A whole year already? Maybe the wait for the next one won’t be as bad as I thought.

Look, this is up there with the games I’ve talked the most about already, there’s so many things about it that I love and so many things about it that I can’t stress how much I despise. But given this game is still very important to me, I figured it was worth putting my updated thoughts out there (with the caveat that I have not actually played the game since my near-100% playthrough one year ago).

I’m gonna say the quiet part out loud that so many others seem scared to admit: Tears of the Kingdom was a disappointment. It did not live up to Breath of the Wild or its own series legacy, and most disappointingly of all, it is one of the worst sequels I have ever played. None of this is to imply that the game is bad, and honestly, that’s part of what frustrates me about this game so much. It pisses me off so much all while still having the gall to be, almost undeniably, a really good game in its own right. But I think we’re at a point where we just need to admit that this game was not nearly as good as it could have been or as it should have been.

When the game came out, I said that the story was better than Breath of the Wild’s. I no longer agree with this. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I feel that it’s actually quite significantly worse. For as much as I disliked BotW’s story structure, the story was built around that structure, it wouldn’t have made sense any other way. TotK’s story feels retrofitted to that structure, and so nearly every player will watch chronological events completely out of order. It’s got a singular great moment, but even that is completely undone by the time you reach the ending.

The dungeons I still feel pretty similarly about, which is to say that I believe they are better than Breath of the Wild’s but still far below the standard set by Zelda games of the past. I can articulate my disappointment better now though. Every individual puzzle is good, but they all feel incredibly disconnected from each other. There’s no through-line, no consideration of multiple elements working together at the same time, no logical sense of progression, because the developers feel that being able to approach these in whatever way you want is more important than any of that. I have to wholeheartedly disagree.

And this leads into a more general point I have on the design philosophy of this game. Freedom made Breath of the Wild exciting. The exploration and appreciation of Hyrule was front and center, with dungeons being secondary pieces. I wish they had made the dungeons more important, but fine. It fits with the game’s vision. However, the most critical flaw with Tears of the Kingdom is that its priorities are completely unbalanced.

Let me explain: Tears of the Kingdom approaches freedom in a completely different way. Instead of searching out what you want to do, you get to decide how to do it. BotW dipped its toes into this pool but TotK dives in head first. That’s why you have these incredible abilities that I still think are a remarkable technical achievement. However, if they were going to shift directions like that, they needed to change up much more than they did in every other area.

That goes for the dungeons like I mentioned, but more damning to me is the fact that this game is completely toothless in how it handles Breath of the Wild’s world. Everything is damn near identical, with extra additions in the sky and depths coming off as supplementary and relatively unnecessary. Where are the towns? Where are the interesting memorable locations? They’re on the surface level, and nowhere else. So the vast majority of the content is in the same space as it was in the map from the previous game.

Don’t get me wrong, BotW’s Hyrule is incredible, but it is a map built for exploration and discovery. It is NOT a map teeming with unique content or interesting ways to use all the new mechanics in play. So if you try to play TotK like you would BotW, focused on exploring Hyrule, you’ll almost certainly be disappointed by the lack of changes. I think it’s fair to expect more significant changes than a town being covered by mushrooms or sludge this time around.

Because this world was not designed with these mechanics in mind, things get extremely repetitive extremely quickly. Many can attest to giving up on being creative as soon as they discovered the popular hoverbike technique, but even as somebody who never saw that, I also began using the same copy/paste techniques over and over throughout my playthrough. The more time you spend with this game, you realize how little you’re actually encouraged to use the mechanics that everyone loves so much. It’s not even fun in a sandbox sense because there’s no sense of permanence to your creations whatsoever. Why bother being creative when it’ll disappear the moment you want to go do something else?

The game is a lot better when you gun it to each major quest objective and try not to explore much, but that’s insane to me because the vast majority of content in this game is completely optional. In a game that took me 130 hours on my first playthrough, it’s inexcusable that I’m sitting here saying I regret at least 100 of those hours. There is so much unnecessary fluff in this game, more than any other game I’ve ever played. The shrines are admittedly quite fun, but I can only take so many mini-challenges when there’s so few chances to exercise these mechanics in a properly demanding environment.

