I was listening to a Siivagunner rip of the game because I saw a cute blonde anime girl with something that look like either a facemask or glasses (turns out it was makeup, wtv it's cute) and then I saw it was free on steam and decided to try it.

My fondness for quirky blonde anime girls with facemask aside, the game was actually a surprisingly fun and charming game with a lot of really neat ideas, I mean I never coded in JavaScript and this bitch taught me how to code in JavaScript to play a little puzzle game how neat is that ?

You can feel this is a small project made by a relatively small team on their free time and it's most likely you would've found this on Newgrounds in the late 2000's and in fact that's how the weirdoe forced 2D platforming segments of the game felt like, they're weird, floaty, janky and smells of amateurism, if you can't accept a videogame to not be 200% playable or haven't grow up on the golden age of Flash Games with fucked up physics, these segments will probably make you strike a few nerves.

It doesn't help the fact the game's humour falls into the "quirky for the sake of quirk" category, some jokes landed due to how random they were and some were "hey did you get that reference ?" (often time to other game with a meta element to it, mostly the popular ones like Undertale or DDLC if you ain't tired of them yet) level of low-bro internet humour and sadly this is a significant part of the game since these platforming segment far overstay they're welcome in my opinion.

I kinda wish they pushed the "desktop adventure" aspect further and didn't feel the need to add "an actual videogame" in the middle for all that was worth honestly.

The final boss segment is really creative ! I'm not going to spoil anything but be sure to have a few icons on your desktop for some fun surprises, I dunno how much app the game can detects for that segment but my mind was blown that it was part of the final boss.

And again, Lumi (the main character) is cute enough and the game is dank. It's free anyway so give it a shot and maybe support the devs via donation if you end up enjoying it !

Crash Bandicoot 4 : It's about time is actually 2 different videogames in one.

On one hand, Crash 4 is easily the most polished, most well-rounded, most imaginative and most creative Crash game to have ever released.

The developers at Toys for Bob did an absolute wonderful job looking at the original trilogy and turbo-charged all of the good elements while adding the expertise of years of platforming craftmanship with the game following pretty much the same school of thought as Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze (one of the single best 2D platformer ever created) and applied it to Crash Bandicoot which for all intents and purposes were already kinda like Donkey Kong Country games with a different angles in a sense.

The game has levels that are insanely varied and creative, one world theme is never static and constantly evolves telling a story of its own while introducing new and innovative way to platform around and enjoy the level design.

The main Crash Trilogy wasn't necessary known for the creativity or cohesiveness of their different levels (aside from maybe the first one which had the issue of being a stupidly hard game) but here it's totally different and I'm absolutely happy for it.

Just playing that game from start to finish will give you a decently challenging but fair game that yes can get a bit tough at times (much like Crash 1 was) but never to an unfair degree....

Right ?

Well not exactly...

Because on the other hand, Crash 4 is also the absolute biggest nightmare of a 3D platformer the second you consider going for full completion percentage and turns what is essentially the best Crash game ever into the worst fucking game you've ever fucking played.

Getting the secret and the true ending in this game requires DK64 level of dedication and Rayman 1 level of tolerances to bullshit because this game is downright EVIL at times with full percentage completion requirements.

On top of the game being outright more challenging than any previous game in the series just playing through it casually, you now must be an absolute freaking GOD at Crash Bandicoot to complete it.

Each stages has 6 gems, 3 for collecting 80% of the Wumpa Fruits in a given level, one for breaking all the boxes, one for finishing the level without dying less than 3 times and one that is simply hidden inside the level.

The wumpa and hidden ones are not really all that problematic since you will likely get 80% of the wumpa playing through a stage casually and as for the hidden gems while some of them are truly really well hidden (and will recquire a guide for some of the more egregious one) they change they way you're looking at the levels and you can even stumble upon them on accident. It's just a matter of dedication.

But those box gems ?

Oh god fuck those box gems

See one of the most fun aspect in the older crash games was getting the gems for breaking all the boxes but sometimes it could lead to some frustration when you finish a level and one or two boxes are missing which usually isn't that bad since none of them are truly hidden and there's not that many boxes in a level anyway.

But here the number of boxes per level can get absurd, the first level alone has 107 boxes to break some stages have over fucking 500 of them and it's not even taking into consideration the new types of boxes introduced in this game which makes it more annoying.

AND SOME OF THOSE BOXES ARE HIDDEN IN THE MOST OBNOXIOUS "WHO THOUGHT OF THIS ?" AREAS OF THE STAGE POSSIBLE ! It's already enough to hunt for hidden gems why did they feel the need to hide freaking boxes ! Just so you finish a level and starts developing terminal cancer at the count missing 1 or 3 boxes and then replaying the level and find out they were waaaaaaaay out of reach in places you'd never ever think of looking to.

Oh but that's not all ! Remember the not dying 3 times gem ?

Forget the Dying 3 times thing

This game has an extra bonus collectibles for doing everything aforementioned WITHOUT DYING ONCE

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME ?

The game just randomly expects perfection for you and with all the repetitions, and the addition of N.Verted levels which doubles the amount of stages by Two and the Tape levels this is a 3D platformer that will take you Skyrim level of game time to complete.

Completing crash games has always been 80% of the fun in those games but that was never that much of a daunting task, here it's just bullshit and while the game expects perfection from you, the game isn't entirely perfect either.

Sure it looks and feels polished but the slight freaking inconsistency becomes a mountain once you're trying to be perfect.

I'd say, just play the game regularly, yes you will be missing on 80% of the content but you'll thank me later, it's not WORTH IT IN THE SLIGHTEST

The developers at Toys for Bob need to freaking chill and stop designing their freaking game like goddamn Kaizo hacks because it's hands down the single most Sisyphean videogame ever conceived.

I still recommend it tho... mostly for what I said at the start but good god, save yourself from hell if you can

The saddest attempt at a live service game that I've ever seen, it's been 2 years and the game is still stuck in early access, still doesn't have co-op and still plays like shit.

The fact they spent most of their budget for this piece of crap on getting an English dub that nobody in the fandom gave a shit about instead of making the game playable or having interesting features that will actually compel people to spend time on their shitty battle pass (because yes, the game isn't finished but putting micro-transaction was an absolute priority).

The main campaign might as well be a placeholder, so little effort has been put into it that it's not worth the grind, you're just playing Muv-Luv Alternative but without its brillant narrative and direction and with shitty gameplay segment which forces you to grind to continue the story.

This game is a pure scam of the highest degree that it died faster than it lived with only 4 active player on the damn thing who probably can't afford a copy of Armored Core 6

Easily one of the worst mecha-game I've ever played and the worst Muv-Luv related title ever released easily

I expected nothing and I still got blown away, a very simple yet terribly smart game which reminded of my experience trying to figure out the first Zelda back in the day with the same level of confusion

The later half is definitely more on the cryptic side of things but holy shit it's also the smartest part of the game

There's tons of secrets I probably missed but I got the true ending and found the golden path on my own and I love gaming fr

Slightly better than the first 1 because the game is faster and more well paced and we definitely needed more Sonic Advenutre Clone in these days and age.

