overwrought and underwhelming

There's so much wasted potential here, so many great characters that get sidelined, so many plotlines that just run themselves in circles and sputter out, so many boring areas and ham-fisted themes that somehow still feel under-utilized. Coming off the high-minded royal court politics of Heavensward, I was genuinely excited to see a depiction of political change in this world from a ground-level perspective. And there are moments where the execution comes together and that's what I get! But most of the time it just feels like busywork, and not in an interesting, MGSV-ian "busywork of war" way, just the usual busywork of a big open MMORPG that demands a certain amount of hours from you before it can meander its way to a half-hearted ending. When FFXIV is at its best, it overcomes that feeling and its narrative feels more like a tightly-paced single-player RPG. This is not FFXIV at its best.

I wanted more!

Sound design and art direction are unimpeachable. Character design does a great job illustrating each character's idiosyncrasies without feeling like caricature. Character in general is the strong point of this game, every one just oozes charm and I loved how character-focused the plotlines/drives were.

Dice mechanics are great but fall a little flat as the difficulty bottoms out almost immediately. Early into the game I failed a drive because I took too long and completely lost access to an entire character's arc. I wanted more moments like that. The game starts to set up more tough choices, i.e. different characters demanding the same rare resource at around the same time, etc., but the choices were always robbed of impact when I realized I could just... get more. The NPC in question waited patiently for their turn and didn't even acknowledge I had made a choice at all. I liked the parts where characters re-appeared in different arcs referencing past events, but those were few and far between.

I LOVED Lem and Mina, their entire arc was masterful. I wish every character was as fleshed out as they were, and every arc had as many opportunities for interaction as theirs did. Their ending is my favorite and also (unfortunately) the only one that felt conclusive of the ones I got. The other ones tended to just sort of throw a dramatic "final choice" out of nowhere and fade out with little to no denouement. I think this could have worked, the interruption of whatever drives you were following could be an effective narrative shock, but, like the resource choices, they don't make you stand by that choice. It is way too easy to just boot your save back up with no consequence and immediately see the alternative. I get the function of this as a way to help completionists avoid replays, but I WANTED to replay the game. Within a few cycles, I was already thinking "okay so next run I'll prioritize this and focus on these stats..." etc etc. In a game with multiple starting classes I figured that was the point. But that desire faded as resource management became trivial and my stats were near-maxed long before the ending.

I honestly hope Jump Over the Age makes another one of these, not a sequel but another game that carries on the (brilliant) mechanics and storytelling of this and expands on them.

I cannot think of a single game that tops Killer7 in terms of stylistic cohesion. Nothing is wasted. Every element—visual, aural, ludic, and literary—is moving in perfect harmony towards a singular goal and when it reaches that goal it lands with the force of a bullet to the brain. This game feels like the antidote to decades of poisonous, pigeonholed triple-A design—a bold counter to the idea that these homogenous design trends won out because they are universally the best way to do things. More and more, games look the same, play the same, tell their story in the same damn ways. Suda, for his entire career, has been shouting from the rooftops: It doesn't have to be this way! We can (and should) do things differently! And no game screams louder than Killer7. Some day I hope we listen.

Coming to terms with the fact that I just don't like 2D Metroid all that much :(

I liked the vibes and exploration in Super enough to 100% it, but Zero Mission was decent-to-mediocre, and though at times I could see why this game is so revered it just did not click with me. The story was great but by the time I got to the little morsels of exposition the game deems fit to dose out every two hours or so I was so frustrated with actually playing the game that it barely made an impact. Movement and combat felt stiff at all the worst times, ESPECIALLY during boss fights. Super had this problem too, but the ratio of exploration to fighting was such that it was only ever a short roadblock during an otherwise chill and vibey experience. Fusion just fucking throws bosses at you nonstop and the difficulty ramps up so quickly. Screen space wasn't as much of an issue as it was in Zero Mission, though there were a few times (especially in the bigger boss arenas) where I was just getting sniped from off-screen constantly with no time to perceive the threat, much less to dodge. Also found the soundtrack incredibly grating which just added to my frustration most of the time--and this is coming from someone who LOVES the GBA soundchip skung!!!--though I'm sure that was more a result of already being frustrated.

I still wanna give Dread a shot because I keep hearing great things about it and it looks significantly less stiff than the older ones but for now I think I just have to accept that these games aren't for me. :(