At once one of the worst and best games I've played in a while. I'm compelled enough to want to know what they're doing, but also the act of trying to figure out what they're doing is a fool's errand lol. Rebirth is exceptional when it's about hanging out. But it's weighed down so heavily by the worst case of ubisoft open world bloat I've ever put up with. Its combat system could be studied in universities for eons, it's obscenely, disgustingly, putridly brilliant. Boss fights in this game are some of the most fun and fascinating collaborations of systems and creative design I can recall, and I don't think they're getting nearly enough credit for just how intricate it is. But 95% of the fighting in this game is generic fodder enemies that turn it into a borderline-musou level of turn-off-brain-and-mash-square. The bulk of this game does disservice to everything it excels at. It bogs itself down with frivolous padding at every opportunity—every little action takes like a second and a half longer than you'd expect, making it feel sloppy and unresponsive in the hands when outside of combat, which is most of the time. The composition work on this score is some inconceivable galaxy brain stuff. We're talking minimum 200 IQ moves all over the place. I cannot wait for that big-ass CD box set, dude. That's my main takeaway from this game.

Tales of the Abyss was my the best game I played last year, borderline my favorite game of all time. I’ve never been interested in playing a game from this franchise before, I started this entirely on impulse.

The one thing that did interest me was that I had a trusted friend tell me it was almost guaranteed to be my thing, even comparing it to my actual favorite game of all time, FFVII.

This game had a very excellent English dub. There is something lost in the process, I don’t know why but I imagine probably because JRPG’s like this weren’t the biggest sell at the end of the PS2 era, but in-game party chat isn’t voiced like in the Japanese version.

While for me personally this wasn’t a huge deal I didn’t very much appreciate that the localization removed Bump of Chicken’s song as the theme in the opening cinematic, literally my favorite J-Pop band. Karma is one of the greatest songs ever and its lyrics especially convey the main philosophical conflict of the story so well. It’s melody is referenced in like 5 different leitmotifs throughout the game.

All that said, the combination of Yuri Lowenthall as the leading man with Johnny Yong Bosch in the main cast was an immediate hard sell. A duo I’m not so unfamiliar with. Yuri’s performance for Luke is scarily perfect.

His two big roles in my mind have always been Yosuke and Sasuke, characters who have this very selfish core that can come across as downright entitlement. Luke’s egotism was something I felt immediately endeared too cause it was something I was familiar with.
He’s such an insecure prick at the start and it’s pathetic and he’s my baby girl.

Abyss’s cast as a whole is so compelling flawed, and flawed ways that aren’t meant to be inherently likable, which I greatly appreciated. It’s just overall a very all-star cast too, it never feels like a character shines at the expense of another.

There’s a symbiosis between the character writing/development and the way the setting of the game itself evolves throughout. Forces outside of the control of any one person shapes them in visible ways and informs their goals and mindsets, while at the same time the specific choices these people make prompts meaningful change to the systems in place.

Speaking of the setting I found it to be so cool. I wouldn’t say it’s absolute peak work building but it got me invested in it a decent bit more than the average JRPG world. I loved the infusion of various sci-fi elements and concepts that blends well with its mysticism and other stock fantasy RPG tropes.

As I’ve said I had virtually no pre-conceptions about what Tales was or could be so it was only a bit ago I learned that Tales having bad gameplay is something of a common opinion. And I understood why that would be a take almost immediately as a I heard it but I’ll try and explain why it works for me, at least in this entry.

The way Abyss builds on its combat/mechanics is, fairly piece meal. It’s a system that doesn’t give you all its tools right away, early game combat can feel boring with how limited you are. For me this worked because progressively unlocking new mechanics was part of what kept me engaged and enticed throughout.

It’s something more akin to an action game, and influenced in more ways than a few by fighting games. Getting the hang of it mostly comes down to learning proper spacing, memorizing patterns, executing strings, and because it’s so basic at the beginning I can see why it would turn off so many people.

To me a lot standard JRPG battle systems like Final Fantasy’s ATB aren’t so different because it’s a waiting game but the edge is taken off cause execution isn’t one of the main skills. Abyss is still and RPG, but one where mechanical mastery is expected.

I don’t blame anyone who feels intimidated by this but I’d also say, it’s a system where you get out of it what you put in, it’s about patience and learning, learning in the truest sense. So I’d implore, do your best to give it a chance and find if it ends up clicking with you.

