Rowan1312
994 reviews liked by Rowan1312
Fallout 3: The Pitt
2009
I vividly remember eating the baby when I first played this, but that obviously isn't a choice so I have no idea where that came from
Stellar Blade
2024
I have no clue if this is still the last bastion of our culture war or if it’s too woke now so I’m giving it a 5/10 to average those two possibilities out
This review contains spoilers
[This will contain spoilers for both Crisis Core, and the original FFVII]
Something I don't see a lot of people talk about is how much that disc 3 super-secret Zack flashback cutscene in the original VII rips. Squaresoft's brazen over-dramatism manages to enrich a character with life in such a short time.. Zack is just a peppy boy who loves the sound of his voice so much that he can have a conversation with a comatose dude, and walk away from it satisfied. His death goes on to leave a paralyzed Cloud idolizing his lost friend, subconsciously glamorizing a life that ended without fanfare the moment he tried to escape the system.
Coming off of Crisis Core, the main thought in my head really was...
Did Zack even improve as a character after all of this?
There's some additions I do like here and there; the way Zack is afforded no agency by the plot - aimlessly hovering between the military he serves, and the war against it. The envy he feels for those who have the option to stand up for themselves; it's sooooo almost there. But the plot is just unwilling to express these feelings in anything less than an artsy cutscene. Like..."Those wings, I want them" is coooool but please, let these characters express some mundane natural emotion for once. Maybe I'll regret asking this sort of thing one day; disliking the vision of developers who perfectly capture angst both unspeakable, and awkward when spoken aloud. But every Kingdom Hearts game I've played has the clarity of sincerity somewhere in there. This game's just less well written than Kingdom Hearts
All of this game's problems stem from the way its narrative economy is distributed like the dril candles tweet. There is not a single chapter in this game that spends its time in the right places. When I streamed this to my friends, some of them joked about how often Zack says "huh?" - but it began to become a serious problem that despite playing a reactive role in the plot, Zack doesn't really have reactions. Zack's moment to moment dialogue never quite breaks out of just being another spunky Final Fantasy protagonist pastiche; it becomes obvious this is the spin-off none of the creatives daydreamed about on their lunch breaks. Nojima's side hoe. It's distressing seeing them show us the truth behind a moment like how Zack and Aerith began dating - telling it like the same military boy out of water love story that Cloud went through - and realizing that whatever vague idea I had in my mind was more creative than what this story had to tell. Cloud's entire arc is about him learning that he doesn't need to be Zack, so why do all of their life events have to parallel?
what's up with that one monologue from aerith about hating things that aren't normal. what the fuck lol
But the ending is good. I could nitpick it for sure. I'll at least acknowledge that leaving off on Cloud saying "I'm your living legacy" totally sucks ass, it's the exact opposite of what he needs to learn; he needs to stop trying to be other people. I still like Zack’s death in the FFVII scene more - the rawness of three lone officers gunning him down hits harder for me - but yeaaah, it's iconic. The scream into the fucking Zack AMV rules. But what gets me the most is that this scene isn't even better with the contents of the game. Crisis Core is not a good game, CRISIS CORE FINAL FANTASY VII FULL ENDING & CREDITS (HD) on youtube dot com is. This game was never even about Zack, it was about some other guys.
I think I would hate this game if I saw nothing in Angeal or Genesis. The entire narrative's run-time is cashed in on them, consistently choosing them over meaningfully expanding the few core details we knew about Zack. I think I got close to "getting" Angeal - obv a lot of commentary on wanting to follow the footsteps of flawed idols and the stuff - Genesis was just kinda funny, though. hes gackt up. i laughed rly hard when the game posited that genesis was in the room when sephiroth went crazy at the nibel reactor. But no matter how good of a time I can have watching some fun 2000s Square Enix cutscenes, there isn't a sense of fun in the moment to moment, to give the game any flow; the gameplay SUCKS!!!!!
