Still a very good game but probably the weakest out of the main 3D Zelda titles. I think the problem with this game is so many things you do to progress your character involve several tedious little tasks. If you want a better inventory, you better slowly travel all those Koroks to their destination, if you want to not get one-shot by all the enemies, you need to grind out materials. Want more health and stamina? Well you better find and finish as many shrines as possible. All these things would not be such a big deal on their own, but they started to add up as i played through the game. It also would help if the building mechanic was just a bit more consistent and easier to handle. After awhile all those little grindy things you do, every time you need to help a dude fix his sign, and every little contraption you have to put together just feels like chores. Another very odd thing I noticed is that through the dragon tears flashbacks, the game can literally spoil its own story?? Like the flashbacks in botw made sense to be out of order, because they were not telling you the story, but simply adding context to what was told in the introduction. This time around, they just are the main way the story is delivered, which has no reason to be out of order. Again, I want to reiterate that this is not a bad game. It is actually very fun in small doses, and looks and plays as best it possibly could given the hardware; I just wish it felt more consistently entertaining. I beat the 4 main dungeons, did a bunch of shrines, and explored the open world a pretty good amount. Eventually I will come back and finish the game.

I played this game specifically to spite people in a Discord server who were saying it's bad in one sitting to 100% because I will not take slander towards this absolute gem of a game. Mario 64 isn't perfect. Rainbow Ride is mid, the bosses aren't anything special, some of the stars are tedious as hell and exiting a stage every time you get a star gets monotonous after a while. But despite those issues everything from the controls, to (most of) the levels, to the music, to even the visual style for being one of the first N64 games is absolutely stellar. There's a reason why this game is the golden standart for 3D platformers, and why it's remained that for so long.

I started playing CSGO around 2013. The game was still very much in its infancy, and at the time I had no prior experience with the series in general. To say that I got hooked is an understatement. As of typing this out, I have accumulated about 3800 hours of playtime, which is not something I'm proud of, but it shows just how much I loved it. Sure, there was a lot of toxicity, hacking, griefing, and just generally unpleasant company in your team sometimes, but the core gameplay and genuinely good matches one could have outweighed most of the negativity to be found here.

Unfortunately, we are witnessing the end of an era here. September 27, 2023: CS2 has just released as a massive overhaul to CSGO. New engine, new physics, new graphics. On paper it all sounds great, and there are indeed a lot of great additions and improvements; likewise, there are plenty of negatives to come of this as well, but lest I start dissecting it too much, I'll save it for the actual CS2 review. The fact of the matter is that the original CSGO holds an incredible amount of sentimental value and got me through much of my adolescent free time. I sincerely hope Valve someday brings back CSGO in some capacity for those who will forever remain nostalgic for it. Personally, this was and still is the golden standard for online competitive shooters.

Played as part of the Final Fantasy Origins collection for the PlayStation 1.

I take shots at the prices of old games in some of my reviews, but despite recognizing how miserable the market has become, I all too frequently indulge in a bit of Gamer-brained overspending. Typically, I get fixated on one specific series or platform and chip away at every title on my list until I'm satisfied. Recently it's been OPM demo discs and the PlayStation 1 releases of Final Fantasy, which initially started as simply wanting to pick up FFVII and FFVIII before spinning out to everything. Why yes, I spent 35$ on a sealed copy of Final Fantasy Chronicles despite being told repeatedly by people on this very site that at least one of the two included games (Chrono Trigger) is borderline unplayable. I'll never be able to afford a house, but if I buy enough PlayStation crap I can simply build shelter out of jewel cases!

This demented urge to own some of the worst versions of classic Final Fantasy titles also means I'm beholden to finishing them. No longer can I load a ROM of Final Fantasy, beat Garland, shrug and go "that's an old RPG!" No, this is a real game, it exists physically on a disc, I invited it into my home and that means I have formed a contract with it.

The PlayStation version - which itself is based on the WonderSwan Color edition of the game - makes several improvements over the 1987 original, most obviously in presentation, but also by restoring functionality to a staggering amount of spells that were outright busted and potentially harmful to the player. Look, I was also born in 1987 and didn't come out right, so I'm sympathetic. This is a major change that takes a considerable burden off the player, but Origins: Final Fantasy is otherwise faithful to the structure of the NES release, meaning it is no less tedious and demanding.

