The amount of ideas and versatility this game displays is truly incredible; as varied as problematic at times, Live A Live puts concepts above polish, and with it delivers a truly magical game that I can not compare to a lot of others mainly because of its boldness.

The remake is also beautiful and makes little adjustments to the original that (for what I know) evolves the game into an equally brilliant less frustrating modern experience that doesn't seem strange as a 2022 release.

The kind of game that should absolutely get a remake and probably the only one like this that has gotten one, kudos to Square.

After beating all of the Kiryu saga and going back to its roots playing Yakuza (thanks to the restoration patch) I can say it's quite an experience. It's no surprise that the Kiwami remakes are not just poor reimaginations of the PS2 era but barebone games on themselves, only interesting as proofs of concept for certain gameplay gimmicks that in some cases are nice and harmless (leveling on Kiwami 2) and in others can be fatal blows to pace and overall consistency (Majima Everywhere).

It is while playing Yakuza this time that I made peace with how bad I received what I thought was a poor beginning with certain good ideas and moments; this first game is flawed and poorly written at times but it echoes in a way that Kiwami cannot even begin to grasp. What here is moody there is bland, the tries and failures of an innovative and risky endeavour such as Nagoshi and his team did with this monstrous project is lack of consistency and polish on the 7th mainline game of an established franchise. I'm not gonna keep comparing even if I thought before playing this that I would. Yakuza is so much more.

Kamurocho has character, a character I didn't see fully formed until Yakuza 4 is its own beast here, a city brimmed with danger and threats to Kiryu that manages to be absolutely ridiculous while keeping a tone. In fact this is much of what happens with this game on every single level. The idea of the two sides of Yakuza is somehow a modern construct that has been developing, that's clear, and in this first approach without added "funny bits" Yakuza presents itself as a much more gruesome and sad game without going to the places the franchise has risked to go in the latest games. The plot doesn't break grounds and makes mistakes on the most stupid places (why the fuck Haruka goes to Shangri La?), having too much for its own good, closing arcs that haven't been developed enough, killing characters that could make much more alive in future games... But in the end, although flawed, it all comes together. The bullshit is minor, the mysoginy is a load of crap but it got a tiny bit better in future games (hope it gets inexistent at some point, please, Yokoyama), and the poorly built scenes make sense for the arcs. The plot is flimsy but Kiryu manages to make it not crush, as he always does.

See the beginning of what I consider the best main character in this medium as it was meant to be makes even clearer to me why he has been a totem for this franchise every single time.

Kiryu makes everything work.

His personality is as firm as the game needs to be, never breaks enough, and his idealism is always the point of conjunction for characters and plot itself to connect making the themes resonate above the mistakes, the sides coalesce; Kiryu is Yakuza at its core. Kiryu is so much Yakuza that it has permeated to the point the franchise can continue without him because his way of connecting with reality is embodied on every single aspect of this franchise. Every game tells a tale about him because Kiryu is the embodiment of the core ideals of what Ryu Ga Gotoku stands and believes.

Yakuza is colder, faulty, feels rushed and risky, unfocused but heartful, it is a first try right in its core. This game talks about a particular Kamurocho, one full of bands and people, one that Kiryu doesn't feel his own. Weird and new, closed, in need of help. Kamurocho is always a reflection of the spirit of times, of the game itself and his aspirations.

This tries so much it fails at times, but it tries its best. It's always better to fight and lose on your own terms than to not even try. Nagoshi succeeded even with failures, and this game can be a masterpiece and a disaster on spans of 10 minutes. And even if the plot trembles and the combat pales I just needed a walk through the city. To hear the music, to see the beauty and have the realization that this, right here, is everything I love; this is the Kamurocho I know from memory, the one I've visited through the years. It's a faithful companion I've seen shackled, alive most times and dead a few, but a city I, as Kiryu, can't stop coming back even with its share of problems.

I love Kiryu and Haruka to death, I love the vibes, and the final boss fight makes me chill every single time. I look at the screen and sometimes just smile thinking about the journeys, the incredible moments I have gone through looking at the back of the most iconic jacket in gaming, and looking to the sky, to the Millennium Tower, and glancing at the sheer brilliance of everything on display here. A building that turns always the main character without pretending to, a tall and threatening presence that every single time means death and loss, but doesn't want any of that. I look at the tower that wasn't here 10 years ago and now stands at the center, always the center, and think about this city that made me cry and laugh so many times I managed to discover more about myself and try my best to keep fighting. And that's exactly what Yakuza is about. What Kiryu stands for. What Kamurocho has always meant to me.