in our heart or hearts everyone going into this knows at this point that the compilation is the equivalent to those netflix star wars spinoffs. most people are aware of this, and most people also seem to like it anyways. the truth is that what makes square enix unique is that they can't help themselves from imbuing all of their projects with heart. anyone who has ever cried to one of their mickey mouse games should know this. crisis core was always going to be a story about salvaging good human artistic passion from a game assigned to be trashy from birth, and i went into it with the most hopeful mindset i could.
and i dont know if i got anything from it
im still gonna be nostalgic for it in like 5 months
guys im going back to 7 rebirth and i still dont know what cissneis deal is im so fucked
Something I don't see a lot of people talk about is how much that disc 3 super-secret Zack flashback cutscene in the original VII rips. Squaresoft's brazen over-dramatism manages to enrich a character with life in such a short time.. Zack is just a peppy boy who loves the sound of his voice so much that he can have a conversation with a comatose dude, and walk away from it satisfied. His death goes on to leave a paralyzed Cloud idolizing his lost friend, subconsciously glamorizing a life that ended without fanfare the moment he tried to escape the system.
Coming off of Crisis Core, the main thought in my head really was...
Did Zack even improve as a character after all of this?
There's some additions I do like here and there; the way Zack is afforded no agency by the plot - aimlessly hovering between the military he serves, and the war against it. The envy he feels for those who have the option to stand up for themselves; it's sooooo almost there. But the plot is just unwilling to express these feelings in anything less than an artsy cutscene. Like..."Those wings, I want them" is coooool but please, let these characters express some mundane natural emotion for once. Maybe I'll regret asking this sort of thing one day; disliking the vision of developers who perfectly capture angst both unspeakable, and awkward when spoken aloud. But every Kingdom Hearts game I've played has the clarity of sincerity somewhere in there. This game's just less well written than Kingdom Hearts
All of this game's problems stem from the way its narrative economy is distributed like the dril candles tweet. There is not a single chapter in this game that spends its time in the right places. When I streamed this to my friends, some of them joked about how often Zack says "huh?" - but it began to become a serious problem that despite playing a reactive role in the plot, Zack doesn't really have reactions. Zack's moment to moment dialogue never quite breaks out of just being another spunky Final Fantasy protagonist pastiche; it becomes obvious this is the spin-off none of the creatives daydreamed about on their lunch breaks. Nojima's side hoe. It's distressing seeing them show us the truth behind a moment like how Zack and Aerith began dating - telling it like the same military boy out of water love story that Cloud went through - and realizing that whatever vague idea I had in my mind was more creative than what this story had to tell. Cloud's entire arc is about him learning that he doesn't need to be Zack, so why do all of their life events have to parallel?
what's up with that one monologue from aerith about hating things that aren't normal. what the fuck lol
But the ending is good. I could nitpick it for sure. I'll at least acknowledge that leaving off on Cloud saying "I'm your living legacy" totally sucks ass, it's the exact opposite of what he needs to learn; he needs to stop trying to be other people. I still like Zack’s death in the FFVII scene more - the rawness of three lone officers gunning him down hits harder for me - but yeaaah, it's iconic. The scream into the fucking Zack AMV rules. But what gets me the most is that this scene isn't even better with the contents of the game. Crisis Core is not a good game, CRISIS CORE FINAL FANTASY VII FULL ENDING & CREDITS (HD) on youtube dot com is. This game was never even about Zack, it was about some other guys.
I think I would hate this game if I saw nothing in Angeal or Genesis. The entire narrative's run-time is cashed in on them, consistently choosing them over meaningfully expanding the few core details we knew about Zack. I think I got close to "getting" Angeal - obv a lot of commentary on wanting to follow the footsteps of flawed idols and the stuff - Genesis was just kinda funny, though. hes gackt up. i laughed rly hard when the game posited that genesis was in the room when sephiroth went crazy at the nibel reactor. But no matter how good of a time I can have watching some fun 2000s Square Enix cutscenes, there isn't a sense of fun in the moment to moment, to give the game any flow; the gameplay SUCKS!!!!!
