The story may be a bit of a whatever excuse plot (fog king? more like fog "doesn't connect the future" king), Kino and Nene are just Reyn and Sharla reskins, but hey, we get to see more of Shulk and Melia, a peek at a post-XC1 final boss world, and we finally get to explore the cut content of Bionis Shoulder that has actually been refurbished since its unused debut, and it's more of the same Xenoblade 1 combat we all know and love, so that's awesome

WE MEASURE FIND TREASURE PONSPECTORS TIL WE DIE

Never has a game made me cry this much before.

It's snowing. A boy and his younger sister are starving and freezing, so they seek shelter in an abandoned supermarket to find rations and warmth. No one else is in sight, the streets and supermarket are empty - until mysterious shadows break into the store and threaten the siblings. With his remaining strength, the boy heads out to the parking lot and decides to take on the monsters with just an iron pipe and dark magic spells from a mysterious book, as he needs to protect his beloved sister at all costs. It's a hopeless battle, but the brother has no other choice.

NieR Replicant ver1.22 tells the tale of the young Nier and his quest to find a cure to heal his bedridden sister Yonah. Their parents are dead, so Nier is doing his best as a big brother and takes on various requests in his village to earn some pocket money to buy food, but at the same time he hates seeing his sister alone and wants to spend more time by her side. Life isn't easy for the two of them and it would be a shame if it got any worse.

Alright, I'm not giving an entire rundown of the plot here. My point is: The game is sad! Really sad. As you've read in the opening sentence, never has a game made me tear up and shiver as much as Replicant before and I'm a sucker for stories with emotional impact. It's really one of the best narratives I've ever seen. The moment I stepped foot into Aerie Village I knew I was in for a ride, but to be fair, the game does start rather slow and doesn't really gain momentum until an hour or so in, but that's because Replicant starts by showing Nier's daily life in the village and his routine (comparable to Twilight Princess' intro segment, but only half as long). The payoff is worth it though, as experiencing the plot unravel firsthand from an average shonen story to pure Yoko Taro madness is truly an one-of-a-kind experience and you'll never see this adventure the same way again after some reveals. Through episodic storytelling in the form of multiple routes, the player needs to replay a part of the game each time, but in each subsequent playthrough, new scenes that give context to certain events are added, which totally enhanced the experience for me, especially since you'll always know after your first playthrough what's going to happen next. Not gonna elaborate on that further, since it's a very spoilery topic by nature, so you should just experience it for yourself. However, I can understand how people are upset with the repetition, especially since the third playthrough is nearly identical to Route B. But trust me, pushing through is worth it and by the time you reach Ending E most of your questions should be answered, which is a great reward. The only thing I'm a bit torn on is the requirement to have all weapons in your inventory to access Routes C, D and E, since some of them are missable. A bunch of missed weapons can be bought at the blacksmith in Aerie Village after a certain point in the story, but some also require you to do three certain side quests. My recommendation: Since you can't get all the weapons on Route A normally anyways (3 are locked behind the World of Recycled Vessel content, which only unlocks after beating the game once), I suggest you just play through that one normally and pick up every weapon you find along the way (remember to break the crates!!) and if you are still missing some, you might look up where to get them on Route B. This requirement really shows the age of the original game, but shouldn't distract you from the overall outstanding narrative.

Okay, so the story is good, but what about the gameplay? I think it's great personally! (Except for the part where I broke the spring in my controller's right trigger... by dashing too much.) The controls are simple and the combat feels satisfying, there are great animations and the attacks feel like they have weight to them. Being able to utilize weapons and magic at the same time is really cool, you can pull off some interesting maneuvers by combining certain spells with standard attacks; there's even an in-game tutorial for it, if I remember correctly. But the combat is not the only aspect of the game, a lot of time is spent... backtracking (and fishing). There's really a lot of running around, especially if you're looking to complete as many side quests as possible. As someone who wanted to get the most out of Replicant, I finished the game with 97% sidequest completion and only left out two specific ones deliberately because I really didn't like the idea of spending several real-time days on the gardening part of the game with only a chance to get the flower seeds you need. That quest aside, surprisingly I really enjoyed my time with most of the sidequests! A whole lot of them were just fetch quests, yet you get some nice (voiced) dialogue out of them and I got to spend more time in this cozy world, so it didn't really matter to me - the extra banter alone made it worth to me. There's also some particularly good quests, like ones where you can make decisions that actually impact your rewards and the people around you. As an example, in one quest you can decide whether to help a criminal out or not and you have to live with that decision. Same goes for several occasions throughout the game where Nier can decide to either tell the truth or lie to people - there is no "right" choice and it's up to the player to decide what they think is for the best. Very cool.

