I think Lazy Bear is a bit of an underrated studio. Not that their games are amazing, but they have a formula that I think they've been molding for a while that really comes together here to make for a pretty darn good time.

The minmaxing focus of "how do I create a given resource in the most efficient way" isn't exactly appealing mechanically, but it is, frankly, very stimulating. You have to remember a lot of recipes, where to get what ingredients, which part of Bandle City contains which aura, which workbench does what, whether or not you can create something in a workbench on the other side of the world, what pieces are needed for which lecture, your plants are constantly growing and more!

By taking away any and all action elements, the game might get a bit dull for some, but I personally found its art, soundtrack, and even sounds of the little Yordle running against different terrain to be enough to keep me going. Sure, I would occasionally throw something on in the background, but if I didn't, I was always pleasantly surprised. The soundtrack often has this effect of being played through, like, a piece of glass or through distant speakers. Really adds to the feel of this being a kind of a storybook or a tiny world inside some snowglobe contraption or something like that.

The constant stimulation combined with a very laid-back tempo where you, the player, decide whether you're ok with waiting a bit while working towards another goal or using up some more resources to have things happen faster (or skip time by going to sleep, mimimimimi). I think it's a pretty unique game in that regard, most if not all other resource-management games have some form a lose state or action elements that can skip a day if you fail at them, but here it's kinda just you earnestly working towards helping a bunch of pals or just upgrading your lil backpack house. It's a pretty good vibe once you get in the groove of things.

Ultimately, it is kind of a sim of walking back and forth, but if you ever played these kinds of games on your GameBoy Advance or early PC days, I think you can understand the joy of just walking around all chill-like in a very pretty world with some objectives to keep you busy, ones that aren't intrusive but are there if you wish to follow them, and maybe some minigame or two. Think, like, Lego Island. Maybe these types of games don't have much of a leg to stand on anymore, but I'd like to think that Lazy Bear has something going here, and I hope the failure of Riot Forge does not discourage them from exploring it.

Which, also, I am extremely distraught about the end of Riot Forge. I think people don't realize how good they have it when they can get small projects like these games in a universe that's already established, familiar, and comforting. Really, no matter what you think about the individual games, I think it's a tragedy that we stopped letting creatives make small games like these in big universes. How awesome would it be to have stuff like this for all these other franchises? It's basically been my dream buisness model, but it seems like in the current landscape it just cannot exist. Feels bad. Real bad.

Incoherent rambling I wrote when playing Baldur's Gate 2. Too much writing to just delete it but the thesis falls apart when you consider that games like Underrail and Colony Ship are still coming out.

Old RPGs Are (Almost) Dead

I do not believe in the idea of video games aging. I do, however, believe that the way we play them does. You cannot replicate the idea that permeated a school playground or an online forum of, for example, what it means to be an RPG. The story they are describing is set inside a game with pixelated graphics that communicate the bare minimum. One may look at a dragon there and a dragon in Elden Ring and just be baffled at how one can match the other. But that potential was there. People found it and extracted it and had the feeling of an epic adventure. It still is there. But it becomes increasingly more difficult to access them, to feel them. They are dying, and some are already dead.

In Baldur's Gate 2, there's a quest that has you investigate a cult where people rip their eyes out to have a chance of an awakening. To go undercover, you have to find a piece of a wand from a place deeper underground. In there, you find a temple, dedicated to a different deity than the one you are investigating. Its followers have forgotten the name of their god and as such his strength wavers and his avatar cannot defeat the evil that is overtaking him and his temple, the purpose of which was guarding the wand piece from evil.

The lesson here is you cannot make anyone remember a thing forever, even if you were to give them eternal life. The human experience is that of many experiences, and we forget. The pain more often than not makes us forget, the pain of aging or just the human condition replacing old positive memories with not just negative ones. They sometimes replace them with nothing. There are just gaps in memory. I cannot make anyone cherish these games, and the games cannot hold up themselves, even if I put out this piece of writing and let it sit forever. The followers of the forgotten deity, by the time the player meets them, hate their god. Not passionately, but dejectedly, thinking they will never be allowed to pass on. Even if you dedicate your life to something, that dedication can ruin it for you.

