unbelievably ahead of its time, the meta storytelling & unwaveringly ambitious presentation give this game an atmosphere and general vibe like nothing else - it feels like it belongs to the same band of hugely accomplished 5th gen games as silent hill and vagrant story but you can definitely feel its influence pop up in some v different gaming circles, the team ico vibes here are exactly as potent as you might expect

I didn't come out of it feeling like I had just experienced a total masterpiece or anything but I was still VERY into its sense of subtlety and restraint, the team's attempts to turn saga into a genuinely countercultural jrpg consistently shine through. the character design is strange and hard to parse, the cutscenes have a consistent sense of quiet tension and the gameplay often takes a backseat when it needs to, it's really great!

I love the decision to keep the voice acting in japanese in all versions as well, I'd probably prefer a pseudo-language so that the untranslated version would have this too but the sense of mystery it gives the dialogue when you can't understand it is fantastic, it's a shame 'panzerese' generally sounds kinda goofy but something like NieR's chaos language would've been perfect. as it stands it seems very well acted to someone not versed in the language, I just can't be bothered to dig up any japanese discussion of the game to find out whether that's true lmao

anyway i'm going to steal azel's gender. thank u for reading