it's thps4 with a disney coat of paint; it's serviceable and fine for the most part. the playlist sucks and is way too short but it's a kid's game so it's a little understandable that they cheaped out on it. some of the levels are ass to navigate (graveyard and the jungle portion of human camp) but the rest are good. it's a decent timekiller if you're just looking for something to dick around in and you're already familiar with thps. it's somewhat shameless in how little it brings to the table mechanically but i do get the vibe that the people who worked on this game did care and had some amount of passion for both the disney IPs and skateboarding games in general.
best song on the playlist is "sell out" by reel big fish, do not FUCK with me on this
best song on the playlist is "sell out" by reel big fish, do not FUCK with me on this
1987
used to be kinder on this game, but a replay made it apparent to me just how poorly this game has aged. i'm not even referring to the weird unnecessary score system or the relatively plain presentation (compared to later entries), but more just that the actual level design is super dogshit at times. elecman's level has multiple dead ends that you can't predict, wily stage 1 has a section where it can be impossible to avoid damage upon entering a screen, and both iceman + wily stage 1 have those god awful floating platforms that shoot projectiles who do not operate based on set patterns but instead float wherever based on vibes. there are things about this game that we just accept despite them being poor game design, like the necessary element of the magnet beam despite it being missable and nothing at the game hinting at it otherwise. i'm willing to be very patient and generous to a game made in 1987, but i have limits for what level of quality i can defend.
seriously, i think people who call this game good either have rose-tinted glasses or haven't played the game without using the elec beam pause glitch. i can say the latter because i used to be more neutral on this game because of that very reason. replaying this game doing a buster-only run really illuminated just how tedious the game can be. bosses like fireman and elecman are nightmares to fight if you don't use the manipulations in their AI to loop them. and fighting iceman without cheesing him via elecbeam made him unbearably tedious. keep in mind that wily stage 4 has a boss rush of bombman, fireman, iceman, gutsman, and then both wily forms back-to-back with absolutely 0 healing. again, i can be patient with older games, but 6 boss fights in a row with no healing is extreme. there's a reason every single boss rush section in later mega man games gives you a large heal after each fight.
can't say i hate this game, because it did spawn an otherwise great series and resulted in several games i adore. it is, however, going to be one of the first games i now think of when people mention classic games that have not stood the test of time.
seriously, i think people who call this game good either have rose-tinted glasses or haven't played the game without using the elec beam pause glitch. i can say the latter because i used to be more neutral on this game because of that very reason. replaying this game doing a buster-only run really illuminated just how tedious the game can be. bosses like fireman and elecman are nightmares to fight if you don't use the manipulations in their AI to loop them. and fighting iceman without cheesing him via elecbeam made him unbearably tedious. keep in mind that wily stage 4 has a boss rush of bombman, fireman, iceman, gutsman, and then both wily forms back-to-back with absolutely 0 healing. again, i can be patient with older games, but 6 boss fights in a row with no healing is extreme. there's a reason every single boss rush section in later mega man games gives you a large heal after each fight.
can't say i hate this game, because it did spawn an otherwise great series and resulted in several games i adore. it is, however, going to be one of the first games i now think of when people mention classic games that have not stood the test of time.
i have been doing WAY too much this first month of 2024. this makes my 11th game that i've finished in january, and i swear it's not that i'm just no lifeing this shit. this was a hard mode playthrough i set up about a year ago, and only just finished now. you could say the same about a lot of games i've finished this month (FE7, SSX 3, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel), but it's worth mentioning here because i spent a loooooot of time in this game.
it's funny whenever games have a hard mode and then just completely fail to balance mechanics around it. did you know that, in hard mode, because of how the Mole1 and Mole2 viruses work, it's impossible to get the chips they drop (PopUp and Meteor18) through normal means and instead have to roll for them at the chip trader? extremely fun oversight aside, hard mode doesn't feel like the major difficulty spike it should be. earlygame is definitely hell, and getting good bust ranks is a lot more difficult to accomplish until around midgame. but, hard mode, just like normal mode, still gets broken in half by gater. sure, the boss HP totals skyrocket when you multiply them by 1.5 (MagnetManV3 boasts an intimidating 2700 HP meanwhile PlanetManV3 has the highest total at 3300 HP), but the same basic strategies will work here just like they did in normal mode. Invis3 still makes you untouchable, Gater still deals a stupid amount of damage while being easy to make flow in your folder, and FullCust is still broken. this is by no means a complaint, it just feels odd that capcom would go through the effort of hiding this hard mode behind so many obstacles only for it to feel relatively unconsidered.
MMBN2 is still at its base a fantastic game and i still had a great time with it. if anything, the hard mode experience has left me thinking that the overall ease and simplicity of normal mode could at least be somewhat solved by using some of these HP totals. maybe keep the virus HP totals the same (to make random encounters + escaping be less tedious) but use the navi HP totals from hard mode? i could always just play the "remove the letter G from the game" mod, but something like this feels at least a little more sensible and organic. ah well, difficulty issues aside, it's still one of the best games on the GBA and a highlight of the series.
it's funny whenever games have a hard mode and then just completely fail to balance mechanics around it. did you know that, in hard mode, because of how the Mole1 and Mole2 viruses work, it's impossible to get the chips they drop (PopUp and Meteor18) through normal means and instead have to roll for them at the chip trader? extremely fun oversight aside, hard mode doesn't feel like the major difficulty spike it should be. earlygame is definitely hell, and getting good bust ranks is a lot more difficult to accomplish until around midgame. but, hard mode, just like normal mode, still gets broken in half by gater. sure, the boss HP totals skyrocket when you multiply them by 1.5 (MagnetManV3 boasts an intimidating 2700 HP meanwhile PlanetManV3 has the highest total at 3300 HP), but the same basic strategies will work here just like they did in normal mode. Invis3 still makes you untouchable, Gater still deals a stupid amount of damage while being easy to make flow in your folder, and FullCust is still broken. this is by no means a complaint, it just feels odd that capcom would go through the effort of hiding this hard mode behind so many obstacles only for it to feel relatively unconsidered.
MMBN2 is still at its base a fantastic game and i still had a great time with it. if anything, the hard mode experience has left me thinking that the overall ease and simplicity of normal mode could at least be somewhat solved by using some of these HP totals. maybe keep the virus HP totals the same (to make random encounters + escaping be less tedious) but use the navi HP totals from hard mode? i could always just play the "remove the letter G from the game" mod, but something like this feels at least a little more sensible and organic. ah well, difficulty issues aside, it's still one of the best games on the GBA and a highlight of the series.
i've owned and adored this game for years, but i had never bothered with the ranking system. in the past, i had always regarded it as a largely irrelevant feature to how i wanted to play and basically ignored it. however, something crawled up my ass last year, and i decided to do a ranked run of HHM. as preparation, i did a ranked run of HNM to get an idea of what it would be like and how to adopt the mindset. and while some things are actually more strict in HNM ranked (for whatever reason, night of farewells has a way tighter turn count), it was an educational experience that steeled me for my real goal: S rank HHM.
i now talk to you as someone who has scaled the mountain that is S ranking HHM. after several months of meticulous planning and arduous resetting, i got my S rank. and while it was extremely shitty to do for a myriad of reasons, this experience has not only deepened my appreciation of the game, but it has reminded me of how constraints make for better design. let's be clear, FE7's ranking system is fucked and its refusal to be transparent with not only its set goals but also how to achieve them is bad. i do not think this game does ranking very well (chapter requirements are literally being broken on hector mode chapters like talons alight and the berserker such that they're considered chapters you should beat in 0 turns to avoid penalization). add all this together, and i understand why casuals are so offput by it.
but, i do mourn it retroactively now, as i think we lost something significant when IS decided to ditch it instead of improve and refine it. ranked runs require a different mindset and encourage you to think of the game as purely tactical as you can. turtle and grind strategies suddenly become inoptimal and the last thing you want to do. meanwhile, the experience rank obligates you to use units that you would otherwise almost certainly have not touched, forcing you to use basically everyone in at least some capacity. the strangest thing is that they already revamped how the game would judge the player via a ranking system in going from 6 to 7, so it adds on to the disappointment that they abandoned it in sacred stones. hell, sacred stones could've been like 20x better if there was anything resembling a challenge in it. the closest thing we've gotten since then was the bonus experience system in the tellius games, and while that is good, something all-encompassing like elibe's rankings is preferable to me. i've realized that i'm a huge sucker for when a game assesses and grades your progress, whether it be on micro scales like in MMBN and FFXIII, or on a playthrough-wide scale like Resident Evil and this game. it was a flawed system and needed polish, but, fuck, i kinda miss it now.
that said, i love this game, but, i confess, this ranked run did inspire great amounts of anger and hate out of me. on top of S ranking HHM being one of the hardest things i've ever had to do in a video game, i think i can confidently say that fire emblem is one of the most infuriating games on earth. with how pivotal RNG is to not only character progression but even just basic offensive interactions, it is the perfect simulator of "i made no mistakes and still lost" in video game format. i get that RNG is invariably going to affect personal experience in both extremely positive and extremely negative ways, i just deeply wish there was some way to curb it a bit. for instance, all three of my lords were complete dogshit this run, and i had to use boosters on all three at some point just to get them to their average stats. granted, you don't have to use lyn and eliwood, but see me after class if you think i'm doing lloyd's FFO. plus, they're mandatory deployments on certain chapters (including but not limited to the final one), so it's frustrating when diceroll level ups turn against your favor and give you completely trash units. it's still a wonder to me that a fixed stats mode was only ever used in path of radiance and it's never been used ever again. it's truly baffling considering how convenient and consistent it would make replays of any of the games. in that sense, the most appealing method of ever playing this game again is on emulator with tony's mod, a player-made fixed stats mode.
either way, this is still one of my favorite games of all time, in spite of the colossal deep fissures of flaws i have with fire emblem as a series and even this individual game (seriously, why doesn't eliwood use lances?). i can rest easy now and say it's going to be a looooooong time before i do another playthrough of this beast. yet, tellingly, when i do get that urge, i've already got a plan of what i want to do next. imagine if i used these autistic impulses to do something of value. what if.
