It's been a month since I beat Rise of the Ronin. I really wanted to like this game more but unfortunately after the first 10 hours of gameplay, it simply fell off. At first I was loving the combat, the open world aspects, Sakamoto Ryoma and the fact that it is set during the Bakumatsu but at some point I found myself running through the main story just to beat it.

I was very excited for the combat since you'd only fight Humanoid enemies, which are typically the best encounters in FromSoftware titles and Soulslikes in my opinion. There's a decent amount of variety with the weapons and each weapon-type has access to 3 slots of "stances" that you can customize, and will act as a rock-paper-scissor system against enemies. Meaning you get different playstyles and they'll either be effective or not effective depending on who you fight. Counterspark/Parrying is an alright mechanic but it isn't as clean as Sekiro, Stellar Blade or even Lies of P, it's kind of weird how it can also serve as an attack except it's just bad when it is used like that.

When you're only fighting Humanoid enemies and bosses, if you're not introducing new and interesting movesets/patterns that are hard to deal with but instead just throw in another enemy, it removes all the fun from actually struggling and learning how to read your opponent. There is maybe one fight that actually skill checks you and it is in early game, after that all the fights that are annoying are the gank fights. I only used the support characters to help me clear the levels but I removed them as soon as I got to the boss encounters. Anyhow this game made me learn to actually appreciate beast/monster-type enemies, you know the big ones that really mess with your camera LOL. The reason why is because when you finally get to those Humanoid bosses, it feels good to fight them since all you've been fighting prior are those big monsters where you have no vision because they take up the whole screen and half of the fight is versus your camera. This is not the case here, like I said earlier you just fight humans who doesn't necessarily get stronger, you just fight an extra person or two and that doesn't make it more fun. I wanted clean one versus one swordfight battles where I have to figure out how to parry their onslaught attacks and have them beat my ass over and over again until I finally pick up on it, and each encounter should've been unique. I don't really have a favorite fight because it all just felt the same.

At this point I don't recall much from the story but the setting is cool and there were a few characters I enjoyed like Sakamoto Ryoma, Kaishu Katsu and Kogoro Katsura. It would've been nice if the MC actually talked more because they do talk BUT most of the time, they're just silent so it makes you feel disconnected.

When I first stepped into Yokohama, I was really excited to explore everything because the map was huge and there was a lot to do. I actually thought that the entire game would take place here but then I learned that there were more maps just as big and that's when I gave up on exploring and only pushed the story. It makes sense that it isn't the only area because of Kyoto and Edo but still, I wasn't willing to go through the Ubisoft loop multiple times.

Rise of the Ronin is a decent experience, however I wouldn't recommend grabbing it for full price. For the most part it has unimpressive graphics especially for a PS5 exclusive title with the frame rate dropping constantly on Performance Mode however I heard there was a patch that helped but I can't confirm because I beat the game before that went live. It does somewhat scratch that Sekiro itch but it is definitely not up there, hell I don't even think this game is that much better than Team Ninja's previous game Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty.

Had a lot of fun with Stellar Blade and I'm currently going through NG+ for the plat. The game has very clear strengths as well as weaknesses. Overall though I'm pretty surprised by how well made it is.

It goes without saying that the most fun part about Stellar Blade is its combat and while it falls short to something like Sekiro, it is still damn good. You get sick ass moves with Combo Attacks, Beta and Burst skills that will not only make you look cool but also do hella damage. Some of these can even cancel out annoying moves or strings, really useful against bosses. The defensive options like Perfect Parrying and Dodging feel very nice too even though I suck at dodging the yellow attacks. You also get access to follow-up attacks when you land these, making it even more satisfying. Also having a dash that basically teleports you to the enemy is convenient if you wanna close the gap and be aggressive.

The Naytiba's have great looking designs and there's a hefty amount of them so you never really get bored fighting these enemies. Boss fights are solid and I'm glad they were because I got hooked on the demo, fighting the Boss Challenge over and over again. Unfortunately didn't get a no damage run but the Stalker fight gave me hope for what's to come and majority of the bosses in the full game actually did deliver.

Paired with an exceptional soundtrack that could very well be the best one this year, it is a fire recipe they have here. Not a single bad track in the entire game and the list has a ton of range too, keeping it refreshing. It also made exploring so much more enjoyable especially since I was doing all the side content.

Oh yeah, the graphics are good.

And I almost forgot to mention but there wasn't enough sword surfing.. sad!

Now this is where it gets bad because while I really liked doing the side stuff, there are so many things that just drag down the experience. First of all, the fast travel and map. Why is it so annoying to get from Point A to Point B? There's just too many steps and when you have to backtrack constantly like it's a metroidvania or something but then you're also met with multiple loading screens, it's just terrible. You can't fast travel to every camp nor can you open the map and look at a different location, not to mention you only have an actual map for only half of the locations. Another thing I noticed when exploring is that there are lots of spots where it looks like you can make a jump or a climb but you literally can not. Is it designed this way to piss off the player? I don't know.

