I had a longer review written, but... Hmm...

There's this interview that plays in my head a lot. Someone brings up how popular Zero (a dashing genderweird character introduced in 6.1) is and Naoki Yoshida - the game's producer, director, and member of Square Enix's board - awkwardly mumbles out that he didn't quite expect people to love her so much.

This is innocent on the surface, but to me it was a huge head tilter at the time.

See, FFXIV has a problem with misogyny. Whether it's inconsequential shit like "Minfilia polled terribly with players, so we killed her and turned her into a mcguffin", Yotsuyu's weird allergory for comfort women turning sour in Stormblood postpatch, Ysayle/Moenbryda (self-explanatory), the double standard invoked with the fates of Fordola compared to Gaius Baelsar, the incredible overuse of sexual assault references in dialogue up until late Stormblood, or Lyse getting written out of the story because people hated her, there's a lot to chew on regarding misogyny.
It's sort of a "joke" (insofar as banal reality can be humorous) among woman-liking FFXIV fans that pretty much any new woman introduced will probably either die or be written out. Venat implicitly (in the Japanese text, explicitly) being denied reincarnation while the setting's equivalent to Super Hitler gets to constantly appear in flashbacks was just the nail in the coffin.

I bring this up because 6.5 is bad. It's not bad in the same ways 6.0 was bad - Natsuko Ishikawa's uncomfortably Imperial Japan sympathizing fingers are at a minimum barring 6.4 - but it's bad in more banal, eyebrow-raising ways.
To avoid burying the lede: 6.5 smacks of both swift, lazy rewrites and also creative sterility.

After 5 patches of overwritten, backtracking-padded, unsatisfying buildup, 6.5 just dispenses with most of the stakes and conflict to say "Beat Zeromus and Golbez will be a good guy!". You get an admittedly decent trial out of it before Zero abruptly becomes a Paladin with little fanfare (mirroring Cecil's iconic moment from FF4, but terrible) and surprise Golbez is a good guy.
Zero thanks you for your friendship and aid, before declaring that she's going off to the same not-relevant closet as Lyse and demanding you don't ever come knocking for her.

Honestly, as an aside: XIV's format is killing it. There is no real reason for 6.4 to not have the Scions immediately leap in to fight Zeromus other than the devs needing to do another patch. It sucks so much.

"Zero was intended to die but they changed their mind last minute" is, at the time of writing, a conspiracy theory. Nonetheless, it's a believable one.

What's really telling to me, both about the void arc's development and also the reception Endwalker got, is that this patch opens with an incredibly lazy and overbearing Shadowbringers nostalgia trip. Needing Light for a storyline that should've ended last patch, you and Zero hop over to the First and meet all of your Shadowbringers friends! Hurray!
Except... Look, even putting aside my negative bias (I consider Shadowbringers the worst XIV expansion) it just reads incredibly poorly. It's an abrupt plot stopper, is mostly unvoiced filler dialogue/quests that serve no purpose than to tug at the player's nostalgia, and genuinely does not matter at all until the very end.
This is alarming, at least to me, because they did this after Stormblood (an expansion Japan infamously despises to this day) what with the sudden surge of Ishgard/Heavensward references and Aymeric being your BFFL all of a sudden in Ghimlyt, the nuking of Stormblood plot threads in Shadowbringers, plus the very abrupt resurrection of Zenos and the sudden announcement of a whole event centered on Ishgard - the first and so far last of its kind.
Lastly, the dungeon of this patch is a cheap rehash of Amaurot but because nobody gives a flying fuck about the storyline it has all the impact of picking up a plate with a towel and it sliding back into the basin.

All of this combines into a package that, honestly? Pisses me off personally. The Void and everything around it has long since been one of the most int- [remembers what games I'm talking about] least boring parts of the setting and it's essentially gelded, its sole promising voiced NPC neutered, all to... idk, shove the single remaining plot thread from pre-Ishikawa days in the trash and move onto Dawntrail?

Other reviews have said it already and I'm adding my voice to the chorus: I think FFXIV has went on too long.

I only have so much tolerance for drab cutscenes with the same canned animations, the same WoL responses, the same bad audio mixing that feels like mics are about to peak, the same annoying placid and uninventive BGM that I've been hearing since 2013. I have even less tolerance for quest design that hasn't changed since I left education - and it was the same when I went into it!

I want to lie and say that maybe Dawntrail will be better, but... Will it?

I forgave a lot of XIV's bullshit because the writers had a series of curtains drawn that I was eager to peek behind.

The curtains are open now, and despite my hopes they are indeed blue.

Will Dawntrail be any good? Will it deviant from dungeons/trials at odd levels, playing Machinations whenever it's safe to skip a cutscene, overly choreographed duties that're aimed at people who have panic attacks when asked to use tank stance, mediocre writing which betrays the writers' uncomfortable opinions on Imperial Japan's colonization efforts, and music which occasionally rises above "fine" but is mostly just forgettable BGM unless you're in a duty?

