Pretty much what every self-described "speed game" should be.

Frankly, I've grown quite tired of the speedrun/challenge run culture surrounding a lot of the mainstream discussion around videogames. The incredible popularity of Twitch streams and youtube videos of people "playing the game wrong" has created a lot of expectations for basically every title to allow for such approach, and it gets criticized if anything goes against that (see people being mad at the maze catacombs of Elden Ring because they "are slow").
However, for some reason, Rusted Moss made fall in love with that aspect of gaming again.

Very few games can say that they're literally built for speedrunning, and Rusted Moss is among them. But unlike a lot of the others you don't feel like "missing out" by not engaging with that aspect. The implementation of the "speed tech" is so varied and broad that every single casual play will discover something unique and cool to do while playing with the momentum-based mechanics of the game.
Even the smallest discovery feels like unlocking a whole different layer of this game. You get rewarded for each and every single thing.

Rusted Moss demands a lot of you to get 100% completion, but that "lot" contains different things for each player. You can do that without discovering the most advanced tricks, or without realizing the most basic interaction, it is truly one of the most freeing (and yet tightly designed) experiences you can have.

The world itself is also extremely worth all of your dedication. Varied and vibrant environments still shine as you blaze through them with your newfound techniques. Piecing together the (admittedly fairly simple) lore and watching all the ways Fern and Puck interact with each other and all the inhabitants of the world never gets stale, as everything culminates into the final True Ending of the game.

Not a revolutionary experience, but one that is confident in its building upon conventions of everything that preceded it, and I am very glad I got the chance to fly through it.

a very good jrpg whose main flaw is probably that there's too much of it. the main cast is strong, and the en voice acting great overall, although my patience for adults doing kid voices wore thin here and there. the combat has a weird back-and-forth flow that i ended up enjoying even if it's not completely my thing, and presumably a lot of depth if you explore all the characters and their fighting styles more than i cared to.

something i'm noticing about tales games is that the focus on characters and their interactions really grounds them in tabletop rpgs, or maybe just the aspect of tabletop rpgs that i enjoy the most. almost everything that happens emerges naturally from the characters, their backstories and personalities and how they come into conflict with the world and with each other, although i'll admit there's a higher than usual volume of magic-technology-handwaving to keep things moving forward as well. another aspect of this pen & paper provenance is how the characters, initially with completely separate goals and motivations, and often driven by these motivations in diverging directions, are gradually and organically brought together by the fantasy complications and contrivances that the "DM" arbitrarily throws their way. i'm not sure if this makes sense if you haven't played a long tabletop campaign, but if you know, you know.

this is also why, while there's way too much game here for me to go looking for all the side content and endgame dungeons and so on, this kind of drawn out format really works well to establish a player's bond with the characters, in a similar way to episodic fiction.

vesperia doesn't really believe in overcomplicating itself, and most of its depth is in its clearly laid out ethical questions. what's especially appealing to me is that, because of what i said before about the characters driving the story, there's no concept here of "meaningful choices" that has so plagued rpgs (games in general, really) and stifled their imaginations; the choices emerge from believable fictional people's personalities, not the extra-diegetic agency of a player comfortably above any reasons and consequences, and so are much more rooted in a, however fantastic and simplified, social and interpersonal context. this is what i would venture to call "good" instead of "bad".

plus, it's got yaoi, it's got yuri, what more do you need?

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.—Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

I love Mint more than anyone alive, dead or fictional and I'm so glad she never at any point stopped sucking ass

I'm so catastrophically depressed about all the sequel hook stuff that never produces an actual sequel I need more stupid sister adventure I can't live without it

also god it looks nice everything looks like it tastes good and animates like a funny cartoon I need more models that look like this

1. imagine being a triple a videogame developer, you know what Fromsoft is capable of- the phrase "the Dark Souls of ... " rings in your heart; it is the tinnitus of your soul. But Fromsoft stays in the corner, gurning, keening, laughing at the end of sentences, this grants you a measure of peace. One day you come into work, and they're sitting at your desk. they own your fucking desk.
2. the greatest videogame adaptation of the works of Hieronymus Bosch
3. little guy in the foreground of landscape concept art simulator
4. the definitive answer to the question "would the Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich be improved by letting you throw fireballs at skeletons"
5. did Hidetaka Miyazaki come up with "The Loathsome Dung Eater" or did George R R Martin, or did they simply both announce the name out loud at the same time at their first meeting, before offering so much as a "hello"
6. with Bloodborne, they came for the shield guys, with Sekiro, they came for the dodge guys, with Elden Ring, they came for the Fox Only No Items Final Destination guys
7. Elden Ring is a 100 hour game that feels like a 200 hour game that feels like a 50 hour game

Well damn, they did it.

I dunno how, I really wasn't expecting this to be anywhere even halfway decent after the meanspirited mess of the first game. I bought it, all the same, because I love the concept enough to want to like what it does, but I was so sure it'd leave me just as muddled as Overdose, desperately wishing for a game that could've done what it set out to do better.

And here it is. They did it. They delivered on every bit of promise the first game held. The combat is much better, the side content is actually meaningful, the dungeons are genuinely fun to navigate and have some really neat ideas baked into them, and the music is every bit as stellar as the first game, with not a single dud track in the entire thing.

But it's the writing where this game truly shines. The first game was so meanspirited and hollow, punching down at every opportunity. Caligula 2, meanwhile, is written with so much empathy, with one of the sweetest, most well-considered arcs about gender identity I've seen in a game, and a main cast that I came to truly adore. Sasara, in particular, turned out to be my favorite in the group, with the conclusion of her story helping me come to terms with the somewhat recent passing of a family member. I can't say how much I appreciated that all, really.

Hell, it's so good that it retroactively makes parts of the first game better, calling back to it in ways that drastically up the emotional stakes here and toy with audience expectations really cleverly.

Right through to the last dungeon, I was so ready for the game to fumble something, for it to really remind me why the first game never worked for me. But that never happened. Everything it did was just fantastic, right up until the end.

What a lovely, special game. I can't believe this comes from the exact same writer and director as the first game, but what an incredible example of listening and swearing to do better by the people you've hurt. What an amazing turnaround, truly.