Uma fofura. Se agarra à inocência e inventividade infantil e conta uma história que tenho certeza que toda criança espevitada já viveu em sua cabeça, explicitando tudo de estúpido e belo que torna a infância uma coisa tão linda. A estética de Tokyo rural e sua paixão pelo tokusatsu amarra tudo com um lacinho de nostalgia por parte dos criadores que completa a obra como um pacote simplesmente :)

Além disso, esse jogo ter tipo 10 modelos, 5 animações, 10 ilustrações e 15 minutos de música é o tipo de encorajamento logístico que me convence que posso sim fazer muito com pouca quantidade - me falta só a qualidade.

ideologia é o privilégio do não-desespero. o tempo necessário para tomar uma decisão teórica depende da ética que advém do desapego, de certa distância, do eterno "e se". o ethos não é um sobrevivente e sim um acadêmico. a ideologia se confunde com a política pois a política depende de um movimento em massa para acontecer, então ela se vende como um fator ideológico em que existe Informação a ser Interpretada: a normalização (criação de denominador comum) da heurística, um véu comunitário sob algo que é inerentemente solitário e solipsista. o pathos é a sobrevivência, a divisão definitiva entre o que é o Ser e do que é sua Ideia, pois embora um, claro, influencie o outro, corrija o outro, esse um nunca comanda o outro. há um abismo dificilmente cruzado entre a prática e a ideia quando não existe tempo de planejamento, quando a ideia já é um resultado de outros atributos ativos de antes. a única defesa contra a ideologia é o suicídio. o barulho de tiro é mais alto do que a música. não existem perigos universais pois eles não são necessários: o mundo está sempre acabando pra alguém.

Final Fantasy VII Remake project has absolutely no right working as well as it does, and Rebirth doubles down on what made Remake work -- and occasionally what really brought it down, with more unsavory additions to spare. But don't get the wrong idea, in Rebirth's extravangance and conceptually superfluous presentation exists the most actualized and engrossing take on the events of Final Fantasy VII's post-Midgar disc one that one could possibly even imagine, and I'm saying this as somebody whose love for the original is ironclad and unbreakable: Rebirth is probably going to end up being my favorite way to experience the moments tucked away in what was once a maybe 7 to 12 hour-ish section of a 25 hour long game -- with the 7 to 12 hour section now being close to 50 or 60 hours on average I'd imagine. That is to say, I've come to terms with a lot of the liberties Square has taken with the narrative and characterization and presentation, everything really; what made the original special to me, and most likely to many others as well, can't be perfectly replicated anyways, so I really do mean it when I say that the end result given here is bordering on a "best case scenario" for an adaptation of this vast a scope.

Much like Remake, characters that were once tableaus feel alive and truly connected as a group in a way the original just didn't have the ability to convey, just on an even more detailed and broader scale. And once again don't take that the wrong way, they're tableaus that I cherish dearly -- Final Fantasy VII's cast is my absolute favorite across like, all media -- but they're expanded upon so meaningfully: Tifa's self-destructive people-pleasing, Aerith's down to earth and fun attitude, Barret being the leftist extremist father figure we all know and love, Red XIII's deep loyalty, Yuffie's obnoxious little sister energy, Cait Sith's inopportune joviality, Cid's weird uncle vibes, and Vincent being the resident goth kid that has issues with authority. And their relationships with one other: Aerith's deep friendships with Tifa and Red XIII, Barret's new found friendships with Yuffie and Red XIII, and even the basic and immediate kinship many of them feel towards one other is more detailed and vibrant. I don't know man, I just love all these fuckin' guys, I constantly had the stupidest fucking grin on my face while playing this game it was honestly kinda cringe. Even side characters have so much more going on with them, certain characters that were previously throwaway will often give one a sense that there's something deeper going on with them as they continue to try to exist in this broken world, even the ones that are more comic relief than pathos-invoking.

