With the atmosphere and presentation of Signalis, I was sure I would fall in love with this game. In the first few hours, the gameplay was interesting and fun, motivating me to solve the puzzles laid before me through its mechanics that very much reminded me of the classic survival horror genre.
Unfortunately, the horror aspect of Signalis isn't very appealing and while everything is stunning to look at and play through, there's never a feeling of tension and that's a huge miss.
Nearing the end, those mechanics that I found so engaging towards the start, started to dwindle and became monotonous with countless times feeling burdened with whatever comes next.
I stopped caring and I dropped it.

I really wanted to come out of the ending satisfied, being able to find it within myself to fully accept the way FF16 executed its vision and say "despite its flaws it's very well done". But as the dust has settled, I find that while I still feel like its messages are extremely palpable and powerful, I didn't come out of the experience feeling wholly confident that FF16 executed itself to the best of its ability.

It's no secret now that this game is not actually a game of thrones politics heavy Final Fantasy game, but is actually just your typical JRPG romp. Make friends, save world, defy fate, etc etc. It's this first element especially that is essentially the lynchpin of the entire narrative, and it is the center of its focus on every level. From the plot, to the thematics, to the characters, to the game design YoshiP and Maehiro STRESS deeply the communities you've come to be a part of, as well as the power of the found family you’ve come to create. And I think through the sidequests this is done super well, but I don't love how these elements at times can take away from the main scenario experience. From the literal times which the plot halts completely and has you fill time by going around the hideaway, or how everytime you enter a new area you have to learn about its local town and the secret leaders who run them. While I find the former egregious, the latter isn't inherently problematic. I am a 14 fan after all, but the difference between 14 and 16 in this department is the potency of their writing and worldbuilding. I don't mind helping people do random BS in Shadowbringers cause Norvrandt is one of the richest worlds out there and Ishikawa writes with such charm and turn that random NPC's can really have an impact on how you view the world. Maehiro in 16 just really doesn't have the charm in his writing to consistently make his NPC's pop and Valisthea is just not an interesting enough setting to carry these more mundane sections. There is a lot of focus in trying to make some of the more significant NPC’s notable characters and I really appreciate that approach, but there really is only so far you can go with an NPC in terms of character writing.

It really ends up being a double edged sword, where while I do think it ultimately contributes to this holistic vision that can be satisfying (see the conclusions to many of the side quests), it at the same time draws focus away from things that definitely could've really used it like better exploration of the politics within Valisthea. This is something really made apparent by the fact that there’s literally a character who’s entire job is to explain to you the political state of the world on the handful of occasions Clive actually ships out on a mission.

I feel like every day I'd hop on 16 I'd feel different about it, more or less confident with its vision at each step, one day content and another quizzical. Funnily enough this is exactly like how I was with Endwalker, and I probably have it within myself nowadays to admit that Shadowbringers/Endwalker are my de facto top 1 fiction, but the difference here is I just don't think the quality of the writing is ever strong enough to really make my confliction ever bloom into deep appreciation and love.

That being said, I do really enjoy a lot of the game. I've been very critical of it simply because I think there is a lot to say about 16 as an experience, but ultimately there are still a lot of positives to remark on. The boss fights and setpieces are awesome, the cast is way better than I'd ever thought it'd be, Maehiro wrote his first truly great antagonist, the cutscene direction/general visuals are incredible, and I think in general the story has a really great sense of thematic cohesion which makes a lot of the moments land especially hard. This game is good, without a doubt in my mind do I think it's good but before I had first played it I said something to myself, which was I'd be content if it was at least better then Heavensward. And I haven't played Heavensward in so long, so it's hard for me to even make this judgment properly, but it's the fact that I can't be confident about it that gives me pause.

This game is a classic. It's fun and satisfying and contains a lot of charm and personality, from the gameplay to the music. Sadly, I wish this were a better remaster, if you can even call it that. It feels more like port, as it's essentially the exact same as the original. All the textures are still extremely pixelated and I wish better shading/shadows were added. The lack of autosaves is extremely annoying as well. That being said, the base game is just so good, and I find myself coming back to play a level or two all the time. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone that's at all interested.