Encounter rates border on self-parody, and frequently difficulty spikes mean grinding is mandatory. God help you if you decide to skip the late game class upgrades, or worse, forgo having a white mage entirely. There's only one type of restorative potion in the game and it does not scale with you, and since phoenix downs didn't exist yet, Life and Life2 become your only means of reviving downed party members outside of towns. A significant portion of the Final Fantasy experience involves inching your way through dungeons, gaining a level or two, warping out and healing up in town, then running the gauntlet again. You make a bit more progress each time until eventually you're powerful enough to take on the boss.

I have a notebook full of grievances against this game, like how all your attacks miss for the first few hours until you can get better equipment, or how everything costs so damn much that you have to grind Gil using the hidden 15-Puzzle minigame (thank you, Nasir Gebelli.) Just like real life, I'm spending all my money on funny tasting potions so I can't afford a damn cottage. The final dungeon is excessive and brutal and locks you behind a point of no return that can only be circumvented with the Warp spell, so if your White Wizard dies you get to reset the console. I could go on, but all of this is part and parcel with RPGs of its era. It's not like I expected Final Fantasy to be anything other than this and going in knowing it would not be a fully "modernized" enhancement allowed me to sink in and enjoy the game for what it is and not what I would like it to be. And I think I... like this.

There were definitely some rough patches, but Final Fantasy kept me engaged the whole way, and I actually found myself eager to get home and play it. It's been storming out lately, and leaving the blinds open while rain patters against the window and Final Fantasy buzzes on my TV has become something of a comforting experience as my state absorbs the aftermath of California's hurricane. I also have to compliment Final Fantasy for having a functional buff/debuff system that matters and bosses who can be inflicted with status ailments, a layer of strategy that the series pushed away from at some point and trivialized to the point of near unimportance.

Actually sitting down with this game has also given me a greater appreciation for why it caught on here and how important it is to the development of the JRPG genre. Games like Ultima and Wizardy served as strong points of inspiration to Sakaguchi and his team, with mechanics like choosing your own class and elemental affinities having their roots in Western roleplaying games. It's not hard to see why it caught on here when so much of our own DNA is present, and it's hard to imagine what shape roleplaying games would've taken had it not been so successful. If I weren't an embryo when this first released, I bet I would've had a great time with it, warts and all.

Despite ultimately having a good time, Final Fantasy is still antiquated and difficult and tough to recommend. It requires patience and probably a guide (gotta love the obtuseness of late 80s roleplaying games), and it's certainly a good idea to stick to something like Origins or the Pixel Remaster than play the original NES release if you do decide to commit your time and energy to it. I'm glad I did, though. New Weatherby comfort game, for sure. Excited to get to Final Fantasy II, I hear everyone likes that one the most. Yup, nothing but love for Final Fantasy II.

​🇮​​🇷​​🇺​​🇲​​🇦​​🇪​ - ​🇹​​🇪​​🇦​​🇲​ ​🇫​​🇴​​🇷​​🇹​​🇷​​🇪​​🇸​​🇸​ 2

​🇦​​🇱​​🇪​​🇷​​🇹​​🇸​ (1️)
​🇾​​🇴​​🇺​ ​🇭​​🇦​​🇻​​🇪​ ​🇳​​🇪​​🇼​ ​🇮​​🇹​​🇪​​🇲​​🇸​!

Recently I’ve become infatuated with the catalogue and timeline of Valve’s works, as someone who has arrived to the PC scene only recently, I’ve picked up their backlog of titles and have come to understand their legacy. Wherever that’s their genre making Half-Life that set forth what an immersive story should be, or the incredible case of Portal, and what I could argue as the definitive puzzle game. Even their more “lesser frontline” games such as Day of Defeat and older Counter Strike’s are fascinating enough where I feel intrigued to explore and delve in more. The success could be attributed to many things, like the Source engine being so perfect for the time as it was, or Valve’s near godlike worship in most online communities. Over the past few weeks however, one of these has stuck out to me as a work I would have never expected to love so much.

ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴄᴀꜱᴜᴀʟ ᴍᴀᴛᴄʜ ɪꜱ ʀᴇᴀᴅʏ
ᴊᴏɪɴɪɴɢ ɪɴ 6...