The plot can often feel clumsy, but I'd say it's a lot more cohesive than the original's, pretty significantly too, the original occasionally feeling aimless and as it tried to find a reason to send you to the next exciting setpiece; even as somebody who replays the game often I find myself being confused which event flag I need to trigger next. And really the original Final Fantasy VII can be best-described as like, a bunch of Final Fantasy VI opera scenes strung together, and Rebirth leans into that so hard that I could see it being way too much for some people. If Final Fantasy XVI was way too dry for many, myself included, I could genuinely see Rebirth being perceived as excessively "wet" for others. Though, as a side note, when playing Final Fantasy XVI I'd often find myself unintentionally dozing off, whereas with Rebirth I actually had enormous trouble sleeping, both in finding a place I wanted to stop playing and the mild insomnia the excitement of getting to play the game again induced in my four day-ish long binge (which, I haven't done in a long fucking time without needing to take significant breaks, which happened quite often with Final Fantasy XVI, and as an adult in her 30s I think that's saying a lot).

On the topic of CBU1 styling super fucking hard on CBU3, god damn the combat in Rebirth is exactly what I wanted it to be, probably my favorite combat in general, from like, any video game? Like, it's not mechanically the deepest action game I've ever played, but it does expand upon Remake's systems in a meaningful way without upending what made those systems work in the first place. Final Fantasy has been focused on telling the player what any given character is about through how they play since like, FF4, and Rebirth's execution of that philosophy doesn't miss at all. Tifa is more fun than ever with an extensive aerial toolkit, I fucking love that she can juggle enemies and it kinda became my go to strategy at a certain point, which like Tifa was the blueprint for young Theia so I'm so glad they did her so good in this game both on a gameplay and narrative level. Red XIII I have to say feels a little bit busted!! I'm bad at playing as him, and he still seems really fucking useful even with unskilled play. Cait Sith I'm still trying to wrap my head around, but I wouldn't have it any other way than making Cait Sith a confusing mess to properly utilize. I wish Vincent was playable, one of like 10 or so boys in media that I actually care about, but I kinda understand why he isn't when he shows up so late that it was probably better to just focus on polishing the rest of the cast than implementing what's probably going to be a pretty unique kit on top of everything else going on.

There's a particular level involving Cait Sith that I'm pretty sure is gonna become like the third or fourth most contentious thing about the game, but I fucking loved it in a really fucked up Banjo-Tooieian way and nobody can take that away from me. The thing I can see becoming the second most contentious aspect about the game, what I thought would be the primary contention until I got to the ending (which I'll get to in a bit, and without spoiling anything, but if you don't want to know literally anything just be forewarned), is the open world game design elements. The best way to describe it is probably Xenoblade with some pointless Ubisoft shit, but it's not really as bad as it sounds, and much of it is entirely optional only providing secondary or tertiary benefits to character progression. As a "modern" interpretation of the original's wide, open, and mostly empty fields populated by sets of random enemy tables, I think it's probably a fair enough way to go about things. The life springs and towers I wasn't so much a fan of, like why do the towers play the BotW theme But At Home when you activate them, but the summon temple thingies felt a lot more meaningful than just picking up a materia off the ground, like how it usually worked in the original (seriously who was dropping all those bahamut variants and just leaving them there). The map designs themselves I did enjoy though, even if the Cosmo Canyon and Gongaga regions can be a little tedious at times, I honestly prefer having to mentally map out the geographical logic of an open world than the modern trend of empty fields with little identity and often no reason to engage with a game's environments and systems.

That said, the more linear "dungeon" levels are kinda mostly the same deal, but they did an even better job at making them feel like real places you're exploring this time 'round, as opposed to the modified FF13 hallway dealie in Remake. They're still largely linear, but the best way to explain why I think they work better is how the Final Fantasy standby of forked paths with option A being progression and option B being a treasure chest is more heavily obscured; I actually got a little bit lost in a couple of levels!!! Though sometimes that was the result of perhaps poor tutorialization of a level's specific gimmick or progress not being visually distinct enough, which like god damn the graphics are so fucking good in this game that it's almost hard to see anything unless I walked up to my TV (maybe I just need to invest in a larger screen for my old lady eyes but whateverrr), it's no wonder that there are several areas where the Uncharted climbing walls have the RE4R yellow paint on them. I know people are gonna slam the game for shit like that, which is like, yeah I can kinda get it, personally would've preferred more non-diegetic signaling over things that make me have annoying CinemaSin-esque intrusive thoughts about "who is painting all this shit out here in the middle of nowhere".

