13 sentinels aegis rim is one of those games i saw get really hyped up and picked up because of how much i liked the english VAs in it. after playing like three jrpgs prior to this i much appreciated the break of a 30 hour game even though those 30 hours were completely batshit. Let’s discuss:
- story is really good. and also VERY convoluted. every scene you’re gonna be sifting through plot twists. it does have a slow start (especially when you’re going through six or so different prologues) and i got kind of bored of what i call interactable cutscenes where a long exposition dump is interrupted by you needing to interact w the character again so its not just a 30 minute cutscene (this is a constant throughout the game) but i kept coming back every day just because i was HOOKED and finished the game in under a week. juggling 13 stories is no easy feat and i think this game does so very well in a way that’s very well… characteristic for each character. the stories riff off and shout out a lot of other media (even outside of sci-fi) so most of the references fly over my head but i still enjoyed it? it’s absolutely helped by the analysis mode which recaps events in chronological order and sticks specific reveals in mystery files; looking at that alone answered most of my lingering questions about the plot when the story itself wasn’t quite clear. it actually made more sense to me than some simpler stories i’ve gone through (eg. persona 2 innocent sin, a game i played not long before this, where i could not tell you what the hell in lak’ech was about) which is SURPRISING
- you need to know AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE about the story going in though. to get the best experience
- characters: this cast fucking rocks. there’s only one character out of the main cast i really didn’t like and even then i think her story is cool (even if i think they kind of drop the ball with its resolution it still made me cry for other reasons?!! can’t explain without spoilers) i just got tired of megumi going “juro… 🥺🥺🥺” after the first three times. i would break down what i like about each one but that would take forever and it’s also hard to be spoiler free about it. side cast is cool too though i wish they had the time to do more with tamao in particular. there is so much cut content and ideas for this game it’s not even funny
- gameplay: i don’t have much experience with RTS games so i was worried i would regret buying this looking at the gameplay but it’s pretty… fun?!! it’s like a power trip for me even on normal (i managed to S rank every story stage with.. not that much struggle?!). experience may vary between ports bc i know the switch version made some changes. my personal strategy i settled into was using just the first and third gen sentinels but different stages will call for different team and even armament compositions. it’s quite malleable like that. since destruction all takes place chronologically after remembrance i decided i would play as much of remembrance as i could before i needed to progress in destruction and then go back and since destruction can spoil some stuff it’s not a bad idea but also sitting through story can get kind of tiring especially with the information overload. it’s a balancing act. i also had the occasional performance issue but that was only when my screen had sensory overload levels of attacks and kaiju like the missile rain armament and it runs super well otherwise.
- oh i guess remembrance also had some gameplay too? aside from the extended cutscenes it was pretty easy to get through. i had to look up a walkthrough a couple of times but the system will generally lead you in the right direction
- presentation is AMAZING. this is my first vanillaware game and holy shit they were not kidding that art is gorgeous. character designs are top notch. music is also really good; not mindblowing because a lot of the soundtrack is ambient but some tracks do really stick with me even outside the battle themes. my favorite track is probably the insert song seaside vacation. once again can’t speak for the jp cast but the english voice acting is so good i’m shocked to learn they recorded during covid lockdown and it still turned out THIS GOOD. i firmly believe because of the versatility of these roles that they’re among the best roles for many of these VAs. allegra clark (one of my ALL TIME FAVES ❤️) and mick wingert (who i’m surprised i didn’t discover was this good sooner?!) in particular have to do a lot of heavy lifting here and WOW do they exceed expectations!!! but they’re not the only ones who get to show the extent of their range they’re just the biggest examples
- unfortunately this is not a five star rating. there are two things that bump it down for me though not enough to be just 4 stars. they are the needless high schooler fanservice (ESPECIALLY the girls… the staff’s perverted tastes are embedded so far in down to how they summon their sentinels compared to the boys…) and the obligatory pairings between all the protagonists. with story in mind i can sort of get why it’s there and appreciate how they play with some characters having multiple different love interests depending on their Circumstances but they feel kind of shoehorned in (like “this is a boy and this is a girl so they have to kiss!”) so really not all pairings are created equal.
- the bright side to these forced pairings is that we do get a queer romance that is MY personal favorite but honestly even if it was a straight couple and thus we didn’t get the comphet dilemma it would still be the best couple in the game.