Cave Story immediately pulls your attention with its charming retro style and simplistic, but tight gameplay. Controlling Quote feels great and through the early level design, it teaches you the very basics of Cave Story's platforming and combat. For me, it all felt very nostalgic to play a game like this again.

Although the core gameplay of the game is quite simple in execution, it revels in that simplicity through its more complex level design. While using level design to further enhance the gameplay and the way you have to utilize your movement and controls is nothing unique to Cave Story, it is one of the better examples to do it out there. This feels especially true for some of the boss fights that ask more elaborate movement than your regular levels.

And while there's not too much to say about its actual story, it's fun and creative enough to keep you engaged with its plot and characters. Through its silly dialogue and message of kindness, it's clear how this is one of Undertale's many inspirations.

The phrase “x story helped me out during a rough time” is used commonly to elaborate on how much a piece of media has helped someone out, but I can’t say that about Persona 3, primarily because it’s a story that has taken root inside me deeply and stayed with me throughout the years ever since 2021 when I first played it. It’s not like it helped me during a single rough time, it was more like an affirmative embrace and an acknowledgement of my struggles throughout all of these years collectively instead of just one period of time. Persona 3, much like Good Will Hunting, Evangelion, and Pandora Hearts, is a game that I like to revisit and reflect upon every time I feel like I’m in a rut and can’t figure out who I am and what am I supposed to do in this world. It’s something I’ve closely attached to who I am because of how much it shaped my mindsets towards life, “The meaning of our lives is something that we make but don’t see”, and, “You don’t need to save the world to find meaning in life” are quotes I internalised, reminded myself of anytime I felt myself falling down an existential crisis, and the long term effects it had on me throughout the years is not something I take for granted. In a way, Persona 3 is a symbol of my struggles during my adolescence, and so, it is that revisiting it through Reload that I felt like I was looking back on parts of myself from back then and getting in-touch with them again. It felt like a reflection of my past, of all the struggles I pushed through to make it this far to where I am today, and by the end of it, I realised that much of my own growth throughout the years was because of stories like Persona 3, growth due to me burning my dread and venturing in life while living in the moment.


When you’re faced with a crisis that you have no idea how will it end, or how you will resolve it, you have two choices, whether to believe that you’ll fail and fall into a hole of cynicism or to believe in your happiness and work towards that ideal in the moment by focusing on yourself and doing what you can until eventually, everything falls into place. This sentiment seemed too unreal to me because of how clouded my vision was with all of the negativity that I surrounded myself with back in 2020 because whenever I tried to resolve my issues, I half assed it and it backfired, whether it be my existential crisis due to the societal pressure I experienced that made me feel like I had to have a larger than life success story to be worth anything, my ever growing disdain towards the fleeting nature of bonds, struggles with navigating interpersonal issues due to my self pity and cynicism as a byproduct of my fear of abandonment, and fear of death due to religious doubts I had. All of this was too much for my 17 year old self to bear, but as I said, Persona 3 and its characters all reflected different intimate parts of who I am for a reason.


For a dumb teenager like me who couldn’t believe in himself, drowned in self pity and inferiority towards others, and had trouble seeing what was so special about myself, Junpei Iori represented my struggles with the indifference of the universe crucially. He’s someone who believes his own hype to subconsciously convince himself that he’s a hero destined to save everyone, when in reality that’s merely his coping mechanism with his deep-seated insecurity about his incompetence, and that shows in the dichotomy of his goofiness and feelings of envy and jealousy. It’s only later through meeting Chidori, someone who felt like her life held meaning due to her persona, much like he did, that he realized that he doesn’t need to be this impossible image of a hero that he created within himself and that if he kept on being true to his innermost self, the one who wanted to become a baseball player, he’ll have already become a hero to someone, like he did with Chidori. I said that Junpei’s insecurities and tendency to compare himself to others reflects a part of me in the past, but truth be told, I still have those tendencies lingering in from within me, yet in the same vein, over time I’ve learned to trust in myself, that whatever I do, it’ll result in something special. I learned that it doesn’t matter if there’s someone who’s better, smarter, more insightful than me, because no matter what, they can never be me, and so long as I pursue that self and see to it that its potential is met, everything will fall into place. It’s for that reason that I can look back on Junpei’s arc in P3 fondly and think to myself about how much it helped me internalise that self trust, because there’s nothing more real than pulling a mentally ill goth bad bitch by being funny and quirky.



