Many people rejected this as a Contra game right off the bat--including blowhard Youtube assholes that pretend Contra III is this flawless masterpiece despite having the exact same game design for two entire stages--but Neo Contra was absolutely a fantastic Contra game! Fast-paced action, great controls with new options, amazingly grotesque enemy designs, and awesome music!

My only real complaint is the game is just a bit too easy. They probably wanted to ease up on the players after making a top-rank finish in Shattered Soldier nearly impossible! Even so, it's interesting that they went with the name Neo Contra, seeing as how the previous game was "Shin Contra." It was like after making the most true-blue Contra game they could muster, they wanted to take the franchise down a new direction with this isometric gameplay. I would've loved if this caught on, but sadly it's diminishing returns after this incredible title . . .

thesis: yoko taro is often listed among the foremost auteurs of the medium but the reality is his strengths lie in a kind of prototypical 'video game' method of work, borne out of necessity, that prioritizes collaboration between a consistent set of screenwriters, an unorthodox style of design targeting emotional resonance, and a plethora of unique flourishes specifically aimed at facilitating the empathy, immersion, and connection of its players (researching drakengard 1s development makes this especially apparent - it's arguably not even a yoko taro game in the usually defined sense of the term). his works, when in production, are thwarted frequently by compromise, limitation, and sacrifice - stumbling blocks, all in service of eventually reflecting a well-trodden title which charms on the virtues of its rustic artistry. wear and tear and a heart of gold. this style of development, marked by haste and experimentation and fueled by pure zeal and love for the craft, perhaps reveals why the pillars of video games, the codified monomythic genres and the primordial archetypes and the frequent allusions to popular work, so often impress themselves upon yoko taro games, and why so often his work succeeds in connecting to people where other talent may struggle. the video game of it all, if you will. incidentally, this collaborative style allows for a large breadth of potential interpretation and analysis afforded towards his work, and ive long maintained that a YT game is at its most interesting when it's not about what he intended for it to be about. did the tragedies in nier gestalt sometimes fall flat for you? me too! thankfully that's not what the game is about, at least not to me. in sum: the work of many, each willing and able to leave a fingerprint on the mosaic of development, enriches the product in the long-run, creating a full-bodied textured work of art and contributing immensely to the humanity at the core of these games. if any given chord strikes you as dull, a separate melody will enchant you - that's the nature of YT's games. they're artisan because of what they value and because of how they achieve their mission statement, and especially because of their passion, always demonstrated by the little details in these games. passion will always reveal itself, but so too will a dearth of passion reveal itself.

proof: nier re[in]carnation
if these games worked because of a certain je ne sais quois shared by the collaborative nature of a team in a trying work environment, i don't think my prospective next project would be a game in an exploitative genre where a new team of writers handled an endless barrage of one-note vignettes while YT sat back, nodded halfheartedly at his desk, and tried to string every vignette together using an overarching plot catering to obsessive drakennier fans. just my two cents

"...you can make a wonderful film about nothing. Look at Fellini. The most important thing in a movie is the actor, and everything which is in front of the camera. And the decadence of the cinema, and we have a certain decadence, comes from the glorification of the director as...being not the servant of the actors, but his master...the job of the director is to discover in the actor something more than he knew he had. The job of the director is to choose what he sees. And to an extent, to create. But a great deal of what is applauded as creation is simply there. It was there, when you put the camera...that actor, that bit of scenery, that veil that hung over the river - it was there! And you're intelligent enough to shoot it...the director should be very intelligent, preferably not intellectual. Because the intellectual is the enemy of all the performing arts." - Orson Welles, 1982

Mfs will watch the purple girl exposition at you abt the world for the entirety of Unlimited and most of Alternative and say this is the greatest gift god has ever bestowed upon mankind. For the record, exposition is about all you'll get out of this world as the majority of Alternative takes place in one singular spot, giving you very little time to see what the hellscape of Alternative's world has to offer, cool writing man, I love hours upon hours of infodump about a world I never get to actually see aside from 3 segments. Not only this but these fellas will look at the ensemble of poopoo fart characters with 0 depth and whisper under their breath "Peak Fiction". At least Chapter 7 was cool doe!

