goodchicken
2000
two seperate points in the game, once near the start and once again in the second to last chapter, this game does the same joke of an elderly wizard telling mario some ancient important story with heavy lore implications. both times, mario falls asleep within moments and we miss all of the "important" lore, and mario carries on with his adventure. it's a silly bit of comedy that i like, as well kind of important to me that the game reminds you that the lore and story and other things we might associate with a JRPG don't really matter here. it's not that those things are bad, but that in paper mario, we're just a silly little plumber who jumps good. and really, what more can you ask for?
normally i break reviews into gameplay and story as the two main articles, but seeing as story is such a non-factor here, i think vibe is more important. and the vibe is immaculate. every chapter in this game is colourful and charming, committing to the bit, with good humour. even in chapters where the vibe is supposed to be a bit spooky they sneak the good jokes in and it's a good time. but the vibe isn't always comedy! there's a couple of chapters where they do something really special. chapter 7 specifically has these moments of like, wonderlust? just high up in the mountain with the aurora borealis, and the music twinkling in a special way. atop the star mountain near peach's caslte the music hits in a kind of mystical, wonderful way, that makes you feel like wishing upon stars is a real and tangible kind of magic. these moments are few and farbetween admittedly, but they really stand out to me as really quite incredible. as comedy and mario's hijinks are the most important factor of the game, they are highlighted, and are always good. it's strange just how endearing mario is in this game. he's just so humble - which is significantly different to hiself in Mario & Luigi where he's bombastically confident like Goku might be. the companions are pretty good. i was gonna say they ooze charm, but only about half of them do actually. goombario, lady bow, parakarry, and watt are the most fun companions as characters go. unfortunately there are just kind of too many companions and this game makes the classic JRPG mistake of giving you some in the final quarter of the game, which has always felt like a miss to me. you could probably scrap sushie and lackilester and the game would still feel well populated. parrakarry for life as far as companions go
the gameplay is seriously good too. i think TTYD improves upon it with its companions feeling more like actual party members, but that game's combat has to work significantly differently for it, and what we have here does work incredibly well. i think by keeping the numbers so small, literally most attacks througout the whole game do less than 10 damage (in final fantasy 7 cloud has over 300 health, the damage economy is seriously inflated), and damage is consistent. what this means is that attacking a specific way or defending a specifc way means it's always an incredibly considered decision. as every attack requires input from the player to properly work you end up with a very engaging battle system. unfortunately the N64 controller is Bad and so a lot of the time getting these moves right isn't quite as easy as it looks. parrakarry's normal attack as well as watt's were consistently hard for me to just get right, even though they felt like they should've worked? playing this on nintendo switch or wii u is definitely better than playing it on N64 these days, those controllers are more responsive, but the fault also lies in the coding of the game. something else TTYD improves upon
anyway you end up with a seriously good JRPG from start to finish. at no point in this game was i not having fun. it's nuts just how good this is, and nuts that the sequel does all the same things but more. i cant believe they just killed off such a formula-perfect series so fast! hopefully TTYD's remake is a sign of good things to come... but we'll see...
normally i break reviews into gameplay and story as the two main articles, but seeing as story is such a non-factor here, i think vibe is more important. and the vibe is immaculate. every chapter in this game is colourful and charming, committing to the bit, with good humour. even in chapters where the vibe is supposed to be a bit spooky they sneak the good jokes in and it's a good time. but the vibe isn't always comedy! there's a couple of chapters where they do something really special. chapter 7 specifically has these moments of like, wonderlust? just high up in the mountain with the aurora borealis, and the music twinkling in a special way. atop the star mountain near peach's caslte the music hits in a kind of mystical, wonderful way, that makes you feel like wishing upon stars is a real and tangible kind of magic. these moments are few and farbetween admittedly, but they really stand out to me as really quite incredible. as comedy and mario's hijinks are the most important factor of the game, they are highlighted, and are always good. it's strange just how endearing mario is in this game. he's just so humble - which is significantly different to hiself in Mario & Luigi where he's bombastically confident like Goku might be. the companions are pretty good. i was gonna say they ooze charm, but only about half of them do actually. goombario, lady bow, parakarry, and watt are the most fun companions as characters go. unfortunately there are just kind of too many companions and this game makes the classic JRPG mistake of giving you some in the final quarter of the game, which has always felt like a miss to me. you could probably scrap sushie and lackilester and the game would still feel well populated. parrakarry for life as far as companions go
the gameplay is seriously good too. i think TTYD improves upon it with its companions feeling more like actual party members, but that game's combat has to work significantly differently for it, and what we have here does work incredibly well. i think by keeping the numbers so small, literally most attacks througout the whole game do less than 10 damage (in final fantasy 7 cloud has over 300 health, the damage economy is seriously inflated), and damage is consistent. what this means is that attacking a specific way or defending a specifc way means it's always an incredibly considered decision. as every attack requires input from the player to properly work you end up with a very engaging battle system. unfortunately the N64 controller is Bad and so a lot of the time getting these moves right isn't quite as easy as it looks. parrakarry's normal attack as well as watt's were consistently hard for me to just get right, even though they felt like they should've worked? playing this on nintendo switch or wii u is definitely better than playing it on N64 these days, those controllers are more responsive, but the fault also lies in the coding of the game. something else TTYD improves upon
anyway you end up with a seriously good JRPG from start to finish. at no point in this game was i not having fun. it's nuts just how good this is, and nuts that the sequel does all the same things but more. i cant believe they just killed off such a formula-perfect series so fast! hopefully TTYD's remake is a sign of good things to come... but we'll see...
2022
This review contains spoilers
the pokemon company delivered their promise to make an open world pokemon game this time around. they genuinely commited to it, they didnt hold our hands and railroad us on some cheesy feelgood bullshit this time around. this, in an essence, is everything we wanted pokemon to be, and performance issues aside they really tried to meet the fan expectations... but they were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.
this is an open world game. this is also a JRPG-lite. i do not think they mesh well.
in another open world game where your destination is your choice, you might encounter something that is too ferocious to deal with, but with your cunning and wits, you might still be out to outgun whatever baddie you encounter. in a JRPG, fighting an enemy that's twenty levels higher than you is almost always impossible without some form of exploit that makes you play the game entirely differently. this is true of pokemon too, you might be able to take on a gym where the pokemon are so many levels higher than you, but it will be because of some bullshit, or because you had a fuck tonne of potions/max revives. i hate using items in pokemon because it feels so cheap; for a game where the premise is equal opponents against each other, using items just feels like cheating. as a result of this, winning a fight against a gym i'm not levelled for is an impossibility. there's simply no point! doesn't really matter how well I know my type matchups, if you have a dragonite that's 40 levels higher than me there's no way my wooper and dunsparce are surviving that. as a result, the open world nature of pokemon kind of failed here i feel like! i just ended up using a guide to go to the recommended next area because it felt like otherwise i was getting my shit kicked in, purposely avoiding trainers and wild pokemon until i could reach the gym and cheese my way through it, and that wasn't fun at all.
another aspect of the open world is navigating it; we're given Miraidon/Kiraidon for this purpose, and it's cool how our mount evolves with each titan that we beat. it's so much faster than running on our feet it feels absolutely necessary to use, but honestly, i felt like i didnt get agood picture of what paldea looks like because of it. sure i explored, but that quickly got boring because there was never really anything worth finding. sure there's items and TMs, but they're both boring. there was never, as far as i'm aware, a case of only finding a certain pokemon in a certain place. each pokemon kind of wanders round aimlessly in each area, feeling less like actual animals with habitats and more like freckles that are scattered across your skin. the towns too are completely bland, totally lacking in personality. i would say they might be the worst towns in the franchise. you can't enter any buildings except for the gyms, which are just boring ass gray buildings with nothing going on! i get that there's an emphasis on being outside but man, i didnt get that feeling of "oh cool a new town!" that you get when you find one in an older pokemon game, which was a real shame. they used to be so colourful. i guess the mount controls okay though. side note, the game's overstated horrific performance issues do not make paldea a nice region to look at either! paldea was not particularly fun to explore for any reason! it wasnt bad it was just... not good?
