DOOM 2016 Review

A phrase I often use in my reviews is “textbook sequel”. I define this phrase as a sequel to a highly successful and beloved title in an established series that takes almost everything that made the previous game work and refines it. Some examples that immediately come to mind include Portal 2, Metal Gear Solid 2, Silent Hill 2, and Batman: Arkham City. DOOM Eternal is very much a textbook sequel in that regard as well. It took almost everything that DOOM 2016 did right and expanded upon it to quite frankly, an overwhelming extent. The result is one of the most exciting and thrilling games that I’ve ever experienced, a game that I’ve replayed countless times at this point. From the bottom of my heart and soul, I LOVE DOOM Eternal. Every time I come back to this game, its gameplay provides a level of thrill and sheer joy that few games have ever come close to matching. It’s a game that rewards your mastery of its mechanics with an unmatched level of catharsis and satisfaction that truly makes me feel like an unstoppable, unshakeable torrent of carnage and mayhem.

After the events of DOOM 2016, the demonic forces of Hell have begun an all encompassing invasion of Earth. In order to save his home, the DOOM Slayer goes on a journey across many different worlds in order to track down and kill the Hell Priests, a trio of wizards that are responsible for opening and maintaining the gateways that allow Hell’s forces to invade Earth. The DOOM Slayer’s mission to save his world quickly evokes the wrath of the mysterious Khan Makyr, an ancient alien being that seems to be in league with the forces of Hell. Naturally, the Khan Makyr’s anger pales in comparison to the DOOM Slayer’s righteous rage. In his eyes, the Khan Makyr is just another demonic scumbag he needs to kill.

Like I said, DOOM Eternal takes everything in DOOM 2016 and greatly expands upon it. Everything is bigger: the number of levels, the scale of the story, the amount of upgrades you can purchase for Doomguy, the roster of demons you encounter… everything in this game feels HUGE. It’s truly a lot to take in, and despite it’s best efforts, I’ll admit that Eternal doesn’t always make it easy to do so. Coming to this game with experience from 2016 might not necessarily prepare you for how much of a step up Eternal is from its predecessor. I’ll admit: I didn’t like the game nearly as much as I currently do after my first playthrough. I wasn’t prepared at all for how expansive everything is, and trying to play the game like it’s 2016 will only get you so far. It wasn’t until after I had listened to other people’s thoughts and reviews of the game, and gave it a second runthrough, that I started to really understand what the game was going for, and how to approach it in a way that’s comfortable and paced to my liking.

While the game is still structured more or less the same as 2016, the ways in which certain aspects of the game have been expanded upon makes Eternal feel a tad different. Levels still follow that classic DOOM gameplay loop: you kill demons and you find keys in order to progress through levels, and you always have the opportunity to search for hidden secrets as well. I can’t say for sure whether or not all of the levels in the game are actually longer than the ones in 2016, but they absolutely feel like they are. It might be because of how many combat arenas a level has, as well as how extensive combat can be. Either way, levels in this game definitely feel too long, and I honestly think some of them could be split up into multiple levels for the sake of better pacing. If you have yet to play DOOM Eternal, heed my advice: take breaks whenever you need to. Don’t feel compelled to finish a level if you’re feeling tired. Each level is extremely generous with its checkpoints, to the point where you can pretty much exit the game at any time and pick up right where you left off. Forcing yourself through levels when you’re tired is only going to exhaust you and cause you to resent the game, which happened to me during my first playthrough.

Platforming sections in-between combat arenas return. I’ve seen people frequently complain about the platforming, and while your initial experience with how to progress in certain areas can certainly be confusing since you don’t always know where to go, I personally never found the platforming sections to be a big issue. As I’m about to explain, Eternal’s combat can be tiring, especially when played at higher difficulties. Quite frankly, it needs the downtime the platforming sections provides. Platforming is also better here than in 2016, since failing to make a jump doesn’t result in an immediate death anymore, instead you’ll just respawn while losing a chunk of health.

Combat has been extensively reworked, to the point where it feels so much more intense and chaotic even when compared to 2016 on its hardest difficulty. The demons in Eternal feel a lot more aggressive than they did in 2016. In that game, the demons generally preferred to spread themselves apart and harass you from a distance (with some exceptions like the Hell Knight or the Pinkies). The demons in Eternal all feel like they’re bum rushing the hell outta you. Now more than ever, standing still during combat means death. You need to be constantly moving and using the environment to your advantage in order to stay alive, and Doomguy has a couple of new tools to accomplish this.

