The forgotten king.

It's always Sam & Max, Day of the Tentacle, Secret of Monkey Island that come up when the conversation turns to the classic Lucasarts point 'n' clicks. And they're great games, worthy of being in the conversation. But Fate of Atlantis? That's where the real heat is.

First off: the tone is pitch perfect. Everything about Fate of Atlantis feels like an Indiana Jones movie, from the dialogue to the locations to the plot and beyond. Jones is cynical, stubborn, a bit sexist. His co-star - Sophia Hapgood - gets under his skin, holds her own, spars with him verbally. You trot the globe with the classic map screen, break out the whip, reference previous adventures. It's glorious, as on point as it could be, the secret fourth movie.

But the real secret, the best part? There are three distinct paths through the game, triggered by an early dialogue choice. Want the classic point 'n' click experience? That's the wits path. Want more action? Fists. The best, however, is team, with Sophia coming along and bringing that pulp adventure vibe to life.

There's more. The locations change on each path, the puzzles and dialogue as well. And those puzzles themselves often have multiple solutions, both within their paths and between playthroughs, some light randomization changing locations of objects and the solutions to reach them. Moreover, hidden in all that is a wealth of optional dialogue, quips and snarks, little tidbits to discover on that second or third playthrough.

Moon logic puzzles are almost entirely absent, benign enough when encountered due to the self-contained nature of the scenarios. There's a labyrinth at one point, which is never a favorite, a door maze as well. Minor issues in the end, and nothing that tarnishes the crown rightfully owed to Lucasart's finest adventure game.

This is strictly reviewing the base-game content of A Realm Reborn (not including the post-patch epilogue quests leading into Heavensward).

I COMPLETELY understand why most people will tell you to either play through ARR as fast as possible or buy the skip and watch a story recap, because, unfortunately, yes, it is a fairly substandard by-the-numbers Final Fantasy story. The game does NOT do a lot to make itself very engaging to play outside of a couple dungeons nearing the end of the story. If you're not familiar with the prior story of what this game was before ARR, most of the characters in the story will seem paper-thin and unimpressive. It's a shame really, because there's a ton of characters here that were given a good amount of depth prior to ARR that you simply will not see reflected here.

But honestly? All of these negatives, which in other games might be enough for me to drop them, did not really bother me all too much. It was probably because I was playing a Lalafell Warrior because the idea of being a tiny guy running around holding all the aggro was really funny to me, and I honestly had a pretty good time getting to play that out. I did a duty roulette once where I got put into a premade group of three Miqo'te girls and they all patted me on the head before leaving the instance when we finished. So that was pretty cool.

Much of me has been... 'trained', I guess, to really pay attention to the inner workings of games to evaluate them. My angle with games is often to analyze mechanics, understand what various systems exist in the game and see how they interact or don't. Yet, MMOs, a genre that I've only recently experienced through vanilla WoW private servers (rest in piece nostalrius) and like two weeks of playing Runescape on my second monitor, can't really be held to this standard. It might be more accurate to say that it isn't fair to hold them to this standard, mainly because the 'massively multiplayer' aspect of MMOs adds a lot of gray areas when it comes to forming a concrete 'objective' analysis of video games. In single player-games, regardless of how many different playstyles any single game might be able to account for in it's design, the ways a player interfaces with the game appear countably finite. Every player, regardless of specific choices in their gameplay, will encounter the same problems, story checkpoints and other scenarios that effectively funnel the immersion and agency of the player into predetermined outcomes. It's not possible for developers to create a truly unique outcome for every different way a player may approach a problem. MMOs, being intrinsically social games, are designed to truly offer a scope of choice most single-player experiences simply aren't equipped to replicate. What this leads to is several different strata and substrata of players who are all playing the same game, but for entirely different purposes and goals. This is how you get people like pure-crafters, immersive role-players, the Limsa Lominsa catgirls, and even player groups and discords solely bonded because they all chose to play as Lalafells. The scope of MMOs is something more traditional and technical frameworks for understanding games can't really talk about without missing the forest for the trees. I really hope i'm using that metaphor correctly.

Point being, I think Final Fantasy XIV is a pretty special game, through and through. For every part that

[We are announcing the end of this review of Final Fantasy XIV Online. We thank all readers of the review for the time and energy they have spent in reading and supporting this publication. If we had a cool seven minute long music video to commemorate this occasion, this is where we'd put it.]

I know this game is in early access, but it’s nearly complete, and I don’t think its most significant issues will be resolved via player feedback and updates.

It feels like a massive step back from the first game in every metric.

The combat feels sluggish and less responsive, and none of the weapons are enjoyable. Hades I had this rapid ebb and flow to its combat that II lacks. You’re mostly just stunlocking enemies with larger health pools instead of zipping around frantically.

The biomes are less attractive, and some are straight up not enjoyable.

The new progression systems feel poorly thought out and are mainly added to differentiate itself from the first game.

None of the characters are endearing, and many come off like Battleborne versions of the Hades I cast. This was especially jarring because everyone in Hades I—as well as its world and narrative—was immediately captivating.

