Leave it to pure contempt to get me back into using this site.

The whole game reads like no one in development had any passion for this product. There is nothing exceptional here at all. I don’t know if the Luminous engine just can’t handle gameplay where you do more than hold a button or if this is that team's idea of engaging and are just wholly committed to it, but somethings gotta change here, which is unlikely since I don’t see that studio existing into next year. There’s this parkour system that would have worked if they didn’t drop every obelisk of side content haphazardly onto the world map like a 5 year old playing SimCity. These biomes were absolutely supposed to just be fields lightly dotted with things to see before the Ubisoft curse took hold and instead crammed 6 different iterations of “do our bad combat slogs”. This game makes use of 4 different magic types: short range, long range, long range, and long range.

I could in no world conceive of writing this bad in anything, not even the worst TV show has anything this devoid of character. Not even Marvel movies are an apt comparison anymore, those can have neat things in them. Nothing exemplifies this more than going on a side quest for who might be the only half decent character in the game, inspecting a room with three dialogue prompts that all say “this character must have had a complicated history with one of the villains”, after which you find a diary that “might delve into that relationship further” and when prompted to read it the main character says “nah”. Every idea is only explored to its most basic form. The setting could have been so much more. The story could have stuck to its theme of rising from nothing to do great things, which is already an overly bloated message, instead of spinning out around the last turn and adding the addendum “as long as you were born super powerful and special and important.”

The music feels safe and forgettable. Hearing the first 5 seconds of the battle track over and over as I sped away from combat was very grating but also kinda funny. I do have exactly one positive thing to say about Forspoken, and that is the visual effects are pretty great overall. Magic looks like it feels cool, when it’s not congesting the screen.

I would call this a saltine cracker of a video game, but at least those have salt. This is straight up a communion wafer. Lacking flavor, dry as shit, and a strong association with being in hell.

I think I have just enough political literacy to find all of this games verbose dissertations fascinating. I wringed my playthrough dry and that was as one of many variations of the main character that I could have become. The density of the writing is astounding, detailing the intricacies you don't often get in an entirely new setting, be that politics, geography, religion, media, society, and the psychological ramifications of these concepts in tandem with one another. It puts you into the role of an amnesiac flawlessly. You as the player are really only expecting to piece together events pertaining to the main character's personhood, but when all basic concepts are unfamiliar, the lack of confidence lets you really play the role with all of the dread intended. Any game that lets me play the role of a empathetic-communist-hyper apologetic disaster cop is okay by me.

I can understand the ire this game generates, but a lot of the things folks hate about this game I ended up finding a lot of value in. It's a cake walk compared to other FF games, and while this is the biggest knock against it for me personally, it didn't bother me all that much. The game's difficulty is balanced around the player drawing a lot of spells from enemies mid fight.

Speaking of, the junction and drawing system is crackheaded. But once you familiarize yourself with it you get into this groove with junctioning magic. As much as the game tried it still took me a while to comprehend, but once I got it down it all just clicked. It was nice to be able to have every spell at my disposal with every character.

The cast is another point of contention. I'll admit the supporting cast is weak compared to say FF7, but I think Squall really carries this game. His entire presentation with his inner monologue really puts you firmly in his shoes. I've seen it argued that he's kinda just an emo kid, and yeah, that's kind of the point. He is very much not equipped to be this protagonist, and he is fighting that every step of the way. It rules.

The last dungeon was pretty miserable, but aside from that the ending was just superb. I won't go into detail, but it's safe to say that for me personally, the whole ending sequence is probably my favorite moment across the whole franchise so far. The games FMV sequences hold up in general. It's no surprise that Square has been the one to beat in that department for this entire industry's lifetime.

The music is great. Triple triad kicks so much ass. I just left this game with a lot of positive feelings. I don't begrudge anyone who didn't vibe with this game, but for me it's looking like it's up there with FF7.

It can't be overstated just how perfect Dragon Quest localizations end up. There is so much charm bursting with every interaction in this game. I was a bit down on having recruitable monsters in favor of a traditional party at first but in the end it worked out just fine. When it did give you party members, there was an initial fear that they were too under leveled to end up at all useful, but the game is paced so that never ends up being a problem for long. The animations on the monster sprites are just superb. There is a masterful understanding of perspective at play with every encounter. The pacing of this game really is fantastic. I always enjoy the grind in this series more than some others, but it was nice that the game flowed more smoothly in regards to how often you would even need to grind. The party chat function did a lot in terms of connecting with your human companions. They weren't ever present in the narrative but they would offer some nice character and world building when you chose to engage with them, which I did constantly.

