what i'm about to say might change within the next few weeks. maybe its just recency bias talking, or maybe i'm still hyped up on adrenaline after the insanity that is this games ending. maybe i'll think it through and find some fatal flaw that didn't cross my mind as of writing this review, but honestly?

i don't care.

as of this moment, this is the greatest game i have ever played.

I was a very early adopter of Project Octopath Traveler hype. That first trailer all the way back in September of 2017 sold me instantly. From the beautiful graphics to the amazing music, I knew i would be buying it day one. And I did. And I dropped it almost immediately.

Aside from the soundtrack, which of course, was still amazing, and the visuals, which were also still very, very good, nearly nothing about the game hooked me. I found the combat to be just okay, and the the characters and story to be super boring. I think what turned me off most, though, was the lack of a connecting story. In the small amount of the game that I experienced, the characters didn't interact at all. That's when I decided it just wasn't for me, and went on with my life.

Flash forward to 2022, and Octopath Traveler II was announced. I once again, was interested, but this time, I was a lot more wary about it. When it was announced, I think I said something along the lines of "Man, I really hope this is good, but I'm not counting on it." When it was announced that characters would get crossover chapters, though, is when it really caught my attention. I still didn't buy it on launch, but I did get it for my birthday. and then didn't touch it for 7 months.

Listen, in my defense, my birthday came right after the Xenoblade 3 dlc came out, and right before Tears of the Kingdom came out. I had other priorities! Still, I regret not playing it sooner, because holy. fucking. shit.

This game is incredible. It's a completely magical experience, and an absolute love letter to JRPGs in all the best ways. This game somehow swept Digital Devil Saga 1/2 off its feet to become my new favorite turn based combat system out there. The break system is levels of genius game design my mind can't even begin to comprehend. And the gameplay twist that happens in the final boss? I don't remember the last time I've squealed like that because of a gameplay twist. I lost my shit. 10/10 combat.

The stories here are much improved from the first game. I wouldn't call them all fantastic, but all of them are at least great, with multiple making me tear up (Castti, Temenos, Throné, iykyk) and multiple making my jaw hit the fucking ground with their twists (OSVALD, THRONÉ, IYKYK), and the final chapter was, I think, a very nice ending, with quite possibly the greatest and most heartwarming title drop I've ever seen.

The cast here is a lot of what really makes this game special to me. Straight up, I think this game has one of the greatest casts in gaming. Or recent history, at least. I love every single one of them (especially Partitio, my fucking GOAT, greatest character of all time) and it makes me incredibly sad that I probably won't ever see them again unless octopath 3 has more connections to 2 past one boss fight. The travel banter, battle voice lines, and crossed paths really make this cast something special. Moments like when Partitio tried giving all his money to Agnea so she could live out her dreams, or when Ochette told Osvald the sixth source was meat, or every time Ochette called Castti Ma (MY FUCKING HEART AHHHHH), and everything inbetween. It's all so special. I can only hope Octopath 3's cast is half this good.

The last thing I'm gonna gush about here is the soundtrack. This motherfucker Yasunori Nishiki COOKED. All of the character themes are amazing, with Partitio, Castti, and Osvald's being straight up brilliant pieces of music, the environment and town themes are incredibly beautiful and atmospheric, and the battle themes. Oh my god the battle themes. Normal Battle III?? CRITICAL CLASH II???? FUCKING FOR THE DAWN????????????? peak. goated. raw. Ungodly levels of perfection here. Nishiki has to be a wizard or something. Don't even get me started on the remixed character themes before boss fights and how they transition perfectly into the boss theme. I could talk about this soundtrack, and frankly, this game, for hours, but I think I've about written enough.

In a comeback story for the ages, Octopath Traveler II has managed to steal my heart and become one of the best games I've ever played. Top 15 at least, if not higher. I cannot stress enough how special this game is. All I can hope for at this point is that this game somehow gets story DLC, and/or that Octopath 3 is at least half as good.

SPOILERS BELOW BECAUSE I HAVE AN INSANE STORY TO TELL.

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ok so that final boss yeah? the greatest fucking boss fight in gaming?