When I said that P3 reflects different parts of myself from the past, I meant that because it’s not just my teenage years that it reflected but my childhood as well with characters like Ken. I could go into how characters like Mitsuru, Akihiko, Shinjiro, & Fuuka connected with me but I want to go with Ken not just because he’s my favorite among the aforementioned characters (I’m quirky, I know) but because of how he crucially reflected a part of me that no other character has, and it’s how Ken chooses to adapt to his situation to fit in in self deriding ways that I feel seen by. From the start, Ken is pushed into this dog-eat-dog world where only the strong survive, even in SEES, and that sudden change in his environment not only made him lose himself but a person’s most precious value, that being his inner child. Ken was forced to let go of his childish nature, gaslight himself into thinking that such notions would only hold him back, and proceeded to move solely through objective means because of how he was stuck in an adult world where if he doesn’t man up and throw away his childish needs and struggles, he’d be left behind, much like how his mother left him behind and so did everyone else, with their looks that were devoid of nothing but pity, yet even then, in his linked episodes, he couldn’t let go of his inner child and it shows sprinkles of his inner child peeking out due to his enthusiasm. It’s a heartbreaking accurate depiction of how much Ken struggles to connect with others and most importantly himself, because nothing has been the same for him since his Mom died. Many people, when looking at Ken’s character, view Ken’s arc as a revenge arc, and while that’s a valid reading of his character, to me, it felt like it was more so Ken reconnecting with his inner child, realising that he doesn’t need to put up this facade to “survive” and “fit in” with this cruel world, and that he doesn’t need to hold himself back emotionally so much because of others anymore, because while he may have lost his family, he gained another through SEES, and that’s what “living” means. Losing people, meeting new people, bonding with them, and doing simple things like practicing your hobbies, that’s what living really means, and that meant so much to me because back when I was a kid, I never had any friends of my own, could never really connect with them, and that’s because I always hung out with my older brother’s friends, which subsequently made me mature too fast for my good and didn’t allow me to live my childhood to its fullest. I could never connect with people my age, because I was so used to forcibly maturing myself to keep up with my older friends, I always felt like bottling up my emotions and needs in favor of a facade that could get me the closeness and sense of belonging I wanted out of their company since I was too awkward to make any friends of my own, yet on the inside I was too young and emotional to get along with my older friends, creating this unstable interpersonal problem I had that plagued my childhood. It’s funny, how I’m a grown person now, yet seeing Ken be plagued with this same issue I had and recovering from it through mundane means, almost had me tearing up because it reminded me of how much I hardened myself and designed a strong man to protect the hurting child inside me.




