trashh
2023
A great and super faithful remake for those who already liked the original. For those who didn't, don't expect any improvements notable enough to change your mind.
I can respect Super Mario RPG for the mountain of a hurdle it had to take on in order to work. Taking the world's most popular platformer, one of the most beginner friendly genres in the industry, and turning it into a genre known for slow, strategic decision-making is no easy feat. Many of the design sensibilities are inherently opposing of one another. Despite the clear effort put into fusing these two together, Super Mario RPG misses the mark and ends up with an experience that fails to satisfy the strengths of either, sticking too close to the conventions of its genre. Instead of adapting or innovating on it to create something truly new, it waters down everything that makes RPGs great and leaves a half baked mess, creating a wholly unsatisfying and forgettable experience.
Combat is very simple, even by 1996 standards. Everything that you'd expect is here, with very little done to spice up the flow or structure of battle. New moves are often just direct upgrades of old moves at a slightly higher cost. The party members don't rarely anything unique to the table that other characters don't have access to. Unique additions to the formula such as a shared MP gauge and action commands get no room to shine do to the lack of any required strategy or thought. While bosses do commonly have gimmicks in an attempt to make battles feel more unique, I can not remember a single one that caused me to rethink my strategy. Every battle just feels like you're going through the motions, requiring the bare minimum amount of thought needed to progress. Even outside the realm of battles, Super Mario RPG fails to deliver much in gameplay. The overworld is generally very bland with little room to explore and discover. The whole game is set on one linear path with very minimal splits. Any other form of gameplay such as platforming or the various minigames feel very underdeveloped, the former being consistently annoying due to the stereoscopic 3D angle.
Most of the things I’ve mentioned up until now is stuff I expected. Even Chrono Trigger, a game that had less of a wide net to toss, rarely satisfied me in combat or gameplay. No, the true thing I looked forward to was the story and characters. Though it has been a few years, I remember the other Mario RPGs I had dabbled in prior consistently delivering decent stories and charming characters, as well as plenty of memorable moments along the way. And with this game being from Square, a company that had satisfied me in those same areas both before and after this game, I had solid expectation set, which makes it all the more disheartening when I met all those aspects with a resounding “meh”. The actual story itself is also pretty much nothing and could be summarized in a single sentence, but I think that's the lesser issue. Most of the characters and antagonists I felt were kinda forgettable, likely due to the generally short amount of time given to each antagonist (there's 7 big bads, not including Smithy himself which, mixed with the game's 10 hour run time, means you usually get one or two short scenes and a battle with each within areas that barely last an hour), as well as there being only one consistent threat to fight against that's only loosely tied to everything else in the game. This tied with practically no recurring characters makes the entire game just feel like a string of random, generally forgettable moments held together by said loose thread of a central threat (the aforementioned thread could be removed and very little would change). Even in its best moments, such as exploring Star Hill, the game is heavily tainted by this disconnect.
While the game does have its few upsides, particularly in the visuals, music, and the insanely impressive battle animations, I just feel dissatisfied by Super Mario RPG. It didn’t do enough.
Combat is very simple, even by 1996 standards. Everything that you'd expect is here, with very little done to spice up the flow or structure of battle. New moves are often just direct upgrades of old moves at a slightly higher cost. The party members don't rarely anything unique to the table that other characters don't have access to. Unique additions to the formula such as a shared MP gauge and action commands get no room to shine do to the lack of any required strategy or thought. While bosses do commonly have gimmicks in an attempt to make battles feel more unique, I can not remember a single one that caused me to rethink my strategy. Every battle just feels like you're going through the motions, requiring the bare minimum amount of thought needed to progress. Even outside the realm of battles, Super Mario RPG fails to deliver much in gameplay. The overworld is generally very bland with little room to explore and discover. The whole game is set on one linear path with very minimal splits. Any other form of gameplay such as platforming or the various minigames feel very underdeveloped, the former being consistently annoying due to the stereoscopic 3D angle.
Most of the things I’ve mentioned up until now is stuff I expected. Even Chrono Trigger, a game that had less of a wide net to toss, rarely satisfied me in combat or gameplay. No, the true thing I looked forward to was the story and characters. Though it has been a few years, I remember the other Mario RPGs I had dabbled in prior consistently delivering decent stories and charming characters, as well as plenty of memorable moments along the way. And with this game being from Square, a company that had satisfied me in those same areas both before and after this game, I had solid expectation set, which makes it all the more disheartening when I met all those aspects with a resounding “meh”. The actual story itself is also pretty much nothing and could be summarized in a single sentence, but I think that's the lesser issue. Most of the characters and antagonists I felt were kinda forgettable, likely due to the generally short amount of time given to each antagonist (there's 7 big bads, not including Smithy himself which, mixed with the game's 10 hour run time, means you usually get one or two short scenes and a battle with each within areas that barely last an hour), as well as there being only one consistent threat to fight against that's only loosely tied to everything else in the game. This tied with practically no recurring characters makes the entire game just feel like a string of random, generally forgettable moments held together by said loose thread of a central threat (the aforementioned thread could be removed and very little would change). Even in its best moments, such as exploring Star Hill, the game is heavily tainted by this disconnect.
While the game does have its few upsides, particularly in the visuals, music, and the insanely impressive battle animations, I just feel dissatisfied by Super Mario RPG. It didn’t do enough.
TBD
The fact that this is even remember positively, let alone considered a "timeless masterpiece", endlessly eludes me to this day. Even as a child, I could tell just how shit Petscop was. I wish I could type paragraphs upon paragraphs about how terrible it is, but there is genuinely so little depth that I can barely type a few sentences.
To give you the full picture; in Petscop, there is only one level. And said level has maybe 4 or 5 one minute dead-brained puzzles. That's it. No other levels. No extras menu. No easter eggs. That is ALL of content in this game. Anything else is either unfinished menu options or scrapped pets (which are all left in the game and do nothing).
The only reason I can conjure up that this unfinished, buggy mess of a game is so beloved is either 1. it's one big ironic joke that I'm out of the loop of, 2. I somehow received an unfinished build of the game, but judging by a YouTube video I skimmed through, I don't think that's the case, or 3. some people for some reason REALLY love the visuals, music, and general aesthetic of the game. The ladder is the only case in which I can understand liking this game, but even then, why not give your attention to other actually good, well crafted games instead of this shovelware scam game?
I do not recommend this game under any circumstance. Life is short, go obsess over something else.
To give you the full picture; in Petscop, there is only one level. And said level has maybe 4 or 5 one minute dead-brained puzzles. That's it. No other levels. No extras menu. No easter eggs. That is ALL of content in this game. Anything else is either unfinished menu options or scrapped pets (which are all left in the game and do nothing).
The only reason I can conjure up that this unfinished, buggy mess of a game is so beloved is either 1. it's one big ironic joke that I'm out of the loop of, 2. I somehow received an unfinished build of the game, but judging by a YouTube video I skimmed through, I don't think that's the case, or 3. some people for some reason REALLY love the visuals, music, and general aesthetic of the game. The ladder is the only case in which I can understand liking this game, but even then, why not give your attention to other actually good, well crafted games instead of this shovelware scam game?
I do not recommend this game under any circumstance. Life is short, go obsess over something else.
2014
Unironically a pretty solid platformer, and easily the best and highest quality mobile game. I highly suggest 100%ing it and trying out hardcore mode, its genuinely very challenging.
(Note: I played about 40 hours before dropping the game. Might finish in the future.)
Instead of making an effort to improve on all the issues with the base BOTW, Nintendo instead opted to just add a bunch of stuff on top of it and hope you don't notice. And even then, the new content itself isn't particularly great. It focuses too much on adding "more" instead of adding anything with substance of depth. The sky islands? Starts out good, until they quickly start reusing the exact same islands over and over again to fill out space, with puzzles even more shallow than shrines. The depths? Very cool to drop into for the first time, until you realize it offers nothing new in terms of enemy variety and is just a blander version of the overworld with a dark atmosphere.
Both the depths and the sky suffer from a major issues of spread out, bland content. Personally, I really think they should've cut out one and expanded on the other. Or hell, cut out both and give us a new map, with small underground and sky areas to explore.
Speaking of that, the reused map removes one of the best aspects of the original BOTW; the feeling of an undiscovered world. While I had many issues with BOTW, the pure feeling of running around this open space for the first time, not knowing what to do or where to go and discovering the content and mechanics was an incredibly unique feeling I've never felt in another game before. Reusing the map inherently removes the potential for bringing back this feeling for any returning player. And as I said, the two new sides of the overworld suffer too much from reuse and lack of variety to feel like you're exploring anything new.
The building mechanics are probably the best part of the game, yet they're still mishandled. It's very technically impressive and you can do a lot with it, but the game actively demotivates you from using it. To build actual machines, you have to use parts. Parts are a limited but renewable resources that you have to use a material found in the depths for. However, since this resource is also used to upgrade battery space, I ended up wanting to conserve this material, and so I stopped using parts out of worry of needing them in the future. This caused me to stop experimenting and having fun with the mechanic designed to experiment and have fun with due to this arbitrary restriction.
I think a much better solution would be having parts act as an upgrade of sorts. You can unlock parts and use them at any time with no cost, however you start with only one each at a time. You have to upgrade them using materials to use more at the same time. Keep the battery and its upgrading system the exact same as well. This both still gives incentive to collect materials from the depths and encouraging more experimentation due to reduced risk of wasting resources (there still is a slight issue about worrying about which part to upgrade, but I'd take that over TOTK's system any day).
A lot of the games other issues boils down to the reused or unchanged content. Despite the shrines having a lot more to work with and generally being more creative, the actual puzzles in them are still unbelievably shallow. Korok seeds have some new variety, however the way they work is completely unchanged. The backpack one just sucks too. It's fun at first to make machines, but the game always gives you the pieces you need. There's no puzzle solving or trying to find the right pieces, you're effectively told the answer. The sign guy isn't really worth mentioning; another thing neat at first that is ran into the ground.
Overall TOTK is just a bad sequel, if you can even call it that. I wasn't expecting much from this game already, but it irks me so much to see so little issues from the base game actually addressed. You could say "oh if you already didn't enjoy BOTW much of course you wouldn't enjoy the sequel", isn't that what a sequel should aim to do? To improve on the issues of the previous game while offering something new? Because if that's the case, TOTK fails at being a sequel.
Instead of making an effort to improve on all the issues with the base BOTW, Nintendo instead opted to just add a bunch of stuff on top of it and hope you don't notice. And even then, the new content itself isn't particularly great. It focuses too much on adding "more" instead of adding anything with substance of depth. The sky islands? Starts out good, until they quickly start reusing the exact same islands over and over again to fill out space, with puzzles even more shallow than shrines. The depths? Very cool to drop into for the first time, until you realize it offers nothing new in terms of enemy variety and is just a blander version of the overworld with a dark atmosphere.
Both the depths and the sky suffer from a major issues of spread out, bland content. Personally, I really think they should've cut out one and expanded on the other. Or hell, cut out both and give us a new map, with small underground and sky areas to explore.
Speaking of that, the reused map removes one of the best aspects of the original BOTW; the feeling of an undiscovered world. While I had many issues with BOTW, the pure feeling of running around this open space for the first time, not knowing what to do or where to go and discovering the content and mechanics was an incredibly unique feeling I've never felt in another game before. Reusing the map inherently removes the potential for bringing back this feeling for any returning player. And as I said, the two new sides of the overworld suffer too much from reuse and lack of variety to feel like you're exploring anything new.
