This game is unimaginably horrible and it's baffling it's the hill so many are willing to die on. There is no enemy variety, which is for sure a good idea for a modern open world game. There is no spell variety either (26), which again certainly was a great idea for a modern rpg based solely around it's magic set at a magic school, but hey Harry Potter has always had a terrible magic system so ¯\(ツ)/¯. For reference Final Fantasy (1987 NES) has triple as many spells (60), and Skyrim a more modern open world game for comparison has over 100 AND both those games have multiple combat classes besides magic. The game will let you use the "unforgivable curses" but it has no morality system to give any meaningful consequences to your actions because according to the devs it would be "too judgmental on the game maker's part". The world is empty, which is always a problem with open world games (not remotely a fan of the genre tbh) and every door is a loading screen. The game is also a buggy mess and anyone saying otherwise is just lying, the game literally has Denuvo lmao. But none of this is surprising, ignoring the original author for a moment, every trailer made it look lackluster and it's made by the developers infamous for Disney tie-in shovelware.

And now for the elephant in the room... The game doubles down on all the racism and antisemitism of its source material, anyone saying Terfling had nothing to do with this game is bending the truth. The official Q&A for the game on their site says they worked closely with her team so it perfectly fits her world, and that it does a little too perfectly. The main premise is squashing a goblin rebellion riddled with antisemitism. The goblin rebellions are not new to the franchise, they are a thing mentioned in the books and expanded material as something the students learn in history class. And what were all the rebellions about? The lack or basic rights like using wands, and checks notes wizards attempting to enslave them "as house elves" but we’re supposed to believe they’re still the villains throughout the franchise?
Which brings us to the next topic, the house elves... As in the source material Hogwarts is run by slave labor and the franchise doesn't want us to look deeper into what that means, waving it off with "well they like it". But if wizards can attempt to enslave goblins as “house elves” what does that actually mean, what exactly is a “house elf” and why doesn’t the series creator want us to examine it? The head house elf at Hogwarts becomes a companion, so you don't actually get to own a slave but you still get one by proxy. The game also lets you decorate the Room of Requirement with mounted house elf heads, with how controversial this aspect of the books has always been idk who on the dev team didn’t think “maybe we shouldn’t keep the mounted head of a sapient creature decoration item”. Again none of this is surprising given the source material where they decorate houses with elf heads and the kids put little hats on during christmas, oh isn’t it so cute and whimsical? And the fact that one of the lead devs was a gamer gate youtuber (them stepping down was never going to divorce the game from these elements). The game is also a prequel set in the 1800s so it can't actually effectively deconstruct the issues with the source material, the goblins are still the anti-semetic bankers, the house elves are still slaves, and the ("good") wizards are still the good guys that have every right to oppress them. Just like Terflings own politics and the politics of the source material the game's message is about preserving the status quo, nothing meaningful can change and it shouldn’t cause we have a continuity to uphold damnit!
The game also throws in the series "first trans character" who they named "Sirona Ryan", this is a name of a Celtic goddess (as many people will point out in an attempt to ignore criticism, despite the origin not being the issue with the name) but just like "Cho Chang", "Anthony Goldstein" and "Kingsley Shacklebolt" it's certainly a choice out of all the Irish names to deliberately use that one for your first trans women. Sirona was also very obviously thrown in last minute in an attempt to save face and say the game was divorced from Terflings and her raging transphobia, but as you can see the game is quite the opposite.
But you know despite all that 9/10 IGN-ostalgia am I right!

In conclusion this game is truly the “Legacy” of this franchise and I can see why fans say “this is everything I ever wanted in a Harry Potter game” because this is all the franchise really truly is. I certainly hope everyone who bought the deluxe edition for the sole reason to spite a minority the author is actively harming daily love their overpriced shovelware and fuck off. Remember yall were the same people in the 90s who hated and wanted to boycott the books for being “satanic” and "progressive". (spoiler alert they never were)

And for anyone who can’t let go of the franchise because of “childhood” and cause “it’s so magical”, let me recommend “Earthsea” by Ursula K. Le Guin, “Discworld” by Terry Pratchett, and “Percy Jackson” by Rick Riordian. None of those series are perfect and have their fair share of problems, but they were written by authors who actually cared, who actually took criticism and grew from it. You can let go and grow too.

