DD 2's approach to world design, its loving disinterest in commonly accepted quality of life features, its sometimes obscure but always interesting mechanics - all of that I hope will inspire games to come.
Unfortunately DD2 runs out of gas really quickly. There simply are not enough enemy types and environment types to sustain the game's length. I can only fight goblins and ogres on my way to a cave with nothing interesting in it so many times. Pair that with forgetable writing and a bland story, and despite loving my first 10 or so ours with it I quickly soured on DD and ultimately dropped it.

Give the team that animated the Sphinx a massive raise though, holy shit.

Wild that in 1997 Square released one of the most beloved video game stories ever made, only to spend the next 20 years trying to ruin it with every new addition to the canon.
Do you like Aerith's personality? Guess what, Zack did that.
7th Heaven, cool name for a bar? Zack did that.
Aerith selling flowers and offering Cloud a date as payment? You guessed it, Zack did it.

The Nibelheim flashback? Actually Genesis, maybe the worst character in any final fantasy game ever (And what a title that is in a post XIII and XVI world), was just out of screen at all times reading fucking 5th grade poetry.

The soundtrack is incredible to a point where it almost tricks you into thinking CC's cutscenes are emotionally resonant. The combat is very playable, and how the wheel of fortune ties into Zacks thoughts and memories, and how that informs his combat abilities, is a really cool idea. But the writing, especially for Zack and Genesis, is so bad that I kinda wish I hadnt played this.

Rebirth's climax misses. By going for vague ambiguity when emotional clarity and catharsis were deeply needed, by kicking the timeline can down the third game road, they undercut one of the moments, all for the vague promise of payoff in the sequel.

It is the only significant mark against Rebirth, and what keeps this incredible game from being a 10/10. Rebirth might have the best cast in video game history? Everyone gets to shine, everyone is lovingly animated and voice acted, everyone is multi faceted, everyone grows and learns. Pick any 2 characters, put them in a scene together, and gold is struck.

Cloud and Tifa's interplay in particular is so incredibly well executed: when they argue, when they confide in each other, when they long for each other, when they worry about each other, all expressed through incredible voice acting and animation and writing work. The very top tier of video games.

Rebirth is so. Much. Fun. Remake's already fantastic combat, perfected. Everyone (minus Red XIII, sorry bud but you dont deal any damage) is a joy to play, and can be pushed to a gamebreaking version of themselves. We have an absolute embarassment of riches in terms of side quests and minigames, full of unique charactermoments, encounters, songs. Oh god the songs. There are so many tracks.

And when I thought, they couldnt pander anymore to me personally, the (amazing) in game card game Queen's Blood got a Yugioh plotline.

If FF7RE3 ties the storyline up in a satisfying way, I might upgrade this to a 10. So far we stay at an incredibly loving 9. It is so nice to play good new final fantasy games, after the string of disappointments that 13, 15, and 16 were.

The kind of twist that at first makes you go "This is really dumb", then after a while it s coming together, it starts to make sense, only to realize afterwards that no, nothing about this works, it is a really dumb and pointless twist.

Intensly frustrating. I love the first game, I love the cast, I love the tone, the music, the creativity. But through it's structure and twist Nirvana Initiative becomes much less than the sum of its parts.

THe secret ending and its implications slap though.

The moment to moment gameplay in Go Mecha Ball instantly clicks - Bounching, boosting, jumping at Enemy neck-breaking speed, weaving between bullets, pouncing on robots, is instantly very very fun, supported by smooth controls and a visually consistent style.
The skeleton around the gameplay struggles to support it - the roguelike aspects only allow for very limited build making, runs blend into each other quickly. The content is quite thin, essentially 3 Levels with 3 sub-levels and one boss each, that do not vary between runs. At least half of the guns have no reason for existing and do not feel meaningfully different from one another. Because of that I didnt stick with GMB for long, but give me a controller and let me bounce around a level and I m certain I d have fun again instantly

A whole video game held up by one hell of a man. Ichiban is simply a goated main character. Taking the quintessential JPRG hero and dropping him into the real, muddy, upsetting world is nothing short of genius. Seeing Ichi maneuvering society's grey zones with pure heart, unbreakable spirit, and the power of friendship is moving and heartwarming. And whenever the game leans into that (especially during the homeless chapter and the ending) it is absolute peak, some of the very best the genre has to offer.

(I just realized, in my MGS3 review I said that it's essentially a game about a boy who wants his Mama. Y7 is very much a game about a boy who wants his Papa)

Unfortunately it is often pulled back by a plot that logically only makes sense if you dont think about it too much ("I m gonna kill a soapland owner, nobody knows I killed him afaik, then I m going to wait until someone investigates that murder, the trace will lead into my territory, where I will catch them in the act. Then I will use them to record a fake video about Yakuzas attacking our turf, and then I will immediately go out and massacre 2 Yakuzas." - You do that buddy, that seems completely necessary and reasonable as a plan) and worse, a plot that thematically tries to have their cake and eat it too. Y7 builds a beautiful, sympathetic case for the grey areas, and the people failed by society that rely on them: Homeless, undocumented immigrants, Ex-cons, sexworkers. It does so with a care and kindness very unique in video games and worthy of great praise.
But then the game tries to extend that sentiment to Yakuza and other organised crime groups in Ijincho, and that just does not work. Those should not exist. They are not good dudes. 15 hours before that we stopped their "pay me money or I execute your old family members" scheme. Trying to conflate those two aspects really muddies the water and robs Y7 of its thematic strengths.

Quick notes to the gameplay side: Side content is once again phenomenal, loved the management game, and some of the mini quests are very emotional (Kaede) or very funny (Kimchi). As an RPG Y7 is not great, Job switching is very limited and punishing to grind back up, you cannot really combine aspects of different builds, combat is very repetitive, AoEs frustrating to use since enemies keep moving.
The game has a monster difficulty spike and you know what, I kinda like that. That builds character and creates memorable moments, just how every FFX player remembers Seymour 3, and every Fire Emblem player gets PTSD when they read Conquest Chapter 10.

Conclusion: I would die for Ichiban

There are two schools of thought to criticising Bioshock Infinite. The first is "Uhm, actually, if you think about it, the story really doesnt make sense, look at this plothole, and how does that even work, and..." to which my response is Shut up Nerd, before I stuff you in a locker.
The second one is "Bioshock Infinite kinda frames the violence of a slave revolution as equally bad as the violence of slave oppresion, essentially 'both sides'-ing slavery." to which... I have absolutely no response. It does do that. Infinite swings for 'Cyclical nature of violence, oppression breeds revenge' and really just misses that particular baseball. Infinite's politics are somewhere between problematic and offensive, and I can understand anyone discarding or hating it based on that.

Nevertheless I cannot shake the grasp Infinite has on me, from the first time I played it back in 2013 to every replay since. Booker and Elizabeth are incredible characters. Audiovisually the game is a gift. The impact that ending had the first time I saw it cannot be understated, I remember sitting in front of the TV motionless for the whole credits, thinking the events over.

At this point I cant tell if it is teenage nostalgia or actual quality, but Bioshock Infinite will always be my problematic fav, and everytime I replay it, I am back under its spell.

Chants of Sennaar, Case of the Golden Idol, and Return of the Obra Dinn have built a little mini-genre for themselves here. We should come up with a name for it.

Out of those three Chants of Sennaar has the highest frustration potential, some of the puzzles are a bit obscure and having to guess what the drawings in your notebook are supposed to depict is harder than the actual puzzle of mapping words to actions.
It does however also have the strongest narrative, a heartfelt pledge for reaching out across communities and building a better future together