ScionOfPride
14 reviews liked by ScionOfPride
The true reveal of Metal Gear Solid 2 is not that we play as Raiden instead of Solid Snake - it's that the antagonist of the game does not exist. It's pulling back the curtain to find that the man behind it died a century ago. The most powerful nation on Earth is essentially an algorithm with a mind of its own, akin to a runaway train that everyone "in charge" pretends they are responsible for. There is no individual you get to blame. Not the politicians, not the CEOs of major corporations. Not even the current or former presidents of the United States have any idea of what's really going on. The algorithm will replace these people the second they stop being useful. In my opinion it's a much better conception of "the system" than what you see in most conspiracy fiction: a small, shadowy cabal of people pulling the strings from behind the scenes. The reality is that all of the powerful people we blame are just the ones who managed to latch on to the algorithm of capitalism and milk it for all they can. There is no grand design, nobody is in control, everyone responsible for setting this system into motion is long dead. Which is why Otacon says the Patriots "have been dead for 100 years".
Every choice you (and Raiden) make perpetuates this status quo, and every radical political cause (like Snake and Otacon's 'Philanthropy') is effortlessly co-opted by it. MGS2 conveys this idea in a way that only a video game could: By playing as Raiden, you are forced to directly confront the futility of any resistance. You can approach MGS2 in a million different ways with an expansive arsenal of tools, getting no kills or alerts and discovering every secret in the Big Shell, or do the exact opposite. But the end result is always the same: You kill Solidus, the only threat to the Patriots, after they explicitly tell you it's exactly what they want. If you opt out entirely and "turn the game console off" you're still doing something you were ordered to do. Even if you choose not to play, you lose to the Patriots. MGS2 places you in the position of the post-information age, digital subject: Imbued with detailed knowledge of every single way you are being oppressed and exploited, you still choose to follow orders. You are so overwhelmed by information, some true, some false, that is causes a kind of exasperated compliance.
This is simultaneously a commentary on the nature of video game stories as an immutable, pre-programmed series of events not as different from film narratives as we like to think; Any "choice" is always an illusion, whether it's in Metal Gear Solid or a Telltale game. Any game that sets out to fulfill the concept of "player freedom" in its story will always fail. Video games stories are (at their best) about interactivity, not choice. They let you play out a pre-ordained role and do some improvisation, not write the story. Kojima understands this, and it's why he borrows so much from film. It's also why the criticism that his games are too much like movies is kind of pointless; he's just recognizing the inherent similarities of the two mediums.
On a less meta level, this lack of free will in MGS2 underscores the reality that capitalism, American empire, the very norms and values of American society, whatever the antagonist of the game is - cannot be destroyed from within. It is a system that has achieved self-awareness. Any possible attempt to destroy it has already been anticipated with an infinite number of contingencies. Emma Emmerich gave her life to destroy the GW AI and it was just replaced with a backup. The battle has already been lost, and it was decided by a microscopic processor in a fraction of a second. Solidus (a perfect stand-in for the kind of right-wing populist we wouldn't see for awhile in 2001) was the only person in power trying to oppose the Patriots, but his fatal mistake was believing that the Patriots were essentially a deep state globalist cabal, rather than the nigh omnipresent force they really are (they aren't really a "they", but an "it"). Like Snake said, "the Patriots are a kind of ongoing fiction". But even the legendary Solid Snake, the archetypal hero who opposes the system with clear-eyed determination, is completely dumbfounded after the credits roll.
And that's because this enemy is simply beyond the abilities of one man, even if that man is a Snake. It can just create its own soldier to surpass Solid(us) Snake and even mass-produce them, and your actions throughout the game prove it. No tactical espionage action can defeat what is essentially an idea - one that has infiltrated the furthest depths of the human soul. The only hope lies on a society-wide level: An alternative has to be built by everyone from the ground up, through finding what is true and meaningful in life and passing it on to the next generation. Slowly, generation by generation, an alternative capable of opposing the great algorithm can be built. And it has to be one that people can have faith in, in a spiritual sense.
But the encroachment of the internet into our lives is making this less and less feasible. By replacing the traditional nuclear-armed metal gear with Arsenal Gear, an AI that controls the internet, Kojima is essentially framing the internet itself as a threat equal to or greater than that of nuclear weapons. It is an instrument of human separation much more powerful than the splitting of an atom. The quote at the beginning of Raiden's chapter tying computers and nuclear weapons together bolsters this interpretation.
The digital age has turned human life into a scrambled mess that is impossible to parse. We create entirely idiosyncratic, patchwork realities for ourselves by finding various "truths" through our own individual exploration of the internet and jury-rigging them together. We relate to each other less and less, and mental illness is widespread. This overload of information makes us increasingly neurotic, isolated, and unable to determine truth from fiction. The collective human mind is being broken (or at least pounded into a new shape) against the collective neuroses of the internet, and nobody knows what to do about it. We're all alone right now, each of us left with the isolating task of finding our own truth amidst the cacophony. Even the algorithm fears for our future, yet it's still the only entity with a solution: Censorship. Make the noise stop. Honestly, has anyone thought of a better idea?
Every choice you (and Raiden) make perpetuates this status quo, and every radical political cause (like Snake and Otacon's 'Philanthropy') is effortlessly co-opted by it. MGS2 conveys this idea in a way that only a video game could: By playing as Raiden, you are forced to directly confront the futility of any resistance. You can approach MGS2 in a million different ways with an expansive arsenal of tools, getting no kills or alerts and discovering every secret in the Big Shell, or do the exact opposite. But the end result is always the same: You kill Solidus, the only threat to the Patriots, after they explicitly tell you it's exactly what they want. If you opt out entirely and "turn the game console off" you're still doing something you were ordered to do. Even if you choose not to play, you lose to the Patriots. MGS2 places you in the position of the post-information age, digital subject: Imbued with detailed knowledge of every single way you are being oppressed and exploited, you still choose to follow orders. You are so overwhelmed by information, some true, some false, that is causes a kind of exasperated compliance.
This is simultaneously a commentary on the nature of video game stories as an immutable, pre-programmed series of events not as different from film narratives as we like to think; Any "choice" is always an illusion, whether it's in Metal Gear Solid or a Telltale game. Any game that sets out to fulfill the concept of "player freedom" in its story will always fail. Video games stories are (at their best) about interactivity, not choice. They let you play out a pre-ordained role and do some improvisation, not write the story. Kojima understands this, and it's why he borrows so much from film. It's also why the criticism that his games are too much like movies is kind of pointless; he's just recognizing the inherent similarities of the two mediums.
On a less meta level, this lack of free will in MGS2 underscores the reality that capitalism, American empire, the very norms and values of American society, whatever the antagonist of the game is - cannot be destroyed from within. It is a system that has achieved self-awareness. Any possible attempt to destroy it has already been anticipated with an infinite number of contingencies. Emma Emmerich gave her life to destroy the GW AI and it was just replaced with a backup. The battle has already been lost, and it was decided by a microscopic processor in a fraction of a second. Solidus (a perfect stand-in for the kind of right-wing populist we wouldn't see for awhile in 2001) was the only person in power trying to oppose the Patriots, but his fatal mistake was believing that the Patriots were essentially a deep state globalist cabal, rather than the nigh omnipresent force they really are (they aren't really a "they", but an "it"). Like Snake said, "the Patriots are a kind of ongoing fiction". But even the legendary Solid Snake, the archetypal hero who opposes the system with clear-eyed determination, is completely dumbfounded after the credits roll.
And that's because this enemy is simply beyond the abilities of one man, even if that man is a Snake. It can just create its own soldier to surpass Solid(us) Snake and even mass-produce them, and your actions throughout the game prove it. No tactical espionage action can defeat what is essentially an idea - one that has infiltrated the furthest depths of the human soul. The only hope lies on a society-wide level: An alternative has to be built by everyone from the ground up, through finding what is true and meaningful in life and passing it on to the next generation. Slowly, generation by generation, an alternative capable of opposing the great algorithm can be built. And it has to be one that people can have faith in, in a spiritual sense.
But the encroachment of the internet into our lives is making this less and less feasible. By replacing the traditional nuclear-armed metal gear with Arsenal Gear, an AI that controls the internet, Kojima is essentially framing the internet itself as a threat equal to or greater than that of nuclear weapons. It is an instrument of human separation much more powerful than the splitting of an atom. The quote at the beginning of Raiden's chapter tying computers and nuclear weapons together bolsters this interpretation.
The digital age has turned human life into a scrambled mess that is impossible to parse. We create entirely idiosyncratic, patchwork realities for ourselves by finding various "truths" through our own individual exploration of the internet and jury-rigging them together. We relate to each other less and less, and mental illness is widespread. This overload of information makes us increasingly neurotic, isolated, and unable to determine truth from fiction. The collective human mind is being broken (or at least pounded into a new shape) against the collective neuroses of the internet, and nobody knows what to do about it. We're all alone right now, each of us left with the isolating task of finding our own truth amidst the cacophony. Even the algorithm fears for our future, yet it's still the only entity with a solution: Censorship. Make the noise stop. Honestly, has anyone thought of a better idea?
This review contains spoilers
It was hard to articulate my exact feelings on the first game. I came out of it liking it well enough, largely from the game's amazing vibes, but its flaws remain glaring, accentuating themselves the farther out from the ending I've gotten. Beyond the whole Chihiro Issue™️, most of it stems from the cast... kind of sucking. It's so damning when you get to the end of a gauntlet of cool reveals and world building, with a strong thematic ending of the Hope's Peak doors opening into an unknown future... And then Hina and Hiro are still talking about eating donuts and reading fortunes: a harsh undercutting of the game really hitting its mark to go back to wallowing in a really shallow stupidity.
It's important to discuss the character issues of the first game, because that's where 2 understands the issues lie too. A lot of basic stuff about the first game is relative unchanged in regard to gameplay and aesthetics (honestly that's where I have a few small issues with 2, with the clusterfuck that is its take on the letter shooting minigame and generally not caring for the faux-retro aesthetics until they bring it home with the ending twist). But still, underneath all of that is an exceptionally strong base that could be build off of a lot more smartly. As such, Danganronpa 2 decides to make the bold decision to, gasp, be a smartly written game this time around!
Its funnier, has more interesting mysteries, better pacIng, and plays off its "dumb" moments a lot better, but most importantly, it knows so perfectly what it wants to be. If the focus of the first game was primarily on the atmosphere of the overtaken Hope's Peak, this game focuses so much more on its characters. The cast is the heart and soul of this game, given so much opportunity to grow and interact and just be human in a way the first game never was. Little stuff like the completely optional remembrance concert Hiyoko sets up in Mahiru's memory add so much and really build up a sense of these characters legitimately caring for each other. This shift in focus permeates through the entire rest of the game, improving basically everything that the first game faltered at.
Most of the murders end up being focused around personal issues versus the fairly shallow motivations of the first game, leaving me so much more emotionally invested in them. The second trial feels like the first time in the series where an emotional moment really lands, and it just kickstarts Fuyuhiko's arc into becoming one of the best characters in the entire game. By the time that case is over, every single character remaining was one I cared about to some extent, making each death feel more gutting than the last. The part where you need to choose the killer becomes so much more impactful when it's bearing the load of "fuck, I don't want any of them to have done it". The game obviously realizes how strong these bonds have become too, with how its final two motivations for murder are basically taken out of the character's hands. When combined with how much more every character is an active part of the trials, filled with moments where they're all actively working together to draw a conclusion, it all just works so well.
My love runs most deeply for the main trio though. It's hard to describe why I love Nagito so much, that freak who made me feel ill (positive) with every other line of dialogue. For being such a chaotic character, it's so interesting to unravel the logic behind him, even after he's died. And Chiaki, who besides just being literally me, managed to make me teary-eyed twice. The one-two punch of Nagito's trap and Chiaki's melancholic confession was such an incredible roller coaster, one of the best ones I've had in a videogame (facing head on with the best Ace Attorney ending cases).
