poochy
2020
I've had my eye on World of Horror for a long time now, patiently waiting for the game to come out of early access. It feels pointless to even discuss what pulled me into the game; it basically sells itself 'cause... just look at it! Look. at. it.
Every single screen of this game drips with one of the most incredible aesthetics I've ever seen in a game. The 2-bit art works so perfectly at making its gruesome imagery and overload of information put upon you at all times so evoking to look at. Even opening an item's submenu and seeing 20 different icons I can't click on and don't know what they do is interesting here. Combined with a really well-done soundtrack, it's hard not to be completely enraptured by what's in front of me at all times playing the game. I can imagine how the simple art allowed for the solo developer (who apparently made the game part time while being a dentist?!) to flesh out a lot of unique scenarios, which is of course vital for a rougelike.
Indeed, the game has an immense amount of things going on throughout the five different mysteries you tackle each run. So many different encounters with a breadth of different, often very precarious effects, a stupidly high number of unique enemies, and different permutations of survivors, old gods, and backstories to shape the entire way you have to play, there's a lot unique going on. I've beaten 3 runs of the game so far, with 2 more I fucked myself out of victory in the very final stretch out of greed and bad memory (and very precisely those two things!). Even as I slowly work through the game's systems, it's kept up the feeling of being arcane and dangerous.
Indeed, the world never lets you breathe for too long, constantly having to keep up the spinning plates of your two different health meters, injuries you can sustain, and an almost ever-increasing DOOM meter that does exactly what you'd expect it to if it ever reaches 100%. (Spoilers: You're doomed!) This is where most of the game's horror comes in, constantly under stress of being just a couple of bad decisions away from all of reality crumbling away. The game definitely has a couple of scares and plenty of unsettling things as you'd expect—a few of the DOOM-based game over texts have been lingering in my mind since I've first read them—but it's all very manageable and interspersed with a solid layer of shlockiness.
At first, I was really unsure about the game's structure, as the genre's fatal question lightly flickered in the back of my mind: "would I have liked this more if it wasn't a roguelike?". The way each case you take lays out is admittedly strange. Each case's story advances when you explore a certain area, but the encounter you get while exploring is not one tied to the case and you can go explore other areas at your... something vaguely approximating leisure. The case stories are fun little experiences, but of course with the roguelike nature, you'll be seeing these cases several times over (more often than the individual events for certain), so what's left?? Then I realized, even as the exact case events fade into the background on successive runs, so pops out the natural stories of a playthrough.
Getting a particularly bad skill check roll and catching the attention of a being known simply as [SOMETHING TRULY EVIL], a constant presence just out of sight throughout the run, slowly getting closer... When I tried to save and quit out of the game, all I was told is [YOU CANNOT RUN FROM SOMETHING TRULY EVIL]. When I tried to rest at my very own home, I was threatened with [SOMETHING TRULY EVIL KNOWS WHERE YOU LIVE]. When the mysterious figure finally lurched upon me, the screen glitching nonstop, all I could do was [CRY FOR IT], [BLEED FOR IT], and finally [DIE FOR IT], and in my struggle against these options, I was forced upon the third one. I later found out that this series of events ruining my entire run were something I could have survived through, but it still left it an incredibly visceral, awesome experience.
Contrast that, on one of my last runs, I came out of a boss literally as close to death as possible, getting rid of all my items and spells in a play that I'm still surprised got me out of the fight alive. I spent the rest of the game getting by on the skin of my teeth and then, by the highest grace of god, that ended up a run I won. All of the stress and fear of what could destroy me around the corner in the face of glorious victory. It's the best rougelike feeling you could ask for.
So, the game works really well as a roguelike, one that keeps pulling me back in the more I think about it, like it's an elder god of its own. Sure, there's a couple of small issues I have with the game that I could elaborate more upon, namely the limited feeling combat system with defensive options that feel like they cost too much to be worth using. I'm sure as I play a bit more the repetition of the 24 cases will start to grate on me and I will start to really see the seams of repetition and eventually I will get bored of continuing it, just as I do with every game. However, even if I stopped right now, the time I put into the experience would be more than satisfying. It's all not a very big deal though in the face of everything else feeling viscerally unique and interesting. Definitely one of the best games released so far this year.
Every single screen of this game drips with one of the most incredible aesthetics I've ever seen in a game. The 2-bit art works so perfectly at making its gruesome imagery and overload of information put upon you at all times so evoking to look at. Even opening an item's submenu and seeing 20 different icons I can't click on and don't know what they do is interesting here. Combined with a really well-done soundtrack, it's hard not to be completely enraptured by what's in front of me at all times playing the game. I can imagine how the simple art allowed for the solo developer (who apparently made the game part time while being a dentist?!) to flesh out a lot of unique scenarios, which is of course vital for a rougelike.
Indeed, the game has an immense amount of things going on throughout the five different mysteries you tackle each run. So many different encounters with a breadth of different, often very precarious effects, a stupidly high number of unique enemies, and different permutations of survivors, old gods, and backstories to shape the entire way you have to play, there's a lot unique going on. I've beaten 3 runs of the game so far, with 2 more I fucked myself out of victory in the very final stretch out of greed and bad memory (and very precisely those two things!). Even as I slowly work through the game's systems, it's kept up the feeling of being arcane and dangerous.
Indeed, the world never lets you breathe for too long, constantly having to keep up the spinning plates of your two different health meters, injuries you can sustain, and an almost ever-increasing DOOM meter that does exactly what you'd expect it to if it ever reaches 100%. (Spoilers: You're doomed!) This is where most of the game's horror comes in, constantly under stress of being just a couple of bad decisions away from all of reality crumbling away. The game definitely has a couple of scares and plenty of unsettling things as you'd expect—a few of the DOOM-based game over texts have been lingering in my mind since I've first read them—but it's all very manageable and interspersed with a solid layer of shlockiness.
At first, I was really unsure about the game's structure, as the genre's fatal question lightly flickered in the back of my mind: "would I have liked this more if it wasn't a roguelike?". The way each case you take lays out is admittedly strange. Each case's story advances when you explore a certain area, but the encounter you get while exploring is not one tied to the case and you can go explore other areas at your... something vaguely approximating leisure. The case stories are fun little experiences, but of course with the roguelike nature, you'll be seeing these cases several times over (more often than the individual events for certain), so what's left?? Then I realized, even as the exact case events fade into the background on successive runs, so pops out the natural stories of a playthrough.
Getting a particularly bad skill check roll and catching the attention of a being known simply as [SOMETHING TRULY EVIL], a constant presence just out of sight throughout the run, slowly getting closer... When I tried to save and quit out of the game, all I was told is [YOU CANNOT RUN FROM SOMETHING TRULY EVIL]. When I tried to rest at my very own home, I was threatened with [SOMETHING TRULY EVIL KNOWS WHERE YOU LIVE]. When the mysterious figure finally lurched upon me, the screen glitching nonstop, all I could do was [CRY FOR IT], [BLEED FOR IT], and finally [DIE FOR IT], and in my struggle against these options, I was forced upon the third one. I later found out that this series of events ruining my entire run were something I could have survived through, but it still left it an incredibly visceral, awesome experience.
Contrast that, on one of my last runs, I came out of a boss literally as close to death as possible, getting rid of all my items and spells in a play that I'm still surprised got me out of the fight alive. I spent the rest of the game getting by on the skin of my teeth and then, by the highest grace of god, that ended up a run I won. All of the stress and fear of what could destroy me around the corner in the face of glorious victory. It's the best rougelike feeling you could ask for.
So, the game works really well as a roguelike, one that keeps pulling me back in the more I think about it, like it's an elder god of its own. Sure, there's a couple of small issues I have with the game that I could elaborate more upon, namely the limited feeling combat system with defensive options that feel like they cost too much to be worth using. I'm sure as I play a bit more the repetition of the 24 cases will start to grate on me and I will start to really see the seams of repetition and eventually I will get bored of continuing it, just as I do with every game. However, even if I stopped right now, the time I put into the experience would be more than satisfying. It's all not a very big deal though in the face of everything else feeling viscerally unique and interesting. Definitely one of the best games released so far this year.
This review contains spoilers
I knew Final Fantasy XV was a massive mess of a game. I’ve known it ever since the game came out in 2016, consequently seeing them try to patch it together into something more coherent. Despite that deep-seeded knowledge, what drew me to this? Was it a pressing desire to engage in high octane combat after a series of games with sparse physical gameplay engagement? The fact it was on sale for $14? A gut feeling that I would actually think the game is pretty good (I mean it was patched a bunch)??? Was it the twinks????????? The answers naturally follow: yes. Ultimately, it’s the hunter to blame for being slain by the beast if they were given sufficient precaution to its ferocity.
These initial drawings started to wear away quite quickly. After an opening that throws you into it with little pretense and the "Stand By Me" car pushing scene that I always thought was referring to the movie when people have talked about it prior, combat rears its fangs. You can attack enemies with a volley of sword swings, warp to enemies, have your allies pull off their own moves, aaaaand... that's about it!
To be blunt: the combat sucks. Even my desire for something physically engaging is shot by the fact that the basic cadence the sword not feeling very satisfying. Otherwise, you can use the complete non-starter of a magic system or cutscene attacks that lose their luster almost immediately. With so few options at your disposal, it ends up being perhaps the very epitome of hold attack to win... very slowly... either taking down one giant dude with way too much health, or handling a way too large number of goons in a game severely lacking in crowd control options, often just leading to a several minute long clusterfuck.
Sword warping is perhaps the most disappointing element, when its so clearly meant to be this combat's "thing". You can warp to an enemy to do a fairly strong attack, you can warp to a safe point to heal, and... again, that's it! Frustratingly, the game does show the cinematics it so desperately wants for all of two boss fights: following them throughout the air, clashing arms, sending them to the ground. It makes every other uninteresting, incredibly samey-feeling fight all the most frustrating, because there's clearly potential here that's barely tapped into.
This fleeting potential is a story that repeats itself throughout just about every single aspect of the game. A couple of moments of absolute brilliance that's drowned out by a flood of incredibly poor construction. One particularly prominent beacon of light shines during the open world exploration, a fairly novel approach to it where you're largely stuck to your car as a base, going from it out to do sidequests before wrapping back to a campsite or hotel after a couple to cash in your experience. While the world itself is fairly barren—with a number of enterable buildings rivaling that of the latest Pokemon games and sparse incentive for natural exploration outside of sidequests—the interactions with your cast are such a treat that it made the mundanity of the moment-to-moment gameplay itself so much more tolerable.
Noctis's entourage—Prompto, Gladiolus, and Ignis—are the blazing heart and soul of the game. There's a bevy of unique lines for each location and quest and really eloquently made animations for each camping section. One of my favorite moments was after camping for the night, when Prompto asked me to wake up early the next morning for a short sidequest to capture a picture of a giant monster nearby. It was such a natural excursion that really made the game feel alive for those few moments, like I was really going on a road trip with my bros. It's a great feeling! Prompto ended up my favorite of the bunch, not just because he's the cutest (though that does help!), but the way his photography integrates so naturally over the course of the game. It's such a joy flipping through the snapshots while camping as a brief retrospect of what you did, saving the best to create a growing compendium of your entire adventure. And to the game's credit, it very well knows this!
It's so great then when the game decides to rip off what little appeal is left draped on its shambling corpse. I was well aware that the open world is abandoned in the game's back half for something strictly linear, but it didn't properly prepare me for how much it would make the open nature of the game prior a fading star. All of the time spent on a roadtrip with your pals is thrown out for traveling down a fuckton of barren hallways getting into the nitty gritty bullshit of its swiss cheese-ass story. It's really, really hard to care about a lot of the events that are going on when the game never takes the care to set them up properly due to its immensely fucked up dev cycle. How am I supposed to care about the death of Ravus when he's in two scenes of the game prior and gets his demise announced in a completely missable radio broadcast???
So many characters in the game end up unceremoniously killed despite having 5 minutes of screentime prior. Noctis's dad being assassinated in a nonsensical supercut of a scene from the Kingsglaive movie that wasn't even in the game prior to its day one patch. Jared's death leading to Noctis having an outsized breakdown for a character that is the most literal who imaginable. Lunafreya being such an important cornerstone of the game's plot, but the swift knife of messy development basically cutting her out of the game!!! Did you know: the developers of the game called her a strong female character? Despite the only thing she actually does in the game is help make sure her groom-to-be could continue on his destined path???? But hey, another character calls her strong for doing this in a flashback several hours after her death, so its fine.
The linearity really comes to a head in the penultimate Chapter 13, a winding gauntlet where you're stripped of both allies and weapons. You have to slowly plod through this place, slowly gaining back what you've lost to overcome the odds. I can see the intention: illuminating the weaknesses and insecurities of Noctis as a solitary figure, split apart from the allies so vital to him. It's meant to be scary, but it just ends up being tedious. It really had no reason to keep going and going and going AND GOING, keeping up the same monotony for a solid hour. And this is after the patch that gave you the ability to sprint during the chapter and let you kill enemies way faster! I can only imagine how miserable playing this chapter must've been at launch.
But for all the misses with its ideas the game has, again, some of its ideas are still able to shine through. After Ignis is blinded due to [DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT], you spend Chapter 11 traversing a dungeon where the tensions of the group are at an all time high. Gladiolus just got done yelling at Noctis for his inabilities and now you have to slowly walk through this pit while making sure the cane-wielding Ignis doesn't fall behind. If you try to go ahead, Prompto and Gladio will passive-aggressively snark at you to wait up. The whole experience genuinely started to piss me off, bringing me right into their shared mindset. By focusing on these characters I already grew an attachment to in the game's first half, it ends up being an incredibly effective, and genuinely impressive, unity of gameplay and story beats.
This game has a vision that illuminates so clearly in its final act. Noctis Lucis Caelum: a pampered prince thrust out into the real world, going on a 10-year journey to learn the sacrifices we must make for each other such that he is able to become the King of Kings and free his kingdom and his people of the darkness once and for all. When he's able to enter the throne room for his final duel, he takes one last look through the photographs saved throughout the journey, a reflection of all everything that led to him being the man he's become. This moment shows that the developers knew what they had here, and it hit me so well. Then Noctis enters the throne room, and makes the ultimate sacrifice to complete his destiny. And the final scene transitioning into the game's logo. Beautiful on a level few games are able to reach. On paper, it is such an incredible epic to be told.
Which makes it so supremely frustrating that's not what Final Fantasy XV is.
The losses Noctis has suffered are almost all stunted by being characters with so little screentime or being omitted almost entirely. The 10-year timeskip just kinda happens without much reasoning behind it, besides it advancing what the devs wanted the endpoint of the game to be. It ends up being really jarring, and hampers Noctis's grand return when he was only gone for like 30 minutes of actual game time. The game brings itself to such an epic conclusion, with its lavishly rendered cutscenes and incredible music, without building up a story that deserves such a finale.
