Chapter One
A child ran off from their village, filled with rage. A petty kind of anger; one that the child would have all but forgotten about the next time you saw them. This next time would never come, though. The child disappeared and in their place stood a Destroyer.

Chapter Two
The village seemed different. Strange new people kept showing up, with pig shaped masks covering their eyes. On the surface, they went about their business and chatted like any other villager but the more mind you paid them, the more their words rang hollow. Their thoughts and jokes seemed inorganic; mass produced even. As these Pigmasks gathered in the village, the original people there felt alienated. An old man, once known for his insights and his sharp wit would get angrier and angrier, lashing out at those around him and eventually leaving. More villagers would follow suit, some of them against their will, as this community they saw as a safe haven to share things they couldn’t share anywhere else slowly but surely became part of that “anywhere else.”
Were these Pigmasks to blame for everything? Or was it merely a case of things that always infested the community finally bubbling up to the surface? And what of the Destroyer, a one-time villager, now hailed as the champion of the Pigmasks?

Chapter Three
A monkey walked through a forest with boxes on their back; head and torso fighting a fierce battle to not fall and hit the ground. This grueling process eventually became routine and the monkey’s body eventually went on autopilot. They had all this time to think about if they’ll ever move past this task and if they’ll ever have a purpose.
Did the Destroyer have the same thoughts in this same forest?

Chapter Four
Another village child was not unlike the one who would become the Destroyer. In fact, you could say that these two village children were a single entity; two sides of the same coin. The Destroyer was the head of this coin, facing up and always the topic of conversation from those who saw this “face.” The tail, stuck to the ground, reveled in the attention the head received. They took glee in seeing friends talk about the Destroyer without any clue of its relation to the one standing near them. They searched for other villagers’ words on this mysterious Destroyer and snuck into houses to see them: the praise, the insults, the natural discussions surrounding this new “symbol” of the village.
This was not healthy for the village child. But still, could you blame them? This sensation of feeling important, even if that importance was just a niche micro-celeb in a small village, was much more comforting than the cold reality of meaning nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Chapter Five
A Pigmask working in a tower was a big fan of a rock band. They were utterly awestruck at the sight of that band’s merchandise on the man that entered the tower earlier that day and could not talk about anything other than that band: expressing their love of the band’s work, idolizing the ones behind it as supposedly great people, and elevating the band to some moral paragon because of milquetoast political opinions in its songs.
The Destroyer was in the tower too, watching this Pigmask’s conversation with mere apathy if not active contempt.

Chapter Six
Sometimes, ghosts of the past appear as reminders of what will never come back.

Chapter Seven
The Destroyer pulled a needle out of the ground and felt nothing. They pulled quite a bit of these needles before but something was different this time. The act was now done only out of some perceived obligation; to the Pigmasks and villagers cheering on or to the fake images of hearts that result from the act. It was time for the last needle to be pulled.

Chapter Eight
The Destroyer laid on the ground motionless as its tail pulled the final needle on its behalf. Its supposed stardom was crushed into not even half a star.
It’s over.

“Like leaves chasing the mighty ocean current. That at any moment, could find themselves plunged beneath the water. But one day… yes… if we could only wash ashore. We could sprout. Bud. Grow strong roots that burrow beneath the earth…”

We are born into this world as very little. A blank slate in which the experiences we are exposed to initially shape who we are and the trajectory of what we seek to become. These individual defining moments we reflect on become known as ‘memory’. We find this mosaic of fragments in which we are comprised is never truly cemented. We continue to experience, accumulating more of ourselves. We find pieces to cherish and deliberately seek to embody forever. Others instead we forget or choose to forsake, expelling bits of which we once were. This transient nature of self leaves our pathways through life to be ambiguous. We are never quite certain of our eventual destinations, only perhaps the direction in which we are headed. Eastward is a game that celebrates the spirit of this journey. A game about collecting memories, preserving them, and eventually letting them go.

“Ah so someone’s finally decided to learn things again, hm? Don’t you think it’s a little late for that, John?”

