I wake up -> be silly -> shitfaced -> EX Drunken Fist -> eepy -> rinse and repeat. And he gets to be a lawyer? What a sick joke! From RGG studios comes a game that doesn't really excel in any ways compared to previous titles. It's a good game, but I have to judge it as it is. Perhaps Yagami being overshadowed by the other protagonists plays a role, but he has a cool jacket to back him up. He looks so much like a japanese doppelganger of one of my uncles at his age, only he can take better selfies. His office is lucky it's so small, otherwise the game would have surely included a fight in it at some point.

Kaito really hits that 😴😴😴 when I'm about to get a hole in the cranium, while a japanophile just goes "fuck it we ball" every altercation I get into. I think I know who the true bro is. I'm glad Kaito's my friend, though. If he were to hit me, one of JUDGMENT's new addition would bite me in the arse: mortal wounds. It is like if rubbing salt in the wound was taken literally, you have to walk in shame as your heart is broken in shards. Don't rough up your local detective like this, you punks! Men like him have two sides, tiger and crane. Crane isn't really anything noteworthy, however Tiger lets you trigger the Tiger Drop, and honestly that would have been the biggest missed opportunity so I'm glad you can learn it. Consume druid liquid and launch nukes for more information (this kind of breaks the game)

Since the game throws you into a street fight every 5 seconds, making the case that it's not actually a Yakuza game is hard. Nope, abstaining from using lethal weapons in the street does not make you a saint. Nobody in the Tojo clan has squabbled and flown away from law enforcement as much as yours truly. Literal drones 🤣 but then, if they literally are drones, what about those little things I'm flying around and practically never used in the game? All in his mind? Better hit that trailing minigame again. Our audience will never feel like the heroic detective if they don't get that devious ahh stalking once in a while. I'm carrying an entire outfit in each of my pockets, begging to be put to use. Sir I'm on my knees let me wear that suit

You know, while I'm interrogating someone beaten half to death, I didn't expect the most beautiful girl in the game (Amane) to send a message asking me out on a date. I went tiger mode on bro and switched to crane for the ladies. Maybe. It doesn't work like that though. Neither animal thrives alone, in any case. Which is why Yagami, after two decades of living in Kamurocho, finally decides to make friends. You'll never hear that siren with the power of friendship. That's probably how Yagami got rid of every Kamurocho citizen after Kiryu left, or maybe they left because Kiryu left. Are we living in the Truman show? Give dat man a Tru

It feels mean to compare this to its predecessor but Virtue's Last Reward just doesn't have the sheer joy and thrill that Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors had. Its lore simultaneously wants to develop and exacerbate the insanity that 999 spent slowly unspooling, but it doesn't want to approach that level of multifaceted storytelling with nearly the same drama or heightened sense of panic. When I learned of a new element within the story, I didn't feel as strong of a sense of bewilderment or clairvoyance-level realization, but rather a sense of mild satisfaction. That's the thing that gets me about this game, I suppose: It works, but it doesn't tug at my emotions as much as 999 did. The chaos is ramped up but it just doesn't feel as urgent or interesting.

The character drama in particular is maybe my biggest gripe with the game overall. Every conversation is considerably longer and more quippy at the cost of information density, there's this sense of irreverence that feels extremely out of place. Of course, you could blame this on the advent of the Danganronpa franchise and its mockery in the face of certain death, but that series has its moments to refrain from indulging in its hypersexuality and humor in service of a bigger idea that climbs towards a hostile thriller screenplay. Additionally, the irreverence is used to help build onto the dread—were it not for Monokuma's complete and utter disregard for his subjects' lives, there'd be less panic among them.

The characters in VLR, on the other hand, are poised to joke and shove corny banter in nearly every conversation given enough time, such that it stands to kill a lot of the intensity that the holistic story builds. I would much rather a short, important conversation than a long one that stands to remove any given amount goodwill I have for the main characters. This lack of brevity is also not helped by the gargantuan amount of time that it takes between various novel segments, showcasing a very annoying dot moving across the map for every single possible migration of the characters. At a certain point in my playthrough, I started scheduling for these intermissions and texting friends over actually trying to remain immersed with a medium that ejected me from immersion to begin with.

