played it like a pokemon nuzlocke, which was very fun but devastating when some random antlion cast level 5 death and annhiliated three of my girls in one move. made me real mad!

i love this game. marche's motivations are undeniably not explored enough, but there is the seed of something fun in this, a game where "you are the villain" but you think youre the good guy? but also, this game DOES think you're the good guy? idk its interesting! montblanc is very ugly. i wish the sequel's gameplay wasnt like that!

To be clear i didnt actually PLAY this game, i watched ashleigh play the whole thing and sat with her during the class trials and we talked about.

now i dont KIN nagito or anything like that, but when we got into the meat of this game i was definitely pleasantly surprised. you hear so much shit about dandan's romper fans that i thought this was going to suck, be total anime bullshit throughout, and be lame. i was mostly wrong! like a lot of Hard Anime works, dandan's romper has its own world and set of rules that make sense within the context of that world. once you give yourself over to that you can enjoy the game on its merits for what it is: a solid murder mystery story with a conspiracy going on in the background. Each murder, bar maybe one of them, was genuinely really well thought out and written, with a good understanding of logistics behind it. the characters were all interesting anf strange, and even the ones you dislike get depth, and even the cheesey anime silly ones grow on you as time goes on. i didnt like Mafia Boy at all by the start but by the end he was a good man. Dandan's romper is also super self aware, it breaks the fourth wall, acknowledges how its plot is convenient for the sake of the plot, and more. it balances humour and horror in a really satisfying way, its incredibly stylised, and the music fucks. it made me think of persona in that it has very gay and trans coded characters at points, and while it doesnt confirm anything it doesnt do the persona thing of going "whoops they were straight all along heehee!"
Knocked off half a star bc the minigames during the trials are absolutrly atrocious. hangman's gambit is a terrible, terrible way to spend your time. wasteful

souda is the best boy

its so funny playing this after FF2 which is genuinely unpleasant to play and experience, and just have this intense quality of life improvement in its gameplay. the leveling system is classic and good, and the job levels in this game is also a fun mechanic. job levels arent too grindy and its very conceivable you'll get at least one to max with just playing the game and not switching classes too much!

about two years ago i finished FF3's 3d variant on steam, based on the DS port. i wasn't so hot on it, maybe bc on a big screen its very ugly, and the actual characters/plot of FF3 arent great! i think the pixel remaster was a wonderful way to experience this because graphically, the pixel remasters are excellent! and aside from the NES version, theres no other pixelated version of this game, unlike the rest of the PR games. all the different job sprites are so charming and wonderful! the problem with FF3 is, as i said, its lacking characters and plot, and mainly that the job system does not actually really compliment the multi-job system. in that there are sections of the game that are designed to be tackled by specific jobs, like the Cave of Nepto being an all mage section or the Cave of Shadows requiring dark knights (who also kind of fall off from this point). don't get me wrong it's not terrible but it does make it feel like some classes simply arent viable. but its fine! i still just enjoyed this game the whole way through, and the dungeons are SO much better than the previous two games! good job FF3 :)

this game has a pretty good GBA port (and a weird DS remake where FuSoYa's stats go DOWN on a level up! but we'll talk about that LATER) and so this version of the game isnt SUPER necessary? it cuts out the developer's room in the dwarven castle which is mondo sad, and also doesnt have the optional stuff at the end of the game (including choosing your party for the final dungeon)... furthermore, and this is both a good and bad thing, this version is markedly easier than the others. the XP requirements for leveling up are less so just by playing the game you level up faster. this was probably due to the fact that you can run diagonally now, meaning you'll get less random encounters. still, it felt a bit too much. bosses i remember struggling against once upon a time didnt mean dick to me here. this includes Lugae and his frankenstein freak, i think Golbez in the dwarven castle, and uh, zeromus? still it was nice to play it again! FF4 pisses me off bc of the low accuracy mages have and that part in the story where you have three fucking wizards with you. also dark knight cecil needed a longer duration in the story!!!

