played almost to the end. as interesting as i think the game and its multitude of ideas and systems are (esp as a snes release) it became increasingly frustrating and tedious to play as i settled in and learned how things worked. the variety of options completely stopped meaning anything as the only way that i was able to finish levels was to turtle my whole team and slowly pick off guys or suicide charge to kill the one target. a lot of my issues i feel are symptoms of the original game design, as it just felt very slow and low-impact. not to mention the game is SO LONG lmao, i literally gave it 40 hours. no thank you.

they somehow followed up on ayesha by making the gameplay loop even more addicting and the vibes more vibing. it feels considerably less "open" than ayesha but i think i almost prefer it this way. the game is sort of on rails in terms of getting your tasks done, but it has enough going on that it feels like i still have to think about what im doing. that airship sideplot was a really cool little side gig that felt so rewarding and added to the main plot as well
also the final boss theme is a vocal track sung by kanako itou?? peak fiction