Finished Super Mario RPG at 15 hours. It was way shorter than I thought even for SNES RPG standards but also after playing a bunch of complex and deep RPGs lately, something so simple, fun, and lighthearted as Super Mario RPG was such a refreshing change of pace. This was a game I wanted to play for years but I never got around to it, so I'm going into the game as a newcomer.

The overall story is quite simple. it's just Mario with friends embarking on a journey to find the seven stars to restore the Star Road that grants wishes and defeats Smithy who has taken over Boswer's Keep to start an invasion with weapons. While the grand scheme of things is your run-of-the-mill Mario adventure, it's the whole journey to find the seven stars that are the whole highlight of the adventure.

I honestly found the game much more enjoyable than expected because it just doesn't take itself seriously at all. Throughout the game, Super Mario RPG is filled with silly slapstick humor, over-the-top exaggerations, and villains with pretty selfish but goofy motivations. Such as Booster kidnapping and wanting to marry Peach for whatever reason. And he isn't exactly the brightest bulb in the shed, so his shortcomings were entertaining to watch, to say the least.

Super Mario RPG is just a game filled with so much fun, color, and charm, from the various settings and characters featured in the Mario series to the soundtrack composed by Yoko Shimomura to compliment the mood. However, what gives the game its identity is the fusion between the turn-based combat and the platforming, puzzling, and minigames known in Mario during exploration.

Minigames were fairly common in RPGs for its time period but Super Mario RPG uses its strengths from the series' history to create brief challenges for Mario to overcome such as navigating a mine tunnel with controls similar to Mario Kart or hopping over barrels and avoiding enemies that pay homage to its Donkey Kong origins. Personally, I wasn't a fan of the platforming at all, I just find the controls too slippy and it doesn't work as well because of the isometric perspective. But considering the original game serves as the bridge between 2D and 3D Mario, perhaps I could be a bit forgiving.

However, for much of the game, the gameplay lies within the turn-based combat every time you encounter an enemy.
Super Mario RPG takes much of the RPG elements from known Square RPGs from the SNES era such as Final Fantasy IV-VI and Chrono Trigger. Attacks, spells, and item management are all present. But what is unique in Super Mario RPG is the timing-based input for attacks and special abilities. If the input is timed correctly, the potency of the attack or special ability will increase. It's such a kinetic mechanic that it's single-handedly the one thing that prevents the otherwise very easy and simple combat from being stale and boring.

Overall, I don't have many complaints about Super Mario RPG. Besides the iffy platforming and while much of the game's narrative has aged wonderfully compared to its contemporaries thanks to having a simple approach to the story. There are still minor gaps in the story that I have noticed that were unexplained and Geno in particular was oddly silent compared to the other playable characters (I don't know if he is written that way on purpose or not).

Otherwise, it's a game filled with so much color and charm and it does not overstay its welcome at all. Mario is usually at its best when it just wants to show a player a fun and good time without taking a long time to do so and Super Mario RPG does that very well. I understand why this game is very belove

"The Hero Turns To Look Inside, Is Destroyed By What He Sees, And Is Redeemed."

Finished Alan Wake 2 last night and oh my, I absolutely get the praise for Alan Wake 2 now. It's an experience like no other game and not only does it greatly improve from the first game in every single aspect, but this is easily Redemy Entertainment's magnum opus with its unique multimedia method of storytelling and immersion.

The graphics are just astonishing, especially with how carefully Redemy has been crafting thier usage of lighting to the point there are many scenes when you could easily mistake the game for live-action. The audio design is one of the best I have experienced and it's incredibly immersive to hear sounds from all directions and angels from pouring rain, ringing phones, a conversation between people, and eerie monstrous sounds. From an aesthetic viewpoint, Alan Wake 2 does an excellent job of sending the message that this is a survival horror story.

Speaking of survival horror, Alan Wake 2 makes a drastic change in gameplay from the first game. No longer an action-adventure game shooting down dozens of Taken and dealing with frustrating combat sections. The gameplay emphasizes less action and more on slowly walking through nerve-wracking uncertainly.

While the survival horror combat itself is nothing groundbreaking, what helps make Alan Wake 2 stand out is how the duel protagonists, the titular character himself Alan Wake, and FBI agent Saga Anderson, solve their obstacles to resolve the issue at hand.

