crow_witch
There was so so much I loved about this game.
To start, Ichiban is one of the most wonderful AAA protagonists I have ever seen. It was so refreshing not to be in the mindset of a grizzled and cynical man, but instead with a character who is enthusiastic and so openly feels joy, love, rage, and grief.
All of the party members won me over too, and the dynamics in party chats and table talks delighted me from start to finish.
I am a self-professed minigame ignorer, but I had so much fun trying out all the minigames and sinking probably 10 hours into the management sim alone.
My nitpicks have to do with the finicky combat movement, the chapter 12 difficulty spike, and general turn-based rpg fussiness. I was so happy to hear that most (if not all) of these problems have been solved in Infinite Wealth and I cannot wait to play it.
To start, Ichiban is one of the most wonderful AAA protagonists I have ever seen. It was so refreshing not to be in the mindset of a grizzled and cynical man, but instead with a character who is enthusiastic and so openly feels joy, love, rage, and grief.
All of the party members won me over too, and the dynamics in party chats and table talks delighted me from start to finish.
I am a self-professed minigame ignorer, but I had so much fun trying out all the minigames and sinking probably 10 hours into the management sim alone.
My nitpicks have to do with the finicky combat movement, the chapter 12 difficulty spike, and general turn-based rpg fussiness. I was so happy to hear that most (if not all) of these problems have been solved in Infinite Wealth and I cannot wait to play it.
I can't rate this game because I have so many mixed feelings about it.
VNs are hard from me, because I read a lot more than I game, so I am PICKY when it comes to writing.
The Good: the music is incredible, the women are written with complexity and depth, Beatrice is here. I had to skim the gore/violence sections because they were so viscerally written. Up there with McCarthy in terms of being able to turn my stomach.
The Mediocre: every scene is like 20-30% too long, in my opinion. Ryukishi07 has this habit of telling me 10 times what I read and learned just fine when I read it the first time. Please, trust me, Ryukishi07 I promise I understood Shannon's character development in this volume. It's better here than in Higurashi though.
The bad: the tea party scenes are so self-indulgent and are so so so long.
Will I keep reading? Maybe. Maybe.
VNs are hard from me, because I read a lot more than I game, so I am PICKY when it comes to writing.
The Good: the music is incredible, the women are written with complexity and depth, Beatrice is here. I had to skim the gore/violence sections because they were so viscerally written. Up there with McCarthy in terms of being able to turn my stomach.
The Mediocre: every scene is like 20-30% too long, in my opinion. Ryukishi07 has this habit of telling me 10 times what I read and learned just fine when I read it the first time. Please, trust me, Ryukishi07 I promise I understood Shannon's character development in this volume. It's better here than in Higurashi though.
The bad: the tea party scenes are so self-indulgent and are so so so long.
Will I keep reading? Maybe. Maybe.
You know, looking back, I have played so many games that write women so poorly. Playing this back to back with Dave the Diver was the impetus for me realizing just how much in Dave the Diver was rubbing me the wrong way because of the covert sexism in that game. Misericorde's cast is (for now, I'm expecting some gender stuff in volume 2) primarily women. Flawed, silly, heroic, villanous, and so so human. The art design helps capture that, utilizing presentation that gets across the uniformity of their nuns' habits to strike fear into the reader and then seamlessly showing through posture and gesture how they each wear it a little differently.
I believed in every single character in the game, even the ones I didn't like, and Hedwig is a perfect protagonist. I admit, at the start, I expected Hedwig's fish-out-of-water story to be background, but it is the foreground. We are hearing Hedwig's story with all the biases and missing moments you would expect of a profoundly self-loathing and self-righteous woman who has been isolated all of her life.
The music is an absolute gift. Over 100 tracks for a game a tenth of that length, and I have listened to it often while writing or working.
I cannot wait for volume 2 and all future volumes!
I believed in every single character in the game, even the ones I didn't like, and Hedwig is a perfect protagonist. I admit, at the start, I expected Hedwig's fish-out-of-water story to be background, but it is the foreground. We are hearing Hedwig's story with all the biases and missing moments you would expect of a profoundly self-loathing and self-righteous woman who has been isolated all of her life.
The music is an absolute gift. Over 100 tracks for a game a tenth of that length, and I have listened to it often while writing or working.
I cannot wait for volume 2 and all future volumes!
2022
Rewrote my brain chemistry.
No, genuinely. This is my first Fromsoft game. I had always thought I was "too bad" at reflex-based games to ever enjoy them. I bought ER on a whim, on sale, and said fuck it. I'm going to die a lot, but if I hate it, I can stop playing.
On some good advice, I played astrologer, and relied heavily on my girlfriend (Lhutel the headless) at the start. I died. A lot.
