Anyone who knows me knows that I do not care for superheroes and have not done since even before the MCU took over. I am a certified hater and have been for a long time. However, in 2009 before I received my Hater Certificate from Based University I played Batman: Arkham Asylum and actually wound up enjoying it a lot.

So I'm gonna make a confession. I kinda like Batman. I don't really care for the character himself (cliche backstory, generic personality, silly looking costume imo) but I like the world of Batman, I like Gotham; the villains, the darkness, the (somewhat light) social commentary, I think it's all pretty neat. When Batman: Arkham City came out a couple years after Arkham Asylum, I was pretty excited to play it. But I remember messing around with it for a few hours and it not really jiving with me, perhaps related to the Hater Certificate I had received shortly after my Dad & Brother dragged me along to see shitty-ass Iron Man 2

In the years since, Arkham City has generally gone down as the best of the bunch - an even better game than Asylum and one of the best superhero games ever and I've always been curious to give it another try and see for myself. Some 12-or-so years later, I've come back to give it another whirl and, yeah. I mean, whaddaya want me to say? "It really makes you feel like Batman"??? Well guess what!! It does!! It just fucking does!! That is a true statement! That is an extremely correct thing to say and I'm tired of pretending like it's not! It pulls a bit of DNA from Metal Gear Solid, Metroid and honestly a little bit from Legend of Zelda, but also still manages to create something wholly its own. Over 10 years later now, Arkham City was doing so many of the things that people still pine for from modern video games.

It set the bar for combat in a third-person action game. It hardly looks sophisticated by today's standards, but its job is to make you feel cool - like badass mfin Batman and it succeeds to the point where practically every superhero game since has been copying its style of target-switching, counter-based combat. Almost every combat encounter is fun owed to incredible sound design, responsive and fluid controls and that awesome zoomed-in camera on the final hit of every fight. It's open world, but said open world is not this big, obnoxious, bloated mess of towers and checklists; it's carefully crafted, beautifully detailed and mercifully small. It's not big, it's DENSE. You can get from one side of Arkham City to another in like less than 5 actual minutes, but there's something worth doing in almost every dingy alley and dilapidated building you glide over. Also on the note of the world, a quick shoutout to art and environment design. Well over 10 years after its release Arkham City is still an absolutely peak videogame interpretation of the world of Batman, there is so much detail and artistry in just a single hallway, let alone all the neon green and towering setpieces that adorn some of the game's most memorable locales like the Museum and Wonder City. Penguin's "exhibits" in the Museum are one of the highlights of the whole game for me.

It fires on all cylinders in regards to being a game where you are Batman. Hell, even his running animation looks ripped straight out of the old cartoons from the 70's, it's perfect. With tons of cool gadgets to experiment with, some serviceable stealth and some incredible voice acting performances to match fascinating depictions of so many legendary characters from the mythos, it really does not set a foot wrong in what it sets out to achieve. It's a pretty short game in terms of main story (which was honestly welcome in 2023) but it packs so many awesome moments in that short time, including one of the coolest (pun not intended) boss fights I've ever seen against Mr. Freeze. The story gets spread a little thin between too many villains in the final act, and the last boss is pretty underwhelming, but it's not enough of a blemish to negatively impact my opinion at all. And hey if you didn't get your fill out of the main story, there's tons of worthwhile side content and DLC to boot! It achieves everything it sets out to do to near-perfection. It's goated. Fuck superheroes

Wonder Flower gimmicks are cute until they turn repetitious, which they do by the end of World 2. The badges largely make up for a lack of platforming aptitude which, as a seasoned gamester, means I have to play the game wrong to accommodate their use. But I'm not gonna unlearn my Mario skills so I don't remember to use them outside of when they are clearly necessary for side objectives like an over-polished immsim. You mean I should use the Dolphin badge on the levels right after I got it? Wowee Zowee!

Broadly speaking this feels like an attempt to teach the kids that grew up with the Switch what Mario is about. The hypersleek UI elements, mountains of spoken text as a replacement for other markers of design intent, the badges, the Wowee Zowee, the oodles of characters, the gacha elements of the standees, the multiple currencies (and decimalisation of Flower coins to further litter the field with shinies), the little emojis, the lack of points. These additions and subtractions are by no means bad but I won't lie, it feels a little like I'm playing a AAA game from the 2020s. Because I am. It's hard to read Wonder as a creative reinvention and reinvigoration of Mario because I know it took thousands of people to make this. That every decision was subject to board meetings and focus groups. It's the same problem as your New Super games -- the formula must be adhered to. And even if the formula changes, it's still a formula. Nothing wrong with that, but it's not what I look for at this point in my life.

