Ys : A forgotten Revolution

The 80's were such a pivotal time for the history of video games. If you think making games is hard now, imagine what it must've been like in an era where pretty much everything had to be invented, you didn't have bricks as much as you had clay to build those bricks before you could even build the house itself. To most people, 80’s gaming is now a distant relics of a long forgotten past, something not worth going back to if only for curiosity sake, it seems impossible to imagine than a game this ancient can even impress anyone nowadays and yet to me, Ys 1&2 did and they did it spectacularly well.

The Action-RPG genre was barely a thought in the minds of many people but a small studio by the name of Falcom was going to launch a revolution within the genre, a revolution that will put them on the map not as icons but as pioneers of a new age of virtual entertainment. Falcom pretty much invented the Action-RPG genre with their old classic such as Dragon Slayer and its sequel Dragon Slayer II : Xanadu (the Dragon Slayer series by itself being the converging point of about 3/4th of Falcom’s entire catalog of franchise) but as much as these games were small revolutions in the mind of many, they were not the cult classic hit and aside from a few turbo-boomer, you hear very little people going back to the original Xanadu in spite of its reputation ! But in 1987, Falcom released what will be known as their core-franchise for a long while (until it was later replaced to my regret by a much more ambitious but ever so frustratingly disappointing series that I’ve already covered in details on this account) and this franchise was Ys ! Originally thought of as one big game, the final draft of the project will end up becoming a two-parters with Ys II releasing a year later in 1988, suffice to say that every port of both titles past 1988 bundled them together into one singular entry which to my surprise flows surprisingly well into one another despite an hard reset at the start of Part II.

One of those legendary ports is of course the version of the game I’m reviewing today, the 1989 PC-Engine edition of Ys 1&2 developed by Hudson Soft, to many it is considered the definitive version of Ys 1&2 even with the existence of Chronicles + which is the more widely available version of this game in the year of our lord 2023 but the reason why I decided to review the PC-Engine version instead is because while Chronicles + is a really competent remake worth experiencing and perhaps more palatable to a newer audience, it also operated a bunch of changes (mostly to Ys 1, Ys 2 is rather faithful to the original game) some goods of course and some that comes in complete contradiction with the spirit of the original game and the main idea behind its game design philosophy which I will develop further down the line.

See the entire idea behind Ys started pretty much on the same basis as those of the original Dragon Quest which was released a year earlier and which is to make a genre as complex and complicated to navigate through as accessible and easy to understand for console and their limited resources to handle complex systems that were seen on computer as well and pen and paper RPG at the time by translating and digesting those systems for newcomers to the genre. And even with the original Dragon Quest succeeding to such an absurd degree that it pretty much invented an entire subgenre of Japanese Role-Playing Game onto itself, some developers namely Masaya Hashimoto (main programmer and director of the original Ys) thought that they could do even better to fulfill that idea of making the RPG genre more welcoming and thus different systems were put into place to elaborate on that philosophy.
One of the main things that will strike most modern player as odd with Ys is its peculiar battle system, it’s true that nowadays pushing a button to attack sounds like a evidence but back in the day it wasn’t really the case and in fact for many years, the action-rpg genre used this so called “bump system” from Tower of Druaga to the original Hydlide, it was just the norm at the time and Ys just elaborated a bit further on this idea. To hurt enemies in Ys you simply have to bump into them until they die, simple, yet effective but Ys added another layer that didn’t exist in previous iterations of this system which is that it’s encouraged to bump into enemies from their sides rather than from the front, in one part to deal more damage to them and in another to avoid getting damages yourself ! The system, though simple, has a rather steep learning curve that might throw people off at the start of the game and in fact, the game pretty much forces you to interact with it head on in order to immediately buy the necessary equipment to advance throughout the story. It doesn’t make the best first impression but once you get a hold of it, you will realize that as archaic as the bump system can seem at first, it’s actually quite a brilliantly elegant system even compared to its contemporaries at the time which used action buttons !

Its elegance is due to one core factor that makes Ys such a satisfying game to play in it that every interaction with the world (aside from occasionally navigating menus to equip items which is also vastly simplified compared to most RPGs) is done through movement ! Combat is based on movement and positioning, interacting with NPC is done by simply bumping into them which triggers their dialogue boxes, what few puzzles the game has are also based on movement and of course all these elements converge together into the fact that all of this contributes to the main gameplay loop of the game which is exploration ! Ys is a game of constant motion, never stopping, always rushing from moment to moment gameplay, it’s a game which demands its player never stop in the pursuit of adventure and this feeling of constant motion is amplified by the absolutely kick-ass soundtrack playing in the back.

The main composer of the game is Yuzo Koshiro, a guy that will later down the line become infamous for his work at Sega and even though he didn’t himself rearrange the tracks for the PC-Engine version, he still did more than an excellent job with establishing Falcom’s future legacy of their games being carried by impressively excellent soundtrack. Ys is the series for which the JDK team was formed after Yuzo Koshiro left and it definitely works with Ys fast-paced constantly moving action that make the series seem like it was Zelda for people who like to rush through corridors to the sound of death metal like a Doom Player !

But the Bump System and movement alone couldn’t fulfill the fantasy of an easily accessible yet fun video game for newcomers of the genre. It’s also how straightforward yet not streamlined the progression of the game is. Ys 1 is composed of 2 very small overworld areas, 2 villages, 2 dungeons and of course the final stretch of the game being the Darm Tower, a final dungeon so ambitious in its scope and scale it represents the second half of the game by itself ! There is no need to go heal at an Inn and there’s very few shops in the game ! In fact if you want to heal while on the overworld, you can just stop and wait for your health bar to fill up, in dungeons however you will either need a special ring or use an item to fill your HP bar to emphasize how dangerous adventuring into dungeons feel compared to the overworld.

This simple yet elegant design in both form and execution is ultimately what made Ys 1 a classic which stood the test of time even more than a lot of its successors !
No line of dialogues is wasted, no step towards completing the quest is too bullshit or cryptic and you can finish the game simply by paying attention to the in-game dialogues and putting one and two together. Of course there’s some side-objectives that could trouble your progression but they’re generally well integrated within the main game. In (dark) fact the final boss of the game has a weakness which is a puzzle to the scale of the entire game with the game even tricking you with an higher tier of equipment that will do fuck all to him !

And even the grinding process is thought in a way to always make the player see the horizon of his progress, at the bottom of the screen, you can see all the information you need which includes how much EXP you need to level up and see in real time how much EXP enemies gives you, which hints towards how much work you have to put into leveling up and also the EXP rate is degressive meaning that eventually power-grinding in an area is rarely worth it past the soft-level cap imposed by the game at certain points (you also gain an automatic level up upon completing certain task which is neat) and even if you do struggle with the game, you can pretty much save whenever and wherever you want which is an impressive technical feat for the time as well as great for accessibility.

And here’s where my issue lies with the Chronicles version of Ys 1 specifically, the shinier graphics, the full-analog movement and remixed soundtrack are all welcome additions but Ys 1 as a remake want to both be faithful to the original but also add a bit too much fluff which somehow make the game more archaic in its progression than the original game, the overworld is now big and full of empty spaces that weren’t present in the original game, the PNJ now update their dialogues for every story moment (an heritage from Falcom’s Legend of Heroes series) which is great for worldbuilding and such but also muddles the actually helpful information for game progression under a ton of fluff that’s not necessary to the game’s progression but I think what kills this remake a bit is how they’ve handled the level progression and the bosses !

The thing with Ys 1&2 on the PC-Engine however is that since it was pretty much two games fused together back to back, the leveling curve was a bit smoother and spread out for the entire duration of the two games which is great ! But the chronicles version of Ys 1 and 2 separates them into different executables which means that Ys 1 had to change up its leveling system to accommodate. Now you’re only capped at Level 10 and each level up is a significant boost to your stats meaning that the difference between owning a boss’s ass or the boss owning yours is arbitrarily be about at which level you enter the boss arena and the entire second half of the game is going to be reliant solely on your own skills in navigating the bump combat system which somehow despite the introduction of diagonal movement is somehow stricter than in the PC-Engine version but also the bosses are also badly coded !

Their patterns, behaviors and sometimes collisions are heavily fucked over for some reasons and don’t get me started on the final boss which is meme’d across the entire community for being a complete RNG fest of projectiles and framerate turboboosting, it’s an hilariously bad boss but one that makes it probably more memorable than its more manageable original counterpart, to give you an idea, it took me 1 try to defeat Dark Fact in the original and probably 12 for the Chronicles version, it’s actually ridiculous. Since Chronicles is the more widely available version, most people will probably get out of Ys 1 thinking it’s actually more outdated and janky than it actually was which definitely isn’t supposed to be the goal of a remake, it’s not game ruining or anything but I do think that it needed to be discussed.
I spent most of the review talking about my love of Ys 1 and I somehow still haven’t talked about Ys II, well it’s because to me Ys 1&2 are part of the same whole and most of the qualities of Ys 1 follows through on Ys 2 but even then I do think that Ys 2 is the lesser of the two halves mostly because of a few unfortunate decisions, it’s still a good game but the way it handles certain parts that Ys 1 nailed so much kinda frustrates me. The game is definitely more streamlined than its predecessor, in Ys 1 if you wanted to do certain things out of order to get some of the best equipments right from the start well nothing was stopping you aside from the enemies which you can easily ignore but in Ys 2 the progression is a bit more linear, instead of exploring a world, it feels like you’re exploring a set of levels which themselves are dungeons with their own navigation puzzle and NPC quest to wrap your head around !