John, who comprises half the duology of ambivalent protagonists, is a confronting character to play as. Silent as the grave in this breathing world founded upon dialogue. The emotionless exoskeleton he embodies jarringly contrasts against the vibrant landscapes and the people contained within. You are made to feel he does not belong in this world in which he travels. This is deliberately so, the journey in which he partakes is not being driven from his own volition. He is instead a willing passenger along for the ride. This mostly blank slate known as John has been calcified over a lifetime of empty experiences accumulated prior to the start of the adventure. For a self and identity to manifest, there must be components, internalized ‘memories’, in which to build with. Due to the circumstances of John’s existence, very few of these were ever formed, and therefore he is unable to exude self nor manifest agency. The acquisition and internalization of new memories in which to do so is a slow and gradual process. Eastward is partially a game about growing the stagnant universe that is John

“Isn’t this just another dome? Higher than the one in Potcrock Isle, but still. What could be on the other side of that dome?”

Instead, this train’s driver is of the other half of the duology, Sam. This child John found by complete happenstance. Although we are born with very little it is not nothing. For a while at least, we possess an innate curiosity. A desire to experience all that we can. We seek to fill ourselves, this empty vessel, with memory. To grow and become more of ourselves. This youthful inquisitiveness that is often framed as ‘naivety’ before being supplanted by ‘experience’ is a quality of which Sam projects. While any latent desire John might have once possessed to expand past the dome that encloses him has been crushed, Sam in contrast cannot, and will not, be contained by any such dome. John, as her designated caretaker, must follow as she so casually shatters anything that seeks to bind her, and in doing so frees himself from long rusted shackles. Through a foundation built upon mutual trust, the two journey. Accumulating memory together. Building that which they are and becoming so much more.

P: “You’ve saved the world!” K: “That was only a happy byproduct.” P: ”……” K: “All I really wanted was to save you.”

The dichotomy of this relationship that is shared between these two is not an isolated case, rather instead a reoccurring theme of the work. This dynamic is further explored, mirrored, and contrasted against by a few other pairs among the cast. A codependency of which is consistently framed to be akin to the romanticized notion of a Princess with that of her Knight. A Princess whom leads, serving as a catalyst for experiences, an intoxicating fountain from which ‘memory’ freely flows. Who can conceptualize purpose to the struggle of existence, the nature of the world, and find their place within it. And a devoted Knight who willingly follows, living vicariously through their muse, enabling and accommodating her ambitions. Seeking to protect her from harm at all costs knowing that without her they are lost. While this is far from the only relationship dynamic examined, it is the one this work seeks to emphasize and elaborate extensively upon. Both reveling in its beauty and lamenting in the tragedy left in its wake.

“Every once in a while, we run into something that seems strangely familiar. Don’t question it. There’s definitely meaning behind it.”

The memories that form us so in turn are used to form the world around us. That which we are moved by motivates us to move others. Lingering memories of the past are propagated into the future through the actions of those living in a transient present. Within the imagined world of Eastward lies another imagined world, Earthborn. A game within a game. The in-game designers of Earthborn weaving their memories into their creation. This essence of themselves becoming absorbed as new memory by all those who engage in the work. A shared experience immortalizing a singular and contrived moment in time. So too the world of Eastward seeks to be perceived. A reflected and abstracted memory of the living world we exist in right now. Memories and the ideas we extrapolate from them we are made to find are as living and breathing as both you and I.

“As for me, I’ll stay here. Watching over her. Protecting her until the end of time”

There is an inevitability to the nature of memory that we must eventually confront however. That because memory is living so too must it eventually succumb and fade. In time we will forget all and in turn be forgotten. Memory is found to be a contradiction. Designed to be preserved yet fated to expire. So what good are they then? We experience, only to eventually forget? It is to find value in the journey itself, to live in these moments as they pass through you. To have memory propel you forward seeking out more in kind, which in turn propel you further. Memory, and all it entails, is both the fuel and pursuit in the journey that is life. Allow it to push you onward even as you must look back.

