Wow. I had a feeling I might enjoy this game, but never did I expect to absolutely love it the way that I did. After beating the game I read some reviews to see what did others pick up on that I missed, and while I could somewhat see some peoples gripes, I legitimately did not encounter any of them or think about them while playing.

- Right off the bat, anyone with eyes and ears can recognize the beauty of this games pixel art and its stunning music. Thats all that needs to be said about those, its a given.
- The gameplay I found to be really engaging, the combat keeps you focused and rewards swapping around party members with no punishment around levels. Exploration always rewards you with new gear or secrets and almost gives a bit of a zelda-esque experience doing through the different areas and dungeons, perhaps that will be their next genre?
- The plot and characters I thought were really well done. The two solstice warriors can be argued as bland or basic but if you spent your formative years training with an old man, you'd be a bit boring also. Luckily this is where the supporting cast of characters and party members comes in, each of them with their own personality, motivations, and secrets. Meanwhile we have a plot basically themed on responsibilities, ones that are inherited, ones we feel compelled to take on etc, and how we handle those responsibilities. I would advise going for the true ending, the requirements aren't steep if you've been engaging with the game as you go, took me maybe an extra hour or two max after beating the normal ending. Some people take issue with certain plot beats and twists but honestly it did all I could have asked for it to do and I'm more than ok with how it all ended up.

If you played The Messenger you will also get some added joy and cheeky nods while playing Sea of Stars. But you also don't feel left out if you didn't. Where one person sees a familiar face, another sees a cool new character, its very well balanced but rewarding for those involved.

Overall, Sea of Stars is a delight of a game. Thankfully the kickstarter raised enough to hit the dlc goal so I will return for that, and I will absolutely be keeping an eye on Sabotage Studios next game.

I played 88 hours of this in less than 3 weeks so obviously I really enjoyed the game. I can't give it a perfect score because it does have its issues and even if they are minor individually, there are enough of them that it adds up. However, there are so many good elements to the game, almost all of them revolving around the characters, that it makes up for a lot of weaknesses, so much so that I had debated only doing 4/5 but I think that would be unfair and time would help me forget some issues.

So I'll start with the issues because I want to end on the good stuff. Some people complain the game has too much padding. I disagree for the most part, as those people will reference the totally optional side quests and open world activities as padding. There is however noticeable padding from around chapter 9/10 onwards in the main story with arbitrary "puzzles" thrown in your path. I also found the gongaga and cosmo canyon region to be designed in a way that felt like everything took longer to get to, like I was being punished for doing the side content. Speaking of the side content, for the most part its fine, doesn't take very long to do and initially its interesting to see where some of them will lead to. Unfortunately I felt some of them had lackluster endings like the protorelic one (which also has an insane level requirement to do???), or some were just way harder than they needed to be, such as the very final side quest in golden saucer (I HATE 3d brawler).

Now for something I dont dislike but I cant say yet that I really like, the plot. The plot does suffer a bit from being the portion of the original game where it does kind of spin its wheels a bit as not a lot actually happens in this portion until near the end, its very character motivated rather than any worldly causes or external factors. Like we aren't even in disk 2 of 3 from the original game yet until the very end of this game. Speaking of the ending, I don't dislike it, but I need to see how the next game follows up from it because not everything is resolved in a way I would have hoped/expected. Its definitely an ending they want people to talk about, similar to remakes.

The middle of most stories is when we get to know our characters best and that is exactly what happens here and its why rebirth is such a fun time. Everyone gets at least one moment to shine, most get multiple. Theres also the banter as you explore around and just the general camaraderie
and support within the group, whether thats Tifa and Aeriths sisterhood or Barrett and Yuffies big brother and annoying little sister dynamic. Also the locations, holy moly some of the locations are just stunning, its insane looking at side by side shots from the original game and seeing how they were brought to life but still keep the vibe of the original locations.

