Just finished my Very Hard/Master playthrough, and what can I say that hasn't been said a million times before? This game is peak F-Zero, and easily one of the best racing games I've played.

Super satisfying gameplay, a stellar soundtrack, and probably some of the best and funniest characterization of the F-Zero cast to date thanks to SEGA's mega-cheesy writing. It's very easy to see why Nintendo has had such a hard time coming up with a way to follow this one up properly.

Side note: People talk about how hard this game is, and it is challenging on higher difficulties, but I feel like some who haven't played the game might get the impression that the standard difficulties are insanely difficult. Which really isn't the case and I feel it's a disservice to anyone who might want to get into this game to imply otherwise.
Normal does indeed mean normal in this gameeee

Between Ikrauga's color system, R-Type's force pod, G-Darius' capture ball, the Rayforce Shot, et cetera, developers in this genre are tripping over themselves to differentiate their titles mechanically in ways that range from ingenious to gimmicky.

Cave has a different approach. There is practically nothing in this game but shooting, dodging, and bombs, but the fundamentals in this game are so balanced, and so satisfying, and so well-engineered that it's like eating at a Michelin star restaurant that only serves bread and butter.

There's a type of design philosophy that I have been trying to define when it comes to shoot 'em ups. A combination of the feeling of a perfect level of speed, combined with excellent enemy placement and bullet patterns that never slow down, with music complimenting the action that creates an incredible feeling of adrenaline with each and every action the player takes; a "high" that lasts for the entire duration of the game, that never ends, until you hit that credits screen, and you're ready to do it all over again, because it was a meditative experience that comes once in a lifetime.

That is Mushihimesama. My favorite shoot 'em up, and one of the best games ever developed. For the love of Ikeda, play this one.

How can I start this... (Im sobbing as im writing this)

Library of Ruina is a game developed by the indie studio Project Moon, that started with a little cult classic called Lobotomy Corporation. Lob Corp, was frustrating game, but delivered an amazing story with amazing characters, it had a nice gameplay loop and was overall a pretty good first project.

Library of Ruina is all of the above, but better.

Not going into spoiler territory, but to put short, Library of Ruina was one of the best games that I ever had the pleasure to play, and it also was one of the most beautiful pieces of art that moved and messed with my life.

The deckbuilding part is pretty good, you have an entire arsenal at your disposal, so there is always room for experimentation, keeping the combat always fresh, specially with the E.G.O cards, and the Abnormalities Skills.

The difficulty spike was vertical, but what really kept me going were the characters. The writing and the designs are exceptionally good and they are memorable, not only the main characters, but the reception guests that you fight, aswell.

And speaking of main characters, Angela and Roland are complex, yet simple, they are characters that you can relate in a way or another, both of them are chained, and they learn to live on without being caged by their past.

Roland is a very special character for me, as I can relate to him in a very specific kind of way. I've also lost someone that was very special to me, my love and my world, so whenever the topic of Roland's past was brought up, I always teared up.

When something like that happens to you, you break down, you try to run away the most that you can, you lose your will to live and everyday you try to escape, either by drinking or smoking, asking why are you still here.
And when you stop crying, you get up and you feel furious, you feel anger against the world, against it's people, against God and against yourself. Why should life be unfair? Why I couldn't stay with the one that I love? The one that was the light of my world? Because, life in all of it's means, is unfair. And in this moment, when you look back, you see that you hurted others, that you also made others feel sorrow, and the only thing that you can say is "This is this, that is that".

Roland, for me, is a personification of grief. A character that has a caring side, and a lovable personality, but in reality, is sorrowful and distant. Grief for many people takes years, or even decades to finally get over it, it is something that stays with you and brings you down, and it also mutes your soul and emotions and this was shown perfectly with Roland...

Grief feels like you are desolated in a world pitch black, like an open desert, without light, you lash and attack but you can't escape it, and if you look up, you only see a void in the sky, there aren't no clouds and the angels are gone, there are no stars to show you that is day, there is only the cold Black Silence.


