anyone who's known me for any amount of time could probably tell you that dragon quest is far and away my favorite series of all time, i love it dearly and to death. despite this, like most franchises i love, i struggle to reconcile with the wider opinions the fans of dragon quest hold, most of all the near universal acclaim of dragon quest 8. even the other dragon quests i don't "get" in the same way, namely 5 and 9, at least have something about them that i can understand being a hook to some even if i don't necessarily agree, but i just can not wrap my head around the fanbase's—and jrpg fans as a whole's—opinion on dragon quest 8. i understand that it had a lot uniquely going for it at the time, especially a demo for final fantasy 12, but despite most of what it had going for it at the time being less and less unique as time goes on the opinion of dragon quest 8 being one of the better dragon quest prevails, and i just don't get it.

don't get me wrong, i still enjoy this game! honestly having played every game in the mainline series other than finishing 11 at the time of writing this the only ones i even dislike are 2 and 9. in terms of positives i think dq8 has a great cast between the party and dhoulmagus, and despite the acoustics of the orchestral versions being questionable 8's soundtrack is really great. the final boss theme in 8 is unironically tied with 9 for my favorite final boss theme in the series, there was obviously as much love put into this game as every other dragon quest and that in of itself is charming to me.

however, that's sadly about where i run into the things i don't really care for. more than any other game in the series i find dragon quest 8 to be the embodiment of what most people who dislike or don't respect this series come to think of it; dragon quest 8 is a formulaic comfort food type of game without much notable to say outside of vibes and character writing. outside of dhoulmagus, yangus, and angelo there's not really that much to say about the story (and even what there is to say isn't crazy unique), the reliance on psyche-up and lack of distinct party variety outside of the 3ds version makes combat land on the less engaging side of what the series has to offer which is really not great when this game seemed to over-correct on people complaining about 7's combat-less intro (and to be honest nothing is more irritating to me than a sequel over-correcting on what made a much better game unique and appealing!), and the game is somehow on the longer end of dragon quest play times despite utilizing it the most haphazardly.

despite all that though, it's still dragon quest and i still get the base appeal! it's still a very strong 7/10 game for me and i'm glad i played it despite all of that because at the end of the day it's all dragon quest and i love dragon quest. it's just confusing and maybe a bit frustrating to see how common of a sentiment it is in the western fanbase to deride titles like 6 and 7 while parading a game like 8, maybe the most "generic" dragon quest in a series that outsiders deride for being generic, as a masterful golden goose of the entire franchise. i get that this game was the first 3d dragon quest, i get that it had voice acting and overseas it had an orchestral soundtrack, i get that there was a final fantasy 12 demo packaged with the game, and i get that plenty of people are nostalgic for this game but almost 20 years later with more and more people playing this game completely divorced from that context, what merits of its own does it really have? why out of every dragon quest game is it 8 that's so popular? i just really really don't get it.

Sable is my Breath of the Wild. An open world design staple that is second only to the super condensed A Short Hike.

Stellar art and music. Lovely map design that invites you to sit down and take the world in.
Writing, both dialogue and world building, is very good and often can get emotional. Sable's world is intriguing from the get go and unravelling its history was very fun.

It's a tragedy that a game this pretty and clever runs so very poorly.

I took my time with Sable's Gliding and did nearly everything the game has to offer, part of me didn't want to let go of the beautiful desert scenery and serene music. Part of me didn't want to let go but as the game keeps telling you - Journeys must end and that's part of what makes them special.

Where were you when cyberpunk became escapism?

Look around discussions of Cyberpunk 2077 and keep track of how long it takes before someone says that they wish they could live in Night City. Watch these conversations as they turn to screenshots of scenic views and vistas, with all involved waxing poetic about getting lost in the world. See the rising glut of "comfy" cyberpunk games — DYSTOPIKA, Skid Cities, Nivalis — and remember the genre's origins, written in blood and broken teeth from beneath the heel of a corporate boot. Cyberpunk has not been a genre where hope exists. It has not been a place for people to want to be. Cyberpunk media is a warning more than anything else. Despite this, more people than ever don't just see places like Night City as an acceptable alternative, but as something to yearn for. What they have now pales to what the genre's founders threatened would come to be. It isn't difficult to understand; I spent four years in Toronto, and that city has been a fucking shithole longer than I've been alive. This is a common opinion for extant cities and towns all around the globe. But what once existed as the worst-case scenario of a dark future has since emerged as more favorable to the world we occupy today.

There's an honesty to cyberpunk media that isn't there for much else. To pull an idea from Fighting in the Age of Loneliness, our world doesn't make sense. It's all abstraction. There are no roots, no sensible causes, just an ideological superstructure over everything that never seems to be shaped by its base despite all theory suggesting that it must. The bank owns a home owned by a landlord whose mortgage you pay. Your work is dictated by a boss who is dictated by a stock market which is dictated by investors, all so far removed from what you do that they couldn't ever comprehend it, yet they remain in charge of shaping it. Your country sends locals to other countries to kill other locals and nothing ever seems to come of it besides more people being dead sooner than they would have been otherwise. Cyberpunk media offers an escape from the absurd; it puts a gun in your hand and tells you to go and blow someone's fucking head off. The cops won't stop you, you'll get paid to do it, people will celebrate you. It's brutal, and barbaric, and it'll eventually leave you with more lead in your body than blood, but it's honest. It makes sense. There's no abstraction. There's you, there's a gun, there's a computer, there's a target, there's a legend. If it doesn't change much, it'll feel good to do it. Adventurism can't even promise you that in real life.

The greatest triumph of Cyberpunk 2077 is almost inarguably in its world design, doubtless thanks to the many decades of effort put in by creator Mike Pondsmith. Whether or not CDPR did a great job in translating all of that background lore into gameplay — in empty, clean streets, packed with inaccessible buildings and linear pathways — the design of everything borders on flawless. Night City is an urban planning nightmare, all twisted highways and too-dense housing. Drive a few miles out of town, though, and it starts looking like LA suburbs; drive a bit further than that, and you hit desert. While this alone is nothing new — Grand Theft Auto 5’s Los Santos is effectively the same thing — I feel that this is pretty rare for a lot of cyberpunk media, especially in the ones that break into the mainstream. People online will talk about that “eating noodles while wearing a trenchcoat in the rain” joke a lot when it comes to their ideal cyberpunk setting, but really take a second to think about how painfully generic cyberpunk media tends to be. Everyone wears stupid clothes, lives in permanently-raining cities with neon lights running 24/7, they all listen to nothing but darksynth, they’re all either corporate goosesteppers or chromed-out hackermen. People in cyberpunk settings are almost universally treated as set dressing, as indistinct and universal as the fucking wind. There’s some real diversity to both Night City and to the people that make it up, and it goes a long, long way in making it feel like a possible outcome for the real world rather than yet another piece of computer-anarchist wish fulfillment.

