Shadow Hearts Covenant is the type of game that swings for the fucking stars. So absolutely confident in everything it's going for from combat all the way to the endearingly messy but wonderfully heartfelt storytelling.

A story of people doing their best to make it and find their own happiness in a cold world that just keeps throwing ordeal after ordeal at them. In a world that does nothing but take how do you continue on giving yourself to others? Ya just do. Everything about Yuri's story hits for me in just such a special and specific way. Grief is rough and its easy to get lost in. Support systems are important and can help you from ending up completely losing yourself within it.

I love that it even touches more upon the bad people justifying horrible shit to themselves deal that Koudelka strives at and Shadow Hearts stumbled with and nails it pretty hard here (Koudelka still the GOAT at it tho).

I love everything about this games Trigun ass vibes, the warm summertime glow of some of the locations, how beautiful the world is represented. How endearing mostly the entire cast is. Joachim especially is a fucking standout character. Like this game is absolutely not great with queer rep (the man festival is pretty fucking yikes dawg) but Joachim is like a shining beacon of hope within the messiness of it all. He's such a loveable gay himbo and I absolutely want to protect him at all costs, he gets so many fun bits and jokes, so many wonderful character moments. It's definitely a step forward from the first game even with, again, how bad the man festival specifically is (though it's at least thankfully optional).

The music yet again slaps hard as fuck. Complimenting every location and moment almost perfect. My favorites in particular being The Fate Cluster Amaryllis and Evil Gate Opener. It just strikes on so many wonderful levels though I do think that the game's implementation of these themes is a little messy. The dungeon music is fairly uniform in a way that's a little boring after the 5th time you've heard it and the town themes, while VERY good, suffer from unfortunately the same problem. Still amazing but just wish they used a lot of the tracks in much better ways like the first time around.

The combat, oh dear sweet jesus, the combat is so fucking good. They took the rough but fun systems of the original and put them completely within your hands. Every aspect of it is customizable and tweakable to make the game as easy or as difficult as you want it to be. Like I hear FTNW only improves on it and I seriously cannot even imagine how yet and that only gets me more stoked because for me it's so fucking excellent!

The dungeon design would be fine if it weren't for how horrible the map system is honestly. There are some standouts like Mirror Castle but this game would seriously benefit from having a real map and it boggles my mind that it just only has a minimap for navigating around. It's so bizarre especially since the dungeons can loop you around and shit. It's faiiiirly annoying but I can deal with it!

Something about this whole experience hit me in a way that I don't think I'll ever be forgetting anytime soon. Everything about it vibed with me in such a specific way that the first game just didn't at all. This is absolutely one of the best sequels ever made that I've experienced so far at least and I'm so hopeful for Penny Blood if this is the framework they follow (though hopefully with far better queer rep/something more along the lines of Joachim or something.) It's messy, it ain't perfect, but fuck it I love this game a ton. Captured everything I wanted the first game to be and more while also getting me to care far more about aspects of the first that I didn't fully before. Absolute banger.

Karin deserved so much better though like holy shit why did they do THAT.

My full analysis on it is now up if ya wanna check it out!

I wanted to give //Infection the benefit of the doubt. It's a shorter game, and they didn't reveal much about the plot. It was rough around the edges, but it's a very early PS2 RPG, the sequel was sure to improve upon the original and the story could finally get going. I beat the optional boss of the previous game, got my save ready to import, took a small break, and threw this game in.

The first half of a hour of this game destroyed whatever goodwill that the first game built up. This wasn't a proper sequel. This wasn't even something like Shining Force III, where they used the same engine but provided a full narrative and enough changes to the formula to avoid burnout. They took what they had with //Infection, and cut the game in half. Zero visual improvements, most of the areas use the same tilesets. The combat, with its monotony, difficulty hitting enemies (due to movement and camera issues) and abundance of crowd control directed towards the player remains in tact. They sold this game as a sequel, and it should be looked at like a sequel.

The biggest addition to the game are Grunty Races. They're a mini-game that doesn't directly impact the plot, and rewards the player with permanent stat boosts. It's a welcome addition, even if it's half baked, but in no way justifies how padded and sparse this entry in the series is. There's so many "arcs" that are obviously not important to the overall story and are there to waste time. Even with a sizable break, playing more than one of these games starts to feel like eating flour.

So many times have I tried to get into The Evil Within. I clawed my way through it on PS3 and I clawed my way through it on PC. This time I was determined to finish this for Halloween, I was confident that Ill do it. I hate this game. Its 15 mediocre Horror Games rolled into one. Theres so many instant kills. I think they want you to improvise and use your tools to fight the enemies in clever ways but there are so few combat rooms to do that. Most of the time you spend in long linear corridors your expected to sneak through with horrible stealth or you have a crash bandicoot style chase scene or you get to train your late stage arthritis with horrible quicktime events. Sure love mashing A to turn that wheel 50 times. I appreaciat how it wants to be unapologetic weird but actually playing it fucking sucks.

"What if Pokemon Scarlet/Violet was good?"

I haven't felt this awe struck about a indie videogame OST since Sayonara Wild Hearts. Its also a little bit challenging because of the Typings in the game where I had to have a chart up at all times.

Its a 2v2+ battle system as well which creates more of a strategy for the game and presents challenges more of itself.

Also Kayleigh is best girl

i love the funny gun game with good music

it's real hard to review a collection this massive, so i'll just make a sweeping comment and say that, as all the games are pretty short, all are pretty worth playing, even if some are clunky or not as good.

shelved because i haven't finished odst (when i do i'll move this to completed), although all the games in the collection have extremely high replayability, and the experience changes depending on who you play it with. lots of fun with friends!

I really wanted to like this one more than I did. While this game has a great cast featuring likeable main characters and fun set of villains for then to go up against, I find that the gameplay itself is okay at best and frustrating at worst. The platforming segments are mostly pretty alright, but almost half of the game is comprised of various mini games that just aren't fun at all. It isn't helping that most of them control terribly and as the game progresses through each world, these mini game segments become more frequent. The first world has one mini game level, the second has two, the third and fourth have three, and the final world has four, five if you consider that most of the game's final boss is a shooting segment that controls similarly to the other minigames. I want to bring special attention to the driving minigames in the second and fourth world, as not only do they control terribly, but the physics behind the cars are janky as all hell. In both instances it felt like I would have to hope the physics screwed over the other racers in order for me to win, rather than anything I did directly. It's a shame too because I think Sly controls pretty well, and is fun to play with even if there isn't that much going on his levels. Another criticism i have towards the game is it's health system, as without a lucky charm, Sly always dies in one hit. While i didnt take issue with this in Sly's levels due to their focus on stealth, the minigame segments are made even worse when getting hit even once forces a restart. While I didn't completely hate my time with this one, I don't see myself replaying it anytime soon.