Then there's Hajime Hinata, the protagonist I wasn't sure I was feeling at first impression, but god damn was I wrong. Already he's leaps and bounds above Makoto by virtue of being more of a sentient being than the mouthpiece that works through Kyoko's vagueries. His perpetual skepticism makes a good foil to the rest of the cast. He's just a pretty good character the whole way through, but things really hit home with him during the ending, finding out about his past as Izuru and being pincered between the impossible choice of sacrifice forced upon him.
It clicked with me a few days ago that a lot of the stories that have really clicked with me over the past few months in a way that's really special—Final Fantasy VII, Nier Automata—have been stories about characters where I desperately want to see them take control of themselves and live in the world they deserve, which I think is something more nuanced than just "I like stories with good characters" (wow? really???) even if it is hard to articulate. This game is no different. Hajime choosing to make the impossible choice on his own terms, forging out into the endless sea, having the incredible hope that they'll be able to save themselves from the ultimate despair through their bonds even after they've been erased. Writing it out like this makes it sound kinda like goofy anime bullshit (probably because it is) but damn, it works! I nearly cried! I want to see all these characters I've grown to love find the happiness they so desperately deserve, of their own will!
In the days since I beat it, the game's really kept weighing on my mind day in and day out, a warm yet melancholic nostalgia for an event just passed, but one you know you'll never get to repeat quite the same way again. Like I miss the characters already. It's probably the strongest I've felt this feeling with a game since beating Omori. It's an experience I want to cherish, and characters I want to cherish, forever. Honestly, it's almost scary to think about the idea of V3 being an even better game than this according to some of my friends, but I'll trust the vision for when I get there.
It's important to discuss the character issues of the first game, because that's where 2 understands the issues lie too. A lot of basic stuff about the first game is relative unchanged in regard to gameplay and aesthetics (honestly that's where I have a few small issues with 2, with the clusterfuck that is its take on the letter shooting minigame and generally not caring for the faux-retro aesthetics until they bring it home with the ending twist). But still, underneath all of that is an exceptionally strong base that could be build off of a lot more smartly. As such, Danganronpa 2 decides to make the bold decision to, gasp, be a smartly written game this time around!
Its funnier, has more interesting mysteries, better pacIng, and plays off its "dumb" moments a lot better, but most importantly, it knows so perfectly what it wants to be. If the focus of the first game was primarily on the atmosphere of the overtaken Hope's Peak, this game focuses so much more on its characters. The cast is the heart and soul of this game, given so much opportunity to grow and interact and just be human in a way the first game never was. Little stuff like the completely optional remembrance concert Hiyoko sets up in Mahiru's memory add so much and really build up a sense of these characters legitimately caring for each other. This shift in focus permeates through the entire rest of the game, improving basically everything that the first game faltered at.
Most of the murders end up being focused around personal issues versus the fairly shallow motivations of the first game, leaving me so much more emotionally invested in them. The second trial feels like the first time in the series where an emotional moment really lands, and it just kickstarts Fuyuhiko's arc into becoming one of the best characters in the entire game. By the time that case is over, every single character remaining was one I cared about to some extent, making each death feel more gutting than the last. The part where you need to choose the killer becomes so much more impactful when it's bearing the load of "fuck, I don't want any of them to have done it". The game obviously realizes how strong these bonds have become too, with how its final two motivations for murder are basically taken out of the character's hands. When combined with how much more every character is an active part of the trials, filled with moments where they're all actively working together to draw a conclusion, it all just works so well.
My love runs most deeply for the main trio though. It's hard to describe why I love Nagito so much, that freak who made me feel ill (positive) with every other line of dialogue. For being such a chaotic character, it's so interesting to unravel the logic behind him, even after he's died. And Chiaki, who besides just being literally me, managed to make me teary-eyed twice. The one-two punch of Nagito's trap and Chiaki's melancholic confession was such an incredible roller coaster, one of the best ones I've had in a videogame (facing head on with the best Ace Attorney ending cases).
Then there's Hajime Hinata, the protagonist I wasn't sure I was feeling at first impression, but god damn was I wrong. Already he's leaps and bounds above Makoto by virtue of being more of a sentient being than the mouthpiece that works through Kyoko's vagueries. His perpetual skepticism makes a good foil to the rest of the cast. He's just a pretty good character the whole way through, but things really hit home with him during the ending, finding out about his past as Izuru and being pincered between the impossible choice of sacrifice forced upon him.
It clicked with me a few days ago that a lot of the stories that have really clicked with me over the past few months in a way that's really special—Final Fantasy VII, Nier Automata—have been stories about characters where I desperately want to see them take control of themselves and live in the world they deserve, which I think is something more nuanced than just "I like stories with good characters" (wow? really???) even if it is hard to articulate. This game is no different. Hajime choosing to make the impossible choice on his own terms, forging out into the endless sea, having the incredible hope that they'll be able to save themselves from the ultimate despair through their bonds even after they've been erased. Writing it out like this makes it sound kinda like goofy anime bullshit (probably because it is) but damn, it works! I nearly cried! I want to see all these characters I've grown to love find the happiness they so desperately deserve, of their own will!
In the days since I beat it, the game's really kept weighing on my mind day in and day out, a warm yet melancholic nostalgia for an event just passed, but one you know you'll never get to repeat quite the same way again. Like I miss the characters already. It's probably the strongest I've felt this feeling with a game since beating Omori. It's an experience I want to cherish, and characters I want to cherish, forever. Honestly, it's almost scary to think about the idea of V3 being an even better game than this according to some of my friends, but I'll trust the vision for when I get there.
World of Horror
2020
I've had my eye on World of Horror for a long time now, patiently waiting for the game to come out of early access. It feels pointless to even discuss what pulled me into the game; it basically sells itself 'cause... just look at it! Look. at. it.
Every single screen of this game drips with one of the most incredible aesthetics I've ever seen in a game. The 2-bit art works so perfectly at making its gruesome imagery and overload of information put upon you at all times so evoking to look at. Even opening an item's submenu and seeing 20 different icons I can't click on and don't know what they do is interesting here. Combined with a really well-done soundtrack, it's hard not to be completely enraptured by what's in front of me at all times playing the game. I can imagine how the simple art allowed for the solo developer (who apparently made the game part time while being a dentist?!) to flesh out a lot of unique scenarios, which is of course vital for a rougelike.
Indeed, the game has an immense amount of things going on throughout the five different mysteries you tackle each run. So many different encounters with a breadth of different, often very precarious effects, a stupidly high number of unique enemies, and different permutations of survivors, old gods, and backstories to shape the entire way you have to play, there's a lot unique going on. I've beaten 3 runs of the game so far, with 2 more I fucked myself out of victory in the very final stretch out of greed and bad memory (and very precisely those two things!). Even as I slowly work through the game's systems, it's kept up the feeling of being arcane and dangerous.
Indeed, the world never lets you breathe for too long, constantly having to keep up the spinning plates of your two different health meters, injuries you can sustain, and an almost ever-increasing DOOM meter that does exactly what you'd expect it to if it ever reaches 100%. (Spoilers: You're doomed!) This is where most of the game's horror comes in, constantly under stress of being just a couple of bad decisions away from all of reality crumbling away. The game definitely has a couple of scares and plenty of unsettling things as you'd expect—a few of the DOOM-based game over texts have been lingering in my mind since I've first read them—but it's all very manageable and interspersed with a solid layer of shlockiness.
At first, I was really unsure about the game's structure, as the genre's fatal question lightly flickered in the back of my mind: "would I have liked this more if it wasn't a roguelike?". The way each case you take lays out is admittedly strange. Each case's story advances when you explore a certain area, but the encounter you get while exploring is not one tied to the case and you can go explore other areas at your... something vaguely approximating leisure. The case stories are fun little experiences, but of course with the roguelike nature, you'll be seeing these cases several times over (more often than the individual events for certain), so what's left?? Then I realized, even as the exact case events fade into the background on successive runs, so pops out the natural stories of a playthrough.
Getting a particularly bad skill check roll and catching the attention of a being known simply as [SOMETHING TRULY EVIL], a constant presence just out of sight throughout the run, slowly getting closer... When I tried to save and quit out of the game, all I was told is [YOU CANNOT RUN FROM SOMETHING TRULY EVIL]. When I tried to rest at my very own home, I was threatened with [SOMETHING TRULY EVIL KNOWS WHERE YOU LIVE]. When the mysterious figure finally lurched upon me, the screen glitching nonstop, all I could do was [CRY FOR IT], [BLEED FOR IT], and finally [DIE FOR IT], and in my struggle against these options, I was forced upon the third one. I later found out that this series of events ruining my entire run were something I could have survived through, but it still left it an incredibly visceral, awesome experience.
Contrast that, on one of my last runs, I came out of a boss literally as close to death as possible, getting rid of all my items and spells in a play that I'm still surprised got me out of the fight alive. I spent the rest of the game getting by on the skin of my teeth and then, by the highest grace of god, that ended up a run I won. All of the stress and fear of what could destroy me around the corner in the face of glorious victory. It's the best rougelike feeling you could ask for.
So, the game works really well as a roguelike, one that keeps pulling me back in the more I think about it, like it's an elder god of its own. Sure, there's a couple of small issues I have with the game that I could elaborate more upon, namely the limited feeling combat system with defensive options that feel like they cost too much to be worth using. I'm sure as I play a bit more the repetition of the 24 cases will start to grate on me and I will start to really see the seams of repetition and eventually I will get bored of continuing it, just as I do with every game. However, even if I stopped right now, the time I put into the experience would be more than satisfying. It's all not a very big deal though in the face of everything else feeling viscerally unique and interesting. Definitely one of the best games released so far this year.
Every single screen of this game drips with one of the most incredible aesthetics I've ever seen in a game. The 2-bit art works so perfectly at making its gruesome imagery and overload of information put upon you at all times so evoking to look at. Even opening an item's submenu and seeing 20 different icons I can't click on and don't know what they do is interesting here. Combined with a really well-done soundtrack, it's hard not to be completely enraptured by what's in front of me at all times playing the game. I can imagine how the simple art allowed for the solo developer (who apparently made the game part time while being a dentist?!) to flesh out a lot of unique scenarios, which is of course vital for a rougelike.
Indeed, the game has an immense amount of things going on throughout the five different mysteries you tackle each run. So many different encounters with a breadth of different, often very precarious effects, a stupidly high number of unique enemies, and different permutations of survivors, old gods, and backstories to shape the entire way you have to play, there's a lot unique going on. I've beaten 3 runs of the game so far, with 2 more I fucked myself out of victory in the very final stretch out of greed and bad memory (and very precisely those two things!). Even as I slowly work through the game's systems, it's kept up the feeling of being arcane and dangerous.
Indeed, the world never lets you breathe for too long, constantly having to keep up the spinning plates of your two different health meters, injuries you can sustain, and an almost ever-increasing DOOM meter that does exactly what you'd expect it to if it ever reaches 100%. (Spoilers: You're doomed!) This is where most of the game's horror comes in, constantly under stress of being just a couple of bad decisions away from all of reality crumbling away. The game definitely has a couple of scares and plenty of unsettling things as you'd expect—a few of the DOOM-based game over texts have been lingering in my mind since I've first read them—but it's all very manageable and interspersed with a solid layer of shlockiness.
At first, I was really unsure about the game's structure, as the genre's fatal question lightly flickered in the back of my mind: "would I have liked this more if it wasn't a roguelike?". The way each case you take lays out is admittedly strange. Each case's story advances when you explore a certain area, but the encounter you get while exploring is not one tied to the case and you can go explore other areas at your... something vaguely approximating leisure. The case stories are fun little experiences, but of course with the roguelike nature, you'll be seeing these cases several times over (more often than the individual events for certain), so what's left?? Then I realized, even as the exact case events fade into the background on successive runs, so pops out the natural stories of a playthrough.
