I initially was gonna wait until all the parts were out so I could play the whole game in succession despite my gripes but since I got a copy of Final Fantasy 16 for Christmas and I want to play it, I decided to play this now so I can appreciate the gameplay without comparing it to the style of 16 and potential reacclimating I would need to do.

And I'm going to get this out of the way, I am a big fan of the original FF7. Though 9 is my favorite, I find 7 to be the far easier game to "pick up and play" as far as jrpgs are concerned. I am one of those people who does not like the direction the remake went narrative wise. I put a fair bit of weight on narrative when it comes to this genre and I do not like that its this is undeniably a sequel. If I wanted a different game or sequel then I wouldn't have bought something labeled as a REmake of FF7. Quite frankly this has made me wary of every single remake announced after it pulling one of these which is not something I needed in regards to my entertainment. I refer to this game as FF7-2 for a reason. At the very least, since that cat is out of the bag, I can look at the later parts without that baggage of being what I expect a remake to be.

Due to feeling the need to have Midgar have enough content to be its own game, the pacing jumps between well done to slower than molasses going down a hill in Janaury. Even if I wasn't taking the time to do all the side quests, missions, weapon leveling etc I still feel these pacing issues would have happened. Also, walk n talks. I HATE WALK N TALKS, not just in this game but all games. Maybe its the Metal Gear head in me but just make them goddamn cutscenes. Making it interactive to have to keep pace with an npc or else they stop due to you being too far away is not worthwhile gameplay. Its Replay poison. There also just felt like there was too much meandering disguised as "worldbuilding" and "fleshing out midgar". Characters who weren't super fleshed out in the original got their due (mainly Jessie from Avalanche) and in terms of the rest of the main cast I enjoyed seeing aspects of them I didn't in the original game. I had several moments where I was smiling like a dumbass. Spending more time in sector 7 before the big event did add to the moment but even if it didn't, seeing that cutscene and aftermath still would have left quite the impression.
Graphically the game is beautiful, except for a couple moments when you're really high up and the landscape underneath had that "its a jpeg" look to them and the two FMVs near the end where they were visibly worse but that one is clearly not in engine since it has Cloud wielding the buster sword despite me not using it at that time.

Gameplay wise I thought the remake was good. The combat felt very good to engage with (except for one aspect I will get into later) and swapping between characters was fast but making magic in of itself and giving orders to ai controller members need the atb system felt more like it halted combat flow more than helped imo. Also the fact using items needed that same bar, which on hard you can't use items at all which makes no sense since thats the difficulty I'd actually need to use them on, made me use them inside of battle less. That classic difficulty is a spit in the face though. There is nothing "classic" about characters moving, attacking and guarding on their own while you wait for the atb bar to fill up. Classic would be them standing in the line not doing a goddamn thing until I gave an input. I don't believe character in any turn based adjacent combat should move a damn muscle unless they were given auto type equipment and that why I didn't like Yakuza 7's combat despite being a turn based supporter. Materia also didn't create a fresh one once you mastered it which threw me for a loop and I'm honestly kind of sad about that, especially the enemy skill materia. Leveling up the weapons I am indifferent about. One one hand it feels like another grind to inflate playtime, but on the other hand the stats are worthwhile as is getting the specific abilities. The fact you could just add materia slots to weapons is a game changer. Having summon materia have its own dedicated slot away from your normal slots was a fantastic idea and whoever decided that should get a raise. The more limited materia selection of part 1 here is kind of detrimental to me but I fully understand why and won't fault the game for that. No playable Red also soured me cuz he's one of my favorites to use. I learned like a day before I started this playthrough that basically nothing is gonna carry over to Rebirth so I stopped caring about maxing all the materia out since I have no desire to play this game on hard where it would be necessary to have them. That did take the wind out of my sails a bit for the upcoming parts though I won't lie. Shame it ain't like .hack GU where the good stuff carries over. "But balancing!" Get outta here. If a ps2 game could figure it out, so can this.

So that one aspect of the combat that I alluded to earlier is how the game handles phase changes alongside its break/stagger mechanic. I just do no like break/stagger mechanics in general and how they are implemented in almost all jrgps that use them except like Bravely 2/Octopath. In 7R's case, it doesn't feel like I'm building up to this big damage but instead feels like my damage is nerfed for no reason until I hit the enemy enough. And then theres the cutscene phase changes...In most boss fights right about when I finally filled up that stagger meter the cutscene would activate and all that work is reset cuz no it doesn't carry over. Its just really annoying, it unnecessarily drags out fights and I don't understand the fascination with these things being put in jrpgs. The fight wouldn't be an more of a slugfest if this system was removed imo.