And you know, it's not gonna be the most discussed thing in the end, as uninspired as Rebirth's "structural quirks" may feel now, they'll probly become innocuous given enough time; that's just how these thing typically go. I wanna say the same will happen for the game's ending which... yeah. Not gonna say much here, but if you find yourself frustrated by it, I'd say give yourself some space and rewatch it on YouTube or something. It's a lot to take in, and I found it a lot more impactful after I had gotten some sleep and finally digested what was being shown to me. I don't think it was all exactly what I wanted it to be, far from it maybe, but there's something to be said about the way the entirety of Rebirth takes special moments dear to us and recontextualizes them into new special moments, sometimes even more special.

And a bit of a tangent, but I loathe the critic scores for this game. Not so much because they're necessarily wrong for enjoying the game, but because I'm starting to strongly believe that art, and especially interactive art, can't really be quantified on such simple terms, especially when people tend to have such viscerally opposed reactions to their experiences with any given work. What does a 10/10 even mean? On a personal level I could almost understand, but detached from the context of that personal experience how can we consider any piece of media to be in some arbitrary upper percentile of perfection? I guess I'm saying this because I know with scores like that people are going to come at this game with a certain set of expectations, but despite it being one of the most gorgeous and polished Final Fantasy titles that CBU1 has brought out in recent years, it's a deeply uneven experience. You will be frustrated, maybe you'll even get annoyed at the many side quests that suck ass and are total shit!!! Or something, maybe you'll hate the combat even if it's exactly what my brain has always wanted FF7's combat to be. But I guess like, when you look at a piece of art in its totality as opposed to a given qualification of Good or Bad, it's easier to just appreciate things as they are. Or even fucking hate them for what they are! People on this website tend to tear the shit out of really popular games and who's to say they're wrong for looking past consensus into a deeper inner truth, which you know, even if that comes from a place of unfounded contrarianism, good for them, man. Fuck video games!!

I hope it doesn't come off like I'm waffling or anything, I just really love this game, and I feel like the things I hated about it only made me love it more in a really fucked up way. I think playing Drakengard 3 for the first time a year ago gave me brain damage or something. Also like, on a final note, let me get more on brand here: there's some premier fucking queerbaiting going on here, and if that ain't more accurate to the actual single lesbian in her early 30s experience than any other AAA video game that has some fake ass porn-afflicted interpretation of sapphic romance where flesh puppets say sweet nothings at each other after completing a single questline or whatever the fuck, than I don't know what is. Anyways, sorry I had to make it gay in the end, but truly that is what the Final Fantasy VII was about all along: twinks with swords and bisexual women who can suplex kaijus. Which, you know, being able to do the latter is what's going to be main determinant if part 3 is good or not, so the ball's in your court now Square...

I have put maybe an hour or two into Silent Hill 2, and I know it's a game that I need to finish at some point. I know the great twist, I've had that spoiled for me god knows how many times. I honestly put it into the same camp that I have movies like Alien in: even if there's something in there that surprises me, having the big moments ripped off like a band-aid purely through pop culture osmosis dampers my curiosity somewhat. All of this is to say, while you may not personally be excited for new Silent Hill games, I'm just curious to see something new. Since I was only really around for P.T. once that was spoiled for me, too, I'm not counting it—which leaves me with the newly released The Short Message.

I did not get the hate that this got over its leaks, and having finally played it, I still don't. Having seen those leaks, I actually have more of an appreciation for this; I know now that this was pretty cohesive in its themes and intention when it needed it to be and never deviated from that. I don't mind a lack of subtlety, as long as the bluntness of what you're working on is there for a good reason, and I found the reasoning for it here to be acceptable. It's laser-focused on what it wants and needs to say from beginning to end, and this focus is echoed throughout the spaces you explore. Although I can see someone being a little irritated that this is linear to the point where doors don't unlock unless you read certain notes, most of those notes serve the story and not the lore. There are notes that serve the lore, but they all feed you the right amount of information while giving you space to think. What impressed me on an immediate level were the cinematics. I genuinely can't tell if they were live-action or rendered, although I know that they were likely rendered. It's uncanny as hell, but it's equally impressive. What impressed me throughout, however, is how well this serves as a mood piece. Each and every location, whether it was important or minor, made me feel something. This is more of a vibes game than something substantive or scary, and while that might be disappointing if you're going in expecting serious scares, it kept me hooked. One concern I do have, if this is the playable teaser many are making it out to be, is that the only area where I noticed evident performance issues was when I was near fog. If the new Silent Hill games are all going to lack the fog or run like shit because of it, we might be in for a doozy. But regardless of that one scene, the rest of this was pretty solid! ...for the most part.