(Eastward is an amalgamation of experiences that have resonated with its creators, which have then been deliberately sought to be propagated. Reconstructed and reimagined memories of other works as well as our lived reality, cohesively combined into a creatively distinct journey. The work conveys a broad range of ideas and themes, very few of which are delved into deeply and none of which given a definitive conclusion. To many who play it, this has been perceived as a breach of trust, a failure of the work to satisfy the expectations of those who were enticed to engage with it. To me, this would be a complete misunderstanding of the value of the work. What it is fundamentally about and seeks to encapsulate. This is a game that seeks to show you beauty in the mundane. The value of passing moments that we so casually dismiss as inconsequential but ultimately are of unfathomable value to the journey that is our lives. It shows you the expansiveness of a world not to taunt you with your inability to comprehend it but so that you may dismiss it in pursuit of the fleeting more personal connections in which you care. I would recommend this game to absolutely everyone but from critical consensus it is clear the reality is this work is divisive. Instead, I begrudgingly suggest it should only be pursued by those who can find value in a work that asks no questions nor seeks to provide any answers.)

“…Until one day, a mighty wave comes crashing down, swallowing us once more. And then even more leaves set sail, searching for their own land in which to bloom.”

The double-edged-ness of TTYD runs throughout its very being. A bizarrely crunchy and engaging turn-based/action combat system hybrid, but very little in the main story is going to truly challenge the seasoned player without interfacing with the various methods the game gives the player to create their own challenge mode (and even then you might not ever see a game over screen). A 50/50 gender ratio in the main cast, further bolstered by each of those women being really fun designs with strong personalities, which is then doused by the swamp water that is the tendency for RPG writers to feel the need to make every woman in the main cast be horny for the main protagonist in a really awkward way (like, it's just little old Mario, and he never seems to really welcome any of this affection, literally kissed or accosted with physical affection against his will more times than you count on two hands I'd wager). A strong sense of humor that crumbles under the weight of its desire to constantly be punching down (Vivian is not the great trans representation you've been told she is in the original Japanese script, it's so much worse than you realize). A story that could summed up as a quirky DnD campaign with strong variety both visually and conceptually, it really does transcend what you'd expect from a Mario game... but then it really has nothing cohesive to say in the end, not even an overarching theme or some sort of broad feeling to impart to the player beyond just expecting the player to appreciate the adventure for what it was.

But despite all that it does manage to work, and it's hard to fault Intelligent Systems for really trying to form this into an experience that was probably pushing at the boundaries of what Nintendo was allowing them to get away with, and even the parts I dislike just end up adding to the game's overall sense of character. How many other Mario games portray the issue of casual misogyny within the workplace? How many other Mario games have you participating in organized crime? Much of the experience is cobbled together out of novelty, but it manages to come together in a way that elevates what it even means to be a Mario game.

A lot of people complain about the backtracking, and really, they're not that wrong. Each screen in the game is its own carefully constructed diorama of sorts both in terms of gameplay and visuals, and because of that every chapter is composed of maybe 4 to 6 "major" screens with a varying amount of "minor" screens (that are mostly made up of smaller rooms or houses within towns or villages) and maybe a dungeon that's composer of a handful of screens itself. Some chapters you're basically just gonna be going back and forth through the same screens ad nauseum, and while somebody who has played the game more times than she can count like me is able to see why the game is the way it is, I wouldn't blame anybody if that broke the camel for them.

Anyways, before I wrap this up I'm gonna talk about Vivian, especially because I feel a wave of discourse potentially bubbling up whenever the remake releases. I could probably write a whole detailed essay on Vivian's portrayal, but I'll give the rundown, and if you wanna look into it more yourself, MarioWiki's article on Vivian has probably the most comprehensive set of sources I've seen (I'm sorry I'm lazy about properly formatting sources within my reviews). In the Japanese version she's characterized as a crossdresser (specifically referred to as "otoko no ko"), and it feels mostly played as a joke at Vivian's expense, with that being pretty much the same in the French and Spanish localizations. There's a particularly nasty scene in the second chapter of the Japanese script where Vivian is visibly gutted, unable to defend herself after her sister denies her gender identity; this was replaced for a less extreme, but still clearly abusive conversation about how she's ugly in the English version (with her gender never being called into question). Interestingly, the Italian version's portrayal of Vivian is the bravest with it not only acknowledging her womanhood and retaining her transness (which was effectively just dropped in the English and German scripts), but also reworking the entire scenario where her sister denies her gender identity into one where Vivian stands up for herself and proclaims her pride for " having become a woman". As well in the Italian version, the Tattle Log and in-menu text ostensibly refer to her as a woman or with feminine terminology (whereas even the in-menu text in the Japanese version seemingly mocks her by referring to her with masculine terminology).

