Probably the most contentious game I've played so far in this series, and I can absolutely understand why. A lot of what it does undermines the original game so massively in both aesthetic and tone that I can't overlook it (seriously, the music choice during the beginning of chapter 12 and near the end of chapter 16 are honestly laughable). Kiwami 1 was a flawed remake for sure, but I can easily see why this is by far the most "you either love it or hate it" game I've seen in the series yet.
The Dragon Engine looks immaculate visually and the combat has a nice, free flow to it that I really dig, but it still feels like RGG's still in the early development phase with it. It's incredibly janky, not as mechanically rich as either 0 or Kiwami 1, and it can feel a bit too easy at times. I'm sure later Dragon Engine games (the Judgment series, essentially) will do this better, but it still feels like we've got a bit to go before it's truly ready.

That all being said, I still thoroughly loved my time with this game from start to finish. Call it brainrot, call it dickriding, call it stockholm syndrome, call it whatever the fuck you want, I can't help but love Yakuza, it's my new addiction, really.

The story of Yakuza 2 is preserved here in all (or most of) its glory. Kiryu is just as strong of a character as he's always been, and I love seeing his ideology being tested at every turn. It's great to see some pushback to his sense of honor, and watching him overcome all of that in the end and come out a stronger person will never not be heart-wrenchingly satisfying. Ryuji is the biggest contributor to this, as he's an amazing foil to Kiryu (probably the best in the series), boasting his own unique sense of honor that clashes perfectly with Kiryu's, as he's more vain and greedy, having yet to understand Kiryu's more pure and true sense of honor.

Also speaking of Ryuji, can I just say that he's honestly one of the most entertaining characters in this franchise. From his phenomenal voice performance, to his arrogant, RAW personality, every scene he showed up in had my full attention throughout. And I loved when the game blew past his arrogance and badassery and allowed me to genuinely sympathize with and understand him on a closer, more personal level, which only added to the INCREDIBLE finale this game contains (seriously, that final boss was insane).
I'm not sure if I prefer him or Yakuza 1's villain more yet, but I'm absolutely delighted that the series has failed to disappoint with its major villains so far, and I hope that continues.

Also really loved Sayama's character. Following her as she learned about her past and developed a genuinely touching, heartfelt bond with Kiryu served to be the surprising emotional core of this story, and I loved it. Her personality's got that signature Yakuza rawness with a feminine touch, but she was nuanced in her writing to where it felt like more than just flash without any substance (and fighting with her was always cool as hell), and her arc is just great.

And yeah, despite my grievances with the combat, what I said about the Dragon Engine's visuals is still totally true. The cutscenes and dynamic intros have never looked better, to be honest (final boss's dynamic intro and final QTE were especially phenomenal) and they always succeeded at getting me hype, or immersing me in the moment.

So overall, while I do absolutely understand why someone would find this remake to be vastly inferior to the original (I would probably end up agreeing with that notion myself if I ever do get to playing it), and disliking or even hating it as a result, I'm so glad that I finally played this game. It provided me with enormous joy as I experienced this story and saw these characters unravel once more. I look forward to what the rest of the series has to offer, but I can safely say that the Kiwami games, while not perfect by any means, helped continue my unwavering love for this series and I could not be more thankful for that.

Real good! I definitely think this is a lesser thecatamites game which makes it sad that this is the only one most people know but still!

The main thing that stuck out to me about this is the soundtrack! I feel like most video games that use pre-existing music just stick to the most obvious choices, aka the same 5 80s pop songs, but Space Funeral is digital Crate digging. Just look at this list! Also I just think that committing copyright violations is a cool and fun thing to do. It feels like every indie dev wants to be a perfectly able-to-be-ported-to-consoles and limited run games-able object and I think that's lame! YouTube to mp3 your entire soundtrack!!!!! Bitch!!!!!!!!!!

