You can run past the first Samurai that'll bring up a very important tutorial that will explain what the Red Kanji above their head means and how to deal with it. I ended up being very frustrated because I genuinely had no idea how to deal with this interaction until I randomly decided to backtrack and find out there is a tutorial that explains what it does. I did not have a problem with this enemy ever again after reading the tutorial.

The stealth in this game is an unfinished gimmick. You can stand right behind an enemy and kill them with their buddy right beside him, and you're invisible. But if you walk past a tiny crack on a wall, the blowhorn enemy will blow his horn and aggro every enemy onto you. It isn't until you realize that the only actual way you can complete this section stealthily requires that you run through the area, go to the bonfire, sit down, and reset the enemies, so you can kill them all from behind. I am referring the section you enter right after the Chained Ogre fight. This game broke for me when I realized the mandatory stealth section with the giant enemy snake can just be rushed past without hesitation.

Even disregarding my individual frustration with this game, I could really feel just how repetitive this game's combat system is. Timing is everything, sure, but "CLUNG KLANG KAKLANG" just isn't engaging enough for me.

Here's just 1 breakdown of one very specific path you can take when navigating The Great Plateau. You'll see a cabin in the distance after activating the Sheikah tower. There are about 4 small enemy camps and one Shrine that lie in between the background and foreground. Ignore all of that, and go straight to the Cabin. You'll meet the King who will be beside or around a Woodcutter's Axe. You'll notice a tree standing beside a gap, and you'll strike the tree with your axe, letting the tree fall and create a new way to cross that gap. Most likely, you'll have a Korok leaf fall from the top of the tree, which you can use to launch the 2 Bokoblin's off the cliff, going farther down that left, you'll find a cracked wall which you can blow up to get a nice little reward. There's a decent chance that attacking with the Korok leaf will knock one of the many apple's atop the nearby tree to the ground. You'll notice a platform that you can jump up onto and use the korok leaf to blow all of the other apple's down. Looking up, you'll notice that there is another protruded rock above Link. This is just one way to begin your ascent to the next Shrine on the highest point. Unfortunately, Breath of the Wild never reaches this same level of concentration no matter what direction you go once you have left the tutorial. And while Ganon's Castle can feel reminiscent of this, it's very rare to approach such a dangerous area in different ways when you already know one path.

Ichiban is such a great new main character that they already seem to be throwing away with the 8th game by putting Kiryu on the box art when he fucking died in that one Yakuza game.

Unfortunately, they decided to follow tradition with the inspiration from Dragon Quest by taking the combat system from the series too. And they couldn't even do it well. Despite the enemy variety, it will never reach the wonder of variety that Mother offered; they're trying too hard to make a cohesive design. I should be fighting abstract art, not a very specific list of machinery like a roomba and construction shit. Even if this sounds appealing, the novelty wears thin very quickly the second you are forced to do the dungeon crawling from Yakuza: Like a Dragon. I can appreciate the originality in the mini-game's but I question if it border's on addictive mobile gaming rather than an actual quality mini-game.

Did you know gaming? This is the 2nd Japanese game whose 7th mainline entry also indicated a huge reinvention of the series and also when they decided to fuse the Japanese name and English localized title into the same title. That other game is called Resident Evil: Biohazard 7

I'd really love to speak on how fucking incredible the map design is for this game. Every corner has another corner until you're an idiot hitting a wall. Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time remembering any of the character's names from the story. But that Entire map going from post-school invasion to the Fairy Forest, was one of the best experiences I've had in a video game. Reaching Shinagawa Pier and meeting a King Frost in a freezer, just freezing a single piece of meat is what I play video games for. The gradually evolving music hits like a truck mid-way when you reach Konan 3rd block. You can actually see this impact the truck left when you look to the left and see a giant crater where a big ass Girimehkala stands. I won't say more, but if you like good gameplay with great level design, this is the game for you.

Yes. Definitely. Absolutely.

This game is genius. You feel a great sense of satisfaction from trying out new things and finding out it works. Each new mechanic they teach you, is attached to a card you've used before. So rather than introduce new abilities every level to make it more interesting, that interest is actually garnered when you realize new ways to complete a previous level you already aced; Every level feels meticulously designed to reward you when you actively try to experiment with the tool's you're given.

You find yourself asking questions like, "What if I ran on the water, used a bomb to launch myself over to the next bomb, and using that bomb to launch me to the finish line? "What if I used 2 bombs at once and just launched myself to the finish line." "What if I saved this bomb, bombed it later, and then bombed again, saving more time than the person telling me to play this game." All of this experimentation is done while you're shooting enemy's from across the map, so that you can turn your 8 second PB into an 7.87 second PB.

Now, for the story, just Press F until you think something mildly interesting is going on or you want more context to what is going on. I just don't understand why they felt to obligated to give it anime writing. Think of what a pimp looks like in your head, that's exactly what I mean when I say anime writing.

Machine Girl did really good on this soundtrack. There's a lot to say about how the first 3 songs feel like you're going deeper and deeper underwater until you're touching the bottom of the ocean--taking in the spectacle of each layer. But I'll just leave one comment:
"House of Cards" https://youtu.be/HEAeItQm__Q?t=107
Endlessly falling, you can literally feel the light reflecting off the glass pane windows and right before the song leaves you back at the beginning of the level. Just amazing stuff from Machine Girl, love how developers asked them to take the soundtrack in the direction of one of their best album's, "Infinite Potentiality and Others."

The combat can be cool but it's often bogged down by the fact that it's Final Fantasy VII: Remake. Do you wanna know how hard I groaned when I saw that the stupid fuckin Harry Potter Dementor's were a metaphor for GAMERS who hate SHITTY video games? Wild and crazy, how you make a statement like that and then your voice direction is, "yeah let's have them do that dumbass anime grunting." Did you know Erica Lindbeck had a voiceline in Persona 5 that, I think they just used that exact voice line Futaba said its, "Not too shabby!" this is what Futaba says in this game when you press up on the left stick to dodge laser's. Barret is cool, he says the, "Rot runs deep in this pizza" which is a reference to the song from the soundtrack called the rotting pizza look it up. The last thing I will add was that when I wanted to buy this game on release, they were sold out and I walked home with a copy of Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii. The laser inside my Wii doesn't work, so it can't read the disc. They also dropped an enhanced version of the game less than a year later on the PS5 and dropped the normal version on PS+, I didn't even need to pay for it, so worth it. Anyways, remember in Detroit: Become Human where the Androids sat in the back of the bus because it was NOT an allegory for black people. Ok, I got an idea for a boss design, but if it went temporarily invincible because the player didn't do it in the boring way we wanted them to do it? Woah what's that? The shittiest flying up to kill a moving target animation ever?? We gotta lot of Final Fantasy VII to do.