(Demo abandoned)

What the fuck are we doing? How the hell did Dark Souls 3 become the template for action games?

"Oh, it's the potential for good levels!" But what would good level design even look like in this context? Dark Souls 1 has a simple combat system that doesn't rely on large open spaces without obstacles. This way the player can be trusted to defend themselves in most terrain, which in turn enables designs like Blighttown, Sen's Fortress, New Londo Ruins, etc. where enemies can meaningfully interact with the level geometry. One can argue how consistently applied or successful this was in practice, but there is a solid design goal there that's still visible even up to Elden Ring (as scattershot as that game is).

As you make combat systems and enemy AI more complex though, generally you'll have to start making the simplifying assumptions of plenty of open space and no blocking terrain, which in turn restricts your level design capabilities. This is fine if you build the game accordingly, i.e. most of the classic linear action games. But Dark Souls 3 likes do not actually seem to be aware of this and so have dragged along huge amounts of bloat sections (Stellar Blade: swimming, keypads, climbing) so they can continue to pretend that the spaces between fights have any relation to the actual mechanics.

Similarly constructed arguments can also be made for the following Souls systems, which I will leave as an exercise to the reader: items, camera, pacing, leveling.

So I guess the whole point of these games is to grit your teeth so that you can experience the combat system? But is the combat really all that interesting? The camera limits how many aggressive enemies you can reasonably handle at once, and not being able to hitstun enemies with normal attacks pushes you into hit and run defensive play, which in turn pushes you to abuse the simplistic, timing-based parrying and iframe systems that all these games are cursed with. Why bother when you can just play Nioh 2, which commits all the soulslike sins above but at least has actually interesting resource management, accessible hitstun, deep weapon movesets, and so on. Why play any of these games at all when you can play Monster Hunter where the defensive, commitment driven style that soulslikes are known for is a hundred times better executed?

This whole subgenre is a complete dead-end design wise and doesn't look to be getting better anytime soon. What a mess.

Been thinking about this game lately, and I haven't done an informal bullet-point review in a minute so lemme ramble for a bit will you? :3

-By this point, the myth of "honest footsies" ever existing in isolation has been debunked wholesale across the genre, but CvS2, particularly at the mid-level (which I would (generously) say I occupy), is far and away the most tempered, neutral-focused 2D game I can think of (aside from SamSho IG but that's cheating!!). You can point towards roll cancels and A-groove combos all you want but the vast majority of what I do here are the things that people who earnestly believe "combos are the worst part of fighting games" dream of. Couple this with the notably low damage output and the longer-than-life-itself timer per round and this game might honestly be so straight-laced that the weak-willed in the audience will be frantically checking their pockets for keys to jingle, lol.

(why this game was played in like FT5s back in the day will forever elude me, who the FUCK made that decision)

-Between the timing windows and lack of input buffer, the gulf that separates easily predictable combo situations like jump-ins and the tougher stuff like maximizing damage via normal links (1-2F links Everywhere) is So Wide that in play with any kind of stakes, you're much more likely to submit and rely on the fundamentalzz, keeping your relationship with the game in a semi-permanent "pretty good but still learning" stasis. Reminds me a lot of SFIV and newer FG fans' relationship to that game, but unlike that game there are far fewer archetypes here whose express purposes are to skip that part of the game and break it down into 50/50s or wakeup gambles. Which is good! I think!

-it's one of those things that's almost too obvious to speak to, but the fact that this game has 6 interchangeable game systems that communicate between each other and is somehow not fucked beyond repair in practice is an outrageous badge for an FG to be able to wear. There are clear lines between each one's applicability, but aside from mmmmaybe P-groove I wouldn't dissuade anyone from following their hearts if asked (and it's not even that P is bad necessarily, just much harder to excel with given that parrying, which is already hard, is correctly assumed by Capcom to be powerful enough to quarantine in its own groove).

-That said, groove choice is a substantial decision in this game with consequences, which is once again something that sounds too obvious to state but for whatever reason people are surprised that this game's meta is as messy as it is despite there being like 300 choices to make, nevermind team comp bringing this number up by several factors. I wouldn't say this game's team comp is quite as iconic and impressive as MvC, but between the groove and ratios you have a lot to chew on and IMO!! it's more enjoyable on its surface how you approach it here considering in Marvel it defines basically every choice you make going forward. FAR less strategically rewarding admittedly but being a Marvel player is a disease I have yet to contract in my lifetime so forgive me for the preference.