With Saga's mind place to help put together pieces she finds throughout the game to solve the surrounding mysteries and interrogate suspects. As well as Alan's plot board changes the surrounding environment around him as if he's rewriting "plot elements" for a story. It's a fresh and creative layer to prevent the gameplay from ever being stale.

The shining gem of Alan Wake 2 is the story and narrative and while it's very difficult to talk about its story without going into spoilers and details. What I can say is it masterfully presents its story like no other game I've played.

You have live-action segments of a short film, an operatic rock musical, video autobiographies, commercials, etc. As well as songs that play during and at the end of each chapter and scattered pages of incomplete manuscripts, all complimentary to the spiraling complex narrative that explores the psychological descent of the duel protagonists.

While each unique segment of Alan Wake 2 does sound disjointed and nonsensical on paper, it all comes together flawlessly in a meta manner of speaking to tell a story about a story and how these characters are trapped in a horror story coming to life.

Not to mention, the worldbuilding and easter eggs that Remedy have set up with thier previous games Quantum Break and Control help sell the overall dark surrealism and atmosphere that extends beyond the main focus and scope of Alan Wake 2. So it's very rewarding to play Redemy's previous games to appreciate these finer details that would be harder to pick up.

Truthfully, Alan Wake 2 is a near-flawless game. While I do think some of the enemies are a bit too health spongey and the checkpoint system could be more forgiving, those are just nothing more but minor nitpicks. It's otherwise masterfully executed in game design, narrative, and presentation with its creative multimedia approach.

I'm not a huge horror fan so I can't say with confidence it's one of the greatest horror stories of all time. But what I can say is it's a hallmark of visual and audio entertainment and sets a new standard of story presentation and game design. As far as I know, Alan Wake 2 is easily one of the greatest games of all time and that is something I do not say lightly.

It's definitely more of a post-game dungeon deal with challenging bosses since the story for this DLC is basically a very well-elaborated excuse to have a challenging dungeon at the endgame. But it was really nice to revisit FFXVI's combat and dungeon crawling even if it's not my absolutely favorite part of the game.

Me personally, I thought the dungeon was too FFXIV-ish. It definitely reminded me of how dungeons and raids in that game work because of the challenge and how a lot of the bosses love AOE attacks. But I thought the whole high techno setting was just very out of place??? Me personally, I think "Omega" in FF in general sticks out like a sore thumb but it's especially apparent in FFXVI.

Overall while the DLC doesn't have any of the highs of the base game off FFXVI, it's a short and sweet time with its gameplay if you want more FFXVI and pretty much did everything you could in the base game or looking for a greater challenge.

Over the weekend I played the free DLC for God of War Ragnarok which is the Valhalla mode. Finally, I went in with no expectations other than it's just more God of War for free with a roguelike mode (that I was curious how that would work with the gameplay). Still, I left with a fantastic conclusion to Kratos' journey and growth as a character.

Valhalla isn't very narrative-heavy in terms of plot. The overall story is just Kratos coming to terms with who he was as a person back in Greece compared to who he is now and each "run" he does in Valhalla is Kratos facing different aspects of his past and how he views his past self isn't as black and white as he thinks it is.

Valhalla being a roguelike works wonderfully for the introspective journey Kratos takes in Valhalla. Gameplay-wise, while Kratos is in Valhalla, he can unlock temporary perks, weapon enchantments, stats, HP and rage recovery, etc to make a "run" easier. Upon death, Kratos is sent back to the shore and must restart the run until he completes a run after battling randomized enemies and bosses across all the areas seen in the base game.

A huge emphasis on Valhalla is that Kratos is always making progress towards "mastery" regardless of whether the run is successful or not. Since at the shore, you can make permanent stat and Valhalla upgrades Kratos can have those at the start of every run thanks to mastery seals and later on spirit seals he gets to keep to use on those upgrades.

However, what really impressed me was the self-reflection Kratos was doing. As someone that been into the God of War series for over a decade now and played every game in the series, it's rather very satisfying to see Kratos' evolution from an angry vengeful violent person to someone who only wants to fight to protect who he cares for and to freed others from tyrant gods.

There are a lot of references from past God of War games that just make Valhalla more satisfying to play if you have been following Kratos over the years. And not only Kratos reflects on the major events that happen in the first three mainline games. But also he takes a look back on his actions in the lesser-known God of War games such as Chains of Olympus, Ghost of Sparta, and Ascension.

