I jumped for joy at another chance to get back into my 2023 Game of the Year in Final Fantasy XVI with the surprise announcement of this DLC at The Game Awards. Imagining I was in for a brief experience, and with a three-four hour runtime I was, I'd hoped that Echoes of the Fallen with its bombastically vibrant trailer would capture the jaw-dropping magic that the main title was able to do. Generally it speaking it did, but there did exist flaws within this short DLC that I found unfortunately a little too much to ignore.

Visual Clarity is a big thing for me in games, I really like being able to see the ooh's and ahh's but not at the expense of mechanical understanding and movement within an encounter. FFXVI had a few moments in the eikon fights that I legitimately could not tell what was going on, it's something I struggle with in games and FFXVI was a prime example of where this happens. Echoes of the Fallen contains a few miniboss fights with a major boss at the end. The first miniboss was mostly alright but again just awkward enough in the amount of touhou level mechanics thrown at you that I got hit by moves I thought I normally wouldn't. Where it really got bad was in the last fight against the big bad, I almost threw my hands up in the air in a bout of intensified confusion because of all the visual clutter. I loved FFXVI, I love the scale of these fights, but there's only so much purples/reds/yellows that I can take coming at each and every angle all the time before my ability to follow what's going on is completely lost.

Outside of slight complaints, the location itself was really neat, the runtime probably perfect for a near to end-game DLC addition, but the visual overload and combo-locking bosses was unfortunately not my cup of tea. Once more, Masayoshi Soken delivers a fantastic (yet short) soundtracking experience, the ultimate boss theme being one of the cooler tracks in the entire game. I recommend this if you're playing through FFXVI, but maybe not a must-see for players thinking about getting back into it.

I cannot explain how much I love this game. This game frustrated the hell out of me, but in a good way. It kept me coming back. I died a lot, but each time I died, I benefitted. Finding the perfect cast of characters for each boss and pulling off perfect strategy is so satisfying. There isn’t a bad character in the game, they are all great for their own skills. And though I wasn’t sure if I’d like the “second job” option, it became really fun really quickly. The game is an eye-gasm to say the least, it’s gorgeous to look at, not to mention the soundtrack that lives in my head rent-free. The voice acting is above and beyond. Needless to say, this game had a death-grip on me and I grew fonder and fonder of it the more I played it. Each character became very special to me. I know this is one of those ‘either you love it or you hate it’ kind of games to people but I can honestly say it’s one of my favorite games I’ve ever played.

Sonic Adventure 2 is a perfect allegory for the police as an organization, and considering their denomination — GUN — an immortalized reminder of their brute force and willful incompetence.

From the wrongfully attempted persecution of our titular hero, to the attempted murder of a harmless turtle, and finally the actual murder of a small child, there are no punches being pulled here. GUN is vicious, uncaring, and irresponsible.

Just like the non fictional industry they represent.

Sonic knows these people cannot be reasoned with. He outruns them, defaces their property, and smashes the system whenever it stands in his way.

He's our true boy in blue.

Probably the best thing Gamefreak has put out in ages since Gen 5 and Pokemon HGSS.

I hope that this is the new direction Pokemon takes in general. I honestly prefer this to any of the tradition Pokemon games. The battle system already felt better, and could be even better with some tweaking. I love all of the maps and wish there were more.

Alpha Pokemon are also, before you get better balls at least, the most challenge Pokemon has given us in a while and the fights with them were actually fun, and felt dangerous.

Music's great, story's the only one I've cared about since B&W, the catching mechanics are a joy to use.

My minor complaints mostly have to do with the graphics (We've heard that one a million times), balms for bosses feel kinda... silly? and I feel like trade evolution Pokemon should still evolve through trading since the Link Cable item is so rare.


Edit: There's some unfactual information in this review. Trade Evolutions still work, already did a few. Completing the Pokedex is fun but fuck Spiritomb.

We're initially grounded in the body of Yuito/Kasane, almost claustrophobically. There's a slight hesitation between pressing the jump button and the character performing it, and awkward movement through alleys and stairways suddenly bring to attention just how little control we ever had over them. We are always gelled to environments that both look good and move us through set paths, deflecting interest. It's in combat that our movement becomes fluid, and this fluidity is, curiously, achieved through the character body being divided into pieces, disappearing from the screen in flashes, and directing present action through inanimate objects. Scarlet Nexus' narrative then matches this play, as it revolves around the merits and ethics of intersubjectivity. It's when we move from Yuito/Kasane and are distributed across others that we feel free, and the rhythms of Scarlet Nexus are felt and capable of being instrumentalised. Our eyes blur across the entire field, moving and shaking, and in the moment that we become one with the chaos everything falls into place.