i now talk to you as someone who has scaled the mountain that is S ranking HHM. after several months of meticulous planning and arduous resetting, i got my S rank. and while it was extremely shitty to do for a myriad of reasons, this experience has not only deepened my appreciation of the game, but it has reminded me of how constraints make for better design. let's be clear, FE7's ranking system is fucked and its refusal to be transparent with not only its set goals but also how to achieve them is bad. i do not think this game does ranking very well (chapter requirements are literally being broken on hector mode chapters like talons alight and the berserker such that they're considered chapters you should beat in 0 turns to avoid penalization). add all this together, and i understand why casuals are so offput by it.
but, i do mourn it retroactively now, as i think we lost something significant when IS decided to ditch it instead of improve and refine it. ranked runs require a different mindset and encourage you to think of the game as purely tactical as you can. turtle and grind strategies suddenly become inoptimal and the last thing you want to do. meanwhile, the experience rank obligates you to use units that you would otherwise almost certainly have not touched, forcing you to use basically everyone in at least some capacity. the strangest thing is that they already revamped how the game would judge the player via a ranking system in going from 6 to 7, so it adds on to the disappointment that they abandoned it in sacred stones. hell, sacred stones could've been like 20x better if there was anything resembling a challenge in it. the closest thing we've gotten since then was the bonus experience system in the tellius games, and while that is good, something all-encompassing like elibe's rankings is preferable to me. i've realized that i'm a huge sucker for when a game assesses and grades your progress, whether it be on micro scales like in MMBN and FFXIII, or on a playthrough-wide scale like Resident Evil and this game. it was a flawed system and needed polish, but, fuck, i kinda miss it now.
that said, i love this game, but, i confess, this ranked run did inspire great amounts of anger and hate out of me. on top of S ranking HHM being one of the hardest things i've ever had to do in a video game, i think i can confidently say that fire emblem is one of the most infuriating games on earth. with how pivotal RNG is to not only character progression but even just basic offensive interactions, it is the perfect simulator of "i made no mistakes and still lost" in video game format. i get that RNG is invariably going to affect personal experience in both extremely positive and extremely negative ways, i just deeply wish there was some way to curb it a bit. for instance, all three of my lords were complete dogshit this run, and i had to use boosters on all three at some point just to get them to their average stats. granted, you don't have to use lyn and eliwood, but see me after class if you think i'm doing lloyd's FFO. plus, they're mandatory deployments on certain chapters (including but not limited to the final one), so it's frustrating when diceroll level ups turn against your favor and give you completely trash units. it's still a wonder to me that a fixed stats mode was only ever used in path of radiance and it's never been used ever again. it's truly baffling considering how convenient and consistent it would make replays of any of the games. in that sense, the most appealing method of ever playing this game again is on emulator with tony's mod, a player-made fixed stats mode.
either way, this is still one of my favorite games of all time, in spite of the colossal deep fissures of flaws i have with fire emblem as a series and even this individual game (seriously, why doesn't eliwood use lances?). i can rest easy now and say it's going to be a looooooong time before i do another playthrough of this beast. yet, tellingly, when i do get that urge, i've already got a plan of what i want to do next. imagine if i used these autistic impulses to do something of value. what if.
1998
one immutable thing about gex is that, whether you love him or hate him, if you grew up in the 90s and played video games, you probably know him. this was back during the mystical bygone era of the midbudget title, back when games were allowed to be shamelessly inspired by other groundbreaking ones (in this case, super mario 64) and they were allowed to just try to ape the design as best they could. and as much of a meme as the "15 million sales" claim is, gex was still a memorable entity, even in the peripheral. it's '98-'00, you go to blockbuster, look at all the games available for rent, and even if you didn't rent gex: enter the gecko, the box art with gex in a dynamic and memorable pose stuck with you. i think something like this is one of the largest reasons gex has endured as a recognizable mascot, even if it is almost entirely ironically. but, irony can only get you so far, and there is genuinely goodwill for these games that has also endured for a lot of people, myself included.
it's fun coming back to these games i played disposably as a child and actually trying to assess the game design and development/production aspects that i would've otherwise never contemplated. in particular, i'm able to say that gex: enter the gecko actually has some fairly solid level design. the levels are engaging, they have loads of landmarks that help the player not only mentally map out a level, but also create memorable platforming segments. these don't always pan out, and i'm not going to sit here and tell you that every single level is a homerun, but there's definitely more interesting and memorable levels than there aren't. in particular, i think some of my favorites are poltergext, mazed and confused, samurai night fever, frankensteinfeld, and fine tooning. each of them has either some genuinely creative design or otherwise memorable platforming sequences that help put this game ever so slightly above the other contemporaries trying to replicate grab the super mario 64 crowd. tell me, does anyone still feel this passionately about croc or, god forbid, bubsy?
it's not all roses down memory lane. anyone who's played this knows and will tell you the camera is angry video game nerd voice like piss soup seasoned with wet diarrhea. the best you can hope for is to set it to manual and just babysit the damn fucking thing as much as you can, and even then, the game still fights you tooth and nail whenever you try to adjust it with a wall anywhere near it. it's not only made the game aged incredibly poorly, but it was something that, on launch, made the game stumble out of the gate. gex: enter the gecko is actually enjoyable in those moments you can escape the burden of camera control and just mock the stupid shitty and sometimes vaguely racist things gex says. there's probably a good argument to make that this game is one of the better mascot platformers of the time because there was at least a solid design foundation here. i don't adore gex in the way that i could really defend his games to anyone who didn't grow up with a playstation/N64, but there is value in them.
if nothing else, this game takes a lot of swings and most of them hit in some capacity. again, we're not dealing with high water mark platformer territory here, but this is fun in a very approachable and simple way. just remember to forget about the camera as much as you can.
it's fun coming back to these games i played disposably as a child and actually trying to assess the game design and development/production aspects that i would've otherwise never contemplated. in particular, i'm able to say that gex: enter the gecko actually has some fairly solid level design. the levels are engaging, they have loads of landmarks that help the player not only mentally map out a level, but also create memorable platforming segments. these don't always pan out, and i'm not going to sit here and tell you that every single level is a homerun, but there's definitely more interesting and memorable levels than there aren't. in particular, i think some of my favorites are poltergext, mazed and confused, samurai night fever, frankensteinfeld, and fine tooning. each of them has either some genuinely creative design or otherwise memorable platforming sequences that help put this game ever so slightly above the other contemporaries trying to replicate grab the super mario 64 crowd. tell me, does anyone still feel this passionately about croc or, god forbid, bubsy?
it's not all roses down memory lane. anyone who's played this knows and will tell you the camera is angry video game nerd voice like piss soup seasoned with wet diarrhea. the best you can hope for is to set it to manual and just babysit the damn fucking thing as much as you can, and even then, the game still fights you tooth and nail whenever you try to adjust it with a wall anywhere near it. it's not only made the game aged incredibly poorly, but it was something that, on launch, made the game stumble out of the gate. gex: enter the gecko is actually enjoyable in those moments you can escape the burden of camera control and just mock the stupid shitty and sometimes vaguely racist things gex says. there's probably a good argument to make that this game is one of the better mascot platformers of the time because there was at least a solid design foundation here. i don't adore gex in the way that i could really defend his games to anyone who didn't grow up with a playstation/N64, but there is value in them.
if nothing else, this game takes a lot of swings and most of them hit in some capacity. again, we're not dealing with high water mark platformer territory here, but this is fun in a very approachable and simple way. just remember to forget about the camera as much as you can.
2011
resident evil 4 is, objectively, one of the most influential games to ever be released. when you address such a monolith of a game like RE4, you have to acknowledge what it did not only for the genre(s), but what it was for video games as a culture and art form. RE4 isn't the very first game to ever do third-person shooting nor is it the literal genesis of over-the-shoulder cam aiming, but is the driving force that made it such a default for AAA games going forward. the game combined TPS and action as a genre and fused them into this neatly calcified "ah-ha!" conglomerate.
that's all well and good, but you can talk about the legacy of RE4 until you're 170 minutes into a youtube video. how does it feel? what does RE4's minute-to-minute gameplay meaningfully feel like? there's this je ne sais quoi about actually playing RE4 that's always appealed to me. it's a combination of the visceral fidelity of being able to snipe a dude's head off and hear that meaty THWACK as the bullet from your semi-auto rifle pierces it and you hear the casing hit the floor. maybe it's also the appeal of being able to quite nearly literally "death by a thousand papercuts" someone to death with the knife when you get them on the ground. something about this game feels good in that way that's hard to articulate but immediately recognizable when the controller is in your hands. RE4 feels good in a way it needs to, because when you mechanically break the game down, it loses luster.
i'll just say it: this game has a lot of shitty elements to it. novistadors are maybe some of the actual worst designed enemies in any video game i have ever played (no i have not played battletoads. the exaggeration is meaningful in its vagueness.). colmillos are not far behind with their ability to say "actually, your point blank shotgun didn't affect me at all, i'm now going to drain about 75% of your HP with my tentacle attack.". and there's individual rooms here that. . . you know that one meme that's like "when you want to replay a game you like but then you remember that one part" and it's always a negative reaction? there's maybe like 5 different parts of this game that can apply to. here, i'll list them off the top of my head right now: the hedge maze in the castle, the first outdoors area of the island, the second novistadors area where you're swarmed by like 13 of them immediately, the del lago fight (i have played the game three times and still do not know what in good fuck the tell is supposed to be for avoiding his ramming the boat.), the third novistador area, the water archers room, the room where a cage surrounds you with a garrador, the mike helicopter section, that one room with the rocket launcher guys hidden behind paintings, etc. etc.
i'm not trying to say "behold! i have the new opinion no one has ever expressed! [popular game] bad!". instead, i'm trying to say that RE4 is maybe the most salient example in all of video games of being more than a sum of its parts. is the game too long? almost certainly. does the game have sections that are rampantly unfun? i do not believe there is a single person on the planet who unilaterally likes every encounter in RE4. at the same time, i think the larger picture is that RE4 has a catharsis to it that you could try to dissect but never grasp unless you experience it. there's something simultaneously comedic, horrific, and tight about leon doing shit like fighting possessed suits of armor or running on the back of a giant motherfucker just to tickle his back parasite to death.
and yeah, the plot is not only terrible, but riddled with holes that stem from basic questions like "why do guys try to kill ashley when their plot revolves around her" and "why do they need money if they're going to brainwash the entire united states government". but RE4 has never been a cerebral experience, for better and worse. i know that this was a symptom of being an original IP reskinned to be a RE property, but it doesn't help that the entire nonsense plot has next to no bearing on any RE series lore. we see wesker briefly, ada is still ada, and so on and so forth. i don't need these things from RE4 to enjoy it, but i'd be lying if i said that they wouldn't help me enjoy the game more. leon and ada begin and end as the same characters, krauser is basically a nothingburger outside of his gay sex cutscene with leon. i'm not looking for something that's going to bring me to tears, but why even use these characters that have already been established if they're going to be so disposable? it doesn't help that leon feels borderline out of character, but whatever. only sexless nerds care about this type of shit i guess.
