had a very rocky relationship with the game as i played, and i came away from it positively, but ultimately a bit underwhelmed? the depth and openness and discovery of dark souls was substituted for a more streamlined gameplay style that just happened to be one i didn't really gel with. i honestly much prefer basically everything else about these games to the combat itself, so it's a bit of a miss for me in those regards

basically i like almost everything about dark souls better except the writing and visuals. blood vials are bad, frenzy is nonsense, and boss fights shouldn't take any longer than, like, two and a half minutes or so, imo

i was a defender of this game for a long long time off the merits of the dss system and upon replay in the advance collection.... i don't think i can really defend it in good faith anymore lol

starting positive, i still think DSS is an incredibly cool system. collecting them is always extremely exciting thanks to the way each one becomes more and more valuable the more you collect. just getting one card drop can suddenly give you access to entire mechanics, which is super cool! but wow does the game not want you to get to experience that system

the #1 cardinal sin the game commits is that exploration isn't fun. traversal is absolutely laborious thanks to needing to double tap to run every single time. lots of frustration due to not timing the inputs right and getting jumps with puny horizontal distance. really makes you just not want to bother taking nathan anywhere you don't have to

the second most glaring flaw is item drops. there's no shop in the game, nor are there any items hidden in the castle. any secret you find will always be a stat boost. which means, all items are random drops by enemies. and the drop rates are pitiful. it's bad enough that DSS cards and gear are behind <1% drop rates, but even healing items appear just once in a blue moon. if you want to see what the game has to offer, you truly have to grind out item drops, and there's nothing fun at all about it

it all comes together in a game that just feels like it lacks thoughtful design. more than any other castlevania game, this game's castle is full of long, straight-shot hallways with the same enemies repeated over and over. lots of monsters consistently inflict status ailment without reliable way to cure it. the only rewards you get for exploration are stat boos items. it's just not fun to play, and rarely feels rewarding. i wish we could've seen a revised DSS in another game, but for now the best you can do is enjoy it as much as possible in this game's magician mode

i bought this game on 360 in 2011 as a buy two get one free with batman arkham city and something else i forget and played until i got killed by the bridge wyvern. then i bought it on pc at launch and maybe played up to firelink. then i bought it on ps4 and got about halfway through undead burg. then after hearing all the elden ring hype, i figured i should try it again rather than take the plunge on a new game. so i played until bell gargoyles and decided it wasn't for me. it wasn't a matter of difficulty, i just felt like... i wasn't really getting anything out of learning boss patterns to attempt them over and over. it wasn't fulfilling for me and i really wished i had spent the time another way

but! part of me woke up the next day wanting to try again. and for about a week, i played hours every day until it was all done. it had finally clicked, and i really, really enjoyed it

the previous times i played it, i was constantly worried about finding the way the game wanted me to play. that if a game was so unforgiving, surely there must just be a "right" way to approach things so you run into fewer problems. but... i think the appeal of the game is how much that wasn't the case at all! i was able to just find what worked for me and run with it, and... it was pretty smooth sailing all the way through. i never really felt like i had to change course to play the game the way it wanted me to

i begrudged people for a long, long time over comparisons between this series and castlevania, figuring people just saw vaguely gothic themes and deliberate combat and drew a surface-level comparison. but i found that the gameplay loop really scratches the same itch as the iga directed titles. exploring to find checkpoints, lots of cool and unique loot, memorable bosses, discovering connections in the world, a mix of horror and whimsy, discovering secrets on your own as well as hearing about the ones that i would never have found. it's... really all there, and in great form

i held something of a grudge against this game and series for a long time, feeling like it was something of a traitor to the mid-budget japanese game pedigree that it came from, and that i loved so dearly. but in the end... it's actually exactly what i like about those games. it's unabashedly weird and deep and full of ideas and passion. and knowing that something like this ended up reaching the success it did gives me much more hope than the larger scale dialogue of "dark souls made it okay for games to be difficult". so....... i'm sorry dark souls!!!! i was wrong all along!!!!! thank you for being such a cool and interesting game!!!!!

i can almost understand people who got extremely upset about not every pokemon being in every game after seeing a game that does a more meaningful job of selectively choosing elements and mechanics to retain. almost.