But I wasn't angry about dying, because, well, it's a Fromsoft game, legendary for their difficulty. Where in other games I may have given up while beating myself up for being bad at games or turned the difficulty down, I kept playing ER. I began to confront my own minor self-esteem issues: my tendency to give up and blame myself right as a new skill gets difficult instead of embracing the challenges ahead. By the time I got through Stormveil Castle, I was anticipating every challenge with nerves and, strangely, excitement.
By the time I put the game down, it had become one of my most treasured gaming experiences, ever. I have played games differently ever since. In the past, I sometimes would start a game on easy before trying it, assuming that I would never be good enough at games to get through it on normal. Now, I always start on normal, no matter the genre, with no judgement if I need to turn it down later. Before, if I couldn't beat a boss on the third try, I would blame myself for trying and give up. Now, the first five times are basically just reconnaissance, and I can see with good humor, that I was being really mean to myself for no reason.
This is not going to be everyone's experience, far from it, but if you're on the fence about ER because you don't think you're a good enough gamer: come, join me in dying a lot and having so much fun that you won't particularly mind.
This game has some flaws: some of the caves can be repetitive, I can't kiss Malenia, but it changed the way I game. Forever. Can't wait to play Dark Souls next year.
(Important note: Fromsoft should have accessibility options. And a pause button. That is a conversation for another time, but I recommend the blog "Can I Play that?" for discussions of gaming and disability).
No, genuinely. This is my first Fromsoft game. I had always thought I was "too bad" at reflex-based games to ever enjoy them. I bought ER on a whim, on sale, and said fuck it. I'm going to die a lot, but if I hate it, I can stop playing.
On some good advice, I played astrologer, and relied heavily on my girlfriend (Lhutel the headless) at the start. I died. A lot.
But I wasn't angry about dying, because, well, it's a Fromsoft game, legendary for their difficulty. Where in other games I may have given up while beating myself up for being bad at games or turned the difficulty down, I kept playing ER. I began to confront my own minor self-esteem issues: my tendency to give up and blame myself right as a new skill gets difficult instead of embracing the challenges ahead. By the time I got through Stormveil Castle, I was anticipating every challenge with nerves and, strangely, excitement.
By the time I put the game down, it had become one of my most treasured gaming experiences, ever. I have played games differently ever since. In the past, I sometimes would start a game on easy before trying it, assuming that I would never be good enough at games to get through it on normal. Now, I always start on normal, no matter the genre, with no judgement if I need to turn it down later. Before, if I couldn't beat a boss on the third try, I would blame myself for trying and give up. Now, the first five times are basically just reconnaissance, and I can see with good humor, that I was being really mean to myself for no reason.
This is not going to be everyone's experience, far from it, but if you're on the fence about ER because you don't think you're a good enough gamer: come, join me in dying a lot and having so much fun that you won't particularly mind.
This game has some flaws: some of the caves can be repetitive, I can't kiss Malenia, but it changed the way I game. Forever. Can't wait to play Dark Souls next year.
(Important note: Fromsoft should have accessibility options. And a pause button. That is a conversation for another time, but I recommend the blog "Can I Play that?" for discussions of gaming and disability).
2023
A flawed game that I loved with my whole big heart. Totally understand why some people would jump off with the repetitive parts, but this one worked for me. I'll be thinking about it for awhile.
2023
Relaxing and unique. I love dipping in and out of this game.
2023
I did not expect to love Pikmin 4 as much as I do.
I have not played any Pikmin or RTS prior to playing Pikmin 4, and it was a bit of a slow burn for me. Given that this game is meant for a family audience, the tutorials are slow and detailed, cluttering up the opening couple hours of the game. I ended my first play session thinking "that was alright." The next day I played for three straight hours.
The delicate music and gorgeous environments of the opening areas invited me into the world of Pikmin. The strategizing of careful use of my little guys and my big puppy kept me longing to just play one more day or one more sublevel of a cave. I appreciated the variety between caves, traditional areas, dandori challenges, dandori battles, and night expeditions, though I do think that night expeditions are the weakest element, gameplay-wise, too short and too easy, on the whole. I hope that Nintendo iterates on the night expeditions in future Pikmin games!
I docked half a star because the writing is, well, serviceable, if occasionally scenes go on too long, but I wasn't really there for the narrative. I was there to painstakingly plot out my routes through a level to achieve the greatest possible amount of dandori.
Truly, I think this is a great place to start with the Pikmin series, just skip cutscenes if you're bored and know that the tutorials stop around day 9. I can't wait to play the rest of the series!
I have not played any Pikmin or RTS prior to playing Pikmin 4, and it was a bit of a slow burn for me. Given that this game is meant for a family audience, the tutorials are slow and detailed, cluttering up the opening couple hours of the game. I ended my first play session thinking "that was alright." The next day I played for three straight hours.
