Talking about Revue Starlight is not an easy task, it’s a game I’m a bit conflicted.
As a game it’s not good at all, the gameplay is not fun, it’s a very basic turn based gameplay, PVE is piss easy, and PVP is mostly determined by power creep, so there’s no real strategy during the fights.
The gameplay parts are also poorly implemented into the game since it’s removed from the main story, it has no relevance being there, it’s just a way to unlock the rest of the story. The only strength of the fights is actually to listen to the songs you want during the activation of the climax of your characters (you can choose the song of your choice, there’s more than 50 of them I think since there are the insert songs of the anime, of the stage plays, of Re Live).
These songs give bonus to your characters, but you don’t care on PVP since it’s so easy, you just choose the song you want.

The gacha aspect is also a very serious issue, it’s a game wanting to take all your money by showing you very beautiful artworks of the characters you want to have, but there’s no way to farm gems to roll, you have to spend money on it (something I refuse to do).

The live 2D sprites are very charming and expressive, all the main characters (and there are more than 30 of them including some of them who only appears during the events and school stories) are dubbed, and it’s a bliss since it makes the game really lively. But the direction of the scenes is very poor, there is very few CG during the main story (the rare ones are good but it’s not on par with a lot of the visual novels I played).
The music is beautiful but except the insert songs, their number is too low, and that’s a shame even if I like them a lot.

But even if all the flaws I wrote about, guess what ? I JUST DON’T GIVE A F***.

Why ? Simply because Revue Starlight without hesitation has my favorite video game story by far (and overall, I only like a bit more Utawarerumono Mask of Truth in weeb media).
I had some doubts before starting the game since it’s a gacha, I’ve never played one but I had a lot of stereotypes (a lot of them were true) about this genre of games, I thought the game was only a way to make the fans spend tons of money (it’s the case but not just that), but the game really has a lovely story, central characters all are well developped (and the majority of them are wonderfully developped), and all of them have a relevance to the thematics of the game.

It probably helps that Re Live was written by Tatsuto Higuchin, the main scenarist of the anime and the movie. Re Live perfectly respects the thematics built by the anime and the movie while being its own thing, thematics regarding the importance of evolve as a person, that everything has an end but that’s okay, it’s just how life is, and also to not cling on toxic habits you can develop with other people even if they like you (or if you like them) but can hurt us, preventing us to express what we really want to be.

Of course these are common and grounded thematics, but I love how the Revue Starlight franchise express it in a really metaphorical way (using japanese theater), offering them a context (the stage) to help them express what they really feel, to break the mask they can have in their life, while showing us how they can shine. So I can say I was delighted to see the game respecting the anime and the movie.

I also need to say that the main story of Re Live is taking place after the events of the anime, so you need to watch it before playing Re Live, and the last arc of the game also has some references to the movie (I don’t think it’s mandatory to watch it to read it, but it’s better for the overall experience regarding the interactions of two characters during the last arc).

But of course, if it was only that (handling thematics already dealt with), it would have been a bit redundant since the anime and the movie already had these themes, especially given the main story is taking place after the events of anime. So I was pleased to discover a lot of new characters, the main story expands very naturally the setting of Revue Starlight, there’s now 4 schools instead of just one (Seisho, Rinmeikan, Siegfeld and Frontier).

These 3 new schools all have a different situation compared to Seisho, and their goal is also different, it gives to all these schools a very varied tone while impacting the relations between the characters. The new cast is extremely endearing, I even think some of them are even better than the original cast. There very varied situations of the characters gives a new flair to the thematics of the anime and the movie, and the greatest strength of Re Live, it’s that all of them will have their moment to shine, I never saw (in a weeb medium at least) so many characters having their moment to shine (even if some characters are more important than others).

Some characters like Aruru of Frontier (my favorite character and I didn’t even like her at the begining), Akira (Siegfeld) or Tomoe are at least on par with the original cast of Starlight.
The original cast has less development than the new cast, but I really like how their past experiences help the other girls of the schools, they feel like mentors and you really feel how they evolved during the anime, it was lovely to see how past events helped them becoming better people, while helping others at the same time.

Another strength of the main story is that it takes more time to build the relations between the characters (without having the pacing of a slice of life visual novel, I would not say it’s a slow burn reading), I think it was something a bit missing with the anime since developing 9 characters with 12 episodes was not enough. Adding that, the fact that it’s a gacha with a updated content allow introducing event stories developing even more the characters using the stage plays they are in, since they often use their outlook of life to play the characters they are playing, and there are sometimes some parallels between their past and how it will influence the plays.

One flaw is that it makes the chronology of story events a bit confusing, sometimes it’s hard to know when an event story happened, even if these event stories are mostly a addition to make the characters even more flashed out and enjoyable, there are not a lot of references to these events in the main story.