Beats me.

[The review has functionally ended here, I'm now just talking to myself.]

I've seen a lot of comparisons to TV shows and the MCU when talking about how exhausted FFXIV's formula is, and while I agree to an extent (I am an ex-Red vs Blue fan.) I think with games it's actually worse.

I alluded to it up above, but games being tired and going on too long is far more noticeable than in other mediums besides maybe music (shoutout to BFMV for making Fever for a decade straight).
It terrifies me that FFXIV is somehow one of SE's top earning games (barring this year, where their MMO division lost money for the first time in a while) but it feels so cheap. The same animations, the same music, the same format. For a decade, nothing but empty field areas and inconsequential yellow quests and 3 alliance raids and 12 normal raids and Hildebrand and five post-patches. A trial before you hit level cap, then a back-to-back dungeon and trial. Main leitmotif for the final boss. Final boss is a well intentioned extremist.
Over and over and over...

It's strange, too. I've recently gotten super into Granblue Fantasy, and it feels like a mirror into a better world. A better FFXIV. It, too, is a decade-spanning pseudo-MMO that's had to deal with the pains of being a GaaS title, yet it's managed to innovate within itself. Fights only get cooler and cooler as time goes on, characer kits manage to be relatively interesting without being a straight upgrade to existing characters (though these still exist), their writing has matured from its infancy, and the art/visuals/music only get better every month.

Sure, it has gacha money, but FFXIV is one of SE's top earners, yet it feels cheaper than some games I've played that were literally made by 10-15 Chinese folks in a shed.

I don't actually think CBU3 are entirely to blame. They are absolutely to blame for XIV's weirdly conservative stances on things, bad writing, and overexertion of creative control (STOP FORCING SOKEN TO MAKE ORCHESTRAL MUSIC.), but I think most problems I've talked about here can be traced back to both the very strict "5 post-patches, then an expansion every two years" shit and chronic mismanagement/underfunding.
I know Naoki Yoshida is everyone's parasocial best friend who can do no wrong, but c'mon. Fumbling FF16 despite having infinite Mainline Final Fantasy money can't say anything good about his capabilities.

As I wrote this all out I found myself longing for Stormblood. I don't like Stormblood (or anything in XIV anymore, really, I just came back to get my IRLs prepped for Dawntrail) but...
Hm.
I don't know how much the devs really care about FFXIV, especially as Yoshida continually looks more withdrawn and disinterested with each fanfest, but as a simple end user it just feels like Stormblood was the last time they were firing on all cylinders. The duties were great - in side content especially - the field areas were gorgeous, the music had so much flavour compared to ShB and EW's morose slop, and for just a brief moment in this game's gargantuan lifespan I was actually interested in where the individual location plots went.

I don't feel the same way about everything after it. Shadowbringers was, in hindsight, the developers panicking after Stormblood's reception and throwing the player into a world divorced of the icky plot threads/women they so despise, and Endwalker was Endwalker.

Am I just projecting my own discontent? Probably.

But when you offer the player a dialogue choice to voice their discontent at being forced to meddle in Tural's affairs, only for G'raha Tia to smile and tell you "nawwww it'll be fun :)" I can't help but wonder.

P.S: This patch was so bad I actually forget Vrtra was there, despite Azdaja being the instigating incident. Imagine.

considering WotC and chimera squad were already Figurative Marvel Shit, the pivot to Literal Marvel Shit is about the least surprising thing ever; if you didn't see this coming I suggest staying out of the entrail reading business. the real surprise here's that everyone buried the lede blubbering about deckbuilding stuff so thoroughly that I had no idea this was Meet n Fuck Marvel

not since borderlands 2 has a game's dialogue filled me with the primal unease of an ape seeing a particularly snakelike vine. started this up while my wife was in the shower and when she texted asking if I could make some coffee I knew the choice was to smash ALT+F4 or risk being divorced on the spot

the cardgame bit I'm kinda whatever about. I think I'd like it more if the camera was positioned anywhere else and it didn't lean so hard into Epic Cinematic Presentation that even the most basic actions take a century to unfold. it's cool you can do the type of MTG blue deck bullshit where your turn lasts so long the person on the other side of the table regrets being a nerd, but not cool enough to endure the simpering player worship, cutscenes after cutscenes, and psychotic tutorializing that make up the bulk of the game

have to imagine you'd have a considerably better time stuffing hulk hands in your ass while playing slay the spire

It's the game everyone's talking about! Just try and navigate TikTok without being inundated with Street Skater 2 clips.