I think much of this stems from this template getting everything squeezed out of it in the first game. I know why they made a sequel, but I wish Supergiant hadn’t.

feels like i played this alongside my six year old self. we did it lil' buddy, we finally beat the one game we had no chance in hell of finishing without a gamecube memory card

as with sa1, there's really no point in arguing about this series since the detractors have long made up their shitty minds. sa2's an interesting beast though because it manages to excel just as much as its predecessor... in very different ways!

the speed stages are great, albeit nothing like sa1's. maybe you prefer these more linearly driven, setpiece-focused levels, but i might be partial to having a spindash that can blaze me across entire courses in a matter of seconds. i like going places i shouldn't and being rewarded for it. there's some of that here, but it's not nearly the same. that said, there's no city escape or final rush in sa1 so we'll call it a draw

treasure hunting is improved tenfold. i definitely prefer the newly limited radar system (it makes finding shards early super satisfying) and the overall increased difficulty. especially after knuckles' previous story was an absolute cakewalk. rouge is basically knuckles on hard mode and i generally prefer her side more for that. love her music too, though i wish it was more lyrically driven to better contrast knuckles

shooting's a more mixed bag. tails reps one of the best stages but also most of the worst. eggman on the other hand for the most part lives up to gamma's gameplay well enough - especially once he gets his booster. there's def a sense of flow to these that i feel a solid chunk of people don't give deserved credit because they just wanna go fast and grind rails

...which is a sentiment i don't completely identify with because i feel sa2 is more than the sum of its parts. the narrative is genuinely great and actively shifts moods and gameplay styles accordingly. you're always listening to a banger, you're never on the same sort of stage for more than a few minutes at a time - and you're always pushing closer to one of the greatest fuckin' finales you'll ever find in video games. the quality of direction really skyrocketed here. the last episode's preview alone completely solos every single scene in sa1

one strange oddity though: there's a surprising lack of shadow gameplay here. maybe the devs weren't so confident in him as a newcomer and didn't expect him to be such a hit?

if they knew what was good for them, sonic team would've just made a whole ass game where you play as shadow the hedgehog...

EDIT: after careful deliberation (replaying the shit out of everything) i've decided that i have 0 significant issues with this game. i'm not even standing by what i said about the speed stages before. they're all fuckin' fantastic and i think i might actually prefer these to sa1's (granted i need to spend some more time with that game too for confirmation)

on top of all of what i've said - i've still barely scratched the surface of the chao world content and that on its own is pretty impressive for being in an already tightly-packed game to begin with. how the fuck did this get made in two years?

i also learned last night via the extra video that city escape was inspired by sonic team constantly receiving parking tickets while living in san francisco. that's worthy of some merit on its own

and maybe this is cheating to mention since it's largely battle rerelease content, but i don't care: the multiplayer is some of the most fun i've ever had with a 2-player game

you know what - fuck it, 10/10

EDIT 2: got all 180 emblems. basically a perfect game

Disappointment after disappointment, when will I ever grow up? Every damn game I am underwhelmed, yet I seem to never learn. I will never love an entry in this series again, the magic that I experienced from days long past will never be seen or heard from again. Forever I am chained to this merchandise-pushing bulldozer of a franchise. Why does my childhood keep pestering me? Is it a curse? Why do I bother? Just let it die already.

Being someone whose username looks like it's based on Pokemon and formerly having an Eevee PFP for quite a while on here, it would feel like my take on seemingly the most divisive entry in the series yet will come off as something easily discarded. An open world game that is apparently super buggy and super empty? No way I could love it. It's a despicable game that would probably steal my dog's lunch money if it got the opportunity. I can't believe they would release such a broken game in 2022, etc, etc, yadda yadda. Whatever, you heard it all already.

Lend me your ears though... I loved this game.

As I lie here on my bed and rest myself on my Slowpoke pillow, I think to myself "is this a dream?". Not since the early days of playing on my purple Game Boy Color with my copy of Blue version have I felt this same feeling of grand adventure. The ability to go wherever I please without a completely nothing rival constantly challenging me at every other route, or having someone stop me from going down a certain route because they dropped their contact lens. Even the overworld trainers have grown to finally get some manners, and allow me to walk around freely without being demanded to waste my time fighting their crappy low level Scatterbug that wouldn't even give me a single XP point. Finally, a game that eschews all of that so that I may feel free. Free to experience the world of which I seem to never grow out of.

This is MY adventure.

The best part? This game will only get better for me. I played Violet in pretty much the worst way possible, via portable mode on my Switch. I experienced the worst frame rate drops possible, I experienced the worst pop-in, and despite all the doomer talk on Twitter....I never once experienced a crash or even one of the funny glitches or bugs. (may have helped that I bought it digitally) It turns out you can't trust judging your incoming experience based on what you see on the internet, especially when everyone everywhere can easily record stuff that happens to them in what might be the new best-seller in the entire universe. Personally, that stuff actually endears me more to this game. There's a clip of a Jigglypuff that flew off into space out there somewhere that's actually perfectly in-character, and would've made me laugh my ass off if I had experienced it in my own game. To say that I can't wait to replay this later on either a patched version, on better switch hardware or emulator would be an understatement. I cannot imagine how much I would love this once I experience it at a consistent frame rate.

Despite the tacky school uniform you're saddled with at the beginning, I found the setting very charming. Clothing options suffer thanks to it, but these are probably my favorite set of characters since Black/White. Mela having to move her legs like a robot because of her ridiculous boots is more fun and entertaining than anything Leon and his merchandise-moving Charizard did in the last game, and Arven is someone who I want to fight for to the very end. Don't talk to me or my cybernetic lizard motorcycle son again. The last 5% of this game goes beyond words in how much of a step up it is from Sw/Sh's wet fart of a climax.

They say an image speaks louder than words, but here it is.

Call me a fanboy, call me chopped liver. You could even call me late for dinner, but...I enjoyed myself immensely...and that's all that matters in the end.

It's then that I ask myself again, "is this a dream?"

No, the sky has not fallen.....no cats and dogs are not currently living together.... Pokemon Scarvy is my game of the year. This is reality, and I still can't fucking believe it.

Ten.
Years.

Ten whole years since B/W, and they finally do it again... holy shit.

I refuse to grow up.

"Are you ready for the sexualising minors in your story lesson?"

Kazutaka Kodaka gulped.

Katsura Hashino nodded.

Nisio Isin blinked nervously.

"Yes, Gen Urobuchi" they said in unison.