I’ve been told that a propensity for smalltalk is one of the little things that reveal someone as American, but even as an introvert who was never super good at it, I never found it as off-putting as some of my friends around the world do. Sure the words themselves are pointless, but I think it’s nice when people can spend a couple seconds establishing some tiny human connection. Of course, when you get into a situation where it drags on for minutes at a time, that’s when the unspoken social contract has been broken. The idea here was to invest a small amount of time to connect and lift the feeling of uncertainty from the air, but once that’s complete, the connection benefit is far outweighed by the social energy required to keep going. When you think about it, this principle of energy input vs. energy return can be generally applied to the effectiveness of a lot of things, and it’s part of the reason I’ve been writing shorter reviews than before. For every second I demand, I should hope to return an appropriate value, and that’s easier to do when maintaining a strong focus. With this in mind, after completing Nier Replicant, I’m sitting here wondering what the thought process was in making players repeat ~15 hours of content across 4 additional playthroughs before seeing the few short scenes which complete the narrative. It’s not that what’s here is terrible, but again, it’s like bad small talk. The story creates little connections and pulls at your heart, but the investment it demands is disproportionate to the return. It creates the same sort of annoyance that you could feel with someone who’s excessively chatty; you go from thinking it’s nice to meet someone so friendly, to wishing they would leave you alone for a while. As beautiful as the game is, and even with how most of it is executed well, that’s the unfortunate feeling that comes to mind as I look back on the experience. It’s nice, it’s fine, but I feel like it chose not to respect my time, making that lack of respect unfortunately go both ways.

When you think about it, the principle of energy input vs. energy return can be generally applied to a lot of things, and it’s part of the reason I’ve been writing shorter reviews. For every second I demand, I hope to return an appropriate value, and that’s easier to do when maintaining a strong focus. With this in mind, after completing Nier Replicant, I’m sitting here wondering what the thought process was in making players repeat ~15 hours of content and complete 5 playthroughs before seeing the few short scenes which complete the narrative. I had the exact same thought when I was finishing Automata, and although I was willing to give it some credit back then, I was surprised to see that the exact same gimmick was already used in the previous game. Just like with Automata, it’s not that what’s here is terrible, but again, it’s like bad small talk. The story is as dramatic as one would hope for, but the investment it demands is disproportionate to the return. It creates the same annoyance that you could feel with someone who’s excessively chatty: you go from thinking it’s nice to meet someone, to wishing they would leave you alone for a while. As beautiful as the game is and how well most of it has been executed, that’s the unfortunate feeling that fills my mind as I look back on the experience. It’s all fine, but I feel like it chose not to respect my time, which made the lack of respect go both ways.

When you think about it, the principle of optimizing energy input vs. energy return is a fundamental rule of nature, and it’s part of the reason I’ve been writing shorter reviews (other than general laziness, of course). Every second that you spend reading this should be worth your while, and that’s easier to do when staying focused. With this in mind, after finishing this game, I’m sitting here wondering why players had to complete 5 playthroughs before seeing the ending cutscenes. I had the same thought when finishing Automata years ago, but while I was willing to give it some credit back then, I was surprised to see that the same gimmick was used in the previous game. Just like with Automata, it’s not that what’s here is terrible, but again, it’s like bad small talk. The story is as dramatic as one would hope for, but the investment it demands is disproportionate to the return. It’s sorta like how I’ve intended to watch that new Batman movie for a while now, but the three-hour runtime creates such a mental block that I never decide to actually start watching it. It would probably be a fun enough little movie, but I know Batman will just be doing the things I expect him to do, so I don’t think I would get three hours worth of enrichment from it. As beautiful as Nier is and how well most of it has been executed, that’s the unfortunate feeling that fills my mind as I look back on the experience. It’s fun but widely uninriching, and I feel like it chose not to respect my time, which made the lack of respect go both ways.

When you think about it, the principle of optimizing energy input and return doesn’t just apply to media, it’s a rule of nature, and it’s part of the reason I’ve shortened my reviews. Every second that you spend reading them should be worth your while, and that’s an easier promise for me to keep when I stay focused. If I don’t, then even my audience might lose focus, making even the parts that they did engage with quickly fade from memory. With this in mind, after finishing this game, I’m sitting here wondering why players had to repeat so many hours of content in Nier before seeing a satisfying conclusion. I had the same thought when finishing Automata years ago, but while I was willing to give it some credit back then, I was surprised to see that the same gimmick had already been used in the previous game. It’s not that what’s here is terrible, but again, it’s like drawn-out small talk. The story is as dramatic as one would hope for, but the investment it demands is disproportionate to the return, especially when a plot that’s fairly obvious dips into indulgent melodrama. It’s not like the media you consume needs to be analyzed as such a clinical and unartistic transaction of course, wasting time has a lot of its own benefits, but a line needs to be drawn somewhere for the best use of your time. As beautiful as the game is and even with how most of it is executed well, that’s the unfortunate feeling I get when I look back on the experience. It’s fun, it’s fine, but I feel like it chose not to respect my time, which made the lack of respect go both ways.