Finally, the soundtrack. I'm not a big soundtrack guy but my god does it do wonders here. Its not even that there are bangers you can jam to, if anything its the opposite. While it does have bangers, its actually the various themes that play throughout the game that works so well, various renditions of the main theme or character specific themes like tifa or aeriths become more familiar to you as you play and especially if you've played the other games and it just adds to this sense of the overall game world.

As you can see there is a lot to discuss about rebirth and this is without even giving any specific around plot or moments within the game. I went from basically never having touched a jrpg a few years ago to loving rebirth and buying four classic jrpgs in the most recent steam sale with even more on my backlog. Games like rebirth prove that some good music and an interesting cast of party members can make any game an incredibly memorable experience.

This write up is going to sound like a lot of glazing and might sound like I'm being abstract or pretentious at points but its just because this game in its storytelling is so unlike any other game I've ever played or seen before. We've played survival horror games before, this isn't dissimilar to a game like Resident Evil 2 Remake. We've seen games use live action before or be flat out TV shows like Quantum Break. Games have delved into the psyche of people before like Psychonauts. But I struggle to think of a game that brings all of these aspects and more together into one singular project, until Alan Wake 2 that is.

This is the kind of game you could go down a rabbit hole discussing and dissecting so to avoid a lot of that, I just want to quickly cover what I think will be the briefest portion and thats actually the gameplay. Its literally just a very solid survival horror, very similar to games like RE2 and the other RE remakes. Its maybe not 100% as tight as those but its like, 90% of the way there personally. The game also has some great music, which has a narrative role, some excellent level design, which has a narrative role, and offers a dual perspective on the story of the game as you switch between Saga and Alan, both playing the same story at different locations, which again has a narrative role. Picking up a theme here?

I'm not smart enough nor have I researched enough into this game, remedys background, the building blocks of inspirations used for Alan Wake like twin peaks, x files, even stage plays. But what I will say is a non spoiler example of how meta and self warping Alan Wake 2 can be:
Alan Wake is about a guy who's writings come to life and bring about unimaginable horrors to himself and those around him. This story is written by humans at Remedy who are aware that through their writing they are bringing to life a horror story about a writer who is bringing to life a horror story through his writing. Remedy do not try to hide or disguise that, in fact they really want you to observe that as part of the story of Alan Wake and go to an unseen length to try and drive it home. That length being that they
put one of the writers of the video game into the video game. Sam lake
is the co-writer and co-director of Alan Wake. He is also the face of agent Alex Casey Saga's partner and he's also the face of Alex Casey, a fictional character cooked up by Alan Wake who happens to have the same name as the real Alex Casey and while Alex Casey is mo-capped by Sam Lake, he's voiced by James McAffrey who was the voice of Max Payne and Sam Lake was also the face of Max Payne back in the first two games so Sam Lake is Max Payne who is Alex Casey who is written by Alan Wake who is written by Sam Lake.

Thats just one example of how the narrative of Alan Wake 2 is unlike anything else I've played. Add in the overlapping dual perspectives, the live action scenes, the live action mixed with gameplay scenes, and many more elements I can't go down the rabbit hole on, Alan Wake 2 is truly a game you have to play to fully understand and experience, words alone don't do it justice yet theres more to say about this type of game than almost any other I can think of.

This is like if Danganronpa and Zero Escape had a weird love child, where it has a lot of the charm of Danganronpa and the mystery plot of Zero Escape. But on top of that, it also have the most childish humor of all those games and for me that was fine and right up my alley but I can see it grating for some people.
The main thing stopping the game from being rated higher is I wasn't a fan of the dialogue options at times, it just felt very drawn out, and I wasn't the biggest fan of Somniums, compared to Danganronpa trials and Zero Escape puzzles, its easily the weakest gameplay mechanic of the three.

Hilarious end credits scene lmao

All the pieces of Rain Code truly came together in the last two chapters for me. I debated whether to give it a 4 or 4.5 but I think with its consistency, music, aesthetic, characters, and plot, its strengths overcome the few weaknesses it has to justify the higher score.