in our heart or hearts everyone going into this knows at this point that the compilation is the equivalent to those netflix star wars spinoffs. most people are aware of this, and most people also seem to like it anyways. the truth is that what makes square enix unique is that they can't help themselves from imbuing all of their projects with heart. anyone who has ever cried to one of their mickey mouse games should know this. crisis core was always going to be a story about salvaging good human artistic passion from a game assigned to be trashy from birth, and i went into it with the most hopeful mindset i could.
and i dont know if i got anything from it
im still gonna be nostalgic for it in like 5 months
guys im going back to 7 rebirth and i still dont know what cissneis deal is im so fucked
Final Fantasy IX
2000
honestly feel like i should preface this with an apology but ff9 is kind of exhausting to me. it feels like going to a shift to work at a theme park; it's pretty and sweet, it's whimsical, and it has nice atmosphere and sometimes you even see your favorite characters walking around, but at the end of the day it's still a day of work to get through. going to just chalk it up as this one not being for me until a few years down the line where i yet again try to beat my head against this game until i like it
Dragon's Dogma II
2024
discourse about microtransactions and performance aside:
this is japanese skyrim, with all of the associated positive and negative implications that statement brings along with it
hoping that whatever its dark arisen equivalent turns out to be will create a more complete, enjoyable version of itself.
this is japanese skyrim, with all of the associated positive and negative implications that statement brings along with it
hoping that whatever its dark arisen equivalent turns out to be will create a more complete, enjoyable version of itself.
Garten of Banban 6
2023
You wouldn't last an hour in the asylum where they raised me.
Final Fantasy XIII
2009
I would bet it all to smoke weed with Fang and Vanille in their dimly-lit bedroom full of empty takeout bags: I have never seen a burnout codependent lesbian couple depicted this plausibly. XIII is probably the first Final Fantasy to make intra-party dynamics a narrative priority, and the most successful in this. Good dub casting supports this, and it's the series title from which I came away most fond of the characters. Pretty much the gold standard of seventh generation console visuals, and the best version of the ATB system.
Elden Ring
2022
"Whew," the enamored g@me play0r sighs out in reverence as the boss clearly designed by someone who thought they were on a job for a mediocre Platinum title did three SICKASS ANIMEY slow-mo front flips, each dealing 70% max health damage to the player with around 8 quintillion HP (which was only reasonable to invest a few points into after getting some from the eleventh Piss-And-Shit-Smeared Tree Spirit overworld boss fight that also netted a BAD. ASS. spirit ash to help you circumvent said bosses in the future except it's objectively worse than half the ones you already have) which they got to by trekking across seven hills, seven lands, seven seas and seven hells, each populated by more barren stretches of land than the last with s p o o k y copy-pasted caves and catacombs breaking up the monotony of running into small platoons of disinterested enemies you can't even be assed to to swing a sword on horseback at on your way to the next 𝓛𝓮𝓰𝓪𝓬𝔂 𝓓𝓾𝓷𝓰𝓮𝓸𝓷 (VERY important areas they put all their ACTUAL level design into! which is why half of them are directionless slogs where everything looks the same and with enemy placement done by the one only Mr Miyazaki'ˢ ⁸⁻ʸᵉᵃʳ⁻ᵒˡᵈ ˢᵒⁿ who really liked the funny jump battan) so that they can find an NPC which mysteriously vanished one Saturday night a few weeks into the playthrough but is crucial for the conditions of one of the many different-colored endings outlined by the Purposely Vague and not frequently Irritatingly Nebulous lore (which is totally okay because that's how they always did quests dude :P it's NOT comically archaic in contrast to the world design xP) but at least there's some World Essence and Snail Drippings to pick up on the way in case you ever find a cookbook that teaches you how to MacGuyver the two into a portable ICBM and then not land the shot because the Lands Between Olympic Champion you're chucking it at read your input had superior reflexes, "From the Software has done it again!"