Yeah, those chase scenes, man. I'm a little biased because I already don't like chase scenes, but something about them here felt either like filler or downright infuriating to deal with. If it weren't for the last chase sequence, my rating for this would absolutely be three-and-a-half stars because the vibes were just that immaculate for me. But no, god, no. I don't know if I ever want to go through that again. Put it this way: the game doesn't make a big deal about which rooms you go into because of its linear trajectory until the final chase sequence, where it expects you to remember the layout of the map like the back of your hand while elements of it feel completely different. It expects you to find five photographs in this mess without giving you a map or checkpoints. At a certain point, the stress I was intended to feel gave way to frustration. The only reason I didn't stop playing there was because I wanted to see the ending. That was it. The ending was nice, and there was a cute little tune that played over the credits (way more people worked on this than any other free game I've ever played), but I don't think that forgives it. It was that bad. At least the creature design was cool, though—although I found it to be scarier in the leaked concept art than I did in the final product. Consequences of having that kind of stuff leak, I guess. Whoops! Feel bad for the developers on that front, because I'm probably not alone in that.

What I liked about this, I really liked. If a new Silent Hill game is made from this mold, I wouldn't mind, actually. The Silent Hill 2 remake being a horror game that needs to have a trailer dedicated to its combat should say something about how skeptical I am of that, but I might also check it out when it's on sale. If this and that trailer is Konami's way of getting people back on the Silent Hill hype train... I mean, I wouldn't call this embarrassing. This was cool. But, 7/10.

Death Stranding aka Norman Reedus and the Funky Fetus is a sort of mixed bag of highs and lows, though with enough strengths to make it a solid game that I enjoyed. The game strongly ties in its unorthodox for the AAA scene game mechanics of delivering packages with its narrative themes. Having other players help you through their structures they built and you in turn paying them back through your own creations is a great feature that ties into the game’s themes of community so well. Going around delivering packages is also nice though I wish the bike controlled a bit better and there was slightly less rocks, it’s sometimes a bit of a janky pain to maneuver. The combat and the BTs drag the game down though as they’re just sort of a slog to deal with and the game initially loves just throwing them at you in chokepoints where you can’t just maneuver around them. And it’s even more annoying in endgame when a couple of giant BTs will just spawn out of thin air at you so you have to slowly run away from them. Combat with bandits is okay, but one boss fight just sucks and feels really jank. This game is definite proof to me that Kojima needs an editor or the like to reign him in though because he genuinely does have a good grasp of integrating themes with the gameplay as I said, but man is this game’s narrative rather bogged down in goofy technobabble and mostly adhering to the Garth Marenghi’s school of subtlety. On the other hand though it does have some genuine narrative highs and manages to nail the moments that really matter.

I think the ending is the best example of the dichotomy of the game’s hill and valleys as it’s paced like shit and really needed a second pass, but it also has some of the best parts of the game. The first half is just a total slog with you primarily trudging along a wasteland as the credits slowly go by interspersed with some exposition cutscenes; it’s something that desperately needed to get cut because it just an absolute waste of time. But then the second half kicks in and there you start really learning the truth of what happened and this is where the game pulls off its best narrative moments with genuine emotional gravitas. I’ve seen people mention it before I played this and I have to agree, Tommie Earl Jenkins goes hard, holy shit.

Overall a flawed, yet interesting game that manages to nail the parts that matter to make a worthwhile experience. I’m up for Norman Reedus and the Funky Fetus 2: Electric Boogaloo.

I don't necessarily know that I agree with this anymore, so I've removed the rating I originally gave it. Thank you for the recognition, though; this review in particular is why I've stuck around on this website.

