I played this before, back at the height of its controversy, and going back to it now it's impossible to imagine a game this mundane and small lead to...well, Gamergate and all the harassment and bullshit and awfulness that came with it. Just completely bonkers that somebody played a small, personal visual novel about depression and went "FEMINISTS MUST DIE!!!!" I don't really wanna examine all that, others have done it better, but it feels impossible to review this game without at least mentioning it.

Depression Quest succeeds at what it aims to do, which is how I typically judge a game. The writing gets a little hokey at times, but it's rarely BAD and is, at its best, really good. And it was fun coming back to it now, where I'm in a leagues better place mentally than I was when I initially played it, and seeing how my answers and choices changed. Being able to trace my own story, with finding the guts to see a therapist and growing brave enough to truly depend on my support system, and see it mirrored in the protagonist felt sort of warm and nostalgic, and it inspired in me a lot of affection and tenderness for the younger me who couldn't imagine ever feeling this good.

It's nothing mind-blowing now, and I've played better text-based games. But when it came out, it really and truly was something different. It's easy to brush that off now, when this sort of game — and games revolving around mental illness more broadly — are more commonplace, but it really did do something new. Something with — as we'd all see in the months and years that followed — real and genuine risks. I really enjoyed coming back to it.

My friends who’ve heard me talk about this game are going to think this score is nuts. I’ve told everyone how much I love this game. I’ve gushed about this game. I’ve made gifsets and fanart. I’m going to replay it 500 times and make a gazillion player characters. I really, truly love it, and there’s so MUCH to love. The scope, the ambition, the responsiveness of the world and the characters. I love the world and the stories, the way nearly every quest has a million ways you can sneak through or around it. I love the breadth of characters and all of their arcs. I love the recurring theme of how revenge rarely feels as liberatory as you want it to and yet sometimes it still has to be done. I love the themes of autonomy and losing it and taking it back. I love how the characters can grow and change even when you don’t outright convince them. I love how the game looks and the art direction and the lighting. It also drives me fucking nuts. And it’s not even (entirely) the game’s fault.

To be clear, there are, genuinely, things wrong with the game in and of itself. It’s buggy in places — Act 3 especially — and every fix or patch adds three new bugs for every one it removes. Wyll’s arc is short-changed in a way that’s hard not to see as antiblackness. The turn-based combat means that every encounter with more than five or so enemies ends up being slow as sin, and there’s no meaningful attempt by the game to circumvent this issue. Moving through the world out of combat never feels bad, but it never feels awesome, either. Some of the side characters who are from older games are characterized completely differently and often contradictoraly from their old appearances, which is bound to piss off old fans. But, honestly, all of these issues on their own would still have me slapping a 4.5 or even a 5 on this game and moving along, because it really is still GREAT.

No, the real issue is the fandom. They’re insufferable. When they’re not making petitions to add new romances (always with men, incidentally!) or having meltdowns because a writer dared to say that continuing the cycle of abuse was a bad end, they’re trying to dox the devs so they can get new Rolan (another man!) content added. “Rain,” I hear you say, “That’s not fair. You can’t punish the game for the fandom.” That’s true! I’m not out here badly rating Sonic or Dragon Age games just because those fandoms need to be nuked from orbit. The problem here is that Larian fucking worships the fandom. They’re making changes to arcs and endings and characters on patch 900-whatever to appease the fandom! Lae’zel is too mean? Oh, okay, we’ll make her nicer! This ending is too sad? Oh, okay, we’ll soften it! You think Gortash is really sexy? We’ll borrow fan conent to add new stuff for him! (Were those fans PAID? CREDITED?) To be clear, on an objective level I LIKE some of the changes they’ve made. But I don’t WANT to play “Larian’s game but filtered through the lens of what I personally like,” I want to play “Larian’s game and Larian’s story.”