I shit you not I've spent like the last two weeks of my life trying to defeat this fucker. this absolute bastard. this complete son of a bitch who can stop you from reviving and kill pretty much anyone in one turn because of ruinous light and that other attack in phase 2. I had no idea that you had to use all 8 characters in this fight. I had used the same 4 characters for pretty much the whole game, the other 4 were all like level 35 when I strolled up to the final boss. I've been grinding and doing side content for two weeks straight and still this boss fight was the most brutal thing ever. the most raw fucking tooth and nail fight I've ever done in a video game. I've experienced nothing like it and I don't think I'll experience anything like it ever again. I was constantly on the verge of losing. I struggled to get past the first phase every attempt. my winning attempt though, oh my GOD. I had just about gotten the jackass to half health so he could initiate phase 1.5 and drag out the other half of my party when he killed two of my current party members and got another one to like, 50 health or so. I thought I was boned. I was so tempted to just restart. but I'm so glad I didn't. because I MANAGED TO BRANDS BLADE HIS NOT EVEN BROKEN ASS INTO PHASE 1.5 AND BROUGHT BACK AND HEALED MY WHOLE PARTY BEFORE THE SWITCH HAPPENED. I literally couldn't believe my eyes. I felt like a fucking god gamer. also the fight took me two fucking hours. 10/10 never fucking doing that ever again but its peak. ok reviews done now bye

fuck.

When it was revealed that Kiryu was not only going to be back for Like a Dragon 8, but going to get his own in-between solo game, I was really worried. Rough as the overall experience can be, I still find Yakuza 6's ending to be fucking perfect. I didn't want them to mess with it, at all. That was the happiest ending Kiryu could ever get without them pulling some bullshit. Now, though... fuck man. I'm not so sure any more. This games story is really padded. Its basically the Torna: The Golden Country of the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series, forced side quests included. But, in that same vain, the emotional payoff here is immense. That ending man... maybe there is a way Kiryu can get the ending he deserves.

The gameplay here is probably the best of any of the action games in the series. The agent style is really cool, and kinda overpowered when you use its Extreme Heat Mode. The Yakuza style, which is just the Dragon style under a different name, is at its best here, at least when it comes to the Dragon Engine games. I much prefer the turn-based style, but for the action games, this is about as good as it gets.

These next two months waiting for Infinite Wealth are gonna be torture. But I can wait if it means we get peak gaming, which, at this point, I have no doubt that Infinite Wealth will be just that.

My relationship with this game is a complicated one.

Back in early 2019, I had just come off of my first playthrough of Xenoblade 1, and even though I had just played Xenoblade 2 and Torna the year before, I was still desperate more more Xenoblade content. So, of course, I decided to play X. I managed to grab a preowned copy at GameStop, somehow, and I started it, expecting yet another masterpiece.

...that's not what I got.

I was a much less patient man back then, so I dropped it almost immediately. Past the opening cutscene nothing about the game, especially the story, really grabbed me like the rest of the series did. This almost became a cycle. When Xenoblade DE released, i tried to go back to X, and dropped it again. When Pyra and Mythra were announced for smash, i tried to go back to X, and dropped it again. This kept happening for basically every Xenoblade related announcement that happened, up until very recently.

The recent Xenoblade 3 DLC trailer had me hyped to no end, so of course, I yet again returned to X, hoping for it to finally click. This time was different, though. I told myself that no matter how bored I got, no matter how annoyed I became, I would finally beat this game that had been stuck in my backlog for so long. And I did. I finally did.

It was hard, at first. The beginning of this game, past the tutorial, is so unbelievably boring. I found the side quests to be almost akin to Xenoblade 1's infamously boring fetch quests at that point, and like I said earlier, the story wasn't really grabbing me yet. The only two things that kept me going was the gameplay, and the idea of skells. I found the soul voice system to be an incredibly interesting way to implement healing, and I had heard that once you get skells, the game got infinitely better. Well, it took a while, but I finally managed to get the skell license, and after all this time, it finally clicked.

I finally understood all of the ravings. While I still find it to be so insanely dumb to have a story that takes 50 hours to get good, the gameplay and side quests had me so consumed that I didn't care nearly as much any more.

