Wadakamari
Thracia is a beautiful video game and a bit of a standout in the Fire Emblem series. In FE you often play as a prince or princess with the support of the crown, yours or another, at your back. Knights, resources, loyal retainers, and the like. You go forth and fight for your kingdom, your friends, and what have you.
Thracia is a bit different. Leif is a minor prince in exile, and your brigade is the local militia. So much of the game is spent struggling against overwhelming odds; running away from a superior force. You have very little gold, so you need to capture enemies and steal their equipment. Every victory feels desperate and well-earned.
The game is full of bullshit. It is a bullshit game. Don't have enough keys at this very late chapter in the game? Sorry, buddy, you're softlocked. Oh, you're in the bandit gaiden? Get ready for the girl with the Thief staff to steal your equipment from across the map. Deal with it. Got a powerful unit in the middle of your army? Sorry, she got hit by the berserk staff and just killed your best healer. Walk out into the dark forest? That's a shame, this random bandit just hit you with a sleep staff, captured you, and stole all your equipment. Oh, and the boss hit you with a long range sleep staff, too. Don't even get me started on the long range siege tomes through fog of war.
The game hates you. The game spits on your face. You think you're having a continent-spanning adventure as the Hero-Prince Marth? Who the fuck do you think you are? You think you're having a geopolitical Shakespearean drama, an ancient epic with larger-than-life heroes blessed by the blood of ancient warriors, of the very gods themselves like in FE4? Get real, twerp. You're a two-bit prince with a bunch of militia troops, freedom fighters, and mountain noble knights (later), and you've got to run the fuck away before you can reclaim your kingdom. Every battle is desperate. Every victory is hard-won.
The beauty of the bullshit is that you also have bullshit. Staffs are busted. Warp across the map, who cares. Make the enemy berserk, whatever. Thief staff the boss's weapon away, what's he gonna do about it? When you're this desperate, who the fuck cares about 'fighting fair'? This game was meant to be cheesed, because it's cheesing you. It feels like the director Kaga is challenging you, personally, to a battle of wits - a contest you're going to rise to the challenge of.
One part that stands out to me is a mission later in the game, a tense defense mission where you have to hold out for reinforcements. When it is finally done, the protagonist of FE4 appears with a host of troops to bail you out and give you the thumbs up before going back to doing incredibly significant, world-saving epic shit. You, as Leif, and all of your struggles, have just been a footnote in the greater narrative of FE4. Your 16+ chapters of blood, sweat, tears and loss are just a single map to the other guy.
It's beautiful.
Most significant to me is the penultimate map, right before the finale. I won't give details of the reward, but it is the height of the game's bullshit, of its player-hostile design. Seemingly-random tiles teleport your units to a room in the bottom where they are beaten to death by enemy reinforcements coming out of stairways from which there is no escape. Fog of war concealing Berserkers with extremely high crit and damage, all but guaranteeing a one hit kill on any of your unfortunate allies. Constantly dark mages warping towards you from across the map. It is perverse. It is disgusting. It feels like something out of like a cruel romhack, like a particularly rough Kaizou Mario.
Yet it has great purpose. If you go through it, even though your best units will likely be fatigued and thus unusable in the final map, where you will need them most to actually beat the game - even though you will gain no new items, no new weapons, not even a powerful party member - you are instead rewarded with the best cutscene in the game and incredible emotional catharsis.
It is completely optional. It is in your best tactical interest to not do it. The requirements to unlock it are slightly difficult in the previous map. Yet, the game looks you in the eye, narrows its own, and asks you how much you want your happy ending. Because if you do, you'd better come and get it, motherfucker.
I love Thracia 776. I don't think we'll ever get a game in the Fire Emblem series like it again, but I deeply cherish my time with it and hope anyone else interested in Fire Emblem gives it a try, ideally after getting a few femblems under their belt.