The lack of willingness in the gaming world right now to create games that don’t cater to the player, where the devs and the writers tell the story they aim to tell and build the mechanics they want to use and STICK TO THAT VISION, even if it adds friction or some gamers won’t like it or some fans complain drives me insane. I don’t want something that appeals to everyone, I want something specific and real. The idea that some fucker got mad because Larian dared to make a character that didn’t worship the player immediately and Larian bowed down and caved to the shit makes me want to blow up. STICK TO YOUR VISION AND YOUR STORY, PUSSIES! I’m about to get mad about the ME3 ending shit again good god.

It’s just such a frustrating encapsulation of everything wrong with gaming right now and how fandoms have too much power and too little imagination, and it breaks my heart how much it’s soured my stomach on a game I do genuinely adore. It’s so good where it’s good! It’s goddamn perfect! The love from the team is dripping out of every pore. But it’s impossible to look past the fact that the game that exists now is a different game than the one that was initially released, with different characters, because some people on the team felt that compromising their artistic vision was worth it if it’d make some fandom rando happier.

I still adore this game and, seriously, if you love RPGs or the like this really should be a must-play. It’s a joy. Its scope and ambition are second to none, and I have to cheer that on (particularly given how every other big studio is playing shit so safe right now) even when it doesn’t stick the landing. I love my gang of bisexual war criminals. Despite the tone of this review, I even love Larian; the next Big Game I plan on starting is Divinity: Original Sin 2 entirely because I love this game and Larian’s work on it so much. It’s such a wonderful piece of art. I hope the next one they make will be one with choices they have the guts to stick to.

What a delight! I really enjoyed this one; I know it gets flack for how much of its visual story (and, to a lesser extent gameplay) it borrows from other greats like Zelda, but to be honest I really adored that; I felt like I was 9 again, playing Jak and Daxter on my PlayStation 2 after school. The nostalgia was lovely, and it's fun to see more games playing into the ps2-era stylings and movement that aren't full-on retrobait stuff.

The movement feels good, the boss battles are wonderfully challenging, the world is really beautiful, the soundtrack is GORGEOUS. The story isn't mind-blowingly original, but it does what it aims to do beautifully, and with a lot of affection and tenderness. I loved its study on care and love and how those things can warp a person into the worst, most destructive version of themselves. I definitely teared up a few times.

I only have two real gripes, and one is quite petty. The non-petty one is that the invisible walls and invisible death triggers were a pain; I was regularly barred out from platforming on things that by all accounts looked like places I could platform, and occasionally killed jumping down to places that I absolutely should have been able to reach. Watching Kena's "long fall" death animation trigger four inches above the ground was not great. The pettier one is that the character modeling, particularly of Kena and the Rot, is all very...Disney, in the most generic and boring sense of the name. The environs are beautiful and some of the other characters push the stylization far enough to feel more interesting, but I do wish they'd gone for something more interesting, at least for the Rot. Like, Kena's actual DESIGN is great, I just wish it was on a different model. I'm a little bored of every girl looking like she's trying to be the next Disney princess and the little guys all looking like adorable Disney movie animal sidekicks.

Genuinely, though, those gripes are SO minor overall. I had a great time with the gameplay and the story. Really recommend if "beautiful 10-14 hr game with a banger soundtrack and vibes that feel the way playing all those stellar PlayStation platformers when you were 11 felt" sounds remotely appealing.

It's hard for me to talk about this one because on the one hand I honestly don't personally vibe with this style of RPG (but that's not the game's fault and I feel like it does it fairly well) and also it made me feel weird and anxious and uncomfortable (which speaks to the quality of the game and its art direction but does mean that I did not Like It in the traditional sense). BUT. ALSO. It looks so fucking cool, the claymation thing kicks ass, it's like 3 hours long which is great, Somsnosa please call me. I love the existence of any art that can make me feel weird and nauseous and annoyed even if I don't Like It. Can't wait to play the second one and want to die the whole time.