That's not to say it's a bad game, far from it—once again in no small part to the thoughtful escape room design employed with a similar (but not exact same) grace as its predecessor. The increase in difficulty is something I rather appreciate, even if it comes at the cost of breaking immersion sometimes. I especially appreciate the safe system, though it has its drawbacks with certain room-end puzzles. The broader story itself, divorced from being attached to the game and the individual writing choices I dislike, is excellent scaffolding around the original lore that 999 set up. It's just a shame that this story had to shake out this way, because as a game it fails to excite me beyond its lore and individual chambers.

EDIT, 23-MARCH-2024:

My neglect to mention the very casual misogyny present in this game is starting to bug me greatly, so allow me to comment on the reality that Sigma and the rest of the characters either are victims or enablers of horrific womanizing. In a shocking departure from 999's relatively minute jokes about sexuality that are unimportant, minor facets of individual characters only appearing once or twice, Virtue's Last Reward takes the bold move to make Sigma a sexual harasser. In every possible route, he is poised to interact with at least one of the female characters with a variety of dehumanizing and, frankly, horrible sex pestery. He even remarks that Clover (who in VLR is small and skinny but an adult) is seemingly jailbait.

Misogynist characters are not inherently detrimental to a story if it is done with the tact and angling that it deserves. I hold the idea that depiction is not necessarily endorsement of the depicted. However, VLR's main character being an incessantly horny poon-hound who can be led to do just about anything with the promise of someone's panties getting stripped off is so irritating after 20 hours of playing the game that it ceases to be worthwhile as a facet of a character worth exploring. There is no benefit to it in this story.

"Remember me, and your true self as well, also that which you must become. The one who will lead us to Paradise with blood stained hands!"

I'm not a really big fan of survival horror games, or horror games in general, because I get scared easily, so I feel like I never get to fully enjoy these games and their qualities, mostly because I end up looking for guides and walkthroughs online.
Before the Silent Hill games that I played for the first time last summer, I had only played RE 2 and 3 remakes, and those were both games that i didn't like very much. Luckily,  that wasn't the case for the Silent Hill games, because I loved them. After finishing Silent Hill 2 in one day and loving it, I decided to play Silent Hill 3, which quickly became my favorite in the series, even more after playing Silent Hill 1. After one year, while watching my friend play sh2, I decided to replay sh3, and my opinion on it hasn't changed.
I think that Silent Hill 3 is the best game in the original trilogy for a different number of reasons, from the gameplay to the even more absurd horror elements and the incredible story and characters.

First of all i wanted to talk about how good all the different "levels" in this game were, they were all perfectly crafted and scary but fun to go trough, my favorite one was the hilltop center, mostly bc i really liked the change to the otherworld and also i feel like they are the most scary ones with the church, that is one of the best parts in the game with the recalls to silent hill one, the shopping mall and the subway were also good but in this replay i found them really fast to go through and didn't think much of them other than the fact that the mall is a perfect preview of what the game is going to be, then bookhaven hospital is in my opinion the least fun one because you already go through it already in sh2 so its a bit repetitive in its normal form; overall i think that every place visited is good in its own way and doesn't fail at making you feel scared thanks to the perfect sound design but also to its little eastereggs like the cutscene in the subway that always freaks me out.

The gameplay is also better than in sh2, thats because theres more types of weapons that make the gameplay more fun and engaging, also i love the ng plus weapons like the infinite flamethrower, the infinte submachinegun and my favorite one which is the beam saber. Also the costumes add to the game a lot of replayability thanks to all the different shirts and outfits that Heather can wear, even though in my opinion her original outfit is the best one bc its more iconic and particular.

I loved the cult story and how it managed to deliver an interesting and particular narrative, even though it can be considered more "common" than the one in Silent Hill 2.

My favorite characters were Heather, Douglas, and Vincent. The best one is Heather, who has probably become my favorite female character, she acts like a real person during the game by showing a wide range of emotions but also by her interactions with the world around her, and I love how she has her own unique personality, i also really liked Douglas because i think hes a really intricate charachter and i love how the game makes you hate him at the start but then not only he becomes a very important part in the plot, but he also becomes an important person to Heather, then theres Vincent which I really liked because of its contrast with claudia about their beliefs and their different view on the same religion.

The themes of the game are very delicate but at the same time very important to talk about, like unwanted pregnancy, abortion, and womanhood in general. I would love to talk more precisely about each one of them, but I think that since they are a big part of the game, I would end up spoiling something.

I can say that Silent Hill 3 is, at least in my opinion, the peak of horror gaming, and even if I don't play a lot of horror games myself, I don't think that there will ever be a game that surpasses the feeling of anxiety, terror, and also sadness that Silent Hill 3 gave me. This game is a must-play for everyone, even for the people who, like me, aren't really big fans of the horror genre.