I was riding on this high for basically the rest of the game, right up until the last chapter. Not gonna spoil anything, of course, but holy shit. the final boss of this game is ASS. Maybe my ground gear was just garbage, but even on easy mode, I had zero chance of beating this five phase monstrosity for the longest time. I grinded xp and money (to get a level 50 skell) for FIFTEEN. FUCKING. HOURS. And still, the only saving grace I found, and the only reason I finally beat the final boss, was this sort of half assed infinite overdrive using Elma, since I hadn't gotten the FMJ class on my custom character and I was not willing to grind any more. I am a strong believer that a bad final boss can sour a mostly good experience, and i feel like that's the case here, as i was originally planning on rating this a 9/10 instead of an 8/10.

Despite all of my complaining I still think that, as a whole, Xenoblade X is a great game. I had a great time losing myself in the amazing world that is Mira. I just hope that, whenever X2 finally rolls around, they tell a story of similar quality of the mainline games, while maintaining the gameplay and exploration quality of this one.

Roguelikes have never been my favorite genre of game. Every single time I've tried to get into one, I just end up giving up at some point. Dead Cells had awesome gameplay, but I never felt like I was making any progress. I loved so much about Hades, but I just couldn't get past Elysium and it got so frustrating that I just wasn't having fun anymore.

Funnily enough, I actually didn't go into Risk of Rain 2 knowing that is was a roguelike. The only reason I picked the game up was because some friends of mine told me the multiplayer was fun, and because I had heard the song "...con letitud poderosa" and thought "Holy shit, whatever this is from I need to play."

I was obviously thrown off when I realized what I had gotten myself into. I expected to like it, but get bored with it eventually, just like what had happened many times before. But that didn't happen. Just about the opposite, actually.

I don't think I'm alone in saying that this game is basically the video game equivalent of crack. The basic gameplay is already rather fun, but the item system is quite possibly one of the best upgrade systems I've ever seen in a video game. Every round, you gradually obtain more items with varying effects, dealing more and more damage, inflicting a large range of status effects, and healing yourself with many different methods, until you're essentially an unstoppable killing machine. But the enemies are also gradually getting more powerful, and at a faster rate than you. You can kill most things in about 3 hits in the late game (even faster if you get lucky with your build) but so can the enemies. its perfectly balanced to be difficult but super rewarding too. Every time I died, I kept on telling myself "Just one more run." No other roguelike has ever done that to me before.

So, I kept at it, grinding at the game harder and harder until, just about 40 minutes ago, I finally got the god run. the circumstances surrounding my first victory are actually kinda funny. I was planning on just doing one round on monsoon difficulty before going and doing my homework (I had been playing on rainstorm most of the time, but I had just decided the other day to switch it to monsoon), but on my first attempt, I died during the stage one teleporter boss. I wasn't gonna let it end like that, so I immediately restarted, and, well, I think you can guess what happened.

If it wasn't clear already, I love Risk of Rain 2. Its not only an exceptional roguelike, but an exceptional game, and I plan to sink even more time into it than I already have. Also, Risk of Rain Returns cannot come soon enough. The 2D gameplay might throw me off a bit, but at least I'll get to hear more Chris Christodoulou bangers.

obligatory shoutout to him, btw, the music was half the reason I had the motivation to complete this game. will be looping for the foreseeable future.

THE ABSOLUTE FUCKING HIGH I AM ON RIGHT NOW, OH MY GOD. Just finished my first ever victory on this game (on monsoon difficulty btw), and yep, this game is incredible. The gameplay is tight and satisfying, the item system is still perfect, the visuals are some of the best pixel art i've ever seen, the music mindblowing (COALESCENCE AHHHHHHHHHHHH) and the final boss might be one of the greatest in gaming. It also might be one of the hardest games I've ever beaten, way harder than RoR2. My expectations were high, and god, they might have been surpassed. I just really need the mouse aiming patch to come out already, and maybe for chests and shrines and stuff to spawn more often/be more condensed, but otherwise, 10/10 I fucking love this franchise. I will be getting all achievements just like I did RoR2.