The game perfectly recapture all the right sensation from these games with tons of room to maneuver around at high speed with tons of branching paths and verticality as well as cool short cut, the game might be fun to speedrun and the game indeed does reward you for completing stage as fast as possible.

Sadly it reproduces SA a bit too well in all of its glory and all of its horror, the jank is everywhere especially in the wall climbing and looping segment which can get truly irritating as you have barely control over them and fucking up once means a certain death which gets slightly annoying during the more spectacle oriented segment when they don't work properly

That tower level can suck my nuts, the combat system still feels like an after thought that I just didn't bother with outside of boss battles which outside of having a great music sadly are all absolutely goddawful to actually fight and clearly the weakest part of the game

Overall, it's alright, tons of room for improvement and I heard Spark 3 finally hits the series strike.

Chained Echoes : Impressive yet flawed

If you know me, you know that I love myself some classic JRPG especially of the SNES-PS1 era variety, there’s a magic to these grand epic journey of traveling a gigantic world on foot, uncovering the secret and mystery of its setting, experience memorable scene written by master hands with a bit of endearing jank to the style.

So when I heard about Chained Echoes through some of my friends and RPG youtubers and saw that it was on the Gamepass (that I got for free thanks to a friend of mine who got a spare code), I was like “Look why not”. I was a little worried about getting into Chained Echoes at first, usually speaking I feel like western developers trying their hand at the Japanese style of RPG usually ends up feeling try hard and forced and without lying to you that’s the impression I got from the game at first.

But then upon realizing that the entire game was made by literally one dude on his spare time on kickstarter money, I started to reconsider my position and while the first few hours of the game were a bit rough eventually upon reaching the 2nd act of the game everything started to click in my head once we got access to the Sky Armors which opens up the game significantly in terms of exploration and a decent chunk of superbly well-crafted and put together side content (actually these are some of the best side-quest I’ve seen from this genre since the PS2 era at least !).

Chained Echoes is not gonna break any new ground, the game owes a lot of its solid foundations to what came before it, if I have to boil down the story to its mere essential, I’d say it’s the bizarro child of Final Fantasy Tactics and Xenogears ! Both incredibly ambitious titles with a crazy ambitious scale and tone for their times mixed together with the same level of ambition as the titles of old. The game isn’t shy about its inspiration and while it can feel try hard at times because it’s a genre that tends not to reinvent its wheels all too often, I can only admire the sheer effort and passion that was put into such a project. The world of the game is vast and full of details, various cultures and mythologies clashing with each other, it has warring factions and characters working for their own agenda with a very Matsuno style of human to human conflict with a tints of gray morality and nuance that I admire a lot. The character writing is also nothing to shy on about, Glenn for exemple is an interesting twist on the hard-boiled soldier boil haunted by the sins crawling down his back and always trying to one-up himself for the mistakes he previously committed, this actually takes an interesting direction later into the story when we realize the true nature behind his existence and I actually like how well the game paces its revelations, it’s not a constant rollercoaster ride but they’re placed at just the right time to keep you going further and get more and more invested into it.

The game setting is super ambitious and while that’s definitely one of the game's biggest strengths it also comes to the game detriments especially near the end of the game, the last act of Chained Echoes feels very anti-climatic and very sequel baity. I don’t know if Matthias plans on making a sequel to this game and considering it already took 6 years to do all of this, I don’t think this will happen very soon or at all which is why I think that a co-writer would’ve helped tampers Mathias’s ambition down a bit for what is essentially a small indie release which was probably going to be a one hit wonder anyway.
The last act over-indulges on its lore, events go by super fast, arcs are wrapped up in very ungracious fashion, the game suddenly is way too easy due to the abundance of options you get by the late game and the final boss being more of a narrative spectacle than a challenge. Literally 2 minor but significant villain just disappear into nothingness never to be heard from again, the big bad god deity the game has been urging us about never shows up at all and the conclusion to the story feels very tacked on and cheesy when the rest of the game wasn’t so sappy about “redemption” for its most villainous characters. With many questions left unanswered, let’s just say that what was a pleasant ride kinda ended on a wet fart, I literally wasn’t thinking the game would end during the final dungeon but it actually did and it’s weird as shit, let’s hope a sequel or at least DLC’s or in the work to bounce back from all of this, cause I could genuinely see this being the solid basis for a whole franchise if done correctly.

So while the story is indeed pretty surprising and enjoyable, it’s held back by Matthias' ambition being way too big for the kind of project he’s working on, I can say that ambition helped make the rest of the game all the more enjoyable.

One thing that’s immediately clear right off the bat is how gorgeous the game looks, this is some truly high quality pixel-art right there and at times the game has some pretty stunning looking areas and sprites. The only thing I’m not too big on are the character portraits, they’re not terrible but the fact they only have one expression and the artstyle is pretty uneven between characters makes me feel like these were an unnecessary additions which at times takes away from the intensity or emotions of the scenes, I would’ve rather not have any portraits at all if that was going to be the end result, Glenn’s face especially makes it very hard to take all of his emotional trauma-dumping seriously when he’s just blankly staring into the void with a neutral expression all the time.

Music wise, it’s just ok, it gets the job done, can’t say I was impressed by this game soundtrack it sounds very “everyday snes game” which is about as much of a decent compliment I can give to it.

Now let’s talk about the juicy part of today’s review which is the gameplay. Chained Echoes goes a long way towards doing the thing most JRPG inspired indie games do by trying to “fix” some of the more “tedious” elements of JRPG’s to make for a smoother experience. I personally am someone who’s grown too attached to the roughness of most JRPG systems. I’m a guy who has NES games amongst his favorites despite not being from this generation at all, so I’m going to give my most honest and brutal opinion on the matter.

I don’t think JRPG as a genre needs “fixing” and there has never been an attempt in recent memory that has actually managed to fully convince me that trying to do so ends up in a more fulfilling or even fun experience. Grinding is not a problem in any JRPG’s since the SNES, in fact the only people I see complain about grinding are the people who plays Pokemon and tried a single JRPG once and got bored fast despite the fact that Pokemon has been way behind the curve on its game design ever since the very first generation and is something you notice even more when going on self-imposed challenge to make the game more appreciable as an adult.

In fact, I will defend the idea of grinding as an accessibility function, while most RPG don’t rely on overleveling to get things done as a good game is often supported by various system to circumvent the level curve, grinding for levels is an option that I at least like to have and liked to have especially as a kid when my brain couldn’t process the dullness of such an activity.

In fact, traditional levels and growth structure actually allows to have a better sense of progression, it’s ok for regular encounters in RPG to be mindless because for the most part, part of the fun is figuring out a set strategy to go through these encounters faster and also the game can better control its difficulty and balance with random encounters than field encounters which encourages people to overlevel on reflex (or at least that’s true for me because my OCD refuses to see a single mob left on the screen).

With that said Chained Echoes actually has a few fun systems but not all of which fully convinced me to think of them as a significant improvement over more traditional old-school RPG and it’s mostly due to a weird imbalance between the random encounters and the bosses.

You can’t level up through battle in this game, you level up through getting grimoire shards that you get at certain key point in the game (usually after defeating a boss) or through completing the game reward board which is an achievement system that rewards you for doing certain task and by chaining them together on a grid, you get points to get bigger rewards like the aforementioned grimoire shards.