i do see this as more of a promising template than a full realization of what it sets out to do. wild pokemon behavior is disappointingly similar, as is any strategy involved with trying to catch pokemon without sending your own into battle. and at some point, taking a stealth approach becomes a waste of time compared to brute force

the willingness to pick and choose mechanics to keep rather than carry everything forward except a previous generation's super move gimmick is a very welcome one. found relearning what i knew about pokemon and reconsidering strategies very engaging. don't really understand why multibattles are in but any moves related to it aren't, and while i understand that breeding was removed to make catching more significant, it feels like it just makes catching evolved forms less desirable

in the future i'd like to see more of a push for battling and action mechanics, which are very light here, and less of it for open world and crafting. honestly found the setting to be the least engaging part. would much prefer a modern-day action pokemon game, perhaps set in a more unregulated region like the gamecube entries, than the hunter-gatherer setting. also sinnoh is just really boring sorry!!!!!!

in general this is exciting proof that the pokemon formula is just as engaging when you push its genre boundaries and i hope to see more like it. neato game imo

this definitely feels like a bit of a watered down experience in some ways but in the end this is just a massive warm cozy concentrated chunk of imas content

in exchange for having nearly 30 idols, there's some pretty clear concessions that were made. firstly, this is really not a replayable game. there's a single story route and it always plays out the same way, and it's loooong. too long, probably. and if you were hoping for a story where your favorite idol played a key role... you're not getting it. it's all about kohaku, the one new character. any other given character's role during the story is pretty much for the sake of kohaku. this can definitely be a bit of a bitter pill to swallow for what's supposed to be a special anniversary game where on top of your favorite 765pro idols, you can finally manage characters from other branches in a console release

on that note, this game doesn't have you create your own unit to manage. instead, your unit consists of all 29 idols in the game. rather than choosing your favorite idols to focus on, it's necessary to balance the entire cast. because if you don't... you'll very much regret it in time

all the game's issues came to a head for me about halfway in, when there's literally several hours straight of kohaku cutscenes, and hearing every line of dialogue out of my favorite characters' mouths be about how they were worried about kohaku became grueling. and then immediately after that, the game introduces a massive difficulty spike in the form of medley lives. suddenly you needed to have half the cast live-ready at any given time, and there was little room for error. all the commus where i hadn't chosen the best response started to add up, meaning my crew was unequipped to handle the tasks ahead. i'm sure this was very deliberate when the game offers stat boosting items as paid dlc via the shop

i was almost prepared to just give up on the game after hitting that wall, but i decided to start over using a commu guide. which wasn't necessarily an easy decision considering it took many many hours to return to the point i was at

after breaking through that wall, though, i found that the game hid any depth the simulation component had until late-game. it's still very reduced compared to some previous entries, but there's still more freedom for strategy than the insanely rigid first half of the game would lead you to think. in fact, once it opens up, it suddenly becomes really easy for anyone who knows what they're doing

the game's presentation is absolutely gorgeous, and if it weren't for my firm belief that the original kubooka art is the absolute peak of the anime aesthetic, this is the best the series has looked by a mile. it's honestly almost worth the price of admission to just look at it all in motion (including the decade+ old ancient dialogue animations the 765 idols still have)

song list is honestly a bit on the weaker side, just for the lack of variety. every idolmaster series brings several of its main themes, in addition to one of the 5 or so new songs being a main theme, meaning a lot of the song list is extremely similar traditional-style idol songs. on the other hand, this helps a new surf rock or gothic track stand out in a very positive way. still, it would've been nice to have more genre variety in its picks from returning tracks

despite any complaints, this is a game i kept wanting to go back to that kept having more to offer. it's just densely concentrated idolmaster, stretching far as the eye can see. getting to interact with some of my favorites from other branches (the deremas picks in particular were spot-on for me. if only shiki were in it...) in a new way, returning to managing 765 idols, and seeing all the cross-branch interactions really were always a joy, and it felt practically un-ending. and i haven't even touched the dlc!!

so, i'm sure this is a disappointing release for a lot of longtime fans in some ways, and i don't really think it would sell newcomers on the appeal of the franchise. but as someone who followed the series from the sidelines since the beginning, there's just something very irresistibly warm and inviting about this game