The upcoming remake's English script will probably retain the "ambiguity" of the original localization (I say ambiguity because tbh that's a bias a lot of people still have, where they assume the lack of explicitly textual queerness implies the the character is cishet, but that's a discussion for another time), though there are explicit changes to the script that have already been shown, so there's some hope that the English script could even adapt aspects of the original's Italian script within the framework of modern sensibilities.

Either way, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is beloved for a reason, and even among its own ilk it stands out both in gameplay and aesthetic. I still don't find myself really longing for another one like it, the older I get the more I just appreciate experiences for what they are. Sure, games like Sticker Star or Color Splash are vapid simulacrums of their predecessors, but I don't really feel personally attacked by their mere existence. TTYD still exists, and regardless of whether we get the mythical True TTYD Sequel, TTYD's existence is immutable. Our lives are short, and the love we're able to extract from our experiences is ephemeral; it's better to just enjoy what we have while we have it than chase after a high that would never be able to live up to nostalgia-soaked memories anyways.

only so many times I can go thru the same floors with the same enemies and the same bosses and the same weapons and the same everythings. for something so lauded I expected some variety. I'm sure some bozo will tell me "umm actually curse, there's six billion lines of bespoke artisinal stone baked dialogue" but you can blow it out your ass if the whole thing's contingent on slaving away in the metalayer currency mines for hours on end

every room seems to go on forever man. imagine if in isaac or monolith you cleared a room and then it filled back up with the same shit five more times. what the fuck guys? you have like four enemies per zone, you don't need to rub it in. is the expectation that I'm basking and luxuriating in these encounters? I'm not. I'm bored before I hit the third floor

maybe it gets better once I suck up to every NPC and collect all the gizmos and upgrade the weapons and upgrade the dungeon and upgrade the shop and upgrade the trinkets and fill out my pokedex, but I'll never know. I fuck with greek mythology when it's about cronus eating his kids and perseus cutting heads and severed testicles goin in the sea, but I don't think I'm the target audience for this kinda snarky post-tumblr young adult stuff. I'm glad folks like jacking off to it, I guess?

probably beats playing it!

The fifth best Final Fantasy XIV expansion, a modern Final Fantasy IV: Final Fantasy XVI is a game that I understand why people like it, but I cannot really conceive of how somebody would love this game. And don't let me stop you from loving it if you truly do, there's certainly moments of beauty within FFXVI that feel meant for somebody with much different sensibilities than I, it just remains a pretty thoroughly underwhelming affair to me personally -- both in what the game promises and in what it fails to deliver.

Mechanically adequate, systemically superfluous, and structurally mundane, but where Final Fantasy XVI really fucks up is with its thoughtlessly derivative narrative and dull characters. The way CBU3 have plucked concepts, backstories, and characterizations from popular shows like Game of Thrones isn't necessarily the worst thing they could do on the face of it, it's just how little those aspects end up mattering outside of being familiar tropes that the player can quickly identify. The same could be said for the game's attempt at a more serious tone with a focus on geopolitical affairs. The game starts off with two sequences that are almost identical to ASOIAF/GoT's Winterfell introduction, which is then followed by a Red Wedding-esque event to make sure you understand how fucked up this world really is. Except, that's kinda where everything stops being like that, they copied GRRM's homework, now it's time to be Final Fantasy!