The biggest gripe to have with this game is how you can only take 4 of your 8 party members into most dungeons. That is where the majority of levelling is done and having party members miss that ended up rendering them useless. I never deviated from the team of 4 I always had on hand, and that made a lot of the experience a bit dull since I was incentivized to just stick with the same members and their limited spells.

This game is indicative of why Dragon Quest is such a revered series. They always implement new ideas while retaining all of the heart. This is an entry that shows what the series can be at its best.

I've been hearing nothing but praise for this game for quite some time now, and initially I was on board with it all. The music is wonderful and diverse. The aesthetic is very pleasing. A lot of the designs of the world and it's architecture are just cool to look at. But over time the quality begins to wane. Particularly with the writing.

This is really just an old school and simple Final Fantasy style story, for better or worse. The characters are likable enough without so much as scuffing the mold. The localization is very fun, giving the cast a variety of European accents and unique nomenclature. This livened up the otherwise standard JRPG events taking place. Some of which felt out of place and were clearly meant to be fun diversions, but only ended up feeling like a waste of time.

However, as a whole, this game does not waste any time, ending around a tight 30 hours with sidequests. In most cases I would praise it's brevity, but I really could have done with more to connect with the cast more. They seem to arbitrarily enter and exit the story, and few really get a chance to shine. I liked that the main character and the love interest actually had good chemistry together. A lot of my favorite scenes were just them being cute together.

The plot is, again, simple. That didn't stop me from being intrigued at the start. It never really blew my mind at any point, but I was enjoying myself well enough, up to a point. That point being around the start of the 70% mark, when our cast suddenly decides to forgo any common sense and actively work with an antagonist, despite the events immediately before giving reason as to why this should not be done. It was just a weird and frustrating moment that clearly only served to move the story along, logic be damned, but no one seems to even address that maybe this is something that they should not do. This one event made it hard to appreciate a story that wasn't doing a whole lot for me in the first place.

While the story takes its time to annoy me, the combat did that right from the get go. Having your character automatically attack when you approach an enemy isn't inherently poor combat, but when quarters are tight and all you want to do is move past an enemy but end up swinging instead is frustrating. For a game that is supposed to be tactical, your options are very limited. You can command your party to do things… sometimes. Even when they need to do things that are crucial the the fight at hand. It can take a while before you can control them to do anything, and once you do that once, you must wait again while they get absolutely pummeled. Luckily your playable character had the power gifted by the gods to draw aggro. While the actions you can take are not varied, the ways the enemies make you use them can be. I just wish the whole experience was smoother.

Any charm this game has is dulled by the act of experiencing the whole of it. I had a pleasant time with a lot of this game, but by the end I was glad it was over so quickly.

There's a weird feeling this game elicits in which I can see how I would have had a much more immersive experience had I played this on the Wii while simultaneously thankful that I didn't. The brush mechanic slows the pace of things, having it activated by holding a button and using the analog stick to clumsily draw out a circle on par with a preschoolers. The trade off being the HDification of the game that does the art direction just as much justice as having the brush feel a little better does to the gameplay.

If you are a fan of 3D Zelda games, which statically speaking I am going to assume you are, you are doing yourself a disservice by not trying out this title. It feels not so out of place alongside its influences, aside from it feeling pretty good to fight enemies. Being made aware of the self induced difficulty character action game players present onto themselves by not using items made me hyper aware of that stigma in most character action games that I play and thus gives me a somewhat pathetic case of imposter syndrome when I even consider needing to do just that. That wasn't a problem with this game because it's easy! Very easy! The game does start out rather rudimentary, but as your arsenal of brush techniques, weapon capabilities, and problem solving capabilities expand, so too does the depth, and in turn the enjoyability.

Structurally, this game has you going through 3 equally trifling segments all culminating in saving the world from demons eventually. Along the way you meet many named characters. These characters are the foundation this game lays its narrative upon. The brief connections you make with these people is the crux of this game's motif. Amaterasu doesn't speak, rather having Issun, an amicable and staunch little pervert, be our mouthpiece. And he does a bang up job. The Navi-like relationship feeling more like an actual relationship goes a long way. Amaterasu is a god, and yet is nothing without the bonds forged along the way. It's not the most unique sentiment but it's a genuinely nice one.