Earlier, I described Persona 3 as a meditative experience that gives me space for my feelings whenever I need a haven to express myself within, or feel seen within, and so, there are parts of it that are timeless to me, parts of it that help me see myself in a better light and enable me to look at myself more positively, one such part is Yukari’s character and how much of an embrace it feels to me. Truthfully speaking, my aim with my media experiences is to either escape the real world, or for edutainment purposes, but it is so rare for me to engage myself with a story that can help me discover positive, strong traits within my character that makes me love myself. It’s hard for a story to do that, since what I look for in fictional characters are parts of me that I and others around me struggle to accept, more often than not are negative parts, but that’s why Yukari means the world to me, since not only does her character give me a safe space to feel seen and accepted for my contradictory feelings of love and hate towards intimacy, but she also embodies a trait of mine that helps me accept it, that being kindness and empathy. Yukari’s premise is that she struggles with the internal conflict known as the hedgehog dilemma, where she craves intimacy but disdains contact with others, because she wants to be loved, but doesn't think she's worth loving because of the self pity, sense of weakness/inferiority, & self hatred she internalised as a byproduct of being "abandoned" by both of her parents, at least emotionally. I say emotionally because her dad died so he didn’t abandon her technically, and her mother simply clung to other men for emotional support, so she didn’t consciously abandon Yukari, but at least on an emotional level, Yukari felt like she had the deepest craving she had was taken away from her, forever a wish beyond her reach, and that affected how she perceived herself and others and based her moral compass around her disdain for her Mother who abandoned her and what she represents. Following that, Yukari would disassociate with anything that resembled the escapist coping mechanisms her Mother did through either self-denial or self-isolation from others. It’s why she despises being helped out, because not only does she blame and hate herself for what happened to her parents but because it resembles her Mother’s helpless state of feeling like she needs to be saved, it’s why she was mad when Makoto helped her out during her s. Link, it’s why she tries to present herself as this being who towers above the concept of weakness to feel a sense of leverage and derive self-worth from that, but at the same time, she’s a highly emotional person who wears their heart on their sleeve, and so bits and pieces of that need for emotional support and insecurities about her self image come out. An example of this would be her jealousy and fixation over Mitsuru, she’s so fixated on Mitsuru because deep down, she wants to be like her, someone who’s unfazed, looks powerful and is the exact opposite of her Mother. A toxic sense of admiration, you could call it, since she never recognizes this jealousy, how wrong it is since even Mitsuru’s flawless demeanor was fake and a byproduct of societal expectations, and how much it contradicts Yukari’s conscious desire to present herself powerfully, and whenever she recognizes that, it’s in self-loathing, like how she did in Yakushima, because of how much she gaslights herself into thinking that she’s strong and doesn’t need help, even if it means ignoring herself and wrongly seeing others. Despite those insecurities getting in the way of how she interacts with others, she's a very kind person who has all the love to give to others, yet when it comes to loving herself, that ''love'' she has for others is devoid of any love for herself. Time and time again, in various instances Yukari shows how much empathy and kindness she has for others, even from the start of the game, like how she was the first SEES member who bothered to reach out to Makoto and connect with him instead of spying on him, how she was the first to defend Makoto when Junpei lashed out at him, how she made insensitive jokes about Junpei but then apologized to him and considered his feelings, or with how she helped other SEES members navigate their problems like Fuuka who struggled with people pleasing habits during her final s. link and Mitsuru who struggled with self-acceptance and existential dread. Additionally, if you spend enough time with her during the night events, there's a moment where she talks about how inspiring the main female character is, how she wants to be just like her, someone who's there for everyone around her and is capable, and that puts into perspective how kind Yukari is and how much she empathizes with others. Yet, she has moments where she’s a tease and makes fun of others, sometimes in a tone-deaf way, and why is that? The majority would chalk it up to her being a quirky mean white girl, and while I get it and understand how appealing that is since I’d love for a pretty white girl like her to call me racial slurs and deride me my right to live, I think that Yukari’s need to prove her toxic self image right to justify her self hate and rejection of help to disassociate from her Mom is what causes her to be such a tease and to be so slanderous, because while she's quirky and mean in her own right, it's also valid to infer that about her character. It doesn't help that being bullied due to her father's failure influenced her perception of social interaction more aggressively and might've added to that if anything. In a sense, she has the most amount of kindness out of anyone, but the dichotomy she has where she pushes everyone away while craving their love and attention, is what clouds that trait of hers and makes it harder for her to express that, and it's why whenever she gets praised for her kindness, she denies it. She's a perfect example of how someone's personality can be so dynamic, where she's a mean teaser on the outside, but would be the quickest to be there for someone else, and that part of her helps me embrace the idea that I'm a kind person, or at least, try to be because I'm similar to that aspect of her and it feels very validating. It's especially relatable because there are moments where I went out of line and lost friendships due to that, due to unhealthy tendencies and mindsets I had, and that made me reject my kindness in favor of self-loathing, yet through Yukari, I was able to see that part of me, admit to it, and love myself more authentically because of it.