Thracia is a bit different. Leif is a minor prince in exile, and your brigade is the local militia. So much of the game is spent struggling against overwhelming odds; running away from a superior force. You have very little gold, so you need to capture enemies and steal their equipment. Every victory feels desperate and well-earned.
The game is full of bullshit. It is a bullshit game. Don't have enough keys at this very late chapter in the game? Sorry, buddy, you're softlocked. Oh, you're in the bandit gaiden? Get ready for the girl with the Thief staff to steal your equipment from across the map. Deal with it. Got a powerful unit in the middle of your army? Sorry, she got hit by the berserk staff and just killed your best healer. Walk out into the dark forest? That's a shame, this random bandit just hit you with a sleep staff, captured you, and stole all your equipment. Oh, and the boss hit you with a long range sleep staff, too. Don't even get me started on the long range siege tomes through fog of war.
The game hates you. The game spits on your face. You think you're having a continent-spanning adventure as the Hero-Prince Marth? Who the fuck do you think you are? You think you're having a geopolitical Shakespearean drama, an ancient epic with larger-than-life heroes blessed by the blood of ancient warriors, of the very gods themselves like in FE4? Get real, twerp. You're a two-bit prince with a bunch of militia troops, freedom fighters, and mountain noble knights (later), and you've got to run the fuck away before you can reclaim your kingdom. Every battle is desperate. Every victory is hard-won.
The beauty of the bullshit is that you also have bullshit. Staffs are busted. Warp across the map, who cares. Make the enemy berserk, whatever. Thief staff the boss's weapon away, what's he gonna do about it? When you're this desperate, who the fuck cares about 'fighting fair'? This game was meant to be cheesed, because it's cheesing you. It feels like the director Kaga is challenging you, personally, to a battle of wits - a contest you're going to rise to the challenge of.
One part that stands out to me is a mission later in the game, a tense defense mission where you have to hold out for reinforcements. When it is finally done, the protagonist of FE4 appears with a host of troops to bail you out and give you the thumbs up before going back to doing incredibly significant, world-saving epic shit. You, as Leif, and all of your struggles, have just been a footnote in the greater narrative of FE4. Your 16+ chapters of blood, sweat, tears and loss are just a single map to the other guy.
It's beautiful.
Most significant to me is the penultimate map, right before the finale. I won't give details of the reward, but it is the height of the game's bullshit, of its player-hostile design. Seemingly-random tiles teleport your units to a room in the bottom where they are beaten to death by enemy reinforcements coming out of stairways from which there is no escape. Fog of war concealing Berserkers with extremely high crit and damage, all but guaranteeing a one hit kill on any of your unfortunate allies. Constantly dark mages warping towards you from across the map. It is perverse. It is disgusting. It feels like something out of like a cruel romhack, like a particularly rough Kaizou Mario.
Yet it has great purpose. If you go through it, even though your best units will likely be fatigued and thus unusable in the final map, where you will need them most to actually beat the game - even though you will gain no new items, no new weapons, not even a powerful party member - you are instead rewarded with the best cutscene in the game and incredible emotional catharsis.
It is completely optional. It is in your best tactical interest to not do it. The requirements to unlock it are slightly difficult in the previous map. Yet, the game looks you in the eye, narrows its own, and asks you how much you want your happy ending. Because if you do, you'd better come and get it, motherfucker.
I love Thracia 776. I don't think we'll ever get a game in the Fire Emblem series like it again, but I deeply cherish my time with it and hope anyone else interested in Fire Emblem gives it a try, ideally after getting a few femblems under their belt.
This review contains spoilers
Do I have the right to jot my thoughts down on this game? I mean, I only finished half of the Blue Lions route and all of the Crimson Flower route, and I am planning on... well, eventually getting back to do Golden Deer, but I want to believe punching through a route is enough. This game took me like eighty hours as is.
Picked this up around release. Was very Fire-Emblem lapsed. I'd picked up Awakening on release, could not get into the story, dropped it. Picked up Conquest, thought it sucked, dropped it. Three Houses, though, people were talking about. And I'd just gotten a shiny new switch.
