic with Trucy Wright, his co-counsel.
Trucy was a character that I was especially unsure about going into this game. Trucy is the adopted daughter of Phoenix and the head of the "Wright Anything Agency", which is where you work for most of the game. I was a big fan of Maya and Pearl as our co-counsel in the original trilogy so going into this I was worried that I wouldn't like Trucy as much since she didn't seem as interesting from what little I knew about her at the start; but I have to say that Trucy is probably one of the best parts of the game for me. The way she interacts with Apollo and messes with him gives me brother and sister vibes reminiscent of Phoenix and Maya, while also putting their own spin on it and making the dynamic feel like it's own thing even with the similarities to how Phoenix and Maya were.
Outside of her banter with Apollo though she's great on her own. Her way of seeing the world feels deceptively innocent when you first meet her but it becomes very clear as the game goes on that she's wise beyond her years. You're given hints about how Trucy came to be Wright's daughter and other small tidbits about her life through cases 1-3 but once you hit case 4 and get the full picture it really puts into perspective how strong Trucy is as a character and how intense her determination to make others happy is after she's endured so much; yet she basically pushed all that down in order to ensure that she can help Phoenix after his life was ruined. Trucy is a really well written tragic character and I cannot wait to see how they follow up on her story in future games. Speaking of future games, lets talk about a character that we probably won't see much of going forward: This game's prosecutor, Klavier Gavin.
As I mentioned earlier the prosecutors in this series tends to change to a new main one every game, and considering I liked all three before this I was expecting to enjoy whoever the new one was well enough. Enter Klavier Gavin, the best prosecutor this series has seen so far. Everything about this man just hits the right notes for me and it actually kinda surprises me how much I enjoyed him in this game. From the moment you first meet him he just has this aura of "I'm better than you, but like in a respectful way." and it's super interesting to me because of how generally the prosecutors up to this point have been a lot more meanspirited and aggressive at first. Gavin on the other hand, is friendly from the start and makes for a really fun dynamic between him and Apollo.
Despite his friendliness with Apollo, Klavier still acts as a formidable rival in the courtroom. Calm, collected, yet fierce he challenges you at every turn throughout the three cases he's in. He manages to capture the energy of a friend who wants to push you to be the best that you can be, and the way he starts working with Apollo throughout the trials once the truth starts to become clear is always so much fun. This is due mainly to the fact that much like how being the best and revenge drove the other prosecutors, the main drive that Gavin had was finding the truth. I find this aspect of him really interesting because it's a fresh take on how the prosecutors usually are in this series when you first meet them. He's just a guy who wants the true culprit to be caught, and even if he loses the cases he's just glad that the real criminal got put away. We also actually get to see where Klavier Gavin's quest for truth started in game which is cool; ir also just so happens to coincide with Phoenix Wright's fall from grace.
Full disclosure I knew about old man Phoenix coming into this game, I've seen the design around a lot but I had no idea what the context of it was. Seeing him as the defendant of the first case though, and from there seeing how much he's changed in the seven years since the end of AA3 really caught me off guard and got me extremely invested in the main plot of the game. Slowly being given details about what happened to Phoenix through the first three cases and then having it all be revealed to you in a section where you get to play as him again in case 4 for a flashback was great and I think they did a great job of revealing all the information around what caused him to become this person.
An older, more cynical Phoenix that's been warn down by being framed and kicked out of the job he's dedicated his life too felt like a compelling place to take his character in this game and helped to provide a continuous hook throughout the game of wanting to find out how he became this tired, kinda sad guy after being a lively fun person in the original trilogy. I think what this game absolutely nails about him though is it showcases just how smart Phoenix is. His entire plan to not only clear his name, but finally get closure and justice for the case that ruined him seven years ago was brilliant and showed that while the years had dulled his spirit, they hadn't dulled his mind. Phoenix isn't the only returning character though, he returns with forensic expert Ema Skye who functions as the new detective to help (or hinder you sometimes) you during investigations.
While I did like Ema Skye, I do think she's the one character that didn't reach the same standard of the other new generation characters from me. I still think she was great but the character she was replacing, Detective Dick Gumshoe, was just too good in the original trilogy. Her personality is distinct and different from his enough to make them two very different characters who ultimately function differently and are enjoyable on their own; but it does still feel like she's missing something when compared to who she's replacing.
I will note that while I would like to focus on how all of these characters stand on their own, it is a tad difficult to do so when they are all effectively replacing other characters. It's the unfortunate risk writers run when they try to introduce a new cast to an ongoing series, it can be hard to get out of the shadow of what you've done previously. Ultimately I do think the game for the most part does manage to live up to the expectations of having the same great core cast the trilogy did and I love how all of them are throughout this game's story.
Regarding the story, I really liked how they managed to pull off the style of overarching plot that AA3 did again. I feel like as Shu Takumi worked on the series he became a better and better writer and that is exemplified here. So many small things throughout each case that felt like they would be irrelevant to the main plot of the case all end up factoring in and as I started to realize this it was fun trying to figure out which minute details would become important to the endgame of the case. This game has its fair share of sudden twists and turns throughout the cases like all the other games, and I do love how it all comes together in the end with case 4, which is tied for my second favorite case of the series.
The overarching plot of the game focuses on the mystery of Phoenix's final trial seven years ago and what really happened that day that got him disbarred. I've mentioned it a few times in this review already but the way they managed to weave breadcrumbs throughout every case felt organic and like it was never detracting from the current focus, but still reminding you that plot was still going on in the background. The way everything came to a head in case four was so damn cool and I just absolutely loved how they wrote that entire case. The whole idea of trying to use a jurist system for this case instead of the evidence only approach was a fun idea that I hope continues to show up in future games as it felt fresh and unique in how the case was presented due to it not needing to be won in the same way as every other case so far. Apollo Justice's story is great and definitely a fun time if you decide to playthrough it.
While the story is great, I do think part of what makes this game so great is the presentation.
Playing this game you could really tell Capcom were taking full advantage of the ds's visual abilities. The bounciness and general movement of the sprites, as well as just how clean they look visually, was super neat to me and really made all the fun new character designs pop much more than they would have if they had the more static look of the gba games I feel. The designs are also just all really fun in general as well. I think it says a lot that when trying to think of my favorite design pretty much all of the main cast come to mind. The animations and art are definitely made even greater by the music though, which may be my favorite soundtrack of the series so far.
Like I said with the FFX review I'm not the best at talking about why I like music, I just know when I like something I like something. That being said, I just wanted to say that Apollo Justice's soundtrack is phenomenal. Tracks like their renditions of the cross examination and the cornered themes in this game are some of the best I've heard so far, and new themes such as Klavier Gavin's theme are just incredible. Even if you don't play the game give some songs a listen, they're great.
Though I've spent most of this review talking about aspects of the games that I love, there were a few things about the game that did rub me the wrong way.
I think one of the two places this game is lacking though, are the investigation minigames. This time around during the investigation portion of cases you will often enlist the help of Ema Skye in order to gather evidence left behind at the crime scenes that you couldn't get through normal means. Cases two and four have one or two new minigames that cover gathering evidence in different ways. For example you make casts of footprints in case two, using an X-ray machine to read a letter through an envelope in case four, etc. case three meanwhile has a soundboard that you have to adjust and listen too carefully in order to hear sounds that help build your case in that specific trial. While most of these are fine and not that big of a deal they felt not super fun to play at best and just tedious at worst like with the aforementioned X-ray minigame. While I'm bringing up tediousness, that brings me to my other big problem with the game: repetition.
While this may seem like a petty complaint, I was extremely not a fan of just how often the middle cases would use flashbacks and make us reread parts of the game that we've already read. Or in the case of case three specifically, replay the same clip of video on repeat every two minutes or so during a section that was reliant on talking about this piece of video. I do understand to some degree that it was necessary for people to see the different clues and stuff that they may have missed when they weren't specifically looking for them, but I do think it still went overboard to some degree.
All in all though, Apollo Justice is a lot better of a game than I think its given credit for online. Fun characters, incredible writing, great music and visuals, all ingredients in the recipe for a good Ace Attorney game. Give this game a shot if you're on the fence after the trilogy, it's a great time.
9.5/10
This review contains spoilers
As a big fan of horror media I've been trying to branch out and try more horror games since outside of Resident Evil and (arguably) Dead Rising I haven't played a lot of horror or horror adjacent games. Which lead to me trying out the Metro series, games that aren't entirely horror but have enough of it in their DNA for me to count them as such. While I did like the first game in the series, Metro 2033, it had its fair share of problems that brought the experience down for me a bit. I can safely say that for the most part those problems were fixed for Last Light. There are so many systems and general gameplay elements that were tweaked for this sequel that just makes the game as a whole feel so much better to play and made it a much more enjoyable experience overall.
One system in particular that I would like to touch on first is the filter system the series has. A big part of the game's lore is that humanity cannot survive in the open air thanks to how toxic the air has become due to radiation poisoning, which leads to needing air filters whenever you venture onto the surface world. These filters run on a timer that limit how long you can survive on the surface or within pockets of toxic air within the metro. I don't have a problem with the mechanic itself and found it added to the tension a lot in certain areas. For example there was a boss fight on the surface that I had to figure out how to defeat in less than a minute since when I reached the checkpoint before the boss I only had about a minute of filter time left. It made the boss a lot more difficult and forced me to strategize and really figure out how the boss's mechanics worked in order to beat it on time, and even then I barely made it to the next level without passing out in game. Experiences like these really elevate the feeling of tension the game tries to create and made it a really memorable part of the game for me. The system itself is great on paper and when it works, it really works. There is a problem with this system though, which is the number of filters in the game.
In my opinion to get a system like this right you need to balance it well around having enough filters but not too many to make the system feel pointless. Last Light doesn't really accomplish this and ends up going to both ends of the extremes on this issue. The start of the game is pretty light on filters and you're constantly struggling through a lot of these areas just trying to find the next filter to the point of being more frustrating then fun. This is exacerbated by the fact that unlike the first game you can no longer buy filters in the early game and have to make due with only what you find in the tunnels. This then switches over about halfway into the game into having too many filters. You still can't buy them but suddenly you have 25 minutes worth of filter time from random large groups of them you find during a certain section and as long as you're not just ignoring every pick up, you maintain that amount of filter time for the rest of the game. While throwing more filters in late game as they expect you to spend more time outside makes sense and I think it's a logical course of progression, it does feel like it was less of a progression and more just going from having no filters to never having to worry about filters. I would have personally liked it if it was a bit better balanced, and I hope Exodus improves on that aspect, but it's still a cool system that I enjoy during the points where it's balanced well.
Speaking of balance I would like to say that they really fixed the balance on human vs human combat this time around. My biggest issue with 2033 was how much of a slog the combat against other human opponents was because of the arenas you fought them in, and I am glad to say that Last Light definitely fixes that. It actually feels fun to fight human enemies this time due to the changes to the general level design for combat encounters.
The rooms for human enemy encounters feel like they were designed in a way that makes both combat and stealth feel really good this time around. In 2033 the level designs for most human encounters felt like they designed the levels without human enemies in mind, and because of that a lot of the stealth or just outright combat that was intended for those moments felt more frustrating than fun because any attempts at stealth were ruined by the level design not really giving you places to hide but then also not giving you a ton of places that provide true cover at the same time for full on combat. Thankfully Last Light takes care of both of these problems and manages to craft a lot of levels against humans that allows either approach to work well in most cases. Most of my time I would go for a stealth approach until I deemed that the herd was thinned enough to take them out in a fire fight and then went from there. Both approaches worked well and felt like you could tackle the entire game with either gameplay style if you desired.
On the topic of level design, while I do love the general aesthetic of the game and feel like it fits very well within the tones and themes the games try to set up, it can be a bit too similar at times. I may just be bad at videogames and the whole "seeing" thing in general but a lot of times the environments, especially in the tunnels, all blended together and it became a tad difficult to figure out where I needed to go exactly when things would divert from a linear path. I would generally find it after fumbling around a bit but the earlier parts of the game were rough due to most of them looking incredibly similar. Thankfully the later parts of the game address this issue by giving you a lot of unique outside areas that really showcase the game's aesthetic while also having subtle level design that shows you were to go without telling you where to go. The final trek through the garden and the surrounding area to get back to the city you started in is honestly beautiful and really shows off the art direction to its fullest in my opinion. This area also just happens to be one of the best parts of the game in terms of story.
So the story of Metro Last Light is that after the bad end of the first game where you accidentally nuked and obliterated a race of people known as the dark ones after thinking they were hostile the whole game, only to find out that they were trying to make contact with humanity instead of kill them, you are alerted to the existence of a child sized dark one that has been spotted living around what remains of their nest. Your mission from there is to then retrieve the baby dark one; which unfortunately doesn't go as planned when the nazis show up. You then spend the rest of the game trying to get back home after escaping from the nazis, combating the reds, and then reuniting with the baby dark one in order to stop the reds from wiping out your friends. The story is alright for the most part but the last third of the game is where it really shines in my opinion.
After you reunite with the young dark one he essentially acts as someone to question your morality and make you think about the choices you've made, both as just the character Artyom but also as the player. I found this angle of having a child character essentially questioning why you did things a certain way and reminding you of how you had a hand in genociding his people (though the player did have no say in letting that happen in the first game) really compelling, because it makes you think of the actions that have lead to this and think about the actions you can do now. They remind me of Clementine from the first season of the walking dead game in a way with how they act as someone who makes you explain yourself for things you've done and makes it more apparent when you realize you've done something wrong because now you have someone reacting to all of your choices and actions. It's a dynamic I love because of how it makes the player think about what they're doing and what they're allowing to happen within the game's world and I think it is done really well here for the brief time that the young dark one is with you. That all being said, the game introduced this far too late into the game.
I really like this dynamic but I feel like the fact that the small dark one just isn't relevant for over half of the game does lead to feeling like we didn't get enough time with them. While it would have been a bit difficult I could see a way for them to incorporate this character throughout more of the story and keep them as something that accomplishes what I mentioned earlier but on a much wider/larger scale. I still love how they're used in the game and how they play into the plot as a whole, I just think it was a bit of a wasted opportunity to restrict how much this dynamic can be explored in this way. I understand needing to not have the dark one in the story for certain sections to make some reveals land, but I feel that there may have been a way to keep the dark one out of those moments without writing them out of the story entirely like they were in the final product.
Regardless of this Metro Last Light manages to improve in almost every way on its predecessor and I am extremely impressed with how much they managed to improve between games. Still a few things that need to be worked out to make it a incredible experience to me but this game overall was one I had a great time with.
8.5/10
One system in particular that I would like to touch on first is the filter system the series has. A big part of the game's lore is that humanity cannot survive in the open air thanks to how toxic the air has become due to radiation poisoning, which leads to needing air filters whenever you venture onto the surface world. These filters run on a timer that limit how long you can survive on the surface or within pockets of toxic air within the metro. I don't have a problem with the mechanic itself and found it added to the tension a lot in certain areas. For example there was a boss fight on the surface that I had to figure out how to defeat in less than a minute since when I reached the checkpoint before the boss I only had about a minute of filter time left. It made the boss a lot more difficult and forced me to strategize and really figure out how the boss's mechanics worked in order to beat it on time, and even then I barely made it to the next level without passing out in game. Experiences like these really elevate the feeling of tension the game tries to create and made it a really memorable part of the game for me. The system itself is great on paper and when it works, it really works. There is a problem with this system though, which is the number of filters in the game.
In my opinion to get a system like this right you need to balance it well around having enough filters but not too many to make the system feel pointless. Last Light doesn't really accomplish this and ends up going to both ends of the extremes on this issue. The start of the game is pretty light on filters and you're constantly struggling through a lot of these areas just trying to find the next filter to the point of being more frustrating then fun. This is exacerbated by the fact that unlike the first game you can no longer buy filters in the early game and have to make due with only what you find in the tunnels. This then switches over about halfway into the game into having too many filters. You still can't buy them but suddenly you have 25 minutes worth of filter time from random large groups of them you find during a certain section and as long as you're not just ignoring every pick up, you maintain that amount of filter time for the rest of the game. While throwing more filters in late game as they expect you to spend more time outside makes sense and I think it's a logical course of progression, it does feel like it was less of a progression and more just going from having no filters to never having to worry about filters. I would have personally liked it if it was a bit better balanced, and I hope Exodus improves on that aspect, but it's still a cool system that I enjoy during the points where it's balanced well.
Speaking of balance I would like to say that they really fixed the balance on human vs human combat this time around. My biggest issue with 2033 was how much of a slog the combat against other human opponents was because of the arenas you fought them in, and I am glad to say that Last Light definitely fixes that. It actually feels fun to fight human enemies this time due to the changes to the general level design for combat encounters.
The rooms for human enemy encounters feel like they were designed in a way that makes both combat and stealth feel really good this time around. In 2033 the level designs for most human encounters felt like they designed the levels without human enemies in mind, and because of that a lot of the stealth or just outright combat that was intended for those moments felt more frustrating than fun because any attempts at stealth were ruined by the level design not really giving you places to hide but then also not giving you a ton of places that provide true cover at the same time for full on combat. Thankfully Last Light takes care of both of these problems and manages to craft a lot of levels against humans that allows either approach to work well in most cases. Most of my time I would go for a stealth approach until I deemed that the herd was thinned enough to take them out in a fire fight and then went from there. Both approaches worked well and felt like you could tackle the entire game with either gameplay style if you desired.
On the topic of level design, while I do love the general aesthetic of the game and feel like it fits very well within the tones and themes the games try to set up, it can be a bit too similar at times. I may just be bad at videogames and the whole "seeing" thing in general but a lot of times the environments, especially in the tunnels, all blended together and it became a tad difficult to figure out where I needed to go exactly when things would divert from a linear path. I would generally find it after fumbling around a bit but the earlier parts of the game were rough due to most of them looking incredibly similar. Thankfully the later parts of the game address this issue by giving you a lot of unique outside areas that really showcase the game's aesthetic while also having subtle level design that shows you were to go without telling you where to go. The final trek through the garden and the surrounding area to get back to the city you started in is honestly beautiful and really shows off the art direction to its fullest in my opinion. This area also just happens to be one of the best parts of the game in terms of story.
So the story of Metro Last Light is that after the bad end of the first game where you accidentally nuked and obliterated a race of people known as the dark ones after thinking they were hostile the whole game, only to find out that they were trying to make contact with humanity instead of kill them, you are alerted to the existence of a child sized dark one that has been spotted living around what remains of their nest. Your mission from there is to then retrieve the baby dark one; which unfortunately doesn't go as planned when the nazis show up. You then spend the rest of the game trying to get back home after escaping from the nazis, combating the reds, and then reuniting with the baby dark one in order to stop the reds from wiping out your friends. The story is alright for the most part but the last third of the game is where it really shines in my opinion.
After you reunite with the young dark one he essentially acts as someone to question your morality and make you think about the choices you've made, both as just the character Artyom but also as the player. I found this angle of having a child character essentially questioning why you did things a certain way and reminding you of how you had a hand in genociding his people (though the player did have no say in letting that happen in the first game) really compelling, because it makes you think of the actions that have lead to this and think about the actions you can do now. They remind me of Clementine from the first season of the walking dead game in a way with how they act as someone who makes you explain yourself for things you've done and makes it more apparent when you realize you've done something wrong because now you have someone reacting to all of your choices and actions. It's a dynamic I love because of how it makes the player think about what they're doing and what they're allowing to happen within the game's world and I think it is done really well here for the brief time that the young dark one is with you. That all being said, the game introduced this far too late into the game.
I really like this dynamic but I feel like the fact that the small dark one just isn't relevant for over half of the game does lead to feeling like we didn't get enough time with them. While it would have been a bit difficult I could see a way for them to incorporate this character throughout more of the story and keep them as something that accomplishes what I mentioned earlier but on a much wider/larger scale. I still love how they're used in the game and how they play into the plot as a whole, I just think it was a bit of a wasted opportunity to restrict how much this dynamic can be explored in this way. I understand needing to not have the dark one in the story for certain sections to make some reveals land, but I feel that there may have been a way to keep the dark one out of those moments without writing them out of the story entirely like they were in the final product.
Regardless of this Metro Last Light manages to improve in almost every way on its predecessor and I am extremely impressed with how much they managed to improve between games. Still a few things that need to be worked out to make it a incredible experience to me but this game overall was one I had a great time with.
8.5/10
2021
This review contains spoilers
Going into No More Heroes 3 I wasn't expecting it to be the final game in the series. With Travis Strikes again existing as a way to bring people back into the series and them seemingly going all out for 3, I figured the franchise was going to go into an upswing of sorts. So When I saw the tweet from The official No More Heroes twitter where Suda 51, the director and creator of the franchise, said that the game is Travis's final battle it caught my by surprise. That being said, after actually playing No More Heroes 3 it makes a lot of sense. I will be saving that part of this review for last though as I would like to talk about every other aspect of the game that I found notable first, but the sense of finality that exists in regards to Travis and his journey was a major part of the game that I found extremely engaging. Fair warning this is gonna be filled with a lot of spoilers for the game.
To kick things off I wanted to talk about how incredible the combat feels this time around. I played the switch ports of 1 and 2 originally and while I liked their combat design well enough the gameplay did feel very of its time in terms of not having some now standard mechanics of the genre such as dodging being easy to pull off. NMH3 meanwhile has some of the best action combat I’ve seen in awhile. Giving Light attack and heavy attack their own buttons instead of having two different ways to do them from one input feels really nice and makes it feel a lot more fluid than the prior games. Adding in dodging and jumping also helps the overall feel of the combat to feel a lot smoother and bring it up to modern action game standards. These more modern controls mixed with all of the new enemy types you have to face as well as just the general weight and feel of attacks makes for some incredibly solid combat that I wanted to do as much as possible throughout the game. However, I’d argue the biggest addition to the gameplay this time around are the death skills.
Death skills are an addition from Travis Strikes Again that I am really glad made it into 3. They essentially function as special moves that can help you dish out massive damage in some capacity before needing to recharge before the next use. These skills felt like they slotted in really well with the rest of Travis’s combat abilities personally. The four skills you receive are Death kick, a strong drop kick that sends enemies flying, death force, a force push type attack that sends enemies flying as well, death rain which has small projectiles rain from above over a set area, and death slow which slows everyone in a certain area. All of the abilities will work well in a pinch and can make battles a breeze if you use them well, but my personal favorites were slow and rain. Being able to damage enemies and keep them off of me while I fought one enemy, or if I was getting overwhelmed being able to slow down everything near me and give myself a second to breath helped to control the flow of combat and make me feel like I'm in charge of the battle and I love that feeling. The combat is easily the best part of the game and it runs incredibly, which I unfortunately can't say about most of the rest of the game.
The game runs at about 60fps in combat, and that's pretty much the only time outside of cutscenes where it does. I'm not very good at noticing framerates so it usually doesn't bug me when a game has framerate problems, but going from the extremely fluid fights to the open world which I think hovers around 30 fps (or possibly lower during certain parts of the game such as using the boost on the motorcycle) it is very apparent and shows that this game probably could have been optimized a bit more. Even with how it's running the open world isn't much to write home about. It's very barren and while it does have points of interest they're few and far between compared to most modern open world games. That being said, I'm okay with this for one reason.