RE4 is a game i have a lot of fun with, in spite of itself. another way i could phrase that opinion is "RE4 is one of the best games that i fucking hate". in large part, i do tend to focus on the critical points that stick with me when it comes to this game, but i also recognize that's a "me" thing rather than a failing of the game. it is good for substantially longer than it is not, and i can't resent the game too much for failing to meet me more than halfway. i can't help but also lean against the way in which this game has dominated the RE series discourse and landscape, but that's, again, a "me" problem. am i tired of hearing about resident evil was always bad, the plot was never worth caring about, RE4 is a parody of RE games, etc. etc.? absolutely. but i'm going to be a big boy about it and still acknowledge that this game did a lot and meant a lot. as much as i hate the fans who refuse to acknowledge the flaws, i will not be the critic who denies the accomplishments.
btw, the island > the castle.
that's all well and good, but you can talk about the legacy of RE4 until you're 170 minutes into a youtube video. how does it feel? what does RE4's minute-to-minute gameplay meaningfully feel like? there's this je ne sais quoi about actually playing RE4 that's always appealed to me. it's a combination of the visceral fidelity of being able to snipe a dude's head off and hear that meaty THWACK as the bullet from your semi-auto rifle pierces it and you hear the casing hit the floor. maybe it's also the appeal of being able to quite nearly literally "death by a thousand papercuts" someone to death with the knife when you get them on the ground. something about this game feels good in that way that's hard to articulate but immediately recognizable when the controller is in your hands. RE4 feels good in a way it needs to, because when you mechanically break the game down, it loses luster.
i'll just say it: this game has a lot of shitty elements to it. novistadors are maybe some of the actual worst designed enemies in any video game i have ever played (no i have not played battletoads. the exaggeration is meaningful in its vagueness.). colmillos are not far behind with their ability to say "actually, your point blank shotgun didn't affect me at all, i'm now going to drain about 75% of your HP with my tentacle attack.". and there's individual rooms here that. . . you know that one meme that's like "when you want to replay a game you like but then you remember that one part" and it's always a negative reaction? there's maybe like 5 different parts of this game that can apply to. here, i'll list them off the top of my head right now: the hedge maze in the castle, the first outdoors area of the island, the second novistadors area where you're swarmed by like 13 of them immediately, the del lago fight (i have played the game three times and still do not know what in good fuck the tell is supposed to be for avoiding his ramming the boat.), the third novistador area, the water archers room, the room where a cage surrounds you with a garrador, the mike helicopter section, that one room with the rocket launcher guys hidden behind paintings, etc. etc.
i'm not trying to say "behold! i have the new opinion no one has ever expressed! [popular game] bad!". instead, i'm trying to say that RE4 is maybe the most salient example in all of video games of being more than a sum of its parts. is the game too long? almost certainly. does the game have sections that are rampantly unfun? i do not believe there is a single person on the planet who unilaterally likes every encounter in RE4. at the same time, i think the larger picture is that RE4 has a catharsis to it that you could try to dissect but never grasp unless you experience it. there's something simultaneously comedic, horrific, and tight about leon doing shit like fighting possessed suits of armor or running on the back of a giant motherfucker just to tickle his back parasite to death.
and yeah, the plot is not only terrible, but riddled with holes that stem from basic questions like "why do guys try to kill ashley when their plot revolves around her" and "why do they need money if they're going to brainwash the entire united states government". but RE4 has never been a cerebral experience, for better and worse. i know that this was a symptom of being an original IP reskinned to be a RE property, but it doesn't help that the entire nonsense plot has next to no bearing on any RE series lore. we see wesker briefly, ada is still ada, and so on and so forth. i don't need these things from RE4 to enjoy it, but i'd be lying if i said that they wouldn't help me enjoy the game more. leon and ada begin and end as the same characters, krauser is basically a nothingburger outside of his gay sex cutscene with leon. i'm not looking for something that's going to bring me to tears, but why even use these characters that have already been established if they're going to be so disposable? it doesn't help that leon feels borderline out of character, but whatever. only sexless nerds care about this type of shit i guess.
RE4 is a game i have a lot of fun with, in spite of itself. another way i could phrase that opinion is "RE4 is one of the best games that i fucking hate". in large part, i do tend to focus on the critical points that stick with me when it comes to this game, but i also recognize that's a "me" thing rather than a failing of the game. it is good for substantially longer than it is not, and i can't resent the game too much for failing to meet me more than halfway. i can't help but also lean against the way in which this game has dominated the RE series discourse and landscape, but that's, again, a "me" problem. am i tired of hearing about resident evil was always bad, the plot was never worth caring about, RE4 is a parody of RE games, etc. etc.? absolutely. but i'm going to be a big boy about it and still acknowledge that this game did a lot and meant a lot. as much as i hate the fans who refuse to acknowledge the flaws, i will not be the critic who denies the accomplishments.
btw, the island > the castle.
cool-ish level design and visuals but the narrative sucks shit. for whatever reason, jack blindly trusts shadowtrap (epic name). also there's this emotional core narrative with claptrap that completely fucking fails and it's baffling. the DLC itself is super light on content and generally not super interesting. i can't keep giving pity points, this just wasn't fun and the first person platforming is still bad and the enemies are still glitching out into platforms and walls that they shouldn't be. between this and the other DLC, you can tell 2K Australia was out of ideas from the getgo because the majority of content is just battle domes, which have always been the worst type of gameplay (and probably the most appealing kind to create, due to how little assets they require).
starting to feel like my 3.0/5.0 for the base game was too generous. whatever. at least i'm done with this game that it feels like no one was passionate about.
starting to feel like my 3.0/5.0 for the base game was too generous. whatever. at least i'm done with this game that it feels like no one was passionate about.
they charged $10 for this. 2014 was such an awful year for everything
finally finished this game after years of putting it off. quite possibly the most mid experience of my life, it put me to sleep at least twice, but i also weirdly empathize with the dev studio? they were given a relatively unfair task of "make a compelling handsome jack origin story", which is already never going to work (what do i need to know about the guy who enslaves his daughter that's going to wildly change my opinion of him). and gameplay-wise, it feels like maybe 3 borderlands 2 DLCs strapped together in terms of length and mechanical variety. and god, i know complaining about borderlands humor is such a "you do it to yourself, you do, and that's why it really hurts" situation, but man. and the new space mechanics are more tedious than fun. sure, jumping around willy nilly can make traversal less droll, but then you get to the god awful first-person platforming sections and wonder why the hell you're even playing the game anymore.
i feel like giving this a 3.0/5.0 is overcorrecting for my immediate and very obvious bias against this game, because it's not exactly bad, but it's also just such a nothing game. i barely remember most of what happens and who the characters are, and i ran through the game twice getting the platinum. it all feels by the numbers despite the different dev team, and maybe it's just borderlands being doomed to be a mid series. the skinner box surely must run out of juice eventually. haven't played 3 yet, still planning on tackling the DLC(s?) for this one in the near-ish future, but man. why do i feel so melancholy for a game that made me feel nothing?
i feel like giving this a 3.0/5.0 is overcorrecting for my immediate and very obvious bias against this game, because it's not exactly bad, but it's also just such a nothing game. i barely remember most of what happens and who the characters are, and i ran through the game twice getting the platinum. it all feels by the numbers despite the different dev team, and maybe it's just borderlands being doomed to be a mid series. the skinner box surely must run out of juice eventually. haven't played 3 yet, still planning on tackling the DLC(s?) for this one in the near-ish future, but man. why do i feel so melancholy for a game that made me feel nothing?
1996
maybe one of the literal best "simple platformers" to ever exist. it has minimal mechanics (jump, spin, and movement) and pushes them to their limit. the level design here fascinates me and tells an implicit story in the journey from primitive to the advanced. even something as simple as being able to see the other islands in the backgrounds of level skylines impressed me as a child and still does to this day. i have just the utmost amount of respect for naughty dog as a studio for making something this focused and developed. this was a clear idea when 3D platformers were still unclear. i respect it just as much as i actually enjoy playing it, and it's always a special reward when i can say that about a game.
i know everyone likes to dogpile this game because "getting the gems is too hard" or "it needed a double jump" or whatever but i genuinely just think there's a lack of patience and willingness to meet the game on its own terms that comes from that camp. crash bandicoot has a rhythm to its obstacles and it's often best to be slow and methodical than quick and risky. i think you're being genuinely unfair to the game when you aren't willing to put the time and effort into learning it. it's fine if it doesn't click with you, but just say that, not that it's "objectively bad" or whatever. i feel like an old man saying this, but not every game was meant to be disposable and play the same.
btw, the bridge levels fuck, you guys just suck at them. but "lights out" and "fumbling in the dark"? absolutely assgarbage.
i know everyone likes to dogpile this game because "getting the gems is too hard" or "it needed a double jump" or whatever but i genuinely just think there's a lack of patience and willingness to meet the game on its own terms that comes from that camp. crash bandicoot has a rhythm to its obstacles and it's often best to be slow and methodical than quick and risky. i think you're being genuinely unfair to the game when you aren't willing to put the time and effort into learning it. it's fine if it doesn't click with you, but just say that, not that it's "objectively bad" or whatever. i feel like an old man saying this, but not every game was meant to be disposable and play the same.
btw, the bridge levels fuck, you guys just suck at them. but "lights out" and "fumbling in the dark"? absolutely assgarbage.