-CvS2 gets shit for the mismatched sprites and, yes, Morrigan's VSav look doesn't make a lick of sense here, but I think the SNK sprites that Capcom cooked up for this game and the one before it are underrated as hell. Everyone on that side of the roster looks fantastic, and the low-contrast coloring that Capcom's fighting games are known for fit SNK characters far better than the reverse seen in SvC Chaos (though I do like the look of that game in a perverse kinda way). The only aesthetic drawback this game has beyond the sprites is that the spontaneous and stylish stages from CvS1 have few equals here. But everything else clears, we love the yellow diamonds here at FM Towns Party.

-I find it hard to pin down a "favorite" fighting game, as the circumstances for liking them are so out of my hands. Like yeah, I love Tekken 3-5 dearly and always have, but unless Namco suddenly becomes very cool and implements (good) netcode into those games, I can't imagine I'm playing folks with any regularity soon. 3S is sort of a mirror reflection of that: while there are plenty things unique to 3S that grind against me as a long-form game to play, it's also trivially easy to play with people in comparison, and even in more casual settings it seems like many are enamored enough to at least take it for a spin. Outside of my newest fling SF6, which has been a miracle worker of sorts in these regards, CvS2 might be the game that threads all those needles the best.

This one’s a doozy. Always heard Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII was the worst. Not just the worst of this specific trilogy but one of the worst final fantasy games in general.
Is it though? I really dug this game. It’s genuinely fascinating to me. It may even be my favorite of the trilogy and I liked XIII a decent amount. There’s so much I love about Lightning Returns. It has problems but from a gameplay experience I enjoyed it almost the entire time. I feel like I liked it as much as Crisis Core for example.

Lightning Returns is clearly lower budget. The hilarious Spirit Halloween-esque adornments used for NPC character designs. The awkward dialogue. Hope talking so much that he interrupts himself or doesn’t get to finish a sentence because you’re doing a quest. The horrible performance. It comes down to a lack of polish with its presentation. The core ideas, mechanics, themes, and especially the music are really great and unique for the franchise. Especially the combat system.
Customizing clothes and trying to make schemas look as stylish as possible was delightful. Schematics are a lot of fun. It feels like a pure split of action and turn based. I was never bored of fighting because even when it was easy I was still engaged by the action-like inputs and having to pull off perfect guards. It has a similar flow as the paradigm shifts but the execution in battle feels completely unique. It’s very clever. It feels like a would-be prototype for 15’s combat.
The music is amazing too. So many tracks depending on the area, time of day, multiple battle themes. It’s so varied. There’s some weird vibey ambient tracks that I adore now as well. Dark moody jazz pieces, a lot of textured percussion, brief moments of vocal melody, it’s great.

The game also exudes a weird uncanny mood in a way that I dig. Perhaps not always intentional, but a world where everyone knows they’re about to die has a somber tone to it, even if a lot of people just go about life like nothing is going to happen. I like the Snake / Otacon relationship Lightning and Hope have here, even if they’re a bit robotic. Lightning is hilarious in this game though. Despite the narrative device of her not having human emotions I loved her personality at times. She’s so stern and cold. Telling children they have meaningless existence, throwing moogels into the sky, she has a fun presence here. The writing often sucks though. She over explains everything for the player a lot and Hope will repeat things you just learned. It’s a bit much sometimes but it never made the game annoying to me. I think people are far too cynical about how boring and uninteresting lightning is.

I want to go out on a limb here and observe a potential meta element as well. There’s high chance this wasn’t the idea behind the story, but I feel like I enjoyed it decently enough because of this connection whereas most people take this story far too straight.
Final Fantasy XIII and its original big picture ideas for the future of the Final Fantasy series series obviously died out upon backlash. Seeing these characters mourn that their world is coming to an end and people will forget about them is incredibly dour. It feels like they’re reflecting on the failure of their world and lamenting that it has to come to an end. Their lives didn’t go how they expected and it’s time for a new world to be born. Then VersusXIII became XV. A new world. It’s oddly reminiscent of XIV’s reset as well. I have never seen this observation made so I’m not sure if this is me looking into it too much or if so little people cared enough about XIII to afford it this kind of emotion. On paper this story is really stupid and silly, but the context of what XIII’s world was to a lot of fans and the developers makes me feel a strange sense of mourning and investment when it all comes to an end. Their world had to end but they all get to live a calm and happy life in the end which I find a charming resolve for a band of characters that were often hated by fans and lived in constant stress and misery in the games.
Lightning Returns is a weird game. There’s such a stigma around it and I never expected the game to be as cool as it was. It deserved a second look from the fans. It’s my favorite of the trilogy and overall a cool final fantasy game. There’s a lack of polish and you can see through the cracks a lot. I just really loved the core experience, the tone of the world, the music, the depressing mood around the story, and finally my own personal observations between its story and the real world development of XIII. A remaster that cleans up the visuals would be genuinely exciting to me. I don’t adore this trilogy but I’m glad I finally played them and gave them a fair shake that I didn’t afford it in the past. I’m gonna miss the world of XIII in a weird way but I’m happy to move on.
LR > XIII > XIII-2