This is such a weird, scruffy little project. Micro Cabin are a studio you won't have heard of unless you swim in the very, very deep end. Most prolific during the MSX era, they appear to have toughed out the nineties as a porting studio, and their biggest projects are things like the 3DO versions of Myst and Bust-A-Move, and the Saturn version of Tunnel B1. Co-developers, Atelier Double, are a company I'd never heard of, and they mainly seem to be a support studio, with credits on Umihara Kawase, Boku no Natsuyasumi and Game Boy spin-offs of games like Quest 64 and Lufia. Though they're not credited on the box, they appear to be the driving force behind Street Skater, with a host of c-tier skateboarding and snowboarding games under their belt. These are the people behind Zap! Snowboarding Trix, Snowboard Racer 2 and Disney Sports Skateboarding. A weird transition, and one that appears to have killed the studio, as they closed in 2004.

Anyway. I have a soft spot for Street Skater 2. Japan never really seemed to catch on to skateboarding games, and there isn't a lot of space in the culture for the sport to thrive over there. The unwarranted success of the Cool Boarders series was responsible for many crimes. Street Skater takes much more of an arcade-style approach than THPS, with you keeping an eye on the time as you attempt to rack up as many points as you can between checkpoints. It has its own internal logic behind trick execution and point distribution, and it doesn't feel very technical or satisfying, but there's still fun here, albeit quite superficial.

The trick system in Street Skater 2 doesn't bare much resemblance to THPS or any of the games it inspired. You're more rewarded for performing simple tricks across different stretches of the course than complex ones in a single spot. This results in amusing moments like pulling off a fingerflip 900 and hearing the Crazy Taxi-style commentator bluntly stating "your family should disown you". The game defaults to an "Automatic" trick system, and there's little rhyme or reason to what you end up pulling off in this mode. You launch off a ramp and the game determines whatever trick it thinks you ought to pull off, given your speed. It doesn't matter if you land mid-trick, even if you're not even on your skateboard at the time. The only way to wipe out is by bumping into a wall at speed. You'll land everything else. There's also a "manual" mode, which appears to have been patched in to satisfy THPS fans, but it's not very well incorporated, and just makes score-chasing more frustrating.

The soundtrack is quite insufferable, featuring Deftones, Static-X and multiple tracks from "Shootyz Groove". There's also a Del The Funky Homosapien song here, and given that the game allows you to pick a track before starting each level, I relied on it many times in my playthrough.

Street Skater 2 isn't very good, and you shouldn't put a lot of effort into picking up a copy. It is, however, frequently very cheap, and it's enjoyable enough. If you're diving into sub-£5 second-hand PS1 games, you're hoping for a small mercy like a Street Skater 2. It's very dumb and forgettable, but it retains a bit of charm, and serves as one of the more playable 90s Japanese extreme sports games. It's over in an hour, and you may be glad to find something so modestly-designed and quirky to sink those minutes into. I just can't bring myself to talk too negatively about it.

I think Sion should have never been reworked. Imagine all these shonen protatgonists running around getting one-shot by a guy who looks like Klungo from Banjo Tooie. It would have been the funniest shit in the world.

I am going to confess something that will forever change our relationship: I love League of Losers. I started playing in 2013 and it was the most exciting multiplayer game I had ever played. I played a shit ton of games as Shen and Skarner and with friends it was electric. Eventually I went to college and, living in the corn fields of Iowa, the internet conmection on these Iowa campuses was so rotten that playing League online was simply not a possibility.

So, I spent a few years Not playing League, working full-time jobs that meant that after a brutal 9 hour shift I was NOT even interested in getting screamed at by a 16 year old Udyr in my chat. I briefly tried going back to the game in 2021, but this was the time Akshan was released and I found his kit despicable. Which is nothing new: every new champion is released hideously broken and able to solo games because that is how you sell them. But that overloaded kit? Give me a break.

But, you know what, you can't stop me from playing Renekton, so I have been playing it the last month and I have a couple thoughts about the game that made me reflect on it. My first thing is: How do new people get into League? It seems impossible. If you show even the slightest competency in a win you will instantly get paired against Team Smurf who will make you go 0/15/4 as fucking Kennen or something. If I was brand new and I saw Yasuo owning my team while my team unearthed ancient slurs to tell me to kms, I would say, "Ah, this game is for fucking morons." The fact Riot is so incapable or disinterested in figuring out the smurf problem or actually banning people who abuse chat is insane. It has been a problem since the day I joined the game and has not even moved an inch.

Riot's general ineptitude is it's own essay entirely. They are a poorly run Boys Club that fails at even the simplest of tasks when it comes to operating one of the largest games of all time, and half their financial model has to be based around smurfs buying Yasuo skins on new accounts because it seems impossible to me that new people successfully are retained. It's like the Burger King that is ALWAYS hiring because the pay is shit and customers are fucking morons.

The amount of rage in this game is kind of astonishing. For the record, I think shit talking opponents is fine. They are your enemy! Shit talking teammates is insane to me. No one's play has ever improved because they got told to hang themself in the most grammatically alien way every written. I had someone rage at me in ARAM once! The fucking casual mode! What is wrong with this playerbase?