Being an RPG where you fight countless enemies, at times those enemies will be actual people. Abyss is one of the only games I’ve seen where it directly acknowledges how you as the player end up killing so many people. It’s a point of conflict for Luke early on that he actually has an incredibly hard time killing enemy soldiers, being sheltered his whole life.

The whole thing is given the proper nuance and discussion it deserves. It’s hardly a game about “killing people is bad,” but it directly acknowledges these things, and contends with them. Not as a point of praise but just as a descriptor, it feels very “mature” in how it grapples with this problem.

There can be times where characters have to do something distasteful but which is still the right thing, but there can be times where you make the wrong choice, do something you can’t take back, and there are real consequences for that. It’s the prompt for Luke’s entire redemption arc in the game.

Luke’s actions and lack of consideration end up causing a number of people to suffer. Though it’s entirely his fault, and at times indirect, they’re the consequences that resulted because of how he is all the same. And it ends up damaging the relationships he has with the people around him.

I love so much how even if it feels unfair, Luke has to deal with the fact that he lost the respect and trust of the people he was with and at a certain point they’re not just going to uncritically put up with his behavior, and he has to live with their judgment of that.

The way the writing in Abyss unfold is really quite unpredictable in the best of ways. Amazing twists, reveals, red herrings, etc. The game even has this entire second act ending that feels like it should be the final part of the story, but continues even beyond that in a way that feels completely organic and it’s another way that Abyss was able to just hold my attention and never once lose it.

The environment design is gorgeous. Fixed camera angles lets this game put as much detail into the levels as it can. Some of the best looking stuff on the PS2, undoubtedly. Not held back presentationally by its age in any way.

The soundtrack does its job extremely well. It’s not among the absolute peaks of JRPG composition overall but there definitely isn’t a bad song or mid track. And it still manages to produce some of the absolute greatest pieces of music I’ve heard in a game. Meaning of Birth, especially, I might say is just my favorite piece of video game music ever.

I’ll be getting into story spoilers now, with some light analysis to convey why this story really means so much to me. So now is the time for if you haven't been spoiled or don’t know how the story plays out, to be advised against reading further.

Lots of Japanese media has the cutting off of hair as a significant symbolic action. In a way it’s meaningful for being about letting go of a burden that had been weighing down on you, or signaling a fresh start and new beginning in life. Luke is able to look past the person he was, and the loss of his old life, in order to progress and become his own person.

And obviously, Luke’s thematic foil for the whole game, Asch, never loses his long hair. Asch in the end was never able to move past having the life he feels should have been his taken from him. Asch can only ever think, only ever agonize, over his past that he can never take back.

As Luke says, while Asch has something he lost and can’t take back, Luke never even had a past to begin with. Though that’s something else about Luke Asch can’t accept. Even though the two of them are supposed to be mirrors, and should be so so similar to each other, Asch can’t accept how the person who he sees as having everything he wanted could find so little worth in himself.

Asch is an unbelievably proud person, and someone who’s so much like him shouldn’t feel worthless are undeserving of having been born. It’s not an entirely rational feeling, but that’s what makes Asch’s resentment compelling.

Likewise, Luke his entire life craved the acknowledgment of Van, while Asch had already long ago been acknowledged by Van as a powerful ally, but still stood against him on his own. In their final fight to decide who will destroy Van, Luke says that him & Asch are pretty much the same strength wise.

Which is the impetus for Asch to challenge him to decide which of the two is stronger once and for all. While Asch can’t stand that Luke put himself down as the inferior, now that he says he’s not inferior but that they’re actually equal, is an affront to Asch’s pride.

It’s only now that Luke actually believes in himself and his own strength though, that Asch can finally prove himself in the way he wanted to, in a definitive sense. Defeating Luke at the height of his mental strength means that he was right to always feel that the life Luke had should have been his.

Because as it is, Luke & Asch don’t have any kind of future after the final battle with Van, they’re going to disappear. So, living in the moment as they are, they decide to give everything to this fight and decide the significance of what their lives meant.

The Meaning of Birth is an orchestral rendition of Karma, with two competing sounds making up the significance of what it means for it to play during this fight. The flute represents Luke, light, maybe in a way weak, but even being subdued its strength is present in a more subtle way. The loud percussion and horns are Asch. Loud, almost violently so, outwardly a very powerful sound. And in the middle of the song it comes together.