The 25th Ward: The Silver Case is a game about the internet, viewed through the lens of an authoritarian government that monitors its citizens and wipes them out with impunity via their government-sanctioned murderers to maintain the illusion of peace.

It's a game about how even in a "perfect" society where the people up top maintain an iron-grip on every minuet detail of its citizens lives, the biggest threat is the power of the individual and the propagation of ideas.

It's a game about the dehumanizing effects of violence, how those charged with keeping the peace are volatile, reckless goons who kill without remorse and never receive any kind of punishment for it. How killing is innate to the human experience, and how the will to kill resides in all men's hearts.

It's a game about trans-humanism. People turned into biological supercomputers built to retain petabytes of information. People who gain identity on the net. AI's so sophisticated that they become indistinguishable from their creators. People who ascend beyond the biological to become ideals, the purest form of information, unlimited by the notions of life or death.

It's a game about games and the people who play them. The relationship between protagonist and player. The rejection of industry norms. The eschewing of any kind of notion of traditional understanding.

The 25th Ward is a game I have a hard time writing about. It juggles a lot of topics, and yet, it sticks the landing with each and every single one of them in a way that is hauntingly prophetic for what was originally a 2005 flip-phone text-adventure game. It's a bit of a cop-out answer, but after a day or two of writing and rewriting this review, I really do feel it's an experience beyond words. It's a game that resonates even more today in the modern internet age, and it's view of the internet via a fictional social experiment of a city where the line between net and reality is non-existent is an intensely interesting backdrop for the triad of storylines that each explore a facet of this society and how it parallels the modern age.

"Don't depend on the net. Depend on the net. God lives in the net. The net will guide you to all answers and wisdom. Doubt the net. Save the net. Kill the net."

Good game with a great story but definitely not a game without its flaws. I enjoyed the soundtrack and exploring Lospass Island, but I did not get that DS feeling when I had to constantly go back and forth across the island to do fetch quests. Pretty sure the joke Suda wanted to tell is since video games are considered to be just time wasters, the game decides to literally waste your time by doing the former and with having to do like 30 basic math problems at the end. As annoying as some of the gameplay can be, I still had a good time with the game but think it would have benefited from having more of a visual novel style like The Silver Case did.

It's a shame, Logic Chess is such a cool idea for a dialogue system but with how it's implemented, it all boils down to picking the right dialogue branch to get keywords (or clues) to open up the other branches. It never really deviates from this, and as such feels less engaging that it conceptually should. The timer going down as you pick dialogue options, being able to stay quiet to not interrupt the person you're interrogating, it has a lot of stuff you'd want in an interesting dialogue system but it feels underutilized due to it not allowing for much deviation and not using already established mechanics from the usual cross examinations to add more stuff you'd have to consider.

the rest of the game is alright, i guess? a bit long perhaps. not the best the series has to offer imo

I absolutely loved this game as a child, and I hold it very dear to my heart in the present day. As a young girl who was bullied quite frequently, I found solace in pretty much any monster high related media. The idea of not being "perfect", but still owning your freakiness and making something of your own is a message I deeply needed as a kid, and I think more people need in today's world. Draculaura was and still is my idol. Her style, her personality, everything about her is just something I always wanted to be. Stylish, friendly, a bit spoiled but with a heart of gold. I'm happy to say that everyday I get closer to my ideal self, and every day I feel more and more comfortable in my skin. That's what monster high was all about, loving yourself not "in spite" of your freaky flaws, but loving yourself BECAUSE of your flaws. After all, "everybody turns to look at you, it's not because you're different, it's just because you're scary cool."

