Absolutely enthralling from start to finish.

I wouldn't say 13 Sentinels has the best writing or story I've seen, but the way it's presented is absolutely fantastic. Mushing every sci-fi trope together and making this giant amalgamation of plot twists that only increases how confused you are. I loved piecing the story together and trying to figure out the order everything took place and having to rearrange my entire brain when something new got revealed.

I've gotta shout out the English voice acting in this game because MAN did they do good. Usually, I'll try and listen to the English voices for like an hour and switch to Japanese but the voice acting here is stellar.


The battles are pretty whatever since they're so easy, but they serve to give you some fucking fire songs and usually a funny interaction or two after a battle. EXCEPT FOR THE FINAL BATTLE THAT WAS PEAK!!!!

I don't think it's perfect as I didn't really like how some of the characters were handled compared to others. Though, it's kind of impossible to give anything lower than a 9/10 when I think about how much of the story stuck in my mind as I tried to piece together events.

If you can sense any form of soul, you will be forced to kneel to this game at some point. If you like sci-fi and visual novels DEFINITELY check this out.

SHOUT OUT MIYUKI!!!!! SHE'S A REAL ONE!!!

Great openworld detective adventure game (with light platforming elements of all things). The atmosphere is top notch, the characters are all interesting and well designed visually, the soundtrack is absolutely superb and the mystery unfolds in a way that is paced surprisingly well for a game structure that has a habit of tossing such things in the bin in search of player freedom. This game also has a tropical setting, which reminds one of danganronpa 2, except paradise killer is actually good.

One thing to keep in mind however, is that Paradise Killer is much more a game about investigating than solving a crime if that makes sense. The great paradox in detective games is that (and I have played a lot of them) no one has ever quite figured out the way to craft one where the player can figure out a mystery and convey it to the game without cheating or causing frustration. PK sort of sidesteps this issue by having the mystery sort of solve itself and even not really checking if you made the right decision (its complicated and nigh impossible to explain without spoilers). Dont expect an Ace Attorney/Danganronpa etc hour long trial where you have to cross examine every piece of evidence. Fittingly for the vibe of this game, this is much more laidback and casual, which may turn some people off but I particularly think it works fine

This one's pretty good! The remaster helps in making it more accessible too. Next to FF1 remaster, I would recommend this one just as much as your starter Final Fantasy. With every party member being predetermined in their abilities, and the world being fairly linear in its design, you don't have to worry about much of anything else other than leveling them up, equipping them with the right gear, and making use of boss weaknesses. It's simple, easy to get into, and satisfying to explore.

That being said, this story is... something. I feel like ever since Final Fantasy II (the nes one), RPG storytelling thought that killing off several characters 60 minutes after introducing them constituted as emotional impactful storytelling. But FF4 takes it to an almost parody-like level. Characters just drop like flies in this one, constantly. Every time a new death scene happened, I was more and more baffled. That's on top of the entire story just being one unlucky event for the protagonists after another. It's very dramatic, but it's so relentless about it, you just can't take it seriously after a certain point.

As someone who feels like they're in a constant game of tug of war with each Yakuza game they play, I was genuinely surprised with how much I ended up enjoying Ishin. As far as ones I've completed go, this very well may be my second favorite in the series.

Yakuza games are often funny and unique, with really entertaining characters. I really think Kiryu is one of the best protagonists of all time. But theres always some things that bring them down for me. Grueling pacing, terrible boss design and lackluster endings are what a lot of this series has left me with. Most of the games make up for this overall (besides Yakuza 4. Sorry I dont usually like to use reviews to insult other games but god I fucking despised playing that). But starting with 0 which does have some of the same issues but is by far the strongest I've beaten yet has made the entire series onwards feel a bit disappointing. Especially with my last two experiences, Yakuza 5 and 6. I never ended up reviewing them but they did so much that I wanted from the series and I really felt the Yakuza love again (much needed after 4), but then both of them completely dropped the ball for me with some of the most unsatisfying endings I've ever experienced.

So yeah, I made sure my expectations were tempered for this one. Which I think in the end made me enjoy it more. Its completely fair to expect the mainline series to be high quality but in most cases its understandable to expect a spinoff to be a little weaker. But damn, not this one.

