This is in my opinion the perfect Fire Emblem game.

Its mechanics are fine tuned, the maps are more interesting, returning favorites make a return, cinematics appear in a series first and are excellent... but none of that is why I value this game so much.

The story in this game is absolutely top notch. This game has so much to say and says it so, so well. It takes its source material and expands the world around it, explores that games' events on everyone in this world, and even goes beyond and explores a variety of real world social issues. All this is done through the lens of a very interesting plot with some truly crazy story and gameplay twists. Add to that the returning favorites and interesting new characters (Even if some are a bit weak), and you have a winner.

Simply put, this game is a banger.

This game is incredible. IMO the best Metroid-vania ever made with no exceptions, and also my favorite game to include souls-like elements, and yes that is counting Elden Ring.

Everything about this game from the atmosphere, to the fluid controls, to the gameplay to the bosses is just perfect.

The ONLY complaint I have is that some of the post-game content, like Godworld, is very tedious and frustrating. Yet even then, Nightmare King Grimm, one of the other post-game bosses, may be my favorite video game boss ever.

This game is a masterpiece and I do think everyone should enjoy it if they enjoy video games.

I ranted and raved about the original, and this one is almost as good.

I was skeptical at first since I hadn't even heard of this game until years later when looking for the wiki article to the first game. I assumed it must have been a dud to fall that far under the radar, but I was wrong.

This game is a bit of give and take compared to the first one. What I mean is that the great card based combo system and gameplay of the first one is more fleshed out and feels incredible in this one. It feels like they figured out exactly how to improve their system without changing anything that worked. Over the long time this game took, I still stayed awed at how much fun combat was the whole way, something that never happens to me over the course of long RPGs.

That said, the story is overall a bit weaker. It's not bad by any means, but the original had one of the better video game stories I've seen, constantly subverting my expectations in well written and executed ways.
This game's story is just a decent RPG story. It's not bad by any means, but it was a bit predictable and overall not on the same level as that of the first Baten Kaitos.

All in all, this is an excellent game, but I do admit the first one had a stronger impact on me.

I've played through the entirety of this game multiple times. Some of that is definitely nostalgia, but I do think this is just an excellent title that blends deck builder and RPG epic seamlessly. The way the deckbuilding system and party systems interact, as well as the combos you can do is just excellent.

I can't talk about this game without mentioning the story though. This game has a hell of a story that I won't get into much detail about since it is very spoilable. That said, it starts looking like a typical JRPG story that is full of crazy twists and turns I never saw coming. The voice acting is decent too, and quite funny at times, especially with some of the names people and places have.

This is admittedly not a perfect game though. There are a few places where it can be hard to tell where you're supposed to be going, which led to me accidentally grinding in the wrong area to try and get through then being overleveled for the area I was actually supposed to be in.

There is also one dungeon in particular, the Spirit Tower, which is just miserable. While level design is mostly a hit through this game, that one dungeon occupies the same space in my mind as the Ocarina of Time Water Temple, Mt Moon in pokemon R/B and Tower of the Gods in Wind Waker.

Overall though, outside of that one dungeon, this game is a criminally under-rated gem from the Gamecube era, and I look forward to the remake.

This was a weird game. I actually did like the gacha mechanics that people hated. I generally do like gacha except for the fact it's usually in super predatory games, and this one doesn't do that. I also really liked that the special blades you unlock have unique personalities and missions. Some of them ended up being amongst my favorite characters in the game, and I loved doing their side missions.

That said, I think my issues were more with Xenoblade as a whole. This game was fun for about 50 hours, and during those 50 hours it felt VERY fun.
The problem is I put over 100 hours into the game. The beginning of the game when you don't have many combat mechanics unlocked is brutally slow and tedious, something I've heard other people say is an issue in all Xenoblade titles.

The later part of the game has a different yet similar issue. At some point, the game decided to give everyone some sort of super attack that activates when they get to about ~20% HP. These attacks would often wipe or almost wipe my whole party. As a result, to avoid this, every combat in the later part of the game forced me to save chain attacks to use around ~25% hp and kill them outright before they could use that crazy low hp move they all seemed to have. This made every fight feel repetitive because I ended up just doing the same sequence of moves to enemies that weren't challenging outside of their 1 BS low hp attack to kill them before they could do it.

Mix that with the fact that the plot ends on a weak note and that the story dragged a bit, and I feel like the whole game could have benefitted from being shorter, something I've heard is also a recurring Xenoblade theme.
All in all a pretty good game with an excellent soundtrack that has severe pacing issues and a few weird difficulty curves.

I'm not a souls guy, but this game was excellent.

I loved almost every minute of my 130-ish hours spent on it.
Combat is difficult but rewarding, and the beauty of this open world setting is that anytime something got too difficult, I could just leave and explore somewhere else. That exploration was so fun and rewarding too. Sometimes I'd find key NPCs who's quest lines would change the geography of the world map, and sometimes I'd find trap chests that would teleport me straight into my worst nightmares.
At first the world map seemed so small too, but as you explore more it grows and grows, expanding my sense of wonder and desire to explore with it. This exploration is 100% what made this game special to me. Every new discovery was cooler and more cinematic than the last. Let me give an example of what made this so special for me.