So, my recommendation for any new player is: mute EVERYONE. Do not assume that something someone types in chat will be worthwhile. It won't be. Pings can do enough. Watch good players online play, and they will regularly communicate their thought process during objectives and team fights, and a lot of those thought processes can be applied to your own game. Do NOT pay for a fucking course for the love of fucking God. The game is about map awareness it is not rocket science save your money. You should also avoid bot lane, as bot lane in this game is the most useless role I have ever seen in a Moba.

Historically, the ADC was great at pushing lanes and snagging kills, but now EVERY champion is hyper lethal and mobile, so the fucking Ezreal dinking around bot lane is just a relic of the past. He will never help nor hinder your game; he is just a sitting duck fr. Your Zed or Lee Sin or K'sante are the ones who will carry you to the finish line due to their ability to explode enemies and not die doing it. Supports are also the whiniest, most pendatic fucking crybabies in the history of gaming. If you, as a level 1 Vayne, don't engage in the most brainded fight in history, they WILL rage and probably AFK. Botlane needs a severe rework because it is such a useless and not fun lane.

So, after ALL this crying, how can I possibly like League? The thing is that sometimes it all works. Sometimes it comes together and you get the kind of excitement and thrilling plays that define great multiplayer games. Sometimes you'll lane against bloated characters like Yasuo and Yone as Renekton and just blow them the fuck up with your empowered W. 200 years of game design vs. a Pissed Off Crocodile. I wish there more beast characters being made, as every new champion is designed to appeal to Main Character Syndrome in ways we haven't yet seen. So just shutting those Main Characters down with really simple characters like Ren and Garen? M'wah, perfecto.

Other complaints: Voice actors are terrible anime dub actors. Mute them instantly. Nasus and Renekton sound awesome though. Unmute them. Whoever designed Akshan should be sent to a prison camp, and I'm not just saying that because my Akshan mid the other day AFKd after dying once since it prevented him from being the Main Character. Riot is so bad at making a game that they are still making it 10 years later.

Play it if you dare.

An extremely unique game with cute visuals and a very old-school design sensibility that proves frustrating at times and exciting at others. You really have to think and plan your strategies based on trial and error and you're forced to explore the areas properly as if you were actually there. The adorable sound effects and creature designs betray the difficulty of this thing and I think savestates are permitted here to at least remove the busywork from progressing through some long, easy challenges just to get another crack at the one that kills you in seconds.

I really adore this game even if I kind of hate playing it. They really packed in so much using this concept and bespoke engine to squeeze as much as they could out if it. Yet the ceiling is still the limit and I would have loved to see an expanded sequel. One of the few games I feel would have made for a really fun open world game, imagine possessing all the different creatures to traverse certain biomes easier or attack certain enemies. Alas, I doubt Take Two will ever allow for this to be rereleased or licensed out in any format, and DMA Design will forever be cursed to the GTA mines.

there's a very distinct sum-of-it's-parts vibe to Paranormasight- that feeling you get when you're absorbed in a cracking book- that i didn't want to end

always got time for games that tell stories by leveraging the fact it is, indeed, a videogame. to say any more would be spoilery

maybe the best prologue i've ever played?

using 360° camera pan is consistently cool, with some extra 4th wall puzzle gimmicks thrown into the mix. would have enjoyed a couple more of these!

slapped a star right off this thing for using one of the dullest tropes. high school teacher blackmails student to do shady shit. tasteless and overused, but mercifully portrayed well enough not to put me right aff the game

i accidentally played this one for a couple hours on my genesis flashcart instead of the genesis/MD version which made it pretty funny when i discovered that version was the original... this europe-exclusive port is mildly impressive for master system despite the unnecessarily blown out colors and generally ugly sprite conversion, but tbf the MD original was barely a step up from its SMS predecessor (The Dragon's Trap). of particular note is that, being that master system carts rarely came with battery backups, this conversion opts to use hilariously long passwords -- positively dying imagining some poor british kid writing this shit down, seething with jealousy at his classmate who owned a megadrive

In keeping with the free-flowing, improvisational spirit of Final Fantasy VII, a series of semi-connected thoughts:

- Lots of people are hung up on the minigames for one reason or another, and they are worthy of discussion, though not about whether they belong here (of course they do) or if they're any good (most aren't), but how their purpose has shifted between the original and this iteration. In 1997, they were tonal interludes meant to show off what a strange, crazy planet we're fighting to protect, bursting with unexpected things to see and do. In 2024, they're blown up in length and number to serve as narrative delivery devices, neatly structured to grant further dimension to one or more of your party members while also conveniently padding out the playtime of your $70 luxury consumer purchase.