the story is pokemon as always. team star was absolutely the worst bit, completely lacking in flavour at all. the bosses are all boring, and cassiopea was boring. i DID like clive though; i wish he would have got flustered everytime i called out who he really was though, that would've been funny. the champion storyline is also pretty meh, the gym leaders this time around are mostly forgettable, some of them being memorable only for their visual designs and not much else. i didnt like nemona at the start but whatever reason she grew on me! the game seems to realise that she's stupid and that makes me like her more.
arven's story was the best one with the titans. the titans were the coolest thing in it, and i wish they had been a bit tougher or stranger, but i did enjoy them a lot, and arven's thing with sada/turo is good too... speaking of...
area zero takes the game into a totally different, bizarre for pokemon, act. nemona, penny, and arven have all this expository banter while you explore this dazzlingly beautiful area on foot, it's tough and dangerous. for once a pokemon game also acknowledges that people can dislike each other; the characters are witty and have banter with each other, and they're mean about it sometimes! even penny has a level of sarcasm to her that gives her some flavour, and i suddenly found myself invested in this little friendship group i was in. the paradox pokemon are genuinely cool, and the mystery of what's going on genuinely caught my attention. the fact that the real professor turo/sada has been dead the entire time is a genuine shock, and the final battle with their robot clone is tough and super exciting! it's not a long final act, but it's a really good one! it made me wish for not an open world pokemon game, but a focused one with a decent story... kind of like colosseum, but with more choice of pokemon in the team!
the new pokemon this time around are really good, i surprised myself by managing to finish the game with a team full of entirely new pokemon, which i dont think i've ever done before in a new pokemon game! that's genuinely awesome!
final note, i think making your first open world game also the game with the boarding school was a HUUUGE mistake! boarding school fiction is fun because it's a centralised location that the audience becomes intimately familiar with; dropping that in a game where we have very little incentive to go back to is insane! and now we're likely to never get it again which is a shame, bc i love boarding school fiction! ah well!
this is an open world game. this is also a JRPG-lite. i do not think they mesh well.
in another open world game where your destination is your choice, you might encounter something that is too ferocious to deal with, but with your cunning and wits, you might still be out to outgun whatever baddie you encounter. in a JRPG, fighting an enemy that's twenty levels higher than you is almost always impossible without some form of exploit that makes you play the game entirely differently. this is true of pokemon too, you might be able to take on a gym where the pokemon are so many levels higher than you, but it will be because of some bullshit, or because you had a fuck tonne of potions/max revives. i hate using items in pokemon because it feels so cheap; for a game where the premise is equal opponents against each other, using items just feels like cheating. as a result of this, winning a fight against a gym i'm not levelled for is an impossibility. there's simply no point! doesn't really matter how well I know my type matchups, if you have a dragonite that's 40 levels higher than me there's no way my wooper and dunsparce are surviving that. as a result, the open world nature of pokemon kind of failed here i feel like! i just ended up using a guide to go to the recommended next area because it felt like otherwise i was getting my shit kicked in, purposely avoiding trainers and wild pokemon until i could reach the gym and cheese my way through it, and that wasn't fun at all.
another aspect of the open world is navigating it; we're given Miraidon/Kiraidon for this purpose, and it's cool how our mount evolves with each titan that we beat. it's so much faster than running on our feet it feels absolutely necessary to use, but honestly, i felt like i didnt get agood picture of what paldea looks like because of it. sure i explored, but that quickly got boring because there was never really anything worth finding. sure there's items and TMs, but they're both boring. there was never, as far as i'm aware, a case of only finding a certain pokemon in a certain place. each pokemon kind of wanders round aimlessly in each area, feeling less like actual animals with habitats and more like freckles that are scattered across your skin. the towns too are completely bland, totally lacking in personality. i would say they might be the worst towns in the franchise. you can't enter any buildings except for the gyms, which are just boring ass gray buildings with nothing going on! i get that there's an emphasis on being outside but man, i didnt get that feeling of "oh cool a new town!" that you get when you find one in an older pokemon game, which was a real shame. they used to be so colourful. i guess the mount controls okay though. side note, the game's overstated horrific performance issues do not make paldea a nice region to look at either! paldea was not particularly fun to explore for any reason! it wasnt bad it was just... not good?
the story is pokemon as always. team star was absolutely the worst bit, completely lacking in flavour at all. the bosses are all boring, and cassiopea was boring. i DID like clive though; i wish he would have got flustered everytime i called out who he really was though, that would've been funny. the champion storyline is also pretty meh, the gym leaders this time around are mostly forgettable, some of them being memorable only for their visual designs and not much else. i didnt like nemona at the start but whatever reason she grew on me! the game seems to realise that she's stupid and that makes me like her more.
arven's story was the best one with the titans. the titans were the coolest thing in it, and i wish they had been a bit tougher or stranger, but i did enjoy them a lot, and arven's thing with sada/turo is good too... speaking of...
area zero takes the game into a totally different, bizarre for pokemon, act. nemona, penny, and arven have all this expository banter while you explore this dazzlingly beautiful area on foot, it's tough and dangerous. for once a pokemon game also acknowledges that people can dislike each other; the characters are witty and have banter with each other, and they're mean about it sometimes! even penny has a level of sarcasm to her that gives her some flavour, and i suddenly found myself invested in this little friendship group i was in. the paradox pokemon are genuinely cool, and the mystery of what's going on genuinely caught my attention. the fact that the real professor turo/sada has been dead the entire time is a genuine shock, and the final battle with their robot clone is tough and super exciting! it's not a long final act, but it's a really good one! it made me wish for not an open world pokemon game, but a focused one with a decent story... kind of like colosseum, but with more choice of pokemon in the team!
the new pokemon this time around are really good, i surprised myself by managing to finish the game with a team full of entirely new pokemon, which i dont think i've ever done before in a new pokemon game! that's genuinely awesome!
final note, i think making your first open world game also the game with the boarding school was a HUUUGE mistake! boarding school fiction is fun because it's a centralised location that the audience becomes intimately familiar with; dropping that in a game where we have very little incentive to go back to is insane! and now we're likely to never get it again which is a shame, bc i love boarding school fiction! ah well!
hello. i have finally finished symphony of the night. it is the most important castlevania game and the first metroidvania. i think it is pretty amazing that this amazing formula for RPG-lite metroidvanias was born here like, almost with nothing predating it? genuinely amazing. there's so much good stuff here too.
the sprite work is really nice and the castle looks amazing. there are so few parts of this that i think look bad that i'd be willing to say, despite it being the first one, it's one of the better ones. the individual tracks are all stellar too, for the most part anyway. crystal teardrops, marble gallery, abandoned pit, dance of pales, and lost painting, to name a few, are all phenomenal. the downside to this comes from the reverse castle (which is the focus of almost all of my criticisms of the game). Final Toccata is a perfectly fine song. it's nothing special. however, for whatever reason, it is the theme for about 5 of the areas in the reverse castle. you will get sick to bastard death of this song. it is so annoying. it takes away so much of the charm that each area has!!!! i suspect that game's second half was rushed in development or something because it loses all sense of progression, it repeats tracks, has basically no story until you find Death and then Shaft, and has annoying enemies instead of good ones. fighting the Guardian with his super fast shield or the witch in the floating catacombs sucks. speaking of the floating catacombs, oh my god, why is Galamoth so hard?! there is no reason for him to be that strong!! I genuinely dont know how youre supposed to beat him without cheesing the shield rod and Alucard Shield. whatever
I'm kind of rambling but I did really enjoy this game. I played it with the original clunky dub and tbh, I really love it. nobody really gives a good performance but I dont mind? It's just kind of camp and find and I'm here for it. I love Dracula quoting the Bible as he fucking explodes. I love "What is a man?" and I love that Alucard has such a deep voice. it's just good
my only other complaints are more minor ones. I wish there was weapon variety that felt better; the later games improve this (particularly Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, and Bloodstained). And I wish that the sub-weapons didnt work from candle drops. It just doesn't suit a metroidvania like this. the inventory management sucks a lot, and its bizarre how long it takes for this to get properly fixed. and finally the reverse castle could have just had better and more interesting loot dotted around it. There are so many times you go into a room where there was cool loot the first time around and there's just fuck all in the reverse castle. lame!