I gained an appreciation of titles like these thanks to the YouTuber Warlockracy, who does "narrative let's plays" through which he paints the picture of how to find enjoyment in them. I now love Morrowind because I listened to him talk about how it is largely its own medium where a player can tell their own stories, and then proceeds to do just that. My next attempt at Morrowind succeeded because I decided to leave anything I tried before and figured I would like to have this character I am creating to try and gain money fast by working as a guard. I figured a government job would pay well and provide good equipment and I was not disappointed. I am still figuring out how to approach classic Fallout in the way he talks about it, but I keep giving it a try now and then. One day it might click.

He also has a video on Baldur's Gate, but his playstyle is not at all like mine. As such I thought I could try doing something similar to his style of content, but for a more standard playthrough, to maybe help one or two people enjoy these games more. I wrote down tips such as "make as efficient of a party as possible to get through regular fights much easier" and "save up wands for the hardest encounters." But these do not work, do they? They don't make you want to play these games and they don't help you experience them like I did. They may unlock that potential but they don't lead you down that road.

Instead, I think the only way, at my current writing skill level, is to speak of the adventures I had. You might stop playing 10 minutes in. I did, about 20 times in fact, before actually moving on past chapter four. In most of these attempts, I didn't even complete the prologue. You may try co-op only to find out how difficult it is to coordinate on something this hard to grasp for 70 hours. I did. Twice. If at any point you read these descriptions, however, and think "How does one experience these through this jumbled mess of a UI and tiny pixelated character models," all I can say is: play it to find out.

My journey started in Candlekeep, where I was raised to combat spellcasters. My father, Gorion, was one himself and knew how dangerous magic can be. His fascination with magic items always made him feel a bit distant, and the way he spoke made me want to avoid all forms of such power.

Many years later, Gorion told me suddenly that he had planned a trip for both of us. It was something he had been planning for a little bit now, clearly knowing something was afoot. The attempts on my life inside the walls which occurred on the day we were to leave only confirmed his suspicions, and even though he had not told me what was in store for us I trusted him. Outside the city gates, we were ambushed, and Father told me to run. Though he has slain multiple of the assailants, the big one with a horned helmet eventually crushed him.

Here is where my tale begins to grow to epic proportions. Imoen, who grew up with me in the keep, caught up to me, my one new companion, but the empty fields before me seemed to be endless. I could travel in any direction, but I was struck with choice paralysis. Gorion gave me directions to a nearby fortress where friends would await us, and I could not think about any other path. I was scared and wanted directions. Thankfully upon reaching the inn at said location, I found some.

But the mines that I liberated with my new companions soon after were merely the beginning. The tough fight at the very end helped me realize the power that magic can hold, and how communicating with my teammates and friendly spellcasters can turn the tide of battle. What Gorion could achieve was impressive, but he was just one man. Together, maybe this could work. I traveled the land far and wide in search of magical artifacts to strengthen me and my allies before we chased my father’s murderer further.

One of these locations was a forest infested with spiders. It was filled with spider-web traps that would prevent all of my teammates from moving, all the while fast spiders with knife-like legs would slice us up. Each fight cost us time, as we had to rest before we proceeded any further, and were awoken many times by ambushes. It was weeks of sleeping in that one forest, unsure of what would come next. Above it all loomed a big dome made of spider webs. It was a nest of evil. I felt the need to destroy what was inside.

But I could not have expected a human form to control these spiders. It was sprawling, distorted, but still visibly human. She was cursed, as she says. But that is all I learned before she would attack alongside her army of spiders who charged right at me. Knowing I could not take them all in their den, I ran outside, baiting them out in groups and using healing spells and potions before going back in. One of our companions, a wild mage, unleashed fierce fireballs that decimated them as we went back inside but hurt some of us as well. Eventually, we were victorious. Barely standing, we had another rest in front of the structure. Thankfully, this one was uninterrupted.

For my troubles, I obtained Spider’s Bane, a two-handed sword that would prove to be my most reliable weapon for the rest of my time chasing my father’s killer. It was enchanted, but I decided to wield it regardless. I realized my conviction against magic died with Gorion. My training made my body unable to use some trinkets, but if this sword would allow me to avenge him, so be it. I set out for the town of Baldur’s Gate.

There I eventually confronted the villain. To find him I had to be chased around like a criminal, I had to learn of Gorion’s secrets, and my whole worldview was reshaped as I learned of who I was in the grand puppet play of the gods. But I persevered. Though the final battle was chaotic, with summoned allies and my companions falling in battle, I dealt the last blow with a weapon that symbolized my conviction. It turned out the abandonment of the past, back when I first picked it up, was merely a prelude to how much I would have to leave behind.