2003
you know, i get it. for most of my adult life, i've mourned the SSX series and waited like a coiled spring for a new game. granted, i never played any of the entries after this one, but, to be fair, they all looked like microwaved dogshit. still, i've waited for a true sequel to this game for so long. and i do finally understand why we haven't gotten it and never will. it is frankly just too fucking difficult to iterate on this game. from top to bottom, this game is mechanically dense and full of little refinements and tweaks to the SSX formula that i can't see being improved upon. you could try, sure, but it'd be a fool's errand. this was the peak of SSX. this was the furthest the series could go. it was a funeral for the series. but it was also a celebration for the series.
i used to be someone who thought SSX Tricky was the ever-so-slightly better entry, but now that feels like a borderline offensive opinion to throw out. SSX Tricky is a fantastic, outstanding game. but does it push as many boundaries of game design like 3? does it manage to add a superior level of complexity to preexisting mechanics in a way that feels like a natural evolution like 3? hell, does it even have the better OST? all these years, I used to think these questions weighed in Tricky's favor. i just can't see it now. (that said, i still absolutely crave the remix of "Smartbomb" on Tricky's OST on spotify. i need it badly.)
SSX 3 is a landmark game in what it achieves as early as 2003, but it remains a landmark game in how well it's aged and managed to still be fresh to play. i know everyone gushes about it, but it truly is impressive as all fuck to be able to start at the top of peak 3 and go through six different and varied courses and end all the way at the bottom of peak 1 without a single load screen from the word go.
the loss in vibrancy, cartoonishness, and informed personality does hurt, and it's always been my biggest sticking point with the game. yeah, all of Tricky's cast fucking annihilates the newcomers here and all the returnees feel like they've been sand-papered down to a less distinct and memorable edge. i can completely concede that. but, the game puts emphasis on characterizing the different tracks of the game. there's nothing quite as outlandish as aloha ice jam or outright impossible as tokyo megaplex, but we trade that for grounded fantasies. look at something like ruthless. ruthless is absolute eye-candy for anyone who has an appreciation for nature, but it also has this horrific realism to it in that you could easily imagine it claiming the lives of reckless newcomers every year. sure, you're still hitting rails at lightning speed and regularly doing jumps that should shatter femurs, but the style shift to realism makes it feel more memorable and weighty.
all this is to say that i can't necessarily begrudge anyone who prefers Tricky. at this point, i've seen approximately 0 people ever argue either of these games are bad, so it feels as though it's a continuous argument between which of these two games is the more definitive entry. forgive me, but i'm going to use a fairly nebbish final argument for my position. we've had sequel after sequel for SSX 3 try to take the series in a new direction and each has ultimately failed. most tellingly, none of these games have tried to claim the mantle of SSX 4. and how could you? how could you ever claim to iterate on SSX 3 when it captured the formula, the gameplay, the design, everything so well? there has never been anything like this game since its release, and, at this point, it's starting to look more and more certain that there never will be.
personally, i would love to play SSX 4. i just expect that if i ever do, it won't be called that. the series is dead, and i say that with reverence.
i used to be someone who thought SSX Tricky was the ever-so-slightly better entry, but now that feels like a borderline offensive opinion to throw out. SSX Tricky is a fantastic, outstanding game. but does it push as many boundaries of game design like 3? does it manage to add a superior level of complexity to preexisting mechanics in a way that feels like a natural evolution like 3? hell, does it even have the better OST? all these years, I used to think these questions weighed in Tricky's favor. i just can't see it now. (that said, i still absolutely crave the remix of "Smartbomb" on Tricky's OST on spotify. i need it badly.)
SSX 3 is a landmark game in what it achieves as early as 2003, but it remains a landmark game in how well it's aged and managed to still be fresh to play. i know everyone gushes about it, but it truly is impressive as all fuck to be able to start at the top of peak 3 and go through six different and varied courses and end all the way at the bottom of peak 1 without a single load screen from the word go.
the loss in vibrancy, cartoonishness, and informed personality does hurt, and it's always been my biggest sticking point with the game. yeah, all of Tricky's cast fucking annihilates the newcomers here and all the returnees feel like they've been sand-papered down to a less distinct and memorable edge. i can completely concede that. but, the game puts emphasis on characterizing the different tracks of the game. there's nothing quite as outlandish as aloha ice jam or outright impossible as tokyo megaplex, but we trade that for grounded fantasies. look at something like ruthless. ruthless is absolute eye-candy for anyone who has an appreciation for nature, but it also has this horrific realism to it in that you could easily imagine it claiming the lives of reckless newcomers every year. sure, you're still hitting rails at lightning speed and regularly doing jumps that should shatter femurs, but the style shift to realism makes it feel more memorable and weighty.
all this is to say that i can't necessarily begrudge anyone who prefers Tricky. at this point, i've seen approximately 0 people ever argue either of these games are bad, so it feels as though it's a continuous argument between which of these two games is the more definitive entry. forgive me, but i'm going to use a fairly nebbish final argument for my position. we've had sequel after sequel for SSX 3 try to take the series in a new direction and each has ultimately failed. most tellingly, none of these games have tried to claim the mantle of SSX 4. and how could you? how could you ever claim to iterate on SSX 3 when it captured the formula, the gameplay, the design, everything so well? there has never been anything like this game since its release, and, at this point, it's starting to look more and more certain that there never will be.
personally, i would love to play SSX 4. i just expect that if i ever do, it won't be called that. the series is dead, and i say that with reverence.
replayed this for the RA set. this is still a pretty exceptionally shitty game. i feel bad saying that it has basically no redeeming qualities as a game, because games development is a harder process than i will ever be exposed to in my life most likely. on the other hand, none of the jokes land because they're all nonsequiturs/catchphrase one-liners/etc. and the gameplay has basically no depth. oh well. joke's on me because this is the second time in my life i've gotten the 1 million in this game. clearly something is wrong with me. Something is wrong with me.
Something is wrong with me.
Something is wrong with me.
hell has frozen over. 2024 is here. and, as is typical of the new year, it's time for a new me. with that, i announce a great paradigm change: i am now a kingdom hearts II liker. again. please, hold your gasps of shock and awe, we have much to cover.
jokes aside, those who've known me for years and have talked about video games at length with me have likely heard my take on the KH series: it should never have gotten sequels. it's a fun quick summation of my feelings to give. i can now upgrade that to a delightful "it should never have gotten sequels after II". 358/2 Days has always been an exception to this either way, so the one-liner loses its potency. but what was it about kingdom hearts II that was so polarizing for me? i've come around on RECOM, so, truly, anything is possible. but what made II such a dislikeable game?
my history with KH II is interesting. i was obsessed with KH I as a child. it was basically my first JRPG, for however much you consider it a true-blue JRPG. it captivated me by presenting me these complex (to an 8 year old) ideas of strategy and stat management in a familiar environment. i've never been much of a disney fan, even as a child, but you can't deny that there's cultural osmosis shared with aladdin and the little mermaid that makes them feel immediately familiar. i was being introduced to a world i'd never explored, and it helps that the execution of the concepts KH I had was nearly pitch-perfect.
KH I was a tragic game defined by its longing and sense of childlike thrill. being a child taken seriously was something to both crave and fear. KH I was able to capitalize perfectly on what it feels like to be someone just coming into their own sense of self and identity, personified by its characters' own struggle with identity and restraints. sora and riku and kairi are more than just preteens wanting to set sail and see the world, they're also your next door neighbors who want to escape suburbia or their small town or wherever and be free. this spoke to me in a profound way that a lot of art and media with child protagonists didn't. the game never admonishes the destiny islands trio for their desires and wants, nor does it treat them as childish or foolish. these characters were played straight in a serious context. without having the words to vocalize what about KH I spoke to me, i just knew there was this feeling the game evoked out of me that very few things had in my life by that point. i wanted more. i needed more.
so, all this leads to me playing the game relentlessly and waiting like a coiled spring for a sequel. i had played COM, and that gave more questions than answers (though it did give us axel, who's just a special little guy to me). even as a kid, i could recognize that its existence was largely just to serve as a soft-recap of the events of KH I for a ninendo-audience, and the scant bits of new information were difficult to process and determine the significance of. what is the deal with the guys in the black coats? what is "the organization"? what's axel's full deal? who the hell is diz? etc. etc. little did i know that writing for the KH series would follow this tendency of presenting the player with more questions than answers in each installment in time.
still. i was excited for kingdom hearts II. its release would be my woodstock. i can scarcely remember how it felt to want a game so badly, to feel so assured in knowing it would be not only a good game, but that it would be a life-changing event that would radically alter my personality down to the cellular level. i didn't have friends who were into kingdom hearts at all, so i was on that same metaphorical island as sora, wanting someone to share my experiences with. i bid my time, hoping patience's reward would visit me soon.
eventually, it came. i got home from middle school. i put the kingdom hearts II disc into my playstation 2. i hit new game. "i wanna line the pieces up - yours and mine." cue "sanctuary" by utada hikaru.
and you know what?
it FUCKED.
i still remember the feeling of watching that opening FMV. what a fucking showstopper of talent. i would go so far as to say it's a pinnacle achievement in the medium. it not only recaps (without a single word!) both the plots to I and COM in a "here's all the big points you need to know" way using the visual storytelling of a cutscene, but it's done so effortlessly, with such grace and precision. it's what we wanted. i remember starting up new games of KH II later that night just to rewatch it. it was just. . . impeccable.
what followed was me consuming the SHIT out of KH II. i will say, my initial playthrough of this game feels very much like a blur. i barely remember how i played, what i thought of things, and i didn't even properly digest some of the plot elements of it. in that way, i treated KH II like a rollercoaster ride: something to experience, not to contemplate. it couldn't necessarily be helped; at 12 years old, the nuance of the roxas cold open was entirely lost on me nor did i even really comprehend it. i didn't even connect the dots on roxas being a former organization member despite it being explicitly spelled out several times. again, experienced, not contemplated. it's worth stressing that i missed all these story beats and didn't even largely understand a lot of the text of the game because, and this is the important part, i still loved kingdom hearts ii. i was apeshit for it. i thought it was an incredible achievement. my DNA had been altered from playing it. i was a different person. society was post-"sanctuary". i lived in a different world than the one i did on march 27th, 2006.
and then, when i became a more thoughtful, analytical, and critical teenager, i revisited kingdom hearts ii. and you know what?
it was fucking terrible.