Getting a particularly bad skill check roll and catching the attention of a being known simply as [SOMETHING TRULY EVIL], a constant presence just out of sight throughout the run, slowly getting closer... When I tried to save and quit out of the game, all I was told is [YOU CANNOT RUN FROM SOMETHING TRULY EVIL]. When I tried to rest at my very own home, I was threatened with [SOMETHING TRULY EVIL KNOWS WHERE YOU LIVE]. When the mysterious figure finally lurched upon me, the screen glitching nonstop, all I could do was [CRY FOR IT], [BLEED FOR IT], and finally [DIE FOR IT], and in my struggle against these options, I was forced upon the third one. I later found out that this series of events ruining my entire run were something I could have survived through, but it still left it an incredibly visceral, awesome experience.
Contrast that, on one of my last runs, I came out of a boss literally as close to death as possible, getting rid of all my items and spells in a play that I'm still surprised got me out of the fight alive. I spent the rest of the game getting by on the skin of my teeth and then, by the highest grace of god, that ended up a run I won. All of the stress and fear of what could destroy me around the corner in the face of glorious victory. It's the best rougelike feeling you could ask for.
So, the game works really well as a roguelike, one that keeps pulling me back in the more I think about it, like it's an elder god of its own. Sure, there's a couple of small issues I have with the game that I could elaborate more upon, namely the limited feeling combat system with defensive options that feel like they cost too much to be worth using. I'm sure as I play a bit more the repetition of the 24 cases will start to grate on me and I will start to really see the seams of repetition and eventually I will get bored of continuing it, just as I do with every game. However, even if I stopped right now, the time I put into the experience would be more than satisfying. It's all not a very big deal though in the face of everything else feeling viscerally unique and interesting. Definitely one of the best games released so far this year.
Celeste
2018
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Balatro
2024
Balatro is the antethical to everything I've held dear to the medium in recent times: a near-completely artistically stripped down experience devoid of story, made to be repeated in perpetuity. Even the brightest jewels of the roguelike genre—Hades and Inscryption—I cherish largely in spite of their nature as roguelikes. Yet, after spending six hours playing through on release day, I was already hooked in deeply, just to have it embed deeper and deeper into my soul with every game.
There's an inherent trance that every run builds up, setting up the perfect hand with discards before firing off an insane chain reaction of multipliers. So many variables at play that it's pointless to crunch beyond a rough estimate, leaving each hand as something of it's own gamble. Sometimes that leaves you short of a win by only a fraction of the point threshold to hit, but sometimes that hand you thought would net you a few hundred thousand ticks all the way up to 20 million. This has happened to me on multiple occasions! And it's a glorious, visceral experience each and every time.
The biggest strength with Balatro, I feel, is the ease and variety of ways in which it feels like the game can be snapped in two. I have already beaten 7 or 8 runs of the game, more than any other roguelike I've played besides maybe Enter the Gungeon (which I dumped 100 hours into during high school), and am thirsting to do even more. From my experience, most other roguelikes make winning a run a far scarcer experience in order to help perpetuate the gameplay loop. But as it turns out, winning is really fun.
Not only that, every single winning run takes a completely separate angle to win: totally different Joker cards, deck compositions, and hands I aim for. It's so easy to feel like I've found the stupidest possible way to win the run, just to come around to the end 2-3 runs later with something far stupider. And even after each winning run, I feel inclined to continue in the endless mode, where the point thresholds start going up exponentially just to see how far the utter stupidity can take me. Many runs end up becoming less about whether or not I can win with my setup, but rather the far more interesting question of how far towards infinity I can reach with it. I'm prematurely a bit excited for the run I eventually get on that lets me pass my current wall, the 300 million point threshold.
It's pretty impressive how Balatro really just... doesn't have any issues. Thanks to being so stripped down, it manages to be absolutely airtight in its design while providing a cornucopia of variety. It's just an absolute masterpiece of design. A welcome surprise for personal game of the year contender.
There's an inherent trance that every run builds up, setting up the perfect hand with discards before firing off an insane chain reaction of multipliers. So many variables at play that it's pointless to crunch beyond a rough estimate, leaving each hand as something of it's own gamble. Sometimes that leaves you short of a win by only a fraction of the point threshold to hit, but sometimes that hand you thought would net you a few hundred thousand ticks all the way up to 20 million. This has happened to me on multiple occasions! And it's a glorious, visceral experience each and every time.
The biggest strength with Balatro, I feel, is the ease and variety of ways in which it feels like the game can be snapped in two. I have already beaten 7 or 8 runs of the game, more than any other roguelike I've played besides maybe Enter the Gungeon (which I dumped 100 hours into during high school), and am thirsting to do even more. From my experience, most other roguelikes make winning a run a far scarcer experience in order to help perpetuate the gameplay loop. But as it turns out, winning is really fun.
Not only that, every single winning run takes a completely separate angle to win: totally different Joker cards, deck compositions, and hands I aim for. It's so easy to feel like I've found the stupidest possible way to win the run, just to come around to the end 2-3 runs later with something far stupider. And even after each winning run, I feel inclined to continue in the endless mode, where the point thresholds start going up exponentially just to see how far the utter stupidity can take me. Many runs end up becoming less about whether or not I can win with my setup, but rather the far more interesting question of how far towards infinity I can reach with it. I'm prematurely a bit excited for the run I eventually get on that lets me pass my current wall, the 300 million point threshold.
It's pretty impressive how Balatro really just... doesn't have any issues. Thanks to being so stripped down, it manages to be absolutely airtight in its design while providing a cornucopia of variety. It's just an absolute masterpiece of design. A welcome surprise for personal game of the year contender.
This review contains spoilers
At our core, every human is a patchwork of ideas imprinted upon us by others, both consciously and subconsciously. We then continue the cycle of imprinting on those around us, again, both consciously and subconsciously. There’s a reason all art is political, even if not all art desires to engage politically.
It feels impossible, no matter how trite it may feel, to discuss Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass without consistent reference to the inspirations it wears on its sleeve (a strong enough invitation for comparison). Something of a classic Final Fantasy-structured globetrotting adventure with a reinterpretation of Yume Nikki’s transformation system. And, most pressingly of course, a closer set of vibes to what makes the Mother trilogy so beloved than any other game I’ve played. Standing on the shoulders of giants, Jimmy manages, with only a few missteps, to coalesce into an immensely charming RPG with an impressive amount of depth to it.
It’s quickly apparent getting situated in Jimmy’s home atop the clouds it’s some kinda of dream world, beset by the growing rot of the titular Pulsating Mass (an obvious stand-in for… something). This vast world, so rich in variety, is the star of the show. A constant stream of interesting new locales and dungeons reflecting upon Jimmy’s young psyche manages to capture the oh-so-pristine feeling of being a real globe-trotting adventure. It really hits in the endgame cleanup, having the Final Fantasy airship moment and realizing how far I’ve come since the starting island, and how much there still was to experience. Even when I dug well into the game, there was still a solid half-dozen side dungeons with their own unique aesthetics, lore, and gameplay mechanics I never even touched.
Combat alone is chocked to the brim with a stupid number of elements that are so fun to really dig into. Jimmy alone has like 10 separate forms he can switch between in battle, each with completely different niches. As you level them up you unlock pieces of each form to spec base form JImmy into any sort of fearsome fighter. The rest of the team have more predefined niches, but plenty of weapons, equipment, skill manuals, accessories, and collectable furniture that gives a ton of flexibility in the team dynamics. Towards the end, the game does some I LOVE when games do: giving you gimmicky equipment that fundamentally changes how characters work. In the final areas, my healer was rocking with the strongest basic attack in the entire party after an entire game of her being the weakest by a large margin.
The enemies, not to be outmatched, are full of their own little gimmicks, particularly interacting with Goon Jimmy’s grifting. Got an alarm robot in the way? Just steal its voice box and let it flounder in silence. Didn’t steal it and let the alarm summon a Deathbot 3000? Just steal the Deathbot 3000’s voicebox and—oh—that doesn’t prevent it from death-ing you. Of particular interest, basically every boss fight has an interesting gimmick attached to it as well. It’s an interesting contrast to Final Fantasy VII, which (like VI) opens with a boss who’s counterattack serves as a good tutorial to the ATB system, before forgetting boss gimmicks can be a thing until the superbosses. It’s really impressive how well realized Jimmy’s combat ends up being, easily the best combat of any RPG Maker game I’ve played (granted, Omori is probably the only game that remotely competes).
Unfortunately, the game decides to take on particular element from the Mother series that… well… read my Mother 3 review: the combat gets to be a SLOG. While it has the nice QoL feature of being able to ignore some encounters when you hit some arbitrary requirement (I assume level??), each individual encounter is difficult enough and enough of a resource drain to become exhausting, and often leaving you unprepared for boss fights with massive HP pools at the end of a long dungeon.
Almost every boss became a loop of attempting it, realizing I did not have the resources to survive the war of attrition against the boss, then switching to easy mode to get through it. The reason it took so long for me to beat the game was the constant ramming my head against a wall before putting it down for a few weeks, several times over. Until halfway through the game when I decided to just keep easy mode on full time. despite the game pinning normal mode as “the intended experience”, easy mode was so much more enjoyable. It saved the experience for me really, turning it into a really chill adventure overall.
This adventure is constantly intertwined with the adventures of a whole bunch of other characters. While the concept of “reoccuring side characters” is of course not remotely unique, I think its notable how many the game has. Halfway through the game the game stops everything to do what could be called an “every character in the game so far tournament arc” and it’s a delight. It (perhaps counterintuitively) really builds up the sense of adventure and strong vibes.
To reuse the phrasing that certainly made people silently wish death upon me on the Mario Discord, Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass is the “quirky Earthbound inspired indie game” that most exactly captures the vibes that made the progenitor trilogy so appealing. I struggle to pick out the exact elements that make them match so hard beyond a lot of very earnest humor interspersed with some really engrossing descriptions (albeit far more R-rated than anything you’d find in Mother). Still, it ended up making for a very similar feeling experience to the one I had playing Mother 3 last year—and not one that felt derivative in the slightest.
The art style does not carry the vibes as well as the writing, with sprites often looking fairly crude in a way that feels amateurish. It gets a tad unbearable in the game’s gorier moments. Sometimes, the game pulls out a pretty impressive looking part that makes me think the spritework is meant to reflect the crudeness and edginess of a child like Jimmy’s thoughts. But then I see the kinda abhorrent spritework for the visual novel section of the game and I lose benefit of the doubt. At least the soundtrack absolutely slaps.
Ironically, the weakest characters end up being the main cast: Jimmy’s family. They’re not bad characters, but just end up feeling kind of thin and “along for the ride” when spending so much of the game with them. And when the story is so focused on Jimmy’s family, it ended up not really emotionally landing for me, especially compared to how I’ve seen it hit some others. It took until near the end, when Jimmy is given brief flashes on consciousness to realize the Pulsating Mass I suspected to be some sort of metaphor (Earthbound-inspired indie RPG about depression REAL???) was literally a Pulsating Mass. It’s a cancerous tumor. Jimmy is in a coma. Then the rest of the game ends up playing out just about how you’d expect it to. While there’s some texture provided, particularly during the glimpses back into reality, to keep it from feel too trite, I can’t help from feeling somewhat dissatisfied.
Jimmy’s adventure is moreso about the journey than the destination, though, and I think the game even makes the case for that. While not some must play game that will stick with me forever, there’s so much heart that it’s hard not to really like it in spite of the issues. It’s a game of impressive craft, especially considering it was a solo development.
For the final, secret form Jimmy can unlock, he imagines himself as the phoenix. “He feels alive. Energized. Jimmy thinks that if he put his mind to it, he could fly right out of bed. He could fly and fly. He could burn bright forever, like a brand new sun.”