The MTX is stupid as hell (and the fact that so many people on the internet are just straight up lying about what’s actually being offered is worse). The PC port at launch was inexcusably bad. It shouldn’t have come with Denuvo. Capcom sucks in a myriad of different ways. And yet. AND YET!!!

The thing about me is that I think that the most irritating thing about the games industry right now, aside from the heinous abuse of employees, is the refusal to let anything be spikey. Every game is trying so fucking hard to shave off its own harsh edges, narratively and re: gameplay, lest they invite the rage of GamersTM who think the only reason a game should possibly exist is to make them feel good and powerful and godlike. Sometimes they continue to shave off harsh edges POST-RELEASE (and ooooh boy do I have thoughts about how Bioware softening ME3’s ending because of fan backlash to anything that challenges them or makes them feel less important starts the domino effect that we now see with Larian making Lae’zel nicer on the game’s 80th patch because of fan backlash to anything that challenges them or makes them feel less important, but we’d be here all day). I just want a game that MAKES CHOICES, particularly ones that DON’T center the player or put them on a pedestal, and I want games that commit to those choices! Even if those choices annoy me I just love that they MADE THEM. I believe that games are art, and sometimes art is going to exist to make you angry or annoyed or helpless or uncomfortable!

I played on a beefy rig and have the technical know-how to circumvent most of the performance issues other PC gamers experienced, so my gameplay was smooth like butter. Neither of these things should be required for the game to run well at launch, and it’s awful that it was. But at the same time, good fucking LORD I haven’t had this much fun with a game world in ages. All the vocations feel fun to play, it’s a genuine joy to wander through the world and see what deranged bullshit the game is going to heap on me (a dragon and a griffon at once while I go on a stroll with my girlfriend’s dad! Sure, why not!). The pawns’ and NPCs’ AIs are custom built for Looney Tunes level physical comedy. It’s so fucking great. And most of all, a glorious return to real intentional friction that isn’t just Souls-style “it’s really hard!”

I want MORE games that are this punishing about deaths! I want MORE games that limit fast travel like this! I want MORE games that fight super hard to prevent save scumming and which force you to commit to the consequences of your actions! I want MORE games that allow literally anyone to die! I want MORE games that can break in major ways if I fuck off or don’t read or care about mechanics properly! ABANDON ALL DELUSIONS OF CONTROL, GAMERS! Not EVERY game should be like this, obviously, but right now the ONLY kind of game that feels like it’s allowed to exist (particularly from major publishers) is one that has as much friction removed as possible, that are smooth and shiny and boring. It’s genuinely mind-blowing that a game that is THIS unconcerned with the player was published at all, let alone that a significant number of people are buying and playing it. That tells me that there’s a genuine hunger for this sort of experience. That makes me SO EXCITED!

The world and setting and lore are all fascinating and its commentary on the fourth wall is so fun. The plot’s thin and most of the characters are barely there, but it SO succeeds at what it sets out to do, which is create a world that it’s fun and insane to explore and suffer through. I have my squabbles, obviously (give me more enemy types!) but by and large it’s exactly what I want out of an open world game. I desperately hope that the deranged discourse (and the way so much of the discourse revolves around the idea that friction shouldn’t exist and that a game should, above all, cater to the player, make everything easy for the player, adore the player) doesn’t prevent more stuff like this getting made. A game that so fully nails the “exploring an unforgiving world with your gang of idiots” niche that DD2 has with more character and plot focus would be, genuinely, the perfect game. Please lord let me have this. PLEASE!!

It's one of my favourite point and click horror games ever, but it does unfortunately come from the "game difficulty is the game forcing you to desperately click on every single pixel to solve puzzles" school of development, which was common for the time the but feels super punishing and irritating now.

It shows its age in other ways, too; Ellen is one of my favourite game characters ever and a lot of her writing is really lovely. I adore how she's allowed to be extremely strong and self-assured and also terrified and wilting. But she's definitely written as something of a "sassy Black woman" stereotype, and while I do genuinely appreciate how the game portrays how PTSD can create triggers that appear "nonsensical," the way the game handles her trauma can come sometimes come across as under-researched at best.