That reason being that while the open world doesn't run the best and is pretty empty, it adds to the charm of the game in my opinion. Santa Destroy is a shitty, rundown place that even after years of change and having a big tech mogul like Damon, one of the game's main antagonists, move into the area and bring money isn't enough to make Santa Destroy any better of a place. It's still just some backwater, rundown town. The lower quality framerate and resolution in these areas help add to that for me in a bizarre way that I feel like I shouldn't like as much as I do. In the same vein, I would ultimately rather have these aspects of the game than not.
The overworld and everything that comes with it, such as the money earning for rank up fights and the minigames in order to earn that money, are a returning feature from No More Heroes 1 that all were not in No More Heroes 2. NMH2 cut a lot of these features in order to streamline the game and get people to the fights quicker, and while I get that approach from a certain perspective personally I find that it made NMH2 lose some of the charm that NMH1 had. There was something special about watching Travis have to run or drive around town to various odd jobs like picking up trash or mowing lawns, it was wacky and silly between all the high octane fights that each level brought and it made them memorable. It also made Santa Destroy memorable in it's own right because you got to see the town as you went looking for jobs to do after being sent out from the job agency. It wasn't exactly the most fun thing possible but it added its own quirky touch to the game. No More Heroes 2 however cut all this. You don't have to get money for rank up fights, you can't explore the map at all, and while you can go do side activities they generally were for leveling up and weren't as memorable to me as the No More Heroes 1 minigames.
No More Heroes 3 having these elements from NMH1 return made the game feel charming in a way NMH2 couldn't really manage. So even if the overworld parts of the game didn't run the best compared to how well the combat runs I can look past it because it makes the game feel more unique and just adds a layer of charm to it. Sure it's janky and feels off compared to the cutscenes and combat, but that's okay. Santa Destroy is an off putting place and seeing it explored in a less than ideal way adds to that feeling for me.
The story for NMH3 is one that I really enjoyed personally. It's unconventional, weird, over the top, but most of all it just has fun with itself. The game starts with an alien invasion lead by Prince Fu, an intergalactic criminal who has come back to Earth after being stranded there years before in order to take it over with his buddies from space prison. Travis gets involved when they blow up a huge chunk of Santa Destroy and wake Travis up from where he's passed out in front of the TV. From there Travis kills the weakest one of the aliens, getting himself put onto their galactic leaderboards, which then leads to Fu attacking Travis's friends and bringing him fully into taking out all of the invading alien superheroes. From there it's a fun romp through multiple boss fights, some against the aliens from the rankings and some against other characters from previous games who killed the boss before you could in classic NMH fashion.
This type of story feels fitting for the final game in the series in my opinion. Travis has peaked as the strongest on Earth so the only people who can keep giving him reasonable challenges are his friends and his brother or aliens who aren't bound by the restraints of being human. The grandiose scale of the story feels fitting for both the series and the supposed final game of it. Overall I loved the story for this crazy game; but at the same time I think the part that I found the most impactful and important about the story was how it functions as a character study of Travis Touchdown after doing this for the past 12 years.
I mentioned earlier that the game has a sense of finality to it, and that is best reflected in Travis himself. It's been 12 years since the first game and the years have taken their toll on him. He still loves the thrill of the fight and will fight to protect his home town of Santa Destroy, but it's no longer his choice in a way. In No More Heroes 1 he actively sought out the fight. Throwing himself into the assassin ranking fights for money, a chance at sex, and the general thrill for battle. But as of TSA and No More Heroes 3, the fight is actively chasing after him. Travis just wants a quiet life now, sitting at home watching Miike movies, anime, and wrestling with his friends. Sure he'll fight and kill other assassins when needed, but it's no longer what he's after. The fight continually is coming to him and he's trapped in this cycle of the battle never truly ending because of his actions in the first two games. This is effectively Travis's final battle, not against Fu or Damon, but against the life he's built for himself.
I think this is exemplified by the after credits scene of the game where Travis and everyone are getting ready to go home after the events of the game and yet another new threat appears. That threat is then dealt with by outside forces, namely Travis's kids from the future, who have come to find Travis so he can help them fight another threat. This is Travis's life now, and despite being annoyed Travis does accept going with them in the end to continue the fight. Travis is still fighting on and on because that's all his life has been for the past 12 years, just continous death and bloodshed with moments of peace with those that he cares about in between. His final battle is effectively deciding whether he wants to put up with the never ending battle for the moments of peace; and the game answers that question in a scene earlier on in the story where Travis dies.
Travis's death towards the end of the game is effectively the deciding point in this psychological last battle. After being killed by his brother Henry, Travis’s soul is then sent to what is essentially a 80’s arcade game. In this game Travis has a conversation with the main character that while brief is ultimately what helps him come to a decision. He chooses to go back and keep fighting instead of finally being able to rest. Travis decides the outcome of his final battle here by accepting that if he wants the parts of his life that he enjoys he also has to accept that the fighting won’t ever truly end for him. There’ll always be another ranking leaderboard, there’ll always be another huge threat to his loved ones, and there'll always be another battle to fight. But that’s okay because Travis is determined to keep fighting as long as he gets the peaceful moments with the people he loves.
No More Heroes 3 is a bizarre but beautiful game. It has the perfect mix of fluid and janky when it comes to the different aspects of gameplay, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Meanwhile when it comes to story it revels in being juvenile while having some really serious stuff going on under the hood, and honestly I think this dichotomy that it creates with this elevates the story and makes it extremely memorable and impactful. NMH3 is a special kind of game that doesn't come around very often and I'm glad I got to experience it.
So thank you Suda and Grasshopper Manufacture, for one final trip to the garden of madness.
10/10
To kick things off I wanted to talk about how incredible the combat feels this time around. I played the switch ports of 1 and 2 originally and while I liked their combat design well enough the gameplay did feel very of its time in terms of not having some now standard mechanics of the genre such as dodging being easy to pull off. NMH3 meanwhile has some of the best action combat I’ve seen in awhile. Giving Light attack and heavy attack their own buttons instead of having two different ways to do them from one input feels really nice and makes it feel a lot more fluid than the prior games. Adding in dodging and jumping also helps the overall feel of the combat to feel a lot smoother and bring it up to modern action game standards. These more modern controls mixed with all of the new enemy types you have to face as well as just the general weight and feel of attacks makes for some incredibly solid combat that I wanted to do as much as possible throughout the game. However, I’d argue the biggest addition to the gameplay this time around are the death skills.
Death skills are an addition from Travis Strikes Again that I am really glad made it into 3. They essentially function as special moves that can help you dish out massive damage in some capacity before needing to recharge before the next use. These skills felt like they slotted in really well with the rest of Travis’s combat abilities personally. The four skills you receive are Death kick, a strong drop kick that sends enemies flying, death force, a force push type attack that sends enemies flying as well, death rain which has small projectiles rain from above over a set area, and death slow which slows everyone in a certain area. All of the abilities will work well in a pinch and can make battles a breeze if you use them well, but my personal favorites were slow and rain. Being able to damage enemies and keep them off of me while I fought one enemy, or if I was getting overwhelmed being able to slow down everything near me and give myself a second to breath helped to control the flow of combat and make me feel like I'm in charge of the battle and I love that feeling. The combat is easily the best part of the game and it runs incredibly, which I unfortunately can't say about most of the rest of the game.
The game runs at about 60fps in combat, and that's pretty much the only time outside of cutscenes where it does. I'm not very good at noticing framerates so it usually doesn't bug me when a game has framerate problems, but going from the extremely fluid fights to the open world which I think hovers around 30 fps (or possibly lower during certain parts of the game such as using the boost on the motorcycle) it is very apparent and shows that this game probably could have been optimized a bit more. Even with how it's running the open world isn't much to write home about. It's very barren and while it does have points of interest they're few and far between compared to most modern open world games. That being said, I'm okay with this for one reason.
That reason being that while the open world doesn't run the best and is pretty empty, it adds to the charm of the game in my opinion. Santa Destroy is a shitty, rundown place that even after years of change and having a big tech mogul like Damon, one of the game's main antagonists, move into the area and bring money isn't enough to make Santa Destroy any better of a place. It's still just some backwater, rundown town. The lower quality framerate and resolution in these areas help add to that for me in a bizarre way that I feel like I shouldn't like as much as I do. In the same vein, I would ultimately rather have these aspects of the game than not.
The overworld and everything that comes with it, such as the money earning for rank up fights and the minigames in order to earn that money, are a returning feature from No More Heroes 1 that all were not in No More Heroes 2. NMH2 cut a lot of these features in order to streamline the game and get people to the fights quicker, and while I get that approach from a certain perspective personally I find that it made NMH2 lose some of the charm that NMH1 had. There was something special about watching Travis have to run or drive around town to various odd jobs like picking up trash or mowing lawns, it was wacky and silly between all the high octane fights that each level brought and it made them memorable. It also made Santa Destroy memorable in it's own right because you got to see the town as you went looking for jobs to do after being sent out from the job agency. It wasn't exactly the most fun thing possible but it added its own quirky touch to the game. No More Heroes 2 however cut all this. You don't have to get money for rank up fights, you can't explore the map at all, and while you can go do side activities they generally were for leveling up and weren't as memorable to me as the No More Heroes 1 minigames.
No More Heroes 3 having these elements from NMH1 return made the game feel charming in a way NMH2 couldn't really manage. So even if the overworld parts of the game didn't run the best compared to how well the combat runs I can look past it because it makes the game feel more unique and just adds a layer of charm to it. Sure it's janky and feels off compared to the cutscenes and combat, but that's okay. Santa Destroy is an off putting place and seeing it explored in a less than ideal way adds to that feeling for me.
The story for NMH3 is one that I really enjoyed personally. It's unconventional, weird, over the top, but most of all it just has fun with itself. The game starts with an alien invasion lead by Prince Fu, an intergalactic criminal who has come back to Earth after being stranded there years before in order to take it over with his buddies from space prison. Travis gets involved when they blow up a huge chunk of Santa Destroy and wake Travis up from where he's passed out in front of the TV. From there Travis kills the weakest one of the aliens, getting himself put onto their galactic leaderboards, which then leads to Fu attacking Travis's friends and bringing him fully into taking out all of the invading alien superheroes. From there it's a fun romp through multiple boss fights, some against the aliens from the rankings and some against other characters from previous games who killed the boss before you could in classic NMH fashion.
This type of story feels fitting for the final game in the series in my opinion. Travis has peaked as the strongest on Earth so the only people who can keep giving him reasonable challenges are his friends and his brother or aliens who aren't bound by the restraints of being human. The grandiose scale of the story feels fitting for both the series and the supposed final game of it. Overall I loved the story for this crazy game; but at the same time I think the part that I found the most impactful and important about the story was how it functions as a character study of Travis Touchdown after doing this for the past 12 years.
I mentioned earlier that the game has a sense of finality to it, and that is best reflected in Travis himself. It's been 12 years since the first game and the years have taken their toll on him. He still loves the thrill of the fight and will fight to protect his home town of Santa Destroy, but it's no longer his choice in a way. In No More Heroes 1 he actively sought out the fight. Throwing himself into the assassin ranking fights for money, a chance at sex, and the general thrill for battle. But as of TSA and No More Heroes 3, the fight is actively chasing after him. Travis just wants a quiet life now, sitting at home watching Miike movies, anime, and wrestling with his friends. Sure he'll fight and kill other assassins when needed, but it's no longer what he's after. The fight continually is coming to him and he's trapped in this cycle of the battle never truly ending because of his actions in the first two games. This is effectively Travis's final battle, not against Fu or Damon, but against the life he's built for himself.
I think this is exemplified by the after credits scene of the game where Travis and everyone are getting ready to go home after the events of the game and yet another new threat appears. That threat is then dealt with by outside forces, namely Travis's kids from the future, who have come to find Travis so he can help them fight another threat. This is Travis's life now, and despite being annoyed Travis does accept going with them in the end to continue the fight. Travis is still fighting on and on because that's all his life has been for the past 12 years, just continous death and bloodshed with moments of peace with those that he cares about in between. His final battle is effectively deciding whether he wants to put up with the never ending battle for the moments of peace; and the game answers that question in a scene earlier on in the story where Travis dies.
Travis's death towards the end of the game is effectively the deciding point in this psychological last battle. After being killed by his brother Henry, Travis’s soul is then sent to what is essentially a 80’s arcade game. In this game Travis has a conversation with the main character that while brief is ultimately what helps him come to a decision. He chooses to go back and keep fighting instead of finally being able to rest. Travis decides the outcome of his final battle here by accepting that if he wants the parts of his life that he enjoys he also has to accept that the fighting won’t ever truly end for him. There’ll always be another ranking leaderboard, there’ll always be another huge threat to his loved ones, and there'll always be another battle to fight. But that’s okay because Travis is determined to keep fighting as long as he gets the peaceful moments with the people he loves.
No More Heroes 3 is a bizarre but beautiful game. It has the perfect mix of fluid and janky when it comes to the different aspects of gameplay, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Meanwhile when it comes to story it revels in being juvenile while having some really serious stuff going on under the hood, and honestly I think this dichotomy that it creates with this elevates the story and makes it extremely memorable and impactful. NMH3 is a special kind of game that doesn't come around very often and I'm glad I got to experience it.
So thank you Suda and Grasshopper Manufacture, for one final trip to the garden of madness.
10/10
2021
This review contains spoilers
Back at E3 2019 12 Minutes was one of the first games that really caught my eye during the Xbox press conference. A Telltale style story game around a timeloop murder that you have to prevent in only 12 minutes that starred some high profile actors like William Defore, Daisy Ridley, and James McAvoy? It initially sounded like something I'd really enjoy back when it was revealed two years ago. Then I actually played it and I was pretty disappointed if I'm being entirely honest. This entire review is basically one giant spoiler because there's really no way to talk about this game without going heavily into spoilers for it's story due to the fact that it's effectively a modern point and click adventure game.
Speaking of being a point and click adventure game, I feel like that kind of game was not the best idea for this sort of plot. I have nothing against point and click games but in a game where you're going to be repeating things I feel like it might need a bit more to it terms of how you actually play in order to keep the player engaged. I say this because in 12 minutes you'll be repeating a lot of dialogue and conversation options over and over again in order to reach the new content that you can now access after the last loop that you went through assuming you made progress. Eventually you get to a point where you repeat the same conversation trees so many times that you just want it to be over. While this would most likely be an issue with almost any kind of time loop game, it feels especially frustrating here just due to how the core element of the game is the conversations between characters and there is no other kind of gameplay to keep you entertained with. Ultimately I feel like the format works against the story of this game and makes it more repetitive than it would be if there were more fleshed out gameplay elements to it.
Now actually tackling the story itself, there is a lot to unpack here. The basic synopsis of the plot is that your character, named "the husband", comes home from work and are surprised by your wife, "the wife", and are told that she is pregnant. The celebrations are cut short though when a police officer, "the officer", makes you let him in and then he kills your wife over a pocket watch her father used to own. Over the course of the loops you eventually learn that the officer believes the wife killed her father, and over each loop you have to try and find a way to prove that she didn't do it to the officer in order to break the loop and stop him from killing her and potentially you. This is a very interesting premise for a plot and I'm all for it, the problem comes in its execution which I already touched on earlier as well as in it's two major twists.
You do manage to prove that your wife is not who murdered her father, but rather it was her brother from the affair her father had based on information the officer had and the timings of the death and where your wife was. You then end up finding out that the husband was actually that brother. This unleashes a whole slew of problems both narratively and in what it makes the player feel. Going to save the narrative aspect of this for after we talk about the second twist in the game, but in regards to how this makes a player feel I'm not exactly sure what they were trying to go for here. The game does eventually paint the husband and wife being related as a bad thing in the true ending, the problem being that the keyword there is eventually.
Before you get to the true endings that has the main character either abandoning his sister wife or being hypnotized by their dead father to forget about his feelings for his sister (we'll get to that) you have to go through multiple loops where the husband either tries to justify their incestuous relationship or just refuses to acknowledge it and keeps trying to solve the loop as if they were still just two random people who loved each other. It all feels very weird and unnecessary while playing and I'm not sure what the intent of the writers was with this? The incest is treated as a bad thing by the other character that knows, but the main character who you're supposed to agree with actively fights against this idea until he's basically forced to give up by another character. It's treated as a sad thing that the two of them have to separate over this when like, I feel like this shouldn't have been something that even happened in the first place given some aspects related to the other major twist of the game.
So the second twist of the game is that the officer who breaks in and murders you and your wife is the father of both of you. This is never explicitly said but both the officer and the father are voiced by William Defoe with the exact same inflection and tone in their speaking so I'm pretty sure they have to be the same character based on this. Unless they were just lazy and decided not to get a fourth voice actor for the character who has about 4 scenes. Regardless going under the the assumption that Defoe's characters are one in the same, this along with the brother twist create a pretty big problem. That problem being "how did no one recognize the others?" If the husband is Defoe's son and his wife's brother, and Defoe is the dad of both of them, wouldn't one of them have recognize the other or at least the voice of them? This kind of breaks the whole narrative for me because as far as I remember it's never explained why the brother doesn't remember his sister or killing his father, he just kind of doesn't. So because of that it feels like it kind of comes out of nowhere with nothing other than the mention of a brother character existing at all acting as foreshadowing for this fact.
Even then, the wife should have recognized her father's voice or her younger brother since she doesn't have any kind of memory lose in the narrative since a big part of the loops is getting her to open up and tell us what happened several years ago. To top this off we actively see the father die in one of the flashback loops where he confronts the brother over wanting to have a relationship with his sister. You watch him die yet he's still present in the main game as an antagonistic force that no one remembers somehow. I don't like being too negative about things but these plot twists feel like they were made specifically for the shock factor of the player and not to tell a coherent story because they create so many inconsistencies that feel impossible to look past for me.
I really wanted to like this game because of how excited I was going into it, but ultimately I just did not enjoy this game. It has a great set up as well as an all star cast, but the writing and gameplay loop just don't come together in a satisfying way while also just ultimately being uncomfortable and frustrating.
2/10
Speaking of being a point and click adventure game, I feel like that kind of game was not the best idea for this sort of plot. I have nothing against point and click games but in a game where you're going to be repeating things I feel like it might need a bit more to it terms of how you actually play in order to keep the player engaged. I say this because in 12 minutes you'll be repeating a lot of dialogue and conversation options over and over again in order to reach the new content that you can now access after the last loop that you went through assuming you made progress. Eventually you get to a point where you repeat the same conversation trees so many times that you just want it to be over. While this would most likely be an issue with almost any kind of time loop game, it feels especially frustrating here just due to how the core element of the game is the conversations between characters and there is no other kind of gameplay to keep you entertained with. Ultimately I feel like the format works against the story of this game and makes it more repetitive than it would be if there were more fleshed out gameplay elements to it.
Now actually tackling the story itself, there is a lot to unpack here. The basic synopsis of the plot is that your character, named "the husband", comes home from work and are surprised by your wife, "the wife", and are told that she is pregnant. The celebrations are cut short though when a police officer, "the officer", makes you let him in and then he kills your wife over a pocket watch her father used to own. Over the course of the loops you eventually learn that the officer believes the wife killed her father, and over each loop you have to try and find a way to prove that she didn't do it to the officer in order to break the loop and stop him from killing her and potentially you. This is a very interesting premise for a plot and I'm all for it, the problem comes in its execution which I already touched on earlier as well as in it's two major twists.
You do manage to prove that your wife is not who murdered her father, but rather it was her brother from the affair her father had based on information the officer had and the timings of the death and where your wife was. You then end up finding out that the husband was actually that brother. This unleashes a whole slew of problems both narratively and in what it makes the player feel. Going to save the narrative aspect of this for after we talk about the second twist in the game, but in regards to how this makes a player feel I'm not exactly sure what they were trying to go for here. The game does eventually paint the husband and wife being related as a bad thing in the true ending, the problem being that the keyword there is eventually.
Before you get to the true endings that has the main character either abandoning his sister wife or being hypnotized by their dead father to forget about his feelings for his sister (we'll get to that) you have to go through multiple loops where the husband either tries to justify their incestuous relationship or just refuses to acknowledge it and keeps trying to solve the loop as if they were still just two random people who loved each other. It all feels very weird and unnecessary while playing and I'm not sure what the intent of the writers was with this? The incest is treated as a bad thing by the other character that knows, but the main character who you're supposed to agree with actively fights against this idea until he's basically forced to give up by another character. It's treated as a sad thing that the two of them have to separate over this when like, I feel like this shouldn't have been something that even happened in the first place given some aspects related to the other major twist of the game.
So the second twist of the game is that the officer who breaks in and murders you and your wife is the father of both of you. This is never explicitly said but both the officer and the father are voiced by William Defoe with the exact same inflection and tone in their speaking so I'm pretty sure they have to be the same character based on this. Unless they were just lazy and decided not to get a fourth voice actor for the character who has about 4 scenes. Regardless going under the the assumption that Defoe's characters are one in the same, this along with the brother twist create a pretty big problem. That problem being "how did no one recognize the others?" If the husband is Defoe's son and his wife's brother, and Defoe is the dad of both of them, wouldn't one of them have recognize the other or at least the voice of them? This kind of breaks the whole narrative for me because as far as I remember it's never explained why the brother doesn't remember his sister or killing his father, he just kind of doesn't. So because of that it feels like it kind of comes out of nowhere with nothing other than the mention of a brother character existing at all acting as foreshadowing for this fact.
Even then, the wife should have recognized her father's voice or her younger brother since she doesn't have any kind of memory lose in the narrative since a big part of the loops is getting her to open up and tell us what happened several years ago. To top this off we actively see the father die in one of the flashback loops where he confronts the brother over wanting to have a relationship with his sister. You watch him die yet he's still present in the main game as an antagonistic force that no one remembers somehow. I don't like being too negative about things but these plot twists feel like they were made specifically for the shock factor of the player and not to tell a coherent story because they create so many inconsistencies that feel impossible to look past for me.
I really wanted to like this game because of how excited I was going into it, but ultimately I just did not enjoy this game. It has a great set up as well as an all star cast, but the writing and gameplay loop just don't come together in a satisfying way while also just ultimately being uncomfortable and frustrating.
2/10
Note before we start I will not be covering all the big glitches heard about on twitter and youtube in this review as I did not run into anything major throughout my time with the game beyond a weird instance where the second boss would insta kill me the moment I used a homing attack on it regardless of my ring count.
Sonic the Hedgehog is a franchise I’ve always had a bit of a weird relationship with. I grew up playing the games and I still love a number of them to this day, but at the same time a lot of the games haven’t really been what I wanted. Besides Mania, generations, Sonic 2, and Sonic 3(& knuckles) most of the games in the series come with a caveat for me when I recommend them to friends. With Sonic Adventure I have to warn about the Big The cat stages, Unleash the werehog stages, etc etc. I was hoping that Colors would join the four I could recommend without mentioning a major flaw it has beforehand, unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
Now I want to say that I don’t think Sonic Colors is a bad game. It’s perfectly fine, but ultimately I do think that is all it is though. I admit part of this opinion may just be because of how the game was talked about to me before playing it. Going into Sonic Colors I heard a lot of people say it was the best boost formula Sonic game, if not the best 3d Sonic game in general before I played it; and I think hearing people say that kind of set my expectations too high for this game while also kind of misrepresenting what the game is.