The characters themselves play a large part in why players seem so desperate to live here. Night City, as presented here, is kind of just filled with decent people. Now, we can’t talk about 2077 without talking about the Edgerunners anime, so I’ll be brief. What people liked about Edgerunners, I hope, is that it did a good job of establishing how someone can slip into a street gang. Not just a cyberpunk-themed one, but in general. David’s life fucking sucks from minute one, and it doesn’t stop sucking until the day he dies. His life is dog-eared by the deaths or betrayals or both of just about every person he’s ever cared about. He starts out with no money, no opportunities, and no future. Finding his crew is a release from that, but it’s short, and it’s painful. V, by contrast, has been born with a silver spoon in their mouth. The most stark difference you’ll notice happens right at the beginning, when Viktor Vektor gives you a free 21,000 eddies worth of cyberware that you never have to pay back. This is a strong line to draw between the two works. 2077’s Night City is nice, and forgiving. Edgerunners’s Night City will swallow you whole. It makes it really kind of difficult to believe that this is such a terrible world to occupy when V never really struggles for much, due in no small part to how strong of a support structure they both start out with and discover as the game goes on.

While nowhere near as cutthroat as they perhaps ought to be, considering that the way they act runs counter to how bad you’re told the setting is, 2077 has a strong supporting cast. What helps is that most of them are flawed in fairly believable ways: Judy is an idealist in a situation where it won’t work; Panam is so emotionally stunted that nearly every conversation she has ends with her blowing up on the other party; Jackie doesn’t know when to quit; River is here. Everyone’s favorite wholesome chungus Keanu Reeves is here as Johnny Silverhand, too, and he does a good enough job playing his character that you might forget that Silverhand is supposed to look like Bowie. Something I really do love about Silverhand is that it would have been so easy to make him fall on one extreme or the other — always right or always wrong — but he straddles that line exceptionally well. Johnny spends most of the game as an insufferable asshole, but when he’s right about something, he’s very right about it. By contrast, there’s a lot of time spent on him being wrong, and there’s really nothing to ought to say to him beyond telling him to go fuck himself. It’s a nice balance, and one that CDPR couldn’t keep up through Phantom Liberty, but that’s a review for another time.

The writing, broadly speaking, is good. I think a lot of the best stuff gets tucked away in the side jobs where you can actually dig into who these characters are and what they’re about, rather than just using them as a point of contact to get more “go here and kill a guy” missions from. I’m not completely sold on this being a masterpiece once you start poking away at specific details; I remain very surprised by people who both got attached to Jackie and then were surprised to see him die. The guy is throwing death flags from the very first mission. “Mama Welles is worried about me because all of her other sons died doing exactly what I’m doing, but it’s okay, because I’m never going to die. I love being alive. Hey, bartender who works at the place where they name drinks after dead people, here’s what my drink would be.” It doesn’t help that CDPR apparently ran out of time and money and stuffed the majority of Jackie’s character development and V’s start in Night City into a montage. I don’t know for certain how much it would have helped, but I have to imagine that Jackie’s death might have hit a bit harder if the guy wasn’t gone after a grand total of two gigs.

V lives a remarkably untragic life when you really zoom out. Aside from Jackie’s death, basically everyone that V knows or cares about either continues living their lives just fine or straight up moves out of Night City to go someplace else. Evelyn’s suicide is barely felt because she’s barely known, a couple of Aldecados can bite it, some dolls die in a Tyger Claws raid, and that’s about it. When you see how easy it is for Judy to leave Night City, for Panam to leave Night City, for V to leave Night City, for River to go on the run, for Kerry to go on tour — it makes you wonder why the fuck anyone actually stays in Night City. It doesn’t really seem that hard to just bounce. Of course, this is where something like the core books or Edgerunners come in to demonstrate why people can’t leave, so I’d say CDPR just did kind of a bad job in conveying this.

2077 does manage to be a decent immersive sim released in the year 2020, and that’s something of a feat. While some missions are incredible railroads that essentially force you down a set of tight hallways, there are significantly more of them that allow for quite a bit of player expression. Far from your usual dichotomy of “guns blazing” or “rear-naked choke fanatic” — though that certainly still exists here — 2077 likes to play around with the idea of your skills allowing you to break a mission in half. These are usually relegated to your mobility options, as most characters can walk out of the first couple hours of the game with a double jump and an airdash that’ll allow them to soar like a majestic, sequence-breaking eagle. It’s like a more limited Cruelty Squad, as the closest comparison; there’s no gunk booster jetpacks or intestine grappling hooks, but you can instead kill people with your brain or get Gorilla Arms to punch them in half as a trade-off. These are what you should be prioritizing when it comes to killing people, because firing guns feels pretty bad. The best thing you can do with regards to firearms is get the biggest shotgun you can find and stuff it in someone’s chest, or get smart guns that don’t require you to aim. Peering down your sights and taking potshots at approaching enemies from anything more than ten meters may as well just subtract the ammo from your gun without all of the sound effects and visual flair that would suggest it would ever do anything. Of course, this is all moot when you consider that the most optimal and most fun way to play this is to activate your berserk implant and just smash everyone’s face in with a baseball bat like you’re the Babe Ruth of the dark future.

It’s still kind of a buggy piece of shit. I do like 2077, but this is not the absolute slam-dunk comeback that it’s been hailed as. Granted, it’s certainly a lot better now than it was — back when it was so bad that Sony pulled it from digital storefronts and issued no-questions-asked refunds — but you don’t get points for getting your game to day-one launch stability three years after you released it. The opening nomad lifepath at one point flung me a kilometer in the opposite direction from my car for seemingly no reason, and I had to walk all the way back to it. This is in the introduction mission, before you’ve done anything. This is not the point where things should be breaking yet.

More and more of these bugs will continue to rear their ugly heads the further into the game you get and the more things 2077 needs to keep track of, and it’s clear that it’s a juggler with too many balls. Cops stopped spawning entirely at one point, allowing me to massacre civilians with no penalty; calls for new missions stopped coming in, so I couldn’t progress the side stories; the game engine would forget a fundamental law of reality and drop me through the map, or launch me hundreds of feet into the air, or make it so my guns just wouldn’t fire when I pulled the trigger. These come infrequently, but popped up enough throughout my 25-hour playthrough to bother me. I’m playing this on a brand-new computer off of an M.2 drive and V’s dick is still out whenever he gets on a motorcycle for a few seconds before his clothes load in. Something’s fucked up behind the curtain.

2077 is good, but given how much of a moment it was intended to be, it falls more than a little flat. CDPR still made a fucking gajillion dollars before it even released, so it isn’t as if they’re going to learn anything from this. As The Witcher 3, as Cyberpunk 2077, so The Witcher 4. Expect their next title to also be a barely-working mess that takes years to patch to an acceptable state. This is good, but it’s only good. It's a lot of missed opportunities rolled into a single work.

In Night City, you can be cum.