Which like, if they wanted to copy Game of Thrones, you'd think they'd be a little more confident about it. Like, the way Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy IV, and Final Fantasy VI cop shit from Star Wars (and I guess a bit of Dune and LotR) feels like expert craftsmanship in comparison, because they also fairly accurately replicate the tone of space operas (just, you know, in the form of pseudo-sci-fi medieval fantasy). They sort of try to keep up with the underlying geopolitics aspect throughout the game, but it mostly falls apart by the end and Valisthea never really ends up feeling like a real place to me. So post-GoT-esque intro, the first third of the game's tone plays out like a more linear, bootleg Witcher 3, in a kind of unflattering way.

The remaining two-thirds of the game do feel pretty distinctly Final Fantasy (with a pretty weak undercurrent of half-baked Matsuno-isms) with structure identical to a Final Fantasy XIV expansion. The latter aspect was comforting at first since I kinda enjoy the simplicity of a fresh FF14 expansion, but it's easily the worst part about the moment-to-moment experience of Final Fantasy XVI, making the game much more prolonged -- and much of it being coated with the tasteless grey sludge of live service content creation habits -- than it really needed to be during its most important narrative escalations. The former aspect is what keeps the experience feeling adequate, but it really just doesn't do enough to differentiate itself from most of the series in terms of character dynamics, overarching themes, and fantasy elements. Really feel like most people who aren't allergic to turn-based combat are better off playing Final Fantasy IX or VI for most of the stuff XVI is trying to pull off. There's even this point where the characters decide to embark on this Final Fantasy V/Final Fantasy VII-esque quest to save the environment, and that also just kind of goes nowhere as the game buckles under concept bloat and is wordlessly replaced with a different thing later on.

The funniest part is the last third of the game is so clearly bogged down in its own bullshit that they had to add this NPC that feels like she was ripped out of Dragon Age Inquisition or something to explain the plot to the player because there isn't actually enough deliverable gameplay moments or constructive skits to bookend all the threads the game has set up by this point. I guess it's more disappointing than funny in the end, there were moments in FFXVI that made me wanna feel that it's all somehow worth it, but so much of it is just unearned or passively malicious in what it's conveying to the player.

The thing that almost makes the whole experience worth it -- a pretty common opinion -- is def the eikon fights, though I can understand if they're too spread apart and too mechanically fluffy for somebody who wants more substantial action gameplay to sink their teeth into. They're carried by their presentation and spectacle, as the gameplay interaction ends up feeling pretty junk food-y, but fuck they rule. Even the one towards the end that everybody I hates, I love that one too! Though maybe it's because I'm permanently a sucker for CBU3's boss encounter design, even if it's gotten a little stale in Final Fantasy XIV itself lately.

The combat design might be another story unfortunately, like, it's not bad, I actually kind like it because I have the issue with my brain where I enjoy performing class rotations in MMOs, but slapping that kinda shit onto DMC5-lite was not the move I think. There's just not enough going on here to be having a cooldown-based system integrated with kinda barebones action gameplay, and I don't think the individual eikon abilities themselves are interesting or cohesive enough to make up for the lack of both strategy and truly engaging action. Glad to see the stagger system here, but I kind of almost would've preferred if CBU3 had copied even more from the FF13/FF7R dev team's combat ideas.

The game is clearly designed around the fact that you can only play as Clive, and it only adds to that dynamism that's sorely lacking from most of the characters; if you're not going to show me enough of who these characters are in the cutscenes themselves, you could at least communicate it through gameplay, like other games in the series do. Clive's solipsistic streak feels pretty fucking forced compared to protags like Zidane or Cloud, Clive is just way too fucking reasonable of a dude most of the time I don't really buy it! And that's fine, I like having nice protagonists sometimes, but they spend the entire game trying to convince he's this brooding lone wolf! It doesn't help that in the game's pursuit of copying and pasting elements from other FFs, it also steals their mistakes: like Clive's main motivating factor being resolved like 5 hours into the game just like Cecil in FF4 and forgetting to make any of the women actually characters, also like Final Fantasy IV.