Kiwami's was dead, this is alive. Not much more to say.

Trek To Yomi is the kind of game I either love or despise, no middle ground. The decisions made here to turn this mediocre 2D slash game into an artistic experience with its shot composition, filters and coarse reference to classic Samurai films are rather poor and make this seemingly harmless indie game into one of the practices I hate the most in modern entertainment; the stupid homage.

This game doesn't try to get what Kurosawa says in his Samurai films, let alone his style beyond black and white and grain. The magic of Yojimbo, Seven Samurai or RAN is never present here, only able to be thought of while playing this by the sheer abundance of comments made by the press and the users. Even with its soul not being there it tries so hard to remind you of what you may think this movies were. There is love here, the shots made with the fixed cameras on gameplay are a few times astonishing and they let the journey flow at the beginning; and the voice acting, while being held back by a barebones script, is pretty on point and works to sell you on part of the atmosphere. If this just were a bad homage with some love and a bunch of good shots put here and there this may had been a serviceable poor game that tries too hard but at least has basic but fun level design and good visuals.

But the combat.

I'm not gonna rant much more because I don't like to discredit something made with care by a team, and I feel much more at ease critizing things like The Avengers game than an indie project built, I'm sure, with the best possible intentions; but this combat can't make the cut. It doesn't feel good at all, it's clunky, unresponsive, on hard the game turns at times into an spiral of almost instant deaths, the parry is awful (the game doesn't even count it as it should a lot of times, and you end up dying while listening to the sound made by the swords clashing). I don't get why this game based almost entirely gameplay wise on combat encounters has some of the worst sword combat I've experienced on a not amateur game; it's just bad.

Flying Wild Hog is better than this, and the tiny bit I played of Shadow Warrior 3 makes it imposible to me to understand how this was released in this state. Let's hope the next thing they do has the same level of focus but on the right places.

A much more focused, solid and satisfying experience than the base game.

I've never been much of a Zero Dawn fan even after loving some of the key elements of the game and most of all praising the intent to define an original concept with fun and deep twists to both visual design and gameplay; having said that, the game extended too much, the balance between the two plots that are ocurring at the same time are unbalanced in quality and even worse the animation and care put on cutscenes and general dialogue is subpar and detracts so much from the whole that I ended up, except for a couple of moments, not feeling what at the beginning was an intriguing and potentially entertaining story.

Frozen Wilds solves this by being just an expansion, which means less content with more polish, less characters but better defined, and the necessary additions to an already fantastic core gameplay that rejuvenates the later arc of the game into a potential look into the future, one with a dna of its own that doesn't fight with it's own nature as a AAA title with massive scope.

I hope Forbidden West learns its lessons and this is just the beginning of Horizon defining itself as a saga as refreshing and fun as its own best concepts.

Overall a pretty mediocre and downright bad platformers at times elevated by its uniqueness and charm on character and level design.

Balan Wonderworld has good ideas, really interesting aspects but a poor execution on almost every front; character designs are a standout, boss fights are consistently pretty good but level design is uneven, the amount of dresses plays against itself making most of them useless the more you play, and the worlds are a hit or miss depending too much at times on replays that will likely never come due to repetiveness. There are good concepts for levels that manage to be great experiences and the balance between open environments and more linear intricate corridors is (like the rest of the game) unbalanced but pretty good at times.

This is an example of how general consensus depends too much on polish and modern game standards over style and substance; Balan does its own thing, and while being a failure on some fronts that are usually considered as pillars of an experience like gamefeel, performance or polish, that doesn't detract in any way any of its virtues. It has a much clearer identity than a lot of modern platformers and the charisma to be remembered for its own rights and wrongs; a game I can't call good, but deeply interesting, and an unfairly hated game that could have found a niche at a lower price point and the right mindset going in.

Being the worst of the franchise I've played yet, it is really interesting as a direct comparison with AM2R, and how both manage to analyze, decompose and rearrange what makes the original game interesting and what Metroid is supose to be.