When you think about it, the principle of optimizing energy input and return doesn’t just apply to media, it’s a fundamental rule of nature, and it’s part of the reason I’ve shortened my reviews. Every second that you spend reading them should be worth your while, and that’s an easier promise for me to keep when I stay focused. If I don’t, then even my audience might lose focus, making even the parts that they did engage with quickly fade from memory. With this in mind, after finishing this game, I’m sitting here wondering why players had to repeat so many hours of content in Nier before seeing a satisfying conclusion. I had the same thought when finishing Automata years ago, but while I was willing to give it some credit back then, I was surprised to see that the same gimmick was used in the previous game. Speaking of Automata, I was really split on whether I should do a standard review for this game like I did for Automata, or whether I should be a self-indulgent hack like I am right now. I decided on this format mostly because doing a repeat of “it’s a fine game, but its obvious plot, melodrama, and repetition bugged the hell out of me” would be a bit pointless. It’s not that writing another review like that would be terrible, but again, it’s like drawn-out small talk. The investment it would demand is disproportionate to the return. It’s not like the media you consume needs to be analyzed as such a clinical transaction of course (wasting time has its own benefits) but a line needs to be drawn for the best use of your time. As well as most of it may-or-may-not have been executed, that’s the unfortunate feeling that probably fills your mind as you look back on this experience. At the very least, *I* had fun, I think it’s fine, and maybe that’s how Nier’s creators felt, so in the end it goes both ways.

Tears of the Kingdom is a really weird game to talk about, because I feel like I should enjoy it a lot more than I do. I ended up playing the game for 150 hours, I ended up getting all the shrines (though definitely not 100%ing...), but I don't know that I fully enjoyed those 150 hours. There was a lot of the game that was just downtime where I was going through the motions, and it was never straight up unenjoyable, but I also don't know if I'd say that the game has 150 hours worth of content - rather that's just how long it took me to go through it.

I feel like ToTK 's content gets less interesting as you play through it. Exploring the depths was fun at the start, when fog busting was novel and it hadn't gotten tedious yet, but it got tedious by the end of the game. While there are vehicles you can use, all it does is make boring content go by faster, as there's very little interesting to discover in the depths. It's basically just currency to upgrade your battery, armor you're never going to use, and resources. It overstayed its welcome. The same can be said of exploring the sky. It was novel at first, and then the sheer amount of copy pasted islands with similar puzzles got a little tiring. Even the labyrinths suffer from the same problem. The first time I found one, and explored it from start to finish, I was amazed. It was a super novel experience. And then all three are formated the exact same way, which eats away at how interesting it was to explore them.

Building stuff was interesting in theory, but in practice I found it took way too long. You could use autobuild, but even that isn't perfect since you needed to either spend zonite or take the parts out of your inventory ahead of time, which was a little tedious. Building anything new took forever, too. The time between finding a solution, and actually executing that solution, was too long. A lot of the time I just found myself finding other ways to travel (gliding, spamming the same plane model, horse) rather than building anything novel. That aside, I don't like that it allows you to clear puzzles in such a wide variety of probably not intended ways. The feeling of "Eh, definitely not the intended solution, but good enough." is just not one that I actually enjoy, especially when that solution is so often "just use a rocket/just use a generic fan + control stick vehicle/just build a long stick or bridge."

Combat is just as fundamentally broken as it was in Breath of the Wild. I enjoy it more, because I don't feel like it's a dark hole of resources I'll never get back thanks to the fusion system, but Zelda combat should just not be about RPG numbers, at least defensively. Offensively it's mostly fine since they mix in goobers alongside the big boys, so you still get to feel yourself becoming more powerful, but defensively it's just ridiculous. You can just upgrade the hylian set for nearly no materials and just... take no damage from enemies. And conversely, it means that whenever you're wearing something other than your hylian set, you take a ton of damage, more than is probably reasonable. And since it takes forever to upgrade armor outside the hylian set, I just end up not bothering. Hell, a lot of the utility ones barely feel like they matter. The one that lets you climb in the rain barely feels like it does everything, even with the full set.

Shrines were OK. Not much to say about them, there was a lot of them, most of them had creative ideas, but they were often too short to scratch the same itch as a dungeon would. Likewise, I don't really care for the dungeons in this game. I liked the approach and build up to the dungeons almost universally more than I enjoyed the dungeons themselves. The Divine Beast style of just finding 5 things then going back to the central room to fight the boss just isn't interesting to me. At least there's more variety aesthetically than there was with divine beasts.

Story wise, it feels like the game is being held back by the way that the game is set up. The story can be found out of order when it comes to stuff like Zelda's tears or the master sword, and then conversely they're so obsessed with the idea that they have to make sure you get the story in order-ish that the cutscenes for all temples are copy pated. It's not a bad story, I like it conceptually, I like elements of it, but I hate how it's told because of the open world nature of the game.

All in all, TOTK is just a really weird game for me. I had a really good time early on, and while it never fully lost its steam (I still completed it), I also feel like I'd have enjoyed it more if I just ended the game early rather than actually going for all shrines and map completion. There was just a lot of the time where I was coasting through the game rather than fully enjoying myself.

man 10 year old me must have poured hundreds of hours in flipnote. This was an amazing network of incredible talented kids and a looooot of pre-historic shitposting, the first AMV I watched was likely on my DSi screen through this software. I remember working tremendously hard to make my flipnotes, I was an avant-gard flipnote artist I swear to god, everything I made was abstract as shit. I remember once I poured hours and hours into one specific flipnote and I recall my dad turned the ds off or something? I don't know, I don't really know how or why my dad would even turn it off, let alone if he knew how, but that's how my 10 year old self remembers it. I remember crying and throwing a tantrum on the couch in my living room, and refusing to go to dinner. Man, what an annoying little shit I was.