This visual novel does romance in a way I haven't really seen before and thought I would never find in a work like this. By the end of it I disliked the main characters in the same amount that I loved them, and I think it'll stick with me for a long time.
I wouldn't call it perfect, Closing Chapter had some weaker parts that dragged and made me stall it for some time (especially in the side routes), but CODA was good enough that the whole journey felt worth it in the end. One of the routes especially was the highest point of the VN and every scene in it was that much powerful because of everything that came before.

今でも覚えている あの日見た雪の白さ
初めて触れた 唇の温もりも忘れない
粉雪のようなあなたは 汚れなく奇麗で
私もなりたいと雪に願う
I still love you.

Pokemon Scarlet/Violet are an event horizon for Pokemon games. It is actually unbelievable how unfinished these games are. It's when playing these games that you realise that every single Pokemon game since they went 3D about 10 years ago has been unfinished. Every single one has blacked out the screen in place of actual animations whenever a character does anything even remotely active, every single one up until now has re-used the same Pokemon models and attack animations, and every single one has had barebones world design, plot and characters that you're just railroaded along with no freedom because the devs likely didn't have time to design anything other than an incredibly linear experience.

When I tell you this game is unfinished, I mean that there are frame drops during the opening cutscene and the CREDITS. THE CREDITS. THERE ARE LITERALLY FRAME DROPS ON A BUNCH OF FUCKING NAMES SCROLLING DOWN A BLACK SCREEN. This game's technical performance is unbelievable in the absolute worst way, there is never a moment where its utter lack of polish is not a total distraction. Frame drops, hideous PS2-looking textures, egregious pop-in everywhere you go, NPCs fading out of existence because they can't make it up a flight of stairs, Pokemon turning invisible mid-battle. I could go on. I have never played a game in a state as rough as this.

And what pisses me off the most about that is that it puts a huge damper on what is otherwise a really fucking good Pokemon game, the best since Generation 5, in my opinion. Fundamentally, from a design perspective, I think this is just really good shit - it does a lot of things I've been pining for from the series for a long time. The open world isn't a lie, it truly is open! Shockingly so, in fact! Even with the supposedly open world being all over the marketing I really was expecting this game to do the classic Pokemon, "oh you can't go there yet there's been an outbreak of Sugma" or whatever and have some fuckin' dude blocking my way at 3/4 of the exits of every city, but nope! You really are just let loose in this world, allowed to beeline straight to areas with Level 50+ trainers and Pokemon and get your ass beat right away! It's super refreshing to not have my hand held every step of the way! Yet it does subtly tell you which parts of the map are intended to be taken on later through some nice and sensible design. There's a cave in the southwestern part of the map that leads to a city with a gym, but to get through the cave your "mount" (the game's "box legendary") needs to unlock a high jump that you get from progressing elsewhere in the game. HOWEVER that city is not blocked off from you entirely early on because there's a slightly harder-to-find hidden path that lets you get to the city without needing to unlock the upgrade! Wow! Thanks for telling me that the area is hard but not entirely blocking me off from going there anyway, Game Freak! Junichi Masuda leaves and suddenly you learn game design! What's up with that?

Scarlet and Violet despite having similarly condescending and 2-dimensional dialogue (even by kid's game standards) to previous Pokemon games, do also genuinely have a pretty good story! There's some interesting stuff going on here ESPECIALLY towards the game's climax! Narrative-wise, I think the last 4 hours or so of this game are some of the best stuff Pokemon has ever done!

A shame then, that all the cutscenes and moments around this part of this game and indeed all the way through are undercut by the devs only having time to put like 6, whack-ass MIDI sounding songs in it, and having to constantly watch hideous textures glitch out in the background whilst none of the characters emote or animate at all. At this game's emotional climax, it plays this incredibly cheap, wafer-thin "emotional music cue" song that you've heard numerous times throughout the game, and that on top of everything else just robs it of all its emotional weight. This game frequently deserves better. It has genuine freedom, a fair and reasonable sense of difficulty and challenge and a story with far more intrigue and nuance behind it than any other Pokemon game in the last decade. What a shame that it's buried under the weight of what has to have been a horrible amount of crunch.

For the first time in a long time I find myself feeling sympathy for Game Freak. No dev ever wants to release a rushed or unfinished game, and they will definitely have KNOWN what state it was in before it came out. There is no doubt in my mind that the state of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are far less to do with incompetence on Game Freak's part and far more to do with corporate interference and this increasingly ridiculous and unsustainable "new generation every 3 years" release pattern that well and truly killed them here.

How sad. If these games had been given another year or even 6 months in the oven they would have absolutely been the best Pokemon games ever in my mind. My dream scenario is that some kind of "Deluxe" version of these games comes out in a few years (and maybe for SwSh too, which were also clearly unfinished) for the next, more powerful Nintendo console that includes all the DLC from jump, HUGELY touches up the graphics and technical performance, adds in some new animations and general polish and maybe adds just a few little extra bits of content here and there. Realistically I think the best I can hope for is that they continue on with Scarlet/Violet's open world design philosophy in the next games, which I'd like to get excited for! But if they have to shit out another one in just another 3 years?

I don't know. Just give them more time next time. Jesus christ.

I don't care what glitches and bugs are still in the game at the time of writing. This was everything I hoped it would be and more. The open world and playing with your friends is everything I wished SwSh would do with the Wild Area. Obviously the game points you in the intended directions, but otherwise you can explore to your discretion. The Tera Raids feel more fun and fast-paced than in SwSh as well, always enjoyable. If you can look past the obvious flaws, you'll find something amazing. Super cliché to word it this way, but this game is a treasure.

I wish ZeroRanger wasn't sold to me as the best thing mankind has ever created. I appreciate the game for what it is and the ambition it has-- everything people say about that aspect of the game is true. What it has to say as a story and as a meta-commentary of arcade games and shoot 'em ups particularly is awesome. I even like the funny gimmick at the end because it's not really a big deal; this game is short and not all that hard. Even without the story at play the presentation still carries. The music is excellent, and while the green/orange gimmick can cause issues for some it has the foresight to feature a colorblind mode, which is appreciated. I really liked a section of the game where iconography you know is reused yet altered, creating a feeling of "this isn't quite right." There's even some nice little touches like the B and C ship models having different flavor texts.

But I can't really get down with much else. The gameplay in this game is woefully uninteresting, and when you're making game that encourages high scoring that's not really a good thing. In some ways it makes ZeroRanger feel like it's a "shump for people who don't like shumps," due to its heavily reliance on its story, which is not dissimilar to some other popular things with a similar deal going on. I know it isn't that pretentious: this game is clearly inspired by a lot of things, shumps most definitely included... but it rubs me the wrong way.

I didn't beat the true final boss, and I guess you could call me "filtered" for that but if this game was enjoyable during instances that weren't the normal final boss fights I would jump right back on that shit... but as it stands, ZeroRanger is a far better concept than it is as a game.