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! :)

miitopia's not a perfect game by any means, and you have to be willing to put up with silly JRPG stuff and backtracky stuff (although, funnily enough, there's no need to grind if you dont want to which is nice) but i love this game so much. i LOVE miis. i love them so much. i love my little guy, KJH is his name. i made him in january 2007 shortly after the nintendo wii came out. in that time, i have made ONE edit to KJH, which was to make his head slightly smaller. that's it. he's the same otherwise. anygame that i get to see my silly little boy having fun is a game i'm going to love. and this game has so many ways of having fun! the classes are all very varied and have lots of fun aspects too them (some more than others, sorry Tank) and the fact that miis play every single NPC is so great! being able to put anyone you want in is so much fun! this game is just truly charming if you enjoy the gameplay involved. i really, really love it so much. there's some annoying stuff about how certain classes get slightly worse when they level up? like when the Cat starts stealing food instead of attacking its just a wasted turn! some personalities are just better than others (Stubborn and Cool are better than Laidback and Airheaded for example) and there could be MORE to do in the towns too, for the fact that after the story there's almost no reason to ever return to them. more opportunities to actually run around and talk to people, maybe lean more into the JRPG and actually buy stuff from each town's stores? that could be fun! but idk! gimme a sequel!!!!

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

beat NEO Spamptom on my first try dude nice

another very solid piece of writing and work from toby fox. always very taken with how good a mystery builder toby fox is. i think of gaster, and now this "knight" and how little we know about them and how intriguing they are. he knows the perfect place to cut the music and just have it be dark, a nd serious, and silent

its good shit

(finished this a week ago and have not been able to write my thoughts then, so keep in mind that my onions are rotten!)

played this on the 3 heart challenge this time, which is something i have always wanted to do! and bow howdy it was pretty tough in some places! the issue i always have with 3 heart challenges in games like this is that there is no reason to search and explore, or at least limited reason, as you can't take all the rewards. everytime i play i notice this because it means one of the fun aspects of a game like ocarina of time is not readily available! i have tried not to let that - or the difficulty of a 3 heart challenge - influence my feelings TOO much. and to be honest, the difficulty wasnt that much of a problem most of the time! the game provides you with enough hearts casually that you can always be stocked full of them when you're in a tight spot, and that with bottled fairies and the defence increase before ganon make it honestly not too difficult! there were a couple of particularly frustrating parts. first of all, any stalfos encounter was hard, but the double stalfos encounters were damn near impossible. i dont remember them being too tough in the regular game but i can imagine getting my ass whooped by them even with 7 or 8 hearts, let alone. the most fun stalfos encounter was in the shadow temple where two attack you on the ship. i could not, for the life of me, find any hearts after the ship, so going into Bongo Bongo I NEEDED to be on full health, which meant not getting by stalfos on the boat. the ideal strategy was to not fight, but stun with deku nuts and avoid. took me multiple tries lmao, but better than fighting! the other hard bit in particular was volvagia. holy fuck. he made me so fucking mad dude, although my freezer malfunctioning during this fight also contributed to my foul mood. it never got as difficult as it was with volvagia. his fire breath and hair whip attacks would kill me instantly, taking up valuable fairies or giving me the sweet game over. and to top it off, if he hit you with his hair whip (and killed you anyway) then he would go back in the lava so i couldnt even hit him! made the fight last very very long. the relief on killing volvagia was palpable, let me tell you.

generally speaking though i still think most of this game holds up really, really well. it doesnt really have a story to speak of but it does have a vibe, and that vibe is particularly strong when playing as young link. i think this is the best part of the game because it's chilled out and you get to see all these locations for the first time when theyre full of life. and then you leave Market, or Goron City, or Zora's Domain, and you're a lonely little boy in a big world! the vibe is truly immaculate. it is perfectly captured in the moment saria says goodbye to you in the lost woods, and all youve got is the the noise of the woods to accompany it. chef's kiss. as for gameplay, swordplay is not really the game's strongsuit. i found myself having to swing the sword like 10 times to hit pots haha (which might say more about me) but also most fights are just "wait for the weakspot to appear" which isnt fun. https://bit.ly/3gdTVOa sums up the problems with the fighting better than i can. otherwise most items are pretty fun to use, if a bit gimmicky. i think the dungeons are mostly really good (dodongo's cavern is probably my favourite, with a shout out to the short ice cavern) but most of them are difficult in an artificial way where they are totally labrynthian and hard to navigate. the puzzles are never heard, but going "where the fuck is the one room i havent explored to find the key" is pretty frustrating! i found this true of specifically Inside Jabu Jabu's Belly, The Forest Temple, and The Water Temple. but oh well! isnt the graphical thing they do on the walls cool, where its like theyre wet and theres an animation that just runs down them? ive never seen that in any other game really! the wallet system is so weird and interesting in this too, because the game knows youre almost always capped on ruppees so expensive stuff is not really rare, but you need extra walletspace! but then why constantly reward you with ruppees? but if they DIDNT constantly give you ruppees then youd never be capped and youd not need the extra walletspace! this is NOT a part of the game that needs as much examinaing as i am giving it

I like Ocarina of Time quite a lot! it's crazy to think playing a game without moving the camera with an analog stick was just... normal. but you get on with it and dont even notice at the end of the day!

heyyy its breath of the wild!! its the best game ever or something!! but not really, like it's pretty good but definitely has a lot of problems. its my second time completing the game and i've put it in a good 210 hours or some shit and im like... done with it now lol

so first of all how is it as an open world game? for one, hyrule is massive! and that is great, it feels honestly inconceivable to walk from the west to the east but you definitely could. i love how huge it is, and when you realise how far away stuff is it truly wild. the world has a lot of things in it that constantly rewards you, be it monster camps, shrines, towns, etc etc, its good! but herein lies one of the problems. once you happen upon a korok or a shrine a lot of the time it just feels like a chore. i came upon so many korok spots and just thought "I cant be bothered" because the reward just didnt feel worth it. thats true with a lot of the things in this game i feel, you see an enemy camp and think "what am i gonna get? a knight's claymore? not worth it" and just not worth going in! this would happen LESS if your weapons didnt break, but because they do you have to weigh the pros and cons of doing stuff. if you already have decent weapons youre attached to then why would you risk/damage them for something worse? its just not worth it

combat is mostly good! it's quite simple, and especially so when there isnt much normal monster variety either. (bokoblins are the best, then moblins, and lizalfos DEAD last) combat feels really good when fighting bosses and mini-bosses because they're intense. fighting lynels and guardians is particularly fun because of the big open arenas and how much room you have around them. otherwise combat is a LITTLE bland? it gets the job done and isnt bad but it definitely makes me want for a little more! maybe i should play dark souls!

as a last aside, the voice acting in this game genuinely sucks! zelda's fake british accent is not good, and all the old characters being voiced by VAs who are clearly young people and they do a really bad job! i sometimes think its quite shitty to dunk on VAs like that but in terms of the art of this game i do think it affects it. this game came out during the 2016-2017 VA strikes so potentially the VAs here are also scabs. hard to say!

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!

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

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