conclusion? kain in the after years is sexy BEFORE he gets paladinised. play FF6 instead

more often than not when a final fantasy game's mechanics get changed up for something a bit more experimental it doesnt work. final fantasy 8 is no exception lmao
playing this game was a fucking nightmare. girlfriends make us strong, and thats the core mechanic of this game. however junctioning them, magic, and abilities, and having to switch them back and forth between forced party members is such a tedious pain in the ass. there are so many times in this game where its like "change to zell and his gang" for two fights then it switches you back to squall and his gang, and it takes multiple minutes everytime to switch over all my GFs!!! i'm not leaving GFs and magic on characters im not using bc i'm just weaker for it with my main team! even in the final battle its not like you actually NEED everyone, you just let the people you dont want for the fight die so you can use the actual good characters (Squall, Irvine, and Rinoa). on the magic front of things, drawing it from draw points and monsters is fun in theory but just sucks the fun out of the game if you want to play optimally you will draw all the valuable spells 99 times from every enemy. this makes spell quantities pointless, but again, youd be stupid not to do this because it's just the optimal and easy thing to do. and it takes ages! leveling up in this game is basically pointless because the stat ups are minimal, but they can be worth it when you have GF abilities like STR and HP Bonus on your best boy Irvine Kinneas. However when the game deems Squall too high levelled then the amount of XP you get from battles dramastically decreases... for everyone. so if Squall is overlevelled, NO one can level up anymore. tbh I didnt check BUT i'm pretty sure you also have to take Squall with you so you cant get out of this... maybe i'm wrong but i will not be playing this game again to find out! also the game kinda wants to level its enemies with the party; this isnt necessarily a bad thing, but the devs decided that enemies of different level-tiers drop different loot. this means it can be very easy to obtain certain materials from enemies in the early game, but once you level up a bit too much some items because borderline impossible to get your hands on. this SUCKS!!!!!!!!! i could go on and on about all the weird gameplay decisions they made in this game that make it frustrating and not fun a lot of the time, but the gameplay experience overall wasnt TERRIBLE it was just really, really annoying at the worst of times, and reminiscent of better final fantasys at the best of times.

all of that being said, the story in this game is the thing that kept me going. i am, famously, an FF7 fanboy which i love to death. i think that games story is just like, the bee's knees. i love its down-to-earth human action, its lack of divine intervention, its relatable anti-capitalist pro environment message, i Love it. this game leans more into anime asthetics to tell a more personable story about, essentially, teenagers falling in love with themselves, and then other people. its cute! its good even! squall is genuinely insufferable for a really long time, but his inner monologue throughout the game really does a lot to explain why he is the asshole he is. the game even lets you choose how much you want to play into with dialogue options. i didnt want to play squall in anyway other than how i saw him; an asshole; so for a lot of the game i always picked the dickhead options like "whatever" and "shut up" etc etc. but as the game progresses and squall is confronted with love and earnest attempts to open him up, i felt the need to respond in kind, and i enjoyed that i could allow squall to be more open with his friends and be honestt. the simple character arc over 40 hours genuinely works very well! i dont necessarily like all of the characters (sorry selphie) but there's a lot of good stuff in here. the world is more explicitally fantasy/sci-fi and less relatable. Midgar and Shinra's politics in FF7 are much more laid out the state of people in the world made clearer, but in FF8 there's conflict as a plot device that doesnt apply to the characters and its fine. this game also has the interesting idea of having an alternative storyline playing out, with Laguna Loire, Kiros, and Ward. dude, i love Laguna. he's such a himbo. i like his battle theme, i like how handsome he is. I like how he is the polar opposite to Squall. it's a really nice idea! the gameplay doesnt quite compliment it really; i feel like it would have worked better with FF7's materia system where the other party have their own stash of stuff and you dont need to worry about rejunctioning them. then when the characters finally rendevous maybe you can even have them join up for one fun bossfight or something! still, a lot of good and fun story stuff. i like the Shumi, the Moomba, Fisherman's Horizons was fun. I wish there was a bit more with Seifer. I like how the world is populated with goofy, funny characters that Squall just has to react to. i love the idea of stone-hearted Squall looking at Shumi building a statue, KNOWING he needs to assassinate the sorceress, and just going "I could help them build a statue" for no reason. i love that; its great

so thats final fantasy 8. its pretty weird. if it had better gameplay mechanics i probably WOULD play this again, but as it stands, i dont want to go through that shit again bc it suuuuucks. Irvine Kinneas best boy forever; moomba OUT

