Not as bad or middling as I expected, albeit it feels like an overall downgrade from FFI.

The leveling system isn't TOO bad when you realize the stats are getting directly increased in lieu of levels, and that more weapon hits mean weapon classes get more experience, but it feels like a lot of extra confusion for what more or less amounts to the same mechanics (not to mention getting like 6 game overs because I accidentally wandered into midgame enemy territory at the beginning really makes for a bad first impression). I also found the gameplay a bit more one note, I rarely needed to do more than auto-battle for most of it. Also the final boss feels like more of a letdown than I's.

It has some cool stuff that would end up in future FFs, but it's only really for completionists.

Strong 5/10

Guess I'm a Final Fantasy fan now.

Not too much to say here. The pixel remaster looks really nice, it looks as you'd imagine an NES remaster would look and the music arrangements fit the mood and setting. It's super basic in its gameplay, which was to be expected, but honestly being rough around the edges adds to the charm. Don't think I'll revisit this one often, but there's fun to be had.

6/10

Now onto FF2!

Obligatory disclaimer: I've always been aware of FF since I've been gaming, I've tried playing 7 but got stuck, I goofed around with 7's remake for an hour just to get a feel for it and plan on returning to it, but this is the first game in the series I've finished. I'm aware I lack the series' context as to why certain changes might have hampered the experience of longtime fans, so this will be through the eyes of a newcomer.

That being said, I absolutely loved this game. I usually log games here after I complete them, but I had to do another playthrough because it was too fun not too. I couldn't wait any longer and this was the game that made me get a PS5 when I did. I obviously was excited since the DMC5 combat director was involved and considered this his best work (although I'd have to disagree, DMC5 still has the best combat in any action game I've played IMO). While it isn't quite my favorite system, it's super addicting and the Eikon abilities have a surprising amount of depth to them, the thought of another playthrough to experiment with the system even more is super compelling to me. Then the boss fights? Good lord the bosses here were incredible, arguably on par with some of FromSoftware's best fights (I'll admit the Bahamut shmup section was a little weak, but the final phase makes up for it).

The sidequests have been criticized a lot, and I can't really disagree with them being one of the weaker aspects of the game. Most of them are basic fetch quests, several of them are confined to the same room, but a few do actually build on the characters further and make the finale even more compelling. This did not bother me too much, but I get longtime fans being let down.

I did find the story compelling, but the GOT-esque negotiation scenes kinda took me out of it (not the fault of the game, just kinda was over GOT from a while back, being exposed to constant hate over its finale had that effect on me). But I became immensely attached to the characters, Clive is one of my favorite protagonists in games right now, I found his romance with Jill to be genuinely sweet, Torgal is good boi, and even the minor supporting characters really grew on me and helped my investment in the story. It's been a while since I found myself THIS invested in an entire cast of characters, and it makes me love the game even more.

Performance on PS5 is stable for the most part. A few cutscenes dip a little, but the combat is a steady 60 fps where it matter most (i'm certain the PC port will fix this, but for now I'd rather it falter where it matters less).

Anyways, needless to say I love this game. I'm definitely getting the Pixel Remaster and plan on playing every FF up to this point (except maybe 11 and 14, I'm really not into MMOs). I'm curious to see where this entry stands when I finish the classic games, but for now this made me a fan and I can't wait to go through them. For now, I'll likely come back to this game for the rest of the year. Not quite my GOTY, (sorry, but Hi-Fi Rush will be a hard act to top) but a close second.

Strong 9/10

I normally don't bother to get the Platinum on most RGG titles because they're either immensely tedious or demand too much minigame stuff, but the use of cheat items here compelled me to get those normally annoying completion checklists out of the way and I ended up getting the PT.

I think the general consensus is Judgment/Judge Eyes has the better story and Lost Judgment has the better combat, and I can't say I disagree for the most part. LJ's combat is very fluid and stylish, and many uploaders on YouTube show how deep the combat can get (juggles are fun even if I only KINDA managed to get it once). Tiger and Crane are faster and feel more responsive than JE with lots of nuances that make them some of RGG's best fighting styles, Snake really grew on me my Legend playthrough and got me out of some rough situations, Boxer (BTW it's still BS that it's paid DLC when the basis for it is RIGHT THERE in the boxing side story) needs more time with me but it's super fluid and hard-hitting and might end up becoming my favorite style. One improvement I haven't seen mentioned is that the crowd bosses are much more fun than JE, I much prefer duel fights to the crowds since they can really highlight a boss's moveset and your own playstyle and crowds tend to take that feeling away from me. In this game, however, the Akutsu fights are some of the best in the game (that said I still would have loved at least one 1v1 with the big guy, he has a really neat moveset. Side note: it's not a huge complaint since the unique duels are amazing, but I kinda wish there was at least 1 or 2 more of them). Not to mention, the removal of mortal wounds was a godsend and already a huge point in its favor in making the bosses super fun. I will also add that the Amon fight for this game might be my favorite in the series, his gimmicks aren't nearly as rage-inducing garbage like some of the other fights.

