LeonardIngelsson
9 reviews liked by LeonardIngelsson
Celeste
2018
This review contains spoilers
At first, I had personally found it really hard to enjoy Celeste, I've heard great things about it and I respected and admired what great things the game had accomplished, but I often struggled to find a moment where the game had clicked for me (but that's mainly due to me not being very great at the game when I first played)
But I still came back, and the moment where everything did click for me, I knew I that I wanted to see it through to the very end.
For me, climbing the mountain was enough of an huge, personal accomplishment and I felt happy, content and satisfied with what I've played, I didn't care if I missed any strawberries, nor completed the "Core" and "Farewell" content , nor finished a B-Side level, I was just happy that I've finished the main game, and for me, that was enough for me to consider this one of my favorite games of all time and one I'll always remember fondly.
But I still came back, and the moment where everything did click for me, I knew I that I wanted to see it through to the very end.
For me, climbing the mountain was enough of an huge, personal accomplishment and I felt happy, content and satisfied with what I've played, I didn't care if I missed any strawberries, nor completed the "Core" and "Farewell" content , nor finished a B-Side level, I was just happy that I've finished the main game, and for me, that was enough for me to consider this one of my favorite games of all time and one I'll always remember fondly.
Slime Rancher
2017
It's a lovely, relaxing and all-round wholesome game to play when you don't end up making a stupid mistake which results in you getting PTSD from seeing your slimes getting eaten by Tarr Slimes.
This review contains spoilers
As much as I want to tell you about the game itself, it's characters and what it entails, I feel as if I really can't without spoiling some major things, which in my personal opinion makes the game special and one of a kind. To me, it's the kind of game you'll just have to go in blind and experience it yourself, as I believe it's the best way possible to enjoy this game.
So I'll just give you a spoiler and the reason why I consider this one of my favorite games of all time.
The song "The Child You Were" by Frances Aravel made me cry. It made me cry. As someone who went through some massive childhood trauma, this song felt like the warm hug that I never knew that I needed. It told me that even thought you been through an awful lot, you're still here and that great, it's okay. And that meant something to me.
This game really means so much to me as a whole and I'm glad that I took the chance to play it.
So I'll just give you a spoiler and the reason why I consider this one of my favorite games of all time.
The song "The Child You Were" by Frances Aravel made me cry. It made me cry. As someone who went through some massive childhood trauma, this song felt like the warm hug that I never knew that I needed. It told me that even thought you been through an awful lot, you're still here and that great, it's okay. And that meant something to me.
This game really means so much to me as a whole and I'm glad that I took the chance to play it.
Persona 4 Golden
2020
This review contains spoilers
*Please Read The Disclaimer : Admittedly, I played this game on very-easy mode because I just wanted to pay attention to the story and characters because that's what I enjoyed most about this game. So I acknowledge that I'm not the best person to talk about the combat in this game but I will say that I very much enjoyed myself with this game. For my discussion on this game, I want to focus on the story and overall presentation if that is fine with you all.
The theme of accepting one's true self and its flaws is still a very powerful message that really resonated my angsty teenage self. It's really hammered home by the characters (especially the main characters) and their own struggles that they have to deal with. And Inaba as a setting is so wonderful, it's quaint and peaceful atmosphere makes this city feel vibrant and beautiful in a way that I can't full describe. It's unlike any other setting I've experienced in any video game.
I don't want to spoil the game too much since I believe (just like I Was A Teenage Exocolonist) going in blind is the best way to play this game, though ironically if you want to best ending you may want to look up a guide for that, just in case.
This game made me feel nostalgic in a way that not only made me feel like a kid again, but had a profound impact on me as a teenager (especially during a time where I felt I was at my lowest point) Is it perfect? Not by any stretch. But to me, it was a genuine force of good in my life. And to me at least, that's the best thing that art could be. A force for good.
The theme of accepting one's true self and its flaws is still a very powerful message that really resonated my angsty teenage self. It's really hammered home by the characters (especially the main characters) and their own struggles that they have to deal with. And Inaba as a setting is so wonderful, it's quaint and peaceful atmosphere makes this city feel vibrant and beautiful in a way that I can't full describe. It's unlike any other setting I've experienced in any video game.
I don't want to spoil the game too much since I believe (just like I Was A Teenage Exocolonist) going in blind is the best way to play this game, though ironically if you want to best ending you may want to look up a guide for that, just in case.