I'll keep playing it, I'll probably finish it. It's like a Coca-Cola Creation, y'know? You see it on the shelf, you think 'what the hell do '+XP' or 'Starlight' taste like, the first sip is novel and enchanting, before long you're still drinking Coke. If I want true innovation, I'll reach for the local-made can of kombucha flavoured with some berry I've never heard of before. Like Haskap. Uhhh, for the purposes of this analogy I guess the random shit I pick up on Steam and itch.io are the kombucha.

And I gotta say, I'm sorry but I can't hear the Mario Gang say Wowee Zowee without having flashbacks to Game Grumps Kirby Super Star Part 2 where Jon and Arin argued for like a minute straight over whether or not Arin had said Wowee Zowee before. Back then life was so simple. I was so young. Games held so much potential. Eleven years, gone in the blink of an eye. In another life, I'm the Mario Wonder kid, growing up on a Switch. Who could have known things would turn out the way they did, that I'd be the person I am today...

Feels like a rebrand to cover up some controversial past half the time.

WOAH JUST LIKE GAME GRUMPS 😱

This game isn't quite as bad as people are making it out to be. Like yeah, the dialogue is terrible and it's basically the same tired open-world design we've seen so many times, but the combat is pretty fun and the magical parkour is pretty legit. It's not really enough to save it, especially with how poorly it is paced with the game literally telling you to read books at one point, and it taking forever to unlock the second set of spells. So yeah, the combat is fun, but everything around the combat keeps from wanting to play more.

Usually my reviews average around a paragraph or two that explain my general feelings, but this is a game that I cannot condense my feelings on since it has left me baffled and confused in ways that need more elaboration. I don’t think it is necessary, but for context going in keep note that I am a diehard FF fan and aside from the MMOs and FFXIII I have played every mainline game and a good number of non-mainline FF entries that have given me some extra appreciation or annoyances that might not be present to a new fan.

Final Fantasy XV is a MESS. But it is a mess that sometimes works. I walked away from this game a little spitefully, because sometimes it is brilliant and wonderful, but so often it is among the worst of the series and maybe even the genre. Through all of it though, I think I like this game?

There are two games in FFXV that are frankenstein-ingly stitched together into one creature, one game that is really polished, creative, and charming- and another that is frustrating, padded, boring, and disrespectful to the player. The ugly side is the one that makes up more of the experience, but the good side is so enjoyable it makes it worth it.

When this game is propelling you down its main story you will not be very invested, at least I wasn’t. The game feels extremely rushed and incomplete. Of its 14 story chapters, maybe 3 of them feel like something actually happens, and when it does it typically involves some event or character that is paper thin. So much of this story is just things being told to you without really being able to experience or invest yourself in. The easiest comparison to make that I found is Metal Gear Solid V, a game where so much was cut it makes it feel so hollow- only made worse by the surrounding series it is a part of being so strong in this regard. There are a few moments I really enjoyed in its main story- a couple of flashy encounters and set pieces, a couple funny moments, and a genuinely pretty great ending- but of the ~20 hours of story there is here, it is severely underdeveloped and has a lot of missed potential. I wanted to be more invested in the main story, as its setup is pretty effective for as simple as it was, and I really liked a lot of the side characters, but there is not much substance here to really enjoy.

When this game is showing off its combat and mechanics, it is equally as underwhelming. I’ve never gravitated towards action rpgs nearly as much as their turn-based counterparts, and this game was quite possibly the worst execution of the gameplay style I have experienced thus far. At best, this game is a mindless, flashy and mildly satisfying albeit hollow experience. At worst, it is a frustrating, padded, boring mess. There is nothing engaging here, and oftentimes the biggest challenges (outside of its sometimes ridiculously poorly designed challenges like costlemark tower) are fighting with the camera, ai, or the boring and repetitive animations you watch every time you use an item. It is a button mashy (or holdey, in this case), boring, exhausting experience in desperate need of variety, customization options, and fat-trimming. As a jrpg, the character progression is woefully limited to not even allow fun builds or satisfying growth. Everyone is a physical fighter, you equip their strongest weapon and an accessory and that is about the extent of it. There is a big shared skill tree, but the effects it grants are so minimal I forgot about it for the majority of the game and was perfectly fine. It is especially lame given this cast is so small and given a ton of time to showcase the diversity in their personalities, and the fact there are so many FF jobs deeply rooted in its iconography and experience, that nobody here gets to be a black or white mage, thief, or anything else.