I gotta be honest man I think this formula has the studio stuck spinning their wheels and given ER's astronomical success they're probably not gonna try reinventing it anytime soon. The game isn't bad. I'll still play the DLC. But seeing it heralded as the zenith of the genre let alone Fromsoft's masterwork gives me a fucking migraine.
I gotta be honest man I think this formula has the studio stuck spinning their wheels and given ER's astronomical success they're probably not gonna try reinventing it anytime soon. The game isn't bad. I'll still play the DLC. But seeing it heralded as the zenith of the genre let alone Fromsoft's masterwork gives me a fucking migraine.
Chrono Trigger
1995
Its got great pacing, art, and music, but the combat is really shallow with little moment to moment choice, the fixed encounters make exploration a huge chore, and the story and characters are a little too stock to find personality in. It's got heart in a lot of places, but like the most polished, studio-made work, despite being so handcrafted, it's kind of a vapid blockbuster. Not trite, but vapid. You could say it was too many cooks. Too many hands building towards a really general, mass appeal vision.
I often hear this game lauded as the best of both worlds with regards to the creators of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy coming together, but it would honestly feel like the weakest entry in either series if put side by side to them. I don't like this frame of looking at it.
Dragon quest games use simple plotlines to convey often extremely subtle and sometimes very complex themes. They feel timeless because of that. The combat systems are made from really simply conveyed choices that feel really weighty; even simple attacks feel intentional, and have the ability to perform unexpectedly to lots of random factors like enemy stat variations, class stats, and flat fractional critical rates. Its combat is like a wizardry 2.0. The best dragon quests have a random encounter rate just low enough to make the player think they can get away with peering just around the corner, while dreading every step in case they run into something truly devastating. Every treasure nets a huge boon, but each one may be your last, with penalties for death being very real. Exploration is the method, and adventure is the dream. To reiterate, complex themes, simple plots, simplified combat terms, devestating and exciting blows with real choice that furthers the desire for more exploration and adventure.
Final fantasy has often really complex plots that have simple themes guiding them. They feel personal and grandiose at the same time. The characters are often commentaries on the tropes they wear on their sleeves, with a lot of hidden depth and backstories to chew at for miles. Exploration is there, but it's in favor of highly scripted and exciting setpieces. Like those setpieces, the combat favors theatricality and performance that heightens the player-character relationship, and the product of that relationship guides the player to navigate the often complex character-building systems of those games. The combat then has complex terms and systems although streamlined for a mass audience to operate on a base level, and play the entire game that way if they so choose. Rather than having a combat around survival and risk/reward, between loot/exploration/death, final fantasy combat is about giving the player a language to understand the world and personality of its inhabitants. It is communication serving the themes of the story (DQ does this too, but in very different ways). To reiterate, complex systems made feasible guided by complex characters, in a complex plot guided by simple themes.
Chrono trigger has simple characters, a pretty simple plot, simple themes, and a simple combat system.
You don't have much say over how you build the characters, the combat doesn't serve as a language, its a bit too easy with penalties too light to serve a vehicle for adventure, not to mention most battles playing out the same way, with a generally unchanging player psychology (tactics are simple, rules generally stay the same, even the introduction of magic mostly keeps characters fighting the same way as before). It's just kinda alright. I play it when I want a simple linear game. (But tbh even ff4 is kinda better at that)
I often hear this game lauded as the best of both worlds with regards to the creators of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy coming together, but it would honestly feel like the weakest entry in either series if put side by side to them. I don't like this frame of looking at it.
Dragon quest games use simple plotlines to convey often extremely subtle and sometimes very complex themes. They feel timeless because of that. The combat systems are made from really simply conveyed choices that feel really weighty; even simple attacks feel intentional, and have the ability to perform unexpectedly to lots of random factors like enemy stat variations, class stats, and flat fractional critical rates. Its combat is like a wizardry 2.0. The best dragon quests have a random encounter rate just low enough to make the player think they can get away with peering just around the corner, while dreading every step in case they run into something truly devastating. Every treasure nets a huge boon, but each one may be your last, with penalties for death being very real. Exploration is the method, and adventure is the dream. To reiterate, complex themes, simple plots, simplified combat terms, devestating and exciting blows with real choice that furthers the desire for more exploration and adventure.