It’s so frustrating to imagine that all of these problems could have been solved with an entirely new environment. I had so much fun with the opening island because it seemed like it was going to be everything I wanted from this game! But as we all discovered one year ago today, the rest of the game wasn’t like that first island. I don’t mind the Breath of the Wild formula, but I do mind how lazily it was reused here. These games will NEVER work with repeated maps, and this game was the ultimate proof of that.

Tears of the Kingdom is a good game because Breath of the Wild was a good game. It has a great open world, great mechanics, great atmosphere (even if it is a bit worse now that all the towns are uglier), etc. But it is NOT a good sequel. It blatantly reuses elements without considering how they would be recontextualized with the new mechanical focus. Its new additions content wise are lackluster at best. And because of this it is completely unable to separate itself from its predecessor in a way that every Zelda prior has done with flying colors, even the direct sequels. Hearing this game compared to something like Majora’s Mask is legitimately insulting.

Having had my thoughts develop over the course of the last year, I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that this is my least favorite 3D Zelda, despite everything it has going for it. Nintendo should know to do better. We should know that Zelda deserves better.

Even as someone who was very excited for the game since the demo dropped, I didn't expect to be THIS in love with the final product. It's genuinely unbelievable that it's Shift Up's first console project. This is a technical marvel packed with eyecandy environments, models and effects that still runs at 60fps the whole time at a 30GB file size. In a lot of ways it feels like the first true 9th generation game I've experienced, and finally not a remake or sequel of anything else. So many moments where I was genuinely blown away by what I was seeing and experiencing, like arriving in the main city for the first time. Still shocking that SIE decided to back this so hard in publishing and promotion as it seems to go against everything the company is about in recent years but it's a move I'm thankful for.

Stellar Blade harks back to the PS2 era, unashamed of being a video game and prioritising gameplay above all else, with a ton of unlockable outfits and new game+ free on day one. Not to say that its design is primitive in any way as it incorporates all the best parts of modern gaming too. Areas are a mix of linear setpiece based levels and more open exploration. I liked how the side missions took you to new locations and had actually great rewards, and in general it's not a ridiculous time sink like a lot of modern games. Combat is an absolute blast, a fusion of other great actions like Sekiro, Bayonetta, even Resident Evil at times. Very reflex heavy swordplay wth a variety of different ranged firearms as well. With the amount of skills and specialized equipment you can collect you'd think it would get too easy after a point, but you will still get put in your place by the brutal boss fights at the end of the story. The grotesque monster designs and the elaborate animations for dismembering them are just on another level, every encounter sticks out in my memory. And I've seen criticism of it but I personally loved the parkour and Uncharted style climbing around the world. I felt like there was such a huge variety to what I was doing for my whole 40 hours played and it was mixing multiple genres I love perfectly. Finally if this game doesn't at least take nominations for best OST of the year it will be an absolute crime because it's constantly hitting your ears with objectively heavenly sounds, the most atmospheric emotional vocal songs seamlessly switching to more intense versions when fighting. Combined with the landscapes and art design you just gotta stop and take it all in sometimes.

This achievement has been overshadowed by some REALLY braindead controversies over the last few months and I've also seen a lot of hate from fans of the other series that clearly inspired it. It's a new IP so harsh critics are to be expected but I look forward to more people warming to it and realizing how it's actually a love letter to those things and an amazing game in its own right, and I hope EVE will be respected one day like Bayonetta, 2B etc have come to be. This singlehandedly made me feel less doomer about the game industry, if we can still get stuff like this every once in a while we may be alright. I will be eagerly awaiting whatever these devs make next on console

Infinite Wealth is a huge improvement from Y7 in a lot of areas, but it's also a downgrade in some others.

Starting with some positives first, the combat in this game is 10 times better than Y7's, I've always loved the combat in 7 but it's only after playing this game I realized how much could still be improved upon. The side content is HUGE, just Dondoko Island alone offers hours and hours of content, but there's a ton more minigames that are all really fun, like Crazy Delivery and Sujimon battles. The music in the game is in my opinion as good as Y7's, every single song is such a banger that I spent nearly an entire month after playing the game almost solely listening to this OST and no other music.