This way of gatekeeping progression pushes a bigger emphasis on exploring to be more powerful rather than fighting many enemies to be more powerful but here comes the issue I have with said system. Regular encounters can be a bitch to go through, in fact I will say that this game have the quite annoying tendency to have regular encounters sometimes be more challenging than bosses themselves, I actually died more often on these than I did on the game various bosses which are often more straightforward in how you’re supposed to approach them (although some of them have interesting gimmicks that are quite cool to figure out, especially in the end-game). Because of this, you rarely ever feel like you’re getting more powerful, sure you unlock more options, you get more passive abilities, you get more active skills but that doesn’t change that most fight in this game can be a drag and an half and while the encounters are field based like Chrono Trigger, it doesn’t change that you’re going to spend a lot of time on those anyway (and don’t you dare use quick travel or else most of them will respawn).

Which bothers me because for how tough some of these encounters are, the reward is practically non-existent, you get some materials which exist only to be sold at shop to get extra cash (and “deals”) or upgrade your equipment and some SP to level up your skills which takes so much goddamn point to upgrade and you get so little SP that it doesn’t feel like an actual good substitute for exp.

While it creates an interesting new approach to combat in which most encounter cannot simply be mashed through, it does get tiring after a while especially with how bloated and inflated some of the enemies HP bars can be, making most strategies around taking out multiple enemies with multi-target attack often fruitless and a time waste at worst.
I know some people actually praised this approach for being unique and not let regular encounters be dull but I’m not sure I think giving that level of importance to regular encounters is always that great of an idea, it really depends on a case by case basis and a game where you barely even feel an actual sense of progression because the game decides for you what options you may have at certain point (with some space for customisation but not by much) can be pretty ass at time.

But the fights are still incredibly fun anyway, the game is challenging in all the right place, the synergy meter mechanic is a great take on traditional turn-based system that prevents you from again mashing through them like a maniac, the game does a few interesting things with that synergy meter but It quickly loses its steam as the game progresses, I wish more bosses would mess around with that meter or gimmicks involving that meter being more prevalent but oh well, I’ll take what I get (especially since THANK GOD they let status effect actually work on bosses so stalling strats are actually viable).

There’s a part of the progression system I forgot to mention which is the weapon and armor upgrade system. Simply put, this entire part of the game is needlessly complex but also terribly pointless. The idea is that you can upgrade your gears to make them stronger and upgrade the number of crystal slots available to them just like materia. Attaching these crystals that you can farm at certain gathering points on the map allows your gear to get new properties like more passive abilities that help you in battle.

The problem with these is how tedious the entire process is. You have to combine crystals of the same type to make a stronger crystal but wait can’t reuse a crystal you already used silly ! Also since crystals attach themselves to weapons, it means you’re gonna spend a few minutes upgrading and tinkling with said weapon and have all that effort being for naught as you get the higher tier of weapon literally 10 min after you spend time upgrading the previous one.

It’s especially grating in the mid-game where you constantly get new gear in quick successions so at one point, you just completely ignore that aspect of the game and frankly the game hasn’t been made more or less difficult from me completely ignoring this feature even in the later part of the game or the optional content so whatever.

Another feature of the game that went solely underutilized are the class emblems which is the closest thing this game has to a job system but closely resembles more guardian forces or master quartz from Trails, it’s an equipable item that gives you a stat boost and a couple of passive and active skills, most of which are just worse version of skills you can already unlock from the skill tab once you level up meaning that outside of the first one you get which let any characters becoming an healer (especially since you don’t have one until at least act 2 and she’s not really all that useful with Health and Mana always replenishing after battles).

In general the game is bloated with annoying filler passive like “do more damage to x type of enemies” but since the encounters are fixed and the game erased grinding from its gameplay loop, I don’t see the point of these being a thing at all, heck the Blue Mage character literally only has that kind of passive (and also is the worst blue mage I’ve ever seen in an RPG).
There’s also the Sky Armors, much like Xenogears, the game oftentimes have fights taking place inside giant mechs which are more or less customizable. These are way better than the ones from Xenogears as they actually require a bit of thinking and strategy to handle the synergie bar this time around but once you figure out the trick to it, they become pretty dull compared to the on-foot encounters, still it’s a nice pace breaker if nothing else.

But what the Sky Armors add to the game is the possibility of fast seamless travel across the game's various maps and the second you get them during the second act, the game evolves from a mostly linear structure to an exploration galore of epic proportions !

In fact, the second and third act of the game was the best part for me, the game opens up significantly and shows us its side-content and believe me, that side-content is to die for ! Between the extremely rewarding and fun exploration complete with the game super tight level design with many secrets to find, the recruitable NPC’s you can add to your newly build home base which adds different new mechanics in the game and makes your central hub prettier the more you go back to it and of course the side-questing which is to die for.

I’ve grown pretty tired of the way side-quest are handled in RPG’s these days, a lot of filler content without much substance with quality over quantity plastered all over it, tedious fetch quest that forces you to go back and forth between locations to do specific task or collect X amount of items but there’s nothing of the sort in this game, oh hell no !

Each side-quest comes with proper story development, character arcs and even their own mini-dungeons and bosses ! These side-quests are so rich and plentiful that it made me feel like I was playing an actual golden age RPG again, they were all super fun and incredibly rewarding as they help you understand more about the world and its secrets as well as making your main cast and the side-characters more interesting.

Heck there’s even a super-side-quest that’s less telegraphed than the rest of them which leads you on a quest to hunt the game various superbosses and that quest is long sprawling multiple new environments and dungeons and feel like actual secrets you stumble upon at random and heck, it leads to an even cooler superboss that the game only slightly hinted at earlier during one of the game side-quest and let’s just say that it was a great surprise and a great moment for me as these superbosses are truly excellent !

So in the end can Chained echoes stand on its own on the shoulders of giant, hey maybe not but it definitely is a more competent attempt at living up to these classics and I’m sure that with a bit of tweaking and perhaps a sequel to build up on its truly solid foundations, it could end up being really special and the game has no shortage of very engaging and profound moments that are synonymous of the style of game it’s trying to emulate and like its inspiration was the result of ambitions being led astray by the limitations of the industry but that’s life.

Considering most of the game is a one man job, it is thoroughly impressive all the way through but doesn’t change the fact that maybe with a few more people on board, it could’ve been perhaps even better than what it reached out to be !

Overall, play Chained Echoes, it’s a good time if nothing else.

Pretty average 2D Sonic clone that far overstays its welcome, it can sometimes be fun but the levels are often way too long and confusing to navigate any Jester Power that isn't the Edgy transformation make the late game platforming painfully unfun especially with how slippery Spark gets (and they expect you to do precise platforming with this control scheme).

Ennemies are for the most part a bother and they truly went overkill in some of the later areas by adding a shit load of them and especially some that take multiple hit, I know they're going for a different experience than base 2D Sonic but there's a reason 2D Sonic and combat don't really go well together.

I didn't bother finishing Fark mode, the parry mechanic is super janky and the reduced health made every boss encounter and areas full of ennemies and hazard a slog and a pain to go through.