There is a huge emphasis on side content in this game due to its open world structure- and frankly its lack of substance in the main story- and it achieved mixed results. There are so many great side missions you can do, my favorite was this big exciting stealth mission against a behemoth, then it transitions into a boss fight that is big, explosive, and exciting, and then the reward is unlocking the ability to rent chocobos. That questline is so interesting, fun, expansive, and grants an incredibly useful and tangible award. Quests like that, or even the simpler but still really fun challenges like taking pictures of landscapes are great times, but they are far and few between. Lots of the quests are simple fetch quests or ask you to slay a monster- something that feels especially redundant since FF12 style monster hunts return here- and given doing quests gives far more xp and money than just old fashioned monster grinding, you will no doubt end up with a huge list of mindless quests you feel an obligation to do despite little genuine motivation or investment.

There is more I don’t like about this game. The character specific skills are so uneven. Prompto’s photography skill is always leveling up since he is always taking pictures, but if you want to level up Noctis or Gladio’s fishing and survival skills respectively, get ready to fish for upwards of 6 hours or rubber band your control stick and leave the console on overnight
(why they made this skill only level up from on foot travel in a game with three separate types of vehicle transportation is beyond me). The dungeons in this game are almost all very dull and linear. The last third of the game or so is the worst of it all, stripping you not only of the fun open world, but party members and even weapons as you experience its pitifully boring, long, linear, and annoying final dungeons and encounters.

That being said, I still kinda like this game. The main party of the game is so enjoyable it made a lot of the annoying and tedious parts of this game feel fun regardless. It didn’t matter that the quests felt time-wastey when the people along with me felt so alive and personable. The main playable Noctis wasn’t too interesting, though playing as him made him feel avatar-esque even if he did talk and have characteristics. The other three, however, were wonderful. I loved hearing their banter, watching their little personality quirks show themselves in how they fought, walked, and interacted with the world. Hearing them have little conversations was wonderful, and I found it so charming that they would do things like ask to pull over to take pictures of pretty landscapes, argue about petty things, have their own favorite foods, or even give you a high five in the heat of the battles. None of them have particularly deep stories, but they didn’t need to as the best story you could tell with them was developing a real friendship, and they nailed that. The world being big lends itself to lame side missions as stated, but it was so invigorating and exciting to be able to just explore at my own pace, and finding a new (expansive, beautiful, and varied) town or dungeon was always a highlight that rewarded my effort and curiosity. It clicked with me a little while into this game what it reminded me of. Four adventurers freely exploring around and creating a grand adventure? That is Final Fantasy. Despite this game having almost nothing in common with classic FF in terms of its execution of the world, gameplay, mechanics, etc. The spirit behind this game is arguably the purest FF experience since maybe FF3? Somehow this game is as alienating as it was familiar to me, and honestly, I kinda respect it. This game could’ve been either a very safe and forgettable game, or it could’ve been something completely unrecognizable, but it managed to be somewhere in the middle. It is a very memorable, fresh, and addictive experience but it still feels familiar- even if not a great game.

I don't have a good segway into this, but the music is also good. This soundtrack isn’t a top tier FF soundtrack as the competition is so incredibly fierce, but there is some great stuff here, with the soft acoustic guitar town themes being my personal favorites. I also like that the town themes had contextual versions, in Lestallum for example, as you enter its theme is soft and catchy but understated, but as you walk into its little marketplace with live performers and tons of townsfolk more instrumentation builds up the song and gives it a lot of character. Good stuff here, and just needed to be mentioned.

