I’ve been looking forward to playing I Am Setsuna ever since Oninaki–Tokyo RPG Factory’s third title–was announced back in 2019. I feel it’s rare to see a studio so specifically devoted to one genre of game with nothing else in their portfolio, no matter how mediocre those products might be. I Am Setsuna is nothing if not a profoundly and shockingly mediocre title that nonetheless attracts attention due to its unique-if-compromised creative vision. Taking place in a desolate world drowning in an endless snowfall, you play as Endir, a masked man tasked with assassinating (for no real reason) the young sacrifice, Setsuna, whose life must be given to save the world for another cycle. However, upon their initial meeting, Endir sees no reason to murder this child who is going to die soon anyways, so he becomes her protector alongside a group of cliche and uninspired party members.

The party’s goal is to save the world via bringing Setsuna to Zanarkand–i mean the Last Lands. If the premise sounds familiar, it’s because I Am Setsuna’s plot is highly derivative of the painfully overrated Final Fantasy X, and the game’s combat system is ripped straight from Chrono Trigger but worse in every way. These derivative elements were part of what drew me to this game, given that that FF10’s story of sacrifice and cycles is the only redeeming part of it’s otherwise bloated and inconsistent narrative, and Chrono Trigger is a functionally perfect game and its combat system could never be made mostly bad (it is.). The changes that I Am Setsuna makes to its inherited combat system mostly involve making the combo system much more complicated to use by not condensing everything. The menus are clunky and barely usable, with the combo options never being shown when equipping Spiritnite (this game’s version of Materia) and the gameplay generally relying on this terrible wait-to-charge system that is barely explained. If I have to look up how to make the game work post-tutorial, the game has probably failed at explaining itself (looking at you FF8).

While the story itself isn’t much worth writing home about outside of pointing out how much it takes from FF10 (thankfully they didn’t adapt Seymour Guado), I Am Setsuna was at the very least able to engage me with Setsuna’s emotional journey. Setsuna learns to value her own life by the end, even when she still has to sacrifice it, and she’s made unforgettable bonds with all of these other mediocre characters. It almost pulled at my heartstrings.

The game’s visuals are another component, while I really appreciate the decision to commit to the snowy environments, I could only hope for more visual variety in these cold locales; as-is, I Am Setsuna vastly underscores the diversity of biomes present in cold climates. Let the player explore some tundra! Maybe the clouds blend in with the mountains and the player can’t distinguish what is solid ground and what is cloud! Maybe some of the towns are inventively placed on the ice of a lake or have the colorful characteristics of Scandinavian towns. There’s a lot of missed potential here. I also think all of the town chop vendors just being copy-pasted into random buildings in each town is super boring and a simple solution would have been to make them like a traveling wagon of merchants that have small dialogue snippets the first time they encounter the party in a new town. Would make for a more natural way of engaging with the shopkeepers without having to build a market for each town.

While the game is profoundly mediocre in its execution, I Am Setsuna has a clear identity that carries it through that mediocrity and provoked me to actually finish it despite the copy-and-pasted dungeons and meandering plot and extremely repetitive visuals. I hope the next two releases from Tokyo RPG Factory are able to carry that same sense of identity despite being otherwise mediocre products.

While the platforming is undeniably fun, the game takes too long to hit its stride, with the first several areas being very repetitive and uninteresting. The pacing is all over the place, with each area having an inconsistent number of levels and the boss fights all being not great.

The busker sequences at the end of each level are way too involved for what is clearly attempting to evolve the Kirby endlevel minigames, but the reason those work is because they are simple and quick. The busker sequences involve landing at the top of a layer-cake-esq contraption, with each level indicating a different amount of stars you can obtain from a quick-time event minigame, which is dreadful each time. It's just too much for what should be a quick end to a fun level.

This game's fatal flaw is the pacing, which is a shame because everything else is very well realized. While the story is nothing to write home about, being completely serviceable (and a bit cute near the end), it never really evolves beyond the solid core gameplay, which ultimately leaves it as an ambitious and fun platformer that never quite sticks the landing.

I kinda fucking hate this game. I hate the football guys, I hate Yoshi's cowardly ass, I hate the way secrets are laid out. I played this for so long because I kept hearing it's one of the best games ever made and I was hoping it would click at some point, but it never did so instead I just used the secret woods warp to the final level cause I couldn't handle it anymore.

But as much as I hate this game, it's too well made for me to give it anything lower than a 3/5. Whatever, the other Mario platformers are better.

What a dissapointment. Easily the weakest of the Yakuza games I've played thus far, with a bloated yet flatline of a plot and way too much side content, Yakuza 8 is a complete slog. I'm 25 hours into the game and the main storyline hasn't inched a budge. Ridiculous, fortunately I wasn't scammed by buying it for full price, but this is just so rough.

Kasuga Ichiban is a character who feels completely lost here, devoid of purpose after his native storyline finished in 7, now consigned to wander aimlessly looking for a mother nobody cares about because Yakuza doesn't care about women. Kiryu is here, he has cancer now. The rest of the cast is fine, but they all feel like retreads of prior cast members.

I'm genuinely so sad, 7 was the game that made me love Yakuza, and it's immediate sequel is a boring nothingburger of a game way longer than it has any right to be. I was hoping so hard it would be great, and I was just bored instead.

Utterly bizarre abrupt ending that really killed what was otherwise a pretty great metroidvania. Cookie Cutter features exhilarating combat and a very solid loop of discovery that a lot of the other games in the genre i've played recently have lacked. However, it's held back by a few key issues: like the parry mechanic not working in the slightest--fortunately the game can mostly be played without it, but the parry mechanic is explained in a misleading and incorrect way that doesn't actually communicate how it works. It's frustrating.

The ending is extremely abrupt, and due to a lack of information about the game online, it's hard to tell if I missed a True Ending signal or the game really was just gonna cut to black on a sequel hook. I definitely enjoyed myself though.