ALL that to say this game is still worth playing. I like that it's genuinely pretty challenging. Its vibe is fantastic and when things come together they really come together. nice!
the sprite work is really nice and the castle looks amazing. there are so few parts of this that i think look bad that i'd be willing to say, despite it being the first one, it's one of the better ones. the individual tracks are all stellar too, for the most part anyway. crystal teardrops, marble gallery, abandoned pit, dance of pales, and lost painting, to name a few, are all phenomenal. the downside to this comes from the reverse castle (which is the focus of almost all of my criticisms of the game). Final Toccata is a perfectly fine song. it's nothing special. however, for whatever reason, it is the theme for about 5 of the areas in the reverse castle. you will get sick to bastard death of this song. it is so annoying. it takes away so much of the charm that each area has!!!! i suspect that game's second half was rushed in development or something because it loses all sense of progression, it repeats tracks, has basically no story until you find Death and then Shaft, and has annoying enemies instead of good ones. fighting the Guardian with his super fast shield or the witch in the floating catacombs sucks. speaking of the floating catacombs, oh my god, why is Galamoth so hard?! there is no reason for him to be that strong!! I genuinely dont know how youre supposed to beat him without cheesing the shield rod and Alucard Shield. whatever
I'm kind of rambling but I did really enjoy this game. I played it with the original clunky dub and tbh, I really love it. nobody really gives a good performance but I dont mind? It's just kind of camp and find and I'm here for it. I love Dracula quoting the Bible as he fucking explodes. I love "What is a man?" and I love that Alucard has such a deep voice. it's just good
my only other complaints are more minor ones. I wish there was weapon variety that felt better; the later games improve this (particularly Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, and Bloodstained). And I wish that the sub-weapons didnt work from candle drops. It just doesn't suit a metroidvania like this. the inventory management sucks a lot, and its bizarre how long it takes for this to get properly fixed. and finally the reverse castle could have just had better and more interesting loot dotted around it. There are so many times you go into a room where there was cool loot the first time around and there's just fuck all in the reverse castle. lame!
ALL that to say this game is still worth playing. I like that it's genuinely pretty challenging. Its vibe is fantastic and when things come together they really come together. nice!
2020
This review contains spoilers
took me fucking ages to beat this badboy but i finally got around to it. should preface this by saying i never played 1.0 of this game! i wasn't super interested at that time and the more i heard of the gameplay mechanics the more i figured it weren't for me! by ashleigh played lisa the painful for me this year in exchange for me becoming the Cyber Punk, so i waitied until 2.0 dropped and here i am! i have become the cyber punk, the flatliner of gonks... or whatever
i like the gameplay. i like first person RPGs like fallout, TES, vampire masquerade, so on and so forth. so it was probably a given that i'd at least find this playable. but the gameplay is genuinely good and feels involved because it's got so much variation. there's a bunch of different types of gun, your pistols, SMGs, snipers, so on, but there's all these different variations of them from there. i don't just mean like, different types of SMGs, but there's power types, smart types that work with the cyberware in your body to produce extra affects, tech weapons that use electromagnetic technology to bust through walls and do the big damage. then there's melee weapons, which is blades and clubs, and punching, Gorilla Punching, or Mantis Slashing, or Wire Killing, theres so many different ways to murder people that it feels very fresh. i understand it certainly didnt use to be as balanced as it is now, but i decided from the get-go i wanted a shotgun, a sniper, a pistol, and mantis blades, and at literally no point did i ever have to even consider using other kinds of weapons. you can use quickhacks to set people on fire or distract enemies. i didn't do any of that sneaking stealthy shit because i'm not a pussy though. there are tonnes of options for avoiding combat encounters, and using quickhacks on tech around the room or on people to distract them, cover your path, so and so forth. i never did it as i say, but it's cool that every level feels designed with both rooty-tooting as well as sneaky peteing. you also, obviously, get better at your jazz as you go. there's normal leveling up and skill trees that you can put points into. if western RPGs have taught us anything its that interesting perks are ones that slightly change the way you interract with the world, not ones that produce bigger numbers. the perks allow you to get the dash, the sickest ability in the game, and not much else matters? there's a bunch of other cool shit in there like the first reloaded bullet being an eletrical explosion, or slowing down time, or deflecting bullets with a blade, but that dash and double jump is the only conceivable way to travel in this game. it makes movement for an RPG feel great, and i can't help but feel going back to new vegas where i cant even sprint is going to be a bit sore! especially now that matthew perry has passed into the great beyond! i digress... on the note of progression, there's also little mini level up trees that level up with specific actions that you do, so the game is constantly rewarding you for a specific playtype and you get better at the type of gameplay you keep doing. it's nothing major but its a nice bit of positive reinforcement. same with cyberware really, i found a lot of the cyberware was just "number go up" so didnt' care too much for it, but cyberware did allow me to double jump and have cool blades in my arms so i cant complain too much! i think the only problem with the gameplay is that maybe combat is too easy? i only had a few difficult combat encounters in the game. one was right at the start of phantom liberty (which i promised myself i woudlnt talk about, but fuck it. seems like the writers didnt give a fuck about dogtown because why the fuck would you renegate the quest of "who's going to lead dogtown" to a sidequest and make it THAT boring??? whatever) when i decided to kill ALL the guys outside dogtown's entrance, which was clearly not the intended way to play. the other hard fight was adam smasher, who wasn't too hard himself, more just that the ending segment makes it hard by capping your max health continuously as it goes. you have an infinite amount of healing items in teh game from the beginning, so all consumable items in a normal difficulty game were totally pointless. sold them every time and never felt wanting. maybe that stuff matters more in hardmode, but i just never felt the need to swap out from frag grenades or the normal healing item! they both served me perfectly for the entire game! tangent but the gun camo and car decals are so nice, i love that so many games have different coloured variants... shame you cant pick any! whats up with THAT? same with the car. i bought a maimai and used it for the whole game, but had to use the red one when i wanted a blue one? what am i carrying all these freakin eddies around for, huh, choom?