By now you understand how much Persona 3 means to me, how much of a solace inducing experience it is for me, and how much it helps me to love, to feel loved, to express my earnest desires, and to be there for everyone around me, but in contrast, oddly enough, when I was playing through Reload, a certain part of it re-stimulated my fear of abandonment, my disdain for the fleeting nature of relationships due to past experiences, and my desire for everything to stay the same way, thinking about how worthless something is if it’s destined to never last, that certain part being the front and center of the game, Aegis. A few years ago, during the pandemic, I’d say I was at my worst mentally, and it’s not because of the experiences I went through by that point, but it was more so because of how I dealt with those experiences by willingly surrounding myself with negativity, choosing to be miserable instead of fighting, and preferring victimhood over the pursuit of happiness. It led to loads of perceptual issues I had, and that only piled up more on the issues I already struggled with at the time. You see, I grew up in an environment that shunned sensitivity and emotions and saw them as a sign of weakness, and so, a feminine guy like me who was highly emotional and sensitive, was essentially born and raised in the wrong environment because of how much that aspect of it contradicted how I was at my innermost core. In an attempt to fit in, I discarded myself, drowned myself in an endless hell of facades, and over time, forgot who I even was, becoming something of a colorless broken puppet unable to discern my emotions and convey them, forever emotionally stunted and ignorant of how it feels to “live” because all I did was exist. For that reason I’ve had my complications with loneliness and love, feeling like I couldn’t feel it or even deserved it. So, it is that through Aegis I was able to see a picture of my past self, a grotesque portrait of how I was 4 years ago. It was as eerie as it was comfortable, seeing a character frustratingly and confusingly try to navigate their place in the world and getting shredded by it. It felt validating, because Aegis had the same misconception that I did, and it was that I thought I had to do something larger than life itself to justify my existence when that wasn’t the case. It was very comforting for me to see a character that represents how I was a few years ago, that’s how it was at first anyway. It later dawned on me that after Aegis decided to live, she started struggling with something that I struggle with nowadays, and it’s maintaining relationships, or rather, thinking that they’re worth maintaining anyway since they all end. I’ve always had this thought that yeah, sure, all bonds end, that this is an absolute, but it always pained me whenever I met someone, because I knew deep down, that at some point they’re going to leave me behind and we’ll part ways. Even if we reconnect, it might not even be the same as before and that made me oftentimes crave a reality where time could be halted. But upon revisiting Aegis’ social link, there’s a piece of dialogue that reminded me why I cherish the people I cherish and why I’ll never stop loving the people I’m with.

“Life is both short and finite. That’s what makes it so invaluable, and why one feels that it must be cherished… When you think about it, it’s a miracle that two given people are able to ever meet in this chaotic flow of time and space.”


It’s a simple line, something that’s hard to miss, but that's the case with most ideas in life and is what makes it connect with me because of how Makoto’s dynamic with Aegis resonates with that sentiment and embodies it with the stark contrast of how they live. Their differences made them feel complete because, on the two opposite spectrums, they struggled to understand life and the worth of the process that goes within it that inevitably leads to death, yet through something simple, like knowing and understanding each others' emptiness, they felt the elusive taste of connection and yearned for more from it. Makoto is a human who tries to be a machine, while Aegis is a machine who tries to be human, yet despite their differences, they connected because they both yearn for the same thing, to stand with one another atop Gekoukan’s rooftop and gaze at the city that gave them a taste of that elusive connection. The shortage of something is what makes you fear losing it. Yet, in the same vein, it makes you want to appreciate it and make use of it to the fullest so that when it ends, you can look back on it with no regrets and cherish your memories of it because it’s the memories that make our experiences with one another flow through all eternity. And so, even if I fear losing the ones I love, even if I lived a life of an emotionally stunted puppet, even if I lived in existential dread, even if I thought at times that I didn’t deserve to be liked, or that I was of less worth than others, none of that matters, because regardless of what happens, I’m human, I have feelings worth conveying, I will always have people I love, and I have something to live for, it may not be monumental, but the small ripples caused by the day to day things I do will surely produce a result worth living for in the long run because no two days are the same. It’s funny, I talked about my time during the pandemic as the worst time in my life, yet when I look back on it, I can’t look at those days as an unhappy time. To me, they’re a sign that I’m alive, a backdrop for me to push forward from, a pat on the back telling me how much I’ve changed, and a signal to dash forward and follow my heart, because I now know that rejecting it is the most painful of all. Maybe that’s how I feel about them because over time, I’ve slowly subconsciously implemented the feelings and lessons that Persona 3 made me feel and taught me into my day-to-day life, and now looking back on it, after everything has been said and done, I feel nothing but pride and love towards who I became and who I was. Through remembering my mortality, I remembered to live, and so I did.