It's easy to write The Evil Within off as Shinji Mikami attempting to repeat his success with Resident Evil 4 on a new generation of hardware but I think that'd be selling TEW a bit short. Yes, it has a lot of surface level similarities to one of the greatest games of all time, but TEW has a much darker side to it. A more ruthless, unapologetic side.

One very appreciated similarity between TEW and RE4 is how utterly unforgiving it is. While some shooters will offer the occasional one-hit-kill hazard, TEW makes them a constant throughout the 10 hour long adventure and you're expected to die to them frequently. TEW does not tolerate mistakes, either in the player's execution or decision making. Checkpoints are common enough that failure rarely feels soul crushing but death is around every corner and on a first playthrough you'll constantly be on edge. I was second guessing my decisions far more often than in most third person shooters and I consider that a strong positive.

While RE4 uses its tank controls and lack of movement while aiming as a key part of its challenge, TEW offers a more conventional control scheme. Your player character, Sebastian Castellanos(badass name btw), can move freely while aiming and is much more nimble. To accommodate this, enemies are far more aggressive and slightly less predictable than in RE4. While this can occasionally lead to moments where an enemies acts in a wild manner that borders on unfair, I think it helps make the fights more dynamic. Maybe it's because I've played through RE4 over 50 times at this point and have only played TEW around 7 but I find it a lot harder to go into autopilot in TEW as I feel a lot more can go wrong for you at a given moment. It's a similar tense feeling to RE4 but a bit more manic.

While RE4 feels very focused on it's set of escalating challenges, TEW is a lot more scatterbrained. Every few chapters introduces not only new enemies and obstacles, but entirely different pacing and context for the frights you face. One chapter will have you being cold and calculated while the next will put you into a mad frenzy. This all makes it hard to judge TEW as a whole because the game's quality can change on a dime depending on what kind of scenario it throws you into but overall I think the variety and ruthlessness makes for an engaging and memorable game. Perhaps it's the at times brutal difficulty and demand for you to learn on the fly that made TEW a bit of a dud to critics and casual players but like many games of its kind I recommend you give it a shot and don't immediately write it off as a cheap RE4 knock-off. It may not reach the same pristine quality of Leon's most acclaimed outing but it still manages to stand on its own, even if it can be a bit jank at times.

TL; DR - clears throat FINAL FANTASY V IS SO F-ING AWESOME THAT IT MAKES MY DICK ROCK HARD

I have to preface my musings by making the distinction between 'puzzle'-style gameplay and 'playground'-style gameplay in RPGs. FFVII is a typical playground-style RPG: the materia system is very flexible and customizable, so you can feel free to express yourself, build your characters in any way you like, and take any number of creative approaches to combat. FFIV, on the other hand, is a typical puzzle-style RPG: it often changes around your party composition and throws different challenges at you, often geared towards forcing you to make clever use of the resources and tools you have at that particular time with that particular party.

Time for my hot take: FFV is a better playground RPG than FFVII and a better puzzle RPG than FFIV. While FFVII does afford much more customization, it's also very easy which means you never really get incentivized to really explore the materia system and the varying combat options beyond spamming attacks/limits and healing when needed. FFV, on the other hand, is just tough enough to push you to explore the vast network of jobs and job skills to find combinations that work on that one boss.

The 'puzzle' aspect of the game comes from limited-job challenges like the Four Job Fiesta (let an RNG pick 4 of the 20 jobs which you have to limit yourself to over the course of a run). While this wasn't exactly what the devs had in mind, the fact that you can complete the game with any combination of four jobs (yes, even four Berserkers!) is a testament to how well balanced the game is. Playing the game with different job combinations each time forces you to come up with ever more creative solutions (no healer? Just equip flame rings and nuke yourself with Firaga!) to the puzzles the game presents, and unlike FFIV, the solution to the puzzle is different every single time you play. The sheer replayability and depth of the job system is what makes this my favorite game.

Run count: 51 and still not bored