on the subject of "chooms" lets talk about that writing. was it preem or not? for the most part i really like it! the main story is relying so heavily that the relationship between V and Johnny will work. if it doesnt, the whole game is completely pointless and we should uninstall right now. it's not that you have to like johnny, but it's that you have to learn to understand him, the way he learns to understand you. the moment to moment plot beats are perfectly fine. they're servicable and sometimes serve to make night city feel like a lived in place. but the important stuff in this game is not really to do with themes of transhumanism or reliance on technology, or the ship of theseus. instead it's all about the characters. johnny is the duetoragonist of this and i think casting the most lovable man in hollywood as johnny works. listen, everyone loves keanu reeves (except for the aforementioned dead Benny Gecko of Fallout: New Vegas fame) so i'm choosing to believe that CDPR put a chunk of budget into Reeves bc they knew that if Johnny didnt work, the game wouldnt work... and not because they wanted a celebrity to help sell the game. even if the latter is true, which it at least partially is, Reeves' Johnny is overflowing with a well performed venom for your character and the state of the world. johnny's not edgy because he's a cool legend, he's a narcissistic dickhead who hurts other people and lets the guilt wash over him. he's also lonely, and bitter about what happened to him. the rare moments of sincerity in that character endear you to him so much. because like, this is the only guy in the whole world who GETS it. who gets YOU. he might not be the perfect person to team up with, but he's all you got, through thick or thin. and keanu makes it fucking work, baby. the side characters are okay too. or at least, judy is pretty damn good actually. i played as male V, made him a drug huffing booze cruiser who liked to shoot cops for fun. wasnt any place for romance for me. i did the quests for panam and kerry, both of which were fine, but i get why everyone says judy is queen. because she is! her story is so much more emotionally enriching and that much more tragic for it too. i didn't get to romance her because judy is a lesbian, but i know that if i ever play this game again i will do so as judy and see it through. characters got me wanting to come back to night city, which is saying something because the place is a shithole, and doesnt actualy have much in it! oh well, time for good chicken to delta! syonara!
i like the gameplay. i like first person RPGs like fallout, TES, vampire masquerade, so on and so forth. so it was probably a given that i'd at least find this playable. but the gameplay is genuinely good and feels involved because it's got so much variation. there's a bunch of different types of gun, your pistols, SMGs, snipers, so on, but there's all these different variations of them from there. i don't just mean like, different types of SMGs, but there's power types, smart types that work with the cyberware in your body to produce extra affects, tech weapons that use electromagnetic technology to bust through walls and do the big damage. then there's melee weapons, which is blades and clubs, and punching, Gorilla Punching, or Mantis Slashing, or Wire Killing, theres so many different ways to murder people that it feels very fresh. i understand it certainly didnt use to be as balanced as it is now, but i decided from the get-go i wanted a shotgun, a sniper, a pistol, and mantis blades, and at literally no point did i ever have to even consider using other kinds of weapons. you can use quickhacks to set people on fire or distract enemies. i didn't do any of that sneaking stealthy shit because i'm not a pussy though. there are tonnes of options for avoiding combat encounters, and using quickhacks on tech around the room or on people to distract them, cover your path, so and so forth. i never did it as i say, but it's cool that every level feels designed with both rooty-tooting as well as sneaky peteing. you also, obviously, get better at your jazz as you go. there's normal leveling up and skill trees that you can put points into. if western RPGs have taught us anything its that interesting perks are ones that slightly change the way you interract with the world, not ones that produce bigger numbers. the perks allow you to get the dash, the sickest ability in the game, and not much else matters? there's a bunch of other cool shit in there like the first reloaded bullet being an eletrical explosion, or slowing down time, or deflecting bullets with a blade, but that dash and double jump is the only conceivable way to travel in this game. it makes movement for an RPG feel great, and i can't help but feel going back to new vegas where i cant even sprint is going to be a bit sore! especially now that matthew perry has passed into the great beyond! i digress... on the note of progression, there's also little mini level up trees that level up with specific actions that you do, so the game is constantly rewarding you for a specific playtype and you get better at the type of gameplay you keep doing. it's nothing major but its a nice bit of positive reinforcement. same with cyberware really, i found a lot of the cyberware was just "number go up" so didnt' care too much for it, but cyberware did allow me to double jump and have cool blades in my arms so i cant complain too much! i think the only problem with the gameplay is that maybe combat is too easy? i only had a few difficult combat encounters in the game. one was right at the start of phantom liberty (which i promised myself i woudlnt talk about, but fuck it. seems like the writers didnt give a fuck about dogtown because why the fuck would you renegate the quest of "who's going to lead dogtown" to a sidequest and make it THAT boring??? whatever) when i decided to kill ALL the guys outside dogtown's entrance, which was clearly not the intended way to play. the other hard fight was adam smasher, who wasn't too hard himself, more just that the ending segment makes it hard by capping your max health continuously as it goes. you have an infinite amount of healing items in teh game from the beginning, so all consumable items in a normal difficulty game were totally pointless. sold them every time and never felt wanting. maybe that stuff matters more in hardmode, but i just never felt the need to swap out from frag grenades or the normal healing item! they both served me perfectly for the entire game! tangent but the gun camo and car decals are so nice, i love that so many games have different coloured variants... shame you cant pick any! whats up with THAT? same with the car. i bought a maimai and used it for the whole game, but had to use the red one when i wanted a blue one? what am i carrying all these freakin eddies around for, huh, choom?
on the subject of "chooms" lets talk about that writing. was it preem or not? for the most part i really like it! the main story is relying so heavily that the relationship between V and Johnny will work. if it doesnt, the whole game is completely pointless and we should uninstall right now. it's not that you have to like johnny, but it's that you have to learn to understand him, the way he learns to understand you. the moment to moment plot beats are perfectly fine. they're servicable and sometimes serve to make night city feel like a lived in place. but the important stuff in this game is not really to do with themes of transhumanism or reliance on technology, or the ship of theseus. instead it's all about the characters. johnny is the duetoragonist of this and i think casting the most lovable man in hollywood as johnny works. listen, everyone loves keanu reeves (except for the aforementioned dead Benny Gecko of Fallout: New Vegas fame) so i'm choosing to believe that CDPR put a chunk of budget into Reeves bc they knew that if Johnny didnt work, the game wouldnt work... and not because they wanted a celebrity to help sell the game. even if the latter is true, which it at least partially is, Reeves' Johnny is overflowing with a well performed venom for your character and the state of the world. johnny's not edgy because he's a cool legend, he's a narcissistic dickhead who hurts other people and lets the guilt wash over him. he's also lonely, and bitter about what happened to him. the rare moments of sincerity in that character endear you to him so much. because like, this is the only guy in the whole world who GETS it. who gets YOU. he might not be the perfect person to team up with, but he's all you got, through thick or thin. and keanu makes it fucking work, baby. the side characters are okay too. or at least, judy is pretty damn good actually. i played as male V, made him a drug huffing booze cruiser who liked to shoot cops for fun. wasnt any place for romance for me. i did the quests for panam and kerry, both of which were fine, but i get why everyone says judy is queen. because she is! her story is so much more emotionally enriching and that much more tragic for it too. i didn't get to romance her because judy is a lesbian, but i know that if i ever play this game again i will do so as judy and see it through. characters got me wanting to come back to night city, which is saying something because the place is a shithole, and doesnt actualy have much in it! oh well, time for good chicken to delta! syonara!
