Theres a unique charm Dredge had for me that not many other games have. Theres a peaceful aspect to it as you fish during the day, a rewarding aspect as you slowly improve your boat and equipment, and then an underlying unnerving element as night falls and you experience the atmospheric horror, and sometimes the actual horror of what lurks beneath the water.

Its a fun time that doesn't overstay its welcome, I think there are some small QoL features that would bump this up, the main one being some sort of notification once you catch a fish that you need for a request, that would be great, and maybe a better way of finding fish for quests if you've never found them yet since some can be in kinda specific locations. Outside of that though its a solid game and its even got a little plot to it and plenty of lore notes for people into that stuff.

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.

Realidea System is a well written and beautiful looking fan game that was originally released in Spanish but has now been translated to where about 95% of it is in English and fully playable.

Initially I was lukewarm on realidea as I didn't think it was doing enough to really stand out. It has a well designed region, characters, and the flow of route -> city -> evil team -> gym -> repeat works well even if a bit repetitive. But I felt like the story was lacking and I had hoped for a few more regional forms, I think I came across 4 in my play-through and I don't suspect there is much more than that. This game isn't easy but I wouldn't say its hard either. It might actually have the best level curve in any pokemon game as you will always basically be on par or one level above/below a boss fight. I think slightly better AI in the trainers would have given it a slight bump up. I also think the games gimmick of the realidea system is not nearly as drawing as it needs to be, I can count on one hand the number of times I used it and it was all basically in the endgame for healing.

However, as I got into the backhalf of the game, I realised the allure of realidea system was its story and its art. Its not a masterpiece by any means but its also not cringe emo slop and the art work on display in the character portraits and the full screen set piece moments really will make it stand out in my memory as I play more fan games.

Anode heart is a solo indie dev project that is inspired by the classic digimon world games and tries to bring those into a modern light with new creatures and world to explore. The solo dev of this actually made a pokemon fangame called Pokemon Empyreon I believe which I had actually played and thought it was pretty good and I was impressed with what I saw of this game and heard of it from the monster catching/taming community.

To make a long review short, Anode Heart is a very good game. Theres a lot to like, it does manage to bring that classic digimon world feel to a modern setting by removing a lot of the obscurity and required guide reading but still keeping a lot of mechanical depth for those who want to dive into it but not requiring it to beat the game. Theres a whole breeding system for min maxing your tamas (the creatures) and theres stuff around swapping moves around to make illegal movesets, I didn't need to touch any of that to be able to beat the game, which has a decent ebb and flow of patches of difficulty and some patches where its a bit easy, that probably comes down to how well you can come to grips with its reboot system, I've played digimon games before and its basically the same as those so I was fine but for newbies it could require some learning but its not difficult, just different to other games like pokemon.

The battle system is quite interesting, at first it might seem a bit odd or obtuse but it actually reminds me a lot of the digimon tcg system. I'm sure other games have it but basically your moves have a power amount and most have extra effects etc like pokemon, and along with a set "pp" number, they also have a value where once you use up x amount of value then the turn swaps to the opponent and that value can overflow giving your opponent more value to use on their turn, so it adds a layer of strategy which I liked.

I do have some grips though. The first one being around the story. Its not a bad story by any means but I do think all of the jargon and terminology isn't really required, made it a bit hard to follow who was what at different points even if I understood the overarching story. My other grip is that unlike digimon, very few tamas here seem to have branching evolution paths. I think I only found one during my playthrough and discovered my starter also had one but I'm not sure if all starters do or just mine, and even then I had built my team around my starters original form so I wasn't going to swap it but maybe others would. I would have like more branching evolutions since thats a big appeal of digimon for me over something linear like this and pokemon.

But overall, if you liked classic digimon world or even just want a new semi open world monster catching game thats different to the usual pokemon inspired games, I would absolutely recommend Anode Heart and I look forward to seeing what this developer does next.

Pacific Drive is a game that on paper seems fairly straight forward, you drive a car across some maps and collect resources as you go which allow you to upgrade your car and progress further into the map. This is true, but it undersells just how much work goes into turning your car from a pile of shit into something that can turn rain into fuel and within radiation damage and give you a gravity boost etc.

That really is the high level overview of the game, along with an interesting aesthetic, Pacific Drive is a fun game to do a run or two in a session since a run can be anywhere from 20-45 minutes but its not a roguelite you can binge through say like Hades, as it can be quite taxing and a grind at times, especially near the endgame, if you are looking for specific resources, because while all the info is available to you in game, its not going to hold you hand either.

That also extends to the actual maintenance and upgrading of your car. If you run out of fuel for example, you don't just press the fill fuel button, you have to grab the gas pump and put it into the fuel tank and wait for it to fill and then put the pump back. If something is wrong with a door or wheel you have to inspect it and if needs sealant or replacing you have to manually get the sealing kit or replacement part and disassemble the old part and put in the new part and then breakdown the old part for scrap because nothing should go to waste when you need resources. It can take a while to get used to all the bits and bobs that go into taking care of your car and unlocking new components and even gear for you to wear while outside of the car but once you get into the swing of things it does all play like a well oiled machine and you really do start to bond with the car, bond as in you will feel miserable if it gets destroyed on a run and you have to remake shit on the car all over again lol