to sum up: if you can sit through a lot of mind melting story (probably the biggest barrier) focused on high schoolers i highly recommend this game. lived up to all the hype For Me. peak fiction. 4 and a half hemborgers

i think nier automata is a game someone should go into with as little knowledge about the story as you can manage. but it is also a game that won’t be ruined by you knowing even big plot twists. i bought this game after learning about route C and really wanted to see how we got from point A to C. still blew my socks clean off and consumed around 60 hours of my time.

i played the switch edition (the end of yorha). this has its own entry on backloggd but i'm posting my review on this page anyway. will keep spoilers to a minimum but it's hard to talk about the best parts of the game so just Take My Word For It Okay

The Fun:
- combat! you will be doing this a lot. while it looks simple on the surface different weapons have different combos that you can upgrade and switch between which gives more variety than you'd expect, and your support pod has its own set of abilities you can mess with.
but the real game-changer are the chips you can equip to suit whatever build you want. long-range? short-range? tank? glass cannon? whatever you want. the chips are the best part and you will be in no shortage. you have three characters you will play as significantly and 2B is your first; she has the least gimmicks so personally had more fun with the other two.
- hacking! this is 9S's special ability, as a replacement for his heavy attack. it is incredibly broken. it takes you into a shoot-em-up section with a variety of minigames you can get depending on the complexity of the enemy. this can break the flow of your usual hack-and-slash but i personally LOVE hacking because of how broken it is.
particularly, if you hack an enemy that hasn't gotten murder red eyes, you can also subjugate it to attack for you or even remote-control it to fight as it until it dies. you also use hacking to open chests that you can't open with the other PCs
- exploration! the world is super pretty. your characters run surprisingly fast but if you wanna go faster you can ride animals. fast travel is unlocked pretty early on in your first playthrough (and needs to be re-unlocked in the second but is available in the third from the start) and it is incredibly convenient. your fast-travel points are also your save spots. You need to save.
- side quests! fetch quests aren't as much of a pain as they could be since your map is marked to show you where you get the supplies you need. not all side quests are created equal but i think even if some of them are a pain to play the story behind them can be anything from hilarious to heartwarming to really depressing. because of this two of my favorites are escort quests! ESCORT QUESTS! side quests also give you a fuckton of EXP so go do them!!!
- soundtrack! this game uses a dynamic soundtrack and uses it SO well - versions flow through each other seamlessly. every track is a banger and the vocal tracks have such amazing singers that even when they're singing in chaos language (which is what most songs are in) they still make you feel things. there are a couple of tracks ported or remixed from the original nier and they are also used masterfully.
- story! i had some trouble getting into the story on a first playthrough but subsequent playthroughs further expand on it and make you realize just how 20:20 hindsight is. because this is a Yoko Taro game the story is distributed across 3 playthroughs; the first is a series of events from 2B's perspective (route A), the second is the same events from 9S's perspective (route B), and the third is... 🥴 (route C/D - the split between the C and D endings only happens at the very end of this route so i call it C or CD). and even if the story isn't the best in terms of events when yoko taro wants you to feel things by god he will do it.
also, this is a very distant sequel to nier (gestalt? replicant? i think both are canon but only replicant got remade?) and while i never played that game or any of the drakengards i still enjoyed it. if you did play nier you can point at automata and be like "Hey!!! I know the thing!!!"
- voice acting! i can't speak for the voice acting in other languages but holy mama the english cast is amazing. unfortunately 2B’s dub voice seems to be a point of contention. while she’s definitely more sassy (japanese 2B is just monotone but sounds more gentle than stern), i think her deeper character is still clear enough. more than that i have to swear my allegiance to english 9S because i think Kyle McCarley is a godly voice actor and his performance in route CD was what drew me to the game. unfortunately both english and japanese voice casts do have sex pests in them but there's not much you can do about that
- chapter select! this is a function you unlock once you get either ending C or D (whichever one you pick first) towards the end of the game. this allows you to go back on your existing or new save file to any story quest. i cannot begin to explain how good this is to get to anything you may have missed previously. thus the amount of things you can permanently miss are very few and the most important of this is ending Y
- DLC! there's some dlc automatically added to the switch port that i think you can also get on other versions. some cosmetics some battle colosseums. it's what you get after you finish the main 6 stages of each that i really recommend. Go Get The Amazarashi Ending.

