" Mion can I go to your school? "
" For wholesome doppelganger moment? "
" Yeeeeess wholesome doppelganger moment. "

Actually becomes the writer excuse to justify child abuse like a boss.

I have my fair share of problems with Ciconia so far but thankfully my expectations were tempered from the start due to the setting and scale. The abnormally large and varied cast is handled fairly well and they have good interactions. The non-wartime parts are entertaining and do a good job of endearing you to the characters while building up the world. The wartime parts end up feeling very repetitive with a lot of redundant dialogue regarding the WALLS OF PEACE and DONT KILL DONT DIE and generally uninteresting action scenes. It feels like every other scene features ryukishi using the game as a mouthpiece to tell the reader how bad humanity is and how much war sucks and it ends up detracting from the story. The themes are meaningful and interesting but the lack of subtlety makes it feel very tiring after a while. Often I was subjected to scenes where everyone would be all buddy buddy and spend 5 minutes talking about how much they'll support peace which is annoying when anyone with more than a couple brain cells knows from the start that they will end up killing each other. Presentation is upgraded from the other WTC games but it doesn't really get a lot of chances to shine given how few legitimate fights there are. Music is good as usual but not really as memorable as umineko's or as impactful as higurashi's. Despite my problems, the ending was great and I'm interested to see where the story is going to go from here now that they've built everything up.

"Visuals Novels is shit. I'll be here fighting angels in the name of chaos while you cling to Chee. Can you even take on the armies of YHVH and fight in the name of Chaos? I bet you dream of holding Chee's hand instead of claiming the world in Lucifer's own glory. Do you even dungeon crawling? Try not to feel too bad, but the objective best waifu in the entire series is actually Louissa Ferre, from Strange Journey, and Chee is but a bakuh and unpure girl compared to her."
-Rog, 2014 (RIP)

Playing SMTV has kinda made me think back to what it is about this game that'll make it always hold that special place for me that is "my favorite RPG." It's pretty far from my favorite one from a gameplay standpoint, or a story standpoint, really my favorite in terms of much except for one thing: A phenomenal sense of atmosphere. Strange Journey is a game that does almost everything in service to making an atmosphere of absolute hostility. The dungeons are sprawling labrynths of hidden doors, poison traps, and random teleporters. Just about every boss is infamous for some kind of bullshit status ailment abuse or overpowered attacks (Asura Roga funny moments). The music, while hardly my favorite in the series, looms over like a constant blanket of dread. The game really goes to efforts to make you feel like the small, powerless grunt in a foreign hellhole that you are. Every challenge, while maybe not the fairest thing in the world, makes you feel like an absolute god once you overcome it.

The other stuff is good too! While SMT as a series isn't really known for its stories, this one's about as rock solid as the franchise gets. Plot's cool and got some neat twists and turns, Zelenin and Jimenez are objectively the best alignment reps in the franchise, and the BBEG being someone other than YHVH or Lucifer is certainly a nice change of pace. Also, it's cool how this is like the only game that doesn't fully incentivise going down the neutral path to get all the content in the game, since each ending has it's own unique shit to do. Rare neutral L is appreciated. Combat's good. It's an SMT game, the combat's generally gonna be good. The lack of press turn is maybe a little unfortunate, but giving alignment an actual gameplay purpose was a cool addition to it.

Shin Megami Tensei peaked as a franchise when the stupid bucket head man went into the earth bussy and we need to free ourselves from the shackles that Cuckturne and Peesona 5 set upon us. Reject press tvrn, retvrn to massive fvcking teleporter mazes. It's fun, i swear

Brawl Stars is quite notorious for being a rage-inducing game. There are many factors that make the game frustrating to play, but perhaps the most pressing one for many people are other players. Both opponents and teammates often act as if they're oblivious to the mechanics of the game, and it doesn't change no matter how high in trophies you've gotten. It could be a teammate rushing to fight the opposing team alone in gem grab, while holding 10 gems, or an opponent completely ignoring everyone else trying to attack them in showdown, and instead deciding to target you at the cost of their own life.

The game is obviously targeted more towards a younger audience, so it's true that you're going to be matched often with children. While that does affect how the match plays out, it's not only the young players that don't play quite as well as others (being a child doesn't also mean that you're automatically bad at the game, of course). Brawl Stars provides very little rewards for completing matches, and the matches are often very quick. This gives all players the impression that playing with focus and care is a waste of time, which in turn makes them more prone to not playing as well. The problem comes up when players decide to follow that mindset every match.

While the brawlers aren't terribly imbalanced, all maps favor certain types or brawlers over others. But even then matches are like a game of rock-paper-scissors, because you could always end up spawning next to a brawler that counters your brawler perfectly on that map. If you try picking that brawler next game, you could spawn next to another counter again. Brawlers die out very quickly if there's a direct head-to-head battle going on (assuming there aren't massive amounts of power cubes in play), which means there's very little room to strategize in combat. Almost all of the strategization simply happens in the lobby, where you pick your brawler, possible teammates, gadget, star power and gear. The only problem is that the last three are dependant on money spending and/or previous grinding.

Skins are overpriced for free-to-play players, most shop offers are horrendously bad, brawlers with high rarities are a pain to unlock, and brawl pass tokens to earn from matches run out very quickly. While the adrenaline received from the game can get very addicting, and the rare win streaks can feel satisfying, I would overall describe my experience with Brawl Stars very mixed. I'm currently at ~20500 trophies, but I think it's time for me to retire for good, as many of my friends have also done with this game.