Bayonetta is a franchise that's always meant a lot to me. The drama surrounding the release of this has been absolutely disheartening. I lost a lot of respect for what I considered to be one of my favorite voice actresses and the way it was handled by Kamiya especially was very awful. This had quickly gone from my most anticipated game of the year (or perhaps ever really) to something I felt sick thinking about it. I wasn't sure what to do. Seeing the way Taylor muddied the waters of an important topic for personal gain, throw the new voice actress under the bus and then for the cherry on top asks people to donate to an anti-choice organization just fucking blew my mind. And then finally the previews and reviews started rolling in. Reading and hearing people talk about the game made me feel like I could finally get excited again. I was able to get it a day early and just the experience of completely ignoring the internet until I finished it was such a relief. The gameplay is refined from what I already thought was perfect for me to basically just the next level perfect. I'm a fan of all the changes and everything they keep the same. The story wasn't necessarily the direction I was anticipating but in the same vein I enjoyed it a lot more than I would of thought. Even if you're not a fan of it the gameplay alone is more than enough to keep you engaged. Genuinely such a blast to play and experience. For a franchise I once thought would be dead forever to get an entire trilogy and shine even through unfortunate controversy is not what obliviously gay thirteen year old me sitting and playing this christmas morning would of ever expected. I'm glad to of gotten to play these each at a pretty pivotol moment in my life. I wholeheartedly loved this and even as I'm writing this review I am starting up a second playthrough to explore the mechanics more thoroughly.

Jennifer Hale is a great Bayonetta.

The one thing I never expected an Obsidian game to be was terminally uninteresting but that's exactly what The Outer Worlds is. A collection of shallow systems, characters, and quests that sort of affect the illusion of a proper RPG with depth and consequence but in reality offers nothing of the sort.

The almost cartoonish lack of depth in the gameplay is mirrored in the story, which is a smarmy and infuriatingly smug monument to Enlightened Centrism that wraps itself in a veneer of anti-capitalist rhetoric so thin that it would struggle to appear meaningfully leftist even to someone who gets all their political opinions from Breadtube. Faux-empathetic South Park politics for the Rick and Morty generation, where picking an actual side is always fucking stupid and you should always strive for a meaningless compromise in order to preserve the status quo.

Genuinely astonishing that this came from the same studio that released Pillars 2 just prior, a game that, for all it's issues, actually had the guts to grab you by the neck and tell you to pick a fucking side, to get some god damn ideology, and actually let you meaningfully change the broken world it presented. That game was the real New Vegas 2 you've all been clamouring for, but no one bought it, so I guess we're stuck with this.

Nothing else to really say because there's basically nothing else in here. An utterly empty and vacuous game that doesn't even manage to surpass Fallout 4. A snake oil salesman promising you a miracle solution to bring back the Fallout you remember, but get past the fancy logo and uncork that bottle, and you'll find nothing in there but dust and echoes.

Really makes you FEEL like Slugcat.

Endlessly gorgeous in its world design, refreshingly subtle and minimalist, and one of the most effective tone-pieces and uncompromising gaming experiences out there. Every element combines in a masterful display of how unconventional, inconvenient game mechanics can bring greater purpose to the player experience without sacrificing thematic resonance in its Buddhist-inspired circle of life philosophy, providing further context for its harsh, challenging world and uniquely animalistic mindset required to survive. Frustrating? Yes, but, while I might be insane, I found it fun more often than not, with a rewarding sense of exploration and movement detailed enough to provide continual mastery of your slugcat’s many abilities, a huge, varied world that always feels fresh and exciting to traverse, and for being a 2D Metroid-like that doesn't half-ass its warping system, finally.

Rain World is the best game I've ever played that I can't recommend, as it is so bold in its vision of game design as a form of artistic expression that it won't hesitate to crush you with that vision. I know, for me, the feeling of being in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by predators, and happening upon a shelter at the end of a long hallway while I hear the frightening rumbling of the oncoming downpour is something I won't soon forget, and exemplifies the magic needed of esoteric games like these.