Then there's the school story sideplot, it has some of the best and most fun side content in the entire series. The skateboarding, the dance club, even robotics really grew on me when I decked out my team. The overarching story of these sideplots ended up growing on me more than I expected and seeing the finale was immensely satisfying and I was sad to see it end.

Of course there's the rest of the side content, a few returning from JE. I think the lack of a slowdown in the Dice game adds an unneeded layer of anonyance that made grinding out the requirements tedious. Some of the arcade games are pretty cool (Motor Raid unironically rules), the one other fighting game was almost worse than finishing the True Final Tower in Y:LAD.

With me praising almost every facet of this game, you might think it's a complete slam dunk that almost makes the previous title irrelevant. Well, not quite. The story, while quite good in the end, pales in comparison to the central conspiracy story of JE (I'm also going to post a hot take here, I think JE's final boss is better than LJ's). There are also a few other bosses from JE that I like more than most of the fights in LJ (of course, the fluidity of LJ is going to make revisiting JE a little rough).

I love this game, I really hope it goes forward to Judgment 3, and I hope RGG can make the combat even cooler then. I might have my personal gripes with this game, but it doesn't take away from the fact this has some of RGG Studios' best work to date. I'm definitely going to get to the Kaito Files DLC at some point soon, I kinda want to do an all-Boxer playthrough next.

9/10

It took me long enough, but I finally have the Platinum Trophy for this game.

For a while I had very conflicting thoughts on the gameplay. Traditional turn-based RPGs are something I'm very picky with, with action combat being my preference. I thought the game felt too grindy at points during the first half, I felt super underpowered a few times, and I ended up getting burnt out at that point and shelved the game for a while. It ended up growing on me, as you can imagine, and when it clicked for me I became sort of addicted here. When I got access to efficient farming methods to get better gear, it became a lot more palpable for me (I might have slightly overleveled for a few certain fights). The Essence moves are hilariously over the top and always satisfying and entertaining to see play out.

The story and characters are where this one really shined for me. Ichiban is officially my favorite character in the entire series, the story is tied with Y0 for favorite in the franchise (2 is my favorite overall, for reference). I became IMMENSELY attached to everyone in the main cast, and it might have the greatest voice acting in any of the games and some of my favorite performances ever.

Completionists should heed my warning. If you want the Platinum, you'll need to do several minigames (some of which get rage-inducingly frustrating) and constant job farming to complete the final post-game dungeon, which might be the hardest challenge in a Yakuza game I've done.

This definitely got me to try out more traditional turn-RPGs, I have Persona, Nocturne, and a few others in my backlog. For now though, this is definitely a top tier Yakuza game and I'm looking forward to 8 (and of course Gaiden).

Strong 9/10

I've actually beaten the Japanese release of this one a while back thanks to a translation stream (shoutout to Salty Yen on YouTube), and I've had the US release sitting around for a while and decided to finally go for the Platinum Trophy and it was fun for the most part.

Combat-wise, it's definitely the clunkiest in the Dragon Engine and was definitely a pain going back after playing Kiwami 2 and both Judgments. The combat is decent but certain encounters can really mess with the flow if you get an unlucky combination of enemies and attacks. Several of the boss fights are easily series highlights.

Story-wise it felt like a good swan song to the Kiryu era (this aged hilariously though lmao), even though it took some odd risks with how it primarily focused on new characters where most of Kiryu's buddies were offscreen following 5's events (thankfully this cast is full of compelling characters so it wasn't a waste).

Since you don't need to 100% the checklist to get the Platinum I decided to go for it, the side content is pretty beefy. There are the baseball, spearfishing (an awesome arcade FPS that is super addicting), the usual hostesses, the clan creator's debut (I prefer it here to Kiwami 2), the bar friendships, and of course the cat cafe. Some of these minigames are lots of fun, others felt tedious. The substories were pretty painless for the most part, a few that I expected to struggle with were not so bad (the batting center and darts were surprisingly fun when I knew how to play them). If you just want to fight Amon, you just need to finish out two roaming miniboss stories (I really dislike this game's Amon fight though).

The game is pretty great, the story might be a little standalone in the context of the series but I enjoyed it immensely, and you get to beat up one of the greatest living film directors.

PS, the Japanese version's main theme is light years beyond the US' version (localization and rights issues really suck sometimes).