I love shinji mikami but I gotta say

damn bitch, you made this?

they called this shit "panic horror" and boy I'm panicking — panicking that there might be another god awful pipe puzzle from the twisted mind of shu takumi or that once I'm done collecting two of every keycard under the sun someone might ask me to build an ark

with little interest in horror or combat dino crisis bets it all on sludgy adventure game tedium and loses. it might've worked better if there was even a hint of resident evil's unhinged charisma — the weird doors, weird keys, bonkers architecture etc — but what's here is crushingly dull from top to bottom

if it wasn't for the narrative branching and crafting system I'd be hitting it with the chicxulub impactor grade extinction score it otherwise deserves, but I gotta acknowledge how cool that stuff was when RE3 made good on it later that year

reading more into the development I found that not only did shu takumi design all the puzzles, he served as the game's director before being fired after throwing the team into "uncalled for confusion" due to his lack of experience. kamiya and takumi corroborate this with the former referring to takumi as the game's director to this day and the latter alluding to mikami's role as being that of a fixer — someone brought in to get the project back on rails after much of the game had been already established

I love shu takumi but I gotta say

damn bitch, you made this?

Feels like a Persona Spin off that was made with half the budget. The inspiration is very clear, and the game doesnt seem to try to hide it.

It falls under a lot of common anime tropes and the characters are a bit shallow, but the writing on certain scenes was actually pretty decent, this game also has a better excuse for shallow characters than persona considering its 1/10th of the playtime.

Combat is perfectly serviceable with combos, dodges, parries, especial abilities and somewhat okay enemy variety.

The main story is pretty whatever but it does try to incorporate the romance bits of the game into it towards the end, it doesnt quite work but it is a commandable effort nonetheless.

Seeing in the credits that it was made by a handful of people from what seems to be a tiny studio, its quite a commendable effort that the closest point of comparison for me and a few others is Persona.

Its not without issues tho, combat only doesnt get boring because the game is quite short, the main story is, once again, quite whatever for the most part, and character scenes and dialogue can be pretty hit or miss.

Still, i dont regret playing it, its a decent video game at the end of the day, even has some actually funny bits, i expected it to be way way worse than it ended up being.

"Mom I want Persona"

"We have Persona at home"

Persona at home:

Eternights is truly a video game, and one that jumped on my radar almost immediately after watching a Sony State of Play sometime last year. As my intro details, it was effectively billed as a hack and slash Persona-lite with heavy dating sim elements. Knowing myself as a filthy Persona consumer and a reluctant weaboo, I cautiously wrote down the title as something worth keeping on my docket for whenever it released. I vividly remember reviewing the games I had notched as "interesting" following the State of Play and thinking "There's no way this one is any good right?" and it turns out... yeah it wasn't really all that great. To be level with you the reader, Eternights is pretty much the Coors Light of video games. It's not great, it's a lesser version of something you can get better elsewhere, it doesn't stay with you long, but it's not the worst way you could have spent your time.

The game begins with a zombie apocalypse, as many do, and of which you and your best friend (who felt like a very watered down version of the Ryuji/Yosuke archetype) must survive. You quickly run into Japan's biggest pop star, Yuna, and link together with a mysterious force to fight against the architect of this malice. The premise of the story is mildly exciting at best, which is whatever because that wasn't necessarily the guiding light of the allure of Eternights. What drew me and probably most people into the title was the dating sim and Persona-esque nature of it. Now naturally you are a male protagonist on a train venturing out to do some dungeoneering with a team of waifus and two husbandos, all of whom you can earn affection and I believe romance with. Just like Persona these conversations are checked with substats, but instead of guts, charisma, or intelligence, you have acceptance, expression, and confidence (and a few more.) I appreciated this game for doing more of what Persona did, but I found the way that you gain each of these respective stats was a little too hamfisted and awkward. Much like Persona you do the bulk of it through selecting the right words in conversation... but I felt like what my intention was (for instance, trying to level up expression) didn't always match what I was saying in conversation. Early on in Act 3 I decided that I wanted to romance Yuna, but my expression wasn't high enough. I spent the rest of the act and the one after trying to pick the answers in conversation that leveled up expression... but I was wrong almost every time. This was okay in the end as I got to romance another character and go down their route, but it was mostly via incident and not intention. Persona did it right in having alternate routes to level up these stats (P5 for instance eating at Big Bang Burger leveled up your guts,) however that was not present in Eternights and made the dating sim element, a main draw, unfortunately too vague.