The building mechanics are probably the best part of the game, yet they're still mishandled. It's very technically impressive and you can do a lot with it, but the game actively demotivates you from using it. To build actual machines, you have to use parts. Parts are a limited but renewable resources that you have to use a material found in the depths for. However, since this resource is also used to upgrade battery space, I ended up wanting to conserve this material, and so I stopped using parts out of worry of needing them in the future. This caused me to stop experimenting and having fun with the mechanic designed to experiment and have fun with due to this arbitrary restriction.
I think a much better solution would be having parts act as an upgrade of sorts. You can unlock parts and use them at any time with no cost, however you start with only one each at a time. You have to upgrade them using materials to use more at the same time. Keep the battery and its upgrading system the exact same as well. This both still gives incentive to collect materials from the depths and encouraging more experimentation due to reduced risk of wasting resources (there still is a slight issue about worrying about which part to upgrade, but I'd take that over TOTK's system any day).
A lot of the games other issues boils down to the reused or unchanged content. Despite the shrines having a lot more to work with and generally being more creative, the actual puzzles in them are still unbelievably shallow. Korok seeds have some new variety, however the way they work is completely unchanged. The backpack one just sucks too. It's fun at first to make machines, but the game always gives you the pieces you need. There's no puzzle solving or trying to find the right pieces, you're effectively told the answer. The sign guy isn't really worth mentioning; another thing neat at first that is ran into the ground.
Overall TOTK is just a bad sequel, if you can even call it that. I wasn't expecting much from this game already, but it irks me so much to see so little issues from the base game actually addressed. You could say "oh if you already didn't enjoy BOTW much of course you wouldn't enjoy the sequel", isn't that what a sequel should aim to do? To improve on the issues of the previous game while offering something new? Because if that's the case, TOTK fails at being a sequel.
2016
Furi is so close to being amazing, but it slips up on the most crucial step to making it there. (To note, I played this game on Furier mode my first time through, as I wanted both the developer's intended experience, and I love a good challenge.)
Furi has some of the best, most engaging and challenging bosses I've seen in an action game. Each boss carries their own personal flavor and style, tackling different parts of the games mechanics and combining uses of them together in continuously interesting ways. Even in the fights themselves, there's constant variation going on, such as constantly changing and evolving attacks or unique arenas, while still keeping true to and expanding upon the bosses core theme and mechanical focus. I think it'll be a long time until I see an action game with bosses this good. That makes it all the more disappointing to say that this game is taken down by a health system that's far too forgiving. Leniency and making things easier not inherently bad, but the way they implement it is what does it in.
Think about how Dark Souls handles health and healing. Every fight, you only have a very limited amount of health. The only way to gain it back is via health vials, which gives back a limited amount of healing and stops you dead in your tracks. This creates a risk reward system to using vials, while also adding an extra layer of strategy. When is it safe to use it? Should I wait to take a bit more damage so I get to use this vial to it's fullest potential? Should I heal now that a phase change is coming up I've never done? Etc. This is constantly going through your mind each step in battle in Dark Souls. The vials make a system that creates strategy, resource management, and forced mastery of every boss. You have to learn all the bosses by memory to get past them, which helps lift up its admittedly repetitive boss design.
Now, compare to Furi. You start every fight with 3 lives. Every life lost fully heals both you and the boss, but the boss stays on the current phase they're on. Every phase beaten will replenish your health and give you an extra life back. Parrying also grants you some bonus health. See the issue? When the game gives you health (which you could theoretically heal infinite of) and lives, it creates gameplay that focuses not on mastering the bosses, but on getting to the final phase at the same state you were in at the beginning. You can die on each phase in this game but suffer zero actual punishment by the final phase. This sadly undermined most of the combat in the game for me, and turned bosses into just getting past the fluff to get to the real challenge. The fix is so easy too, it could literally be made in a patch.
I can't hate Furi on the whole because, even despite the major flaw, pretty much everything else is perfect. I mentioned the boss design before, but the music, story, visuals, writing.. all of it is really fucking good. I could never not recommend the game because of just how good those aspects are. And at the end of the day, I still had fun. I just wish it could've made that final step.
Furi has some of the best, most engaging and challenging bosses I've seen in an action game. Each boss carries their own personal flavor and style, tackling different parts of the games mechanics and combining uses of them together in continuously interesting ways. Even in the fights themselves, there's constant variation going on, such as constantly changing and evolving attacks or unique arenas, while still keeping true to and expanding upon the bosses core theme and mechanical focus. I think it'll be a long time until I see an action game with bosses this good. That makes it all the more disappointing to say that this game is taken down by a health system that's far too forgiving. Leniency and making things easier not inherently bad, but the way they implement it is what does it in.
Think about how Dark Souls handles health and healing. Every fight, you only have a very limited amount of health. The only way to gain it back is via health vials, which gives back a limited amount of healing and stops you dead in your tracks. This creates a risk reward system to using vials, while also adding an extra layer of strategy. When is it safe to use it? Should I wait to take a bit more damage so I get to use this vial to it's fullest potential? Should I heal now that a phase change is coming up I've never done? Etc. This is constantly going through your mind each step in battle in Dark Souls. The vials make a system that creates strategy, resource management, and forced mastery of every boss. You have to learn all the bosses by memory to get past them, which helps lift up its admittedly repetitive boss design.
Now, compare to Furi. You start every fight with 3 lives. Every life lost fully heals both you and the boss, but the boss stays on the current phase they're on. Every phase beaten will replenish your health and give you an extra life back. Parrying also grants you some bonus health. See the issue? When the game gives you health (which you could theoretically heal infinite of) and lives, it creates gameplay that focuses not on mastering the bosses, but on getting to the final phase at the same state you were in at the beginning. You can die on each phase in this game but suffer zero actual punishment by the final phase. This sadly undermined most of the combat in the game for me, and turned bosses into just getting past the fluff to get to the real challenge. The fix is so easy too, it could literally be made in a patch.
I can't hate Furi on the whole because, even despite the major flaw, pretty much everything else is perfect. I mentioned the boss design before, but the music, story, visuals, writing.. all of it is really fucking good. I could never not recommend the game because of just how good those aspects are. And at the end of the day, I still had fun. I just wish it could've made that final step.
2023
Pizza Tower is the antithesis of what I find fun in a platformer. Linear levels with zero obstacles, mindless speed that takes zero effort to build up and little to conserve, etc. All challenge in the game relates to technical skill, but the bar is kept too low, even while P ranking. I had little fun doing it because the levels are built so linearly that there wasn't any room for strategy or path building, all of that is laid out for you, you just have to execute.
I thought the inclusion of secrets could lead to some fun exploration, but it doesn't work because the path of the level is already determined for you, there's no challenge in finding it outside of minor observation skills. Look at something platformer with good exploration and speed like Sonic CD. All the levels in that game are built for exploration; they have multiple paths which flow into each other and can be traversed both forwards and backwards. This allows for a lot of freedom in exploration, but they're also designed in such a way that no matter which way you go you'll always be facing obstacles, constantly keeping you on your toes. At the same time though, despite all these obstacles, they're still able to be designed around speed, you just actually have to earn it. Because the levels in Pizza Tower are designed around only speed running and nothing else, all the secrets, which are required for P rank, have to be placed on the main path. There's no challenge navigating to them. These secrets are actually not bad platforming challenges, but I'm not gonna give much credit when they're pretty much the only segments of platforming in the game that actually both feel like they test your movement and speed while also being somewhat challenging to do.
Another thing I was hoping could be enjoyable was the timed segments at the end of each level that force you, even in casual play, to go as fast as possible, but it suffers from a major flaw that ruins it; you're given too much time. Think about the structure of the game for a second. At the end of a level, you activate a timer that, when depleted, spawns in an obstacle that chases you, but can be dodged if you're skilled enough. To get a P rank, you have to run through the level a second time, with the timer not being reset. Therefore, the time limit is set just right to be able to beat the entire level without the timer getting to 0. See the issue? Pizza Face, despite existing as a feature that can allow skilled players to avoid death, is never utilized in the P ranking, the part of the game explicitly designed for skilled players. Pizza Face is actually pretty challenging to dodge and requires a lot of memorization of the level. One gap in speed can kill you pretty much instantly. The fix is so simple to make this feature actually enjoyable; just reduce the timer. To compensate for the causal players, I would still give some lenience on the timer, around 3/4ths the time it is now. This gives casual players the time to finish the level securely, while making Pizza Face more of a present threat, while also both adding more skill and mastery to the PERFECT rank, and adding some fun stress and thrills right at the very end. This wouldn't fix the game, but it could give some level of true mastery and reward for speed for the dull, repetitive grind P ranking is.
One feature I think takes down the game majorly is the automatic wall climb. You know how the entire point of platformers is to time and make jumps? Even the simplest of platformers understand this. Pizza Tower is the first platformer I've ever played where missing a jump results in zero punishment, since any missed jump you can just run up again. There isn't a speed punishment or anything for this, you just don't have to jump across platforms. In a platformer.
I could go on about my issues with Pizza Tower (I likely will edit this in the future to add more since I have a lot more to say), but I think you get the picture. I really can't understand what people enjoy about this game.
I thought the inclusion of secrets could lead to some fun exploration, but it doesn't work because the path of the level is already determined for you, there's no challenge in finding it outside of minor observation skills. Look at something platformer with good exploration and speed like Sonic CD. All the levels in that game are built for exploration; they have multiple paths which flow into each other and can be traversed both forwards and backwards. This allows for a lot of freedom in exploration, but they're also designed in such a way that no matter which way you go you'll always be facing obstacles, constantly keeping you on your toes. At the same time though, despite all these obstacles, they're still able to be designed around speed, you just actually have to earn it. Because the levels in Pizza Tower are designed around only speed running and nothing else, all the secrets, which are required for P rank, have to be placed on the main path. There's no challenge navigating to them. These secrets are actually not bad platforming challenges, but I'm not gonna give much credit when they're pretty much the only segments of platforming in the game that actually both feel like they test your movement and speed while also being somewhat challenging to do.
Another thing I was hoping could be enjoyable was the timed segments at the end of each level that force you, even in casual play, to go as fast as possible, but it suffers from a major flaw that ruins it; you're given too much time. Think about the structure of the game for a second. At the end of a level, you activate a timer that, when depleted, spawns in an obstacle that chases you, but can be dodged if you're skilled enough. To get a P rank, you have to run through the level a second time, with the timer not being reset. Therefore, the time limit is set just right to be able to beat the entire level without the timer getting to 0. See the issue? Pizza Face, despite existing as a feature that can allow skilled players to avoid death, is never utilized in the P ranking, the part of the game explicitly designed for skilled players. Pizza Face is actually pretty challenging to dodge and requires a lot of memorization of the level. One gap in speed can kill you pretty much instantly. The fix is so simple to make this feature actually enjoyable; just reduce the timer. To compensate for the causal players, I would still give some lenience on the timer, around 3/4ths the time it is now. This gives casual players the time to finish the level securely, while making Pizza Face more of a present threat, while also both adding more skill and mastery to the PERFECT rank, and adding some fun stress and thrills right at the very end. This wouldn't fix the game, but it could give some level of true mastery and reward for speed for the dull, repetitive grind P ranking is.
