Losing your mind, at the end of the world

Just getting started into this Nier/Drakengard universe left me with it's first game: Drakengard. It was hard to summarize and organize my thoughts on it once reaching ending D without looking insane and just spitting words out of my mind, just because. Well, I'd say Drakengard made me feel like that few hours after finishing it; insane.

What is Drakengard exactly? Take the best aspects of a "Warriors" game and take half of the fun of it. "Warriors" as in Dynasty Warriors, or musou as the genre is called. So the basic premise for grounded combat is to decimate the targets present at the battlefield within a large and endless hordes of enemies that will stand in your way. But unlike most musou games, as I said before it strips away the sense of power and control in the middle of chaos giving us a combat system that shits the bed as soon as we want to take it seriously; because it doesn't want to. Between engage with the combat system or to exploit what little advantages you have against the enemies is much prefered to do the latter as there isn't any incentive to play fair. And that's all you'll be getting out of it, at least when it comes to grounded combat. Just kill whoever is in your path to victory and continue to the next level, sort of like an arcade game. It blends both action and RPG elements as expected from an Square Enix game, the more you kill the more experience you have. And the word "kill" isn't used lightly in this game, I'll go deeply into it later.

Though the title is called Drakengard, or "Drag-On Dragoon" in japan which means we'll be able to ride a dragon and...basically do the same thing as we did on ground but taking action to the skies. Overall, it feels nice travelling with Angelus, which is the dragon's name from basic movement to dodge any sort of projectiles. This is were my praises for it end, as attacking is misserable; trying to land a hit on a target is a test of patience which I lost several times. On some levels both dragoon and grounded combat are combined as one, taking the best and the worse of both worlds. Caim's is slow but less prone to be attacked and Angelus has a fragile nature, but it's much more capable at taking a big amount of enemies with her breath of fire. Though, it's not as deep as it sounds since there are two valid strategies to follow: A. Waste a big amount of time at foot, not using the dragon at any time. B. Carefully managing space with Angelus this makes you travel faster but again she's more prone to be damaged and so does you. C. Kill the archers with Caim and then hop on Angelus to clean the rest of the area including the targets. So that wraps up the basics of combat in Drakengard, but you'll have to experience as words can't describe with ease how jank and badly designed it gets. Not only that, it will try to break you with an over-reliance on doing the same task of killing enemies over and over again so much so I started to become numb to everything combat-related and just go with it. Just as Caim.

Caim story starts right after being fatally wounded in battle, close to dying. But he doesn't give up, he sees a dragon nearby in similar conditions as him and negotiates a pact in order of both of them to live. The dragon refuses the offer multiple times, but Caim manages to convince her. A pact is formed at the cost of Caim's voice, his mark is located exactly in his tongue. Caim sheer power of will didn't let him die, even making a pact with a dragon; creatures that he despises with all his heart. Thus Caim tale of revenge and decay starts. It's a nice, more calm beginning to what will ultimately be a downward spiral into madness. It sets the tone, wildly different from more Square-Enix RPGs, present the characters and their motivations; specially when it comes to Caim.

The story itself feels like a deconstruction on most JRPGs stories, or rather a darker and less care-free version of them. It can also be applied to the classic tale of the hero. It asks the question: How much are you willing to sacrifice in order to fullfil your goals? Caim is the perfect protagonist, at least for this kind of twisted story: Shoot, ask questions later. In this story Angelus takes the role of being our companion, alongside a psychopath she's our voice of reason up to chapter 8. Caim is not the hero, nor is the villain as while his reason to go against the empire can be seen as noble; a feature present on most hero stories, his endless bloodlust for revenge which is what drives him forward can also be seen as feature of a villain. But on Drakengard there is no moral ground, everyone is either sick in the head or can get easily warped into different characters altogether in a matter of seconds; just as Inuart, Seere or Leonard can. Every non-playable stories are fragmented through different endings, having five in total.

If anything Drakengard made the narrative most of it's personality, carried with the most shitty gameplay imaginable. I appreciate everything Drakengard set to do back in 2003, shit's crazy, bold, confident while a bit stupid and isn't afraid to throw ideas to the mix. The gameplay indirectly made me numb to the act of "killing" itself, in which Angelus and the priest often remark that Caim might be taking things way too far. The act of killing takes the backseat most of the time, having no consequences on the story whatsoever until it happens to you, or well, Caim. Specially on Ending B.

Give it a try if curious. Words alone can't describe this game, it speaks for itself.

Quite a departure of the games I use to review on this site. Whacky chaos, violence, emotionally gripping moments, thought-provoking narratives with a nice sense of style. I'd argue those are the type of games I like to play for the most part, but more ofthen than not I'm willing to give other genres a chance once I get tired, and Gris caught me at the right mood to enjoy it.

Gris doesn't try to be more than what already is. An artsy game that talks about the loss of a loved one and how to ultimately deal with that event, through acceptance. Yeah, it's the so common message about just moving forward with your life facing the reality that it is in front of you. But Gris is subtle as there isn't any dialogue present, just some little interaction between the characters. So, the overall narrative is hidden under a layer of pastel colors and abstract geometry.

The lack of gameplay from the start is quite a letdown, but towards the end it starts to get really good might I say I was having fun doing some puzzles and I suck at puzzles. These were really enjoyable to figure it out alá Limbo just not as extreme. Mix it with a gorgeus art direction and everything just fits together. Doesn't try be more than that, it is a beautiful artistic and technical showcase for Nomada Studio.

And please, buy the soundtrack as well. Just lovely, happy mellow vibes.