This game made me feel nostalgic in a way that not only made me feel like a kid again, but had a profound impact on me as a teenager (especially during a time where I felt I was at my lowest point) Is it perfect? Not by any stretch. But to me, it was a genuine force of good in my life. And to me at least, that's the best thing that art could be. A force for good.
"I love being an Assassin!" I say, pelting the island of my target with cannon fire.
I'm not a huge fan of AC, let's just get that out of the way. But I do love pirates, so I was sold on this premise immediately. Fortunately, this game gives possibly the best pirate experience in gaming. The main thing holding it back is the series it comes from.
This is still very much an ubisoft open world and is annoyingly dotted with an excess of collectables and activities. Pursuing everything will surely burn a player out and cause resentment. I absolutely recommend only seriously pursuing templar keys, as they at least have missions and stories that are worth experiencing. I make it a point every playthrough to turn my back on the tutorial islands collectibles and sail away. If completionism is important to you, be cautious with this one.
Contrary to what you may hear, this game is also very much an AC game. That's honestly fine, the stealth in this game isn't very deep but it does have enough gadgets to stay interesting. What isn't fine is the shear amount of tailing missions in this game! They are everywhere! I let out an audible "Jesus fucking Christ" upon being told I had to stealthily tail a FUCKING GALLEON on my boat. I was absolutely flabbergasted. And then there are the modern day sections, which just strangle the pacing.
With that said, if you can look past these aspects, you will find a wonderful pirate adventure underneath. Watching your vessel bounce with the (visually great) waves as your crew sings sea shanties is absolutely whimsical and avoids the usual fatigue open-world travel typically bring. You move fast enough that making a bee-line towards your destination doesn't take much time at all. It's even faster to get distracted and start naval battles (or ending ones that have already started without you).
Thankfully, ship combat is very satisfying and has plenty of options to remain fresh throughout this games runtime. Ramming, mortars, a few flavors of cannon fire, and the reliable swivel cannon are all useful and fun tools. Enemy ships and forts also have and utilize these tools, and they are pretty aggressive with them. There's enough depth and challenge to ship combat to keep it from ever getting boring.
(I don't know where to put this, but the fact that you can bring your ship on assassination missions is fucking hilarious and I love that I can just mortar an entire island instead of being stealthy.)
Sword fighting is sadly a tad under baked. It can look and play really stylish, but that requires a lot more work from the player than the optimal strategy of killing anyone from a counter. Most enemies can die from two button presses, ruining any reason to experiment and find all the cool kill animations. Targeting enemies can also be rather buggy and make sword fighting a clumsy mess. Messy combat is very pirate, but also very annoying.
Lastly, the story is pleasant enough, with our protagonist meeting charming approximations of histories best sea dogs while on his desperate journey of chasing a treasure most don't believe in. Characters are well acted and fun to watch, but the overall journey is a tad long and awkwardly paced. Ending still hit me pretty hard though.
It is sad that we may never see a pirate game like this again, especially given how horrific Skull and Bones development has been. Even despite its foundations as an AC game holding it back, this is an absolutely lovely pirate adventure worth experiencing.
I'm not a huge fan of AC, let's just get that out of the way. But I do love pirates, so I was sold on this premise immediately. Fortunately, this game gives possibly the best pirate experience in gaming. The main thing holding it back is the series it comes from.
This is still very much an ubisoft open world and is annoyingly dotted with an excess of collectables and activities. Pursuing everything will surely burn a player out and cause resentment. I absolutely recommend only seriously pursuing templar keys, as they at least have missions and stories that are worth experiencing. I make it a point every playthrough to turn my back on the tutorial islands collectibles and sail away. If completionism is important to you, be cautious with this one.
Contrary to what you may hear, this game is also very much an AC game. That's honestly fine, the stealth in this game isn't very deep but it does have enough gadgets to stay interesting. What isn't fine is the shear amount of tailing missions in this game! They are everywhere! I let out an audible "Jesus fucking Christ" upon being told I had to stealthily tail a FUCKING GALLEON on my boat. I was absolutely flabbergasted. And then there are the modern day sections, which just strangle the pacing.