However, this game is lacking in some areas, most notably the story. The story is an absolute snooze by the latter half, some characters with a lot of potential feel barely explored at all (looking at you Wong Tou). To add to that, the substories and side content are given to you so early that if it wasn't for Kiryu's Bucket List, you'd have nothing new to do but the main story. You can be finished with all side content by around chapter 7 on Ichiban's side, leaving you with 4 chapters with nothing but the story which, like I previously mentioned, is not great by (a bit later than) this point, making the latter half of Ichiban's section just a bore. This is avoidable if you still haven't done all of the side content, which is likely, but the same cannot be said about the substories, as there is but a single substory you can unlock only after chapter 7.

Overall, as much as I complained about the story, this game is still a very much worthwhile experience. It's just an extremely rare case where the beginning and middle sections of a Yakuza game exceed the ending one.

Final Rating: 8/10

Chrono Cross had the impossible task of following up Trigger and while not everything about the game is amazing, it's worth seeing through till the end. The game does a lot right, good battle system, fun characters, nice world and an instant favourite OST. It's just got a really weird narrative, it flip flops between wanting to be its own game and also tying into Trigger heavily. Compared to Trigger narratively, this is much more focused around a main story and not character based like Trigger. The game still has good characters but the fact it has 45 playable characters feels wasted, I recruited almost everybody as you could in the initial character and there's only really maybe 5-8 that I could tell you about which is unfortunate because I feel if you just had a centered main cast the game would be a lot more consistent narratively striking a good balance between cast and main story.

Cross is a weird game in all though, it get fairly convoluted towards the end and some game design choices towards the end of the game some people won't probably be a fan of, the ending overall is pretty good in my opinion. The soundtrack is easily my favourite part of the game though, Yasunori Mitsuda became a top 3 VGM composer for me and even if you don't plan on playing the game you should definitely listen to the songs he did on this game.

I have lots and lots of thoughts on this game, so many that it’s tough to know where to start. I will say this though: while this is a far from perfect game in every area, I feel pretty confident in saying that the full scope of this journey is significantly more competent than you might expect looking at its individual elements.

FFVII Remake is a game that I have relentlessly defended since I first played it in 2020. Where many criticized its admittedly overbearing padding and certain choices regarding the ending, I fell head over heels for its combat system and expansion of its world and characters. It’s not without its issues, but I’ve always believed it deserves to stand head and shoulders alongside the greatest action RPGs.

So it was extremely strange for me to start playing FFVII Rebirth and immediately get struck with the feeling that everything on offer was an immediate downgrade. The presentation is noticeably weaker than the last game, the opening chapter is quite poor in my opinion with lots of unnecessary dragging moments, and the open world was seeming to be far too big and generic for its own good. My first 10ish hours with the game were a fairly large disappointment.

And I want to hone in on that open world now, because it’s one of the strangest I’ve ever seen in the sense that the whole thing isn’t actually an open world at all. Regions are distinctly separated, the map feels like it’s tricking you into thinking each area is far larger than it is, and the first region is by far the largest in the game. The whole thing almost feels like it’s begging you to believe it’s a big open world that can compete with the expectations of AAA games today, when in reality its scope is much more controlled.

I really could’ve done without all the Ubisoft-esque World Intel… some of it like the protorelics and combat challenges were worthwhile and fun, but most of it just felt like checking off a checklist just because it was there. This was the biggest factor of my initial disappointment. Compared to Remake which is a linear rollercoaster without many chances to break off the main path, Rebirth has a significantly more open structure with way more side activities. And during that first section, I felt like I wasn’t making any progress and just wasting time filling out a meaningless checklist, and I hated that feeling.

However, the further into the game I got, the more this feeling disappeared. Call it Stockholm syndrome I guess, or maybe just bc I was so engrossed with the world and characters being presented, but I began to slowly cherish every moment I spent with the game. Exploration never did much for me but I loved seeing the enemies, doing the side quests (which are MUCH better than Remake’s I have to say), even all the minigames, there’s something really special about just soaking in everything this game has to offer.

And I have to stress that this is the game’s single biggest strength. There is SO much to do, and most of it is a ton of fun. It’s so varied, it rarely dips into copy/paste territory, and it really goes a long way into injecting this world with a palpable sense of life that I haven’t felt from a single-player entry in this series since Final Fantasy X… and I really mean that. Combine all that with the gorgeously expanded towns and in its best moments, FFVII Rebirth brought me back to the magic I experienced on my initial run throughs of all those classic FF games, a feeling that I thought the modern industry just wasn’t able to deliver.