Like, I wanna say on average Jill is better written than FF4 Rosa, but at least you get to play as Rosa! Sure, both Jill and Rosa are treated as fragile baby birds who are forced to stay at home while the men go fight, but at least Rosa gets to defy that notion when it counts. It's just kinda pathetic what's happened here, like, CBU3 doesn't have an amazing track record with women characters, but at least they do get to do things and have individual motivations for participating in the story in Final Fantasy XIV. Even compared to the FF14 expansion that preceded the start of FF16's development, Heavensward, it feels notably regressive.

It'd be bad enough if it stopped there, but the two other women in the main cast are probably treated even worse. The first one's whole characterization is how she manipulates men with sex to gain power, with the writers using threat of SA as a motivating factor for her transformation into an eikon. Actually fucking vile! They even just straight up copy a panel from Berserk! And the other one's main character trait is she's an evil mom (basically just Cersei Lannister without any of the actual interesting parts). There's one secondary woman character towards the back half of the narrative who's probs the only woman with a personality, which is a shame! Jill especially had a lot of potential as at least Clive's best friend and confidant, and it's just wasted on a character who sits there and placidly stares while bloodlessly agreeing with everything Clive says and does. They can't even make her interesting as an extension of Clive, let alone as a person with actual interiority.

I don't really hate Final Fantasy XVI as much as this review would make you believe: I love adventures and I love action RPGs, and it does a pretty decent job of both. It's "comfy", but it could've been so much more with the kind of talent that Square and CBU3 have on hand, but consistently have failed to utilize to their fullest, outside of maybe Shadowbringers. Like the soundtrack is the best microcosm of all of this; Soken has an insane pedigree, and while his work here is mostly high quality, it feels like his strengths are being misutilized to adhere to a specific vision that maybe should've gotten a few more complete redraftings. Final Fantasy XVI half-heartedly commits to aesthetic ideals and tropes that were already outdated years before it released, in a way that feels almost Final Fantasy, but is ultimately never really elevated into its own cohesive identity.

Anyways, play Asura's Wrath instead. It's got the same misogyny per capita, but it's basically like if you cut out all the rest of the bad parts of Final Fantasy XVI and then also made it way cooler at the same time. 'Star Wars x Fist of the North Star x Buddhism and Hinduism' clears 'Spark Notes of A Song of Ice and Fire books 1 thru 3 x Buzzfeed Article History of Final Fantasy Series' any day.

This might be a weird thing to be fond of the game for, but I seriously think that Persona 3 Reload is the most respectful instance of voice actors being recast in gaming history. To my knowledge, at least!

But, besides that, I was actually the type of person who felt like this game's existence was redundant when I initially heard of it. That said, the only version of Persona 3 I had played at the time was Portable, and I wasn't one to knock things before trying them. After playing it for myself, it was evident the jump from that version to this one was impressive, and I was silly to be doubtful.

I went from experiencing Persona 3 in my hands, on a rinky-dink, budget Android phone using the PPSSPP emulator, to experiencing it in HD, 60fps, on my fancy-schmancy PlayStation 5. When I was dead broke, man, I couldn't picture this.

It's really not just about the fidelity, though. Although there have definitely been artistic compromises in the transition from old to new, a lot of tact was exhibited, considering the fact that this new coat of paint was applied by folks who hadn't touched the original. They had a delicate job on their hands, and in my book, they succeeded.

Ufouria/Hebereke 2 was developed by a small team from a new development studio called Tasto Alpha, the heads appear to mostly be Grasshopper Manufacture alumni. From what I can tell this is only their second game, the first being a card-based RPG from last year. The sound director for Ufouria 2 was one of the composers on Godhand, the director was one of several planners on Rule of Rose. The game has a charming aesthetic, great new remixes of tunes from the original game, and a good sense of humor. It's structured less like the "search action" style of the original, and more like a scaled down Amazing Mirror with extremely lite Rogue elements. The game is about 3 hours long and the last chunk is mostly mirrored versions of previous levels.