I feel like it’s a tad incorrect to call Sonic Colors a 3d Sonic game considering that 3/4 of the game’s levels are either fully 2d or are primarily 2d. I won’t lie, I was more than a little disappointed by this. I do enjoy 3d Sonic gameplay despite the flaws and issues most 3d Sonic games have, so when I was starting this I was expecting and excited for 3d Sonic gameplay. So being given an almost entirely 2d game with some minor snippets of 3d sections of stages and only one fully 3d boss I was pretty let down. There is nothing wrong with most of the levels being 2d, it just wasn’t what I came in hoping for. Most of the levels themselves were fine gameplay wise as I said earlier; though they were pretty much all forgettable and kind of blend together in my head as I try to think of them now. I would chalk this up to the levels being both really short and also using the exact same aesthetic across every level for a world.
Theming each level based on the world they’re in is fine and some of my favorite platformers like Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze have done it, but generally those levels are just themed around a general aesthetic and have their own look. Meanwhile here most of the levels in colors just use the same assets and backgrounds. This mixed with how little time you spend in each level makes them not feel unique at all. Which is unfortunate because the general aesthetic of each world in the game is strong in the first few levels for that world, it just overstays its welcome by the time you reach the final boss for the area.
As for the bosses that was another area I was kind of just whelmed by. They weren’t anything to write home about but they weren’t explicitly bad either beyond my earlier comment about a glitch in the second fight. I did have mixed feeling about how the later three worlds had bosses that were just tougher versions of the previous three bosses though. While I do normally enjoy when games do this, its usually because they’re brought back as a normal enemy or a miniboss instead of just being a world boss again. It was probably due to a lack of time working on the original colors release but I can’t help but feel that it would have been better to have unique area bosses for the second half of the game. Like, it just feels weird to reuse bosses like that to me because while it most definitely was a time constraint it does just ultimately make the game's areas have less of their own identity outside of what wisps you unlock in those areas.
Since I forgot to mention it earlier the wisps are the new power up mechanic that were introduced in Sonic Colors when it first released. Basically you free this little ghost like aliens from eggman pods and they help Sonic do something useful like float through the air or to climb up walls. In my opinion these are probably the best part of the game. Giving Sonic actual meaningful power ups that change how you can approach the stages was a really good call and all of them feel really fun to use; even the one that just turns you into a cube had some good puzzles built around it that made how you approached the level with it different. I can definitely see why this was the gameplay element that was carried over into future games, even if it didn’t make sense with those games’s stories.
Speaking of stories I’m not the biggest fan of this game’s story. There’s nothing wrong with it really, it just feels very by the numbers for Sonic just with wisps instead of chaos emeralds. It doesn’t really do anything particularly exciting and mostly just feels like its trying to reintroduce Sonic to people. This marginally makes sense after how different and wild the last several Sonic games had been at that point, but I think the different and wild approach genuinely worked better for the 3d games in the series personally. Sonic is a blue talking hedgehog that’s kind of built like a halfway transformed animorph, he’s weird by default. Him getting turned into a werewolf or stopping sentient water from trying to destroy the world because it got some shiny rocks feels a lot more natural for 3D Sonic games than just saving small creatures from Eggman’s money sink of the week like how you would in the 2D Sonic games.
I think this may ultimately tie back into my expectation of this being a standard 3d Sonic game when it was kind of clear that the team really wanted to make another 2d Sonic. Overall I do think that is what the game needs to be approached as, a 2d Sonic game. Under that assumption the story being as generic as it is feels a lot less out of place. Though if I'm being honest the story probably isn’t what most people play Sonic for so while it isn't the most important aspect of the game, I do still wish there was more too it.
Before I finish this out I just want to say that like almost all Sonic games the soundtrack is awesome. If there’s one thing you can count on Sonic for, its phenomenal music and Sonic Colors Ultimate delivers that in spades. This is another one of those games where I'd say listen to the soundtrack even if you don't want to play the game, the music is that good imo.
Sonic Colors Ultimate is a game that at the end of the day is pretty okay. It’s not bad but it’s not super amazing to me personally; though I do think a good chunk of that is bias on my part due to going in expecting something different from what Colors is. I may give this game another shot at another point with a better mindset about it, but for now its just an alright game that feels overall pretty standard.
5/10
Sonic the Hedgehog is a franchise I’ve always had a bit of a weird relationship with. I grew up playing the games and I still love a number of them to this day, but at the same time a lot of the games haven’t really been what I wanted. Besides Mania, generations, Sonic 2, and Sonic 3(& knuckles) most of the games in the series come with a caveat for me when I recommend them to friends. With Sonic Adventure I have to warn about the Big The cat stages, Unleash the werehog stages, etc etc. I was hoping that Colors would join the four I could recommend without mentioning a major flaw it has beforehand, unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
Now I want to say that I don’t think Sonic Colors is a bad game. It’s perfectly fine, but ultimately I do think that is all it is though. I admit part of this opinion may just be because of how the game was talked about to me before playing it. Going into Sonic Colors I heard a lot of people say it was the best boost formula Sonic game, if not the best 3d Sonic game in general before I played it; and I think hearing people say that kind of set my expectations too high for this game while also kind of misrepresenting what the game is.
I feel like it’s a tad incorrect to call Sonic Colors a 3d Sonic game considering that 3/4 of the game’s levels are either fully 2d or are primarily 2d. I won’t lie, I was more than a little disappointed by this. I do enjoy 3d Sonic gameplay despite the flaws and issues most 3d Sonic games have, so when I was starting this I was expecting and excited for 3d Sonic gameplay. So being given an almost entirely 2d game with some minor snippets of 3d sections of stages and only one fully 3d boss I was pretty let down. There is nothing wrong with most of the levels being 2d, it just wasn’t what I came in hoping for. Most of the levels themselves were fine gameplay wise as I said earlier; though they were pretty much all forgettable and kind of blend together in my head as I try to think of them now. I would chalk this up to the levels being both really short and also using the exact same aesthetic across every level for a world.
Theming each level based on the world they’re in is fine and some of my favorite platformers like Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze have done it, but generally those levels are just themed around a general aesthetic and have their own look. Meanwhile here most of the levels in colors just use the same assets and backgrounds. This mixed with how little time you spend in each level makes them not feel unique at all. Which is unfortunate because the general aesthetic of each world in the game is strong in the first few levels for that world, it just overstays its welcome by the time you reach the final boss for the area.
As for the bosses that was another area I was kind of just whelmed by. They weren’t anything to write home about but they weren’t explicitly bad either beyond my earlier comment about a glitch in the second fight. I did have mixed feeling about how the later three worlds had bosses that were just tougher versions of the previous three bosses though. While I do normally enjoy when games do this, its usually because they’re brought back as a normal enemy or a miniboss instead of just being a world boss again. It was probably due to a lack of time working on the original colors release but I can’t help but feel that it would have been better to have unique area bosses for the second half of the game. Like, it just feels weird to reuse bosses like that to me because while it most definitely was a time constraint it does just ultimately make the game's areas have less of their own identity outside of what wisps you unlock in those areas.
Since I forgot to mention it earlier the wisps are the new power up mechanic that were introduced in Sonic Colors when it first released. Basically you free this little ghost like aliens from eggman pods and they help Sonic do something useful like float through the air or to climb up walls. In my opinion these are probably the best part of the game. Giving Sonic actual meaningful power ups that change how you can approach the stages was a really good call and all of them feel really fun to use; even the one that just turns you into a cube had some good puzzles built around it that made how you approached the level with it different. I can definitely see why this was the gameplay element that was carried over into future games, even if it didn’t make sense with those games’s stories.
Speaking of stories I’m not the biggest fan of this game’s story. There’s nothing wrong with it really, it just feels very by the numbers for Sonic just with wisps instead of chaos emeralds. It doesn’t really do anything particularly exciting and mostly just feels like its trying to reintroduce Sonic to people. This marginally makes sense after how different and wild the last several Sonic games had been at that point, but I think the different and wild approach genuinely worked better for the 3d games in the series personally. Sonic is a blue talking hedgehog that’s kind of built like a halfway transformed animorph, he’s weird by default. Him getting turned into a werewolf or stopping sentient water from trying to destroy the world because it got some shiny rocks feels a lot more natural for 3D Sonic games than just saving small creatures from Eggman’s money sink of the week like how you would in the 2D Sonic games.
I think this may ultimately tie back into my expectation of this being a standard 3d Sonic game when it was kind of clear that the team really wanted to make another 2d Sonic. Overall I do think that is what the game needs to be approached as, a 2d Sonic game. Under that assumption the story being as generic as it is feels a lot less out of place. Though if I'm being honest the story probably isn’t what most people play Sonic for so while it isn't the most important aspect of the game, I do still wish there was more too it.
Before I finish this out I just want to say that like almost all Sonic games the soundtrack is awesome. If there’s one thing you can count on Sonic for, its phenomenal music and Sonic Colors Ultimate delivers that in spades. This is another one of those games where I'd say listen to the soundtrack even if you don't want to play the game, the music is that good imo.
Sonic Colors Ultimate is a game that at the end of the day is pretty okay. It’s not bad but it’s not super amazing to me personally; though I do think a good chunk of that is bias on my part due to going in expecting something different from what Colors is. I may give this game another shot at another point with a better mindset about it, but for now its just an alright game that feels overall pretty standard.
5/10
2017
This review contains spoilers
Playing through the Yakuza series these past few months has been a treat because despite the main stories for each game all being essentially crime drama movies you'll never know what you might get. Whether its an inter-clan battle over the position of one of the family captains while tying into a much bigger conspiracy, or its a story of trying to find a missing friend while you protect her daughter, deal with your former clan, and try to get through to your brother who has fallen from grace you can generally expect a pretty interesting story front and center while the rest of the game is filled with wacky and interesting side stories and minigames. Yakuza Kiwami 2 mostly continues this trend. This review is going to heavily go into spoilers for the main story of Yakuza Kiwami 2, just as a heads up. Before we talk about those aspects of the game though I do want to touch on the general gameplay of the game first.
Due to engine changes Kiwami 2 has a different combat style from Yakuza Zero and Kiwami 1, and honestly while it took me a bit to adjust to not having styles I did grow to like it by the end. The actual acts of attacking, dodging, blocking, and using heat actions all remain relatively the same but the way the game's new engine makes them feel more fluid on top of how all of them have been reworked slightly just make them all feel better and more impactful than the combat in Zero or Kiwami 1 did. Kiwami 2 also removes the worst mechanic from Kiwami 1, the essence of Kiwami actions that you have to use when a boss charges up otherwise they regain a ton of health, and replaces it with a much better system of finishing heat actions that you can activate towards the end of boss battles for a big cinematic finish to the fight. These changes come together to make a fun and fluid combat system that I think is probably the best in the series for me as of me writing this.
Building on top of the base combat system weapons and picking up items off the street has also been revamped, and I both like and dislike these changes personally. The way they have items bound to the dpad instead of styles made me want to use weapons more since I could have multiple equipt to switch through at a time, and generally most of the weapons and their heat actions were really fun to use, but I do feel like they gutted pick up weapon objects in doing this. For those that don't know in Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami there was a combat form for Kiryu, Beast style, that allowed you to pick up items from the area of the overworld map you were in such as signs or bikes and just start swinging them around like crazy to do massive damage to groups. This is still in kiwami 2 too a degree but it's severely cut back in terms of how many uses of the picked up objects you have, how many objects can be picked up, and if they have unique heat actions like in Kiwami 1 and Zero. I do get why this system was cut back, since it's not needed and it allowed them to refine Kiryu's hand to hand combat a lot more so this isn't the biggest of complaints, but it is a part of the two games before this that I particularly enjoyed that got cut down so I wanted to talk about it a bit.
While we're on the topic of the overworld I do want to say that I really love how Kiwami 2 expands and adds more functionality to the two cities, Kamurocho and Sotenbori, that we go back and forth between. You can just walk into buildings now instead of needing to load into every small building you may want to visit for a side activity and while this is again a minor thing it's a really cool change that I greatly appreciated coming off of Zero and Kiwami. This functionality of including small buildings and shops on the main world map mixed with the increased graphical quality and crowd sizes of Kiwami 2 makes the world feel a lot more lively and bustling than in previous games. It's cool how small touches like this can make a game feel a lot more alive and I think it's a very notable thing about Kiwami 2 that could easily get looked over.
I think an aspect of why the dev team decided that it was important to make the restaurants and stores part of the overworld is that it also is more important to visit some of these places this time around, mainly in regard to restaurants. Instead of just healing you when you eat like in Zero and Kiwami when you eat in Kiwami 2 you get various amounts of the five different kinds of exp points that are available in the game. Each different kind of point corresponds to a different stat and is used to upgrade different aspects of Kiryu and unlock moves. Restaurants are where you'll be visiting most often to get these points since eating will supply you with way more points than combat usually will. I'm not the biggest fan of this style of leveling up because it feels a tad frustrating to try and manage all five different kinds in order to consistently upgrade your stats on top of also unlocking new abilities since some stat upgrades and most abilities require upgrade points from multiple different exp pools. It's easy enough to get points if you eat consistently throughout the game, but it still feels like a step down from Kiwami 1's level system to me personally.
I'm not a completionist so while I didn't do all the side stories in the game, the ones I did do were really enjoyable and pretty par for the course for the franchise. Whether it's being a VA for a Gay dating sim, being a shirtless model, stopping a dude from killing his girlfriend with a knife on a rooftop, finding a puppy for an orphanage, or beating a millionare at Virtua Fighter 2, there's plenty of fun and unique side stories that can be found throughout this game's world. Something I noticed about this game's handling of substories is that instead of just instantly forcing you to chose if you want to do them right as you run into them like in Zero and Kiwami they sort of structured them as to where you would get introduced to the story character, and then be free to approach it whenever you want later now that you know of its existence. Like a few other things I've mentioned it's not the biggest design change, but it was noticeably different in how the NPC's giving the sub stories interacted with you; which in turn made the world feel a bit more alive during my playthrough.
Finally getting into talking about the story for this game, it's mostly alright with the ending completely destroying any good will I had for it. The main plot of the game follows Kiryu getting dragged back into the Tojo Clan's shenanigans when the person he left in charge of the clan at the last game, Terada, is killed and in his dying breath he begs Kiryu to bring an alliance between the two big Yakuza clans on their side of Japan, the Tojo and the Omi. This alliance is stopped and delayed due to interference from the son of the the Omi alliance chairman, Ryuji Goda, who wants to completely wipe out the Tojo and take out over their territory. This battle against Ryuji and the Omi is intertwined with a revenge plot from the few members of the Korean Jingweon mafia that Kiryu's father figure Kazama spared when he and other Tojo clan members were ordered to eliminate them all Twenty-six years ago. Kiryu is joined on this quest by his new love interest, the Yakuza Huntress Sayama, as the two of them try to unravel the plots and mysteries of these two plot lines. Honestly I do think the game handles both of these plot lines well enough and they kept me engaged and trying to figure out where they were going with them, right up until the ending of the game where it completely managed to unravel the entire story and make everything feel stupid in a fifteen minute timespan.
Remember Kiryu's pal Terada who died within the first twenty minutes of the game? Surprise, he's alive. He also is the one who has been planning the events of this game for the past twenty-six years because he was apparently also a member of the Jingweon mafia that was spared by Kazama, who then decided to get revenge on the Tojo clan by moving up the ranks of the Omi Alliance, defecting to the Tojo clan after Kazama dies and has his son make him the new chairman of the Tojo clan, only to fake his death to cause a war with the Omi Alliance and have both of them take each other out. This part of the ending just doesn't work and feels really out of nowhere. There was no foreshadowing or build up to this reveal, and then they show us that they just left off part of the flashback to the original raid on the Jingweon, that they showed six times before this without any indication of this being a thing that happened that night, in order to throw it in here and make this make sense at the last second. However it doesn't make sense and just feels horribly convoluted. I wish I could say that's as bad as it got, but unfortunately that's not the case.
Immediately after this Terada is betrayed by his benefactor and biggest supporter in the Omi, a family captain named Takashima, and killed. But not before he activates the giant bomb that he brought to the roof, giving everyone 10 minutes to escape. Takashima is then killed by Ryuji, who despite everything you put him through in the boss fight right before this plus being shot multiple times is still able to get up and kill a man. Then instead of trying to escape the bomb Kiryu and Ryuji decide they need to have a final fight right then and there, despite both of them resolving their fight earlier and probably not needing to do this right next to a bomb. Kiryu wins again, Ryuji dies, Sayama comes back up the tower after being sent down to escape the bomb, and instead of trying to escape both of them accept death and start making out as the bomb ticks down to zero… but then doesn't go off in the post credits because Terada had disarmed the bomb before setting it to blow. For some unknown reason.
This ending is bizarre and really dumb in my opinion, and not dumb in the "oh my god this is hilariously weird I love it" kind of dumb like earlier in the game when a golden castle was hidden under Osaka Castle or when Kiryu fought tigers, it just felt needlessly convoluted and poorly written. I feel like if you just removed the Terada reveal and the bomb and instead had Takashima show up at the last second after you fight Ryuji, have that conflict play out, and then fight Ryuji again with him still dying at the top of the tower it would have felt infinitely better narratively and writing wise. I'm not kidding when I say this whole ending sequence significantly lowered my opinion of the game overall, which is unfortunate because I did enjoy the narrative up to this point despite its weird pacing at times.
Yakuza Kiwami 2 is a prime example of a game that has a good run throughout but doesn't manage to stick the landing at all and ends up stumbling and falling on its face right at the end. That being said it was a good run up to the ending in my opinion, a bit poorly paced at times as I mentioned but still having some really solid moments and decent-good writing. It has the best combat you'll find of the Kiwamis + Zero, some really solid sub stories, and looks absolutely stunning while opening up the world a bit more. It's really unfortunate that the ending played out the way that it did, because if it wasn't for that I probably would have liked this almost as much as I like Zero. But, unfortunately while it is a great game I can't really say I prefer it to the other two games in the franchise that I've played at this point. Still definitely a game worth checking out in my opinion, but keep your expectations in check going into the finale.
8/10
Due to engine changes Kiwami 2 has a different combat style from Yakuza Zero and Kiwami 1, and honestly while it took me a bit to adjust to not having styles I did grow to like it by the end. The actual acts of attacking, dodging, blocking, and using heat actions all remain relatively the same but the way the game's new engine makes them feel more fluid on top of how all of them have been reworked slightly just make them all feel better and more impactful than the combat in Zero or Kiwami 1 did. Kiwami 2 also removes the worst mechanic from Kiwami 1, the essence of Kiwami actions that you have to use when a boss charges up otherwise they regain a ton of health, and replaces it with a much better system of finishing heat actions that you can activate towards the end of boss battles for a big cinematic finish to the fight. These changes come together to make a fun and fluid combat system that I think is probably the best in the series for me as of me writing this.
Building on top of the base combat system weapons and picking up items off the street has also been revamped, and I both like and dislike these changes personally. The way they have items bound to the dpad instead of styles made me want to use weapons more since I could have multiple equipt to switch through at a time, and generally most of the weapons and their heat actions were really fun to use, but I do feel like they gutted pick up weapon objects in doing this. For those that don't know in Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami there was a combat form for Kiryu, Beast style, that allowed you to pick up items from the area of the overworld map you were in such as signs or bikes and just start swinging them around like crazy to do massive damage to groups. This is still in kiwami 2 too a degree but it's severely cut back in terms of how many uses of the picked up objects you have, how many objects can be picked up, and if they have unique heat actions like in Kiwami 1 and Zero. I do get why this system was cut back, since it's not needed and it allowed them to refine Kiryu's hand to hand combat a lot more so this isn't the biggest of complaints, but it is a part of the two games before this that I particularly enjoyed that got cut down so I wanted to talk about it a bit.
While we're on the topic of the overworld I do want to say that I really love how Kiwami 2 expands and adds more functionality to the two cities, Kamurocho and Sotenbori, that we go back and forth between. You can just walk into buildings now instead of needing to load into every small building you may want to visit for a side activity and while this is again a minor thing it's a really cool change that I greatly appreciated coming off of Zero and Kiwami. This functionality of including small buildings and shops on the main world map mixed with the increased graphical quality and crowd sizes of Kiwami 2 makes the world feel a lot more lively and bustling than in previous games. It's cool how small touches like this can make a game feel a lot more alive and I think it's a very notable thing about Kiwami 2 that could easily get looked over.
I think an aspect of why the dev team decided that it was important to make the restaurants and stores part of the overworld is that it also is more important to visit some of these places this time around, mainly in regard to restaurants. Instead of just healing you when you eat like in Zero and Kiwami when you eat in Kiwami 2 you get various amounts of the five different kinds of exp points that are available in the game. Each different kind of point corresponds to a different stat and is used to upgrade different aspects of Kiryu and unlock moves. Restaurants are where you'll be visiting most often to get these points since eating will supply you with way more points than combat usually will. I'm not the biggest fan of this style of leveling up because it feels a tad frustrating to try and manage all five different kinds in order to consistently upgrade your stats on top of also unlocking new abilities since some stat upgrades and most abilities require upgrade points from multiple different exp pools. It's easy enough to get points if you eat consistently throughout the game, but it still feels like a step down from Kiwami 1's level system to me personally.
I'm not a completionist so while I didn't do all the side stories in the game, the ones I did do were really enjoyable and pretty par for the course for the franchise. Whether it's being a VA for a Gay dating sim, being a shirtless model, stopping a dude from killing his girlfriend with a knife on a rooftop, finding a puppy for an orphanage, or beating a millionare at Virtua Fighter 2, there's plenty of fun and unique side stories that can be found throughout this game's world. Something I noticed about this game's handling of substories is that instead of just instantly forcing you to chose if you want to do them right as you run into them like in Zero and Kiwami they sort of structured them as to where you would get introduced to the story character, and then be free to approach it whenever you want later now that you know of its existence. Like a few other things I've mentioned it's not the biggest design change, but it was noticeably different in how the NPC's giving the sub stories interacted with you; which in turn made the world feel a bit more alive during my playthrough.