There’s the new dash ability, which allows Doomguy to quickly zoom forward in whatever direction you’re currently moving in. You have two total dashes you can use before the ability requires a cooldown. Proper use of the dash ability is extremely necessary, and an absolute must during combat, as Doomguy’s default run speed isn’t enough to outpace the demons chasing after him. There’s also the Meat Hook, an attachment for the Super Shotgun that functions as a grappling hook that pulls Doomguy towards enemies, which is a great way to not only transport yourself across the map, but also bring yourself within Glory Kill distance. The Meat Hook is extremely fun and satisfying to use. Using it to get yourself out of a jam or bring yourself closer to an enemy so that you can kill it with the Chainsaw and replenish health and ammo you desperately need makes you feel incredibly smart, but also provides a strong feeling of relief as well.

With the exception of the pistol (which, let’s be honest, has never really been all that useful in the history of DOOM unless you were desperate to conserve ammo), all of the weapons from DOOM 2016 return. One of the biggest problems that 2016 had was that Doomguy’s arsenal of weapons just wasn’t balanced especially well. The strength of the more powerful weapons in the game (the Super Shotgun in particular) made early game weapons feel redundant as it went on. There was definitely a massive attempt to fix this problem in DOOM Eternal through various means, some of which weren’t initially met with positive reception. However, I believe these changes to Doomguy’s arsenal makes it feel a lot more coherent and purposeful, and even late into the game, all weapons serve a purpose to some extent.

Weapon modifiers return, which plays a part in making those early game weapons remain useful. A lot of weapon mods from the previous game have been replaced with actually useful ones. Certain enemies have weak points on them, such as the laser cannon on an Arachnotron or the rocket launchers on a Revenant, and weapon mods can be used to exploit those weak points, such as the precision scope on the Heavy Cannon or the sticky bomb from the Combat Shotgun. This will stagger enemies while also depriving them of their weapon of choice, which plays a big role in making early weapons still feel relevant all throughout the game.

The most controversial change to combat is that the amount of ammo each weapon can hold has been reduced rather heavily from 2016. It’s a change that really takes a lot of getting used to. You can’t just rely on one weapon to get you through combat arenas anymore. You’re going to have to constantly be switching between weapons, not just depending on the demon you’re currently trying to kill, but also depending on how much ammo per weapon you currently have. I understand a lot of people really don’t like this change, but I honestly am a huge fan of it, especially since DOOM Eternal gives you all of your weapons at a much faster rate than before. By the fourth level, the game itself will tell you that “You have everything you need to beat DOOM Eternal” including the Super Shotgun and a majority of your heavy weapons. What makes the combat of DOOM Eternal so much fun for me are the constant decisions you have to make at a fast pace in order to massacre your enemies while staying alive, and the reduced ammo capacity plays a huge role in encouraging that fast-paced decision making.

There’s a technique in the game called quickswapping which you can use to do immensely fast bursts of damage on enemies. I’m not sure how the technique works on controller, but on keyboard and mouse, you can swap between weapons quickly by binding them to certain keys or additional mouse buttons if you have them. This allows you to quickly swap between weapons while skipping their cooldown animations. I have mixed feelings on quickswapping. There are moments where it feels like it’s overpowered, but at the same time, it’s absolutely necessary in overwhelming situations and against certain demons, the new Marauder demon in particular.

The Marauder was a huge point of contention and controversy when Eternal first came out. It can be a difficult enemy to deal with, as he is generally invincible and has multiple attacks that can shred your health if you’re not careful. To make him vulnerable, you have to stay at a specific distance from him in order to goad him into attacking you with his axe. When he goes for this attack, his eyes will flash green and you can shoot him, which stuns him for a very short period of time, and during that short period, you have to do as much damage as you possibly can. This is where quickswapping comes into play, as quickswapping between the Super Shotgun and the Ballista really shreds his health while he’s stunned. This technique was not explained in the game when it first came out, and without it, the Marauder is a much bigger pain to deal with. The game was eventually updated with a tutorial on how to perform the technique shortly before your first encounter with him. This technique is useful against all demons, not just the Marauder though, and it comes in clutch late in the game, especially on higher difficulties. I have no clue how people who play this game on a controller pull this technique off, and I wonder if that hinders their experience with the Marauder and more difficult enemy encounters.