The other main element of the game outside of the dating sim aspect is the combat, and man did it look real nice in the trailer. An ongoing issue with anime action games is that the combat will often look pretty and clean (Tales of Arise, Scarlet Nexus) but in practice feel like slapping sand against a brick wall, and that is an apt descriptor of Eternights' combat system. Much like Scarlet Nexus you wail and wail against waves of enemies in a group in a button mash style. These enemies will sometimes have barriers that require popping with your elemental powers granted to you by the select group of waifus you call your team. While not every enemy has a barrier, and you can bypass many of these weaknesses by just using whichever element you want, it just becomes another game of matching the shape to the peg hole. This is what killed a lot of Scarlet Nexus for me, it was just lukewarm button mash combat with added in weakness hunting. On top of that, the game will throw a lot of enemies at you that require dodging before you can attack, and man there's few things I dislike in action games then staring at your opponent waiting for them to attack so you can get your own hits in... it just straight up kills any pace and flow that the title has.

I feel like this is probably way more than anyone will write about Eternights, but what else are we to do.

The positives of Eternights are thus: it's actually pretty funny and self aware of the lewditiy of it all... and no that is almost assuredly not a word. And honestly? Sometimes a Coors Light can hit the spot, they're low in ABV and go down like water, and sometimes you just need water. I'm between Starfield and Lies of P, with a Cyberpunk DLC on the horizon so this game tucked in with a pretty short runtime and some decent humor that got me to crack a grin every now and again. There were a few callbacks to animes and videogames that must have been influences on the developer that I appreciated (hello Final Fantasy X!) as well.

I can't recommend anyone to play this game, unless they really like Coors Light. It's a decent at best game with some weak to middling dating sim elements that are better done in many other series, and an unfortunately poor combat loop.

The Perfect Bad Game

This game truly manages to take everything corny about Persona's dating system and turns them into something thats not exactly that good but just charming with how funny and stupid it is.

The gameplay is pretty much the most medicore action combat of all time but i wont blame this game for that as its developed by basically a single person.

Absolutely the best aspect of this game is that I spent basically the entire runtime laughing my ass off. If you try taking this game seriously you will not like it but if you consider the game as a massive ironic joke it turns into the greatest thing ever written

I dont think i would recommend this game to anyone but at the same time its so funny that I think people should see it for themselves

"Music has mysterious power.
By listening people can calm their hearts and purify their minds."

It's such a sweet little tale of the transition between the first and second stage of humanity.
First, the genesis - God created everything and God is everything, we must depend on Him, and all is how it is because He said so. Certainly a step up from living merely to sate one's carnal desires as a beast that knows nothing but pleasure felt in the moment. It gives humans the ability to think on a higher level, utilizing the materials found within reality to further the quality of life, thereby prospering. And yet - this cognitive thinking, it still feels lacking. As if humans have still not reached their full potential.
Second, the modernity - God is Dead. He is left behind as quickly as He arrives, as human progress is ever the speed of lightning. People stand on their own two feet instead of depending on a transcendental being.
And that's for the better.
Humanity is so much more beautiful without needing help from God.
It's a message that reverberates even through Quintet's very first work:
"Life for yourself. Always pursue progress. Chase after your dreams. Don't let God dictate your life."