Alpha Protocol is one of the worst Stealth games I've played in recent memory. I'll say that it's not the absolute bottom of the barrel when it comes to stealth games; you can tell that they tried their hardest with what they had. There are a ton of fun options to work around with, including gadgets like a sound emitter and tranquilizer darts for your pistol. But four fundamental pillars always set it back: one, bodies disappear. I'm not of the school of thought that you need to be able to drag bodies in a stealth game, but I've always thought that it's necessary to make sure they don't despawn. Part of the reason I love stealth games so much is that they're tense in a way few games are; small missteps will absolutely set you back. Taking the consequence away from having to take someone out feels cheap and cuts that tension in half. Two, it's overly reliant on checkpoints. Another staple of the stealth genre for me is the ability to quicksave. I know not every game has this, and some games are generally better without it. But when checkpoints are your only option, things get frustrating quickly. What ends up happening is that you get spotted, and because you either aren't well-equipped for combat or just don't want to deal with that noise, you try to reload a save. Only, your last checkpoint was 30 minutes ago, and you have to backtrack aaaaaaaall the way back for a minor misstep. In a game where the main goal is to shoot all of the bad guys, going back 30 minutes isn't too much of an issue. But when you can consistently set yourself back, it gets tiring to deal with. You can technically save your progress from a checkpoint in case you want to pull any of the punches this game asks you to make. But if you're wondering if that actually comes in handy while you're playing the game, its purpose is null. Three, the AI is erratic. Sometimes it will spot you on a dime or even through a wall, while other times, you can take three to four guys out in front of another guy, and he won't flinch. It's both unpredictable and infuriating to deal with. Finally, and most egregious of all, this game is NOT graceful when you get caught. Other games might make the transition from stealth to combat easy on their players, so it's not too much of a hassle to deal with. But in Alpha Protocol, I associated this lack of a transition with that of a jump scare. I might have screamed on multiple occasions; I didn't count. But I screamed a lot.
So then why on earth did I give this four stars?

Here's the thing: in The Walking Dead, the choice of Doug or Carly only affects your experience in a minor way. The game isn't asking you if you want the story to change significantly, but rather which character you want to hang around and how you want to alter one tiny scene later in the game. The way The Walking Dead presents its choices isn't through a sense of fascination, though, but through urgency. Whether or not you go with Doug or Carly, Doug or Carly will die. There's something to be said about how choice in video games is an illusion; the game might tell you telling Lee Everett to be more aggressive will make others more cautious in his presence, but without the game explicitly saying that that's the case, you'd be hard-pressed to notice a change in behavior. The Walking Dead, and those in its stead, are an inconsistent mix of show and tell. They're willing to show you some things, but the only thing they have to offer is lots of telling. In some instances, Alpha Protocol is guilty of the same thing. But what sets Alpha Protocol apart from its contemporaries with one thing: its pacing. There are plenty of Doug or Carly instances in this game, but instead of waiting half the game for that choice to have any meaningful impact, Alpha Protocol is blunt about your choices' outcomes. In a way, it has to be. The most significant factor in how you handle reactivity to player choice in video games comes down to setting. If your game is set within a slowly dying world, where the loss of life might as well turn the sun brown, it almost makes sense for your choices not to have consequences right away. In the case of Alpha Protocol's espionage setting, there isn't a single character in here that's in the right or wrong. If you want to make a case for some of the most despicable members of its cast, you can. Everything is varying shades of grey. If I had to wait half the game to find out that sparing the boss who played loud 80s hair-metal made someone angry, I'm no longer making a case for having saved that character. The illusion of choice is pushed to its absolute limit in Alpha Protocol, and I don't think I've seen another game take its approach in the ten-plus years since its release.

But none of that would be entertaining if the writing sucked. Thankfully, they pulled this one off with flying colors. The first thing that I have to point is that they reuse the same rape joke twice, and it isn't funny either time. But in contrast with the rest of the game, that's the exception. I laughed my ass off multiple times, and it was never at this game's expense. If you have the option to play a conversation straight-faced, you also have the option to do it shit-faced. I'm almost considering doing a playthrough where I'm an asshole to everyone because some of this dialog is genuinely that funny. But I don't know how easy that would be for me, considering how much I adore these characters. Mina, Scarlett, Steven, and Albatross are some of the best this game offers. But even the smaller side characters are entertaining and odd in their own ways. I'm sure that I missed out on one or two of them, which just gives me more incentive to revisit this when I get the sound of that stupid alarm going off out of my head. And I look forward to that day.

