No spoilers, just vague statements about the story.

As three split into a pair of two, until the remaining one left, and the two split into a pair of ones, a season of White Album would come forth over and over again covering all their scattered emotions, before melting away as spring arrived and being shown to the whole world in all its impurity. This will be less of an analysis piece and more of the remaining thoughts and feelings that have stayed put in my mind since the three months when I finally finished the absolute behemoth that is White Album 2, for I still can’t go even a day without listening to a song from it.

Music, I would like to think, is the great connector between all people, more so than any other form of art. The majority of those that listen to it aren’t necessarily qualified to accurately identify what makes say, this chord progression good or why this particular harmony sounds pleasant to our ears, but regardless of that, they are still able to feel it. White Album 2 understands the essence of music, that past theoretical composition and choice of instrumentation, the most important aspect of it all is the feelings that music imbues inside of us, and what it represents in every aspect of our lives. We listen to music because it turns into a part of us, something that when we hear a melody that sounds nice in our mind, we become happy; something that when we hear, perhaps maybe we are reminded of a time long past, a memory now casted in an immortal light.

Love is something I find nearly impossible to fully write about in all of its confusion between sadness and happiness, and the logical inconsistencies that such a thing brings with it. However, there is one thing that I believe is fact, love isn’t merely a romantical feeling. It could be the love of friendship between life-long friends who have witnessed each other change over the years, or a paternal and maternal love parents have for their child, as there is nothing more they see in the child then the one they now are forced to love second most. These are both very ideal situations, but I think they are good enough examples for what I am trying to get across. White Album 2 is not a conflict of two separate loves for the same person, it is a conflict of three mutual loves they share between all of them. That is the reason why I believe this story to be so emotionally effective, where love battles love in a fight for what they deem will give their greatest happiness.

Originally, I was planning on doing more of a review directly addressing White Album 2 itself, but I don’t think that’s something I am capable of, at least right now. So instead, I wanted to let out this small fraction of feelings that I still hold within me from this work for the world to see. Love and humanity is such a challenging thing to genuinely represent, and were I to be ashamed of it(for some odd reason), I would probably struggle to tell others that the story I found the most of this in is from a 2011 Visual Novel. Fortunately, I am not that person. This story is so, so special, and I hope that were someone to read this, one who hasn’t read it or someone who doesn’t even know what a visual novel is and probably just saw the incredibly high rating, that this capsule of feelings were to touch you, perhaps even getting you just the slightest bit interested in it.

You know, I open Strive every once in several months, ask myself "why did I even do this" and close this game, until I eventually think of getting into it again and the cycle repeats.

It's not really bad. It is a good gateway into fighting game genre, which it was for me and countless people around the world. You'll have fun at first, but after a while the cracks will begin to show. And yes, no game is free from that, but Strive suffers from it more than others.

This game is shallow. Not simple, it's shallow. I actually love simple fighting games, 2019 Samsho is my favorite fighting game. But at some point Strive gets so basic it's painful.

First of all, WHERE ARE JUMP CANCEL ROUTES? Seriously, what kind of anime fighting game is that? I can only think of... 5 characters that retained cool air combos. I'm not a big fan of combos in fighting games(Samsho is my favorite, remember that), but come on, really?

Instead of providing clever simplification for wider audience, while maintaining high skill ceiling, Strive just dumbs down everything, whether it's combo game or character movesets, like turning Elphelt into a fucking rekka character. Some additions are actually nice and interesting like dash macro, but it happens rarely.

Massive issue of Strive is how easily you can run into plateau. There's not that much stuff to learn and it's... not really interesting to learn it after you pass the beginner stage.

And while lots of changes were sloppy, the game had a bright future, it was a massive success in a long while for Guilty Gear franchise! The thought of "beginner friendly" Guilty Gear was a blasphemy, yet it succeeded!

Except the game never became "simplier" nor "complex" in fun ways. Arcsys kept adding questionable mechanics like Wild Assault and Positive Bonus changes, that made already difficult defense game even worse for beginners, character balance consistently sucks, high damage gets "nerfed" at the expense of removing fun combo routes instead of simply you know just lowering numbers, etc etc.

Game is not easy. It's just not fun, or should I say its fun runs out way too fast?

Outside of that... Extremely underwhelming single player(that sadly is a standard in the genre nowadays), mediocre story(Xrds was SO MUCH better) and extremely hit or miss aesthetics and ost, but there's still so much cool stuff missing like VS character themes. Seriously, this is THE FIRST GUILTY GEAR WITHOUT "SOL VS KY" THEME" DAISUKE BE FOR FUCKING REAL

Guilty Gear Strive is a game of missed opportunities. It will still remain popular for a long time, but how many people will stick with it when Strive's time eventually runs out? Will it have small, but loyal community like +R or Xrd? Will someone remember it for its gameplay, instead of cool redesigns of vocal tracks? Will someone love this game for its worth, instead of for being their first fighting game?