One feature I think takes down the game majorly is the automatic wall climb. You know how the entire point of platformers is to time and make jumps? Even the simplest of platformers understand this. Pizza Tower is the first platformer I've ever played where missing a jump results in zero punishment, since any missed jump you can just run up again. There isn't a speed punishment or anything for this, you just don't have to jump across platforms. In a platformer.
I could go on about my issues with Pizza Tower (I likely will edit this in the future to add more since I have a lot more to say), but I think you get the picture. I really can't understand what people enjoy about this game.
I do not like it when fan remakes try to fit a game into the skin of another game, rather than building up a remake based off of the design of the original and adding elements from other games where it fits. This is Sonic 3 2, not a faithful remake of Triple Trouble. If you don't care about that and also like Sonic 3, you'll probably enjoy this.
2014
As someone who has spent hours dabbling into RPG Maker, I always knew that as a game making tool, it had incredible potential. It was by no means the most complex program, but it had all the tools for a gem to be crafted. However, despite the years of its existence, it felt like it never crafted anything that fully clicked. OFF has a fantastic story and great visuals, but puts little attention towards combat. Omori's few good aspects are stuck under heaps and heaps of flaws and bad design. All the various horror games such as Ao Oni or The Crooked Man are generally enjoyable horror experiences but completely ditch the RPG formula.
As an avid turn based RPG fan, Lisa is easily the best I've ever played. For a while, I've struggled to find a JRPG that mixes all the genre's strengths into one package. One with great gameplay would have mediocre story, and vice versa. Story wouldn't tie into the gameplay in satisfying and impactful ways. Combat was diluted with endless, useless systems of high yet shallow complexity. My initial love for these games would always fall off as these cracks in their systems bore deeper. However, Lisa has reaffirmed my love for the potential of the genre by being a shining example of nearly every good aspect about turn based RPGs.
The gameplay was the part I was easily most worried about. There is a depressingly small number of games which I would say respect turned based combat, understand what makes it work, and executes it well. RPG Makers games were usually guilty of not. However, not only does Lisa nail it, but it also handles it in a unique way. In most RPGs, battles are almost entirely confined to the fight itself. You're usually given a moment to prepare, and rarely what happens outside of battles will affect you in them. Lisa instead takes the survival and resource management aspects of turn based combat and spreads it throughout the whole game. The whole "I can't use these items now I may need them later" feeling actually matters here as some items you get cannot be regained. Damage you take cannot always be healed, and you gotta charge forward with low health. And even if you find one, most heal spots have potential risks, including permanent debuffs, losing party members, and getting into fights. You can get randomly ambushed just walking around. Dialogue choices can have extremely dire consequences. Everything in this game sets you back, but you have to keep marching. However, the gameplay isn't carried by this either. Combat is still really fun. Don't expect anything amazing, enemies are usually pretty one note and can be tackled with the same strategy. The best thing battles bring to the table though is the potential loss of party members. Specific enemies can instantly kill your teammates permanently. Forever. If you don't save scum, you'll have to reorganize your team and start your strategy from scratch.
However, that brings me into my first, and probably only issue; Lisa is too forgiving. Even on Pain mode, It's simply too easy to get past all the management and consequences. Money and experience can be infinitely farmed, items can be infinitely bought, and saves can be infinitely loaded. I only ignored these aspects out of respect for the spirit of the game, but I cannot overlook them. I can understand these being in the normal mode, but I really think pain mode should've taken the extra step forward, especially since it is possible to beat the game with these restrictions. I placed all of these on myself and got by. It made my experience better, but I could never get the nagging feeling in my head to reload and save resources or characters to go away, which took away from the experience as a whole. Not nearly to a degree of ruining the game, but I could never consider it the best of the best because of it.
The story is what most people find memorable about the game, and for good reason. I won't go into detail, but I do wanna mention one major thing; how it ties into gameplay. I've always thought that JRPGs are ripe to implement story and combat more seamlessly than other genres. The turn based nature allowing for story beats to happen step by step, as well as the heavy use of text to showcase battles allowing for dialogue and wording, levels and skills allowing for character growth to be easily and immediately reflected into combat, character visuals and names being able to change and reflect revelations, etc. The simplified visual nature of turn based combat allows for so much to be expressed that wouldn't be possible in other games is one of JRPG's biggest strengths, and Lisa has the shining example of this. I won't say specifically, but it's the fight on the first island after making the ship. This fight plays like a normal battle, but every aspect of it tells you about yourself and who you're fighting. I rarely cry, or even get even close to it in games, but this fight got me the closest to it in a long time.
Another big strength of the story is the focus. A lot of games really put importance on the big picture and what's happening inside of it, however Lisa doesn't care about that. The game is obviously post apocalyptic, but what happened before is almost entirely unknown. Any time you view life before, or have it mentioned, it's purely to drive the characters forward. Things like the mutants have little but vague hints as to why they even exist, and the game is all the better for it. For both serious and comedic purposes, the game focuses solely on the characters and their actions, and its the only thing that drives the game forward. The history of the world matters to you as much as it does to the characters themselves, so you rarely hear about it. I really like this approach, and I like how it thematically ties into Brad too.
To move on, Lisa has a very unique handle on its world. It's hard to describe how Lisa combines it's comedic and depression, serious sides. It's not like a coin, as that would imply two completely separated halves. They're moreso blended together, with both happening simultaneously. There will be moments where you'll go through a depressing cutscene where a long time party member gets murdered, and then a minute later you'll walk into a house where Poopsock Gonzalez will tell you the tragic tale of how he became known as Poopsock Gonzalez, before joining your party. This dichotomy wouldn't work if it weren't for two reasons; the first is how the comedic and depressing elements tie into the world. In most games, comedy is meant to relieve the depressing parts, to take you out of the sad and bring you out of the world with something disconnected to be comedic. However in Lisa, every joke is grounded within the boundry of the world itself and how it works. Humor and gags are so common and relentless in Lisa that they retroactively become part of the world itself, likewise with the depressing elements. You eventually just accept both as part of the world itself, and so you're never taken out of the moment by random bits. A shining example of this is the scene where you have to ride the body after the cutscene that nearly got me that I mentioned earlier. You're so depressed by this point that this very small, slight gag honestly does nothing but make you feel worse, and it's genius. The second main reason is because the game is actually really funny and really depressing. It is probably the funniest game I have ever played, and one of the most relentlessly sad games too.
Finally, there's one more element I want to bring up, the general scuffed quality of Lisa. In most games, a game being scuffed or not well made in parts would bother me. However, Lisa is able to get by this by having the scuffed feel be a perfect fit for the feel Lisa is going for. It's hard for me to fully articulate, but the general idea is that I think having the game have higher quality visuals, music, mechanics, etc would take away a crucial feel towards the game.
In the end, I am left saddened that Lisa is an exception in its genre. How is stagnation even possible to happen when that is the case? We need more games like Lisa, ones that take a look at the genre they come from and innovate on what can be accomplished while staying true to what made said genre so established in the first place. Lisa doesn't feel like a loveletter to JRPGs, nor does it feel like it exists to be a solution to it's issues; rather, it feels like being a JRPG was just the natural fit to an already incredible idea for a game. And one day, it will click.
As an avid turn based RPG fan, Lisa is easily the best I've ever played. For a while, I've struggled to find a JRPG that mixes all the genre's strengths into one package. One with great gameplay would have mediocre story, and vice versa. Story wouldn't tie into the gameplay in satisfying and impactful ways. Combat was diluted with endless, useless systems of high yet shallow complexity. My initial love for these games would always fall off as these cracks in their systems bore deeper. However, Lisa has reaffirmed my love for the potential of the genre by being a shining example of nearly every good aspect about turn based RPGs.
The gameplay was the part I was easily most worried about. There is a depressingly small number of games which I would say respect turned based combat, understand what makes it work, and executes it well. RPG Makers games were usually guilty of not. However, not only does Lisa nail it, but it also handles it in a unique way. In most RPGs, battles are almost entirely confined to the fight itself. You're usually given a moment to prepare, and rarely what happens outside of battles will affect you in them. Lisa instead takes the survival and resource management aspects of turn based combat and spreads it throughout the whole game. The whole "I can't use these items now I may need them later" feeling actually matters here as some items you get cannot be regained. Damage you take cannot always be healed, and you gotta charge forward with low health. And even if you find one, most heal spots have potential risks, including permanent debuffs, losing party members, and getting into fights. You can get randomly ambushed just walking around. Dialogue choices can have extremely dire consequences. Everything in this game sets you back, but you have to keep marching. However, the gameplay isn't carried by this either. Combat is still really fun. Don't expect anything amazing, enemies are usually pretty one note and can be tackled with the same strategy. The best thing battles bring to the table though is the potential loss of party members. Specific enemies can instantly kill your teammates permanently. Forever. If you don't save scum, you'll have to reorganize your team and start your strategy from scratch.
However, that brings me into my first, and probably only issue; Lisa is too forgiving. Even on Pain mode, It's simply too easy to get past all the management and consequences. Money and experience can be infinitely farmed, items can be infinitely bought, and saves can be infinitely loaded. I only ignored these aspects out of respect for the spirit of the game, but I cannot overlook them. I can understand these being in the normal mode, but I really think pain mode should've taken the extra step forward, especially since it is possible to beat the game with these restrictions. I placed all of these on myself and got by. It made my experience better, but I could never get the nagging feeling in my head to reload and save resources or characters to go away, which took away from the experience as a whole. Not nearly to a degree of ruining the game, but I could never consider it the best of the best because of it.
The story is what most people find memorable about the game, and for good reason. I won't go into detail, but I do wanna mention one major thing; how it ties into gameplay. I've always thought that JRPGs are ripe to implement story and combat more seamlessly than other genres. The turn based nature allowing for story beats to happen step by step, as well as the heavy use of text to showcase battles allowing for dialogue and wording, levels and skills allowing for character growth to be easily and immediately reflected into combat, character visuals and names being able to change and reflect revelations, etc. The simplified visual nature of turn based combat allows for so much to be expressed that wouldn't be possible in other games is one of JRPG's biggest strengths, and Lisa has the shining example of this. I won't say specifically, but it's the fight on the first island after making the ship. This fight plays like a normal battle, but every aspect of it tells you about yourself and who you're fighting. I rarely cry, or even get even close to it in games, but this fight got me the closest to it in a long time.
Another big strength of the story is the focus. A lot of games really put importance on the big picture and what's happening inside of it, however Lisa doesn't care about that. The game is obviously post apocalyptic, but what happened before is almost entirely unknown. Any time you view life before, or have it mentioned, it's purely to drive the characters forward. Things like the mutants have little but vague hints as to why they even exist, and the game is all the better for it. For both serious and comedic purposes, the game focuses solely on the characters and their actions, and its the only thing that drives the game forward. The history of the world matters to you as much as it does to the characters themselves, so you rarely hear about it. I really like this approach, and I like how it thematically ties into Brad too.