Finally getting into talking about the story for this game, it's mostly alright with the ending completely destroying any good will I had for it. The main plot of the game follows Kiryu getting dragged back into the Tojo Clan's shenanigans when the person he left in charge of the clan at the last game, Terada, is killed and in his dying breath he begs Kiryu to bring an alliance between the two big Yakuza clans on their side of Japan, the Tojo and the Omi. This alliance is stopped and delayed due to interference from the son of the the Omi alliance chairman, Ryuji Goda, who wants to completely wipe out the Tojo and take out over their territory. This battle against Ryuji and the Omi is intertwined with a revenge plot from the few members of the Korean Jingweon mafia that Kiryu's father figure Kazama spared when he and other Tojo clan members were ordered to eliminate them all Twenty-six years ago. Kiryu is joined on this quest by his new love interest, the Yakuza Huntress Sayama, as the two of them try to unravel the plots and mysteries of these two plot lines. Honestly I do think the game handles both of these plot lines well enough and they kept me engaged and trying to figure out where they were going with them, right up until the ending of the game where it completely managed to unravel the entire story and make everything feel stupid in a fifteen minute timespan.
Remember Kiryu's pal Terada who died within the first twenty minutes of the game? Surprise, he's alive. He also is the one who has been planning the events of this game for the past twenty-six years because he was apparently also a member of the Jingweon mafia that was spared by Kazama, who then decided to get revenge on the Tojo clan by moving up the ranks of the Omi Alliance, defecting to the Tojo clan after Kazama dies and has his son make him the new chairman of the Tojo clan, only to fake his death to cause a war with the Omi Alliance and have both of them take each other out. This part of the ending just doesn't work and feels really out of nowhere. There was no foreshadowing or build up to this reveal, and then they show us that they just left off part of the flashback to the original raid on the Jingweon, that they showed six times before this without any indication of this being a thing that happened that night, in order to throw it in here and make this make sense at the last second. However it doesn't make sense and just feels horribly convoluted. I wish I could say that's as bad as it got, but unfortunately that's not the case.
Immediately after this Terada is betrayed by his benefactor and biggest supporter in the Omi, a family captain named Takashima, and killed. But not before he activates the giant bomb that he brought to the roof, giving everyone 10 minutes to escape. Takashima is then killed by Ryuji, who despite everything you put him through in the boss fight right before this plus being shot multiple times is still able to get up and kill a man. Then instead of trying to escape the bomb Kiryu and Ryuji decide they need to have a final fight right then and there, despite both of them resolving their fight earlier and probably not needing to do this right next to a bomb. Kiryu wins again, Ryuji dies, Sayama comes back up the tower after being sent down to escape the bomb, and instead of trying to escape both of them accept death and start making out as the bomb ticks down to zero… but then doesn't go off in the post credits because Terada had disarmed the bomb before setting it to blow. For some unknown reason.
This ending is bizarre and really dumb in my opinion, and not dumb in the "oh my god this is hilariously weird I love it" kind of dumb like earlier in the game when a golden castle was hidden under Osaka Castle or when Kiryu fought tigers, it just felt needlessly convoluted and poorly written. I feel like if you just removed the Terada reveal and the bomb and instead had Takashima show up at the last second after you fight Ryuji, have that conflict play out, and then fight Ryuji again with him still dying at the top of the tower it would have felt infinitely better narratively and writing wise. I'm not kidding when I say this whole ending sequence significantly lowered my opinion of the game overall, which is unfortunate because I did enjoy the narrative up to this point despite its weird pacing at times.
Yakuza Kiwami 2 is a prime example of a game that has a good run throughout but doesn't manage to stick the landing at all and ends up stumbling and falling on its face right at the end. That being said it was a good run up to the ending in my opinion, a bit poorly paced at times as I mentioned but still having some really solid moments and decent-good writing. It has the best combat you'll find of the Kiwamis + Zero, some really solid sub stories, and looks absolutely stunning while opening up the world a bit more. It's really unfortunate that the ending played out the way that it did, because if it wasn't for that I probably would have liked this almost as much as I like Zero. But, unfortunately while it is a great game I can't really say I prefer it to the other two games in the franchise that I've played at this point. Still definitely a game worth checking out in my opinion, but keep your expectations in check going into the finale.
8/10
I've never been the biggest Wario fan personally, him and his two spin off series's have just never really been something I had explicit interest in. That being said, I did enjoy what I played of WarioWare: Smooth moves for the Wii back when I was a kid so WarioWare Get It Together! Was something I was interested in trying in order to try and break into the Wario franchise a bit. I'm happy to report that the game is solid fun, with a few issues I had here and there. While being very similar to the WarioWare I remember playing back on the Wii it does do a lot of interesting new things with the game's style, so I'm going to be talking about that first because it is the most interesting thing about the game to me; that thing being its use of different characters
Character switching to tackle minigames differently is one of this game's main features to make playing the same game multiple times feel unique, and I am really mixed on how it's used in this game. While I think it's a great idea on paper I'm not the biggest fan of how it was translated to gameplay. I do love how each microgame can be tackled in multiple different ways depending on who you have and how they have to interact with it, and it leads to some unique solutions or situations with certain games. Each character also controls super well in my opinion. I don't think there was a single one that didn't feel good to use, though my favorites were Jimmy T, Crygor, Ashley, and Wario himself. Those four generally worked with every game and felt right to use in my opinion. However, all that being said, at the same time it is very clear that they didn't design the characters with every game in mind.
I don't fault them at all for not every character working with every game, since the idea of designing two hundred games that all work perfectly with eighteen different playstyles sounds like pure hell, but at the same time it does get frustrating when you get a game that just does not work right with certain characters and it causes you to lose one of your lives on that stage. Sure this is kind of negated by having less of a punishment for losing all your lives thanks to the continue system this game adds, but it still doesn't feel great to not really be able to do something with a randomly chosen character. This only happened a few times throughout the game so it's not the biggest deal but it got frustrating when it happened.
On the topic of characters while all of them did feel fun to play I did notice that a few of them were basically just better versions of others. Jimmy T was just a version of Wario that could move both up and down as well as side to side for example. Or there's Cricket and Master Mantis who are just the same character but one can walk on ceilings. I'm actually okay with this because while they have the same basic power sets they're still balanced in a way that doesn't make one inherently better than the other (unless you're Cricket, who is just completely outshadowed by Master Mantis). Revisiting the Wario and Jimmy T example i used earlier, while they have the same basic gameplay of charging forward based on the direction you go in their kits, Wario's charge goes further and hits harder. So the trade off that Jimmy T gets by having more movement options is traded for not being as effective. It's a cool balancing trick they did for these characters and I'm curious to see how they follow it up if they use this style for the next Warioware as well since it did make you think a bit more in how you approached each of the games.
Speaking of the games themselves, I think all of them are pretty good for the most part. They feel like solid Warioware minigames and while I don't have much to compare them to since i've only played one other game in the franchise, Smooth Moves for the wii, I can definitely say I think these were better designed overall to me personally. I did like how in the story mode of the game they ordered each game by theme so you basically got a lot of games with different mechanics but the same themes together. This specifically was really interesting to me in one stage that was games that are based on other nintendo games. It was really cool getting to see all these franchises and games I love represented here as fun little microgames that still felt fitting for the games they were representing. Overall the games were solid, they were a fun time and outside of one or two I liked them all which surprised me because when there's two hundred of them you'd think there'd be a handfull that are bad, thankfully most of these are good though.
This game also has co-op, which is a first for the Warioware series; and I was surprised by how well it worked in these minigames honestly. It felt so well integrated and natural for the Warioware formula I'm kind of surprised it wasn't a thing in these games beforehand. I played through about half the story mode with a friend and it was a great time, would definitely playing this with someone else if you have the opportunity.
Warioware Get it Together! Feels like the perfect game for when you have only a few minutes to play something while you're out and about and want to get some quick gametime in with a friend. Which is a great kind of game to have around and I am very glad it exists, but it does feel very situational to me personally. Like I had some good fun with the game but I think it's not the kind of game that meshes with how I normally play games the best. Still a fun time, but if you're someone who normally sits down and plays games for a few hours before doing something else it might not scratch the right itch for you. That being said the game being on handheld is very beneficial for it because being able to just pick it up and play while waiting for a train or something is great and is perfect for the series. Overall I do like the game, and I had a fun time with it, so I would definitely recommend it to people, just with the caveat of it may not be best for sitting down and playing for awhile.
7/10
Character switching to tackle minigames differently is one of this game's main features to make playing the same game multiple times feel unique, and I am really mixed on how it's used in this game. While I think it's a great idea on paper I'm not the biggest fan of how it was translated to gameplay. I do love how each microgame can be tackled in multiple different ways depending on who you have and how they have to interact with it, and it leads to some unique solutions or situations with certain games. Each character also controls super well in my opinion. I don't think there was a single one that didn't feel good to use, though my favorites were Jimmy T, Crygor, Ashley, and Wario himself. Those four generally worked with every game and felt right to use in my opinion. However, all that being said, at the same time it is very clear that they didn't design the characters with every game in mind.
I don't fault them at all for not every character working with every game, since the idea of designing two hundred games that all work perfectly with eighteen different playstyles sounds like pure hell, but at the same time it does get frustrating when you get a game that just does not work right with certain characters and it causes you to lose one of your lives on that stage. Sure this is kind of negated by having less of a punishment for losing all your lives thanks to the continue system this game adds, but it still doesn't feel great to not really be able to do something with a randomly chosen character. This only happened a few times throughout the game so it's not the biggest deal but it got frustrating when it happened.
On the topic of characters while all of them did feel fun to play I did notice that a few of them were basically just better versions of others. Jimmy T was just a version of Wario that could move both up and down as well as side to side for example. Or there's Cricket and Master Mantis who are just the same character but one can walk on ceilings. I'm actually okay with this because while they have the same basic power sets they're still balanced in a way that doesn't make one inherently better than the other (unless you're Cricket, who is just completely outshadowed by Master Mantis). Revisiting the Wario and Jimmy T example i used earlier, while they have the same basic gameplay of charging forward based on the direction you go in their kits, Wario's charge goes further and hits harder. So the trade off that Jimmy T gets by having more movement options is traded for not being as effective. It's a cool balancing trick they did for these characters and I'm curious to see how they follow it up if they use this style for the next Warioware as well since it did make you think a bit more in how you approached each of the games.
Speaking of the games themselves, I think all of them are pretty good for the most part. They feel like solid Warioware minigames and while I don't have much to compare them to since i've only played one other game in the franchise, Smooth Moves for the wii, I can definitely say I think these were better designed overall to me personally. I did like how in the story mode of the game they ordered each game by theme so you basically got a lot of games with different mechanics but the same themes together. This specifically was really interesting to me in one stage that was games that are based on other nintendo games. It was really cool getting to see all these franchises and games I love represented here as fun little microgames that still felt fitting for the games they were representing. Overall the games were solid, they were a fun time and outside of one or two I liked them all which surprised me because when there's two hundred of them you'd think there'd be a handfull that are bad, thankfully most of these are good though.
This game also has co-op, which is a first for the Warioware series; and I was surprised by how well it worked in these minigames honestly. It felt so well integrated and natural for the Warioware formula I'm kind of surprised it wasn't a thing in these games beforehand. I played through about half the story mode with a friend and it was a great time, would definitely playing this with someone else if you have the opportunity.
Warioware Get it Together! Feels like the perfect game for when you have only a few minutes to play something while you're out and about and want to get some quick gametime in with a friend. Which is a great kind of game to have around and I am very glad it exists, but it does feel very situational to me personally. Like I had some good fun with the game but I think it's not the kind of game that meshes with how I normally play games the best. Still a fun time, but if you're someone who normally sits down and plays games for a few hours before doing something else it might not scratch the right itch for you. That being said the game being on handheld is very beneficial for it because being able to just pick it up and play while waiting for a train or something is great and is perfect for the series. Overall I do like the game, and I had a fun time with it, so I would definitely recommend it to people, just with the caveat of it may not be best for sitting down and playing for awhile.
7/10
2019
This review contains spoilers
Inmost was not the game I was expecting it to be when I went into it, but that is not at all a bad thing. Based on the trailer I saw for the game going into it I expected another indie horror game with a pixel artstyle, what I got instead was a bleak, gripping story about recovering from loss and how events can be seen by different people involved in the process of it and how that evolves. This review is going to primarily talking about the story of this game, since it's the main part of the game that resonated with me, so if you have any interest in this game I would suggest you stop reading here and go play it instead since in my opinion this is a game you should experience the story of first hand. I would also like to mention that there is talk of pretty heavy themes within the game's story, and this review, so if you aren't in the best mindset it might be best to sit this one out. However before we get into talking about the story, I do want to go over the gameplay really quickly just because the context of it is needed to talk about the story.
The game has you constantly switching between three main characters, Elizabeth, Adam, and the Knight. Each character has a different gameplay style and it ties directly into the kind of story each character tells in your time as them. As Elizabeth you explore your house as you try to avoid your adopted parents. As such stuck to actions that only a child could really do such as climbing things and pulling them around to be able to climb up higher and reah new areas. Meanwhile Adam, an adult exploring a crumbling world, has his gameplay be more of a puzzle platformer where you have to avoid enemies and find ways to defeat them without directly fighting them while also trying to find a way to move ahead in the areas you've exploring. Finally, there's the Knight who is a nigh unstoppable walking weapon who just mercilessly cuts down as many enemies in front of him as he can on his quest to gather pain from other living beings to bring it to a mysterious being known as the keeper. Despite how different all of these sound both in terms of gameplay and storywise, they all do fit together well and work off each other in interesting ways.
That being said, the gameplay is never the most engaging. It all works well enough but it's not particularly good I feel on its own. The platforming for Adam is fine and is the most gameplay there is, Eliza's is almost a point and click adventure, and the Knight's is just mashing the attack button and using it to grapple to different platforms to get to more combat. The Knight's combat was definitely the least fun in my opinion but at the end of the day all three of the gameplay styles are serviceable, just not anything to really write home about.
From here I want to talk about each character's individual story before talking about how they all tie together to kind of try and emulate the way the game tells the stories, I'll be starting with Elizabeth's and then going down the list in the order I talked about them previously from here.
The story for Elizabeth's part of the game follows her as she adapts to her new home with her adopted parents. At first everything seems normal and she is just trying to play but her new mom seems to not even be able to look at her, which then turns into outright contempt and anger once Elizabeth finds a stuffed bunny toy hidden in the garage. Elizabeth turns this stuffed toy into an imaginary friend that she talks to and uses to think things through, which leads to Elizabeth spiraling into anxiety as the rabbit convinces her that her new parents are not as they seem. After her new mom has a breakdown where she screams at Elizabeth and leaves she and her new dad disappear all together, leaving Elizabeth alone in the house. She is convinced by the rabbit that her new parents had been kidnapping kids and she goes on a quest throughout the house to find out the truth, which ends with her finding a basement full of old children's toys that she had never seen before; that in her mind confirms her theory.
Elizabeth's story is very interesting to me because its main focus on how being brought to a new home can create some a lot of fear and anxiety in a child who doesn't know why they're there; on top of how those feelings can be expanded by an authority figure that isn't exactly happy that she's there in the first place. Seeing the anxiety grow and consume her in real time is really well written and accurate to how anxiety functions in real life, at least in my experience. Especially the way her anxiety transitions halfway through her story from worrying about the prospects of her fears being right to worrying about if she gets caught once she finally decides to take action and find out for herself. Anxiety isn't something that really goes away on its own in real life unfortunately, and seeing how it plays out in game was surprising and also really cool in that it felt like a very accurate and honest portrayal of it. Finding the toys isn't the end of the story however, as when she tries to escape the house after that discovery Elizabeth comes face to face with Adam.
During his sections of the game Adam is revealed to be a father who lost multiple people close to him. On a few occasions throughout his story it is mentioned a few times that three lives being lost lead him to where he is now. This is later revealed to be Adam's son, his daughter in law, and his granddaughter. Adam's granddaughter is revealed to have been lost when she committed suicide after never ending bullying from school, which sent her parents into a spiral that resulted in their deaths; which we will talk about more later. Adam's section is ultimately more gameplay than story for most of its time on screen, but that is mostly due to what Adam's roll in the story represents.
Adam's story is not actually happening. He isn't actually traversing this broken, decaying land in search of something like it's portrayed from the beginning of the game, rather it's Adam trying to navigate his way mentally through this very complex emotional situation he's in because of what's happened to his family. The desolate world he navigates essentially represents his emotional state as he tries to navigate the sudden loss of his remaining family and how its making him feel. This is further shown by how about halfway through Adam's sections he starts to be guided by a fox made of light, which up to this point is the first thing he has seen that differs from either the real people or the dark monsters that inhabit this world that Adam has found himself in. The Fox represents Adam's hope and desperation for an answer. He is following it as he grasps for answers and has to keep it alive against creatures a few times in order to basically keep his hope alive. The Fox leads him to a fountain that in turn turns Adam into a being of light like the fox, and he finds a flower of light there with another person of light. This flower will be touched on more in the Knight's section, but it is important here as Adam's section ends with him still being a person made of light that has been left alone with the flower. This ending for Adam is him coming to terms with what happened and what he has to do going forward. To get into how that is however, I will first have to talk about the Knight's story.
The Knight is an interesting character as he feels very different from both of the others in how he's presented and played throughout the game. For his part of the story the Knight is hunting down those with pain, which is represented in game as little glowing balls of light, and killing them in order to take the light back to the Keeper, who is a giant mysterious monster that demands his soldiers, such as the Knight, gather all the pain so he can consume it. A thing the game tries to emphasis is that people like the Knights who hurt others and take their pain cannot grow their own light flower like the one that Adam had at the end of his campaign, and due to that the Knight kills two light people and steals their flower. He then proceeds to give the flower pain repeatedly like he has been to the Keeper but the flower does not grow or bloom, and the game makes sure to remind us that this flower will never truly belong to the knight. The knight's story caries on like this where he continues collecting pain for the keeper but is slowly becoming more and more of a monster as the story goes on, becoming like the beings that he is destroying for the pain. After a moment where the Knight decides he no longer wants to serve the Keeper and is badly wounded he returns to the flower and instead of trying to force the pain he has onto the flower, he accepts the flower's pain instead. This allows the flower to truly bloom and grow, moments before the Knight is attacked once again by the Keeper. This entire story feels weirdly disconnected at first from the rest of the game, until you realize that the Knight isn't real.
The story of the Knight in Inmost is made up. It's narrated entirely by who we later learn is Elizabeth and it is a story based in her perceptions of how she thought her adoptive father was. This is why the story is so much more fantasy oriented than both Elizabeth and Adam's stories as well as why the Knight is the only one who feels like they fit in these strange fantasy environments, because like the environments the Knight himself is a fantasy. Too fully analyze this, we need to talk about how all three stories are woven together in the ending.
As I mentioned earlier Elizabeth became convinced that she had been kidnapped by her new parents, and she was actually right. Kind of. Her adopted parents were Adam's son and his daughter in law. This is revealed immediately after Elizabeth found the toy basement, and with it we learn that Adam's son after losing his daughter to suicide was out one night when he happend to find an appartment building that was burning down. Hearing a baby crying he ran into the building to help and found the baby alone with it's parents dead in the room. Adam's son saved the baby from the building and raised it as his own daughter in order to replace the one he lost. The moral questions this raises aside, Adam's wife was not happy about this at all. So Adam's son tried working harder and harder in order to get money to try and appease both his wife and new daughter with gifts. This is where the story of the Knight comes in. Elizabeth sees her new father as the knight, going around and taking from others and destroying their lives. The flower that he takes represents the connection between the two people who made it, that resulted in Elizabeth after he lost his daughter, his own flower. Which is why the game hammered in the idea that it would never truly be the Knight's flower so hard, because he was trying to recreate something that he had lost and had taken it from someone else in order to do it.
The Knight being killed by the Keeper also mirrors what happens to Adam's son in real life, that being killed by his wife. The person who wanted his pain as atonement for not being able to save their daughter and adopting a new one after she was gone. The wife then kills herself after her husband is gone in order to be with her daughter again, leaving Elizabeth alone. Which is where Adam reenters the picture. Upon hearing what happened to his son and daughter in law he tries to race to their house, and in doing so this is where his events of the game take place. Him navigating the broken and confusing world as he rushes to their home to find out if what he was told is true is where he tries to think through everything and creates the complex puzzles he has to work through during his sections of the game. Then, he meets Elizabeth.
When he gets there and sees Elizabeth for the first time is when he becomes the person made of light in his story. He is left alone with this flower that has been given to him, and he knows that he has to be the one to take care of it now that both the previous people with that flower are gone. Adam is accepting his responsibility and becoming the guardian of this flower that his son took because he wants to make things right. He is deciding to be there for her like he wasn't there for his son after his son lost their first daughter.
This game's story was a lot more impactful and just all around strong than I was expecting given what I thought the game was when I went into it, and I am thoroughly impressed with how they managed to tell this story. The fact that even the gameplay types each character has functions as a factor in how the stories are told feel incredibly well done, even if the gameplay at times isn't the most interesting. This game is truly something special in my opinion, and while it might not be the most engaging game gameplay wise, its something I recommend highly.
9/10
The game has you constantly switching between three main characters, Elizabeth, Adam, and the Knight. Each character has a different gameplay style and it ties directly into the kind of story each character tells in your time as them. As Elizabeth you explore your house as you try to avoid your adopted parents. As such stuck to actions that only a child could really do such as climbing things and pulling them around to be able to climb up higher and reah new areas. Meanwhile Adam, an adult exploring a crumbling world, has his gameplay be more of a puzzle platformer where you have to avoid enemies and find ways to defeat them without directly fighting them while also trying to find a way to move ahead in the areas you've exploring. Finally, there's the Knight who is a nigh unstoppable walking weapon who just mercilessly cuts down as many enemies in front of him as he can on his quest to gather pain from other living beings to bring it to a mysterious being known as the keeper. Despite how different all of these sound both in terms of gameplay and storywise, they all do fit together well and work off each other in interesting ways.
That being said, the gameplay is never the most engaging. It all works well enough but it's not particularly good I feel on its own. The platforming for Adam is fine and is the most gameplay there is, Eliza's is almost a point and click adventure, and the Knight's is just mashing the attack button and using it to grapple to different platforms to get to more combat. The Knight's combat was definitely the least fun in my opinion but at the end of the day all three of the gameplay styles are serviceable, just not anything to really write home about.
From here I want to talk about each character's individual story before talking about how they all tie together to kind of try and emulate the way the game tells the stories, I'll be starting with Elizabeth's and then going down the list in the order I talked about them previously from here.
The story for Elizabeth's part of the game follows her as she adapts to her new home with her adopted parents. At first everything seems normal and she is just trying to play but her new mom seems to not even be able to look at her, which then turns into outright contempt and anger once Elizabeth finds a stuffed bunny toy hidden in the garage. Elizabeth turns this stuffed toy into an imaginary friend that she talks to and uses to think things through, which leads to Elizabeth spiraling into anxiety as the rabbit convinces her that her new parents are not as they seem. After her new mom has a breakdown where she screams at Elizabeth and leaves she and her new dad disappear all together, leaving Elizabeth alone in the house. She is convinced by the rabbit that her new parents had been kidnapping kids and she goes on a quest throughout the house to find out the truth, which ends with her finding a basement full of old children's toys that she had never seen before; that in her mind confirms her theory.