The cast of this game is awesome, and I'm not just talking about the main party. Characters like the twins, Fyra or the postman really add to the liveliness in this overall rather bleak world and everyone has their own unique story behind them. I mean there's even a backstory for the fisherman who gives you all those fishing quests! Fishermen and postmen aside, Nier's actual companions deserve the spotlight just as much. Weiss, Emil and Kainé are some of the most unusual JRPG companions I have ever seen (and I love them for it), since they basically go against most of the common tropes you'd expect out of a sidekick. Personally I found the banter of the party to be really interesting at times, since their distinctive personalities are just destined to have a weird dispute every now and then.

The rearranged soundtrack is just beautiful. While NieR Gestalt focused more on the bass of the songs and sounds "rougher", Replicant ver1.22 centers the instruments more and has a "softer" tone, which fits the melancholic vibe incredibly well in my opinion. If you'd ask me to pick three four favorite songs, I'm going with Snow in Summer, Temple of Drifting Sands, Song of the Ancients (Devola) and Fleeting Words (Outsider). I'm not linking them this time, because it's quite hard to find an upload of the individual ver1.22 arrangements on YouTube and its even harder to find spoiler-free ones (very important for a story-heavy game like this).

To wrap this up, I firmly believe Nier Replicant is a must-play for anyone who loves JRPGs with great narrative, characters and soundtrack (but can also handle a little repetition). While the game can be a little slow at times, the experience of slowly piercing this story and context together for yourself is unbeatable and I hope it makes you just as sad you can find just as much enjoyment in it as I did!

(Note: I've completed the contents of this DLC in Replicant ver1.22, where it's already included. From the looks of it, the content is identical with the Gestalt version though.)

The World of Recycled Vessel might just be one of the most redundant and aimless expansions I've ever played. The advertised "story" is pretty much nonexistent, and the gameplay portion doesn't really make up for it either, since it's just fighting your way through reused rooms filled with enemies. It's not entirely unoriginal though, there are two new arenas that I especially liked: some basketball court and a raft on the horizon of Seafront.

Now, the presentation of the DLC is also... unique, to say the least. Being able to play as Father Nier was definitely my personal highlight of it, since I never played Gestalt. Soundtrack's fine too, even if most of the remixes aren't quite memorable in my opinion. I really like the Song of the Ancients remix here though. My biggest issue with the "art direction" of the DLC is just how there's a video filter slapped on almost every stage for no reason; it was really irritating at times.

The cherry on top are the rewards for these trials - three below-average weapons that, realistically speaking, hardly anyone would ever use at the point the DLC unlocks. They don't even have a cool gimmick or anything, however you need them in your inventory to get access to the last three endings in the game. You also get some costumes for the cast, but they're whatever to me. By the way, you don't get ANY exp or materials from the enemies in the trials (but the healing items you use here are lost ironically), just a weak payout in exp and gold at the end of each door. Just like with the weapons, these amounts are practically worthless by the time you unlock the DLC.

It certainly was nice to play as Father Nier for once, but the rest of the expansion just didn't really stick for me. I think it's rather funny how they made a combat-centered DLC for Gestalt when the general consensus is the combat being rather rough in that game (can't comment on it, didn't play Gestalt). My review for Replicant ver1.22 is probably dropping very soon, and I can guarantee you I had a way better time with it than with World of Recycled Vessel. Thanks for reading.

Me & My Motion Sickness

My thoughts on Me & My Katamari are rather conflicting and I don't know how much of the bad stuff I can excuse in this game for being a PSP game unlike the previous entries in the series. There are definitely flaws because of the restrictions of the Playstation Portable, but some others are just flaws in terms of weird design choices. I'm sure you'll know what I mean once you read what I wrote below.