This game annoys me so much because it looks much crisper and smoother than Three Houses and has the fan service Engage elements which are lowkey overpowered but fun, but the big issue is that this story is so mediocre and completely uninspiring. All of the characters either feel like cardboard or shallow versions of themselves and it's kinda frustrating to have to listen to the yapping after putting 70 hours into this game ngl. I hope the next game can build off the progress made here with an actually strong story.

Tales of the Abyss was my the best game I played last year, borderline my favorite game of all time. I’ve never been interested in playing a game from this franchise before, I started this entirely on impulse.

The one thing that did interest me was that I had a trusted friend tell me it was almost guaranteed to be my thing, even comparing it to my actual favorite game of all time, FFVII.

This game had a very excellent English dub. There is something lost in the process, I don’t know why but I imagine probably because JRPG’s like this weren’t the biggest sell at the end of the PS2 era, but in-game party chat isn’t voiced like in the Japanese version.

While for me personally this wasn’t a huge deal I didn’t very much appreciate that the localization removed Bump of Chicken’s song as the theme in the opening cinematic, literally my favorite J-Pop band. Karma is one of the greatest songs ever and its lyrics especially convey the main philosophical conflict of the story so well. It’s melody is referenced in like 5 different leitmotifs throughout the game.

All that said, the combination of Yuri Lowenthall as the leading man with Johnny Yong Bosch in the main cast was an immediate hard sell. A duo I’m not so unfamiliar with. Yuri’s performance for Luke is scarily perfect.

His two big roles in my mind have always been Yosuke and Sasuke, characters who have this very selfish core that can come across as downright entitlement. Luke’s egotism was something I felt immediately endeared too cause it was something I was familiar with.
He’s such an insecure prick at the start and it’s pathetic and he’s my baby girl.

Abyss’s cast as a whole is so compelling flawed, and flawed ways that aren’t meant to be inherently likable, which I greatly appreciated. It’s just overall a very all-star cast too, it never feels like a character shines at the expense of another.

There’s a symbiosis between the character writing/development and the way the setting of the game itself evolves throughout. Forces outside of the control of any one person shapes them in visible ways and informs their goals and mindsets, while at the same time the specific choices these people make prompts meaningful change to the systems in place.

Speaking of the setting I found it to be so cool. I wouldn’t say it’s absolute peak work building but it got me invested in it a decent bit more than the average JRPG world. I loved the infusion of various sci-fi elements and concepts that blends well with its mysticism and other stock fantasy RPG tropes.

As I’ve said I had virtually no pre-conceptions about what Tales was or could be so it was only a bit ago I learned that Tales having bad gameplay is something of a common opinion. And I understood why that would be a take almost immediately as a I heard it but I’ll try and explain why it works for me, at least in this entry.

The way Abyss builds on its combat/mechanics is, fairly piece meal. It’s a system that doesn’t give you all its tools right away, early game combat can feel boring with how limited you are. For me this worked because progressively unlocking new mechanics was part of what kept me engaged and enticed throughout.

It’s something more akin to an action game, and influenced in more ways than a few by fighting games. Getting the hang of it mostly comes down to learning proper spacing, memorizing patterns, executing strings, and because it’s so basic at the beginning I can see why it would turn off so many people.

To me a lot standard JRPG battle systems like Final Fantasy’s ATB aren’t so different because it’s a waiting game but the edge is taken off cause execution isn’t one of the main skills. Abyss is still and RPG, but one where mechanical mastery is expected.

I don’t blame anyone who feels intimidated by this but I’d also say, it’s a system where you get out of it what you put in, it’s about patience and learning, learning in the truest sense. So I’d implore, do your best to give it a chance and find if it ends up clicking with you.

Being an RPG where you fight countless enemies, at times those enemies will be actual people. Abyss is one of the only games I’ve seen where it directly acknowledges how you as the player end up killing so many people. It’s a point of conflict for Luke early on that he actually has an incredibly hard time killing enemy soldiers, being sheltered his whole life.

The whole thing is given the proper nuance and discussion it deserves. It’s hardly a game about “killing people is bad,” but it directly acknowledges these things, and contends with them. Not as a point of praise but just as a descriptor, it feels very “mature” in how it grapples with this problem.