There's a lot to appreciate here. A cavalcade of kooky character's. A light sense of humor, again on par with Zelda games with a buff equivalent to a PG rating. Genuinely moving moments elevated by a breathtaking period appropriate score. If the long playtime is an issue, just play the first act and then pretend you played it 2 more times and you'll effectively get the same experience.

I feel like all people need from an open world for it to be considered good is to be big and pretty. There isn't much to do in this world besides fight the various monsters that roam around or try to unlock areas on the map, which can be done with a press of the button.

The way progression is locked behind leveling up and doing side quests is silly. Even when completing the side quests it wants me to and most of the side quests available I'm still required to grind before I can progress. Or I have to unlock parts of the map, which I need upgrades for which I get from leveling up so I have to level up even more than I already did. This is asinine.

Not that I didn't enjoy combat. I wish there was more direct control with party members but considering this is an active game I get how that would be difficult and getting them to focus on specific types of actions does well enough.

The tone of the game was pretty milquetoast overall. I get the feeling it was leading to something better but I just didn't have it in me to go through any more than I did. None of the characters' personalities really stood out unless their personality was that they were annoying.

One aspect of the game that I wholly enjoyed was the music. More games need to just give their tracks a vocal lead because most of the time it makes the soundtrack more memorable.

My first endeavour into Xeno didn't fill me with a lot of confidence for other entries, but I'm willing to give them a shot anyway. More focus on the story would help this game a lot.

Also side note this was the last game in my Wii U backlog so I might as well just set the thing on fire.

Combat feels a bit off. Switching styles could be more instantaneous to help it flow better. You can do this by activating your EX mode but it barely lasts and using it up removes your ability to use special moves, so I barely got a chance to use special moves which sucks the enjoyment out of encounters. There also felt like less variety in your special takedowns. Even after scouring Kamurocho for the QR codes necessary to get vital combat abilities, opportunities rarely presented themselves to really showcase the cool moves I earned. The hyper-specificity of how to get them to proc led to me just kicking fools while they were down 4 out of 5 times. I really wish I didn’t find every RGG games combat so shallow because it’s genuinely the only thing that keeps these games from entering my personal upper echelon. No Yakuza game ever clicked with me 100% on a gameplay level so it might just be me. The tailing minigame put me to sleep, and they use it exponentially more than in other RGG games. They drag on so long I genuinely think it’s the thing that’s keeping this game from a higher score for me.

Thankfully this game has the best narrative of any Yakuza game so far. I'd never describe a Yakuza game's story as "gripping". They're schlocky but more than serviceable, but this time around I was fully invested. It helps that it shows a lot more restraint with the twists, even with it being a detective story. Excellent cast of characters. Yagami is cool and likable. The crew you end up assembling are also great, and some of the antagonists are my favorite in the series, Hamura was excellent in particular. The dub is really strong. I could easily recommend it.

I didn’t really care for the side quest structure at all, in that some of them need you to make friends with unknown individuals to progress them, and without, after all these years, decently functional quest marking, makes some of them impossible to complete without a guide. I ended up just befriending everyone I could before doing any side case, which aren’t nearly as fleshed out and way more tedious. The side cases themselves are an absolute joy of course. Multiple multipart stories feel way more intimate this time around, which admittedly does lend some justification to the friendship system.

It’s such a brief moment but I can’t not mention the woman harassment simulator that I honestly can't tell if it was supposed to make the characters in question uncomfortable or uplift them in some cumbrains idea of empowerment.

Kinda wild how you are accompanied by a party full of magic users for half of the game. Having their long spell animations play out every couple of seconds really messed with the flow of combat, but it was also the most effective method to just have them go all out, so turning their spells off wasn't really justified. You don't really have a reason to play anyone else besides Cless (I know the names are different in the other versions but I played PSX) since he was the most active and also the only one who unlocked better moves by performing the ones he already had. You could have easily done that with Chester or Suzu but it didn't happen.

Speaking of Suzu, she arrived so late in the game that she didn't get a chance to catch up to the others in level before the game ended. It would have been a welcome addition if it was more significant.