Elizabeth's story is very interesting to me because its main focus on how being brought to a new home can create some a lot of fear and anxiety in a child who doesn't know why they're there; on top of how those feelings can be expanded by an authority figure that isn't exactly happy that she's there in the first place. Seeing the anxiety grow and consume her in real time is really well written and accurate to how anxiety functions in real life, at least in my experience. Especially the way her anxiety transitions halfway through her story from worrying about the prospects of her fears being right to worrying about if she gets caught once she finally decides to take action and find out for herself. Anxiety isn't something that really goes away on its own in real life unfortunately, and seeing how it plays out in game was surprising and also really cool in that it felt like a very accurate and honest portrayal of it. Finding the toys isn't the end of the story however, as when she tries to escape the house after that discovery Elizabeth comes face to face with Adam.
During his sections of the game Adam is revealed to be a father who lost multiple people close to him. On a few occasions throughout his story it is mentioned a few times that three lives being lost lead him to where he is now. This is later revealed to be Adam's son, his daughter in law, and his granddaughter. Adam's granddaughter is revealed to have been lost when she committed suicide after never ending bullying from school, which sent her parents into a spiral that resulted in their deaths; which we will talk about more later. Adam's section is ultimately more gameplay than story for most of its time on screen, but that is mostly due to what Adam's roll in the story represents.
Adam's story is not actually happening. He isn't actually traversing this broken, decaying land in search of something like it's portrayed from the beginning of the game, rather it's Adam trying to navigate his way mentally through this very complex emotional situation he's in because of what's happened to his family. The desolate world he navigates essentially represents his emotional state as he tries to navigate the sudden loss of his remaining family and how its making him feel. This is further shown by how about halfway through Adam's sections he starts to be guided by a fox made of light, which up to this point is the first thing he has seen that differs from either the real people or the dark monsters that inhabit this world that Adam has found himself in. The Fox represents Adam's hope and desperation for an answer. He is following it as he grasps for answers and has to keep it alive against creatures a few times in order to basically keep his hope alive. The Fox leads him to a fountain that in turn turns Adam into a being of light like the fox, and he finds a flower of light there with another person of light. This flower will be touched on more in the Knight's section, but it is important here as Adam's section ends with him still being a person made of light that has been left alone with the flower. This ending for Adam is him coming to terms with what happened and what he has to do going forward. To get into how that is however, I will first have to talk about the Knight's story.
The Knight is an interesting character as he feels very different from both of the others in how he's presented and played throughout the game. For his part of the story the Knight is hunting down those with pain, which is represented in game as little glowing balls of light, and killing them in order to take the light back to the Keeper, who is a giant mysterious monster that demands his soldiers, such as the Knight, gather all the pain so he can consume it. A thing the game tries to emphasis is that people like the Knights who hurt others and take their pain cannot grow their own light flower like the one that Adam had at the end of his campaign, and due to that the Knight kills two light people and steals their flower. He then proceeds to give the flower pain repeatedly like he has been to the Keeper but the flower does not grow or bloom, and the game makes sure to remind us that this flower will never truly belong to the knight. The knight's story caries on like this where he continues collecting pain for the keeper but is slowly becoming more and more of a monster as the story goes on, becoming like the beings that he is destroying for the pain. After a moment where the Knight decides he no longer wants to serve the Keeper and is badly wounded he returns to the flower and instead of trying to force the pain he has onto the flower, he accepts the flower's pain instead. This allows the flower to truly bloom and grow, moments before the Knight is attacked once again by the Keeper. This entire story feels weirdly disconnected at first from the rest of the game, until you realize that the Knight isn't real.
The story of the Knight in Inmost is made up. It's narrated entirely by who we later learn is Elizabeth and it is a story based in her perceptions of how she thought her adoptive father was. This is why the story is so much more fantasy oriented than both Elizabeth and Adam's stories as well as why the Knight is the only one who feels like they fit in these strange fantasy environments, because like the environments the Knight himself is a fantasy. Too fully analyze this, we need to talk about how all three stories are woven together in the ending.
As I mentioned earlier Elizabeth became convinced that she had been kidnapped by her new parents, and she was actually right. Kind of. Her adopted parents were Adam's son and his daughter in law. This is revealed immediately after Elizabeth found the toy basement, and with it we learn that Adam's son after losing his daughter to suicide was out one night when he happend to find an appartment building that was burning down. Hearing a baby crying he ran into the building to help and found the baby alone with it's parents dead in the room. Adam's son saved the baby from the building and raised it as his own daughter in order to replace the one he lost. The moral questions this raises aside, Adam's wife was not happy about this at all. So Adam's son tried working harder and harder in order to get money to try and appease both his wife and new daughter with gifts. This is where the story of the Knight comes in. Elizabeth sees her new father as the knight, going around and taking from others and destroying their lives. The flower that he takes represents the connection between the two people who made it, that resulted in Elizabeth after he lost his daughter, his own flower. Which is why the game hammered in the idea that it would never truly be the Knight's flower so hard, because he was trying to recreate something that he had lost and had taken it from someone else in order to do it.
The Knight being killed by the Keeper also mirrors what happens to Adam's son in real life, that being killed by his wife. The person who wanted his pain as atonement for not being able to save their daughter and adopting a new one after she was gone. The wife then kills herself after her husband is gone in order to be with her daughter again, leaving Elizabeth alone. Which is where Adam reenters the picture. Upon hearing what happened to his son and daughter in law he tries to race to their house, and in doing so this is where his events of the game take place. Him navigating the broken and confusing world as he rushes to their home to find out if what he was told is true is where he tries to think through everything and creates the complex puzzles he has to work through during his sections of the game. Then, he meets Elizabeth.
When he gets there and sees Elizabeth for the first time is when he becomes the person made of light in his story. He is left alone with this flower that has been given to him, and he knows that he has to be the one to take care of it now that both the previous people with that flower are gone. Adam is accepting his responsibility and becoming the guardian of this flower that his son took because he wants to make things right. He is deciding to be there for her like he wasn't there for his son after his son lost their first daughter.
This game's story was a lot more impactful and just all around strong than I was expecting given what I thought the game was when I went into it, and I am thoroughly impressed with how they managed to tell this story. The fact that even the gameplay types each character has functions as a factor in how the stories are told feel incredibly well done, even if the gameplay at times isn't the most interesting. This game is truly something special in my opinion, and while it might not be the most engaging game gameplay wise, its something I recommend highly.
9/10
2018
Generally I like to go in detail and talk at length about what I liked and disliked about a game when writing reviews like this, but considering The Quiet Man has wasted enough of my time as is I'm going to just be blunt and get this over with as fast as possible: This is the worst game I have ever played.
The gameplay feels like if you took the earliest possible pre alpha demo of a Yakuza combat system and released it. There is exactly one combo you have and you'll be seeing it a lot because this game just likes to throw random combat at you every 3 seconds. The story is practically non existent because in trying to emulate a deaf character they just removed all sound from the game despite the fact that the character has conversations with some characters and clearly understands what people are telling him to do and what they're asking him so instead of emulating what it must feel like to be deaf it just feels like you're watching a movie on mute. The main character uses sign language exactly three times throughout the game which I thought was important to bring up since again, according to the devs they were trying to emulate how life is for those who are hearing impared, without even really including the most common way deaf people communicate. The nicest thing I can say about this game is that for most of the shots the FMV cutscenes seem to be shot competently.
Game just is not good, and I hate to say that because I like to see the good in even bad games but I just felt like my brain was melting as I played this game. To make things even worse when I closed the game it didn't even close it just hid itself in the system tray so it was still up but just continuously eating my ram. I wish I could say I was surprised by this but when I discovered this the next day I was more just disappointed that the game couldn't even close right more than anything.
1/10
The gameplay feels like if you took the earliest possible pre alpha demo of a Yakuza combat system and released it. There is exactly one combo you have and you'll be seeing it a lot because this game just likes to throw random combat at you every 3 seconds. The story is practically non existent because in trying to emulate a deaf character they just removed all sound from the game despite the fact that the character has conversations with some characters and clearly understands what people are telling him to do and what they're asking him so instead of emulating what it must feel like to be deaf it just feels like you're watching a movie on mute. The main character uses sign language exactly three times throughout the game which I thought was important to bring up since again, according to the devs they were trying to emulate how life is for those who are hearing impared, without even really including the most common way deaf people communicate. The nicest thing I can say about this game is that for most of the shots the FMV cutscenes seem to be shot competently.
Game just is not good, and I hate to say that because I like to see the good in even bad games but I just felt like my brain was melting as I played this game. To make things even worse when I closed the game it didn't even close it just hid itself in the system tray so it was still up but just continuously eating my ram. I wish I could say I was surprised by this but when I discovered this the next day I was more just disappointed that the game couldn't even close right more than anything.
1/10
1999
This review contains spoilers
Despite being a huge horror game fan I somehow had never played a Silent Hill game. Which after playing it feels like I made a big mistake for a long time because this game is incredible and I wish I had played it sooner. Silent Hill is an absolutely fascinating original Playstation game that I think definitely lives up to the hype and renown that the series has grown for the original entries over the years. I will be discussing spoilers for the game as always so just a fair warning in advance.
In Silent Hill you play as Harry Mason as he struggles to try and find his daughter, Cheryl, somewhere in this mysterious and unsettling town in New England where he crashed his car. Harry slowly unravels this town's many secrets as he battles many horrific creatures and struggles to stay in the real world as he keeps getting pulled into a nightmare realm version of the town that was created by a cult that had tried to create their own god and started pulling the town into a demonic realm in the process. The story is engaging and pretty solid, I liked the characters and never felt like the story was going in any directions I didn't like, and I definitely felt like some of the story bits really added to the overall horror of the game with how unsettling a lot of the details of the story are, such as the fact that they kept a little girl alive in a dying state for years since she was going to be the incubator for the new god the cult was trying to create. Though an element that I think really added to the horror of the game, in a good way, were the controls.
The controls of this game are pretty clunky and and can take a good amount of time to get used too, but I think them being clunky and kind of awkward really works for the type of game that Silent Hill is. Harry Mason isn't some tactical military man with years of combat training, he's just some dude trying to find his daughter. So him feeling kind of stiff to control and hard to maneuver at times makes sense for him to a degree. At the same time, from a gameplay perspective it does also help the game feel scarier I feel. Not being able to control your character as smoothly or as gracefully as in other genres of games, like an action game for example, help adds to the feeling of struggle and horror as you try to traverse this horrific town. Games that use their controls as a way to help accentuate the style and tone of gameplay they're going for is interesting to me and this game definitely does it in a way that makes it feel still pretty playable while also making you feel part of the experience almost. Since I mentioned style and tone, I think next I need to talk about this game's atmosphere.
Silent Hill is a marvel in how it creates and manages to consistently keep up its atmosphere throughout the entire game. From the moment you first get control of Harry and get thrown into the fog covered world the game just creates this constant sense of unease. You don't know whats out there and you're alone and unarmed in this unknown place. Then once they start introducing more and more of the horror elements to the game it manages to keep feeling intense and and keep the pressure on you as it manages to create this feeling of something being around every corner. Its incredible really and is up there as one of the best horror games for me just for this ability to keep atmosphere alone.
What I find really impressive is that a huge part of this game's aesthetic and atmosphere, the suffocating fog that rests over the majority of the town, is only there because of hardware limitations. It's incredibly clear that this game being on the playstation one really hindered it as they couldn't render the town in a satisfactory manner with the way they wanted the town to function as an overworld; which is very apparent during nightmare world sections of the game where there is no fog and only a darkness that isn't pulled in enough to keep the player from seeing just how much pop-in and loading in there is for the town as you travel through it. So they added the never ending sea of fog that blankets the town during the day in order to let them use their idea while also hiding some of the messier technical aspects, and I'm just impressed with how this bandaid over a technical problem managed to make the game feel more at home as a horror game. The fog in Silent Hill hiding the nightmare creatures that lurk around, ready to kill you at a moment's notice if you get to close just feels right and really adds to the tense spooky atmosphere the town carriers and I'm honestly pretty glad they had to use the fog since I can't imagine how this game would function without the fog there to act as a constant sense of fear of the unknown for the player.
I do think part of the atmosphere working so well is tied to the game being as short as it is. I finished the game in a little under four hours and I am more than content with that length. I know the big for a lot of games today are to be as big and time consuming as possible, but horror games just cannot function that way. Eventually you'll stop getting scared or lose all the tension the game once had because you'll be used to it by that point. It was my biggset problem with Alien: Isolation back when I played that because it was a twenty hour horror game that stopped being scary around hour ten because you've seen all the scares the game could possibly throw at you at that point. Silent Hill feels like its just the right length to stay unnerving and tense while also not ending before the player has had enough which I feel really helps the game keep up its tense and spooky atmosphere that has been so well crafted over the course of the game. All that being said, there is one thing the game does that breaks this atmosphere and general horror vibe a bit.
One of my only two criticisms of this game is how it handles the combat; not in the gameplay itself but in the weapons you get as well as the amount of ammo you get for the guns. What I mean by this is that the game just kind of throws ammo at you to insane degrees. By the end of the first nightmare section I had almost two hundred pistol bullets and a decent chunk of shotgun ammo saved up, and this trend continued throughout the rest of the game up until I got a weapon about halfway into the game, the emergency hammer, that basically just invalidated every enemy outside of flying ones and bosses. Combat managed to maintain some tension through throwing more enemies at you at once and forcing you to struggle against a lot of them coming from all sides, but that quickly deteriorated as you could just swing he hammer a couple times and be done with the encounter once you took care of the first one in that encounter. It's not the biggest issue in the world, but it did take me out of a few combat encounters and bosses since I never really had to worry about or struggle with weighing whether it was worth it to waste some ammo since I always knew a truckload more was around the corner.
Now for the second thing I have a number of criticisms for in this game, its the puzzles. The way this game handles puzzles is really bizarre in that it almost has a reverse difficulty curve with the first real puzzle, the piano in the school, being the hardest and the ones later on all being relatively easy in comparison. The piano puzzle is effectively a puzzle without a clue due to how the clue is written and how much mental gymnastics you would need to take to solve it on your own with what you're given (unless you're me who was just absentmindedly pressing different keys on the piano while trying to figure out what to do and got it on accident. Which doesn't make the puzzle good but it does make it kind of funny that I solved a ridiculous puzzle on accident). Thankfully this is the only one that is super obtuse but it does kind of make all the other puzzles after this one feel lesser just because knowing how hard this was supposed to be gave me expectations for the rest of the puzzles in the game which, while I'm glad they weren't as weirdly obtuse as this, felt all pretty straight forward and easy even removing the comparison to this puzzle.
Overall, Silent Hill is a must play in the horror genre in my opinion. This game effectively writes the book on horror tone and atmosphere while having fun (though admittedly dated) gameplay and a pretty strong story. Seriously if you haven't played this game yet please do, there's a reason the Silent Hill name has stayed in people's minds despite it being seventeen years since the last game in the series most people would consider good released.
9.5/10
In Silent Hill you play as Harry Mason as he struggles to try and find his daughter, Cheryl, somewhere in this mysterious and unsettling town in New England where he crashed his car. Harry slowly unravels this town's many secrets as he battles many horrific creatures and struggles to stay in the real world as he keeps getting pulled into a nightmare realm version of the town that was created by a cult that had tried to create their own god and started pulling the town into a demonic realm in the process. The story is engaging and pretty solid, I liked the characters and never felt like the story was going in any directions I didn't like, and I definitely felt like some of the story bits really added to the overall horror of the game with how unsettling a lot of the details of the story are, such as the fact that they kept a little girl alive in a dying state for years since she was going to be the incubator for the new god the cult was trying to create. Though an element that I think really added to the horror of the game, in a good way, were the controls.
The controls of this game are pretty clunky and and can take a good amount of time to get used too, but I think them being clunky and kind of awkward really works for the type of game that Silent Hill is. Harry Mason isn't some tactical military man with years of combat training, he's just some dude trying to find his daughter. So him feeling kind of stiff to control and hard to maneuver at times makes sense for him to a degree. At the same time, from a gameplay perspective it does also help the game feel scarier I feel. Not being able to control your character as smoothly or as gracefully as in other genres of games, like an action game for example, help adds to the feeling of struggle and horror as you try to traverse this horrific town. Games that use their controls as a way to help accentuate the style and tone of gameplay they're going for is interesting to me and this game definitely does it in a way that makes it feel still pretty playable while also making you feel part of the experience almost. Since I mentioned style and tone, I think next I need to talk about this game's atmosphere.
Silent Hill is a marvel in how it creates and manages to consistently keep up its atmosphere throughout the entire game. From the moment you first get control of Harry and get thrown into the fog covered world the game just creates this constant sense of unease. You don't know whats out there and you're alone and unarmed in this unknown place. Then once they start introducing more and more of the horror elements to the game it manages to keep feeling intense and and keep the pressure on you as it manages to create this feeling of something being around every corner. Its incredible really and is up there as one of the best horror games for me just for this ability to keep atmosphere alone.
What I find really impressive is that a huge part of this game's aesthetic and atmosphere, the suffocating fog that rests over the majority of the town, is only there because of hardware limitations. It's incredibly clear that this game being on the playstation one really hindered it as they couldn't render the town in a satisfactory manner with the way they wanted the town to function as an overworld; which is very apparent during nightmare world sections of the game where there is no fog and only a darkness that isn't pulled in enough to keep the player from seeing just how much pop-in and loading in there is for the town as you travel through it. So they added the never ending sea of fog that blankets the town during the day in order to let them use their idea while also hiding some of the messier technical aspects, and I'm just impressed with how this bandaid over a technical problem managed to make the game feel more at home as a horror game. The fog in Silent Hill hiding the nightmare creatures that lurk around, ready to kill you at a moment's notice if you get to close just feels right and really adds to the tense spooky atmosphere the town carriers and I'm honestly pretty glad they had to use the fog since I can't imagine how this game would function without the fog there to act as a constant sense of fear of the unknown for the player.
I do think part of the atmosphere working so well is tied to the game being as short as it is. I finished the game in a little under four hours and I am more than content with that length. I know the big for a lot of games today are to be as big and time consuming as possible, but horror games just cannot function that way. Eventually you'll stop getting scared or lose all the tension the game once had because you'll be used to it by that point. It was my biggset problem with Alien: Isolation back when I played that because it was a twenty hour horror game that stopped being scary around hour ten because you've seen all the scares the game could possibly throw at you at that point. Silent Hill feels like its just the right length to stay unnerving and tense while also not ending before the player has had enough which I feel really helps the game keep up its tense and spooky atmosphere that has been so well crafted over the course of the game. All that being said, there is one thing the game does that breaks this atmosphere and general horror vibe a bit.
One of my only two criticisms of this game is how it handles the combat; not in the gameplay itself but in the weapons you get as well as the amount of ammo you get for the guns. What I mean by this is that the game just kind of throws ammo at you to insane degrees. By the end of the first nightmare section I had almost two hundred pistol bullets and a decent chunk of shotgun ammo saved up, and this trend continued throughout the rest of the game up until I got a weapon about halfway into the game, the emergency hammer, that basically just invalidated every enemy outside of flying ones and bosses. Combat managed to maintain some tension through throwing more enemies at you at once and forcing you to struggle against a lot of them coming from all sides, but that quickly deteriorated as you could just swing he hammer a couple times and be done with the encounter once you took care of the first one in that encounter. It's not the biggest issue in the world, but it did take me out of a few combat encounters and bosses since I never really had to worry about or struggle with weighing whether it was worth it to waste some ammo since I always knew a truckload more was around the corner.
Now for the second thing I have a number of criticisms for in this game, its the puzzles. The way this game handles puzzles is really bizarre in that it almost has a reverse difficulty curve with the first real puzzle, the piano in the school, being the hardest and the ones later on all being relatively easy in comparison. The piano puzzle is effectively a puzzle without a clue due to how the clue is written and how much mental gymnastics you would need to take to solve it on your own with what you're given (unless you're me who was just absentmindedly pressing different keys on the piano while trying to figure out what to do and got it on accident. Which doesn't make the puzzle good but it does make it kind of funny that I solved a ridiculous puzzle on accident). Thankfully this is the only one that is super obtuse but it does kind of make all the other puzzles after this one feel lesser just because knowing how hard this was supposed to be gave me expectations for the rest of the puzzles in the game which, while I'm glad they weren't as weirdly obtuse as this, felt all pretty straight forward and easy even removing the comparison to this puzzle.
Overall, Silent Hill is a must play in the horror genre in my opinion. This game effectively writes the book on horror tone and atmosphere while having fun (though admittedly dated) gameplay and a pretty strong story. Seriously if you haven't played this game yet please do, there's a reason the Silent Hill name has stayed in people's minds despite it being seventeen years since the last game in the series most people would consider good released.
9.5/10
2021
This review contains spoilers
I’m majorly impressed by Toby Fox and the Deltarune team’s ability to consistently keep one upping themselves. They've pulled out all the stops for Deltarune Chapter 2 and it really shows how much passion and love they all poured into every aspect of this game. This is probably hands down one of the best releases of the year and probably one of my favorite games of all time when combined with chapter 1. If you have even the slightest interest in this game I strongly recommend going and playing both chapters before reading this, especially since combined they have about six hours of playtime total, because I’m going to be talking about a lot of spoilers. If you don't care about spoilers or already played though then hey, keep reading.
For a quick recap up to this point, Deltarune Chapter 1 is a turnbased RPG that follows Kris, a high school student who gets sucked into a magical world known as the Dark world with the school bully, Susie. The two of them end up having to work together with a citizen of the dark world, Ralsei, to seal a dark fountain and stop an evil king from using the power of the fountain for his own gain. Through several misadventures dealing with the King’s son and Susie switching sides, the trio eventually fight and defeat the evil king. Which frees the dark world and returns it to how it was before. The chapter then ends on a startling scene of Kris ripping out their own heart and throwing it into a cage before walking to somewhere off screen with a knife. This sets the stage for chapter 2, which picks up right where the first chapter leaves off.
Chapter 2’s story really intrigues me both because of what it confirms and what possibilities it opens up for the future of the game. Chapter 2's plot is essentially the same as the first, you and Susie find another dark world, you go in to fix the fountain, this time you're also trying to save your friend and classmate that got sucked into the dark world, then you trek through an exciting new world very unlike the real world as you meet new friends, enemies, and see how your new friends react to this new world while trying to stop the Evil Robot Queen from getting your one friend, Noelle, to use her power on the fountain and cause even more damage with it. While the way I described this does sound pretty generic, I can say without a doubt this chapter's story still manages to be really well written and an enjoyable to with this plot premise; however I feel what really makes this chapter is how it uses the characters.
What really makes this game's story shine in my opinion is how it handles its characters. All of the ones that are given focus this chapter have great moments that really elevated the story just because of how these characters reacted to events that took place in ways that distinctly felt like them. These characters all have strong voices and personalities and it blows me away how distinct they all feel.