And yet, the final campfire scene, where Noctis, about to leave behind his friends for good, tearfully bears out his love for them. And it got me! Because I love these characters! It's such a genuine, hearfelt, incredible place to leave them off, it almost makes me angry. Noctis, Prompto, Gladio, and Ignis deserve the 9/10 game this 4/10 game so desperately wants to be, but it's too late for that to happen.
—————————————————
I also played the four DLC episodes that released, the first three presenting the truth of things that happen to the three members of Noct's entourage in their absence that are never elaborated on in the game. While on their own they're largely inoffensive (a tedious enemy gauntlet, a not very good feeling shooter, and an actually pretty cool elemental combat system), they mainly suffer from the fact that, since they're so disconnected from the game itself, what happens in them can't actually have an impact on the main game's story. Gladio's and Prompto's stories don't end up adding to their respective characters much, and perhaps even worse, Ignis's does!!!
Finding out the reason Igniswent blind is that he sacrificed it to put on a holy ring and save his king is so much cooler than what I expected the reason to be and fits in so well with the game's central theming of sacrifice. It makes it all the more frustrating that this can't be explored in the main game because the reasoning for his blindness is completely skimmed over there. I don't understand if its out of a greedy desire to make people buy the DLC or a prideful desire to only show this reveal in the best light possible, but even if they couldn't rewrite the story with the mess they had... at least mention this plot point! Even the messy development can't really excuse the nonsensicality of this.
Then there's Episode Ardyn, following the eponymous villain of the game (which was spoiled for me due to the DLC's description. lol. lmao). The gameplay is genuinely really cool, with what's by far the best boss fight in the entire game, for as low a bar as it is. Yet, letting the story sink in during the following hours has soured me a fair bit on it. Selfsame to my problem with the other episodes, the story it covers just does not interact well with the main game its supposed to slide into, and even worse feels kind of contradictory. Ardyn turns out to have been the true king chosen by the gods and Noctis's ancestor, the first king of Insomnia, acknowledges himself as something of an illegitimate heir? Perhaps I did not read well enough, but that sense of Ardyn being a tragic villain who was betrayed does not come across AT ALL in the main game. In fact, it makes the whole story of Noctis coming back to reclaim his throne feel kinda weird!
This was meant to be the start of a series of DLCs, Dawn of the Future, with an alternate telling of the game's story, before being unceremoniously canned in possibly the strangest developer broadcast of all time. Ardyn and Noctis and others were to team up against the gods and unseal themselves from the fate set upon them, with a drastically different ending from the one in the main game. While I'm not against the concept of DLC delving into alternative storylines, its such a bizarre decision here. Final Fantasy XV's ending is already its best realized part and is firmly rooted in the idea of Noctis fulfilling his destiny. To make a path focused on breaching that destiny feels like it undermines what made the original ending so powerful.
All of this DLC doesn't change what Final Fantasy XV is: a deeply disappointing, unfinished, not very fun to play game. If they didn't want to make the full effort to integrate these stories into the game, I really don't think they should've bothered. It's not that I would expect them to do that, considering how much effort would need to be put in to wrangle this game together into a something that's truly quality. This isn't something that could be, or should be fixed. The effort required would be so much better put into new stories and experiences. I don't even feel like I wasted time with this game, despite having such a distain for so much of it. Despite everything, this game still managed to make me care about Final Fantasy as a series. I've dabbled in VI & VII, but this was my first time digging really deep into one, and now I'm voracious for me. I'm already planning on playing VI, and VII and VII remake and XVI when it hits PC. Final Fantasy XV is perhaps the most interesting failure of a game I have ever played, and for all of that, it at least managed to make an experience I would call unforgettable.
These initial drawings started to wear away quite quickly. After an opening that throws you into it with little pretense and the "Stand By Me" car pushing scene that I always thought was referring to the movie when people have talked about it prior, combat rears its fangs. You can attack enemies with a volley of sword swings, warp to enemies, have your allies pull off their own moves, aaaaand... that's about it!
To be blunt: the combat sucks. Even my desire for something physically engaging is shot by the fact that the basic cadence the sword not feeling very satisfying. Otherwise, you can use the complete non-starter of a magic system or cutscene attacks that lose their luster almost immediately. With so few options at your disposal, it ends up being perhaps the very epitome of hold attack to win... very slowly... either taking down one giant dude with way too much health, or handling a way too large number of goons in a game severely lacking in crowd control options, often just leading to a several minute long clusterfuck.
Sword warping is perhaps the most disappointing element, when its so clearly meant to be this combat's "thing". You can warp to an enemy to do a fairly strong attack, you can warp to a safe point to heal, and... again, that's it! Frustratingly, the game does show the cinematics it so desperately wants for all of two boss fights: following them throughout the air, clashing arms, sending them to the ground. It makes every other uninteresting, incredibly samey-feeling fight all the most frustrating, because there's clearly potential here that's barely tapped into.
This fleeting potential is a story that repeats itself throughout just about every single aspect of the game. A couple of moments of absolute brilliance that's drowned out by a flood of incredibly poor construction. One particularly prominent beacon of light shines during the open world exploration, a fairly novel approach to it where you're largely stuck to your car as a base, going from it out to do sidequests before wrapping back to a campsite or hotel after a couple to cash in your experience. While the world itself is fairly barren—with a number of enterable buildings rivaling that of the latest Pokemon games and sparse incentive for natural exploration outside of sidequests—the interactions with your cast are such a treat that it made the mundanity of the moment-to-moment gameplay itself so much more tolerable.
Noctis's entourage—Prompto, Gladiolus, and Ignis—are the blazing heart and soul of the game. There's a bevy of unique lines for each location and quest and really eloquently made animations for each camping section. One of my favorite moments was after camping for the night, when Prompto asked me to wake up early the next morning for a short sidequest to capture a picture of a giant monster nearby. It was such a natural excursion that really made the game feel alive for those few moments, like I was really going on a road trip with my bros. It's a great feeling! Prompto ended up my favorite of the bunch, not just because he's the cutest (though that does help!), but the way his photography integrates so naturally over the course of the game. It's such a joy flipping through the snapshots while camping as a brief retrospect of what you did, saving the best to create a growing compendium of your entire adventure. And to the game's credit, it very well knows this!
It's so great then when the game decides to rip off what little appeal is left draped on its shambling corpse. I was well aware that the open world is abandoned in the game's back half for something strictly linear, but it didn't properly prepare me for how much it would make the open nature of the game prior a fading star. All of the time spent on a roadtrip with your pals is thrown out for traveling down a fuckton of barren hallways getting into the nitty gritty bullshit of its swiss cheese-ass story. It's really, really hard to care about a lot of the events that are going on when the game never takes the care to set them up properly due to its immensely fucked up dev cycle. How am I supposed to care about the death of Ravus when he's in two scenes of the game prior and gets his demise announced in a completely missable radio broadcast???
So many characters in the game end up unceremoniously killed despite having 5 minutes of screentime prior. Noctis's dad being assassinated in a nonsensical supercut of a scene from the Kingsglaive movie that wasn't even in the game prior to its day one patch. Jared's death leading to Noctis having an outsized breakdown for a character that is the most literal who imaginable. Lunafreya being such an important cornerstone of the game's plot, but the swift knife of messy development basically cutting her out of the game!!! Did you know: the developers of the game called her a strong female character? Despite the only thing she actually does in the game is help make sure her groom-to-be could continue on his destined path???? But hey, another character calls her strong for doing this in a flashback several hours after her death, so its fine.
The linearity really comes to a head in the penultimate Chapter 13, a winding gauntlet where you're stripped of both allies and weapons. You have to slowly plod through this place, slowly gaining back what you've lost to overcome the odds. I can see the intention: illuminating the weaknesses and insecurities of Noctis as a solitary figure, split apart from the allies so vital to him. It's meant to be scary, but it just ends up being tedious. It really had no reason to keep going and going and going AND GOING, keeping up the same monotony for a solid hour. And this is after the patch that gave you the ability to sprint during the chapter and let you kill enemies way faster! I can only imagine how miserable playing this chapter must've been at launch.
But for all the misses with its ideas the game has, again, some of its ideas are still able to shine through. After Ignis is blinded due to [DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT], you spend Chapter 11 traversing a dungeon where the tensions of the group are at an all time high. Gladiolus just got done yelling at Noctis for his inabilities and now you have to slowly walk through this pit while making sure the cane-wielding Ignis doesn't fall behind. If you try to go ahead, Prompto and Gladio will passive-aggressively snark at you to wait up. The whole experience genuinely started to piss me off, bringing me right into their shared mindset. By focusing on these characters I already grew an attachment to in the game's first half, it ends up being an incredibly effective, and genuinely impressive, unity of gameplay and story beats.
This game has a vision that illuminates so clearly in its final act. Noctis Lucis Caelum: a pampered prince thrust out into the real world, going on a 10-year journey to learn the sacrifices we must make for each other such that he is able to become the King of Kings and free his kingdom and his people of the darkness once and for all. When he's able to enter the throne room for his final duel, he takes one last look through the photographs saved throughout the journey, a reflection of all everything that led to him being the man he's become. This moment shows that the developers knew what they had here, and it hit me so well. Then Noctis enters the throne room, and makes the ultimate sacrifice to complete his destiny. And the final scene transitioning into the game's logo. Beautiful on a level few games are able to reach. On paper, it is such an incredible epic to be told.
Which makes it so supremely frustrating that's not what Final Fantasy XV is.
The losses Noctis has suffered are almost all stunted by being characters with so little screentime or being omitted almost entirely. The 10-year timeskip just kinda happens without much reasoning behind it, besides it advancing what the devs wanted the endpoint of the game to be. It ends up being really jarring, and hampers Noctis's grand return when he was only gone for like 30 minutes of actual game time. The game brings itself to such an epic conclusion, with its lavishly rendered cutscenes and incredible music, without building up a story that deserves such a finale.
And yet, the final campfire scene, where Noctis, about to leave behind his friends for good, tearfully bears out his love for them. And it got me! Because I love these characters! It's such a genuine, hearfelt, incredible place to leave them off, it almost makes me angry. Noctis, Prompto, Gladio, and Ignis deserve the 9/10 game this 4/10 game so desperately wants to be, but it's too late for that to happen.
—————————————————
I also played the four DLC episodes that released, the first three presenting the truth of things that happen to the three members of Noct's entourage in their absence that are never elaborated on in the game. While on their own they're largely inoffensive (a tedious enemy gauntlet, a not very good feeling shooter, and an actually pretty cool elemental combat system), they mainly suffer from the fact that, since they're so disconnected from the game itself, what happens in them can't actually have an impact on the main game's story. Gladio's and Prompto's stories don't end up adding to their respective characters much, and perhaps even worse, Ignis's does!!!
Finding out the reason Igniswent blind is that he sacrificed it to put on a holy ring and save his king is so much cooler than what I expected the reason to be and fits in so well with the game's central theming of sacrifice. It makes it all the more frustrating that this can't be explored in the main game because the reasoning for his blindness is completely skimmed over there. I don't understand if its out of a greedy desire to make people buy the DLC or a prideful desire to only show this reveal in the best light possible, but even if they couldn't rewrite the story with the mess they had... at least mention this plot point! Even the messy development can't really excuse the nonsensicality of this.
Then there's Episode Ardyn, following the eponymous villain of the game (which was spoiled for me due to the DLC's description. lol. lmao). The gameplay is genuinely really cool, with what's by far the best boss fight in the entire game, for as low a bar as it is. Yet, letting the story sink in during the following hours has soured me a fair bit on it. Selfsame to my problem with the other episodes, the story it covers just does not interact well with the main game its supposed to slide into, and even worse feels kind of contradictory. Ardyn turns out to have been the true king chosen by the gods and Noctis's ancestor, the first king of Insomnia, acknowledges himself as something of an illegitimate heir? Perhaps I did not read well enough, but that sense of Ardyn being a tragic villain who was betrayed does not come across AT ALL in the main game. In fact, it makes the whole story of Noctis coming back to reclaim his throne feel kinda weird!
This was meant to be the start of a series of DLCs, Dawn of the Future, with an alternate telling of the game's story, before being unceremoniously canned in possibly the strangest developer broadcast of all time. Ardyn and Noctis and others were to team up against the gods and unseal themselves from the fate set upon them, with a drastically different ending from the one in the main game. While I'm not against the concept of DLC delving into alternative storylines, its such a bizarre decision here. Final Fantasy XV's ending is already its best realized part and is firmly rooted in the idea of Noctis fulfilling his destiny. To make a path focused on breaching that destiny feels like it undermines what made the original ending so powerful.
All of this DLC doesn't change what Final Fantasy XV is: a deeply disappointing, unfinished, not very fun to play game. If they didn't want to make the full effort to integrate these stories into the game, I really don't think they should've bothered. It's not that I would expect them to do that, considering how much effort would need to be put in to wrangle this game together into a something that's truly quality. This isn't something that could be, or should be fixed. The effort required would be so much better put into new stories and experiences. I don't even feel like I wasted time with this game, despite having such a distain for so much of it. Despite everything, this game still managed to make me care about Final Fantasy as a series. I've dabbled in VI & VII, but this was my first time digging really deep into one, and now I'm voracious for me. I'm already planning on playing VI, and VII and VII remake and XVI when it hits PC. Final Fantasy XV is perhaps the most interesting failure of a game I have ever played, and for all of that, it at least managed to make an experience I would call unforgettable.
2021
Ah, how many games I have lined up on my list to play by year's end, a list full enough it's likely I won't even get to all of them even if I tried! Yet, here I was, seeing the Nintendo Switch Online offer to play Eastward--for free! For a week! A game I've heard fairlyyyyy good things about before! How could I say no to that? On a whim, it was written, Poochy is playing Eastward.
God I wish I liked it.
Eastward is a post-post apocalyptic adventure game that, like many of its kin, explores that value of human connection. Kinda. It's depiction of the world is so rich, both in terms of the ideas presented in each area and the . Just look at any screenshot of the game, it's got some of the best pixel art work I've ever seen, with a ridiculously level of animation work and lighting that makes everything feel so alive. My Switch album is filled to the brim capturing every luscious landscape and setpiece it has in store. For that alone, it made my time in the world not regrettable.
Prior to finishing, I was under the belief every other element of the game besides its aesthetics and world design undershot what they really should have been by like 20%, but unfortunately then the ending happened. The game makes a really dangerous gambit, by spending almost the entire game setting up question after question that are all loaded onto the final act to pay off. Plenty of my favorite games go forward with this structure and are so beloved precisely because of their gambit. Eastward, however, does a number of things throughout that makes its story not just rote but kind of actively bad!