Beauty in fantasy

I'm just gonna say it, I have a hard time trusting japanese role playing fans when it comes to genuine conversations about the genre in general. Despite the decade and the overall flak this game gets and the actual vitriol that comes from discussing this game, I finally got around to actually playing the game myself and seeing for myself what many people labeled "the worst Final Fantasy game". Now I get there are genuine criticisms about the game and this game isn't perfect by any means but it's a beautiful game. The linearity which I feel is the number one criticism doesn't really matter considering the whole package here and especially it wasn't even the first game that has done the linear approach in Final Fantasy and it fits thematically with the game itself here too.

While I feel the story is under cooked due to having to read a little in the codex, it was still decent and not too hard to understand. I admit that I got a little lost nearing the end but the ending itself was great but I think the best part is the whole journey of the game itself here. I really liked the cast here in the fact they feel like actual people barring one or two of them. I feel like each character has had their chance to shine and develop throughout the journey and it made for some great moments I didn't expect at all as they all become victims of circumstance and made for interesting dynamics between certain characters. I never really minded the linearity here due to the fact that the characters realistically didn't have time to partake in side stuff, time is running out and you're always running.

The paradigm system is honestly one of my favorite renditions of ATB so far in the series. My main problem is that it doesn't open up soon enough with the game not giving you the full customization until you're three quarters done with the game. Creating strategies for specific roles is something I really enjoyed doing here and it also rewards perfectly timed switching with a full ATB gauge after a certain amount of time too which makes it even easier to activate burst damage windows. I had fun with this system but the way the game creates these fights are a bit uneven. The game is mostly really easy until the game unlocks the ability to customize your characters and party and the difficulty ramps up pretty hard nearing the end. Fights that used to take 1-2 minutes had average fights taking 4-8 minutes in the final dungeon with mobs. You never really had to grind too much in this game fortunately from my own experience as the game rewards game knowledge over raw stats most of the time.

If there's one word I can use to describe Final Fantasy XIII: Beauty. The level design for almost each area is teeming with visual spectacle and variety. From the machine infused nature of the forest to a land forgotten by time itself, each chapter really managed to provide a unique atmosphere to each area that it's honestly impressive despite the approach to progression. The entire game is yet put into another plane with a serene and energizing soundtrack that focus on the elegance and beauty of the piano and the violin along with the occasional vocal track that really makes this easily one of my favorite soundtracks in a japanese role playing game and knowing the genre, it's really tough to be at that spot considering how good these soundtracks usually are. Two of my favorite tracks manage to build up and then unleashes a beautiful set of strings as the pay off and makes me remember why I enjoyed gaming sometimes. The game is still amazing to look at even today and even the FMVs are always a treat to see after a gameplay sequence that brings back the old days when technology wasn't there yet for the gameplay to match the viewing experience.

I feel like Final Fantasy XIII was meant to be a PlayStation 2 title because it has all the bearings of what would essentially be that. Experimentation of ATB, an incredible soundtrack, gorgeous visuals, linear design that wasn't even the first rendition of it albeit a bit worse. It's also kinda funny how much stuff from this game seeps into the real of modern Final Fantasy too which is surprising. I think even Square realized they had a lot of great ideas in this title and took them and improved them further in future and current titles. The game starts pretty slow and ends a bit too slow too but the overall package is pretty good for what feels like essentially another fun adventure in the series and honestly too overhated for what it actually is and what I feel Final Fantasy is: a fun and beautiful experience.

It cannot be understated how much of an improvement this game is over its predecessor. I feel like this game became the west’s introduction to Fire Emblem and its standard for a reason—everything that made FE6 feel rough around the edges post-Kaga has been refined here to make a quintessential game for the series. If you’ve already played it, I really have to recommend playing FE6 and then replaying this to see just how much it improves.