You steal things and run for your life. It's like a puzzle platformer, except the platforming is not very fun from a tactile perspective. I dunno how to convey it in words, but basically it doesn't have that floaty feel or the perfect balance in distance between platforms that great platformers tend to have. And when you're being chased, this becomes a real issue. And your pursuers are relentless to an almost cheating degree. Obstacles don't exist for them, and they always know where you are. Honestly, this game gives me anxiety. As a kid I was able to play it probably because my mental health was better. Now I'd rather play games where you can murder people because I wanna murder people.

Just like Dreamland 2, the first time I fully beat this game was in 2022, directly after Dreamland 2 actually. I first played this years ago when I got an SNES classic, and thought it was cool. But I'll come out and say it, I never really digged the whole multiple bite-sized campaigns in one shtick. I had a greater appreciation for this game, when I played it in 2022, due to some of the series staples it added. But even then, it wasn't one of my favorite Kirby games. How do I feel about the game now though? Basically, the same tbh. Though, when compared to every Kirby game that released prior to this, I'd say it's the clear best.

The biggest improvement, and this would be a Kirby staple once Return to Dreamland released, is the expanded move set. No longer do you only have a single move per copy ability. Now, depending on your directional inputs on the d-pad, you can use several different moves per copy ability. This is a fantastic addition, and probably my favorite aspect about this game, as it makes beating each level more fun. Both of the fire abilities that were in Adventure, are now in one and the one that would turn you into a fireball is your dash attack. Spark, which was a staple in Adventure and Dreamland 2, isn't even in this game and was basically replaced by Plasma (which is all around better because of the electric shield you can get). The copy abilities in general, are really good in this game. You have your series staples like sword, hammer and all that. But then you have new ones like Bomb, Mirror and Yo-Yo which are all really awesome. Compared to prior games, the amount of copy abilities in this game is massive and I think it even rivals some of the modern games. You can also, at anytime, turn whatever copy ability you have into a little NPC helper. This was a fun addition and let's you play the game with two players? I actually never tried it out myself, but I assume you can do that and not have the multiplier be regulated to the minigames.

I am a Dreamland 3 fan, and while I prefer how that game looks visually, Superstar still looks really good for an SNES game. The game is full of that Kirby personality, whether it's with Kirby himself or the enemies he faces. The animations on some of the enemies in this game are just really expressive, and that includes the bosses as well. They're all very charming, especially the computer virus boss, that one is very witty. Some bosses are better than others (I really hate fatty whale) but most of them are pretty fun..especially with the expanded move set.

Now for the meat and potatoes of this game, the game modes. This is the part of the game I'm not much of a fan of. The game consists of 9 modes in all. 4 of them are normal Kirby campaigns, 3 of them are short minigames, 1 is a weird campaign that is more akin to a Metroid game and the last is a boss rush basically. They're all mostly fun in their own right, I just much prefer a more focused, full sized campaign since even with the longer modes here, they just don't stick in my mind as much. I'll delve into each mode though and explain my feelings on every one of them.

Megaton Punch is a short, button timing mini-game where you must see who creates the biggest crack on Popstar. It's very short and humorous to watch, but there's not much to it. Samurai Kirby is basically a remake of the one western minigame from Kirby's Adventure, and it's even more simple to play. You just press the A button faster than your opponent but I swear I just can't do it, even on the easiest difficulty. I always lose to Meta-Knight at the end. It's alright but I prefer Megaton Punch. The last mini-game is Gourmet Race. I won't get into the staple song just yet, but know it's my favorite of the three minigames because of its music and because its fun to race Dedede (and to see his reactions to you winning).

As for the normal campaigns, the first one is Spring Breeze. Not much to say here, it's the shortest of the four and is basically just a remake of Dreamland 1. It's actually even shorter than that game since it lacks the reused portions of levels before Dedede. Dedede is also super easy in this version compared to Dreamland 1. Dynablade is a little longer than Spring Breeze, but not by much. Also don't really have much to say here either, it's a pretty uneventful set of Kirby levels. Revenge of the Meta Knight is a lot longer than the previous two campaigns, or at least it felt like it was. It has Kirby trying to stop Meta Knight and his crew. The level takes place, mostly, in his ship as you destroy it. It also has the most dialogue in the game, because of his crew members, and it's very charming because of them. This felt like the most unique of the normal campaigns and it was definitely my favorite next to the final one. The final one, Milky Way Wishes, has Kirby trying to stop the sun and moon from fighting, which Kirby must make a wish using Nova (this cat face clock thing) because this fella Marx told him to. In the end of the adventure though, Marx dupes you and takes the wish for himself and you have to fight him. This one probably has the most stakes out of any campaign and Marx has a really cool design. I also really liked the space theme and I really really liked the copy ability mechanic. Basically, you can only get copy abilities from these pedestals hidden throughout the world, but once you do you keep the ability forever and can freely switch between any you've gathered at anytime. Thinking about it then, this is probably my favorite mode in the game..it would've been really cool to see this one fleshed out even more though since it still isn't very long.

As for the other two modes, The Great Cave Offensive is different from the other modes. It acts as sort of a metroidvania, where the goal is to explore each section of the game for treasure. You can backtrack freely which is unusual for a Kirby game and is why this one feels different from the other 4 campaigns. It's fun but getting every treasure can be a pain, and pretty much all of the bosses (which you would first see here) get reused in the later campaigns. The last mode, which you unlock from beating every other one, is the arena. This is the boss rush I mentioned earlier, and it's a staple in like all of the modern Kirby mainline games. I actually didn't beat it this time, I gave it like 10 go's, but I did beat it back in 2022. The copy ability you want to use is definitely hammer as it does the most damage. The arena is usually the hardest part of the modern Kirby games and that's no different here, as you have to defeat every boss in the game with only 5 Maxim tomatoes for all of them. It's not totally my thing but it's a decent inclusion nonetheless.

The OST is good, as most Kirby games are, and the standout of course is Gourmet Race. It's one of the most well known Kirby songs for a reason (besides becoming big because of Smash) and yeah it's pretty awesome. The rest of the OST is good too, but this was my favorite new song, as this game continues the trend of remixing a lot of older Kirby songs.

I'm not crazy about this game like some other Kirby fans are, due to the multiple campaigns, but I can't deny it added some great series staples like the expanded move sets and the arena. While not in my personal top 5, at this point in the series this is definitely the best Kirby game thus far. Fun time overall!

A really good game that could have been a really great game. Nailed the aesthetics, tone and soundtrack. The music in particular really stood out to me and was a real highlight of the game. A few tracks such as the one that plays in the main castle made me stand still and just listen for a bit. This wasn't a one off encounter, but constantly throughout the game I just had to pause think to myself "nice". Really great stuff.

Where the game fell flat for me is in plot progression and characters. I think what was most frustrating to me was clearly he was able to write some fun dialogue and banter, as the two leads were enjoyable to read and watch interact. The rest of the cast just didn't work for me due to lack of proper development. It felt like a waste of what could have potentially been one of the best games I played this year. I say all this but I did give this game an 8/10. This game was a joy to play and I easily recommend it. Its cheap, its short, its a novel gaming experience. Go play it.