I don't think so.

As a game, it must be said that it is very complete. Interesting story, charismatic characters, they have created several characters/designs that have been used for other installments, series, characters from other sagas that have become popular and known thanks to the game...

However, it is a gacha and as such it is very bad because it lacks basic features of current gachas: no auto, skip tickets, pity system that is impossible to fulfill (throw 900 to a single banner which is equivalent to 2700 gems that you can't achieve even saving a year).

If you are a fan of fate you will enjoy it, but you will suffer a lot. You can spend years trying to bring out your favorite character and still not bring him out.

Como juego hay que decir que está muy completo. Historia interesante, personajes carismáticos, se han creado varios personajes/diseños que luego han usado para otras entregas, series, personajes de otras sagas que se han vuelto popular y conocidos gracias al juego...

Ahora bien, es un gacha y como tal es muy malo porque le faltan características básicas de gachas actuales: no hay auto, skip tickets, sistema de pity que es imposible de cumplir (tirar 900 a un solo banner lo que equivale a 2700 gemas que no logras ni ahorrando un año).

Si eres fan de fate lo vas a disfrutar, eso sí vas a sufrir y mucho. Puedes estar años para intentar sacar a tu personaje favorito y aún así no sacarlo.

I wish I had a constructive review to write here about this game, but honestly it was just... a journey. I mean that in the best way possible, but I couldn't explain it if I tried to without just retelling you the game's story. The bombs they dropped on us toward the end were what I've come to expect from this series and Yoko Taro. So, safe to say, I'm mind blown with complicated feelings and all about this game after having played it, and all I can wish is that it wasn't a mobile game so I could pour over it more.

Also, for the record, I completed it with... 11 hours and 35 minutes to spare before the severs shut down. So, I am proud of that much having booked it from the end of the Sun arc all the way to the end of the game in the course of a day and a half.

I think the best way I could describe Final Fantasy XVI is that it’s one of the most “it’s so over -> we’re so back -> (repeat)” games ever

My favourite part of XVI was the combat, which didn’t feel like it got old even once for me. It was one of those types of gameplay that got better as you got further, especially with the amount of Eikons you get to unlock and chain together (Titan my beloved). I liked the story and Clive is easily one of my favourite protagonists in the franchise, I wasn’t too sure how I’d feel about him at first but he ended up growing on me a ton. And of course the boss fights were just perfect, with my favourites being Odin, Titan and Bahamut. There wasn’t a single one that didn’t have me at least slightly locked in, whether it was in Clive’s regular form or as Ifrit

With all that said though… I do kinda wish I ended up liking this game more? Don’t get me wrong I did really like it, but my god the lows of this game were enough to get in the way. I don’t think I need to say much about the pacing and amount of fetch quests this game throws at you out of nowhere since many people have said the same thing about them (for good reasons too). The part after the Titan battle especially because god that felt like it took foooorever to get through. I did enjoy the final parts but at that point, it did feel like it overstayed its welcome and I was more than ready for the game to be finished during the last few chapters

Despite all of that though, I enjoyed my time with XVI and felt that the ending was a satisfying one for me. I do wish I could call it one of my favourite Final Fantasy games, because it easily has so many parts that would make me think that if it wasn’t for the issues I had. If I spent a full £70 on this back when it first released, I would’ve been way more conflicted about it, so I’m more than glad that I waited. But with all that said, XVI was one that I liked and can definitely see why it was GOTY for many people

It's impressive the way Shigesato Itoi utilizes the Mother series to critique the day-to-day aspects we take for granted within our lives, while also not hesitating in drenching said aspects in both naturalistic and pop culture-infused aesthetic pleasures to demonstrate both the moral ambiguity and the inherent beauty of the mundane. Outside of the distinctive pseudo-modern sci-fi fantasy settings the games are set within and the earnestly and meaningfully sentimental tone they're garnished by, I find that it's the little things in the Mother series that really draw me in. The atypical verbiage in the battle dialogue, the bespoke sound design, or how every NPC manages to say something meaningful; not necessarily always meaningful to the story or plot, but in what it conveys to the player about the game's world or even the real world -- and often without utilizing more than one or two textboxes. Some of that could be attributed to the various localization both official and unofficial, but when looking at all three games with a wider lense, it's clear Itoi didn't want to settle for what was easy when it came to writing the scripts and scenarios for the Mother trilogy. There's a self-evident wisdom pocketed into each slice of text, in all three Mother titles, but especially within Mother 3.

