AAAAGHH THIS GAME WAS SUCH AN AMAZING EXPERIENCE!!

Seeing a single gif of Love & Destroy a few months back sparked my imagination in a way that I haven't felt since being a kid and piecing together information about games from background clips in Youtube videos. This game alone motivated me to delve in to playing PSX games which, so far, has been a wonderful experience that's given me a lot of thoughts about what I like and dislike about game design.

The presentation of this game instantly gripped me with it's low-poly, low-res visuals being able to portray a sense of scale better than any video game I've ever seen (bar, BotW (namely, the dragons that fly around sometimes). L&D's limited 3D graphics with baked-in shading and no lighting-engine enable the player's imagination in a really powerful way that I haven't experienced before playing this game. When watching gameplay of Armored Core 6 after playing L&D, I was intrigued by how the lighting-engine, level-of-detail, and camera of AC6 did a disservice to the massive scale of the game's battles compared to L&D. This isn't to disparage AC6, as it's a great looking game in it's own right but to emphasize my shock that L&D is able to compete with it aesthetically in any way shape or form.

Often people look back on retro game aesthetics with the somewhat inaccurate opinion that they're "outdated". I think this is due to a multitude of factors, including but not limited to the scarcity of native-res, CRT-filtered footage of 6th generation games. I've noticed that a lot of "retro-inspired" games (namely, Pseudoregalia) underestimate 6th-gen's graphical capabilities and pull their aesthetic more from the N64 than the PSX. While the N64's graphics had limitations in cartridge-size making it read more as "charmingly crappy", what L&D showcases is that PSX graphics were not just good "for the time" but have their own strengths that can't be replicated with modern graphics.

While I do one day hope for a fan-translation, it would be inaccurate to say that playing the game untranslated didn't add to the experience for me. This game has the aura of an old, untranslated arcade cabinet in the back of the arcade that not many people care to give a try, but you feel like the coolest person in the arcade just for giving it a shot. The UI of the game uses english-text so it's rather easy as an english-speaker to get by without knowing any japanese, but not being able to parse the story at first added to a sense of intrigue about what the game could contain.

My first playthrough was actually a failed run, I thought the "virtual-mission" bosses were survival-missions, so I timed out on each. This lead to a series of cutscenes of the player-character sitting alone in his room looking somber, ending in a sudden apocalypse on the 5th mission. I assumed this was just how the game was meant to go, which made my 2nd playthrough that much sweeter when saw more cutscenes of the protagonist hanging out with the main girls. Despite not speaking a lick of japanese, getting these cutscenes was really exciting to me. Connecting the characters to each mech made me want to root for the girl I felt was the "strongest" (Kiki) because she helped me get through boss fights that I had initially failed. Even beyond that feeling of playing something "rare", the game being in japanese served as a testament to how well the gameplay loop was able to make me root for the characters.

Realizing after my first playthrough that there was a "cutscene gallery", I immediately became curious as to why I was still missing cutscenes with Kiki. A true ending? A New Game+? I wasn't entirely sure, but I became very determined to understand every facet of the game. I continued with a few more playthroughs trying to trial-and-error until I found what worked. Eventually, I figured that out, but there's still a soundbite gallery that I'm unsure how to complete. Because of the game's short runtime, I feel a lot more comfortable taking my time and experiencing multiple runs to find out all of it's mysteries. This game has quickly become an all-time favorite and an inspiration to me and I'm really glad that I acted on my curiosity for this game.

This game fucking rules. My God.

The experience of playing this game in a voice call with me and my friends voicing each character is an unmatched life experience I will remember forever. I understand how some things about the writing can be grating, but since every character is a character who can DIE the annoyance increases the tension rather than annoying me. There were a few instances where me and my friends were devastated because someone we hate lived while someone we loved died.

I'm slightly biased because of HOW I experienced this game, but if you're able to play it with friends, PLEASE DO.