More than that, even, they're ways of delaying the inevitable. Rebirth isn't really a game about a doomed planet, but a doomed woman, and everyone with the faintest knowledge of FF7 is aware of this. No matter how many sprawling overworld maps or Gold Saucer diversions or matches of Queen's Blood you throw yourself into, you're still on a beeline toward tragedy. Consider Cloud and Aerith's last "date" and how they never get exactly what they want - the candy, the tchotchke, the photo. Our choices in this world, like any other video game world, are merely a dilation of time, a hopeless attempt to forestall the medium's great historical trauma, gamer 9/11.

This is all theoretically interesting, but also has the unfortunate effect of imbricating the story's emotional slam dunk with the grim maximalist demands of the AAA market. You get what you came for... after 100 hours of wildly quality-variable content, of course. Even the Fated Event itself is compromised by a ludicrous boss rush, your characters all barking out their combat sound bites as if nothing has happened, multiversal fanservice rearing its ugly head for no discernible reason. (I ask this with no malice in my heart: why do people care about Zack enough to justify how much screentime he gets here?) In many ways this is a very simple game, but in the one moment that truly called for simplicity, all of the dubious worldline hijinks Nomura planted in the first game got in the way.

- I did find myself moved by one scene toward the end where the game briefly puts you in the shoes of a sad, scared little girl. The original FF7 made remarkable use of modifying your control scheme to convey shifts in your characters' emotional states; in Rebirth they generally overdo or mishandle it, much like everything else, but it worked well here.

- The combat is generally quite enjoyable. It's comforting to know that SE can get an action RPG right after FF16. Even with one installment worth of practice, though, some characters still feel better thought-out than others. Aerith sucks and Barret is truly just sad - what if you wanted to play Bayonetta using nothing but the guns? I have a few other complaints, like how ancillary and easily interrupted magic is, your characters' irritating lack of poise, and some hitbox tracking that would make Miyazaki blush, but they are ultimately pretty minor.

- Morph and Steal are so useless, what gives?

- Guarding feels terrible. No feedback.

- I liked the (PROTORELIC QUEST SPOILERS) fight a lot. It demands careful and attentive play but also gives you lots of options.

- The music is good, of course, although what other possible outcome could there be when you throw an exhausted supergroup of Japanese composers at one of the most beloved OSTs of all time? Unfortunately, the music is also a key factor in one of the game's great failures: it is almost perpetually unable to modulate its atmosphere. This shit is LOUD, all the time. There are no opportunities whatsoever to just be in a moment and collect your thoughts or size up your environment. I knew I was in for disappointment early on when Cloud and Sephiroth rolled into Nibelheim for their ill-fated flashback mission and I heard the sorrowful strains of Anxious Heart... followed by 15 different NPCs barking at me... followed by me stepping on a stool and dragging it noisily along with my character model for 100 feet. The din is constant from start to finish, and if you don't agree, Chadley would like to have a word or fifty thousand with you.

- This is a more personal gripe, but I feel that this trilogy's total inability to establish a horror tone is one of its great betrayals of its predecessor. The writing was on the wall with the Shinra Building in Remake; while that whole dungeon was badly handled in general, there was no attempt whatsoever at conveying any unease or fear. This is likely a result of Sephiroth being overexposed from the jump in Remake so there's no mystery, no terrible legend lurking around the corner. The horror in the original worked partly because Sephiroth was so brutal in a way that the franchise had never grappled with, but also because the world was more recognizably our own and easier to project yourself on than that of any other Final Fantasy: urban, modern, diseased, desperate, doomed. The Midgar Zolom incident makes you feel small and mortal, and the Shinra Mansion like you're a mere human enmeshed in something hostile and supernatural, but in this game those two setpieces are so fucking stupid that they're not even worth talking about.

- I know that everyone is nutting over the dumb dog song but for me the standout is One, Two, SABO!, which plays, as far as I can tell, during exactly one optional combat. Aggressively joyous and exuberant to the point of menace... love it! Fucking Cactuars!

- In a perfect world, both this game and FF16 falling short of SE's sales expectations would tell the company that the AAA open-world model is just not an effective container for video game storytelling, or at least the type that Final Fantasy made its name on so many years ago. It is my unreasonable hope that they will course correct for Part 3 and bring us back to a more focused experience, but as ever, the gamers demand more. Who are the devs to deny them the constant creep toward bigger and better?

- I really enjoyed Remake, but after this installment the project has lost its shine for me. No more remakes!