Overall, as one of the biggest unexpected surprises that have appeared towards the end of the year, God of War Valhalla stands tall as one of the finest pieces of gaming this year. By serving as an extended complimentary epilogue to the already masterful Ragnarok and finally giving the closure Kratos deserves as a character. Considering Valhalla is completely free of charge, if you have completed Ragnarok, then I can't recommend it enough to play the DLC ASAP.

Played 12 hours of Tactics Orge before the start of the new years. It's not bad but due to a couple reasons I'm gonna shelve it for now.

From an historical perspective, it's nice to see where Final Fantasy Tactics and Triangle Strategy got its inspiration. But my main thing is just how slow the battles are, even on high spreed mode. Idk, it just feel like it takes forever to take down an enemy. Especially since there's an "union level", so an unit can't go pass the union level until it's raised after a couple main story battles. I get this exist so you won't have anyone overleveled and rely less on "tactics". But I kinda wish the union level didn't exist if enemy gonna be huge health sponges. At least the AI mode is nice if you wanna grind up units on training maps.

Story is fine, it's nothing wow (maybe because the stories of FFT and TS spoiled me) but it's serviceable enough for a tactics game, especially for its age. I like how you can make choices to shape up the story and having certain characters you have recruited to have extra lines during battles is nice. It was the main reason why I kept playing despite the dragged out battles.

There's also an another good reason why I'm shelving the game but that's something I really can't really explain, at least not in the public (let just say it isn't just about me for this reason). I am aware of the age of Tactics Orge and even the remake is quite old at this point. But I'm just at the stage when there's just so many games to play, I don't really have the time to just settle for "okay". I might return to it one day since deep down, I do enjoy it enough to keep playing. But right now, there are just bigger priorities than Tactics Orge.

When I heard Majikoi had obtained several sequels beyond the original, the next order of business was to play Majikoi S. Returning to Kawakami City and revisiting the Kazama family, Majikoi S serves more of an expansion to the original game rather than a continuation.

There are routes that take place after the ending of the five main routes and the Agave route for the original game. However, The main focus of S is on the brand-new characters that further add insight into the Kuki Corporation and introduce a new rival school known as Tenshin Academy. As well as characters from the original game that have not gotten a route have received one in S While the expansion sounds exciting and some of it is well executed, there is also quite a lot of content in S I less than enjoyed.

Majikoi S plays the same as the original game but with a few improvements. Since Majikoi S is fully voiced (just like the original game if you patched it), the addition of a voice timer to let you know when a character has finished speaking is greatly appreciated. Especially since there are times from the original when I have proceeded to the next line before the character is finished talking because I thought they were done talking (it can be a bit hard to tell at times since the voices are only in JP).

New to Majikoi S are short animated clips of action scenes that occur during fights in the game. Considering the nature of Majikoi and its focus on martial arts and combat, these short clips elevate the fights to be more engaging and entertaining to experience rather than just solely using text, voice, sound effects, and still images to depict these scenes.

Also, the route selection is much more straightforward this time, since you use a timeline to select which route to start, rather than spending X amount of time with a character after the prologue in the original game. From there, only the choices you can select can impact the game. While some choices will just alter the dialogue for the next few lines, others will impact what route you will proceed to. And Majikoi S rather has quite some endings that can be very difficult to get without using a guide.

At the end of the common route (which is 2nd-year 1st Semester + Future without a Relationship), the player character, Yamato Naeo, is presented with four “heroines” to pursue their routes. Tsubame Matsunaga, Margit Eberbach, Kokoro Fushikawa and Monshiro Kuki. Tatsuko Itagaki is also considered a “heroine” in S but her route must be accessed in the Agave After route. From what I have noticed, out of these options only Tsubame and Monshiro’s routes cover the bulk of the new S content while the rest of the routes are fairly self-contained to the heroine herself.

I was suggested to start with Tsubame’s route first since it was the route that further introduced the most amount of new characters. And for the most part that was true thanks to the tournament that takes place during her route as well as her need to advertise her natto brand (which means naturally encountering a bunch of characters). Maybe because I love it when girls are older than me or I just love the whole Onee-san trope but I ended up loving Tsubame’s route a lot and she ended up being my favorite character in the game, even if I can understand why some would dislike her at the end. Her route is split into two sub-routes. One route when Yamato “takes the lead” and another when Tsubame “takes the lead”.