Again this doesn’t constitute a flaw but I think that they could’ve expanded on the non-linearity and exploration aspect of Ys 1 even further, as for the combat while the bump system is still into place, this time the game introduces magic such as fireballs and a spells that lets you turn into a monster to discuss with the local fauna, that second spells is especially fun to use to get some fun tidbit and dialogues with the different monsters you’ve been slaying mindlessly so it’s a neat addition even if a bit gimmicky but the fireballs kinda break the flow of combat since they’re pretty much the safer options all the time and all the bosses asides from the last 2 are immune to bump combat and weak to fireballs turning these confrontations into bullet hell segment and even more so when contrary to the Chronicles version of Ys 2 one shot you if they hit you forcing a perfect run.

The overall navigation can also be a bit more confusing at times even with how segmented the game feels, the final dungeon of the game aka “The Solomon Shrine” is especially known for being a bit of a head scratcher the first way though with all of its floors and layers and weird conditions to progress into it and the story and this is something even the remake couldn’t make smoother.

Again, nothing that makes Ys 2 an unworthy successor to the first game let alone a bad game or a bad sequel, in fact Ys 2 focuses a bit more on its narration contrary to Ys 1 since it’s supposed to be the “answer arc” of the duology and in that way, it’s an amazing send-off to the duology and the series as a whole (well until they decided to make Ys III making the subtitle of Ys II “The Final Chapter” a bit of an oxymoron but oh well).

In fact this is also something that surprised me compared to a lot of RPG’s of its era and its how subtly well told the story of the game is which is definitely helped by the game’s presentation on the PC-Engine adding animated cutscenes and dubbed dialogue which is missing from other versions of the game including you guessed it, the Chronicles Version. I think that despite its age and the relative straightforwardness of its premise (Random adventurer investigate a demon invasion and uncover the truth about an ancient civilization), the way it’s told as well as incorporated inside of the gameplay loop really make the story of the game stand out from the crowd compared to a lot of its contemporaries, it’s definitely helped in part by the excellent character design, I mean Feena and Reah alone are mostly carried by how they than by their dialogues but also by the myriads of little details in dialogue and ofc the different book of Ys you uncover, some characters even manage to pop-off like Dogi who becomes a mainstay of the series as Adol’s life-long partner or even Lilia, the happy go lucky village girl who helps you on your quest throughout all of Ys II.
This is also something for which I’m going to give an edge to the chronicles version, if both versions follow the same throughline, Chronicles adds a lot of additional fluff to the dialogues which makes the setting of the game more alive than ever and even some addition that ties the game to the lore of the rest of the series, the ending was also changed to be more focused and conclusive towards Adol and Feena relationship which is all fine by me because I enjoy this couple far more than the Adol and Lilia pairing that seem to be a more natural and less tragic path for Adol to choose from but is also tremendously boring as a result (even if they do some cool things with it in the two different version of Ys IV which we may or may not talk about in a future review). In fact I did get a bit emotional during the ending of Chronicles especially with its new beautiful rendition of Feena’s theme but if I’m being honest I do miss this game having more animated cutscenes and voiced dialog. To me both versions of the story are complementary to one another and in the end, it’s worth experiencing both versions to see which part of which did you like best and to form your own opinion on the matter.

I also mentioned that the game includes its narration quite well within its gameplay loop which makes me think about Adol and how I think Adol is one of the rare valid mute protagonists. It’s been established later down in the franchise that the meta-narrative surrounding the Ys series is that we don’t actually play as Adol but rather one interpretation of Adol based on what he chronicled in his book, not only does this tie well with all the older titles getting remakes and as such have slight discrepancies between the different version but also because that means we don’t need Adol to talk, there has been a few games that made Adol talk and the more recent entry definitely push towards a more talkative Adol but I also don’t think it’s necessary, Adol is a badass adventure who rushes to the occasion and acts like a hero, he’s brave, fearless, strong and part of about 20 different prophecies ! His date of birth is the “Year 0” of Ys universes calendar and it’s all up to the game to make you feel like you’re playing as an absolute unstoppable unit which as I mentioned earlier, the game succeeds thanks to this constant sense of motion, an excellent sense of pacing (a word modern Falcom seems to have completely forgotten about) and a kick-ass soundtrack which as much the soundtrack of Adol’s life than it is the soundtrack of the environment he visits.

I also mentioned earlier how the game hides a puzzle to the scale of the whole game and that’s because the villain goes around stealing Silver tools from everyone, the more you progress through the game and the more you sense that it’s kinda weird for someone to be stealing such a specific item and it turns out that not only is it because it’s his weakness but also because Silver is another name for Cleria a much more legendary metal which was the cause of Ys’s downfall and the invasion of Darm’s demon army ! In (dark) fact, I actually recommend to watch the two ova adaptations which adds a lot of layer to the villain of Ys 1 and his plan on top of having a kick-ass and metal as fuck interpretation of the some of the games more iconic locale but also for all the cute moments between Adol and Feena.

The game is an epic journey and I did feel a great sense of fulfillment when finishing it, both games are also extremely short (about 10h each) which makes for a big satisfying 20h game experience which to my opinion stood the test of time much more than people gave it credit for.

And that’s pretty much the sad conclusion of Ys, while it is a cult classic, it’s hard to expect a younger audience to be enraptured by its proposition. Ys is a game which sadly got eclipsed by a much more clever and ambitious title at the time : the original Legend of Zelda which single handedly defined how 2D Action RPG should be made for the following decade (and will do so again with OOT for 3D action rpg games).

But I like to believe in the real strength of Ys as a game, I think both games are much better than the original Zelda or even Zelda 2 for that matter as well as better than a lot of contemporaries and imitators and in a world where Zelda didn’t exist, we could’ve probably expected Ys to be the cornerstone of an entire genre, but also this wasn’t the case but that’s ok because now Ys has known a new life and has continued for years to come, always in the shadows of giants but with a boundless sense of wonder which captured the imagination of many children and young adults over the years !

And for that, and that alone, I urge you to experience Ys 1&2 and discover how shockingly competent those games were if you’re willing to accept a few of its rougher edges and how different of a take on an action-rpg it is even by today standard in which it feels more of a curious novelty than the proper evolution of the medium it was meant to be, it’s still excellent and I love these games deeply !

Maybe I’ll make reviews for the other titles cause I feel like being a bit more positive on this account with a franchise I actually like !

It’s incredible that the Yakuza Like A Dragon series exists in this form at all. It’s really easy to discuss these games as a simple comeback story where it was saved from (Western) obscurity by grassroots efforts rallying around 0, but the fact that this insane momentum was met by RGG Studio changing the protagonist and turning it into a triple-A turn-based JRPG when the studio has no prior experience making those and conventional wisdom says the genre is utter sales poison is staggering. The last several mainline games demonstrate a remarkable and admirable disinterest in providing fans with what they expected or wanted, which is doubly impressive when the series is so iterative by nature.

Infinite Wealth iterates a lot on its predecessor, especially. It’s still a turn-based JRPG, and its changes are really, really cool. 7 felt like an experiment that had some great moments but didn’t cohere, an exemplification of the divine mathematics that underpin Dragon Quest and the travails that come when they are fucked with too much. Infinite Wealth still has a major debt to DQ (and some tinges of Chrono Trigger-style enemy shuffling) but manages to be much more unique and self-assured.

For starters, the exp curve is just phenomenally well-considered this time. Gone are the days of 7’s stupid-ass back-to-back grinds, and the scaling for exp and job levels means that it’s very easy to catch up and it can be surprisingly difficult to overlevel. In my playthrough, I kept half of the cast with their default jobs and I had the other half level a side job to 30 before swapping back to default. Team OG ended the game with job levels in the forties, and Team FAFO ended the game with a cumulative sixty job levels. I didn’t feel punished for doing either, as each job kit feels well-rounded and useful even without getting into the insane potential added by skill inheritance, but leveling side jobs felt breezy.

Beyond just the math, job design and skills got so much love - each new job has a really cool and distinct aesthetic, a really fun playstyle, and AoE attacks are way more interesting than they were 7. Circle AoEs might have one edge centered on the targeted enemy, making them finickier for selecting a full group but granting finer control over who else to include, granting damage bonuses for initiating the attack from far away, or having a long line start and end at interesting points. Cone-shaped AoEs are a lot more useful-feeling in this game when their far edge can be centered on the targeted enemy instead of the front tip. It all adds up to make lining up attacks require thought and positioning, which is really nice.

Being able to move around is the most transformational part of the combat changes, easily, but it’s part of a host of other changes that all feel a little small on their own but add up fast. There’s now a proximity bonus for basic attacks that adds in extra hits if they’re made from up close, and getting a proximity hit from behind guarantees crits. Enemy AI is aware of this, and the window to get back attacks is often fleeting at the start of the player’s turn. Having autoattacks be gimped if the party member is pathed far away or wants to hit a specific far-away enemy is frustrating, and there are three major ways to circumvent this - the simplest is to just use a skill to close the gap and do reliable damage.

They can also pick up an environmental object and use that - being able to walk up to ‘em means that they’re an actually valid part of the player’s strategy this time, and on top of their positioning benefits they're a great way to hit elemental weaknesses on people who don’t have certain skills. Otherwise, they can stand nearby another party member and do a combo attack that applies their weapon effects, does full damage at range, and gives their partner a bit of MP back on hit as well. These latter two options are useful and have a variety of obvious applications, but still come with drawbacks - if somebody’s basic attacks do knife or gun damage, then using a ground weapon will override that. Sometimes proximity attacks do way more damage than a combo strike or weapon attack, or the other person in a combo attack will hit an enemy’s elemental resistance and do almost no damage.