It’s a game that knows how to be beautiful.
It feels impossible, no matter how trite it may feel, to discuss Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass without consistent reference to the inspirations it wears on its sleeve (a strong enough invitation for comparison). Something of a classic Final Fantasy-structured globetrotting adventure with a reinterpretation of Yume Nikki’s transformation system. And, most pressingly of course, a closer set of vibes to what makes the Mother trilogy so beloved than any other game I’ve played. Standing on the shoulders of giants, Jimmy manages, with only a few missteps, to coalesce into an immensely charming RPG with an impressive amount of depth to it.
It’s quickly apparent getting situated in Jimmy’s home atop the clouds it’s some kinda of dream world, beset by the growing rot of the titular Pulsating Mass (an obvious stand-in for… something). This vast world, so rich in variety, is the star of the show. A constant stream of interesting new locales and dungeons reflecting upon Jimmy’s young psyche manages to capture the oh-so-pristine feeling of being a real globe-trotting adventure. It really hits in the endgame cleanup, having the Final Fantasy airship moment and realizing how far I’ve come since the starting island, and how much there still was to experience. Even when I dug well into the game, there was still a solid half-dozen side dungeons with their own unique aesthetics, lore, and gameplay mechanics I never even touched.
Combat alone is chocked to the brim with a stupid number of elements that are so fun to really dig into. Jimmy alone has like 10 separate forms he can switch between in battle, each with completely different niches. As you level them up you unlock pieces of each form to spec base form JImmy into any sort of fearsome fighter. The rest of the team have more predefined niches, but plenty of weapons, equipment, skill manuals, accessories, and collectable furniture that gives a ton of flexibility in the team dynamics. Towards the end, the game does some I LOVE when games do: giving you gimmicky equipment that fundamentally changes how characters work. In the final areas, my healer was rocking with the strongest basic attack in the entire party after an entire game of her being the weakest by a large margin.
The enemies, not to be outmatched, are full of their own little gimmicks, particularly interacting with Goon Jimmy’s grifting. Got an alarm robot in the way? Just steal its voice box and let it flounder in silence. Didn’t steal it and let the alarm summon a Deathbot 3000? Just steal the Deathbot 3000’s voicebox and—oh—that doesn’t prevent it from death-ing you. Of particular interest, basically every boss fight has an interesting gimmick attached to it as well. It’s an interesting contrast to Final Fantasy VII, which (like VI) opens with a boss who’s counterattack serves as a good tutorial to the ATB system, before forgetting boss gimmicks can be a thing until the superbosses. It’s really impressive how well realized Jimmy’s combat ends up being, easily the best combat of any RPG Maker game I’ve played (granted, Omori is probably the only game that remotely competes).
Unfortunately, the game decides to take on particular element from the Mother series that… well… read my Mother 3 review: the combat gets to be a SLOG. While it has the nice QoL feature of being able to ignore some encounters when you hit some arbitrary requirement (I assume level??), each individual encounter is difficult enough and enough of a resource drain to become exhausting, and often leaving you unprepared for boss fights with massive HP pools at the end of a long dungeon.
Almost every boss became a loop of attempting it, realizing I did not have the resources to survive the war of attrition against the boss, then switching to easy mode to get through it. The reason it took so long for me to beat the game was the constant ramming my head against a wall before putting it down for a few weeks, several times over. Until halfway through the game when I decided to just keep easy mode on full time. despite the game pinning normal mode as “the intended experience”, easy mode was so much more enjoyable. It saved the experience for me really, turning it into a really chill adventure overall.
This adventure is constantly intertwined with the adventures of a whole bunch of other characters. While the concept of “reoccuring side characters” is of course not remotely unique, I think its notable how many the game has. Halfway through the game the game stops everything to do what could be called an “every character in the game so far tournament arc” and it’s a delight. It (perhaps counterintuitively) really builds up the sense of adventure and strong vibes.
To reuse the phrasing that certainly made people silently wish death upon me on the Mario Discord, Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass is the “quirky Earthbound inspired indie game” that most exactly captures the vibes that made the progenitor trilogy so appealing. I struggle to pick out the exact elements that make them match so hard beyond a lot of very earnest humor interspersed with some really engrossing descriptions (albeit far more R-rated than anything you’d find in Mother). Still, it ended up making for a very similar feeling experience to the one I had playing Mother 3 last year—and not one that felt derivative in the slightest.
The art style does not carry the vibes as well as the writing, with sprites often looking fairly crude in a way that feels amateurish. It gets a tad unbearable in the game’s gorier moments. Sometimes, the game pulls out a pretty impressive looking part that makes me think the spritework is meant to reflect the crudeness and edginess of a child like Jimmy’s thoughts. But then I see the kinda abhorrent spritework for the visual novel section of the game and I lose benefit of the doubt. At least the soundtrack absolutely slaps.
Ironically, the weakest characters end up being the main cast: Jimmy’s family. They’re not bad characters, but just end up feeling kind of thin and “along for the ride” when spending so much of the game with them. And when the story is so focused on Jimmy’s family, it ended up not really emotionally landing for me, especially compared to how I’ve seen it hit some others. It took until near the end, when Jimmy is given brief flashes on consciousness to realize the Pulsating Mass I suspected to be some sort of metaphor (Earthbound-inspired indie RPG about depression REAL???) was literally a Pulsating Mass. It’s a cancerous tumor. Jimmy is in a coma. Then the rest of the game ends up playing out just about how you’d expect it to. While there’s some texture provided, particularly during the glimpses back into reality, to keep it from feel too trite, I can’t help from feeling somewhat dissatisfied.
Jimmy’s adventure is moreso about the journey than the destination, though, and I think the game even makes the case for that. While not some must play game that will stick with me forever, there’s so much heart that it’s hard not to really like it in spite of the issues. It’s a game of impressive craft, especially considering it was a solo development.
For the final, secret form Jimmy can unlock, he imagines himself as the phoenix. “He feels alive. Energized. Jimmy thinks that if he put his mind to it, he could fly right out of bed. He could fly and fly. He could burn bright forever, like a brand new sun.”
It’s a game that knows how to be beautiful.
Neon White
2022
Neon White felt like the perfect companion piece to my awaited playthrough of Final Fantasy VII: a lighting-fast action game to contrast a slower-paced JRPG. Yet, within the first few levels of playing Neon White, I knew this plan was shot by a game that contrasts itself far too well to put down.
The game has an incredibly well-defined gameplay loop for each level. First, figuring out the fastest path through the level to slowly whittle down the time to an Ace-rank medal (and even an elusive dev time-beating Red Ace medal once for me) in attempt after attempt of high-precision gameplay. Then, taking a fine-tooth comb to the level to find the hidden present and, more importantly, figure out how to actually collect it. Rinse and repeat for the next level. The present portion serves almost as a reward for getting an appropriate time on the level, something that often takes upwards of 10 minutes in the later levels. Without this "break", speedrunning levels back to back would almost certainly get exhausting.
Yet, both portions are able to remain incredibly stimulating with how they force you to thing about the physical space you're platforming through in each level. It'd be so easy for each level to be a linear, binary skill test, but the possibility space for each level is immense. They end up being these multi-faceted puzzles where absolutely everything around you needs to be considered in really interesting ways. So often you'll go through a level one way, be 10 seconds off from the Ace rank time, and then it just requires thinking about the tools to get through the level and how, if used in a completely different way, you shave off so much time.
The possibility space just continues growing the further in you get, with each new weapon added to your arsenal providing more freedom to utilize than the last. In the last few worlds, the grenade launcher that lets you both rocket jump up the side of walls and expend the weapon for a grappling hook completely blows the doors off the limitations of what 's possible if you're smart, and the game really makes you think about it. The game pulls the "figure out a way to conserve your bazookas throughout the level so you can stock up on blasts to scale up the side of a massive building to find a present" card more times than it really should be able to, but it remains satisfying to do every single time.
The game tries to replicate its high-octane/relaxing pace on a more macro structure as well, but it... doesn't work quite as well. The story the game tries to tell, in every facet down to its voice acting, feels overly thin for the amount of times the game dedicates to it. While nothing about it stuck out as outwardly bad to me, a lot of my paging through the dialogue, particularly in the individual character sidequests, felt like an obligation to get to the next portion of actual gameplay. By the end of the game, I ended up getting a bit annoyed at Neon Violet's yandere-isms, which I did not anticipate from my initial impressions of her (I am typically very tolerant of that kind of stuff)!
It's a shame how much space the lacking story takes place compared to what's a practically perfect gameplay experience. While I don't wish for the story to have been removed entirely, I think that would be a detriment to the game itself, sometimes you just wish something was a bit better! Still, it doesn't detract from the experience that much—and I think anybody who seriously docks the game for it needs to grow up a bit. Neon White as an incredibly enthralling, unique experience that understands speedrunning so well. I've been waiting to play the game since it released a year and a half ago, never getting around to it for one reason or another but always knowing it would be Poochycore. It feels good getting to this point and knowing my gut feeling was right!
The game has an incredibly well-defined gameplay loop for each level. First, figuring out the fastest path through the level to slowly whittle down the time to an Ace-rank medal (and even an elusive dev time-beating Red Ace medal once for me) in attempt after attempt of high-precision gameplay. Then, taking a fine-tooth comb to the level to find the hidden present and, more importantly, figure out how to actually collect it. Rinse and repeat for the next level. The present portion serves almost as a reward for getting an appropriate time on the level, something that often takes upwards of 10 minutes in the later levels. Without this "break", speedrunning levels back to back would almost certainly get exhausting.
Yet, both portions are able to remain incredibly stimulating with how they force you to thing about the physical space you're platforming through in each level. It'd be so easy for each level to be a linear, binary skill test, but the possibility space for each level is immense. They end up being these multi-faceted puzzles where absolutely everything around you needs to be considered in really interesting ways. So often you'll go through a level one way, be 10 seconds off from the Ace rank time, and then it just requires thinking about the tools to get through the level and how, if used in a completely different way, you shave off so much time.
The possibility space just continues growing the further in you get, with each new weapon added to your arsenal providing more freedom to utilize than the last. In the last few worlds, the grenade launcher that lets you both rocket jump up the side of walls and expend the weapon for a grappling hook completely blows the doors off the limitations of what 's possible if you're smart, and the game really makes you think about it. The game pulls the "figure out a way to conserve your bazookas throughout the level so you can stock up on blasts to scale up the side of a massive building to find a present" card more times than it really should be able to, but it remains satisfying to do every single time.
The game tries to replicate its high-octane/relaxing pace on a more macro structure as well, but it... doesn't work quite as well. The story the game tries to tell, in every facet down to its voice acting, feels overly thin for the amount of times the game dedicates to it. While nothing about it stuck out as outwardly bad to me, a lot of my paging through the dialogue, particularly in the individual character sidequests, felt like an obligation to get to the next portion of actual gameplay. By the end of the game, I ended up getting a bit annoyed at Neon Violet's yandere-isms, which I did not anticipate from my initial impressions of her (I am typically very tolerant of that kind of stuff)!
It's a shame how much space the lacking story takes place compared to what's a practically perfect gameplay experience. While I don't wish for the story to have been removed entirely, I think that would be a detriment to the game itself, sometimes you just wish something was a bit better! Still, it doesn't detract from the experience that much—and I think anybody who seriously docks the game for it needs to grow up a bit. Neon White as an incredibly enthralling, unique experience that understands speedrunning so well. I've been waiting to play the game since it released a year and a half ago, never getting around to it for one reason or another but always knowing it would be Poochycore. It feels good getting to this point and knowing my gut feeling was right!