PS:
Even though the review is finished, I wanted to share 2 of my favorite quotes from the game:
"Is every person here a mental case?"
"Monsters? They looked like monsters to you?"

This is the start of a series of reviews that I’ve titled “The Great Zelda Binge”, where I’ll be reviewing all of the single player mainline entries in The Legend of Zelda series, as well as their various ports. The Legend of Zelda is my favorite video game franchise. It’s that childhood game series that remains near and dear to my heart to this day, and is immensely responsible for my love of the medium in general. Writing in-depth reviews on each mainline entry in the series is my way of paying tribute to it, as well as finally forcing myself to catch up on a couple of stray titles in the series that I just haven’t gotten to yet. Some friends of mine, Reyn, Quent, Steinco, and PT are also doing similar Zelda marathons, and I highly recommend giving their reviews a look as well.

All that being said, despite my proclaimed love for the franchise, I will admit: coming to appreciate its very first game is rather difficult. The original Legend of Zelda lays down an enormous amount of groundwork for the series. It is more or less the template that the vast majority of games in the series would follow going forward. Despite being a strong foundation to build upon, ultimately, that’s all the first Zelda is: a foundation. It’s a primitive game that understandably has numerous issues that end up being addressed in future entries of the series.

Ages ago, the kingdom of Hyrule was in possession of the “Triforces”, which were golden triangle-shaped objects imbued with mystic power. The Prince of Darkness, Ganon, led an army of monsters to attack Hyrule in order to seize the Triforces and wield their awesome abilities for himself, so he could plunge the world into darkness and rule over it all. After he acquired the Triforce of Power, the princess of Hyrule, Zelda, split the Triforce of Wisdom into eight separate pieces and hid them throughout the kingdom in order to keep Ganon from obtaining it, while sending her attendant, Impa, to seek out someone with the courage to defeat Ganon. After learning about what the princess had done, Ganon imprisoned Zelda and sent his monsters to track down Impa, who at the last minute, was saved by a young man named Link. After Impa tells Link about everything that’s happened, Link’s sense of justice causes him to resolve to find the eight pieces of the Triforce of Wisdom, rescue Zelda, and stop Ganon’s plans to take over the world.

The Legend of Zelda is a game that’s meant to recreate a traditional fantasy adventure. It’s a top-down, action-adventure game rooted in the concept of exploration, of going out into the world and uncovering all sorts of secrets and battling evil monsters during your quest to rescue the princess. The game starts Link off in the Overworld, which is where you’ll spend a majority of your time traversing. After obtaining the wooden sword from the cave on the starting screen, you set out into the world. There’s a lot you will find throughout the land of Hyrule. You can discover special items that Link can use either in combat or while exploring, such as the boomerang, which can stun enemies, or the bombs, whose explosions can damage enemies and reveal hidden caves and pathways. There are hordes of monsters that you encounter, as well as various caves with merchants you can purchase items from, and even secret individuals who will grant you a reward for finding them. Despite the game’s ethos being rooted in exploration and discovery, its biggest problem is that it’s designed in a way that doesn’t make exploration enjoyable at all. In fact, blindly exploring in this game is downright painful. The Overworld in particular is absolutely miserable to traverse if you don’t know where to go or what to do.

Almost every screen in the Overworld is overrun by all sorts of different monsters, and I do mean overrun. You can’t go a single screen in any direction without a mob of enemies immediately spawning in and hurling projectiles at you. At the start of the game, Link is particularly fragile, it doesn’t take more than a couple of hits for him to go down. Dying causes Link to respawn with only three hearts at the starting screen with the cave where you find the sword, and while you can obtain items and upgrades that will make Link live longer, I can’t imagine most people figuring out how to find them on their own.

I will be completely up front: I used a guide for the Overworld sections of the game, and if you plan on trying this out for yourself, I highly recommend you do the same. The particular guide I used, which was found on zeldadungeon.net, specifically has you go out and obtain a number of items and upgrades as the very first thing you do in the game. It’s very understandable why the guide has you get them. A couple of these items, specifically the Heart Containers and the Blue Ring, are particularly important to get as early as possible if you want to keep yourself from dying to a single touch, as they give Link additional health and lessen the amount of damage he takes from enemies respectively.