Very much enjoyed my time with this. Extremely relaxing and satisfying. Knows it's job and gets it done. However, I'm only giving stars for every player that is allowed to play campaign mode with you (including yourself) because it is absolutely fucking stupid that you can only play it with one other friend (at least make another campaign mode that you can progress through with more people) and I SHOULD be giving this ONE STAR for the even more STUPID fact that only the host can earn trophies and enhanced equipment (more or less) in campaign mode while the person helping their campaign along doesn't get ANYTHING (more or less). Along with other little tedious issues here that also shouldn't at all be a problem, this game is an excellent example of how all the stupid little things can add up and taint a pretty solid product. Absolutely no regrets with my time spent beating the campaign with my friend (while the game forced us to leave our others friends behind to DIE) and some solo stuff I did but also COME ON.

Elysium has some fun things going for it. I enjoy the weighty feel of the main character's movement, and the fast-and-loose rhythm of the combat sets it apart from most other action RPGs these days, putting it closer to PS2-era hack and slash games. But it's also a bit too gloomy and serious, both literally in the way the environments look, and narratively. I can see some personality and intrigue coming out of the characters every now and then, but it's not quite enough. Not to mention the levels are pretty boring on average: the art direction often feels pretty cheap, and the level design is pretty uninspired. This feels like a game that would benefit from being a shorter, more focused experience, mostly because the good ideas here need to be fleshed out quicker.

A couple of months ago an oomf recommended I should play through Breath of Fire. It was always a game I wanted to play so I could eventually play the popular third entry on PS1. So I’m going through the series in order. I almost forgot to play this one until looking at my list and going “oh right I should get on it.” Enough exposition, time for my opinion on the game.

Well the game starts off pretty promising with a rather dark opening. You know things are serious when you begin in your town all destroyed with your sister kidnapped by the villain. Now it’s off on your own to discover the world and save the day. The character you start off with is named Ryu, who I accidentally named Ryuu. So he will be called that for the rest of the review. I’ll talk about the party members as a whole later.

The game when you’re actually playing isn’t the most interesting as Ryuu can only attack and nothing else. Even when you get to bosses it’s just a game of spamming attacks and herbs until you win. I will say that I do like how you can see an enemy’s health bar. Even bosses are the same way though for some reason their health becomes invisible when you knock it down all the way first. It’s not like that for every boss but it’s for a majority of them. I like how after getting the Earth key it doesn’t end all happy as a whole town gets destroyed for it.

Alright, time for a long paragraph. It’s early to do it but let me talk about every party member. Ryuu is a hard hitter who is good with swords and boomerangs. About a third of the game, you’re introduced to transformations where Ryuu can become a powerful dragon to do massive damage to enemies. He’s a character you probably want out at all times. Nina is your white magic user who can’t hit hard but has a ton of magic to do stuff like heal, give buffs, and give enemies statuses. She spends the early game being on Earth key duty but she ends up being pretty helpful especially for bosses. Gary is a wolf bow user who does good damage and has weak magic that’s good for the early game. Sadly he lacks much AP and he kind of falls behind imo by the late game. He can also hunt on the overworld which is helpful if there is something like ivory you wanna obtain. You also need him to walk through trees in the overworld for some reason. Danq is fast but ok in power. He may seem underwhelming at first but he can later fuse with party members to become really strong. He ends up being one of your strongest units in the game. Hope you find his fuse powers because they will be a huge help. He can also disarm traps and find trap floors but sadly the game doesn’t use this much along with opening locked gates. Gobi is weird, he’s got moderate power but he’s slow and his AP moves only work in the water. He can also host shops but I only found it useful once to get Angel armor. He can also later on help with transportation in the water. Bild is your hardest hitter but slowest character. Though if you ask me, he didn’t feel as strong as I hoped and his slow speed hinders him a lot especially in random encounters. He also can break down walls and knock fruit out of trees. Deis is a black magic user and she gets insanely strong magic and levels up really fast. She’s definitely one of the best members in the game and she gets a ton of AP too. Her only disadvantages are her weak attack stat and somewhat low defense. It’s just a shame you get her so late. Mogu…okay did anyone else find him kind of worthless? He isn’t that strong, his stats aren’t too high, and his ability to flee by digging doesn’t even work in dungeons. He can dig in the overworld to find secrets but I didn’t find almost any use for him which is a shame as his story was quite enjoyable.

When it came to the actual battles, I think it got better once I got more of the team assembled as there is a fair bit of strategy to have when going into enemy encounters and boss encounters. Though by the end of the game I was mostly rocking the set of Ryuu, Nina, Deis, and a fused Danq. Since his dragon form requires Gary, Bild, and Gobi, the only other party member left is Mogu and I sure wasn’t using him. This also meant a lot of my strategy went into power unless I wanted some good magic or some buffs from Nina. There were a ton of auto battle moments which is odd because I almost never use that feature in other games. Also I find it a shame transformations are so limited too, basically only using one move. I think the battle system kind of wavers throughout the game even if it does have times I do enjoy it.

Traveling the world can be fun but god I sucked at figuring out where to go half the time. This was more of a me issue personally but I sometimes was confused at what I was doing wrong only to learn it was something small like I didn’t talk to a specific NPC. I think it’s because a lot of them spout very generic dialogue with some even repeating in the same room no less. It made me less motivated to listen to townsfolk as they don’t feel real half the time. Also you can call me out for me not paying attention but I did have to look at a walkthrough at times for help. I will say at least the story is pretty nice for what’s there and there are even times NPCs will react differently to who’s in the front. Also, if you see something you can’t interact with, write it down and you’ll be thankful for that when you need to go back and get it.

Can’t forget about the dungeons which are alright, they kind of vary for me. Some kind of blend in together but others can have some very creative ideas. I was surprised how much this game uses mode 7 ngl. They aren’t too challenging or long even if you’re getting every chest you see. These are some of the more fun places in the game. My only notable gripe with them is that a couple of them for no reason have a horribly high encounter rate. I’m thankful it’s only like two or three but why is it even a thing? I also never really found any boss to be that hard but some do present some interesting ideas like the one where normal attacks do more damage until it stops looking blurry.