Its compulsory need to layer on mystery after mystery without explaining even fairly rudimentary things that happen. Stuff as simple as how the two main characters met each other, or basic character motivations are barely touched on and the game just treks along as if it doesn't matter. Major characters, including who could best be called the primary antagonist of the game, drop in and out of the story without much elaboration on what their deal is, and then reappear way later on having undergone radical changes that still are barely given any elaboration. So often, the perfect opportunity for characters to discuss what their deal is with each other is set up and then they just... walk away? For no real reason???
In place of focusing on its story, the game loves sending you on adjacent objectives with side characters that don't really amount to much of anything, like the beginning section of Twilight Princess strung out across an entire 20 hour adventure. In general, the game's pacing is totally fucked, with a largely nonsensical chapter structure and a really bad gameplay-to-cutscene/fetch quest ratio. There is an entire chapter where basically all you do is go through an entirely inconsequential dungeon to save two completely inconsequential NPCs, something that in any other game would be a side quest. At another point, you're going through a section about cooking food, then while you're in the middle of cooking the food the characters decide to fuck off and do something completely unrelated. Then, when they get back, the food is, predictably, ruined! So much of the game feels like its strung together via a series of disconnected "and then this happens..." instead of being based in the realm of cause and effect. It results in a story experiencing experience that often feels like pulling teeth.
Then, I reached the final chapter, the game rapidly approached the end, and... as you can probably imagine, did not stick the landing as I hoped it would. The ultimate answers to the questions it proposes are either the most obvious ones they could be or left more or less unanswered. It ends up being so frustrating to see these scenes with some absolutely jaw dropping, beautiful visuals play out with amazing music accompanying, and yet I just don't care for the emotional beats they depict. It hits all the story beats you would expect a game like this to hit, but the game hasn't done the work needed to really make me character about these characters. And the unanswered questions... I did a bit of digging afterwards to make sure I didn't just miss out on elements of the game's story, but no! The subreddit is filled with people left confused about fundamental aspects of the world and characters with responses that amount to "well I think it might be this but idk that's just my best guess".
I want to make a particular shoutout to the bizarre lack of characterization given to John, the father figure in the main playable father-daughter duo. He's a silent protagonist, which I do not have any issues with on the face of it, but the game barely gives any texture to him beyond the first 10 minutes of the game outside of a sparse few scenes. Sam, the daughter of the pairing, is talkative as all get out though. The way this ends up playing out in the vast majority of cutscenes is John being a mindless automaton following Sam while she makes every decision, including several that a father figure really should provide at least a little pushback to her making! It's hard to shake the feeling he ended up being silent because it wanted to recapture the vibe of playing as Flint in Mother 3 and his legendary cutscene at the beginning of the game. Yet, much like Mother 3's handling of Duster and Kumatora, it feels like his silence just comes at the expense of having a character that's way less fleshed out than he really should be.
Anyways, as I said before, a far larger chunk of the game is dedicated to cutscenes and fetch quests than the quality of the writing mandates. When it's not that, however, the duo goes venturing into areas fashioned similar to Zelda dungeons--and they're pretty solid! It's a good enough time exploring each beautiful looking area, uncovering secrets, and going through puzzles that often rely on switching between the two different characters. None of it is particular novel, and I do wish the game had a few more tricks up its sleeve than the switch puzzles it loves so dearly, but it all remained fairly chill and just taxing enough on the brain to remain interesting.
The combat is similarly decent enough, but really starts to strain itself towards the end of the game. Your main methods of dealing damage are almost all short ranged or take an annoying charge up time until close to the end (and the option you do get then is... too weak to depend on). When enemies start getting more aggressive and agile, it becomes increasingly hard to keep up, especially considering that your hitbox consists of both the character you're controlling AND the follower. It's never frustratingly difficult with how many resources the game dumps on you, as well as a cooking system for more healing dishes I never really bothered with, but still. Why doesn't the game have a dodge roll or something? It would fit right in. Again, it's one element where it feels like the game falls 20% short of where it really should've been.
So here I am, left just feeling rather deflated by the whole experience. The most I dwell on it, the more frustrated I become with the story and writing. There's clearly a lot of effort and passion put in from top to bottom, plenty of stuff I enjoyed in the moment, but it just doesn't come together into a cohesive product. What a shame.
Adendum: I forgot to mention this, but the game crashed SIX! times over the course of playing. Fortunately, the game had a good autosave system that left me only losing ~10 minutes of game time total, but it was still a tad frustrating.
God I wish I liked it.
Eastward is a post-post apocalyptic adventure game that, like many of its kin, explores that value of human connection. Kinda. It's depiction of the world is so rich, both in terms of the ideas presented in each area and the . Just look at any screenshot of the game, it's got some of the best pixel art work I've ever seen, with a ridiculously level of animation work and lighting that makes everything feel so alive. My Switch album is filled to the brim capturing every luscious landscape and setpiece it has in store. For that alone, it made my time in the world not regrettable.
Prior to finishing, I was under the belief every other element of the game besides its aesthetics and world design undershot what they really should have been by like 20%, but unfortunately then the ending happened. The game makes a really dangerous gambit, by spending almost the entire game setting up question after question that are all loaded onto the final act to pay off. Plenty of my favorite games go forward with this structure and are so beloved precisely because of their gambit. Eastward, however, does a number of things throughout that makes its story not just rote but kind of actively bad!
Its compulsory need to layer on mystery after mystery without explaining even fairly rudimentary things that happen. Stuff as simple as how the two main characters met each other, or basic character motivations are barely touched on and the game just treks along as if it doesn't matter. Major characters, including who could best be called the primary antagonist of the game, drop in and out of the story without much elaboration on what their deal is, and then reappear way later on having undergone radical changes that still are barely given any elaboration. So often, the perfect opportunity for characters to discuss what their deal is with each other is set up and then they just... walk away? For no real reason???
In place of focusing on its story, the game loves sending you on adjacent objectives with side characters that don't really amount to much of anything, like the beginning section of Twilight Princess strung out across an entire 20 hour adventure. In general, the game's pacing is totally fucked, with a largely nonsensical chapter structure and a really bad gameplay-to-cutscene/fetch quest ratio. There is an entire chapter where basically all you do is go through an entirely inconsequential dungeon to save two completely inconsequential NPCs, something that in any other game would be a side quest. At another point, you're going through a section about cooking food, then while you're in the middle of cooking the food the characters decide to fuck off and do something completely unrelated. Then, when they get back, the food is, predictably, ruined! So much of the game feels like its strung together via a series of disconnected "and then this happens..." instead of being based in the realm of cause and effect. It results in a story experiencing experience that often feels like pulling teeth.
Then, I reached the final chapter, the game rapidly approached the end, and... as you can probably imagine, did not stick the landing as I hoped it would. The ultimate answers to the questions it proposes are either the most obvious ones they could be or left more or less unanswered. It ends up being so frustrating to see these scenes with some absolutely jaw dropping, beautiful visuals play out with amazing music accompanying, and yet I just don't care for the emotional beats they depict. It hits all the story beats you would expect a game like this to hit, but the game hasn't done the work needed to really make me character about these characters. And the unanswered questions... I did a bit of digging afterwards to make sure I didn't just miss out on elements of the game's story, but no! The subreddit is filled with people left confused about fundamental aspects of the world and characters with responses that amount to "well I think it might be this but idk that's just my best guess".
I want to make a particular shoutout to the bizarre lack of characterization given to John, the father figure in the main playable father-daughter duo. He's a silent protagonist, which I do not have any issues with on the face of it, but the game barely gives any texture to him beyond the first 10 minutes of the game outside of a sparse few scenes. Sam, the daughter of the pairing, is talkative as all get out though. The way this ends up playing out in the vast majority of cutscenes is John being a mindless automaton following Sam while she makes every decision, including several that a father figure really should provide at least a little pushback to her making! It's hard to shake the feeling he ended up being silent because it wanted to recapture the vibe of playing as Flint in Mother 3 and his legendary cutscene at the beginning of the game. Yet, much like Mother 3's handling of Duster and Kumatora, it feels like his silence just comes at the expense of having a character that's way less fleshed out than he really should be.
Anyways, as I said before, a far larger chunk of the game is dedicated to cutscenes and fetch quests than the quality of the writing mandates. When it's not that, however, the duo goes venturing into areas fashioned similar to Zelda dungeons--and they're pretty solid! It's a good enough time exploring each beautiful looking area, uncovering secrets, and going through puzzles that often rely on switching between the two different characters. None of it is particular novel, and I do wish the game had a few more tricks up its sleeve than the switch puzzles it loves so dearly, but it all remained fairly chill and just taxing enough on the brain to remain interesting.
The combat is similarly decent enough, but really starts to strain itself towards the end of the game. Your main methods of dealing damage are almost all short ranged or take an annoying charge up time until close to the end (and the option you do get then is... too weak to depend on). When enemies start getting more aggressive and agile, it becomes increasingly hard to keep up, especially considering that your hitbox consists of both the character you're controlling AND the follower. It's never frustratingly difficult with how many resources the game dumps on you, as well as a cooking system for more healing dishes I never really bothered with, but still. Why doesn't the game have a dodge roll or something? It would fit right in. Again, it's one element where it feels like the game falls 20% short of where it really should've been.
So here I am, left just feeling rather deflated by the whole experience. The most I dwell on it, the more frustrated I become with the story and writing. There's clearly a lot of effort and passion put in from top to bottom, plenty of stuff I enjoyed in the moment, but it just doesn't come together into a cohesive product. What a shame.
Adendum: I forgot to mention this, but the game crashed SIX! times over the course of playing. Fortunately, the game had a good autosave system that left me only losing ~10 minutes of game time total, but it was still a tad frustrating.
1992
“Poochy, aren’t you being really hard on an original Game Boy game?”
Yea.
I was hoping to say something about how interesting it is to go back to the first game in the series but, wait… the interesting thing about the game is how uninteresting it is! You travel through five stages mostly just moving forward and sucking up enemies sometimes, fight a few bosses, fight them again, fight Dedede, then you’re done. It feels difficult to call the game “chill” when it feels moreso like a nothing game. The movement just isn’t really fun at all, and the floating feels just finnicky enough to be a little annoying (particularly during the Lololo/Lalala boss fight).
The mid-level and before-level cutscenes are pretty cute, and clearly where most of Kirby’s appeal originates from. The game still felt like a waste of time though, ultimately. But such is life.
Yea.
I was hoping to say something about how interesting it is to go back to the first game in the series but, wait… the interesting thing about the game is how uninteresting it is! You travel through five stages mostly just moving forward and sucking up enemies sometimes, fight a few bosses, fight them again, fight Dedede, then you’re done. It feels difficult to call the game “chill” when it feels moreso like a nothing game. The movement just isn’t really fun at all, and the floating feels just finnicky enough to be a little annoying (particularly during the Lololo/Lalala boss fight).
The mid-level and before-level cutscenes are pretty cute, and clearly where most of Kirby’s appeal originates from. The game still felt like a waste of time though, ultimately. But such is life.
This review is dedicated to END ROLL: underappreciated in its time (that I played it) and a better game than this one on just about every level.
Wadanohara is nearly eight hours of a deeply, deeply repetitive game. One I stuck with for way longer than it deserved, hoping desperately to get over the hump and pull something wonderful out of the game, led by the recommendation of two separate friends and a--perhaps perverse--intrigue into the big content warning about the game's portrayal of sexual assault plastered on the vgperson translation page. I trudged through several hours of a monotonous journey to six separate shrines, eying the uniformity of each island i landed at, and going from fighting a couple of enemies in my way to not engaging with the combat system all together.
The combat... A RPG having particularly easy combat, hell even trivially easy combat, is not inherently a bad thing. LiEat might as well not have any combat with how trivial it is, but the crux of the game is about solving puzzles and experiencing the story, with combat being moreso a contextual action. Wadanohara on the other hand has massive swaths of the game where you are walking through hallways teeming with enemies that you only fight if you explicitly interact with them. Again, not an inherently bad idea, in fact that could be really nice to choose when you get to engage with the combat, but after fighting the enemies in just a few areas, I was already overleveled enough to kill every boss in 2 turns. This continued up to the final boss of the game, even though I did not fight a single non-mandatory enemy for the entire back half of the game, if not longer!
The lack of purpose to the combat made moments when areas were teaming with so many enemies especially frustrating because I could kill them near-effortlessly, but why would I when the reward for doing so was next to nothing. All the tension of those moments was essentially sapped out and I just had to walk down hallways until the next story beat. This is not to get into how much gear the game just halfhazardly throws at you to equip and replace over and over and over with essentially no fights worth fighting in between that gear being equipped and replaced with something slightly better. I might as well not have changed my gear out at all during the entire story.
Back to the structure, after exploring the six islands, I reached the second act of the story, which is where the game really feels like it focuses in, leading you down hallways with a lot more cutscenes and boss fights, which is what I was looking for! The game has some cute character designs, even if the characters themselves are largely paper thin. But getting to the end of the act, I figured the end was in sight... and then the third act stated.
Largely feeling like a retread of the second act, introducing a bunch of new characters and a new princess and new hallways to wander down, the game definitely introduces it's most interesting ideas here. Still, the ideas it introduces aren't fleshed out nearly as much as I was hoping for them to be, especially with the amount of monotony required to be trudged through to reach that point AND continue to be trudged through in the third act. The writing of the game in general is rather mediocre and frustrating. Outside of Wadanohara, Samekishi, and the main villain, the rest of the cast all blend in together, including Wada's own party members you spend the entire game with! And for the love of god, someone needs to take away ellipses from the creator. A solid half of the lines contain elipses in them, and so many of that subsect are JUST ellipses. It felt so agonizing and a massive fast of my time scrolling through that empty text.
I would also like to point out the aforementioned sexual assault portrayal as one of the things I wish the game handled better. I am a firm believer that depicting uncomfortable topics in media, especially when used to provoke an emotional reaction from the audience, is perfectly fine. The scene is set up during the second act of the game as one of the story's big reveals, one of its only big reveals. It seemed like the story was going to be able dealing with the ongoing trauma from sexual assault, including how our memories get warped in order to protect ourselves from trauma. Then the scene itself happened, and then it ended, and... didn't really have much impact on the rest of the game?