The next route I have done is Monshiro’s route. While her route is considerably slower and less action-packed than the previous routes in Majikoi, Monshiro’s route gives the player plenty of insight into how the Kuki company is operated and the employees of the company. Not to mention as far as character writing and development, Monshiro is the strongest route for that in S. After all it’s just really hate to not like Monshiro, she is just really precious and I have claimed her as my “daughter”. Monshiro’s route can have various endings but the “Future with Monshiro” ending is the main ending for her and will unlock her “after” routes.

Margit was the next route I have completed and frankly, it’s rather disappointing. While this route made me enjoy Margit more as a character compared to the original game, I did not like it was so sex heavy with several explicit scenes. To the point, I think half of her route was just sex. It's just a bummer that this is how the game decided to treat Margit when she’s one of the more interesting characters in the games.

Kokoro was next, and while her route hardly focused on any of the new content, it was still a fairly enjoyable route as you get to learn more about Kokoro that was never revealed in the original game. I found her just very annoying and arrogant before, but her route made me see Kokoro in a new light. Now I just can’t help but laugh at her every time she fails at something and cries about it since it’s so comedic and amusing to me. There is a handful of sex scenes but not to the point I thought the sex was overwhelming (although I was quite disgusted with the end of one of them).

Then you have Tatsuko’s route, which began on the Agave After route as well as the after routes for the original’s game five heroines. These routes will assume you have played the original game since the after routes rather work as extended epilogues of the events that took place in the original game. There isn’t much to say since their main plotline is completed. You just go on romantic dates with the chosen girl and engage in plenty of sexual acts with them. Which for me, range from me enjoying them to absolutely loathing them.

Majikoi S is undeniably very sex-heavy in general and because of that, it is important to note that all of the involved characters are 18 and over. In fact, I have discovered the word “nukige”. A term I found out because of this game that means it explicitly focuses on the graphic sex scenes, and by that I mean it’s porn. I rather not get into details since I want to keep this review as clean as possible. But I thought they have overdone it with the porn. The original game had 20 and they are all removed if you play the Steam version while S had nearly 50 porn scenes.

Not to mention they are all very long and unrealistically dragged out. I was uncomfortable seeing a handful of sex acts (for reasons I rather avoid mentioning to not make things problematic) but for the most part, I just ultimately got bored of nearly all of them (I will admit I enjoyed two of them though) since they’re all written the same way and quite frankly, I get very impatient with sex scenes. So in the end I ended up turbo-skipping over all of the dialogue.

However, my biggest complaint is you have to endure much of the porn just to unlock the childhood route. To unlock it, you must complete all 5 routes of the newly added heroines for S as well as all of the after routes of the heroines from the original game. I think that only completing Tsubame and Monshiro’s route should be the requirement to unlock the childhood route considering they are directly tied into the new S content while the rest was fairly irrelevant to the new content. So enduring 8 sex-heavy routes just to unlock what I consider to be the best route in the game is heinous and what I consider the biggest fault of the game.

Once you do unlock the childhood route, which will lead into the Koyuki’s route since Koyuki Sakakibara is considered to be the “secret” 6th heroine for S. The childhood route is easily the most epic, action-packed, and exciting route in the game since it’s such a love letter to classic battle shounen series such as Dragon Ball and Bleach and even take influences from Star Wars. As someone who grew up on those series, it was just nonstop joy from beginning to end thanks to the tight pacing despite how huge the Koyuki route is in scale.

However, I thought any romance for Koyuki was forceful and shoehorned due to the lack of time you spend with her. If the Koyuki route was named something else (I think it should be called the Bushido Plan route instead), then I would have no major issues with it. However, considering that the route is named after Koyuki and considering there’s a huge lack of focus for her. The naming convention is rather confusing and jarring.

Majikoi S in the end is a severable sequel with new improvements to make enjoying the visual novel easier and the new characters are overall great and help expand the world of Majikoi. The porn is frankly overwhelming, does overstay its welcome though and I dislike a handful of them. And due to a lack of an option to skip or censor those games, it makes Majikoi S very difficult to recommend even if someone loved the original game. However, if you can overlook the high amounts of porn, then Majikoi S is a treat for anyone that wants more adventures with the Kazama family and the people that surround Yamato Naoe.