I'm just going to name the worst offenders straight by the name: the level design and gameplay loop. Katamari's gameplay loop has always revolved about starting small, but as you roll up enough things over time, you eventually visit locations from earlier or a past level, but with a bigger Katamari. There's a sense of scale and progression, which MMK doesn't really have. The levels always play out the same and I mean that quite literally - the first city map always has the 75cm checkpoint and 1.50m size requirement, while the lake map always has the 4m checkpoint and 10m size requirement. And you're going to play these maps a lot, since for some reason the "new" gameplay loop in MMK has you going through multiple levels in a row. You would think there would be atleast some variety here, but no. After the house map, the first city map will always follow, then the lake map and so on. Every. Single. Time.
Atleast some maps have winter variants, but they're rather monotonous after the first few times too (looking at YOU, winter lake). I didn't even mention how frustrating the object placement is at times in MMK, this becomes really apparent in City 1. Now, for some reason the bonus levels all have unique map variants, but they're never used again for the "main" stages. Why? The desert map is literally used a single time in the entire game! Atleast the bonus stages are a good time and felt very refreshing to play every now and then inbetween the repetitive main story levels.

A personal major criticism I have with MMK is the shaky camera. It can't ever decide if it wants to be a third-person or top-down camera, so it keeps shifting between those two and I noticed it gets really bad when you roll over bumps. Had to quit the game two times because it made me actually nauseous and I pretty much never have motion sickness in games, this wasn't the case in Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari either. So if you're particularly sensitive to motion sickness in games, I'd think twice about playing Me & My Katamari.

I can see how people complain about the controls too, since MMK uses the buttons instead of another analog stick like in the previous games. To be honest, I only played with the original controls for three levels before I decided to remap the buttons to my right stick and it felt a lot more natural (even if it was a bit more unresponsive than in the previous games this way). Of course this wasn't possible to implement originally because of how the PSP was built and I really believe Namco did the best they could with translating the dual-stick controls onto the device. The rolling itself feels good in this game, even if it has the same issue as Damacy, with easily being able to get stuck between objects at times.

Considering my negativity towards MMK so far, you'd think I would absolutely hate it, but I don't. There are still many cool things in here worth mentioning, like the island hub world, playable cousins, the fantastic selection of the soundtrack of the previous two games (bit of a bummer that there's only a single new song with Katamari on the Funk, but it's alright since the reused songs are very good) and the great adaption of the artstyle. Like seriously, this game manages to capture the Katamari aesthetic from the PS2 games so well. Little things like the individual island designs you get as a reward for completing a stage or the ability to equip presents again made the game really more enjoyable and I'd be lying if I said I didn't have atleast a bit of a good time with Me & My Katamari! Thanks for reading.

Ever been interested in the Persona series? Start with this one!

As a big fan of Persona 3, Reload was the game I was looking forward to the most in 2024 alongside Infinite Wealth, so I did the same as with IW and held off on watching trailers past the announcement one entirely to experience the changes for myself. When the release date came closer, I began to see more and more doomposting for Reload and even considered holding off on buying it because of how negatively this game was treated by others. I'm glad that didn't get to me in the end and I could form my own opinion of the remake of one of my favorite games.

First off, the presentation in Reload is amazing right off the bat, ranging from the upgraded artstyle to the dynamic menus and improved character models, it's just so very pleasant to look at. This also includes animations - the Ultimate moves of the characters look super cool. As someone who only ever really played Portable before, the upgrade in presentation was a huge point for me. Sure, the updated environmental design of the overworld is great, but the cherry on top are the revamped Tartarus blocks. The floors are no longer mere reskins with the same layout, now every block has a detailed new look and a different pattern. Tartarus changes don't stop here though, like the previous top-down camera has been turned into a proper third-person one, which I believe adds to the immersion a lot, despite being so seemingly insignificant at first. Furthermore, exploration is incentivized with mini-bosses being accessible in ordinary floors now alongside the addition of lucrative floor-specific events like locked or special chests. Can't forget the revamped Golden Hands in Reload either, as they provide a large amount of XP now (like in Persona 4) instead of dropping items. A great change for everyone who hated grinding and the new Great Clock random event can boost two of your teammates' levels on a whim, so no one has to fall behind! I believe the new Tartarus has something in store for everyone, so even if you were turned off by the gameplay in the original, giving it a second look might be worth it...