Fire Emblem Persona started out pretty nice. Customize your class, learn about the deep world, fight some low-stakes battles. I was getting kind of anxious about going back to the monastery instead of doing a more traditional, linear Fire Emblem campaign, but I was open to it.
Then the shift happens, the time skip the trailer promised. Here we go, I think. We're going on a war campaign (I was with Dmitri of the Blue Lions) and this is going to kick ass. It uh. It sort of did.
See, the issue here is that the gameplay had sort of broken down. I was playing on hard, but no map presented even an iota of challenge. I'm not trying to toot my own horn, here - at the time of playing, I was an absolute shit gamer, a strategy buffoon, a tactical caveman. The gameplay simply did not hold my interest.
Turning to the plot to provide hope, I got to THE map. It was going to be the coolest one, the class reunion. The gang is fighting. What was supposed to be the climax, the emotional peak of the game... just utterly shat the bed for me. I, the player, was fighting against the Golden Deer while the Empire was right there. The Golden Deer explicitly did not want to fight me. One of my former students bum rushes me and some emotional dialogue plays: "Sensei, why are you attacking us?"
It was the worst shit. I dropped it then and there.
A good three years later I get into Fire Emblem again. I boot up Maddening. I stream. The friction is incredible. The first few maps, while terrible on replay, are entertaining in their bizarre challenge. I go with Edelgard this time and the catharthis of fighting my former students, their former friends, family members... it rules. The penultimate map is one of the most exciting strategy challenges coupled with emotional release. It is why I play Fire Emblem.
7/10
Picked this up around release. Was very Fire-Emblem lapsed. I'd picked up Awakening on release, could not get into the story, dropped it. Picked up Conquest, thought it sucked, dropped it. Three Houses, though, people were talking about. And I'd just gotten a shiny new switch.
Fire Emblem Persona started out pretty nice. Customize your class, learn about the deep world, fight some low-stakes battles. I was getting kind of anxious about going back to the monastery instead of doing a more traditional, linear Fire Emblem campaign, but I was open to it.
Then the shift happens, the time skip the trailer promised. Here we go, I think. We're going on a war campaign (I was with Dmitri of the Blue Lions) and this is going to kick ass. It uh. It sort of did.
See, the issue here is that the gameplay had sort of broken down. I was playing on hard, but no map presented even an iota of challenge. I'm not trying to toot my own horn, here - at the time of playing, I was an absolute shit gamer, a strategy buffoon, a tactical caveman. The gameplay simply did not hold my interest.
Turning to the plot to provide hope, I got to THE map. It was going to be the coolest one, the class reunion. The gang is fighting. What was supposed to be the climax, the emotional peak of the game... just utterly shat the bed for me. I, the player, was fighting against the Golden Deer while the Empire was right there. The Golden Deer explicitly did not want to fight me. One of my former students bum rushes me and some emotional dialogue plays: "Sensei, why are you attacking us?"
It was the worst shit. I dropped it then and there.
A good three years later I get into Fire Emblem again. I boot up Maddening. I stream. The friction is incredible. The first few maps, while terrible on replay, are entertaining in their bizarre challenge. I go with Edelgard this time and the catharthis of fighting my former students, their former friends, family members... it rules. The penultimate map is one of the most exciting strategy challenges coupled with emotional release. It is why I play Fire Emblem.
7/10
2023
Fire Emblem Engage. Got really, really into Fire Emblem right before its release, playing much of the series in a feverish pitch with this game's release being the climax. Was it worth it? Sure was. One of my favorite Femblems.