I enjoyed majority of the remake music and I'm excited for how something like Cosmo Canyon will sound like. Yes I found its disc but I wanna hear it without jukebox crust. I do like that the discs were a thing, cuz I really do love Tifa's theme. Its probably my favorite in 7's entire ost. I hope some sort of portable music system is implemented in REbirth if the disc system carries over. Actually since shit doesn't carry over it doesn't matter. Guess I'll stick to spotify if I wanna boot up a good chocobo theme. Can I also say I like how theres an npc in the party who will sing the classic victory fanfare since the games have gone action? Bonus points to the colosseum for having it as well as the classic victory animations AND having the characters line up while doing it.

I assume I'll continue being late to this party when REbirth and whatever part 3 is called comes out but if you're gonna split what was once a single multi disc game into three separate things Hobbit movie style then I'll stick to paying $20 each piece. That'll be the cost of one "new" by the end of it and I'll have the complete ff7 experience like I do on ps1. I probably come off as bitter, hater of change yada yada but I really did enjoy my time playing it for the most part (damn stagger system) which is why the score probably doesn't seem like it matches my words.

Bland levels, bland roster, bland art style, bland music, bland gameplay. A competent product that I feel virtually nothing but apathy for - granted I don't care that much about the Smash games either, but come on... There's just no comparison here, those are (mostly) leagues better than this is despite it still being a capable clone on a base level. The PlayStation All-Stars comparisons are noted but I would say they're only founded in the sense that both feel like almost immediate abandonware despite being spearheaded by waves of gigantic IPs that have all the ingredients for what should have been a huge slam dunk. Otherwise Sony's attempt felt way more personalized than this shallow husk imo. Feels like a sixth-gen game and not in a good way, everything about this just screams chintzy. Crazy how even after all these post-launch fixes the sound mixing is still this bad.

Honestly wasn't really expecting this one to vibe with me, and certainly wasn't expecting to list it among my favorite games of 2023. Holy shit were my expectations blown away. Everything in this game works. Music, animation, design, movement, core gameplay loop - everything is exactly what it needs to be. I don't necessarily think it's the greatest game of all time, but I do think it is a perfect game in the sense that it is perfectly put together. Everything was tested to hell and back, everything unnecessary being cut or removed and every element that remains being polished to a mirror sheen. It's downright impressive, and it's a blast to play. Probably 2023's best.

[PAC-MAN Museum+ 7/14]

No. Dear lord, NO. This is easily the worst game in Museum+, not even close, and one of the most unpleasant gaming experiences I've had in recent memory. This was shockingly awful. Don't make my mistake.

Almost everything about this game is severely, fundamentally flawed. While the "Eat all the Pac-Dots to unlock the goal" idea might have sounded good on paper, it leads to the gameplay loop becoming a tedious slog of combing through the level to find that last Pac-Dot - levels which are cumbersome, annoying, and terribly unfun to navigate. Labyrinthine levels and a tedious core gameplay loop is a terrible enough combo, but then there's a third thing making this a true unholy trinity; the piss-poor control. PAC-MAN has the tendency to just ricochet off of goddamn everything when jumping, is unresponsive when you need him to be responsive, overly-responsive when you need to be precise and careful, and suddenly becomes 90 times slipperier when you even so much as think about approaching a slope. It just feels bad to play Pac-in-Time.

At least the music rips. Very bouncy and catchy melodies, ones I still remember despite the poor experience of the gameplay here. It's just about the only redeeming quality in this stinker, though. So we've got A-grade music in a game with an F-grade gameplay loop, F-grade level design and F-grade controls. Yeah, this is atrocious.

It may seem like a simple task to single out what is considered a good or bad product when it comes to the various elements it implements, but there are several external factors that can make judging a product fairly more challenging. Aspects such as the time of release, competition at the time, its overall financial performance, and how well the product has aged over time are taken into consideration time and time again when looking back on a product to determine how good or bad it is in the modern day. One external factor that does often get in the way of this would be a product’s cult status. There have been many, MANY examples of pieces of media released over the years that, at the time, didn’t quite reach the same height of success or popularity as others, and as such, gains a small, yet passionate following over the years that will typically defend the product to no end, despite what the actual quality of the product may entail. One example of a product with a cult status that has received this fate would be with Alisia Dragoon.