The Maybe and Meh
- a lot of story content is relegated to side novels, stage plays, even fucking concerts. at the very least some of this material is available in the game (the pearl harbor incident has a dedicated stage play, but there are three in-game novels you can get through anemone in route CD that tell the tale as well). but the game does a good job of standing on its own merits in my humble opinion.
- lots of people find route B to be a slog, due to how you basically play the game again with most differences coming with the expanded enemy backstories and moments in which 9S is separate from 2B. personally i thought it wasn’t that bad because i wrapped it up in a fraction of the time i spent on A (i skipped most cutscenes and also skipped most combat via hacking. super OP i tell you.)
i could see a case for it being combined with route A but i do like how they make you play the same story twice to lull you into a false sense of security before BAM. route CD enters the fray and metaphorically smashes your balls in with a meat tenderizer. though i’m a little mad i would have missed all the N2 cameos in the cutscenes had i also skipped the final scene in route B. and that i had to wait until they gave me fast travel back. mostly i think i just liked 9S so much that i was happy to play as him :)
- there are these dudes named adam and eve. i think their inclusion in route A was pretty clunky but route B gives them more time to shine so i'm not as mad about this but i just want to note it.
- i feel like because of the nature of how most sidequests are doable in route A and B this game spent a lot of time waffling about the question of “do machines actually have feelings? or are they just imitating humans without understanding?” where a side quest would clearly have them start to consider the truth of the matter and then you go back to the main story and they take turns holding the “machines don’t feel” ball. this is better in route CD at least.

The Bad
- glitches - mostly audio but there were times where quest elements just straight up did not spawn unless i restarted the game? weird. otherwise 80% of the time the glitches just amount to “sound effects don’t work when hacking”
- frame dips happened to me whenever i was in the shopping mall or there were too many enemies at thee start of route C. switch ran this game well aside from these hiccups but i just wanna mention them.
- exclusive to end of yorha, nintendo online sucks piss with this game in particular. many players’ tutorial data are stuck at 98% bc of how hard it is to find other people’s corpses (protip: soul box. pile of bodies when you hack into the yellow thing at the top). the game disconnects you from network functions like nobody's business even if you have nintendy online.
i'm also not sure if it's... possible to get the most out of ending E without nintendo switch online? i personally used my free trial for this (having seen it coming) but wow.
- the competionist 100% grind in endgame if you subscribe to it is also a pain in the ass. mostly with the rare enemy and fish spawns. i did it (minus the special challenges in the colosseums because i didn't need them to finish the quest) but christ almighty
- fuck hegel. fuck that boss in particular. i think it was a terrible time to introduce berserker mode considering there's an optional boss that is just hegel 2 and i wiped my ass with that boss using 9S.

nonetheless. this is a game that made me cry twice (chapter 14, ending E) and both times were over things i was already spoiled for no less. Ending E is one of the best things i've ever experienced in anything and i'd call automata GOTY every year for that alone. go play nier automata. maybe not on the switch. but play nier automata. Peak fiction.