Gameplay? Fantastic. The difficulty of the Maddening mode has hands-down the best difficulty pacing in the series; they really got it with this one. It's enough of a toothy challenge right off the bat that always feels hard enough, and it keeps pace with you even as you gain more and more tools to deal with its challenges. It contrasts with Three Houses Maddening, which is comically difficult in the beginning with your do-nothing scrub kids until they grow into their own and it gets much easier. Pretty great last maps, though. It also contrasts with Conquest's Lunatic difficulty, which punches your face in from the start and every mission is a fight for your life. Yeah, Conquest is pretty great, too.
The systems of simple character customization with emblem ring skills and the emblems themselves were really fun. I was worried that the game would be a juggernaut-fest of steamrolling the enemy with superpowered transforming emblem units (this can still happen but only if you really know what you're doing), but was pleasantly surprised at just how fun the emblem engaging mechanics were. The series fanservice was pretty nice, too, having the player take on some of the hardest maps from the old games.
Other production value things - great soundtrack with its dynamic battle themes, excellent animation with throwbacks to GBA battle animations, the previous peak of the series, and some really nice optimization. The game actually runs well on the switch, which is a real shocker.
What I didn't like as much is pretty much what everyone else didn't like, the story and the character designs. The story is Fine, it's a campy Marvel story that I was checked out of and kind of enjoyed the villain's motivations metaphorically as a Femblem gamer who just like me fr. It had hype moments, so what more could I ask for. Oh, I know - less text. The game had so much text and said so little with it! Man!
The character designs. Many will kvetch that they are too "anime," too "weeby," because, well, Fire Emblem has never been animesque! Anyway, Mika Pikazo's art owns, and I like some of the really exaggerated designs. Seeing Celine flip around in a giant poofy onion dress and platform shoes is the funniest and best thing. The problem is, there's no cohesion. Like, none. No one looks like they live where they're from, no one looks like they inhabit the same world, and nothing looks real. They feel like a bunch of gacha game character designs slapped together, and that's pretty much how they were made - IS asked Pikazo to just go and design 50 characters and bada-bing-bada-boom here we go. Bring us back to Echoes... or at least, Thracia...
Anyway, great strategy RPG
Gameplay? Fantastic. The difficulty of the Maddening mode has hands-down the best difficulty pacing in the series; they really got it with this one. It's enough of a toothy challenge right off the bat that always feels hard enough, and it keeps pace with you even as you gain more and more tools to deal with its challenges. It contrasts with Three Houses Maddening, which is comically difficult in the beginning with your do-nothing scrub kids until they grow into their own and it gets much easier. Pretty great last maps, though. It also contrasts with Conquest's Lunatic difficulty, which punches your face in from the start and every mission is a fight for your life. Yeah, Conquest is pretty great, too.
The systems of simple character customization with emblem ring skills and the emblems themselves were really fun. I was worried that the game would be a juggernaut-fest of steamrolling the enemy with superpowered transforming emblem units (this can still happen but only if you really know what you're doing), but was pleasantly surprised at just how fun the emblem engaging mechanics were. The series fanservice was pretty nice, too, having the player take on some of the hardest maps from the old games.
Other production value things - great soundtrack with its dynamic battle themes, excellent animation with throwbacks to GBA battle animations, the previous peak of the series, and some really nice optimization. The game actually runs well on the switch, which is a real shocker.
What I didn't like as much is pretty much what everyone else didn't like, the story and the character designs. The story is Fine, it's a campy Marvel story that I was checked out of and kind of enjoyed the villain's motivations metaphorically as a Femblem gamer who just like me fr. It had hype moments, so what more could I ask for. Oh, I know - less text. The game had so much text and said so little with it! Man!
The character designs. Many will kvetch that they are too "anime," too "weeby," because, well, Fire Emblem has never been animesque! Anyway, Mika Pikazo's art owns, and I like some of the really exaggerated designs. Seeing Celine flip around in a giant poofy onion dress and platform shoes is the funniest and best thing. The problem is, there's no cohesion. Like, none. No one looks like they live where they're from, no one looks like they inhabit the same world, and nothing looks real. They feel like a bunch of gacha game character designs slapped together, and that's pretty much how they were made - IS asked Pikazo to just go and design 50 characters and bada-bing-bada-boom here we go. Bring us back to Echoes... or at least, Thracia...