On top of all this, there is now a visible knockback indicator for attacks, which adds in yet another layer on top of all of this: knocking an enemy down into a party member does a lot of damage and applies their weapon effect, but knocking them into another enemy does a good bit of AoE, but knocking a large enemy into a wall scores a full knockdown other party members can exploit that otherwise wouldn’t exist. Enemies who block can have their guard broken by either doing a grab-type attack or hitting them from behind; a grab will permanently break it, a back attack will just pierce it for that one attack (and any followups while the enemy is on the ground). This is all then further compounded by the incessant shuffling and jockeying for space that enemies do - every consideration the player will make is based on reading the situation as it exists and trying to capitalize on split-second opportunities. It’s fully turn-based, but it has the pace and feel of an action fight, while retaining the positional focus, comboing, and okizeme of the series’ beat-em-up roots. It’s really fucking good.

The standout is Kiryu’s default job, which exemplifies almost all of this. Style swapping changes the properties of his basic attacks in cool ways on its own; Rush lets him make two weaker attacks per turn, giving him strong AoE or letting him score a guaranteed KO on a weakling before focusing fire on somebody else, Beast lets him do grabs without spending MP and amps up his ability to use ground weapons, and Brawler is the “vanilla” set of attacks that then let him do heat actions under the traditional series rules - be nearby a specific environmental object or otherwise fulfill certain criteria, get into proximity with them, then ace a quick QTE. All three styles get additional action game flair by having their proximity attacks have a short mash or timing prompt, which sells Kiryu both as somebody with a foot firmly planted in real-time and also as a monstrous DPS machine who feels awesome to control.

This mechanical empowerment is contrasted by his narrative role. Ichiban’s stylization as a JRPG hero sells him as somebody strengthened by his friends, but it results in a constant bitter tinge when Kiryu is in the squad. He didn’t always need help, and the character writing does a lot of really satisfying stuff with this disempowerment and reliance for such a stoic, badass lone wolf. Infinite Wealth is a game defined by dichotomies like this - obviously it’s a story split between two countries and two leads, but its themes are equally defined by parallels and mirrors. Everything ultimately comes back to purification or corruption, light and dark, and the terrors and delights of both the past and the future.

It doubles down on everything that makes these games what they are while simultaneously being confident enough to downplay so many of the series’ touchstones, giving the game a feel kinda like a concert that’s half playing the hits and half showing tracks from their next album. The first time a jacket is dramatically removed to reveal the body underneath is an unthinking act of kindness on Ichiban’s behalf, performed without any intent to fight or to show off, but when the player sees the world through Kiryu’s eyes, he can’t help but see ghosts everywhere he goes. These themes of past and future cycles make it hard to not feel a bit of metatext in this being the first full game released after Nagoshi left, and this “changing of the guard” plot can spark worries of being a retread of 7’s themes - and while certain plot elements certainly evoke it, there’s always a knowing tweak to it. 7 is a game about starting over again, of living through a storm and planting seeds for the future once the rubble’s been swept away. Infinite Wealth is more about perpetuating or changing the cycles everyone inhabits - of seeing what’s been done to them and the people before them and trying to break, fix, or continue things.

The returning characters are all well-considered and, equally importantly, most feel unexpected. Few of them feel obligatory, and those that do are given angles and elements that keep them surprising and cathartic nonetheless. Plenty of them have been chewed up and spit back out, some have come back stronger and better, some are indolent, and some lucky few stroll back into the picture feeling just as magnetic and lovable as they were all those years ago. Seeing the game take full advantage of its position as the ninth mainline title in a series stretching back almost twenty years is just as satisfying as seeing how it fantastically it intersects fantastically with the character writing writ large.

Yamai manages to escape the “Majima clone” allegations with aplomb, with a great design, fantastic presence (Koyasu the GOAT), and a satisfyingly mercurial-but-coherent role in the narrative. With the exception of Saeko, whose entire character frustratingly feels like an extension of Ichiban’s arc, literally every single party member is given a lot more to chew on this time. The gap between December 2019 and November 2023 reshuffled a lot and the status quo shifts give people unexpected and lovely positions and angles to view the world. Each little skit and friendship bingo conversation is consistently funny and interesting, and the new party members are literally all bangers. Special shout outs to the job unlock cutscenes creating the implication that Chitose has a Nico Robin-style hyperactive imagination that she does not ever share with anybody; that being said, Tomizawa and Chitose are both incredibly endearing and have a lot of great dramatic and comedic chops. Tomi gets more focus in the front half and Chitose the back, which gives her a bit of an edge in terms of immediate retrospective emotional edge, but both are excellent.

Tomizawa’s arc is tied up with the Barracudas, who are kind of a nexus of the game’s more annoying issues. The gang has a really strong and sympathetic hook that is connected to pretty venomous social commentary, but they rapidly recede from institutional relevance and, just like 7, the themes of homelessness, discrimination, and critiquing the lived effects of Japan’s comically harsh anti-yakuza laws (making it basically impossible to have a normal life certainly makes it effective for killing recruitment, but guys seeking a way out certainly have their work cut out for them…) feel under-discussed after the first act. Additionally, while Yakuza has always had a heightened tone, there are times when, regardless of the player’s tolerances, there will be moments that stretch credulity; especially when combat is done with silly costumes. Sometimes it feels weird to talk about America’s crumbling infrastructure and skyrocketing cost of life only to then beat up three Hungry Hungry Homeless.

These are issues, and they deserve mention, but simultaneously, this is the ninth mainline RGG game. Every issue raised so far has been present to some degree or another in quite literally every single game in the franchise. They’ll affect enjoyment to varying extents, of course, but… I wouldn’t get too mad at a fish for being bad at climbing trees, or at least when I’m neck-deep I’d think I know what pitfalls I'd fallen into.

For all the love heaped on the character writing, the main villains really falter, which is unexpected for this series. There’s good villains and bad villains, and certainly sometimes they contrive excuses for a final boss when punching out a businessman would be unsatisfying, but RGG Studio’s been on a hot streak for antagonists for a good while now. The antagonistic forces in this game feel more like an exercise in thematics than they are actually characters. It’s cool to see a contemporary political thriller manage to make themes of corruption, despoiling paradise, and battling against nature feel grounded within a real-world context and not feel too hacky about it, but despite their screentime they have a terminal lack of real presence or sauce. The villains’ big dramatic showcases pale in comparison to both the quiet and loud moments that accompany their underlings and frenemies. They do create good moments by contriving the protagonists into circumstances that showcase their amazing traits and even better voice actors, but the monologues and physical performances shown off could be bounced off somebody I actually give a shit about and I’d be into it even more than I am.

The cutscene direction, as implied above, is excellent. The stunt coordinator for every game since 6 cut his teeth on Mark DaCascos hood classic Drive (1997), a shitload of tokusatsu, and a little old game called Devil May Cry 3, and it lends the cutscene brawls a sense of physicality and flair that a lot of game cutscenes weirdly can’t do very well. The dramatic scenes have astonishingly good blocking and composition. For how many cutscenes are in this game, they find so many great camera angles, poses, and little vocal quavers to give far more weight to far more than one would expect.

It’s easy to gush about this game, and while it has its flaws and doesn’t always favorably stack up to past games, it feels like a chore to discuss them. Sure, Ichiban got a better moment in 7, Kiryu’s finest hour is still (regrettably) the final scene in Gaiden, and the enemy shuffling just inherently means that the combat’s chaotic, uncontrollable nature will create frustrating situations and missed attacks. It’s maybe not as focused as some other Yakuza games? (I mean, not really, lmao, the only games you might be able to argue that for are 2 and 6, and buddy, 2 is not as focused as you remember it being and 6 is just not interesting.) But at the same time, I don’t really give a fuck.

I love Yakuza most when it’s maximalist, audacious, willing to totally fuck with your expectations, and unafraid to be messy. That’s what I associate the series with and that’s what I want with each new game. That’s what I got here. I was so worried that Kiryu’s return would feel cheap, I was worried that losing Nagoshi would rob the games of an ineffable soul, and Gaiden put the fear of God in me that they would retain the godawful grinds that 7 had (if not double down.) Some mistakes it makes are certainly frustrating and I hope that one day the series will move on.

At the end of the day, it’s hard to not root for the game anyways. A game like this is so special to me. It never treats its past as a burden, and it plants one foot after another into an uncertain future with confidence. You can’t always cure stupid, but the way it endlessly strives towards a better and brighter path, unafraid to experience the sad, bitter, silly, and sweet in all its forms… it’s nice to see a game’s ethos resemble its admirable hero so much.

This is an SRPG made for me. TS on Hard has some issues, the UX isn't as good as FE, unit balance isn't perfect though it's better than most games, there can be some awkward parts where the game doesn't quite react to a choice well or reconverges in a little too quickly there's some element of grinding up newcomers with mock battles though you can't really over level in the game. There's some lacking polish with how music can cut off strangely in scene transitions. The depth of field doesn't look great, there are some technical performance issues. It's easy to make all these critiques but it falls away in face of chapters like 7, 9, and 17 where the desperation is genuine. Where the narrative and gameplay are both fleshed out to an extent where you never really stop thinking about the consequences and variety of options in combat, many of which remain relevant throughout the game. It is among those games that beggars consistent imagination and reflection. I've no qualms calling games that reach that level of completeness and cohesion as masterpieces.

As a disclaimer, I didn’t finish the game. I got to the 5th region with about 40 hours clocked (felt longer) and the last boss I beat was Ryomen.