If you liked Danganronpa I think its safe to assume you'll like raincode. The only reason you wouldn't is if you really can't stand the idea of a Miu x Monokuma style character being with you at all times cause thats basically what Shinigami is but I loved it and her eventual arc so it was fine by me. I don't think the characters of rain code will hit the personal highs a lot of people will have for various dango characters, but they also won't hit the lows of characters you despise, they are just consistently good at their role as allies/enemies/suspects. The protagonist Yuma is also probably the most fleshed out protagonist from out of any of these type of games I've played and honestly Shinigami is probably second.

Out of all the chunsoft games from this same vein, dango/Ai/zero escape etc, this probably has my favorite gameplay section after danganronpas class trials. While I think there was room for more mini game variety in the mystery labyrinths and the hallway walks were a bit annoying, what we got was good and reminded me a lot of the trials which I really enjoyed.

Speaking of trials, the mysteries of each chapter are pretty good here, like the dango games, some are better than others, but really theres only one weak one here in the 5 or 6 available. And while the overall plots mystery probably isn't as well sprinkled throughout the game as it is in other chunsoft games, it does come full circle in a way thats better than any of the others. In a weird way its the most fucked up but also the most likely/believable plots of any of those games lol.

This is probably my favorite pokemon inspired game I have played and I've played a lot of the big ones, nexomon extinction, temtem, coromon etc. What makes this better than all of those in my opinion, is that its what most resembles pokemon for me, but isn't afraid to improve where pokemon doesn't/won't, whereas sometimes in the other games it feels like they hold back in certain areas or make the same mistakes pokemon does. The main example of this is the gameplay flow for Cassette Beasts, its very similar in structure to Scarlet and Violet where there is a mostly open world map, and you have 2-3 core objectives to complete in order to beat the game. It even has unlocking overworld abilities to help you progress the map like SV does but its implemented better here imo. And overall that gameplay flow is done better here thanks to firstly the map design and secondly the level scaling implementation.

I'll start with the map design. While the game is marketed as open world, its not really, but in a good way. You are meant to do the right side of the map first until you complete enough of it to travel to the left side, and how you progress through that right hand side and what order you complete objectives is up to you. This is where the level scaling comes in. At the start of the game you are giving choices in how the scaling will be implemented, for example will bosses scale down to you, how will enemy AI move in the overworld etc. This level of tweaking is fantastic as it allows you to essentially make a custom easy/normal/hard mode, a sorely lacking pokemon feature. This is what truly helps the game flow, as you never feel over or under leveled, I left it on the default settings and while I never truly struggled like say in TemTem at times, I also couldn't just blindly mash away like you often can in pokemon and SV (depending on your order). I also really liked how none of the objective locations are just given to you immediately on the map, you either have to find them yourself or have an npc in town tell you as a quest, its a nice touch for those into exploration.

In terms of beast designs, I liked a lot of them, I feared that the roughly 120 count wouldn't be enough but it is and they are distributed well throughout the map. I also like the sticker move system and the star system for evolving, it makes having a rotating squad very feasible. The fusion mechanic is also cool, the algorithm used is very good in that it never feels like the fusions are just slapped together like the default pokemon fusions.

If I had any gripes, its that I wasn't a fan of how the companions quests are generally tied into a handful of the main objective boss fights, which means for about half of the Archangel fights you have a companion with you that can't fuse until you do the fight. Not a big deal but it came up as an annoyance once or twice. The other gripe is the awkwardness of swapping around beasts, especially if you want to take a beast off a companion to give them a fodder one if you are swapping, you should be able to remove your active beast from the tape inventory menu rather than having to back out to the party specific menu, it just becomes a hassle if you find yourself swapping companions a lot, which you will have to do some amount of due to the quests.

Overall, thoroughly impressed with this two person dev team and I'm glad its on gamepass as that should help with discovery a lot and even on steam its a very fair price of €/$20 I believe. If you are a fan of monster catching games, this is one to try.