This review contains spoilers
I knew Final Fantasy XV was a massive mess of a game. I’ve known it ever since the game came out in 2016, consequently seeing them try to patch it together into something more coherent. Despite that deep-seeded knowledge, what drew me to this? Was it a pressing desire to engage in high octane combat after a series of games with sparse physical gameplay engagement? The fact it was on sale for $14? A gut feeling that I would actually think the game is pretty good (I mean it was patched a bunch)??? Was it the twinks????????? The answers naturally follow: yes. Ultimately, it’s the hunter to blame for being slain by the beast if they were given sufficient precaution to its ferocity.
These initial drawings started to wear away quite quickly. After an opening that throws you into it with little pretense and the "Stand By Me" car pushing scene that I always thought was referring to the movie when people have talked about it prior, combat rears its fangs. You can attack enemies with a volley of sword swings, warp to enemies, have your allies pull off their own moves, aaaaand... that's about it!
To be blunt: the combat sucks. Even my desire for something physically engaging is shot by the fact that the basic cadence the sword not feeling very satisfying. Otherwise, you can use the complete non-starter of a magic system or cutscene attacks that lose their luster almost immediately. With so few options at your disposal, it ends up being perhaps the very epitome of hold attack to win... very slowly... either taking down one giant dude with way too much health, or handling a way too large number of goons in a game severely lacking in crowd control options, often just leading to a several minute long clusterfuck.
Sword warping is perhaps the most disappointing element, when its so clearly meant to be this combat's "thing". You can warp to an enemy to do a fairly strong attack, you can warp to a safe point to heal, and... again, that's it! Frustratingly, the game does show the cinematics it so desperately wants for all of two boss fights: following them throughout the air, clashing arms, sending them to the ground. It makes every other uninteresting, incredibly samey-feeling fight all the most frustrating, because there's clearly potential here that's barely tapped into.
This fleeting potential is a story that repeats itself throughout just about every single aspect of the game. A couple of moments of absolute brilliance that's drowned out by a flood of incredibly poor construction. One particularly prominent beacon of light shines during the open world exploration, a fairly novel approach to it where you're largely stuck to your car as a base, going from it out to do sidequests before wrapping back to a campsite or hotel after a couple to cash in your experience. While the world itself is fairly barren—with a number of enterable buildings rivaling that of the latest Pokemon games and sparse incentive for natural exploration outside of sidequests—the interactions with your cast are such a treat that it made the mundanity of the moment-to-moment gameplay itself so much more tolerable.
Noctis's entourage—Prompto, Gladiolus, and Ignis—are the blazing heart and soul of the game. There's a bevy of unique lines for each location and quest and really eloquently made animations for each camping section. One of my favorite moments was after camping for the night, when Prompto asked me to wake up early the next morning for a short sidequest to capture a picture of a giant monster nearby. It was such a natural excursion that really made the game feel alive for those few moments, like I was really going on a road trip with my bros. It's a great feeling! Prompto ended up my favorite of the bunch, not just because he's the cutest (though that does help!), but the way his photography integrates so naturally over the course of the game. It's such a joy flipping through the snapshots while camping as a brief retrospect of what you did, saving the best to create a growing compendium of your entire adventure. And to the game's credit, it very well knows this!
It's so great then when the game decides to rip off what little appeal is left draped on its shambling corpse. I was well aware that the open world is abandoned in the game's back half for something strictly linear, but it didn't properly prepare me for how much it would make the open nature of the game prior a fading star. All of the time spent on a roadtrip with your pals is thrown out for traveling down a fuckton of barren hallways getting into the nitty gritty bullshit of its swiss cheese-ass story. It's really, really hard to care about a lot of the events that are going on when the game never takes the care to set them up properly due to its immensely fucked up dev cycle. How am I supposed to care about the death of Ravus when he's in two scenes of the game prior and gets his demise announced in a completely missable radio broadcast???
So many characters in the game end up unceremoniously killed despite having 5 minutes of screentime prior. Noctis's dad being assassinated in a nonsensical supercut of a scene from the Kingsglaive movie that wasn't even in the game prior to its day one patch. Jared's death leading to Noctis having an outsized breakdown for a character that is the most literal who imaginable. Lunafreya being such an important cornerstone of the game's plot, but the swift knife of messy development basically cutting her out of the game!!! Did you know: the developers of the game called her a strong female character? Despite the only thing she actually does in the game is help make sure her groom-to-be could continue on his destined path???? But hey, another character calls her strong for doing this in a flashback several hours after her death, so its fine.
The linearity really comes to a head in the penultimate Chapter 13, a winding gauntlet where you're stripped of both allies and weapons. You have to slowly plod through this place, slowly gaining back what you've lost to overcome the odds. I can see the intention: illuminating the weaknesses and insecurities of Noctis as a solitary figure, split apart from the allies so vital to him. It's meant to be scary, but it just ends up being tedious. It really had no reason to keep going and going and going AND GOING, keeping up the same monotony for a solid hour. And this is after the patch that gave you the ability to sprint during the chapter and let you kill enemies way faster! I can only imagine how miserable playing this chapter must've been at launch.
But for all the misses with its ideas the game has, again, some of its ideas are still able to shine through. After Ignis is blinded due to [DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT], you spend Chapter 11 traversing a dungeon where the tensions of the group are at an all time high. Gladiolus just got done yelling at Noctis for his inabilities and now you have to slowly walk through this pit while making sure the cane-wielding Ignis doesn't fall behind. If you try to go ahead, Prompto and Gladio will passive-aggressively snark at you to wait up. The whole experience genuinely started to piss me off, bringing me right into their shared mindset. By focusing on these characters I already grew an attachment to in the game's first half, it ends up being an incredibly effective, and genuinely impressive, unity of gameplay and story beats.
This game has a vision that illuminates so clearly in its final act. Noctis Lucis Caelum: a pampered prince thrust out into the real world, going on a 10-year journey to learn the sacrifices we must make for each other such that he is able to become the King of Kings and free his kingdom and his people of the darkness once and for all. When he's able to enter the throne room for his final duel, he takes one last look through the photographs saved throughout the journey, a reflection of all everything that led to him being the man he's become. This moment shows that the developers knew what they had here, and it hit me so well. Then Noctis enters the throne room, and makes the ultimate sacrifice to complete his destiny. And the final scene transitioning into the game's logo. Beautiful on a level few games are able to reach. On paper, it is such an incredible epic to be told.
Which makes it so supremely frustrating that's not what Final Fantasy XV is.
The losses Noctis has suffered are almost all stunted by being characters with so little screentime or being omitted almost entirely. The 10-year timeskip just kinda happens without much reasoning behind it, besides it advancing what the devs wanted the endpoint of the game to be. It ends up being really jarring, and hampers Noctis's grand return when he was only gone for like 30 minutes of actual game time. The game brings itself to such an epic conclusion, with its lavishly rendered cutscenes and incredible music, without building up a story that deserves such a finale.
And yet, the final campfire scene, where Noctis, about to leave behind his friends for good, tearfully bears out his love for them. And it got me! Because I love these characters! It's such a genuine, hearfelt, incredible place to leave them off, it almost makes me angry. Noctis, Prompto, Gladio, and Ignis deserve the 9/10 game this 4/10 game so desperately wants to be, but it's too late for that to happen.
—————————————————
I also played the four DLC episodes that released, the first three presenting the truth of things that happen to the three members of Noct's entourage in their absence that are never elaborated on in the game. While on their own they're largely inoffensive (a tedious enemy gauntlet, a not very good feeling shooter, and an actually pretty cool elemental combat system), they mainly suffer from the fact that, since they're so disconnected from the game itself, what happens in them can't actually have an impact on the main game's story. Gladio's and Prompto's stories don't end up adding to their respective characters much, and perhaps even worse, Ignis's does!!!
Finding out the reason Igniswent blind is that he sacrificed it to put on a holy ring and save his king is so much cooler than what I expected the reason to be and fits in so well with the game's central theming of sacrifice. It makes it all the more frustrating that this can't be explored in the main game because the reasoning for his blindness is completely skimmed over there. I don't understand if its out of a greedy desire to make people buy the DLC or a prideful desire to only show this reveal in the best light possible, but even if they couldn't rewrite the story with the mess they had... at least mention this plot point! Even the messy development can't really excuse the nonsensicality of this.
Then there's Episode Ardyn, following the eponymous villain of the game (which was spoiled for me due to the DLC's description. lol. lmao). The gameplay is genuinely really cool, with what's by far the best boss fight in the entire game, for as low a bar as it is. Yet, letting the story sink in during the following hours has soured me a fair bit on it. Selfsame to my problem with the other episodes, the story it covers just does not interact well with the main game its supposed to slide into, and even worse feels kind of contradictory. Ardyn turns out to have been the true king chosen by the gods and Noctis's ancestor, the first king of Insomnia, acknowledges himself as something of an illegitimate heir? Perhaps I did not read well enough, but that sense of Ardyn being a tragic villain who was betrayed does not come across AT ALL in the main game. In fact, it makes the whole story of Noctis coming back to reclaim his throne feel kinda weird!
This was meant to be the start of a series of DLCs, Dawn of the Future, with an alternate telling of the game's story, before being unceremoniously canned in possibly the strangest developer broadcast of all time. Ardyn and Noctis and others were to team up against the gods and unseal themselves from the fate set upon them, with a drastically different ending from the one in the main game. While I'm not against the concept of DLC delving into alternative storylines, its such a bizarre decision here. Final Fantasy XV's ending is already its best realized part and is firmly rooted in the idea of Noctis fulfilling his destiny. To make a path focused on breaching that destiny feels like it undermines what made the original ending so powerful.
All of this DLC doesn't change what Final Fantasy XV is: a deeply disappointing, unfinished, not very fun to play game. If they didn't want to make the full effort to integrate these stories into the game, I really don't think they should've bothered. It's not that I would expect them to do that, considering how much effort would need to be put in to wrangle this game together into a something that's truly quality. This isn't something that could be, or should be fixed. The effort required would be so much better put into new stories and experiences. I don't even feel like I wasted time with this game, despite having such a distain for so much of it. Despite everything, this game still managed to make me care about Final Fantasy as a series. I've dabbled in VI & VII, but this was my first time digging really deep into one, and now I'm voracious for me. I'm already planning on playing VI, and VII and VII remake and XVI when it hits PC. Final Fantasy XV is perhaps the most interesting failure of a game I have ever played, and for all of that, it at least managed to make an experience I would call unforgettable.
These initial drawings started to wear away quite quickly. After an opening that throws you into it with little pretense and the "Stand By Me" car pushing scene that I always thought was referring to the movie when people have talked about it prior, combat rears its fangs. You can attack enemies with a volley of sword swings, warp to enemies, have your allies pull off their own moves, aaaaand... that's about it!
To be blunt: the combat sucks. Even my desire for something physically engaging is shot by the fact that the basic cadence the sword not feeling very satisfying. Otherwise, you can use the complete non-starter of a magic system or cutscene attacks that lose their luster almost immediately. With so few options at your disposal, it ends up being perhaps the very epitome of hold attack to win... very slowly... either taking down one giant dude with way too much health, or handling a way too large number of goons in a game severely lacking in crowd control options, often just leading to a several minute long clusterfuck.
Sword warping is perhaps the most disappointing element, when its so clearly meant to be this combat's "thing". You can warp to an enemy to do a fairly strong attack, you can warp to a safe point to heal, and... again, that's it! Frustratingly, the game does show the cinematics it so desperately wants for all of two boss fights: following them throughout the air, clashing arms, sending them to the ground. It makes every other uninteresting, incredibly samey-feeling fight all the most frustrating, because there's clearly potential here that's barely tapped into.
This fleeting potential is a story that repeats itself throughout just about every single aspect of the game. A couple of moments of absolute brilliance that's drowned out by a flood of incredibly poor construction. One particularly prominent beacon of light shines during the open world exploration, a fairly novel approach to it where you're largely stuck to your car as a base, going from it out to do sidequests before wrapping back to a campsite or hotel after a couple to cash in your experience. While the world itself is fairly barren—with a number of enterable buildings rivaling that of the latest Pokemon games and sparse incentive for natural exploration outside of sidequests—the interactions with your cast are such a treat that it made the mundanity of the moment-to-moment gameplay itself so much more tolerable.