Thanks Roland and thanks everyone at Project Moon, for showing me that even if im wearing a mask that blocks my vision, even if im wearing gloves that don't make me feel the touch of things and people, and even if I have a sorrow that has pierced my dark heart, wandering around in a black silence world, you can always strive to help someone else find their own light and own identity.

Im also writing a novel, that I normally write to cope with my grief, as many of the ideas and concepts that I use for that novel were initially made by my former fiance, I will try to finish it in her memory. And seeing that in the end, Roland and Angela finishes their story writing a book together brought me to my knees.

Thanks alot for this masterpiece, Project Moon. Lobotomy Corporation was a pretty good game, Limbus Company is also very good, but I really wish for something that is on the caliber of Ruina or somehow above it. This is yours magnum opus.

(Note: I played about 40 hours before dropping the game. Might finish in the future.)

Instead of making an effort to improve on all the issues with the base BOTW, Nintendo instead opted to just add a bunch of stuff on top of it and hope you don't notice. And even then, the new content itself isn't particularly great. It focuses too much on adding "more" instead of adding anything with substance of depth. The sky islands? Starts out good, until they quickly start reusing the exact same islands over and over again to fill out space, with puzzles even more shallow than shrines. The depths? Very cool to drop into for the first time, until you realize it offers nothing new in terms of enemy variety and is just a blander version of the overworld with a dark atmosphere.

Both the depths and the sky suffer from a major issues of spread out, bland content. Personally, I really think they should've cut out one and expanded on the other. Or hell, cut out both and give us a new map, with small underground and sky areas to explore.

Speaking of that, the reused map removes one of the best aspects of the original BOTW; the feeling of an undiscovered world. While I had many issues with BOTW, the pure feeling of running around this open space for the first time, not knowing what to do or where to go and discovering the content and mechanics was an incredibly unique feeling I've never felt in another game before. Reusing the map inherently removes the potential for bringing back this feeling for any returning player. And as I said, the two new sides of the overworld suffer too much from reuse and lack of variety to feel like you're exploring anything new.

The building mechanics are probably the best part of the game, yet they're still mishandled. It's very technically impressive and you can do a lot with it, but the game actively demotivates you from using it. To build actual machines, you have to use parts. Parts are a limited but renewable resources that you have to use a material found in the depths for. However, since this resource is also used to upgrade battery space, I ended up wanting to conserve this material, and so I stopped using parts out of worry of needing them in the future. This caused me to stop experimenting and having fun with the mechanic designed to experiment and have fun with due to this arbitrary restriction.

I think a much better solution would be having parts act as an upgrade of sorts. You can unlock parts and use them at any time with no cost, however you start with only one each at a time. You have to upgrade them using materials to use more at the same time. Keep the battery and its upgrading system the exact same as well. This both still gives incentive to collect materials from the depths and encouraging more experimentation due to reduced risk of wasting resources (there still is a slight issue about worrying about which part to upgrade, but I'd take that over TOTK's system any day).

A lot of the games other issues boils down to the reused or unchanged content. Despite the shrines having a lot more to work with and generally being more creative, the actual puzzles in them are still unbelievably shallow. Korok seeds have some new variety, however the way they work is completely unchanged. The backpack one just sucks too. It's fun at first to make machines, but the game always gives you the pieces you need. There's no puzzle solving or trying to find the right pieces, you're effectively told the answer. The sign guy isn't really worth mentioning; another thing neat at first that is ran into the ground.

Overall TOTK is just a bad sequel, if you can even call it that. I wasn't expecting much from this game already, but it irks me so much to see so little issues from the base game actually addressed. You could say "oh if you already didn't enjoy BOTW much of course you wouldn't enjoy the sequel", isn't that what a sequel should aim to do? To improve on the issues of the previous game while offering something new? Because if that's the case, TOTK fails at being a sequel.