But (sorry for a terrible transition) I do not want to abandon Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2. I am in the process of playing through the second game for the first time, and though I felt sad enough about the possibility of these experiences fading away to write this piece, I am incredibly excited that the series got the enhanced editions by Beamdog and that the third installment somehow reached the same heights critically as its predecessors did. But it will undoubtedly overshadow them even harder, just like Witcher 3 did to the two games that came before it.

I simply hope that the sort of experiences that are becoming less and less popular are still able to reach some people. They might never be as popular as they used to be, but these are undoubtedly experiences some people still search for. Games like The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Fallout 1 and 2 all provide storytelling possibilities that are hard to find even in current year’s incredibly impressive lineup of titles. Only these games provided me with them, so seeing them phased out into the indie sphere at best, and even then rarely, is something I am having a hard time with.

Perfectly solid, short, little action platformer for the Gameboy. No doubt anyone who owned it would have been satisfied. Levels are tight and not too long, bosses are perfectly solid. Nothing to really drag on at all!

Though this is still dinosaur mass murder simulator, it does benefit from the Jurassic Park theming by having these water creatures and the land dinos as enemies. They all just look appealing for the screen they're on. And the bigger ones look threatening and cool, especially the underwater one that charges from off screen. The only one that looks extremely goofy is the Velociraptor.

Unfortunately it also just does not stand out very much for the platform it's on. Certainly would be ten times more forgotten if not for the branding. It's a one hour drive home kind of game, but undoubtedly one many kids would have picked back up and beaten several times.

This will be so many people's favorite game of all time. It's not mine, and I may have my issues, but I write this because I absolutely wanna celebrate games that have such unbelievably good production, such interesting and rich worlds, characters with expansive perspectives, such beautiful diversity and take something that has already been a staple of several amazing games over the past few years and just experiment with it further and further to see the way players react. It didn't perfectly click with me, but if it does with someone, HOOOOOLY I can't imagine that feeling. It's so rare that games with such incredible production try and reach further than they maybe can, than they maybe should, and not play it safe, and I think even this game maybe goes a bit safe at specific points, but it GOES for it otherwise. It's just such a rare thing to take something that works perfectly well and decide to risk it all. Just, fuck yeah, video games.

Starts off rather strong but never goes anywhere. This run n' gun has a few interesting ideas, the primary one being the different weapons for humans and dinos. You're kinda like the dinosaur witcher here. One type of weapon deals damage to both, while the others only neutralize the beasts. If you kill too many, however, the game just ends, which I found out the hard way. And the number isn't exactly clear, but if you go below 50 the ecosystem gets borked or something.

So you have this dynamic of switching weapons, preserving ammo, all that. Works especially well in the later stages. Too bad the later stages are largely either rehashes of other levels, or are just straight up annoying. The game begins to really go hard on the death pits, on cheap damage, and convoluted missions. The volcano one, dear lord. It's just a maze really and you supposedly have a device to track it down with sound but it just makes no sense as you play it. The whole game is go right simulator, if you can't go left, so putting a poorly thought out maze that doesn't make any sense structurally, and then redoing this concept on a timer? AAAAAAAAAAA.

The final boss is nothing to speak of, but the reuse of enemies is. Nothing is safe from the power of reuse. If this game was like two missions shorter, or just abandoned the timed missions altogether, I think it would be fondly remembered for the cool mechanics I mentioned. But it's just bloated and gets progressively more and more dull.

Same issue as the Snes Jurassic Park and the Genesis Rampage Edition. So many games from this era are longer than they should be just because they can be longer. They don't do anything with that length, they just are. This does not feel good enough to play by the middle of the game, let alone during a replay on a harder difficulty. The length does not fit replayability or single completion, I don't get it. These types of games should have just returned to monkey, to the NES. That's the lesson here I guess.

It's probably better in co-op, but so is half of the SNES library.

Jurassic Park for the Genesis plays like a sped up Flashback, or you can play as a raptor if you want. It's unreal how large and how fast Grant's leaps across the screen are, but each level is finished in minutes. There's the huge issue of just not being able to see what's below you or in front of you sometimes, and it is much harder to learn what feels like a layout of a Sonic level at points, but it is certainly doable.