There can be times where characters have to do something distasteful but which is still the right thing, but there can be times where you make the wrong choice, do something you can’t take back, and there are real consequences for that. It’s the prompt for Luke’s entire redemption arc in the game.

Luke’s actions and lack of consideration end up causing a number of people to suffer. Though it’s entirely his fault, and at times indirect, they’re the consequences that resulted because of how he is all the same. And it ends up damaging the relationships he has with the people around him.

I love so much how even if it feels unfair, Luke has to deal with the fact that he lost the respect and trust of the people he was with and at a certain point they’re not just going to uncritically put up with his behavior, and he has to live with their judgment of that.

The way the writing in Abyss unfold is really quite unpredictable in the best of ways. Amazing twists, reveals, red herrings, etc. The game even has this entire second act ending that feels like it should be the final part of the story, but continues even beyond that in a way that feels completely organic and it’s another way that Abyss was able to just hold my attention and never once lose it.

The environment design is gorgeous. Fixed camera angles lets this game put as much detail into the levels as it can. Some of the best looking stuff on the PS2, undoubtedly. Not held back presentationally by its age in any way.

The soundtrack does its job extremely well. It’s not among the absolute peaks of JRPG composition overall but there definitely isn’t a bad song or mid track. And it still manages to produce some of the absolute greatest pieces of music I’ve heard in a game. Meaning of Birth, especially, I might say is just my favorite piece of video game music ever.

I’ll be getting into story spoilers now, with some light analysis to convey why this story really means so much to me. So now is the time for if you haven't been spoiled or don’t know how the story plays out, to be advised against reading further.

Lots of Japanese media has the cutting off of hair as a significant symbolic action. In a way it’s meaningful for being about letting go of a burden that had been weighing down on you, or signaling a fresh start and new beginning in life. Luke is able to look past the person he was, and the loss of his old life, in order to progress and become his own person.

And obviously, Luke’s thematic foil for the whole game, Asch, never loses his long hair. Asch in the end was never able to move past having the life he feels should have been his taken from him. Asch can only ever think, only ever agonize, over his past that he can never take back.

As Luke says, while Asch has something he lost and can’t take back, Luke never even had a past to begin with. Though that’s something else about Luke Asch can’t accept. Even though the two of them are supposed to be mirrors, and should be so so similar to each other, Asch can’t accept how the person who he sees as having everything he wanted could find so little worth in himself.

Asch is an unbelievably proud person, and someone who’s so much like him shouldn’t feel worthless are undeserving of having been born. It’s not an entirely rational feeling, but that’s what makes Asch’s resentment compelling.

Likewise, Luke his entire life craved the acknowledgment of Van, while Asch had already long ago been acknowledged by Van as a powerful ally, but still stood against him on his own. In their final fight to decide who will destroy Van, Luke says that him & Asch are pretty much the same strength wise.

Which is the impetus for Asch to challenge him to decide which of the two is stronger once and for all. While Asch can’t stand that Luke put himself down as the inferior, now that he says he’s not inferior but that they’re actually equal, is an affront to Asch’s pride.

It’s only now that Luke actually believes in himself and his own strength though, that Asch can finally prove himself in the way he wanted to, in a definitive sense. Defeating Luke at the height of his mental strength means that he was right to always feel that the life Luke had should have been his.

Because as it is, Luke & Asch don’t have any kind of future after the final battle with Van, they’re going to disappear. So, living in the moment as they are, they decide to give everything to this fight and decide the significance of what their lives meant.

The Meaning of Birth is an orchestral rendition of Karma, with two competing sounds making up the significance of what it means for it to play during this fight. The flute represents Luke, light, maybe in a way weak, but even being subdued its strength is present in a more subtle way. The loud percussion and horns are Asch. Loud, almost violently so, outwardly a very powerful sound. And in the middle of the song it comes together.

Asch loses this fight, but while he said this would decide who between them was the real Like fon Fabre, in his final stand to buy Luke time, at last reclaims his name. For Luke, going against Asch was the final mental block he needed to overcome in order to finally be able to defeat Van.