Sunshine is certainly a strange game to talk about. It has a lot of poisitives aspects that neither Super Mario 64 nor it's sequel Super Mario Galaxy has but also many negatives that drags the game to the bottom of the list when it comes to 3D Mario games for me. The black sheep, the odd one, the weird kid in class you name it.

Mario and, his friends? Travel to Isle Delfino, for a sweet-sweet vacation. Arriving at the airport, a mysterious slime-like substace blocks the way and who else but Mario needs to clear this mess literally speaking with F.L.U.D.D which is sort of an AI-water pump machine, it basically just shoots water and speaks. This is used to defeat the creature that spawned out of that gloop, a Piranha Plant covered in gloop. After defeating it, we're directly sent to jail by the Isle Delfino police force. Why? A criminal, shockling similar to Mario was causing havoc on the island. With everything to lose on our end, they throw us out to court to prove our innocence minutes after arriving to the island. We can't defend nor escape from Isle Delfino corrupt legal system, with proof as revealing as a drawing of the "criminal". It's not all that bad, instead of serving jail we're forced to clean this whole mess up and caught the criminal in the process. Notice how Bowser was never mentioned at the start? Not even the evil laugh of his like in Super Mario 64. That was really refreshing to see for once, even though I knew he would appear soon enough anyways.

As a sort of sequel to Super Mario 64 it follows more or less the same principles as you may expect. General movement in Sunshine eliminated the kind of cool but at the end of the day useless movements that you could do with mario in 64, only having the essentials to work with now. Probably to give more space to F.L.U.D.D. So, it is no possible to crouch anymore alongside other useful moves that were outright removed. "Humping the Floor" or dive which performed by repeatedly pressing "B" while running will be one of the most advanced techniques in mario's arsenal without F.U.D.D to gain speed while on the floor, and on air if you need a little push. Basic jumps that don't require the use of the crouch button from Super Mario 64/Super Mario Galaxy such as the "Side Summersault" are present, with an all-new adition: "The Spin Jump", one of my favorite moves in the 3D Mario games, is performed by spinning the analog stick in circles and letting mario jump with "A", this will result in him spinning midair covering a lot more vertcal space than the side summerault jump would. Useful at times were the side summersault jump isn't enough to reach a certain platform and the space itself is tight enough to not reach a third jump. It's simple, but wonderfully complex.

But, mario needs to land somewhere and the world needs to respond to his actions. This is where Sunshine starts to crumble, just a little bit. First, mario has a blazing fast acceleration and very little traction on ground which allows reaching top speed almost immediately. This is actually bad in practice if we're talking about a platformer. Just imagine being on the ledge of a platform, but as you are preparing to jump you suddenly slip off the edge it sort of feels like that. Mario reacts to the floor as he was made out of butter, mario can slip on some occations outside the one I already mentioned and more often that not gain super speed out of nowhere during a dive or you accidentaly do a side summersault jump, instead of a simple jump just trying to quickly turn around mario, thus leaving to you covering a lot of vertical space but not much horizontal space and most likely miss what was basically just a regular jump to another platform.

On the other hand, we have the levels themselves. This is when Sunshine show it's real ugly face. Let's get out the positives first, as it has a big one. The levels vary depending on which start you choose, meaning every start is an "Episode" of sorts or a new take on the already stablished level so every "Shine" is it's own story and adventure. It is the difference between a mission, and a objective basically. The more starts we end up getting on a level, the more it will open up for us meaning there are not only new Shines to but more coins to collect. Every level is, as you may imagine is summer themed. It explores every inch of the island, such as ports, villages, parks, etc. Love me a good summer centric game. Sadly I played this on winter while it was raining outside, yikes. It is commited to one thing and one thing only which is this vacation-summer feeling. Alright, down to the negatives. Missions or "Episodes" are plain unbalanced. Some Shines will require much more effort to get than others. No shit captain obvious, I'm mainly refering to Shines within the level itself, each one can radically fluctuate the difficulty depending on which episode you are. Episode 1 can be an easy short introduction to a level, on Episode 2 it can be a cryptic nightmare but by Episode 7 is a matter of sprying Shadow Mario until he stops moving lasting only a matter of seconds. See where I am getting at? It is not consistent at all, it can lead to some surprises but that's it you never know what to expect next which can also be a positive to some. For me it was exciting and terrifying the same, what kind of bullshit will they throw now? Look at the Sirena Beach Episode 3, tell me I'm not the only crazy one here. The chuckster shine can leave a mark, almost broke my cheap chinese gamecube controller with that one. The level designers were in a really bad mood that day.

This was only covering the main stages needed to progress on the story. You'll need to clear 7 Shines out of the 7 main levels there are in total. Levels taking place in Delfino Plaza are not necessary, though if you are going for the 100% it is required to complete every single on of them including the blue coins which I briefly mention earlier. These optional levels are without a doubt one of the hardest I've ever played in a 3D mario game. Yes, they are short, but can be lethal on long sessions. Not exactly hard because they impose a fair challenge, but because they barely work. Namely, and the most outspoken example: The Pachinko. You have to try it for yourself. The rest are merely forgettable. Every level has a determinated amount of blue coins that can be exchange on Delfino Plaza, each 10 blue coins is a star. But this is not important at the end of the day, as I just said it's just optional content.

Didn't quite like Sunshine overall. Solid start off, but then it started to dwindle and throw whatever bullshit was at their hand without much rhyme or reason as it goes on. I did had fun on moments, when the difficulty wasn't brutally punishing or moments were I did felt there was a fair challenge but nevertheless those moments were far and between from all the frustrating designed elements Sunshine deliberately chose to put above everything else which is quite sad. Playing this an adult made me easlly spot most of it's problems my younger self couldn't.