The delicate music and gorgeous environments of the opening areas invited me into the world of Pikmin. The strategizing of careful use of my little guys and my big puppy kept me longing to just play one more day or one more sublevel of a cave. I appreciated the variety between caves, traditional areas, dandori challenges, dandori battles, and night expeditions, though I do think that night expeditions are the weakest element, gameplay-wise, too short and too easy, on the whole. I hope that Nintendo iterates on the night expeditions in future Pikmin games!
I docked half a star because the writing is, well, serviceable, if occasionally scenes go on too long, but I wasn't really there for the narrative. I was there to painstakingly plot out my routes through a level to achieve the greatest possible amount of dandori.
Truly, I think this is a great place to start with the Pikmin series, just skip cutscenes if you're bored and know that the tutorials stop around day 9. I can't wait to play the rest of the series!
2022
I enjoyed so much about this game, but some of the writing problems took away from my overall enjoyment.
First, the positives. The loop from fishing to restaurant management was a time suck. The fishing controls were appropriately tricky to master and the restaurant brought the kind of adrenaline I haven't felt since playing Diner dash. Those two elements are only the start of all the content in this game, which is both blessing and curse.
The benefit of so much content is that the game is bursting with ways to express yourself as a player. Want to invest in farming? In restaurant staff? In minigames? All of it is here and so much more that would be a spoiler to discuss. On the other hand, there is so much content that I felt like I barely had a moment to breathe. I often wanted a button I could push that would push deadlines for special events back a couple of days, not because they weren't interesting, but because I wanted to chill with this game rather than rush.
The problems in the writing is where I got stuck. Dave is an atypical protagonist as a fat, middle-aged man who is not macho. I loved that about this game from the start. However, the writers see him as a joke. At least, that's how it feels. Every character has to comment on his weight and emasculate him for being a relatively timid fat man. At first, I assumed that the side characters who mocked Dave would learn that they were wrong, and that this non-traditional game protagonist would be respected. This never happened. He was consistently the butt of the joke.
The other criticism of the writing that I personally have is how the few female characters are written. I noticed that every woman are characterized as nagging or foolish, with perhaps the exception of the recruiter, who still has to learn a lesson. All major sympathetic characters are men.
After a dozen or so hours (I got to chapter 6), these flaws got to me, and I shelved the game for the time being. It's a fun and generous game, but I wish it was more generous with its women and with Dave himself.
First, the positives. The loop from fishing to restaurant management was a time suck. The fishing controls were appropriately tricky to master and the restaurant brought the kind of adrenaline I haven't felt since playing Diner dash. Those two elements are only the start of all the content in this game, which is both blessing and curse.
The benefit of so much content is that the game is bursting with ways to express yourself as a player. Want to invest in farming? In restaurant staff? In minigames? All of it is here and so much more that would be a spoiler to discuss. On the other hand, there is so much content that I felt like I barely had a moment to breathe. I often wanted a button I could push that would push deadlines for special events back a couple of days, not because they weren't interesting, but because I wanted to chill with this game rather than rush.
The problems in the writing is where I got stuck. Dave is an atypical protagonist as a fat, middle-aged man who is not macho. I loved that about this game from the start. However, the writers see him as a joke. At least, that's how it feels. Every character has to comment on his weight and emasculate him for being a relatively timid fat man. At first, I assumed that the side characters who mocked Dave would learn that they were wrong, and that this non-traditional game protagonist would be respected. This never happened. He was consistently the butt of the joke.
The other criticism of the writing that I personally have is how the few female characters are written. I noticed that every woman are characterized as nagging or foolish, with perhaps the exception of the recruiter, who still has to learn a lesson. All major sympathetic characters are men.
After a dozen or so hours (I got to chapter 6), these flaws got to me, and I shelved the game for the time being. It's a fun and generous game, but I wish it was more generous with its women and with Dave himself.
This review contains spoilers
They gave this frog a gay love story and it really doesn't get any better than that.
2023
This is the kind of game that is normally catnip for me, with its emphasis on emotional storytelling, but it just fell flat. The music and art design were gorgeous but the writing was overly saccharine and didn't add anything beyond the tropes I already enjoyed. I am looking forward to what this studio puts out next, though!
This was my first WarioWare game, played using the Nintendo Switch Online GBA system, and I had an absolute blast!
This game embraces chaos and absurdity from its music to its game play. I loved how goofy the cutscenes were for each of Wario's friends, and how they all ended up hanging out at the gelateria. I especially loved Kat, Mona, Dribble&Spitz's minigames!
The highest praise i can give this game is that I showed Mona's minigames to my partner who had no context for what WarioWare was, and first they laughed until they cried, then asked for the switch so they could mercilessly crush my high score on their second try. It's compelling in its commitment to the bit.