Honestly I don’t have much more to say as the game was a progressive line for me as I continue to moderately enjoy myself and there were still moments that surprised me. I also failed to mention yet was I used a hack to basically give the game a rewritten script and it also added a run button. I got very unhealthy about using it. I normally don’t try to use hacks when reviewing RPGs and I don’t know why I even did for this one but I think it was for the better just for the better script. It also gives Danq his original design but was edited to look a little less blackface. So how about something cool I witnessed? There’s a moment with a character that caught me off guard when it happened and it’s really cool what you get for helping the character out. The final part of the game though kind of blows. The dungeon is fine if nothing challenging though running from most encounters probably helped with that. I already felt my level was high enough that I didn’t need more. The last few bosses are just lame, you just turn on the Infinite form for Ryuu and just attack, attack, and attack! It’s dull, it’s boring and it throws out any cool strategies you could have. I mean don’t get me wrong, the form is cool but like I didn’t want just using one move over and over to be the finale. Well at least when it’s over there is a nice ending and I felt satisfied. Though I kind of wish Nina said something to Ryuu before he left, I kept thinking she’d confess to him with love but no, no dialogue. Maybe the sequel finishes that part off or maybe I’m just supposed to use my imagination, only time can tell…

The game graphically looks pretty nice for the SNES. I like the sprite work presented here especially for the battles. I think the locations could use a little more variety but I think it looks nice regardless. I like how some sprites for shops have an animation when you finish shopping. Some of the bigger sprites look so cool. There’s even a couple of cutscenes that always get me excited but man I wish there were more. It’s overall a good looking game. The music is also quite good with the composers being Yasuaki Fujita, Mari Yamaguchi, Minae Fujii, and Yoko Shimomura. I really like the grand feel a lot of them have as they fit the setting and genre the game is in. I feel like it reminds me of some other Capcom games on the system but I can’t remember what it was. There aren’t really any bad songs but goddamnit I can’t stand the house theme as it plays every single time and it got so repetitive that I would eventually make my own lyrics that are so bad and uncreative I’m not telling you them. I also wanna give a shoutout to when you’re getting ready to fight the final boss for real, the overworld music becomes the one from the beginning and you first hear this coming out of the first town again. I was actually getting so hyped hearing it again!! Seriously, it’s good stuff.

Game’s can have their ups and downs. Breath of Fire is not perfect but I still had a good time with it. The setting and story is nice along with a fun party. I think the battle system could use some work, moreso just balancing the group better. I think it’s a good start considering how little Capcom had done with the genre at that point in time. There were better RPGs on the system by 1993, I even reviewed one of them a little while ago but I expect going on past this, it’ll be even better. I hope Capcom will impress me more as I move forward into the series. I should also mention the game would later get ported to GBA but I can’t tell you if it’s any good, sorry. I just don’t know much about it. It’s also available on NSO if you want an easy official option but be warned it still uses the old Squaresoft localization. Breath of Fire is worth playing and I see this as the beginning for what’s yet to come. I’ll probably play the sequel sometime this year so expect it probably in about 5-6 months. I’ll see you around!

As somebody who is usually quite critical of boomer shooters, Prodeus pretty much fits with how I want these kind of games to be; hard hitting, highly dynamic and varied shooters with a strong audiovisual character. But despite its unique qualities, Prodeus' fundamentals are a bit too reliant on its influences, to the point of limiting its potential.

First things first, this game simply looks amazing. The mix of classic Doom faux-3D style sprites and id Tech 4-esque 3D graphics never feels anything less than pleasing. It's very cool that they allow you to customize some aspects of the art style, like having 3D models or 2D sprites for the enemies. I also love the gore-y details, like blood and viscera dripping from splatters on the ceiling.

The dark, somewhat edgy atmosphere of the levels are supported quite well by the ambient soundtrack. The only part of the audiovisual experience that I don't enjoy is the metal soundtrack, which usually pops up in the more elaborate enemy encounters. These tracks are just not interesting enough.

The gameplay is as you would expect from a game like this. Run and dodge projectiles, avoid getting too close to melee enemies, pick the right weapon for the job, and try to maintain your accuracy as you move around. Prodeus particularly draws inspiration from Doom 2016, and it's very visible. Its enemy types, weapons, level design philosophy, and so on. It's not a bad thing to copy one of the most popular and influential shooter in modern times, but I really wished Prodeus had more original ideas to spice up its fundamentals. Sometimes it can feel like a merely neat-er version of Doom 2016, rather than being a new game.

I do appreciate how tight the main campaign is compared to its contemporaries. The individual levels feel more than distinct enough from each other, and it never feels like the game is just repeating the same tricks. For the most part, the pace and length of these levels are also very digestible, and most of them never overstays their welcome. It's also quite short, maybe no longer than 8 hours. Not to mention the absolute lack of intrusive non-fundamental elements, like story or lore.

I think a lot of boomer shooters overrate how good their gameplay loop really is, and end up boring me with just a bunch of uninspiring enemy encounters that feel endless. There's also a lot of them that design their exploration to be a bit too cryptic, and it would ruin the pace of the levels. Prodeus never does any of this, and it's nice to finally find a boomer shooter that fits me like a glove.

I still have to complain about the campaign's lackluster ending, but that's probably the only thing that's definitely bad about it. The quality of the levels themselves are not exactly mindblowing, but none of them are obviously bad. It's a consistently fun campaign overall.

As it stands, Prodeus' highly focused execution of its ideas are more than strong enough to carry itself above most of its peers. It's not original enough to set its own legacy, but it does solidfy the strength of its influences.

Today is my birthday! And for such an occasion, me and my bestie are playing through the Ace Attorney trilogy, in what is the first revisit I've had to the original games since I was a child

Anyone who knows me knows the importance the AA trilogy had in my early years. As an adult, I'm somewhat forced to view the game in a different manner, but I can also now look back to see the purpose this held to me, in the past. To be a child in the western world is to be ignored, I think. Especially a child like me who could understand these things more than most. Adults play little lords who can offer no refuge from the agony they bring, purposeful or not. It always seemed to me that everyone was making base mistakes that I could never fathom, that reflected off them and burned into me because children have no say in anything that goes on around them. And I could never understand their actions- I could never understand the screaming, I could never understand the deeply ingrained violence, I never understood why no one listened or could even parse things that were immediately obvious to me. Or why no one felt spurred to change. For years, I just ghosted the world feeling like one big tear all the time, very alone, but I would rather be alone than be with people like that. But I never forgot it, the extreme frustration of being that child. The child who is forced into situations with no voice and no autonomy, getting punished when I myself could not say anything back, lashing out and being unable to convey my desperation. Its pure bile and anger to be there.

I had so many feelings and thoughts about this growing up, the above can only be a tame simplification of many years of displacement. But one day, I caught a glimpse of a weird lawyer game on my shitty little ipod's app store in 2013, and things kind of changed. As I played, suddenly, I could see what it was like to have a voice. I could see what it was like to have friends, to find a family. I was introduced to a manner of things through Ace Attorney, a new manner of thought even, which at the time felt very cathartic to me. It reinforced a conviction that I've held since I could remember and I could see myself a little in it, sometimes. It was a comforting space. As an adult who knows more about the world than I did then, the writing isnt so mind-blowingly fantastic. But boy, as a child was it sure fucking incredible. To shout your objections and have pure, undeniable proof of what you meant at terrible people who otherwise would never see it. It was the spark of that more than the actual meat of it.

