Wadakamari
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.
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.
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
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
2016
With Long War 2, best strategy game I've ever played by a wide margin
Are the action mechanics the most complex? No. Are the graphics the best? No. Is the soundtrack the best? Yes. Is this the coolest game of all time? Yes.
Glad zoomer youtubers gave it a breath of new life. Rising owns
Glad zoomer youtubers gave it a breath of new life. Rising owns
2001
A weird, janky transitional point between Devil May Cry the character action game and Resident Evil 4. I liked it. Has a lot of oddball charm, some great cheesy voice acting, and a terrible but ambitious last boss fight. - HD Collection
2012
Felt like being in a sensory deprivation tank for 5 hours.
This is a beautiful game. The cutscenes are both really cheeky and goofy while being incredibly cool; it's that kind of action movie/anime camp where you're laughing your ass off while also saying "this is the coolest thing I've ever seen." You can't make fun of the game because any joke or ridiculous occurrence you're thinking of is going to happen in the next cutscene.
Great character action, though I am sad I missed out on the style switching of the Switch game (my god I hated playing it with the Switch controller, DS4 for life).
Great character action, though I am sad I missed out on the style switching of the Switch game (my god I hated playing it with the Switch controller, DS4 for life).
The most "null" Devil May Cry. None of the weird jank of DMC1, none of the buckbreaking awfulness of DMC2, none of the series and genre definition of DMC3, none of the [redacted] of DmC, none of the gameplay refinement and iteration on 3's system of 4...
No, that was a lie. This iterates on DMC3 great in Dante's half; he feels incredible to control, especially coming off of DMC3. Nero for his part is also fun, though much of his route can be beat by just spamming his beefy arm. It's a fun time, though feels incomplete once you get to Dante's route and you run the game in reverse.
No, that was a lie. This iterates on DMC3 great in Dante's half; he feels incredible to control, especially coming off of DMC3. Nero for his part is also fun, though much of his route can be beat by just spamming his beefy arm. It's a fun time, though feels incomplete once you get to Dante's route and you run the game in reverse.
2019
Bang bang bang pull my devil trigger
I played the entire series in one go leading up to this and I got no idea what's happening in the story
Bonkers fun character action though, the final boss had me howling
I played the entire series in one go leading up to this and I got no idea what's happening in the story
Bonkers fun character action though, the final boss had me howling
2013
Went in with an open mind, and you know what? S'all right. A lot of the game's DNA, like the music being linked to your style ranking, the cute little way enemies are introduced - a lotta that got carried over to DMC5. The feel of the game itself was kind of /shrug, and the self important story wasn't too compelling. What was, though, were the visuals and environment designs. Incredible levels, best in the series. The Bob Barnas boss fight is one of the most visually cool in the series, I loved every minute of it.
I love Final Fantasy Seven
1987
One of my favorite Final Fantasies, a janky, buggy mess I can always go back to. It combines the harsh dungeon crawling RPG action and party making over 80s RPGs with the larger than life time-travel-and-sci-fi plot of... well, final fantasy. Great stuff. Great to have a final fantasy you can have a "run" of.
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.