This ties into what I believe to be the biggest issue of the game. A number of these special items and upgrades are located or tied to secrets you can find throughout the Overworld. These secrets include hidden merchants who you can buy items from, old men who will give you additional Heart Containers, and the occasional friendly monster who will pay you an amount of rupees (the currency of The Legend of Zelda series) for discovering them, which you would otherwise have to collect by grinding enemies. While you could consider the game’s secrets to be optional, as it is possible to beat the game without them, choosing not to seek them out will make things much harder for you. The problem is that the game’s secrets are hidden in an extremely poor fashion. They will usually be hidden in caves that you have to discover by bombing specific walls, or underneath bushes that you have to burn using the Candle item. However, you have absolutely no way of telling what wall can be bombed or what bush can be burned. When it comes to bombs, you can only carry a limited supply, and the Candle can only be used once per screen. Unless you want to go through the utterly insane process of bombing every single wall you see, or burning a single bush, leaving the current screen and then returning to burn another one, then you will not find these (in my opinion) highly necessary upgrades.

The pieces of the Triforce are all located in places known as labyrinths, which are underground maze-like locations filled with traps and enemies. Labyrinths are where you’ll find a majority of special items in the game, as each labyrinth has at least one item for you to find. The end of each labyrinth features a showdown with a boss guarding a piece of the Triforce. Upon defeating it, Link will earn a Heart Container and he’ll also be able to collect the Triforce piece the boss is guarding. After completing all eight labyrinths and gathering all eight Triforce pieces, Link can then set out in search of the final labyrinth in Death Mountain, where Ganon and the Princess reside.

The labyrinths are relatively simple to explore compared to the Overworld. They typically consist of various rooms where you just fight enemies on your way to find the dungeon's key item and then the boss. You’ll occasionally need to push a random block in a room in order to unlock a stairway to a hidden passage as well. About halfway through the game, however, labyrinths do require you to bomb specific walls in order to progress, and you run into the same issue that you have with the Overworld: you have no way of knowing what walls to bomb, which can cause you to waste them. If you’re not using a guide during the labyrinths and you’re playing the game either via an emulator or on Nintendo Switch Online, you’re going to want to use the rewind feature very often just to make sure that you don’t waste bombs trying to figure out where to go.

Labyrinths are also where you’ll be doing the most combat as well. Combat in this game, despite being simple at heart, does get more complex than you’d expect. You can only thrust your sword in the direction that Link is currently facing, meaning you have to frequently move and position yourself according to the enemy’s moving patterns so that you can hit them without getting hit yourself. Certain enemies can only be attacked at certain angles, though as you progress through the game and get more upgrades, you can just start to tank hits from weaker enemies and mash your sword, which is admittedly rather lazy and does make the combat less engaging than it would otherwise be.

Its presentation is about what you’d expect for the NES. Its visual style is simple, yet iconic all the same. It makes great use of the NES’ color palette to simulate various climates that you explore, such as green forest areas, brown mountain areas and deserts, and blue lakes and rivers. It’s only got about five music tracks, but again, it's some of the most iconic music in all of video games. The main theme in particular is up there with Super Mario Bros’ overworld theme as one of the most well known video game songs of all time. Koji Kondo made do with what he had to work with, and he did a damn good job, he truly understood the assignment.

The Legend of Zelda, despite not quite earning my enjoyment, still earns my respect at the bare minimum. Technically, almost everything that I would come to love about the series is here, but what’s here is rather unrefined. It’s a game that I’m happy to have completed for the sole purpose of being able to say “I beat Zelda 1”, but otherwise, it’s not really a game I can recommend to people nowadays unless you are adamant about experiencing Zelda’s roots. It doesn’t accomplish its goal of providing an enjoyable exploration-based experience primarily because of the way its upgrades and certain items are distributed and hidden, but the building blocks for future Zelda titles are there. The series wouldn’t be around without it, and plenty of other games wouldn’t be around without it either. It’s a necessary first step on the path to something far greater.

There is a scene here where Cooper gives BT a thumbs up and BT tries to do the same for a moment before giving him a thumbs up back, and I start smiling like an idiot before I pull a thumbs up myself, and all I'm thinking the whole time is, "Man, I'm way too easy to please."

I genuinely believe that, outside of the ridiculously fun combat system, the best decision made here was to give the hulking Evangelion a personality of its own. Not the snarky, know-it-all techno-babbling AI, but just an intelligent robot that doesn't necessarily know everything outside of its specialization on the battlefield. The exchanges between Cooper and BT are both hilarious and compelling, generating immense interest in their evolving relationship. Of course, the campaign is fairly short-lived, but it does wonders at crafting memorable moments through those interactions spliced in between the chaos of militia and titans.

