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

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

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

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

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

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

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

souda is the best boy

this game took me fucking MONTHS to beat. I started it way before i finished five separate castlevania games, A Realm Reborn, and FF6. oops! I kept getting distracted and just not wanting to play it. I found Oliver quite annoying and the studio ghibli art style in 3d doesn't work too well (although this game is originally a PS3 title so you have to keep that in mind).

Finally however, I have bested it. YES I had the Griffin ticket from the switch version and YES I turned it to easy mode when I got to Hamelin, but thats because I didnt like the combat very much! I know this is probably a controversial comment but I stand by it. I think it would've been far more solid if it was classic turned based, having to move around the arena never quite feels right and when youve got 6 enemies runnning around on screen even the game gets confused. There are so many times where my guys would bee-line towards an enemy and then run into one of my allies and just, keep running into him? then I'd have to cancel the attack command and manually run round. that should not be an issue but it happens in almost every battle lmao
also, as familiars are such a core part of the battle system, why even have the option to use the Oliver, Esther, and Marcassin's brother? there is almost no time in the entire game where it is optimal unless you need to specifically use items or change tactics (and you could just add these to your regular familiar's menu). That being said, when I actually got Marcassin he would constantly get rid of his familiar to cast healing spells or hit all the enemies. He is waaaay better than his brother and also just has a bigger MP reserve, he's just better. Sorry Marcassin's brother; you're ugly AND bad!
As previously mentioned, there're lots of familiars. They are absolutely, without a doubt, the best thing about the game. Because you're essentially allowed 9 familiars per combat session there's lots of familiars you can choose from. By the end of the game my main guys were Dynamite, Sharper-Parper, Moggle Boggle, Puss-in-Boats, Bone Baron, and Griffidgerator. A pretty strong team! The first three in particular are my baby boys who I love. Once Sharper-Parper unlocked Parp it was fucking all over for you bitches. Mito and his evolutions are ludicrously cute and while his stats sort of dropped below that of Bone Baron and Puss-in-Boats he was still viable for the whole game, especially once he learnt super slash (and after feeding him about 200 bars of chocolate).

The characters and story are okay, you can see its Dragon Quest influence on its sleeve which is fine. The actual party members are a little flat but they're all likable. Mr Drippy High Lord High of the Fairies however is the best character in the game; I wanted to play in Japanese because I hated Oliver's voice so much but I had to go back to the English because I miss Drippy's dulcet Welsh tones. The entire Fairyground portion of the game was great for that reason, genuinely funny and charming. Drippy calling the final bosses "Those rotters!" is so perfectly in character. All I wish for Drippy is that he actually got a bit more? I think in the DS version he was a character and that would've worked well here! I think he could've joined me shortly after I got the magic world. Then I never would've had to have used Marcassin's brother!

I also got sick of the music pretty fast, especially the cave and battle themes. Oh well! Still a pretty good time. :)

the only castlevania metroidvania not made by iga and it shows. the focus here is explicitally different; instead of exploring a castle and creating a clear loop around it where getting from area to area is easy, CotM presents each area of the castle almost like classicvania level. for the most part, once you've completed an area you have very little reason to go back. this is kind of true in your regular castlevanias too, but you'll often pass back through old areas later and unlock secret rooms and corridors with extra challenges, or ways to other locations through them. it is admittedly similar, but still noticably different.

it's also noticable how different the gameplay focus is! CotM gets particularly nasty at points, with enemies who just start smashing you up big time. i particularly noticed it with the holy knights who just started rocking my shit up. even when I was ready to fight dracula at the end the dark armour guys were still beating my ass and making me feel like a baby. wah! thats pretty cool though, it did make traversing parts of the castle feel particularly dangerous. what wasnt cool was the fact that there's little to no healing items! maybe it was my bad luck but i genuinely found one high-potion in the entire game as a random drop from an enemy. regular potions become ludicrously useless very fast, and even with 5 or 6 of them it only takes one hit from a boss to negate them all. the last 3 bosses of the game i just did without healing items. i'm not sure if that's normal or not but it was very stressful! the final dracula fight is particularly frustrating because of that!