Where can you really start with Team Fortress 2? A flagship of the Orange Box quickly becoming one of the longest supported games throughout it’s life, before falling into a limbo of uncertainty for it’s prevalent future. As someone new to playing, this was incredibly daunting, but soon enough you get into a rhythm of matches and matches and the outsider feeling isn’t really a problem. To delve into the gameplay, I believe they really nailed it right on the spot. Before the time of Overwatch and Paladins there were nine mercenaries, and wherever that the natural talent of Valve they’re really loveable. I initially thought these were just blank slates and that internet culture hypes these guys out more than they’re meant to be, but god dammit they're extravagant personalities really shine out. Scout is loud, often abrasive, Heavy is a sort of stupid yet secretively intellectual character, and the cartoonishly evilness of Medic’s science, to name only three. The reason why TF2 has stuck out so much over the 1.5ish decade course is that these jerk-offs really are individuals, which brings so much personality into the world.

🇽​​🇽​ꜱʜᴀᴅ0️ᴡᴡ0️1️​🇽​​🇽​ ︻デ═一 ɪʀᴜᴍᴀᴇ
​🇽​​🇽​ꜱʜᴀᴅ0️ᴡᴡ0️1​🇽​​🇽 🎯​ ​🇮​​🇸​ ​🇩​​🇴​​🇲​​🇮​​🇳​​🇦​​🇹​​🇮​​🇳​​🇬​ ​🇮​​🇷​​🇺​​🇲​​🇦​​🇪​

Speaking of individuality, an almost genius idea that was maybe accidentally brought into the game was the customisation of the mercs.The mix-matching of weapons and weighing out the pros and cons gives you your own playstyle and how you play your matches. To name an example, my team was trying to push on Dustbowl, and were struggling to get it out of spawn. I had an idea and used the Eyelander and Chargin’ Targe for Demoman and successfully flanked most of the enemy team. Older players will probably roll my eyes and make a comment about subclasses, but I felt rewarded by the game for trying out something slightly unconventional.

​🇩​​🇪​​🇦​​🇩​ ​🇸​​🇦​​🇱​​🇹​​🇾​​🇸​​🇴​​🇱​​🇩​​🇮​​🇪​​🇷​⦂ 🇫​​🇺​​🇨​​🇰​​🇮​​🇳​​🇬​ ​🇸​​🇹​​🇴​​🇵​ ​🇧​​🇪​​🇮​​🇳​​🇬​ ​🇦​​🇫​​🇰​

“Unconventional” suits this game a lot. The more time I spent in this game the more the rabbit hole of gamemode and maps opened up for me. Mann vs Machine, (if you ignore the prevalent toxicity surrounding the games) is one of my favourite PvE modes that could serve as its own game. The uniqueness of mix-matching the weapons and classes comes into fruition here as they bring forward the teamwork and communication side of TF2, and as long as you get great people it’s a lovely time. It gives a very hard to master approach, but I feel as if I’m learning and improving all the time. All of that is driven by the wondrous prize of an elusive Australium weapon, and although I cannot comment on it as much as I would like to, the market system and trading economy in this game is comprehensive and extensively deep. Community tabs, though a violent cesspool of mediocrity, are majoritively entertaining enough to check out. It’s interesting to see what the community can do with only the engine and game mechanics; you only need to take a quick look at rocket-jumping maps for how committed TF2’s players are willing to push the gameplay core.

(​🇻​​🇴​​🇮​​🇨​​🇪​) ​🇫​​🇷​​🇮​​🇪​​🇳​​🇩​​🇱​​🇾​ ​🇭​​🇪​​🇦​​🇻​​🇾​⦂ ​🇲​​🇪​​🇩​​🇮​​🇨​!
(​🇻​​🇴​​🇮​​🇨​​🇪​) ​🇫​​🇷​​🇮​​🇪​​🇳​​🇩​​🇱​​🇾​ ​🇭​​🇪​​🇦​​🇻​​🇾​⦂ ​🇲​​🇪​​🇩​​🇮​​🇨​!
(​🇻​​🇴​​🇮​​🇨​​🇪​) ​🇫​​🇷​​🇮​​🇪​​🇳​​🇩​​🇱​​🇾​ ​🇭​​🇪​​🇦​​🇻​​🇾​⦂ ​🇲​​🇪​​🇩​​🇮​​🇨​!