Obviously I'm giving it four stars, so I still think it kicks ass. This is my second time beating this game (and I've watched others beat it lots of times) and I continue to enjoy it a lot; the story kicks ass and is delightfully dark and horrific, I love how it expands the characterization everyone gets from the short story, Harlan Ellison is clearly having the time of his fucking life as AM. Its commentary on human nature is timeless. Just use a walkthrough (and, if you know you've got trauma that games can bring to the surface, consult a list of triggers) and keep in mind the game's age.

Watching some people react to this game's pretty simple and inoffensive message of "when you're isolated and on the brink, a small connection from another human can help begin healing" with "it's illegal to tell stories about mental illness that don't end with the illness 100% cured but also if you do cure the illness that's cheap but suggesting that there's no moment where you're 'cured' you just grow and become better at dealing with it is ALSO evil. And suggesting that small things might help depression is evil and ableist and also suggesting that getting help is good is also evil and ableist. And also displaying mental illness as being debilitating is bad but also displaying it as being minor amounts to shooting mentally ill people in the head. And also it's misogynistic to suggest mentally ill people, some of whom are women, can be helped or even saved by human connection" makes me SO excited for how today's media landscape is going to absorb, flatten and wreck the themes of games that actually HAVE deeply nuanced, complicated things to say about mental illnesses and healing from them.

Like, say, Silent Hill 2.

ANYWAY! I thought it was fine, great in some parts and weak in others. It's VERY on the nose about its theme — but people are still missing it, so whatcha gonna do. The reaction from people with 0 media literacy is frankly more interesting to me than the game itself. STILL, I enjoyed it well enough and I think a lot of the disdain it's getting has more to do with the way that modern Silent Hill fans have decided that anything new is inherently bad and cheap and will never live up to some imagined past of perfection than the actual game itself, which is, at WORST, mid and anvilicious.

This was so fun! It's not perfect by any means, but it is a real delight to experience, and that's all I really ask for from a Sonic game. I appreciate that a lot of the characterization beats carry over from Frontiers, the graphics are really lovely, the models are SUPER expressive (great to see them continuing to get better and better each game, especially after years of nobody emoting ever) and the story is quite charming. I love that it's neither sanctimonious nor afraid to take itself seriously.

I hope it gets ported to other platforms eventually, because it's a shame that one of my favourite Sonic games in recent years is on a platform most GamersTM don't regularly touch.

"Coming off of the arcade version of Frogger, which is a characterization masterpiece and paragon of gameplay, this version of Frogger is impossibly catastrophic. Frogger makes a leap (lol) from being our likable blank slate protagonist who we just want to see get to the other side of the road safely into a deeply unlikable and disappointing excuze for a frog. What’s with the bone sound effect?
Graphically the game is ugly. Plain and simple. Voice acting is mid but what else do you expect from Frogger.
The game’s antifeminist rhetoric is deeply entrenched in the naming of Lily, which eagle-eyed Frogger fans will recognize from the HIT TITLE, Swampy’s Revenge. Naming all girls Lily and therefore reducing them to one singular entity, especially when that name is congruous with a frog’s home, the lilypad, is misogynist.
If this hasn’t convinced you, they stole Silent Hill 2’s Promise. Lily’s not your Mary.
But Slick Willy can get it tho"

The hubris in the above review displays an unhinged troglodyte who has, clearly, burst. Frogger is a departure from its predecessors, it's true, but it is also a breath of fresh air and work of art in it's own unique, specific way. In creating The Great Quest, the devs seek to absolve themselves from what once made them legendary, and in doing so create a truer, more real game.

The fact that this person missed the obvious metaphorical and narrative explanations for what they've crudely described as "the bone sound effect" should be proof enough that this is not a review or a reviewer worth respecting. That the obvious subversions of the concept of "fridging" with the character of Lily have flown over this simpleton's head is no surprise, either.