The spatial logic of the hack and slash dictates that environments operate only as empty stages, and that working through the possibilities of the body-in-action is exploration. Items are given glowing outlines that highlight their functionality as game objects, and during action the beautifully imagined backdrops close in, revealing the illusionism of the grey box models. There's a reason for this — Yuito/Kasane direct their interest solely to the goal at hand, and the game graphically maps itself to this hack and slash intentionality. Unfortunately the telekinetic vision that could make the environments vividly alive with possibility gradually reveals how uniform these stages really are. It doesn't help that they are so fragmented, or that our progression through them is so linear. They lack the circularity of something like Nier, where the repetition becomes akin to madness, and instead dissolve as we depart.

As the game advances the levels get more visually minimalistic and so 'true' to their nature as virtual wireframes — like in the Arkham games' detective vision, there is a kick to being granted access to the world one layer down from graphical representation. And this should compound thematically in a game about recursive timelines and datasets. Early on there's the suggestion that the top 'semantic' layer (cities, people, etc) is a simulation projected onto a ruined Real, but Scarlet Nexus ultimately asserts itself as a political (rather than existential) dystopia. The fish and skies are holograms, but the people and buildings aren't. Memories can be transferred from a central database into clones, but we're to believe in the veracity of Yuito/Kasane. It tones down cybernetic/End of History ambiguities to make the case for concrete history and identities, but so why then does it all feel so dead and empty?

As the game through long static expositional sequences divulges its ultimately straightforward narrative (major players capable of manipulating space-time to their own personal/emotional ends), it's Satori the Archivist who continues to warrant interest. Saving and loading states is performed through this mysterious figure who is always there, at home, in dreams, in protected locations, and whose voice becomes less and less human. Early on the Archivist explains his position as a recorder of events for his employer (the same one as that of the protagonist), and this makes sense as the prevalence of surveillance and news networks is underscored as a fact of life in New Himuka. Before long it's clear that he's not actually working for anyone, and admits that he is 'air, and shadow' — an inhuman force that binds and gives shape to all things. This undermines the character-centric form the narrative takes, and insists on the eeriness of Scarlet Nexus' questions of time and virtuality from the sideline. That is, it is not us as Yuito/Kasane moving through concrete space that drives the game; our experience is only the flow of records kept by the Archivist who personifies the immanent code of the game system. It's the air, the shadows, it's God.

Triangle Strategy feels like an SRPG made just for me. What I love about this game is the ample amount of backstory and lore of each and respective countries filled with the brim with political intrigue each detailing how the citizen of their respective country was brought up.

The game focuses on what "choices" you would make in the instance and I'm happy that the story is excellent here. It's felt more grounded than other stories in the genre leaning on with it's huge emphasis on it's political drama whilst they build up each and every character motivations through their convictions and thoughts.

Gameplay felt really well done and you really need to think on the "strategic" element on the game. It's challenging and will provide you with that satisfaction of completing each map (At least to me when I finish the game on hard). Every map felt different each with it's own special elevation and gimmick to be able to help you in your battles. Every character in this felt like an individual and can be useful too which I really love. I know that there were some hoping to be more customizable, and I do wish for that too to a certain extend where there's more weapon skill trees for the player to choose and different job promotion in a skill tree like setting rather than a free-for-all.

However, this in turn make the game feels more well-done at least to my opinion because the game can be balance with the currently available jobs in mind so I don't really mind too much.

To be honest, my only gripe with the game is the story to battle ratio in the beginning where it felt like it's 2/3 story to battle ratio. However towards the middle there were certainly cases where the story bits were definitely reduced down. Needless to say, I'm one for the story bits, as it was really entertaining and it brought to the player eyes to make it more interesting as you can feel connected with each of the main cast.

There are more I would love to say about the game, but I'm not that good with articulating my thoughts that well. However, I will leave it with this. Triangle Strategy is honestly a very enjoyable experience as long as you love your political drama and have interest in it's characters and the world it has build upon. I genuinely had a great time with the game, and I hope most of you do too