Its’ cultural status breaks out of this too, as of its’ 16 year anniversary it has miraculously pulled through the lack of support that Valve has given it. It’s a shame, as issues like hacking and the rise of bots have troubled the community enough. But somehow, the perseverance and determination of TF2’s players has me in awe. The aspect of wanting to keep your playerbase together whilst managing to uptake the parts of the game that made it so interesting in the first place is maybe one of the reasons why I love this game so much. And I feel like I could go more into this game, but I’ve said enough. Maybe as I reach the high hour marks my thoughts and opinions will grow bitter, I’ll sour and become a TF2 vet, depressingly wandering and reminiscing on a game that once was. I’ll have joined a community of edgy teens, toxic tryhards, and AI bots insta-sniping me from across the map. But I’ll also be in a place of belonging, and acceptance in a weird time of the internet where maybe all I need from a game is to have fun.

For a game I only just know, this feels like home.
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​🇰​​🇮​​🇨​​🇰​ ​🇵​​🇱​​🇦​​🇾​​🇪​​🇷​⦂ ​🇮​​🇷​​🇺​​🇲​​🇦​​🇪​? (​🇳​​🇴​ ​🇷​​🇪​​🇦​​🇸​​🇴​​🇳​ ​🇬​​🇮​​🇻​​🇪​​🇳​)

​🇵​​🇷​​🇪​​🇸​​🇸​ ​🇫​1️ ​🇹​​🇴​ ​🇻​​🇴​​🇹​​🇪​ ​🇾​​🇪​​🇸​
​🇵​​🇷​​🇪​​🇸​​🇸​ ​🇫​2️ ​🇹​​🇴​ ​🇻​​🇴​​🇹​​🇪​ ​🇳​​🇴​

✓ 6️ ✖ 0️
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​🇸​​🇦​​🇱​​🇹​​🇾​​🇸​​🇴​​🇱​​🇩​​🇮​​🇪​​🇷​⦂ ​🇫​1️
​🇫​​🇷​​🇮​​🇪​​🇳​​🇩​​🇱​​🇾​ ​🇭​​🇪​​🇦​​🇻​​🇾​⦂ ​🇫​1️
​🇮​​🇷​​🇺​​🇲​​🇦​​🇪​⦂ ​🇼​​🇦​​🇮​​🇹​ ​🇼​​🇭​​🇦​​🇹​ ​🇳​​🇴​
​🇮​​🇷​​🇺​​🇲​​🇦​​🇪​⦂ ​🇮​❜​🇲​ ​🇩​​🇴​​🇳​​🇪​ ​🇷​​🇪​​🇻​​🇮​​🇪​​🇼​​🇮​​🇳​​🇬​

​🇩​​🇮​​🇸​​🇨​​🇴​​🇳​​🇳​​🇪​​🇨​​🇹​​🇪​​🇩​⦂
​🇩​​🇮​​🇸​​🇨​​🇴​​🇳​​🇳​​🇪​​🇨​​🇹​⦂ ​🇨​​🇱​​🇮​​🇪​​🇳​​🇹​ ​🇩​​🇮​​🇸​​🇨​​🇴​​🇳​​🇳​​🇪​​🇨​​🇹​.

Double Dash isn't the game I'm gonna play on my own, but it's definitely the game I'm gonna drunkenly play with friends. It's the perfect Mario Kart / racing party-game. While I prefer all the games that came after it, I cannot deny that this game is wacky and silly and a perfect encapsulation of the Gamecube Mario aesthetic.

But there are two problems for me:
1. I didn't grow up playing games in the Gamecube era
2. I like playing Mario Kart both with friends AND alone.