As for this game itself, it's more about what it did for me rather than what it is. To encourage thinking for ones self, to encourage that faith in an informed conviction. And that which fueled my fire for creative work, that I am still drawimg today. I talked about this a lot in my aai2 review, and I will talk about it again, but the introduction of Miles Edgeworth resonated with me so much back then. Who doesnt want to watch their shitty father bash their head into a wall- but that meant so much to me then. Actually, I forgot that this character largely introduced the concept of homosexuality to me. I would have figured myself out sooner or later, as I would with all these things, but at the very least I finished this game back then with an appreciation for a masculine demeanor and a strong need for a fitted suit.

I'm kind of rambling, and not well, but its my birthday so I'm allowed to. In present times, I'm noticing many spelling errors and sometimes a lacking of tone. And sometimes I feel like it relies too much on a joke so that the whole thing comes off as clowny, but I also feel like it might just be the english translation that made things this way. This was the first of its kind after all, and I've seen how the series has grown, so I can cut it some slack. Turnabout Goodbyes and Rise from the Ashes are still fantastic cases, and what's been even more fun than running down memory lane is watching my best friend experiencing it with me for the first time. I cant explain how much I absolutely love every piece of these games, though. They feel like a part of me, and I'm fairly proud of that. Its been a blast, and I cant wait to rediscover the rest of the series again.


Dont forget DL-6!

When a friend first asked me how I would describe Final Fantasy II, I was about half way through the game, and had just met Leila. I didn’t really know how to describe it, it was something I couldn’t compare to anything I’d played before. It led me through the story like an early JRPG but with early WRPG mechanics. It was bizarre and completely threw me off from what I learned in FFI. So much of what I learned from the first game didn’t matter at all now, and what it was trying to teach me seemed almost alien. So of course, my natural response to my friend was a wary, “Have you ever played… Morrowind?”

Final Fantasy II is nothing like Morrowind. Well, it has its similarities, as comparing any game from the same genre to each other would, I guess. I came into Final Fantasy II having only the original Final Fantasy to compare it to… eh, within the Final Fantasy series at least, as I have played a handful of 3rd-gen RPGs before it. Maybe it’s why I ended up thinking of FFII so positively compared to others. Maybe that’s a negative, but I like to think of it as a positive. It keeps me thinking of FFII in the bubble it originally released to, but unfortunately that also lacks me being able to compare it to much else.

One thing I should warn before diving fully into the review is that I did play the game in Japanese, so some of the names for things might be spelled differently from my own personal transliteration vs other later official English translations (wait his name was Josef and not Joseph this whole time?!). The Famicom version I believe is also missing quite a few additions that future versions had added later on, including ones added even a couple years later in the Famicom dual-release of both FFI + FFII.

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From first glance, I could immediately tell that Final Fantasy II had improved drastically from its predecessor. The creators were able to expand A LOT on what they made with the original. Just to list a few:

• You’re now able to fully go into buildings and walk around. You can even see little Firion sleeping in the inn!
• There's a crazy amount of new magic you can learn (which you see early on thanks to Ming Wu).
• You can now see your character’s negative status effects play as a funny symbol on top of them in battle (black glasses for blind, green swirls for poison, they literally turn into a rock when hit with the stone status!). It looks great and makes it easier for players to remember what exactly the current status of their party is just at a glance.
• The character designs are more varied and more detailed, even if Firion is just the fighter sprite from the first game. With Maria, we can now see our first true playable female character in the series, rather than the assumed fully-male cast of the first (or at least that’s how the English guidebook describes the cast which uh, infamously got quite a few things wrong about the game, so take that as you will LOL). You meet a very colorful cast of characters right at the start as well, with a good amount having fairly unique designs (Ming Wu is my favorite)!
• Lastly, the thing I noticed and was so happy to see was that you can now save whenever you want. Well, whenever you’re on the overworld map. But, still! It’s a button that’s always on your menu screen. You don’t have to bank on having a hotel or cottage in your pocket so you can save before a dungeon, which can make expeditions infinitely less frustrating.

The story of FFII is surprisingly engaging for a 3rd-gen game, with it starting out with a 5 minute long interactive cutscene kinda thing. Watching it, you quickly learn that you now have a set story with characters that have a set destiny. You can name them and train them to be whatever you want, but no matter what, the story has a path it will always take with characters you can’t always predict. Oh boy, how you can not predict. About 2/3rds of the temporary party members who join you end up dying! Even NPCs you don’t interact with too often end up dying! But hey, the story does focus around war, and what’s war without loss. Though more realistically, I imagine they killed off a majority of your short-term party members as a way to cycle through different characters and show the player different builds they themselves could evolve on. My favorite non-player characters that I met along the way were Paul the Ninja, and Sid and his son, who offer a shuttle with their flying boat not unlike the one from the first game… hey wait, why does Sid have his clearly underaged son in a bar? Oh well, it works for the story. Just try not to think about it!

There’s little things I can nitpick though, of course. I absolutely hate the new map. I understand this map is WAY bigger than the last, and the illusion of the globe allows them to fit more with less, but holy shit its soooo slow - and if I just want to check what direction I want to go to reach a dungeon, I have to slowlyyyyyyy wait for the globe to turnnn and inchhhh and oooo we’re almost there, baby!!!! Well, this shouldn’t be a problem, right? Final Fantasy I, Dragon Quest, Legend of Zelda are all games that provide a full map for you in the manual to glance at, so there must be one in this manual- nope. Okay, what about the guidebook? You know, the thing you spend extra money on to hold your hand and show you how to get through the whole game- nope. There’s no maps at all actually, even for the dungeons! Remember how Final Fantasy I had big maps for the player to scan through for everything, all within the manual packaged with the game? Well, Final Fantasy II says “Fuck you, why don’t you figure out,” as they hand you Slowpoke Rodriguez’s favorite class globe.

The manual and guidebook at least are very useful in including every little detail about the new leveling system, and also informing the player on what all the new magic does. A stupid complaint, but skimming through this lovely mapless guidebook, I was excited to see Chocobos appear, which are like giant chickens your player can ride on! Unfortunately, I never ran into them once throughout the entire game. They seemed cute, and the book says you can find them in a specific forest if you wander, but I never found one, even when purposefully looking for them. Oh well, maybe I was just unlucky!

Wait, that’s it? Those are the only complaints? It seems like FFII should smell like roses in comparison to FFI after all that, shouldn’t it? Well, it does…! It does, except for one very small, very tiny detail…

GAMEPLAY AND RPG MECHANICS

FFII doesn’t level in the way that Dragon Quest or even the original Final Fantasy do. In fact, the closest comparison I can personally make to a game that I’ve played that came out before FFII is regular tabletop DND. When you want to level up, you have to focus on a specific skill or trait. It’s not as simple as leveling up your magic to improve your magic; you have to focus on what exactly you want to level up in your magic. Did you want your magic attack to be stronger? Then focus on using the specific spell you want to be stronger, as the more you use it the more it levels up. Did you need more MP? Then use more magic to get more magic! Using magic in general also helps level up your magic strength… but specifically your intelligence or spirit which correlate to your black and white magic respectively. See where I got the Morrowind comparison? It’s a lot, but as you can see with my magic example, a lot of it relies on each other, so if you play naturally, you should still level up naturally like you would in FF1.