Aside from your weapons, there’s a number of other upgrades you need to purchase throughout the game, all with their own different types of currency. One point of criticism I have against this game is that the amount of purchasable upgrades is too damn high. Some of these upgrades are very important, but there’s also a lot that you really don’t need, and it can be confusing picking out the good from the bad. This problem is especially prevalent when it comes to Suit upgrades. For Suit upgrades, you primarily need to focus on purchasing the ones in the Fundamentals category for things like decreasing your dash cooldown and refilling your dash after you use a Glory Kill on a demon. In fact, these should be purchased as soon as you are able to. The other Suit upgrades just aren’t really worth it for the most part. You don’t really need to purchase any of the exploration upgrades unless you’re hunting for secrets, and I’ve never really used grenades in this game, so I never purchase upgrades for those either, I only purchase a couple for the Ice Grenade to freeze enemies longer. Upgrades regarding resistances to environmental hazards in particular is a complete waste of currency. There aren’t enough of them in the game, nor do they do damage threatening enough to warrant purchasing them.

In addition to the Suit upgrades, there’s also other upgrades you can get whenever you find a separate currency called Sentinel Crystals, which not only will increase your health, armor, and ammo capacity, but also grant you random buffs like reducing the cooldown of the Flame Thrower or letting you pull in resource drops from dead enemies while you’re farther away. Then there are Runes, which also grant you random buffs as well, such as letting you perform a Glory Kill from farther away or increasing your ability to control Doomguy while he’s in the air. If this all sounds confusing or too much take in, well, it kind of is in-game as well. You do eventually get a grasp on it all, but to be completely honest, all of these different currencies and customizable buffs really need to be consolidated in the future. Get rid of the more superfluous upgrades and try to keep almost everything to one menu. These upgrades are genuinely great and unlocking them over the course of the game does feel rewarding, but they’re also a huge pain to keep track of for how vital they are, and figuring out the good from the bad is not very newcomer friendly at all.

I think the biggest area where DOOM Eternal is lacking, and the only thing that’s a downgrade from the previous game, is its narrative and its approach to storytelling. 2016’s narrative was a simple one that was very easy to follow and digest. Eternal’s story is not. The worldbuilding for DOOM is expanded immensely in Eternal, which goes as far as to introduce completely new worlds and races to its universe. The problem is that the story itself barely provides any context whatsoever for these aspects of the story. Even the very beginning of the game is confusing if you come to it after having played 2016. Minor spoiler warning for the end of 2016 to follow: that game ends with a cliffhanger, but when Eternal begins, it doesn’t continue from that cliffhanger. It’s clear a lot of time has passed since then but what exactly happened in between both games is never explained in the main story itself.

Instead, this context for all of these new story elements can be found in this game’s collectable codex entries. I’ve briefly talked about this in other reviews, but I really don’t like it when a game has key elements to understanding the narrative hidden away in collectables like this, unless that’s the main point of the game. I think that codex/journal entries in games are fine as supplemental material to the main narrative (even if I’m not especially interested in hunting them down), but not if they contain context and history that’s necessary to understand the plot. I think this was done in an attempt to try and appease people who don’t care about the story in DOOM or in other video games, and they weren’t confident enough they could present their story with all of these expansive new details in a way that captures their interest, so they just brushed it off to the side. Thing is, the people who don’t care about story in DOOM are just going to skip the cutscenes anyway, all this storytelling approach does is cause confusion for anyone who might actually be interested in the narrative. They might’ve thought this would motivate people to search for the hidden codex entries and read them, but personally, I’m more likely to just look that up on a Wiki or watch a YouTube video explaining it or something. The narrative itself ends in a rather sudden and lukewarm manner, though there is the Ancient Gods DLC campaign which expands on it and acts as a proper conclusion to the story.

DOOM Eternal got a major visual overhaul from 2016 that was very much for the better. As I mentioned in my review for 2016, the visual design of environments in that game would often blend together, since the game primarily took place either in Mars or Hell, and while there were some elements to both settings that made them look a bit more distinct from one another, it didn’t help all that much. In comparison, Eternal is an explosion of color. You travel to far more distinct locations with extremely vibrant and varied visual designs. The scale of the environments is also massive. Every single time I come back to this game, I am in sheer awe at how detailed the backgrounds of each location in this game is. Words seriously don’t do them justice. The enemies have also been overhauled visually as well. Most of them have been given redesigns that make them more closely resemble those of their original appearance. It’s especially noticeable with the zombie troopers, as well as the introduction of “The Tyrant”, which is literally just the Cyberdemon from classic DOOM, and I will continue to refer to it as such because that’s a helluva better name.

