Long ago I was kinda excited for this. What would a talented studio do with a few years and an already well established base game do? Something new and experimental(why did I think this?)?? It turns out more of the same. By the time this actually rolled around I was kinda meh on it. It already wasn't appealing to me as I just felt elden rings base game scratched much more than a small itch for me.

So what's here? Another castle (the one to the left where enir ilm is atop of) that feels like a worse version royal capital of the base game, huge verticality that I would argue is pretty cool but ultimately a tad shallow, and just a lot of guys to defeat.

Much to my detriment, I always play strength builds in these games. I should've mixed it up, but honestly this smithing system is horrid. It makes experimenting a non option, because you can't just try a weapon (if you have the stats for it) without it being severely underpowered. And it's almost like they kinda knew because the amount of smithing stones in here is hilarious. But don't they realize the problem they created then? It's just tedious, a pointless upgrade system to waste some minutes of my life to. And back to the strength build, well most combat is about getting in enough R1s to break the enemies stance, rinse and repeat. Between familiar castles and enemies, I really felt like I was going through the motions. This is partially the excitement of dragons dogma, which allows you to switch styles on the fly, (i just thought there wasn't enough juice in 2 in other ways.)

On the other hand, it's still all here. Everything looks good, it's the game a child dreams of I feel, endless variety, perfect dark fantasy vibes. Imagine giving a gamer in the 90s this. It's really wild. I'm imagining ~13 year olds playing this having their lives changed. Oh well.

It's interesting to see we are all wary, if not sick of, fromsofts shit at this point. And I almost feel like they kinda are too? I mean bosses are stupid in this, the balance is impossible to reconcile, and everything that kings field 1 set out to do has been explored at this point right? It sounds like in Miyazaki interviews that smaller more interesting stuff is coming soon, led by new talent. And maybe in 10 years fromsofts culminates it's past decade into a huge large game again and it'll be great. I'm optimistic.

Influences are a weird thing huh? It's funny how everyone thinks this inspired so much, and maybe it did. But if you look past the Hallmarks of this era, you see a lot of ico everywhere. Something was in the water. It's in from softwares own shadow tower made a few years before. These warped textures and grand architecture were always there. This one culminates it all well enough and it is fun to turn to demon souls and dark souls and see that Miyazaki wanted to just make another from ass game but very literally in the ico castle, but he only did say because it was already from, capable of doing so. And adventure games have been around forever. Unfortunately for ico, someone decided we needed to spam attack occasionally in this one.

Oh well, talking about the history of video games will always be tough. You can't get many people to play this one probably because of its oldness Im guessing, the masses cry out for a remake! So many games are forgotten and ignored, maybe resurfaced by your favorite YouTuber but then it's only for ogling by the audience, not playing and understanding. But ico is everywhere, no?

Shout out to tsuki, osato, shiroyabu.

Really wild stuff here. Lots of factions at play here. Feels more cop wary, or overall more concerned about the political machinations of power. Everyone is trapped here. Once you become a cop, you become entangled in a system that kills with no supervision, but eventually the cop killer has to be curtailed too. And civilians can be executed at any time too, and there is a latent super violent nature that everyone could have activated at any point. Scary stuff, but it almost isn't far fetched.

It's an odd surrealist and very blunt take on human nature and flawed people. It's obfuscation belies it's lack of depth. It wants you to think a lot is going, but I think it's more have a fun fucky time with you. Let the villain be a digital pixel based hellform who is a reincarnation of the previous game's villain. It's all good. Enjoy the wild ride, the portraitures of violence, the comical and beguiling script.

I love the guy hiding out near the vending machines. Giving away new flavors, hawking the goods.

Music is kinda wild especially the sampled vocals turned into percussive elements bouncing around the soundscape.