Looking at a couple of other things about the game post-finishing it, it seems the villains of every game the creator makes attempt to commit sexual assault? And the creator drew explicit art of the sexual assault scene for a tumblr ask? Knowing this stuff in post doesn't really change my thoughts on the game much (not that they can get too much worse LOL); The oddity of that scene does not permeate the rest of the game, the strange ballgag equip found on one of the islands notwithstanding. Still, it just feels so odd to have experienced a sexual assault in a videogame that, as far as I can tell, was there due to the creator's fetishes. Like, what do you do with that experience?!
There are some nice things about the game. The cut-in art is well drawn and the interactions between the two leads is generally cute if a bit rout. Nothing is able to overcome the game's overwhelming sense of mundanity though. I dragged myself through to the true ending, hoping for something worthwhile to grasp onto, and now here I am, wishing I followed through with my initial thought to drop the game an hour and a half or so in. Bleh.
Wadanohara is nearly eight hours of a deeply, deeply repetitive game. One I stuck with for way longer than it deserved, hoping desperately to get over the hump and pull something wonderful out of the game, led by the recommendation of two separate friends and a--perhaps perverse--intrigue into the big content warning about the game's portrayal of sexual assault plastered on the vgperson translation page. I trudged through several hours of a monotonous journey to six separate shrines, eying the uniformity of each island i landed at, and going from fighting a couple of enemies in my way to not engaging with the combat system all together.
The combat... A RPG having particularly easy combat, hell even trivially easy combat, is not inherently a bad thing. LiEat might as well not have any combat with how trivial it is, but the crux of the game is about solving puzzles and experiencing the story, with combat being moreso a contextual action. Wadanohara on the other hand has massive swaths of the game where you are walking through hallways teeming with enemies that you only fight if you explicitly interact with them. Again, not an inherently bad idea, in fact that could be really nice to choose when you get to engage with the combat, but after fighting the enemies in just a few areas, I was already overleveled enough to kill every boss in 2 turns. This continued up to the final boss of the game, even though I did not fight a single non-mandatory enemy for the entire back half of the game, if not longer!
The lack of purpose to the combat made moments when areas were teaming with so many enemies especially frustrating because I could kill them near-effortlessly, but why would I when the reward for doing so was next to nothing. All the tension of those moments was essentially sapped out and I just had to walk down hallways until the next story beat. This is not to get into how much gear the game just halfhazardly throws at you to equip and replace over and over and over with essentially no fights worth fighting in between that gear being equipped and replaced with something slightly better. I might as well not have changed my gear out at all during the entire story.
Back to the structure, after exploring the six islands, I reached the second act of the story, which is where the game really feels like it focuses in, leading you down hallways with a lot more cutscenes and boss fights, which is what I was looking for! The game has some cute character designs, even if the characters themselves are largely paper thin. But getting to the end of the act, I figured the end was in sight... and then the third act stated.
Largely feeling like a retread of the second act, introducing a bunch of new characters and a new princess and new hallways to wander down, the game definitely introduces it's most interesting ideas here. Still, the ideas it introduces aren't fleshed out nearly as much as I was hoping for them to be, especially with the amount of monotony required to be trudged through to reach that point AND continue to be trudged through in the third act. The writing of the game in general is rather mediocre and frustrating. Outside of Wadanohara, Samekishi, and the main villain, the rest of the cast all blend in together, including Wada's own party members you spend the entire game with! And for the love of god, someone needs to take away ellipses from the creator. A solid half of the lines contain elipses in them, and so many of that subsect are JUST ellipses. It felt so agonizing and a massive fast of my time scrolling through that empty text.
I would also like to point out the aforementioned sexual assault portrayal as one of the things I wish the game handled better. I am a firm believer that depicting uncomfortable topics in media, especially when used to provoke an emotional reaction from the audience, is perfectly fine. The scene is set up during the second act of the game as one of the story's big reveals, one of its only big reveals. It seemed like the story was going to be able dealing with the ongoing trauma from sexual assault, including how our memories get warped in order to protect ourselves from trauma. Then the scene itself happened, and then it ended, and... didn't really have much impact on the rest of the game?
Looking at a couple of other things about the game post-finishing it, it seems the villains of every game the creator makes attempt to commit sexual assault? And the creator drew explicit art of the sexual assault scene for a tumblr ask? Knowing this stuff in post doesn't really change my thoughts on the game much (not that they can get too much worse LOL); The oddity of that scene does not permeate the rest of the game, the strange ballgag equip found on one of the islands notwithstanding. Still, it just feels so odd to have experienced a sexual assault in a videogame that, as far as I can tell, was there due to the creator's fetishes. Like, what do you do with that experience?!
There are some nice things about the game. The cut-in art is well drawn and the interactions between the two leads is generally cute if a bit rout. Nothing is able to overcome the game's overwhelming sense of mundanity though. I dragged myself through to the true ending, hoping for something worthwhile to grasp onto, and now here I am, wishing I followed through with my initial thought to drop the game an hour and a half or so in. Bleh.
2010
I've paged over all of the various games vgperson has translated over the years, making a mental repository of which ones had my interest and I wanted to give a try. Yet, all those times, Re:Kinder always fell squarely in the "not interested bucket" because, well, just look at any screenshot of it. Look at it! On the surface, this game is fucking grody, an amateurish mashup of default RPG maker assets that all clash against each other. Every character looks like they're missing one of their eyes when their sprite is facing to the side. Where the fuck is that Backloggd icon from? Everything at face value would suggest that this is a hastily slopped together thing in the sea of the thousands of other RPG Maker projects made over the past several decades not worth caring about.
And yet, what if I told you that underneath this presentation, somehow, some way, this was not only a good game, but one of the best experiences I've had with a RPG Maker game??? It's kinda crazy.
Re:Kinder stands out on two fronts. First, the number and novelty of gameplay situations it sets out during its short runtime is incredibly strong for the genre. The puzzles are generally well thought out and play with the standard RPG Maker elements of inventory and interactables. There is also some combat, but the leveling and inventory systems are stripped out to make each fight more of a puzzle using a limited set of tools. The apartment towards the end of the game is certainly the highlight, with a clever interaction puzzle and one of the most novel combat encounters I've seen in one of these RPG Maker games pasted back-to-back. The combat encounter has you run around a room collecting items and gaining new skills as you fend off a boss constantly trying to engage in combat with you, until you obtain the tools necessary to ignite the boss for an instant kill. It was a bit on the obtuse side (I consulted vgperson's guide for it, which even she admitted some of the elements of the fight were quite inexplicable), but that didn't take away from how novel it felt.
It's other main appeal is the writing and tone it goes for, with a poignant discussion of the impacts of mental illness. The game takes place in a world where mental illnesses are treated as quack science by society, examining how people deal with not having an outlet for or even recognition of their issues. It's a clear reflection of our own world, and it explores the concept with a pretty hefty depth, again, for its short runtime.
Yet, the main villain Yuuichi throws in a hefty mix of off the wall, often dark humor into the game, sometimes right in the middle of some serious moments. Nothing quite prepares you for the main villain coming out after just having murdered a kid to an intense track with Spanish lyrics, nor a stock photo of a dog suddenly flashing on screen (more than once!) in the middle of a conversation. There's a great sense of humor here, making me laugh at several points from the sheer absurdity of what happened. The soundtrack to the game is diverse and shocking in all its own ways, adding a lot to each scene, even if sometimes that a lot is a "wtf is happening right now". By the end of the game, even the seeming mess that is the graphics feels, somewhat, kinda, almost the intent, feeding into the chaotic vibes of the chaotic world.
The craziest part about all of this? Re:Kinder is not some avante garde title, but instead indicates its a remake of the TWO THOUSAND AND THREE game Kinder. Finding out about this after beating the game made its novelty and strong theming feel even more potent. The framework of this game is over 20 years old! It's older than Yume Nikki! From what I understand--there's no English translation of the original release--the dark comedy aspects of the game were added into the remake, where the original kept a thoroughly dark tone throughout. I believe this addition ultimately made the game more interesting. Still, the rest of the game, how it handles mental illness and even touches on some queer themes, and how it plays on the conventions of the RPG genre is radically ahead of its time. Honestly, it pulls a lot of these things off better than many other RPG Maker games I've played that released a decade+ later.
The longer I sit with this, the more profound it feels to be experiencing this creation of an individual 20 years after it was first released, almost in tandem with when I was born. One of the main reasons I play RPG Maker games is the way the pastiche reveals these experiences revolving around, in most of the cases I've seen thus far, a single person's thoughts and identity. In the best case, stepping out of my world to delve into someone else's mind for a couple hours, seeing everything they have to say. These minds enshrined in code that will be available for time in memoriam, from times I didn't get to experience the way I am able to now. And, idk, Re:Kinder is one of the best enshrinements of this.
And yet, what if I told you that underneath this presentation, somehow, some way, this was not only a good game, but one of the best experiences I've had with a RPG Maker game??? It's kinda crazy.
Re:Kinder stands out on two fronts. First, the number and novelty of gameplay situations it sets out during its short runtime is incredibly strong for the genre. The puzzles are generally well thought out and play with the standard RPG Maker elements of inventory and interactables. There is also some combat, but the leveling and inventory systems are stripped out to make each fight more of a puzzle using a limited set of tools. The apartment towards the end of the game is certainly the highlight, with a clever interaction puzzle and one of the most novel combat encounters I've seen in one of these RPG Maker games pasted back-to-back. The combat encounter has you run around a room collecting items and gaining new skills as you fend off a boss constantly trying to engage in combat with you, until you obtain the tools necessary to ignite the boss for an instant kill. It was a bit on the obtuse side (I consulted vgperson's guide for it, which even she admitted some of the elements of the fight were quite inexplicable), but that didn't take away from how novel it felt.
It's other main appeal is the writing and tone it goes for, with a poignant discussion of the impacts of mental illness. The game takes place in a world where mental illnesses are treated as quack science by society, examining how people deal with not having an outlet for or even recognition of their issues. It's a clear reflection of our own world, and it explores the concept with a pretty hefty depth, again, for its short runtime.
Yet, the main villain Yuuichi throws in a hefty mix of off the wall, often dark humor into the game, sometimes right in the middle of some serious moments. Nothing quite prepares you for the main villain coming out after just having murdered a kid to an intense track with Spanish lyrics, nor a stock photo of a dog suddenly flashing on screen (more than once!) in the middle of a conversation. There's a great sense of humor here, making me laugh at several points from the sheer absurdity of what happened. The soundtrack to the game is diverse and shocking in all its own ways, adding a lot to each scene, even if sometimes that a lot is a "wtf is happening right now". By the end of the game, even the seeming mess that is the graphics feels, somewhat, kinda, almost the intent, feeding into the chaotic vibes of the chaotic world.
The craziest part about all of this? Re:Kinder is not some avante garde title, but instead indicates its a remake of the TWO THOUSAND AND THREE game Kinder. Finding out about this after beating the game made its novelty and strong theming feel even more potent. The framework of this game is over 20 years old! It's older than Yume Nikki! From what I understand--there's no English translation of the original release--the dark comedy aspects of the game were added into the remake, where the original kept a thoroughly dark tone throughout. I believe this addition ultimately made the game more interesting. Still, the rest of the game, how it handles mental illness and even touches on some queer themes, and how it plays on the conventions of the RPG genre is radically ahead of its time. Honestly, it pulls a lot of these things off better than many other RPG Maker games I've played that released a decade+ later.
The longer I sit with this, the more profound it feels to be experiencing this creation of an individual 20 years after it was first released, almost in tandem with when I was born. One of the main reasons I play RPG Maker games is the way the pastiche reveals these experiences revolving around, in most of the cases I've seen thus far, a single person's thoughts and identity. In the best case, stepping out of my world to delve into someone else's mind for a couple hours, seeing everything they have to say. These minds enshrined in code that will be available for time in memoriam, from times I didn't get to experience the way I am able to now. And, idk, Re:Kinder is one of the best enshrinements of this.
Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum (what a wonderful mouthful of a subtitle) was one of the games on this RPG Maker journey I knew the least about going into it. A friend just sent me the Steam page for it when it went on sale and I picked it up more or less on a whim. In many ways I was expecting another one of those, and in most aspects it is a fairly typical RPG Maker horror game, but its scope and structure does a lot to elevate it to be easily the most unsettling... and probably the most impressive.
In many ways, the game I want to compare it to most is Yume Nikki. They are drastically different games, yet Pocket Mirror hits at the same feeling of wandering aimlessly through lurid landscapes with but a vague idea of what your end goal is meant to be. There is plenty of dialogue and NPCs and jokes and the like, but the game remains oppressively opaque in its structure from start to very near the finish, keeping information on the world and your end goal dangled precariously in front with only vague hints given. Every time you try to claw for more information, the game gives off just a trickle of the truth, before taking another step back into the darkness.
The game's length benefits this a lot as well; in general just having more stuff in the game makes it harder to gauge where exactly you're at. There's little padding here. The number of different locations with completely unique visuals you go through, many of which you're in for barely more than a couple minutes, is downright impressive. Particularly in the last 2 hours, the game funnels you through setpiece after the insane setpiece that left me constantly awestruck. The production values are ridiculously good, easily the highest of any of these games I've played. A particular highlight from early in the game was when a character stomp down and it caused the screen to have a massive crack it in, which remained for that entire gameplay segment.
Another surprise is the fairly low gameplay density. Most of the game is just wandering down hallways and experiencing the vibes, with a couple of chase sequences throughout. Puzzles are strewn fairly far apart from each other and mostly take the form of riddles, albeit pretty well-done ones, and even they more or less disappear towards the end of the game. Ib easily has more puzzles in it overall despite being a fraction of the length. This isn't particularly an issue--as I said before the vibes each new area give off are more than enough--though a couple more puzzles in the final sections would probably smooth out the experience a bit more.
The game's opacity is most strongly felt in its story, almost to a frustrating degree. Even single major character in the game feels like they're leading you on, knowing things you don't and refusing to divulge no matter how much you beg and plead. There is a decent bit of drawn out, repetitive dialogue between the main characters that you KNOW will lead nowhere, but the main character is desperate enough to keep on trying. It treads a fine line between being endearing and annoying, but I think it ultimately tilts a bit more towards the later. Once I hit the credits, I still only had a vague idea of what the game's story was actually about. After reading another review and the developer's AMA, I more or less understand what happened, but its something I'm not sure I would've pieced together fully on my own.
The game have 5 endings total and I only got the first one, the one most people would get on their initial run, and then watched the bad ending on YouTube. Siliconera's page titled "Here's How to Get All Endings in Pocket Mirror GoldenerTraum" says the bad ending ironically spells out the game's story most clearly. I don't know if I agree with that assessment but I get where they're coming from. I do wanna go for the true ending soon--and it's one of those I don't know how you would get without a guide unless you were really lucky with dialogue choices--but the game's length is putting me off for right now. Soon though! I'll update this review when I do if I feel the need to.
