goodchicken
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
its fine! yuffie and sonon's gameplay works well together, although you don't get a super long time to really get to play with them. i also think they should've just let you play as sonon too, dont really get why they restricted it! fort condor is fun but it feels tacked on here. i like the new environment unter sector 7, it was fun to explore, and fun to meet some of the main avalanche group members! i havent played durge of cerberus but i must say, nero sucks! evil darkness guy who is so crazy and loves darkness is lame. why do most of the villains in this series suck ass!!! i cant explain it but they really do!!!
This review contains spoilers
there is a version of this game that is my absolute favourite thing in the world! there are so many moments within this that show me the creators truly understand what made the original FF7's world so charming. it's not JUST cloud's backstory, and his beef with sephiroth, its all the weird and goofy shit. it's squatting in the gym, its crossdressing, its fighting a giant house. this game even introduces new bits, like darts! seeing i could play darts made me over the moon happy! combat is similar and dissimilar enough to feel fresh while also making sense; materia works in the same way, ATB is still there, i think the did a really good job at modernising the way it worked back in 1997. the characters are spot on, and with more thought to its localisation each character gets more flavour, aerith in particular, feels infinitely more alive than she ever has. when she says "I'm not some princess who needs to be coddled, y'know... shit!" I fell in love with her. graphically its stunning of course, and midgar is so amazingly realised too! each slum town feels rich and deep, wallmarket in particular as this home of debauchery and vice, i love it. i love what they did to midgar so much. the original music and revised music is all great; Underneath the Rotting Pizza is and incredible rearangement and yet Collapsed Expressway is an amazing original piece! there is so much here to love, SO much. fighting big bosses feels great most of the time, airbuster is awesome, the Turks are great, and each character's unique style makes them fun and exciting. the weapon system itself is cool, allowing for customisation thats more interesting and exciting that the original game. being able to play the whole game with the Buster Sword if you want, but also having the variety! wow!
but nothing is perfect, especially if tetsuya nomura has had his grubby little mitts on it. i'm not saying the man can't write a good story, and for as bizarre as some of his stuff comes across, he does have rules for his stories. but i don't think this story needed destiny, or arbiters of fate, and while i appreciate we delete destiny at teh end of the game, we certainly dont need to add in extra plot twists like Zack and Biggs surviving; it just isnt necessary. i think its all red herring material personall,y, i think by the end of the trilogy both Zack and Aerith will have died, regardless of how its looking. we'll see! i could be wrong! also barret shouldnt have sunglasses, they suck. another bad thing is the filler, or at least some of it. i get that they wanted midgar to be its own game, and i even agree with that decision if the result is a midgar this fleshed out, but there are filler chapters that are genuinely awful. every side quest chapter is worthless, boring, unoriginal drivle. there isnt a single good sidequest in this game. do better next time, please. also, leslie and the sewer sequence feels tacked on and bad. i think they couldve done SOMETHING better than that too. there could have been a bit more on the plate i feel like, like on the way to the shinra building maybe we have another chapter, like chapter 2, where we're going through the streets of the plate to get to the tower, and so on. Hojo's lab is absolutely awful. i love a secret lab for the lore implications, but the story is nonexistent at that point and the manouvering is frustrating and weird. do better!
looking forward to part 2 :)
but nothing is perfect, especially if tetsuya nomura has had his grubby little mitts on it. i'm not saying the man can't write a good story, and for as bizarre as some of his stuff comes across, he does have rules for his stories. but i don't think this story needed destiny, or arbiters of fate, and while i appreciate we delete destiny at teh end of the game, we certainly dont need to add in extra plot twists like Zack and Biggs surviving; it just isnt necessary. i think its all red herring material personall,y, i think by the end of the trilogy both Zack and Aerith will have died, regardless of how its looking. we'll see! i could be wrong! also barret shouldnt have sunglasses, they suck. another bad thing is the filler, or at least some of it. i get that they wanted midgar to be its own game, and i even agree with that decision if the result is a midgar this fleshed out, but there are filler chapters that are genuinely awful. every side quest chapter is worthless, boring, unoriginal drivle. there isnt a single good sidequest in this game. do better next time, please. also, leslie and the sewer sequence feels tacked on and bad. i think they couldve done SOMETHING better than that too. there could have been a bit more on the plate i feel like, like on the way to the shinra building maybe we have another chapter, like chapter 2, where we're going through the streets of the plate to get to the tower, and so on. Hojo's lab is absolutely awful. i love a secret lab for the lore implications, but the story is nonexistent at that point and the manouvering is frustrating and weird. do better!
looking forward to part 2 :)
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
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!
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
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!
