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!

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.

This is an odd game to come back to after so long to review. While playing, I was intensely immersed, and found myself thinking about the game even while not playing, but there are some themes here (that are unsurprising for an ATLUS game) that made this game difficult to recommend:

1. Double-edged Queer Rep: there are queer characters who openly love one another, but there are moments of intense transphobia as well. This COULD have been brilliant, if they'd had, you know, a queer writer.

2. Sexualized teens. The way that the teen girls are drawn in battle is so openly erotic that it grosses me out.

3. Forced romance. Almost everyone pairs up by the end, and frankly, I don't think it always works. Some of the pairings are Wonderful, and others are...well, boring as hell.

On the other hand, this game does so much that I love! The pacing that means that players will arrive at revelations in a fun order no matter how they order the exploration of the characters. I adore my problematic traumatized fave Ryoko.

The way that the three primary mechanics: the visual novel, combat, and wiki exploration allow players to experience the story almost like a detective, strategically deciding what to play when in order to explore different aspects of the story is incredibly unique.

I'm glad I played 13 Sentinels, it has a lot to offer, but I think that some of these big caveats are important for players to know before they decide to pick this game up.

My love/hate relationship with ATLUS continues.

I loved so much of this game: the art design, music, level layouts, and combat all worked for me.

However. The heart of all RPGs, for me personally, lies in its cast, and the core three in Sea of Stars were not well characterized. I cannot think of a single thing that really distinguishes Zale and Valere from one another, and Garl is a saint. Friendships made of threes are often awkward and complex. Doubly so for childhood friendships where two are pre-selected to play a special role in their society. But they are all so unfailingly perfect and kind that it took me out of the high stakes of the story. The side characters were wonderful, but made how flat the core three were really stand out.

On the other hand, this was the perfect game to play when I came down with a bad cold! So I can definitely recommend it for that!

What a journey.

There's so much I could say about Earthbound, but most of it has already been said. I was so impressed by how well the quirky writing holds up, and how fun combat was 90% of the time. Honestly, this game is STILL funnier (and will continue to age better) than some modern titles.

While I wish my chosen one kids had spoken to each other, I still loved them all, built relationships based on the journey we embarked on together, and damn that final boss fight still made my heart race, made me cry.

Perhaps the biggest praise I can give this game is that after I finished it, I struggled to start and stay invested in other games, because, well, they're no Earthbound.

It's worth saying that I played this via the Nintendo Switch Online functionality and those QOL features made this title much more accessible, and the sometimes unfair RNG in combat less irritating. I would definitely recommend that to anyone interested in the game!

I can't WAIT to play Mother 3.

Life After Magic is a charming sapphic visual novel, with beautiful pixel presentation, lively music, and lovable characters. There's really a trope for every sapphic out there, from the leather-jacket wearing KJ, to the rival ARA, to my favorite, the sweet jock Jackie. Each character is lovable and with such a short game, it's easy to imagine re-playing it multiple times to see different character's arcs.

I also really appreciated how every member of the cast was affected in different ways by their magical girl group falling apart. All of it felt emotionally real, drawing on experiences many of us have with trying to reconnect with former close friends.

I appreciate that you can play this game non-romantically, and that even if you play out a romantic scenario, that doesn't mean the characters will end up together forever.

A small negative is that I really don't know what I missed to get Jackie's romantic ending, so when I didn't trigger it at the end it was a little frustrating. Overall, though, I was so happy with how her storyline came together that I could overlook this problem.

All in all, a no-brainer for lovers of other sapphic visual novels. I'm so excited to see what this team puts out next!

I've been reading tarot cards for myself (and on request for friends) for over seven years. This made Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood incredibly appealing. Who doesn't want to be a cosmic witch reading cards for your coven?

There's a lot that I loved about this game: the atmospheric music of fingerspit, the strong writing of nuanced relationships, and the minigame of creating your own divinatory cards was spellbinding. Honestly if the whole game was creating cards, I'd still play it.

Where it fell apart for me is the integration of the interpretation of the cards when Fortuna does readings. I never felt like what cards I pulled influenced the dialogue options. I'm not sure a game could really make interpreting tarot or other divinatory cards a mechanic because it's so subjective.

When I read tarot, I pull from my meanings of the card, the question, the spread, and the way that all of those things interact. I usually describe the imagery in detail as a way of connecting the question to the cards pulled.

When you interpret the cards in Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, the cards and what you say seem to have nothing to do with one another. Fortuna never references the titles of the cards or even the keywords that the game assigns them. I imagine coding something like that would be an absolute nightmare, and was probably outside of the scope of the game. I also don't think this will bother most people, but with my particular interests this got to me, pretty quickly. Like, sure, I'm enamored with my cards, but what do they mean? Does it matter which ones I pull? Fortuna seems to believe so, but the game, mechanically, doesn't align with that.

Still, a perfect Halloween game with flaws that probably won't bother many players.