Coming from the same source I think AM2R gets much more of the core of Metroid magic right and improves upon the original material in a beautiful and mesmerizing way, letting the traversal flow flawlessly and actively disempowering Samus to put her at what she actually is in the game, a tiny fraction in a vast, hostile unknown environment. Also AM2R feels like a direct sequel to Zero Mission from all perspectives: the look, the feel, the rhythm; and in the points where AM2R does his own things and elevates on different directions, it does knowing and letting the player know how a Metroid remake by its original makers is.

Its soul is focused on its legacy.

On the contrary this remake has an unique voice, wants to point out how incredibly cool Samus is prioritizing the combat and the overall polish of animations, cutscenes and difficulty to a point AM2R can't logistically get, but also doesn't want to, to a certain degree.
Having set that and getting much more out of this new interpretation of the sequel to Metroid from AM2R, Samus Returns (3DS) does a great job at making just a fun, engaging and deeply satisfying Metroid at the cost of some of its soul; the atmosphere doesn't get the job done and I particularly dislike the colour palette in here; but at the same time I've never had such great and rewarding encounters, especially boss fights.

It is clearly unbalanced; even the new habilities, or the power bomb, are a bit broken but to the point where I think they're just very fun to play with. What is new here is kind of hard to elevate, it's difficult to say how this is more than just a fine Metroid title; but just as a game, getting rid of the big elephant in the room; it is fun, addictive, satisfying, epic on a pretty modern scale, and it has the level of detail and polish you can only get from a AAA game.

In the end, and prefering what AM2R does, I am happy that Mercury went for their own take on this game, and on Metroid as a whole. Knowing now that Dread exists as it is, I am as interested on it as afraid of how the pillars that define this franchise for me will stand after seeing how their vision here pretty much goes on a whole different direction of what I consider makes this franchise shine as an out of time classic.

I enjoy the creepy vibes, the loneliness and fear that comes from the unknown, of knowing yourself unable to confront the next menace that will show itself behind you hunting you down through a dark, cold corridor with the only company of the tools you've been getting through the journey. This game does none of this, but what it does is really good and I can't blame it for being itself.

PS: Samus is a badass and I'm all for it.

I think I enjoyed Kena so much because I miss unconcerness in videogames.

This is just the definition of enjoyable. It won't break any ground, it puts its own cuteness and charm above all else; even possibly at the cost of a deeper, more engaging level design, or a richer more complex combat. This doesn't matter to Kena, it wants to be PS2 at heart, and it certainly feels what I dreamed a perfect weekend rent game would be when I was playing Kingdom Hearts 2 with 10 years old sitting on the floor of my room with an old TV and my eyes glued to the screen.

Kena doesn't fail to do anything remarkable because it's not even trying, it's just what it wants to be; and absolute success on forgetfulness. And this is something weird to mark as positive, but this game tastes like cookies and milk on a Saturday, like a cartoon marathon on a long weekend with no homework, or a snowy day without class.

It's nice to remember that games doesn't need to be remembered because either they're too self centered and believe themselves as the NEXT BIG THING, or because they need to make you flow with them for at least months through seasons and passes and fucking I don't know anymore it's tiring just thinking about it. I want useless mechanics to hug a cute puppy and a jump that's not afraid of itself; a game that doesn't need to flash me with shit or stuff itself for endless hours of absolutely nothing. This is just fun, and, you know? Games can be fun.

Thanks for the reminder.

The driving is pretty on point, there are really cool set pieces, and the game as a whole can be at times a really good place to hang out and just enjoy the vistas and the flow of the road, but the characters and the general mood of this franchise annoys me so much. The characters can't stop talking about things I don't care, the dialogue itself is too nice and welcoming to the player that it comes out forced, which is something that relates directly to the progression system. The amount of visual stimuli this game thinks is needed to hook players is just insulting, the map is full of icons, the ending of every career is so full of colours, and ticks, even spins to a wheel of fortune, is like a casino for kindergarten kids. And it's a shame because the core is really nice and the game is beautiful to see, but I feel everything is so clearly put there to satisfy me with the lowest input necessary, like what the worse kind of a game pass game can be, trying to appeal every single human being who is just not enough interested in the game just for the sake of progression and achieving things that frankly are useless when all of your starting cars do the job. This is a very good game that fails spectacularly not to make me feel stupid while playing it, sorry.