"sanctuary" still hit those everest highs. but the gameplay had largely been solved once i realized there's next to no punishment for mashing attack, reaction command, and healing as necessary. was there any fight in the game that challenged this standby? even sephiroth could be bruteforced by a level 80+ player using this mentality. i didn't even use magic beyond cure. reflega? firaga? why would i use something that isn't my explosion finisher? all these boss fights i had thought on my first playthrough to be these accomplishments of skill suddenly became revealed as artifice. so many boss fights felt disposable and unmemorable to me in this playthrough. i had lost the ability to see the magic that had enchanted me. and, truthfully, i still understand this mentality i had. i don't even necessarily disagree with it; i find vanilla II to be a pretty easy game to bulldoze with mindless tactics. gameplay isn't everything to these games, but it's the lion's share of what you're doing. if i'm not having fun, what good is the game to me? if it's not challenging me, what is the value of combat? if it's not engaging, what is the value in engaging?
this was a viewpoint that i had predominantly held onto for several years, dating to even recently. it's worth stating that even playing final mix did not amend this for me. if anything, it arguably made it worse. i got the platinum in PS3's KH II FM and that is not an easy task to accomplish for the uninitiated. much of my "success" with the superbosses was a result of me bruteforcing my way through fights that required more planning, strategy, and creativity than the entirety of II vanilla had required. it was incredibly frustrating fighting someone like data vexen and getting my ass tapdanced on because i didn't know dominant strats or how to utilize the options i had. sure, i had learned that reflega exists, but limits were still a mystery to me, and it was beyond my expectations that there would be combo modifiers i'd want to unequip (i.e. dodge slash and aerial sweep).
none of the things i needed to do felt explained, none of my tools felt like options i could even use. truthfully, it wasn't just that it didn't click. it was that it was infuriating. it felt like i was missing something. it was a game i had endured seeing heaps of praise for from speedrunners and high level action game players alike. i wanted to understand, and i was dealing with a client that refused to let me in. my opinion managed to sink lower. what's worse than casually being disappointed by a game you thought you loved? exclusion from the cool kid's club and being incapable of finding the way in.
that was 2018. i played II FM as a refresher for III as well as to see how different FM would play. now that we live in a post-kingdom hearts III world, it's easier to see how nothing matters and everything is decaying. but it's worth sharing this poorly arranged medium-article of a review because KH II is a personal game for me. one of great success and failure. i think art, especially video games, can be an intimate experience for people in profound ways, and it feels as though i can segment periods of my life with my experiences with kingdom hearts ii. it's relevant to this review because i am who i am now because of kingdom hearts as a series. not in a major way, but also in an observable way. these anecdotes are relevant to my review because they are me and my feelings on the game are defined by these experiences.
so, with that preamble said, we reach 2023. by this point, i've made my peace with not being in the cool kid's club. if anything, i've been bolstered in my opinion by finding the KH II hater now and then. i know who i am, i am a matured adult. i know what i'm about. still, in spite of my harsh misgivings with KH II, i'm also a person makes mistakes and does not always agree with my past opinions. i even have a list dedicated to games that i used to hate but now love (and one for games i used to love but now don't). i am a person with a perspective, and perspectives change with time, age, and experience. i am struck by a sudden urge to replay kingdom hearts II final mix. i own the story so far collection for PS4 (which has wondrously short load times). i decide to replay it. worst-case scenario, i know the bad things i'm in for, so i can't be surprised. i pop in the disc. i hit new game. "i wanna line the pieces up - yours and mine." cue "sanctuary" by utada hikaru.
and you know what?
it FUCKED.
okay, maybe fucked is a bit much. i still have misgivings with the game (most notably in the plot). and i cannot deny that one of my larger complaints that still resonates with me is with the game's design is level structure that feels open and empty. i still have things to critique about this game. but i do find much more joy in it now as someone with tempered expectations. it's funny, my first playthrough was too much hype that colored me into a state of blind adoration without the adequate understanding to verbalize why i liked the game. then, after that, it was sophomore slump-esque cynicism that failed to see any value or joy in the game at all. thesis, antithesis. it's logical that synthesis would follow.
one of the largest hurdles i had to deal with was coming at this game with the right set of expectations. it's not necessarily a misnomer to call KH II a JRPG, but it is a lie by omission. whereas you could potentially get away with calling KH I a JRPG and not an action game, KH II is a prominent and unapologetic action game. KH II lives and dies by the moments where the player is managing space between an enemy(s) and weighing what options they should use to solve the encounter. this is more than just "use fire on the enemies weak to fire" logic of I. fire is more of a magic function than an element, with emphasis being on using it as a character-orbiting hitbox more than for its elemental status. blizzard gives the player ranged damage in the way ebony and ivory would in DMC. magnet gives crowd control options to help the player deal with larger numbers. reflect is downright busted when you learn how to utilize it. all of this sounds redundant, but starting to view magic as functions rather than JRPG elements is a microcosm of the perspective shift i needed to appreciate what the game is doing. i have to meet the game as it is, not what i demand it be.
the thing about all of this is that the game does not ever expect any competency with these systems, and, as mentioned, it's easy to just bruteforce. in fact, KH II's greatest shame is that it seems embarrassed to tell you about the things you can do and when you should do them. it doesn't even seem to want to provide you with the obstacles that would necessitate them. everything can be largely solved by attacking it, and while there's more efficient ways than just attacking, they're almost always unnecessary. the greatest flaw KH II has is that it lacks the confidence to provide better explanations of these tools and simultaneously demand players use them. what good is a jewel that is too precious?
i now get it though. i understand why people say that this game shines at higher levels of play with critical mode and data organization. to be frank, critical mode feels like the only way i could ever recommend someone experience this game, as it gives that level of burden i had earlier alluded to. it's not a perfect system, and complementary explanations are woefully absent, but it does alleviate so much of what made KH II dull to me. i now understand the value of limits and what tactical advantage they can provide. i now use limit form fairly regularly as a panic button (and because it's busted as fuck for certain fights like roxas lol). i needed third-party suggestions and information to get to this point, but i met the game halfway and got more out of it as a result.
the bittersweet nature of kingdom hearts as a series continues on, however. this was the entry that tied up all loose threads, yet, here we are, characters with stories still being told. the plot was essentially self-contained and could easily be the final entry for the destiny island trio. literally all you would need to do is delete that "chamber of repose" FM cutscene, the letter from the king teaser, and remove references to xehanort from the BBS teaser. from everything i've seen, xehanort might as well be an entirely new character in BBS (a game i have not played yet), so there's no reason to tie the destiny islands trio back into it. KH II was a closure for their story, a finality. sora, riku, and kairi had their adventure, they saw the world, and they returned home to each other. they matured and got to satisfy their yearning for freedom to greater appreciate their surroundings. it was the end of the book. the final scene. the last moment. i know i'm tardy to the party on this one, but KH II did not and should not have gotten sequels that involved these characters anymore. i do plan on playing BBS in the near-ish future, and it's going to be a monumental task for it to overcome this finality in my mind.
overall though? i'm glad i replayed this game. i gained a greater understanding of it with age, and i feel as though i've finally reached a closure with with game that i've denied myself for years. an open wound has finally scabbed over and begun to heal. i can appreciate the heart and soul of this gargantuan entry in not only the series but the PS2 library as well without losing focus of its shortcomings.
new year, new me.
jokes aside, those who've known me for years and have talked about video games at length with me have likely heard my take on the KH series: it should never have gotten sequels. it's a fun quick summation of my feelings to give. i can now upgrade that to a delightful "it should never have gotten sequels after II". 358/2 Days has always been an exception to this either way, so the one-liner loses its potency. but what was it about kingdom hearts II that was so polarizing for me? i've come around on RECOM, so, truly, anything is possible. but what made II such a dislikeable game?
my history with KH II is interesting. i was obsessed with KH I as a child. it was basically my first JRPG, for however much you consider it a true-blue JRPG. it captivated me by presenting me these complex (to an 8 year old) ideas of strategy and stat management in a familiar environment. i've never been much of a disney fan, even as a child, but you can't deny that there's cultural osmosis shared with aladdin and the little mermaid that makes them feel immediately familiar. i was being introduced to a world i'd never explored, and it helps that the execution of the concepts KH I had was nearly pitch-perfect.
KH I was a tragic game defined by its longing and sense of childlike thrill. being a child taken seriously was something to both crave and fear. KH I was able to capitalize perfectly on what it feels like to be someone just coming into their own sense of self and identity, personified by its characters' own struggle with identity and restraints. sora and riku and kairi are more than just preteens wanting to set sail and see the world, they're also your next door neighbors who want to escape suburbia or their small town or wherever and be free. this spoke to me in a profound way that a lot of art and media with child protagonists didn't. the game never admonishes the destiny islands trio for their desires and wants, nor does it treat them as childish or foolish. these characters were played straight in a serious context. without having the words to vocalize what about KH I spoke to me, i just knew there was this feeling the game evoked out of me that very few things had in my life by that point. i wanted more. i needed more.
so, all this leads to me playing the game relentlessly and waiting like a coiled spring for a sequel. i had played COM, and that gave more questions than answers (though it did give us axel, who's just a special little guy to me). even as a kid, i could recognize that its existence was largely just to serve as a soft-recap of the events of KH I for a ninendo-audience, and the scant bits of new information were difficult to process and determine the significance of. what is the deal with the guys in the black coats? what is "the organization"? what's axel's full deal? who the hell is diz? etc. etc. little did i know that writing for the KH series would follow this tendency of presenting the player with more questions than answers in each installment in time.
still. i was excited for kingdom hearts II. its release would be my woodstock. i can scarcely remember how it felt to want a game so badly, to feel so assured in knowing it would be not only a good game, but that it would be a life-changing event that would radically alter my personality down to the cellular level. i didn't have friends who were into kingdom hearts at all, so i was on that same metaphorical island as sora, wanting someone to share my experiences with. i bid my time, hoping patience's reward would visit me soon.
eventually, it came. i got home from middle school. i put the kingdom hearts II disc into my playstation 2. i hit new game. "i wanna line the pieces up - yours and mine." cue "sanctuary" by utada hikaru.
and you know what?
it FUCKED.
i still remember the feeling of watching that opening FMV. what a fucking showstopper of talent. i would go so far as to say it's a pinnacle achievement in the medium. it not only recaps (without a single word!) both the plots to I and COM in a "here's all the big points you need to know" way using the visual storytelling of a cutscene, but it's done so effortlessly, with such grace and precision. it's what we wanted. i remember starting up new games of KH II later that night just to rewatch it. it was just. . . impeccable.
what followed was me consuming the SHIT out of KH II. i will say, my initial playthrough of this game feels very much like a blur. i barely remember how i played, what i thought of things, and i didn't even properly digest some of the plot elements of it. in that way, i treated KH II like a rollercoaster ride: something to experience, not to contemplate. it couldn't necessarily be helped; at 12 years old, the nuance of the roxas cold open was entirely lost on me nor did i even really comprehend it. i didn't even connect the dots on roxas being a former organization member despite it being explicitly spelled out several times. again, experienced, not contemplated. it's worth stressing that i missed all these story beats and didn't even largely understand a lot of the text of the game because, and this is the important part, i still loved kingdom hearts ii. i was apeshit for it. i thought it was an incredible achievement. my DNA had been altered from playing it. i was a different person. society was post-"sanctuary". i lived in a different world than the one i did on march 27th, 2006.
and then, when i became a more thoughtful, analytical, and critical teenager, i revisited kingdom hearts ii. and you know what?
it was fucking terrible.