However, it's not totally awful and there's some fun to be had here with the different transformations and the early parts of the game. There's also some cool level gimmick

Good to pass the time but nothing much behind it aside from the sick ass OST

Sonic Frontiers is a game I think will probably please more so the hardcore fans of Sonic than people like me who just casually check out these games either with fond nostalgia or pure ironic enjoyment.

I'm actually happy that at least on the writing department, Sonic is finally trying again, Sonic stories have never been amazing but the earlier 3D entry just scratch that autistic itch of camp and seriousness that can only be replicated either here or the Kingdom Hearts series.

No more meta cynicism, the game fully embraces its lore and try to haphazardly put all of it into a coherent timeline, which I'm ngl, I didn't even know most of these were meant to have any connection past characters returning.

The game as usual for Sonic games is a lot of interesting ideas held back by a lack of polish (especially in how rough the game feels to play) and questionable design decision that are specifically made to be anti-fun and seems to not understand the strength of its own gameplay loop.

Roaming around the open-world as Sonic feels good but then you realize that you're just speeding through a succession of randomly placed automated obstacle courses which quickly become repetitive and often hinders actual exploration (especially when you're thrown into a forced 2D section for no reasons like it happened oh so many times on the 3rd island) but the game goblin gamer brain effect tend to make these more fun on quick succession than they actually are.

The Cyberspace levels however are for the most part all fucking dogshit, the gameplay stops being responsive, you're nerfed in your abilities, most of them are insanely easy and the ones that aren't are an annoyance and to top it all of a bunch of them are recycled from previous Sonic games and all have the 4 same level skins plastered over them.

Some Cyberspace levels are taken from the Adventure era title and these just do not work with the wack ass physic and gameplay of these sections of the game and don't get me started on the fully 2D levels which makes me wonder why Sonic team is still fucking trying with these when so many people have complained about the 2D sections in all the previous titles that had them.

There's combat in this game, it's nothing remarkable, gets old very fast and makes you question why they even try to have that kind of gameplay that don't really fit in a Sonic game but aight

The bosses while nothing special and kinda wacky are actually the highlight of the game thanks to the absolutely banging music playing that just makes you feel like anime !

The music aren't Crush 40 levels of iconic but they have MGR vibe and I think every videogames in the world need MGR style vocal track it just improves everything

Why is the Final Boss an Ikaruga stage tho ?

Believe me, I LOVE Ikaruga but it was super out of place and could've been even more epic had they actually made a proper boss fight here

Other than that huh...

Game's fine

Spark 3 definitely clears it tho lol

Mother 1 (that I'm playing through this official English release known as "Earthbound Beginning) is a game that if anything is confident in what experience it's delivering.

The game is charming and the 80's sobriety of it all make for a truly unique experience, the game doesn't tell you much outside of a small context at the start and boom, you're send off to a bizarre adventure of epic proportions, so epic in fact that the game overworld feels as massive as an actual U.S. state.

The game in general "works", very early on you're introduced to all the different mechanics of the game as well as a main objective that you don't fully understand yet but that you do eventually do and it's done with some elegance that I rarely ever felt the need to check out a guide and only 2 out of the 8 melodies are a bit more cryptic but not really if you talk to all the NPC's which all have charming albeit simple dialogues because of the limitation of that era.

The game is weird and embraces its weirdness, it's absolutely a rough game don't get me wrong at time I wanted to throw my controller at some of the bullshit curveball this game throws at you and the jank would probably kill the average zoomer and make games like the early Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy feel like modern triple-A production.

But eventually, you do start to love it, I can see how this game and perhaps more its sequel that I have yet to experience was so influential on gaming in Japan, I'm surprised at how sincere it all feels too, it's less about mocking or parodying the tropes of JRPG at the time more so than to transform them into something truly unique and bizarre and the comedy never feel forced, it feels like a natural part of the world.

The ending of the game is also so freaking amazing, having an ending like this on the NES of all thing is kinda crazy, the final boss is perhaps the most ambitious display of ludo-narration I've seen from this time period

Congratulation Itoi-San, I'm ready for your wild ride

Fun little tech demo for Celeste 6th anniversary ! I really enjoyed it !

The physic can be a bit loose but you definitely get used to it and I think they did a solid job reinterpreting Celeste gameplay into 3D.

I wish this was a full game (much like I wish Celeste 2 was a full game) but what's here is really neat !

Also Maddeline confirmed gay we love to see it !

Dark Souls : Timeless Classic or Outdated ?

Thinking back on it, 2011 was kind of an insane year for gaming as a whole, we were reaching near the end of the seventh generation of console which has been kinda dry in its first few years and suddenly boom, we got classic after classic after classic released on the daily (and Zelda Skyward Sword).

From Portal 2 to Skyrim to the Binding of Isaac and so much more, mostly games that are still fondly remembered to this day and are talked about as seminal classics of their respective genre.

But one of these games was always an outlier, a game that’s seemingly in opposition to every genre and gaming convention of that era, a game that made people re-discover the simple joy of struggling through a rigid learning curve and face the challenges ahead of a fundamentally flawed but terribly well executed experience. A masterpiece that invented an entire sub-genre onto its own due to how influential and iconic it became over the years.

That game is Dark Souls

Now for the longest time I have avoided the hype surrounding From Software’s title, it’s one of these gaping hole in my gaming culture that I never felt like catching up on especially now that this new subseries of SoulsBornKiroRing has so many outings all of them improving on the last and sweeping awards like a fat kids at the donut alley. I simply felt that I’ve missed out on the hype around these games and that I simply just wouldn’t get it and tbf it didn’t particularly look appealing either from the outside.

I’ve seen footages of Dark Souls and heard a bit about what it’s about but it never tempted me, I enjoy difficult games but games that pride themselves on being difficult because of some bullshit mechanics and hitboxes, Idk, the game felt like an overhyped jank fest that somehow caught on because gaming was becoming more and more casual friendly and people desperately needed that resistance (and I’d tell these people to go play some shmups instead).

But a week ago, a good friend of mine “Golden “Capybara” Warframe” which made me do the worst money investment in my life decided to make up for it by gifting me the 2018 remastered version of the original Dark Souls on Steam, suffice to say that the “remastered” aspect of the title completely went past by me because of my shit tier PC that manages to struggle running this game properly without lowering all the settings possible so I won’t be commenting too much on the technical aspect of the game since it would be unfair. Despite all this I rarely if ever experienced any issues aside from some FPS drops here and there that made some sections of the game more painful than they should have.

So I said, screw it, I was getting more and more curious about this From Software hype and now I had little to no excuses not to check it and fill that gap in my knowledge to satiate some weirdo sense of curiosity.

And the result was something deeply interesting that made me felt all kinds of contradicting emotions all clashing to understand what just happened.
I’m gonna cut straight to the chase here, a lot of games these days are so well loved and recognizable that you can have an idea of what to expect just by cultural osmosis alone. But not Dark Souls.

Yeah sure I knew about some stuff like the Asylum Demon, Tupac and Biggie and the crushing difficulty that’s haphazardly plastered on every marketing campaign for the game but I was nonetheless thoroughly surprised and in awe at the rest of the experience.

Dark Souls is, in all but age, an 80’s video game that somehow got lost in the year 2011 and I mean that in the best of ways and also in the worst. It’s a game that asks a lot from you and most importantly something that a lot of gamers have forgotten about “Patience”.