when this game is mid it’s mid. but when it’s good whoa mama it is INCREDIBLE.
- gameplay: i think it’s fun. it is incredibly easy to wipe the floor with your enemies because pair up is so broken. so if you’re looking for a challenge you will have to impose it on yourself. but if you want smooth sailing and broken gameplay this is your game! personally i like never used frederick back when he had jagen status and swapped out higher level units during earlier battles and only solidified an OP team during late game because i decided i was tired of skirmish grinding to make more units viable/grind supports and frankly just wanted to finish the game.
particularly my chrom-robin-lucina-morgan combo were a nuclear family both in the sense of their gender dynamics and also that throwing them at people was like dropping nukes on them.
- story: splitting this into 3 parts because this story has high highs and low lows.
part 1: the first 11 chapters are actual peak cinema. i actually don’t have much to say about this because i want people to experience it as blindly as possible. particularly if someone tries to tell you about chapter 10 you have to cover your ears and go lalalalalalala. hell i was fully spoiled on it and it still had me staring at the ceiling crying in an airbnb halfway across the country.
part 2: then you get to the timeskip where the valm arc is mid at best. it’s kind of hilarious that they decided “oh we revisited archanea let’s revisit its neighbor valentia from gaiden!” and decided the best way to do it would be… to have most of walhart’s generals be comic relief villains of the week? what does this serve? what point is there to excellus’ existence? that said when it takes itself seriously it’s pretty cool. and walhart himself as an antagonist ain’t half bad he kind of reminds me of rudolf. who is most likely his ancestor anyway so it works!
part 2.5: once the game remembers that plegia exists this is where you go back to less peak but still based fiction. while the conclusion is incredibly cliché i LOVE the power of love and friendship so i was just pogging the whole time. that said, there are some bullshit contrivances to get to this point that i’m not a fan of, and the ending scene overstayed its welcome because i had so many units… but it doesn’t knock my ranking down too much. also the scene after chapter 21 actually had me bawling because my executive decision to pair girl robin with chrom really enhanced the emotional connection.
characters: i just loooove the characters! from our main shepherds to even the randos you pick up off the street, i fell in love with… most of them? even if a good chunk of them have an obvious gimmick that permeates a lot of their dialogue like kellam going unnoticed or stahl being super average. my favorites include henry and libra and lucina.
unfortunately i burned myself out trying to get everyone in 1st gen paired up to Make Babies and in turn missed some pretty powerful support conversations. that’s what the internet is for! (alongside reading chrom and m!robin’s supports and pretending f!robin got the same level of care instead of “ohhh… shes a girl… and im a BOYYY!!! AIIIIEEEE!!” levels of melodrama.)
also mix between characters and gameplay here going to this from echoes was kind of jarring because i felt so bad benching a lot of my units but i guess echoes is the odd one out for giving you so many deployment slots?
- window-dressing: this is a very beautiful game! yusuke kozaki has worked on character design for other games i enjoy (namely AITSF) so it was nice seeing his work here. i cannot begin to explain how phenomenal the music is. this game lacks significant voice acting (just soundbytes and the occasional full line) but i kind of wish they voice acted it more because the story definitely would have benefited from it.

while i spent a lot of time complimenting the game, i would say i expected more from this game than it gave me? like it’s pretty solid but i do feel kind of let down at the same time. so it leaves me with some questions as to how this of all entries saved the series.

… but i’m so glad it did. and i can see why it has changed so many people’s lives because it definitely touched me :) given that this game is about the power of love if you read this review i want you to go tell a friend or family member that you love them.

PEAK FICTION HAS ENTERED THE PLAYING FIELD

in all seriousness i had no real expectations going in as i hadn’t played the original miitopia but i love this game to bits! had me hooked even when they had only released the demo. there’s a lot to be said about the creativity with the mii maker and putting people or characters into situations. many people have already said it. also you get a HORSE. gameplay is mind-numbingly easy outside of some postgame content but i don’t care bc i like when games are easy.
the story is incredibly cliché but it doesn’t take it seriously nor does it want you to take it seriously! it is a parody of itself and its genre. because the tone is so lighthearted i got genuinely invested in the few moments where they decided to be serious like with that final decision. If you know you know.
the POST-postgame is where i mostly have problems because it starts out fresh and interesting and then by a week in you realize it’s a herculean or even sisyphean grindfest. as much as i would like to mark off every single achievement (of which there are a LOT) it just ain’t feasible for me to log in every day do a couple of cookie-cutter quests and then hope i get rich enough to buy a costume for a mii. it gets boring. but that’s what making a new profile just to experience the good parts again is for ^_^