Anyways, this game was fun and 8 year old me would likely force you to sit down and play it like 3 times.

I've written a rather long article, but after rereading it, I felt it was too long, so I've cut it down to just the conclusion and a quote. What you think of Atlus, Megami Tensei and its offshoot, Persona, is up to each individual.

Conclusion (summary)
Persona 3 is the savior of Atlus (brand). Without Persona 3, Atlus would be dead.
If we hadn't changed the course with Persona 3 and continued with the default Megami Tensei series, everything would have disappeared.
What Persona 3 did, it attracted a new audience. I don't know if this was the intention, but the way it was done was similar to that of Shonen Jump.
Because we died once with Persona 3, we are now Atlus.
*
https://www.4gamer.net/games/367/G036702/20170810127/
"A look back at the journey to Persona 3 by Katsura Hashino."

Katsura Hashino - "To sum up, Shin Megami Tensei III-NOCTURNE didn't give us a satisfactory result. To make the game more accessible to as many people as possible, we've added new elements, such as the ability to train devil, and created press-turn battles that take advantage of attribute compatibility.
It made the game itself not so bad.
It was so good that all the staff said, "This is really interesting, even though it's our own work", and they went crazy debugging it. And we were able to finish the master on schedule, which gave us a sense of satisfaction that we had done a good job.
But we didn't get the result. After that, "DIGITAL DEVIL SAGA Avatar Tuner" was in the same vein.
From that point on, I started thinking like a producer: "Of course it's important to make a good game, but we need to make it known to as many people as possible. What approach should we take to achieve this?”.
It was at this time that I was asked if I would like to be a producer for "P3".
One day, I was called in by the executive at the time and he told me that if things continued as they were, it would be difficult for Atlus to continue making games.

This was a time not only when I was struggling personally, but also when the company itself was struggling to expand its user base.
In the midst of this conversation, the chairman suddenly asked me, "Mr. Hashino, by the way, how old are you now?"
I was a little over 30 at the time, and I said, "About 30".
Then he said, "You know, Che Guevara succeeded in the Cuban Revolution when he was about 30 years old, just like you. ......" He suddenly changed the subject to Guevara. He went on to speak something like "one revolutionary can change a company".
So I had no choice but to say, "Well, why don't I try it?"
*
There are other interesting stories(God's curse and exorcism etc.), but I don't want to get caught up in the politics between old Megami Tensei fans and Persona fans, so I might write them on request.

I'm not going to write a review of the game itself.
Oh, but I would like to see a remake.

Parappa the Rapper involves two main factors worth evaluating, the first being the charm the game has, whilst the other being the actual rhythm gameplay.

I'll start with the charm and say outright this game is pretty incredible, and also extremely weird. A boy likes a girl is basically the main storyline going on, but it's done in such a metaphorically exaggerated way that it's incredible how wacky it gets at times. The visual style of characters basically being made of flapping paper is pretty goofy as well, combining it with the plot truly made for some actual insane cutscenes. Then there's the music, it's both catchy and also absolutely hilarious, there's literally a song about having to go to the bathroom and getting people in line to move.

Now the gameplay, that's a different story, I thought it was most distasteful. This game essentially works as a mystery because it never actually explains how the hell the scoring system works, and let me assure you it's not as simple as hitting buttons on the prompts. No, you can hit all those prompts exactly right if you wish, however, the game will still lower your score and even make you fail the song. The main aspect for this comes from an unexplained freestyle mechanic that is highly unintuitive and works against the game itself, and Song 4 specifically seems to expect you to use it the most to succeed. When I play a rhythm game with input indicators, I expect to succeed if I press the button while over them; this game defies my expectations but in the worst way possible that makes it entirely contrary to what it seems designed as to the player. Rhythm games shouldn't have secret mechanics that are nearly required to succeed with, and they shouldn't include indicators if they're not actually going to work. This made the gameplay a complete failure in my eyes, and sadly brings down an incredibly charming game to be a mess.