Anyway, great strategy RPG
A beautiful game. Wonderful characters and story, love how everyone can really emote in the Definitive Edition, and the world is a fantastic character in itself. It really grabs that old JRPG feel, that promise, of losing yourself in an immense, vivid world packed with colorful characters, societies, and sights to see. The crazy plot was a lot of fun, and the nonstop hype train ride of the third act was legendary among JRPGs I've played.
I have a few gripes that mar this game from getting the extra half star or so. While the towns were impressive in how vivid they were, I just couldn't get into how drab the NPC dialogue presentation felt. It's a little better with bigger text boxes in XB2, at least. Building on that, the sidequests. On one hand, they were fine as brain-off, I-just-want-to-grind-while-listening-to-three-hour-long-youtube-videos activities, but on the other hand, there were... simply too many of them, and not many had much narrative pleasure to them.
Another gripe is a bigger one - the combat. I found it okay to bad for much of my play. I think it works for the game Xenoblade Chronicles is - the lack of a loud transition to a seperate screen into menu-based turn based combat, opting instead for a seamless, cooldown-based real time system is a boon to the exploration. The game would be much worse off with a system like, say, Final Fantasy 10's-and I think FFX's battle system is fantastic.
Unfortunately, the game's battle system (and that's not even getting into the crazy level scaling, or how I had to grind for a few hours just to beat a miniboss that was incredibly easy but unhittable because I was 5 levels below it) discouraged me from really wanting to bite into the side content of the game. I missed out on a lot of bond talks, a lot of the later bosses, a lot of the post-game areas... but, I was satisfied with my time. So, so satisfied. When the changed title screen came up after the post-credits cutscene, I teared up a bit. I'm tearing up a bit writing this sentence now. What a journey. Just... man.
I have a few gripes that mar this game from getting the extra half star or so. While the towns were impressive in how vivid they were, I just couldn't get into how drab the NPC dialogue presentation felt. It's a little better with bigger text boxes in XB2, at least. Building on that, the sidequests. On one hand, they were fine as brain-off, I-just-want-to-grind-while-listening-to-three-hour-long-youtube-videos activities, but on the other hand, there were... simply too many of them, and not many had much narrative pleasure to them.
Another gripe is a bigger one - the combat. I found it okay to bad for much of my play. I think it works for the game Xenoblade Chronicles is - the lack of a loud transition to a seperate screen into menu-based turn based combat, opting instead for a seamless, cooldown-based real time system is a boon to the exploration. The game would be much worse off with a system like, say, Final Fantasy 10's-and I think FFX's battle system is fantastic.
Unfortunately, the game's battle system (and that's not even getting into the crazy level scaling, or how I had to grind for a few hours just to beat a miniboss that was incredibly easy but unhittable because I was 5 levels below it) discouraged me from really wanting to bite into the side content of the game. I missed out on a lot of bond talks, a lot of the later bosses, a lot of the post-game areas... but, I was satisfied with my time. So, so satisfied. When the changed title screen came up after the post-credits cutscene, I teared up a bit. I'm tearing up a bit writing this sentence now. What a journey. Just... man.
One of those "damn, they had this on the Super Famicom?" levels of storytelling to me. Though I didn't like the gameplay nearly as much on my second playthrough as more of a seasoned fire emblem fan, the game is a powerhouse on your first playthrough. A true epic. Playing this when I was younger, I had never been quite as personally angry at a villain before, anger that propelled me through the second half to the ultimate ending.
2023
This is literally the coolest thing ever, and I think it fucking sucks.
Loved this. Was just rapt the whole time and on my knees at the scope of the game.