I haven't gotten to the story and characters yet but simply put, it is bland. The main trio of EVE, Adam and Lily have no synergy at all. I simply didn't care for any of them, or the rest of the cast but I guess at least Lily has some personality. EVE just has cool outfits and a ponytail so long it reaches her heel, so swag!

Despite all of that, majority of my time spent with Stellar Blade was fun and that's what matters the most in my humble opinion. Looking forward to the DLC with the Boss Rush mode so I can attempt some no damage runs. Anyways I'm giving it a 7.5/10.

Getting to the true ending left me with such a sour taste, so it's only in retrospect I can remember and understand how this game is widely considered a JRPG gem. A beautiful game with a masterful OST. Combat and job class systems that shine within the genre.

Bravely Default, does however, slowly become a chore as you progress, with difficulty spikes and repetitive gameplay/plotline. If I could completely look past how the latter half of the game made me feel, I know for sure I would have much more appreciation for this game as a whole.

Final Fantasy VII Remake project has absolutely no right working as well as it does, and Rebirth doubles down on what made Remake work -- and occasionally what really brought it down, with more unsavory additions to spare. But don't get the wrong idea, in Rebirth's extravangance and conceptually superfluous presentation exists the most actualized and engrossing take on the events of Final Fantasy VII's post-Midgar disc one that one could possibly even imagine, and I'm saying this as somebody whose love for the original is ironclad and unbreakable: Rebirth is probably going to end up being my favorite way to experience the moments tucked away in what was once a maybe 7 to 12 hour-ish section of a 25 hour long game -- with the 7 to 12 hour section now being close to 50 or 60 hours on average I'd imagine. That is to say, I've come to terms with a lot of the liberties Square has taken with the narrative and characterization and presentation, everything really; what made the original special to me, and most likely to many others as well, can't be perfectly replicated anyways, so I really do mean it when I say that the end result given here is bordering on a "best case scenario" for an adaptation of this vast a scope.

Much like Remake, characters that were once tableaus feel alive and truly connected as a group in a way the original just didn't have the ability to convey, just on an even more detailed and broader scale. And once again don't take that the wrong way, they're tableaus that I cherish dearly -- Final Fantasy VII's cast is my absolute favorite across like, all media -- but they're expanded upon so meaningfully: Tifa's self-destructive people-pleasing, Aerith's down to earth and fun attitude, Barret being the leftist extremist father figure we all know and love, Red XIII's deep loyalty, Yuffie's obnoxious little sister energy, Cait Sith's inopportune joviality, Cid's weird uncle vibes, and Vincent being the resident goth kid that has issues with authority. And their relationships with one other: Aerith's deep friendships with Tifa and Red XIII, Barret's new found friendships with Yuffie and Red XIII, and even the basic and immediate kinship many of them feel towards one other is more detailed and vibrant. I don't know man, I just love all these fuckin' guys, I constantly had the stupidest fucking grin on my face while playing this game it was honestly kinda cringe. Even side characters have so much more going on with them, certain characters that were previously throwaway will often give one a sense that there's something deeper going on with them as they continue to try to exist in this broken world, even the ones that are more comic relief than pathos-invoking.

The plot can often feel clumsy, but I'd say it's a lot more cohesive than the original's, pretty significantly too, the original occasionally feeling aimless and as it tried to find a reason to send you to the next exciting setpiece; even as somebody who replays the game often I find myself being confused which event flag I need to trigger next. And really the original Final Fantasy VII can be best-described as like, a bunch of Final Fantasy VI opera scenes strung together, and Rebirth leans into that so hard that I could see it being way too much for some people. If Final Fantasy XVI was way too dry for many, myself included, I could genuinely see Rebirth being perceived as excessively "wet" for others. Though, as a side note, when playing Final Fantasy XVI I'd often find myself unintentionally dozing off, whereas with Rebirth I actually had enormous trouble sleeping, both in finding a place I wanted to stop playing and the mild insomnia the excitement of getting to play the game again induced in my four day-ish long binge (which, I haven't done in a long fucking time without needing to take significant breaks, which happened quite often with Final Fantasy XVI, and as an adult in her 30s I think that's saying a lot).