If Alpha Protocol had a less troubled development and wasn't rushed to market off the back of a bleeding budget, I think that this could have the potential to be in my top five of all time. But as it stands, it's still really fucking good, even if that hacking mini-game can go knit eggs. With all of the sixth to seventh-generation console games getting remade lately, I'm praying that Alpha Protocol gets the reevaluation it deserves.

the beauty of this system is that you benefit from everything that happens. there's no such thing as a wasted spell or a battle that drained more resources than it was worth. if you get hit it benefits you, if you miss it benefits you, if you have a long drag-out battle it benefits you more than an easy battle. perfectly tuned with 0.5x everything and hp compensation off. i recommend resisting the impulse to try to optimize the game and just play it however you want, because the system will conform to your playstyle like memory foam.

the emperor is one of the coolest villains in the series. the guest character structure lets you see the possibilities of what your permanent party members could become. equipment must be chosen carefully to balance all the different stats it affects. it's easy to change anyone's build midgame, as a precursor to the formalized job system. the enemy rank system means it doesn't take long for new skills to catch up, the loot encourages weapon switching by giving you powerful weapons of types you haven't used yet, and taking advantage of elemental weaknesses makes even low-level spells powerful in the right circumstances.

just a really smart evolution of the jrpg, and a game that makes me excited to check out saga.

Full analysis of the game on my YT if you'd like to support my efforts there!

The Misadventures of Tron Bonne is a game with a lot of charm and fun times but is quite a bit of a hollow feeling mess in ways as well.

Most times games like this for me can skate by on charm and their narratives if they're good or interesting enough but for me while that tended to work fairly well for me in Mega Man Legends with the way it tends to balance everything it has going on, here everything feels disconnected and disjointed, something about it didn't click for me in the same way even if I still enjoyed aspects of it.

The mission variety is there but the combat still feels like a bit of a mess, the lock on is sporadic, controlling the Gustaff can feel stiff, the enemy placement and types you fight do tend to feel a lot better at least which is nice.

Now though there's other parts to this whole shebang that tries to spice things up which I respect. There's puzzle levels which feel really great actually. Never thought I'd fuck with it but trying to find the best route to get the crate to the ship genuinely felt satisfying even when I got stumped on one or another.

The dungeon crawly segments are a fun idea with really fun character interactions but the gameplay itself is severly hollow and mad boring just watching your servbots essentially do everything for you, anytime combat happened I was so fuckin bored, I would've actually been way more into it if they went all in with it and just made it turn based or something! I just feel like there had to be a better way and more of a genuine incentive to level up your little guys.

Then there's animal abduction missions which just kinda feel like shit to play to me. Trying to keep your servbots on the animals, trying to make sure they don't keep running away from you when you are in a MECH that can LIFT things just feels real weird! Also the whole thing being a glorified escort mission feels real bad, not a fan!

The servbot management is cute, there's fun interactions and fun little ideas there but honestly it just kinda felt like it didn't matter at all. Managing these little guys felt largerly unnecessary outside of one or two things (bringing a brainy servbot to the puzzle missions in order to get actual hints is probably my favorite thing). It's good for upgrading the Gustaff and getting upgrades for it, though the materials you get for upgrading it I'm pretty sure are mandatory anyway so idk man. But everything else again while cute felt so disconnected from the actual missions and anything I was actually doing that I just didn't feel like it added anything majorly to the whole of this experience. Honestly it just made me wanna play Peace Walker again and experience the variety and structure and replayability that game offered. Ya can't even replay missions here without restarting the entire game which idk man.

The side characters here are great, loved interacting with pretty much all of them and learning a little more about the world but something about it felt like it was lacking that oomph that Legends had, like some 3rd piece was missing. Maybe that ominous mystery Legends was constantly rocking?

I feel like there's good ways they could've expanded upon this but for what it is it's like fine. I enjoyed myself, it wasn't bad or anything but after how fuckin good Legends was it's hard to hop into this honestly.