Susie and Ralsei both had really solid interactions with Kris and the other characters in general this chapter and it was really nice to see more of them again. Susie showing more and more of her soft side while still trying to convince everyone that she's tough and scary makes for some good jokes but also shows how despite being with people she considers friends she still feels like she has to keep up the act she keeps up around everyone else. This is explored a bit with Noelle, a girl from their school who has a crush on Susie, who just isn't afraid of Susie at all. Susie just isn't sure how to respond to this at all and comically misses the point each time and it makes a lot of cute scenes with the character that also helps to further her character arc that was started in the first chapter. Susie also gets a scene at the end of the chapter with Kris's mom, Toriel, that feels like it's pushing this arc further where she is taught how to make a pie just like Kris was taught to as a kid, and because of some unforeseen events is forced to stay the night at Kris's house where they have a fun little sleepover. Susie's guard is more or less completely down this entire time and its really interesting to see how she's becoming more and more comfortable around people thanks to her becoming friends with Kris and Ralsei.
Speaking of Ralsei, I was extremely intrigued this chapter because while they still continue to be the loveable, naive healer of the party they also showed some bits of having more knowledge than they let on that makes me intrigued as to how much this character is hiding from us. Their knowledge of how the dark fountains work that they withheld from us in the first chapter, their in depth knowledge of how the dark worlds effect creatures from different dark worlds and how they appear in the real world, and their ability to be the only dark world being to be able to exist freely in another dark world opens up a lot of questions that I absolutely cannot wait to see the answers too. On top of these there's also a few really good scenes of Ralsei just being Ralsei, like when Susie tried to teach him sarcasm or when he and Kris are travelling by swan boat to reach the Queen's castle and they have a really touching moment together. Love this cute little guy, probably one of my favorite characters for just how innocent he appears while clearly still hiding stuff. Cannot wait to see what happens down the line with him.
Noelle is a character I wasn't expecting to like that much but the way she was handled in this chapter blew me away. Between her budding romance with Susie (which is adorable and one of the highlights of this chapter) and her personal character arc of learning to stop running away and hiding from her problems and to face them head on, which personally resonated with me, she's become one of my favorite characters and I really hope we get to see more of her in the main adventure sections of the next few chapters. The moment where she finally stands up to the Queen and cements herself as not letting people decide what she wants for her was great and probably one of the best in this chapter. Also I just really enjoy how she visits her dad every day after school and hangs out with him in the hospital, its just a cute little touch that I found really sweet.
When it comes to this game's two main villains, namely the Evil Queen who is determined to make the world a utopia based in the internet using the power of the dark fountain and Berdly who is a highschooler that has a crush on two girls in his class, they both are absolute delights in their own right. The Queen is just outright hilarious in almost all of her interactions while still managing to be an intimidating villain through how her mere presence terrifies Noelle. She's probably my favorite character in both chapters and I really hope we get to see more of her in the next few chapters (though I doubt it considering how sidelined Lancer was this chapter). Berdly is an interesting case of character development in my opinion because I went from wanting to punt him at the start of this chapter to wanting to punt him in a friendly way by the end of the chapter. He's an overcompensating, annoying, show off but his heart's in the right place and he just doesn't really know how to express how he cares about others well and honestly I can't really bring myself to dislike him by the end because seeing him grow and realize he doesn't have to try to act smart to get people to like him and can just be himself is a really sweet character arc that made me appreciate him a lot more. Still want to punt him at least thirty yards though.
Also I just want to say that the comedy in this game is incredibly well done. Any words I have cannot do just how funny the Deltarune team's writing is justice. I think the best I can do is something I saw a friend of mine say, which is that the game's humor is consistently funnier and just all around better than any meme made about the game. Honestly the fact that all of the characters are extremely funny and just enjoyable to have around in game is probably a solid part of why this game's characters are so good in my opinion. The Deltarune team also knows when to not have a joke, allowing serious moments to be serious long enough to have impact on the player. And then throwing in a joke right when the moment has lasted just long enough.
This chapter keeps the same gameplay style as chapter 1, aka turn based combat with a focus on being able to spare enemies and keep them alive instead of just brutally cutting them down (though that's also an option if you really want to). There are a few minor tweaks this time around like Ralsei and Susie being able to use the ACT commands that Kris got in chapter 1, meaning that now everyone can contribute towards making it possible to spare enemies without needing to pick back off Kris. It's a welcome change in my opinion since while it did make Kris unique in chapter 1 they keep that uniqueness by them being the only one who can use combo ACTS while Susie and Ralsei can now act on their own; and now that everyone can use it that means if you do a two person combo the last character isn't stuck just having to defend in order to not do damage and can actually help with sparing an enemy instead of being idol for a turn.
As with how Undertale and Deltarune's combat has been so far when you're doing a number of ACT commands or dodging all enemy attacks you're thrown into a little minigame to avoid damage or to make an ACT go through. Just like Undertale and Deltarune, these are still really well done in my opinion. Each enemies unique minigame set feels fresh and tests your reflexes in a fun bullet hell esque way that adds a fun little skill element to the turn based combat without overstaying its welcome. This is such a nice system that feels like it only really works in these games because the general overall game length is pretty short. I can see this overstaying its welcome pretty easily if it went on too long but the game length and general encounter rate manages to keep this system growing old before you reach the end.
One gameplay system exclusive to Chapter 2 (so far) that I wanted to mention is how the first and final boss battles of the chapter are handled, which is through a Punch Out clone. This isn't a problem at all though, I adore Punch Out and getting to do a couple fights via that system in a turn based game were really funny conceptually while also providing good punch out gameplay. I am incredibly glad this was in the game and it just added a whole other level of enjoyment for me personally as someone who has a soft spot for the series it's doing a homage to.
The artstyle of this chapter is inline with the general art for chapter 1 of Deltarune so nothing much has changed but I just wanted to comment on how great the sprite art is and how fun and expressive the sprites manage to be. Not to mention the character design for all the sprites, both for the main party and for all the new enemies and characters/character redesigns, are all really well done in this sprite style and all come across very distinct and easy to figure out how the character is supposed to look just from the sprite. Love the designs and cannot wait to see what the Undertale team comes up with for the next few chapters.
I don't think I really need to talk about the music, everyone knows that Toby Fox, Lena Raine and Marcy Nabors do amazing musical work and this soundtrack is no exception to that at all. I think this game has some of the best music of their catalogues to me personally, the secret boss theme from this chapter for example is incredible and is now probably one of my favorite boss themes overall. Really solid soundtrack overall, definitely give it a listen if haven't already. Some incredibly well made music in this three hour game.
Deltarune Chapter 2 was well worth the three year wait. The writing, music, art, and gameplay all come together to make something truly special that I cannot wait to see how Toby and the rest of the Deltarune team attempt to top. I think this franchise is really something special and I can see why it's gotten the mass appeal that it has, definitely a modern classic in the making in my opinion. This is everything I wanted out of a follow up to chapter 1 and more; I am so excited to see where the story goes from here. Play this game if you haven't yet, trust me its worth your time. Go get that banana and become a [BIG SHOT].
10/10
For a quick recap up to this point, Deltarune Chapter 1 is a turnbased RPG that follows Kris, a high school student who gets sucked into a magical world known as the Dark world with the school bully, Susie. The two of them end up having to work together with a citizen of the dark world, Ralsei, to seal a dark fountain and stop an evil king from using the power of the fountain for his own gain. Through several misadventures dealing with the King’s son and Susie switching sides, the trio eventually fight and defeat the evil king. Which frees the dark world and returns it to how it was before. The chapter then ends on a startling scene of Kris ripping out their own heart and throwing it into a cage before walking to somewhere off screen with a knife. This sets the stage for chapter 2, which picks up right where the first chapter leaves off.
Chapter 2’s story really intrigues me both because of what it confirms and what possibilities it opens up for the future of the game. Chapter 2's plot is essentially the same as the first, you and Susie find another dark world, you go in to fix the fountain, this time you're also trying to save your friend and classmate that got sucked into the dark world, then you trek through an exciting new world very unlike the real world as you meet new friends, enemies, and see how your new friends react to this new world while trying to stop the Evil Robot Queen from getting your one friend, Noelle, to use her power on the fountain and cause even more damage with it. While the way I described this does sound pretty generic, I can say without a doubt this chapter's story still manages to be really well written and an enjoyable to with this plot premise; however I feel what really makes this chapter is how it uses the characters.
What really makes this game's story shine in my opinion is how it handles its characters. All of the ones that are given focus this chapter have great moments that really elevated the story just because of how these characters reacted to events that took place in ways that distinctly felt like them. These characters all have strong voices and personalities and it blows me away how distinct they all feel.
Susie and Ralsei both had really solid interactions with Kris and the other characters in general this chapter and it was really nice to see more of them again. Susie showing more and more of her soft side while still trying to convince everyone that she's tough and scary makes for some good jokes but also shows how despite being with people she considers friends she still feels like she has to keep up the act she keeps up around everyone else. This is explored a bit with Noelle, a girl from their school who has a crush on Susie, who just isn't afraid of Susie at all. Susie just isn't sure how to respond to this at all and comically misses the point each time and it makes a lot of cute scenes with the character that also helps to further her character arc that was started in the first chapter. Susie also gets a scene at the end of the chapter with Kris's mom, Toriel, that feels like it's pushing this arc further where she is taught how to make a pie just like Kris was taught to as a kid, and because of some unforeseen events is forced to stay the night at Kris's house where they have a fun little sleepover. Susie's guard is more or less completely down this entire time and its really interesting to see how she's becoming more and more comfortable around people thanks to her becoming friends with Kris and Ralsei.
Speaking of Ralsei, I was extremely intrigued this chapter because while they still continue to be the loveable, naive healer of the party they also showed some bits of having more knowledge than they let on that makes me intrigued as to how much this character is hiding from us. Their knowledge of how the dark fountains work that they withheld from us in the first chapter, their in depth knowledge of how the dark worlds effect creatures from different dark worlds and how they appear in the real world, and their ability to be the only dark world being to be able to exist freely in another dark world opens up a lot of questions that I absolutely cannot wait to see the answers too. On top of these there's also a few really good scenes of Ralsei just being Ralsei, like when Susie tried to teach him sarcasm or when he and Kris are travelling by swan boat to reach the Queen's castle and they have a really touching moment together. Love this cute little guy, probably one of my favorite characters for just how innocent he appears while clearly still hiding stuff. Cannot wait to see what happens down the line with him.
Noelle is a character I wasn't expecting to like that much but the way she was handled in this chapter blew me away. Between her budding romance with Susie (which is adorable and one of the highlights of this chapter) and her personal character arc of learning to stop running away and hiding from her problems and to face them head on, which personally resonated with me, she's become one of my favorite characters and I really hope we get to see more of her in the main adventure sections of the next few chapters. The moment where she finally stands up to the Queen and cements herself as not letting people decide what she wants for her was great and probably one of the best in this chapter. Also I just really enjoy how she visits her dad every day after school and hangs out with him in the hospital, its just a cute little touch that I found really sweet.
When it comes to this game's two main villains, namely the Evil Queen who is determined to make the world a utopia based in the internet using the power of the dark fountain and Berdly who is a highschooler that has a crush on two girls in his class, they both are absolute delights in their own right. The Queen is just outright hilarious in almost all of her interactions while still managing to be an intimidating villain through how her mere presence terrifies Noelle. She's probably my favorite character in both chapters and I really hope we get to see more of her in the next few chapters (though I doubt it considering how sidelined Lancer was this chapter). Berdly is an interesting case of character development in my opinion because I went from wanting to punt him at the start of this chapter to wanting to punt him in a friendly way by the end of the chapter. He's an overcompensating, annoying, show off but his heart's in the right place and he just doesn't really know how to express how he cares about others well and honestly I can't really bring myself to dislike him by the end because seeing him grow and realize he doesn't have to try to act smart to get people to like him and can just be himself is a really sweet character arc that made me appreciate him a lot more. Still want to punt him at least thirty yards though.
Also I just want to say that the comedy in this game is incredibly well done. Any words I have cannot do just how funny the Deltarune team's writing is justice. I think the best I can do is something I saw a friend of mine say, which is that the game's humor is consistently funnier and just all around better than any meme made about the game. Honestly the fact that all of the characters are extremely funny and just enjoyable to have around in game is probably a solid part of why this game's characters are so good in my opinion. The Deltarune team also knows when to not have a joke, allowing serious moments to be serious long enough to have impact on the player. And then throwing in a joke right when the moment has lasted just long enough.
This chapter keeps the same gameplay style as chapter 1, aka turn based combat with a focus on being able to spare enemies and keep them alive instead of just brutally cutting them down (though that's also an option if you really want to). There are a few minor tweaks this time around like Ralsei and Susie being able to use the ACT commands that Kris got in chapter 1, meaning that now everyone can contribute towards making it possible to spare enemies without needing to pick back off Kris. It's a welcome change in my opinion since while it did make Kris unique in chapter 1 they keep that uniqueness by them being the only one who can use combo ACTS while Susie and Ralsei can now act on their own; and now that everyone can use it that means if you do a two person combo the last character isn't stuck just having to defend in order to not do damage and can actually help with sparing an enemy instead of being idol for a turn.
As with how Undertale and Deltarune's combat has been so far when you're doing a number of ACT commands or dodging all enemy attacks you're thrown into a little minigame to avoid damage or to make an ACT go through. Just like Undertale and Deltarune, these are still really well done in my opinion. Each enemies unique minigame set feels fresh and tests your reflexes in a fun bullet hell esque way that adds a fun little skill element to the turn based combat without overstaying its welcome. This is such a nice system that feels like it only really works in these games because the general overall game length is pretty short. I can see this overstaying its welcome pretty easily if it went on too long but the game length and general encounter rate manages to keep this system growing old before you reach the end.
One gameplay system exclusive to Chapter 2 (so far) that I wanted to mention is how the first and final boss battles of the chapter are handled, which is through a Punch Out clone. This isn't a problem at all though, I adore Punch Out and getting to do a couple fights via that system in a turn based game were really funny conceptually while also providing good punch out gameplay. I am incredibly glad this was in the game and it just added a whole other level of enjoyment for me personally as someone who has a soft spot for the series it's doing a homage to.
The artstyle of this chapter is inline with the general art for chapter 1 of Deltarune so nothing much has changed but I just wanted to comment on how great the sprite art is and how fun and expressive the sprites manage to be. Not to mention the character design for all the sprites, both for the main party and for all the new enemies and characters/character redesigns, are all really well done in this sprite style and all come across very distinct and easy to figure out how the character is supposed to look just from the sprite. Love the designs and cannot wait to see what the Undertale team comes up with for the next few chapters.
I don't think I really need to talk about the music, everyone knows that Toby Fox, Lena Raine and Marcy Nabors do amazing musical work and this soundtrack is no exception to that at all. I think this game has some of the best music of their catalogues to me personally, the secret boss theme from this chapter for example is incredible and is now probably one of my favorite boss themes overall. Really solid soundtrack overall, definitely give it a listen if haven't already. Some incredibly well made music in this three hour game.
Deltarune Chapter 2 was well worth the three year wait. The writing, music, art, and gameplay all come together to make something truly special that I cannot wait to see how Toby and the rest of the Deltarune team attempt to top. I think this franchise is really something special and I can see why it's gotten the mass appeal that it has, definitely a modern classic in the making in my opinion. This is everything I wanted out of a follow up to chapter 1 and more; I am so excited to see where the story goes from here. Play this game if you haven't yet, trust me its worth your time. Go get that banana and become a [BIG SHOT].
10/10
2001
This review contains spoilers
After playing this I can 100% see why this is commonly referred to as one of the best horror games, and one of the best games, of all time. Silent Hill 2 absolutely blew me away with how it basically took every aspect of the first game and improved it tremendously in a way that felt beyond how much improvements sequels normally make. There is just so much put into this game it's insane and I definitely see why it's withstood the test of time to be considered one of the all time greats. Going to be going into massive spoilers with this so here's your warning on that. On a similar note this does get into heavier topics towards the end so be warned if you're not in a good mindset for that sort of thing.
Silent Hill 2 is a game about James Sunderland as he travels to the town of Silent Hill to answer a letter that was sent to him by his ex wife, who has been dead for 3 years by the time he reaches the small Maine town. He then proceeds to fight his way through hordes of horrific monsters as he attempts to find his wife. He also comes in contact with a variety of different people all with their own troubles and problems as they also traverse the town around James.
Something that I want to talk about first that the first game also had going for it is it's atmosphere. Playing this game is the most unnerved and tense I've felt in a horror game in a long time and I'm more than a little surprised by that since generally this kind of thing doesn't get to me. Even Silent Hill 1, which I praised extensively for it's incredible atmosphere, doesn't hold a candle to Silent Hill 2's attempts at reminding you it's a horror game. Whether its the oppressive fog that hangs over the town, the messages that will randomly appear in some places reminding James that something knows what he did, or the constant whining of the radio as an enemy approaches this game excels in making the player feel scared. Which honestly is one of the highest praises I can give a horror game since as I mentioned earlier I don't exactly get scared by games. I think a big part of what went towards this atmosphere working as well as it did was the gameplay.
Silent Hill 2's gameplay is basically an upgraded and refined version of 1's combat that still manages to maintain the general slowness and clunkiness that helps to make a horror game feel like a horror game without making it feel unfun. The game has a kind of refined clunkiness to it where the gameplay isn't fluid but it doesn't feel out of place with how the tone of the game is. I know these controls might still be a problem for some but personally I love how they add to the experience of the game. The general combat feels a bit slower at the start due to your starting weapon being a bit weak but this feeling quickly goes away with how quickly you get access to a gun and a stronger melee weapon. Just like the first game ammo for your guns are abundant but it doesn’t bug me as much this time around (we’ll discuss why later) and the general act of shooting and using the weapons you’ve been given feel a lot better to control and use that the first game.
One neat thing the game does is it makes the enemies react to you in ways that you wouldn't expect from this type of game. My favorite example is what happens if you get your hands on Pyramid Head's weapon. If you go the right way at a certain point you can gain Pyramid head’s cleaver to use as a weapon. It's the most powerful weapon in the game, which unlike the emergency axe from Silent Hill 1 actually has a balancing factor to this in that it's really slow to use and drags along the ground behind you. However the best aspect of this weapon is how enemies react to it if you turn off your flashlight. If you turn off your light and just walk around with it the sound of it scraping against the ground terrifies the non Pyramid Head enemies and makes them flee you, thinking you're Pyramid Head. It's a really cool small thing that just makes me love how much care and detail went into planning and making this game.
Speaking of enemies, while the enemy variety is lesser in this game since most enemies are humanoid in nature minus the bosses and monsters based off the bosses I didn't really mind this much honestly. First of all it meant no more flying enemies which I was very thankful about not having around since I didn't realize how annoying those were in Silent Hill one with them constantly appearing out of the fog and attacking you randomly until they weren't there doing that. As for with everything else them being mostly humanoid works a lot better thematically with the game than if we had a lot of dog based enemies or giant bat things so I didn't mind them all being variations of humans personally.
One gameplay aspect (technically) that I thought was pretty interesting was them deciding to separate the puzzles and the actual gameplay when it came to difficulty settings for this game. Allowing players who want to focus more on the puzzles while putting gameplay in the trunk have that option and vice versa. I'm a really big fan of this change because dear god some of the puzzles in Silent Hill 1 were impossible to parse and allowing players to choose the difficulty of how tough these puzzles is this game was a relief because it allowed me to not have to put up with something like the final puzzle of Silent Hill 1 again. Speaking of puzzles I definitely enjoyed them a lot more this time around, none of them overstayed their welcome and all felt possible to get on your own without outsider info, which is nice since stuff like the piano puzzle from the first game really dragged down Silent Hill 1 for me.
Something that really stuck out to me about Silent Hill 2 was its sound design. A lot of the sound effects and general ambient noise really added to the oppressive and unsettling atmosphere that I mentioned earlier. This is probably one of the strongest parts of the game in that every sound effect and bit of music just really helps to sell this tension that the game is trying to create. Which makes it even funnier when its contrasted by the voice acting. Now don't get me wrong, I love the voice acting in this game; but its not great. A lot of line deliveries feel stilted or have a very clear feeling of the actor just simply reading words off a page over acting. That being said, I am more than okay with this. I love cheesy kinda bad voice acting like what's in this game and even if it wasn't the best it did sell the characters for me to a degree and I enjoyed it regardless of any measure of quality the line deliveries had. The layer of cheese this voice acting adds to the game is a welcome one, and makes the game's story have brief moments of amusement in what is generally a very bleak narrative.
The story of of Silent Hill 2 is honestly up there now as one of my favorites in gaming I think. Seeing James traverse this horrific town while slowly remembering how things went in his past, dealing with the other people who have been brought to this town to atone for their sins, all of it just really hits me in just the right way and I love it. The town basically creating Maria as a version of his wife Mary for him to just lose again and again because of the fact that, as we learn at the end of the game, he killed her and repressed that memory is really interesting to me and really explores the mental guilt James feels over his actions without quite remembering his actions. The game basically functions as a big character study of James and I love media that takes this approach.
Personally I also think I enjoy this take on the concept of the town more than I do of the concept of the town in Silent Hill 1. Silent Hill 2 presents us with the idea that the town exists to make people confront their sins and atone for the evil they committed. I like this approach of the town as an entity that draws people in and forces them to face themselves more than it just happening to be a random weird town with a cult that the main character kinda just stumbled upon. Don't get me wrong I still loved Silent Hill 1's approach and story, but man do I just really vibe with the concept that this game sets up and I hope its carried on into the next few games. One of my favorite things that happens with this concept is how we see it handled with the other three actually alive characters that we find in the town. For example, there's a character named Laura who is a little girl that came to the town in search of Mary since they both knew each other in the hospital. Laura however, hasn't done anything to warrant needing atonement so to her Silent Hill is just an abandoned town. She doesn't see anything created by the town for others, no monsters, no Maria, nothing. Once you figure this out it kind of starts to put things into place how James isn't exactly innocent and starts to hint towards the twist, that being that James killed his wife as I mentioned earlier.
I think ultimately what it comes down to is that Silent Hill 2 feels like it has something to say. It's a story of self reflection and choosing your path in how you atone for the terrible things you have done. The way these themes are portrayed throughout the game with the constant symbolism just really elevates the whole story with how many minor elements allude to future events or character's thought processes, such as the fact that numerous dead bodies in the game's overworld are all wearing James's clothing which alludes to his thoughts of wishing he were dead/thinking he should be dead after killing Mary which is known from one of the various endings you can possibly get. I just think the use of motifs and symbolism to drive themes is a really cool think in fiction and I haven't seen a horror game do it on the same level that Silent Hill 2 does. Hell it even made one of my biggest complaints about the game, just the sheer amount of ammo you get so killing things isn't really a tough choice or a challenge, not a problem for me anymore once I realized that the ease at killing things and the rate at which you find the tools to do it is because killing is already easy for James since he did it once before. So killing all of the monsters that come after him is an easy thing for him. It's really impressive how much this game managed to pull off and I wish I could go into all of it without needlessly doubling the length of this review.
Going into Silent Hill 2 I was ready to be underwhelmed after how hard people push this as one of the best games of all time, since usually when people always talk something up to me like they do with this game I end up going in with my expectations set a bit too high. This however lives up to the hype and goes well beyond what I was expecting. If you're looking for an incredible horror game, look no further than this. The game is the absolute peak of the genre for me and I recommend it to anyone who's looking for the best the medium has to offer in terms of horror.