After finishing Ragnarok on NG+ I was itching to revisit 2018 for the third time, and this might be a hot take but I think I prefer this game to Ragnarok, at least in many ways. The pacing works a lot more here for me, and there a few combat quirks that didn't make to Ragnarok that I wish did (delayed BoC combos are really cool). While Ragnarok has a stronger boss roster, I like the story here a lot more (it's been a while since I last played, I forgot how much colder Kratos was here to everything). While GoW2 will always be my favorite in the series (side note, I'm itching to revisit the classic GoW titles for obvious reasons), this is a closer second than I'd realize (need to replay original and 3 before I make a definite claim). Whereas I think I'll give Ragnarok more time before I give it another playthrough, I could see myself returning to this in the near future (I just maxed out the Zeus armor and might do a GMGOW+ run).

9/10

Sometimes revisiting old favorites is a good way to deal with gaming burnout, even if it loses a bit of the magic.

I beat AC2 originally back in 2012, while I enjoyed the first game to an extent, the sequel became one of my favorite games and I was so invested in the story I did not want it to end. Obviously much time has went by since then, and the gameplay feels really dated to play in 2023.

The platforming feels clunky at times, and there are moments where the game demands precise and timely platforming that the mechanics do not have the flexibility for. I've have quite a few moments where I held the control stick in the direction I wanted Ezio to go and it did not respond until I went over it a few times. The timed missions are OBSCENELY tight, hell even the opening race needed a handful of attempts (not exactly a good first impression), and some of the stealth missions where detection meant failure demanded you deal with the AI in specific ways or face repeat attempts. The combat, while better than the first game, is still stiff and repetitive (I recall Brotherhood fixing my problems here, let's see how that replay goes).

However, when the platforming and stealth gameplay work, they REALLY work and it reminded me of my 2012 where I went through these games. The Florence assassin tomb, the final mission before my Platinum trophy, was easily a highlight and one of my favorite sequences in the game. The gameplay shines when it gives you freedom to parkour areas with interesting design.

Thankfully, the story and characters held up well, albeit more convoluted than I remembered. Ezio is still an extremely charismatic and entertaining character, perfect for a lead, even if the rest of the characters could go either way (although the scene when you get the reward for collecting all the feathers was WAY more emotional than I expected).

While the game certainly shows its age in a lot of areas, it was nice to revisit this game, and I hope to go through the rest of the series eventually (going to take my time going through the rest of them, since burnout was a factor in my losing interest). Getting the Plat really felt like getting closure after not properly finishing it after all this time.

Going with a strong 7/10.

We have another case of I-should-have-played-on-PS5, but this time I doubt it'd make the game THAT much better.

Like everyone else who played this game, I'm a huge fan of Dead Space and its sequel (never got around to 3). I was excited for this game for obvious reasons (and the fact I'm a massive Karen Fukuhara simp made me optimistic in spite of the mixed reception), and it appears waiting a few months after release was a good idea since it patched a lot of what people disliked (i.e., skippable cutscenes, faster healing).

First, some positives: the atmosphere did remind me of Dead Space in flashes, the combination of melee + firearms felt visceral and satisfying, and even the PS4 version has pretty good graphics.

However, the game really screws itself in the last few chapters, and these flaws amplify if you're aiming to beat hard mode for the Platinum. There is an enemy introduced that is blind, and instead of interesting placements it litters the entirety of that chapter (plus as long as you're crouched and don't physically touch them, they won't acknowledge you). This sets the tone for the rest of the game, it throws mob after mob of enemy at you, wearing down your life and ammo, in a game where the combat shines most in 1-on-1 (maybe 2) encounters.

This even affects the handful of boss fights near the end of the game. You fight the Two-Head in the tunnel and end up fighting THREE more, one later on in the same chapter. This encounter is made worse by having random adds to divert your attention and doge, leaving you vulnerable to an instakill if you're on hard mode. It ends up making the final act of the game very repetitive, and even when I was enjoying the game I was practically begging for it to end. And this is without going into the woeful final boss.

Needless to say, it did not recapture the magic of Dead Space. A big shame too, since there is a lot of potential here and could have been pretty cool. I will not revisit this game anytime soon (unless the tiny offchance the DLC is leagues above the main game), and getting the Platinum Trophy did not feel satisfying, but a relief that this slog is finally over.

5/10

I think playing this on PS4 really tarnished my experience, there are a surprising amount of bugs in my playthrough (after the Kashyyyk boss, the screen went black for at least 5 full minutes), the load times were pretty awful (I usually try to play games at least on normal mode, I switched to story mode because I wanted to see the load times as little as possible), the frame rate dipped whenever the action was getting chaotic, and it sometimes loaded mid-level which ranged from not-to-bad to pace-killing.