A lot of design choice in this game feels completely ass backward, not being able to pause the game at all, very old-school menu navigation that feels straight out of some PC Adventure game with tons of stats and numbers the game barely explains to you, enemies that never and I mean NEVER give up purchasing you so you’re almost always in a position of struggle, very little to no indication to what the next step of your quest is supposed to be and of course the absolute king of bullshit stuff, having to run back from the last checkpoint to retry a boss that you failed to fend off.

The game asks a lot from you right from the start and it can be pretty daunting especially since the game has a completely blind trust in its players to understand and work around some of its more cryptic game mechanics. But this blind trust actually enhances the experience.

Dark Souls is a game that’s super adaptable, no matter the build you’re going for there’s hardly any way to fuck you over and having to re-start your game since the game can easily be finished no matter what you’re going for and will simply require a different set of skills to get around.

By default, I went with the adventurer class, a pretty balanced build that’s more targeted towards dexterity so I naturally went for a full dexterity build which yes, limited my options of gear by a lot (since you also have to upgrade strength if you want to profit from using Katanas, Halberds and spears) and made me do less raw damage in favor of faster hits (well as fast as the game allows). My final weapon was the Painting Guardian Sword, a powerful blade that carried my ass through the second act of the game but also has a pitiful range forcing me to be really up close and personal toward the enemies or else I’ll miss my shots (which happened a lot).

I’ve barely used any ranged options because I simply couldn’t figure out how the spell system works and bows were complete ass.

And despite all of this and despite the fact that I feel like this build wasn’t really all that fun to use, it was nonetheless effective and I don’t know how my experience would’ve been had I gone for something more meaty like a fat roll strength build or a build based on magic and that approach to how much freedom the game allows you to have is simply fantastic.

In fact the freedom doesn’t just stop at the build you can have, it also starts with the way the game world is overall structured. Dark Souls isn’t an open-world game in the traditional sense but more in a Metroid sense, each area is connected to another one and you can reach for certain end-game places very early on and get stuck in the bone zone. This can come to the games detriment especially for new players who are going to learn the hard way that these skeletons are not meant to be fought at their current level but in the end nothing stops you from just going for it and even reach all the way down to the end of the catacombs and beyond if they truly feel like it.

The game doesn’t really give that much indication to where you’re supposed to go next, someone at the start of the game tells you about a prophecy, about a chosen undead that needs to do very specific things in order to progress like ringing some bells. But the game won’t tell you for the most part how to access these parts. In fact, something that’s magical about at least the early part of the game is how interconnected the world is, the game doesn’t have any sort of fast-travel system until the midway point. This forces you to memorize the layout of the world, unlock shortcuts, and find the fastest route to your next destination.

Heck at the start of the game, you can even start with something called “The Master Key” which allows you to open any doors in the game and skip huge chunks of it if you so desire (and you bet your ass I’m skipping Blight Town the next time I play through this game).

While the game can feel unwelcoming, cryptic and oftentimes disorienting especially towards blind new players, it compensates by making you re-discover the simple joy of struggling through a game, barely knowing what you’re getting into and being amazed by it at every second.

But in order to fully appreciate it, you first need to get past the first wall that’s the rigid learning curve of this game. To adapt yourself to its clunky sometimes counter-intuitive control schemes and mechanics and I can understand how for some people that was the end of the line and they never touched the game ever again after a first bad experience of not knowing what the fuck you’re supposed to do and dying endlessly trying to beat the game as fast as possible.

Dark Souls is a game of patience more than a game of pure skills if you ask me, this is probably gonna be the coldest of take but I don’t think Dark Souls is the most challenging game I’ve ever played in my life, I’m a Megaman player, I’m a shmup player, I’m an old-school kinda guy. I’ve played games with even steeper learning curves with even higher skill floors than what Dark Souls asked from me.

Sure if you compare Dark Souls to most of its contemporaries, it’s more demanding of its players than any games from that time period but I think that once you get into the “flow” of the game, you will be surprised at how manageable the entire thing is. But it will requires many tries.

I will say that the difficulty aspect disappointed me in one area : The Bosses

Bosses are one of Dark Souls most striking feature to a lot of people and I’m afraid that I can’t really say the same for myself as I found a lot of the bosses to be terribly unchallenging and unmemorable aside from one or two outliers these being ofc the meme fight against Drake and Josh at Anor Londo or some of the bosses from the DLC (namely Artorias and Manus).

The bosses aren’t scripted at all but they are more impressive than hard, usually they revolve around a very specific set of weaknesses to exploit, they’re more like puzzles than actual bosses, sometimes to their detriment (hi Bed of Chaos, I hate you). You can cheese a lot of them through exploiting their AI and vulnerability frame, it’s often more a matter of consistency and pattern recognition than a test of pure skill that’ll make you sweat buckets and I was surprised to see I’ve managed to defeat a lot of them on my first try. Sometimes even to a disappointing degree, like Sif which was a pretty mediocre fight despite all the cool lore surrounding him.

Most of the “hard” bosses in this game are the ones that are just fundamentally broken design wise, like the Capra demon who attacks you on frame 1 with his 2 schizophrenic dog in a tiny ass arena that was clearly not meant to host a boss fight or the CEO of bad boss design in the Bed of Chaos that decided that we’re now running on Super Mario Bros design philosophy for no reason at all and test your platforming skills in a game with no dedicated jump button (and forces you through a painfully long and boring slog through an unfinished alpha built of an area to get back to it every time you fail to get around its shitty hitboxes and holes).

While I probably wished bosses were a little more challenging, I can’t say they’re bad, I just probably came into this game with the wrong expectations. I actually struggled more inside of the levels than the bosses.

The levels are actually really good, for the most part (hi Blight Town), they feel more like Castlevania levels than something out of a 3D action game. You can’t just rush through these levels without a care in the world, you need to always be on your guard, ready for any traps and occasions to fuck you over especially with how your character controls.

Eventually after dying for the millionth time, you will download the areas and its layout in your mind and be better at it, but once again, the game is rarely ever unfair (except when it puts a trap you will fall into just for the fuck of it), when you die, all the strong ennemies you defeated never spawn again, you retain all of the pick-ups you took and any shortcut you unlocked will allow you to proceed to the next part faster and get back to where you die an claim back those sweet sweet souls.

The game manages to create such a personal connection between you and the world and it truly feels magical at times. The feeling of struggling for hours and then opening a shortcut in this game is absolutely immaculate, finding a bonfire to rest after struggling through a huge chunk of the levels is amazing too. And this feeling remains true for at least the entire first half of the game.

Yeah it’s time for my “hot take”, you can say.

While the first 25h of Dark Souls is an out of this world return to form in terms of gaming experience, the second half is a bit mediocre in comparison.

After Annor Londo, which is an area that could constitute a climax onto itself for how iconic it is, the game asks you to go defeat the 4 lords to unlock the door to the final boss. In the meantime, you can also partake in some sidequesting to discover new areas and fight secret bosses, complete NPC quests if possible and you also have access to a limited but still gratuitous fast-travel option.

On the plus side, the game still keeps its non-linearity, you can tackle most of these objectives in any order you want but unlike the first few hours of the game that felt like a web of environments weaved together into a coherent world, the second half of the game make this central web a hub for boss levels à la Megaman where you select a level, complete it and fight the boss at the end.