2001
a very special little GBA game that i dont think enough people talk about. wario land 4 is an INCREDIBLY solid 2d platformer that is INCREDIBLY strange and very japanese. wario land has always tried its hardest to differentiate itself from 2d mario, and each iteration does that in a particularly interesting way. this time around its levels are solved by finding the necessary treasures then setting off that level's self destruct sequence. the tension that comes with having to bolt back to the start of the level while the screen shakes and the timer goes down really can't be understated. it doesn't feel like backtracking, it feels like a perfect race against time. wario's new charging ability when you hold down R is perfect for this, it allows you to barrel along at crazy dangerous speeds, but also stopping means you grind your feet and takes a hot minute, sometimes missing your mark. and every single level is unique in every way,from music, SFX, backgrounds, hell, there are some normal enemies that only appear in one level each! it's just great. not to mention the sprite work is just amazing here, everything looks and sounds amazing, and the gameplay to boot rocks my socks. minus half a star because, honestly, it's too short! and maybe the minigames could've done with some work too idk
played it like a pokemon nuzlocke, which was very fun but devastating when some random antlion cast level 5 death and annhiliated three of my girls in one move. made me real mad!
i love this game. marche's motivations are undeniably not explored enough, but there is the seed of something fun in this, a game where "you are the villain" but you think youre the good guy? but also, this game DOES think you're the good guy? idk its interesting! montblanc is very ugly. i wish the sequel's gameplay wasnt like that!
i love this game. marche's motivations are undeniably not explored enough, but there is the seed of something fun in this, a game where "you are the villain" but you think youre the good guy? but also, this game DOES think you're the good guy? idk its interesting! montblanc is very ugly. i wish the sequel's gameplay wasnt like that!
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!
Exactly the same as Trivial Pursuit Live 1 but with more customisation! Today when we played this morning there was a question about thr differences between a novel and a novella that made three literature students scream in anger. Fun!
2013
small great gun to play with a small group of nerds. great vibes and miniture roleplaying experiment. good music and not afraid to get dark
2013
very fun and solid little game. played it with some friends when none of us knew what was going on and had a great time. works perfectly bc its so simple, just could do with slightly more content?
2022
This game is really special. i remember hearing tim rogers talk about this on an old kotaku video, and when the remake was announced both he and toby fox were very excited! and man, i really loved live a live. its not perfect, but it has so much endearing love put into it that makes it amazing.
octopath traveller took this idea of a bumch of strangers all coming togetger from live a live, and honestly i dont know why they bothered when live a live is this good. Each chapter is a seperate story within its own time frame. Each story is themed in a certain way, anc is allowed to totally be exactly what it is and nothing else. the wrestling chapter is styled like an arcade game fighting machine, it has no XP for battles, no roaming mechanics or NPCs to talk to. the prehistory story is done entirelt without dialogue, and the distant future is done entirely without combat. It doesnt force combat or buying new gear or upgrades where they dont matter, and it doesnt extend these stories longer than they need to be. some are better than others, like akira's and shifu's have room for improvement in terms of plotting, but they do so much to add flavour and make each one feel truly unique and special. the actual gameplay itself is seriously good, its RPG mechanics are non-intrusive for the majority of the game and the combat is active, interesting, fresh, and fun! each characters movesets are completelt unique and viable. the final chapters suffer from some repeated environments and random encounters, and some badly designed dungeons (the trial of keys lmao) but these weakspots are really very minor comments in an otherwise fantastic JRPG. I havent even got to the art style yet, this HD 2-D is utilised and made colourful in such an exciting and vibrant way that the game never gets boring to look at. i keep comparing it to octopath for very obvious reasons, but honestly its not fair, because live a live doesnt everything octopath wanted to do but superior. octopath traveller is terrible. live a live is a must play for anyonr with any interest in JRPGs.
octopath traveller took this idea of a bumch of strangers all coming togetger from live a live, and honestly i dont know why they bothered when live a live is this good. Each chapter is a seperate story within its own time frame. Each story is themed in a certain way, anc is allowed to totally be exactly what it is and nothing else. the wrestling chapter is styled like an arcade game fighting machine, it has no XP for battles, no roaming mechanics or NPCs to talk to. the prehistory story is done entirelt without dialogue, and the distant future is done entirely without combat. It doesnt force combat or buying new gear or upgrades where they dont matter, and it doesnt extend these stories longer than they need to be. some are better than others, like akira's and shifu's have room for improvement in terms of plotting, but they do so much to add flavour and make each one feel truly unique and special. the actual gameplay itself is seriously good, its RPG mechanics are non-intrusive for the majority of the game and the combat is active, interesting, fresh, and fun! each characters movesets are completelt unique and viable. the final chapters suffer from some repeated environments and random encounters, and some badly designed dungeons (the trial of keys lmao) but these weakspots are really very minor comments in an otherwise fantastic JRPG. I havent even got to the art style yet, this HD 2-D is utilised and made colourful in such an exciting and vibrant way that the game never gets boring to look at. i keep comparing it to octopath for very obvious reasons, but honestly its not fair, because live a live doesnt everything octopath wanted to do but superior. octopath traveller is terrible. live a live is a must play for anyonr with any interest in JRPGs.