Talking about the game’s soundtrack is difficult because of the infuriating and unfortunate controversy regarding it (man, this game had a lot of controversies looking back at it…). Since this review is as long as it is, I’m going to hold off giving my extended thoughts about it for now, and I’ll save them for when I review The Ancient Gods Part 1. All I’ll say is that Marty Stratton is a piece of shit, and for now, I’m just going to give my thoughts on the in-game music. Given the positive fan feedback towards the guitar heavy tracks from 2016’s OST, Mick Gordon’s approach this time around involved a lot more usage of guitar, and it’s an extremely welcome approach. As a result, Eternal’s soundtrack has songs that I feel stand out a lot more in comparison to the bass heavy electronic music that made up much of 2016’s OST. These tracks amplify my adrenaline and aggression TENFOLD when I hear them, and they compliment the intensity of the combat so perfectly that I feel separating the two would honestly make the combat slightly worse as a result. That might not make much sense on paper, but that’s just how intrinsically tied the music is to the combat. The music plays such a key role in fully immersing myself in the gameplay, making it some of the most effective video game music I’ve ever heard in my life. Just like BFG Division from the previous game, Mick Gordon put out a couple of tracks that I believe to be anthems for the series: The Only Thing They Fear Is You and Meathook. I hear these tracks and I immediately lock the fuck in like someone just uttered my sleeper agent codeword. I can’t think of too many other video game songs that have this effect on me. I personally believe Eternal without a doubt has the best tracks Mick has recorded over the course of his entire career, and Marty Stratton deserves the absolute worst for the way he treated Mick.

Despite controversy after controversy popping up after it’s release, in my eyes, DOOM Eternal remains the greatest first person shooter I have ever played, and one of my top 5 personal favorite games of all time based purely off of its fun factor alone. For new players, it may be a bit difficult to digest all of the different upgrades and get used to how intense the combat can be as well as how long the levels are. If by any chance I’ve convinced you to give the game a try someday, I hope that over the course of my review I’ve provided you with tips that improve the experience. I really, truly love DOOM Eternal. Getting good at this game feels euphoric. Killing hordes after hordes of demons makes me feel like a god, and I say that without any sense of exaggeration or a tinge of regret. It’s an experience that always manages to get me pumped even after several playthroughs, and even if there’s another DOOM game or FPS out there that manages to be even bigger and better than Eternal, there’s a part of me that feels like I’m always going to end up coming back to it eventually, and in that regard, the game truly does live up to its namesake.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

For the longest time, this was in my top 5 Kirby games. I got this on the Wii U virtual console back in the day, and remember enjoying it a lot. I also remember that I used save states on certain parts and was annoyed at other parts of the game but I generally loved the game's aesthetic and vibe, I guess those aspects overshadowed the bad parts in my mind. What do I think of the game now though? It's not bad at all, but it does have some really annoying issues that nowadays do hamper my experience.

Let's talk about the gameplay first and foremost. Compared to Superstar, it's a big downgrade. Kirby's running speed is very fast, but his walking speed is incredibly slow. This wouldn't usually be an issue however, a lot of them the camera won't pan at the start of a new area until you've gotten until the edge of the screen. Unless you're as careful as can be, if an enemy is there it will hit you. This never happened at all in Superstar. When Kirby floats and gets out of a float, he loses all momentum he's gained and will basically stop in place. Maybe this is so you don't spam the float but it ruins the flow of the gameplay a bit and is an annoyance since Superstar also never did this. It's also incredibly easy to get hit in this game, not only because or the whole screen having to catch up with Kirby, but because the invincibility frames last like a second or less so it's so easy to just get comboed if you're unlucky. This is something I noticed even back in the day, you get hit A LOT in this game and it's quite annoying. One last thing this game downgraded from Superstar, and this one isn't as bad as the other things I mentioned (at least for me) is Kirby's moveset. Kirby goes back to only having one basic move per copy ability. While this is naturally a downgrade compared to Superstar, the animal friends return from Dreamland 2 and do make up for this a bit I think.

Not only are Rick, Kine and Coo back from Dreamland 2, this game adds three new animal friends as well. Nago the cat, Pitch the bird and ChuChu the octopus are the new additions and they're all very solid. Nago is actually my favorite of the six, cuz he feels the best to control but also because he has a very helpful triple jump. Pitch doesn't really have any abilities but he is a cute little guy. ChuChu can only float a couple of times at once but she has the ability to hang from ceilings (it only really gets used once tho lol). Anyways, like Dreamland 2, Dreamland 3 gives each animal friend their own specific take on the copy abilities. With six animal friends now, and 8 copy abilities, that's 48 unique animal friend abilities. There are way less copy abilities in this game compared to Superstar, however with this many animal friend abilities, I feel like it never gets boring since you're more than likely always discovering new ones throughout the game which is fun.

