This is a five star review, but this isn't a perfect game. It definitely has flaws. However, I give it 5 stars because for fans of JRPGs, it provides that elusive nostalgic high that we play so many of these mediocre games to chase. That first game you fell in love with: for me it was FFX, for you maybe FFVII, Suikoden 2, Persona 3, Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, or Dragon Quest 8. Whatever it is, there's a distinctive feeling it gave you as a kid, that you continue playing JRPGs trying to rekindle. Most of the time, you are let down. You may like the combat system, or a few characters, or find the plot decent enough, but usually it just doesn't get there. You might even hit a point where you wonder if a JPRG will make you feel that way again. You're just too old now. These stories are too simple. It's just nostalgia. I thought I had reached that point, but this game proved me wrong.

At face value, the story isn't that exceptional. Aside from one or two of the villains, most of them feel painfully childish- like power rangers monster of the week throwaways. The overarching plot itself is good and engaging, but doesn't stand out among standard JRPG fare. What DOES stand out is what it MEANS, what this story represents, its themes. Time, regret, love, fear, what it means to be alive even if it's painful. THAT is extremely well-done, and emotionally moving. The main cast of characters (and the 20+ heroes that join your party) are my favorite party in a JRPG I've played since I was a kid- maybe my favorite ever, I'll have to think on that. They don't feel like a collection of anime tropes and established archetypal cliches, they feel like human beings. They all have flaws, and growth, and individual arcs. The way they interact with each other over the course of the game- going from hate, to distrust, to begrudging neutrality, and so on, eventually to intimate friendship and love; watching these characters go from enemies to inseparable companions is genuinely touching, especially in the backdrop of a hostile militarized world that makes you question if its even worth fighting for, if there's anything worth salvaging. So, while admittedly, this is a typical JRPG story about a group of friends challenging a corrupt world order in order to save the ones they care about, it is told in such a beautiful and human way, it towers above any JRPG I have played in a long time. If you are a fan of the genre, this is a must-play. This game belongs in the canon of best JRPGs of all time.

TL;DR: Amazing characters, beautiful story. Must-play for JRPG fans. Steer clear if you don't like the genre. It's not for you. Expect run-time of 100 hours+, but its a world you're going to want to keep exploring and will feel sad to leave.

You're probably already expecting this, but its a very simple and jank game. There's nothing that cool about it. The redeeming feature that elevates it from 1/5 to 2/5 is that after a while the mindless shooting and dodging can lull your brain into a kind of a drooling trance state. Though that's probably bad for your brain anyway. Even for free on gamepass, you'll want to put your time into Doom Eternal, Prodeus, Wolfenstein, Titanfall. If you're looking for a spectacle fighter over a shooter, you certainly won't find it with this game either. Go play DMC5.

P.S. Also I want to say- strictly because it's funny- that this game is very close to, and a huge step down from, Dirge of Cerberus (2006).

My controversial opinion about this game is that it would have been better to go all in on a heavily scripted Uncharted 10-20 hour game. There are two games here: the aforementioned and a post-Zelda style adventure / puzzle game that made up a larger chunk of God of War (2018)'s gameplay. The strange thing is I liked the adventuring in 2018. Here, it did very little for me. I don't think it's because it was more poorly designed (though its possible), but because this games high points are SO high, that when you go back down to average gameplay it feels like utter drudgery.

Sure, if you stripped out so much combat, exploring, collectibles, puzzles, you would have something much closer to a movie than a game. But they created a movie that's far more compelling than the game. There are so many exhilarating memorable moments that made this game a blast to play (or watch), while I'll be remembering very little of the exploring.

It feels strange to say, because the exploring and combat wasn't bad. It wasn't amazing, but it was good. Above average, for sure. Just compared to some of the strongest performances we've ever seen in a game, it feels...dated, trite. Like two separate aspects of the game that are both good in their own right, but when you put them together they drag the entire project down rather than complement each other.