Noctis's entourage—Prompto, Gladiolus, and Ignis—are the blazing heart and soul of the game. There's a bevy of unique lines for each location and quest and really eloquently made animations for each camping section. One of my favorite moments was after camping for the night, when Prompto asked me to wake up early the next morning for a short sidequest to capture a picture of a giant monster nearby. It was such a natural excursion that really made the game feel alive for those few moments, like I was really going on a road trip with my bros. It's a great feeling! Prompto ended up my favorite of the bunch, not just because he's the cutest (though that does help!), but the way his photography integrates so naturally over the course of the game. It's such a joy flipping through the snapshots while camping as a brief retrospect of what you did, saving the best to create a growing compendium of your entire adventure. And to the game's credit, it very well knows this!
It's so great then when the game decides to rip off what little appeal is left draped on its shambling corpse. I was well aware that the open world is abandoned in the game's back half for something strictly linear, but it didn't properly prepare me for how much it would make the open nature of the game prior a fading star. All of the time spent on a roadtrip with your pals is thrown out for traveling down a fuckton of barren hallways getting into the nitty gritty bullshit of its swiss cheese-ass story. It's really, really hard to care about a lot of the events that are going on when the game never takes the care to set them up properly due to its immensely fucked up dev cycle. How am I supposed to care about the death of Ravus when he's in two scenes of the game prior and gets his demise announced in a completely missable radio broadcast???
So many characters in the game end up unceremoniously killed despite having 5 minutes of screentime prior. Noctis's dad being assassinated in a nonsensical supercut of a scene from the Kingsglaive movie that wasn't even in the game prior to its day one patch. Jared's death leading to Noctis having an outsized breakdown for a character that is the most literal who imaginable. Lunafreya being such an important cornerstone of the game's plot, but the swift knife of messy development basically cutting her out of the game!!! Did you know: the developers of the game called her a strong female character? Despite the only thing she actually does in the game is help make sure her groom-to-be could continue on his destined path???? But hey, another character calls her strong for doing this in a flashback several hours after her death, so its fine.
The linearity really comes to a head in the penultimate Chapter 13, a winding gauntlet where you're stripped of both allies and weapons. You have to slowly plod through this place, slowly gaining back what you've lost to overcome the odds. I can see the intention: illuminating the weaknesses and insecurities of Noctis as a solitary figure, split apart from the allies so vital to him. It's meant to be scary, but it just ends up being tedious. It really had no reason to keep going and going and going AND GOING, keeping up the same monotony for a solid hour. And this is after the patch that gave you the ability to sprint during the chapter and let you kill enemies way faster! I can only imagine how miserable playing this chapter must've been at launch.
But for all the misses with its ideas the game has, again, some of its ideas are still able to shine through. After Ignis is blinded due to [DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT], you spend Chapter 11 traversing a dungeon where the tensions of the group are at an all time high. Gladiolus just got done yelling at Noctis for his inabilities and now you have to slowly walk through this pit while making sure the cane-wielding Ignis doesn't fall behind. If you try to go ahead, Prompto and Gladio will passive-aggressively snark at you to wait up. The whole experience genuinely started to piss me off, bringing me right into their shared mindset. By focusing on these characters I already grew an attachment to in the game's first half, it ends up being an incredibly effective, and genuinely impressive, unity of gameplay and story beats.
This game has a vision that illuminates so clearly in its final act. Noctis Lucis Caelum: a pampered prince thrust out into the real world, going on a 10-year journey to learn the sacrifices we must make for each other such that he is able to become the King of Kings and free his kingdom and his people of the darkness once and for all. When he's able to enter the throne room for his final duel, he takes one last look through the photographs saved throughout the journey, a reflection of all everything that led to him being the man he's become. This moment shows that the developers knew what they had here, and it hit me so well. Then Noctis enters the throne room, and makes the ultimate sacrifice to complete his destiny. And the final scene transitioning into the game's logo. Beautiful on a level few games are able to reach. On paper, it is such an incredible epic to be told.
Which makes it so supremely frustrating that's not what Final Fantasy XV is.
The losses Noctis has suffered are almost all stunted by being characters with so little screentime or being omitted almost entirely. The 10-year timeskip just kinda happens without much reasoning behind it, besides it advancing what the devs wanted the endpoint of the game to be. It ends up being really jarring, and hampers Noctis's grand return when he was only gone for like 30 minutes of actual game time. The game brings itself to such an epic conclusion, with its lavishly rendered cutscenes and incredible music, without building up a story that deserves such a finale.
And yet, the final campfire scene, where Noctis, about to leave behind his friends for good, tearfully bears out his love for them. And it got me! Because I love these characters! It's such a genuine, hearfelt, incredible place to leave them off, it almost makes me angry. Noctis, Prompto, Gladio, and Ignis deserve the 9/10 game this 4/10 game so desperately wants to be, but it's too late for that to happen.
—————————————————
I also played the four DLC episodes that released, the first three presenting the truth of things that happen to the three members of Noct's entourage in their absence that are never elaborated on in the game. While on their own they're largely inoffensive (a tedious enemy gauntlet, a not very good feeling shooter, and an actually pretty cool elemental combat system), they mainly suffer from the fact that, since they're so disconnected from the game itself, what happens in them can't actually have an impact on the main game's story. Gladio's and Prompto's stories don't end up adding to their respective characters much, and perhaps even worse, Ignis's does!!!
Finding out the reason Igniswent blind is that he sacrificed it to put on a holy ring and save his king is so much cooler than what I expected the reason to be and fits in so well with the game's central theming of sacrifice. It makes it all the more frustrating that this can't be explored in the main game because the reasoning for his blindness is completely skimmed over there. I don't understand if its out of a greedy desire to make people buy the DLC or a prideful desire to only show this reveal in the best light possible, but even if they couldn't rewrite the story with the mess they had... at least mention this plot point! Even the messy development can't really excuse the nonsensicality of this.
Then there's Episode Ardyn, following the eponymous villain of the game (which was spoiled for me due to the DLC's description. lol. lmao). The gameplay is genuinely really cool, with what's by far the best boss fight in the entire game, for as low a bar as it is. Yet, letting the story sink in during the following hours has soured me a fair bit on it. Selfsame to my problem with the other episodes, the story it covers just does not interact well with the main game its supposed to slide into, and even worse feels kind of contradictory. Ardyn turns out to have been the true king chosen by the gods and Noctis's ancestor, the first king of Insomnia, acknowledges himself as something of an illegitimate heir? Perhaps I did not read well enough, but that sense of Ardyn being a tragic villain who was betrayed does not come across AT ALL in the main game. In fact, it makes the whole story of Noctis coming back to reclaim his throne feel kinda weird!
This was meant to be the start of a series of DLCs, Dawn of the Future, with an alternate telling of the game's story, before being unceremoniously canned in possibly the strangest developer broadcast of all time. Ardyn and Noctis and others were to team up against the gods and unseal themselves from the fate set upon them, with a drastically different ending from the one in the main game. While I'm not against the concept of DLC delving into alternative storylines, its such a bizarre decision here. Final Fantasy XV's ending is already its best realized part and is firmly rooted in the idea of Noctis fulfilling his destiny. To make a path focused on breaching that destiny feels like it undermines what made the original ending so powerful.
All of this DLC doesn't change what Final Fantasy XV is: a deeply disappointing, unfinished, not very fun to play game. If they didn't want to make the full effort to integrate these stories into the game, I really don't think they should've bothered. It's not that I would expect them to do that, considering how much effort would need to be put in to wrangle this game together into a something that's truly quality. This isn't something that could be, or should be fixed. The effort required would be so much better put into new stories and experiences. I don't even feel like I wasted time with this game, despite having such a distain for so much of it. Despite everything, this game still managed to make me care about Final Fantasy as a series. I've dabbled in VI & VII, but this was my first time digging really deep into one, and now I'm voracious for me. I'm already planning on playing VI, and VII and VII remake and XVI when it hits PC. Final Fantasy XV is perhaps the most interesting failure of a game I have ever played, and for all of that, it at least managed to make an experience I would call unforgettable.
Celeste
2018
If there are two things you should know about me, it's that I have a very low tolerance for both repetition and friction in the games I play. That naturally leads to me rarely if ever replaying games and 100%ing them at a similar nonexistent rate. Yet here I am, having downloaded Celeste onto my Steam Deck just to try out the device on a game that'd be easy to immediately jump into. Then I ended up not only replaying the game to completion after my original playthrough in 2018, but to 100% completion. All 25 levels, all strawberries, and the Moon Berry (and 2 Goldies for good measure).
I got the game largely on a whim when I was 14 going on 15, and even seeing the radiant reviews it got did not prepare me for how dearly I would latch onto it. Getting invested into the story, attaching to Madeline, struggling through the C-Sides on the bus on the way to school every day for weeks. It was one of the first really good indie experiences I got my hands on and helped inform a lot of the way I view games today. Even before the replay, I felt confident saying it was my third favorite game of all time! I could go with the cliche bit about how "oh I was worried if the game would live up to my memories", but... I knew it'd be an amazing time. It's Celeste.
Now, did I anticipate that my appreciation for the game would reach a whole new level and I'd tear up over it in joy? Not quite! But it happened!
Here's the thing about playing Celeste today versus back then... I'm OLD. No matter how mature I thought I was at 14, my capacity for engaging with and understanding the media I experience has naturally grown vastly in the intervening years. These reviews are an exercise in understanding all these different games I play and figuring out how I'm supposed to share my findings with others. Rationally, it makes perfect sense; of course I can engage with art better when I'm older, but the internalization of this was a constant thought it my head during my entire present playthrough. Now when I look at this game, I'm so much better able to comprehend how it works, how it tutorializes its plethora of advanced mechanics, how it plays with its characters, and builds up its set pieces, and rewards, and teases, and makes me tear up. And—most importantly—I can appreciate better than ever how masterfully it pulls everything off.
One thing I had lost sight of as my memories of the game flattened out was just how different the A-sides are to the B and C-sides, with a heightened focus on exploration for all the strawberries and other collectables. The main path itself for most of these is over in a matter of 5 minutes, but there's such a strong appeal to digging into all these side challenges and secrets, my eagle eyes spotting a whole that is very clearly a secret area, then spotting a secret area within that secret area, and so on. The levels end up feeling like such vast expanses, with finding the main path often being part of the level's challenge! The level I remember having the least gracious memories of, Mirror Temple, ended up being one of my highlights this go around thanks to how hard it goes into being a big winding maze of pure collectable challenges. Reflecting on it now... it makes total sense the next game they're making is a Metroidvania! It plays off on the DNA of the A-sides almost perfectly.
To my pleasant surprise, there was a plethora of small moments interspersed throughout the A-Side experience beyond just the raw story and gameplay that had entirely left my memory, making the experience all the more special. Positioning the feather to steady Maddy's breaths has stuck in my mind ever since I first experienced it, but how about the scene where Madeline and Theo just talk at the end of 5A under the canopy of a dialogue tree that must encompass like half of the game's entire dialogue? It's such a natural conversation and I love how it gives Madeline the chance to let out all her feelings. Or the way the monster creatures in 5A are tutorialized by having you temporarily control one of them, to kill Madeline in her mind? It's so easy to forget, when most of my memories of the game consisted of throwing myself at the gameplay-oriented B and C sides how thorough of an experience Celeste is.