I think a lot of us engage with art, with games, to Feel. Games sort of primarily make the player feel power, agency, a sort of strength they can't really get or experience in real life, but Sir Brante... doesn't exactly let you feel that. It does and most definitely can. In fact, a lot of friends I recommended the game to that went through it shared with me their triumphs at pivotal moments in their version of the titular character's life. My playthrough, however, was one marked by sorrow and loss.
The game is full of failures, of ways your character's adult life can fall apart, of ways childhood innocence peels away, of compromises that must be made and injustices easy to ignore. Sir Brante made me suffer. In my eight hour playthrough, it gave me a turbulent life growing up in a rich, fascinating fantasy world in NotFrance on the verge of revolution, made me experience hope and wonder in my virtual adolescence before crushing me with a brutal life of corrupt adulthood, leaving me having lost everything as a result of my choices.
The ending I was led to and the emotional devastation, all on me, left me in awe. Of course, I went back and played again, did other routes, did everything right, had a triumphant life, and that was all great, but...nothing can replace first playthrough, that first route, that experience of getting to the end utterly defeated, but having lived a full life.
I think a lot of us engage with art, with games, to Feel. Games sort of primarily make the player feel power, agency, a sort of strength they can't really get or experience in real life, but Sir Brante... doesn't exactly let you feel that. It does and most definitely can. In fact, a lot of friends I recommended the game to that went through it shared with me their triumphs at pivotal moments in their version of the titular character's life. My playthrough, however, was one marked by sorrow and loss.
The game is full of failures, of ways your character's adult life can fall apart, of ways childhood innocence peels away, of compromises that must be made and injustices easy to ignore. Sir Brante made me suffer. In my eight hour playthrough, it gave me a turbulent life growing up in a rich, fascinating fantasy world in NotFrance on the verge of revolution, made me experience hope and wonder in my virtual adolescence before crushing me with a brutal life of corrupt adulthood, leaving me having lost everything as a result of my choices.
The ending I was led to and the emotional devastation, all on me, left me in awe. Of course, I went back and played again, did other routes, did everything right, had a triumphant life, and that was all great, but...nothing can replace first playthrough, that first route, that experience of getting to the end utterly defeated, but having lived a full life.
Had a lot of fun playing as scuffed as possible and being surprised at how willing the game was to accommodate me with free, powerful prepromotes the further the game went. Lots of great memories and tense situations playing this one, hit rates kind of blow though and the level design is quite bad
Went into this bad boy after Thracia, wanting more Snes Fire Emblems. I was pensive about it. Like, I'd seen the screenshots, I'd seen some videos - it looked old, crusty, slow. Besides, if it didn't have the story of 4 or the balls-flattening gameplay of 5, what was the point? Still, I wanted to see what Marth was all about.
Absolutely loved it. Book 1, the remake of the first Fire Emblem game, was the baseline story of Marth and pretty fun. Didn't have me singing from the mountaintops, but it was really fun to get acquainted with the original Fire Emblem crew. I started to like all of the characters - Marth, Ogma, Caeda, Linde, Cain and Abel, Hardin... through the gameplay, they really grew on me.
Then I got to Book 2 and found myself stunned. It's a bonafide chronological sequel with all of your favorites returning, and some painful twists. The beginning conceit really impressed me with how it turned the ending on its head. The level design was also consistently pretty good, with the huge exception of Chapter 3. Nothing hamstrings my replays more than that accursed mountain island.
Absolutely loved it. Book 1, the remake of the first Fire Emblem game, was the baseline story of Marth and pretty fun. Didn't have me singing from the mountaintops, but it was really fun to get acquainted with the original Fire Emblem crew. I started to like all of the characters - Marth, Ogma, Caeda, Linde, Cain and Abel, Hardin... through the gameplay, they really grew on me.
Then I got to Book 2 and found myself stunned. It's a bonafide chronological sequel with all of your favorites returning, and some painful twists. The beginning conceit really impressed me with how it turned the ending on its head. The level design was also consistently pretty good, with the huge exception of Chapter 3. Nothing hamstrings my replays more than that accursed mountain island.