To move on, Lisa has a very unique handle on its world. It's hard to describe how Lisa combines it's comedic and depression, serious sides. It's not like a coin, as that would imply two completely separated halves. They're moreso blended together, with both happening simultaneously. There will be moments where you'll go through a depressing cutscene where a long time party member gets murdered, and then a minute later you'll walk into a house where Poopsock Gonzalez will tell you the tragic tale of how he became known as Poopsock Gonzalez, before joining your party. This dichotomy wouldn't work if it weren't for two reasons; the first is how the comedic and depressing elements tie into the world. In most games, comedy is meant to relieve the depressing parts, to take you out of the sad and bring you out of the world with something disconnected to be comedic. However in Lisa, every joke is grounded within the boundry of the world itself and how it works. Humor and gags are so common and relentless in Lisa that they retroactively become part of the world itself, likewise with the depressing elements. You eventually just accept both as part of the world itself, and so you're never taken out of the moment by random bits. A shining example of this is the scene where you have to ride the body after the cutscene that nearly got me that I mentioned earlier. You're so depressed by this point that this very small, slight gag honestly does nothing but make you feel worse, and it's genius. The second main reason is because the game is actually really funny and really depressing. It is probably the funniest game I have ever played, and one of the most relentlessly sad games too.
Finally, there's one more element I want to bring up, the general scuffed quality of Lisa. In most games, a game being scuffed or not well made in parts would bother me. However, Lisa is able to get by this by having the scuffed feel be a perfect fit for the feel Lisa is going for. It's hard for me to fully articulate, but the general idea is that I think having the game have higher quality visuals, music, mechanics, etc would take away a crucial feel towards the game.
In the end, I am left saddened that Lisa is an exception in its genre. How is stagnation even possible to happen when that is the case? We need more games like Lisa, ones that take a look at the genre they come from and innovate on what can be accomplished while staying true to what made said genre so established in the first place. Lisa doesn't feel like a loveletter to JRPGs, nor does it feel like it exists to be a solution to it's issues; rather, it feels like being a JRPG was just the natural fit to an already incredible idea for a game. And one day, it will click.
2012
I am not a fan of platformers. I am not a fan of cutesy art styles. I am not a fan of older indie games. Everything about FEZ initially put me off. Every single time I saw screenshots or gameplay, I looked at it as just another boring late 2000's/early 2010's "indie masterpiece" with a gimmick and nothing more. Because of this, understand that when I say FEZ is a masterpiece that is unlike anything that has come before or after, I really mean it.
On the surface, the game is a tough sell. A short collectathon where you rotate the world to pick up cubes and a handful of other collectibles in a sizeable world map. Nothing bad, just nothing immediately grabbing either. Screenshots don't help either; the game just doesn't initially look interesting in stills.
FEZ is the type of game where playing it yourself is the only way to truly understand it. FEZ's gameplay, controls, visuals and sound all come together in a specific way that can only be experienced though interaction. I watched someone play FEZ before ever touching the game, and I thought it looked boring. It wasn't until I got my hands on the game where everything clicked.
Once you get into it, FEZ is fun from beginning to end. A lot of people don't like the platforming in this game, which genuinely baffles me. The game just feels fun to move around in. Gomez has this specific feel and weight to him that is unmatched outside of Sonic maybe. It's hard to articulate, but FEZ is the only platformer I've played where the physics and feel of the character is as good as the platforming, which it in itself is really good too. The game is constantly throwing new mechanics and challenges at you. While the game never goes into much depth with them, the point is that almost every challenge feels unique and different to play. The platforming is connected together by one large world map, which might be the most addicted I've been to exploring a map ever. Every room is highlighted with treasure, and is given a nice gold sheen once you're done. A lot of the satisfaction has to do with the puzzles and secrets themselves.
And speaking of secrets, FEZ has a largely secret underside that is surprisingly overlooked. After you've finished the base game, New Game+ turns FEZ from a platformer with puzzle elements into a puzzle game with platformer elements. FEZ includes an entire language, numerical system, and movement cipher, all to make its secrets more elusive. Writing stuff down and taking notes is a heavily underappreciated and underutilized part of games that have sadly become more and more rare in games. A game designed around notes can provide a more thrilling and immersive experience than any quest log or information map could provide, and FEZ defines itself by that. The puzzles themselves too are no easy feat. For most of them, you're going to have to carefully observe your surroundings and use all your abilities available to solve them. There's also Red Cubes; puzzles that took the entire community coming together to help solve. Hell, one to this day isn't actually truly solved, being brute forced by the community by inputting every single possible combination for weeks, which I think perfectly showcases the intrigue of the mystery and the enjoyment of puzzle solving in FEZ.
The general presentation of this game is also unbelievable. I already mentioned how important it is to play FEZ to truly understand it, but I just want to reiterate. FEZ's world is animated, and constantly moving. There's so much flair and love in the environment that is so easy to overlook. The visuals would be nothing though without the incredible sound design and music. Every interaction and movement in this game has a sound, and it is genuinely some of the best sound effects I've ever seen in the game. From Gomez's footsteps changing from what he's stepping on, each region having its own bird species to personalize their atmosphere, valves and wheels playing small little tunes when you turn them, to that ever satisfying noise that plays when you solve a puzzle, FEZ has a audible identity I've yet seen matched. It's kind of scary how much personality seeps out of every aspect of this game. And this identity extends into the music too. The soundtrack is what convinced me to stop overlooking FEZ and to actually try it. The entire OST is fantastic, and contains some of my favorite songs in gaming (and possibly ever). Just as each object and action is defined by a sound, every room and discovery is defined by a song. I won't go into examples here, as I think it speaks for itself.
Overall, I can't recommend FEZ enough. Despite being one of the most iconic indies ever, I genuinely don't think I've seen a game as relatively overlooked and underappreciated as FEZ. No one talks about it, no one makes fanart, no one mods it, no one makes countless shitty video essays on it. My best guess is that most people feel the same way I did; I knew about it for years, but I was put off at a surface level and thought it looked generic. FEZ probably isn't for everyone, however if anything above looked interesting, please play it.
Spoiler warning for here on out. I'm going to leave this review untagged just so more people read the above and hopefully play it, but I can't not talk about some other aspects.
First, I want to mention the story and worldbuilding. I haven't researched into the lore and story of FEZ, only picking up the pieces it does show, however everything about it is super interesting. It feels like every game I love nowadays has some sort of sense of scale to it with godlike beings, and FEZ might be the best execution of it I've seen. The aliens are genuinely terrifying. They're kept so vague that I can't tell their intentions. Their designs are so simplified that I can't tell if that's what they actually look like. Their home world(?) is perfectly bizarre and has an overwhelming song that reinforces the scale. The scariest moment in the game for me involved them, that being the skull room. I have no clue what this room means or why it exists, but holding the skull of one of these aliens was so unsettling to me. To see their physical existence and to hold it in my hands just felt overwhelmingly wrong, which can extend to the entire room. I just felt out of place, like I wasn't meant to discover this. The song here too being one of, if not my favorite in the game really played into this too (coincidentally it was the song that convinced me to play the game). It's been a while since I've felt so uncomfortable yet equally mesmerized and intrigued by something in a game.
Finally, above all I mentioned before, even the puzzles themselves, FEZ is a game about scope. The scope of your world being tripled by the third dimension, the scope of the map and the secrets deep within, the scope of the puzzles and the intricate solutions, the scope of the past and what came before, the scope of the universe and those who live in it, and the scope of existence itself and everything that makes it up.
The ending of FEZ is something that I haven't been able to get out of my mind from the second after I finished the game. The visuals combined with the somber yet hypnotic tune creates an ending that's hard to describe with words. It seems sudden and out of place first, but just as the world gets realized as you play through it on New Game+, so does the ending. I'm not sure what the ending means for the story, if anything, but I know what it means for me, and that's all that really matters. And I can't think of a better way to end it then Gomez's celebration. However, there's also the second ending. I already went in with low expectations based off of what I was told, and I get why. The second ending is untriumphant, silent, and quickly over with, and that's the best part. The first ending is all about showing the beauty in creation itself. The entire game has you expanding your scope, so the ending pulls you back home to show you the complexity of yourself on the smallest scale possible. For the second ending to be grandiose, it would have to take away from what the first ending means. And in that sense, I think it's perfect.
On the surface, the game is a tough sell. A short collectathon where you rotate the world to pick up cubes and a handful of other collectibles in a sizeable world map. Nothing bad, just nothing immediately grabbing either. Screenshots don't help either; the game just doesn't initially look interesting in stills.
FEZ is the type of game where playing it yourself is the only way to truly understand it. FEZ's gameplay, controls, visuals and sound all come together in a specific way that can only be experienced though interaction. I watched someone play FEZ before ever touching the game, and I thought it looked boring. It wasn't until I got my hands on the game where everything clicked.
Once you get into it, FEZ is fun from beginning to end. A lot of people don't like the platforming in this game, which genuinely baffles me. The game just feels fun to move around in. Gomez has this specific feel and weight to him that is unmatched outside of Sonic maybe. It's hard to articulate, but FEZ is the only platformer I've played where the physics and feel of the character is as good as the platforming, which it in itself is really good too. The game is constantly throwing new mechanics and challenges at you. While the game never goes into much depth with them, the point is that almost every challenge feels unique and different to play. The platforming is connected together by one large world map, which might be the most addicted I've been to exploring a map ever. Every room is highlighted with treasure, and is given a nice gold sheen once you're done. A lot of the satisfaction has to do with the puzzles and secrets themselves.
And speaking of secrets, FEZ has a largely secret underside that is surprisingly overlooked. After you've finished the base game, New Game+ turns FEZ from a platformer with puzzle elements into a puzzle game with platformer elements. FEZ includes an entire language, numerical system, and movement cipher, all to make its secrets more elusive. Writing stuff down and taking notes is a heavily underappreciated and underutilized part of games that have sadly become more and more rare in games. A game designed around notes can provide a more thrilling and immersive experience than any quest log or information map could provide, and FEZ defines itself by that. The puzzles themselves too are no easy feat. For most of them, you're going to have to carefully observe your surroundings and use all your abilities available to solve them. There's also Red Cubes; puzzles that took the entire community coming together to help solve. Hell, one to this day isn't actually truly solved, being brute forced by the community by inputting every single possible combination for weeks, which I think perfectly showcases the intrigue of the mystery and the enjoyment of puzzle solving in FEZ.
The general presentation of this game is also unbelievable. I already mentioned how important it is to play FEZ to truly understand it, but I just want to reiterate. FEZ's world is animated, and constantly moving. There's so much flair and love in the environment that is so easy to overlook. The visuals would be nothing though without the incredible sound design and music. Every interaction and movement in this game has a sound, and it is genuinely some of the best sound effects I've ever seen in the game. From Gomez's footsteps changing from what he's stepping on, each region having its own bird species to personalize their atmosphere, valves and wheels playing small little tunes when you turn them, to that ever satisfying noise that plays when you solve a puzzle, FEZ has a audible identity I've yet seen matched. It's kind of scary how much personality seeps out of every aspect of this game. And this identity extends into the music too. The soundtrack is what convinced me to stop overlooking FEZ and to actually try it. The entire OST is fantastic, and contains some of my favorite songs in gaming (and possibly ever). Just as each object and action is defined by a sound, every room and discovery is defined by a song. I won't go into examples here, as I think it speaks for itself.
Overall, I can't recommend FEZ enough. Despite being one of the most iconic indies ever, I genuinely don't think I've seen a game as relatively overlooked and underappreciated as FEZ. No one talks about it, no one makes fanart, no one mods it, no one makes countless shitty video essays on it. My best guess is that most people feel the same way I did; I knew about it for years, but I was put off at a surface level and thought it looked generic. FEZ probably isn't for everyone, however if anything above looked interesting, please play it.
