It doesn't take long after starting this that it appears to be another Ys Seven. Lord give me the strength to push through another Ys game!! It was ages ago when I've played through the the ones on PSP and my energy toward completing games have vastly diminished as of late, especially average ones like these are.

My interest took a nosedive as early as the first boss. There is literally a tutorial box telling you how to play. Almost like those flowchart memes deconstructing a game's gameplay with the intent of making it seem more shallow than it appears at first glance. 1) Use charge attacks to fill up skills. 2) Use skills to fill up L button. 2) Use L button. Hell, why am I even playing in that case? Where exactly does the player fit into to all this, seeing as the game has it all figured out already. I'm merely along for the ride, I suppose- to make myself present only to be able digest the story as a reward for being able to follow directions.

Better with circle pad but still obnoxious, from the controls which still blatantly suck to all the convoluted additions/alterations, all piled on top of the very things that made Mario 64 kind of an anachronistic mess to begin with. (like having to choose your goal up front in a free roam game and being spit out of the level each time you accomplish something) Game is further bogged down with regular tutorial dialogues about the stylus controls when one would obviously have no intention of using them ever.

In any game with powerups/abilities gained over the course of the playthrough it obviously would have been much more elegant to have a single character. Like imagine if there was a Metroid game with multiple characters and you constantly acquired new abilities for characters you aren't playing as currently, and had to remember what the ability is and who can/can't do what. This is more or less analogous to Mario 64 DS. Yoshi can't wall jump, Mario can, presumably everyone else cannot. Why? Don't ask, just roll with it.

Added a star because the game manages to be a surprisingly complete experience completely in spite of the DS's limitations and the bar set by pretty much the rest of the DS's library. The jankiness and new additions in a way somewhat make the insufferableness oddly compelling, if you don't go in expecting a 3D platformer romp but rather a sort of puzzle box you gotta figure out that never seems quite hopeless or too insufferable. Although just barely.

The game is emblematic of the PSP and what makes handhelds in general feel so powerful. It's like you're holding pocket dimension in your hand. And this pocket dimension happens to be the entire island of Oahu. It's a miracle it runs at all let alone that it runs basically just as well as any PSP game. You even get to have yourself a derpy Big Rigs like experience by veering into the grass and just seeing how far off road you're really allowed to go. In all likelihood not the way you were intended to play, but when you do go blindly into the untamed procedural wilderness seemingly forever finding a way around multiple nearly 90 degree inclines and coming out half an hour later to civilization and seeing your GPS calculate the proper route back to where you came, it is almost transcendant.

Oh god, it's dark. There are contrast settings thankfully, which I had to crank way up until it looks weird. Why does the game seem so blurry though? And the framerate? What's with the live action? For a while it seemed like those were gone post Criterion (yay! or at least acceptable) along with tuning. (booo!!) Why bring them back now? I would've been fine with just the tuning and not the cringey cutscenes that drag on. It's torture. Just when you've sat through one, and you think you get to play, there's another one. Yeesh.

It's funny the extent this is basically Sonic Adventure as an FPS. You drive around a hub world (which are little more than a brisk series of corridors) simply to get access to traditional FPS stages sealed off by a long loading screen. Very menial experience that offers little to no immersive value. Key locations all seem to be a stone's throw from one another, even those that feel like they were meant to be hundreds of miles away. The most fun I've had was probably the reality TV minigame, where you simply square off against enemies in a handful of small arenas for a cash prize. For me the absolute lowest points include being stuck in a stage bc there was no clearly marked exit (you expect me to pick out the obviously non interactive wall texture that triggers the loading screen to leave?) and the giant boss in the city area- a very typically videogamey boss that you have to hit the weak point x times while dodging telegraphed attacks, while you're locked to a small balcony-with only a few feet in any direction to evade- that conveniently breaks the moment the boss is defeated, allowing you to leave. That one sequence really took me out of the game even more than everything else already has. FPS games need to stop putting in bosses, they're almost never good.

The tutorial makes the game seem vastly more complicated than it actually is despite the fact the game works more or less the same as any other fighter. So many rules as to when this or that can be activated, health must be at x percentage, meter at y, can be activated only once per match, etc. etc. The tutorial doesn't even mention which button does what up front. So I'm pausing the game to see the buttons WHILE DOING THE TUTORIAL.

Once done with the tutorial I'm booted out to the main menu where there's nothing left but arcade mode. But the goofy, balloony looking characters, art style that's simultaneously garish and dreary, and samey roster ("weirdo with sword" done nineteen different ways) leave me completely uninvested. It should also be mentioned that trying to select any DLC character redirects you to the PSN store where you may download that character, even if you own all the season passes. Those characters become free, but you still have to download each and every character one by one which is pretty gross. On top of that some characters still require that I pay such as Mina- wait, wasn't she included in one of the passes? If I buy her wouldn't I technically be buying her twice? I honestly don't know.

You're asked to choose between Novice, Amateur, or Pro difficulty/driving assists. Even on the default (Amateur) I find that my car veers out of control on almost any corner, despite having played racers for two decades, and it being more or less my favorite genre.

The first two cups are kart racing but you have the choice to skip ahead as far as you'd like, as I did. But once you choose there is no way to try different one without starting the entire goddamn game over from the beginning. Whatever you choose, game uses a convoluted calendar system wherein that month's events have to be generated on the spot and then you arbitrarily are made to choose the only one race in the entire month. There is no car customization, you sign up with a sponsor, akin to Grid Autosport.

By the way if you just want to see the controls to find out how to change camera (because default is cockpit) well you can't without backing out all the way to the game's main menu, because you couldn't just do this from the pause menu apparently. Better take a screenshot using the Share button while you're there.

No idea who this game was for. Well maybe it's for SOMEBODY. Hopefully it is. But it's not for me. Lol that this was initially planned to have a Wii U port.