That would be all fine and dandy, except you don’t level up the way the creators intended. I don’t know whose idea it was to go against the golden rule for JRPGs since Dragon Quest: Allow players to level up quickly with the game requiring more points to level up the further they play. For example, to get to level 2 in… let’s say using a sword, maybe you need to use it 10 times before it reaches level 2. After that, then you need to use it 20 times to reach level 3, and so far so forth. FFII doesn’t do that, and I think that’s where its biggest flaw shows. It requires you to use whatever it is you want 100 times each time you want to level it up, all from the start. It’s awful, to put it lightly. The great thing to remember is all the Final Fantasys on the Famicom are insanely broken! As a result, I quickly found out that you can input a move on a party member and quickly cancel it and do it again. It only takes one move but it still counts the first use, essentially doubling the points I get from it. Do this 50 times, and you just leveled yourself up in one battle. Though of course, it’s just that one thing you leveled up, whether that be a magic skill, your attack, defense, HP, MP, or whatever else you focused on. It unfortunately also can mess with the leveling a crazy amount as well. Ugh, just think! This would be significantly less of a problem if they just followed the guide of leveling-up starting fast only to slow it down the further you go. They did it in FFI, so they must have found an issue to force the mandatory 100 points for FFII… On top of that all, the same issues with magic in FFI still exist in FFII, with a nice chunk of spells being completely broken and not working the way they intended. Most infamously it affects Ultima, a spell intended to be the most powerful in the entire game. The only way to figure out what works and what doesn’t is through trial and error- how horrendous! Thankfully, we live in the future, so I was able to quickly find a guide online that lets modern players know what magic to not waste their time on.

This is the biggest turn-off of Final Fantasy II to players, and I don’t blame them. I especially don’t blame players who had to try and figure out everything without the manual guiding them through this incredibly involved leveling system. I found the manual and guidebook for FFII on Internet Archive, and even with that by my side I constantly had to look at it over and over to remember what exactly I had to do to level-up myself up. Eventually, I just wrote and drew a shitty guide just for myself so I could more easily memorize it. In the end, I got there! Then I had to read and memorize all the new magic spells! Oh, well. As someone who loves journaling and taking notes, I really didn’t mind it, but of course I can understand how unbearable it could be for someone who doesn’t like it. It reminded me, again, of tabletop gaming and how when I play that with friends, I often fill a whole booklet with my little notes. Maybe I was used to it? Maybe I just felt it immersed me better into the story, and helped me feel more understanding of how the gameplay meshed with the narrative. In the end, it helped me gain a bit of an emotional attachment to it all; characters and game mechanics alike.

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Well, how would I compare it to my friend now, after finishing it? I’ve been told the Romancing Saga series takes heavy inspiration from it mechanically, and by the time I finished I could see the Star Wars parallels loud and clear. Obviously, it has its Wizardry, Ultima, and Dragon Quest influences… What didn’t back then? But how would I describe FF2?

It’s broken, it’s unreliable, it’s confusing. But it’s also rewarding, emotional, and easy to get wrapped into. It tried crazy things for both the time and platform it released on, but it found its people, and its people found it.

Final Fantasy II is like Final Fantasy II. You wanna know what THAT means? Well, play it and you’ll find out!

4/5

Behold, my 1500th video game! This special occasion warrants nothing less than a super special review. So, what did I think? Well first, some backstory.

This past year or 2, I've been obsessed with playing games that are considered foundational. Sometimes, I don't enjoy them but I'm still glad I played them for the historical value alone which has been the case for games such as Colossal Cave Adventure, Mystery House, or Portopia. Other times, I find some of my unexpected favourite games that are actually very fun such as Wizardry, Fantasy Zone, or... oh yeah, another game by Myst's developers called The Manhole!

When I played The Manhole and its 3D remake last year, I was very captivated! These are 2 games where there is no real objective but to take in the scenery. Just explore and find hilarious imagery while listening to wacky characters. No win condition, no lose condition, no timer, no stress. In a way, this is a really avant garde method of showing that video games are more than their title suggests. That being, they aren't just "games" played for the sake of winning but perhaps important pieces of art.

With how hyped up Myst has been over the years, I decided I would make it my 1500th game on Backloggd (Jesus I've been on this site for years) knowing that it would be something special and, well....

Look. I immensely respect what Myst is going for. I really love how inspired it is, and I am sure the pre-rendered graphics were mindblowing to 1993 audiences. It's neat how several of my beloved games such as Drowned God were blatantly inspired by it, and it's arguably the most important game in the last 30 or so years due to how it was the big boom for PC gaming the world needed.

Yet, I can't feel passionately about it the way I can with The Manhole or Wizardry or even the likes of Colossal Cave Adventure. It is hard for me to be captivated by Myst's legacy when many point and click/adventure games predate it and, in my opinion, have far better QOL, gameplay, and storytelling.

As far as point and click games from before 1993 go, I have a lot of favourites. Uninvited felt like a very kinetic and replayable game with a unique horror feel. Monkey Island 1-2 are still some of the most entertaining and hilarious games I've experienced, boasting incredible artstyles and early popularization of dynamic music. The Manhole, again, was one of the very first entertainment CD-roms and it's still rather fun. Alter Ego having barely any pictures and still being one of the most engaging, deeply written games I've experienced. Hell, when looking at niche Japanese games I'm impressed at how Cosmology of Kyoto, Otogirisou, or Ihatovo Monogatari managed to breathe new life into the game medium as a whole, displaying such artistry that even the likes of Roger Ebert were impressed.

All this is to say that I don't understand at all why Myst is often defended on the basis of "well it's a 30 year old game" especially when other point-and-clicks like Monkey Island before it are still popular today. Hell, Monkey Island is probably much more fun to revisit for the average player. Monkey Island doesn't receive memes like this, at least certainly not with any frequency https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E9tXrGBWYAYBtfc.png

When trying to wrap my head around what made Myst so popular beyond the graphics, I looked at the development history behind the game and found this https://youtu.be/EWX5B6cD4_4

Myst was meant to give players a bang for their buck, resulting in a design based around "brute force" real estate to explore. With no win or lose conditions, the player could feasibly spend weeks if not months on the game. And it doesn't stop there, there is what seems to be a deliberate lack of QOL.

I found myself constantly frustrated by Myst. The save feature restarts the player at the beginning of the area rather than saving their progress, contrary to other even older adventure games. Batteries near the dock drain rather fast and need to be constantly recharged. Activating the large tree elevator is an annoying process. The main character is too much of a moron to carry two pages at a time, so if the player wants to experience every FMV they are forced to go through the same area twice, some of which can be rather confusing to navigate. The sound puzzles where the player must match 5 different sound effects in a row with very large margin of error might as well just say "fuck the deaf and the tone deaf players" good lord. I personally felt the pace broken when 10 minutes into the game I was compelled to read 4 mini-novels in a row. And perhaps most importantly, I had trouble making out a single full sentence in the red and blue books due to the overloaded static noises in the cutscenes.