BT, you will always be famous.

(PS. THE "WHEN YOU GET TO HELL, TELL EM VIPER SENT YA" AND "DODGE THIS" WAS FROM THIS GAME????? THAT'S SO COOL)

THIS LOG IS OUTDATED, THIS IS WHAT I THINK OF THE GAME NOW

I think I'm good until the next couple of major updates or the release of 1.0, while I think the things that made its predecessor good are still there and improved tenfold, there are many things I'm pretty much not entirely convinced about yet. For instance, the Arcana System is not great, and I find the buffs it provides very underwhelming compared to the remarkable upgrade system that the mirror was, I don't really like any of the Nocturnal Arms, enemy damage in later areas feels overtuned, and take too fucking long to die, and for some reason every boss summons adds now.
I know some of these issues are fundamental and might not get addressed, but to prevent souring my own experience any further, I'll put this one on pause for the time being.

Also, I'm sure there are a lot of Nemesis fans already that see her and go "I can fix her". I don't want to fix her.
I want to push her off a bridge after saying this.

This is one of those games where I actually don't really have much to say about it.
It's a simple turn-based RPG made in RPG Maker, and I found its sense of humor pretty charming and funny!

After I got adjusted to the game's mechanics, and passed over a difficulty spike (which was kinda my fault, because I didn't you could recruit other party members at the time), the game didn't really evolve much.
Getting that third party member made things more interesting, because of his different set of attacks, buffs and debuffs, but that was it.

Suits: A Business RPG is a short and simple RPG that I don't think offers much besides its themes and humor.

"Your friends...
What kind of... people are they?
I wonder...
Do those people...
think of you... as a friend?"

Majoras Mask is one of my favorite games of all time, but even though I say this, my opinion on it was very different at the start. When I first played the remake on my 3DS last summer, I completely hated it. To this day, I don't really understand why I didn't like it. Maybe it was the time limit or the confusing start, or maybe even the fact that to fully enjoy the game, I had to complete all the sidequests (I don't really like to 100% games), but after giving it another try in September 2023, again on the 3DS, I realized that all of these "negative sides" were actually the best part of the game, was when Majoras Mask became one of my favorite games oat.
But since i had always heard that the n64 version was better, i decided with the new recompilation project to get all the masks and finish the game for a second time, and i can say that it was one of the best decisions i made because this playthrough helped me fully realize how much i apreciate this game, so much that i even grabbed all the fairies in the temples!
The temples are one of my favorite parts about Majoras Mask, and I think that they are some of the best in the whole series. Even though Twilight Princess has the best ones, imo, if I had to rank them, I would say that:

-Snowhead was probably my favorite one since I love how it uses the goron's mask abilities and also how it looks, which, in my opinion, is the second most creepy after Stone Tower. The OST also sets a perfect tone for how it looks and feels while playing.

-my second favorite is the Stone Tower temple, the ost is amazing, i love how it reverses when the temple is turned around. Also, it's amazing how it combines all the things you learned in the previous temples in this sort of final test before the fight with the skull kid.

-Great bay temple was also amazing but kind of confusing in my opinion. I loved how the zora abilities were used since it was my favorite mask in the game.

-Woodfall temple was also very good for a first dungeon, I loved its ost but unfortunately, it is overshadowed by how good the others are.
Another thing that i love about Majoras Masks are the masks, they are all so cool, and i love all the different uses they have. My favorites are probably the zora mask, the bremen mask, the bunny hat, and the captain's mask. The ost was amazing, and it compliments the game's atmosphere and vibe so well. My favorite tracks were the Astral Observatory, the Song of Healing, and the Termina Field.
The most particular thing for me is that this game isn't afraid of talking about more mature themes like death, loss, grief, and most of all, the concept of masking your true identity, and I like how these themes are not forced into the game but instead are represented in a very natural way through its characters and their quests.
Majoras Mask is, in my opinion, one of the best games of all time, and even if its gameplay loop and mechanics may not be liked by everyone, I think that it's one of those games that needs to be played at least once in their lives since there will never be something like it again.




EDIT:i forgot to say that destroying Majora's with the fierce deity mask was one of the best feelings i've ever had while playing a videogame, imo getting all the masks is worth just for that alone.