I wanna smooch Glyde and cosplay as Roxette.

Is it close to the Silent Hills of old? No not particularly.

Does it absolutely stumble on getting across some of its ideas and concepts? Yeah.

Are the chase sequences a bit rough? Yeah.

I still really fucked with this and everything it was doing. It gave me a dose of what I've wanted from Silent Hill for a long time, it had a vision and it sees that vision all the way through while trying to mix things up a bit.

I think it handles its themes of trauma and abuse trapping someone emotionally within cycles of self destructive and self distancing behaviors causing lashing out at anything that harms the ego and whatever normalcy one can cling onto fairly well.

I feel like even if it was a bit heavy handed at times (the beginning really tries to hammer home how depressed Anita is in ways that feel really corny) I cannot ignore the earnestness and the willingness to just fuckin try something here. The art direction, the atmosphere, the music, the tones.

No it's not Silent Hill 3 but it worked for me and captured me in ways that I really didn't expect. That last chunk of the game really fuckin hit me.

Saw the trailer for this on PlayStation's YouTube channel and gave it a fair shake since it was free!

I dig using games themselves as a kind of meaningful essay format to display and exemplify your points about design and really show the player a better idea of what is being discussed. I especially like this as a more intimate way to try to connect with someone via direct interfacing with mechanics and ideas.

I dug how this played with examples from different games and the creator wasn't afraid to just like call out very explicit specific examples from games though I kinda felt the whole point fell apart in the end by just kinda being like "this is all just to say that Shadow of the Colossus is the best" and it's like yeah but I felt like it kinda deflated a lot of the work and buildup that it was working with beforehand and all to take constant little jabs at fairly interesting games. I also feel like claiming that "that's where the industry peaked" is an insanely reductive statement but opinions!

I heavily disagreed with the entire FF16 point and felt like it could be a bit reductive with how it was engaging with and critiquing some of the games it was but that could also be some of my own implicit biases speaking.

I will say enemies within this are so hard to see given the visual style. I dig the aesthetics but at points it genuinely hurt my eyes to play through it was so difficult to look at at points and the options left a bit to be desired.

An interesting study/experiment even if I feel like it falls a little flat. Interested to see more things like this cause it's really an interesting way to do something like this!

"And now, isn't it time to form yourself once again? Isn't it time to take that power of adaptation, and redirect it towards what you truly believe? [...] You can always become something new."

maybe you can resist the temptation of being free, but maybe you will end up in a loop of self-hatred, with the sparkle of questioning in your head, never, fully, becoming its own light. pretty ironic how nova really has to become unidimensional in order to see the full picture. it's all about navigating in your most, pure, intimate self and concluding that you shall fight the "destiny" put upon you, because the only one that know your real purpose is yourself.

Abandoned: Dec 22 2021
Time: 27ish Hours
Platform: DS (via 3DS)

Final Fantasy III is an interesting one. Following up Final Fantasy II’s strange leveling system (which I loved) and huge strides in storyline and emotional investment, this feels like a side-grade at best, and a downgrade more often than I’d like. FF3 feels like an attempt to course correct after FF2 (and as far as I can tell, it actually was! Even though FF2 was pretty well received, it seems like its systems weren’t liked internally at Square). On top of that, I played the DS remake of FF3, a mostly faithful remake which is infamous for being even less forgiving than the original NES game (balance tweaks and updated graphics being the main changes). Suffice to say, there’s no lack of things to talk about here.

Or is there? Honestly, this game didn’t leave a huge impression on me. I never got too invested, and more often than not was just looking up stats and strategies to min/max my team. As far as investment, I’ll easily blame the story there. FF3 is a return to FF1’s style of storytelling. The blank slate characters, the D&D-influenced “stumble around until the npc hints get you to figure out where you’re supposed to be” pacing, it all seems to draw a straight line to FF1. This wouldn’t be an issue for me if FF2 hadn’t been lightyears ahead in story? I don’t know why they decided to drop the more immediate stakes and less hint-reliant pacing style they’d done such a good job pioneering in the previous game, but I’m not happy with what’s here. Sure it’s much more straightforward than FF1 ever was, but at multiple points through the game you’ll need to go places just because some people in a town said it might be cool to see. The plot operates on rumors, and while that isn’t a bad idea in concept, you end up jetting from town to town, continent to continent, without any reasoning besides “it seems like the game wants me to go there next”.