It’s already a bummer but that wouldn’t have been an issue if the levels in questions weren’t some of the weakest and most gimmicky areas of the whole game. The Catacombs are fun but annoying which is then followed by the Tomb of Giant which is JUST annoying, the Demon Ruins are fine but Izalith is outright just an unfinished area that barely works, New Londo more like I sure love having no check points and having to consume items to deal damage to foes (thank god for the shortcut) and finally the library which is actually quite a cool, unique and challenging area built more like a Zelda dungeon than any other levels but is then followed by the Crystal cave which is just annoying to traverse with its invisible platforms.

Even the optional areas, while really cool in concept often falls apart either because of their ridiculously low difficulty like Ariamis (except the DLC area but it’s mostly because of its bosses rather than its levels) or are visually stunning surprises that serves no purpose other than to exist (Ash Lake is one of the best environment in the game and it must be quite the experience if you happen to find it by accident but the reward for it is just a covenant and I don’t know what those are for aside from PVP which I deactivated).

I’m not saying these levels are bad by any mean (well except Izalith, that shit is just an anomaly) and trying out new stuff was necessary as to not make the game formulaic and keep the sentiment of surprise alive but I’m afraid the game never quite was able to recapture the magic and wonder of the first half and the padding felt real during this second half that felt more like a check-list than a proper well constructed adventure.

Of course a lot of design choices, even the bad ones, are pretty deliberate. I complained about Ariamis being too easy but it was probably on purpose since it’s meant to be a once peaceful land desperately trying to stop you from desecrating their deity.

In fact I’ve probably missed a lot of content, especially on the NPC Quest side of things as the indication towards them wasn’t always clear and could be easily fucked over.

In fact this small complaint about NPC quest is a good gateway to one of the most interestingly underrated parts of the game, its story or more specifically its narrative design.

When I said that Dark Souls is a modern take on 80’s game design sensibility, it also shines through its story-telling which is very indirect at times subtle and voluntarily misleading. Like an NES game, you’re given a brief resumé of what happened to the world before your awakening.

This is all given without proper context but help sets the stage of what world you’re about to traverse, very quickly you start learning about a prophecy and are tasked to ring bells and then reach Anor Londo the city of god. Like an old RPG, the game gives you a context and an objective to your quest but no real purpose outside of maybe saving the world and god knows does this world need saving.

Lordran is a depressing, moody place, where life is barely hanging on a thread or flourished in completely different ways. Most humans you meet define themselves as undead and you are in fact an undead that can turn human for a brief moment thanks to an item called “humanity”.

Everyone you meet is searching for a sense of purpose in a desolate hopeless world, guided by the prophecy and its promises of glory. You know very little of this place and will likely come out the other end of the tunnel as confused as you first were and that’s because the story is very discrete outside of those few exchanges and tips that feels more like NPC guiding you through the game with helpful tips, the way the old men did in Zelda 1.

And that’s the fascinating part about old RPG’s and this game’s narrative, back then games having little story to contextualize and give purpose to your action was a common practice due to the limitation of consoles at the time not allowing for well-developed narrative both in visual and written form because of memory limitation. So they had to find a work-around to tell you a story and guide you through the game, to give your quest a purpose on top of a goal.

When it comes to stories in game, I tend to have grown a bigger and bigger appreciation for this type of narrative. In fact Dark Souls reminded me of Quintet games which often disguised a quest with grand purpose behind a veil of melancholy filled moments. Dark Souls sent you on a quest to fulfill a prophecy, you can take it at face value and rush to the end of the game never questioning anything or realize that something feels off about all of this.

The game manipulates you into doing things not because you want to but because you have to, becoming a tool to the hand of fate that guides this entire narrative. You have to rekindle the flame of life to save everyone but is there even a world left to save ? Or are you simply just delaying the inevitable ? Are you just a tool for the gods to use or the one that will break the cycle and bring forth a new age with it ?

The game gives you very subtle hints through item descriptions, environmental storytelling, bosses, NPC dialogues and occasionally cutscenes about the truth of this world. Heck you might even go the entire game without learning about the truth behind this quest of yours, since the dialogue explaining all of this is hidden behind a very ass-backward and cryptic ways of acquiring it (telling you to go off the beaten path and start defeating one of the lord before you’re even told to do so).
During all of this, you will be tempted to give up, pushed to your absolute limit. Is there even a purpose to this eternal occurrence of death and rebirth ? Those who give up are turned into husks called Hollows which is a metaphor for the flame inside of you dying out because you lost your purpose and gave up which is in a meta way represent you the player who could stop playing at any point and be amongst those who failed to fulfill the prophecy and lost their purpose along the way.

Dark Souls is a beautifully tragic tale that’s not afraid to make you face its inner darkness and invites you to embrace it and face the consequences. And no matter what the end result is, there is not a guarantee of a good ending but the journey through that ending fills you with a sense of accomplishment whether that accomplishment is empty or not that’s up to you to decide at the end of the day.

Giving up on Dark Souls is an admission of defeat, not giving up is an opportunity to change things up even through the darkness that lies ahead. That’s why the so-called difficulty of Dark Souls and its exigence is such an essential part of the experience, not just because of balancing reasons, it’s just that making the game easier, more accessible would just take away that meaning, that purpose. This is true game-design, a game that knows what medium it uses and uses it perfectly to tell it while offering a decent enough challenge for those ready to take it.

Dark Souls is not a perfect game, it’s a flawed game, a game that will make you consider giving it up at any point for many reasons either because you just can’t keep up with it difficulty wise or because of the fatigue caused by the second half dubious pacing and design decision. In fact maybe the second-half of the game being so thoroughly below the first was on purpose, the fact that it feels like a check-list means you somehow forgot or even questioning why you’re doing all of this and for what purpose. Is your curiosity gonna make you keep going or will you simply be done with it ? It may not have been intentional but that would make sense in the end wouldn’t it ?

The fact this game manages to catch mainstream appeal and launch an entire genre onto itself is kind of a miracle. Because if anything the game feels like peeking through a parallel universe where action-games or video-game in general have taken another path, where they keep their root firmly planted to the ground and expanded them downward to blossom into an ancient wise tree instead of branching outward and reach the sunlight by incorporating more elements from other medium and abandoning its uniqueness along the way.

Dark Souls might not be for you and frankly that’s alright. Don’t let the hype persuade you, this game is made for a niche audience and it was mostly an accident that it became so widespread to this day.

But I feel it’s game that you should try at least once in your life, just to get a feel for it, it’s not even that absurdly long, capping at 50h which is a relatively medium length for an RPG of this kind and could’ve been shorter if not for all the incessant runbacks and other dubious checkpoint placement. Had I been younger playing this, I would’ve fallen in love with it thoroughly but suffice to say that despite all this the game didn’t leave me indifferent either, it truly is a timeless classic and one that I hope will still be fondly remembered for years to come.

