If you're a Nier fan hear me out:

1) THE STORY IS EXTREMELLY GOOD, it's way worth watching it, it's on pair with the other 2 Nier games, this IS Nier 3, not because Yoko Taro says so, it's because the game's blatantly clear about it.
But most importantly, the story of Reincarnation fills all the holes and doubts in the Nier lore, I literally can't picture a 4th Nier game unless it's thousands of years in the future, but...

2) Gameplay SUCKS, it's not a good game, even for gacha standarts...
The gameplay it's just mash buttons or put auto-mode and make big numbers, if you have low numbers, you can't access Nier lore and have to go to make some pulls or use your sweet credit card.
And when I say you have to use your credit card, I mean you have to use it A LOT, because the grinding required to pass some stupid walls to continue the story is ASTRONOMIC. How ASTRONOMIC? Well, first wall can ask you for 5000 cristals and second wall ask you for 12000 OR 18000 OF THEM!!!
And don't think about using an emulator, yes you can use Macros to make grinding automatic and make sure you get those cristals (because yes, not only you have limited attempts but the fights not always leave you cristals, only the hardest quests guarantee you some) but due to it's gacha nature, your play time is limited with stamina, and it takes 24hs to refill it.

My recommendation:

- First (and this is optional), read the 10H mini-novel "A Much Too Silent Sea".
It's not mandatory, but it gives you context, it's like watching Ant-Man 2 to understand why in Endgame Scott was trapped in that machine.
Here's 10H novel: https://nier.fandom.com/wiki/A_Much_Too_Silent_Sea

2) Watch, the story on youtube. Again THE STORY IS REALLY WORTH WATCHING, but do not lose your time playing this thing.
The story is divided in 3 seasons and is already finished. The story of the 3 seasons together last almost 20hs.
I'll put the videos for all the seasons down below.
Shout out to BuffMaister for his hard work.

Season 1 Story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbE-6D_dLPA&list=PLaoKfFfkcXxCHnkLqjm6DUKWpgBaqVBjQ&index=22

Season 2 Story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whQCIqiGds8&t=15880s

Season 3 Story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAam56qxIK0&t=25197s

And finally, it's a shame that Yoko Taro decided to make the 3rd Nier game a gacha... If this story was made in any other game format (aside of a light novel) it would easily be a master piece on pair with the other 2 games.
It pains me that a story this good and this beautiful won't be discovered for a lot of people because of this greedy and poor decision.

you ever think about all these nasu mage kids inhabiting huge, intimidating, foreign-style mansions in which they carve out a precarious, temporary, probably doomed, and yet precious daily life, always threatened by some inhuman force of lineage and tradition?

you ever think about the experience of trying to inhabit a way of life or a culture different from the one you are expected to have? you ever feel out of place? you ever tell lies to protect other people's feelings? your own?

of course not. me neither.

Peak fiction. Actual PEAK fiction. Lloyd is peak. KeA is peak. Randy is peak. Tio is peak. Wazy is peak. This entire game. is. PEAK. Top to bottom.

Trails to Azure is the greatest experience I’ve had with any game in all my years on this planet. THIS is the magic of JRPGs & why it eclipses every other genre in my opinion. Azure takes everything that I loved about Zero & in amplifies it to the highest degree. From the characters, to the story, to the absolutely unmatched world building that the Trails series always does so so exceptionally it’s all here & accounted for. And on top of that is one of the most engaging & gripping narratives possibly ever that had me hooked from start to end. So many moments in this game had my jaw completely on the floor & the finale of this game completely mindfucked me SO much.The ending brought me to tears & man the feeling I had when the credits started rolling really really can’t be described.

I honestly struggle to find the words to truly express how incredible this game is & nor do I want to. Because experiences like this come once in a lifetime.

All I will say is that if you for some reason haven’t checked out the Trails series yet then you are doing yourself a major disservice. Because in my eyes there is no other franchise in my eyes that is on the level of The Legend of Heroes when it comes to storytelling.

I’m so glad the Crossbell duology finally came to the west because it’s given me the chance to experience these amazing games for the first time & if you’re like me…then I hope you have as much of a blast as I did. Thank you Nihon Falcom & of course the amazing Geofront team.

Now let’s put the Sky trilogy on modern consoles next, that would be absolutely lovely.

I don't know if I'm ever actually going to review either half of Umineko in here, so for the moment, just consider this at best a placeholder, at worst, just my personal check-point. It's been almost three months since my friends and I finished playing Umineko. Anyone who's read my pieces on Higurashi knows what that game was to me. Umineko sits at the top of it all for me. It's just at the top of everything I've spent my 20-odd years experiencing, the culmination of so much personal journeying, growing and experiencing. I sincerely doubt anything will knock it from its pillar anytime in any near future. What this means to me on an intimate level is something that ultimately right now belongs to my friends and I intimately. I don't know if and when I'll be comfortable sharing beyond that. That is our small world which we inhabit together. Some cat boxes are best left alone, and I think any of you would understand and respect that.

If anything, I want to really extend a lot of gratitude to Ryukishi07, to 07th Expansion and Witch Hunt, especially to the late BT, whose death and more importantly his lifelong friendship with Ryukishi clearly affected how the game evolved into what it became, to the voice cast, and to my friends for all of this. Genuinely a reason to live some days. A reason to create and imagine, every single day.

