In my journey to find cool skateboarding/extreme sports games, I found this somewhat obscure 2000 PS1 game called Grind Session. Downloaded it onto my PSP without much thinking and, to my surprise, it's great!

It's a lot like THPS1, but better in my opinion. It has more of a focus on finding lines, and the controls and a bit more sim like, making it harder to hit those lines. There's a good challenge here and I genuinely think anyone who is a fan of those early THPS games will get a kick out of this.

Having to make my own decisions was a terrifying experience. I will never do it again. And before anyone asks, I did it, everyone! I fixed her! (I got the good ending)
It was one of the best visual novels I have ever played. Great voice acting, great story, and the voices in my head are accurate. It's impressive that they are still updating the game, and a big update that'll extend the game by 25% is on its way. It's also not a very long game; I finished it in 5 hours because I took my sweet time and wandered around.
There was a sequence where I refused to continue doing what I was told, and the game shut down after the entity told me, "I will be here when you are ready" or something. I was flabbergasted. Next time I opened the game, that same entity welcomed me, and I continued where I left off.
I just wished that the Voice of the Hero and the Narrator's voice wasn't so identical.
It is truly a unique experience and a must-play.

This will be the only game I ever give a star rating to, purely because of what it means to me. I'm honestly not gonna rant on Akiba's Beat too long, since I'd be here forever and I know it would turn into gushing, but I do still feel my judgement is valid having played the game several times and watching a relative play through another recently.

The main point I want to state with this review is that this game is NOT soulless, and I still can't understand where this reputation emerged from. Everything from the dialogue to the item descriptions to the narrative to the voice acting... this game is absolutely a work of passion. I definitely respect that the story isn't for everyone, but the love that was poured into this game both by the original team and the western localisation team shines through no matter what. Regardless of anything else, I'd absolutely recommend Beat on heart alone, with its somewhat satirical yet genuine core narrative about escapism and isolation. I've talked with a couple of people who worked on the game, and the one apparent thing every time is how much passion they put into it.

With that out of the way, all I can really say is this game was pivotal to me in more ways than I can describe. Its characters and themes were and still are a huge comfort to me, and the core theme of moving into the future while carrying memories of the past has helped me time and time again. It lets you know that it's okay to fantasise and escape every now and again, since it's those daydreams that motivate us to catch our goals in reality, and that's always been really powerful imo. To quit my emotional stuff for a moment, the plot straight up bangs and the characters are brilliant. Regardless of if you find them predictable or not, there's some really cool and compelling concepts in here that are grounded well by the setting and characters.

Beat definitely shows some indie roughness in a few QoL aspects but nothing will ever stop me from loving it, even now I find new reasons to appreciate it. It just saddens me that people could call it heartless.

To make one last comment: As someone who has played the first portion of Persona 5, they are nothing alike. This isn't to do with quality or my opinion, just objectively, the story themes are completely unrelated, the gameplay isn't the same genre, even the structure of the narrative is completely different. I can confidently say that people who compared this game to P5 did so because of the similar release dates and/or not playing enough games with mindscapes for environments. I have the same things to say about P4 too. A much more apt comparison would be Tokyo Xanadu eX+, another game I greatly enjoyed, and I can confidently say that if you enjoy one then it's highly likely you'll also enjoy the other.

The best simulation racing game that will ever exist. The technological and licensing circumstances that led to this game will never happen again.

The game's presentation conveys a hushed, reverent worship of the automobile and motorsports. It's a classy, understated magnificence that no other racing game has come close to capturing. It also functions really well as a virtual museum of car history.

Shame the progression is so wonky and cheeseable.

have never seen a game get this much acclaim that i genuinely just really disliked this much

a masterclass in bad writing, combat that gets repetitve halfway through (who in gods name decided you should only have THREE special moves per character?????), boring story and dry ass characters, a true ending where you HAVE to 100 percent the game to get (and even then its still incredibly unsatisfying) only saved a bit by its great ost and amazing visuals

genuienly am so confused did i play a different video game or are the standards for indie rpgs this low? you really think THIS is a BETTER indie game than pizza tower? or dave the diver? you think this was a 2023 GOTY contender when shit like re4r, baldurs gate, ff16, hi fi rush, etc also came out???

i actually dont get it