Despite a couple of minor frustrations, the game holds one ultimate success so few games are able to: feeling like an honest to god adventure. Going through so many different locations, having not a faintest clue what couple be around the corner, interacting within this tangible world, it's all really impressive. I don't think there's any one thing in the game that elevates it to something truly special, but it remains an enchanting experience I thoroughly enjoyed.
In many ways, the game I want to compare it to most is Yume Nikki. They are drastically different games, yet Pocket Mirror hits at the same feeling of wandering aimlessly through lurid landscapes with but a vague idea of what your end goal is meant to be. There is plenty of dialogue and NPCs and jokes and the like, but the game remains oppressively opaque in its structure from start to very near the finish, keeping information on the world and your end goal dangled precariously in front with only vague hints given. Every time you try to claw for more information, the game gives off just a trickle of the truth, before taking another step back into the darkness.
The game's length benefits this a lot as well; in general just having more stuff in the game makes it harder to gauge where exactly you're at. There's little padding here. The number of different locations with completely unique visuals you go through, many of which you're in for barely more than a couple minutes, is downright impressive. Particularly in the last 2 hours, the game funnels you through setpiece after the insane setpiece that left me constantly awestruck. The production values are ridiculously good, easily the highest of any of these games I've played. A particular highlight from early in the game was when a character stomp down and it caused the screen to have a massive crack it in, which remained for that entire gameplay segment.
Another surprise is the fairly low gameplay density. Most of the game is just wandering down hallways and experiencing the vibes, with a couple of chase sequences throughout. Puzzles are strewn fairly far apart from each other and mostly take the form of riddles, albeit pretty well-done ones, and even they more or less disappear towards the end of the game. Ib easily has more puzzles in it overall despite being a fraction of the length. This isn't particularly an issue--as I said before the vibes each new area give off are more than enough--though a couple more puzzles in the final sections would probably smooth out the experience a bit more.
The game's opacity is most strongly felt in its story, almost to a frustrating degree. Even single major character in the game feels like they're leading you on, knowing things you don't and refusing to divulge no matter how much you beg and plead. There is a decent bit of drawn out, repetitive dialogue between the main characters that you KNOW will lead nowhere, but the main character is desperate enough to keep on trying. It treads a fine line between being endearing and annoying, but I think it ultimately tilts a bit more towards the later. Once I hit the credits, I still only had a vague idea of what the game's story was actually about. After reading another review and the developer's AMA, I more or less understand what happened, but its something I'm not sure I would've pieced together fully on my own.
The game have 5 endings total and I only got the first one, the one most people would get on their initial run, and then watched the bad ending on YouTube. Siliconera's page titled "Here's How to Get All Endings in Pocket Mirror GoldenerTraum" says the bad ending ironically spells out the game's story most clearly. I don't know if I agree with that assessment but I get where they're coming from. I do wanna go for the true ending soon--and it's one of those I don't know how you would get without a guide unless you were really lucky with dialogue choices--but the game's length is putting me off for right now. Soon though! I'll update this review when I do if I feel the need to.
Despite a couple of minor frustrations, the game holds one ultimate success so few games are able to: feeling like an honest to god adventure. Going through so many different locations, having not a faintest clue what couple be around the corner, interacting within this tangible world, it's all really impressive. I don't think there's any one thing in the game that elevates it to something truly special, but it remains an enchanting experience I thoroughly enjoyed.
2024
Balatro is the antethical to everything I've held dear to the medium in recent times: a near-completely artistically stripped down experience devoid of story, made to be repeated in perpetuity. Even the brightest jewels of the roguelike genre—Hades and Inscryption—I cherish largely in spite of their nature as roguelikes. Yet, after spending six hours playing through on release day, I was already hooked in deeply, just to have it embed deeper and deeper into my soul with every game.
There's an inherent trance that every run builds up, setting up the perfect hand with discards before firing off an insane chain reaction of multipliers. So many variables at play that it's pointless to crunch beyond a rough estimate, leaving each hand as something of it's own gamble. Sometimes that leaves you short of a win by only a fraction of the point threshold to hit, but sometimes that hand you thought would net you a few hundred thousand ticks all the way up to 20 million. This has happened to me on multiple occasions! And it's a glorious, visceral experience each and every time.
The biggest strength with Balatro, I feel, is the ease and variety of ways in which it feels like the game can be snapped in two. I have already beaten 7 or 8 runs of the game, more than any other roguelike I've played besides maybe Enter the Gungeon (which I dumped 100 hours into during high school), and am thirsting to do even more. From my experience, most other roguelikes make winning a run a far scarcer experience in order to help perpetuate the gameplay loop. But as it turns out, winning is really fun.
Not only that, every single winning run takes a completely separate angle to win: totally different Joker cards, deck compositions, and hands I aim for. It's so easy to feel like I've found the stupidest possible way to win the run, just to come around to the end 2-3 runs later with something far stupider. And even after each winning run, I feel inclined to continue in the endless mode, where the point thresholds start going up exponentially just to see how far the utter stupidity can take me. Many runs end up becoming less about whether or not I can win with my setup, but rather the far more interesting question of how far towards infinity I can reach with it. I'm prematurely a bit excited for the run I eventually get on that lets me pass my current wall, the 300 million point threshold.
It's pretty impressive how Balatro really just... doesn't have any issues. Thanks to being so stripped down, it manages to be absolutely airtight in its design while providing a cornucopia of variety. It's just an absolute masterpiece of design. A welcome surprise for personal game of the year contender.
There's an inherent trance that every run builds up, setting up the perfect hand with discards before firing off an insane chain reaction of multipliers. So many variables at play that it's pointless to crunch beyond a rough estimate, leaving each hand as something of it's own gamble. Sometimes that leaves you short of a win by only a fraction of the point threshold to hit, but sometimes that hand you thought would net you a few hundred thousand ticks all the way up to 20 million. This has happened to me on multiple occasions! And it's a glorious, visceral experience each and every time.
The biggest strength with Balatro, I feel, is the ease and variety of ways in which it feels like the game can be snapped in two. I have already beaten 7 or 8 runs of the game, more than any other roguelike I've played besides maybe Enter the Gungeon (which I dumped 100 hours into during high school), and am thirsting to do even more. From my experience, most other roguelikes make winning a run a far scarcer experience in order to help perpetuate the gameplay loop. But as it turns out, winning is really fun.
Not only that, every single winning run takes a completely separate angle to win: totally different Joker cards, deck compositions, and hands I aim for. It's so easy to feel like I've found the stupidest possible way to win the run, just to come around to the end 2-3 runs later with something far stupider. And even after each winning run, I feel inclined to continue in the endless mode, where the point thresholds start going up exponentially just to see how far the utter stupidity can take me. Many runs end up becoming less about whether or not I can win with my setup, but rather the far more interesting question of how far towards infinity I can reach with it. I'm prematurely a bit excited for the run I eventually get on that lets me pass my current wall, the 300 million point threshold.
It's pretty impressive how Balatro really just... doesn't have any issues. Thanks to being so stripped down, it manages to be absolutely airtight in its design while providing a cornucopia of variety. It's just an absolute masterpiece of design. A welcome surprise for personal game of the year contender.
I think, for the most part, it is reasonable to expect (or at least hope) that a studio slowly improves their game-crafting skills with each new release, ideally making them better and better. Of course, that can't always be the case. Some games are good enough to beckon the question "how the hell are they supposed to top this", and which follows the acceptance that it'd probably be okay if what follows is comparatively as good or even a little worse. AstralShift's Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum (a title I will always type out in full out of sheer amusement) from earlier this year, for as much obtuseness and opaqueness as it relished in, was a pretty good game! Then apparently, they already had their next game right around the corner: a step away from RPG Maker, an incredible looking artstyle, more meat added to the gameplay, and being a prequel to Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum? It felt like this game had the potential to be something really special!
And now we're here... and now I've played it... and it's... fine.
The biggest up-front appeal here is clearly the visuals, something the game is completely unashamed of. Of course, the game is drop-dead gorgeous, almost every frame of it looking like 90s anime eye candy. In motion, it looks even better, with well done animation and a really subtle static-y noise filter at night that adds soooo much to the vibes. The dungeon areas you go through every night double down on the wonderful aesthetics, with so many little visual effects and setpieces that love to mesh together different artstyles in ways that are a sight to behold. Shoutouts too to the minigames, presented as fancifully-decorated arcade machines that really sell the experience. I do think Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum ultimately went further with its setpieces and playing with different artstyles, but this game still manages to impress all the same.
Funny anecdote: the game's credits are split between the art team and the programming team for the game. You're only able to skip the later one for whatever reason. I don't think it actually means anything, but its very clear how (rightfully!) proud they are of the aesthetic work put in here.
Yet, under the veneer of these fanciful graphics, the underlying game is kinda lacking? Focusing on the gameplay, it's split between its time management-y social sim elements during the daytime and going through short dungeons more reminiscent of Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum at night, and both are unfortunately pretty rough around the edges.
A lot of the game focuses on meter management with your health, hunger, sanity, and suspicion meters. The cycle is pretty simple: various things in the game lower these meters (raise in suspicion's case), you get money by selling items/playing minigames, then use the money to buy items to rectify those drops. If you don't, you die. On paper, a fairly simple system to add stress to the player, as one does in a kinda-sorta-horror-y game. However, the scope of the game is small enough that it basically throttles you into playing just enough minigames that you have enough money to get all the items you need to survive, but not much more. When combined with how relatively-consistently these meters drain, buying items to manage the meters becomes more of a chore than anything, ESPECIALLY with how overbearing the UI becomes when you're low on one of them.
Shoutouts to when I had to go through half a dungeon with low sanity while the edges of the screen were covered in dark tendrils and the music was muffled by the constant murmuring of ghosts. It wasn't an issue of "oh do I have enough money to survive???", but "oh I guess I'm stuck dealing with this until I can reach the next shop". I wasn't under threat, I was just annoyed.
Speaking of the dungeons, they're the classic RPG Maker horror game mechanics: enemies to avoid, fairly simple puzzles to complete, and a good few chase sequences—as one does. For the most part they're alright, with some interesting puzzles here and there, but as you go on in them they start to get a bit unwieldy. The second-to-last one stands out as the biggest offender, asking you to wander two large lake areas fairly aimlessly while high-damage ghosts chase you down as long as you're not standing on land, which sometimes is just impossible to reach in-between first seeing the ghost and it hitting you. There's a reason the first Steam guide for the game was made specifically for getting through that dungeon. The final chase sequel also to throw out obstacles that are impossible to naturally react to (including one that appeared while i was in the middle of an animation and killed me) while the camera loves to barely show what's in front. Not to mention the door shuffle puzzle you have to repeat THREE times over the course of this sequence that instantly kills you if you get it wrong. The dungeons have just enough moments of bullshit to them, it was hard to look through to their good, largely aesthetics-based, elements. There was also the forbidden fruit of puzzle design: a SLIDE PUZZLE. It was optional but still. What the fuck?
Don't think I forgot about you putting one in, Origami King. Fuck you.
ANYWAYS, aside from all of this, the rest of the game comprises of dealing with an increasingly paranoid village who might or might not think you are a witch, while courting the girl of your desires. Both of which are fairly interesting and well-done! I personally chose Freya as my bride-to-be, and it was all really sweet, fluffy, gay as hell romance. I loved all of the adorable portraits that popped up during their dates, showing them gingerly grow close together. In contrast, the village was a really compelling showcase of mass paranoia and how it overtakes communities. The dynamics of the various villagers as various blights infect the town were simple, but still engaging. This is where the suspicion meter comes into play, gauging how close you are to being hung by the townspeople or something along those lines. I never got close to filling up the meter, and I don't really know how you can even do so unless intentionally seeking it out or being really really stupid, but I still can appreciate the ludonarrative element to it.
All of this dialogue is nicely written and such, but even that gets a tad dicey when having to often replay segments and, in one of the most baffling things I have seen in a videogame recently, it's a total coinflip whether or not you can skip through dialogue! Seriously! There is a fast forward button that only appears during certainly dialogue sequences and cutscenes for reasons totally beyond by conception. It's awesome to go die in a tough boss-like segment or accidentally choose a dialogue option that instantly kills you/locks you out of something (the game loves to do this), multiple times, then the cutscene you're booted back before is—of course—unskippable!!!
And all of this to experience a story that's... pretty straightfoward. While Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum forced you to pull the story out of it like you were desecrating a corpse, that mystique to it was a big reason as to why I liked it as much as I did. Being a more mainstream-targeted game, especially published by Square Enix, it makes sense that this game's story is a lot more outwardly comprehensible, and really I have no issues with that. For what it is, the story is still fairly well done, enhanced a lot by the aforementioned dating and town paranoia elements. Yet, as someone who had already played Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum, I was hoping I wasn't able to intuit the entire story from the very beginning of the game. Hoping for some twist that shaked things up while still keeping up continuity with the game prior, but then I reached the end and everything rolled out... exactly as I expected. That said, I was waiting the entire game for Him to finally appear, and then He did appear and I Leonardo DiCaprio pointed at the screen and it was awesome. So who can say if it was bad or not?
There are so many other smaller things that prick me with the game I could delve into, like the map design basically being a straight line that you walk back and forth across WAY too much for there to be no fast travel system. A lot of these things could probably (hopefully!) be rectified in a few patches, but it's a bit too late for me now. By the end of it, going through that last chase sequence, I was pretty ready to be done with the game. Yet, looking at the amount of time I put into it in a mere 4 days, only a bit less than I put into Eastward for what was still a much less frustrating experience. Getting through all the gruff the game has, there's a pretty decent experience underneath!
I kind of feel like if I went into this without having played Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum and the world had more mystique to it, I probably would have had a better time. Conversely, if I played Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum after this, I probably wouldn't have found that game quite as engrossing as I did at the time. It feels weird and a bit bad bad to feel like the games are stuck in this zero-win situation together. I would love to talk to someone who played the games in reverse order to me and how it affected their thoughts on the game. If nothing else, its a really interesting duology for every interesting decision they do, and its hard not to respect them.
And now we're here... and now I've played it... and it's... fine.
The biggest up-front appeal here is clearly the visuals, something the game is completely unashamed of. Of course, the game is drop-dead gorgeous, almost every frame of it looking like 90s anime eye candy. In motion, it looks even better, with well done animation and a really subtle static-y noise filter at night that adds soooo much to the vibes. The dungeon areas you go through every night double down on the wonderful aesthetics, with so many little visual effects and setpieces that love to mesh together different artstyles in ways that are a sight to behold. Shoutouts too to the minigames, presented as fancifully-decorated arcade machines that really sell the experience. I do think Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum ultimately went further with its setpieces and playing with different artstyles, but this game still manages to impress all the same.