Voice acting in Reload is top notch. I don't share the somewhat popular sentiment of Yukari and Aigis sounding worse than their original counterparts at all, they're probably even my favorite new castings. That being said, personally I wouldn't say there's a single bad casting within the new voice actors, I enjoyed all of their performances. Emotional scenes got me tearing up several times, I got shivers during others. Not to disregard some of the original actors, but Reload really elevated some characters for me, just with their new performances (Yuko, Chidori and Fuuka are great examples). Also love how every social link is completely voiced now, it's a huge boost in immersion. As for social links in general, I'm glad the new Link Episodes exist, they're basically mini social links for the male party members and give you some insight into their life. A great way to add some interaction with them to the game without replacing the already existing social links! The SEES hangouts during nighttime also fulfill a similar role in giving your teammates more screentime without taking up meaningful time (considering the abundance of free time at night in P3), this also includes new events like several study sessions with the team. Those activities aren't just for fun though, you gain new passive abilities for the other members or gain extra knowledge points while studying with the others, the integration is seamless.

The new soundtrack is... good! Not much to say here, I like the remixes of the original songs and the new songs are bangers. Color Your Night is one of the very best vocal tracks in the series and It's Going Down Now still stays hype after listening to it over and over. Shoutout to the new remix of Changing Seasons.

There's a whole lot more to unpack about this game, but for the time being I have said everything that was on my mind. My thoughts are still pretty hazy, despite completing Reload hours ago, but I hope you could get something useful out of my review either way. As always, thanks for reading!

The year…is 2012. The London olympics have been hosted, Whitney Houston died, and West Ham beat Blackpool to return to the premier league. But I feel like we are missing something important, a small piece to this very large puzzle. A year ago to this year, Skylanders spyros adventure released. An experimental game to not only attempt to bring back spyro, but to also birth a new gaming trend: toys to life. And so, on 2012, that is when, I finally got my first toys to life game: Skylanders giants. To any onlooker of this series, they would simply assume giants is quite possibly the weakest and most cashgrab entry. But today, I’m here to disprove that, and hopefully give people a taste of what one of my favourite games as a kid was. So without further ado: let us begin.

The story is pretty simple, basically these Skylanders have been brought to earth and forced to just be these figures, which we the ‘portal masters’ have to save by spending actual currency to put them on a FLASHING LIGHTS portal and then they get brought back into the game. Simple right? Well we also have to stop this evil dude called kaos, who is just as evil as me when I leave the toilet seat up. He basically is trying to reawaken the arkeyan robots whom the giants stopped years ago. And that’s it in terms of plot.

Gameplay wise it’s VERY simple. You scan a Skylanders onto the FLASHING LIGHTS portal and then that Skylander is put into the game. You then go through really simple and basic levels. You beat the enemies, do a tiny bit of exploration, and you move on. At certain points you’ll find certain areas that can only be unlocked through having a skylander of a certain type (fire, water, etc) so you know what that means! Spending time! There are also little puzzles and also…the legend that is: skystones. Remember tetra master from final fantasy 9? It’s basically that but better in every way. It is the quintessential card game.

The music is also something I have to stop by and talk about. Lorne Balfe put his heart and soul into this soundtrack. Levels like the junkyard isles and wilikin village give me an instant hit of nostalgia that is unparalleled. The other tracks as well are also quite memorable and honestly he did a really great job of giving the game that cinematic feel to it.

To be perfectly honest, I do kinda miss this franchise. Not to sound like I’m 8 but man collecting the figures was a lot of fun. Fortunately I still have mine and I do look at them from time to time just because I can’t get rid of them. Even if I could I’d only get a penny from them and that’s the unfortunate downside of toys to life as a whole. But that’s a story for another day. Giants would also be the game to bring other competitors in, those being Disney and Warner bros. and oh man, this is gonna get real big and go down very quickly. But until then, I hope you enjoyed my thoughts on a classic childhood game of mine. Gone but certainly not forgotten.

…also for those who might ask, my favourite was jet-vac.

Ok story, simple gameplay, brilliant music, skystones is peak, also the drill-x rap lives in my head rent free