2017
a long time ago, about 3 or 4 years ago, when my buddies began to play fortednite, i said that i would only join if they introduced certain characters i liked into the game. i was put off by the amount of microtransactions in it, and videos of the building always totally overwhelmed me... but my friends played hundreds of hours of it and the nature of it just seemed fun! so i made my promise and i waited. at the time, there were rumours of characters that epic were looking at putting in. they considered simon belmont from castlevania, joker from persona, snake plissken, and snake from MGS... any of them came in, and i was game.
january 23rd 2024, solid snake was unlockable, so i kept my promise, and played it. and i had fun! i forgot to buy fucking raiden so im now a stupid idiot who only has snake, but still, its good! im terrible at this game. when i'm running round with my buds and they danger ping another squad on a hill, i'm still trying to get my bearings and suddenly a bullet enters my brain and i explode onto my friends. genuinely can't do anything in this game beside kill the AI bots and sometimes hit enemies with lock-on pistols. fortnite is hard bc its filled with children, who we all know are just objectively better at video games than adults, as well as sweaty try-hards, who i call that because i'm jealous of their skill. i SUCK at fortnite. and i sucked at overwatch! i'm not good at shooters that require you to shoot actual, real players who are good at hiding! i have been lucky with a couple of kills here or there but god damn, i suck! part of that is my skill, but another part is that the open nature of the world almost requires having a sniper. and it's true, the sniper is a quintessential weapon in fortnite. and sniping is hard, which means if you can't snipe, you can't win. it's a good thing i get carried so much!!
at time of writing there is no free building in fortnite anymore, which is honestly kind of crazy as that was such an important part of fortnite's identity. but it's gone now, and from what my buddies say, the game is just better for it. you pay more attention to the envinronments, shooting down trees, sliding behind rocks and into bushes to hide. it makes for a more natural experience. there's also weapon modding at the moment, which i dont really understand at all! it makes the weapons, to me at least, needlessly complicated. but that's also because i'm shit.
fuck microtransactions anyway. fortnite relies wholeheartedly on FOMO. it's predatory and it sucks.
final thoughts: for what is probably the biggest, most consistent actively played game right now, it's nuts how like, the game more often than not just feels like it doesn't work? from bad networking to abrupt bad loading, to the UI menus just only half working? like you can "archive" stuff in your locker so that when you shuffle your character skins it will only shuffle the ones that are there. but sometimes it just has the archived skins in too? and also to reshuffle you seem to have to go back to the lobby? like who designed this! it's just silly how frustrating this is hahaha
oh well, i will continue to shoot and be shooted at :)
january 23rd 2024, solid snake was unlockable, so i kept my promise, and played it. and i had fun! i forgot to buy fucking raiden so im now a stupid idiot who only has snake, but still, its good! im terrible at this game. when i'm running round with my buds and they danger ping another squad on a hill, i'm still trying to get my bearings and suddenly a bullet enters my brain and i explode onto my friends. genuinely can't do anything in this game beside kill the AI bots and sometimes hit enemies with lock-on pistols. fortnite is hard bc its filled with children, who we all know are just objectively better at video games than adults, as well as sweaty try-hards, who i call that because i'm jealous of their skill. i SUCK at fortnite. and i sucked at overwatch! i'm not good at shooters that require you to shoot actual, real players who are good at hiding! i have been lucky with a couple of kills here or there but god damn, i suck! part of that is my skill, but another part is that the open nature of the world almost requires having a sniper. and it's true, the sniper is a quintessential weapon in fortnite. and sniping is hard, which means if you can't snipe, you can't win. it's a good thing i get carried so much!!
at time of writing there is no free building in fortnite anymore, which is honestly kind of crazy as that was such an important part of fortnite's identity. but it's gone now, and from what my buddies say, the game is just better for it. you pay more attention to the envinronments, shooting down trees, sliding behind rocks and into bushes to hide. it makes for a more natural experience. there's also weapon modding at the moment, which i dont really understand at all! it makes the weapons, to me at least, needlessly complicated. but that's also because i'm shit.
fuck microtransactions anyway. fortnite relies wholeheartedly on FOMO. it's predatory and it sucks.
final thoughts: for what is probably the biggest, most consistent actively played game right now, it's nuts how like, the game more often than not just feels like it doesn't work? from bad networking to abrupt bad loading, to the UI menus just only half working? like you can "archive" stuff in your locker so that when you shuffle your character skins it will only shuffle the ones that are there. but sometimes it just has the archived skins in too? and also to reshuffle you seem to have to go back to the lobby? like who designed this! it's just silly how frustrating this is hahaha
oh well, i will continue to shoot and be shooted at :)
2022
i first played final fantasy 6 back on the PS1 when i was like, 6 or 7, something like that. could barely get past Mt Koltz when i was that young, if i got that far. like its younger brother FF7, this game has been with me for my whole life. and with the pixel remaster i have FINALLY finished it. what's really remarkable about FF6 by itself however, is just how ahead of its time it was. you compare this to a lot JRPGs today and it still blows them out of the fucking water. the expressive sprites, the fantastic music, the beautiful enemy and esper sprites, and the great characters. admittedly its characters are a little more simplistic than later games in the series, but when you have a cast of 16 characters i think what is produced is astounding. especially seeing as newer games with half the cast (octopath traveller lol) have even more barebones characters with worse writing. (side note, octopath traveller is the worst jrpg i have ever played.) i still kind of cant believe just how good FF6 really is. the entire world of balance is fantastic, it sprouts a huge and interesting world that feels interconnected and personal. i always loved the way Nikeah and South Figaro have a trading route between their ports, and I love that the towns on the outskirts of Vector have been colonised by the empire. there's a real understanding of the towns are neighbours to each other which only arguably FF4 had before it (and even then not to this degree). the flow of the story is great and its set pieces are brilliant. Sabin's route after the returner hideout is genuinely one of my favourite ever video game experiences, and i think the only thing wrong with it is that its not longer or got more to it lmao. it is a whole mini story by itself which is so impressive, and the phantom train is soooo gooood dude. phantom forest is a beautiful piece of music, and the very experience there is weird and fun and interesting, and totally unlike anything else i've ever seen in a game. the games comedic moments between sabin, cyan, and gau are whimsical and delightful. just think about when you recruit gau and have that whole shindig with him, a game like pokemon could NEVER even BEGIN to dream of that kind of stuff. and this game came out in freaking 1994 dude!!!!
i wont go on about the entire world of balance but, needless to say, it is unabashadely fantastic. (the opera scene in the pixel remaster is also amazing, people have noted they wished the whole game was done in hd2d but to be honest i'm glad it wasnt. we've only got two games right now in that style and i'm already sick of it! plus FF6's art direction is part of its charm; i dont think it necessarily needs changing)
on FF6's game design, i only realised for the first time THIS playthrough that the only way to get stat gains on a level up is to use specific espers on each characters. having come off the ass of FF8 with its weird stat gains i was a bit worried about this, but its simplicity does it favours here, and allows you to grind specific stats in a satisfying and noticable way. have the right espers on and levelling up twice makes you notably stronger. bueno nice or whatever!!!!
FF6 is of course, not a perfect game however! there are pacing issues around the world of ruin time. in particular i think it does start with the world of balance, the way strago and relm join your team and then immediately leave it is a tad disappointing. like most JRPGs the later party member additions never feel like they have the weight the starting lot do, and FF6 suffers from this. the lack of story content in the world of ruin definitely is noticable as well, the difficulty spike and the lack of story hits this game hard but thankfully if you like it enough to get to the world of ruin, you'll probably see it through anyway. unlocking the ultima spell makes the game totally trivial too; it is ludicrously powerful, cant be dodged/reflected, and hits all enemies lmao. busted. next time i play i will be smashing up that esper into a sword instead.
anyway, i love this game. i would probably write more but i have to go to work now. bye!
i wont go on about the entire world of balance but, needless to say, it is unabashadely fantastic. (the opera scene in the pixel remaster is also amazing, people have noted they wished the whole game was done in hd2d but to be honest i'm glad it wasnt. we've only got two games right now in that style and i'm already sick of it! plus FF6's art direction is part of its charm; i dont think it necessarily needs changing)
on FF6's game design, i only realised for the first time THIS playthrough that the only way to get stat gains on a level up is to use specific espers on each characters. having come off the ass of FF8 with its weird stat gains i was a bit worried about this, but its simplicity does it favours here, and allows you to grind specific stats in a satisfying and noticable way. have the right espers on and levelling up twice makes you notably stronger. bueno nice or whatever!!!!