dogshit! finished it twice. shocking to me that there are reviews praising this game's "story" and its "characters"? the only good character ARGUABLY is minwu, in that he is a white mage who is kind of cool in concept, but beyond that there's nothing. the main cast are completely bland (except for Guy talking to Beaver) and are so cookie cutter boring. to say they have relationships with each other is a joke lmao. Soul of Rebirth on the GBA did an interesting thing in a post-game with the dead NPCs of the game, but even that was dogshit bc it was just the same dungeons in reverse! and anyway this games leveling system is bad and does not suit it whatsoever, and even then its made worse by the fact that gear has INVISIBLE STAT PENALTIES?? who thought it was a smart/cool/good idea to make the magic debuff on armour INVISIBLE so you couldnt see it? how many people played this game thinking magic was bad bc their spellcaster was wearing armour and they had no idea? its almost like its dogshit!!!!!! also why put the dead end dungeons room back from FF1 in this???????? fuck yoy!!!!!!!!!!

to be clear this isnt specific of the pixel remake, this is probably the best version to play if you want to force yourself to play it.

fuck you final fantasy 2!!! the revivification music is the best thing about you!!!!!

finished this yesterday in meta-knight mode on the wii u. wow! apparently people dont like the graphics in this game? which is madness, it's the best looking kirby imo! the backgrounds are amazing and the sprite work is really good.
i also really like the act of playing this game, the fact that the level select screen is still platforming is cute and fun... and so's the music!
kirby games are also short and snappy. finished meta knight mode in just over an hour which is crazy to me. how did this game take weeks for me to beat as a kid lmao

*review is of the base game A Realm Reborn, up to the completion of Main Scenario quest "The Ultimate Weapon" (completed 2nd May 2022)

with patch 6.1 introducing major changes to A Realm Reborn's main scenario dungeons, including duty support with NPCs and overall quality of life changes, i felt it was worth revisiting A Realm Reborn to see how it shapes up, especially after Endwalker concluded the story that begins in. i'm going to be discussing the story, the gameplay of quests, and the dungeons.

so how is the story? well. it's not great. A Realm Reborn is in a strange place where it's both a sequel and prologue and also neither, and doesn't quite fit any mould. it's a sequel to Final Fantasy XIV 1.0, the longdead game that nearly wiped out the Final Fantasy franchise. it's a prologue to Heavensward, where the REAL story begins (or at least gets good), and is neither because it is telling a "whole" story, that of the Garlean Empire's third attempted conquest of Eorzea, while the Eorzeans themselves and the Warrior of Light (you!) contend with "Primals", the summoned gods of myriad tribes who have a corrupting aura about them, that turns any mortal into their slave forever. so whats wrong with it, why is A Realm Reborn's story bad per se? the problem is in its characters i think. we spend the majority of our time with the scions of the seventh dawn, including Minfillia and Alphinaud as the two main characters. Minfillia is a true mary sue, i dont really like the phrase because it has a ring of mysoginy to it but Minfillia is truly without personality, she is just a nice lady with a magical gift who gives us quests to do. She is boring! Alphinaud is better at least, he is characterised as the snobbish grandson of the legendary wizard Louisoix, with delusions of grandeur in saving the world. he means well, but his background of extreme wealth is clear. Even though the WoL is the one to being slaying primals left right and centre, Alphinaud still has the audacity to refer to us as his manservant. and that's at least good characterisation. in the second half of the game we spend a lot of time with Cid nan Garlond, the defected amnesiac master engineer from the empire of Garlemald. Cid is supposed to be a bit cheeky, a bit cocky, and a genius, who has a complicated relationship with the game's facist villains, Gaius van Baelsar. Cid is wholey uninteresting, and the latter half of the story becomes frustrating in the Praetorium dungeon when so much time is spent having villains tell us how much Cid pisses them off while the WoL is just standing there gawping like an idiot. there are more characters, other scions, but they do not really have a personal relationship with the WoL, and are essentially only important in the story in certain "arcs". Thancred only matters in the Ifrit arc, and right at the end (and even then hardly at all), Yda and Papilymo only matter during the (boring) sylph arc, and Y'shtola only matters during the Titan arc. we dont really get to develop meaningful relationships with these characters, who are otherwise pretty one dimensional and not interesting anyway. how's the plot then? well the WoL starts from humble beginnings as an adventurer, and works their way through myriad dungeons and adventures, much to the amazement of the three governments of Eorzea and the scions, and to the ire of the evil wizards who are the puppetmasters of it all, the Ascians. none of what the WoL does in the early parts of the game particularly matter, they are of fleeting importance and excitement. we fight pirates in La Noscea, ancient entombed giants in Thanalan, and cultists in the Black Shroud. if it sounds like these things bore me, its because they do. they are not inherently boring topics, but they just arent done any justice at all. the moment to moment plotting feels tedious and without interest. the actual important story moments come when the Empire kidnap our scion accomplices, and we wake Cid up from his amnesiac state. when the story IS important it's margianally better, it's at least engaging, but when the characters involved are as flat as they are, it leaves you wanting for a lot more. if I have to give the story and momentary plot beats any credit though, its that they do serve a purpose, one that you at least have to buy into. they do a lot of world building about how Eorzea is handling itself 5 years from the calamity, and about the politics within each of Eorzea's nations. we learn about the wealth discrepancy of Ul'dah, its horrid treatment of Ala Mhigan refugees. We learn about the xenophobic andd racist Gridanians, and their obsitance in following the will of the Twelveswood spirits, and we learn about the strange coalition of pirates that form Limsa Lominsa's government, and their hypocrisy in dealing with the kobolds. Eorzea is fleshed out, and it is interesting, but sometimes its delivery of these facts is not good, and that dampens the worldbuilding itself.