Funny anecdote: the game's credits are split between the art team and the programming team for the game. You're only able to skip the later one for whatever reason. I don't think it actually means anything, but its very clear how (rightfully!) proud they are of the aesthetic work put in here.
Yet, under the veneer of these fanciful graphics, the underlying game is kinda lacking? Focusing on the gameplay, it's split between its time management-y social sim elements during the daytime and going through short dungeons more reminiscent of Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum at night, and both are unfortunately pretty rough around the edges.
A lot of the game focuses on meter management with your health, hunger, sanity, and suspicion meters. The cycle is pretty simple: various things in the game lower these meters (raise in suspicion's case), you get money by selling items/playing minigames, then use the money to buy items to rectify those drops. If you don't, you die. On paper, a fairly simple system to add stress to the player, as one does in a kinda-sorta-horror-y game. However, the scope of the game is small enough that it basically throttles you into playing just enough minigames that you have enough money to get all the items you need to survive, but not much more. When combined with how relatively-consistently these meters drain, buying items to manage the meters becomes more of a chore than anything, ESPECIALLY with how overbearing the UI becomes when you're low on one of them.
Shoutouts to when I had to go through half a dungeon with low sanity while the edges of the screen were covered in dark tendrils and the music was muffled by the constant murmuring of ghosts. It wasn't an issue of "oh do I have enough money to survive???", but "oh I guess I'm stuck dealing with this until I can reach the next shop". I wasn't under threat, I was just annoyed.
Speaking of the dungeons, they're the classic RPG Maker horror game mechanics: enemies to avoid, fairly simple puzzles to complete, and a good few chase sequences—as one does. For the most part they're alright, with some interesting puzzles here and there, but as you go on in them they start to get a bit unwieldy. The second-to-last one stands out as the biggest offender, asking you to wander two large lake areas fairly aimlessly while high-damage ghosts chase you down as long as you're not standing on land, which sometimes is just impossible to reach in-between first seeing the ghost and it hitting you. There's a reason the first Steam guide for the game was made specifically for getting through that dungeon. The final chase sequel also to throw out obstacles that are impossible to naturally react to (including one that appeared while i was in the middle of an animation and killed me) while the camera loves to barely show what's in front. Not to mention the door shuffle puzzle you have to repeat THREE times over the course of this sequence that instantly kills you if you get it wrong. The dungeons have just enough moments of bullshit to them, it was hard to look through to their good, largely aesthetics-based, elements. There was also the forbidden fruit of puzzle design: a SLIDE PUZZLE. It was optional but still. What the fuck?
Don't think I forgot about you putting one in, Origami King. Fuck you.
ANYWAYS, aside from all of this, the rest of the game comprises of dealing with an increasingly paranoid village who might or might not think you are a witch, while courting the girl of your desires. Both of which are fairly interesting and well-done! I personally chose Freya as my bride-to-be, and it was all really sweet, fluffy, gay as hell romance. I loved all of the adorable portraits that popped up during their dates, showing them gingerly grow close together. In contrast, the village was a really compelling showcase of mass paranoia and how it overtakes communities. The dynamics of the various villagers as various blights infect the town were simple, but still engaging. This is where the suspicion meter comes into play, gauging how close you are to being hung by the townspeople or something along those lines. I never got close to filling up the meter, and I don't really know how you can even do so unless intentionally seeking it out or being really really stupid, but I still can appreciate the ludonarrative element to it.
All of this dialogue is nicely written and such, but even that gets a tad dicey when having to often replay segments and, in one of the most baffling things I have seen in a videogame recently, it's a total coinflip whether or not you can skip through dialogue! Seriously! There is a fast forward button that only appears during certainly dialogue sequences and cutscenes for reasons totally beyond by conception. It's awesome to go die in a tough boss-like segment or accidentally choose a dialogue option that instantly kills you/locks you out of something (the game loves to do this), multiple times, then the cutscene you're booted back before is—of course—unskippable!!!
And all of this to experience a story that's... pretty straightfoward. While Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum forced you to pull the story out of it like you were desecrating a corpse, that mystique to it was a big reason as to why I liked it as much as I did. Being a more mainstream-targeted game, especially published by Square Enix, it makes sense that this game's story is a lot more outwardly comprehensible, and really I have no issues with that. For what it is, the story is still fairly well done, enhanced a lot by the aforementioned dating and town paranoia elements. Yet, as someone who had already played Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum, I was hoping I wasn't able to intuit the entire story from the very beginning of the game. Hoping for some twist that shaked things up while still keeping up continuity with the game prior, but then I reached the end and everything rolled out... exactly as I expected. That said, I was waiting the entire game for Him to finally appear, and then He did appear and I Leonardo DiCaprio pointed at the screen and it was awesome. So who can say if it was bad or not?
There are so many other smaller things that prick me with the game I could delve into, like the map design basically being a straight line that you walk back and forth across WAY too much for there to be no fast travel system. A lot of these things could probably (hopefully!) be rectified in a few patches, but it's a bit too late for me now. By the end of it, going through that last chase sequence, I was pretty ready to be done with the game. Yet, looking at the amount of time I put into it in a mere 4 days, only a bit less than I put into Eastward for what was still a much less frustrating experience. Getting through all the gruff the game has, there's a pretty decent experience underneath!
I kind of feel like if I went into this without having played Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum and the world had more mystique to it, I probably would have had a better time. Conversely, if I played Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum after this, I probably wouldn't have found that game quite as engrossing as I did at the time. It feels weird and a bit bad bad to feel like the games are stuck in this zero-win situation together. I would love to talk to someone who played the games in reverse order to me and how it affected their thoughts on the game. If nothing else, its a really interesting duology for every interesting decision they do, and its hard not to respect them.
2006
This review contains spoilers
MOTHER 3 — A Beautiful Song in the Gashes of Attrition
I played Mother 3 after reading a nearly decade-old Starman.net thread titled “Does Mother 3 say something about capitalism?” with several capitalism understanders™️ within saying that it wasn’t. I called them “fucking idiots” at the time—even as someone who hadn’t played the game I could tell its about capitalism—but now that I’ve finished the game, I can provide a more nuanced take. Those guys are MASSIVE fucking idiots.
Mother 3 is a game about the ways capitalism and fascism work together to destroy society. It is not subtle about this in the slightest. It literally has a long, slow text crawl about how consumerism has corrupted people and made things start to get worse! Not that its bluntness is an issue, clearly some people need to have it shoved straight through their thick skulls. Its genuinely impressive how realistically and thoroughly the game covers these themes, from the gradual corruption of Tazmilly Village you get to experience over the course of the game, to the eugenic experiments of Chimera, to Pigmask’s hijacking of the village’s religious beliefs as a front for their lightning strikes. Even the game’s use of the “everybody is colorblind” trope effectively shows how the fascist power of the Pigmasks isn’t built out of some rigid structure. It cannot be said enough how well-constructed of a story Mother 3 is, elevated even further by the pinnacle of Nintendo’s spritework and animation.
The game is also ridiculously funny. The throughout bits are incredibly well done and always a delight to see play out. My favorite one remains the Dog-Like Dude at the entrance to Club Tittiboo (I will die knowing I missed the chance to get a plush of him 😔), though the entire climb up the Empire Porky Building with a dozen fake 100th floors was also a good ass time. I was surprised how much of a straight line I can draw this game’s humor to the indie rpgs inspired by the series, even moreso than Earthbound.
Underpinning all of this is the emotional core of the game, a family ripped apart by the Pigmasks and a young boy trying to find something in the tattered remains. Overall, I felt the game could’ve done more with its characters. Despite me having become a big Kumatora-head, it’s hard to ignore that I can summarize more or less everything the game tells you about her in two sentences. (She is a redheaded masculine girl who came to the islands as an orphan and was raised by the Magypsies. She has PSI powers and will kick your ass if you mess with her.) I think I could tell you even less about Duster. From what I understand, the intent behind the main characters’ relative lack of dialogue stems from having the their emotions reflect the player’s, much in the same way the first two Mother games handed it, but it ends up conflicting with Mother 3’s much more structured story enough that i wish they gave the core cast of characters some more character.
Despite this, the game still nails its ending with a wonderfully personal and emotional final battle. The framing between Lucas and Claus, the music, their parents’ desperate intervention, Lucas’s struggle being portrayed through the gameplay, Claus’ dying words; it’s all so beautifully done, I struggle to say more about it. The culminating awakening of the dark dragon was mesmerizing and felt like the perfect bittersweet sendoff to the world. And then, as someone who has just changed her name, to get to talk with the characters one last time, with them talking directly to me, thanking me directly, wishing me the best returning to my own world felt incredible.
This entire sequence felt special, a testament to Itoi’s incredible skills as a creative. It’s incredibly easy to see why many people consider Mother 3 one of their favorite experiences of all time, it’s definitely a 10/10 story for me.
But ah—
Mother 3 isn’t just a story. It’s a videogame.
Mother 3 is the sequel to the 1994 probably-too-popular-to-be-considered-a-cult-classic SNES JRPG Earthbound. Those close to me may know that my thoughts on Earthbound amount to “everything about the game is pretty good except the gameplay”. The general vibe I got from hearing about Mother 3 in the years before playing it was that its gameplay is an improvement from Earthbound. It definitely is. Doesn’t make it good though.
The core issue of Mother 3’s gameplay is that everything battle feels like a brutal war of attrition. Enemies hit extremely hard, so you always have to be healing someone, which costs PP or healing items, which are always in limited supply, so you better hope you can defeat the enemy before you run out. And hopefully you’re fighting something that takes a reasonable amount of damage from normal attacks, because 2 of your party members have no other options. PP-restoring items are few and far to come by. You do not have a reliable way to revive party members until at least 3/4ths through the game, and a full party heal option until even later. Sometimes the game will force you to go through an enemy-filled mini dungeon, beat the boss in there, then backtrack through said enemy-filled dungeon without a single hot springs to heal at. It’s all such a pain in the ass. And before you try to “skill issue” me, yes, I made liberal use of stat buffs and debuffs, especially during bosses. They feel essential for giving you a remote chance in several battles.
That’s just when you’ve finally got the whole party together. In the earlier chapters, when you only have 2 party members, you’ll often be lacking much options in
combat, which makes things even more of a drag. There were two separate instances in chapter 4, where you’re playing as Lucas and Boney that I would’ve straight up dropped the game if not for emulator features: the boss in Club Tittiboo and the train tunnel where you have to fight wave after wave of enemies without any respite. The game’s corridor-filled level design means any trip through an area means fighting almost every single enemy makes a beeline towards you, and of course respawns every time you reenter an area.
My gameplay frustrations started to boil towards the end of chapter 7, which a friend has affectionately called “Earthbound 2”, where the game’s structure turns into a series of vignettes where the gang travels around to find the needles and (largely) get punked by the Pigmasks each of them. Even if I was no longer as frustrated as in chapter 4, it started to feel very tedious going through each needle’s section, even if there were good moments along the way. The game’s biggest strength is its well-crafted story by far, and I wish the game didn’t put it to the wayside for such a significant chunk of playtime. A thought crossed my head when I reached the fifth or sixth needle, along the lines of “the story wouldn’t really be any different if we weren’t finding these needles, since I end up getting beaten to most of them anyways”, which I don’t think is a super great criticism in general, but speaks well to where the game was leaving me at that point.
I do feel bad that so much of this review reads negatively. It’s a piece of art that is definitely worth the experience, in spite of its gameplay. Its one of those games that feels special. I rant so much about its gameplay because I suffered through it to see what the game had to show me, and it was well worth it.
I played Mother 3 after reading a nearly decade-old Starman.net thread titled “Does Mother 3 say something about capitalism?” with several capitalism understanders™️ within saying that it wasn’t. I called them “fucking idiots” at the time—even as someone who hadn’t played the game I could tell its about capitalism—but now that I’ve finished the game, I can provide a more nuanced take. Those guys are MASSIVE fucking idiots.
Mother 3 is a game about the ways capitalism and fascism work together to destroy society. It is not subtle about this in the slightest. It literally has a long, slow text crawl about how consumerism has corrupted people and made things start to get worse! Not that its bluntness is an issue, clearly some people need to have it shoved straight through their thick skulls. Its genuinely impressive how realistically and thoroughly the game covers these themes, from the gradual corruption of Tazmilly Village you get to experience over the course of the game, to the eugenic experiments of Chimera, to Pigmask’s hijacking of the village’s religious beliefs as a front for their lightning strikes. Even the game’s use of the “everybody is colorblind” trope effectively shows how the fascist power of the Pigmasks isn’t built out of some rigid structure. It cannot be said enough how well-constructed of a story Mother 3 is, elevated even further by the pinnacle of Nintendo’s spritework and animation.
The game is also ridiculously funny. The throughout bits are incredibly well done and always a delight to see play out. My favorite one remains the Dog-Like Dude at the entrance to Club Tittiboo (I will die knowing I missed the chance to get a plush of him 😔), though the entire climb up the Empire Porky Building with a dozen fake 100th floors was also a good ass time. I was surprised how much of a straight line I can draw this game’s humor to the indie rpgs inspired by the series, even moreso than Earthbound.
Underpinning all of this is the emotional core of the game, a family ripped apart by the Pigmasks and a young boy trying to find something in the tattered remains. Overall, I felt the game could’ve done more with its characters. Despite me having become a big Kumatora-head, it’s hard to ignore that I can summarize more or less everything the game tells you about her in two sentences. (She is a redheaded masculine girl who came to the islands as an orphan and was raised by the Magypsies. She has PSI powers and will kick your ass if you mess with her.) I think I could tell you even less about Duster. From what I understand, the intent behind the main characters’ relative lack of dialogue stems from having the their emotions reflect the player’s, much in the same way the first two Mother games handed it, but it ends up conflicting with Mother 3’s much more structured story enough that i wish they gave the core cast of characters some more character.
Despite this, the game still nails its ending with a wonderfully personal and emotional final battle. The framing between Lucas and Claus, the music, their parents’ desperate intervention, Lucas’s struggle being portrayed through the gameplay, Claus’ dying words; it’s all so beautifully done, I struggle to say more about it. The culminating awakening of the dark dragon was mesmerizing and felt like the perfect bittersweet sendoff to the world. And then, as someone who has just changed her name, to get to talk with the characters one last time, with them talking directly to me, thanking me directly, wishing me the best returning to my own world felt incredible.
This entire sequence felt special, a testament to Itoi’s incredible skills as a creative. It’s incredibly easy to see why many people consider Mother 3 one of their favorite experiences of all time, it’s definitely a 10/10 story for me.
But ah—
Mother 3 isn’t just a story. It’s a videogame.