My feelings on it might be more positive because it's my first Warioware game, but it definitely won't be my last!
This game embraces chaos and absurdity from its music to its game play. I loved how goofy the cutscenes were for each of Wario's friends, and how they all ended up hanging out at the gelateria. I especially loved Kat, Mona, Dribble&Spitz's minigames!
The highest praise i can give this game is that I showed Mona's minigames to my partner who had no context for what WarioWare was, and first they laughed until they cried, then asked for the switch so they could mercilessly crush my high score on their second try. It's compelling in its commitment to the bit.
My feelings on it might be more positive because it's my first Warioware game, but it definitely won't be my last!
Really don't know what else to say except I love Kirby. I tend to play Kirby games when I'm in a rough mental place, and I started this one for that reason. I had an absolute blast, and actually was compelled enough to go back and 100% levels, which is not something I typically do with any games. I even played minigames! Me, a professed minigame hater!
I do feel like I was spoiled, in a way, that my first two Kirby Games were Epic Yarn and Forgotten Land, while this one feels more of a predictable Kirby Game. But god, it was fun, and it made me smile when very little else could.
I decided to save the Magolor levels for the next time I need a pick-me-up, so I look forward to checking those out in the future!
I do feel like I was spoiled, in a way, that my first two Kirby Games were Epic Yarn and Forgotten Land, while this one feels more of a predictable Kirby Game. But god, it was fun, and it made me smile when very little else could.
I decided to save the Magolor levels for the next time I need a pick-me-up, so I look forward to checking those out in the future!
Played via the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack, Minish Cap was so much fun! The dungeons were a fun level of challenge although not as complex as Link's Awakening or A Link to the Past. This game seems aimed at a younger audience than other top-down Zelda titles, but it was a joy to play. I was so charmed by the pixel art, especially when Link becomes Minish-sized and is surrounded by a vast, lush world. Definitely worth playing for any zelda fans!
I can't believe I didn't know about the sequel to West of Loathing for so long!
This was so fun, even if I found some of the puzzles a little obtuse. I found each battle to be short enough that they didn't feel tedious but involved enough I had to do a little thinking for each one, a difficult balance for RPGs. The locations and music really added to a perfect silly Halloween vibe that I recommend for scaredy cats like me.
This was so fun, even if I found some of the puzzles a little obtuse. I found each battle to be short enough that they didn't feel tedious but involved enough I had to do a little thinking for each one, a difficult balance for RPGs. The locations and music really added to a perfect silly Halloween vibe that I recommend for scaredy cats like me.
2022
Combat and music in this game ruled, and I loved making Serenoa's choices entirely based off of what his wife thought was best.
However. Whew Boy!!!! The orientalism was off the charts with this one!!!! That scene where our European-coded characters are in a desert city (a scene that not all players will see, given it has branching paths) and are startled and horrified by a daily call to prayer that is very reminiscent of Muslim calls to prayer was wild. How is it scary when Muslims have daily calls to prayer but not when Christians drink the blood and eat the flesh of Christ? It's classic Edward Said Orientalism all the way down in this one.
To quote from the article on Said's work from Wikipedia: "These cultural representations [of the Middle East] usually depict the 'Orient' as primitive, irrational, violent, despotic, fanatic, and essentially inferior to the westerner or native informant, and hence, 'enlightenment' can only occur when "traditional" and "reactionary" values are replaced by "contemporary" and "progressive" ideas that are either western or western-influenced."
I finished the game largely to see just how islamophobic it gets and it is rough. I was pretty unsettled not to see it mentioned in most critical reviews of the game, either.
The tactics were great and I loved most of the characters, but I cannot forgive them for that.
However. Whew Boy!!!! The orientalism was off the charts with this one!!!! That scene where our European-coded characters are in a desert city (a scene that not all players will see, given it has branching paths) and are startled and horrified by a daily call to prayer that is very reminiscent of Muslim calls to prayer was wild. How is it scary when Muslims have daily calls to prayer but not when Christians drink the blood and eat the flesh of Christ? It's classic Edward Said Orientalism all the way down in this one.
To quote from the article on Said's work from Wikipedia: "These cultural representations [of the Middle East] usually depict the 'Orient' as primitive, irrational, violent, despotic, fanatic, and essentially inferior to the westerner or native informant, and hence, 'enlightenment' can only occur when "traditional" and "reactionary" values are replaced by "contemporary" and "progressive" ideas that are either western or western-influenced."
I finished the game largely to see just how islamophobic it gets and it is rough. I was pretty unsettled not to see it mentioned in most critical reviews of the game, either.
The tactics were great and I loved most of the characters, but I cannot forgive them for that.