"sanctuary" still hit those everest highs. but the gameplay had largely been solved once i realized there's next to no punishment for mashing attack, reaction command, and healing as necessary. was there any fight in the game that challenged this standby? even sephiroth could be bruteforced by a level 80+ player using this mentality. i didn't even use magic beyond cure. reflega? firaga? why would i use something that isn't my explosion finisher? all these boss fights i had thought on my first playthrough to be these accomplishments of skill suddenly became revealed as artifice. so many boss fights felt disposable and unmemorable to me in this playthrough. i had lost the ability to see the magic that had enchanted me. and, truthfully, i still understand this mentality i had. i don't even necessarily disagree with it; i find vanilla II to be a pretty easy game to bulldoze with mindless tactics. gameplay isn't everything to these games, but it's the lion's share of what you're doing. if i'm not having fun, what good is the game to me? if it's not challenging me, what is the value of combat? if it's not engaging, what is the value in engaging?
this was a viewpoint that i had predominantly held onto for several years, dating to even recently. it's worth stating that even playing final mix did not amend this for me. if anything, it arguably made it worse. i got the platinum in PS3's KH II FM and that is not an easy task to accomplish for the uninitiated. much of my "success" with the superbosses was a result of me bruteforcing my way through fights that required more planning, strategy, and creativity than the entirety of II vanilla had required. it was incredibly frustrating fighting someone like data vexen and getting my ass tapdanced on because i didn't know dominant strats or how to utilize the options i had. sure, i had learned that reflega exists, but limits were still a mystery to me, and it was beyond my expectations that there would be combo modifiers i'd want to unequip (i.e. dodge slash and aerial sweep).
none of the things i needed to do felt explained, none of my tools felt like options i could even use. truthfully, it wasn't just that it didn't click. it was that it was infuriating. it felt like i was missing something. it was a game i had endured seeing heaps of praise for from speedrunners and high level action game players alike. i wanted to understand, and i was dealing with a client that refused to let me in. my opinion managed to sink lower. what's worse than casually being disappointed by a game you thought you loved? exclusion from the cool kid's club and being incapable of finding the way in.
that was 2018. i played II FM as a refresher for III as well as to see how different FM would play. now that we live in a post-kingdom hearts III world, it's easier to see how nothing matters and everything is decaying. but it's worth sharing this poorly arranged medium-article of a review because KH II is a personal game for me. one of great success and failure. i think art, especially video games, can be an intimate experience for people in profound ways, and it feels as though i can segment periods of my life with my experiences with kingdom hearts ii. it's relevant to this review because i am who i am now because of kingdom hearts as a series. not in a major way, but also in an observable way. these anecdotes are relevant to my review because they are me and my feelings on the game are defined by these experiences.
so, with that preamble said, we reach 2023. by this point, i've made my peace with not being in the cool kid's club. if anything, i've been bolstered in my opinion by finding the KH II hater now and then. i know who i am, i am a matured adult. i know what i'm about. still, in spite of my harsh misgivings with KH II, i'm also a person makes mistakes and does not always agree with my past opinions. i even have a list dedicated to games that i used to hate but now love (and one for games i used to love but now don't). i am a person with a perspective, and perspectives change with time, age, and experience. i am struck by a sudden urge to replay kingdom hearts II final mix. i own the story so far collection for PS4 (which has wondrously short load times). i decide to replay it. worst-case scenario, i know the bad things i'm in for, so i can't be surprised. i pop in the disc. i hit new game. "i wanna line the pieces up - yours and mine." cue "sanctuary" by utada hikaru.
and you know what?
it FUCKED.
okay, maybe fucked is a bit much. i still have misgivings with the game (most notably in the plot). and i cannot deny that one of my larger complaints that still resonates with me is with the game's design is level structure that feels open and empty. i still have things to critique about this game. but i do find much more joy in it now as someone with tempered expectations. it's funny, my first playthrough was too much hype that colored me into a state of blind adoration without the adequate understanding to verbalize why i liked the game. then, after that, it was sophomore slump-esque cynicism that failed to see any value or joy in the game at all. thesis, antithesis. it's logical that synthesis would follow.
one of the largest hurdles i had to deal with was coming at this game with the right set of expectations. it's not necessarily a misnomer to call KH II a JRPG, but it is a lie by omission. whereas you could potentially get away with calling KH I a JRPG and not an action game, KH II is a prominent and unapologetic action game. KH II lives and dies by the moments where the player is managing space between an enemy(s) and weighing what options they should use to solve the encounter. this is more than just "use fire on the enemies weak to fire" logic of I. fire is more of a magic function than an element, with emphasis being on using it as a character-orbiting hitbox more than for its elemental status. blizzard gives the player ranged damage in the way ebony and ivory would in DMC. magnet gives crowd control options to help the player deal with larger numbers. reflect is downright busted when you learn how to utilize it. all of this sounds redundant, but starting to view magic as functions rather than JRPG elements is a microcosm of the perspective shift i needed to appreciate what the game is doing. i have to meet the game as it is, not what i demand it be.
the thing about all of this is that the game does not ever expect any competency with these systems, and, as mentioned, it's easy to just bruteforce. in fact, KH II's greatest shame is that it seems embarrassed to tell you about the things you can do and when you should do them. it doesn't even seem to want to provide you with the obstacles that would necessitate them. everything can be largely solved by attacking it, and while there's more efficient ways than just attacking, they're almost always unnecessary. the greatest flaw KH II has is that it lacks the confidence to provide better explanations of these tools and simultaneously demand players use them. what good is a jewel that is too precious?
i now get it though. i understand why people say that this game shines at higher levels of play with critical mode and data organization. to be frank, critical mode feels like the only way i could ever recommend someone experience this game, as it gives that level of burden i had earlier alluded to. it's not a perfect system, and complementary explanations are woefully absent, but it does alleviate so much of what made KH II dull to me. i now understand the value of limits and what tactical advantage they can provide. i now use limit form fairly regularly as a panic button (and because it's busted as fuck for certain fights like roxas lol). i needed third-party suggestions and information to get to this point, but i met the game halfway and got more out of it as a result.
the bittersweet nature of kingdom hearts as a series continues on, however. this was the entry that tied up all loose threads, yet, here we are, characters with stories still being told. the plot was essentially self-contained and could easily be the final entry for the destiny island trio. literally all you would need to do is delete that "chamber of repose" FM cutscene, the letter from the king teaser, and remove references to xehanort from the BBS teaser. from everything i've seen, xehanort might as well be an entirely new character in BBS (a game i have not played yet), so there's no reason to tie the destiny islands trio back into it. KH II was a closure for their story, a finality. sora, riku, and kairi had their adventure, they saw the world, and they returned home to each other. they matured and got to satisfy their yearning for freedom to greater appreciate their surroundings. it was the end of the book. the final scene. the last moment. i know i'm tardy to the party on this one, but KH II did not and should not have gotten sequels that involved these characters anymore. i do plan on playing BBS in the near-ish future, and it's going to be a monumental task for it to overcome this finality in my mind.
overall though? i'm glad i replayed this game. i gained a greater understanding of it with age, and i feel as though i've finally reached a closure with with game that i've denied myself for years. an open wound has finally scabbed over and begun to heal. i can appreciate the heart and soul of this gargantuan entry in not only the series but the PS2 library as well without losing focus of its shortcomings.
new year, new me.
on the one hand, i feel bad for spike chunsoft and kodaka because i predict that they will likely never be able to escape danganronpa (DR) comparisons for any work they publish for the rest of their careers. i know that this review is going to invoke several comparisons just by itself. on the other hand, this game practically begs for them. the presentation both in art style and music is identical, and some specific plot twists turn the screw against veterans of the DR series in a devious way. still, this game ultimately works best for an audience that hasn't played any of the DR games before, because mystery labyrinths feel like diet class trials and the murders are less characteristically zany or intricate with victims and murderers who you are less invested in as characters. in fact, the worst part is that this game's mysteries are a lot more guessable, to a detrimental point. still, i feel part of the blame is the baggage that master detective archives comes with for a lot of people, and, in that respect, i feel sympathy for this work receiving a lukewarm response critically, financially, and (most importantly) with fans.
let me clarify what i mean when i say "the mysteries are too guessable" because it's a very loaded statement. danganronpa mysteries tend to function with a certain amount of known and unknown variables. when you walk into a class trial for the first time, there's a high likelihood you'll know how some of the events transpired, but you'll lack critical information to really cement how all of it played out. sometimes this can be a certain character being cagey about their whereabouts during the murder, or it can be characters obfuscating evidence with their own motivations for doing so. this means the game will have to provide that information during the trial before you can get a plausible idea for what happened. good examples of this would be 1-2, 2-1, 2-2, and 3-2. it's not necessarily impossible for someone to be able to say "the killer for this case is x, the method they used is y, and their motive was z", but i would say there's basically no case where you can guess all three before the class trial begins.
so, knowing that, let me tell you now that with no exaggeration i was able to guess the murder and methodology for every murder case except the last one before even setting foot in the mystery labyrinth. (the motives were a lot more of a crapshoot. this game places a lot softer of an emphasis on motives for killing especially compared to DR's habit of having monokuma tempt the students with things like "if you don't kill someone i will reveal your darkest secret" or "kill someone and you won't have to deal with a class trial", etc. and instead you'll get more normal motives like killing for profit.) i am not saying this to brag or imply that i'm some super meta-genius when it comes to these things. if anything, i consider myself below average when it comes to solving murder mystery type stories, so you can see the problem i'm presenting here. these mysteries are too undercooked and too simple to really catch me off guard. maybe the DR poisoning has made me keenly aware of certain clues/killers, but i truly believe this is more a failing of the game not presenting enough variables and interesting situations. process of elimination will solve most of the "who is the culprit" guessing before the mystery labyrinths even begin. where's the tension there?