愛がなければ視えない。

Originally made as an attempt for Ryukishi to train himself to work on a short story format.
Due to that, experimental is the word to describe it best, which is truly refreshing after getting used to Ryukishi's ways of building a story with the long long Higurashi and Umineko.

I would have trouble recommending it to anyone who's not super invested in Ryukishi's worldviews and more specifically the constant game of "catch ball"
going on between his previous writings and his next, ever-changing and clashing against each other as they come around with new perspectives to the same issues, specifically within the WTC series.
As a result Higanbana can feel like somewhat of an edgy messy string of stories in standalone when you're not caring much about the other works surrounding it and how they connect thematically to each-other.

While not part of WTC directly, what is said relating to WTC works is where Higanbana was at its most interesting to me, it is much more cruel and dark in its depiction of suffering and their overall resolutions.

The Princess's Lie and Hameln’s Castanets being primary examples for Umineko and Higurashi respectively.

Higanbana is cruel because as its name implies, it is a story of the deads, she nourrishes herself with our repeated failures, there is no warmth to be had for what has failed and will continue to fail,
she will simply always have the last laugh as the cycle continues.

[Posted on June 11, 2022]
It's hard to write a cohesive piece about the entirety of Hello Charlotte and its stupidly interesting overarching (meta)narrative- so I won't, for the time being, as I wait for my thoughts to crystalize into something coherent.
That said, I am decently confident in calling Heaven's Gate, the final entry in the series, an excellent addendum and extension of HC.
Unlike the "mainline" episodes, which continuously recontextualize themselves in order to expand the scope of the broader story and its themes, Heaven's Gate works off the subtext the same mainline games already provided and "simply" fleshes out the characters' lives and relationships further. This brief read contains a lot of emotionally impactful and thoughtful dialogue, even without taking the rest of the series into consideration.
This emotional maturity and self-awareness the characters showcase is, sometimes, almost excessive- but I think it is a very intentional affirmation of the author's own journey, which is a common theme in this deeply personal and unique series. Said journey is, and will never be, truly over - something this bittersweet story directly acknowledges through Vincent's characterization and the ending - but it's always important to remember how far you've come.
Shame about the lack of music, though.

My favorite out of all of them and i will probably be thinking about it for a very long time. It's a very sincere and heartbreaking love/coming of age story.

Its very hard to put into words but i feel very personally attached to this game and many elements seen in Childhood's End. Very specific bits and pieces that feel too real to me, past experiences, feelings, memories. I relate too much. This series is very much about leaving things to interpretation and these last two games did a number on my brain. Thanks etherane.

Also i dunno if the fact that theres no music on this one is intentional. I listened to melancholic game BGM while playing and also some songs from EP 1. It added a lot to the experience for me.

v nice as a postscript to hello charlotte, giving a fresh perspective and deeper focus on the trio at the heart of it. because of this, despite framing itself as an au, it honestly feels more like the reality of these characters that informs the universe of the rest of the series. its very depressing but its not too dour towards making this impression either, if anything it being removed from the intensity of emotions the series led up to, while relying on prior knowledge of it, gives a clearer and less obfuscated picture of how much etherane can pack into these characters' relationships.

the diary (which you can read if you get the paid version, please get the paid version) is such a great final note; it's not just as anri's view of things but also invoking charles's preoccupations within their narratives from their views on anri and possibly themself AND also feels to me, potentially?, like one of the more directly personal things the author has shared. a constant series of narrativizing btwn character and creator and audience. think theres a v clear bridge btwn hello charlotte and tomorrow wont come to be found in how heaven's gate brings this obsession in ane's work, on humans blindly seeing themselves in others, to such a level of legibility that it seems like it was readymade to be worked into the core of twc.

the stark, battered grief that hangs over hg gets expanded on nicely by twc too, and it also feels fitting that it comes after the anger and melodrama and anger ABOUT the melodrama of the series that came before. the arc of these games' development is like seeing someone develop their own self over time, trying to figure out what they honestly believe and what they mean to express. even this technically unnecessary side story vn to a larger rpgmaker series has a place in that bigger picture--one that i admittedly, ironically, am creating for myself. but im ok with believing in it, because this search is what affects me most in etherane's work: its not that the author has hard conclusive answers for the problems they present, but like they are still trying to understand and rigorously interrogate their view of the world in ways i can relate to v much, as if we are doing it together.

I see a lot of people calling this game a 'mess' in a good way, and I can agree in that the overarching story of Hello Charlotte takes a lot of twists and turns, changing meaning throughout, as etherane's intentions seemingly shift from part to part, episode to episode. Yet despite this, the entirety of Hello Charlotte manages to tell a complete narrative, one that ties just about all its lose ends and formulates several cohesive and powerful messages. In the typical complex meta-narrative type story such as HC, I often would have trouble piecing together the full story and have to look up some 3rd party explanations, but by the end of HC3 I felt as though I had a full grasp on everything that I had just experienced, and was able to logically put together many of the overarching ideas etherane placed carefully throughout.

From early on in episode 1, I fell in love with the characters of the game, and only did moreso until the end of HC3. This attachment of course was created intentionally, as the meta-narrative explains, and I found myself sad at the end of the game knowing how much I would miss them, even within just the few hours that I got to know them. Hello Charlotte, among many other themes, tells a story about letting go, and I certainly had to learn it myself. It also tells a story about the nature of stories themselves, and legitimately made me sit back and think about my role as a consumer of media for the sake of entertainment, feeling even guilty at some points of the game. This is a very special and memorable series that I am happy I experienced.