Spoiler warning for here on out. I'm going to leave this review untagged just so more people read the above and hopefully play it, but I can't not talk about some other aspects.
First, I want to mention the story and worldbuilding. I haven't researched into the lore and story of FEZ, only picking up the pieces it does show, however everything about it is super interesting. It feels like every game I love nowadays has some sort of sense of scale to it with godlike beings, and FEZ might be the best execution of it I've seen. The aliens are genuinely terrifying. They're kept so vague that I can't tell their intentions. Their designs are so simplified that I can't tell if that's what they actually look like. Their home world(?) is perfectly bizarre and has an overwhelming song that reinforces the scale. The scariest moment in the game for me involved them, that being the skull room. I have no clue what this room means or why it exists, but holding the skull of one of these aliens was so unsettling to me. To see their physical existence and to hold it in my hands just felt overwhelmingly wrong, which can extend to the entire room. I just felt out of place, like I wasn't meant to discover this. The song here too being one of, if not my favorite in the game really played into this too (coincidentally it was the song that convinced me to play the game). It's been a while since I've felt so uncomfortable yet equally mesmerized and intrigued by something in a game.
Finally, above all I mentioned before, even the puzzles themselves, FEZ is a game about scope. The scope of your world being tripled by the third dimension, the scope of the map and the secrets deep within, the scope of the puzzles and the intricate solutions, the scope of the past and what came before, the scope of the universe and those who live in it, and the scope of existence itself and everything that makes it up.
The ending of FEZ is something that I haven't been able to get out of my mind from the second after I finished the game. The visuals combined with the somber yet hypnotic tune creates an ending that's hard to describe with words. It seems sudden and out of place first, but just as the world gets realized as you play through it on New Game+, so does the ending. I'm not sure what the ending means for the story, if anything, but I know what it means for me, and that's all that really matters. And I can't think of a better way to end it then Gomez's celebration. However, there's also the second ending. I already went in with low expectations based off of what I was told, and I get why. The second ending is untriumphant, silent, and quickly over with, and that's the best part. The first ending is all about showing the beauty in creation itself. The entire game has you expanding your scope, so the ending pulls you back home to show you the complexity of yourself on the smallest scale possible. For the second ending to be grandiose, it would have to take away from what the first ending means. And in that sense, I think it's perfect.
This review contains spoilers
In pretty much every single way, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a step down from the original, and I didn't even like that one much. Every good decision has a swath of negative downsides.
The gameplay and general combat itself isn't bad, and honestly I quite like it on paper. However, I feel it falls apart due to the design of the fights themselves. There wasn't a single point in the game where I remember feeling challenged. As long as you regularly replace equipment and upgrade your characters/blades, it is insanely easy to get by in this game, making the combat depth useless in the main game. There wasn't a point where I had to think about which characters or blades I was using in battle. On every fight you just set up elemental orbs and kill the enemy instantly, and it's super underwhelming. Even the final boss was a pushover. The second you get chain attacks, the game becomes a joke.
The bad utilization of combat really stems from one core issue, not just of this game, but pretty much the whole series; enemy design. Xenoblade, especially 2, rarely ever shakes things up in battle. You're never thrown unexpected bones that makes you rethink how you tackle battles. You just combo, chain attack, and win. The solution to this seems so easy too, just come up with some unique gimmicks and properties. Xenoblade 1 had some of this for better or for worse, with bosses introducing multiple extra enemies that were a genuine threat. If you didn't focus them immediately, you'd be shredded, and so you had to balance the multiple enemies while still keeping an eye on the boss themselves. It wasn't perfect, but it was fun and chaotic. The extra enemies in Xenoblade 2 are so heavily nerfed, they might as well not be there. And even when they are, it hurts the main boss themselves, as they nerf them too to "balance" it. That's not even the only gimmick that could be done. To think of one off the top of my head, have bosses be able to block specific elements. This makes it so you have to be careful which characters and blades you bring into combat, and what moves you use.
Even if the fights themselves were good, it would be held back by the game's overly complex systems. It's hard to articulate, but the game is constantly weighing you down with systems, and they have little depth to compensate. It all feels like just an overcomplicated waste of time. The Aux Cores are a shining example. In nearly every fight you'll be obtaining Aux Cores. However, unlike Xenoblade 1's equivalent, you can't use them immediately. You have to refine them at a station around the world. Simple enough, except to refine them, you need materials. This completely undermines the excitement of finding a rare core, as you likely don't have the specific materials needed to craft it. The system adds nothing to the game but wasting the player's time, which could be attributed to a lot of this game. Speaking of wasting time;
The blade system boggles my mind on how it got passed. Instead of unlocking and finding them yourself, or any other number of way of obtaining them, they decided the best route was to make it a gacha system. The blades themselves bring two big issues to the game as well. The first isn't apparent until the final chapters of the games, but it's baffling. For some reason, they decided to force you to either grind field skill levels on your blades, or to pull blades until you hopefully got one with the right skill. I genuinely don't understand why this is the case, especially when Xenoblade 1 already did it better, having from memory no arbitrary progression barriers outside of battles. The second issue is on a grander scope of the game itself; how much work went into the blade. Each blade has multiple different sets of animations, which all seem to vary slightly per character too. When you have 50 or so unique blades in the game (not including each class of common blade and their variance), you can see how the work would add up quickly. This is moreso speculation, but it really feels like a good chunk of development went into this purely visual element, whereas I feel it could've been spent in much more vital areas. It sucks too, since on paper, I love the idea of commissioning a bunch of artists to make designs that are then implemented into the game (even if it leads to shit like this.)
The story isn't that bad honestly, but it's main issue comes from presentation. The game makes a great step forward with its vastly improved facial animation and expressiveness from the first game, however the way cutscenes are presented and some of the scenes in them can be unbearable. The game takes heavy influence from anime tropes. The first game already had a lot of this, but it used elements from anime I typically don't mind, and I could forgive stuff like the melodrama due to the limited facial animations. Not only does it use those elements to an even greater degree, but it also decided to add some """"""""""comedy"""""""""", which have about as much comedic value as dangling keys. Issues like these are persistent throughout the entire game (even the DLC) which ultimately takes down an otherwise good story. There's too much intricacy for me to go over here, but it's good overall, though it didn't click as well as Xenoblade 1's did.
The environments themselves were probably the biggest disappointment. A big part of the appeal of Xenoblade as a whole is walking around on gigantic creatures, its the reason that the game was made in the first place. Xenoblade 2 generally keeps this up, but I felt like a lot of the magic wore off. In the original, watching yourself move from area to area on the Bionis, and being able to look down on areas previously explored gave this huge, adventurous feel to the game. You could visually see your progression. In Xenoblade 2, you're constantly jumping from Titan to Titan, which leads to generally more unique areas in the game, at the cost of that visual progression feel being largely lost. Even in the World Tree, you don't feel the progression in it. You just go up a couple floors, and then suddenly get in this elevator that takes you to space, it just doesn't feel as natural. The way the levels themselves are laid out also doesn't help here. Look at the first area of Xenoblade 2, Gormott (This picture isn't that good but it's really tough to visualize it clearly). This is the first view you get of an open space in the game. The visual design doesn't really send you anywhere. There's a dirt path, sure, but the scene itself doesn't cause your eyes to follow it. There's no real reason to explore either, as the town, where you're told to go, is all the way to the right. Compare this to the reveal of Gaur Plains in Xenoblade 1. You can immediately see how the game guides you down one path, up the leg of the Bionis. The entire area is just one uphill climb, with various paths on the sides housing little things to explore. It's a much more natural and sweeping first look at a big area in the game. Other areas, especially Uraya and Tantal, do this better, but first impressions matter. Another big thing I was surprised to be omitted was the nightly area changes. There's still a day/night cycle, but for some reason they took out that really cool thing where some areas looked completely different at night in Xenoblade 1, like the Satorl Marsh or Valak Mountain. It added a new layer of wonder to areas, and it's completely gutted here. There were also a few areas which I think were heavily underutilized and disappointing, the biggest being Mor Ardain. The Titan here is the coolest looking in the game, however the area itself is surprisingly bland. I love the mechanized wasteland aesthetic here, it's surprisingly beautiful, however there isn't really much to explore. You have a little bit of area to wander around in, and then an indoor factory level, which is one of the worst areas in the game, gameplay and story wise. Just a huge underutilization of a super cool area, which I think underlines a lot of the game.
And that brings me to a big issue; underutilized and generally useless mechanics. This game has a lot of neat ideas that it does literally nothing with. The strangest inclusion has to be cloud sea levels. The game puts a lot of emphasis on the importance of the cloud sea, and how it will both impede and help your journey. The idea of a rising and sinking ocean that can open up or cross off areas depending on the time of day is a neat idea, adding a bit of personalization to each initial run-through of an area, however the game does literally nothing with it after this point. I don't think I thought about the cloud sea level once after the first area. I genuinely don't think it was utilized a single time afterwards. This is further worsened by the fact that half the titans don't even have the sea levels due to being inside the titan itself, or in an area it wouldn't work well in like Lefteria. When the DLC came around, they didn't even bother including it, which I fully understand. Another more minor but still noticeable disappointment is salvaging. Rex's entire character is initialized by being a salvager, and being able to salvage yourself is a neat idea. However there's literally no reason to outside of sidequests. Cylinders are super expensive too, so 9 times out of 10 you're just wasting money. The dives themselves felt super inconsistent too, sometimes I would get a better reward for diving imperfectly, so it seems to be mostly chance based.
A few side notes I couldn't fit elsewhere:
-The final boss is pretty disappointing in everyway compared to the original. Zanza wasn't anything amazing, but it was visually great with a solid fight and really good music. It wasn't perfect, but it was memorable. I can't say the same about Aion. The design looks like a shitty gundam OC, and the fight is pretty much a worse Egil fight.
-The music in this game is decent. I wasn't a huge fan of Xenoblade 1's ost either, as I'm not really an orchestral guy, but it fits the mood perfectly. I really liked the Indol night theme for how unique and simple it is.
-This game's plot is as predictable as Xenoblade 1's sadly.
-The stuff with Klaus at the end is really cool, but I felt it was a little too overcomplicated. I still have no clue what the Aegises were actually made for, though maybe I'm just stupid. Klaus' design went hard though.
-I don't like how long the side quests take now. They're definitely quality over quantity now, but I personally liked the filler quests in Xenoblade 1 as you could complete them as you played an area. Xenoblade 2's quests just force you to stop your progress for the quest itself. You even have to return back to finish the quest for some reason, which is something I thought Xenoblade 1 already did better by NOT requiring.
Overall, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is just a disappointment. I already went in with low expectations, but there was a slight hope in me that this game would have something that called to me despite its flaws like in Xenoblade 1, but I ended up with nothing. Not even the DLC could save this game. The only thing I feel after finishing this game is the hope that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is better.
The gameplay and general combat itself isn't bad, and honestly I quite like it on paper. However, I feel it falls apart due to the design of the fights themselves. There wasn't a single point in the game where I remember feeling challenged. As long as you regularly replace equipment and upgrade your characters/blades, it is insanely easy to get by in this game, making the combat depth useless in the main game. There wasn't a point where I had to think about which characters or blades I was using in battle. On every fight you just set up elemental orbs and kill the enemy instantly, and it's super underwhelming. Even the final boss was a pushover. The second you get chain attacks, the game becomes a joke.