I enjoyed the concept of Nioh 1, but Nioh 2 actually hooked me in for a while. The good qualities of the combat stood out a lot more, the weapons were more complex, the enemies felt better balanced, and the yokai form was far more exciting than the living weapon. It helped that the game had a really nice character creator to boot, and a decent bit of QoL.

Unfortunately, the game’s fatal flaw to me is just how unambitious it is. It is a game that decided from the get-go that it only seeks to do what Nioh 1 did, but a little better, and nothing else. It has decided on a formula for its enemies and level design, and it sticks to it like superglue, promising to never bring anything new and exciting to the table.

But first, lemme talk about what I liked.

I mainly fucked around with the three weapons that were added to Nioh 2 (Fists, Scythe, Splitstaff), I found a lot to like in their movesets with many attack and movement options that play well into the ki pulse and stance switch system of Nioh 1. My favorite of these was the Fists, which had a unique mechanic that actually leveraged Nioh’s RPG inspirations for cool gameplay.

The Fists allowed me to cancel special attacks into each other in order to gain a stack of a buff. At first the main appeal is the fact that this lets you string some combos with great reward, but the more interesting aspect is managing the buff. The more stacks I have, the faster the buff runs out, the buff’s timer that can be slowed down with a ki-pulse or reset completely by gaining another stack of the buff (by doing another special cancel). And since choosing to special cancel means I have to forgo ki-pulsing, there are ever higher risks to maintaining the buff, forcing me to be incredibly fast and decisive in my gameplay to maintain it while also not running out of stamina. It’s a mechanic that adds a really nice spin to Nioh’s fundamentals by giving you a reason not to ki pulse, and leveraging it well was a real adrenaline rush.

On the enemy side, I enjoyed how much more manageable attacks were in this game, everything felt really fair to me. I especially enjoy the variety of defensive options and how there is a valid reason to use all of them. High stance dodges give more i-frames, but with more recovery and stamina cost than low/mid stance dodges. Guarding is a real defensive option in this game worth using against many quick attacks, but loses to slower attacks that are meant to be avoided, and using guard to get out of hitstun is a really good mechanic that plays into the ki management that is core to Nioh. There is a lot to think about just playing defensively in this game.

Despite the awful bloat that surrounds the game’s menus and its poorly implemented RPG aspects, I had a good amount of fun with this game...initially. Things started to fall apart when the game started to show its monotony after the difficulty bump of its third mission and began to settle into a formula.

Nioh 1 was notorious for its issues with enemy variety, a complaint that Nioh 2 very much attempts to respond to. However, in their response I feel like they have failed to solve the core of the issue. The game introduces a good variety of enemies, but said enemies are never designed in a particularly inventive way, and don’t force me to engage with the systems differently, usually just bringing a host of slightly different melee attacks to the table, with maybe one projectile.


That’s the problem on a micro level, but on a macro level, an even bigger problem is the game’s never changing encounter design. Nioh 2 seems to have decided on five-ish types of encounters. Ones involving human enemies, some involving groups of small demons, some with two big demons, or one big demon paired with a couple small ones, and variations of those involving some archers in the back. Which big demon or small demon it chooses to bring this time was usually different, but the encounters played fundamentally the same. The game has many enemy types, but it never escapes the mold of its rote encounter design, and even if they wanted to, I feel like the “standardness” of their enemies limits how creative they can be as few of them feel made for synergy with other enemies or level design.

The mechanics themselves also began to reveal issues. A minor annoyance I want to mention is how much of the game’s movesets seem to be tailored around fighting human enemies, with many moves being literally unusable against enemies who can’t be grabbed/tackled, and can’t guard. This makes the game’s abundance of demon encounters to be one of the less fun parts of the game.

But the human encounters too, began to break apart. As I became comfortable with ki-pulsing and stance switching to keep my aggression up, the enemies were never able to catch up. Once their ki was downed, it was very easy to keep it down and the human boss encounters, which were previously the best parts of the game, became incredibly trivial. Enemies began to practically kill themselves with big attacks that expend large chunks of their stamina, and once I start my rushdown they can’t really recover and usually get stunlocked to death. If human enemies fully regen’d stamina after a knockdown, or if the game was better at balancing its values, this could have been avoided. Human group encounters would normally avoid this problem, but never seemed to evolve in the number and types of enemies they mix.

It doesn’t help how boring the game’s texture is, mechanics aside. The new locations and bosses the game brings me to are never particularly cool. The level design felt always by the numbers, its “souls-like" looping shortcuts were rudimentary. It felt like the game was determined to never wow me, and I was playing solely for the thrill of its combat which was starting to lose its lustre. If I was a history nerd, maybe I would have got something out of the narrative, but that ain’t me.

When my experience with this game was ending, I had fought 3 bosses in a row whom I killed on my first attempt. The game’s levels stopped bringing anything challenging or exciting. In an attempt to remedy this, I tried to stop doing the side missions and play underleveled. Another two bosses go down, both on the first try. And then I reach a new region, severely underleveled. I start to die, but not in a fun way. The enemies are still the same, the encounters are still the same, but their health values were bloated and most of their attacks one shot me. The game’s RPG aspects came through to finish it off. And with that, I dropped Nioh 2, wishing it aspired to be more than just a sequel to Nioh 1.

As charming as a broad scope exploration of individuality via an exuberant shonen mission structure could be, especially on the Nintendo DS. The core message of the game is summarized wonderfully by the title The World Ends With You (henceforth shortened to TWEWY, for the sake of brevity). Individuals have their own inner worlds that are impossible to truly understand. But it is still worth expanding your world by reaching out to trust others, communicating with them, and experiencing new things.

This notion forms the crux for the main character, Neku’s arc. Initially, he’s a person who pursues self-isolation as a severe extrapolation of a principle peddled by his favorite graffiti artist. He’s dragged into the Reaper’s Game, a set of daily missions over a week that is almost hilarious in cruelty. It requires a partner and enables cooperation between teams, only to reward exactly one person at the end of it all. Over three weeks, Neku meets partners that guide him to a better place. Shiki, a deeply self-conscious individual who puts helping Neku over her own life. Joshua, a stubborn rascal with a smug misanthropic enabling tone who tries to pull Neku back after his initial growth. Beat, a self-sacrificial rebel who is dragged around by the powers that be after losing something fundamental to his life, providing a chance for Neku to help someone amidst abject isolation.

One of the most impactful questions for my understanding of the story comes at the very end. The final boss merely asks Neku if he likes people or not. One among numerous choices the game offers you where your decisions don’t really “matter” beyond flavor, but one where the answer reflects different tones of the thesis. Saying “Yes” implies growth for Neku and his newly attained appreciation of other people in his life, but saying “No” implies Neku understands the strengths of reaching out despite its very nature as a gamble. TWEWY’s perspective at the end is a positive answer with an asterisk. It emphasizes the difference between expanding your world to trust other people and simply liking people as a baseline.

The game's subplots also fit into this broad mold. Most explore the importance of communication over letting our preconceptions of others fester over time. However, one subplot during the second week stands out to me. A timid salesman, who you help in the first week, becomes a relentless businessman seeking to control large portions of the pin and ramen industry in Shibuya. He uses a famous blogger’s ability to sway the public’s opinion as part of a marketing campaign. You help another ramen seller discover how to survive the ever-shifting tastes of Shibuya and help the blogger rebel against the commodification of his recommendations. A surprisingly fun poke at the very nature of corporate desire to control everything in culture, balanced against the hope of reclaiming one’s identity and passions against these overwhelming forces. Even the agent learns his mistake and is guided towards a more humble life that satisfies him.

If anything, the source of the larger conflict in the story is the sandpapering tendencies of corporatization. The source of the Red Pins used to mind control Shibuya and crush all individuality arises from the marketing campaign of the agent. The very hierarchy of the Reaper’s Game mimics that of a large corporation. At the bottom, we have relatively charming and friendly Reapers doing their work guarding exits. They’ll still try to kill you when the time is right, mind you, but they’re nice to their friends and that’s what counts. But on the upper end, you have cruel and eccentric individuals who want to bend the entire city to their will for the sake of a promotion or playing god.

The setting itself, Shibuya, is elevated to a mythical warzone. An eternal clash of fashion and values, amidst various levels of artifice. Brands, music, and graffiti scream loudly as the various notions of individuality peddled melt into an indiscernible cacophony. This backdrop is further elevated by the brands themselves being modeled after the Chinese Zodiac, and how each region of the map follows one of these brands. This ideal backdrop, paying homage to the iconography of the real place, depicts the strengths and consequences of expanding one’s world.

These ideas further mesh with the combat mechanics of the game. Neku and his partner are on two screens, controlled with disparate input schemes. A point often missed in discussions is that the characters barely see each other during combat. A lot of their combat lines express the trust that they start putting in each other. When one partner hits low health, you hear them plead that Neku carries the team or heal them. This initiates a sharp learning demand as you try to split your attention between the two characters, which eventually culminates in a zen state where you expand your world and handle them in parallel.

Less overtly incorporated are the RPG elements. TWEWY's armor system consists of Threads, which are associated with 13 different brands. A cute aspect of this is that you can eventually make Neku and his partners wear all sorts of dresses but you need to cross a threshold based on the character’s Bravery, further emphasizing the effort required and the power attained with expressing yourself. The experience system manifests itself as Pin Points of three types. The first type is based on battles and asks you to engage with the combat as much as possible. The second type requires you to set up a shop to interact with other players or play the hype minigame, Tin Pin Slammer, with others. The final type asks you to shut down your DS and stop playing for a day or so, giving you the chance to enact the game's message in the real world. The game also limits how much food your characters can eat in a day, further reinforcing this subtle call to action. It has been well over a decade since TWEWY's release, so you can’t expect to find many other people with a DS nearby, and the time-based experience system is easily broken by just changing the date settings of your DS. Regardless, these minor details are all part of the portrait TWEWY paints. A truly commendable feat that elevates the game well beyond the sum of its parts.