But if I already really enjoyed the main story of Re Live, it’s the final arc (Arcana Arcadia, the last half of the main story), and it was phenomenal, it’s at least as good as the movie (and the movie is awesome to me).
Atcana Arcadia brillantly used everything built during the main story to offer an amazing pay-off regarding the characters, a lot of scenes were really emotionally resonant to me, it’s really during this arc that the build-up of the character and the plot came to fruition. The metaphorical aspect of Revue Starlight is very present (while being very clear, I think Re Live is overall more accessible than the anime and the movie), the concept of the arc is genius and make the characters really think about themselves.
This arc also warps up the story in a lovely way, the main story lands the ending perfectly, it has no flaws in my eyes and it’s a miracle since I’m someone very picky.
I would like to wrote more about Arcana Arcadia without spoiling, but the pay-off of the story is amazing, it gave me more emotions and fulfillment than any other games I’ve played.
The six insert songs used during this arc are all incredible (special mention to Yami o Terasu Mono, this song and the context broke my heart) even if it’s a shame that the game only used a small part of the song instead of playing the song in its entirety.
Arcana Arcadia makes of Revue Starlight Re Live a wonderful metaphorical journey where characters look out of themselves, are lost in what they are, are doubtful, but are also evolving and shining brightly, and it was so beautiful, nothing can give me so much vigor than Revue Starlight.

Of course there are some contrivances in the plotting, it’s nothing new, it’s Revue Starlight and it was already established in the anime, the main story sometimes ask the player a suspension of disbelief since sometimes the twists are like «just shut up, it’s magic ». But that’s also the beauty of Revue Starlight, everything can happen on stage.

Thanks Revue Starlight Re Live even if you are a sticky gacha. I was already a big fan of Revue Starlight but the gacha made me a fan even more, and I love it also for allowing other stage plays with the dubbers of the game, it’s a joy since I love the songs of the franchises, there are a lot of new songs inspired by the characters of the gacha.

First of all, I'm not sure if I can say I've actually "completed" the game. I rebuilt the community center, finished the mines and got to 100 on the skull cavern. I made some progress on Ginger Island but I didn't complete all of the golden walnut request things, nor the fossil, nor the vaguely racist frog's quest.

It's an alright game. There's lots of polish put into it, it streamlines a lot of farming game mechanics that feel slow in other games, it has a decent amount of content and it's very moddable. Pretty much all the problems I have with this game are personal preferences. Except fence decay, I think that's just stupid.

I think the streamlining of the mechanics works really well for most people, but it just made the game both too overwhelming and too slow for me. Since you can cram more activities in a single day, it's very easy to make a schedule for yourself that gets completely ruined if you don't optimize every single day. Or plant too much and then lack stamina for literally anything else.

I think farming games should be a little obtuse! There should be things in between you and the farm. Not too many things to the point where farming has no point (Harvestella), but having a story to follow or just some unique (non procedural) dungeons to go through make the whole experience more diverse. During the later parts of the game, it was pretty much just a numbers game. Ironic how even doing the community bundle instead of Joja makes you hyperfocus on productivity.

I'm not sure how much the game wants me to care about these characters. They're all interesting and have at least some backstory, but the way it's presented doesn't really click with me. Some of the writing feels... borderline tone deaf, such as the whole thing with George and treating his disability as a flaw. Shane is a dickhead for most of the game as well, I don't know how anyone can like him. Between Shane, Clint, Pierre and Lewis, a lot of people in this town are questionable and I simply don't feel like becoming friends with them at all.

There's the whole lore about the dwarves and shadow people war, the empire and republic war, the elves dying out, the literal wizard, and yet the game doesn't really tell you anything. It feels like it doesn't want to tell you anything. It feels like all these details were made to justify making flavor text more interesting, without making said lore interesting by itself.

But to be fair, that's sort of the point of the game. The community center - and the community as a whole - are broken and it's your job to fix it. But even then, it doesn't feel like anything you do is meaningful. Barely anyone visits the center when it's restored. Making a house for Pam to live in instead of her trailer has an emotional cutscene, but only really affects her schedule. Linus and the wizard continue to be somewhat ostracized no matter how much friendship you gather. What's the point? I'm simply a source of number go up for this town whether I'm serving Joja or a couple supernatural beings that use their tremendous power to... rebuild a community center no one really seems to truly care about. Robin certainly doesn't care enough to even consider repairing it herself.

67

Clearing My Backlog #8

Plants vs. Zombies is a game that I’ve been playing on and off for the past 12 years, it’s been a huge part of my life, because it’s actually one of the three games that got me into this medium in the first place; and I’m so happy that it still holds up after all these years — unlike some of the other games I’ve revisited (I’m talking about you, Spider-Man 2). PvZ is filled to the brim with charm; whether it’s the simplistic, yet gorgeous art design, the catchy — and frankly beautiful OST, the varied and addicting gameplay, all of it just fucking works.