2 months into 2024, this is the most fun I've had with a new game this year. In fairness, there are a lot of games that I would be unsurprised if I had more fun with them when I eventually play them, and some of those games are already out. Maybe I'll like Infinite Wealth more than this, but I want to play other games in the series first. Maybe I'll like Relink more than this, but when that game launched it wasn't on my radar.

A couple weeks ago Penny's Big Breakaway "shadow dropped". I don't want to be too hard on it, because it's definitely an interesting game, because I think I could reasonably speculate on what could possibly be going on in the games industry climate for them to want to rush a sellable product out the door as soon as possible, and because some of the issues I have with it could be patched. One of the main things I've found myself thinking as I try to make more progress through the game is whether or not I would care about the game's collision issues, audio problems, and general "jank" if it were a PS2 game. Next to the latest Nintendo platformers Breakaway falls a little short, but it's clear sense of style and sheer amount of content for a game of its type would have made it a must-buy a couple decades ago. It's the exact kind of game you could imagine Treasure making if they were still around today, but the standards a lot of players have today are likely part of the reason Treasure's future exists mostly in rumors.

Ufouria 2 is a much easier game than the original, but could a game with those kinds of expectations still appeal to the intended audience of the IP? We're stuck with a classic problem of bringing back a piece of media like this, is it hard enough for returning adult fans while being easy enough for the possible new generation? A longplay of the original NES game is about half the length of my playthrough of the new one; even if the game's semi-random level layouts offer a bit of padding, it's definitely of comparable length, probably just a bit bigger. If Ufouria 2 was an NES game, or a SNES game like the many Japan-only spin-offs, would we remember it? Does Ufouria: The Saga already give us the answer to that question?

Would I recommend Ufouria 2? Do I think you should wait for a sale? These are absurd questions. If enough small teams existed around the world making games of this exact scope that one game like this released every week, I know exactly how I would spend Friday night every weekend. I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less. I hope these guys were paid well.

A deeply messy and conflicted game that shows the strains of the capitalist need to remake this game for money versus the interesting metanarrative of what it means to remake FF7. Swings from some of the most beautifully written and heartbreaking moments in any game ever to some of the most tedious gameplay slogs ever. It is the best and worst game in so many ways. The pacing is horrid and at the end of the day i think the open world bloat gets in the way of all the good this game does have. On the ending: it wants to have its cake and it eat it too. It shouldn't. Remake set up so many big swings and this game refuses to make good on those.

Dragon Buster is the first at a lot of things. It's the "first game to have RPG elements", first game to implement permeating platformer concepts like double jumping, and even the first game to have combos where you lose 80% of your health in one interaction because the Wizards juggle you like Sol Badguy doing Sidewinder loops on you.

It's not a good game. Honestly, I don't know if there's anything good about Dragon Buster. The gameplay is terrible. If the rooms of enemies you have to fight through don't just simply decide you lose and bounce Clovis (yes, that's his name) around like a tennis ball, you still have to contend with some of the clunkiest feeling controls I've ever had the pleasure to play with, and not in a meaningful way either. It is a difficult ordeal to jump forward in this game. If you hate Ice Climber for having "bad jumping physics" you haven't seen anything! Eat your heart out!

Dragon Buster's presentation is an unbelievably bad output from Namco in this era, too. I don't get why the game looks and sounds like it this. This game uses the Pac Land engine! A game that looks nice!

Look at how Clovis's sprite looks!
Listen to how the music sounds!
What the hell happened?!

To apply some sort of thesis to all this, maybe Gamers shouldn't apply so much importance to being a pioneer. These games command a certain deal of a respect-- don't get me wrong! But being the first does not a good game make, y'know? It's more complicated than that. That's what makes the craftmanship of better "firsts" than this game awe inspiring.

Still, I don't hate this game. I think action platformers with RPG elements are just my comfort food. If I was there
in 1984 era Japan I would've ate Dragon Buster up. And truthfully, this game has one good thing:
it is really awesome that you can turn the princess that you save into a bunnygirl if you play it long enough. They really had hot stuff in '84 with her and Ki from Tower of Druaga, huh?

(And by the way, that game clears the shit out of this.)