10/10
Silent Hill 2 is a game about James Sunderland as he travels to the town of Silent Hill to answer a letter that was sent to him by his ex wife, who has been dead for 3 years by the time he reaches the small Maine town. He then proceeds to fight his way through hordes of horrific monsters as he attempts to find his wife. He also comes in contact with a variety of different people all with their own troubles and problems as they also traverse the town around James.
Something that I want to talk about first that the first game also had going for it is it's atmosphere. Playing this game is the most unnerved and tense I've felt in a horror game in a long time and I'm more than a little surprised by that since generally this kind of thing doesn't get to me. Even Silent Hill 1, which I praised extensively for it's incredible atmosphere, doesn't hold a candle to Silent Hill 2's attempts at reminding you it's a horror game. Whether its the oppressive fog that hangs over the town, the messages that will randomly appear in some places reminding James that something knows what he did, or the constant whining of the radio as an enemy approaches this game excels in making the player feel scared. Which honestly is one of the highest praises I can give a horror game since as I mentioned earlier I don't exactly get scared by games. I think a big part of what went towards this atmosphere working as well as it did was the gameplay.
Silent Hill 2's gameplay is basically an upgraded and refined version of 1's combat that still manages to maintain the general slowness and clunkiness that helps to make a horror game feel like a horror game without making it feel unfun. The game has a kind of refined clunkiness to it where the gameplay isn't fluid but it doesn't feel out of place with how the tone of the game is. I know these controls might still be a problem for some but personally I love how they add to the experience of the game. The general combat feels a bit slower at the start due to your starting weapon being a bit weak but this feeling quickly goes away with how quickly you get access to a gun and a stronger melee weapon. Just like the first game ammo for your guns are abundant but it doesn’t bug me as much this time around (we’ll discuss why later) and the general act of shooting and using the weapons you’ve been given feel a lot better to control and use that the first game.
One neat thing the game does is it makes the enemies react to you in ways that you wouldn't expect from this type of game. My favorite example is what happens if you get your hands on Pyramid Head's weapon. If you go the right way at a certain point you can gain Pyramid head’s cleaver to use as a weapon. It's the most powerful weapon in the game, which unlike the emergency axe from Silent Hill 1 actually has a balancing factor to this in that it's really slow to use and drags along the ground behind you. However the best aspect of this weapon is how enemies react to it if you turn off your flashlight. If you turn off your light and just walk around with it the sound of it scraping against the ground terrifies the non Pyramid Head enemies and makes them flee you, thinking you're Pyramid Head. It's a really cool small thing that just makes me love how much care and detail went into planning and making this game.
Speaking of enemies, while the enemy variety is lesser in this game since most enemies are humanoid in nature minus the bosses and monsters based off the bosses I didn't really mind this much honestly. First of all it meant no more flying enemies which I was very thankful about not having around since I didn't realize how annoying those were in Silent Hill one with them constantly appearing out of the fog and attacking you randomly until they weren't there doing that. As for with everything else them being mostly humanoid works a lot better thematically with the game than if we had a lot of dog based enemies or giant bat things so I didn't mind them all being variations of humans personally.
One gameplay aspect (technically) that I thought was pretty interesting was them deciding to separate the puzzles and the actual gameplay when it came to difficulty settings for this game. Allowing players who want to focus more on the puzzles while putting gameplay in the trunk have that option and vice versa. I'm a really big fan of this change because dear god some of the puzzles in Silent Hill 1 were impossible to parse and allowing players to choose the difficulty of how tough these puzzles is this game was a relief because it allowed me to not have to put up with something like the final puzzle of Silent Hill 1 again. Speaking of puzzles I definitely enjoyed them a lot more this time around, none of them overstayed their welcome and all felt possible to get on your own without outsider info, which is nice since stuff like the piano puzzle from the first game really dragged down Silent Hill 1 for me.
Something that really stuck out to me about Silent Hill 2 was its sound design. A lot of the sound effects and general ambient noise really added to the oppressive and unsettling atmosphere that I mentioned earlier. This is probably one of the strongest parts of the game in that every sound effect and bit of music just really helps to sell this tension that the game is trying to create. Which makes it even funnier when its contrasted by the voice acting. Now don't get me wrong, I love the voice acting in this game; but its not great. A lot of line deliveries feel stilted or have a very clear feeling of the actor just simply reading words off a page over acting. That being said, I am more than okay with this. I love cheesy kinda bad voice acting like what's in this game and even if it wasn't the best it did sell the characters for me to a degree and I enjoyed it regardless of any measure of quality the line deliveries had. The layer of cheese this voice acting adds to the game is a welcome one, and makes the game's story have brief moments of amusement in what is generally a very bleak narrative.
The story of of Silent Hill 2 is honestly up there now as one of my favorites in gaming I think. Seeing James traverse this horrific town while slowly remembering how things went in his past, dealing with the other people who have been brought to this town to atone for their sins, all of it just really hits me in just the right way and I love it. The town basically creating Maria as a version of his wife Mary for him to just lose again and again because of the fact that, as we learn at the end of the game, he killed her and repressed that memory is really interesting to me and really explores the mental guilt James feels over his actions without quite remembering his actions. The game basically functions as a big character study of James and I love media that takes this approach.
Personally I also think I enjoy this take on the concept of the town more than I do of the concept of the town in Silent Hill 1. Silent Hill 2 presents us with the idea that the town exists to make people confront their sins and atone for the evil they committed. I like this approach of the town as an entity that draws people in and forces them to face themselves more than it just happening to be a random weird town with a cult that the main character kinda just stumbled upon. Don't get me wrong I still loved Silent Hill 1's approach and story, but man do I just really vibe with the concept that this game sets up and I hope its carried on into the next few games. One of my favorite things that happens with this concept is how we see it handled with the other three actually alive characters that we find in the town. For example, there's a character named Laura who is a little girl that came to the town in search of Mary since they both knew each other in the hospital. Laura however, hasn't done anything to warrant needing atonement so to her Silent Hill is just an abandoned town. She doesn't see anything created by the town for others, no monsters, no Maria, nothing. Once you figure this out it kind of starts to put things into place how James isn't exactly innocent and starts to hint towards the twist, that being that James killed his wife as I mentioned earlier.
I think ultimately what it comes down to is that Silent Hill 2 feels like it has something to say. It's a story of self reflection and choosing your path in how you atone for the terrible things you have done. The way these themes are portrayed throughout the game with the constant symbolism just really elevates the whole story with how many minor elements allude to future events or character's thought processes, such as the fact that numerous dead bodies in the game's overworld are all wearing James's clothing which alludes to his thoughts of wishing he were dead/thinking he should be dead after killing Mary which is known from one of the various endings you can possibly get. I just think the use of motifs and symbolism to drive themes is a really cool think in fiction and I haven't seen a horror game do it on the same level that Silent Hill 2 does. Hell it even made one of my biggest complaints about the game, just the sheer amount of ammo you get so killing things isn't really a tough choice or a challenge, not a problem for me anymore once I realized that the ease at killing things and the rate at which you find the tools to do it is because killing is already easy for James since he did it once before. So killing all of the monsters that come after him is an easy thing for him. It's really impressive how much this game managed to pull off and I wish I could go into all of it without needlessly doubling the length of this review.
Going into Silent Hill 2 I was ready to be underwhelmed after how hard people push this as one of the best games of all time, since usually when people always talk something up to me like they do with this game I end up going in with my expectations set a bit too high. This however lives up to the hype and goes well beyond what I was expecting. If you're looking for an incredible horror game, look no further than this. The game is the absolute peak of the genre for me and I recommend it to anyone who's looking for the best the medium has to offer in terms of horror.
10/10
This review contains spoilers
I put off replaying this game a lot longer than I did replaying the rest of the series because I knew I wasn't ready for this ride to end yet. Despite some of my problems with the middle seasons I do truly love this series, and I knew that this last season was gonna hurt just as much as it did the first time. Which surprise, it did. Honestly this season feels like a great send off to the series. I will be talking about spoilers here so be prepared for that.
The Final Season takes place about four years after the end of season three and once again follows Clementine, who has AJ with her again as the two of them try to find food and survive on their own in this post apocalyptic hellscape. After an accident they're saved by a group of kids from a nearby boarding school that got abandoned early into the end of the world. Clem and AJ befriend this group and then have to defend it from outside forces trying to kidnap the students to use them as soldiers in their war with another community. The story is all around really solid and has some incredible set piece moments and scenes, but personally I think where the game excels is in its characters.
This game had a pretty big cast of main characters, with there being effectively five of them (Clementine, AJ, Louis, Violet, and Tenn) who were present for most of the story. I think all of them are handled really well and are all great characters in their own right personally. Though of course the main focus is entirely on Clem and AJ. Seeing Clem and AJ at this stage of their lives is really interesting since the last time we saw either of them was four years ago when AJ was still effectively a toddler and Clem was just barely a teenager. A lot has changed between then and the beginning of this season, especially for Clem. She's been through a lot in the eight years since the outbreak started, and it seems like the time between season three and now have hit her even harder. Though despite this she's still the same Clem, hardened and more cynical but still a person just trying to make the best of the worst possible state of the world. This Clem really feels like the culmination of the Clem we saw in season one, it might be that the writing is generally tighter than season two's or way more focused on her than in season three but this is the Clem that feels the most like she was the same Clem that we helped teach back in the first season as Lee. It's really cool getting to see the end of this character's arc and everything that entails.
AJ meanwhile feels like the perfect encapsulation of the exact opposite of how Clem was back in season one. AJ has been taught all his life how to kill and fighter walkers in order to stay alive, but he has to learn the empathy and human elements of being alive that Clem already had down. It creates an interesting dynamic where you shape the kind of person AJ will become over the course of the game. It's a really interesting way of handling his character that I think plays to the way telltale handles choices, where instead of it effecting the end of a story it changes the journey. You can play this game twice and have a completely different AJ by the end depending on what choices you make throughout. You'll still end with the same ending for AJ as the story dictates, but who AJ will be and how these events changed him will be different and he'll have had different experiences and guidance from you that shapes how he is. I love how these telltale games handle this sort of thing and the fact that it was such a focal point of one of the two main lead characters of the season was incredibly cool to me.
As for the other three main characters, Louis, Violet, and Tenn, they are all newly introduced into these season and I personally enjoyed the dynamics they brought to the game a lot. They helped round out the group of people who were regularly at the forefront of situations and all of them were likeable in their own ways that I really enjoyed. My favorite was probably Louis though since I found him the most relatable. Their dynamics and actions in regards to Clem and AJ are also really interesting to me, where each of them have a completely different connection to the main two. Tenn being AJ's first real friend was a really sweet dynamic that was nice to watch play out despite how it ends, and I really enjoyed the moments those two got together. Inversely Louis and Violet acting as Clem's two most trusted friends at the school work really well in my opinion and both have strengths and weaknesses as characters that make them feel like believable people. A really strong secondary main cast was missing from season two and from half of season three so it was really refreshing in this season to have a really strongly written core group to have around across the entire story.
This season also had a pretty strong showing of villains I thought. The three main ones we see throughout the season are Lily, the woman from the first season that either stole your RV or that you left to die on the side of the road, Abel, Lily's right hand and a bit of a bastard, and Minnie, Tenn's sister who was kidnapped and initiated into Lily's group before this season starts. All three of them play different roles in how the story plays out and all of them have their own strengths as villains I felt. Abel worked effectively as an evil bastard who shows up and instantly starts causing problems, which in turn leads to Lily and Minnie being villains since Abel got everything started off on the wrong foot. Lily works great as a big bad of the season, pushing things that Abel started further and generally just being a much worse human being than she was when we left her back in season one. She's way past the point of being too far gone and is more or less just out for herself and herself alone, which is shown by her surviving in my ending and going out on her own and leaving all of her comrades behind. Minnie meanwhile is extremely tragic and is shown to basically have been completely corrupted by lily's group to the point where she has basically become a brutal killing machine who wants her and her brother to die just so they can be together again. All three of these characters have very different outlooks and ways of acting as antagonists, but in my opinion all of them work extremely well in this role.
I will say that compared to other seasons this one really felt like you didn't get enough time with a number of the introduced characters, namely a fourth of the kids at the boarding school. Granted half of them were gone for pretty much the entirety of episodes three and four thanks to them getting kidnapped and then Clem, AJ, and Tenn getting separated from everyone else, but it still felt weird how we got through most of the series without ever really getting much to Omar, Aasim, or Willy. We get a few interesting things here and there but they felt weirdly underutilized compared to other side characters from the school such as Ruby or James, who were pretty involved in the plot without directly being a main character. With a cast of this size its inevitable that not everyone is going to have their moments, but it feels off to me that these three were effectively sidelined for most of the story despite how much everyone else in the boarding school group got to do. Part of me thinks this is due to there not being five episodes in this run like there normally are in The Walking Dead seasons, so they had less time to let everyone have their moments, but there is no way of knowing for sure how accurate that is. One aspect that didn't suffer though was the gameplay sections that happen between most story sections.
This season of The Walking Dead Game makes a huge leap forward in terms of how it handles gameplay this time around, which has never exactly been what Telltale is known for. It's mostly just glorified quick time events like in past games but the sections they have built in order to give a sense of combat and fighting off hordes of walkers are well done with making you think about your positioning and using your ability to knock over the zombified people which is pretty fun and feels like an interesting way to attempt a mini horde mode every so often in a game without extensive combat mechanics. These sections would most likely get tiresome if given enough time but thankfully the game seems to use these sections just sparsely enough to feel like a nice break from the normal movie style story that the episodes tend to be otherwise. There's also other sections that are essentially just emulating older rail shooters like the other games in this franchise. These sections felt remotely unchanged from the older games in that you basically just focus your crosshairs on the big "shoot here" prompt and then shoot. It works fine as just the filler action gameplay between bursts of story that most of these games function on, but that's really all there is to it.
One thing that really stuck out to me about this season was how throughout the season the creative team really dipped into more subtle aspects of horror with the Zombie apocalypse in a way that the series hasn't since season one. Season three had one moment of this at the very beginning but outside of that the series was much more focused on the drama and tension between people in seasons two and three that I hadn't even noticed until I played through all of season four. Scenes like Clem's nightmares, getting pulled back into the darkness by Zombie Brody in episode one, the person pleading for death as his body is melted from the burning metal he was stuck under, all a lot more subtle and kind of horrifying in ways that feel extremely reminiscent of season one's approach to trying to have more horror beyond the walking dead that surrounds them. It's hard for me to ignore this now that I've made this connection, but I honestly do prefer this style of approach especially this late into the series's life. It's hard to get any fear out of the zombies this late into the series; the fear and horror these things once instilled throughout the first season more or less disappeared by the time seasons two and three rolled around, not to mention that they took a major backseat to the human drama aspects of the series. This isn't necessarily bad but I feel like more of a blend like what seasons one and four have works better for me overall.
So I wanted to dedicate a section of this specifically to the ending of the final episode, since I felt it was probably the strongest part of the whole season. In Trying to escape a horde with AJ Clem has been bitten on the leg, leaving her and AJ to seek shelter in an old barn they found earlier in the story when with James. AJ desperately tries to block off the barn as Clem provides cover fire with a pistol until the two of them have a moment where the walkers can't get in. After a tearful goodbye and pleading with AJ to either kill your or leave you depending on your choice, AJ agrees to do as you say at first, until he turns around and supposedly hits you with an axe. The whole scene is incredibly emotional and really feels like a send off to a character we've watched grow over several seasons.
The issue though, is that anyone who has spent even a small amount of time with The Walking Dead will most likely be questioning why they don't just cut off her leg since the bite just happened a few minutes ago. Thankfully this quick cut works as a great misdirection, since that's what AJ did. In the after credits/real ending of the story you play as AJ and come back home to the boarding school to see Clem on crutches with everyone else as everyone who survived the events of the game are there, happy and safe. Seeing AJ go from this baby who we could barely keep alive in season 2 to someone resourceful and smart enough to save his family on his own is really cool to see and effectively ties together what this season is ultimately about, that being ending the cycle of loss that has been perpetrated since the start of the outbreak. AJ doesn't let Clem die like Clem had to let Lee die, he makes sure she survives and everyone who survives gets to end up happy and safe for the first time in a long, long time. All things must die has effectively been the mantra of the series since season one, but the final season effectively adds an asterisk to that. Saying that while all things will go eventually, we can still fight to make sure that that time is as far off as possible. It's a nice, resounding message of hope in a series that has always leaned far more onto the bleak side.
And with that, Telltale's The Walking Dead is over. It was truly an unforgettable ride and I'm glad I got to experience Clementine's story. Her having a happy ending after everything that she has been through is well deserved in my opinion, and fits really well narratively and tonally in a way I wasn't expecting since the series doesn't always have the most tonally consistent or well thought out endings (looking at you season two) and considering all the development issues this season went through due to Telltale shutting down I wasn't expecting to be as satisfied with the ending as I was; but I'm more than happy to report that they stuck the landing. Definitely recommend this season if you enjoyed season one or any of the others, it feels like the perfect place to end Clementine's story.
9/10
The Final Season takes place about four years after the end of season three and once again follows Clementine, who has AJ with her again as the two of them try to find food and survive on their own in this post apocalyptic hellscape. After an accident they're saved by a group of kids from a nearby boarding school that got abandoned early into the end of the world. Clem and AJ befriend this group and then have to defend it from outside forces trying to kidnap the students to use them as soldiers in their war with another community. The story is all around really solid and has some incredible set piece moments and scenes, but personally I think where the game excels is in its characters.
This game had a pretty big cast of main characters, with there being effectively five of them (Clementine, AJ, Louis, Violet, and Tenn) who were present for most of the story. I think all of them are handled really well and are all great characters in their own right personally. Though of course the main focus is entirely on Clem and AJ. Seeing Clem and AJ at this stage of their lives is really interesting since the last time we saw either of them was four years ago when AJ was still effectively a toddler and Clem was just barely a teenager. A lot has changed between then and the beginning of this season, especially for Clem. She's been through a lot in the eight years since the outbreak started, and it seems like the time between season three and now have hit her even harder. Though despite this she's still the same Clem, hardened and more cynical but still a person just trying to make the best of the worst possible state of the world. This Clem really feels like the culmination of the Clem we saw in season one, it might be that the writing is generally tighter than season two's or way more focused on her than in season three but this is the Clem that feels the most like she was the same Clem that we helped teach back in the first season as Lee. It's really cool getting to see the end of this character's arc and everything that entails.
AJ meanwhile feels like the perfect encapsulation of the exact opposite of how Clem was back in season one. AJ has been taught all his life how to kill and fighter walkers in order to stay alive, but he has to learn the empathy and human elements of being alive that Clem already had down. It creates an interesting dynamic where you shape the kind of person AJ will become over the course of the game. It's a really interesting way of handling his character that I think plays to the way telltale handles choices, where instead of it effecting the end of a story it changes the journey. You can play this game twice and have a completely different AJ by the end depending on what choices you make throughout. You'll still end with the same ending for AJ as the story dictates, but who AJ will be and how these events changed him will be different and he'll have had different experiences and guidance from you that shapes how he is. I love how these telltale games handle this sort of thing and the fact that it was such a focal point of one of the two main lead characters of the season was incredibly cool to me.
As for the other three main characters, Louis, Violet, and Tenn, they are all newly introduced into these season and I personally enjoyed the dynamics they brought to the game a lot. They helped round out the group of people who were regularly at the forefront of situations and all of them were likeable in their own ways that I really enjoyed. My favorite was probably Louis though since I found him the most relatable. Their dynamics and actions in regards to Clem and AJ are also really interesting to me, where each of them have a completely different connection to the main two. Tenn being AJ's first real friend was a really sweet dynamic that was nice to watch play out despite how it ends, and I really enjoyed the moments those two got together. Inversely Louis and Violet acting as Clem's two most trusted friends at the school work really well in my opinion and both have strengths and weaknesses as characters that make them feel like believable people. A really strong secondary main cast was missing from season two and from half of season three so it was really refreshing in this season to have a really strongly written core group to have around across the entire story.
This season also had a pretty strong showing of villains I thought. The three main ones we see throughout the season are Lily, the woman from the first season that either stole your RV or that you left to die on the side of the road, Abel, Lily's right hand and a bit of a bastard, and Minnie, Tenn's sister who was kidnapped and initiated into Lily's group before this season starts. All three of them play different roles in how the story plays out and all of them have their own strengths as villains I felt. Abel worked effectively as an evil bastard who shows up and instantly starts causing problems, which in turn leads to Lily and Minnie being villains since Abel got everything started off on the wrong foot. Lily works great as a big bad of the season, pushing things that Abel started further and generally just being a much worse human being than she was when we left her back in season one. She's way past the point of being too far gone and is more or less just out for herself and herself alone, which is shown by her surviving in my ending and going out on her own and leaving all of her comrades behind. Minnie meanwhile is extremely tragic and is shown to basically have been completely corrupted by lily's group to the point where she has basically become a brutal killing machine who wants her and her brother to die just so they can be together again. All three of these characters have very different outlooks and ways of acting as antagonists, but in my opinion all of them work extremely well in this role.
I will say that compared to other seasons this one really felt like you didn't get enough time with a number of the introduced characters, namely a fourth of the kids at the boarding school. Granted half of them were gone for pretty much the entirety of episodes three and four thanks to them getting kidnapped and then Clem, AJ, and Tenn getting separated from everyone else, but it still felt weird how we got through most of the series without ever really getting much to Omar, Aasim, or Willy. We get a few interesting things here and there but they felt weirdly underutilized compared to other side characters from the school such as Ruby or James, who were pretty involved in the plot without directly being a main character. With a cast of this size its inevitable that not everyone is going to have their moments, but it feels off to me that these three were effectively sidelined for most of the story despite how much everyone else in the boarding school group got to do. Part of me thinks this is due to there not being five episodes in this run like there normally are in The Walking Dead seasons, so they had less time to let everyone have their moments, but there is no way of knowing for sure how accurate that is. One aspect that didn't suffer though was the gameplay sections that happen between most story sections.
This season of The Walking Dead Game makes a huge leap forward in terms of how it handles gameplay this time around, which has never exactly been what Telltale is known for. It's mostly just glorified quick time events like in past games but the sections they have built in order to give a sense of combat and fighting off hordes of walkers are well done with making you think about your positioning and using your ability to knock over the zombified people which is pretty fun and feels like an interesting way to attempt a mini horde mode every so often in a game without extensive combat mechanics. These sections would most likely get tiresome if given enough time but thankfully the game seems to use these sections just sparsely enough to feel like a nice break from the normal movie style story that the episodes tend to be otherwise. There's also other sections that are essentially just emulating older rail shooters like the other games in this franchise. These sections felt remotely unchanged from the older games in that you basically just focus your crosshairs on the big "shoot here" prompt and then shoot. It works fine as just the filler action gameplay between bursts of story that most of these games function on, but that's really all there is to it.