There’s so much freedom with how you can approach levels and all of the different modes, I’ve seen people play this game for hundreds of hours, which is a testament to how much variety it truly has. The survival levels in particular allow for a lot of experimentation with different builds, which I didn’t really bother with (past the achievements) because I’m content with leaving a game once I complete it, but it’s great that it has a lot of replay value for other people. My favourite mode was the minigames one; each level was so vastly different from the one before which forced me to reconsider my loadouts and to change my plants up — for which there are plenty of.

A lot of the issues with this game come in the form of technical and QoL stuff, which is to be expected because it’s an old game; but a big one is the lack of a 2x speed mode. Some levels happen to be pretty slow, so when you finish setting up all of your plants, you basically have to watch everything unfold for a while — without doing anything, which can get pretty boring, especially for your second adventure mode playthrough. I literally ended up installing cheat engine so that I could speed some of those levels up. It’s also a bit annoying how there aren’t any resolution settings, the fullscreen version looks like absolute shit, but then the windowed version gets minimized to a very small window, which is just hard to look at.

Overall though, Plants vs. Zombies manages to be an extremely satisfying and addicting tower defense game, with insane levels of variety, that oozes charm out of every aspect. So good.

Crazy Dave is an icon.

Playtime: 31.6 hours

Every Game I've Ever Played - Ranked (By Score)
Clearing My Backlog
2010 - Ranked

49

Exit the Gungeon is like the lite version of its predecessor, it removes everything that made the original unique, and waters every mechanic down to its simplest and most barebones form. All of the floors, guns, items, enemies, and bosses are less varied; which makes sense because this was apparently a mobile game that was made for Apple Arcade, that was eventually ported to PC. It’s just funny how I can happily play Enter for 90+ hours, but then get bored of this one when I've only put in 20 hours. There’s nothing here that has any longevity, you’ll play through everything the game has to offer in about 10 hours if you’re buying items/guns from vendors.

There’s still a lot of fun to be had with the bosses as they’re all mostly enjoyable and rewarding to master, except the Bolt Python… that mf can fuck right off. The new combo mechanic is hit or miss; I like how it rewards skill, but on the other hand, bosses can become annoying to fight if you happen to mess up once and then have to use the shittiest weapons known to man, it just makes me want to restart the run more than anything else. This is also made worse by how it can’t be turned off, so you’re essentially forced to use a bunch of bad weapons whether you want to or not (and no, turning on arsenal mode doesn’t help).

I have no idea why Dodge Roll even made this— instead of focusing on a better and bigger sequel to the first game, hopefully that’s still being worked on… because man, this ain’t it.

Some notes:
- The music is still great, but they haven’t exactly changed anything, or even added new tracks… I think? It’s honestly a bit hard to tell.
- I hate how long the exit animation takes to play when you complete a run, it’s frustrating to scroll past the same credits for the 20th time.

Playtime: 25.6 hours

Every Game I've Ever Played - Ranked (By Score)
2019 - Ranked

9

Why do so many people seem to think that this is the holy grail of Ubisoft games? It's more repetitive than their most recent ones and people always bring up Vaas as the one saving factor when he's barely in the game and isn't at all a good character, his performance is the only memorable thing about him. Every single character is a raging stereotype and every piece of accompanying dialogue seems like it was written by a 14 year old that thinks they know how real people speak.

The story is no better, it has no sense of pace or complexity or nuance, the whole game is basically one giant fetch quest with the occasional "destroy this location" mission being thrown in. Act 2 was especially boring, of the missions that I can actually remember the ones where you have to find a compass and then its multiple pieces was some of the most boring shit I've played in a long time, same with that one mission at the end of the game where you have to sneak past a million guards without being detected, like how is that supposed to be fun? Who approved that?

The open world is horrible as well, the setting is just not fucking fun man... the terrain is a nightmare to traverse when you don't have the wingsuit which is for 2/3 of the game but by then it's too late because the game is almost over and you don't even get that many chances to use it if you're not specifically looking to use it. This game is just bland bland BLAND

So yeah, probably the worst Far Cry game.

Every Game I've Ever Played - Ranked (By Score)
Ubisoft - Ranked
Far Cry - Ranked
2012 - Ranked

I tried very much liking this as a cozy game between bigger rpgs and perhaps something to enjoy at airports and travels, but I really did not find this game relaxing, engaging or interesting. From the get go you are supposed to talk to 28 citizens that randomly wander around, which is more tedious than interesting or engaging, I can't remember differences between 28 samey characters that appear in same places. The short days are more anxious for me than good design. I never know where to go or what to do. The characters aren't that interesting. The game seriously lacks tutorial system or just something telling how things work, I constantly find new things that I should've known for long. Yeah this is not for me in my current mind set.