As for the parts of this game that are an actual adaptation of the original game… it’s a mixed bag. Some sections are pretty incredible and I couldn’t stop smiling the entire time I was playing them out, such as the Upper Junon parade, the Gold Saucer visits, and the climactic trek through the Temple of the Ancients. The game excels when it’s cranking up the fun, the charm, and the spectacle, and all of these sequences are loaded with those.

Other parts left me disappointed and feeling like they were missing lots of the weight of the original game, like the opening sequence in Nibelheim, the scene with Barret and Dyne, and most unfortunately of all, Aerith’s iconic scene in the game’s finale. It’s not even that any of these are bad sequences on their own, they just feel sanitized and lacking compared to the hefty impact they all left in the original, and that’s pretty disappointing to me as the story of the original Final Fantasy VII is one that means a lot to me.

So even as a straight adaptation of this story, this game doesn’t quite match the original where it really counts. But as anyone who’s played this game or its predecessor would know by now… this isn’t a straight adaptation. And initially I found that exciting! It wasn’t what I wanted, but I was intrigued by the new direction and excited to see where things went. And that’s exactly why the direction of the original parts of Rebirth’s story confuse me so much…

I won’t get into specifics, but Rebirth has a significantly less ambitious story than I expected. The ending of Remake made it seem like they were gearing up for Part 2 to have loads of changes and spin off into an entirely new thing by the end of it, but that’s just not the case at all. Rebirth plays it very safe in terms of its overall structure. If you’ve played the original game, it’s going to hit every beat you expect and outside of a few brief moments that honestly don’t affect the outcome of things very much, there aren’t many surprises.

I won’t spoil the ending, but I will say that it leaves the game in a position where Part 3 is likely to take an extremely similar approach and stick to the original game beat for beat until the very last chapter where it goes completely off the rails in a way that ultimately pretends to have way more of an impact than it actually does. It leaves me in a position where I can’t understand what the point is because it feels like the new story adds absolutely nothing to the experience and just alienates the parts of the fanbase that would’ve preferred a faithful remake.

So story wise… yeah the direction of this entire trilogy is a mess and I sincerely doubt the third game will save it for me. But I know without a doubt that I will be there day 1 when Part 3 comes out because I do still LOVE these games despite not liking how they handle the story. It’s carried by everything surrounding it, the characters and their countless interactions, the incredible combat which has only been further refined here, and above all else the unbelievable scale and life of this world.

Although I was initially disappointed, ultimately I came around to like this game even more than Remake which surprised me. I went out of my way to do everything I could, it took me comfortably over 100 hours, and the grand scope of my whole adventure was a seriously entrancing experience. It helps that it has some really strong post-game legs too, I was immediately beckoned to come back for more once I hit credits, and now that I’m just one hard mode playthrough away from reaching the platinum trophy, I can very confidently say I don’t regret any of the time I put into this.

For reference, at the time of writing I’m nearly 130 hours in, and by this point in my Tears of the Kingdom playthrough I was starting to get pretty tired of the game and only continued to trudge through because I was so close to the end. I’ll surpass that mark pretty soon and I have no signs of fatigue or even wanting to slow down. Not saying this to dog on that game, just to show that this one has serious staying power for me.

It’s not as well realized or polished as something like FFXVI, but I still ended up preferring this in the end because of the massive beating heart at its core. FFVII Rebirth is deeply flawed in execution, even more so than its predecessor, yet it’s an unforgettable experience underneath it all.

RESIDENT EVIL 5 is overall a strong and enjoyable multiplayer experience held down by occasional flaws, with a consistent flaw being how long some enemies take to kill its honestly crazy.

Some of the occasional flaws come in the form of bad puzzle design (specifically the lasers…), quick time events being scattered randomly throughout the game with no prior warning, bosses can be really confusing and have no obvious way to defeat them (especially the final boss, the correct method is not clear at all).