So where’d all the dev time go? Well, FF3 is mechanically a brand new beast. At least, as far as FF games go. FF3 introduces the Job system, which allows you to switch your class anytime outside of battle. It’s a really cool system, encouraging players to change party configuration on the fly for whatever the situation might call for. In theory. While this system is robust as hell and definitely interesting to play around with, the way it interacts with the game’s other systems is… a bit rough, in my opinion. 

FF3, like its predecessors, only allows you to save outside of dungeons. That’s fine in 1 and 2, where your strategy for a boss fight only really has a couple permutations, so you’ll try only a few times before either busting through or deciding you need to grind a bit. Here though, there’s almost literally infinite strategies for each boss. Wanna take someone on as a team of four Scholars, relying on damage items and high intelligence to disintegrate an enemy by their weak point? Go ahead, most of the time there’s nothing stopping you. But say you hit a wall. Do you switch your strategy (to something besides four scholars dear god please) and try again, not knowing if you’ll need to do it all over again? What if I told you you’d need to head all the way back to town and buy new gear if you’ve sold whatever incredibly specific and very unmarked set of equipment your new classes can use? 

Granted, most of the game this isn’t a huge issue. You get an airship early on, and money is never too scarce. For the endgame though? Where you have to backtrack through a dungeon to even reach your airship? I felt stuck, stranded without a choice but to keep beating my head against the final dungeon. The party I had by this point was capable, and after a couple tries I got into a groove and started moving along. Got to the final boss aaaaaand

(SPOILERS)


well, if you know about this game, you might’ve heard about this. The final dungeon ends in a boss fight, which turns into another, which turns into four more, and then a true final boss. And the last time you’re able to save is before the dungeon starts. I managed to get a good deal into the final boss’s health supply before losing, and when I lost, I lost 3 hours of progress. If I knew exactly what I’d done wrong, I might’ve tried again, but the thing is I don’t. And I really, really, don’t want to go through that whole dungeon again, that whole boss rush again, just to lose again. Hence, why I abandoned it.
(END SPOILERS)



Now, as for the 3D remake’s changes, I’m a big fan. I love the art style, the game seems more balanced than the original version, and the biggest thing for me: The characters aren’t blank slates! Er well, not as much. They have canon names and backstories, and they’re not four identical orphans anymore. It’s cool! There’s overall a bit more direction to things too, which is much appreciated. 

That’s about it. I guess I had more I wanted to talk about than I thought haha. Basically, the job system is interesting, but much of the game’s grandfathered in mechanics don’t mesh well with it, and the story is somewhere between a small and a huge step back from FF2. Play it if you want, but if you do, I’d recommend emulating so you can use save states.
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Entre esto, The Well y Vía Negativa, empiezo a considerar a Yames une artista de pocas temáticas y muchas ideas. Donde el primer juego tanteaba con los elementos de una novela gótica clásica, y Vía Negativa trata de presentarse como una versión retorcida del sacrificio de Job, Water Womb World es, a mi parecer, la obra suya que más reconoce sus raíces lovecraftianas. A decir verdad, hay historias en los Mitos de Cthulhu que se leen prácticamente igual si excusas el componente religioso.

Como ya he dicho, creo que Yames es un poco de piñón fijo, pero mientras la estética y la presentación me entren, estaré dispuesto a excusarlo. Y aquí lo que me ha entrado es la interfaz de PC-98 que lo impregna todo. Con todo, hecho en falta un poquito más de variedad.

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Between this, The Well and Via Negativa, I'm beginning to see Yames as an artist with few themes but many ideas. Whereas the first game tinkered with the tropes of a gothic novel, and Via Negativa is like a twisted version of Job's sacrifice, Water Womb World is the one work of his that sits closer to Lovecraft. Truth be told, there are stories in the Cthulhu Myths that read pretty much the same minus the religious component.

As I said, I think Yames is a bit of a one trick pony, but as long as the aesthetics and presentation suit me I'll be willing to play. The PC-98 interface is what did it for me this time, but I missed some variety in the end.