this is somewhat more of a personal point, but i also think this game is just uglier than all of the other vanias i've played. yes, even harmony of dissonance. harmony has its own charms i think, even with juste's blue outline. but in CotM every character and enemy sprite has a black outline around it, and, i dont know, it just doesn't look good? couple with the fact nathan's sprite has a really simple, uninspiring animation too. compare it to how many frames there are when soma cruz runs, and nathan just looks incredibly lame. even the backgrounds this time around dont do a lot, i feel like there's a real lack of memorable set pieces in this version of dracula's castle. so many of the rooms blend together. i really noticed it in the chapel, i just couldn't tell where the fuck i was more often than not because every room just felt like an awkward platforming gambit and nothing else

the DSS is a cool idea and it i think when i understood it i enjoyed it. it was genuinely very cool being able to have all these different elemental whips and swords and stuff, but i think the card system from enemies and combining cards is cumbersome for what should have been a simple system. it honestly would've just made more sense if you could switch out to different whips at will, in a more traditional sense. i suspect other people might disagree but i just find this kind of mechanic clunky and unnecessary.

anyway, that's it for the castlevania GBA games.
1) aria of sorrow
2) harmony of dissonance
3) circle of the moon

man i fucking love this game. i remember playing this on the xbox 360 with my school pals, none of whom were 'vaniaheads (that's the official Castlevania fan name by the way, Vaniahead) and we just had a blast. i love multiplayer co-op stuff and this was just fun. every character has a pretty solid identity and the stages have a good amount of variety in too. if you're familiar with castlevania, specifically the DS titles, you will probably enjoy the gameplay too. god knows i did hyuck hyuck!!! it's just a very neat time, micro castles with loot, some light puzzles, and a challening boss at the end, that you can do with your pals, is just a good time.

it is ever so slightly light on the content side, with the base game only have 6 stages. i would've rounded it to a nice even 10 and then done 5 DLC stages but... what can you do? with the exception of maybe stage 3 they're all good fun, and genuinely difficult. the characters could also do with some balancing. soma is just the best character in the game with unprecedented levels of utility that makes every character look pitiful by comparison. jonathon should've been a mix between soma and the belmonts, in that instead of being a level-up whip user he should've had the weapon variety soma has, but instead of katanas, he has whips! like in portrait of ruin! shanoa should have had infinitely more glyphs also.

the real thing letting this game down these days is the fact it's been lost to the generations of yesteryears. i believe you can still play it on newer Xboxes but its never been actually ported to anything since Xbox 360 and PS3. because it's konami (who are famously fucking useless, especially at PC releases) there's no PC version.

if you have a PS3 or 360 still that you play i would really recommend picking this up, especially if you have some buddies you can play it with. i will always, ALWAYS be down to play this with my fellow vaniaheads out there. hmu.

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!

aria of sorrow is pretty darn good. I havent finished circle of the moon yet but i feel as though this is still going to end up my favourite GBA vania.

the actual story/writing in castlevania is never particularly good, the characters are always a bit one dimmensional and sometimes their lines arent translated very well, as well as general chessiness, but the concept is always very good. aria's concept is great in fact, featuring the potential reincarnation of dracula as its protagonist. It hits similar interesting beats that symphony of the night hit on. what if, instead of a belmont, you were dracula's son!? its a similar vibe but notably different, as well as the role of the belmont. This time when you fight Julius its as your friend in an incredibly hype cinematic battle. the background detail as the castle collapses during Holy Cross is still memorable to me! and finally the vibe is excellent too. despite its somewhat flat dialogue the gore and gothic flavour makes the whole game, and tbh series, fun to be in. the monster variety and blood and weapon variety is just so good.

i also think this game is the first one to have really solved the castlevania metroidvania gameplay. i like harmony of dissonance and symphony of the night but one of their biggest failings is the use of sub weapons as drops throughout the castle. what works in classicvania doesnt always work here, and Aria understands that. the soul system is great. it makes fightint every single enemy worth it, gives them all an identity and allows for a huge amount of customisation. and its a great flavour detail that the souls you need equipped to get the true ending are the ones most remeniscent of dracula. his iconic fireball attack, turning into a bat, and draining the life force of his enemies. it was cool to be like, wow, i feel like dracula right now!

the only thing really letting the gameplay down is the weapon animations. using katanas or axes or any big handed sword feels so clunky and weird. both too fast and too slow at the same time with weapons that are far too big, and have animations that just dont suit them. getting claimh solas is so easy and makes the game trivial from that point, ludicrous damage as well as a ridiculoualy huge arc on the weapon, and you can get it with a significant chunk of the game to go! bonkers. the sequel tidies this up very nicely at least. also, i love Julius Belmont, but Julius mode in aria is not great. its fun how fast he is and i love his uppercut, but by having him only powerup on killing bosses means that explorint the castle is 100% pointless. i managed to beat Julius mode in maybe under an hour? i just beelined from boss to boss because there was just no reason to do otherwise! still, another thing dawn of sorrow gets right.

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

*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.

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

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

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!

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!