The task of eliminating Vandesdelca and saving the world is no longer something he can hope to just pass off to Asch. He can no longer rely on him like he has so many times to this point. He’s emerged as the stronger and this time his need to win over Van matters more than ever. He finds his determination.

In Asch’s death scene, you can see two statues carved onto the door of the room they fought in. One has short hair, the other long, with their hands coming together. It’s an incredibly sad moment to see Asch’s life come to an end, being the one who had to stay behind, but it also shows how, Luke & Asch were finally able to come together for the sake of achieving something.

Luke is one of my top 10 characters of all time, across all mediums and stories. Obviously I think so much about his writing is excellent and it’s apparent to anyone that he’s an amazing character, but I don’t think it has much to do with any super wide appeal he has that made him a favorite.

It’s just everything about this character came together to affect me so deeply. His voice performance which I’ve talked about, his general personality early on as being kind of whiny, kind of a bitch, insensitive, craving acknowledgment, but growing so much as a person from there.

The most personal aspect to me, and it’s a bit embarrassing to talk about, but it was around the time I played Abyss last year that I started really questioning my gender. The hair cutting trope in anime is usually associated with girl characters and it’s not anything huge but it did something in me to see Luke also get to do that trope.

And then there are a lot of ways in which Luke is a fairly sensitive person, fairly emotional, thinks with his heart. I’m not saying it’s a very significant aspect of him to have certain more feminine traits but it was something I really liked. But Luke is also a character primarily associated with identity.

Abyss as the story of how Luke comes to be his own person after finding out that a significant portion of his life was a lie. And finding his own inner strength in that. I suppose any character that deals heavily a lot with identity is someone I could see this in, Cloud for example being my favorite character.

But Luke was the kind of character that just came at the right time, right place. And is a part of the reason I was able to eventually decide this huge thing about who I am.

I haven't dropped a game in a long time. Balan Wonderworld changed that.

As a longtime fan of Sonic Team's work, I was absolutely stoked to hear that Sonic series creators Yuji Naka and Naoto Oshima were returning to collaborate again after years of separation. That optimism turned to skepticism the moment I saw this game in motion, and skepticism to disappointment when the reviews started rolling in. This game quickly became the biggest joke on the block, and after all this time I wondered, "could it truly have been that bad?" After all, I still enjoyed many of Naka's other projects despite their shortcomings. I decided to give Balan Wonderworld an honest shot. Big mistake.

This game forgoes so many 3D platformer game design hallmarks and traditions to the point where I have to wonder if the team persued feedback on certain things. The first and possibly largest offense - mapping everything to one button. Everything. Jumping, attacking, menu navigation - every button does the same thing, even the triggers. This proves to be incredibly tedious and frustrating as time goes on.

The second worst thing this game does just so happens to be its central mechanic, the outfit/powerup system. Powerups are incredibly situational and specific, and there are far too many for the game's own good. Half of them could have been meshed into singular, more versatile powerups - not only to mitigate the tedium of using them, but to lend themselves to more interesting stage mechanics and puzzles. Combine their one-note gimmicky nature with the fact that every button has one function, and that's where this game's faults peek through in plain sight. Have a powerup that focuses on attack? You can no longer jump until you find a powerup that allows for it.

Balan also likes to hide its secrets behind these powerups. Stages often hide their collectibles in plain sight, but require the use of an ability that you haven't encountered yet. This makes completing stages nigh unbearable. Other games hide their secrets similarly, but newfound abilities are typically integrated of into player's move set. Balan decides to take a decidedly more complicated approach, requiring the use of a changing room to swap outfits. On paper this isn't too bad an idea - but the fact that outfits are based on stock and must be individually collected from other stages is where Balan's progression becomes a lot more grating.

Music and visuals are nothing to write home about at all. Stage themes are uninteresting and cluttered, the general visual style is flat and uninteresting, and every tune went in one ear and out the other. Sadly ironic, considering that music and visuals were consistently some of the best parts of Naka and Oshima's previous works. The character designs are a treat to look at, but without appealing environments to stage them in I just find myself wishing they were in a better game.

All in all, this game drained me like few things have before and I only managed to get halfway. I need a palette cleanser. Time to start Spyro 2.