While on the topic, let’s change gears to more technical specifics regarding the gameplay.

TWEWY features a fascinating usage of the split-screen functionality of the DS, where the stylus controls Neku’s movement and pin actions on the bottom screen, while the D-Pad or Face Buttons controls his partner on the top screen. This creates a delightful back-and-forth since enemies are copied on both screens and you can damage them simultaneously using Neku’s pins and his partner’s combo map. The partner’s combo map contains directional inputs that end on symbols as part of a matching game. The more you successfully match the more stars you receive, and after a certain number of stars you can pull off Fusion moves that result in a lot of damage and light healing. Tying all of this together is the Light Puck that multiplies the damage of a finisher for one character before traveling across the screens to the other. A subtle dynamic emerges, where you attempt to finish the pin ability or the combo map string as the puck travels across the screen to optimize DPS. This cacophony of mechanics emphasizes parallel processing, and just like the cacophony of Shibuya, it just works!

Well kinda? I did play on as hard a difficulty I could stomach, and it doesn’t quite perfectly click. Bear in mind it still works well enough to be one of the most engrossing combat systems I’ve played in months, and TWEWY is very recommendable on that front alone. But it’s not quite perfect.

First in line is the Pin system. Neku’s actions are linked to numerous pins that perform attacks or abilities using the stylus. There’s a lot of variety to be found here, with pins covering melee attacks, ranged options, and defensive tools. You can mix and match these pins in up to decks of 6, and adapt these to the encounters and bosses accordingly. The game also stars a pin evolution system based on the 3 aforementioned types of Pin Points, and you can master these pins for minor buffs. Exciting stuff!

However, the first issue here is how certain pins don’t seem to work consistently or have bizarre inputs to pull off. Most inputs are simple enough, like slashing, scratching, and tapping. But some pins require zanier inputs include drawing circles and even screaming into the microphone! The DS’ touch screen sensitivity isn’t particularly adequate for precise movements, rendering some of the unique pin abilities extremely clunky at best and unusable at worst. Another significant hindrance is how you also use the stylus to control Neku’s movement and dodging. As a result, you can’t use certain pins too close to his sprite. You can certainly learn to deal with these limitations over time as you position yourself better and choose simpler decks, but it does leave a slightly sour taste that a few of the more bewildering pin abilities don’t pan out as smoothly.

Next up are Neku’s Partners. Each of Neku’s three partners has a combo map that functions as a way to navigate a predefined directional attack string. These strings end on symbols as part of a unique matching game that rewards you with stars the better you match. The partners further have different defensive options and air-games, changing their overall strategies.

The first of the three partners is Shiki. Functioning as a tutorial character, her attack string is fast and ends in an uppercut with a ton of I-frames. Her air attacks function as a short burst of double damage, and her defensive options include a counter-hit and a block. Her matching game is the simplest, as it quite literally is guessing and matching symbols from a set defined by the difficulty level. The next partner is Joshua who doesn’t attack per se, but rather “targets” the enemy numerous times and drops an object at the end of his attack string. He eventually unlocks a levitation ability that attacks enemies from above with sky beams, and his defensive options include a side-step and a counter that reverses enemy positions. His matching game requires you to compare numbers and is a step up in terms of complexity. He is the easiest to farm stars with since he doesn’t kill enemies as easily and has a matching game that provides you with the solution at the start. Finally, we have Beat who is a glass cannon of sorts. Rapid attack strings both on the ground and in the air, and his defensive options are a counter that lets you continue his air string or a block. His matching game is the most complex and requires you to match pairs of card suits that give you stars in bulk if you are successful, resulting in massive swings of power.

These partners provide ample scope for mastery with their matching games and DPS/build optimization. However, it’s hard to ignore that even on the highest difficulty it’s quite easy to kill practically every enemy and boss with a lot of mashing in one direction. This is particularly noticeable with Shiki. Her combo map is incredibly short and it’s really easy to build up stars for her Fusion by mashing one direction. This ends up in higher DPS as you don’t have to process the matching game at all and only have to pay attention to enemy attacks every once in a while. Heck, the I-frame packed uppercut at the end of her string reduces the cognitive load as well! Joshua is a bit better about this since his attack string doesn’t damage enemies until the very end, demanding some amount of reaction. Beat is probably the most button-mashy partner, but Week 3 manages to somewhat alleviate this by packing the screen with enemies during regular encounters and making bosses much faster.

It eventually boils down to preference in the post-game. Shiki is the easiest to control, has high counter damage, and consistently builds up stars. Joshua is the most technical to control and build around, but the post-game’s superboss practically demands his levitation abilities. Beat has the best attack strings, the most content balanced around him, and fits in almost every build. I like Beat the most as he fits my playstyle, and Joshua as a close second since he’s a fun character to optimize around.

Poor Shiki. She was a real one...

A core element of combat that is not communicated is the notion of Efficiency, where each pin class and partner has an associated hidden multiplier to their attacks. This functions as an interesting attempt at balancing pins by generally giving the harder-to-execute or slower pins a leg up in terms of damage, and incentivizes using a blend of rapid pins with low efficiency for filler damage and heavy hitters for puck-passing. There are still a few pins that slip through the cracks, combining both high efficiency and fast usage/recharge time (and on the opposite end low efficiency and slow use-time), but this system mostly works well. Pins are further classified into Positive, Negative, and Neutral based on if they are Melee, Ranged, or “Weird” attacks. This doesn’t play a significant role in the combat until you reach the post-game, where some enemy variants have noticeable defenses against them. If I had to complain here, I would have wanted to know about these systems earlier and be tested on them more often.

Now onto the enemies and encounter design. TWEWY’s enemy roster (labelled Noises) consists of numerous noise classes with variations based on in-game progression. The roster generally covers a lot of ground and threatens Neku and his partner in unique ways. There’s some overlap in roles based on in-class variation, but here’s the way I broadly classify them.

Passive noises serve as a threat over time or have slow attacks that can heavily punish you. As a result, these noises require you to occasionally divert your attention from the more aggressive enemies and keep their numbers in check. Frog noises try to leap off the characters and occasionally summon bubbles to slow Neku down. Some of them spawn Tadpole noises, which heavily slow Neku’s movement and poison him. Jellyfish noises are incredibly passive but slowly split to form small armies that pass lightning around to damage the characters. They can also inflict the debilitating immobilization debuff on either partner, but these attacks occur rarely.

Light noises are a higher priority than passive noises, but they function more as aggressive fodder to keep your characters busy. Wolf noises are the standard fare. They run around and jump at Neku and his partner to damage them. Crab noises scuttle around the ground and attempt to catch you off guard with grabs and ranged attacks. One variant can also block damage outright! Penguins are the most interesting of this class of noises. They have a long duration slap attack and can slide at you from a noticeable distance. To top it off, stronger variants can command a powerful coordinated attack against Neku that can set you back severely.

Medium noises function as the most common high priority targets throughout the game. Bear noises initially appear as towering creatures with a powerful swipe attack and an attack buff. However, they slowly disappear over time to make way for more dangerous targets. Mink noises are a great all-rounder with a slow melee and ranged attack, but their highlight is the invincible whirlwind attack where they move around the screen trying to damage you. I’d have preferred more aggressive homing with this attack, but these noises are exciting regardless. Hedgehog noises fill the ranged role. They try to run away often, launch quills that land on the ground, and even try to pierce Neku with a wall of spikes in case he gets too close. Kangaroo noises are my favorite enemy class by far. They have high health, a powerful kick attack, and a deadly jump and homing land attack. This makes them the most engaging noises, even on a one-on-one basis, as you have to move around constantly to avoid getting hit.

Heavy noises appear more often in the final week, and function as mini-bosses with unique requirements to damage. Rhino noises have high defense on one side, requiring you to move around to hit them. They are fairly slow and easy to avoid, but their tankiness makes them important to keep at bay. Shark noises are quite exciting! They hide underground with only a small hurtbox on their fin above the surface, leaping occasionally to bite either character. They can also eat smaller noises to buff themselves (which does make the encounters featuring Sharks much easier). Trapping them in a damage stun loop before they can get away makes for some hectic situations.

Two other noise classes function more like pseudo-bosses more than anything – Mammoths and Drakes. Mammoth noises are incredibly tanky enemies that are impossible to stun or juggle. Getting caught in any of their attacks will result in a rapid game over (at low levels, they just one shot you). Drakes have numerous long-lasting high damage moves that demand rapid dodging from Neku or high air-time from his partner. They’re also impervious to stuns and juggles. These two noises rarely feature any support.

The last few classes of noises fill the most unique roles but are unfortunately much rarer than I’d like. Flying noises like Bats and Ravens are mostly boss fodder, but they still stand out since they demand certain ranged pins or require melee attacks with vertical hitboxes from Neku, and force his partner into a constant air attack state. Shrew noises constantly hide away in holes and pop out occasionally to surprise you with a bomb or a dive attack. Fox noises are really rare and work as weird shapeshifters that change between noise classes.