Before I had played this game, I had heard plenty of times from plenty of places that this was apparently one of the most underappreciated games on the Sega Genesis since it was a commercial failure. I had been interested in checking it out, and I liked the name, but I had put it off for sometime simply because it just didn’t catch my eye as much as other games. Eventually though, I decided to finally check it out, and I will admit, the game is pretty good… but definitely not as good as many of its fans would hype it up to be. There is a lot to love about the game, and if it had less issues, I would probably be one of those people who would hype it up to no end, but as it stands, those issues are still there, and they are enough to drag it down for me.

The story is typical for a game of this era, where an evil force kills Alisia’s father and takes over the world, and when she gets old enough, she goes on to stop him, so the story isn’t anything all that special, but it was clear that the story wasn’t the primary focus, so that is fine, the graphics are pretty great for the Genesis, having a lot of fantastic effects such as with your main lightning attack, and there being plenty of vibrant environments to travel through, the music is also pretty good, with there being plenty of tracks that go very well with the action taking place on screen, the control is decent, giving you enough options to maneuver around and take down enemies, while not being too frustrating to get a handle of, and the gameplay is typical of a Genesis action platformer, but with several additions that make the game stand out from others.

The game is, again, a 2D action platformer, where you take control of Alisia, fight through a set of eight stages, take on many different strong monsters and foes using your volatile lighting attacks and other skills, gather plenty of health potions, as well as several items that will help level you up, increasing both your health bar and the strength of your lightning ability, and take on plenty of bosses that will definitely put your reflexes and skills to the test. From the start, you already feel extremely powerful, given this lighting shot that can decimate many foes early, and as you keep going, it just gets better and better, making you feel a true sense of progression and satisfaction. Not to mention, this type of leveling up and getting stronger wasn’t that common in platformers at the time, so it was nice to see.

Alongside your regular attacks are also your pet monsters, which can assist you in battle at anytime throughout the game. There are four of them to choose from, and each of them have a unique skill that can greatly help you out, such as a dragon that shoots fire, a lizard that throws boomerangs, and a bird that launches thunder that nukes everything on screen. These are already pretty cool and helpful as is, but you can also upgrade these monsters as well, increasing their health and power alongside you, and trust me, you will need this, as some of these powers are quintessential to even standing a chance against some of the later games foes. I love these monster partners, as they helped me out of a jam numerous times throughout my playthrough, and I made sure to always upgrade them to make them stronger whenever I got the chance so I had an easier time. Other then that though, there isn’t that much making this game stand out from the rest, but that is ok, because there is more then enough here to where any fan of old-school platformers can have themselves a pretty good time.

Unfortunately though, there are several issues holding this game back from being great. First and foremost, the difficulty is pretty harsh, with there being MANY different things that can gang up on you and kill you so quickly in this game, so if you aren’t prepared for what comes ahead, then you will be screwed. Sure, you do have a lot of health, and attacks don’t do too much damage, but you are attacked so frequently that it doesn’t even matter how much health you have, because one second you have it, and the next it flies right out the window. This also isn’t helped by the fact that you get ONE LIFE at the start of the game. If you die at all, that is an instant game over, and you are sent back to the title screen. Sure, you can find continues to make the journey somewhat more manageable, but do you know how many of these I managed to find in the game? One. Just one. Fucking fantastic. And finally, this may just be a me thing, but I found traversing the terrain of a lot of the levels pretty annoying at times. There will be plenty of times where you have to go up and down slopes, which not only looks extremely awkward, but is also very awkward to maneuver around, giving you very little room to see whatever lies ahead of said slope, making it so that enemies can land an easy hit. There was times when I would just simply say “Fuck it”, and just run through the damage just so that I can make it to the next part, and I don’t like it when a game makes me want to do that.

Overall, despite some annoyances with the difficulty and the frustrating terrain of levels, Alisia Dragoon is a pretty good title for the Sega Genesis, and one that I do think should’ve gotten a lot more love and attention back in the day, but it is definitely not as good as many of its hardcore fans would make it out to be. I would recommend it for those who are fans of obscure Genesis titles, as well as those who are old-school platformer nuts like myself, but for everyone else, you don’t need to give it anymore love and attention that it has already garnered from its cult status. But hey, if you did want to play it, you can easily do that either on the Sega Genesis Mini or the NSO. But only with the expansion pass. You know, the one that costs like $60 a year just to play a bunch of shitty emulations of games that you most likely already own. Yeah, that one.

Game #367

This absolutely enters my hallowed hall of top-tier roguelike deckbuilders, alongside the Monster Train and the crown jewel Slay the Spire. It captures the specific magic of the form where you create builds that feel more and more unbeatable as you fight enemies that feel more and more unfair. The particular conceit of having the final boss (until the very endgame) be your own last winning party is especially brilliant.