GRAPHICS: Charming and genuinely pretty in places such as the sky/weather and the textures and designs of most of the villagers. It's easy to forget how good they are, but looking back at older games makes it clear that New Horizons is a massive graphical upgrade.
CHARACTERS: Appropriately adorable-looking, but completely devoid of personality. Villagers are the entire point of this franchise, as well as the bonds you form with yours, and yet in this game they've been reduced to window-dressing for your customised island who recite the same dozen generic lines identical to every other villager of the same type. A lot of my 'dream villagers' are of the same few types, and so I can be hitting nothing but repeated dialogues within literal minutes of opening the game. It's soulless.
GAMEPLAY: It's... fine. There are some good QoL improvements, such as the way clothes shopping now works at the Able Sisters and terraforming the land, but there are just... so many things that were a given in older games that have been cut out or have regressed in this one. The crafting system is awful and repetitive, DIY recipes are time-consuming to get and even thenmostly just carbon copies of ones you already have, even golden tools (extremely difficult to construct) are now breakable, and shops have far fewer or no upgrades to uncover, just to name a few.
MULTIPLAYER: You can have up to eight players on an island over online multiplayer, or up to four using local co-op. It's pretty much what you'd expect from Animal Crossing - you can run around together and visit each other's villagers (so you can experience their generic dialogue, too!) but aside from activities you can come up with and design yourself there's nothing to really do together.

Overall, this game just... depresses me in a lot of ways. It's stripped back, sanitised, minimalised and "streamlined" in that corporate, modern game kind of way, where all the charm and heart is being lost in order to fit flashy new features to distract from all the ones that have been made worse. Sure, it was a nice refuge over lockdown, but it genuinely kind of angers me that that means this game is going down as a huge best-seller success when it's just... empty. It has the same kind of issue as Sims 4, to my mind, and the fact that so many players picked New Horizons up as their first Animal Crossing game means they don't even know what they're missing. I'll be returning to Wild World and perhaps even New Leaf, because playing this just reminds me I miss the old villagers.

Favourite Male Character: Of the villagers, Butch; of the NPCs, Brewster or K.K.
Favourite Female Character: Of the villagers, Goldie; of the NPCs, Sable
First Character I Liked: Goldie
Favourite Character Design: Merengue
Favourite OST: The Roost
Least Favourite Character: Fuck every single gorilla villager

I was lied to, I was deceived, bamboozled if you will.

It wasn't Sonic who had a rough transition to 3D. It was Sonic Team.

Sonic Adventure is a mess, and I mean, in what world it wouldn't have been? It follows the long lasting tradition of the franchise of having bat-shit and insanely short development cycles, plus the fact it was the game that followed a myriad of disastrous attempts of bringing the blue bastard to the third dimension without inducing massive headaches or implicating near-death experiences; and what fucking worse better ingredient to add to this mixture of chaos (eh? see what I did there?) than good ol' crunch time?! The game needed, nay, it HAD TO release alongside the Dreamcast's launch, which considering how that console was the ''make it or break it'' for the company, in a way it makes sense, but it only worsened the making of a really ambitious game that already had a ton of issues to begin with. I could keep talking about the problematic design and development philosophies of SEGA and Sonic Team and the problematic relationships between the American and Japanese divisions but it would take me quite literally more than entire reviews I’ve written in the past, so for know let’s simply say that this was yet another Sega moment™.

Even if you didn’t know the game was done under sever crunch, it’s not like it hides it very well. When I say Adventure is a mess, I mean it, it has the whole pack: really clunky animations which, even if in part can be justified when taking into account the time of its release, the really weird pacing and direction of the scenes sure can’t; the movement of almost every character can sometimes feel imprecise and things like Sonic’s homing attack just decide to not work out of nowhere; extremely buggy collisions that make running along walls feel extremely unreliable and glitchy and it seems that the lands surrounding Station Square must have poor soil since you are able to go fall through thE GROUND SO MUCH; the main overworlds, while sometimes cool, feel pretty empty and don’t really point you in the right direction and that can make it very confusing to navigate them, and even if there are reasons to explore them since there are secret emblems and even power-ups to get, a lot more work could have been put into making places like Mystic Ruins feel more engaging to traverse and explore; the whole story parts related to Tikal and Chaos feel rushed and disconnected to the individual stories and even the overarching basic plot, and while by the end we may get the overall story, I really doubt that the characters aside from Sonic and Knuckles know what the hell was going… Oh and just to add a little bit of salt to this really weird dish, many of the glitch related problems are even greater in the DX version, since what should have been the ‘’definitive’’ way to play Adventure just screw things up even more! This, in all honesty, should have been unbearable, I’m not exactly one to be really bothered by technical problems, but when so much of the game feels so rough around the edges and when movement, the hubs and the ‘’puzzles’’ feel so archaic and/or choppy, it should have made the entire game in nothing more than a cool history piece, the first dive of the hedgehog into full-blown 3D and another showing at how we could have almost had a fantastic game if the team was just given enough time… except no, that’s not how the story goes, much less how it ends, ‘cause after having a laugh at the funny animations and weird dialogue and voice acting when I started the game, I began the first phase in Sonic’s story and I… enjoyed myself, like, despite some moments of frustration because of the aforementioned problems I was having a great time? And I actually adored the levels and concepts and found them to be really entertaining? And I during the whole game I was actually having a ton of fun with the story and actually getting invested? WHAT KIND OF WITCHCRAFT IS THIS??!!

