i don't feel too particularly obligated to give out my more personal diagnoses to strangers, let alone ones on this website of all places. as much as i worry my thoughts on these games will shed a bit more light onto that than i'd like, i do like to get my thoughts on the games i play out there, even if they're mostly just for my sake.

anyone who knows me personally knows that a lot of my favorite pieces of media speak to me in some way, and the way they speak to me and what they speak to me on can vary a lot. like only a rare few pieces of media that have done the same before it, the milk games have spoken to me in regards to my mental health in a way that made me feel seen for lack of a better word. in contrast, most games i've played that mental health and especially trauma do so in such incredibly poor, seemingly uninformed ways to the point where i end up hating them a lot more than i would've otherwise. none of this is to say that the milk games are like looking into a mirror, but more like looking into someone who could understand what it's like, even if it's just fiction.

so much about this game feels like it comes from a place of understanding, from someone who can at least grasp what living with these issues can be like. i appreciate the dialog a lot too, i relate a lot to the odd use of metaphors and analogies to explain my issues to people i don't think will understand, and the way the girl will be vague and a bit cagey about everything one second just to dump everything out the next feels very real as well. can't say i at all understand anyone who thinks the game is romanticizing mental illness and trauma though, i feel like both milk games do a good job of conveying the subjects through the visuals and dialog. i think the horror is also done really well, even if the first game does stuff like that better, but i don't really feel like that matters to much to me. milk inside a bag felt very chaotic and condensed like the events of an episode, but milk outside of a bag felt more like that aftermath period of stewing on your emotions and experiences and i personally feel like that approach wouldn't work if it kept the same level of focus on the horror.

these games aren't perfect by any means and i do think there's some minor issues i have with them (even if i disagree with most critiques on it here) but they're games that i think will become important to me once i've had more time to think about them and take them in, and i think you should try them out if you think they'll be important to you too.

i wholeheartedly believe that xenoblade chronicles is this generation's final fantasy 7. a jrpg epic with an incredible cast with enjoyable dynamics between every character, and a story that will be praised to high hell for years, and very deservedly. you really don't know what you've gotten yourself into until the end and it's so good. my only complaints are that the jp dub is pretty bland but the english dub falls off in quality closer to the end, but otherwise xenoblade chronicles is a consistently amazing game from start to finish.

xenoblade for people who play games with porn mods

i dont think the issue with xenoblade 2 is that its "too anime" because xenoblade 1 and 3 take just as much from anime, they just take it from shonen whereas 2 draws a lot more from ecchi/harem anime tropes which are absolutely some of my least favorite types of media. that mixed with an awful dub, insufferable characters, and forced comedy that doesn't land even once makes it completely not worth it to slog through 60 hours for the game to finally get "good," because at that point you couldve played multiple games that were infinitely better than a game this bad with a final stretch where the only interesting part of it is a tie in to the first game. easily one of my least favorite games of all time

i think i still prefer v4 but god v5 was so good. like always introduces some of my absolute favorite characters in the series and it does a really good job of being a finale for the initial storyline started by version 1. the final boss just using the generic boss fight track was a little underwhelming, but a certain song from one of my favorite dq games kicks in afterwards and it gets me so hyped regardless. dragon quest 10 is absolutely my favorite dragon quest game with all of the versions taken into consideration and i'm beyond grateful that there finally exists tools to play it in english, and i think anyone who enjoys the series should check it out.

between this version being the ending of the initial story and being the last version where we can confirm it was toriyama himself who did the art/designs i'm a little less excited for what comes next, but there's definitely plotlines that i enjoyed from previous versions that aren't completely resolved so i'm sure it'll be a good time regardless.

honestly as someone who did not like dragon quest 9 and who was also initially not a fan of the new character designs for v6 i had seen which were very obviously not done by toriyama if you look at the hair and the eyes for even a second, this one surprised me. some of the best characters in the series writing wise as to be expected from dq10 at this point, as well as some insane high points story wise. the set up for the expansion guarantees that most new concepts and characters probably aren't going to stick around as the game moves forward which is a bummer, and while it hits higher highs than v5 and even surpasses v4 in moments for sure it struggles to be as consistently good as either expansion. however, i'm a lot less cautious about the future of dq10 having played v6 and i'm very excited to play v7, especially with those screens of the expansion's beautiful environments we've been getting in v-jump.