Rising Tide is 100% done with all side quests completed and Katios Gate is cleared. I could have done better with Katios Gate but it's really challenging for a few fights even with the cheesy "nuke" build I made for the sake of completion.

Fantastic send-off to FFXVI since the DLC really enforces why FFXVI is such a fantastic game between the dense world-building, spectacular fights, and the undying pure human will to create a better tomorrow for the people who are suffering.

This looks like the end of FFXVI as far as additional content but I'm very happy the two expansion packs exist to expand one of my favorite games organically. Sad that Clive's journey is coming to an end but I'm glad I was a part of every moment of it.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is a pretty comfortable game. It's just pretty relaxing to explore a huge open world filled with dozens of dungeons and caves with your party. The pawn system is one of my favorite things about the game since not only you will be attached to your main pawn the entire time, but you will also run into tons of pawns out of the wild or summon them with a rift crystal.

The pawns can vary in all shapes and sizes and can be one out of six vocations (since the advanced vocations such as mystic sphere and magical archer are exclusive to the Arisen). They come in one of four core personalities with a dozen or so specializations, such as marking down materials or translating elven speak to help with the adventure. Their dialogue is pretty limited and after 10 hours it just becomes very repetitive, but I do like the idea of pawns talking to each other and guiding you to chests or campsites you haven't found yet. Adventuring just never feels stale with pawns even 90 hours in.

The vocation system is nice with plenty of jobs for combat variety. Even the basic vocations such as fighter and mage are fun to use. The only one I personally didn't enjoy was the trickster vocation due to the inability to directly do damage. But otherwise, despite how sloppy the combat can be due to no lock-on or dodge/block mechanics, the action combat stays fresh due to the amount of vocations you can use and thier skills you can use for each vocation as you level them up. Although I wish you had more than four skill slots because you get plenty of skills to choose from by the time you max out a vocation.

Dragon's Dogma 2 got the core idea of party-based action RPG down nicely but I am afraid I feel like there are a lot of cut corners as I play through the game. There is a huge lack of enemy and boss variety and fighting the 50th Orge or Cyclops becomes far less exciting. Also, the dungeons and caves are very repetitive in terms of design and visual presentation. On one hand, I enjoy the size of Dragon's Dogma 2 map but also I understand why some people thought the map was too huge due to the lack of content variation in the world.

The overall story and questing in Dragon's Dogma 2 is nothing groundbreaking either. That is to say, it's still a pretty serviceable, if not rather shockingly short main quest in proving you are the true Arisen to everyone and getting your heart back from the dragon that has taken it. However, I really think the whole concept of the post-game is a really nice mood changer and felt like it has taken inspiration from the World of Ruin from Final Fantasy VI as well as the Souls games as far gameplay becomes more difficult. I just wish the post-game ideas were longer or at least more integrated into the story earlier on.

However, my biggest complaint is player decisions for quests feel weightless. Choices in Dragon's Dogma 2 mostly affect what ending you will get for some side quests. No, you don't even get a choice on whether you want to romance Ulkira or Wilhelmina or not if you complete thier quest lines. The game forces romance at you with no say so and that bothers me if I have to be honest. That said, there are still quite a few side quests I enjoyed that fleshed out the sense of world-building more and will be useful to complete later on in the game despite the writing not being particularly outstanding.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is definitely rough on the edges as far as the ratio between the map and the amount of content variation inside the map, a not-too-amazing main story, and some really questionable decisions as far as questing. But at its core, it's an earnest action RPG that is satisfying to explore and engage in its combat and pawn mechanics. End of the day, while I enjoyed the game for the most part, with some polish, more variety and more involved writing with the main story, Dragon's Dogma 2 could be a very strong contender for GOTY.

Pretty visuals and it's nice to see past Atelier characters in new shiny graphics but the fact it's a gacha game just makes it very time-consuming to grind your characters enough for the main story if you're F2P and eventually that just becomes very exhausting.

Not to mention while the main story seems to have promise and the characters are likable for the most part, it just generally feels dragged out for the sake of being a live service game. Also, it's very disappointing how Resleriana calls itself a mainline Atelier game but the item creation is so pathetically simplified compared to the rest of the games.

Between Resleriana demanding so much of your time to keep up with it daily and it came out in a very busy winter 2024 season, I just eventually gave up on playing the game to focus on other releases. I may come back to it one day since I did not completely dislike Resleriana but the game for now is at a very low priority to return to.