Things that by all accounts should have been almost anger inducing where the ones I grew so attached to; the corny voice acting and animations became so endearing in a way I cannot describe, the dumb songs with lyrics that play during cutscenes that at first where annoying turned into something I cannot get enough of, the glitches-no, those are still bad, especially when they made me lose a life, but certain things like the bosses’ life bars nor feeling the gauge and certain aspects of the game’s ‘’unpolishment’’ were… adorable, not in a ‘’Awwwwwww ~, they are trying his hardest, it’s so cute’’ but in a ‘’There’s a incredibly solid game here and that makes the minor mistakes really endearing’’ type of way, ‘cause yeah, the only reason these things awaken these feeling in me is because, despite everything, there’s a metric ton of fun to be had with Sonic Adventure.

‘’How the hell do we translate this character’s gameplay from 2D to 3D?’’ is a question that many major franchise’s had to face, and it was especially difficult to answer back during the fifth and sixth generation; Mario found its answer in a more open world approach, with different missions in big areas not divided by levels, and Sonic, after so many trials and tribulations, found its own way to resolve the conundrum by bringing new ideas to the table as well as keeping what worked from the pixel days and expanding upon it. As I mentioned before, we have a few ‘’Adventure Fields’’ at our disposition, and while as I said I find them to be too big and empty for their own good, they are still pretty neat playgrounds to test the different characters moves and it’s cool they managed to create areas in which everyone can traverse easily, plus since you’ll be re-visiting these places so much during the six camapaings, it's fun to quickly know and react to what you need to do to progress and even find ways to resolve the same puzzle with different abilities at your disposal, even if it’s clearly still re purposing content and a by-product of the lack of time the team had to expand upon each area. But where the true meat lies it’s on the action stages, and oh my sweet chaos, this stuff is GOOD. Instead of the 2D Zone and Act usual division, we get singular stages that we revisit multiple times with different characters each; every time they are perfectly adapted to the character’s gameplay and objection, and it honestly feels like we are visiting different places of the same area each new time, which makes it not only feel overall bigger, but when we actually get to explore same lay-outs feel worth-wile and allows this weird world feel alive and connected. Specially in Sonic and Tails’ case, these zones feel like an bringing old levels to the third dimension, having speed sections and different paths to take and explore, but it also functions as an expansion of that concept, there’s more verticality, more twists and turns, more ideas thrown to you to resolve and more puzzles and obstacles to beat than ever before, some may be a bit uninspired, but most fit the theming and new environment extremely well, like platforms that allow you to walk vertically or switches that activate rockets and secret passages. There may be hiccups along the way, but it’s all just so consistently and just so… uncompromised. Despite all the problems and hurdles, it’s clear that the team didn’t want to give up on ideas, it’s clear they believed that they game wouldn’t be what it needed to be unless they put everything it needed: six full stories with six completely different characters, three main huds with a ton of NPC’s with funny interactions and even upgrades to the movesets and kits, and overarching plot that works incredible with the different perspective idea and a god-damn entire sub-game about raising a Chao that is incredibly well designed and mechanically deep and connects to the main game really naturally… Yeah, I wasn’t joking when I asked which witchcraft they used, they called fucking Ixis Naugus for this shit. And you know, all this talk about how fun and mechanically sound the game is and the six different stories, makes me want to rank them and talk a bit about them individually… but nah, I honestly don’t have that much to sa- SIKE LET’S DO IT.