This game is absolutely defined by its little moments, small details that really stand out and make the game feel so alive. While the whole entire package is full of a lot of missteps, that spirit carried the experience until the end and beyond for me. I did get the platinum trophy for this game despite how much of this game frustrated or disappointed me. Maybe it was spite for how annoyed I was that they abandoned the open world for the last chunk of the game. Maybe I just wanted to prove something to myself that I am the dumbest but most committed JRPG fan there ever was. Maybe I was hypnotized by the charm of the experience and just didn’t want to hang up my coat and leave my boys quite yet. However, I think it goes to show that even the huge and notable faults this game falls under there is still an experience to salvage. If someone came up to me and said FFXV is a great game, I could easily empathize with that sentiment. I could just as easily empathize with someone who said it was the worst in the series. Maybe as time goes on longer I will forgive the faults, or maybe they will become more apparent, but as it is I am right down the middle with this game. At the very least, this games quality allows for a lot of discussion, and I find that a lot more fun and interesting than if this game was just a waste of time that I would never think about again.

I didn’t play the DLC stuff as I didn’t think it was necessary, especially if they end up being more linear and don’t have the context of the entire party working together and interacting. Maybe someday I will but I have had my fill with this game for now.

If you have not played FFXV I don’t want this review to scare you away as much as I want it to encourage you to try it out yourself and see where you fall on the scale. Grab a cup noodles and a coleman camping chair and go binge it for yourself and see.

FF6 is an interesting game where I have to review it from two angles: from the perspective of a SNES game released in 1994, and of course my own enjoyment in 2023.

Coming from FF5, which is more ambitious in terms of its gameplay systems, FF6 is ambitious, well, everywhere. Graphically it's clearly pushing the SNES to its limits, with complex minigames (for the time), pseudo-3d environments, in-battle dialogue, every character having their own wacky mechanic (granted some of them are watered down jobs from 5 but still), a ridiculously large cast of playable characters with full party customisation, and very wild amounts of freedom late game. Most dungeons feel visually and sometimes even mechanically distinct, and I was quite surprised with how little this game reused its own assets to pad out play time—it rarely feels stale, which is unusual for an older RPG.

In terms of the narrative, good lord is it ahead of its time. It takes the approach of a sprawling epic with an ensemble cast, and somehow manages to do a decent job at giving almost every playable character an arc. There are also a notable amount of side characters that feel decently fleshed out, and the background of the story is more explored than ever, right down to having interactable flashbacks.

I won't go into explicit spoilers, but needless to say the structure of the second 'half' of the game is really unique, and clearly influenced the genre for a long time to come.

Cast-wise, they sort of attempt to give each character focus, but its hard to deny some get more than others, with Terra, Celes, Locke and Edgar being the most prominent. It's especially interesting how Terra tends to represent this game as the protagonist, when Celes ends up being the most central character in the story (and my favourite!). In a sense, Terra does kind of get the short end of the stick with surprisingly limited screen time despite her memorable introduction and relevance to the core plot.

Villains... mostly sucked, honestly, though Kefka is an obvious exception. I found him kind of disappointing at first after all the hype and praise I'd heard from him, but by the end I think I would have to agree he is quite strong, and a very unique villain at the time. The only SNES RPG that I personally found to have a stronger villain was Tales of Phantasia, but even then I wouldn't say it's directly comparable to FF6, as they take a fairly different approach. His motives are simple yet oddly realistic, and I think he could really shine if this game ever got a significant remake (especially after seeing a certain scene in Dissidia).

In terms of twists, I wouldn't say this game really has many compared to say 4, but these days I don't really value plot twists as much as I used to, so I didn't find this to be a problem (especially since the twists in 4 are... questionable to put it nicely).

Now you've probably noticed that I'm slowly sliding more into my general enjoyment of the game, so I think it's about time to get fully into that by going into the aspects that did not age very well for me. One of the two biggest elephants in the room is the obvious downside to having such a sprawling cast in a game that gives you endless freedom with party structure: non-mandatory characters simply aren't allowed to influence the story in the scenes they're in. Even worse, there are a lot of hive mind dialogue boxes said by nobody and everyone at the same time, sending me right back to the FF3 experience—which I think is unacceptable in a game with a much stronger emphasis on narrative and developing distinct characters.

This ends up especially depriving the story of character chemistry, as your party just is not allowed to interact with each other and end up feeling more like a disjointed military unit than an actual ragtag team. At first I don't think it's as much of the issue, as characters are allowed to interact with each other plenty early on, but the further you go through and the more your party expand, the less actual dialogue of value you get. Coming from FF5, which features a ragtag group with surprisingly strong chemistry for a SNES game, along with a lot of unique and fun dynamics, I was more than a little disappointed to see that aspect de prioritised so heavily here. This especially hit me during an optional quest with Gau near the end of the game, which features one of the rare times we're able to see the party's chemistry, and made the lack of it elsewhere all the more disappointing for me.