I'm not really familiar with the history behind what inspired the story, but the small amount I do know tells me they definitely took some liberties. I can't really comment on if thats a good thing or not, but the way they play off of some of the real life events is pretty damn cool. Even without the history aspect, its just a badass story to begin with. And my god, characters are getting murdered every other chapter. I love that shit. And! Half of them aren't ridiculously stupid fake out deaths, hallelujah. I can't really get into too much detail because of spoilers but, for basically every Yakuza game there's a few chapters in the beginning or near the middle where I want to cry myself to sleep, but with Ishin I was hooked the entire time past the end of chapter 1.

The combat is already pretty fun. Yakuza needs more guns. Wild Dancer obv is the most entertaining but Swordsman and Gunman are both fun in their own right. Brawler is completely useless, barely touched it lol. The card system is fine, It wasn't implemented all that great and the best cards in the game are free DLC so I just used those the whole time, but It existing is neat. There's also the Another Life farming sim side mode that was cute and fun but for a reason I'm about to get to, I didn't get too far into it.

By 'about to get to', I mean we're going to talk about it right now. The only thing I really disliked about this game is how god damn grindy it is to interact with the side stuff. I usually skip a lot of the side content in this series but I like to do a bit of it when its one of them I particularly like, and it really felt like this one was fighting against me. The battle dungeons are absurdly long, everything in Another Life takes ages (also you can't pay off Haruka's debt with your own money normally for some dumb reason) and trying to upgrade weapons and make the blacksmith actually useful is a nightmare. The light rpg elements and how slow everything is really take away from wanting to interact with much of that.

But that rather large-but-not-really issue aside, this was definitely one of the most surprising games I've played in a minute. Very high contender for the most fun and best written game in the series.

We are now at the blog portion of this review. Skip to the bottom for a TLDR and my final score if you don't care about all that. Things have been going solid, this was one of 5 games I beat in a day (not in their entirety obv) the other day so I'm pretty proud of that. Found a sealed copy of Persona 4 Arena for PS3 so happy to get that. Been playing Breath of the Wild too. Not sure what my next review will be but a MGRR one is quite likely. Also been doing a lot more creative writing which made trying to do write this review harder than usual. I hope this turned out good enough and you enjoyed reading it. If you did, thank you <3

-----TLDR-----
+ Great story
+ Fun gameplay
+ sexy music
- Extremely grindy side content

Nancymeter - 89/100
Trophy Completion - 41%
Time Played - i forgor I'll add this in later
Completion #3 of May
Completion #92 of 2023

I don't know what got into me recently, but whenever I would start up a new game, I would lose interest almost immediately. Could I be experiencing burnout? Instead of going through something new, I opted to replay some games instead. I found solace here; it felt good to play games again. So this game releasing in the midst of my burnout was nice. Katamari is the best kind of comfort food.

I love Katamari! To be more specific, I love Katamari Damacy, the first game. There's something about the original's simplicity that always has me coming back for more. Meanwhile, I only ever played We Love Katamari once. It's a great game, just not as great as the original; at least that's how I remembered it, and after playing this remaster, my opinion still stands, but really, they're both fantastic games. I completely understand when people say this is their favorite Katamari game; the levels have more variety, the soundtrack still goes hard, playing as the cousins is a nice touch, the King's backstory, etc. This remaster also adds a few things, like eternal mode, which was absent from the original's release. Eternal mode allows you to roll around levels without a time limit, which I absolutely adore. There is also an added indicator pointing the player to level goals or a barrier that you are now able to get past. Oh, the Royal Reverie content is there too. It's just five additional levels that let you play as the young King. They're not too great, honestly! A bit underwhelming, in fact.

It really all comes down to rolling shit up, and it's still fun to do so, which is something the games that came after WLK weren't able to accomplish. With Keita Takahashi no longer being involved with the series after the release of We Love Katamari, as corny as it is to say, the series lost a bit of its magic. It just never felt the same afterwards, so that's why I'm glad these Reroll games exist. Now if only we could get a new game that is even remotely comparable to the first two games!