Are there things I appreciate about Myst? Sure! This is far from a game without merit. The minimalist presentation is rather beautiful, with the pre-rendered images and FMVs still holding their own against photorealistic graphics from far stronger hardware. The atmosphere can be rather immersive a lot of the time, with the sound effects being very convincing for every action in the game. I rec listening to this part of the Ars Technica documentary, since it explains things better than I could https://youtu.be/EWX5B6cD4_4?t=860

It's truly a technical engineering feat. Also, after the player obtains the true ending, they are allowed to just explore the island. It really gives me the impression their earlier work on The Manhole helped shape some decisions in this game, and that's just lovely.

Well, that's Myst. It's a technically impressive game, but far from a fun one in my opinion. It was only while writing this review that, perhaps, it hit me.

Everybody has their own unique perspective and experiences that shapes them into the EPIC GAMER they are today. I saved Myst for a rainy day, subconsciously putting it on a pedestal in my head. Most of the people who told me how much they loved Myst mentioned it being a formative artistic experience for them. Could it be because I had the liberty of playing so many untranslated JP adventure games, more modern adventure games, and so forth before Myst, its impact was lost on me?

1500 games is a lot of fucking games. There is an alternate universe out there where I was fascinated by Myst and fell in love with it, rather than found it frustrating in my mid 20s. In fact, this is what one of the developers theorized; only maybe half of players even left the first island. Yet, so many young players who discovered the game left with quite an impression, that they played something which resonated with them FOR the unfamiliar mystique, rather than despite it https://youtu.be/EWX5B6cD4_4?t=1070

When I started typing this review, I wasn't sure if I was happy I played Myst. Yet now, I feel confident I am happy it was my 1500th game. It was not a waste of time, but a good reminder of how games are more than what I play. They are artistic statements, impressive feats of software development, and parts of our culture. The cynic in me can say Myst is a subpar adventure game that only had any success due to the photorealistic graphics. Yet, I'm more inclined to ask one thing:

Is there any game which better embodies the culture of early PC gaming and the appeal of pre-rendered graphics?

God, I fucking love video games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e49OXXBX3Ko

This is a tough one for me. On the one hand, Ys II clearly improves on some of the core aspects of the first game. I would argue, that the overall flow of battle is heavily enhanced due to the overhauled bump system. In the first game, even if you attacked enemies from behind or came at them at an angle, you could still take damage when bumping into them. This is not really the case anymore in Ys II. Sure, if an enemy started an attack and you bump into them when they perform it, you will still get hit. But if you time your attack appropriately and never attack head-on, you are basically invincible. That felt so much better than in Ys I, where I could still get damaged even if I did everything correctly. Another cool addition to the combat is the magic system. It’s not overwhelmingly complex since you only get one magic attack in the form of a fireball and some neat tricks like stopping time for a while, but it did change the combat significantly. Attacking enemies from a distance, especially when low on health, did feel good and it sometimes got me out of a situation, which would have resulted in my death if not for the fire spell. Another clear improvement over the first game is the fact that you can level up your character above and beyond level 10. At the end of the game, I was like level 50 whereas in Ys I, I had reached max level loooong before the final battle.

So, with pretty much all of the good stuff out of the way, let’s talk about some changes, that somewhat soured the experience for me. First off, yes, the magic system itself is pretty neat. However, what I found really disappointing was that the majority of boss fights revolve around using magic. Most boss battles have to be approached by dodging a bunch of projectiles or other attacks, waiting for an attack window and then releasing a barrage of fireballs into the enemy’s mouth, eye or whatever weak spot they have. Having some fights like this would be fine as it makes the player use the new magic system more but I felt like they overused this mechanic way too much. Another thing that really bugged me during boss fights was the fact that I could just leave the boss room at any time, resetting the entire fight. I don’t know if this was a thing in the first game (pretty sure it wasn’t), but here, there were so many times when I unintentionally left the room and had to start all over. On the other hand though, the boss fights in general felt more thought-out than in the first game where RNG played a major role. In this game, I had to be more tactical and boss fights didn’t quite feel like battles of attrition as they did in Ys I most of the time. So, all in all it’s a double-edged sword for me. Boss battles are generally more fun but I just wish they hadn’t relied on the magic system so much.

While I was uncertain about how to rate the boss battles, my mind is totally set on how to assess another aspect of the game which is navigation. Navigation in Ys II is way worse than in the first game. In Ys I, I would get lost every now and again but areas were usually small enough for me to internalize the map layout and find my way through. In Ys II, this is no longer the case. Dungeons are generally so friggin huge, I was constantly confused and lost my way all the time. Add to that the necessity to backtrack so much in this game (especially in the last section) and you have the recipe for frustration. On top of that, Ys II sometimes feels like the devs wanted to stretch out the relatively short game as much as possible by adding some pretty obtuse puzzles and an escort mission that’s straight outta hell (Tarf, please go and throw yourself in a lava pit or something, I hate your guts so much). Also, while it’s cool that I can level up beyond level 10, I felt the necessity to grind way more than in Ys I. Before attempting certain boss fights, I had to grind 2-3 levels most of the time to stand a chance. Again, grinding was also a part of Ys I but since you could only get to level 10, it wasn’t really necessary after you hit max level which happens in the middle of the game.

So, how do I feel about Ys II overall? In general, I feel like I am one of the few people who actually slightly prefer the first game. Ys I was more concise and just felt like the better package overall. Ys II introduced some changes that make the game flow better than the first by revising the bump system and implementing a rudimentary magic system. However, it also stretched the game with confusing dungeon design, obtuse puzzles and even worse backtracking than in Ys I. In terms of story and music, both games are on the same level of quality. I would say that if you enjoyed Ys I, you should definitely give the sequel a shot too. Just be prepared to get lost quite often and don’t feel ashamed to use a walkthrough if needed.

ingame screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/cE30mYy.png

A joyous blissful hydrating nourishing follow-up to Rez, but I'm not the keenest sadly!! Child of Eden is a rly gorgeous example of that latestage Frutiger Aero Sharp Quattron Tech Advertisement aesthetiq, fully encompassed by Mizuguchi's spacey yoga house band, Genki Rockets. It's just a little loser of my own personal battle of appeals because none of this really hits my palate in the same way anything from Rez did. There's this lack of energy I can draw from Child of Eden - whereas Rez's thumping techno OST that blossoms in complexity across the span of a stage, alongside the Char Davies wireframe anthropology artstyle.... I just have a very clear fav, and Rez quite simply doesn't have the nerve to ask me to replay a stage with better scores to progress to the next one. Incredibly corp behaviour 🥲
Well worth a play/emulation for anyone who loves Rez though, there are like three games in this genre if i'm generous and Mizuguchi made most of them.