Another major issue I had was the gameplay—it got old for me fast. The magicite system is neat in theory, but ends up making the party feel extremely homogenous while also butchering the summon mechanic into being mostly useless and situational. Balancing wise, it feels like the game expects you to turn everyone into a magic powerhouse, as individual character abilities become more and more useless unless your name is Sabin or Terra. Most character abilities are also very frontloaded, and you'll generally have most of what they can offer super early on, killing variety as you get further into the game. I also was not a fan of the busy work that many characters expect to get you to build them up, with Gau being the main culprit. Not to mention Strago and Relm are respectively butchered versions of the Blue Mage and Beastmaster jobs from FF5. Overall, I do think the gameplay systems were poorly thought out despite how cool they seem initially, and by the end I had completely lost interest in the gameplay and was abusing boosts/the encounter toggle more than any other pixel remaster.

This isn't to say I think these aspects make the game terrible or something, it's more that FF6 is an undeniably ambitious game that revolutionised the genre (before FF7 came in to do it again), and sometimes it trips under its ambition. It's unfortunate that a lot of newer RPGs take what FF6 forayed into and do it better, as you end up with a bit of Seinfeld Effect while playing it as a modern gamer.

Overall I have to say while I appreciated how impressive this game was for its time, I still came out of it finding FF5 a much more enjoyable experience, as one of the rare old RPGs that made me actively engage in more random battles to experiment with its systems more, along with its significantly better cast chemistry. It's a shame that it generally gets more disrespect in the West for having a deceptively simple exterior and taking a lighter approach to its storytelling.

That being said, I completely understand the love for 6, it's a very special game and there's some stuff that truly stands the test of time: the legendary OST (Dancing Mad is... ??? how did they do this on the SNES???), the gripping premise, a varied ensemble cast that gives (almost) everyone a chance to shine, and one hell of an opera scene.

Overall, this gets a strong recommendation from me for anyone who wants to check out a legendary classic, while being mindful of the time it was released and what the RPG landscape was like back then.

For my first few sessions of Dark Souls III I was under the impression that it was just fine. I liked it! It was Souls! But that was exactly it - it was incredibly safe and re-hashes a lot of ideas and content from Dark Souls I in a way that felt a bit cynical and pandery. As time went on however, I started seeing how these callbacks to DS1 are both intentional, and very contextually justified - in fact they're a very part of the game's lore and world. (Although I still don't get why fuckin' Andre is here, lmao.) That's one thing - but then the game also just hit its stride about halfway through (after you've done Irythill Dungeon, basically) and turns into this conveyer belt of banger boss fights and areas that, quite boldly for Dark Souls - don't make me want to set myself on fire.

It IS safe, and it's less ambitious and interesting than the likes of Dark Souls 2, a game I appreciate a lot in spite of its flaws because I respect how different it feels and how much new stuff it tries. It's also a lot more linear and a lot less interesting design-wise than Souls 1, which frequently branches out in multiple directions and invites a sense of wonder that Souls 3 never even touches. But it's fun. It's the most fun Souls game by a country mile. It's not as important or ambitious or inspired, but fuck man if I'm gonna replay any Souls game again anytime soon it's gonna be this one. You mean I can get the thrill of sick combat and Souls boss fights without having to deal with Tomb Of The Giants, Blighttown, Iron Keep, Shrine Of Amana or Bed Of Chaos and the like? Bro, sign me the fuck up.

Yeah, it grew on me a lot. It has the sickest boss fights of the trilogy by far - Pontiff Sulyvahn, Slave Knight Gael, Champion Gundyr all among my favourites in the series now. It's a pain in the ass to go back to Firelink Shrine every time you wanna level up, I have absolutely no idea how they thought it was a good idea to map the kick to the same button as your standard attack, giving you far more unintentional kicks than an action RPG should ever have but the fact that stuff like this were my biggest gripes should say a lot. (Irythill Dungeon can also eat my ass but w/e.) It's like Dark Souls I but with all the rough edges polished up. Some might say that's a bad thing, or a good thing, but it means that it is quite a different experience from DS1 after all, because the thought of a replay doesn't intimidate me, and it actually just sounds like an uncomplicated good time.

Not particularly revolutionary or bold, but fun!

There are 4 poison swamps in this game.