how is the quest to quest gameplay? in a word, mixed, i suppose? I've played ARR three times now. my first playthrough was back in January of 2020. back then, there was more busywork than anything else. there were SO many quests where the story paused to have characters go "can you right click this pot to add onions to it, right click it again to stir it, right click it again to dish it out, then right click 5 NPCs to give them soup?" i am particualy fond of the quest wherein I had to right click a bucket in a stream three times in a row (with a cast bar for each one!) to fill it up, so i could pour it on some guy's head. this had literally nothing to do with the rest of the plot lmao. in August of 2020, patch 5.3 came out, which included a major revamp to ARR's questline, removing 31 quests in total, as well as a myriad of quest objectives, and simplifying others. this was a WELCOME change, and streamlined the entire process. it's not perfect by any means, there is still pointless busywork involved that only serves to elongate the experience, but it is so much better than it was. sometimes, as the quests go on, you will have to take part in an "Instance", which is essentially where you are put into an arena within the story to fight a specific combat encounter. it's more than just a monster on the overworld. you might be fighting a specific named enemy, or having named NPCs like Thancred fighting by your side. at their best, Instances can be some of the most fun, exciting, and interesting parts of this game. at their worst, they are dogshit boring, tedious, and lame. with patch 6.1's ARR improvements we saw two previous boss fights (Cape Westwind and Lahabrea) go from trials to Instances. these Instances were brand new, made in the way that the game is designed in 2022. as a result they feel fresh and are engaging, as they've been designed by devs who know what FF14 at its best looks like. as a result, ARR now is filled with a bizarre mixture of ancient, terrible instances where you have to run around looking for tiny shield barriers while an invincible robot chases you, as well as the excellent ones like Cape Westwind, that is now both engaging, fun, and even emotional! ARR's questline could do with being made up from the beginning again and i would suspect it would be way better.