Mother 3 is the sequel to the 1994 probably-too-popular-to-be-considered-a-cult-classic SNES JRPG Earthbound. Those close to me may know that my thoughts on Earthbound amount to “everything about the game is pretty good except the gameplay”. The general vibe I got from hearing about Mother 3 in the years before playing it was that its gameplay is an improvement from Earthbound. It definitely is. Doesn’t make it good though.
The core issue of Mother 3’s gameplay is that everything battle feels like a brutal war of attrition. Enemies hit extremely hard, so you always have to be healing someone, which costs PP or healing items, which are always in limited supply, so you better hope you can defeat the enemy before you run out. And hopefully you’re fighting something that takes a reasonable amount of damage from normal attacks, because 2 of your party members have no other options. PP-restoring items are few and far to come by. You do not have a reliable way to revive party members until at least 3/4ths through the game, and a full party heal option until even later. Sometimes the game will force you to go through an enemy-filled mini dungeon, beat the boss in there, then backtrack through said enemy-filled dungeon without a single hot springs to heal at. It’s all such a pain in the ass. And before you try to “skill issue” me, yes, I made liberal use of stat buffs and debuffs, especially during bosses. They feel essential for giving you a remote chance in several battles.
That’s just when you’ve finally got the whole party together. In the earlier chapters, when you only have 2 party members, you’ll often be lacking much options in
combat, which makes things even more of a drag. There were two separate instances in chapter 4, where you’re playing as Lucas and Boney that I would’ve straight up dropped the game if not for emulator features: the boss in Club Tittiboo and the train tunnel where you have to fight wave after wave of enemies without any respite. The game’s corridor-filled level design means any trip through an area means fighting almost every single enemy makes a beeline towards you, and of course respawns every time you reenter an area.
My gameplay frustrations started to boil towards the end of chapter 7, which a friend has affectionately called “Earthbound 2”, where the game’s structure turns into a series of vignettes where the gang travels around to find the needles and (largely) get punked by the Pigmasks each of them. Even if I was no longer as frustrated as in chapter 4, it started to feel very tedious going through each needle’s section, even if there were good moments along the way. The game’s biggest strength is its well-crafted story by far, and I wish the game didn’t put it to the wayside for such a significant chunk of playtime. A thought crossed my head when I reached the fifth or sixth needle, along the lines of “the story wouldn’t really be any different if we weren’t finding these needles, since I end up getting beaten to most of them anyways”, which I don’t think is a super great criticism in general, but speaks well to where the game was leaving me at that point.
I do feel bad that so much of this review reads negatively. It’s a piece of art that is definitely worth the experience, in spite of its gameplay. Its one of those games that feels special. I rant so much about its gameplay because I suffered through it to see what the game had to show me, and it was well worth it.
2023
The last game I finished—Mother 3—I felt enamored with just about everything besides its combat system. It feels right that the next game I beat is something that rides primarily on its combat system.
Okay, that's not entirely fair. Hi-Fi Rush is a game with a fuckton of style. The way the entire game moves to a singular beat: attacks coming out, the environment, the UI, the actions of the cutscenes. It all works together so seamlessly to keep you constantly on the beat. The way some of the cutscenes are choreographed around the music are genuinely impressive.
The game's story and characters are completely forgettable, and the game's writing is quite often eye-rolling. It feels like they were obligated to construct a story with some attempt at emotional resonance despite not wanting to and ended up constructing the most generic plot imaginable. I don't even want to get into how the game flaccid utilization of cyberpunk and anti-capitalist aesthetics. But it's fine. That's not what the game is about. It's about trashing robots to a beat.
The combat is absolutely divine. Very few games nail getting into the zone as much as Hi-Fi Rush does, helped in large part by the rhythm elements. Stringing together chains of attacks, launching the enemy into the air, summoning your allies to keep them up there, destroying them, then grappling to a new enemy to repeat the process, racking up a massive combo meter. It's the classic character action game feeling, and the game pulls it off perfectly.
The combat does have a few issues, namely the enemies with shields requiring you to use your allies' moves. This wouldn't be so much an issue if not for a trinity of issues: most shields take 2 ally attacks to take down, ally attacks are on a cooldown, and there's no lock-on system. If there aren't any other enemies at play, you're forced to awkwardly run around waiting for the meter to refill, ruining both your combo meter and the pace of the gameplay. And god forbid, Macaron's physical attack misses the enemy (since there's no lock-on), forcing you to wait longer. Once the shields are down, however, the gameplay is back to feeling like pure butter.
Outside of combat, the game consists mostly of "running around" sections where you're solving small puzzles, doing light platforming, talking to NPCs, etc. None of it is bad per say, but the running around:combat ratio is way too high and after the first level, most of the time in these sections I was wishing to be fed another treat that is the combat sections. Fortunately, the game strikes focuses more on the combat sections towards the end of the game, and really ends up shining with a set of 2 incredible levels at the end. Also, the jump sucks. I don't know who thought it was a good jump, but they should never be allowed to design a jump in a videogame ever again.
Despite honestly being pretty middling for most of its runtime, Hi-Fi Rush's combat elevates the rest of the experience a lot. The rhythm of the battles still flows within me even a couple hours after finishing the game, and I suspect it will continue to do so for the next few days. I would love to see the team be able to take a second crack at the formula with a bit of a higher budget. I think they have something special sprouting here, and if they do things right, they could have an all-time great on their hands.
Okay, that's not entirely fair. Hi-Fi Rush is a game with a fuckton of style. The way the entire game moves to a singular beat: attacks coming out, the environment, the UI, the actions of the cutscenes. It all works together so seamlessly to keep you constantly on the beat. The way some of the cutscenes are choreographed around the music are genuinely impressive.
The game's story and characters are completely forgettable, and the game's writing is quite often eye-rolling. It feels like they were obligated to construct a story with some attempt at emotional resonance despite not wanting to and ended up constructing the most generic plot imaginable. I don't even want to get into how the game flaccid utilization of cyberpunk and anti-capitalist aesthetics. But it's fine. That's not what the game is about. It's about trashing robots to a beat.
The combat is absolutely divine. Very few games nail getting into the zone as much as Hi-Fi Rush does, helped in large part by the rhythm elements. Stringing together chains of attacks, launching the enemy into the air, summoning your allies to keep them up there, destroying them, then grappling to a new enemy to repeat the process, racking up a massive combo meter. It's the classic character action game feeling, and the game pulls it off perfectly.
The combat does have a few issues, namely the enemies with shields requiring you to use your allies' moves. This wouldn't be so much an issue if not for a trinity of issues: most shields take 2 ally attacks to take down, ally attacks are on a cooldown, and there's no lock-on system. If there aren't any other enemies at play, you're forced to awkwardly run around waiting for the meter to refill, ruining both your combo meter and the pace of the gameplay. And god forbid, Macaron's physical attack misses the enemy (since there's no lock-on), forcing you to wait longer. Once the shields are down, however, the gameplay is back to feeling like pure butter.
Outside of combat, the game consists mostly of "running around" sections where you're solving small puzzles, doing light platforming, talking to NPCs, etc. None of it is bad per say, but the running around:combat ratio is way too high and after the first level, most of the time in these sections I was wishing to be fed another treat that is the combat sections. Fortunately, the game strikes focuses more on the combat sections towards the end of the game, and really ends up shining with a set of 2 incredible levels at the end. Also, the jump sucks. I don't know who thought it was a good jump, but they should never be allowed to design a jump in a videogame ever again.
Despite honestly being pretty middling for most of its runtime, Hi-Fi Rush's combat elevates the rest of the experience a lot. The rhythm of the battles still flows within me even a couple hours after finishing the game, and I suspect it will continue to do so for the next few days. I would love to see the team be able to take a second crack at the formula with a bit of a higher budget. I think they have something special sprouting here, and if they do things right, they could have an all-time great on their hands.
This review contains spoilers
From the very beginning, I knew I was going to love this game. From well before it's very announcement, in early twinkles of the game being a job listing for a 2D action game at EPD, I knew it would be an incredible experience for me. What can I say, I'm a Super Mario girl at heart. Far too many words had been waxed about the creative stagnation of the New Super Mario Bros. series—a series of 4 games released over the course of 6 years, the last game of which having released almost twice as long ago as the series itself lasted—and the will-they-won't-they of is the series would continue—again, a series of 4 games released over the course of 6 years, the last game of which having released almost twice as long ago as the series itself lasted. But I always held strong in the belief something special was on the way.
And yet, despite my full faith going in, exponentially compounded by every single prerelease video released for it… the game still managed to go beyond what I could’ve possibly hoped for. Much like Pikmin 4 earlier this year, Wonder crosses the incredible tightrope of packing its playtime to the brim with new ideas and executing on basically all of them well. Every single section of every single level feels meticulously crafted to be a unique, vivid experience overflowing with soul. And it ends up doing this all with such an effortless grace, as if this experience was just spawned into the world as a perfect specimen, just as Nintendo does at their very best.
The most impressive part about the game is how, despite maintaining the tried-and-true broad strokes of the series formula, the small changes it makes in a million different areas do a lot to make the Flower Kingdom feel so alive. The game is not afraid to shake up the standard level formula, with thing like little cutscenes interspersed throughout a few levels. Worlds 3 & 5 provide a different context to your journey through the world than the typical "defeat the boss at the end of the area!", and despite them ultimately being the (relatively) weakest worlds in the game, they still add an interesting flavor to their levels even if the underlying gameplay is unchanged. It's obvious the devs were greatly inspired by the structure of the 3D Marios, particularly Odyssey, as they should've been! Even the talking flowers, despite their frequent Marvelisms, have a lot more dynamism and interaction than was suggested prerelease. It becomes an active conversation between the player and the game while in the middle of play, just another way of making it all feel more alive.
Naturally, the biggest shakeup to the game is the Wonder Flower sections, which as I said before are incredibly impressive in their variety and quality. Having one per level was the best decision they could have made, giving each level a core identity and always changing up what's going on. Even when wonder effects are repeated, which even then doesn't happen nearly as often as you'd expect, they're recontextualized in different ways that still make them feel different. The only wonder effect that feels like it outstays its welcome is the wall-clinging slimes transformation, where you just kinda use it again in the final stage of the forest world for... some reason? It definitely stood out as a weird decision amongst a sea of very much good decisions. The musical segments were also a wonderful little surprise, making even the King Boo appearance I already knew from the commercials into a treat to experience!
All of the wonder effects are wrapped up incredibly with the final few sections of the game, between the final level, credits, and The Final Test. With how sparsely each one gets used, watching them all come back for a redux, constantly switching from effect to effect... it was wonderful!
Continuing the magic of the game, by some miracle we also got a Nintendo game with a... really good multiplayer experience, both offline and online??? Offline multiplayer being good goes without saying, not just because I played most of the game in bed with my partner (love you <3), but with how they changed the multiplayer experience. All the handwringing prerelease about removing the player interaction didn't anticipate how it allowed the levels to be way tighter designed, and in many ways be more chaotic than their New Wii/U counterparts.
Online though somehow managed to be a really seamless and innovative experience I've never really seen from a platformer, again, from Nintendo of all companies! The game does well to install a mindset of working with the people you're playing the level alongside: helping show others secrets, placing down standees at opportune places, doubling back to save someone who became a ghost. It's all so easy and joyous to do, I built a bunch of connections with players as we struggle through a level together. I even liked the lambasted Search Party levels, which despite being a big too far on the arcane side, made helping each other out all the more valuable. I do feel bad for those playing through the Search Party levels in offline mode... but sometimes sacrifices have to be made for a unique experience! They'll get through it.
There is one area of the game I'll eat crow on though. I was so certain they wouldn't stick with the ugly tile based level geometry of the New series, but its back (well, point-based now to be pedantic) and it looks... really good! Turns out varying the colors and lighting and having models that weren't made for Double Dash in the levels does most of the work! Each level finally feels like it has its own visual identity, with even ones that utilize the same geometry and backgrounds varying up the lighting or architecture in some unique way. Then the wonder effect comes in and changes the world yet again in some unique way, often making it feel like you're playing through two levels in one. It's such a drastic contrast to the set level templates of the previous 2D Marios, and so good to see. The music is also really good in a fairly subtle way. While not too much stuck with me throughout the playthrough, probably in part because how many different tracks the game goes through, listening to some of them on YouTube let me appreciate the highlights a lot more. Shoutouts to the palace music that sounds ripped straight out of Super Paper Mario.
The only thing I'm left wishing is that there was more game. I devoured this game with a voraciousness few games trigger in me. I 100% it, which while not a particularly intensive ordeal, means a lot if you know anything about me! I already feel the pull to replay the game, which if you know anything about me means even more. I want more of it not because I feel any dissatisfaction with what was given, but it being such an magical experience that I feel like I could feast on it forever. It feels good for Super Mario to finally be back.
And yet, despite my full faith going in, exponentially compounded by every single prerelease video released for it… the game still managed to go beyond what I could’ve possibly hoped for. Much like Pikmin 4 earlier this year, Wonder crosses the incredible tightrope of packing its playtime to the brim with new ideas and executing on basically all of them well. Every single section of every single level feels meticulously crafted to be a unique, vivid experience overflowing with soul. And it ends up doing this all with such an effortless grace, as if this experience was just spawned into the world as a perfect specimen, just as Nintendo does at their very best.
The most impressive part about the game is how, despite maintaining the tried-and-true broad strokes of the series formula, the small changes it makes in a million different areas do a lot to make the Flower Kingdom feel so alive. The game is not afraid to shake up the standard level formula, with thing like little cutscenes interspersed throughout a few levels. Worlds 3 & 5 provide a different context to your journey through the world than the typical "defeat the boss at the end of the area!", and despite them ultimately being the (relatively) weakest worlds in the game, they still add an interesting flavor to their levels even if the underlying gameplay is unchanged. It's obvious the devs were greatly inspired by the structure of the 3D Marios, particularly Odyssey, as they should've been! Even the talking flowers, despite their frequent Marvelisms, have a lot more dynamism and interaction than was suggested prerelease. It becomes an active conversation between the player and the game while in the middle of play, just another way of making it all feel more alive.
Naturally, the biggest shakeup to the game is the Wonder Flower sections, which as I said before are incredibly impressive in their variety and quality. Having one per level was the best decision they could have made, giving each level a core identity and always changing up what's going on. Even when wonder effects are repeated, which even then doesn't happen nearly as often as you'd expect, they're recontextualized in different ways that still make them feel different. The only wonder effect that feels like it outstays its welcome is the wall-clinging slimes transformation, where you just kinda use it again in the final stage of the forest world for... some reason? It definitely stood out as a weird decision amongst a sea of very much good decisions. The musical segments were also a wonderful little surprise, making even the King Boo appearance I already knew from the commercials into a treat to experience!