Your reward will be a cool T-Rex head popping out of the background and a boss battle against two raptors where you are not actually able to hurt the raptors, and are supposed to hit the two pedestals holding up the dino skeletons. Bizarre choice for a game where half the time I would rocket some dilophosaurus in the face.

Raptor is just Sonic. He jumps across the length of what feels like two screens. The screen literally cannot keep up with you half the time. Then they put you in the shitty tight canals. Like why? The final boss isn't against Grant either, it's against ONE of the stones from a specific angle.

Bizarre game, but pretty inoffensive and forgettable. I'm sure there will be people who will get a lot less and some who will get a tiny bit more out of it though.

Games like this aren't entirely about your first impressions, or second, or third really. Many of my favorite NES games are ones that operate best when you just know them front to back, know how to move, know the patterns, know the rules. It's about how satisfying a full run of these games is once you learn them, and how fun the learning process is.

Jurassic Park is incredibly tedious and annoying to learn. It's all patterns. The Triceratops stampede can be beaten without memorization but you will lose several lives, and there are only so many continues. The T-Rex boss is an escort mission where if you or the guy who follows you at certain intervals touches his face, you lose a wholeass life. It is tough to memorize his entire pattern, but it's doable. Then there are the positions of each egg, knowing which doors to do in which order, knowing which consoles to do in which order, knowing which drops are health and which will instakill you (they look identical).

And when all is said and done and you do know how the game works... it's good! There is a bit of an issue with not being able to stop and shoot diagonally, and not being able to jump above certain obstacles, but its got tight hitboxes, different powerups that you can preserve between levels, the dinos look nice and their movements are interesting to work around. Dinos drop as much ammo as they take, and if you get a different weapon you can stack your regular one in the meantime with those pickups. It's also always clear as to what you're supposed to do as long as you read. If I had this game as a kid, I would be very satisfied with it... after the first week of beating my head against the wall to learn it that is.

It's just that... this is not a Jurassic Park game is it? You're a guy shooting dinos, murdering their population, collecting eggs. It's nothing like the movie. This is just an action game, and would maybe be better received if it was not titled "Jurassic Park."

The music bangs though. Maybe the budget from it being a licensed IP went to the music. I don't know.

The two previous works from Jeppe Carlsen—Limbo and Inside— are about humans. Two kids to be exact. They infiltrate a facility of some sorts to find something, they see very fucked up stuff, they die a lot in gruesome ways. There is something to get attached to there: you see a human and you see them die and go "fuck, that's brutal." At the end, after everything they went through, you think "it must have been for something" and start to imagine things in your head. You begin to make theories. I have my own about both games. The issue with those games for me, however, was that theories would always get cut short. Because everything in there is about humans, things are human-made, things are within the sphere of human understanding.

Cocoon is a game about fucko aliens watching other fucko aliens, beating up fucko aliens, turning into even more fucked up fucko aliens. There is almost nothing human to attach to. There's little guys that follow you around or these big bosses, but these shapes, movements, creatures, they're not anything I can point my finger towards to and go "ah, that came from this." Sometimes it has spider legs, but then it is stuck inside some weirdo crystal and makes brain mass pulsate on the floor. Sometimes it has tentacles but then it's also kind of a plant of some sorts? I just can't really explain anything.

All that's sort of human is that there are answers to the puzzles. Everything is designed, but none of it really operates logically. Things inside things, thing inside itself, things moving between different worlds or realities in ways they seemingly shouldn't. Things materialize and dematerialize, and there is consistency to everything. There is some plan. This game has an ending, your character has an end-goal. Maybe logic is not human after all. The universe existed before us, and it worked in its own way. Maybe logic is inherent. So is there anything human here?

It is on the player to insert that humanity into this game somehow. Thinking about this game as I played it, I have not really encountered a stopping point yet the same way there is with Limbo (the girl must mean something to the main character) or Inside (the creature you become at the end must mean something to the scientists and this facility, as well as the whole meta-narrative), though maybe I will, given that the game does have an ending. But not for now.

There is some form of infinity to this game's alien presentation. The little sound effects of the metal wings or the cybernetics of the robobuds make things feel tactile, familiar, but its constant reliance on the unfamiliar and that cool as fuck ending make it feel infinite in scale. It feels like I can reach into this game and it will keep on giving for a long time. Time will tell, but this is a far more interesting feeling, far more special feeling than anything these types of games have ever given me before. An interaction between the player and the game that doesn't feel gamey. Something truly special.