The gameplay is a mixed bag that uses ideas from tons of established titles but the results kind of annoyed me at points. Exploration because much more fun after getting story upgrades, but the combat felt way too clunky, stiff, and delayed to feel Souls-like as its influences imply (again this might be better on current gen consoles but it was my experience).

That being said, the saber duels are the highlight of the combat and are genuinely lots of fun. The story appears to be the most loved part of this game, and I personally thought it was decent enough to keep me engaged, and I did end up growing to really like this cast of characters (coughalso Trilla is best and hottest Star Wars charactercough).

Going for 100% completion was more enjoyable than I expected, Zeffo was my least favorite planet during my story run but it ended up being my favorite to clean up (Dathomir was pretty bad both rounds, took me way longer than I hoped for).

Long story short, I'm extremely conflicted with my thoughts on this game but I'd say my experience was more positive than negative. I don't have a PS5 yet so I won't play Jedi Survivor for a little while (might also be a good idea to wait until its bugs get patched out, I've read about a few), but from what I've read and seen it fixes quite a few of my issues here.

Giving this one a 6/10, ended up being an enjoyable Platinum Trophy.

Just finished NG+ and honestly the game is starting to grow off me. Atreus' life and rage meters are story locked, so being forced to fight his early missions with lower life and rage againast beefed up enemies really puts a damper on the experience.

I mostly loved the finale my first run, but it ended up really annoying me this time around (mostly because it reveals some of my fundamental disagreements with the current iteration of the series). Still a pretty great game in many ways, but I'm probably not going to revisit this for a while.

Just got the platinum trophy so some (potentially rambly) thoughts.

Yes, the story is pretty good. The performances are superb, everybody by now knows Chris Judge plays the role of Kratos phenomenally, but Richard Schiff as Odin unexpectedly became one of my favorite gaming villains in a long while. It has some of the best graphics on any game out there (even with the less-than-optimal PS4 performance it's still wonderful to look at).

The gameplay is obvious why we're here, and it's mostly great but I have a sort of complicated feeling toward these current GOWs. I've been a fan of the series since around the time GOW2 came out, and I fully understood why the combat needed to evolve. My biggest gripe is the leveling system, you'll often find yourself with gear underleveled by one and getting curbstomped by enemies, then spend a few hours getting better gear and curbstomp them back, which I know is a carry over from the previous title but I'm still not a fan of it, I felt really underpowered a lot of the time.

New to this game is the ability to play as Atreus. Most of his sections are shorter and story contextual, and while his second section was good from a story perspective I know it'll be a buzzkill when I tackle new game plus (I did really like his final section though, it was a nice set piece that acted as a capstone to his gameplay).

GOW2018's biggest letdown for me was the lack of bosses, the few it had were mostly great but I wanted more. Thankfully there are a bunch more here, plenty of them throwing back to the PS2 games' epic scale monsters. Like GOW2018, there are a bunch of optional side bosses that lead to their leader (unlike 2018, this isn't the true superboss), who is the type of super aggressive boss that I love in action games and might be my favorite encounter in the game (the actual superboss is also much easier than 2018's, still took a little while to down her).

I am aware my thoughts aren't very structured, but this is pretty much how I feel as a whole. I do love this game and consider it to be at least on par with GOW2018, but I'm going to do a NG+ playthrough before I cement my final thoughts.

Feeling a decent 9/10 on this one.

Just got the platinum trophy! While I don't think it's quite on the level of its predecessor, it's a worthy sequel with a lot to offer in its own right. I'll try to be vague as to avoid spoilers.

I'd say the story and gameplay are pretty much on par with the previous game. The game actually feels like there is much more at stake and it feels relatively larger in scale. Obviously since we're playing with one screen here, pins are assigned to the face and shoulder buttons which does take a bit getting used to, but after getting adjusted the combat is very fluid with an impressive amount of depth. Admittedly you will need to go through the motions early on, but the combat REALLY opens up when you get more teammates.

Characters are pretty close in quality to the first game, but I think the cast slightly edges out (I prefer the villains there to the ones here). Honestly don't have too much to criticize other than my preference for the first game.

Basically, I adore this game and maybe it'll grow even more on me. I'm currently feeling a strong 9/10 on this one, but it could be a 10 some day. I'll definitely be playing this one for a while.

I've had an itching to get back into this game since the sequel looks really cool, so it made sense to get back into it.

I can't believe I forgot how good this game is. One of the most creative combat systems ever made, a much better story than you'd expect, and it's absolutely addictive, the item/food grinding doesn't feel tedious. There's also an absurd amount of stuff to do after finishing it, and I know I'll be playing this for a while. I think this is a top 10 favorite game now, definitely my favorite game on a handheld system for sure.

Can't wait to play NEO!