PS the music is very good but sadly theres only maybe a handful of tracks, would have liked a few more but at least what we have is good so you don't mind hearing them often.

Safe to say I fell into the same rabbit hole with this game that many other people last year did also. I was particularly surprised because I had no prior DnD knowledge and the only CRPG I had played was Disco Elysium, which I didn't even know was a CRPG or what that genre really was.

I'm going to try and avoid doing a full crazy detailed breakdown of my thoughts on the game cause I feel like I could ramble for quite a while since with 100 hours played in like less than 3 weeks, theres a lot I can say. Clearly I was hooked, once I managed to get an understanding of the combat I was able to settle in and enjoy the next 70 hours or so unimpeded for the most part.

I say it like that because while I did enjoy the game overall, I think the wheels start to fall off a bit in act 3. This game was in early access for two years I believe where people could play all of act 1. You can tell when you play that act 1 is definitely the most polished part and I kind of wish they had done the same for the other acts. Act 2 is very light compared to act 3 content wise and even act 1, and act 3 is basically as large as act 1 and 2 put together and is almost overwhelming when you reach that point after already putting in 70-80 hours only to get a new objective for the real endgame bad guys.

That being said, I wouldn't put 100 hours in so quickly if I didn't enjoy it. I think the writing is top tier, even the most random of NPCs are a level of interesting, and not a single voiced line is phoned in, everyone from the main cast to a pig on a farm puts their all into the voice work. I think the character build system and all the spells, cantrips etc can be overwhelming initially but once you find some stuff you like the game is pretty much beatable with most setups, bar a select number of disgusting fights in act 3 that really need to be patched for a quick redesign, looking at you Viconia.

In summary, writing and va good, plenty of content, initially overwhelming, overstuffed final act along with some bugs and frustrating dev decisions lead to a small dip in enjoyment but overall I'd recommend and honestly I think if I had any prior DnD experience I would have given it a 5/5 since I'd already have a lot of the onboarding already done and understood.

Don't let the 2.5 throw you off, that's a 5/10 and for me, that's a bang average score, not good, not bad, and that's how I feel about Frontiers, it's not good, but it's not bad either. Well, it has aspects that are really good, like a fun core gameplay experience of running fast, but some parts are really bad, like the very repetitive nature of the gameplay, how the story is told, the beta feeling of the game.

Probably worth keeping in mind I'm not a sonic fan, this is my first game so when Sonic references something like his human girlfriend from 06, idk what that means lmao. So those callbacks and fanservice moments didn't do anything for me but that's ok.

I personally didn't really like how the story was told. I think there's an interesting story buried within this game but the amount of cutscenes and how often they happen, just didn't click for me. I also don't like how coy they try to play out the plot for so long and then just expect you to connect all the dots at the every end. I will say though the one story aspect I did like, even though it was underused and not fleshed out enough imo, is the Sage and Eggman connection and how that works out in the ending, I think that could have been a much more interesting payoff if more time was spent on it during the game.

Tbh overall, a lot of my dislike is just that it felt repetitive at times so even if I initially liked the gameplay, after an hour or so I'd be bored cause it's just a loop of finding gears to get keys to get emeralds to fight bosses to move to the next island and do it all over again with little variation in-between. All islands are the exact same, they may visually look a bit different but the grass, sand, and volcanic terrain all plays the exact same. I hate saying this and I hate even more that the developers are open about it, but it really does feel like a beta game that was sent for playtesting and still needs to be tweaked a bit and arrange the pieces better.
Tldr: its a mixed bag that feels like a beta for a potentially really good game. Story is told badly even though it has interesting aspects. Open world is better than cyberspace but it was nice to have a mix even if some cyberspace levels were hell. I don't regret playing it, but I'm glad I got it 50% off.
Weirdly, a lot of thoughts for a 2.5/5 lol