Final fantasy has often really complex plots that have simple themes guiding them. They feel personal and grandiose at the same time. The characters are often commentaries on the tropes they wear on their sleeves, with a lot of hidden depth and backstories to chew at for miles. Exploration is there, but it's in favor of highly scripted and exciting setpieces. Like those setpieces, the combat favors theatricality and performance that heightens the player-character relationship, and the product of that relationship guides the player to navigate the often complex character-building systems of those games. The combat then has complex terms and systems although streamlined for a mass audience to operate on a base level, and play the entire game that way if they so choose. Rather than having a combat around survival and risk/reward, between loot/exploration/death, final fantasy combat is about giving the player a language to understand the world and personality of its inhabitants. It is communication serving the themes of the story (DQ does this too, but in very different ways). To reiterate, complex systems made feasible guided by complex characters, in a complex plot guided by simple themes.
Chrono trigger has simple characters, a pretty simple plot, simple themes, and a simple combat system.
You don't have much say over how you build the characters, the combat doesn't serve as a language, its a bit too easy with penalties too light to serve a vehicle for adventure, not to mention most battles playing out the same way, with a generally unchanging player psychology (tactics are simple, rules generally stay the same, even the introduction of magic mostly keeps characters fighting the same way as before). It's just kinda alright. I play it when I want a simple linear game. (But tbh even ff4 is kinda better at that)
Ehrgeiz
1998
wherever tifa lockhart and vincent valentine go, i'll be there
shitty in a very distinctly cool way. makes me miss when i'd walk into the arcade of a movie theater or w/e in the late 90s/early 00s and chuck a few of my parents' quarters away on something barely playable that looked rad as hell to my idiot child brain. i love how easy it is to cheese the AI with spamming specific attacks, the whole experience is just a flailing mess and it rules. makes me wanna boot up power stone or something, it's been like two decades since i've even thought about games like this, but i know my life is only enhanced by their existence
tifa's design here makes her look like an action figure for pervert otakus, but w/e i like spamming triangle and juggling the bad guy when they're close and spamming tifa hadouken when they're far away and winning. girls are so cool. i like the powers dog that has a red XIII alt and the animorph girl and the guy who shoots rockets out his leg. don't like the old guy with the annoying stick or the yoyo cop tho. i'll play the minigames and quest mode someday maybe, idk just something about blasting through an arcade mode that appeals more to me in these types of games
adding this to my "games that would fucking rule at slumber parties even though i'm turning 32 in a week and all the friends i could have slumber parties with are productive adults who live halfway across the country from me and also i have crippling student debt" list! shirtless sephiroth tho
shitty in a very distinctly cool way. makes me miss when i'd walk into the arcade of a movie theater or w/e in the late 90s/early 00s and chuck a few of my parents' quarters away on something barely playable that looked rad as hell to my idiot child brain. i love how easy it is to cheese the AI with spamming specific attacks, the whole experience is just a flailing mess and it rules. makes me wanna boot up power stone or something, it's been like two decades since i've even thought about games like this, but i know my life is only enhanced by their existence
tifa's design here makes her look like an action figure for pervert otakus, but w/e i like spamming triangle and juggling the bad guy when they're close and spamming tifa hadouken when they're far away and winning. girls are so cool. i like the powers dog that has a red XIII alt and the animorph girl and the guy who shoots rockets out his leg. don't like the old guy with the annoying stick or the yoyo cop tho. i'll play the minigames and quest mode someday maybe, idk just something about blasting through an arcade mode that appeals more to me in these types of games
adding this to my "games that would fucking rule at slumber parties even though i'm turning 32 in a week and all the friends i could have slumber parties with are productive adults who live halfway across the country from me and also i have crippling student debt" list! shirtless sephiroth tho