The changes are all little, and a lot of them are very technical aspects of the mechanics (which you can see in a great breakdown here: https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/cck83m/sequel_talk_mechanical_changes_from_fe6_to_fe7/), but when they all come together they make the game that much better. There are maps with varied objectives; no more needing to seize every map. Classes get reworked or buffed to make them more usable in the long-term (stinks that assassins can’t steal once they’re promoted from thieves tough). Gaiden chapters are no longer gimmicky maps that you need to do to get the game’s true ending, feeling more like worthwhile but non-necessary rewards for going out of your way in the main story. And it’s not just mechanics that got changed, the storytelling of the game was tremendously improved. You don’t get thrown 10 characters in the span of 2-3 chapters, so you actually get to spend some time with the ones you’re fed bit by bit. Side characters have interesting arcs beyond their introduction and maybe a recruitment conversation. Oswin, Matthew, Pent & Louise, Hawkeye, Legault, Jaffar & Nino, you’re not even guaranteed to get or keep all of them, but when you do they become a much more active part of the story than almost any character from FE6 did. Same goes for the enemies; I think the Black Fang and Nergal are some of the most dynamic antagonists in the series.

I don’t mean to just trash FE6 here, because I still do like it. I just think that if you know how much about it this game improved, it really makes FE7 seem like that much more of an achievement. It’s super worthy of praise on its own, though, and I think it’s worth it for anyone remotely interested in Fire Emblem to play.

Extra notes: I have to put this stuff somewhere it really just amazes me. They had to at least have planned that all the absent parents from FE6 were gonna be in this game because they feel so naturally integrated in it. As opposed to just cameos they’re real characters who were awkwardly absent from the last game. Really like how all-around, this game scales back the scope of things in Elibe, too—we got a lost about Bern and Eturia and Ilia in the last game, so focusing on Lycia for the most part with some characters from all around the continent really helps the worldbuilding more than jumping around everywhere in the previous game did. Even if we don’t go everywhere on Elibe, the people who come from all around it bring the places they live to life (this is true for Sacae especially, and it really makes the tragedy of the nation in the previous game feel so much more powerful).

Back in 2014 I saw a trailer for Lightning Returns and thought it was the coolest shit ever. I'd never touched a Final Fantasy game before but I really wanted to get into the series, and get to know XIII in particular. A friend of mine kindly gave me their PS3 copy of FFXIII and well, here we are. My relationship with this game is complicated, but positive overall.

The first time I played through FFXIII, I actually really didn't enjoy it at all. In retrospect, I think if I'd have played a different Final Fantasy game first, I would have known what to expect and had a much greater appreciation for it. My main issues were the amount of grinding and difficulty spikes - I didn't mind the core battle system so much (the Paradigm system is great), but this was my first experience of grinding in a game and I was not having a good time. The story also made 0 sense to me because I didn't bother to do any of the reading it gives you - so as soon as characters started saying words like "fal'cie" or "gran pulse" I would get very confused. Or maybe I was just really dumb (quite possible).

Fast forward a couple years and I get a free copy of FFXIII-2 in a Square bundle. I give it a shot and absolutely fall in love with it. I go back to FFXIII and suddenly the whole story makes sense, and I actually know what to expect from a Final Fantasy game at this point, so the gameplay doesn't bother me so much. FFXIII bizarrely goes from being a game I wasn't that fussed about to one of my favourite games of all time.

The characters in this game are very close to my heart. Lightning is a complex and flawed character who goes through an immense amount of character development throughout the game and I love her so much. All of the characters have their own motivations and the game (once you understand the story and it's jargon, lol) really makes you feel for and care about them. Fang and Vanille in particular are SO good and have such a dynamic and emotional relationship.

The soundtrack in this game is also full of bangers and tracks that will make you feel things. Just the menu music alone (The Promise instrumental) upon first hearing it made me immediately think "oh boy, this game is gonna make me cry". Masashi Hamauzu really nailed it.

The game obviously also looks absolutely stunning. I must've rewatched the CGI cutscenes about 100 times at least and it makes me crave more full CGI FF movies.

My biggest takeaway from FFXIII is that its so refreshing to see female video game protagonists who aren't perfect human beings and aren't regarded as such by the rest of the cast - women who have messy flaws, who are problematic, with a variety of personalities. The kind you get to see develop. By the end of this game, you truly feel like you've grown with the characters.