This review seems more negative than it is. God of War Ragnarok is a great game. Everyone knows it. Still, its hard not to notice that its simultaneously the future of AAA games and just more of the same.

Also, I've gotta say, there are some pretty funny moments, but they went a little overboard on the marvel humor.

While I found the survival horror gameplay mechanics really well-done, I didn't find them satisfying in their own right without an intriguing plot and setting to push me forward. I didn't really have much drive to keep on and see what happens next. The standard survival horror puzzles and inventory management felt more like a chore I wanted to avoid than a source of tension and engagement. This isn't a problem I had with any of the early RE games (and this is probably the best RE1 worship game out there). I know I'm in the minority on this, and most people found the setting, characters, and plot very interesting, so I plan to give it another shot one day, see if it clicks. Also worth mentioning the game has a really great look and aesthetic sense. Definitely distinctive enough to be worth noting as a positive in the game's favor.

FFO: Darkest Dungeon, Turn-Based Battles (namely Suikoden), History

If you're into Darkest Dungeon and history you should definitely try this. Even if you're not that into the gameplay, I think it's worth playing for the unique atmosphere it has. Bleak but hopeful, there's a sad humanism in meeting these interesting characters and learning more about them while fighting with them. As you go on, resources dwindle, districts fall, until ultimately the uprising is violently put down. There's a real feeling expressed through the gameplay of trying to find the strength to fight on while the world crumbles around you no matter how hard you fight to stop it.

While this makes one playthrough very emotionally impactful, the necessary slog and difficulty of the combat and resource management makes me very hesitant to do multiple campaigns the way people would for other games in the genre. I also recommend playing on easy your first time. If you have to keep starting over, you're probably going to quit this game and never make it to the end. While you certainly do lose a little something by playing on easy- for example I only lost one person by the end, and I was absolutely destroying the nazis in one turn- just fuckin one-shot sniping them and nuking them with molotovs which was pretty satisfying in its own way. You'd have a much more stronger feel for the loss and attrition playing on normal, but as I said, you're just probably never going to make it. That's part of the game, but this is a game that's worth seeing to the end. Drop it to easy before giving up, that's all I ask.

Chained Echoes is a game of contrasts....

Really, this game is so polished and well-designed for being an amateur, almost sub-indie game. It does a lot of things better than not only competing indie JRPGs, but actual mainstream JRPGs. It has some of the best map design and exploration in a 2d 16bit JRPG, at times feeling like a 3d zone from Xenoblade Chronicles or Final Fantasy 12. Once you unlock your mechs, it recontexualizes many zones by basically adding a Z-plane. It shouldn't work but it does. It's like if 2.5D actually meant something.

This game really shines in the mechanical, gameplay aspects. An interesting battle system (that does get stale unfortunately but less so than the vast majority of JRPGs), the map exploration, the feeling of constantly unlocking new systems to toy with. I didn't think I enjoyed any traditional JRPG gameplay but this game reminded me devs are just not doing a great job making it engaging these last decades.

It initially opens with a very interesting premise and an engaging cast of characters. The first act I would recommend to basically any old school fan, especially fans of Suikoden and Xenogears. However, this is where we get to my opening line about the contrasts here. This game in some ways is so impressive and polished and well-designed that- when its at its best- competes with massive developers like Monolith Soft and Square Enix. However, as you get further into the game, it stops sucking its gut in. Cracks begin to show. It's hard to pinpoint, but there's a lack of focus and coherence that was making me start to lose interest in not just the story and character arcs but the game itself. Features and system mechanics pile up going from generous to aimless. There's a distinct amateurish vibe, like the writing of a flash game. One prominent example is the wild variance in tone and quality of writing, most times being a standard JRPG a child could play then at other times veering of course with overt sexual themes, swearing, hanging corpses in town, or a party member ruefully retelling a memory of a gang rape. It's not that I'm particularly sensitive to this, but you need to pick one or the other. This is not a mature JRPG for adults, and it's also at times not appropriate for pre-adolescents whatsoever.