Halfway through the game, you meet the Taboo variants of the noise classes. These have more complex and deadly moves compared to any other variant (apart from optional boss variants). But the unique aspect of these noises is how you can only deal high damage to them with a partner only when they have the puck. Finally, you have Reapers, who don’t seem to do much of anything? Not sure what these guys are on. They can phase between screens, but only occasionally do a ranged attack. Somewhat annoying since they start to replace the much more interesting Taboo Noises in the final week.

Finally, I want to briefly mention the bosses of this game. They’re generally excellent! Especially in the latter half. Early bosses amount to slightly beefed-up versions of regular enemies or have tons of basic fodder elongating their fights, but once you hit the second week you start cooking with gas. Numerous aggressive bosses show up, forcing you to master the combat system or die. Some require you to survive for a fixed amount of time, and others feature almost laughably powerful fodder enemies. The final week is where all safeguards are removed. Brutal dual boss pairings, the hardest optional boss noises, and devastating debuffs galore. Fun for the whole family!

Another commendable aspect of TWEWY is how the difficulty and leveling systems are implemented. You can customize how you want to control your partner, change your difficulty level at any time, and you can reduce your in-game level for a higher pin drop rate. The reduction system allows you to chain numerous encounters together and makes them harder as you progress. An excellent step for accessibility, while letting players challenge themselves as much (or as little) as possible without compromising the message of the game.

However, despite a great admiration for what TWEWY accomplishes, there are some story additions to the game via Final Remix that sour me on the direction the series could be taking, especially since those are rendered canonical via the existence of NEO. Somewhat surprising that I ended up here since the NEO demo was what convinced me to play TWEWY in the first place! I was rewarded with this gem of a game, but now I somewhat question the integrity of the sequel. For a game that extols the bittersweet threads of individuality and stands as a unique cultural capsule of mid-2000s Shibuya, it’s surprising to see the sequel's demo so strongly flaunt its return like a phoenix only to end up in TWEWY’s shadow. I certainly hope NEO doesn’t end up as a milquetoast celebration of the strengths of the original.

There could very well be an interesting story to tell here. Shibuya’s culture has aged by more than a decade, and the bombastic war between multiple brands and countercultures has shifted heavily in favor of homogenized corporatization. The demo hinted at a pushback against this new culture, so it can’t hurt to keep an open mind I guess? Especially since Neo comes out like tomorrow. Might even try playing TWEWY Final Remix afterwards, even if the basic implementation of the combat engine is a far cry from the more thematically coherent vision of the original. However, I have heard interesting things about the co-op as an alternative approach, and the gameplay additions are alluring.

But gosh darn it, trepidations about the future of this series are best left for another time. I will heartily recommend this game to anyone. A delightfully unique combat system that pushes the limits of its console. An endearing story with one of the coolest sounding titles ever. All wrapped up in one of the most stylized and thematically cohesive shells I’ve seen in gaming.

Get a DS for this one.

TAG2 itself is an anti-climax that represents a concerning change in direction for the Doom reboot series, which hits harder given how on-track id Software already was with Eternal and TAG1. I am also fully aware of its troubled six-month development cycle where both TAG1 and 2 had to be out within a year of Eternal’s release to fulfill legal obligations, whose production schedule did not originally account for blizzards and power outages striking Texas (where id Software’s offices are located), and a whole freaking pandemic. I am not particularly upset that TAG2 feels rushed or that most of its new enemies are reskins (if anything, I think more games should be willing to reskin and reuse enemies), but what concerns me the most is its new gameplay direction, one which would have persisted even without the world breaking down. To properly understand why this is concerning, and considering parts of the base game and TAG1 have been changed with the release of TAG2, it is necessary to go back to the previous entries and establish some context.

With TAG1, the core players were pretty satisfied with its intensity and challenge, but the consensus amongst casual players (according to Doom Eternal director Hugo Martin) was that TAG1 was too intense pacing-wise, and thus exhausting to play even on lower difficulty settings. Here I disagree; TAG1 definitely does not run at 200% at all times. When breaking the structure of TAG1 down, there are still many downtime segments in the form of platforming segments, minor puzzles, minor combat encounters, story segments, or (quite frankly overlong) underwater swimming sections inbetween all the major arenas. The difficulty has definitely escalated, but the escalation is necessary to avoid running the risk of only repeating the ‘white belt’ encounters of the base game that the player has already proven their mastery over.

I believe the real culprit here is that most casual players were also returning players who had grown rusty in the six months between the base game’s and TAG1’s launch. Considering TAG1 starts off with several Cyber-Mancubi and Barons and no warm-up and it only escalates from there, it can make the entire DLC campaign feel overwhelming when you have yet to remember how everything worked; something that might not have been a problem if you had only just finished the base game. This is where in retrospect I believe that TAG1 would have been better off if it was balanced around a shotgun start and finding all your old weapons again, instead of balancing around your full loadout. This would allow returning casual players to get a quick crash course on all your old abilities and weapons over the course of a level or two instead of having to remember everything at once, and it would also allow for some interesting encounter design for returning core players as well where you’d have to face off against enemies without the weapons you would normally use against against them (like dealing with Shieldguys without a Plasma Rifle, or Whiplashes without Lock-on Rockets, or a Tyrant without any of your power weapons). The Super Gore Nest Master Level already features a Shotgun Start mode, so this shouldn’t have been technically impossible. And, while I personally don’t see any value in this type of argument but know that many others do, you can also cite historical precedent as a justification for taking your weapons away by pointing out that Doom 1 would also take away all your weapons at the start of each episode. Nevertheless, id Software declared the pacing guilty, and so decided to correct this in TAG2.

Rather than balancing the learning curve around one playthrough like with the base game and TAG1, for TAG2 id Software decided to take the Platinum approach to difficulty. In short, the first playthrough is an extended tutorial meant to keep casual players invested by introducing something new every 30 minutes while forgetting about the last thing, whereas the second playthrough in the form of the (yet to be released at the time of writing) Master Levels is the ‘real’ game where aforementioned new elements are combined with each other and pre-existing elements to actually test your mastery over them. In the context of a game like Doom Eternal that’s not designed around being replayed repeatedly to get a decent grasp of the gameplay (like with a roguelite or an arcade game), this approach is terrible because of the following reasons:

Firstly, it defeats the point of having difficulty settings that you can switch between on the fly. When you select Hurt Me Plenty difficulty, you expect a comfortable breeze, and not something as demanding as TAG1 was. When you select Nightmare difficulty, you expect to be pushed into using all of the game’s systems. TAG2 on Nightmare absolutely does not do that, because most TAG2 arenas are intensity-wise on par with Arc Complex in the base game, except in Arc Complex you did not have all weapons/upgrades yet, whereas in TAG2 you are fully upgraded and then some (see: Hammer). Even if the Master Levels were already out, you would still have to trudge through 3 hours of white belt encounters on Nightmare before you can actually get to the Good Stuff, because in DE you cannot access Master Levels unless you complete the regular levels first. Using cheats to skip the regular levels for the Master Levels wouldn’t be ideal either, because regardless of skill level you still need the time and space to learn TAG2’s new gameplay elements, and Master Levels are the worst place to learn them considering MLs are designed around you already having a full grasp of them.

Secondly, you basically have to run through the same content twice to get the ‘full’ experience, and even then it’s not a given that people will even bother playing the Master Levels. Amongst the majority of gamers, “beating” a singleplayer game usually involves playing once up to the credits roll, unless each playthrough promises new content (like in roguelikes and whatnot). Having to replay the same content but remixed once or twice until you get to the Fun Zone will feel to most like uninspired padding, who will just drop the game out of boredom before they get to the Fun Zone. The base game deftly avoided this and successfully appealed to both casual and core gamers by showing you the majority of its content and making you experience the depths of the gameplay--i.e. the Fun Zone, over the course of one playthrough no matter what difficulty setting you picked. Master Levels were for those who were already satisfied with the base game but wanted even more. Only after getting hooked to the gameplay will make people feel like playing remixed content; the actual hook was not in the Master Levels themselves. Meanwhile if you want to experience what it’s like doing Meathook platforming or fighting the new enemy types in a situation that actually makes you think about what you’re doing, then you’re going to have to slog through this 3-hour long pseudo-tutorial before you can even get to that point.

Thirdly, changing direction like this in what’s probably the final piece of official DE story content is the worst place to do it in. Most of the people who will play TAG2 are most likely those who already managed to get through the base game and TAG1 and liked it for what it was and wanted more, so suddenly hitting the metaphorical brakes with TAG2 feels incredibly out of place, what with its tendency for simple fodder-only enemy waves. Narratively this also creates a massive whiplash, where you finally arrive at the True Big Bad’s Lair, but it’s mostly populated by these Demonic Troopers that explode if you so much as hit them with the Meathook, so your archnemesis ends up feeling underwhelming and like a bit of a joke.

Fourthly, I hear TAG2 is supposed to be a ‘victory lap’ or a ‘power fantasy’, but that is, quite frankly, cope. A power fantasy only works when you have something worthy to exercise your awesome power against. Whenever you’d pick up a power-up like the Quad Damage in a game like Quake 1 (or just Doom Eternal itself), it would throw a greater amount of enemies at you that would normally be bullshit to deal with without the power-up. It feels good because now you’ve got the power to pull one over the foes that have been making your entire life miserable up until now. Being given a power-up and the game throwing even less enemies at you than before is not a power fantasy, but an anticlimax. Being given a full loadout and an overpowered hammer that can stun groups of enemies, and then have the only opposition you face be on par with what you faced in the middle part of the base game, is an anticlimax. And as far as I can tell, TAG2 isn’t trying to be anticlimactic for narrative reasons that could possibly justify this direction in gameplay.