2007
A game that hits perfectly if you're a high schooler in 2007. Great thematic vision. It may be half a Tokimeki Memorial-style life/dating sim and half a half-baked dungeon crawler RPG, but you know what? It's more than the sum of its parts. It rocks. I love you Persona 3, memento mori
By and away my favorite of Fromsoft's catalogue. The grim feudal Japanese world, the incredible fantasy vistas, the feeling of being a ninja with little more than your blade fighting off against incredible odds and sheen-polished duels simply works for what I am looking for in a video game. Played it right after Elden Ring and enjoyed every minute of it.
Much like Elden Ring, it showed me just how much difficulty can make a game that much more enjoyable and memorable - the immense struggle I had being killed off by mooks or minibosses or boss-bosses made every triumph, every victory, every boss learned feel that much better. The game demanding I rise to its challenge made my feeling like a cracked out sword-slinging ninja feel earned.
Man. It ruled
Much like Elden Ring, it showed me just how much difficulty can make a game that much more enjoyable and memorable - the immense struggle I had being killed off by mooks or minibosses or boss-bosses made every triumph, every victory, every boss learned feel that much better. The game demanding I rise to its challenge made my feeling like a cracked out sword-slinging ninja feel earned.
Man. It ruled
2016
With Long War 2, best strategy game I've ever played by a wide margin
Yeah, it's the best expansion storywise. I know it, you know it, your mom who hasn't even heard of Final Fantasy Fourteen knows it. Ishikawa and the writing team did an absolute miracle by taking the shittiest, worst part of XIV's storyline, the Ascians, a plot bit I actively kept trying to forget existed (Indeed, the direction they took in the end of Stormblood completely jumped the shark for me with what they did with the Ascians. At that moment I thought to myself that I could no longer pay attention to the story and would just raid with my static, because any storytelling the game could do would be absolute garbage) and... made it incredibly compelling.
For performing XIV's second revival miracle, I will forever kneel.
For performing XIV's second revival miracle, I will forever kneel.
There's so much I could say about this game, and it did, indeed, teach me a lot. Perhaps I could talk about how drummed-up controversies affect our perception of games, perhaps I could talk about how expectations of "uh it's Oscarbait AAA stuf it's going to be 'good' standard good great even" can make things seem less appealing - after all if you know something is just boilerplate good, then you know, why bother?
I could talk about the modern 2 hour video essay, how they serve often to give a person a wikipedia summary of a game and prepackaged opinions so they can take part in Discourse. I can talk about people complaining about emotional manipulation, about The Gamer Struggles, about all that.
None of it matters in the face of the primacy of experience. Of going through a massive work of art like this yourself. How did this get made. How did this get made with a AAA budget. How is it twice the length of The Last of Us One. How is it all killer no filler. How does it manage to tell a story of such violence, emotional vulnerability, and depth. I don't know. People and the discourse around it could not tell me.
A masterpiece. Play it if you liked the first game. Play the first game to play this game. This will be an enduring, all-time classic.
I could talk about the modern 2 hour video essay, how they serve often to give a person a wikipedia summary of a game and prepackaged opinions so they can take part in Discourse. I can talk about people complaining about emotional manipulation, about The Gamer Struggles, about all that.
None of it matters in the face of the primacy of experience. Of going through a massive work of art like this yourself. How did this get made. How did this get made with a AAA budget. How is it twice the length of The Last of Us One. How is it all killer no filler. How does it manage to tell a story of such violence, emotional vulnerability, and depth. I don't know. People and the discourse around it could not tell me.
A masterpiece. Play it if you liked the first game. Play the first game to play this game. This will be an enduring, all-time classic.
1991
A classic. Not one that left a deep impression on me or that I think has aged particularly well, but as a work that truly cemented the character-based narratives of Final Fantasy going forward, I must pay my respects.