FF6 is of course, not a perfect game however! there are pacing issues around the world of ruin time. in particular i think it does start with the world of balance, the way strago and relm join your team and then immediately leave it is a tad disappointing. like most JRPGs the later party member additions never feel like they have the weight the starting lot do, and FF6 suffers from this. the lack of story content in the world of ruin definitely is noticable as well, the difficulty spike and the lack of story hits this game hard but thankfully if you like it enough to get to the world of ruin, you'll probably see it through anyway. unlocking the ultima spell makes the game totally trivial too; it is ludicrously powerful, cant be dodged/reflected, and hits all enemies lmao. busted. next time i play i will be smashing up that esper into a sword instead.
anyway, i love this game. i would probably write more but i have to go to work now. bye!
played with friends, although i didnt have a character. We read the dialogue fully aloud which was fun. Didnt get on with monster prom in the day but i liked this one mechanically more and the variance of its situations is pretty good too!
2019
This review contains spoilers
what a monolith of a game! persona 5's reputation is crazy. it's lauded as the best game ever by some, or at least best JRPG. I thought it was pretty good! i'm comparing it to Dragon Quest 11 and Persona 4 Golden mostly, of which i am very fond of, but P5R is still good!
i'm not super fond of persona's combat, it has this emphasis on capitalising on weaknesses which does work but i'm not huge on, it makes me feel like i'm making a mistake when i hit an enemy with something thats NOT their weakness. i think this game has improved upon P4's combat with the introduction of guns, nuke, and psi damage, as it allows every party member to bring something unique to the team. then, if you're like me, you cover all the other elemental bases with one special persona. for me this was mostly King Frost, then Metatron, then Beezlebub. it is very cool as always the level of customisation you can have in Persona, the way you can spec your characters, but mostly Joker, in a multitude of ways. i appreciate and respect that bc most JRPG protags don't have that level of variety. the confidants in P5R are always so much better; i'm glad i played P4 first because going back to that to find out that you dont get stuff from non-party member confidants would've been crazy. it is so worth leveling up confidants to get cool special abilitie in P5, and its very rewarding capitalising on those things, especially kawakami and the gun about kid. That being said, in terms of free time it sometimes got silly with the amount of stuff i had to do! i think having to wash sooty clothing to get armour sucks and feels like a fake way to waste time, but even then i maxed all my social skills super early and was maxing confidants i didn't care about for the sake of it. ah well! palaces are a very interesting improvements from the P4 ones, wherein instead of procedurally generated corridors they're actual places. on one hand this is so much more interesting, but the palaces are SO long in P5R, and they are very railroaded with the characters stopping at every locked door to have dialogue about whats going on, slowing them down so much. the palaces really began to drag. it is, i think, bc theyre designed almost like zelda ones, with an emphasis on exploration, but with battles being turned based affairs it makes a single room much longer. i enjoyed the palaces much more when i was high levelled and could insta kill normal encounters, saving actual fighting for the Strong enemies and bosses. still, mostly an improvement. another bad thing in persona 5, and 4 tbh, is the items. there are so many fucking items in persona, and they are not fun. i dont know what most of them do from the name alone, a problem a lot of newer persona fans will have, and there's just so many. they're overwhelming, and lack personality. at least in DQ every item has an image that shows you what it is, and gives you a fictional idea of how you might use them. i got the point with treasure chests where i'd mash through it and ignorewhat it was because of the amount of black rocks i got and other shit. my rule was if it wasnt a weapon it wasnt worth it! fuck items... last thought on battles. the okumara boss is insane and made me mad LOL
the story of P5R is pretty good! overall the cast is super solid; i like all the members of the phantom thieves a lot aside from Yusuke, who feels particularly one dimensional and boring. his inclusion feels shoehorned and i think the game wouldve been better without him. haru should've had his dungeon so she had more time to get over the murder of her dad,which she doesnt actually give much of a shit about. I romanced Ann bc she was a great party member and also fun character, although her social link was a little bland. also her costume sucks! for a characters whose introductory arc was about how being objectified sucks, it is was stupid to put her in literal bdsm gear! otherwise i really liked her. the plot of P5 is quite good, its opening chapter spending a decent amount of time to give ryuji, morgana, and ann time to breathe and establish themselves. kamoshida is a great introductory villain, a small enough scale guy but big enough to feel threatening. gives you time to get your head around all the concepts that are being introduced. very solid and feels very victorious when you finally beat that first palace! the plot slows down for quite some time unfortunately, the important details being that you pick up more party members, but plot wise these things aren't important. its filler and its long! it doesnt get particularly interesting again until Akechi joins the plot, who is the best thing about P5. Royal makes him better, he is interesting, well written and well performed, and royal makes him great. i cant quite verbalise what is so great about Akechi other than everything. i love his design, his plot, his gameplay, and his VA is fantastic too. the royal bonus stuff that brings Akechi back is also genuinely great, it is not a redemption arc for him, but it does allow for deeper understanding of him. i really appreciate that they didnt make him a psychopath without empathy, he DOES like us and he does have feelings, he's just twisted and fucked up. the stuff royal adds is pretty good, and significantly better than P4 Golden's Marie stuff, which is honestly atrocious. on the note of the plot, it is good but because of its slower moments it lacks some of the edge that P4 had with its creepy serial killer stuff going on. P5R is not a horror, and neither is 4 really, but there's a slight lack of flavour here. i didnt care that much about the public perception of the phantom thieves really? it just didn't matter to me!
compared to DQ11 which was another monolithic JRPG of the time, i think P5 loses on visuals bc of its age. its way older than i remember and clunky in a lot of places. i like the music, but i dont love it, and also in maruki's dungeon i couldn't change Akechi's costume to his prince one which was a damn shame. oh welL! time for persona 6 in like 6 years lol
i'm not super fond of persona's combat, it has this emphasis on capitalising on weaknesses which does work but i'm not huge on, it makes me feel like i'm making a mistake when i hit an enemy with something thats NOT their weakness. i think this game has improved upon P4's combat with the introduction of guns, nuke, and psi damage, as it allows every party member to bring something unique to the team. then, if you're like me, you cover all the other elemental bases with one special persona. for me this was mostly King Frost, then Metatron, then Beezlebub. it is very cool as always the level of customisation you can have in Persona, the way you can spec your characters, but mostly Joker, in a multitude of ways. i appreciate and respect that bc most JRPG protags don't have that level of variety. the confidants in P5R are always so much better; i'm glad i played P4 first because going back to that to find out that you dont get stuff from non-party member confidants would've been crazy. it is so worth leveling up confidants to get cool special abilitie in P5, and its very rewarding capitalising on those things, especially kawakami and the gun about kid. That being said, in terms of free time it sometimes got silly with the amount of stuff i had to do! i think having to wash sooty clothing to get armour sucks and feels like a fake way to waste time, but even then i maxed all my social skills super early and was maxing confidants i didn't care about for the sake of it. ah well! palaces are a very interesting improvements from the P4 ones, wherein instead of procedurally generated corridors they're actual places. on one hand this is so much more interesting, but the palaces are SO long in P5R, and they are very railroaded with the characters stopping at every locked door to have dialogue about whats going on, slowing them down so much. the palaces really began to drag. it is, i think, bc theyre designed almost like zelda ones, with an emphasis on exploration, but with battles being turned based affairs it makes a single room much longer. i enjoyed the palaces much more when i was high levelled and could insta kill normal encounters, saving actual fighting for the Strong enemies and bosses. still, mostly an improvement. another bad thing in persona 5, and 4 tbh, is the items. there are so many fucking items in persona, and they are not fun. i dont know what most of them do from the name alone, a problem a lot of newer persona fans will have, and there's just so many. they're overwhelming, and lack personality. at least in DQ every item has an image that shows you what it is, and gives you a fictional idea of how you might use them. i got the point with treasure chests where i'd mash through it and ignorewhat it was because of the amount of black rocks i got and other shit. my rule was if it wasnt a weapon it wasnt worth it! fuck items... last thought on battles. the okumara boss is insane and made me mad LOL
the story of P5R is pretty good! overall the cast is super solid; i like all the members of the phantom thieves a lot aside from Yusuke, who feels particularly one dimensional and boring. his inclusion feels shoehorned and i think the game wouldve been better without him. haru should've had his dungeon so she had more time to get over the murder of her dad,which she doesnt actually give much of a shit about. I romanced Ann bc she was a great party member and also fun character, although her social link was a little bland. also her costume sucks! for a characters whose introductory arc was about how being objectified sucks, it is was stupid to put her in literal bdsm gear! otherwise i really liked her. the plot of P5 is quite good, its opening chapter spending a decent amount of time to give ryuji, morgana, and ann time to breathe and establish themselves. kamoshida is a great introductory villain, a small enough scale guy but big enough to feel threatening. gives you time to get your head around all the concepts that are being introduced. very solid and feels very victorious when you finally beat that first palace! the plot slows down for quite some time unfortunately, the important details being that you pick up more party members, but plot wise these things aren't important. its filler and its long! it doesnt get particularly interesting again until Akechi joins the plot, who is the best thing about P5. Royal makes him better, he is interesting, well written and well performed, and royal makes him great. i cant quite verbalise what is so great about Akechi other than everything. i love his design, his plot, his gameplay, and his VA is fantastic too. the royal bonus stuff that brings Akechi back is also genuinely great, it is not a redemption arc for him, but it does allow for deeper understanding of him. i really appreciate that they didnt make him a psychopath without empathy, he DOES like us and he does have feelings, he's just twisted and fucked up. the stuff royal adds is pretty good, and significantly better than P4 Golden's Marie stuff, which is honestly atrocious. on the note of the plot, it is good but because of its slower moments it lacks some of the edge that P4 had with its creepy serial killer stuff going on. P5R is not a horror, and neither is 4 really, but there's a slight lack of flavour here. i didnt care that much about the public perception of the phantom thieves really? it just didn't matter to me!