and, to be absolutely clear, there is nothing wrong with a murder mystery being solvable. in fact, some of the best mysteries are the ones where you have all the information and can solve on your own. the problem is pacing. the investigation segments of this game take a fiendishly long time, even by DR standards, and so much of the mystery labyrinths are dedicated to repeating back things the player likely already deduced. i would go so far as to say something like 10% of the game's script is just summarizing either already known plot points or explaining what the player just proved. i actually enjoyed some of these mysteries in spite of this repetition (with chapters 0 and 2 being the most enjoyable of the game imo), but it didn't help that it constantly felt like i was 2 steps ahead of the game all the time.
master detective archives takes a very hard veer away from DR formula as well by constantly introducing new characters as suspects for each case. the problem was that DR reusing characters for suspects was part of the brilliance of its premise: someone who you'd expect to never commit a murder in the first chapter could easily be the murderer by the third. it also invested you greatly in the cast because you didn't know who would make it to the end and who would take that dark left turn to murder. i feel a lot less investment in accusing a character in chapter 1 of this game, for instance, when literally none of the suspects have names. seriously, you're telling me i have to pick between priest, nun, servant, and worshipper instead of people with names? you also get scant precious time to actually know these characters, some of which you'll interact with potentially only once before having to accuse them. again, this is playing against a DR trope, so i get what they wanted to do, but it's sort of like saying "i'm known for writing stories with several endearing characters, so what if i break tradition and give you a bunch of NOTHING characters huh? would that fuck with you guys a bit?". and, well, it results in a lot of moments with deflated tension. that's probably why chapter 2 was my favorite case; you're given an uncharacteristically large amount of time to learn who the suspects are before the mystery labyrinth, and it invested me so much more in the story going on there.
this stringent economy of characters also works against itself with the recurring cast too. there's only about 6 characters that get any development throughout the entire game, and most of the time their presence ends up being mutually exclusive. so, that means you'll get to spend chapter 1 with a, 2 with b, 3 with c, and so on. i think the attempt at quality vs. quantity is a worthy goal, but it lacks for execution. desuhiko somehow ends up being worse than any of the sex pests in the DR games, fubuki's ditzyness borders on "if i leave this girl alone for two minutes i'm gonna walk in on her licking an electrical socket", and generally i'm just left underfed for a lot of these characters as a whole. all of them abruptly disappear in the final chapter as well, which makes their presence feel even more undercut. gumshoe gab does go a bit of a ways to helping characterize them more, but the majority of the time you're gonna be spent with yuma and shinigami, and their dynamic wears thin pretty quickly.
i certainly wouldn't say i hated master detective archives, but it started to lose me at the halfway mark and basically never recovered. i think the fourth and fifth chapters are especially bad because chapter 4 ends up cutting a lot of corners in its mystery as well as just having several parts that either make no sense or go unexplained. meanwhile, chapter 5 is largely just a lore dump in the investigation and then a regurgitation in the mystery labyrinth. most of the "big" twists of the endgame are things that i had already loosely predicted and just lacked the exact details to hours ago. again, these things being guessable isn't the problem, the problem is rooted in the game thinking these mysteries are big reveals that justify so much slowburn. mystery labyrinths in general just need a lot of retooling because reasoning death matches are a poor man's non-stop debate, shinigami puzzle is "what if we made hangman's gambit somehow shittier", and everything else is just either walking while characters talk, a QTE, or a multiple choice question. i don't think it's wrong to expect better gameplay than just aping what was provided in a PSP game from 2011. at the same time, this game is making me question if kodaka's ever going to want to make something that requires breaking out of the DR formula. sure, the DR series is over, but games like this could functionally be considered danganronpa 4 for as little identity and innovation that they bring to the table. everything good here DR did better, everything bad here is done in spite of DR.
this game was an interesting experience for me because i played it with my boyfriend; he didn't necessarily have a glowing opinion of it, but he did at least find more enjoyment with it than i did. i've told him that's partially because he doesn't know how much is being borrowed from DR (he has never played any of the games), but i think it also helps seeing this as a first from SC and kodaka. i'm going to repeat what i said in that this is a game that does the best with people who have minimal exposure to DR, because the lower gear shift here is felt harder with that experience. i would still consider this better than SDR2, but that stems more from virulently hating SDR2's refusal to deliver on several dangling carrots + incredibly horny for teenagers energy. this game ironically also suffers from that, just to a lesser degree. the one thing i could say in SDR2's defense is that it hits much higher highs than master detective archives: rain code ever comes close to. and while the lower lows aren't felt, i won't deny that i'm much more likely to forget the majority of this game in a month compared to the lasting memory i have of SDR2. i think that sentiment has been echoed in how little i heard about this game going into it. i remember seeing the trailer, thinking "i should play that if i get some free time", and expecting to witness at least a little clamor over it on launch but instead hearing nothing. hell, by the time it even came back to mind, it was several months past launch and no one in my circles had even mentioned it, DR fans included. i was hoping this would be a situation where it was an overlooked gem, but i think its relative unpopularity with both critics and fans alike speaks for itself.
let me clarify what i mean when i say "the mysteries are too guessable" because it's a very loaded statement. danganronpa mysteries tend to function with a certain amount of known and unknown variables. when you walk into a class trial for the first time, there's a high likelihood you'll know how some of the events transpired, but you'll lack critical information to really cement how all of it played out. sometimes this can be a certain character being cagey about their whereabouts during the murder, or it can be characters obfuscating evidence with their own motivations for doing so. this means the game will have to provide that information during the trial before you can get a plausible idea for what happened. good examples of this would be 1-2, 2-1, 2-2, and 3-2. it's not necessarily impossible for someone to be able to say "the killer for this case is x, the method they used is y, and their motive was z", but i would say there's basically no case where you can guess all three before the class trial begins.
so, knowing that, let me tell you now that with no exaggeration i was able to guess the murder and methodology for every murder case except the last one before even setting foot in the mystery labyrinth. (the motives were a lot more of a crapshoot. this game places a lot softer of an emphasis on motives for killing especially compared to DR's habit of having monokuma tempt the students with things like "if you don't kill someone i will reveal your darkest secret" or "kill someone and you won't have to deal with a class trial", etc. and instead you'll get more normal motives like killing for profit.) i am not saying this to brag or imply that i'm some super meta-genius when it comes to these things. if anything, i consider myself below average when it comes to solving murder mystery type stories, so you can see the problem i'm presenting here. these mysteries are too undercooked and too simple to really catch me off guard. maybe the DR poisoning has made me keenly aware of certain clues/killers, but i truly believe this is more a failing of the game not presenting enough variables and interesting situations. process of elimination will solve most of the "who is the culprit" guessing before the mystery labyrinths even begin. where's the tension there?
and, to be absolutely clear, there is nothing wrong with a murder mystery being solvable. in fact, some of the best mysteries are the ones where you have all the information and can solve on your own. the problem is pacing. the investigation segments of this game take a fiendishly long time, even by DR standards, and so much of the mystery labyrinths are dedicated to repeating back things the player likely already deduced. i would go so far as to say something like 10% of the game's script is just summarizing either already known plot points or explaining what the player just proved. i actually enjoyed some of these mysteries in spite of this repetition (with chapters 0 and 2 being the most enjoyable of the game imo), but it didn't help that it constantly felt like i was 2 steps ahead of the game all the time.
master detective archives takes a very hard veer away from DR formula as well by constantly introducing new characters as suspects for each case. the problem was that DR reusing characters for suspects was part of the brilliance of its premise: someone who you'd expect to never commit a murder in the first chapter could easily be the murderer by the third. it also invested you greatly in the cast because you didn't know who would make it to the end and who would take that dark left turn to murder. i feel a lot less investment in accusing a character in chapter 1 of this game, for instance, when literally none of the suspects have names. seriously, you're telling me i have to pick between priest, nun, servant, and worshipper instead of people with names? you also get scant precious time to actually know these characters, some of which you'll interact with potentially only once before having to accuse them. again, this is playing against a DR trope, so i get what they wanted to do, but it's sort of like saying "i'm known for writing stories with several endearing characters, so what if i break tradition and give you a bunch of NOTHING characters huh? would that fuck with you guys a bit?". and, well, it results in a lot of moments with deflated tension. that's probably why chapter 2 was my favorite case; you're given an uncharacteristically large amount of time to learn who the suspects are before the mystery labyrinth, and it invested me so much more in the story going on there.
this stringent economy of characters also works against itself with the recurring cast too. there's only about 6 characters that get any development throughout the entire game, and most of the time their presence ends up being mutually exclusive. so, that means you'll get to spend chapter 1 with a, 2 with b, 3 with c, and so on. i think the attempt at quality vs. quantity is a worthy goal, but it lacks for execution. desuhiko somehow ends up being worse than any of the sex pests in the DR games, fubuki's ditzyness borders on "if i leave this girl alone for two minutes i'm gonna walk in on her licking an electrical socket", and generally i'm just left underfed for a lot of these characters as a whole. all of them abruptly disappear in the final chapter as well, which makes their presence feel even more undercut. gumshoe gab does go a bit of a ways to helping characterize them more, but the majority of the time you're gonna be spent with yuma and shinigami, and their dynamic wears thin pretty quickly.
i certainly wouldn't say i hated master detective archives, but it started to lose me at the halfway mark and basically never recovered. i think the fourth and fifth chapters are especially bad because chapter 4 ends up cutting a lot of corners in its mystery as well as just having several parts that either make no sense or go unexplained. meanwhile, chapter 5 is largely just a lore dump in the investigation and then a regurgitation in the mystery labyrinth. most of the "big" twists of the endgame are things that i had already loosely predicted and just lacked the exact details to hours ago. again, these things being guessable isn't the problem, the problem is rooted in the game thinking these mysteries are big reveals that justify so much slowburn. mystery labyrinths in general just need a lot of retooling because reasoning death matches are a poor man's non-stop debate, shinigami puzzle is "what if we made hangman's gambit somehow shittier", and everything else is just either walking while characters talk, a QTE, or a multiple choice question. i don't think it's wrong to expect better gameplay than just aping what was provided in a PSP game from 2011. at the same time, this game is making me question if kodaka's ever going to want to make something that requires breaking out of the DR formula. sure, the DR series is over, but games like this could functionally be considered danganronpa 4 for as little identity and innovation that they bring to the table. everything good here DR did better, everything bad here is done in spite of DR.