Going into the level's themselves, they aren't great tbh. A good chunk of them are very simple with enemies littered throughout. The level design is way too basic and can get boring some of the time (mostly some of world 3 and 4). They try to combat this with the game's main collectable, the heart-stars, but this can also be a mixed bag. Early on they aren't bad. Each world has six stages, and each of the six stages use the same heart-star conventions. The first always deals with flowers. The second always has you bringing a specific copy ability or animal friend to some part of the stage and interacting with whatever. The third has you playing a minigame a way into the stage. The fourth has you collecting a single object in the stage and bringing it to the end. The fifth has you bringing a specific animal friend to the end of the stage so they can be with their girlfriend/boyfriend. And the 6th has you collecting several objects in the level and bringing them to the end character. Yeah, you get a heart-star from a character at the end of the stage..and they can be pretty fun to see. Mostly because this game cross overed with other Nintendo properties like ROB the Robot and Metroid. Anyways, heart-stars aren't usually too bad to get but the endgame has some really annoying ones. The last couple minigames are like annoying as balls to do without save stating, otherwise you have to redo the stage each time you lose, so I decided to just save state again like I did all the way back in the day. That plus others can just be plain cryptic, and yeah..the collectables aren't super fun to get some of the time.

I know I've spent most of this review complaining so far, and yeah, the gameplay probably is the weakest part of this game, but some of the other aspects are fantastic and make up for the gameplay a bit. The visuals for example are amazing in this game. I still think Yoshi's Island is the best-looking Super Nintendo game, however this is right next to that. This game is a coloring book come to life and it's so nice to look at. It fits Kirby perfectly too and I really wish the modern games tried to do something like this again. Besides the amazing art style, this game is just really charming in general. Whether it's all the animal friend's reactions to Kirby picking other friends instead of them, or the bosses of each world standing idle not fighting you after you purified them by getting every heart-star in the world. Gameplay be damned, it's clear the Kirby3 team were passionate about the actual world and characters. I also always loved the atmosphere in this game. Idk if it's because of the cutesy art style combined with Dark Matter as an antagonist, but this game always felt a bit off in a way I really liked. I don't know how to describe it, but Dreamland 3 fans will probably understand what I mean.

The bosses in general are solid. You have the usual Wispy Woods and some other cool ones. Besides the introduction of Ado (who is basically just Adeline before Adeline), Dark Matter and Zero are great final bosses to the Dreamland trilogy. Dark Matter is cool ofc but Zero is very creepy especially for a Kirby game. The fact it's a giant white sphere that bleeds as you attack it, and the fact its last final form is its eyeball ripped out of the sphere, all bloody and everything, it's so unlike Kirby and just gives the game this eerie feeling I love.

The music in this game is also super good and drives the atmosphere home even more. My favorite songs were probably Grass Land 1, Grass Land 4 and Ripple Field 1. The entire soundtrack is really solid though and like I said, really helps with game feeling atmospheric.

I'm sad this isn't in my top 5 Kirby's anymore. This game has a lot of charm and heart to it but on the gameplay side, it just has too many issues for me to rate it super high. My judgement was clouded back then by the art style and atmosphere, and while those are still great now, I can't deny this game isn't as good as I once thought. I still like it overall, but I will kneel to all the Superstar fans despite not loving that game's structure...that is the superior Kirby game. If they took the gameplay from Superstar and the art style, atmosphere and single campaign structure from this game...I may have gotten my perfect Kirby game. Ah well, a man can dream. I will say tho, I do like this more than Dreamland 2. There isn't a level as bullshit as that trial and error in 2 and this game visually just looks so much better of course. That and I have more nostalgia for it haha. Anyways, next is Donkey Kong Country 3 so look forward to that!

6.5/10

This was the first FromSoft soulsborne game that I played front to back without putting down at some point. The gameplay was addictive and the world it takes place in is really interesting and fun to explore, the bosses were good for the most part (I did have to cheese two but we don't talk about them) and they really made me feel like I was getting better at the game. My only complaint is that some of the areas were hard to traverse for one reason or another and a lot of the enemies scattered about the place were infuriating to deal with, I raged more in this game from them then I did from any of the boss fights. Apart from those slight issues though the game is an incredible experience and one I can see myself playing again.

There are a few things I'm honestly not crazy about in Pikmin 4, yet these are all null under the Scrummy Bone Clause™. Oatchi and Moss are in this game and it gets 5 stars. Jokes aside, this game absolutely rocks on so many fronts— I just wish it was maybe a little bit harder, or at least less forgiving anyway (guess I must be a pikmin-racist). As nice as it is to rewind time immediately after your squad gets wiped by John Sheargrub, I kinda wish there was at least a difficulty option to turn that off since it really does remove the heart attack-inducing tension the series is known for. While I appreciate how cozy this entry can be, stakes are good for contextualizing your victories, particularly in a world as oppressive as Pikmin's. On that note, I'm also not the biggest fan of the busted-ass charge moves, overabundance of spicy spray, 3 pikmin type limit, Armored Core VI unbreakable lock-on, lackluster multiplayer mode, or glow pikmin segments (but to be honest, I won't get into those here— at the end of the day, this game was impossible for me to put down and I really don't care to shit on it more than I have).