The bad utilization of combat really stems from one core issue, not just of this game, but pretty much the whole series; enemy design. Xenoblade, especially 2, rarely ever shakes things up in battle. You're never thrown unexpected bones that makes you rethink how you tackle battles. You just combo, chain attack, and win. The solution to this seems so easy too, just come up with some unique gimmicks and properties. Xenoblade 1 had some of this for better or for worse, with bosses introducing multiple extra enemies that were a genuine threat. If you didn't focus them immediately, you'd be shredded, and so you had to balance the multiple enemies while still keeping an eye on the boss themselves. It wasn't perfect, but it was fun and chaotic. The extra enemies in Xenoblade 2 are so heavily nerfed, they might as well not be there. And even when they are, it hurts the main boss themselves, as they nerf them too to "balance" it. That's not even the only gimmick that could be done. To think of one off the top of my head, have bosses be able to block specific elements. This makes it so you have to be careful which characters and blades you bring into combat, and what moves you use.
Even if the fights themselves were good, it would be held back by the game's overly complex systems. It's hard to articulate, but the game is constantly weighing you down with systems, and they have little depth to compensate. It all feels like just an overcomplicated waste of time. The Aux Cores are a shining example. In nearly every fight you'll be obtaining Aux Cores. However, unlike Xenoblade 1's equivalent, you can't use them immediately. You have to refine them at a station around the world. Simple enough, except to refine them, you need materials. This completely undermines the excitement of finding a rare core, as you likely don't have the specific materials needed to craft it. The system adds nothing to the game but wasting the player's time, which could be attributed to a lot of this game. Speaking of wasting time;
The blade system boggles my mind on how it got passed. Instead of unlocking and finding them yourself, or any other number of way of obtaining them, they decided the best route was to make it a gacha system. The blades themselves bring two big issues to the game as well. The first isn't apparent until the final chapters of the games, but it's baffling. For some reason, they decided to force you to either grind field skill levels on your blades, or to pull blades until you hopefully got one with the right skill. I genuinely don't understand why this is the case, especially when Xenoblade 1 already did it better, having from memory no arbitrary progression barriers outside of battles. The second issue is on a grander scope of the game itself; how much work went into the blade. Each blade has multiple different sets of animations, which all seem to vary slightly per character too. When you have 50 or so unique blades in the game (not including each class of common blade and their variance), you can see how the work would add up quickly. This is moreso speculation, but it really feels like a good chunk of development went into this purely visual element, whereas I feel it could've been spent in much more vital areas. It sucks too, since on paper, I love the idea of commissioning a bunch of artists to make designs that are then implemented into the game (even if it leads to shit like this.)
The story isn't that bad honestly, but it's main issue comes from presentation. The game makes a great step forward with its vastly improved facial animation and expressiveness from the first game, however the way cutscenes are presented and some of the scenes in them can be unbearable. The game takes heavy influence from anime tropes. The first game already had a lot of this, but it used elements from anime I typically don't mind, and I could forgive stuff like the melodrama due to the limited facial animations. Not only does it use those elements to an even greater degree, but it also decided to add some """"""""""comedy"""""""""", which have about as much comedic value as dangling keys. Issues like these are persistent throughout the entire game (even the DLC) which ultimately takes down an otherwise good story. There's too much intricacy for me to go over here, but it's good overall, though it didn't click as well as Xenoblade 1's did.
The environments themselves were probably the biggest disappointment. A big part of the appeal of Xenoblade as a whole is walking around on gigantic creatures, its the reason that the game was made in the first place. Xenoblade 2 generally keeps this up, but I felt like a lot of the magic wore off. In the original, watching yourself move from area to area on the Bionis, and being able to look down on areas previously explored gave this huge, adventurous feel to the game. You could visually see your progression. In Xenoblade 2, you're constantly jumping from Titan to Titan, which leads to generally more unique areas in the game, at the cost of that visual progression feel being largely lost. Even in the World Tree, you don't feel the progression in it. You just go up a couple floors, and then suddenly get in this elevator that takes you to space, it just doesn't feel as natural. The way the levels themselves are laid out also doesn't help here. Look at the first area of Xenoblade 2, Gormott (This picture isn't that good but it's really tough to visualize it clearly). This is the first view you get of an open space in the game. The visual design doesn't really send you anywhere. There's a dirt path, sure, but the scene itself doesn't cause your eyes to follow it. There's no real reason to explore either, as the town, where you're told to go, is all the way to the right. Compare this to the reveal of Gaur Plains in Xenoblade 1. You can immediately see how the game guides you down one path, up the leg of the Bionis. The entire area is just one uphill climb, with various paths on the sides housing little things to explore. It's a much more natural and sweeping first look at a big area in the game. Other areas, especially Uraya and Tantal, do this better, but first impressions matter. Another big thing I was surprised to be omitted was the nightly area changes. There's still a day/night cycle, but for some reason they took out that really cool thing where some areas looked completely different at night in Xenoblade 1, like the Satorl Marsh or Valak Mountain. It added a new layer of wonder to areas, and it's completely gutted here. There were also a few areas which I think were heavily underutilized and disappointing, the biggest being Mor Ardain. The Titan here is the coolest looking in the game, however the area itself is surprisingly bland. I love the mechanized wasteland aesthetic here, it's surprisingly beautiful, however there isn't really much to explore. You have a little bit of area to wander around in, and then an indoor factory level, which is one of the worst areas in the game, gameplay and story wise. Just a huge underutilization of a super cool area, which I think underlines a lot of the game.
And that brings me to a big issue; underutilized and generally useless mechanics. This game has a lot of neat ideas that it does literally nothing with. The strangest inclusion has to be cloud sea levels. The game puts a lot of emphasis on the importance of the cloud sea, and how it will both impede and help your journey. The idea of a rising and sinking ocean that can open up or cross off areas depending on the time of day is a neat idea, adding a bit of personalization to each initial run-through of an area, however the game does literally nothing with it after this point. I don't think I thought about the cloud sea level once after the first area. I genuinely don't think it was utilized a single time afterwards. This is further worsened by the fact that half the titans don't even have the sea levels due to being inside the titan itself, or in an area it wouldn't work well in like Lefteria. When the DLC came around, they didn't even bother including it, which I fully understand. Another more minor but still noticeable disappointment is salvaging. Rex's entire character is initialized by being a salvager, and being able to salvage yourself is a neat idea. However there's literally no reason to outside of sidequests. Cylinders are super expensive too, so 9 times out of 10 you're just wasting money. The dives themselves felt super inconsistent too, sometimes I would get a better reward for diving imperfectly, so it seems to be mostly chance based.
A few side notes I couldn't fit elsewhere:
-The final boss is pretty disappointing in everyway compared to the original. Zanza wasn't anything amazing, but it was visually great with a solid fight and really good music. It wasn't perfect, but it was memorable. I can't say the same about Aion. The design looks like a shitty gundam OC, and the fight is pretty much a worse Egil fight.
-The music in this game is decent. I wasn't a huge fan of Xenoblade 1's ost either, as I'm not really an orchestral guy, but it fits the mood perfectly. I really liked the Indol night theme for how unique and simple it is.
-This game's plot is as predictable as Xenoblade 1's sadly.
-The stuff with Klaus at the end is really cool, but I felt it was a little too overcomplicated. I still have no clue what the Aegises were actually made for, though maybe I'm just stupid. Klaus' design went hard though.
-I don't like how long the side quests take now. They're definitely quality over quantity now, but I personally liked the filler quests in Xenoblade 1 as you could complete them as you played an area. Xenoblade 2's quests just force you to stop your progress for the quest itself. You even have to return back to finish the quest for some reason, which is something I thought Xenoblade 1 already did better by NOT requiring.
Overall, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is just a disappointment. I already went in with low expectations, but there was a slight hope in me that this game would have something that called to me despite its flaws like in Xenoblade 1, but I ended up with nothing. Not even the DLC could save this game. The only thing I feel after finishing this game is the hope that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is better.
Torna bravely answers the question "what if we made a game that was only side quests"
This review contains spoilers
It feels nice to log this game after so long. It felt like it was going to be on "Playing" forever. And I have to say, it was worth it overall.
Xenoblade Chronicles is one of the only games to be immediately interesting to me on concept alone. The mere idea of a world built on the bodies of dormant titans than you can explore with a true sense of scale calls to me, and the fact that it's a JRPG only strengthened this. And generally, the game hits it on the head with this. It's impossible to not look around constantly while running from one location to the next, every area is stunning in its own way. This is easily the best part of the game, there isn't a single environment with a fault to it.
However, that cannot carry a game alone. The gameplay itself is generally good, but can be hit or miss. The combat, in particular, took a long time to click. I'm a big fan of turn based combat, but I wasn't a fan of how Xenoblade shook it up, adding action elements that for a while seemed pointless. It wasn't until the final fifth of this game where I finally got what they were going for, and had a great time with the battles. The system is really fun and customizable. The variety of moves, gem types, skill link options, and armor choices each character has allows for entirely different purposes to be created for characters, and allowing for a huge variety of team builds. There's no real punishment for trying it out either. The only main issue is the arts points, which cannot be reallocated, which boggles my mind when considering the expert mode level system. The fights and enemies themselves are also quite good too. It feels like they should blend together, but the amount of variables the open combat brings allows for things to vary quite a lot. I had to think outside the box for fights very commonly, being thrown into unexpected situations by enemy, nearby enemies, my teammates, or even the environment itself. It's not always perfect though. Some bosses in particular can be super annoying or unfair, especially any boss that brings in multiple enemies. It's almost always unbalanced and way too challenging. When a second enemy comes into battle in normal fights, I didn't mind it outside of mild annoyance since it's not only extremely avoidable and usually the player's fault, but also because they're generally less challenging than the bosses, even the super enemies. In boss fights, it's completely unavoidable, can be resummoned, and are horribly unbalanced. They always have way too much HP, and make big health bars even bigger. The only fight from memory where it felt balanced was Egil, as the enemies could be killed really easily, but hit hard and could group up if you weren't careful.
The fight that I think encapsulates all the flaws with the combat is Lorithia's. It's pretty much a gimmick fight, however the game is incredbily vague about it. The 4 (maybe 5?) minions she summons are absolutely unfair. All have spikes which can do a variety of debuffs, do a lot of damage, have high HP, and have high defense. The only character good against them is Melia, as they all have absurdly high physical defense, but if you attack too much, you'll be annihilated instantly due to aggro. It's this huge unbalanced mess that is only memorable for being bad. Even the boss itself is a super forgettable villain that had no build up and didn't really need to exist. It doesn't end there though. The boss itself can still hit too, and half of its moves can cause status effects. so you'll be constantly toppled, dazed, and confused, with literally no way to prevent it. To top it off, the boss themselves has no interesting moves once the minions are gone, and can be easily wailed on. Just a super frustrating and annoying boss that I think perfectly highlights the flaws in this otherwise good combat system.