Ar Tonelico : Interesting yet unimpressive

Today ladies and gentleman, we are trying out a game which I wasn’t really planning on playing myself but since a friend of mine was really interested in trying it out and wanted to share the experience with me ! I decided to jump in since I wanted kind of a buffer game after playing 3 ultra-mega-ambitious RPG’s and didn’t wanna jump on playing (heck even re-playing for some) Xenoblade games just yet. With that said, the sales pitch he gave for being interested in Ar Tonelico definitely caught my attention. The friend in question is a composer and therefore is very interested in music as an artform, when he read about the universe the Ar Tonelico took place in, he was immediately charmed as it hits his sweet spot just right. He wasn’t the only one amongst my close mutual friends who recommended Ar Tonelico, he’s currently playing the game himself in Japanese, I had other friends who also like the universe and from what I’ve gathered from them, artistically speaking this is right up my alley.

Now I bare to mention that this is my first experience with a Gust title, Gust is a company mostly known for their long-running Atelier series which is an historically long RPG series which has existed since the PS1 and still comes out on a semi-yearly basis and are mostly focused on life-simulation, craftings and being “comfy” games rather than telling any sort of grand narrative. Not my cup of tea, as I usually tend to like my RPG to be a little bit more involved than that but I’m curious to try one of them someday. Ar Tonelico by comparison is an outlier in their line-up since it’s the closest thing to a typical RPG they’ve released however some light influence from the Atelier franchise can be seen here, to what extend I can’t really tell but crafting plays a somewhat minor role in the game design of the game.

The origin of the project is actually rather interesting, Akira Tsuchiya the main composer of the Atelier series as well as Ar Tonelico for which he also serves the role of director created the entire setting of the series while he was in college. It was initially the setting of a tabletop RPG he created for him and his friends to play in, over the years of course, he developed that universe until eventually, he was given the opportunity to adapt that tabletop game into an actual title for the PS2. Initially planned for the year 2000’s, the project continued to grow until it was released in 2006.

This means two things, one there are several and I mean several additional materials about the game from even before the release of the first game which will help you understand how absurdly well thought-out and unique the setting of the series is ! You can feel that a lot of work was put into creating that universe and describing how it works and the main component that holds it all together : Music and its effect on the world and on people as an art form. Second, that means that upon reading all of this, you probably will have quite a bit of high expectation coming into this game because of the sheer work that was put in creating it, from the concept arts, to the general artwork, to the setting and other stuff.

Music is an essential core-part of the Exa_Pico universe in which the series takes place in and the origin of life and the universe as it came to be is all rooted in musical science which is nuts even if I don’t understand a single speck of it. They even created their own fictional language called Hymnos which is designed specifically to sound good musically speaking and you got several beautiful vocal tracks in the game sung in said fake language and yes, if you’re willing to dig deeper, you can translate that shit ! It’s an actual language, it's nuts !
The game takes place on the floating continent of Sol Ciel, a long time ago humanity used to live on the surface and used the power of songs in order to accomplish all sorts of technological and medical advancement. The world is held together by a gigantic tower acting like some sort of supercomputer by the name of Ar Tonelico and people either live on its bases or higher up the towers in floating cities. A couple of years ago, a man-made tragedy whose origins has been lost to time divided the population of Sol Ciel between the Upper world and the Lower World with Ar Tonelico managing pretty much all of the world power. However, one day, viruses started attacking the Tower, it’s up to Lyner a Apostle of Elemia to deal with the issue, after failing to push back the virus menace, he takes an airship and crashes to the surface world after being tasked by a woman named Shurelia to find something called an “Hymn Crystal” which can stop the virus invasion.

Shurelia herself is a Reyvateil, a subspecies of humans that are mostly part machines and the only remaining people who can use the power of songs in order to accomplish all sorts of things through the uses of Song magic. Throughout his adventure, Lyner will meet 2 of those Reyvateil which are the main 2 heroines of the game Aurica and Misha (the latter of which seems to know him even if he doesn’t remember) as well as a bunch of colorful individual on his quest to find a way to stop the virus invasion.

I think I still need to emphasize that a lot of work went into creating the setting of the universe and it definitely is an intriguing world which functions in a really unique and interesting way. I’d say that artistically speaking and in terms of ambition, the game holds its ground fairly well especially in the music department. Most of the music sung in Hymnos were composed and performed by the absurdly talented Akiko Shikata, a popular japanese singer specialized in chorus-style music, she’s mostly known for her work on Umineko these days for which she sung the opening of both the visual novel and the anime but she got her debut in the world of video game composition with Ar Tonelico. The music in the game in general is one of its strong suits, especially all of the vocal tracks, the rest of the soundtrack is of a rather standard quality even though not unpleasant…

Yeah standard…

Because see, this is where Ar Tonelico falls really short in my opinion, for such a unique setting and unique origin behind the creation of the game, the end-result is a bit of a wet fart if you ask my opinion. Story wise the game is divided in 3 acts, a classic plot structure but also not really. In most stories with 3 acts, you’d expect the 3 acts (called “Phase” in this game) to be a beginning, a middle and an end but in reality this game pacing is a bit all over the place. The game is short, capping at around 30h but at times, the story feels like they crammed the storyline of 3 separate video games into one title and it definitely shows, events goes by fast, characters arcs gets rushed, lots of things are left on the side and very little of the game’s promising setting is actually fleshed out or well established to the point that you would get more out of reading the Ar Tonelico wiki entry on the game than expecting the plot to tell you about the rather fascinating but ultimately fruitless details.

And when I say it’s the story of 3 games, I mean it, each game starts with an initial conflict kicking the plot into high gear followed by a series of small side-ventures and concludes into a climatic finale which makes you feel like you’re in the end of the game but actually you don’t. Heck Phase 2 even ends on a credit roll despite 10h still remaining on the counter…
The actual writing by itself is the most cookie-cutter RPG schlop you’ve seen time and time again and it’s not particularly good schlop either. The main character for exemple is a bland goody two shoe with a heart of gold, the brain of a bird and denser than the surface of Saturn. He will have his affection pursued by the 2 main heroines of the game which are no more or less interesting than him.

At the start of the game, you get the choice between either Aurica or Misha : Aurica has the better toolkit for battle, you get to use her for a lot more time and as such you will likely keep her in your party for longer just for her raw damage output alone, however she has the personality of a doormat, always needing Lyner to save her ass and never really speaking up about her problems or about anything really until the very late stage of the game. Misha is a bit more interesting, she’s supposedly Lyner childhood friend but he doesn’t seem to remember much about her, her role is central to the narrative as she is later revealed to be the star singer, a core part of the tower necessary to keep the viruses away with the issue being that she has to keep singing forever. However, while Misha has a bit more meat on her bone, she’s a pretty generic childhood friend archetype, she seems to have a lot of things going for her but it’s presented with no real finesse or substance whatsoever and a lot of the pay-offs about the mysteries surrounding her are honestly pretty underwhelming.

With 2 heroines put on the forefront and a main character who exists mostly for the player to project themselves on him, you guessed it, it’s one of those RPG’s with the central gimmick of its story being pursuing romance with either of these two ladies. The way of doing so is actually pretty unique, you first have to gather discussion topics around the world, discuss these topics by resting at a save point or an inn and then gather stamps to unlock part of their “cosmosphere”. Cosmosphere is a virtual world inside the Reyvateils mind that humans can access via a process called “diving” at a certain facility in the game. There are multiple layers to the cosmosphere that you unlock as you get to know the character better and collect more discussion topics, once inside the Cosmosphere however, the game pretty much turns into a visual novel where you spend a currency called “DP” which Reyvateils gain in battle in order to unlock certain scenes and complete the current level of the cosmosphere. It’s through this system that you’ll get to know the finer details of each heroine's backstory as well as the inner machinations of their mind but also craft new Song Magic for them to use in battle.

