not very good but I kind of liked it

There's two big things about this game that I don't think worked and they're the arena and enemy design. Arenas are weirdly massive and open, while enemies are mostly melee and hitscanners (with occassional projectile based ones). The huge size of arenas make melee enemies completely trivial to fight as you have plenty of room to manouver around them and fights with the hitscanners have you just scanning to find them before you pick them off. It never really feels like a fight, it's just busywork which is really bad for an FPS game.

It's a shame too because everything else is alright. There's a ton of weapons and most of them feel pretty good and I love the overall vibe of the game with its jungle theme and really cool soundtrack. It just has this nice Nintendo 64-ish tone to it all that I can't quite put into words. I think it's the comic book influences put onto the slightly jank N64 hardware? Gave it this cool 90's tone that meant I glided through the whole thing knowing it wasn't very good but having a nice time none the less.

I think the collectable aspect saves it a bit for me as well as the slight exploration focus kept my brain distracted from the FPS stuff. But it is at its core an FPS game and not a very good one. Still had a nice enough time though! Might try the sequel and if it's even slightly better I'll be happy.

There's this cat who keeps wandering into our home right now who we've called Peter. I think one of our neighbours owns him but you always see him trotting around coming in and out the house, sleeping on the couch, scratching said couch. He's a nice fellow and with him always being around but not knowing exactly where he's come from it's easy to wonder about him and his little life and at its best Stray gives a really nice window into that.

Levels remind me a lot of Hitman as they're not huge but there's so much personality in every corner and the cat perspective really adds a kind of honesty to that. Nothing is trying to present itself as more than it is to you, because you're just a cat, nobody is going to be mad at you for any mischief, because you're just a cat and this lack of formality to the game's world means that poking around is such a comfy and nice time. I clambered around all the bars and flats as much as I could because they all feel so lived in and homely.

The game does seem to discard this sometimes for a weirdly combat focused section and stealth? Which didn't feel like it fit the rest of it at all. The plot also focuses on a threat that's just a bit too big in scale for a game where you play as a stray cat and I wish it honed in more on small-scale character moments instead.

the cat stuff is really good though and goes beyond the gif bait some people seemed to expect. had a nice time

Weird playing this after Sonic Frontiers because I've come away with very similar feelings of this being the greatest video game burried under some possible development issues? The combat is great fun but gets repetitive due to lack of variety in stuff like enemy types and I like the story but I don't think it was told very well with the characters feeling somewhat robotic despite it trying to be a very human story. Other things just feel off like the levels being reused and a currency being shown at the bottom of the pause screen that functions no differently to the game's other crafting materials but is given this whole space to itself as if it was supposed to be more important.

at the end of the day though this is a game where you run into combat shouting "it's my destiny to kill them all" and then cast a bunch of spells so it's kind of sick and i might try the other Valkyrie Profile games because i like the story's themes and it has this very cold, rough but clean look(??) that i like.