This isn't to knock the B and C sides though, because I love them still very much. It's obvious the game's credits rolls, while the end of Madeline's main arc, is but the "first act" of the entire gameplay experience. Instead of talking with the player predominantly on the basis of narrative, it shifts to guiding you with a (very) light hand through all of its challenges, and still introducing a bevy of new ideas and techniques even as the level themes are recycled. Even after the first 14 whole levels, 7B introduces the super wall jump and the game from then on out demands you know how to use it! In 8C when you have to learn how to grounded wavedash (I'm not looking up their actual terms LOL) from the tutorial bird, and slowly honing it through the gauntlet of its third screen. Then, at the very end, that fucking bird that I hate pops up again in front of the most mechanical implementation of the grounded wavedash since the very start, as if to say "you've better mastered it by now, bitch". And if we ignore the fact I died to that final trial like 10 times, I sure did master it.
Another surprise from this replay was that, wow, I really am just better at videogames than I used to be huh. My original playthrough took 42 hours with an incomplete strawberry list and a record of over 11k deaths. It only took me 17 hours this go around to beat every level with all the strawberries and two whole golden berries, all in a cool 3.6k and change deaths. It felt really cathartic going through these levels that caused me so much strife prior and have a pretty chill, but still demanding, time. Even when the difficulty really ratchets up with 7C, 8C, and Farewell, no one section kept me banging against my wall for all too long, sans one screen in Farewell that was remedied with the miracle cure of... taking a break to do something else and coming back to it! I beat it in one (1) minute on my return! Wow!
It all culminated well with the final few screens of the game. I flew through them with the wind at my back (sometimes literally!), knowing instinctively my path through the level. Then, the final screen of the entire campaign: a brutal gauntlet that demands a good 90 seconds of solid execution to succeed. After the first few attempts, I certain smugness set within me: "this isn't that hard". And what do you know, about 15 minutes worth of attempts later, my smugness was vindicated and victory was achieved. An immensely satisfying way to send off my gameplay experience with Celsete.
Something else about me has changed too, of course, one of the most important changes even. I realized I was trans, just like Madeline. The timeline of Celeste's designer Maddy Thorson realizing Madeline was trans as she herself figured out her gender identity, to revealing it in a 2020 blogpost missed out on overlapping with my own processing of my identity by a bit over a year. I already had Celeste being a transgender story pretty well squared away in my mind, never truly reckoning with it once it became something I could personally relate to.
Back during my first playthrough, back when Mount Celeste was a metaphor for depression and nothing more, I could recognize how good of a story Celeste told—it was one of the reasons I loved it so much—but it wasn't something I could relate to. Now though, coming back as an adult, as a woman who's gone through a hell of a lot to figure myself out, I get it now. Despite not being consciously written as a story about a girl learning to embrace her own identity, the transgender reading is so blatantly obvious—it was certainly unconsciously written as one. Thorson summed it up in her blog post on the matter. If you haven't read it, it feels essential to do so.
"Celeste is a game written and designed by a closeted trans person who was struggling with their gender identity, scored by a trans woman, with art and code and sound and other labor from their inspiring and irreplaceable friends."
Even if I have by and large figured myself out and am living as the best woman I can be in all aspects of life, it's still such a vulnerable thing to be. It's still so rare to have the experiences I have gone through be reflected in what I watch and play. To have it sink in how this game I love to death is really the unfiltered experience of someone just like me, I feel so seen. It makes me wanted to cry. When seeing Madeline and Badeline embrace each other, as Madeline embraces identity and gains the newfound resolve to keep moving forward, it made we want to cry. And reflecting on it all now, it still makes me want to cry.
There's a happenstance as Madeline climbs the Summit in 7A. Remember, Madeline was not yet understood by Thorson to be trans at the game's initial release. Yet, when she soars through the sky thanks to the newly embraced part of her, the sky is painted in streaks of blue, pink, and white: a canvas of trans pride surrounding her. She keeps moving forward, unafraid of failure, just glad she is trying. The fact she is pushing forward, that *I* am pushing forward, in spite of the immense challenges that loom an impossible shadow over us; our greatest victory is that we continue to be who we are.
I got the game largely on a whim when I was 14 going on 15, and even seeing the radiant reviews it got did not prepare me for how dearly I would latch onto it. Getting invested into the story, attaching to Madeline, struggling through the C-Sides on the bus on the way to school every day for weeks. It was one of the first really good indie experiences I got my hands on and helped inform a lot of the way I view games today. Even before the replay, I felt confident saying it was my third favorite game of all time! I could go with the cliche bit about how "oh I was worried if the game would live up to my memories", but... I knew it'd be an amazing time. It's Celeste.
Now, did I anticipate that my appreciation for the game would reach a whole new level and I'd tear up over it in joy? Not quite! But it happened!
Here's the thing about playing Celeste today versus back then... I'm OLD. No matter how mature I thought I was at 14, my capacity for engaging with and understanding the media I experience has naturally grown vastly in the intervening years. These reviews are an exercise in understanding all these different games I play and figuring out how I'm supposed to share my findings with others. Rationally, it makes perfect sense; of course I can engage with art better when I'm older, but the internalization of this was a constant thought it my head during my entire present playthrough. Now when I look at this game, I'm so much better able to comprehend how it works, how it tutorializes its plethora of advanced mechanics, how it plays with its characters, and builds up its set pieces, and rewards, and teases, and makes me tear up. And—most importantly—I can appreciate better than ever how masterfully it pulls everything off.
One thing I had lost sight of as my memories of the game flattened out was just how different the A-sides are to the B and C-sides, with a heightened focus on exploration for all the strawberries and other collectables. The main path itself for most of these is over in a matter of 5 minutes, but there's such a strong appeal to digging into all these side challenges and secrets, my eagle eyes spotting a whole that is very clearly a secret area, then spotting a secret area within that secret area, and so on. The levels end up feeling like such vast expanses, with finding the main path often being part of the level's challenge! The level I remember having the least gracious memories of, Mirror Temple, ended up being one of my highlights this go around thanks to how hard it goes into being a big winding maze of pure collectable challenges. Reflecting on it now... it makes total sense the next game they're making is a Metroidvania! It plays off on the DNA of the A-sides almost perfectly.
To my pleasant surprise, there was a plethora of small moments interspersed throughout the A-Side experience beyond just the raw story and gameplay that had entirely left my memory, making the experience all the more special. Positioning the feather to steady Maddy's breaths has stuck in my mind ever since I first experienced it, but how about the scene where Madeline and Theo just talk at the end of 5A under the canopy of a dialogue tree that must encompass like half of the game's entire dialogue? It's such a natural conversation and I love how it gives Madeline the chance to let out all her feelings. Or the way the monster creatures in 5A are tutorialized by having you temporarily control one of them, to kill Madeline in her mind? It's so easy to forget, when most of my memories of the game consisted of throwing myself at the gameplay-oriented B and C sides how thorough of an experience Celeste is.
This isn't to knock the B and C sides though, because I love them still very much. It's obvious the game's credits rolls, while the end of Madeline's main arc, is but the "first act" of the entire gameplay experience. Instead of talking with the player predominantly on the basis of narrative, it shifts to guiding you with a (very) light hand through all of its challenges, and still introducing a bevy of new ideas and techniques even as the level themes are recycled. Even after the first 14 whole levels, 7B introduces the super wall jump and the game from then on out demands you know how to use it! In 8C when you have to learn how to grounded wavedash (I'm not looking up their actual terms LOL) from the tutorial bird, and slowly honing it through the gauntlet of its third screen. Then, at the very end, that fucking bird that I hate pops up again in front of the most mechanical implementation of the grounded wavedash since the very start, as if to say "you've better mastered it by now, bitch". And if we ignore the fact I died to that final trial like 10 times, I sure did master it.
Another surprise from this replay was that, wow, I really am just better at videogames than I used to be huh. My original playthrough took 42 hours with an incomplete strawberry list and a record of over 11k deaths. It only took me 17 hours this go around to beat every level with all the strawberries and two whole golden berries, all in a cool 3.6k and change deaths. It felt really cathartic going through these levels that caused me so much strife prior and have a pretty chill, but still demanding, time. Even when the difficulty really ratchets up with 7C, 8C, and Farewell, no one section kept me banging against my wall for all too long, sans one screen in Farewell that was remedied with the miracle cure of... taking a break to do something else and coming back to it! I beat it in one (1) minute on my return! Wow!
It all culminated well with the final few screens of the game. I flew through them with the wind at my back (sometimes literally!), knowing instinctively my path through the level. Then, the final screen of the entire campaign: a brutal gauntlet that demands a good 90 seconds of solid execution to succeed. After the first few attempts, I certain smugness set within me: "this isn't that hard". And what do you know, about 15 minutes worth of attempts later, my smugness was vindicated and victory was achieved. An immensely satisfying way to send off my gameplay experience with Celsete.
Something else about me has changed too, of course, one of the most important changes even. I realized I was trans, just like Madeline. The timeline of Celeste's designer Maddy Thorson realizing Madeline was trans as she herself figured out her gender identity, to revealing it in a 2020 blogpost missed out on overlapping with my own processing of my identity by a bit over a year. I already had Celeste being a transgender story pretty well squared away in my mind, never truly reckoning with it once it became something I could personally relate to.
Back during my first playthrough, back when Mount Celeste was a metaphor for depression and nothing more, I could recognize how good of a story Celeste told—it was one of the reasons I loved it so much—but it wasn't something I could relate to. Now though, coming back as an adult, as a woman who's gone through a hell of a lot to figure myself out, I get it now. Despite not being consciously written as a story about a girl learning to embrace her own identity, the transgender reading is so blatantly obvious—it was certainly unconsciously written as one. Thorson summed it up in her blog post on the matter. If you haven't read it, it feels essential to do so.
"Celeste is a game written and designed by a closeted trans person who was struggling with their gender identity, scored by a trans woman, with art and code and sound and other labor from their inspiring and irreplaceable friends."
Even if I have by and large figured myself out and am living as the best woman I can be in all aspects of life, it's still such a vulnerable thing to be. It's still so rare to have the experiences I have gone through be reflected in what I watch and play. To have it sink in how this game I love to death is really the unfiltered experience of someone just like me, I feel so seen. It makes me wanted to cry. When seeing Madeline and Badeline embrace each other, as Madeline embraces identity and gains the newfound resolve to keep moving forward, it made we want to cry. And reflecting on it all now, it still makes me want to cry.
There's a happenstance as Madeline climbs the Summit in 7A. Remember, Madeline was not yet understood by Thorson to be trans at the game's initial release. Yet, when she soars through the sky thanks to the newly embraced part of her, the sky is painted in streaks of blue, pink, and white: a canvas of trans pride surrounding her. She keeps moving forward, unafraid of failure, just glad she is trying. The fact she is pushing forward, that *I* am pushing forward, in spite of the immense challenges that loom an impossible shadow over us; our greatest victory is that we continue to be who we are.
Super Mario RPG
2023
Despite being such a Mario nut, and a general enjoyer of RPGs, Super Mario RPG has always been one of my blind spots. I've got very little experience with any of the SNES Squaresoft library beyond 10 or so hours of Final Fantasy VI on my SNES Classic a couple years ago. Leading up to release, I was feeling a fairly mild inclination towards it, weak enough that I probably would've been find passing over the $60 cost for a couple months to focus on the other games in my backlog. But then, in the days after release I see my friends posting screenshots and clips from the game, seeing how charming the writing actually was. Then the game being added to the website Wario64 keeps shilling, so I could get it for only $40??? I'm certainly not one to be immune to FOMO.
Perhaps it is good going into a game like this to remember that it served as the foundation for the Mario RPGs, spawning two series of games I love dearly. Every starting point will have it's growing pains, and part of the appeal will be that it was doing something entirely novel for its time. But even now, Super Mario RPG's reputation precedes itself, a game still spoken of in the upper echelons of the Mario RPGs even by those who played it far after its novelty had faded. Some YouTubers may even say the game raises the bar for what a rpg is able to be! So it leaves me a bit surprised to dig into this game and find something... really light?