PS1 platformers own because the developers did not quite yet figure out how to do precise platforming in 3D, while also could not do large, expansive levels on the hardware. There's also no well-defined movesets yet either, meaning you get a ton of different interpretations of a jump, a dash or an attack move.

As such, games like Emperor's New Groove rely on the variety of objectives in shorter levels, making for a lot of memorable little fun scenarios. Kuzco is such an asshole here, and a lot of objectives rely on that. Steal a baloon from a squirrel, knock a deranged guy who thinks he is a bird into a wall, destroy some dude's statues, knock a kid off his bike, then proceed to spit at a kid to throw him off his bike, THEN make him SMASH INTO ROCKS to throw him off his bike. Many of these activities repeat, but also evolve over time.

The level design is very memorable, and has plenty of simple secrets scattered around, like a crack in a wall or an arrow on the ground pointing towards a hidden passage. Each level has a certain amount of coins, and if you collect all you get a piece of concept art for the game and the movie. There are also hidden plushies, the Wampys, which reward you with a unique animation of the demonic PS1 llama model hugging the shit out of it.

The levels get progressively larger and more complex. You start off with very straightforward paths but eventually levels expand and you'll have to choose between multiple paths, all of which ultimately award you with a key to the end door. The keys, of course, are Kuzco's faces. The game absolutely triples down on making him an asshole egomaniac.

There's also a lot of gimmicky, on-rail levels, but even there they spice it up each time. There is an entire section of Kuzco and Pacha drifting through a river on the log they wound up on after leaving the jungle. There's your introductory level, there's a level where you race the bike kid in his llama-shaped inflatable boat, and you even get a sort of a boss battle at the end. The variety is just super impressive.

The least varied type of gameplay is the rollercoaster, but it is so fun. Quite tough on the last stage, but the fact that the game manages to somehow implement this adrenaline-pumping stage in the middle of everything else it does is so surprising.

On top of all that, there are also multiple transformations throughout the game, three to be exact. You get to play as a turtle, frog and a bunny. While the frog plays mostly as you'd expect, the turtle actually always results in a racing section, and the bunny is about achieving vertical height by jumping super high and gliding with his ears like Rayman does with his hair.

There's a lot of other ways in which this game spices up its gameplay, exploration and level design, but it's worth experiencing for yourself because this is genuinely one of PS1's most interesting platformers. It will take a while to get used to, just like all other titles on the damn thing, but that's what you should be here for too in some ways.

Even as a kid I found myself revisiting specific stages just to sort of get a feel for an idea or a vibe in a given stage. I'd replay the underground a lot because it was so creepy, or the turtle racing stages because they controlled like butter but had so much of the racetrack built around these softer turns.

This is perhaps the strongest aspect of level-based games: being able to jump into a whole new world in 5 minutes after launching a game, and then a whole other vibe 5 minutes later when choosing a stage from a different set. There's obviously way more to it, and I genuinely miss it. So many games require so much effort to get back to a specific point you yourself may enjoy. Why can't I just fight this boss right now, or do this section right now unless I finagle with saving or mods? Figure this shit out developers! Emperor's New Groove for the PS1 has you beat!

You know it's good when every guide recommends beating a different game before this one, importing overpowered parts from it for even the earliest missions, and also get the bonuses from going bankrupt that make the game easier, which aren't normally available in this game without the save import. Great!

I somehow did it. After months of beating my head against the wall, trying to find a way to beat this game on my own terms, I simply caved in and took a mech from a guide. It worked. Woohoo. Just like with Armored Core 2, I do not like missions that are near impossible for any but one specific build. Here, they ramped it up by making it ACTUALLY impossible. Some missions cannot be beat if your boosters aren't strong enough and your mech doesn't have high enough output. Some enemies, like the final boss of AC2, are also infuriating unless you go at them with missiles and only missiles. But you don't know that until you go in.

I guess there's less punishment to be found here at least, you lose, you simply go back in whenever you want. You don't lose any money unless you spend more during the mission than you're paid. There's also zero stakes related to the story. In all the other Armored Core games, you get to choose your contracts, your missions, meaning you can skip any that you don't vibe with. Not here, you need to do them ALL here. All 90, just to reach the credits.