Overall, I think Parappa is a game worth looking at, but I can't say it's worth playing. It's visually neat and has a great soundtrack, but the gameplay just completely works against itself.

War is hell. That's what I'm told anyways, though Advance Wars 2 often sends a different message. The appeal of the entire series has interested me for years, in how this image of an almost idyllic warring landscape conveyed through catchy and upbeat GBA music chip tunes, upbeat commanding officers with tons of personality, vibrant colorful pixelated visuals, and cartoon explosions and exaggerated animations is meshed with tight and demanding tactical turn based grid combat, seemingly going against everything that war represents to us via the arts and history. Advance Wars 2 seems to walk this tightrope between its generally non-serious tone versus the broader and more harrowing topic of war threatening imminent destruction upon Macro Land, and yet, manages to thread the line just fine, resulting in these brighter moments of cooperation between the four nations to vanquish this looming evil while never going as far as to advocate for and glorify the act of warfare itself. In a way, it's a great example that video games can appeal to us by serving as an alternative and a disconnect from the real world; it represents this idea of a completely different reality, an escape from the horrors and tragedies of something universally condemned such as war, and instead utilizes it as a landscape to execute its enthralling and thoughtful gameplay.

Quick disclaimer; I've played a bit of the original Advance Wars, but have never actually completed any games in the series, so my experience with tactical games was doing two different runs of Fire Emblem: Three Houses and a couple of campaigns of Divinity: Original Sin 2. I actually tried to run through Advance Wars 2 as part of a server gaming event for some last minute points as a game I could play on the side... how foolish I was. I very quickly learned that this was no walk in the park, not just another "turn your brain off" turn based RPG you could play while listening to a podcast or watching Netflix on the side; Advance Wars 2 demands your full and focused attention and is definitely the toughest tactics game I've played to date. It's uncompromising in how it's both a test of knowledge and a test of decisiveness; understanding the landscape, all the functions of the units, and your enemies' powers and positions is key to victory. But you can't just breeze by through rushing your opponents with units willy nilly or turtling with medium tanks and battleships; every advantage has to be utilized because your opponents are relentless. Stalling and attempting the old "let's stay out of their range until they approach" tactic wastes valuable time and will ultimately result in your opponents getting the draw, because attacking and defending are not equal; the early bird catches the worm after all. No unit is without value; infantry are the only units capable of capturing cities and bases for money, specialized indirect fire units such as artillery and rockets are usually your best bet at taking down tanks, and even units with little health can be used to barricade opposing units and waste their time capturing command points. So, don't even think about trying to cruise by through stockpiling the most powerful units and hoping that's enough; your opponent is more than smart enough to figure out how to stonewall you and eventually whittle you down, and you have to remain on top of your strategy at all costs. And it's a very punishing game too; minor mistakes like failing to capture cities early to gain more funds or taking too much chip damage on heavy attackers could result in the tide of battle drastically turning against your favor, and end up significantly lengthening engagements or even making victory unachievable for that run; I can't tell you how many times I had to restart due to making errors from a lack of situational awareness or careful planning. And even when you think you're close to victory, the enemy team never truly gives in; they'll fight until the bitter end, and this in itself was a challenge, trying to hunt down the remaining troops engaging in guerilla warfare in the fog of war while praying they didn't pick off too many of my remaining forces and throwing away my hard earned result. The enemy remains fickle and unpredictable at times, and is more than happy to capitalize upon indecision and carelessness, and as a result, you'll need every advantage (and perhaps a bit of luck) to pull away with the W in this grueling exercise... but man does it feel satisfying to finally succeed.