The story itself is also good, but nothing incredible. It's biggest issue is the mishandling of foreshadowing. The game can't seem to be subtle at all with it, and will make it super obvious what it's hinting at. The pacing is also really slanted, but that's mostly for a generally uninteresting second quarter of the game, where not much happens. It isn't until Prison Island, which is nearly 30 hours in, where stuff starts to pick up for the first time since the good opening. The last 10 hours of the game is easily where the story shines. Everything the game has been building up to is finally revealed, and it is genuinely really good. It does this specific thing in series like Adventure Time or Attack on Titan, where your initial view of a world is super limited, and is slowly broken down over time, until it all comes crashing down at once, and the world as it was before is completely recontextualized, and it does it well. There are a few issues though with the writing at this point. Dickson is the most obvious, and how underwhelming it was. The actual moment of his reveal is a shock, but the game just kinda overlooks it? Dickson was pretty important to half your party, yet there's little surprise, sadness, or even anger from them. You could say they were more preoccupied by Shulk getting shot, but it's still very strange, they don't even discuss it later. Another issue was Zanza. I don't have an issue with how he's written, his motives and just general concept are great, it's just that I feel like there should've been more. He appears twice, with the second being the final boss. While he was there the entire game, I feel like his revealed self should've gotten some more time in the spotlight. He's a good antagonist, but someone like Metal Face, or hell even Dickson left more of an impact due to their defining moments and importance throughout a majority of the game.
Speaking of characters, this game falls into the usual JRPG traps, with me actually caring about nearly every party member, but dropping the ball in a few key areas. Shulk is easily the best written, being the focal point of the story and having the most chances to shine. Just as the world itself is, your view of him changes from beginning to end. Reyn and Dunban were both great too, though had less apparent arcs and changes to them. They were mostly there for Shulk to bounce his development off of, which is fine. The other characters can be a bit more inconsistent. Fiora is a great example. Her death at the beginning is a surprise, and is a large part of what initially drew me into this game. If a major character can die this early on, what does the rest of the game hold? The rest of her arc after she's brought back is mostly good too, having a more defined development than most characters, though that's also because a lot of it is interlinked with Shulk. The big issue comes at the very end. For someone who spent the entire game accepting her new body, and choosing to move forward purely for the people she cared about, having her suddenly shift back to being human again just felt like it went against all that, and left an overall bad taste. It's not a huge flaw, but it's a noticeable stain on a great character.
Melia is another good character ruined by the end, or rather lack there of. The entire game has her developing slowly, as she figures out the importance of herself to her people, however after her brother dies, nothing happens. She doesn't conclude as a character, it just ends. Not even the ending really does anything with her. Sharla and Riki both fall under similar boats of having unique ideas, but not being that interesting as characters to save it. I'm gonna be honest, I really didn't care for Sharla at all. Her tale is pretty sad, but the game just didn't put enough effort into selling Sharla (or her boyfriend) as unique characters. I genuinely can't remember a single notable scene with her. Riki is a lot more interesting, but nothing is done with him. He has no arc, which I thought was super disappointing. Riki had huge potential to be this character who learns what it means to be a hero, and the ups and downs of being an icon to your people. And I know they noticed this, since Riki and Melia share some moments together in game, but it never leads anywhere. While none of the characters are bad, there are just too many blemishes on them that bring the whole cast down as a whole.
The music in this game fits the world perfectly. I already said before how standout the environments are, however the music sells their uniqueness further. While not all equally memorable, each area has themes that define the area. The first that come to mind are Gaur Plains, Valak Mountain, Mechonis Field, and the second Prison Island visit. However, the battle and cutscene songs are where this game truly shine. The feeling of being in a tough battle, and having that part of You Will Know Our Names play is enthralling, and hypes me up every single time I hear it. And on the other side of the coin, hearing those 8 piano notes in Engage the Enemy instantly strikes fear. You can tell shit is about to go down every time you hear it, and it's easily my favorite song in the game.
Few miscellaneous notes:
-The way death is handled in this game is very weird. There are some characters who die, come back, die again, and then come back again, and it ruins the impact of death in this game. When Gadolt died for the second time, I didn't feel anything.
-The voice acting in this game is surprisingly great, especially Shulk. Is it overdramatic? Yeah, but despite that I was sold on all the characters. The British acting also has this special uniqueness to it, and I'm very glad they kept it in the rest of the later localizations.
-The affinity chart system is strange. I love the idea of having to spend more time in battle with characters to get closer to them, but the progress feels way to slow. Even leveling up one rank feels like it takes an eternity, let alone 5.
-The side quests in this game are super addictive, though I wish there was a bit more uniqueness. I'm fine with all the enemy and item quests, they're moreso for you to complete while exploring the area, not to backtrack and spend time in already explored locations. However, there's barely any story quests to make up for it. I don't remember a single one.
-I liked how Zanza's fight was one big homage to Safer Sephiroth.
Before I end the review, I wanna say something. This game was played over the course of a year and a half, split into multiple chunks of playtime every few months, and this likely affects how I view the game. A lot of my current feelings from the game come from the last 15-20 hours, and so it's a tough game to rate and review. However from memory, Xenoblade Chronicles is a good game with a lot of problems. If you like JRPGs, there's no reason not to check this out, it's a quintessential game in the genre. By the end though, I felt as though this game just sadly doesn't live up to all it feels like it should be.
Xenoblade Chronicles is one of the only games to be immediately interesting to me on concept alone. The mere idea of a world built on the bodies of dormant titans than you can explore with a true sense of scale calls to me, and the fact that it's a JRPG only strengthened this. And generally, the game hits it on the head with this. It's impossible to not look around constantly while running from one location to the next, every area is stunning in its own way. This is easily the best part of the game, there isn't a single environment with a fault to it.
However, that cannot carry a game alone. The gameplay itself is generally good, but can be hit or miss. The combat, in particular, took a long time to click. I'm a big fan of turn based combat, but I wasn't a fan of how Xenoblade shook it up, adding action elements that for a while seemed pointless. It wasn't until the final fifth of this game where I finally got what they were going for, and had a great time with the battles. The system is really fun and customizable. The variety of moves, gem types, skill link options, and armor choices each character has allows for entirely different purposes to be created for characters, and allowing for a huge variety of team builds. There's no real punishment for trying it out either. The only main issue is the arts points, which cannot be reallocated, which boggles my mind when considering the expert mode level system. The fights and enemies themselves are also quite good too. It feels like they should blend together, but the amount of variables the open combat brings allows for things to vary quite a lot. I had to think outside the box for fights very commonly, being thrown into unexpected situations by enemy, nearby enemies, my teammates, or even the environment itself. It's not always perfect though. Some bosses in particular can be super annoying or unfair, especially any boss that brings in multiple enemies. It's almost always unbalanced and way too challenging. When a second enemy comes into battle in normal fights, I didn't mind it outside of mild annoyance since it's not only extremely avoidable and usually the player's fault, but also because they're generally less challenging than the bosses, even the super enemies. In boss fights, it's completely unavoidable, can be resummoned, and are horribly unbalanced. They always have way too much HP, and make big health bars even bigger. The only fight from memory where it felt balanced was Egil, as the enemies could be killed really easily, but hit hard and could group up if you weren't careful.
The fight that I think encapsulates all the flaws with the combat is Lorithia's. It's pretty much a gimmick fight, however the game is incredbily vague about it. The 4 (maybe 5?) minions she summons are absolutely unfair. All have spikes which can do a variety of debuffs, do a lot of damage, have high HP, and have high defense. The only character good against them is Melia, as they all have absurdly high physical defense, but if you attack too much, you'll be annihilated instantly due to aggro. It's this huge unbalanced mess that is only memorable for being bad. Even the boss itself is a super forgettable villain that had no build up and didn't really need to exist. It doesn't end there though. The boss itself can still hit too, and half of its moves can cause status effects. so you'll be constantly toppled, dazed, and confused, with literally no way to prevent it. To top it off, the boss themselves has no interesting moves once the minions are gone, and can be easily wailed on. Just a super frustrating and annoying boss that I think perfectly highlights the flaws in this otherwise good combat system.
The story itself is also good, but nothing incredible. It's biggest issue is the mishandling of foreshadowing. The game can't seem to be subtle at all with it, and will make it super obvious what it's hinting at. The pacing is also really slanted, but that's mostly for a generally uninteresting second quarter of the game, where not much happens. It isn't until Prison Island, which is nearly 30 hours in, where stuff starts to pick up for the first time since the good opening. The last 10 hours of the game is easily where the story shines. Everything the game has been building up to is finally revealed, and it is genuinely really good. It does this specific thing in series like Adventure Time or Attack on Titan, where your initial view of a world is super limited, and is slowly broken down over time, until it all comes crashing down at once, and the world as it was before is completely recontextualized, and it does it well. There are a few issues though with the writing at this point. Dickson is the most obvious, and how underwhelming it was. The actual moment of his reveal is a shock, but the game just kinda overlooks it? Dickson was pretty important to half your party, yet there's little surprise, sadness, or even anger from them. You could say they were more preoccupied by Shulk getting shot, but it's still very strange, they don't even discuss it later. Another issue was Zanza. I don't have an issue with how he's written, his motives and just general concept are great, it's just that I feel like there should've been more. He appears twice, with the second being the final boss. While he was there the entire game, I feel like his revealed self should've gotten some more time in the spotlight. He's a good antagonist, but someone like Metal Face, or hell even Dickson left more of an impact due to their defining moments and importance throughout a majority of the game.
Speaking of characters, this game falls into the usual JRPG traps, with me actually caring about nearly every party member, but dropping the ball in a few key areas. Shulk is easily the best written, being the focal point of the story and having the most chances to shine. Just as the world itself is, your view of him changes from beginning to end. Reyn and Dunban were both great too, though had less apparent arcs and changes to them. They were mostly there for Shulk to bounce his development off of, which is fine. The other characters can be a bit more inconsistent. Fiora is a great example. Her death at the beginning is a surprise, and is a large part of what initially drew me into this game. If a major character can die this early on, what does the rest of the game hold? The rest of her arc after she's brought back is mostly good too, having a more defined development than most characters, though that's also because a lot of it is interlinked with Shulk. The big issue comes at the very end. For someone who spent the entire game accepting her new body, and choosing to move forward purely for the people she cared about, having her suddenly shift back to being human again just felt like it went against all that, and left an overall bad taste. It's not a huge flaw, but it's a noticeable stain on a great character.
Melia is another good character ruined by the end, or rather lack there of. The entire game has her developing slowly, as she figures out the importance of herself to her people, however after her brother dies, nothing happens. She doesn't conclude as a character, it just ends. Not even the ending really does anything with her. Sharla and Riki both fall under similar boats of having unique ideas, but not being that interesting as characters to save it. I'm gonna be honest, I really didn't care for Sharla at all. Her tale is pretty sad, but the game just didn't put enough effort into selling Sharla (or her boyfriend) as unique characters. I genuinely can't remember a single notable scene with her. Riki is a lot more interesting, but nothing is done with him. He has no arc, which I thought was super disappointing. Riki had huge potential to be this character who learns what it means to be a hero, and the ups and downs of being an icon to your people. And I know they noticed this, since Riki and Melia share some moments together in game, but it never leads anywhere. While none of the characters are bad, there are just too many blemishes on them that bring the whole cast down as a whole.
The music in this game fits the world perfectly. I already said before how standout the environments are, however the music sells their uniqueness further. While not all equally memorable, each area has themes that define the area. The first that come to mind are Gaur Plains, Valak Mountain, Mechonis Field, and the second Prison Island visit. However, the battle and cutscene songs are where this game truly shine. The feeling of being in a tough battle, and having that part of You Will Know Our Names play is enthralling, and hypes me up every single time I hear it. And on the other side of the coin, hearing those 8 piano notes in Engage the Enemy instantly strikes fear. You can tell shit is about to go down every time you hear it, and it's easily my favorite song in the game.