While a cool idea in theory, a lot of the cosmosphere revolve around humorous and pretty inconsequential story beat which tries to be serious at times but fail at delivering any kind of emotional impact, the game tries to have a lot of abstract narrative when it comes to the girls but ultimately fail at making any point brought up interesting. Some scenes are just empty trauma dumping without much added value behind it, humorous gag scenes or just random horny fanservice (with both girls having an entire level of their cosmosphere dedicated to BDSM shenanigans). Each level of the cosmosphere features one of the characters in a different outfit that you get to unlock by the end and gives advantages in battle which is pretty neat I suppose. The progression of the cosmosphere is also overall pretty linear and any additional tinkering you might do in them is just a waste of DP (spending thousands of DP to learn about lingerie without any added benefit gameplay or wise sure is something the game does) and even then the cosmosphere isn’t the determining factor to choose which girl you’re gonna end up with. On one hand, that means you will likely see all of the cosmosphere of both girls but also that means that there’s no penalty for prioritizing stuff.
Rather, the determining factor to ending up with one of the girls is a route split in the middle of the game with a choice pretty much locking you into one of the character routes like in a typical visual novel. The route split by itself is pretty cool for replayability but in the end very little actually changes between the two routes except that Aurica’s route focus more on the world and Misha’s route focus more on her perspective on the situation at hand and is therefore a more personal story and one which is most worth experiencing, the end-game is still the same no matter who you choose with only certain endings and scenes changing depending on which girl you chose. In fact, the girl you didn’t choose gets a bit shafted by the narrative and while they still might have a role to play, they won’t be doing much, that won’t stop them from still trying to pursue your affection as if nothing really mattered at all and their fate was sealed.

So who did I end up with ?

Neither, no that doesn’t mean you can fuck up and end up alone like in other similar type of games or that you can embrace the power of polygamy but in a surprise twist of event, the last 10h of the game introduces a new romantic option with none other than Shurelia, the woman who sends you on your mission to begin with and Lyner’s superior. When this happened, I was kind of lowkey confused, introducing a romantic plot line this late into the game after spending 20h with the main 2 heroines, that must mean they have quite a bit of confidence in their writing to pull off something like that and turns out it’s true because Shurelia is the best girl of the three. Her personality embraces the idea of gap moe, where there’s a clear distinction between her position of superiority to Lyner and how she actually is and wants to be treated, she has the most relevance to the overall lore of the series and all of her interventions are filled not only with cute interactions but interesting tidbits about the gameworld (about time we dived into it even if it’s a bit late). Her cosmosphere is a bit lacking, composed mostly of a made up scenario rather than anything really fleshing her out, but she seems to have lots of fun coming up with the silly nonsense in her head and that makes her strangely endearing in a way. I don’t know man, she’s just really neat and managed to steal the spotlight entirely upon joining your party.

The rest of the cast is fine, they’re all kinda cliché but their designs and personality are great, like I said the entire package doesn’t lack in charm but the execution is just a bit lacking, it’s kind of a bog standard JRPG plot with bog standard characters and character interaction and most of what’s interesting about the main premise and the setting of the game isn’t really well exploited or fleshed out at all and when they are it’s either sparse or too late to make an impact on me. I don’t necessarily dislike the game story but it probably won’t leave that much of an impact on me, it’s pretty forgettable and it’s quite a shame considering what we’re working with here.

But an RPG isn’t just a story and a set of characters it’s also a gameplay and here, I’d say that the game fumbles the bag a bit more. In theory, Ar Tonelico has a lot of cool ideas when it comes to its gameplay, the battle system is a mix of ATB system and something similar to the Valkyrie Profile franchise. You got 3 active party members and one Reyvateil which goal is going to cast spells by charging them up and unleashing them on the enemies, the goal is going to let your party member do chip damage and prevent your Reyvateil from dying or losing focus while she’s charging her spell, it’s all pretty neat stuff honestly…

Except the game’s easy as shit…

Most enemies in the game can easily be one shot by a well charged super blast if they don’t get one shot by your active party members and they can’t really fight back in any decent capacity. The overall game balance of this game is kinda below the gutter, the game has a lot of customization options like the “Grathnode” crystals which can be attached to any piece of equipment to give massive bonuses, one of which is just… more damage ? See, in this game you can add additional elemental effects to your weapon, the thing is that these don’t act like a buff but instead a separate state of damage entirely. So if you managed early on to stack 100 points in one elemental statistics, you’ll be dealing your own damage + elemental damages for a single normal attack, meaning you pretty deal 2x of your own damage output.

Even without these broken strategies however, it’s still very easy to cheese most fights, the 3 Reyvateils you get all have a wide variety of spells which all causes to deal massive damage in an AOE fashion and the dominant strategy for almost every boss fight in the game is to just charge your strongest spell to a ridiculous amount of percentage and one shot them that way, it works almost every single time and is the optimal strategy for most if not every fights. The battle system overall is pretty fun but the issue is that it’s mathematically impossible to make the most of it, heck at some point the game just run out of new enemies to throw at you so most of the enemies are literally monsters from earlier areas with literally the same stats and I wonder what was even the point of doing this ? There’s exactly two fights which managed to wipe my entire active part but with the way healing works in this game, you can save your ass super quickly and you pretty much need to make you unoptimized on purpose in order to see the game over screen (and these were the last 2 bosses of the game).

The dungeon design is also very barebone, I will commend tho, they have a pretty unique encounter system. It’s basically random encounters but with an indicator on the bottom right of the screen showing you when it’s gonna happen kinda like the moon phases in the SMT series, in fact after multiple encounters, you don’t have any encounters period which is neat. But yeah other than that, I found that the dungeon design leaves a lot to be desired, the game alternates between the same 3 themes especially once you start climbing up the tower and if it wasn’t enough, the game kinda blows its whole load in the first phase so several hours of both phase 2 and especially phase 3 are spent revisiting previous areas, so it’s recycling on top of recycling.

Speaking of Phase 3, I’d say that it kind of artificially lengthen the story, the reasons to kick off the new conflict is a bit weak and most of it consist in a random fetch quest around previously visited areas which concludes in somewhat of a wet fart but I heard it was done mostly to prepare the terrain for the sequel so I’m letting that slide. The game is also pretty cheap looking, for how good the artwork of the gam is, it looks more like a cheap mobile game rather than a console RPG from 2006 but maybe Gust couldn’t afford better which is a bit of a shame.

Overall, I didn’t had an unpleasant time with Ar Tonelico, but looking at the packaging, you’d expect something with a little bit more meat on its bone, it’s a plot bordering between baby’s first RPG and otaku pandering nonsense but you can’t deny that it has its charm. The game clearly suffers from a bad case of first game syndrome and I heard the sequel is at least marginally better and exploits the universe of the game better, so I’m staying curious about this.