Asch loses this fight, but while he said this would decide who between them was the real Like fon Fabre, in his final stand to buy Luke time, at last reclaims his name. For Luke, going against Asch was the final mental block he needed to overcome in order to finally be able to defeat Van.

The task of eliminating Vandesdelca and saving the world is no longer something he can hope to just pass off to Asch. He can no longer rely on him like he has so many times to this point. He’s emerged as the stronger and this time his need to win over Van matters more than ever. He finds his determination.

In Asch’s death scene, you can see two statues carved onto the door of the room they fought in. One has short hair, the other long, with their hands coming together. It’s an incredibly sad moment to see Asch’s life come to an end, being the one who had to stay behind, but it also shows how, Luke & Asch were finally able to come together for the sake of achieving something.

Luke is one of my top 10 characters of all time, across all mediums and stories. Obviously I think so much about his writing is excellent and it’s apparent to anyone that he’s an amazing character, but I don’t think it has much to do with any super wide appeal he has that made him a favorite.

It’s just everything about this character came together to affect me so deeply. His voice performance which I’ve talked about, his general personality early on as being kind of whiny, kind of a bitch, insensitive, craving acknowledgment, but growing so much as a person from there.

The most personal aspect to me, and it’s a bit embarrassing to talk about, but it was around the time I played Abyss last year that I started really questioning my gender. The hair cutting trope in anime is usually associated with girl characters and it’s not anything huge but it did something in me to see Luke also get to do that trope.

And then there are a lot of ways in which Luke is a fairly sensitive person, fairly emotional, thinks with his heart. I’m not saying it’s a very significant aspect of him to have certain more feminine traits but it was something I really liked. But Luke is also a character primarily associated with identity.

Abyss as the story of how Luke comes to be his own person after finding out that a significant portion of his life was a lie. And finding his own inner strength in that. I suppose any character that deals heavily a lot with identity is someone I could see this in, Cloud for example being my favorite character.

But Luke was the kind of character that just came at the right time, right place. And is a part of the reason I was able to eventually decide this huge thing about who I am.

The Nintendo 64 is home to some of the most iconic games of all time. That’s not an understatement. Not just first party titles but many third parties have gained legendary status from the console. Super Mario 64 was always that defining title for me. And finally after 20+ years, I have a much better game to link to the system.

Paper Mario 64 was the revolutionizer for Super Mario RPGs. It’s no exaggeration to say that it was. It took a simple turn based combat system equipped with tools open to the disposal of its players and yet forced nothing upon them. Despite appearing simplistic in nature, it goes much deeper beyond what appears on the outside. While it may be true that player’s could rush past enemies and learn to time their defensive button presses fairly quickly, there is so much more to be explored in the world of Paper Mario.

This toolset comes in the form of badges. These range from small adjustments like improving the number of hearts/flowers received after battle to immobilizing enemies by shrinking their attack and defense in ways which render them useless. There are a plethora of ways to explore the game’s combat system which opens possibilities for multiple players to experience the game completely differently. Not to mention items which can assist in battle and most importantly, partners.

The side characters in this game are all a joy to follow along with and each of them proves their worth in battle. Strategically selecting who to use depending on the situation while also keeping in mind how many flower points you have is incredibly satisfying. Having a much smaller party makes defeating larger groups of enemies truly feel like you’ve improved over the course of the adventure. It’s simple yet extremely effective in showcasing how you have learned and adapted new tricks after each battle. Despite partners being limited by their low health and inability to take damage, this improvement was ironed out in TTYD so it’s hard for me to complain at this stage.

The music and compositions are all wonderful. Each location looks and sounds amazing, and I loved exploring every nook and cranny (especially in Dry Dry Desert) as I uncovered various badges that I could add to my collection. As the first installment into my favorite series, it’s clear as day that Intelligent Systems needs to return to this formula and revitalize it for future generations. It’s a shame that this formula was dropped after two games and I hope this recent resurgence in games from this era convinces them to bring the series back to its prime.

i had my doubts about it because i generally do not like open world games and i still much prefer Adventure 2 and Black Knight because those games also have a similar quality of writing and spectacle without having to eat my open world veggies (those have other veggies but i like those veggies more than these veggies) but i got so giddy when I was parrying rockets at a dragon flying across the whole stage i spent the last five hours in as a very incredibly talented vocalist was screaming NO MORE COMPROMISE//THIS IS DO OR DIE so suffice it to say this is the best sonic game since 2009