I really, reaaaaallly don't like how it uses an equipment slot in order to give you manual control in combat. It really isn't worth it to use up an item slot, but the feel of combat is so much better when you have complete control of the character, otherwise they will just evade unprompted at seemingly random points. I love the incentive of using artes to acquire combination moves, but having this available to only one character is a huge letdown. When I felt like I was in complete control of the character, battles were enjoyable.

The dungeons are absolutely the worst part of this game. They were long, indistinct slogs that made me go absolutely feral. When they weren't long they had some horrible gimmick attached to them, such as taking damage periodically, or, most egregiously, involving random chance in order to go through the correct door, that actively seemed to give me the worst luck imaginable.

The characters were all pretty solid. Tales characters vary in quality, so having a game full of inoffensive ones is welcome. Their dynamic with each other worked really well. There were also some genuinely funny moments which seems to be a hard thing to pull off for this franchise. The villain was pretty weak. The game's ending is quite weak, in no small part due to the inconclusiveness of Dhaos’ motivations. They just kind of get thrown out after the game is already over, and it only gets touched upon briefly, and ultimately doesn’t even seem all that important to the narrative.

For a first outing this sets a pretty attainable standard to exceed. You really see the improvements that have been made to this formula throughout the years, but it is a solid start to a prolific series of games.

This game really delivers in all regards. The combat is well designed. All characters have their particular uses and they always gelled with each other. I never found myself tired of it and even consistently sought out battles on the field throughout the whole game. The only time it doesn't really work is for the bosses that take up the whole grid. It's antithetical to the whole system.

The story, and arguably the draw to the whole game, is very engaging. Once the core component of the split timeline was introduced I really got invested. I do wish there was more variation but that ultimately doesn't affect the narrative provided. What does affect it is how jumping between timelines when a requirement is met doesn't stop you from just skipping over the new stuff while trying to find it. There are games that do this perfectly so when I don't see it utilized it kinda bums me out.

The characters are all good. This might be an odd complaint but it irked me just enough to bare mentioning. All major characters have character portraits in game, but it seems like some just weren't given one. I don't know if it was a time or budget constraint or they just omitted them intentionally but it seemed odd to me.

The music is another stand out. There aren't a ton of tracks in the game, but much like the combat I never found myself tiring of hearing them. The battle music in particular is incredibly catchy. I do wish there was a bit more diversity. Towns having unique tracks would help.

In summary, this game never blows anything out of the water, but for what it is trying to deliver, I'd say it's a great experience.

Platinum game is fun.

Platinum story is bad.

Time is flat circle.

I have never fluctuated between enjoying a game and loathing it throughout as much as I have with this one.

It has a pretty fun combat system where you have to attack with your assortment of weapons and spells to break down armour. Doing so will cause the enemy to lose a turn or two while leaving it vulnerable to larger amounts of damage. You can also stack BP in order to strike multiple times with weapons or do big damage with spells. It forces you to choose whether to build up enough attacks to do damage when it's vulnerable or to save it to lower its defences quicker. Certain characters can only use certain weapons or spell types leaving some of them feeling more useless than the rest. Thankfully you eventually find a way to allow characters to add the moves of another party member in the form of jobs.

Each party member has what is known as a "path action" which serve as kind of a special action they can enact on NPCs. Doing so will unlock a variety of options, but most notably is that they are key to completing a lot of the side quests, some of which can be solved in multiple ways due to these path actions. This is a cool idea, but realizing that two characters can have path actions that ultimately do the same thing was kind of a disappointing revelation.

The thing most people laud about this game is the style, and that is completely fair. Vibrant colours and deep blur and bloom paired with the pixel graphics give this game an almost figurine like aesthetic. Enemies are given detailed pixel artwork, and the human enemies tower over you imposingly. It rules. It has a pretty standard fantasy soundtrack that I like a lot. Really good instrumentation that sounds exciting.

The narrative of this game plays out through each individual character's stories. They are not connected to each other whatsoever. This is where things get a bit messy. While some characters' stories are more intriguing than others, they are all fine in their own right. However, having to consume small chunks of each character's story over the course of an 80 hour game is brutal. You are pretty much unable to complete one character's story at a time due to the scaling difficulty. The very nature of this game obliterates its own pacing. Not only that, but party members barely interact at all, due to you being able to obtain them in any order and do each subsequent chapter the same way. I would have understood at the beginning when you are collecting everyone if they interacted very little, but as the game goes on it feels bizarre, and when they do interact it plays out so inorganically because as far as what the game shows, they don't even speak to each other outside of these 20 second intervals every 4 hours.