On the topic of CBU1 styling super fucking hard on CBU3, god damn the combat in Rebirth is exactly what I wanted it to be, probably my favorite combat in general, from like, any video game? Like, it's not mechanically the deepest action game I've ever played, but it does expand upon Remake's systems in a meaningful way without upending what made those systems work in the first place. Final Fantasy has been focused on telling the player what any given character is about through how they play since like, FF4, and Rebirth's execution of that philosophy doesn't miss at all. Tifa is more fun than ever with an extensive aerial toolkit, I fucking love that she can juggle enemies and it kinda became my go to strategy at a certain point, which like Tifa was the blueprint for young Theia so I'm so glad they did her so good in this game both on a gameplay and narrative level. Red XIII I have to say feels a little bit busted!! I'm bad at playing as him, and he still seems really fucking useful even with unskilled play. Cait Sith I'm still trying to wrap my head around, but I wouldn't have it any other way than making Cait Sith a confusing mess to properly utilize. I wish Vincent was playable, one of like 10 or so boys in media that I actually care about, but I kinda understand why he isn't when he shows up so late that it was probably better to just focus on polishing the rest of the cast than implementing what's probably going to be a pretty unique kit on top of everything else going on.

There's a particular level involving Cait Sith that I'm pretty sure is gonna become like the third or fourth most contentious thing about the game, but I fucking loved it in a really fucked up Banjo-Tooieian way and nobody can take that away from me. The thing I can see becoming the second most contentious aspect about the game, what I thought would be the primary contention until I got to the ending (which I'll get to in a bit, and without spoiling anything, but if you don't want to know literally anything just be forewarned), is the open world game design elements. The best way to describe it is probably Xenoblade with some pointless Ubisoft shit, but it's not really as bad as it sounds, and much of it is entirely optional only providing secondary or tertiary benefits to character progression. As a "modern" interpretation of the original's wide, open, and mostly empty fields populated by sets of random enemy tables, I think it's probably a fair enough way to go about things. The life springs and towers I wasn't so much a fan of, like why do the towers play the BotW theme But At Home when you activate them, but the summon temple thingies felt a lot more meaningful than just picking up a materia off the ground, like how it usually worked in the original (seriously who was dropping all those bahamut variants and just leaving them there). The map designs themselves I did enjoy though, even if the Cosmo Canyon and Gongaga regions can be a little tedious at times, I honestly prefer having to mentally map out the geographical logic of an open world than the modern trend of empty fields with little identity and often no reason to engage with a game's environments and systems.

That said, the more linear "dungeon" levels are kinda mostly the same deal, but they did an even better job at making them feel like real places you're exploring this time 'round, as opposed to the modified FF13 hallway dealie in Remake. They're still largely linear, but the best way to explain why I think they work better is how the Final Fantasy standby of forked paths with option A being progression and option B being a treasure chest is more heavily obscured; I actually got a little bit lost in a couple of levels!!! Though sometimes that was the result of perhaps poor tutorialization of a level's specific gimmick or progress not being visually distinct enough, which like god damn the graphics are so fucking good in this game that it's almost hard to see anything unless I walked up to my TV (maybe I just need to invest in a larger screen for my old lady eyes but whateverrr), it's no wonder that there are several areas where the Uncharted climbing walls have the RE4R yellow paint on them. I know people are gonna slam the game for shit like that, which is like, yeah I can kinda get it, personally would've preferred more non-diegetic signaling over things that make me have annoying CinemaSin-esque intrusive thoughts about "who is painting all this shit out here in the middle of nowhere".

And you know, it's not gonna be the most discussed thing in the end, as uninspired as Rebirth's "structural quirks" may feel now, they'll probly become innocuous given enough time; that's just how these thing typically go. I wanna say the same will happen for the game's ending which... yeah. Not gonna say much here, but if you find yourself frustrated by it, I'd say give yourself some space and rewatch it on YouTube or something. It's a lot to take in, and I found it a lot more impactful after I had gotten some sleep and finally digested what was being shown to me. I don't think it was all exactly what I wanted it to be, far from it maybe, but there's something to be said about the way the entirety of Rebirth takes special moments dear to us and recontextualizes them into new special moments, sometimes even more special.

And a bit of a tangent, but I loathe the critic scores for this game. Not so much because they're necessarily wrong for enjoying the game, but because I'm starting to strongly believe that art, and especially interactive art, can't really be quantified on such simple terms, especially when people tend to have such viscerally opposed reactions to their experiences with any given work. What does a 10/10 even mean? On a personal level I could almost understand, but detached from the context of that personal experience how can we consider any piece of media to be in some arbitrary upper percentile of perfection? I guess I'm saying this because I know with scores like that people are going to come at this game with a certain set of expectations, but despite it being one of the most gorgeous and polished Final Fantasy titles that CBU1 has brought out in recent years, it's a deeply uneven experience. You will be frustrated, maybe you'll even get annoyed at the many side quests that suck ass and are total shit!!! Or something, maybe you'll hate the combat even if it's exactly what my brain has always wanted FF7's combat to be. But I guess like, when you look at a piece of art in its totality as opposed to a given qualification of Good or Bad, it's easier to just appreciate things as they are. Or even fucking hate them for what they are! People on this website tend to tear the shit out of really popular games and who's to say they're wrong for looking past consensus into a deeper inner truth, which you know, even if that comes from a place of unfounded contrarianism, good for them, man. Fuck video games!!