There was a place where there were a bunch of what looked like train cars knocked over. As I'm riding through here, a random dragon swoops out of the sky and lands on me in a really visually sick moment, immediately starting to attack. By this point I've killed a few dragons, so I'm surprised to see it but confident... at least until it pulls out a thunder sword and does a giant swing that kills me. I revive, go back there for the rematch.... and it's not there. No idea where this dragon went but it's no longer in the same place. I wait different times of day but it never comes back. I am salty and want my runback, but also hype and in awe at how awesome that encounter was. I vow to get my vengeance when we meet again.
Hours and days go by until one day I'm exploring and see a giant thunderstorm in the distance. I ride that way and what do I see but my nemesis, the dragon I've been scouring the land for. My time for a runback was finally at hand! This time I am ready and.... no actually I die again. But now I'd found him, and that knowledge was elation. I go back and THIS TIME I strike it down. What I felt in that moment was unmatched.

The combat is fun too. I built a nimble faith based class who used a quickstep Whip to evade blows then rain burning eye lasers down in retaliation. The summons, which I admittedly missed for the first 30 or so hours of my playthrough, also were a great addition to my combat since it gave me a meat shield to further avoid damage. I know people keep talking about the Mimic's tear but Banished Knight Oleg was my MVP. He served his meat shield role perfectly.

The ONLY reason I don't have it at a perfect score is because the last third of the game started stripping away the parts of the game I liked best (The open world and exploration), instead becoming more traditional linear levels. They were still great, but it was closer to the traditional Souls like experience that I am not crazy about.

I still strongly suggest this to anyone who likes action RPGs, exploration or souls like games.

To properly explain the impact this game had on me, I need to take you back to the olden days of 1999. The N64 is running the market. Batman, Batman Beyond and Superman all have popular television series.
Suddenly, a game appears, taking the popularity of DC and of Nintendo, blending them into one unstoppable superstar of a game. Magazines talk about using all of Superman's powers in 3D for the first time to foil Lex Luthor's nefarious plots. The game commercials show Superman fighting a variety of Supervillains with his incredible powers to save the kidnapped Jimmy and Lois. The box art talks about fighting Metallo, Lex Luthor, The Parasite and even Darkseid in a variety of fully interactible levels. This game sounds incredible.

In those days, I was but a wee child, so I begged my mom to take us to Blockbuster. In our family, renting a game at Blockbuster was a treat we got once per month. There are a lot of good games this year, but my brother and I decided to rent what sounded like it could be game of the year in a year full of classics like the original Smash Brothers, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and Age of Empires 2. On top of that it boasted multiplayer, which was ideal since the decision of what to rent was one we had to make together.

I remember reading the back of the box and the manual as we drove home, impatient to try the game. I want it made ABUNDANTLY clear that nothing from the commercials to the manual have mentioned flying through rings even once. They all mention combat with exciting enemies using an array of powers.

Now dear reader of 2023 or beyond, you already know what child me did not: Everything marketed about this abomination of a game was a lie.

My brother and I got home and saw what we assumed was the tutorial level to fly through rings. Unfortunately, this was much, MUCH easier said than done thanks to the horrendous controls. We were stuck here for a long time. To entertain ourselves we started looking for how to use Superman's powers, but other than awkward punches none of his advertised powers seemed to be in the game. In fact, the only power he seemed to have other than controlling like a lubed bathtub was the power to phase into walls and get stuck there. Needless to say, we were not having fun.
A very long time later, we finally beat it and got to the second level. There we had a 3 second countdown. To this day I still don't know what we were supposed to do, but apparently we didn't do it. Game Over.
Back to the starting rings stage. That's right, this game didn't seem to have any sort of progression mechanic, and a single failure on a 3 second check of something made us start all over.
This was when we stopped playing. I can't remember if there was no multiplayer or if it was so bad that I scrubbed it from my mind, but in any case we both decided this game wasn't it.

My brother and I were children at this time and so it did occasionally happen that if we were having a lot of fun with a game and hadn't finished it, we'd "forget" to remind our mom to take it back. She would obviously be mad and there would be consequences, but we usually got to finish the game.
For Superman 64 we showed up same night asking if we could return it right away to make sure we wouldn't somehow forget and have our mom mad at us over such a bad game.

Long story short, this game is horrendous. It caused me inconvenience and disappointment I shall hold against it for the rest of my days. To my knowledge, no one got sued for false advertising on this game and that is unbelievable to me because this game isn't even in the same cosmos as the product they advertised.

Excellent strategy game that adds the most varied faction mechanics to date.

I cannot explain why I didn't like this as much as HOMM3 (Other than bugs), but somehow there was something missing.

Still, despite that this is an excellent game I sunk a ton of time into with no regrets.