I definitely feel this game can wildly vary depending on who you’re playing with and if you are playing with AI or not so it makes sense why I’ve always heard a big difference in opinions with this game. But I’m glad I played it, was very enjoyable multiplayer and also made for a good first mainline Resident Evil game! I hope this gets a remake at some point in the style of how It Takes Two or Wolfenstein Youngblood work where you only need 1 player to purchase the game in order to play, it would probably be a hit.

Elijah’s review: https://www.backloggd.com/u/liquidddingle/review/1513245/

Fun time, had no idea what to expect as a friend had me play this blind but pleasantly surprised by what ended up being a relatively unique experience.

The use of roguelike elements surprised me most, but the most impressive part of this game I think is the way that each choice you make ends up branching off so drastically and so naturally. And there’s lots of branches too! Honestly a bit overwhelming just how many different paths there are, but I guess that’s where the replay value comes from.

Very creative “endings” here, and the game as a whole is quite well written, especially as you get to the end. Gorgeous artstyle as well.

Criminally underrated racer! If you're going in expecting another Mario Kart imitator you will have a bad time, it's totally different mechanically and has its own awesome futuristic style, and even a neat little story and rival characters. These are probably my favorite designs for the Sonic cast. Riders has a very high skill ceiling and is incredibly fast paced once you learn it, the issue is that it doesn't explain how to do anything so a lot of people will be turned away by that and how brutal its AI and tracks seem at first. But man I just adore this game, its vibe is so charming and comforting. The "DX" mod for the GameCube version is actually peak gaming. It's such a shame that Zero Gravity stripped away almost all of the complexity and then the series died shortly after.

Just to rip the band-aid off here I really don’t think this game would have much of a legacy at all if it weren’t for the admittedly well executed ending.

The gameplay is generally pretty fun but is not exactly the best thought out at points, there’s a lot more randomness than I would like and some mechanics are flat out useless (SP). I appreciate the reworking of the Materia system though and I imagine that going after all the missions would encourage you to engage with those mechanics on an appropriately deep level.

The game is very clearly a relic of the PSP era, but honestly? Nothing wrong with that! If anything playing this just made me miss when there was a dedicated space for weird experimental spin-off titles like this designed around short but fun play sessions rather than constantly chasing immersion to rope you in for multi-hour play sessions. Definitely enjoyed my time playing this even if it wasn’t blowing me away in any capacity.

Story-wise…. man. This is really rough. I will say they won me over on Zack, even with his awful recasting I understand why he’s such a beloved character now. But everything surrounding him is, without mincing words, pretty bad. Playing this served as such a stark reminder of how bad the Compilation of FFVII idea was, there is such a strong disconnect between the tone, themes, and writing style of the original game and Crisis Core. That’s not to say that a spin-off shouldn’t have its own distinct identity, but it just feels like the writers room here had never played the original game.

On top of confusing and ridiculous Nomura-isms in both plot and dialogue, I just didn’t buy the connections between Zack and anyone else. Zack and Aerith like each other because the plot demands it. Zack and Cloud are friends because the plot demands it. There is absolutely no understanding of what made any of these characters compelling originally and they come off as caricatures of themselves.

The Nibelheim incident is expectedly reconstructed here, but feels hastily shoved in last minute because they suddenly remembered they had to, they even shoved in an original character for seemingly no reason. Even the ending, as praised as it is, is dramatized to the point of completely undermining the chilling brevity of the same scene as shown in the original game. These direct connections to the original come off as forced, and I honestly would’ve rather they just told an original side story about Zack that predated all of that entirely.

But the original stuff here sucks too!! The original characters weren’t compelling in the slightest to me, and the plot they followed felt like an absurd fanfiction. I mentioned the dialogue earlier but it’s especially bad here, there’s so many unintentionally hilarious moments that are only made worse by Zack’s awful voice actor.

What could’ve been a simple but fun handheld footnote to FFVII’s legacy ended up being just another example of why the Compilation of FFVII was such a big mistake from the start. The original game never needed any of this expansion, and to this day it’s still best enjoyed while completely ignoring all supplemental material. If anything it made me appreciate Remake even more for nailing the tone and representation of the world/characters, despite all the fate ghost stuff.

I know I’m in the minority here as most fans seem to really enjoy this one but I just can’t connect with the story on any level and it drags the whole package down for me.