So many of them are so boring. There's no fun in having to stand and shoot at incoming enemies for a bit, or boosting through canyons and shooting stationary targets. It's just testing whether you have enough ammo or good enough boosters. I can do that in the testing arena, not in a mission.

This is particularly egregious early on, there's so many missions of this type. After caving in and eventually building a "well-rounded" mech, rather than the one I've been using for the entirety of AC2 and chose to import here, I did start to enjoy it more, but that's only because I got past the worst missions. The later missions are more varied and pretty, there's enemies hidden in snowstorms, there's jumping between planes and destroying them, there's seeing the progressive demise of a water base we previously defended, but which broke the mega-corporation commity rules and we now have to eliminate.

Like I mentioned previously, there's no story to speak of, this is the purest mercenary experience Armored Core ever got. You just pick missions from whoever, no matter how evil their requests are. You could try to avoid this in other Armored Core titles, it was a key part of this series' interaction with the player and what made these games work the best. Not here, you're a mindless merc, you can't progress until you literally just commit acts of terrorism by blowing up a train.

I think this is an absolute failure, there's gotta be a cool story that could be attached to these random vignettes that could only enrich them. You fight these cool, random ACs, and they're good fights mind you, but they're so much less memorable than something like the Human Plus escapee from Armored Core 1, Nineball, even the final boss of the last game is awesome. I appreciate the megarobot fight, that shit was cool as fuck, but how is something this awesome wasted on it being as important as a random encounter in a jrpg.

What a piss ending too. Nooo, skilled pilots are interfering with the government again, how could it beee. This time, it is some total rando who you hear about only one time. That's the final boss. Whatever. Beat them. No ending cutscene. Awesome, great. There's some superbosses after all is done, they're AC bosses from previous games. Kinda cool I suppose, but they're more fun in their respective games for me anyway. Extra parts that you can only use in the test chamber now I suppose. I never want to go through all this again.

My first Zelda replay is not necessarily a very successful one. With the jump to 3D, I began to examine the core mechanics of a Zelda title, and realize how weird of a relationships they have with each other.

Health system that is continually upgraded throughout the game, but is combined with puzzle-based dungeons, with occasional death pits and combat (which has a shitton of inconsistencies in its own right). If you die you get sent back to the beginning of the dungeon, but you unlock shortcuts to get back to your point faster... but you respawn with three filled hearts every time, no matter how much health you collected throughout the game. This has been a thing since Zelda 1, and it continues to be a thing during the jump to 3D. Why? Isn't being sent back the punishment? I guess it's not as big of a punishment as the originals, because here all the doors that required you to kill enemies in them stay unlocked at least, but... I just don't get it.

In general, I begin to wonder exactly what does stuff like the amount of health, arrows, bombs etc. add to the game. I am struggling to find a reason to not just have the player be able to use abilities without a limit. Not like you ever really lack them in any important moments in this game, but what if you did? Theoretically the system is there to prevent spamming them in combat, but what if you do and you just don't have the tool required to progress? What if a puzzle doesn't click with you fast enough? You're supposed to run out of the dungeon, go buy bombs or gather magic and come back?

In a lot of ways, I think these contrasting mechanics sort of add to the world of the games at large, because the game ends up placing shops in towns to make the game feel more human, and even secrets may contain additional items. And, in theory, you really do want those extra hearts for late-game dungeons, so at least on the first run you can unlock as much as possible, so secret-hunting is well incentivized.

As for specific 2D to 3D transition stuff, a lot of the snappiness is gone, replaced by more deliberate movement and combat. Oh man, do I miss the Pegasus shoes. But you do get Epona... once you become an adult at least. There's a lot gained obviously, no reason for me to get into it, you boot up the game and you hear the music, you see Hyrule Fields with your very eyes. No matter how populated it actually is, what it's populated with, or how that stuff interacts with any other systems, I don't know a person who doesn't see how certain elements of Ocarina are a grand success. Really just depends how much clicks with you and how much you're willing to look past because of it.

Myself, I end up looking past quite a bit, but I do wish I approached this replay differently. Maybe engage more with stuff I haven't before, maybe go for a 100%. Going through it casually when you remember so much, without any added challenge or anything, doesn't do it for me. Too slow for my brain which has been steadily developing more and more zoomy receptors. I could also try a randomizer next time. Nevertheless, I think the next replay some time down the line will help me fully realize my thoughts. Right now it's complicated, and the zoomy receptors wish not to wait for me to write more.