Slick Willy is also ugly as hell. Stan The Magical General of Light and Industry.

I think everyone should play this game.

I don't know how to talk about it, though. How to say "I cried at least ten times not because the game was sad — though it sometimes was — but because it was so tender, so loving, so unique" without sounding like a pretentious asshole. I don't know how to talk about Kochi, a little boy who shares his memories of his father with you because there's no way to put that love to letters. I don't know how to talk about the line "It's the two hardest things to hold in your head. They were just boys, and they killed my family" without dissolving into tears.

It's easier to talk world-building and visuals and mechanics. This game has perhaps the most interesting world in any game I've played recently. The societies and values are so much like ours and yet not like ours at all. The mixture of modern aesthetics with old-world mysticism feels so wonderful and lovely. It's explicitly post-apocalyptic but also not. It's SO gorgeous to look at, and the style is so so unique and the models are so so gorgeous.

The walking is sometimes clumsy, and you can get stuck — the game knows this, and the pause screen has a helpful button for unsticking you. The bike - riding, assuming you don't end up wedged in a corner, feels good and tight and not tight at all, much the way actually riding a bike is, I spose. But the gameplay focuses less on moving through the world and more on recording it. There are a few things in the world that you must record to progress, but by and large what you record and why is purely up to you. My journal was filled with photos and sounds that were mine, meaningless nothings that don't matter, but maybe they do, because I saw them, because I recorded them, because I am a part of the world and in seeing and recording I make the world part of me. If you want fast, kinetic gameplay, this isn't it, but the game and the story wouldn't be served by gameplay like that. The gameplay is perfect for telling the story the story wants to tell.

And — it's funny, because gamer-brain initially made this very thing hard to enjoy. I wanted clearer marks of progression. I felt like I'd failed each time I took a photo that wasn't plot relevant or recorded a song that didn't change the worldstate. I was frustrated I wasn't moving fast. Games train us in all sorts of ways, and the leading games in the world now might create beautiful worlds, but they don't really want you to look at them. They want you to find the right tool, the right answer, the golden ending.

And if there's a right tool, there's a wrong one. If there's a golden ending, there's a bad one. If the world is beautiful but not meant to be seen, then the people in the world aren't real, they're enemies or allies or NPC fodder. And this game eschews all that. It's a game where the magic isn't in winning, it's just in seeing and being and loving. It was disconcerting and refreshing, how the game never "takes a side" — it observes the world, and the protagonist has the occasional curious thought about the extreme actions taken by others, but there's no judgement in the thoughts. There are no villains, just people, doing what they can to escape and survive. The game doesn't ask you to come down hard on one side of it's internal debates about rightness, wrongness, memories — it doesn't stop you, but the way the game lets you observe is so wonderful. I've seen other say the ending feels abrupt, but it's the only way for it to end, I think. Abrupt, like the end of the world, but still loving, still whole.

When I finished, my first thought was that I wanted to replay immediately. It's a short game, and I wanted to try the other dialogue options, learn more about this world and these societies that are so similar and so alien to mine. I wanted to see the other ending. But at the same time...this game isn't like that. It's not a game to devour fast as you can, to scour and scum through to achieve maximum content. It's a game that feels a little like climbing into a warm bath. It envelopes you without swallowing you and without you swallowing it. It's just...comfy, and buoyant, and sometimes you sit and you listen to the water and you feel like you're more in the world than you ever have been. I will replay it sometime, probably sometime soon, but...I want to sit with it longer first. I want to let my fingers prune and unprune. I want to let the Season end, and appreciate what it left me with.

I guess, if the game has a moral, a meaning, something you need to take from it, it's something simple: to love even in a world that is passing away, and to take comfort that this end of the world is neither the first or the last. Something new to love will come after, as it always does, and as it has again and again and again.