There is also another issue that plagues TAG2’s pacing, one which would persist even without the aforementioned changed in direction--namely: You’re introducing five new enemy types (Riot Soldiers, Cursed Prowlers, Screechers, Armored Barons, Stone Imps, I’m not counting the Demonic Troopers LOL), a new equipment item in the form of the Hammer, and Meathook platforming in a DLC consisting of three levels (or looking at Immora, it’s more accurate to say two-and-a-half). Where are you going to find the time and space to let the player get acquainted with all these new gameplay elements, while also delivering a climax gameplay-wise that’s befitting of the last piece of official main story content?

Well, you don’t.

Save for the Hammer, every new element in TAG2 is tragically underutilized. New enemies like the Armored Barons and Stone Imps tend to largely appear by themselves and are rarely accompanied by other Heavy demons, whereas the new support demons like Screechers and Cursed Prowlers are only used in relatively low-intensity encounters, and almost never in something major. Having new enemies appear by themselves or with only minor support makes sense for when you encounter them for the first time and have yet to learn how they work, but that’s about the only capacity said demons appear in. Meanwhile the actual major encounters in TAG2 barely use the new demons at all. Meathook platforming is also mostly used to traverse large gaps, but almost never in combat. When it is used in combat, it’s usually as a single Meathook point above a largely flat and sparsely populated arena that already has tons of space to move around in. I can only imagine this all being a consequence of the “we’ll properly flesh this stuff out later in the Master Levels” philosophy.

You really shouldn’t be introducing too many new things at the very end of the game, as it gives you very little space to flesh out said elements. The base game stopped introducing new enemies and weapons after Taras Nabad (bosses and Makyr Drones excluded), and dedicated the remaining four levels to realizing its own potential by combining the existing enemies in different ways to create more demanding but also more unique encounters. TAG1 did introduce Spirits in its second level and Blood Makyrs in its third and final level, but TAG1 got more mileage out of both enemies individually than all new enemies in TAG2 combined, on account of not having to juggle a dozen new elements at once. It also helped that everyone knew that TAG2 was on the horizon, and that we might see even more interesting usage of the TAG1 enemies there (we didn’t). If we knew there was a TAG3 coming, then I wouldn’t be writing this paragraph.

What’s even weirder is that TAG2 already provides a solution for there not being enough time and space to play around with all the new elements, in the form Escalation Encounters. Casual players that prefer having an uninterruptible flow can simply ignore the optional and more intense second wave, whereas core players can get the challenge they crave and see aforementioned new elements being used to more interesting extents. This is also why it’s so unfortunate that Escalation Encounters aren’t used that much (only three times in TAG2), and that even then the second waves barely use any of the new TAG2 enemies.

As for the new enemies on their own; some are good, some are undercooked. The Screecher is a great addition, as it makes you be extra careful with where you shoot and how you use your AoE weapons if you don’t want to unintentionally buff all surrounding enemies and screw yourself over. The only qualm I have about this buff is that on top of buffing enemy attack and movement speed (á la Buff Totems), it also buffs enemy damage resistance. This isn’t a problem in TAG2 itself, since most Screecher encounters don’t have Superheavy demons as support, but for larger encounters in possible future (custom) Master Levels where several Superheavies are involved, accidentally getting a group of Superheavies Screecher-buffed would basically cause a massive death spiral, at which point you might as well reload your save. It’s for this reason that, just like with the Marauder, the Screecher doesn’t scale upwards well; the level designer needs to put a damper on the heavier demons when using the Screecher so things won’t spiral into absurdly difficult territory, which limits how the Screecher can be used. I believe that forgoing the damage resistance buff would make the Screecher more flexible in this regard.

The Cursed Prowler is another such enemy which introduces an interesting and unique dynamic that works well within TAG2’s levels, but wouldn’t scale upwards well in future Master Levels. Being cursed with limited mobility and having to seek out and Blood Punch a moving target that keeps running away from you is great, as it makes you improvise using a more limited toolset in the same way that the Screecher makes you reconsider how to use AoE weaponry. The problem is that this dynamic can only occur so long as the Cursed Prowler hits you. This means that an arena that holds back on enemy spawns to account for the possibility of being cursed runs the risk of being too boneless if you kill the Cursed Prowler without getting cursed, whereas an arena that doesn’t hold back at all is liable to turn into a death spiral if you do get cursed, and basically makes memorizing Cursed Prowler spawns a requirement. This is a similar problem that Buff Totems faced in the base game, where you were better off memorizing Buff Totem spawns and beelining towards them instead of dealing with the buffed enemies, which TAG1 got around by locking Buff Totems away from you and forcing you to deal with buffed enemies. Similarly, Cursed Prowlers would work better if being cursed was an inevitability (like being automatically cursed whenever a Cursed Prowler spawns, with this being telegraphed well in advance). This would make dealing with the status effect more predictable if you know when it’s coming, but this predictability should also allow designers to create encounters that are better tailored around being cursed, instead of having to design encounters around simultaneously being cursed and not being cursed. Even with that in mind, being unable to dash while cursed means you’re basically screwed against enemies like Tyrants, Doom Hunters, or Whiplashes where you absolutely must dash in order to avoid their attacks (the Meathook also works as a means to quickly GTFO, but it has its own cooldown), so to better allow for encounters where you end up being cursed against enemies like that without it becoming complete bullshit, it would be better to create some leeway by having dashes just recharge relatively slowly when you are cursed.

On another note, I also wish being cursed didn’t automatically give you a BP charge to always prepare you for killing the Cursed Prowler, and would actually deplete your BP gauge to begin with. Part of the dynamic of being cursed involves having to suddenly adapt to a limited moveset, and having to find other enemies to GK for BP’s while cursed (instead of immediately beelining towards the Crowler) could have played a great part in that.

The Armored Baron is a great albeit underutilized addition. It’s basically the Marauder Done Right; instead of only being able to wait for the Baron to give you an opening to disable its shields (like with the Marauder/Blood Makyr), you can also force an opening by shooting it with the Plasma Rifle and its mods, which also makes the Heat Blast somewhat useful for once because of its burst plasma damage. Instead of the Armored Baron being a non-factor that you only deal with after clearing out all other heavy demons (like with the Marauder), you do want to prioritize parrying/dodging its morning star attacks when they occur, because their range and accuracy is massive. The Armored Baron also occupies a different niche from the Blood Makyr where instead of being able to insta-kill it during its vulnerability window in one shot, you need to commit more time and ammo to kill it while it’s vulnerable. This is why the Armored Baron works best in pairs or together with other (super)heavy demons; other demons get in the way of you easily being able to burst down an Armored Baron while it’s vulnerable, while the Armored Baron still demands top priority when it does its morning star attack. This is also why it’s unfortunate that Armored Barons are rarely used in this capacity. On another note, I wish the vulnerability window for the morning star attacks was made a bit smaller, so you’d have a reason to actually go destroy the Armored Baron’s armor the hard way when things are getting too intense for you to easily focus on parrying the morning star.

The Riot Soldiers are supposed to be like the Doom 2 Chaingunners, but here they are just undercooked no matter how you want to try and use them. Their fast low-damage projectiles are too inaccurate to pose any threat whatsoever, and their indestructible shields are easily circumvented with only one Remote Detonation or Sticky Bomb. Riot Soldiers could work as a long-range harassment unit, where they bully you with nigh-unavoidable chip damage into breaking line of sight or prioritizing them first, but this could only work if they could actually reliably hit you and if they weren’t so simple to kill from long-range with explosive splash damage. The Challenge Restored mod has the right idea here where Riot Soldiers have increased projectile speeds, and take way less damage from explosive weapons, with the intent of using explosives to setup falters and finishing them off with another weapon. That way instead of quickly being able to delete Riot Soldiers from any range, you need to commit dealing with Riot Soldiers either by waiting for your explosives to detonate and falter them so you can finish them off at any range, or by simply moving around their shields.

The Stone Imps seem like a lazy way to get you to use the Full-Auto, but they do pose an interesting dynamic (if they’re not used only by themselves). So here you’ve got an ubiquitous fodder demon that cannot be killed using regular means. While Full-Auto does easily kill them, Full-Auto is also a mod that requires commitment in terms of deployment time and reduced movement speed when using it, so if you had to fight Stone Imps alongside heavier demons intruding on your personal space, then using only Full-Auto would be much less of a dominant solution. You also can’t easily choose to ignore Stone Imps until you take out all the bigger demons first, because Stone Imps have this homing spinball attack that’s tricky to avoid. Their damage vulnerability to the Hammer is also a neat idea in that you can expend a valuable Hammer charge to easily get rid of them in one shot. At least this would be a cool dynamic if getting Hammer charges wasn’t so easy, but more on that later. I do wish that the Stone Imp also had a damage vulnerability for other high-commitment options such as the Mobile Turret, Microwave Beam and Destroyer Blade, so you have a bit more freedom in deciding how exactly you are going to commit to dealing with Stone Imps.

Lastly, TAG2 introduces the Hammer. The Hammer is your replacement for the Crucible, and is a way more interesting tool that should’ve replaced both the Crucible and Chainsaw from the get go. The Chainsaw simply isn’t very interesting to use; with one press of a button you insta-kill an enemy for ammo, and the dynamic of being left vulnerable after a Chainsaw kill often doesn’t get capitalized on by the enemies (except for Mancubi and Possessed enemies), and even then can be mitigated by deploying the Chaingun Shield right after the kill animation ends. Meanwhile there is more depth to how you can use the Hammer as a tool to regain ammo, as a tool to stun enemies, or just to clear out fodder (kind of like DOOM (2016)’s Chainsaw dynamic of “do I save fuel to insta-kill a Baron, or do I want ammo now”, except the Hammer takes a less insane approach that doesn’t involve insta-killing any enemy with no effort). Enemies hit by the Hammer shockwave drop ammo, so the more enemies you hit at once, the more ammo you get. But you can also opt to forgo maximizing ammo gains to use it more offensively by stunning (super)heavy demons or using it to increase the vulnerability windows on enemies like the Armored Barons and Marauders, or enemies that are resistant to everything except the Hammer like the Stone Imp.