One thing that really stuck out to me about this season was how throughout the season the creative team really dipped into more subtle aspects of horror with the Zombie apocalypse in a way that the series hasn't since season one. Season three had one moment of this at the very beginning but outside of that the series was much more focused on the drama and tension between people in seasons two and three that I hadn't even noticed until I played through all of season four. Scenes like Clem's nightmares, getting pulled back into the darkness by Zombie Brody in episode one, the person pleading for death as his body is melted from the burning metal he was stuck under, all a lot more subtle and kind of horrifying in ways that feel extremely reminiscent of season one's approach to trying to have more horror beyond the walking dead that surrounds them. It's hard for me to ignore this now that I've made this connection, but I honestly do prefer this style of approach especially this late into the series's life. It's hard to get any fear out of the zombies this late into the series; the fear and horror these things once instilled throughout the first season more or less disappeared by the time seasons two and three rolled around, not to mention that they took a major backseat to the human drama aspects of the series. This isn't necessarily bad but I feel like more of a blend like what seasons one and four have works better for me overall.
So I wanted to dedicate a section of this specifically to the ending of the final episode, since I felt it was probably the strongest part of the whole season. In Trying to escape a horde with AJ Clem has been bitten on the leg, leaving her and AJ to seek shelter in an old barn they found earlier in the story when with James. AJ desperately tries to block off the barn as Clem provides cover fire with a pistol until the two of them have a moment where the walkers can't get in. After a tearful goodbye and pleading with AJ to either kill your or leave you depending on your choice, AJ agrees to do as you say at first, until he turns around and supposedly hits you with an axe. The whole scene is incredibly emotional and really feels like a send off to a character we've watched grow over several seasons.
The issue though, is that anyone who has spent even a small amount of time with The Walking Dead will most likely be questioning why they don't just cut off her leg since the bite just happened a few minutes ago. Thankfully this quick cut works as a great misdirection, since that's what AJ did. In the after credits/real ending of the story you play as AJ and come back home to the boarding school to see Clem on crutches with everyone else as everyone who survived the events of the game are there, happy and safe. Seeing AJ go from this baby who we could barely keep alive in season 2 to someone resourceful and smart enough to save his family on his own is really cool to see and effectively ties together what this season is ultimately about, that being ending the cycle of loss that has been perpetrated since the start of the outbreak. AJ doesn't let Clem die like Clem had to let Lee die, he makes sure she survives and everyone who survives gets to end up happy and safe for the first time in a long, long time. All things must die has effectively been the mantra of the series since season one, but the final season effectively adds an asterisk to that. Saying that while all things will go eventually, we can still fight to make sure that that time is as far off as possible. It's a nice, resounding message of hope in a series that has always leaned far more onto the bleak side.
And with that, Telltale's The Walking Dead is over. It was truly an unforgettable ride and I'm glad I got to experience Clementine's story. Her having a happy ending after everything that she has been through is well deserved in my opinion, and fits really well narratively and tonally in a way I wasn't expecting since the series doesn't always have the most tonally consistent or well thought out endings (looking at you season two) and considering all the development issues this season went through due to Telltale shutting down I wasn't expecting to be as satisfied with the ending as I was; but I'm more than happy to report that they stuck the landing. Definitely recommend this season if you enjoyed season one or any of the others, it feels like the perfect place to end Clementine's story.
9/10
2021
I'm not really sure where to begin with this game. If anything I'm more just amazed it exists in the first place. I remember learning about Dread back in 2008 when I was first getting into the series due to the the masterpieces demo of Super Metroid back in Smash Bros Brawl and then subsequently trying to find out everything I could about the series online. I thought this game was never going to exist and would just be a rumored game that would never come out; which was then strengthened by the fact that the series as a whole was more or less dead from 2010 to 2017 when Samus Returns came out. Seeing this announced at E3 was probably one of the biggest, most hype announcements for a game to me personally and I was so excited to finally see my favorite series return after all these years. I was a bit apprehensive however. This would be the first completely new 2d Metroid since 2002, and the first new Metroid game in general since Other M and after Samus Returns (which is a game I liked but have a few flaws with) I was unsure on if Metroid Dread could live up to the hype and expectations I had for the grand return of Metroid. Luckily, this game is everything I wanted and more.
I won't be talking about story spoilers outside what is shown in trailers because I do think that this is best experienced as the endcap to the main Metroid Saga and not explained over a text review like this, but know that if you've been a fan of the series for a long time the story does not disappoint and works great as the end to the story of the original run of 2d games while also being a great starting point for adventures yet to come. The story didn't go the way I expected after Fusion but I do think it works really well and achieves what it sets out to do. Not to mention it has some of the best characterization we've seen for Samus in a long time, basically acting as a counter to everything wrong with how she was written in Other M. However, while I do like the game's story a lot that's not the main focus of this game or where it really shines, that would be in its absolutely incredible gameplay.
This game is by far the best Metroid has ever felt to play, no contest. From the moment you gain control of Samus everything just feels right. You move at the perfect pace, not too fast to miss things or to make it hard to deal with enemies but not too slow either as to where you feel like you're moving through molasses. This is enhanced as you go on by the sheer amount of abilities that help with movement that you manage to get throughout the game. It gets to a point with controlling the game and the abilities you unlock that movement feels effortless and incredibly smooth. I think the best word I have for how it feels to move around in this game is natural. Everything you do in this game movement wise just feels right in a way I can't really describe more than it feeling like you're remembering how to ride a bike once you do it again. This may just be my years of latent Metroid playing coming back doing part of this, but I fully stand by this game just feeling absolutely amazing to control; it just makes it so fun to traverse and explore the massive world that this game provides.
A core part of this movement and general exploration gameplay working as well as it did is it's absolutely incredible level design. The different areas of this game are designed in such ways that they feel so incredible to explore. There's so much hidden behind every corner, whether it's secret passages or another upgrade for your energy or missiles the game manages to constantly reward you in some way for being curious and trying something off the beaten path, and ultimately I think that's at the core of how a Metroidvania game should design its world. In that same vein, I actually did get lost repeatedly both in the main game and going for 100% which is an awesome feeling for a Metroidvania to achieve I think. The map is so sprawling and so incredibly large that it can feel daunting and can easily lead to you getting lost and turned around as you try to find your way forward, but when you finally do oh man does it make you feel like a genius for finding the way forward or finding that power up you've been searching for to open that one door back in the starting area.
Another aspect of the map that I found really cool in this game is how the world changes and shifts with what you do throughout the game. For example very early on in the first area you will come across a wall you need to blow up in order to advance and move on to the next room, but doing so blocks off the way you came and makes you try to find a new way to get back to where you were before. This sort of thing mixed with general map changes as you go through the story and cause different things to happen in the world are really cool also, like when certain areas of the map freeze over so the main villain can try to impede your progress. These sort of things help to make the world feel alive and changing as you go through it and impact it in your way and I think that that's a great thing for a game that is all about exploring a map to its fullest.
While I normally don't care about graphics too much for games I just need to talk about how insanely good the world looks in this game. So much detail and care was put into designing each area and a lot of rooms have insanely detailed backgrounds that I feel like was so much effort for something that most people wouldn't pay much attention too, but man do they look great and show just how much love and care was put into this game.
I've brought up abilities a few times so far but I want to specifically talk about a handful of them because the game both adds a number of great new items while also improving on older ones in interesting ways that help benefit with the exploration and backtracking that the game is built around. First things first there's a few changes to existing abilities that I think really benefit the game design and allow them to have a more staggered expanding of the world in a sense. For example, the series staple Varia suit returns in Dread but instead of being an all temperature suit like in past games this time around it only allows you to traverse through extremely hot areas instead of both extremely hot and extremely cold areas. Instead you unlock the ability to survive cold once you get the Gravity suit, another returning suit that has now been given this temperature resistance. I like this change since it effectively gives you stages in which the world opens up to you and keeps exploration feeling fresh and varied as you're given new areas later into the game that you can now explore using the Gravity suit instead of unlocking effectively all of the restricted area of the map due to taking damage from them at once with one upgrade.
On top of that several other returning staples got changes that I feel were good changes all around, such as the grapple beam being made useable. This is the only Metroid game where I'd say it feels good to actually use the grapple beam, which is astonishing to me because I thought this ability was just destined to not be fun to use. However due to the fact that unlike every other 2d Metroid before this Dread has the advantage of being on a full modern controller with enough buttons to accommodate everything, which makes using and selecting the grapple beam flow a lot better and not feel annoying to use like it has in previous games. Another neat change is the introduction of the cross bombs, which are effectively an easier to pull of version of the 5 bomb drops from Super Metroid. It's incredible nice that they made this more of an active item since its easier to pull off for new players, and is a lot more convenient than having to charge up a charge shot and then doing a bomb instead of just being able to hold the missile button and activate a better version of the bomb. I also really love how they changed the pulse scanner from Samus Returns, which is an item I really didn't like because it effectively just showed you where all the hidden rooms were and didn't make you look for them. Meanwhile the new version of it shows you where hidden blocks are and makes you figure out whats behind them and where to go from there, which I vastly prefer personally. Essentially what I'm trying to say with this section is that the changes to old items feel like overall improvements across the board from older games and really added to how great the game felt to play for me.
As for new items, this game adds a few really unique items that I think mesh incredibly well with the rest of Samus's established moveset. Abilities such as the flash shift, which is basically just a nice dash you can use to quickly zoom around or to dodge during bosses, feels right at home in Samus's kit and helps make boss fights feel incredibly fun since it adds a new option to avoid attacks that feels great in my opinion. One of the other new abilities, the phantom cloak, also made dealing with the game's cover enemies, The EMMI (who we'll talk about in a bit), a lot more manageable as well as allowing for another neat way of allowing the world to open up after getting it in the form of stealth doors. The last of the new abilities I want to talk about is the storm missiles, which while they come from the only kinda bad boss in the game in my opinion are a really fun upgrade on the missiles that make dealing with multiple enemies in an area a lot easier on top of also allowing for new types of puzzles involving these kinds of missiles. There is probably only one new item that felt kind of useless in the game and that was the spin boost, since it was effectively just one extra jump it didn't feel like much of an improvement. Especially when you get the space jump, which is just a better version of it all around, a few minutes later. Ultimately the way this game handles upgrades is really well done and almost all of them feel great to use in normal gameplay.
Speaking of normal gameplay there is a mechanic from Samus Returns that was brought back for this game that I wanted to talk about, since this game does it so much better than how Samus Returns used it. That move would be the melee counter/parry. In Samus Returns this parry kind of just stopped gameplay and made it a waiting game of "wait for enemy to flash so I can actually do some actual damage" but that thankfully isn't the case in Dread. You can do considerable amounts of damage without needing to parry and its basically just there as an option instead of the only way to deal with enemies. There are still some enemies that need to be countered to be dealt with, but they're few and far between and act more as ways to make you stop and think your encounter through instead of being that way with every single enemy in the game. The parry especially nice with how it now factors into boss fights and EMMI encounters.
The EMMI's are an absolutely incredible gameplay mechanic in my opinion. I love having these effectively puzzle bosses that have the one single goal of hunting you down and making your life hell. It adds so much tension to the game in a similar way to how the SA-X in fusion operated and how Mr. X functions in the Resident Evil 2 Remake and I love how it feels to have them chase after you; and especially how great it feels to actually finally be able to turn the tables and destroy them after you get the omega cannon, your only way of dealing with them, up and running. The way they upgraded the EMMI's you faced as you went on by giving them variations of abilities you can get from them makes them work really well as a real tangible threat to you even by the end of the game where you have most of the upgrades by that point. I don't know if these enemies would work well outside of the context of Dread, but goddamn do they work incredibly well in this game and function as fun recurring boss fights.
On the topic of boss fights, I think this has hands down the best boss fights of the series and my all time favorite final boss of any game. I think it says a lot that even the worst boss in the game is just kind of frustrating. Otherwise though, every boss was an absolute delight to fight. All of them were designed in such ways that made their patterns easy to see but something you still had to adapt too. They were really challenging but in a way where right off the bat you knew you could learn how to conquer them if you took the time to learn. Every boss fight was just a constant adrenaline rush that was made even better by how well the devs worked really cool cinematic counters into the fights without making them the only way to do damage to these bosses. As I mentioned before, the final boss of this game is absolutely incredible. It's a tough fight and I died more times against him than I think every other boss fight in the game, but it felt like a real test of everything you've learned over the course of the game and finally defeating it and everything ensuing from that was the most hype moment of the game for me. I really hope we get an update or a dlc that allows for a boss rush mode later on because I would play that as much as possible if it existed.
One thing I want to touch on before wrapping this up is 100%ing the game, which is normally not something I do in games but I made an exception in this case. 100%ing this game is hard as hell. This is specifically because the devs went out of their way to design a ton of shinespark puzzles that make the one in Metroid Zero mission look like it was designed for babies, and personally I loved this but also can totally see why this is frustrating. It felt incredible to finally be able to figure out the insane shinespark tricks I needed to pull off to get this next item towards completion and it really made you learn the game's movement and mechanics in order to get everything. That being said, I totally get this being frustrating and fault no one for not being a fan of it.
Overall, I think Metroid Dread is not only my favorite Metroid game, but my favorite game of all time. I've already spent this entire review listing why that is, but I want to restate how incredible this game is. Everything in it works in a way that clicks with me in just the right way and I cannot believe how good this game is after it being cancelled and rebooted tons of times since Metroid Fusion came out according to the series director. This game is quite literally a dream come true for me and I think everyone needs to play this game, because it's something special that I can already tell is going to be considered a modern classic. I'm glad Samus is back, and I'm hoping she's here to stay. See you next mission everyone.
10/10
I won't be talking about story spoilers outside what is shown in trailers because I do think that this is best experienced as the endcap to the main Metroid Saga and not explained over a text review like this, but know that if you've been a fan of the series for a long time the story does not disappoint and works great as the end to the story of the original run of 2d games while also being a great starting point for adventures yet to come. The story didn't go the way I expected after Fusion but I do think it works really well and achieves what it sets out to do. Not to mention it has some of the best characterization we've seen for Samus in a long time, basically acting as a counter to everything wrong with how she was written in Other M. However, while I do like the game's story a lot that's not the main focus of this game or where it really shines, that would be in its absolutely incredible gameplay.
This game is by far the best Metroid has ever felt to play, no contest. From the moment you gain control of Samus everything just feels right. You move at the perfect pace, not too fast to miss things or to make it hard to deal with enemies but not too slow either as to where you feel like you're moving through molasses. This is enhanced as you go on by the sheer amount of abilities that help with movement that you manage to get throughout the game. It gets to a point with controlling the game and the abilities you unlock that movement feels effortless and incredibly smooth. I think the best word I have for how it feels to move around in this game is natural. Everything you do in this game movement wise just feels right in a way I can't really describe more than it feeling like you're remembering how to ride a bike once you do it again. This may just be my years of latent Metroid playing coming back doing part of this, but I fully stand by this game just feeling absolutely amazing to control; it just makes it so fun to traverse and explore the massive world that this game provides.
A core part of this movement and general exploration gameplay working as well as it did is it's absolutely incredible level design. The different areas of this game are designed in such ways that they feel so incredible to explore. There's so much hidden behind every corner, whether it's secret passages or another upgrade for your energy or missiles the game manages to constantly reward you in some way for being curious and trying something off the beaten path, and ultimately I think that's at the core of how a Metroidvania game should design its world. In that same vein, I actually did get lost repeatedly both in the main game and going for 100% which is an awesome feeling for a Metroidvania to achieve I think. The map is so sprawling and so incredibly large that it can feel daunting and can easily lead to you getting lost and turned around as you try to find your way forward, but when you finally do oh man does it make you feel like a genius for finding the way forward or finding that power up you've been searching for to open that one door back in the starting area.
Another aspect of the map that I found really cool in this game is how the world changes and shifts with what you do throughout the game. For example very early on in the first area you will come across a wall you need to blow up in order to advance and move on to the next room, but doing so blocks off the way you came and makes you try to find a new way to get back to where you were before. This sort of thing mixed with general map changes as you go through the story and cause different things to happen in the world are really cool also, like when certain areas of the map freeze over so the main villain can try to impede your progress. These sort of things help to make the world feel alive and changing as you go through it and impact it in your way and I think that that's a great thing for a game that is all about exploring a map to its fullest.
While I normally don't care about graphics too much for games I just need to talk about how insanely good the world looks in this game. So much detail and care was put into designing each area and a lot of rooms have insanely detailed backgrounds that I feel like was so much effort for something that most people wouldn't pay much attention too, but man do they look great and show just how much love and care was put into this game.
I've brought up abilities a few times so far but I want to specifically talk about a handful of them because the game both adds a number of great new items while also improving on older ones in interesting ways that help benefit with the exploration and backtracking that the game is built around. First things first there's a few changes to existing abilities that I think really benefit the game design and allow them to have a more staggered expanding of the world in a sense. For example, the series staple Varia suit returns in Dread but instead of being an all temperature suit like in past games this time around it only allows you to traverse through extremely hot areas instead of both extremely hot and extremely cold areas. Instead you unlock the ability to survive cold once you get the Gravity suit, another returning suit that has now been given this temperature resistance. I like this change since it effectively gives you stages in which the world opens up to you and keeps exploration feeling fresh and varied as you're given new areas later into the game that you can now explore using the Gravity suit instead of unlocking effectively all of the restricted area of the map due to taking damage from them at once with one upgrade.
On top of that several other returning staples got changes that I feel were good changes all around, such as the grapple beam being made useable. This is the only Metroid game where I'd say it feels good to actually use the grapple beam, which is astonishing to me because I thought this ability was just destined to not be fun to use. However due to the fact that unlike every other 2d Metroid before this Dread has the advantage of being on a full modern controller with enough buttons to accommodate everything, which makes using and selecting the grapple beam flow a lot better and not feel annoying to use like it has in previous games. Another neat change is the introduction of the cross bombs, which are effectively an easier to pull of version of the 5 bomb drops from Super Metroid. It's incredible nice that they made this more of an active item since its easier to pull off for new players, and is a lot more convenient than having to charge up a charge shot and then doing a bomb instead of just being able to hold the missile button and activate a better version of the bomb. I also really love how they changed the pulse scanner from Samus Returns, which is an item I really didn't like because it effectively just showed you where all the hidden rooms were and didn't make you look for them. Meanwhile the new version of it shows you where hidden blocks are and makes you figure out whats behind them and where to go from there, which I vastly prefer personally. Essentially what I'm trying to say with this section is that the changes to old items feel like overall improvements across the board from older games and really added to how great the game felt to play for me.
As for new items, this game adds a few really unique items that I think mesh incredibly well with the rest of Samus's established moveset. Abilities such as the flash shift, which is basically just a nice dash you can use to quickly zoom around or to dodge during bosses, feels right at home in Samus's kit and helps make boss fights feel incredibly fun since it adds a new option to avoid attacks that feels great in my opinion. One of the other new abilities, the phantom cloak, also made dealing with the game's cover enemies, The EMMI (who we'll talk about in a bit), a lot more manageable as well as allowing for another neat way of allowing the world to open up after getting it in the form of stealth doors. The last of the new abilities I want to talk about is the storm missiles, which while they come from the only kinda bad boss in the game in my opinion are a really fun upgrade on the missiles that make dealing with multiple enemies in an area a lot easier on top of also allowing for new types of puzzles involving these kinds of missiles. There is probably only one new item that felt kind of useless in the game and that was the spin boost, since it was effectively just one extra jump it didn't feel like much of an improvement. Especially when you get the space jump, which is just a better version of it all around, a few minutes later. Ultimately the way this game handles upgrades is really well done and almost all of them feel great to use in normal gameplay.
Speaking of normal gameplay there is a mechanic from Samus Returns that was brought back for this game that I wanted to talk about, since this game does it so much better than how Samus Returns used it. That move would be the melee counter/parry. In Samus Returns this parry kind of just stopped gameplay and made it a waiting game of "wait for enemy to flash so I can actually do some actual damage" but that thankfully isn't the case in Dread. You can do considerable amounts of damage without needing to parry and its basically just there as an option instead of the only way to deal with enemies. There are still some enemies that need to be countered to be dealt with, but they're few and far between and act more as ways to make you stop and think your encounter through instead of being that way with every single enemy in the game. The parry especially nice with how it now factors into boss fights and EMMI encounters.
The EMMI's are an absolutely incredible gameplay mechanic in my opinion. I love having these effectively puzzle bosses that have the one single goal of hunting you down and making your life hell. It adds so much tension to the game in a similar way to how the SA-X in fusion operated and how Mr. X functions in the Resident Evil 2 Remake and I love how it feels to have them chase after you; and especially how great it feels to actually finally be able to turn the tables and destroy them after you get the omega cannon, your only way of dealing with them, up and running. The way they upgraded the EMMI's you faced as you went on by giving them variations of abilities you can get from them makes them work really well as a real tangible threat to you even by the end of the game where you have most of the upgrades by that point. I don't know if these enemies would work well outside of the context of Dread, but goddamn do they work incredibly well in this game and function as fun recurring boss fights.
On the topic of boss fights, I think this has hands down the best boss fights of the series and my all time favorite final boss of any game. I think it says a lot that even the worst boss in the game is just kind of frustrating. Otherwise though, every boss was an absolute delight to fight. All of them were designed in such ways that made their patterns easy to see but something you still had to adapt too. They were really challenging but in a way where right off the bat you knew you could learn how to conquer them if you took the time to learn. Every boss fight was just a constant adrenaline rush that was made even better by how well the devs worked really cool cinematic counters into the fights without making them the only way to do damage to these bosses. As I mentioned before, the final boss of this game is absolutely incredible. It's a tough fight and I died more times against him than I think every other boss fight in the game, but it felt like a real test of everything you've learned over the course of the game and finally defeating it and everything ensuing from that was the most hype moment of the game for me. I really hope we get an update or a dlc that allows for a boss rush mode later on because I would play that as much as possible if it existed.
One thing I want to touch on before wrapping this up is 100%ing the game, which is normally not something I do in games but I made an exception in this case. 100%ing this game is hard as hell. This is specifically because the devs went out of their way to design a ton of shinespark puzzles that make the one in Metroid Zero mission look like it was designed for babies, and personally I loved this but also can totally see why this is frustrating. It felt incredible to finally be able to figure out the insane shinespark tricks I needed to pull off to get this next item towards completion and it really made you learn the game's movement and mechanics in order to get everything. That being said, I totally get this being frustrating and fault no one for not being a fan of it.
Overall, I think Metroid Dread is not only my favorite Metroid game, but my favorite game of all time. I've already spent this entire review listing why that is, but I want to restate how incredible this game is. Everything in it works in a way that clicks with me in just the right way and I cannot believe how good this game is after it being cancelled and rebooted tons of times since Metroid Fusion came out according to the series director. This game is quite literally a dream come true for me and I think everyone needs to play this game, because it's something special that I can already tell is going to be considered a modern classic. I'm glad Samus is back, and I'm hoping she's here to stay. See you next mission everyone.
10/10