2012
This review contains spoilers
pretty good game! i'm not a stealth head by any means but i think this game doesnt require you to be a genius of sneaking and stealthing, and it also doesn't necessarily want you to have bucket loads of patience either to get stuff done. like for sure if you want the perfect, most quiet playthrough it would require lots of patience and smart thinking, but for my purposes of beating the game on a low chaos ending, i was able to fumble and goof my way through it.
the level design is good! i enjoyed how many little open windows and rooms there are and how everything connects to everything else. it has well designed maps all over it, if a little too "video-gamey" at times, the amount of ventilation shafts on the sides of buildings you can climb up was quite comical and took me out of it a little bit. a lot of the abilities in this game have so much utility, blink, seeing through walls, and stop time are king. because i tried to kill as few people as possible however i didnt end up using like, half my toolkit? no gun, no crossbow, no grenade, no razortraps, half of the magic abilities like rats and shadow kill i didnt use. i didnt money for anything other than upgrading my crossbow ammo amount to max and buying sleepdarts so i just ended up with loads of money and nothing to spend it on! that felt kinda weird! i havent played enough stealth games to say this with confidence (MGS almost doesnt count) but i think once you get the confidence to know what's going on in a game like this it does get kind of easier? you know that can kinda do stuff in front of someone as long as that person is like, kinda facing away, or like, 15 meters away? it's not very punishing. daud's assassins were definitely more challenging because they can teleport, and daud himself being immune to stop time was also very funny "Nice try, Corvo" although i wish some characters were more surprised at seeing me.
speaking of characters and story, they're alright! game definitely should've had british voice actors, i constantly struggled to invest in this london/glasgow world when everyone sounds like that. the repeated NPC lines got very tedious by the end of the game too, and the gangbangers who when you start combat with them immediately breathe fire in your face are not fun at all, they are just annoying lmao! i already knew when this game came out that havelock betrayed you so i can't talk about if it's a good twist or not, I guess I just didn't super care about it? I did like Samuel and Emily though which was nice! and the last, most important character in some ways, the outsider. i'll be real with you chief. i think the outsider sucks lmao. i hate dudes who show up and go "maybe you're doing this for evil reasons? or maybe for justice? who knows" like bro why are you even sying this to me? makes me think of when you fight daud and he goes "what do you fight for?" like shut up? what a boring ass question lmao
yeah game's alright
the level design is good! i enjoyed how many little open windows and rooms there are and how everything connects to everything else. it has well designed maps all over it, if a little too "video-gamey" at times, the amount of ventilation shafts on the sides of buildings you can climb up was quite comical and took me out of it a little bit. a lot of the abilities in this game have so much utility, blink, seeing through walls, and stop time are king. because i tried to kill as few people as possible however i didnt end up using like, half my toolkit? no gun, no crossbow, no grenade, no razortraps, half of the magic abilities like rats and shadow kill i didnt use. i didnt money for anything other than upgrading my crossbow ammo amount to max and buying sleepdarts so i just ended up with loads of money and nothing to spend it on! that felt kinda weird! i havent played enough stealth games to say this with confidence (MGS almost doesnt count) but i think once you get the confidence to know what's going on in a game like this it does get kind of easier? you know that can kinda do stuff in front of someone as long as that person is like, kinda facing away, or like, 15 meters away? it's not very punishing. daud's assassins were definitely more challenging because they can teleport, and daud himself being immune to stop time was also very funny "Nice try, Corvo" although i wish some characters were more surprised at seeing me.
speaking of characters and story, they're alright! game definitely should've had british voice actors, i constantly struggled to invest in this london/glasgow world when everyone sounds like that. the repeated NPC lines got very tedious by the end of the game too, and the gangbangers who when you start combat with them immediately breathe fire in your face are not fun at all, they are just annoying lmao! i already knew when this game came out that havelock betrayed you so i can't talk about if it's a good twist or not, I guess I just didn't super care about it? I did like Samuel and Emily though which was nice! and the last, most important character in some ways, the outsider. i'll be real with you chief. i think the outsider sucks lmao. i hate dudes who show up and go "maybe you're doing this for evil reasons? or maybe for justice? who knows" like bro why are you even sying this to me? makes me think of when you fight daud and he goes "what do you fight for?" like shut up? what a boring ass question lmao
yeah game's alright