The game has a pace of a bullet train, blasting from area to area, never letting a point linger on for a second too long. Ideas, characters, entire areas are introduced, toyed with for not a second longer than desired, then sealed away for something completely different. There’s an appeal to it in a way, being taken on this nonstop ride where any of the sparse few intolerable parts last a couple minutes at most. Let me be clear, despite everything I’m going to discuss, I still liked the game. It’s a good, highly well made and seeping with charm, but my experience felt like I was going on autopilot with a light smile on my face. Very similar to how I digested End Roll a couple months back, but when that was a dinky little RPG Maker game, versus a big, prestigious, full-price remake—it stings a bit more.
The game for its most part follows a pretty standard formula for the first two-thirds of the game: going through a short overworld area, reaching a new town with a problem to solve, trekking through a short dungeon (which is more or less the same gameplay-wise as the overworld area), probably a minigame or two somewhere in there, then meeting the boss and fucking them up. Over this entire loop that spans roughly an hour each iteration, there’s never really an attempt to give texture these areas and characters. They’re just another stop on the journey to reach the ending. The Smithy Gang especially feels like they got the short end of the stick, with there being like 20 boss dudes in their ranks but nobody gets more than 5 minutes of screentime including the fight itself.
Of course, it’s all a Mario game; naturally the focus will be predominantly on the gameplay versus the story and world, which I’m perfectly fine with! Wonder is my favorite game I’ve played thus far this year after all. Yet I look at the following Mario RPGs and even at their thinnest (ignoring Sticker Star), they provide just a bit more to their world that I can chew on that feels like it goes a long way. The first chapter of Paper Mario 64 has several Koopa Bros encounters leading up to their fight, which helps flesh them out juuuust enough to feel like actual dudes versus just bosses in the way.
The exceptions to this are when the game takes a break from the star hunt during Booster Tower and Nimbus Town, which are not-coincidentally the best areas of the game! Booster and Valentina are fun characters that contribute to several fun scenes and add in a bit more texture to their corresponding dungeons as a result. I really like how Valentina tied in as a micro-antagonist to Mallow’s storyline concurrently to the main story. It’s kinda funny both of them have to do with marriages being done under false pretenses. Yet, them being a diversion to the star hunt does make the pacing feel weird when the game redirects itself. Star Road is an area that conceptually should have a lot going on—it’s Geno’s home!—but because Booster was the focus of the chapter, it ends up just being a place where you grab the star and… that’s literally it. In contrast, Valentina comes at the end of what’s already the largest gap between stars in the game. Then the game springs another dungeon upon you, then its boss fight, then another boss fight immediately after! While the volcano dungeon was good enough and I certainly didn’t mind going through more content, the contrast to what the game had set up for the first 5 stars is really jarring. It makes throwing on yet another thing to do before you reach the star feel a bit long in the tooth, despite the game being so brief.
Boss fight after boss fight… oh does the game love throwing them at you one after another towards the end. At least the game gives the curtesy to refresh you after each one, but it does get a bit ridiculous after a certain point. In some cases, like at the end of Bowser’s Castle, you fight a boss, watch a cutscene, then are immediately thrown into another boss. Or the very end of the game being one long corridor where you fight FOUR bosses in a row right before the final boss, with the middle three being pallete swaps of each other. I get what the joke they were telling there was, but also come on man.
This all wouldn’t really be an issue if the combat wasn’t so easy to steamroll for the most part. It’s another reason of why so much of the game felt like I was going on autopilot. You have a fair few options available and a massive cast of enemies each with their own weaknesses you could consider, but why bother with them when Mallow’s AoE attacks and a few normal hits will take out just about anything within a turn or two. Fortunately, there’s an inherent pleasure to pulling off the timed hits and defeating the enemies quicker, but again, I just wish for a bit more meat to it than that. And the thing is…. there is! Smithy and Culex’s fights ratchet up the pressure enough to force you to engage with the mechanics presented to you, prepare strategies and react to stuff that happens in the battle. I think those two fights were the only time I seriously used Peach in the entire game, where otherwise a DPS approach was simply more pragmatic, but she was truly the MVP for them. They were genuinely great fights, and so it’s a tad frustrating realizing the combat system as it exist has some pretty great potential, but (at least from the base game content) is tragically underutilized. I haven’t done the post-game rematches yet, but I’ve heard similarly good things about them.
Yes, I know Super Mario RPG is meant as a baby’s first RPG, but so are the first two Paper Mario games and the entire Mario & Luigi series. I think those games did a better job engaging in combat throughout the entire experience compared to this first attempt.
Though even many of the boss fights that weren’t mechanically engaging at least offered a secret actual appeal. Sometimes the game decides to eschew a fight… for a stage play. There’s a delight to seeing the chef twins panic over their wedding cake possibly being alive, or Johnny challenging Mario to a tussle mano a mano. Not just the game’s writing is excellent, but its choreography is too. I was constantly giggling at the antics these stubby characters were getting up to with their silly little animations. Every scene has at least one bit that’s incredibly charming about it, and that’s by far the game’s biggest strength. The charm persists in seeing how the game plays with elements of the series from when it was barely a decade old. As a Mario nut, seeing Mario go through a choice of numbered doors in Bowser’s Castle and instantly knowing it’s a reference to World’s final level, yet it still being it’s own spin on the idea, is immensely gratifying.
Super Mario RPG does himge pretty hard on it being a Mario game for it’s appeal… and that’s okay! Mario is a funny little dude who everyone loves to see do funny little stuff, and this was the game to crack the nut on that. Even if its actual game structure leaves something to be desired, it still left me with a smile on my face almost the entire way through. As long as I don’t stew on it too hard (which I did in this review lol), the game remains a simple pleasure and, again, that’s perfectly okay!
Perhaps it is good going into a game like this to remember that it served as the foundation for the Mario RPGs, spawning two series of games I love dearly. Every starting point will have it's growing pains, and part of the appeal will be that it was doing something entirely novel for its time. But even now, Super Mario RPG's reputation precedes itself, a game still spoken of in the upper echelons of the Mario RPGs even by those who played it far after its novelty had faded. Some YouTubers may even say the game raises the bar for what a rpg is able to be! So it leaves me a bit surprised to dig into this game and find something... really light?
The game has a pace of a bullet train, blasting from area to area, never letting a point linger on for a second too long. Ideas, characters, entire areas are introduced, toyed with for not a second longer than desired, then sealed away for something completely different. There’s an appeal to it in a way, being taken on this nonstop ride where any of the sparse few intolerable parts last a couple minutes at most. Let me be clear, despite everything I’m going to discuss, I still liked the game. It’s a good, highly well made and seeping with charm, but my experience felt like I was going on autopilot with a light smile on my face. Very similar to how I digested End Roll a couple months back, but when that was a dinky little RPG Maker game, versus a big, prestigious, full-price remake—it stings a bit more.
The game for its most part follows a pretty standard formula for the first two-thirds of the game: going through a short overworld area, reaching a new town with a problem to solve, trekking through a short dungeon (which is more or less the same gameplay-wise as the overworld area), probably a minigame or two somewhere in there, then meeting the boss and fucking them up. Over this entire loop that spans roughly an hour each iteration, there’s never really an attempt to give texture these areas and characters. They’re just another stop on the journey to reach the ending. The Smithy Gang especially feels like they got the short end of the stick, with there being like 20 boss dudes in their ranks but nobody gets more than 5 minutes of screentime including the fight itself.
Of course, it’s all a Mario game; naturally the focus will be predominantly on the gameplay versus the story and world, which I’m perfectly fine with! Wonder is my favorite game I’ve played thus far this year after all. Yet I look at the following Mario RPGs and even at their thinnest (ignoring Sticker Star), they provide just a bit more to their world that I can chew on that feels like it goes a long way. The first chapter of Paper Mario 64 has several Koopa Bros encounters leading up to their fight, which helps flesh them out juuuust enough to feel like actual dudes versus just bosses in the way.
The exceptions to this are when the game takes a break from the star hunt during Booster Tower and Nimbus Town, which are not-coincidentally the best areas of the game! Booster and Valentina are fun characters that contribute to several fun scenes and add in a bit more texture to their corresponding dungeons as a result. I really like how Valentina tied in as a micro-antagonist to Mallow’s storyline concurrently to the main story. It’s kinda funny both of them have to do with marriages being done under false pretenses. Yet, them being a diversion to the star hunt does make the pacing feel weird when the game redirects itself. Star Road is an area that conceptually should have a lot going on—it’s Geno’s home!—but because Booster was the focus of the chapter, it ends up just being a place where you grab the star and… that’s literally it. In contrast, Valentina comes at the end of what’s already the largest gap between stars in the game. Then the game springs another dungeon upon you, then its boss fight, then another boss fight immediately after! While the volcano dungeon was good enough and I certainly didn’t mind going through more content, the contrast to what the game had set up for the first 5 stars is really jarring. It makes throwing on yet another thing to do before you reach the star feel a bit long in the tooth, despite the game being so brief.
Boss fight after boss fight… oh does the game love throwing them at you one after another towards the end. At least the game gives the curtesy to refresh you after each one, but it does get a bit ridiculous after a certain point. In some cases, like at the end of Bowser’s Castle, you fight a boss, watch a cutscene, then are immediately thrown into another boss. Or the very end of the game being one long corridor where you fight FOUR bosses in a row right before the final boss, with the middle three being pallete swaps of each other. I get what the joke they were telling there was, but also come on man.
This all wouldn’t really be an issue if the combat wasn’t so easy to steamroll for the most part. It’s another reason of why so much of the game felt like I was going on autopilot. You have a fair few options available and a massive cast of enemies each with their own weaknesses you could consider, but why bother with them when Mallow’s AoE attacks and a few normal hits will take out just about anything within a turn or two. Fortunately, there’s an inherent pleasure to pulling off the timed hits and defeating the enemies quicker, but again, I just wish for a bit more meat to it than that. And the thing is…. there is! Smithy and Culex’s fights ratchet up the pressure enough to force you to engage with the mechanics presented to you, prepare strategies and react to stuff that happens in the battle. I think those two fights were the only time I seriously used Peach in the entire game, where otherwise a DPS approach was simply more pragmatic, but she was truly the MVP for them. They were genuinely great fights, and so it’s a tad frustrating realizing the combat system as it exist has some pretty great potential, but (at least from the base game content) is tragically underutilized. I haven’t done the post-game rematches yet, but I’ve heard similarly good things about them.
Yes, I know Super Mario RPG is meant as a baby’s first RPG, but so are the first two Paper Mario games and the entire Mario & Luigi series. I think those games did a better job engaging in combat throughout the entire experience compared to this first attempt.
Though even many of the boss fights that weren’t mechanically engaging at least offered a secret actual appeal. Sometimes the game decides to eschew a fight… for a stage play. There’s a delight to seeing the chef twins panic over their wedding cake possibly being alive, or Johnny challenging Mario to a tussle mano a mano. Not just the game’s writing is excellent, but its choreography is too. I was constantly giggling at the antics these stubby characters were getting up to with their silly little animations. Every scene has at least one bit that’s incredibly charming about it, and that’s by far the game’s biggest strength. The charm persists in seeing how the game plays with elements of the series from when it was barely a decade old. As a Mario nut, seeing Mario go through a choice of numbered doors in Bowser’s Castle and instantly knowing it’s a reference to World’s final level, yet it still being it’s own spin on the idea, is immensely gratifying.
Super Mario RPG does himge pretty hard on it being a Mario game for it’s appeal… and that’s okay! Mario is a funny little dude who everyone loves to see do funny little stuff, and this was the game to crack the nut on that. Even if its actual game structure leaves something to be desired, it still left me with a smile on my face almost the entire way through. As long as I don’t stew on it too hard (which I did in this review lol), the game remains a simple pleasure and, again, that’s perfectly okay!