this game was an interesting experience for me because i played it with my boyfriend; he didn't necessarily have a glowing opinion of it, but he did at least find more enjoyment with it than i did. i've told him that's partially because he doesn't know how much is being borrowed from DR (he has never played any of the games), but i think it also helps seeing this as a first from SC and kodaka. i'm going to repeat what i said in that this is a game that does the best with people who have minimal exposure to DR, because the lower gear shift here is felt harder with that experience. i would still consider this better than SDR2, but that stems more from virulently hating SDR2's refusal to deliver on several dangling carrots + incredibly horny for teenagers energy. this game ironically also suffers from that, just to a lesser degree. the one thing i could say in SDR2's defense is that it hits much higher highs than master detective archives: rain code ever comes close to. and while the lower lows aren't felt, i won't deny that i'm much more likely to forget the majority of this game in a month compared to the lasting memory i have of SDR2. i think that sentiment has been echoed in how little i heard about this game going into it. i remember seeing the trailer, thinking "i should play that if i get some free time", and expecting to witness at least a little clamor over it on launch but instead hearing nothing. hell, by the time it even came back to mind, it was several months past launch and no one in my circles had even mentioned it, DR fans included. i was hoping this would be a situation where it was an overlooked gem, but i think its relative unpopularity with both critics and fans alike speaks for itself.
2023
sometimes i feel like i am pretty obviously the problem. i don't necessarily believe in the "vote with your wallet!" shit because that's been proven not to work as old as 2014 (https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/03/01/why-its-scary-when-0-15-mobile-gamers-bring-in-50-of-the-revenue/?sh=4ad6b8264065). but i think there is some level of blame to place at my feet for pre-ordering a game i didn't even particularly have high expectations for. hell, the only reason i pre-ordered this thing was because i knew, at some point, i'd want to play it for myself, so why not secure a new copy and be done with it? the pre-order bonus was incredibly insulting (oh joy, i get orpheus picaro and izanagi picaro for free) and it didn't even get me the day one DLC (very much love how this sort of thing doesn't even raise eyebrows anymore). so, i want you all to know, in spite of this, i still tried to have a good time with this game. and, truthfully, it's not that bad. it's just simultaneously not that good either. there isn't anything outstanding or noteworthy here if you aren't already a fan of P5's cast, and even then, i'm tired of these characters.
i think what really sucks my enthusiasm out of this game is how low-effort everything feels. my cynical pet theory is that this was a game that was originally going to be a mobile release in the vein of something like nier reincarnation, but atlus thought they could get away with releasing this at full price on current gen hardware. joke's on me, i did buy the game. still, i don't feel as though enough people have been critical of how little this game demands of its hardware. graphics are stylized to a degree that this could run on 3DS hardware with little issue, the mechanics lack complexity or depth such that every character functionally plays the same with a modest tweak here and there, and there's actually very little strategy required for a tactics game. the very few missions that actually require planning and thought are the side-quests that will ask you to clear the level in one turn by cleverly using its mechanics to their full extent. this is stuff that we should've been seeing in the maingame by the halfway point, not as optional side content. instead, basically every challenge the main missions throw at you can be easily brute-forced. this plays less like a game based around tactics and more one around trial-and-error. the addition of an "undo the previous turn if you make any egregious mistakes" function in the menu certainly doesn't help that accusation.
indeed, this game introduces nearly all of its mechanics pretty early and then never develops them or asks the player to utilize them in uncanny or unexpected ways. there are no surprises in tactica's gameplay, and very little competency is asked of the player. i don't even consider myself a particularly smart/great video game player, but i played on hard mode and only saw the game over screen once (and that was by accident due to misunderstanding an endgame sidequest's objective). nothing about tactica feels challenging and, by extension, interesting. there are a few novel gameplay features here, such as how all-out attacks are handled, but they're given very little cost and are almost trivial to execute. combine that with a persona system that is so simplified it makes raidou blush, and there's ultimately very little going on under the hood which, again, reinforces my belief that this could've run comfortably on my phone. i'm not asking for a new final fantasy tactics, but it is interesting how that game managed to have so much more intrigue in both narrative and gameplay despite also being a spinoff of a popular turn-based JRPG series 20 years ago. the tactics genre hasn't stagnated this much, i think atlus just really assumed the persona 5 fanbase lacks standards for this sort of thing. and, loathe as i am to say it, there is a convincing argument to be made in atlus' favor.
i sound exceptionally negative on this game and it's more because even though the majority of my playthrough was brainless skinner box dopamine collecting, i resent what this game represents more than i find any major flaw with it. not every game has to shoot for the stars, and a lack of ambition hasn't stopped me from enjoying other games. again, it's just the cynicism behind all of this. the story isn't particularly interesting and feels fairly predictable. the P5 cast has been sanded down now and have lost the 3-dimensionality that they had in their original game so now you have futaba saying "sus" and makoto's main thing is how she can be scary sometimes. everyone's going through the motions. i will obviously never know the full story of production here, but i feel such a lack of passion for this game from its own dev team. again, i went into this with dim prospects, and i still managed to walk away underwhelmed. in that sense, maybe 2.5/5.0 is too high.
among other things, i just don't feel like this is a game particularly worth your time. i did roughly 2 playthroughs (big ups to locking like 9 personas to NG+ so i had to do a NG+ playthrough just to get the platinum), and i couldn't overcome the feeling that this was a disposable Q4 release for atlus rather than something they cared about. i mean, sure, that's obvious to see, but i was at least a little hopeful that atlus' autopilot was a little better than this. i'm truly baffled that this game's release has been as positive as it is. disregard that one clickbait kotaku article about this game being lgbt positive or whatever; look at the average rating + the general consensus in the reviews here. it legitimately feels like everyone played a different game than the one i am talking about. most likely it's a self-selection bias situation where the people who would've disliked this game more than the current group already removed themselves from the sample. even with that in consideration, it's dire that this hasn't come under greater scrutiny. persona 5 fans really think this is a good spinoff?
i guess that's part of the problem when you're part of the problem: no one's going to join your bandwagon against self-flagellation when you bear the scars on your back.
i think what really sucks my enthusiasm out of this game is how low-effort everything feels. my cynical pet theory is that this was a game that was originally going to be a mobile release in the vein of something like nier reincarnation, but atlus thought they could get away with releasing this at full price on current gen hardware. joke's on me, i did buy the game. still, i don't feel as though enough people have been critical of how little this game demands of its hardware. graphics are stylized to a degree that this could run on 3DS hardware with little issue, the mechanics lack complexity or depth such that every character functionally plays the same with a modest tweak here and there, and there's actually very little strategy required for a tactics game. the very few missions that actually require planning and thought are the side-quests that will ask you to clear the level in one turn by cleverly using its mechanics to their full extent. this is stuff that we should've been seeing in the maingame by the halfway point, not as optional side content. instead, basically every challenge the main missions throw at you can be easily brute-forced. this plays less like a game based around tactics and more one around trial-and-error. the addition of an "undo the previous turn if you make any egregious mistakes" function in the menu certainly doesn't help that accusation.
indeed, this game introduces nearly all of its mechanics pretty early and then never develops them or asks the player to utilize them in uncanny or unexpected ways. there are no surprises in tactica's gameplay, and very little competency is asked of the player. i don't even consider myself a particularly smart/great video game player, but i played on hard mode and only saw the game over screen once (and that was by accident due to misunderstanding an endgame sidequest's objective). nothing about tactica feels challenging and, by extension, interesting. there are a few novel gameplay features here, such as how all-out attacks are handled, but they're given very little cost and are almost trivial to execute. combine that with a persona system that is so simplified it makes raidou blush, and there's ultimately very little going on under the hood which, again, reinforces my belief that this could've run comfortably on my phone. i'm not asking for a new final fantasy tactics, but it is interesting how that game managed to have so much more intrigue in both narrative and gameplay despite also being a spinoff of a popular turn-based JRPG series 20 years ago. the tactics genre hasn't stagnated this much, i think atlus just really assumed the persona 5 fanbase lacks standards for this sort of thing. and, loathe as i am to say it, there is a convincing argument to be made in atlus' favor.
i sound exceptionally negative on this game and it's more because even though the majority of my playthrough was brainless skinner box dopamine collecting, i resent what this game represents more than i find any major flaw with it. not every game has to shoot for the stars, and a lack of ambition hasn't stopped me from enjoying other games. again, it's just the cynicism behind all of this. the story isn't particularly interesting and feels fairly predictable. the P5 cast has been sanded down now and have lost the 3-dimensionality that they had in their original game so now you have futaba saying "sus" and makoto's main thing is how she can be scary sometimes. everyone's going through the motions. i will obviously never know the full story of production here, but i feel such a lack of passion for this game from its own dev team. again, i went into this with dim prospects, and i still managed to walk away underwhelmed. in that sense, maybe 2.5/5.0 is too high.
among other things, i just don't feel like this is a game particularly worth your time. i did roughly 2 playthroughs (big ups to locking like 9 personas to NG+ so i had to do a NG+ playthrough just to get the platinum), and i couldn't overcome the feeling that this was a disposable Q4 release for atlus rather than something they cared about. i mean, sure, that's obvious to see, but i was at least a little hopeful that atlus' autopilot was a little better than this. i'm truly baffled that this game's release has been as positive as it is. disregard that one clickbait kotaku article about this game being lgbt positive or whatever; look at the average rating + the general consensus in the reviews here. it legitimately feels like everyone played a different game than the one i am talking about. most likely it's a self-selection bias situation where the people who would've disliked this game more than the current group already removed themselves from the sample. even with that in consideration, it's dire that this hasn't come under greater scrutiny. persona 5 fans really think this is a good spinoff?
i guess that's part of the problem when you're part of the problem: no one's going to join your bandwagon against self-flagellation when you bear the scars on your back.