- One exception: if SE had any sort of cojones left, they would follow up this time dilation game with a remake of time kompression game FF8, omitting/streamlining all of the side content and churning out the most decadent 10-hour banger of all time, though they don't and they won't.

where most roleplaying spaces unfurl into greater mechanical, numerical dimensions, this only gets more and more hazy and frictionless over time, taking on a melancholic quality as you soar and glide effortlessly thru the world; decadent accumulation carving an ever-increasing gulf between You and Everything Else

sprawling curiosities, unreliable histories, and warbly metaphysics never making peace or finding balance with the ceaseless extrinsic rewards. excavation and communion of the dream growing distant as you pawn off Squirming Godlings to the highest bidder, buy out every house on the market, and upgrade weapons you don't need to kill things that pose no threat to acquire items you won't use

it's all the more uncanny cos none of the perverse little interloper privileges are of much benefit to you. save for a couple sloppy dungeon crawls dredged up out of the early 2000s there's hardly anything that demands to be solved thru violence or expenditure. all that hard power amounts to nothing compared to having a bunch of stats invested in candles

I agree with more or less every criticism that's been brought up to some extent, and I'm pretty sure that people who say it's like king's field probably send cryptograms to local newspapers when they're not LYING on the internet, but I like what's here more than I'm bothered by what isn't: the exploration and quaint little cartography; the surprising tenderness; the strange, incidental mode of unheroism; the disinterest in blood n bone problem solving; even the shameless Michael Kirkbride ReShade bits

when you make The Object Graveyard I can no longer take umbrage with your boss hitboxes being too tall to hit my character or the earlygame revolving around lockpicking for lockpicks so you can lockpick for exp to upgrade your lockpicking. I don't care, I just wanna see what's on that island over there

anyway, check it out: the swords are kissing

I know how it is. I've been in those awkward silences. Nobody wanting to say what's burning away at them. It's time to speak up - Um Jammer Lammy's FMV compression is fucking brutal. Really brings you back to the RealPlayer days. I get it, though. Nobody wants this to become the talking point. For Sony to get excited to fart out a new remaster with AI upscaled cutscenes and interpolated animation. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut.

It's understandable, though. The PlayStation had changed a lot over the course of a few years. The team who once put out Destruction Derby were now the guys behind Driver 2. NanaOn-Sha have insisted that they were pushing the upper limits of the CD-ROM's capacity with SIX whole levels in PaRappa 1, and somehow they managed to squeeze out one more, multiple 2-player modes and a whole second campaign for UJL. None of those weird borders around the FMV sequences, either. It's 1999. We're ready to throw away those Mega CD-era crutches and embrace full-screen video. Those cowards at Squaresoft might have just thrown an extra disc or two in the box, but this is how the real game developers do it.

Um Jammer Lammy is an odd game. The original told a fairly typical coming of age story, whereas this seems more trivial. Lammy has slept in and only has fifteen minutes to get to her concert. PaRappa was faced with challenges that he'd need to overcome to grow up and win over the flower of his dreams, but each stage in UJL represents Lammy being interrupted from her journey to the concert hall. Irritations that she doesn't learn anything relevant from. It's a sillier, less heartfelt story, and the game feels less significant as a result.

The core gameplay hasn't changed, but there's been some neat refinements to the UI. It's much easier to tell when a teacher's phrase ends and your one begins, with consistent on-screen bar length, colour-coding and a neat use of the Dualshock's rumble when it's your shot. Timing seems much easier overall, too, with the button prompts pulsing when you're supposed to hit them. It's subtle, but it feels far more playable as a result. It's not uncommon that I'll get several levels into PaRappa without feeling I have any kind of handle on the timing, but all those little tweaks make UJL feel far more responsive and reliable.

That said, the game's cluttered, messy and a little incoherent. There are moments of characterisation that feel really underbaked, and like they were significantly established in the production material, but those cutscenes just couldn't make it into the 700MBs of space that the game was allotted. There's a running joke aimed at Joe Chin, PaRappa 1's pompous braggart, who has seemingly transformed into a tacky Donald Trump-style casino owner, stamping his name on cheaply-made products (likely the result of Rodney Greenblat's personal irritations, as a resident of New York), even though he has no place in the story and doesn't interact with any of the characters. They likely spent a lot of time coming up with ideas on what to put in a PaRappa sequel, and they just couldn't squeeze it all in. It doesn't feel like we spend enough time anywhere to get a sense of the world that they're attempting to establish. Those cutscenes don't grow on trees, ya know?

Then there's the music. If you hear Matsuura's work as a recording artist, you can tell that PaRappa was far closer to his comfort zone. He's done a lot of great work with funk, soul and disco, and when he focused on that, PaRappa 2 undoubtedly had his best compositions in a game. Lammy comes off like it's going to focus on rock, but it's all over the place. There's a kind of rockabilly thing for one level and a heavy metal pastiche, but there's a bunch of weird detours, plumbing the depths of the confused misfire that is Taste of Teriyaki. I was digging deep to try and link it here, but I once saw a mainstream music review site covering MilkCan's "Make It Sweet" (a sort of reimagined soundtrack where Katy sings all the songs) and it was deeply embarrassing thinking of someone judging these songs without the context of the game. Of course, they hated it. It's frequently quite intolerable. That said, Fire Fire and Casino In My Hair totally rule, and of course, the last level makes for one of the all-time feel-good finales to a game.