i was into this game WAYYYY younger than i should have been but i never played it until pretty recently because i never had the hardware for it. got it on steam. here’s what i have to say:
- if you’re not really a horror guy and you get scared easily (like myself! i do!!) i’d say this is more tame on the horror scale. even if the atmosphere is tense and there are odd sounds and the music cuts out and you’re scared shitless you’ll generally know when something is actually out to get you. like there are some chase scenes but they are NOT hard because your pursuers walk at half your speed.
- unfortunately if you can’t handle blood and gore this is not the game for you. the gore is everywhere. it’s actually worse in the pixel overworld than the CGs a lot of the time? you also get a lot of gross squelching sounds.
- but at least the game looks good? i think it holds up for being like 10 years old. the pixel sprites were my personal favorite part. the music is also pretty good, especially the vocal tracks sung by some of the voice actors :)
- the gameplay itself is like a walking around simulator. you will get lost and wander around aimlessly a lot. it’s not that fun after a while even if you get cool flavor text, so there’s no shame in using a guide! i relied on those a lot, especially when searching for wrong ends.
- there are a LOT of wrong ends and then the occasional odd ducks counted as “extra ends”. not all wrong ends are created equal because some of them get a lot more love than others but a lot of them have good voice acting and atmosphere.
- the voice acting in general is pretty top-notch! they have a lot of all-stars that you can recognize from various other games and anime. they also used dummy mics so headphones are recommended for the full 8d experience or whatever. for some reason in the extra chapters featuring ohkawa from byakudan his voice is mixed kinda weirdly so it’s hard to hear him but that is the only problem i had with the voice acting and his acting was fine it was just hard to hear him
- ok story. i think the story is fine. like as a standalone without considering retcons in future entries (especially the ever-controversial blood drive) it holds up pretty well.
- i do think there are some issues with the localization making a lot of dialogue sound more aggressive? at best it’s fluffed up with swears like fuck and at worst we have naho saying actual slurs. i don’t think this game was updated very much for its newer re-releases 😭
- the characters are pretty decent across the board. my favorites include yoshiki, yui and nana from musashigawa! even if some of them grate on you (like i personally could not gel with ayumi no matter how much i tried) i think you can generally tell that the stress they’re under brings out the worst in them. whether that worst is whiny or trigger-happy.
- i also quite liked a lot of the extra chapters for showing how the kisaragi kids got along before they got sucked in, as well as fleshing out people we didn’t see much of (if at all) in this game like the byakudan and musashigawa kids. my personal favorite was after effect, which was one of the two added for the steam/switch/ps4 release. unfortunately not all extra chapters are created equal either because on the other end of the spectrum we get the incest dimension and fart girl 2020’s misadventures in heavenly host
- so now is where i have to say it. kedwin and co. have a really obvious thing for underage girls in compromising situations. you will get panty shots. you will hear uncomfortable moaning. these are at their worst with yuka, who spends half the game needing to pee and also has an incestuous crush on her older brother. There’s a reason nobody likes Yuka.

overall corpse party is an interesting game because you go from experiencing some very profound and well-voice acted grief and bravery from kids in the face of adversity… to The Piss Dimension. if this game didn’t make me cry in the last scene it would be 2.5 stars.

first of all. i'm of the firm belief that you need to play OG echoes so you can truly appreciate this demake. i will spoil OG echoes in this review. i'll keep hush hush about some of the major story changes though

a good place to start would be some of the issues i had with OG echoes! here's how sacred echoes addresses them
- lack of supports: sacred echoes has supports coming out of its ass from a variety of writers :)! in a full playthrough i only got like a handful. luckily you can keep grinding for them in postgame, which is good because there are a few that are cross-army and can only even be accessed postgame. some characters have paired endings if you get them to max support, even! and not just the basic ones like clive/mathilda and mae/boey. even many supports from the original game were given more depth, like leon and valbar's!
- questionable misogynistic writing choices: unfortunately you still have a lot of women to rescue on alm's route. but celica's gets quite a few overhauls to preserve her agency, and conrad is still integrated in a fun way without stepping on her toes as much as he did in OG. the changes for act 4/5 in particular made my jaw drop.
alm's story has quite a few changes too! mostly with berkut, fernand and rinea. berkut and fernand's arcs are done a little more slowly and rinea is given a bit more of a role and a fun friendship with fernand :) i like it. good stuff
- map design: i actually. um. i actually don't have as much to say because i made the mistake of deciding "oh i played echoes already! let me try on hard this time". IT WAS A BAD IDEA. I WAS FIGHTING FOR MY FUCKING LIFE EVEN IF I WAS STILL ON CASUAL DUDE. but the maps give you a lot more to work with. even celica's hell is less hellish. for example in the desert maps they have some excuse as to why mages don't have their speed impeded by the sand and i was overjoyed
visitable villages are another big change. an incentive not to turtle for too long lest they be destroyed. some of them give you items some just offer flavor text but there's one village in alm's act 4 on one of the last maps that has this beautiful woman with a black veil over her face and you need to visit her with alm. Please. you get lore ported straight from the drama cds and an item too
- character integration: I FORGOT TO EVEN MENTION THIS IN OG ECHOES BUT the optional recruits actually have shit to say about the story instead of there just being a few characters with plot armor. i'm not sure how the reverse works though with plot-armor characters dying in the middle bc i was on casual