As for what I do love about Pikmin 4, basically everything else! To no one's surprise, it is yet another stunningly beautiful Pikmin game, full to the brim with yet another massive cast of adorably terrifying little beasts. This goes for the whole series, but there's just something so healing about Pikmin's charm; all the cute little environmental details, the phenomenal sound design, the goofy idle animations the pikmin do when they aren't directly facing the horrors of war. All of it warms my cold, jaded heart. It is also by FAR the most expansive Pikmin title, there were like 4 separate occasions where I was sure it was over and the game just KEPT going. There's a huge variety of giant levels, refreshingly distinctive both in their visuals and gameplay. Within these are all manner of caves to explore, each offering a unique microcosm of what the game has to offer. On top of that, there's even an entire optional bonus campaign that I'm SO glad greedy Nintendo completely reasonably could have but didn't sell as a $20 DLC. It all closely held my interest for the 40-some hours I took to 100% it too.

I think out of everything (besides my good boy Oatch' of course), my favorite parts of Pikmin 4 were the extremely tightly designed timed challenge stages— quick excursions from the core loop where you have to do all of X before the evil moon crashes into PNF-404. Going for the platinum medals in these is REALLY fun, particularly in the harder ones. They really scratch the micromanaging itch that I've come to love in Pikmin, and I'm honestly not upset the rest of the game was more relaxed given their existence. And say what you want about my productivity irl, because I'm basically the Dandori King 😎. Anyhoo, play this OR ELSE.

Just to preface, this review includes both my actual final verdict and initial thoughts (from roughly 10 hours in) on the game. The latter of which obviously don't fully reflect my current thoughts on the game, but I do think first impressions are still important!

Final Review
While I don't think it'll be for everyone, any fan of existentialist sci-fi and anime will surely find 13 Sentinels to be a real treat. It's clearly a passionate love letter to many of my favorite stories, and whether intentionally or not also borrows a lot of great aspects from other works I like; Terminator, Ghost in the Shell, Bladerunner, Alien, Evangelion, The Matrix, Godzilla, Men in Black, NieR, Zero Escape, the list goes on, and I've really gotta respect how well the game does thematic justice to each of its inspirations. On top of that, the originality Vanillaware brought to the table here shouldn't be downplayed. Where 13 Sentinels may lack some degree of cohesion, payoff for its unique design decisions, it certainly makes up for in innovation. I've never played another game quite like it, nor experienced another story quite like it, and though I find said story falls short in a few areas, its resolute experimentalism should be applauded nonetheless.

As for what I loved— the things that kept me playing daily till completion, I would have to cite the aesthetics, the mystery, the mech fights and their banter, and most of the characters. As I stated in my initial review, this game is just so. fucking. pretty! Each background is a stunningly beautiful painting, warmly lit with a palette of striking, glowing hues. Each character sports a simple yet effective design, brought to life by expressive, endearing animations, and a brilliantly emotive voice cast (I went with the English dub, and would recommend it to even the most dedicated sub Andys). The soundtrack too always provides an amazing accompaniment to the action onscreen, and a number of the tracks were very memorable— the final battle theme is so very hype. I even kinda like the way the battles look, albeit I will say they sorely lack visual clarity, not the most conducive trait to such a complex tactical rpg.

As far as these battles go, despite my minor complaints with their presentation, they were by far one of my favorite parts of the game, and I'm honestly pretty surprised by how divisive they seem! For me, they strike a really cool balance between rts and turn based combat, and even though they're all holograms they still feel incredibly badass, surely in no small part due to the satisfyingly punchy sound effects and campy voice lines. There's a refreshing amount of depth in how you approach encounters, manage team compositions, and otherwise game the system to your advantage, but it also somehow never felt remotely overwhelming to me. 13 Sentinels does a phenomenal job easing players into its mechanics, and that's no easy feat with just how many systems there are. I do sort of wish their difficulty spiked up a little sooner than it did (for the record, I played on the highest difficulty all the way through and it generally felt pretty well tuned), but once you begin reaching the final encounters you really need to plan and improvise strategically, particularly if you want S ranks. I'm super stoked to go back for the optional encounters you unlock after beating the game, and it was honestly just a really pleasant surprise to see their inclusion in the first place!