Rhythm action hadn't really made much progress as a genre until immediately after Um Jammer Lammy, when DDR, Pop'n Music and Beatmania really started to take hold. PaRappa gameplay's fairly tame in relation to the high-level challenge of the emerging rhythm arcade scene, and UJL hasn't really moved on. There's a little more ambition in some of the phrases, but tethering everything to that old COOL/GOOD/BAD/AWFUL ranking system prevents them from doing anything too interesting with song structure. Levels typically feature tricky phrases a third of the way through, and then hand you a couple of really easy ones right at the end to save you at the last minute. It doesn't really incentivise you to play the whole song well. You just have to get those last couple of phrases right.

It may sound like I've given Um Jammer Lammy a real hammering here, but none of these things are important. These games hinge on their charm, and Um Jammer Lammy is really endearing. The looser tone really lets Rodney go wild with his designs, and I really enjoy the background characters, from the guy with an accordion for a head, to the guy with a tree stump for a head, to the guy with a human ear for a head. Please keep an eye out for them. It doesn't really get a lot of credit for it, but it's a wide-appeal nineties videogame with non-sexualised female leads (even if SCEA opted to promote the game with tattooed midriffs), and as low a bar as that is, it's depressing how brave a direction that seemed at the time. Lammy, Katy and Ma-san are all fun and likeable, and for as little as we get to see of their dynamic, they each really seem to care for their friends. It's very sweet, and I think the message of finding conviction in your own unique style is really positive. Giving PaRappa his own post-game campaign was such a treat, though it does highlight that the gameplay works better when button inputs correspond to words as opposed to relatively abstract guitar phrases. Fans love him, and it's nice to see him hanging out with his friends in more relaxed situations. For all the niggles you can point out with the design or soundtracks, these games are really successful in creating a fun, optimistic atmosphere that's comforting to spend time in, and that's what keeps me coming back. The nice time.

It goes without saying that they don't make games like this any more. They never made games like this. Um Jammer Lammy was a fairly audacious thing to print on a PS1 CD-ROM. It retains its unique appeal. The progression of the PlayStation as a platform lent itself to creating more confident, thrilling blockbuster titles, but it also created little niches for the weird stuff to find a home in. UJL sits in a unique position between the platform mascot juggernauts, Crash Bandicoot and Spyro, and the odd, artsy, experimental releases like Pet In TV and Fluid. It's on the border, noooooowwwwww. We're never getting anything quite like this again, but wasn't that a groove?

In an interview with IGN in 2020 Senior Producer Fleur Marty commented about Gotham Knights, Warner Brother's newest Batman game that it's, and I quote:

"is very much not designed as a game-as-service."

Now I don't blame him for this comment, it's part of his job when doing PR rounds to help sell the product. I can only imagine with the negative outlook the title was receiving that the Eye of Sauron at Warner Brothers was watching intently. The thing is the reason I don't believe him is to give credit to the talented people that work on WB Montreal as I refuse to believe they would design such an awful system if it wasn't a live service game initially that was repurposed. Now I like the premise of it, playing as the sidekick's when Batman is gone and the launch trailer is superb at really emphasizing that feeling. I like the idea of having the game co-op and having upgradeable RPG mechanics but the way it's implemented is just dreadful.

So it's an open world game similar to it's predecessors where Gotham City is the playground. When you are let loose to explore there are basic repetitive crimes on the map where you can scan to find them then interrogate criminals to find pre meditated crimes and it's utterly pointless. Simply finding them organically exploring would have been better and more interesting. When stopping crimes sometimes there are chests that have resources in them or blueprints for new gear you can make. The resources are just various shades of colours with huge numbers that are never explained. Playing with a friend to tell them I'd found "some green" which I already had 100,000 of just means nothing and is extremely unexciting. I had random unexplained resources coming out of my ears, blueprints for weapons and armour I'd never use equally spilling out of my bat belt pouch. To compound matters further creating one of these items you can do on the fly but you can't equip it until you return to the Belfry which the game makes you do constantly. It just seems to want to break it's own flow all the time with these "not designed as live service" mechanics.

The game generally is a bit of a rough state in various areas. The movement around the city will have you feel constantly stuck on objects like perches and lampposts that Batgirl seems to glue to with the worlds strongest adhesive like she'd made a lifelong commitment she refuses to break. Bless her. Additionally there are constant little things like the lack of a proper jump being only contextual leaving questions if it will actually work, running into other players or walls kills all momentum and you freeze for no reason, a choppy frame rate and playing online co-op auto stops my headset working in private chat forcing me to mute and unmute again in mid conversation for just no reason. All small things, nothing stopping the game being unplayable but they can get frustrating over time.