compared to DQ11 which was another monolithic JRPG of the time, i think P5 loses on visuals bc of its age. its way older than i remember and clunky in a lot of places. i like the music, but i dont love it, and also in maruki's dungeon i couldn't change Akechi's costume to his prince one which was a damn shame. oh welL! time for persona 6 in like 6 years lol
2008
never cared a whit for versus or the competition that arises from it but the campaigns are so good. such good characterisation of its small cast so fast, each likable with dialogue that makes them bounce off each other easily, and good visual design too. the levels are, for the most part, well designed and interesting to go through. i think some of these levels blend it together quite a lot which is a shame as it takes away from some of the personality, but thats a pretty minor complaint. dead air is just like, amazing, even the individual levels within that campaign are good. the three special infected are all distinct and interesting, always fun to deal with. good great fun! playing this online and forking around will never not be funny
fun to go back to L4D2 after this and see the formula just improved upon with more item variety and special infected. gravy
fun to go back to L4D2 after this and see the formula just improved upon with more item variety and special infected. gravy
Perfect gsme except for tje greyscale, easy, flat surfaces
This review contains spoilers
a frankly ridiculous game whose contribution to the FF7 ethos is undeniable. the backstory we didnt necessarily need of zack fair, and how he came to die before giving cloud the buster sword.
There is so much nonsense in this games plot. i think a simpler, more poignant version of this game, wouldve had all of the jenova cells nonsense cut from it, and instead focused on zack learning that a "hero" isnt necessarily a military grade officer, but rather someone who does the right thing because its good. There could have been cameos from sephiroth, or discussions how he inspired zack. i think zack shouldve had a friend go on a journey like him, who DID choose the more corporate law-abiding type, who shouldve been the villain. the genesis stuff, hollander, angelwings and LOVELESS is all just nonsense. None of it is good, none of it makes sense, it doesnt even MATTER to zack or his story particularly. the dates he has with aerith are good in theory but the script is so bad that their dates are incredibly awkward, nd they spend upwards of an hour together before aerith decides to write him 89 letters??? I like the idea they only had a blossoming romance, that was cut short by zack's murder. There is a version of this story that is just as tragjc without being typical tetsuya nomura bollocks, and i say that az someone who LIKES final fantasy 13!
Combat in this game is actually surprisingly fun, the way materia works feels really smooth and in a normal encounter the game is just good fun. It gets stale fast however when you do the same fucking sidequest 1 million times! The sidequests are tedious, grindy, repetetive, and downright bad. There are a couple of funny lore bits, like yuffie's emails being automatically forwarded to spam, and zack's annual leave being constantly interrupted by monsters and having to use an umbrella is good fun. There just needed to ve more mission variety and maps, and about half the missions. Also the game needed go be less fucking bullshit too tbh, enemies with instant death skills or stun AND stop skills can fuck right off. That shit was infuriating eventually
costly punch forever, however, as i did 2 shot the final boss
There is so much nonsense in this games plot. i think a simpler, more poignant version of this game, wouldve had all of the jenova cells nonsense cut from it, and instead focused on zack learning that a "hero" isnt necessarily a military grade officer, but rather someone who does the right thing because its good. There could have been cameos from sephiroth, or discussions how he inspired zack. i think zack shouldve had a friend go on a journey like him, who DID choose the more corporate law-abiding type, who shouldve been the villain. the genesis stuff, hollander, angelwings and LOVELESS is all just nonsense. None of it is good, none of it makes sense, it doesnt even MATTER to zack or his story particularly. the dates he has with aerith are good in theory but the script is so bad that their dates are incredibly awkward, nd they spend upwards of an hour together before aerith decides to write him 89 letters??? I like the idea they only had a blossoming romance, that was cut short by zack's murder. There is a version of this story that is just as tragjc without being typical tetsuya nomura bollocks, and i say that az someone who LIKES final fantasy 13!
Combat in this game is actually surprisingly fun, the way materia works feels really smooth and in a normal encounter the game is just good fun. It gets stale fast however when you do the same fucking sidequest 1 million times! The sidequests are tedious, grindy, repetetive, and downright bad. There are a couple of funny lore bits, like yuffie's emails being automatically forwarded to spam, and zack's annual leave being constantly interrupted by monsters and having to use an umbrella is good fun. There just needed to ve more mission variety and maps, and about half the missions. Also the game needed go be less fucking bullshit too tbh, enemies with instant death skills or stun AND stop skills can fuck right off. That shit was infuriating eventually
costly punch forever, however, as i did 2 shot the final boss
2022
a lot of people are giving up on this game at the onset because of its microtransaction gacha mobile game modile, and honestly, fair enough. that shit stinks, and when shit stinks, its time to hit the bricks. the microtransaction nature of this game SUCKS BAD and is not redeemable at ALL. you want cloud? you can either buy him with real money or you can grind with the stress of FOMO if he comes back or not. and thats the entire game :^)
now when i mark this as completed it's because i've played (at this time) enough of the online to get to level 20, so a decent amount, and i beat the storymode. the storymode is silly and goofy. its characters constantly break the fourth wall and they tell an extremely simplified final fantasy-ish plot that is rife with parody. its alright. made me laugh in a few places but its not what youd call a GOOD story. its always nice to see gilgamesh getting more good content. the other old FF characters (terra, vivi, steiner) are there just to be there, which is also just fine. theyre very slapdash immediate parodies of themselves, especially terra, who speaks almost exclusively in quotes from FF6 that make no sense at all in the context of the game (this was a little frustrating bc she looks super cool in the game and is fun to play as but her voicelines suck) but at least the other characters are like "whaat the hell are you talking about" lmao. all in all, storymode fine. :)
the only other kart racing game i have played extensively is mario kart, which i will compare chocobo GP to. first of all this game does have a pretty good amount of characters in its roster at launch which is nice. i guess the problem is that too many of them are from the "chocobo" series like shirma, irma, cid, and so on. theyre not bad necessarily but like, who cares about them when you can play as steiner or terra? there should be more, easily accessible characters from mainline final fantasy. like one from each game up to 15 could have worked and then if you like a game from the series you have someone to play as! still, there are good characters here. the chocobo is good, i'm glad there's a moogle (there's 2 in fact), the cactuar is hilarious to watch, and this is probably shiva's best depiction. the characters, barring microtransactions, are fine.