And that isn't to say Itoi's writing is flawless; he has some clear cultural and experiential blindspots, but at least he never stumbles into anything truly condemnable. Towards the beginning of Mother 3 there is a joke that could easily be construed as a some sort of blackface "gag", but like many of the "big swings" Itoi takes in Mother 3: it could definitely be worse, and it's arguably "benign". Of course, I'm a white woman, so you can easily take my opinion there with a grain of salt. But I do happen to be queer and trans, so I can speak about on probably the most controversial aspect of Mother 3's cast in recent years: the Magypsies.

The name alone should probably raise some eyebrows since it's a portmanteau that appears to contain a historically pejorative term for a real world ethnic group; again, I can't really speak on that aspect personally, but I feel it remains part of the discussion. And boy is that a discussion, especially when you get into how the characters fit into queer representation. Aesthetically, they're pretty explicitly just stereotypical depictions of the "okama" trope, but I find it difficult to not love them as individual characters textually despite that. They're morally complex, they're fun, and even if I wish they'd been implemented with more tact they're one of the only depictions of (technically speaking) nonbinary characters within an officially published Nintendo title before the modern era.

Of course, that leads to another problematic element, specifically how depictions of nonbinary people in media leave them often relegated to god-like entities, and the Magypsies unfortunately fall into that trope. Though personally, I feel like it ends up working in service to the game's theme of duality. The razor and lipstick combination used to represent them could be taken as an intentional absurdity (deprecating humor), and perhaps it was meant that way at one point, but I find it difficult to not see it as a deliberate celebration of both masculinity and femininity as forces of identity and expression. Really, it's difficult not to be left with a positive takeaway from the characters on some level, to make queer people have such an important role within the game's world, to make their razor and lipstick items be the best healing/revival items in the game. They're far from perfect, but in that sense they fit well into the game's themes of "impurity" or moral fluidity.

That late game NPC that proclaims a softer side to one of the primary antagonists that the player never sees, multiple characters who are ostensibly on the "good side" who are explicitly abusive to their children, optional text that suggests Lucas himself has potentially bullied animals for fun; none of it is in your face, and none of it is directly excused, but it feels relevant to Itoi's building of a world that doesn't attempt to wash away the imperfections of our own. Even when demonstrating the positives and negatives of both pre-industrial and post-industrial life, it doesn't attempt to obfuscate the highs and lows of either condition.

I say pre and post-industrial instead of pre and post-capitalism because I don't feel like capitalism is really what Mother 3 is trying to tackle. Like, I won't say Mother 3 isn't not explicitly anti-capitalist, but I don't think it does the game justice to summarize up the game's themes as "capitalism is evil" or even just strictly within that very narrow framing. I think there's a very explicit critique of market capitalization, but it's entrenched within the game's exploration of the natural state vs technological growth. Specifically, technological growth in the context of commercialization, and what that does to people and their relationships with others. Without spoiling, I can't help but feel this core theme is shown most explicitly towards the end of the game; and it can be a gut punch to fans of EarthBound/Mother 2 if they haven't yet come to terms with it at that point.

And even then, you probably couldn't reduce Mother 3 down to simply "consumer culture is bad" either, but I think it is most explicitly critiquing consumerism/industrialization and the sometimes deceptively dangerous artificiality of the products we consume. Even if it lacks the cerebral and more actively intellectual commentary of something like Disco Elysium or Pentiment, Mother 3 has that shared interest in showing the world for the complex mess that it is while also being quite honest in the side that it's chosen within its internal debate.

Mother 3 is a game of a lot of themes and concepts, but the most obvious one in the end is "love". Whether that's romantic, familial, humanistic, or just simply not being an asshole to the people around you. That's what I love about the Mother series in the end, how despite it having a mostly critical tone, it effortlessly circles back into sincere sentimentality. Mother 3 is the only piece of media to manage to make me uncontrollably sob (even if EarthBound gives me the biggest lump in my throat overall). I don't really know how Itoi and his teams did it multiple times, but in an age where media seems so keen on empty oversentimentality, each replay of the Mother trilogy still manages to make me feel all these things again and more, even after all these years (couldn't figure out an elegant way to slot this in, but I've been playing/replaying these games for a decade and a half at this point).

Mother 3 is Itoi at his rawest, or at least as raw as he could be within the confines of development for the Game Boy Advance, and for all the games that have been inspired by his series (bad, medium, or good) none of them have really managed to recapture that exact acute sagaciousness in tone and presentation. Perhaps what people should takeaway from these games isn't something literal, but something more epistemological? Regardless, the Mother series -- especially Mother 3 -- feels like Itoi's truth, and I'm so grateful that these games even exist in the first place.