I have never been the biggest from soft guy around, I had my ups and downs before actually getting into the groove and I have been hooked on their games since, playing all their games in a production order has actually changed how I see the studio and how i value productions like this.

Echo night 2 is actually a weird game to talk about because it's very much a lot of things at once, at first is a sequel that mostly works like a resomething of the first game, the concept is there and it works in similar ways but most of the game is brand new and actually very good, then it's a king's field filtered through a horror game and it works very well in that regard, it's fresh, it's interesting, it's a great take on a great formula, then as itself is a great technical achievement on a console that I didn't think could achieve this, the textures are amazing and the game runs pretty well considering the console it runs on.

Now that we can talk about the game as itself, the game is simple on paper, bumble around the mansion lighting up every light switch, find items, make dead people happy and reach the end, easy but the game actually structured itself in a very smart way, you can only access a single block of rooms at once and that's it, keeps the game fresh and flowing nicely, the environments are detailed and that's very important given that this game is supposed to be as free to explore as much as the structure makes you do, most of the items have a brief text explaining what they are, it has a lot of nooks and crannies to look into, the overall moment to moment gameplay is great, the puzzles are really good too, give or take some frustrating ones, like a piano puzzle early on; the plot isn't going to make heads blow off but it's decently written and structured, giving you incentives to go on and has a couple of really cool moments because the non chronological nature of the narrative wants you to figure out a lot, but the very cherry of this cake is the atmosphere, it's thick and rich, it makes you immerse in the game and it actually carried a good game into an experience I won't forget for some time, from actually nailed this and I can't wait for the next great experiment from them.

I'm slowly going through all the from software translated games and here we are, with the first non PS1 game, hurray.

I checked a bit online about this one and found a translation and the fact that it's a bit (a lot) like virtual on, so I played the first 2 virtual on games (great games) and then I played this one, which I must say it's a pretty great way to expand the formula to a single player campaign among other things, the gameplay is simple but it's building virtual on in the direction of Armored Core, you build you mech, you choose the parts and then you do the mission, but this game introduces a crafting element that works decently well in the gameplay loop and actually makes you wanna play better for its sake.

The game is short, really short, but virtual on has always been short so this isn't a surprise, it flows well and the difficulty ramps up decently, the IA is not the best but it's decent enough and the gameplay is solid, and I think it moves forward this style in a great way.

Not the best from software game but a solid entry in their catalogue.

I came into King's Field 3 with quite some expectations and most of them have been flushed down the toilet, it looks good and it plays good but then it starts falling apart, the level design is simply not very good, the maps are full of corridors that offer no actually smart or interesting setpieces, the game is long but not interesting, relying on mostly map that have nothing going on or maps that are actually annoying, with a couple maps being quite offensive, the souls just isn't there and I kinda think this is because the game is trying do correct things that were never an issue in the first game, the towns looked silly, yeah, but they were at least full of stuff, now they are mostly empty lots with 2 houses and some mobs bring in a lot of corridors for making the game load, in the old games the statuses were mostly just there, so now almost every mob inflicts some annoying status if he has projectiles, which sadly is more common than ever with mobs that looks purely melee having one or more annoying status, so the experience gets dragged down by the fact that this bloat is really making the whole game, which is based on KF2, a great game, feel sluggish and empty, a shame.

Yakuza 2 is very obviously a game that tries a Icarus stunt and I don't think it reaches the sun how it should have done, the game is better than the first one on a macroscopic level but the devil is in the details and the microscopic level actually shows that the first one is more consistent game all across the game, the story is more complex but its execution is messier, the gameplay is better but some of its fight can be really a chore given some harder spikes, the side content is bloated and not really consistently interesting with some side content being a downright chore or simply not really interesting, I wanted to like this one more than the first one but simply I can't, which is a shame because it could have touched the sun but it still reached very far and it's a damn good achievement, the game has an amazing vibe a mostly (MOSTLY) good pacing, the story is great when it doesn't get messy and kamurocho is still a great place to bum around in, both Yakuza on PS2 are really amazing games damn easy to recommend.

This game is actually very very very good if you just ignore the fact that it's pretty much not very fun at all, the backtracking is almost unbearable and the overall pacing feels like they dragged out a 4 hours game into 9 hours, but it still has an amazing athmosphere and a great technical side, it feel both rushed and overindulgent at times but when it shines it really shines, I don't really know why they changed so much stuff from the first game, that in my opinion worked much much better, but it's still very far from a bad game.

Count Lucanor is kind of an oddity, I started it on a whim because Yuppie Psycho looked kinda neat and I wanted to play all the studio games that I knew of and Lucanor was in the way but I wasn't really that much extatic about it because it looked kinda bland, lets be fair, it looks exactly like a low effort RPG maker affair and the first minutes were kinda bland, but then something happened, once the game gets going i felt a weird tingle in my gut...
I WAS PLAYING RESIDENT EVIL
Yeah, the camera ain't there, there are no zombies and no guns, but the game kinda went there and in the steam page it quotes proudly "Inspired by silent hill", well yeah, it really does, the game is short but has an hell of a pacing, it just goes and goes, it has multiple ways of doing almost anything and it feels great when you stumble on the solution by doing something else and feel that happy chemical from within that very few games actually make me feel anymore, this game got some serious heart beneath those chunky sexy pixels.

The story is actually quite cool and not really strong enough to make the whole game stand up but it's a nice whipped cream on top of a pixely cake, it's charming and gets you going, but the main draw here is the gameplay that got some amateuristic charme while still having quite some hands in the design department, everything feels purposeful.

It gripped me for the 5 hours or so that took me to get the best end and boy if it's quite good.

Maybe 5 starts are too much, but my scores are mostly my enjoyment rather than some snob way to score how objectively stuff is worth so be it, yuppie psycho it's still in my to do list and now I got more interest than ever.

Sea of stars is both as expected and quite surprising in almost a 50/50 split way, I took part in the Kickstarter years ago after playing The Messenger having almost complete faith in the team, while still having doubts about the genre because I'm not too fond of JRPG, but clocking in at 32 house I can confidently say that they knocked it out of the park AGAIN with a masterful game that takes both the new and the old and creates an unforgettable package.

But breaking it down, the first thing I think should be approached is the gameplay, this game took a thousand inspirations and chose to masterfully build upon them creating a game that's great to play and experiment in like any good JRPG should be, while also shuffling around how the puzzle aspect of the genre affects the single fight, it's a child of Chrono trigger for sure, but it's also a child of the Mario & Luigi series (and kinda Mario RPG as a whole) and flirts with a lot of big name jrpgs, building a combat system that's by far one of my favorites.

The story is not really something that's explosive or mind bending but the Sabotage Team has incredible writers that are perfectly aware about how to write a funny game that's not overbearing or cringy while also building genuine characters and interactions, and a story that's quite nicely put together and memorable

The OST and the pixel art are really really really good, as expected, and the pacing is frankly just right, not too hasty, not too slow.

I have small nitpicks here and there but they are nothing in the face of a game that can, and should, be the foundation for the next 10 years of indie JRPGs.

Thank you Sabotage for such an endearing game that I will not forget for quite some time.