This is all great, but in practice the Hammer is way overpowered (especially once upgraded), and needs to be tuned down by a whole lot. The ammo gained per hit demon is large enough that grouping enemies together on purpose isn’t something you would really consider doing, which on top of already having the Chainsaw means that ammo will never be an issue ever. Hammering enemies that are already frozen with an Ice Bomb or set alight with the Flame Belch further multiplies the health/armor gains to absurd levels. The absurd upgraded stun duration on enemies hit by the Hammer, on top of the debuff that makes hammered enemies take bonus damage, means that you can kill most (super)heavies in one cycle (if you know how to quickswap), and is already obscenely OP on its own. Yes, it lets you very easily one-cycle Marauders which is based because they’re a trash enemy type, but that is honestly just a band-aid fix. Furthermore, the Hammer is also quite spammable because you only need to destroy two weak points or do two Glory Kills to recharge it (sidenote: having something fill up based on destroying weak points is great because it gives you a reason to bother shooting off the Revenant shoulder cannons), and even then TAG2 levels tend to litter arenas with Hammer charge pick-ups that make using the Hammer with its sheer power a brainless option. I want to use the Hammer, but its sheer power makes other parts of Eternal’s resource gathering and faltering dynamic too redundant. The Ice Bomb/Frag Grenades are about as or less powerful than the Hammer, but they’re also less spammable because of their lengthier cooldowns, and so end up being less useful on their own unless combined with the Hammer. In short, the Hammer needs nerfs nerfs nerfs--to the resources you gain from it, to the degree it stuns enemies, and to how frequently you can use it. As it is right now, it’s only suitably tuned for slaughter map-tier encounters, and way too strong for anything below that.

Finally, there’s the Dark Lord fight, which is bad. It’s basically a Super Marauder, except the Gladiator boss fight was already a Super Marauder, so the Dark Lord doesn’t get any points for originality. It’s also a much worse Super Marauder fight in every conceivable way. The biggest one is that it’s just terrible at pressuring you and testing your mobility. Most of his attacks can be avoided by simply circlestrafing or circledashing in the case of his shield bash, which you can do because the arena for the fight is ridiculously large and flat, and the Dark Lord has no fast ranged options that actually lead your movement. Compare this to the Gladiator who could snipe you with his morning stars, his shield projectile, his jumping rope attack, or by just rushing you and smacking you up close, or how the DOOM (2016) bosses would have more ranged attacks that indiscriminately covered the whole arena.

In terms of offense, the fight doesn’t fare much better. Whereas you could deal some chip damage to the Gladiator instead of having to only wait to parry its attacks, the Dark Lord gets straight up healed when you attack it when its eyes don’t flash green, even when it whiffs a melee attack (?!?!). This means there is absolutely no choice but to wait for that green flash to come, and whether the Dark Lord will do the one attack where he does flash green is very much up to RNG. Once you stagger him it’s a matter of optimizing how much damage you get out of the vulnerability time window by using the Hammer to extend the window and equipment to deal more damage, but in this context that’s not an interesting dynamic on its own. Since the fight is mostly a 1v1, applying a close-to-optimal quickswap combo becomes the dominant strategy, which is also one that isn’t that difficult to execute if you have set up some reasonable keybindings. Here the solution is obvious, is easy to execute, and must be repeated several times (for a minimum of two times for each of the five phases) with no reason to change it up, so it becomes boring. What wouldn’t have been boring if you had to find a way to deal the most damage possible while other demons kept trying to interrupt you--much like how fighting Armored Barons should ideally play out. Now depending on the situation you need to shift your priorities between doing sick combos and dealing with other demons. Charging the Hammer so you can deal extra damage is also a shallow dynamic in this fight, where instead of having to set up Glory Kills or target weak points on other demons, the enemies that the Dark Lord summons will straight-up drop Hammer charges on any kind of death, meaning there is no real choices to be had between prioritizing enemies for resources and prioritizing the Dark Lord to deal damage (and even then you can easily Meathook towards any of the static Zombies at the edge of the arena for a free Glory Kill/Chainsaw Kill).

In conclusion, as a result of trying to cram in too many new things in a small mission pack and trying to expedite properly utilizing said things to subsequent playthroughs, TAG2 ends up primarily feeling like wasted potential, and I would have genuinely preferred if it introduces less and polished what little it did introduce, than to wave all these cool concepts in our faces and do nothing with it. While introducing as many new elements as possible is great for future Master Levels both official and unofficial, vanilla TAG2 ends up suffering because of it, and vanilla TAG2 is what most people are going to be playing. I do hope that in the future id Software goes back to the base game’s approach to the learning curve, instead of TAG1’s approach of assuming the player is still completely familiar with all systems, or TAG2’s obsession with flow and increasing the intensity only very gradually over the course of its campaign.

Shibuya is often cited as the epicentre for youth culture, at least at it's peak in the 2000s and early 2010s, many aspects of this district embody this from their shopping centres, to the type of music you would hear from the giant billboard television advertising loud jpop to a massive crosswalk of people walking every direction, surrounded by art trying to speak to someone, no matter how manufactured, or genuine a message it is. All of this is embodied in The World Ends With You, a remarkably unique game because of how it incorporates its style, aesthetics, and cultural history into every element it can. It is impossible to seperate this game from the culture and time it belongs to, ironically this makes it timeless in a lot of ways as a time capsule to an era where punk and angst manifested into noise, bombast, and individuality.

Remarkably, The World Ends with You deftly weaves this into its mechanics, with fashion being, appropriately, stat boosting "armour" that varies in effectiveness with the varying trends of fashion in each district, and pins (think more badges) which are the attacks of the game. While a relatively negligible mechanic in practice, particularly in post-game due to the large assortment of extremely powerful unbranded clothes, it cannot be denied that it has a purpose extended beyond gameplay and weaves itself into the foundation of the game. The way the game's foundation of Shibuya manifests even further into its story, while on a surface level it can feel like a dated story about an angsty teen angry at the world learning to see past himself and look at other people as well, there is a lot of subtext present about the way his eyes open up, even beyond his ability to develop friendships once he focuses more on other people, such as the way he views at art, fashion, and individual expression in general.

The key in what makes The World Ends with You one of my favourite games in how all the little details contribute to the greater themes and ideas. A detail I've often seen overlooked are the thoughts you can mindread from people around Shibuya, while you may look at a few thoughts here and there, I find most players would only beeline towards the relevant thoughts for story progression but there are a surprising number of unique thoughts spread across the many generic npcs in the world. Again, this directly loops into our main character's realisation about the people outside his own peripheral vision, as the player perceives people outside the main cast, or even the side cast, and their thoughts permeating the players view, as this mindreading view is required to encounter enemies outside of bosses.

The World Ends with You is getting a sequel in a few months, but whether that game is good or not won't affect how this game is still a beautiful time capsule of an experience, that is well worth your time if you have even a passing interest in anything that Shibuya was about before it's, arguable, modern corporatization and sanitisation. Feel free to post copium if NEO: TWEWY sucks.

Morte (reading the Nameless One's back): "says here you died of ligma"

Nameless One: "what's death"

Morte: "ligma balls"

So it's Monster Hunter which means it has sucked far more hours of my life than just about any other genre but it's also definitely one of the weaker entries of the post-Tri series.

There's plenty of good; getting around the map feels pretty great; Wirebug spidermanning just works out of combat, you can ride your ninja dog like a horse or yoshi him for extra height, and wirefall recovery gives you a way to get up with your weapon sheathed, something I've wanted for over a decade now. Narga and Ziggy are the coolest they've ever been and I enjoyed the hot new cat Magnamelo as well. The problem is that other than those three and newcomer Goss Harag the monsters just aren't very good; bad hitboxes abound and there are several weird shared telegraphs. The final boss giants are probably the worst the modern series has ever seen and the new Rampage mode, monhun tower defense, is an abomination unto good taste. The fact that the two worst parts of the game are the easiest way to farm charms almost makes me miss rusty shard farming in 3U.

There are plenty of other upsides; armor set skills are designed much more with purpose now instead of being a mismash. Switchaxe and Gunlance are the best they've ever felt to play, with the former using the actual morph aspect as a meaningful part and the latter having actual chasedown and fast punishes. Hunting Horn got a total rework into being the super invincible machine instead of a bad hammer, and LBG lets you go full gunfu on monsters, which is pretty cool.

The biggest downside though is that the game just sort of ends at what would normally be the 70-80% mark or so for a monster hunter game; it feels like 8 quests just got cut from the game; for comparison World went to 9 on launch instead of Rise's 7*.

There's also some serious camera issues; monsters are just bigger and I think the camera might be more zoomed in, but it's far harder to keep track of everything compared to previous entries, like they took G's Plesioth as the new standard where you spend the whole time staring at his weird little feet.

Again though, it's Monster Hunter, it's fun, Long Sword is even more broken than it was before, and it's got one of the easiest LRs for getting you into the game, but I'd still recommend waiting for the next big content patch to get in if you're not a big MH fan.