the tracks on the otherhand are a mess. it is cool to see that there are different variations of each track, so you can play them differently each time, but the problem is you play online and you get interdimensional rift 5 times in a row because of its variations and that just sucks. especially when some tracks don't have variations at all, so your odds of getting interdimensional rift over zozo are astronomical. there needed to be like, at least double the courses (not including variations!) also why does the gold saucer track not have the gold saucer music? also what is with the death bit in the hyperspeed one where if you drift to far the track kills you?
finally, gameplay and items. clearly inspired by mario kart, which is fine, it includes drifting boosts and jump tricks of ramps for speed boosts. great! that makes it more accessible coming from mario kart. my limited mario kart skill helped me at chocobo GP lmao. however the items and special abilities are crazy. in mario kart, the red shell is a homing item that hits the person in front. that person however, might have a shell of their own, or a banana, to protect them. they can hold these items indefinitely unless theyre hit by lighting. in short, they have decent protection against one attack usually. in chocobo GP, half the cast are passively charging a special ability that is unblockable, almost at the same rate. furthermore, the protection items are magicite barriers, which ware off after a few seconds. even the strongest version of barrier magic lasts like, 10 seconds? it is borderline impossible to protect yourself from anything in this game, you are constantly getting smashed and bashed and bonked up. sometimes its not too bad, like shiva's special ability just kind of slowing you down for a while, but ifrit's fucking firewave is horrendous. when you get hit by a strong attack you are knocked on your ass for a solid 5 seconds, much longer than in mario kart. and the tracks are smaller. think of it this way: you cant protect yourself, and are getting hit and hurt more stopping your momentum more on a smaller track. one item can put you from 1st to 8th just like that. and it sucks man. it is a much more frustrating experience than mario kart because of this... and also, the doom magicite just sucks. redesign that shit lmao
in short, chocobo GP is fine. its microtransactions are predatory and evil. it needs more tracks and it needs its items balanced a bit better. thanks
now when i mark this as completed it's because i've played (at this time) enough of the online to get to level 20, so a decent amount, and i beat the storymode. the storymode is silly and goofy. its characters constantly break the fourth wall and they tell an extremely simplified final fantasy-ish plot that is rife with parody. its alright. made me laugh in a few places but its not what youd call a GOOD story. its always nice to see gilgamesh getting more good content. the other old FF characters (terra, vivi, steiner) are there just to be there, which is also just fine. theyre very slapdash immediate parodies of themselves, especially terra, who speaks almost exclusively in quotes from FF6 that make no sense at all in the context of the game (this was a little frustrating bc she looks super cool in the game and is fun to play as but her voicelines suck) but at least the other characters are like "whaat the hell are you talking about" lmao. all in all, storymode fine. :)
the only other kart racing game i have played extensively is mario kart, which i will compare chocobo GP to. first of all this game does have a pretty good amount of characters in its roster at launch which is nice. i guess the problem is that too many of them are from the "chocobo" series like shirma, irma, cid, and so on. theyre not bad necessarily but like, who cares about them when you can play as steiner or terra? there should be more, easily accessible characters from mainline final fantasy. like one from each game up to 15 could have worked and then if you like a game from the series you have someone to play as! still, there are good characters here. the chocobo is good, i'm glad there's a moogle (there's 2 in fact), the cactuar is hilarious to watch, and this is probably shiva's best depiction. the characters, barring microtransactions, are fine.
the tracks on the otherhand are a mess. it is cool to see that there are different variations of each track, so you can play them differently each time, but the problem is you play online and you get interdimensional rift 5 times in a row because of its variations and that just sucks. especially when some tracks don't have variations at all, so your odds of getting interdimensional rift over zozo are astronomical. there needed to be like, at least double the courses (not including variations!) also why does the gold saucer track not have the gold saucer music? also what is with the death bit in the hyperspeed one where if you drift to far the track kills you?
finally, gameplay and items. clearly inspired by mario kart, which is fine, it includes drifting boosts and jump tricks of ramps for speed boosts. great! that makes it more accessible coming from mario kart. my limited mario kart skill helped me at chocobo GP lmao. however the items and special abilities are crazy. in mario kart, the red shell is a homing item that hits the person in front. that person however, might have a shell of their own, or a banana, to protect them. they can hold these items indefinitely unless theyre hit by lighting. in short, they have decent protection against one attack usually. in chocobo GP, half the cast are passively charging a special ability that is unblockable, almost at the same rate. furthermore, the protection items are magicite barriers, which ware off after a few seconds. even the strongest version of barrier magic lasts like, 10 seconds? it is borderline impossible to protect yourself from anything in this game, you are constantly getting smashed and bashed and bonked up. sometimes its not too bad, like shiva's special ability just kind of slowing you down for a while, but ifrit's fucking firewave is horrendous. when you get hit by a strong attack you are knocked on your ass for a solid 5 seconds, much longer than in mario kart. and the tracks are smaller. think of it this way: you cant protect yourself, and are getting hit and hurt more stopping your momentum more on a smaller track. one item can put you from 1st to 8th just like that. and it sucks man. it is a much more frustrating experience than mario kart because of this... and also, the doom magicite just sucks. redesign that shit lmao
in short, chocobo GP is fine. its microtransactions are predatory and evil. it needs more tracks and it needs its items balanced a bit better. thanks
Call me a hater but i prefer the GBC version! this is still very good and its a very faithful remake, but i cant help but notice the framerate drops in the swamp, and the tile based dungeon feels a bit outdated in 2023, but feels more justifiable when its the original GB and GBC versions. also, the graphics in this one sometimes made it hard to see southern doors in dungeons. i know, i know, its a stupud complaint, but its real to me. otherwise this is prettt good still and QOL improvrments make it better, like sword, shield, and boots all being passive equipped is so nice. and even if i prefer tje GBC looks this does still look good!
its alright! its like hollow knight but worse in basically evert way except for movement? The enemies are uninspiring and while the art style is lovely it gets quite boring eventually what with not having many setpieces. also the glowy effects and flowy branches and platforms get quite distracting and misleading at points. most of the bosses are not that fun, although RUNNING from them is fantastic. The "story" bored me to tears, and i groaned out loud when the narrator was revealed to be a character in the story. the snow bit was my favourite! going to trade it in now x
i love old world blues. even years after beating it and knowing its jokes and humour off by heart, i still find it really funny and charming. the script here is just so good, so realised, so charming. it's delightfully fun, both in its comedy and its worldbuilding. i think the thing that slightly lets OWB done is that its actual moment to moment quests are unfortunately a little dull at points, and also you can finish it real fast. it offers a lot more optional content than the other DLCs and that is really cool of it, but i wish there had been a little more of that main story quest. also, going into this with no gear and trying a MGS-style "procure of site" made this WAY harder than i expected. like, way WAY harder. man. still great though!