finally, the dungeons. As previously mentioned ARR has seen multiple improvements since I first played in January of 2020. I suspect that even when I played it was better than it was a few years ago, let alone at launch. ARR's worst dungeons in the day were Copperbell Mines, The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak, Castrum Meridianum, and the Praetorium. in the original Copperbell Mines, enemies would tether to a spot so you couldn't tank them wall to wall, the first miniboss was one to three incredibly weak adds at a time, the second one being a slime that was impervious to damage except for a mechanic which only the tank needed to handle, and so on. Totorak made you explore its labrynth looking for frustrating Magitek Photocells that would dismiss a barrier, as well as having a sludgy floor that slowed the player when they walked on it... which was impossible to avoid. Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium were incredibly long and tedious, both with meandering objectives in them that required teamwork to be done that wasnt fun to complete, but annoying to not complete. On top of this the bossfights were pitiful, and they were both riddled with unskippable cutscenes. Praetorium by itself would last an entire 45 minutes! the improvements we got in 6.1 fixed the bosses in Copperbell Mines, making them actual bosses for everyone to fight. the enemies still tether for some reason, so you can't win them all. Totorak is totally streamlined, no longer a maze, with no sludgy floor. And the vast majority of cutscenes were removed from Meridianum and Praetorium, with only the "necessary" ones still in place. Furthermore, the bosses were made far more engaging with actual mechanics that felt worth acknowledging. again, nothing is perfect, but it feels bizarre to say, these days, that Castrum Meridianum is actually fun now, whereas it used to be a slog. When it came up in roulettes you'd roll your eyes and groan because it was so bad. Not anymore. one of the problems with talking about ARR's dungeons is that hindsight doesnt do them any favours. The first time you play them, especially if you're new the MMOs, they're not so bad because you don't have anything to compare them to. you're also still getting used to your miniscule moveset, so the 3 buttons you press in Totorak wont dismay you your first time. When you're level 90 and have just completed the final trial that Endwalker introduced, then you pop levelling roulette and get Sastasha, and can suddenly press only 2 of your 20 buttons, it doesnt MATTER how good the dungeon is now, because you're left with the worlds most boring, easy, mind numbingly unengaging gameplay. it's good that old content still gets played, but it puts a negative spin on any old dungeon. Even the good Heavensward and Stormblood dungeons suffer from this at this point, and it's a shame.

so what's my conclusion? It's okay. It's better than it was, and will presumably only get better as they continue to make improvements to it. In 6.2 we're expecting improvements to the ARR patches, which are overdue. I wholeheartedly believe that if you can tolerate or even enjoy ARR, you will have an absolute blast with everything that comes after. Literally everything is improved after A Realm Reborn; the story becomes very good, the voice acting is significantly better, the quests are fun and have way less busywork (but not none, unfortunately) and the dungeons/trials are exciting, tense, memorable mini-stories that you are excited to see when you come back to them again. A Realm Reborn is where we started, and it's not perfect, but at least it let us get to the good stuff.

a messy, messy game and one that i wouldnt recommend to anyone unless they were already a dedicated Casltevania fan. id be willing to bet that people who played this one only did so to scratch the itch of wanting more Castlevania games, even if it wasnt so good!

but is it really as bad as all that? for one, the game has this incredible sense of speed that coupled with the fact Juste's kick attacka do the same damage as his whip allows you to fly through Dracula's castle at a constant 90mph. moving in this game is fun, and it is from the very beginning. it gets better with the slide kick, double jump, and fuckin uppity jump near the end of the game. the whip attack is fast and satisfying and you can throw your subweapon fast too.

that being said, the magic spells trivialise the entire game. its already too easy without them. i managed to beat Dracula using the steel tip whip instead of the platinum tip and it made no difference! thats the games biggest failing. its bosses are almost all just too easy, low down rooms with a guy who is very easy to hit with easily avoidable attacks. they can do a lot of damage but it doesnt matter because youll likely have tonnes of potions anyway. another bad thing is the castle in some ways, it has some fun areas but it feels confused. why is the castle treasury like 50% of the map? why does it have the crystal cave section in it, why wasnt that part of the luminous caverns, which woild have benefitted massively from more variance in backgrounds? why is everything in castle B so fucking grey? i would love to mod this game to give Castle B some freakin colour bc it depressing and samey. the music isnt actually too bad if you can get past the awful soundfont, its clearly suffering from technical limitations but the tracks themselves are mostly catchy and good, if a bit boggly from the beeps and boops of it all.

its still nice in this game to see the enemy variety and all the unique death animations they have. despite its problems its still verymuch an explicit Casltevania game with all of the good flavour, albeit a stilted and limited one

ive only played 4 and 8 at this point, and bc of the village-to-castle vibes of 8 i thought itd be similar to 4. and it kind of was! i played on controller for that reason, which was kind of a mistake actually, bc it being first person meant that shooting wouldve just been easier with a mouse. really good fun still though! i think for having inventory management stuff it gives you items all the time, so either i did a really good job managing my shit (doubt) or it gives you too much stuff. guessing the latter. the characters are pretty fun this time around too! :)