I made it to the beginning of Act 3, and it was really just starting to feel like there wasn't a vision here for what this story is trying to tell. It was just piling on new things. This happened, then this happened, oh I just made up a cool backstory for this character, let me add that in now. As I haven't seen the end, maybe I'm mistaken and everything comes together and wraps up really nicely, but that's not the impression I've gotten at all with my experience.

Still, I'm probably much more critical on this than other people would be. MOST JRPGs have a pretty dogshit story or dull characters. People just accept it as part of the genre. If you think, say, the Tales Of games or Trails games have good characters and plots, what this game offers will likely be sufficient (yes, that is a dig at you but it's ok).

So, why am I eviscerating this game and giving it 4 stars? The first act is THAT good. This games high points in design philosophy and mechanics are so well-done that any fan of the genre should play it to the end of Act 1. If you're compelled to finish it, great; if you start to slowly lose interest as I did, big deal, you still had a great time with Act 1. I'm bitter that it didn't follow through, but I'll be interested to see what this developer does next. There is a lot of potential here.

Good game trapped in a mid game. Basically every attempt to copy Souls design was poor gameplay/combat design. It would've been a much better game with a standard action autosave system. Without the ability to travel between bonfires, backtracking through levels is a slog. The combat is worse Sekiro, which is still REALLY good, but there's a lot of things they don't understand that makes a lot of fighting against certain enemies really frustrating and tedious. For example, in Sekiro, you can always cancel a light attack into a dodge or parry, and in general your animations are faster. If you try to play this game quickly on a harder difficulty, you're constantly getting interrupted and hit out of your attacks. You instead have to play patiently and slowly, which is honestly just a lot less fun and interesting than setting it to easy and going wild with longer combos more often.

The characters are better than I was expecting, but not amazing. Plot is serviceable, has some cool moments. The exploration is at times pretty satisfying, but hampered by the Souls checkpoint system and the inability to fast travel. By the end of the game if there was a collectible I could now access from a new ability, if it was out of the way I just wouldn't bother. Who cares? I'm not spending 20 minutes trekking through this winding level to get a force echo or whatever.

If they can clean up the sluggishness of the combat, fix the level design / checkpoint contradiction, and kick up the plot and characters a bit in the sequel, we could be looking at a genuinely good game. As it stands, Fallen Order is a mid game, but it's one of the better mid games I've played.

Really expected to drop this and was basically trying it out of a sense of obligation. It's got some annoying QoL issues (the pathing drove me crazy, party members bumping into each other) but I found even the combat engaging by the end. The dynamic interactions between the party members was really cool, and there's some great areas to explore. Also I find the late 90s gen x dnd nerd humor the game is full of pretty endearing at this point. If I'd played it like 5 years ago, I think it would've just annoyed me.

This game completely nails everything it sets out to do. I can't think of a single significant mistake or bad design choice. The combat is fun even at it's simplest (mashing 4/4 light attacks), but has a ton of depth to explore. It doesn't reach the levels of DMC5 or Bayonetta 1 but it doesn't need to, it carves its own niche.

It has a really distinct style that's extremely well-animated, matching with the great voice-acting, tone, and humor to give it a fun saturday morning cartoon vibe. It brings me back to my first time playing DMC3, laughing out loud at the cool but over-the-top cutscenes. At first, I was scared the tone and attempts at humor would be a turn-off I'd just have to tolerate, but it quickly proved itself. The Korsica door cutscene will be seared into my memory forever as a classic hilarious bit. The characters are so much better than you'd expect, and the story hits every beat perfectly and ends in an extremely satisfying way.

This is the game I've been waiting a decade for Platinum to make, it feels like them at their prime. If you're a fan of games like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, you absolutely have to try this.