Now while Advance Wars 2 does a magnificent job at presenting tight and calculated tactical combat, there are some moments that left me wanting a bit more. One example is due to the AI being prone to moments of obvious, glaring mistakes, just like you; as a result you can "cheese" the opponent by rushing to fulfill the objective with a few carefully placed units instead of attempting a total, tactical victory and destroying all enemy units + capturing all enemy bases. A pretty good example of this is the last stage of the game; if you use Colin and rush for a bomber, then there's a very good chance that the enemy fails to build up enough forces to take down your bomber coming down the middle. It's possible to distract the Black Cannons by sending in a "more valuable" bomber from a friend or baiting an opponent's forces with other units, and as a result, rushing this bomber past the cannon will result in a quick victory if the opponent fails to construct any anti-air forces in the center (as was the case for me on my last run). I'm also not the biggest fan of locking the most powerful unit in the game for the four campaigns behind special missions that can only be unlocked if you find a map in an unmarked, deserted building in a specific mission for each campaign. I had to look up the exact locations of the maps for all the instances because clearing the mission without gathering the map leaves you unable to grab the map and therefore the special unit type (since there is no redoing missions in a saved campaign), and specifically marking the necessary mission (you don't have to clear every mission to clear a campaign) and the building with the map (since it's often not optimal to capture every single building to clear the objective) would have helped immensely. And finally, I do feel like the pace of the game could have been balanced a little bit more; by the end of the game, almost all of the missions were taking upwards of 20 turns or more, and adding some missions where victory was either certain or doomed within a shorter timespan due to stricter requirements combined with a more condensed map would have greatly alleviated this.

Regardless, it's interesting to me how I was actively dreading playing some of the end game during my last few hours spent, and yet, I can't help but hold this game in admiration for how it's more than happy to challenge you in every aspect of tactical warfare without budging an inch to provide leniency. It's classic, distilled turn based tactics that constantly kept me engaged with a seemingly low-stakes narrative and tone, and while I've had gripes here and there, I can't really think of any games that handle the recipe better than Advance Wars 2. It's a worthy challenge for sure, and a challenge that I was more than happy to rise up to while giving me my dosage of dopamine for besting the odds time after time.

This is that sonic fangame everyone was talking about, right?

Despite never really liking many of the games, the sonic franchise has always fascinated me. I've partaken in a lot of sonic related media, both official masterpieces from the likes of the many cartoon adaptations and the incredibly bizarre comics, to iconic fanworks like Tails Gets Trolled or the videos of tamers12345. Something about sonic really brings out the creativity of some of the most bizarre people to ever walk this earth, and I love almost all of it despite having little to no attachment to the original source material, so upon seeing screencaps of this game that showed an Emo Tails preventing Sally Acorn from blowing her brains out, I knew I had to play this.

To get the boring stuff out of the way, yes, this game does not play well. It's an incredibly jank platformer with poorly designed levels, bad enemies, weird clipping issues, and a game feel that reminded me most of that weird SNES Sonic bootleg that was a reskin of a speedy gonzales game. It's playable, and short (Probably only around an hour and a half of actual gameplay in this), so it's an easy hurdle to ignore.

Now, the story, oh god is it the kino I thought it would be. Weirdly captivating earnest Sonic SATAM melodrama combined with some of the weirdest shit I've seen in a game. The artistic decision to drop what is for all intents and purposes corny Jaleel White ass sonic into this gritty story is truly inspired, how else would we get such instantly iconic scenes as him giving Sally a Sonic Sez-tier lesson in how suicide is never the answer? The afformentioned Edgy Goth Tails is amazing in every scene he's in, there are incredibly bizarre detours involving Sally being possessed by a satanic robot (???) and weird prostitute OCs, Eggman's master plan is to freeze every single animal on Earth (which is apparently what Mobius was this entire time) to death so humans may repopulate, and Snively cures baldness. It's art. It's high art. It's the kind of art you can only get from a college student who thinks Sonic the Hedgehog is the coolest shit on the planet. And I love it.

Also, this is a GBA port of a DOS game, which is really weird to think. Didn't play the DOS version, because the creator said it's unfinished, and also it's a lot longer and jankier to play, but from what I have seen it also looks like a masterpiece. Its own separate uniquely weird brand of art.