All of the wonder effects are wrapped up incredibly with the final few sections of the game, between the final level, credits, and The Final Test. With how sparsely each one gets used, watching them all come back for a redux, constantly switching from effect to effect... it was wonderful!
Continuing the magic of the game, by some miracle we also got a Nintendo game with a... really good multiplayer experience, both offline and online??? Offline multiplayer being good goes without saying, not just because I played most of the game in bed with my partner (love you <3), but with how they changed the multiplayer experience. All the handwringing prerelease about removing the player interaction didn't anticipate how it allowed the levels to be way tighter designed, and in many ways be more chaotic than their New Wii/U counterparts.
Online though somehow managed to be a really seamless and innovative experience I've never really seen from a platformer, again, from Nintendo of all companies! The game does well to install a mindset of working with the people you're playing the level alongside: helping show others secrets, placing down standees at opportune places, doubling back to save someone who became a ghost. It's all so easy and joyous to do, I built a bunch of connections with players as we struggle through a level together. I even liked the lambasted Search Party levels, which despite being a big too far on the arcane side, made helping each other out all the more valuable. I do feel bad for those playing through the Search Party levels in offline mode... but sometimes sacrifices have to be made for a unique experience! They'll get through it.
There is one area of the game I'll eat crow on though. I was so certain they wouldn't stick with the ugly tile based level geometry of the New series, but its back (well, point-based now to be pedantic) and it looks... really good! Turns out varying the colors and lighting and having models that weren't made for Double Dash in the levels does most of the work! Each level finally feels like it has its own visual identity, with even ones that utilize the same geometry and backgrounds varying up the lighting or architecture in some unique way. Then the wonder effect comes in and changes the world yet again in some unique way, often making it feel like you're playing through two levels in one. It's such a drastic contrast to the set level templates of the previous 2D Marios, and so good to see. The music is also really good in a fairly subtle way. While not too much stuck with me throughout the playthrough, probably in part because how many different tracks the game goes through, listening to some of them on YouTube let me appreciate the highlights a lot more. Shoutouts to the palace music that sounds ripped straight out of Super Paper Mario.
The only thing I'm left wishing is that there was more game. I devoured this game with a voraciousness few games trigger in me. I 100% it, which while not a particularly intensive ordeal, means a lot if you know anything about me! I already feel the pull to replay the game, which if you know anything about me means even more. I want more of it not because I feel any dissatisfaction with what was given, but it being such an magical experience that I feel like I could feast on it forever. It feels good for Super Mario to finally be back.
How does a glorified game jam the team put together in a week and change feel like the first level of a fully complete game?
2012
The epitome of short but sweet, it's clear why this game is another foundation of the RPG Maker horror genre. It's incredibly creepy and maintains a constant tension, but has a sense of humor about it too. Graphics and music aren't anything to write home about, certainly lacking the aesthetic identity its closest companion game Ib has, but they do the job. The whole arc with the frog companion was really great, especially with the punchline towards the end of the game. Yeah, the punchline was me being murdered, but I couldn't even be mad about it.
I wish the cat that acted as your save point throughout the game didn't say "Yo." every time you met them though. It's an incrutiably small nitpick... but it was still a kinda unfitting choice!
Puzzles are the focus and generally well done, aside from one or two I had to look at a guide to figure out. Interestingly, one of the last puzzles in the game was removed in the version I was playing--no clue what was up with it. The game also LOVES throwing in chase scenes with instant death conditions, ratcheting up the tension of course, but felt a bit overplayed by the end of it.
Probably the only other thing of note was the true ending, nothing truly mindblowing, but it still got me! I am not immune to a concise yet effective twist, or a concise yet effective game!
I wish the cat that acted as your save point throughout the game didn't say "Yo." every time you met them though. It's an incrutiably small nitpick... but it was still a kinda unfitting choice!
Puzzles are the focus and generally well done, aside from one or two I had to look at a guide to figure out. Interestingly, one of the last puzzles in the game was removed in the version I was playing--no clue what was up with it. The game also LOVES throwing in chase scenes with instant death conditions, ratcheting up the tension of course, but felt a bit overplayed by the end of it.
Probably the only other thing of note was the true ending, nothing truly mindblowing, but it still got me! I am not immune to a concise yet effective twist, or a concise yet effective game!
2019
The background of Hypnospace Outlaw, an alt-90s internet space approximating Geocities/AOL, is not something I ever got to experience for myself. By the time I first started to seriously experience the internet as a kid in the early 2010’s, Web 2.0 was well underway, with Hypnospace’s inspirations already well on their way to becoming a relic embedded firmly in history. Yet when playing this game, it’s so easy to see the fantastical allure of what the internet could be. Even as an obviously curated space, I think its poignant that this is the most fun I’ve had just “browsing the web” in a long time. More still, it highlights how even as a lot about the internet has changed, a lot remains similar at the core: people who want to express themselves struggling with greater corporate interests.
Every page of Hypnospace is a meticulously constructed, multi-media collage of clip art, funny-looking early 3D models, and hyper-compressed videos that all feel right at home together. It's also really fucking funny. Whether seeing an old man failing to put together a properly functioning page (props for the effort though) or a bunch of teenagers sticking the same image uniting themselves against the teenzone bully, every page has a—and typically a whole array of—absolutely ridiculous bits that are a delicacy to experience. Indeed, so much of this game's comedy born out of the fact that the way people express themselves is often really funny, whether intentionally or not.
An amazing moment occurs during the first mission to copyright strike images of one 1964 cartoon character "Gumshoe Gooper". You spend a while idling through the vast space available to you, browsing page after page with no luck, until you finally strike the jackpot... a first grade teacher posting the drawings her students made online. Welp! Get on scrubbing those pics, pig. The comedy just ratchets itself up as the game progresses, and you get to see these same webpages evolve, opening the door to so many fun developments (many of which you don't get to truly appreciate the payoff until the end of the game). Part of me wants to be as vague as possible talking about the various elements of the game, because it all deserves to be experienced blindly. Yet, because there's such an immense amount of things to experience, it doesn't really matter "spoiling" a few things.
Short digression I orginally had near the end but moved up here for pacing reasons: There's a very particular focus on music sub-cultures that spawned on the internet, from what I can tell spawning from the creator's own experience in such groups. However, as a relative music normie who just puts on the music I think sounds nice without caring to get too much into the weeds, I felt some of the intricacies of the discussions on various pages were lost to me. This isn't a failure of the game so much as on myself, but I just found it interesting.
Thanks to the sheer joy of scrolling through each and every webpage, it allows for the actual gameplay of Hypnospace to be brave in a sense. It is always a fine wire for the puzzle adventure game to cross between giving the player a freedom with which they're able to answer questions. A game that limits the players responses to a pre-defined list of answers, like choosing clues in Ace Attorney, may lead to the player just selecting the most right sounding options versus truly intuiting the logic of the answer. That's not necessarily an issue, but it can lead to the deduction process feeling unsatisfying if handled incorrectly. On the other hand, a game can let the player respond freely to the question in an attempt to be as realistic of a deduction process as possible, but that a path that very easily leads to a frustrating experience. Not to mention, it's a nightmare of answer parsing, something Square Enix tried to tackle with their eloquently named "SQUARE ENIX AI Tech Preview: The Portopia Serial Murder Case" and, um, well. Lol.
Hypnospace Outlaw skews towards the later option, giving you a page-tagging keyword system and a search bar that lets you search those keywords. While there's plenty of pages accessible from the various "zone" landing pages, many others require you to dig through other pages to find links to them. Some pages require you to intuit very specific keywords to access them. There's like 3 or 4 different secret areas that require you to get through multiple layer of security and keyword intuition to access! Yet I only had to look at a guide for all of this a single time (which, once I did the thing required, really was my fault for not reading correctly), which is incredibly rare for a chronic guide looker-at-er such as I! Even if I couldn't find the thing I was looking for, it was so easy to rabbit hole myself down some other interesting series of pages, often leading to a bunch of different secrets that may or may not be relevant to the main task assigned. Then, eventually, I would stumble upon the information that triggers that all-so-wonderful lightbulb moment, and progress would be forged soon after. It's an incredibly seamless experience, bouncing to and from the "main path" of the game, and one that made me feel so smart with each one of those lightbulb moments.
With all that, I'd be so easy for Hypnospace to be a really well designed puzzle adventure game with an amazing sense of humor, but there's something the game really surprised me with; the element that brings it into the realm of one of my favorite games of all time.
At its core, Hypnospace Outlaw is a game about communities: how they are born, how they prosper, and—perhaps most poignantly—how they wither away and die. You are an internet cop intentionally on the outside of the communities you patrol, an agent of the corporate minds who's capitalist ambitions directly fly in the face of the well-being of these communities. You never directly speak with most of the people who populate Hypnospace, and in fact are forbidden from doing so by your job. Yet, despite all that separation, it's impossible not to grow an attachment to so many of these characters, with a surprising amount of depth both in their interactions amongst themselves and with the corporate overlord Merchantsoft.
Then, towards the end of the game, the game pulls something really interesting that I will not divulge any more into that gives the game a sense of mournfulness to it. No matter how long communities exist, they'll fall apart eventually. Sometimes it's by the nature of people drifting apart as their lives diverge, or those apart of it passing away; oftentimes it's by the forceful cudgel of corporate interests or all sorts of other ugliness. Yet the people within these communities persist, and the great memories of the communities stored within them persist.
Hypnospace recognizes the humanity of internet spaces so well, and caps things off with an ending that, to my total shock, made me a bit emotional! The incredible soundtrack definitely helped pull off the moment. A goodbye to Hypnospace is a bittersweet goodbye to a web of communities I never got to be apart of and yet still grew to know so well. Even as the communities die, the memories remain archived forever.
And may we forever stand with Gooper.
Every page of Hypnospace is a meticulously constructed, multi-media collage of clip art, funny-looking early 3D models, and hyper-compressed videos that all feel right at home together. It's also really fucking funny. Whether seeing an old man failing to put together a properly functioning page (props for the effort though) or a bunch of teenagers sticking the same image uniting themselves against the teenzone bully, every page has a—and typically a whole array of—absolutely ridiculous bits that are a delicacy to experience. Indeed, so much of this game's comedy born out of the fact that the way people express themselves is often really funny, whether intentionally or not.
An amazing moment occurs during the first mission to copyright strike images of one 1964 cartoon character "Gumshoe Gooper". You spend a while idling through the vast space available to you, browsing page after page with no luck, until you finally strike the jackpot... a first grade teacher posting the drawings her students made online. Welp! Get on scrubbing those pics, pig. The comedy just ratchets itself up as the game progresses, and you get to see these same webpages evolve, opening the door to so many fun developments (many of which you don't get to truly appreciate the payoff until the end of the game). Part of me wants to be as vague as possible talking about the various elements of the game, because it all deserves to be experienced blindly. Yet, because there's such an immense amount of things to experience, it doesn't really matter "spoiling" a few things.
Short digression I orginally had near the end but moved up here for pacing reasons: There's a very particular focus on music sub-cultures that spawned on the internet, from what I can tell spawning from the creator's own experience in such groups. However, as a relative music normie who just puts on the music I think sounds nice without caring to get too much into the weeds, I felt some of the intricacies of the discussions on various pages were lost to me. This isn't a failure of the game so much as on myself, but I just found it interesting.
Thanks to the sheer joy of scrolling through each and every webpage, it allows for the actual gameplay of Hypnospace to be brave in a sense. It is always a fine wire for the puzzle adventure game to cross between giving the player a freedom with which they're able to answer questions. A game that limits the players responses to a pre-defined list of answers, like choosing clues in Ace Attorney, may lead to the player just selecting the most right sounding options versus truly intuiting the logic of the answer. That's not necessarily an issue, but it can lead to the deduction process feeling unsatisfying if handled incorrectly. On the other hand, a game can let the player respond freely to the question in an attempt to be as realistic of a deduction process as possible, but that a path that very easily leads to a frustrating experience. Not to mention, it's a nightmare of answer parsing, something Square Enix tried to tackle with their eloquently named "SQUARE ENIX AI Tech Preview: The Portopia Serial Murder Case" and, um, well. Lol.
Hypnospace Outlaw skews towards the later option, giving you a page-tagging keyword system and a search bar that lets you search those keywords. While there's plenty of pages accessible from the various "zone" landing pages, many others require you to dig through other pages to find links to them. Some pages require you to intuit very specific keywords to access them. There's like 3 or 4 different secret areas that require you to get through multiple layer of security and keyword intuition to access! Yet I only had to look at a guide for all of this a single time (which, once I did the thing required, really was my fault for not reading correctly), which is incredibly rare for a chronic guide looker-at-er such as I! Even if I couldn't find the thing I was looking for, it was so easy to rabbit hole myself down some other interesting series of pages, often leading to a bunch of different secrets that may or may not be relevant to the main task assigned. Then, eventually, I would stumble upon the information that triggers that all-so-wonderful lightbulb moment, and progress would be forged soon after. It's an incredibly seamless experience, bouncing to and from the "main path" of the game, and one that made me feel so smart with each one of those lightbulb moments.
With all that, I'd be so easy for Hypnospace to be a really well designed puzzle adventure game with an amazing sense of humor, but there's something the game really surprised me with; the element that brings it into the realm of one of my favorite games of all time.
At its core, Hypnospace Outlaw is a game about communities: how they are born, how they prosper, and—perhaps most poignantly—how they wither away and die. You are an internet cop intentionally on the outside of the communities you patrol, an agent of the corporate minds who's capitalist ambitions directly fly in the face of the well-being of these communities. You never directly speak with most of the people who populate Hypnospace, and in fact are forbidden from doing so by your job. Yet, despite all that separation, it's impossible not to grow an attachment to so many of these characters, with a surprising amount of depth both in their interactions amongst themselves and with the corporate overlord Merchantsoft.
Then, towards the end of the game, the game pulls something really interesting that I will not divulge any more into that gives the game a sense of mournfulness to it. No matter how long communities exist, they'll fall apart eventually. Sometimes it's by the nature of people drifting apart as their lives diverge, or those apart of it passing away; oftentimes it's by the forceful cudgel of corporate interests or all sorts of other ugliness. Yet the people within these communities persist, and the great memories of the communities stored within them persist.
Hypnospace recognizes the humanity of internet spaces so well, and caps things off with an ending that, to my total shock, made me a bit emotional! The incredible soundtrack definitely helped pull off the moment. A goodbye to Hypnospace is a bittersweet goodbye to a web of communities I never got to be apart of and yet still grew to know so well. Even as the communities die, the memories remain archived forever.
And may we forever stand with Gooper.