Of course though, the brunt of 13 Sentinels' content is comprised of its narrative segments. In general, I enjoyed these for what they were, but I will also say that storytelling and writing were two aspects of the game I felt more mixed on. Without getting into spoilers, I need to express that this game's story is hella complex— its plot contains myriad twists and turns, an extensive array of sci-fi themes and vocab to unravel, and a decently massive cast of characters. On top of that, its story isn't presented the most digestibly, at least not until the last several hours perhaps. While I wouldn't necessarily call its level of convolution needless or pretentious, it's certainly self-indulgent, hard to recommend to anyone not immediately enthralled by the mystery of it all.

Where I think this game arguably falls short is in the payoff department; insane as its many reveals can be, I found a lot of them to feel like twists for the sake of twists, information that maybe didn't need as much fanfare as it got, or plot details that could have been left uncommunicated or altogether omitted without the story really losing anything. And weirdly enough, for just how many mysteries the game introduces, it strips back almost all of that mystique by its close, bluntly explaining away just about every instance of ambiguity. Maybe this is for the best in some ways, for on one hand it can certainly be nigh impossible to follow basically anything for the first 20 hours, and it's hard to appreciate what's incomprehensible. Little faith is instilled in the player they will understand anything by the end of the game, so when it eventually does make complete sense and really isn't that revolutionary, all that buildup can feel a little pointless. At least, I usually come to stories for their characters and meanings more than I do for their plots, and 13 Sentinels often seems primarily focused on its plot and worldbuilding in a way I think kind of de-emphasizes its themes, beliefs, and personalities.

Thankfully, that last paragraph is blowing my critique way out of proportion— while a lot of the story's events don't add a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, they rarely detract anything, often at least providing some degree of character development or exposition. And in terms of the characters, I like most of them! Though some of their dialogue can be a little awkward (probably due to translation a lot of the time), they're pretty endearing for the most part, and I appreciate that the majority of them are actually written like people. The best part of the visual novel segments for me was just hanging out with them, going out for food (which always looks fucking delectable btw) after school, playing video games at my guy Shu's place, learning about alien shit with a cute little robot, debating whether "yakisoba pan" or "hemborger" is better, watching everyone crush on each other. It's also great that the majority of the protagonists have equally little clue what's going on, it makes them so much easier to relate to. With that being said, I do think there were a couple duds in the cast. While I don't have anything against Ryoko, Renya, Ei, or Tamao, they all felt incredibly bland (probably all the memory loss), seemingly there purely to exposition dump. While 13 Sentinels is already pretty long, I wish it spent more time just humanizing some of its characters. Even if some of them are a little underdeveloped for my taste though, I like them overall.

Of course, the only reason I bring any of this critique up is because of how often this game is heralded as the pinnacle of storytelling. I find any discourse over whether a piece of media is "overrated" to be pretty unconstructive— the ways people feel about something don't dictate its quality, and calling anything overrated isn't a critique of that thing so much as it is a disparagement of taste. With that in mind, I still really enjoyed 13 Sentinels' story, but more so on the basis of it being a fun, pulpy, anime soap opera! It's kinda just a blast to unravel the sci-fi dictionary, watch the melodramatic love-tridecagon unfold, decipher the crazy-ass lore bible. And there are definitely legitimately well realized themes and characters too! I particularly love all the philosophy surrounding cloning and neural implants— the idea that everyone is who they are because of their experiences, and nothing can ever perfectly replicate one's individuality. It's also super cool there are no truly evil characters in the entire game; while some may be selfish, conniving, or even shallow, they're ultimately all just people with their own drives and motivations.

At the end of the day, this game is great and SUPER unique! As I've said, it surely won't be everyone's cup of sake, but if any of the shit here sounds cool it's probably worth checking out!

* * *

First Impressions
Pretty sure I'm only like 25% of the way through this beast, but I just wanted to get some initial thoughts out since it's been getting me to think a lot, and I've been enjoying my time with it pretty thoroughly! First off, this game looks and sounds gorgeous, and that's coming from someone who's generally not huge on anime artstyles! I'm a massive sucker for hand painted sprites and damn does Vanillaware deliver— the soundtrack goes insaneo style too. ALSO, I fw the mech combat hard, and I'd honestly be perfectly content if that's all 13 Sentinels was.

However, what I more so wanted to talk about was this game's narrative, an aspect of it I'm a little conflicted on, at least as of writing this. To specify, I'd like to speak more of its writing's quality than of my personal experience with it, because regardless of if it amounts to little more than pulpy anime bullshit, I can't lie, I've been getting quite a kick out of following the ludicrously convoluted paper trail. I think my final verdict on 13 Sentinels' story will be contingent on whether it uses its unconventional structure for something meaningful, or if it's just confusing for confusing's sake (and knowing the GOAT Yoko Taro praised it, I'm hopeful).