What really pushes this over the top is the art style. It is bursting at the seams with charm, every little character portrait and monster design and background detail just intensely appealing. Who doesn't want to hang out with Big Berry? Who wouldn't save a poor Naked Gnome? For a genre so mechanically focused that it would be 80% as fun with purely abstract symbology (as early access Slay the Spire players are well aware), there was no need to go this hard on making the game this cute. But they did and I'm delighted.

A testament to the transformative power of a well-crafted hard mode.

About a year ago, I shuffled through the game on normal, and felt like it was a little lacking, but playing through it now on hard, and it’s revealed itself as one of the sharpest retro revivals- where every mechanic has some bit of utility you can wring out of it, and briskly paced in a way that few games are, with some new environmental hazard or enemy type that subtly changes the dynamic of combat appearing on basically every level.

Something that really stood out to me as I was grinding away at attempts on some of the later stages, was despite having fixed enemy spawns (which should make the game extremely memorization-intensive), because you have to keep track of your ammo and a million different angles of attack at once, play the same stage over and over and there’s a remarkable variety to each attempt. Really impressive stuff, a combination of strong scenario design and a fleshed-out player kit that makes the game feel fully realized in a way that few titles are- I was never left wondering “what could’ve been” by the end.

That said, even on this revisit, I still had some problems with the structure, with the countdown timer revealing itself as more akin to hitting a quota for collectables in a platformer so you can progress to the next zone, than a constant source of anxiety that could factor into the standard course of play. The game is so compartmentalized and so demanding on hard, that just by virtue of being able to finish a level, you’ll clear each stage with a cushion of time to spare, your speed and survival fundamentally linked, with little reason to go back brush up on your time once you hit an “A” rank. (It would be a totally different game, but I still ended up wondering how the game would play if you had a few credits and had to go through all the stages in succession, racing against the pressure of a ticking clock. Lack of a scoring system also seems much more pronounced now.)

Honestly, I don’t know if my thoughts have changed all that dramatically from my original review; I’m certainly warmer to it now than when I first played it, and I feel like I finally got to see the mechanics at their best, but the bigger thing for me is that it’s been a great reminder of what you might miss if you just blast through every game without ever looking back.

There have been several instances in Capcom's history where games that were originally intended to be sequels to previous games ended up becoming the first game of a brand new franchise for the company. In this case, the original sequel to the original Street Fighter, known at the time as Street Fighter '89, was completely changed around due to the success of Double Dragon II at the time. So, the game was changed from a fighting game to a beat 'em up, and was renamed into Final Fight. Keep that comparison to Double Dragon II in mind, by the way, because it will be important for this review.

For the first entry in Capcom's signature beat-'em-up franchise, the original Final Fight still holds up pretty well overall. Sure, it doesn't do that much to stand out compared to other games at the time, but I still had a pretty good time with it.

The story is practically the same as Double Dragon, except this time with a little more depth to the world the game takes place in, the graphics are still really good to this day, the music is alright, the voice clips are pretty effective at giving the game character, the control is exactly what you would expect, except for one thing that I will mention later, and the gameplay is what you would expect from a beat-'em-up of that era, except faster and much better in my opinion.

The game is your standard 2D beat-'em-up, where you walk from left to right, beating up an endless sea of goons and bosses, using various weapons and eating various food items along the way, and taking on bonus stages to get more points and lives. There is really nothing that makes it stand out too much from other games at the time aside from animated cutscenes at the beginning and end, as well as the choice of three characters to play as (but, let's be honest, you'll only choose Haggar, because he's clearly the best). That being said, the much more active and fast-paced nature of the game is one that I prefer more overall, as I find it much more fun that way.

Having said that, there are some issues that I have with the game. Unlike Double Dragon II and other games, you only have ONE attack button. Yes, you can pull off a good variety of moves with it, along with the jump button, but I feel like they could have easily put in a second attack button to bring in even more possibilities for combat and movesets. Also, like I said before, if you have played other beat-'em-ups of this era, it doesn't really do anything different from other games. This doesn't bother me personally, but for others, I can imagine they would walk away from the game with a lack of variety in the title.

Also, quick funny thing I found out while researching this game, apparently Capcom made one of the enemies, Poison, a trans woman, because according to them, they thought players would feel bad about beating up a woman. So... beating up a trans woman makes it somehow better? I dunno, 1989 was quite a different time.

Overall, while it doesn't do anything to stand out, and it could do with more variety in the attack capabilities, it is still a very fun beat-'em-up, and a great start to the Final Fight franchise. I just hope that the future games in the franchise make sure to up the quality further from here.

Game #97