Few miscellaneous notes:
-The way death is handled in this game is very weird. There are some characters who die, come back, die again, and then come back again, and it ruins the impact of death in this game. When Gadolt died for the second time, I didn't feel anything.
-The voice acting in this game is surprisingly great, especially Shulk. Is it overdramatic? Yeah, but despite that I was sold on all the characters. The British acting also has this special uniqueness to it, and I'm very glad they kept it in the rest of the later localizations.
-The affinity chart system is strange. I love the idea of having to spend more time in battle with characters to get closer to them, but the progress feels way to slow. Even leveling up one rank feels like it takes an eternity, let alone 5.
-The side quests in this game are super addictive, though I wish there was a bit more uniqueness. I'm fine with all the enemy and item quests, they're moreso for you to complete while exploring the area, not to backtrack and spend time in already explored locations. However, there's barely any story quests to make up for it. I don't remember a single one.
-I liked how Zanza's fight was one big homage to Safer Sephiroth.
Before I end the review, I wanna say something. This game was played over the course of a year and a half, split into multiple chunks of playtime every few months, and this likely affects how I view the game. A lot of my current feelings from the game come from the last 15-20 hours, and so it's a tough game to rate and review. However from memory, Xenoblade Chronicles is a good game with a lot of problems. If you like JRPGs, there's no reason not to check this out, it's a quintessential game in the genre. By the end though, I felt as though this game just sadly doesn't live up to all it feels like it should be.
2001
Halo is the #1 game that I just cannot understand the reception it gets. It's constantly being touted as an aged, clunky mess, which baffles me.
In nearly every sense, I'd describe Halo as a masterpiece. The gameplay itself is easily the most notable aspect. It's heavily focused on strategy, planning out your approach to combat and causing you to constantly shift and adjust for your everchanging predicament. Rather than just having a stock number of guns you switch out on the fly ala Doom, the game gives only two slots to work with, which creates this constant trade off of guns, either using anything available or salvaging any ammo you can find, in every fight. People will describe the combat as slow paced, but I think they're missing the point. Sure, there's little movement options for you to use, but how you move around is but a small part of your options. You have to use anything you can, whittling down the enemy numbers in a smart way until you've won. This is the key aspect that makes Halo's combat work.
Despite this focus on strategy though, the game is also surprisingly open ended on what you can do in combat. The guns are just one small part of a much wider range of tools to use. There's multiple vehicles, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. There's environmental things like turrets and shields, or even just the landscape itself and it's features that you can take advantage of. Later on, the game just dumps a bunch of options for you to use and allows you to run wild. Despite this though, you can't just use any option you want to win. As with its gunplay, you have to use each tool strategically. It's very impressive how well the game keeps its core strategic feel even with such a wide array of options to choose from. There's no catch all, you have to put everything together and decide your best course of action in battle.
However even then, Halo throws multiple curve balls at you, the biggest being The Flood. Compared to the small numbered, strategically minded Covenant, The Flood rush at you with at incredibly high volumes over extended periods of time, completely changing how you tackle combat. They're generally weak and dumb, but their constant bombardment and numbers is the true threat. Rather than the typical plan and execution, The Flood brings you straight back to more classic shooters, being thrown wave after wave of enemies. While not as deep or strategic, there's definitely some thinking that has to be done to make your way through. The Flood fights brought some of the biggest rushes in the game.
To settle this all down, Halo has one of my favorite environments in any game. The Halo itself is this simplistic but endlessly beautiful spectacle. It's hard not to stare out at the ring in the sky, or the vast skylines around the maps. It's not just visual, the world itself is endlessly interesting. The story isn't anything too crazy or complex, being a rather simplistic tale, but has just enough depth to make the world unique and immersive. The cutscenes themselves are also pretty brief, giving you all the information and some nice character moments before sending you right back into the fray, with nearly every being under 3 minutes. That white flash always put me on the edge of my seat, wondering what was about to happen.
To top it off, the atmosphere is incredibly heavy. Each locale has a great grasp of space and color, and creates this universal alien feel to the entire game. The swamp is a staple at this. The cutscene just before gives the first real piece of tension and stakes to the game, but it's left incredibly vague outside of a obvious huge threat. Your thrust into this dark, alien swamp, where you find corpses of humans and Covenant. This area, and generally the entire chapter, is terrifying and constantly intense. There's obviously a greater threat at play, you just have to go deeper. Even places like the grassy mountains or the beach, easily the most Earthlike parts of the world, not only just feel slightly off in geography, but are filled with these strange, blocky alien structures that are clearly not human nor Covenant. One final one I'd like to mention here is the Library. The entire facility has this larger than life feel to it. It makes you feel incredibly insignificant to the bigger world around you, almost like your stepping into a chamber of Gods. Everything is foreign and clearly made for something much higher than you, and I love it.
There's also the music, which exemplifies everything I just mentioned before. Halo has one of, if not my favorite main theme of any game. It completely encapsulates the feel of the game itself. The rest of the soundtrack is more atmospheric, punctuating the most iconic scenes in the game. Outside the obvious main theme, Shadows is a great example of this. Every time it played, I got on full alert. While I couldn't tell what the game was exactly using it for sometimes, the effect it has cannot be overlooked.
I think the biggest point of contention comes with the level design. Generally, I had no issue with it. Halo is a game that relies much more heavily on the enemies and players, rather than the environment in which the battle takes place. What, where, and how enemies are placed can completely change how you take on a fight. Even for The Flood, who are more repetitive in nature, can get by due to the variety of options you have against them. Sadly, I can't say it's void of issues. While I generally didn't mind the repetitive nature of the blocky environments, especially in the first snow level and the Library, I can't lie and say I wasn't sick of it when I was forced to go through the snow level backwards. Was it presented in a unique way while throwing The Flood in to make it more diverse? Yes, I'd say so, and the cross Covenant and Flood fights were pretty fun. But it wasn't fun to go through all these again, especially since the snow level was one of the longest in the game already. Outside that though, I have no issues with the levels.
People really need to come back to Halo: Combat Evolved. While there are many games I like that I can understand the lack of general appeal for, Combat Evolved just feels generally overlooked. It seems to be regarded as the awkward and clunky start of the true franchise, when rather it feels like a triumphant achievement of game design, having an incredible amount of thought put into each and every aspect of the game. Go into this game on Heroic with an open mindset, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. (also please do not play with the god awful remastered graphics)
In nearly every sense, I'd describe Halo as a masterpiece. The gameplay itself is easily the most notable aspect. It's heavily focused on strategy, planning out your approach to combat and causing you to constantly shift and adjust for your everchanging predicament. Rather than just having a stock number of guns you switch out on the fly ala Doom, the game gives only two slots to work with, which creates this constant trade off of guns, either using anything available or salvaging any ammo you can find, in every fight. People will describe the combat as slow paced, but I think they're missing the point. Sure, there's little movement options for you to use, but how you move around is but a small part of your options. You have to use anything you can, whittling down the enemy numbers in a smart way until you've won. This is the key aspect that makes Halo's combat work.
Despite this focus on strategy though, the game is also surprisingly open ended on what you can do in combat. The guns are just one small part of a much wider range of tools to use. There's multiple vehicles, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. There's environmental things like turrets and shields, or even just the landscape itself and it's features that you can take advantage of. Later on, the game just dumps a bunch of options for you to use and allows you to run wild. Despite this though, you can't just use any option you want to win. As with its gunplay, you have to use each tool strategically. It's very impressive how well the game keeps its core strategic feel even with such a wide array of options to choose from. There's no catch all, you have to put everything together and decide your best course of action in battle.
However even then, Halo throws multiple curve balls at you, the biggest being The Flood. Compared to the small numbered, strategically minded Covenant, The Flood rush at you with at incredibly high volumes over extended periods of time, completely changing how you tackle combat. They're generally weak and dumb, but their constant bombardment and numbers is the true threat. Rather than the typical plan and execution, The Flood brings you straight back to more classic shooters, being thrown wave after wave of enemies. While not as deep or strategic, there's definitely some thinking that has to be done to make your way through. The Flood fights brought some of the biggest rushes in the game.
To settle this all down, Halo has one of my favorite environments in any game. The Halo itself is this simplistic but endlessly beautiful spectacle. It's hard not to stare out at the ring in the sky, or the vast skylines around the maps. It's not just visual, the world itself is endlessly interesting. The story isn't anything too crazy or complex, being a rather simplistic tale, but has just enough depth to make the world unique and immersive. The cutscenes themselves are also pretty brief, giving you all the information and some nice character moments before sending you right back into the fray, with nearly every being under 3 minutes. That white flash always put me on the edge of my seat, wondering what was about to happen.
To top it off, the atmosphere is incredibly heavy. Each locale has a great grasp of space and color, and creates this universal alien feel to the entire game. The swamp is a staple at this. The cutscene just before gives the first real piece of tension and stakes to the game, but it's left incredibly vague outside of a obvious huge threat. Your thrust into this dark, alien swamp, where you find corpses of humans and Covenant. This area, and generally the entire chapter, is terrifying and constantly intense. There's obviously a greater threat at play, you just have to go deeper. Even places like the grassy mountains or the beach, easily the most Earthlike parts of the world, not only just feel slightly off in geography, but are filled with these strange, blocky alien structures that are clearly not human nor Covenant. One final one I'd like to mention here is the Library. The entire facility has this larger than life feel to it. It makes you feel incredibly insignificant to the bigger world around you, almost like your stepping into a chamber of Gods. Everything is foreign and clearly made for something much higher than you, and I love it.
There's also the music, which exemplifies everything I just mentioned before. Halo has one of, if not my favorite main theme of any game. It completely encapsulates the feel of the game itself. The rest of the soundtrack is more atmospheric, punctuating the most iconic scenes in the game. Outside the obvious main theme, Shadows is a great example of this. Every time it played, I got on full alert. While I couldn't tell what the game was exactly using it for sometimes, the effect it has cannot be overlooked.
I think the biggest point of contention comes with the level design. Generally, I had no issue with it. Halo is a game that relies much more heavily on the enemies and players, rather than the environment in which the battle takes place. What, where, and how enemies are placed can completely change how you take on a fight. Even for The Flood, who are more repetitive in nature, can get by due to the variety of options you have against them. Sadly, I can't say it's void of issues. While I generally didn't mind the repetitive nature of the blocky environments, especially in the first snow level and the Library, I can't lie and say I wasn't sick of it when I was forced to go through the snow level backwards. Was it presented in a unique way while throwing The Flood in to make it more diverse? Yes, I'd say so, and the cross Covenant and Flood fights were pretty fun. But it wasn't fun to go through all these again, especially since the snow level was one of the longest in the game already. Outside that though, I have no issues with the levels.
People really need to come back to Halo: Combat Evolved. While there are many games I like that I can understand the lack of general appeal for, Combat Evolved just feels generally overlooked. It seems to be regarded as the awkward and clunky start of the true franchise, when rather it feels like a triumphant achievement of game design, having an incredible amount of thought put into each and every aspect of the game. Go into this game on Heroic with an open mindset, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. (also please do not play with the god awful remastered graphics)
sonic 2 but better (still not great tho)