I hope it doesn't come off like I'm waffling or anything, I just really love this game, and I feel like the things I hated about it only made me love it more in a really fucked up way. I think playing Drakengard 3 for the first time a year ago gave me brain damage or something. Also like, on a final note, let me get more on brand here: there's some premier fucking queerbaiting going on here, and if that ain't more accurate to the actual single lesbian in her early 30s experience than any other AAA video game that has some fake ass porn-afflicted interpretation of sapphic romance where flesh puppets say sweet nothings at each other after completing a single questline or whatever the fuck, than I don't know what is. Anyways, sorry I had to make it gay in the end, but truly that is what the Final Fantasy VII was about all along: twinks with swords and bisexual women who can suplex kaijus. Which, you know, being able to do the latter is what's going to be main determinant if part 3 is good or not, so the ball's in your court now Square...

It has Koromaru, therefore it's peak. I haven't played any other versions of Persona 3 so I'm glad I finally got to experience it after all these years.

Loved the story overall, especially the ending.. it was beautiful and left me very satisfied. Everything else was also on par, from the characters, to the voice acting, to the visuals, to the music, to the combat. It's consistently great throughout the entire game. It is also worth mentioning the UI because they most definitely cooked.

I had the most fun in Tartarus, grinding away, searching every corner for chests and fighting EVERY shadow I spot. I tried using all the characters and everyone felt strong which was really nice because I often tend to use the same party members in these types of games. I played 99% of the game with Direct Commands on because the one time I changed it to Act Freely, I didn't like it. Having controls over your party is just convenient, especially with the addition of Theurgy, which is basically your ultimate ability that you charge up over time and does crazy damage, heals your party or sometimes even buff them.

I will be running it back with another playthrough so I can get all of the achievements and I can't wait to go through Tartarus all over again with the SEES squad.

KOROMARUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!

"the sins of the yakuza are mine. and if i have to, i'll take on every last one."

i have spent the past month and a half playing the entire yakuza series. blood, sweat, tears, and hundreds of hours have gone into this journey that slowly rose to the crescendo that is infinite wealth. but now that i'm here, there is a void inside me left by the man whose entire legacy has been built up over the entire series.

it's rare i genuinely get deeply involved into the story of any game or series. these days games just seem to take the same plots and rehash them over and over again and so the idea of a good "story" was kind of lost to me. the story of kiryu is one that managed to slowly consume me as the series progressed, and i struggle to see how they can top what they managed to achieve with infinite wealth. it's not often you keep a main character around across almost 10 games and multiple decades, but they somehow managed to do it.

they connect all the dots between you and your past lives, and it feels like you are forcefully but hesitantly dragged into accepting fate alongside kiryu. the memory links you come across touch on aspects of every game and had me so emotional so many times. at times it felt like the world would fall apart without this man, yet he managed to hold it together every time.

"me? i'll take on the yakuza's past. but you... i want you to handle their future."

it really did feel like this game was kiryu passing the torch to ichiban in hopes of creating a better yakuza world. i didn't know how to feel about this since 7 left me with a weird taste, but over the course of this game i warmed up to the idea of it and like the character that ichiban has turned into, one who can obtain that legendary status.

the same goes for the gameplay; 7 was definitely pretty rough and i'll be the first to say i was not the biggest fan of the jrpg transition. 8 changed my mind completely on that matter; every small thing that annoyed me completely disappeared and was replaced with even more of what i loved. the combat, the jobs, the substories, everything just felt like it meshed together perfectly.

this isn't a game i can coherently explain in a review, it is something you need to experience yourself. play the yakuza series in its entirety. yes, it is going to take you forever to complete, but i promise you it is a peak gaming experience.

i really don't know what i'm going to do next, i don't know what rgg is going to do next, but i do know that whatever it is, i'm here for it.

it made it to my top 5 for a reason.

also i would die for seonhee.

bon voyage.

Apocalypse is one of my favorite Megami Tensei games - to me, this game offers some of the best combat and boss fights in the franchise, with a wide variety of quick, addicting side quests to keep you constantly engaged and seeing new opponents. The writing, while largely pretty corny, wraps around into being cool as shit near the end with one of the most outrageous power trip endings of all time. I refuse to believe the Anarchy ending wasn't intentionally written as the ultimate payoff for people who did not like this game's cast.