Something I'm a little confused by is the ratio of information 13 Sentinels leaves ambiguous to that which it just directly tells you. I'm usually a pretty big advocate for show-don't-tell, but when a piece of media throws 30 wacky new keywords at you every second, I think it's totally understandable and generally advisable to include some exposition, or even a glossary. 13 Sentinels is an anime mystery game so it obviously would fall into that camp, and does indeed compensate with a much appreciated and cohesive glossary (and at that, a pretty clever one in that you unlock entries as you go). However, for how happy the game is to leave you in the dark on major plot details, it can be surprisingly heavy handed when it comes to the more digestible ones.

For instance, in the scene that introduces Megumi (whose plotline has probably interested me the most so far), she's walking and talking with her friend Tomi, and then Tomi basically just turns to the camera and says "This is my good friend Megumi Yakushiji. She's always been the Hopeless Romantic character archetype, probably because she's so Shy personality trait." I'm exaggerating a little of course, but what I mean is that it feels really awkward and unnatural to blatantly exposition dump during a casual conversation between high schoolers, especially when that exposition is simply one of said student's personality, something that was already being established organically. Now, it's honestly very possible that the tropeyness of the cast is actually a highly intentional David Lynchian stroke of genius, but when the rest of Megumi's plotline consists of contracting with a talking cat to shoot witches with a magical gun in order to revive her deceased boyfriend from a different era, and none of THAT is explained, I'll admit this kind of thing feels a little off— probably just some clunky translation, idk. When basic information is so bluntly communicated in a story otherwise seemingly apathetic to one's understanding of it, there are times when it's hard to tell whether the game actually respects its players' intelligence.

At least, going directly into another time traveling RPG immediately after Chrono Trigger gives me a little whiplash. On one hand, I think complexity is great for a story, but it also needs to be earned, well placed. CT's story is instantly very effective because of its simplicity, but 13 Sentinels' seems much more of a slow burn. With that being said, I do really appreciate how the characters themselves generally don't seem to know what the fuck is happening either, and it makes them a lot easier to connect with. On the surface, they may all be defined by an archetypal personality trait and a like and dislike or two, but with the game's focus on story and its 40 some hour runtime, I'd have to imagine they go a little deeper than that once they're better established.

13 Sentinels is as niche as it is a vibe, and from what I can tell, its opening chapters are a weeb-level filter if nothing else. Since it's as well received as it is, I think I'll just have to swallow my pride and trust VW to cook, but nonetheless it's pretty damn fun. :)

I was a big fan of Kira's games before this one came out, so it was quite the pleasant surprise to learn they too were King's Field and Shadow Tower pilled. Lunacid not only does a beautiful job emulating the charm of its spiritual predecessors, it also modernizes and iterates on them in a clearly very passionate, loving, and respectful sort of way. Of course, it also has no shortage of its own ideas, and they really do give it a fresh, endearing identity. And goddamn is this game sweet— if I fell down its well I don't think I'd want to return either.

It's such a vibe to do some old school dungeon crawling to the tune of lo-fi, listen to the Banjo-Kazooie speak of an adorable little cast of characters, then shit myself when moments of this game are lowkey scarier than any horror game I've ever played. There's also not really a speed or jump height cap so far as I know, so if you wanna grind and turn the game into Quake, the world is your oyster. And don't get me started on all the cute little nods to some of my favorite game series, King's Field and Shadow Tower obviously, but off the top of my head, also Castlevania, Drakengard, Zelda, and Kira's other games of course! Shit, even the real life moon cycle buffs your in game magic, if that doesn't sell it I dunno what will.

I've always wanted to make a game like Lunacid, and seeing someone inspired by all the same shit I like honestly really inspires me. Given aspects of it can be a little obtuse I'm sure it won't be for everyone, but maybe give it a shot if it's a rainy day (or preferably, full moon) and it looks like your thing!

9.5/10

What an unbelievable game. It is an artistic, literary, and technical masterpiece! In terms of objective skill, this game is boundary pushing to an extreme extent. It is much MUCH better than it's predecessor in every single way. It tells a more engaging story, with better character writing, with better meta narratives, with more engaging gameplay and combat, in a much more well thought out world, and of course all of the years of beautiful advances in graphics have made this game something to behold. In terms of pure graphical quality and resolution, it has already been outclassed by its peers and games that have come before, but the combination of lighting, and level design, and art design as a whole combine to make one of the most beautiful spectacles available in this medium. Remedy has truly set a new standard.