speaking of the drama CDs, the dev team incorporate extra lore and character backstories from a variety of sources! valentia accordion, drama CDs, even stuff from gaiden and its own adaptations that didn’t return in echoes. you can tell this was done with so much love and care because even the backstory changes make a good level of sense.
i'm using leon as an example because his support chain with valbar goes into his lost love (their relationship is altered here. it hurts so muchies) while his support chain with sonya puts forward a reason or two for leon to become a merchant in his ending. it's good. speaking of leon he's already pretty good gay rep in the OG but even minor additions like for example a joke about how he likes bears (THE GAY KIND) made me giggle like a little girl. i needed to mention this because i love him.

ok. continue. here are some stuff echoes did right that sacred echoes also does right
- the art is amazing. they look so good in the GBA style it's crazy!!! the CGs are ported well enough but there are a couple of upscales or originals because main dev is quite the skilled artist. the new characters (acantha and hyas) look SOOOOO GOOD DUDE. even minor NPCs have banger designs like this hot bald pirate lady from act 2 and whoever worked on those i wish you have the best lives ever. also the combat looks awesome because it's GBA of course it does.
- the music is also ported into the GBA style very masterfully. not every track makes it and i'm a little bitter about some of them (praise this despair... T_T) but that shit takes so much effort to transcribe that i can't be mad about it.
there are a couple of originals, namely act 3 gives alm and celica original battle tracks, and admittedly they're not as good as the ones they got from echoes and gaiden but they're alright.
the arrangement of the sacrifice and the saint is one of my favorites bc i didn't like that song very much before but i do now. main dev's music tastes really show in this but i don't mind i think it's great.
- SUPPORT FOR MULTIPLE LANGUAGES BABY!!!!! sacred echoes has translations in both chinese (up to act 5) and spanish (currently up to act 3), including all the original supports, with more to come in future patches ^_^

overall it's a wonderful experience. honestly the voice acting in OG echoes is the big plus it has over sacred echoes and that's not really sacred echoes' problem! it makes up for it with much better writing that doesn't need a good performance to sound believable. go play this game. don't make the same mistake i made. if you're sad about the lack of turnwheel get your own from home if you know what i mean. and when you are done with this review or even this game i suggest these next steps
- go follow the sacred echoes tumblr blog. you get dev updates for the next patch, character analysis, even soundtrack analysis for the Free Price of Free
- go sub to the unofficial sacred echoes support channel! or at least watch some of the supports they have posted. if you don't have the energy to obtain all of them (god knows i sure don't) this is a very good place to look.

i had a lot of fun with this one! even played it back when it was called backbone. i was like “oh this is a fun mystery with this animal detective guy. gritty noir style. love the aesthetics! i’m doing such cool things!” and then the horrors hit. And then the horrors hit harder. the twists are executed so well and there are SO many of them. the ending scenes in acts 1 and 3 made my jaw drop to the floor so hard that i still feel their impacts today.

people criticize the ending - which is fair, it is confusing and unfulfilling - but i didn’t mind since it was clearly setting up to the continuation of the story. i should play the backbone preludes i hope it’s as good if not better!!!!

my first pokemon game that i played to completion! pretty enjoyable. i’m at the point where i have sucked this game so dry that i open for 5 minutes to get a pokemon to level 10 observation and get so tired i close it for the next few months.
it doesn’t look that great unfortunately. even if i didn’t run into many visual glitches it just looks kind of ugly sometimes. but as someone who like never cared about the pokedex in other games i had tried it really incentivized the collector in me! even if it also burned me out. never collect 200-something wisps for spiritomb you will hate yourself by the end no matter how good that quest’s story is.
the main story is pretty decent and the postgame is awesome :) i’m obsessed with the little freak behind the twist. the sidequests were also fun, especially the chimecho, beauregard and daybreak ones.