-Number 6 is Amy’s story, I like the idea of a more stealth approach, but Amy herself probably feels the worst to control out of all the characters and the phases go on for too long despite the story itself being pretty short. It also just doesn’t add a lot to the overall plot, even if I like the idea of Amy gaining more independence and helping the little birdie. Last boss is also pretty cool.

-Number 5 is Big the Cat. Even ignoring my love for the absolute unit that its Big, I really didn’t hat its phases, I understand why it can be the least favorite to some but I liked the phising mechanic once I got used to it and this more calm, slower set of levels was a fun way to change things up. Last boss sucks ass tho.

-Number 4 is for Knuckles. It flip-flops between being pretty fun and a chore; the echidna himself controls like silk and I like a more exploration-based gameplay, but the randomness of the emerald pieces placements made it so it was either a walk in the park or extremely frustrating. But hey, punching enemies and bosses was a blast and Knuckles’ personality and theme were pure gold. I loved the stupid rad red.

-Number 3 goes for Tails. As an individual story plot-wise it was probably my second favorite, I loved this kid’s story of self-improvement and how that tied on beating Sonic on the levels themselves, plus the fact that it was him who ended up saving everyone from Eggman made it such a fantastic way to wrap up his arc, since after all is Sonic who gets the spot-light in the final story. Some clunky combat and frustrating movements because of flight make it so it can’t be higher, but it’s still pretty damn good.

-Number 2 is for Sonic and Super Sonic. The fact that this is one of the best it’s the best possible outcome since it’s also the longest. Just a fantastic translation of Sonic’s gameplay into 3D, I loved the light dash and the homing attack here (except when they didn’t want to work) and going fast can be an absolute joy. Super Sonic is also a great send off to the game, a fantastic final boss and a really nice implementation of the yellow version of the hedgehog.

-And finally, number 1 is Gamma. I… wow… I just…. I honestly wish it was even longer. Gamma has by far the most interesting narrative in the whole game, and probably in any Sonic game period. It tackles incredibly interesting themes without spelling them out to the public, and whether that was intentional or because it was rushed, the result was outstanding nonetheless; and it did that while also being a really fun journey with thight controls, shooting down enemies and hovering was probably the most fun I had in all the game along side Sonic’s sections. I loved Gamma’s story of self-doubt and discovery, it was fantastic and honestly, the fact it was so beautiful perfectly showcase the entire game as a whole.

It's so beautiful and full of heart at times, even if sometimes it’s rough and has little polish; it’s so fun to control and packed with content, even if that sometime makes it bite its own ass. Even if it has problems, what the team managed to accomplish here is nothing short of commendable. It still pains me that I cannot say that I liked it more, but you know what? I’m happy that I like it this much. Sonic Adventure is shattered dream, one that they managed to put the pieces back to place, and even if easy to see the places where its broken, it’s extremely charming, fun, and full of passion and genius. Rough… yeah, that may be true… but also sleek when it really wants to be…

Oh… I completely forgot about the music, didn’t I?... Well, it doesn’t matter…

No really, It Doesn’t Matter, ‘cause IT’S A FUCKING FANTASTIC SONG AND AN INCREDIBLE OST LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-

If I could sum Okami up in one phrase it would be: "overstays its welcome." This is a game that could really use some modernization. I don't think the game is inherently bad, because I see all the pieces of a great Zeldalike game here. It just doesn't come together very well at all. The artstyle and soundtrack are about the only thing this game has going for it. The Celestial Brush is a cool idea, and there were times where I thought it was a fun mechanic, but it quickly got old.
Also there is way. Too. Much. Fucking. Dialogue in this game. This game would probably be better with like 90% less dialogue. The writing has a bit of charm to it from time to time but most NPC interactions are so tedious. I don't think I need to elaborate on Issun either, but I think most of my frustrations stem from that character's existence.
Combat is also pretty boring as you can faceroll most enemies in the game by just spamming the Rosaries.
I really wanted to like this game, as I've heard it's a good game from many people, but I am just not motivated to continue playing. It might not help that there are loads of other high profile games releasing this year that make playing an already dated game more difficult.
I think this game as a concept; its setting, characters, and story, would absolutely clean house in today's Indie scene if it were modernized. However, Okami in its current form is more of a chore than a game.