It's kind of sad to see such a unique product absolutely choke because of its own implementation. I did like the game overall, but it had the potential to be so much more.

Thus far I've gone through the Castlevania series in a pretty unorthodox order. This was never the intention, I've just been playing them usually as I acquire them and on whatever whim arrives, but I think this has helped me remove them mentally from their predecessors and judge them in a vacuum. That isn't the case for Harmony of Dissonance, as I have played it immediately after finishing Circle of the Moon, and can't help but to see some interesting changes in the formula. If this fact bothers you, then I'm sorry I let you down, but please get used to it.

Firstly, the feel is a lot more akin to older entries in the series. For the most part, you are committed to any airborne movements, particularly with attacking. I don't hate this, but coming off of CotM you feel a level of tightness missing in your encounters. Combat is also let down by the games unique mechanic of its magic system, wherein you can assign an elemental property to your tools which instead of using hearts as it traditionally does, you do a more effective attack using the mana meter. This would be fine if I didn't have to pause every time I ran out of mana to switch back to using the regular tool. I'm not gonna lie, I only ever used magic once in game, and that was during the final boss, and that's only because I knew it was the final boss. I didn't feel the need to experiment with the elemental properties when I knew what the items did when they didn't have any properties. That and the fact that there are no mana upgrades at all throughout the game, only health, hearts and better equipment.

I scrutinized that map like no other, not because I necessarily wanted to, but rather the game insists you do it over and over and over. This game has two identical castles you have to navigate. Along the way you get traversal abilities and keys to unlock new paths or to attain a just unreachable item which you have surely forgotten about hours later. These very items are needed to progress through the game completely. So mentally you have to juggle two identical castles with areas you have been but have not obtained everything in. This process is antithetical to the very genre that this series had invented and perfect in the 5 years before this games release. I ended the game exhausted and glad that I didn't have to do laps anymore instead of any sense of satisfaction.

At least it was nice to look at! I'll admit that CotM being my first Castlevania game I played on the Advanced Collection set a visual bar that I didn't think could be so easily lunged over. The castle(s) in this game is so distinct and kind of experimental that even when doing my hundredth lap I still found some respite in just looking at the thing.

Now, much like in my CotM review, I will remark how the base of this game still holds it above any criticism I have to avoid me just disregarding it as a game that isn't very good. I liked this game. I like this genre a lot. I am fascinated going back to these retro games (sorry boomers) and seeing how they were so ahead of the curve. I am still tickled by these games, and even as I left this one a bit more down on it than I had hoped, I'd be a dummy to deny its good qualities even now.

The diegetic UI is still amazing. There is a weight to the combat that feels perfect. The excellent sound design keeps the atmosphere constantly tense. I wish they did anything at all to make the story less predictable, even for those new to the experience. The game also looks unreal, mostly due to the fantastic lighting. I played the original Dead Space on a Toshiba laptop in 2009 that was falling apart so I can confirm the upgrade is fairly tangible.

P.S. no game should ever cost more than 60 dollars no exception.

I've been chasing the high Stardew Valley left with whatever I have laying around the house, of which consisted of this and a few other Harvest Moon games. So far this was the closest one to scratch that itch.

I developed a routine with my farm work and my social life that was relaxing. Slowly building up your farm makes every little moment feel like a triumph. Story threads would come about somewhat regularly which was welcome. Eventually I had quite a few of them ongoing at once.

What I failed to understand was the finished state of this game only needed one of these story threads to wrap up to occur. So when I finally completed one of the many tasks to "save the homeland", the game resets and incentivizes you to give it another go. I was doing something completely unrelated to the event, and before I knew it credits were rolling. I understand the design philosophy behind this, incentivizing players to seek out multiple endings. The problem is while I didn't care too much about which ending I had gotten, to just remove all progress from the stories I was trying to get through for a story thread that left so little impact that I had forgotten that it even happened leaves me with a very bitter feeling. I wasn't even halfway through the year yet!

This style of completion will definitely appeal to some folks. But it left what should have been a nice little romp with instead a feeling of being robbed of the time I put into maintaining these friendships. That coupled with a lack of any marriage options, this felt more experimental, which held it back.