The thing is if you strip those mechanics out and look past the niggling technical issues there is actually the foundation of a good game here. When playing specific story missions and it's focused on the plot and unique locations it's really good. I like the characters and narrative, there are some touching scenes and funny moments. There is the framework of a great game here just held back by an obviously difficult development and initial design pivot regardless of what Fleur Marty may have been stating on his PR rounds. My friend and I did have fun playing it regardless and certainly don't regret it. Riding through Gotham on a bat-cycle launching into the air to land on an unsuspecting criminal and doing a finisher with a brutal kick to the jaw is really satisfying. I also loved playing as Batgirl and wanted more of that ever since the Arkham Knight - A Matter of Family DLC. Whilst it just doesn't reach that level of quality it was still fun, just extremely flawed.

Worth a try if you're curious as it's constantly on sale, hard one to recommend but it's not as bad as some people make out I feel.

+ Story premise is really good.
+ I like the characters and story beats.
+ I like the presentation though it's not as dense and gothic as it's predecessors.

- Upgrade and open world systems are just awful, clearly was designed as a live service game that pivoted in development but the damage is there.
- Combat and movement isn't smooth enough.
- Some minor bugs and frame rate issues.

We were young, and we were still learning. Coming into our own, yet still not quite there.

The second generation was much like some of us who had experienced the series from the beginning as bright eyed and optimistic children. Maturing, finding our footing in life, and trying to figure things out for what we really wanted out of our future. Do we continue onward with our current path and continue developing our skill? Are we seeking to make a career of said skill? Those drawings bearing a similar crudeness to generation one sprites that we etched on the back of our tests, those little characters that you made from your own two hands and the ocean of your imagination. They would need to be refined, perhaps to the point you would be sick of seeing them again through the months and months of practice. We struck gold on something we were good at, but were we ready to make this our life? How do we get ready for life? Would we even make it to that path we dreamed of?

For us, this was the sequel. A sequel to childhood, and the path to maturity.

If we were to get ready for life, we would need to learn how to maintain a schedule and utilize a form of communication to keep in touch with our contacts. Through our little battery-powered clock in our cartridges, we kept track of the time of day in order to search for different friends on different paths. We would remember what day it was, so we could participate in a bug catching contest and try to find that Scyther. If we couldn't get up in the morning early enough to catch a Ledyba, what good were we in participating in life? It was at this point we were starting to get into the thick of things, we weren't children anymore, but teenagers who aspired to be more like adults. We were excited of all that upcoming opportunity that would only be granted to us with age, and with that age in due time came responsibility and expectations to provide. Life would soon not be all about fun anymore.

It was soon time to grow up, and perhaps move away from home to master our craft elsewhere...

It's hard however to leave behind everything that you grew up with. We traveled to Johto to learn how to better ourselves, perhaps like the bike shop owner who got unlucky on their new shop placement in Goldenrod, but for us it wasn't truly home. We would long for our old pals, our old hangout spots, and our favorite order from our childhood fast food place. We desired a return trip home to Kanto, so we can say hello to everybody one last time before we begin our life's career. Home however, wasn't quite the same as we had remembered. Forests were chopped down, caves were cleared out, and Lavender Town's place of remembrance had been converted into a radio tower. Kanto has changed, or has it matured like us? Resources have been plundered for practical use over the thoughts of those who had lived there, and spirituality has been pushed to the side in the name of technological advancement. Have we lost our way, or is this what is to be expected of us in the future?

When I finally climb this mountain and end this visit home, what will await me at it's peak?

The last lingering strand of childhood I had left made manifest, the past me armed with the very first friends I had made on this adventure. If I must let go of the past, I must defeat the longing memories of what once was. Even if I were victorious, will the memories finally rest or will they continue pursuing me? With the destruction of the past, we make way for the future. This is the way. This is the way we grow up. We no longer have room for trifling matters such as our childhood friends, memories, or the places we once held dear. It's time to make way for adulthood and to only go forward without ever looking back. Home is no longer home, it's no longer even a memory for us, it was thrown back into the toybox where it belonged. With this we continue our adventure elsewhere, and we leave everything behind. It was a fad, and it's time to bury those McDonalds toys and trading cards in a box or sell them off in a yard sale.

It was never to be the same again, for we have both grown up. Us now simple mature adults, and them a fully-realized juggernaut of a franchise with no end in sight. We've defeated our childhood, there was no reason to keep going with this series obviously geared towards what we had grown out of. We could take a peek once in a while to check on them when they make the television, but we would do so with a look over our shoulder to try and maintain our mask of adulthood and maturity. It was time to only watch mature programming, and play mature games while doing other such mature things, like swearing while our parents weren't around. This is what is expected of us now, it's time to leave it behind to the next generation who will grow with the next set of games, whom may also leave once they have grown past it....with another generation to follow.....and the cycle repeats....

My time was over, much like Kanto and the Game Boy, but despite what life and middle school demanded of me, I would never be too far away.

I am home, I always have been.