With that said, if you can look past these aspects, you will find a wonderful pirate adventure underneath. Watching your vessel bounce with the (visually great) waves as your crew sings sea shanties is absolutely whimsical and avoids the usual fatigue open-world travel typically bring. You move fast enough that making a bee-line towards your destination doesn't take much time at all. It's even faster to get distracted and start naval battles (or ending ones that have already started without you).
Thankfully, ship combat is very satisfying and has plenty of options to remain fresh throughout this games runtime. Ramming, mortars, a few flavors of cannon fire, and the reliable swivel cannon are all useful and fun tools. Enemy ships and forts also have and utilize these tools, and they are pretty aggressive with them. There's enough depth and challenge to ship combat to keep it from ever getting boring.
(I don't know where to put this, but the fact that you can bring your ship on assassination missions is fucking hilarious and I love that I can just mortar an entire island instead of being stealthy.)
Sword fighting is sadly a tad under baked. It can look and play really stylish, but that requires a lot more work from the player than the optimal strategy of killing anyone from a counter. Most enemies can die from two button presses, ruining any reason to experiment and find all the cool kill animations. Targeting enemies can also be rather buggy and make sword fighting a clumsy mess. Messy combat is very pirate, but also very annoying.
Lastly, the story is pleasant enough, with our protagonist meeting charming approximations of histories best sea dogs while on his desperate journey of chasing a treasure most don't believe in. Characters are well acted and fun to watch, but the overall journey is a tad long and awkwardly paced. Ending still hit me pretty hard though.
It is sad that we may never see a pirate game like this again, especially given how horrific Skull and Bones development has been. Even despite its foundations as an AC game holding it back, this is an absolutely lovely pirate adventure worth experiencing.
Pokémon Unbound
2020
pokemon hackers stop making insufferably edgy storylines challenge (impossible)
This review contains spoilers
Every so often, you get a game that hooks you straight away. A game that you're thinking about for every moment you're not playing it, and a game that you'll be thinking about for a long time after you've completed it.
For me, I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is one of those games. The writing is incredible. Every loss hit me because the characters felt so real, and the way that choices interlink to create your own unique narrative is incredible. By the end of the game, my ending and the choices I made felt like the consequences of my actions paid off. And because I cared about the characters, all of my decisions, how I chose to spend each month, felt so tense and terrifying as the game progressed and the stakes got higher.
Also, I love the trans representation in this game. I liked the games fluid approach to gender and how you can change your expression, identity, and name whenever you feel like, even if I never used the feature (I played a girl the whole time). I also loved the trans characters in the game itself, especially Tangent, and how her transness is an important part of her identity and arc without focusing on cliched transition-related angst. There's a scene in the medbay between her and Utopia, another trans woman, that nearly made me cry.
In short, I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, is a game I loved, I highly recommend, and I will probably be thinking about for a very long time. It's probably not for everyone, but it was for me, and at the end of the day that's all that matters.
For me, I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is one of those games. The writing is incredible. Every loss hit me because the characters felt so real, and the way that choices interlink to create your own unique narrative is incredible. By the end of the game, my ending and the choices I made felt like the consequences of my actions paid off. And because I cared about the characters, all of my decisions, how I chose to spend each month, felt so tense and terrifying as the game progressed and the stakes got higher.
Also, I love the trans representation in this game. I liked the games fluid approach to gender and how you can change your expression, identity, and name whenever you feel like, even if I never used the feature (I played a girl the whole time). I also loved the trans characters in the game itself, especially Tangent, and how her transness is an important part of her identity and arc without focusing on cliched transition-related angst. There's a scene in the medbay between her and Utopia, another trans woman, that nearly made me cry.
In short, I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, is a game I loved, I highly recommend, and I will probably be thinking about for a very long time. It's probably not for everyone, but it was for me, and at the end of the day that's all that matters.
If you'd asked 14-year-old me what her favourite game was, she would've said the first of the World of Assassination trilogy. I loved that game. I'd played through every mission dozens of times and I had go-to routes so that I could get silent assassin on every mission (still remembered my routes for Paris and Sapienza but completely forgot the others). Despite that though, I never actually got around to playing Hitman 2 or 3 so it was nice to finally play them. The gameplay is great, the various minor improvements were enough to make the gameplay feel better without straying away from what makes it so good, and the levels from 2 and 3 are great sandboxes just like I'd come to expect although I do feel like the Hitman 3 levels feel more linear than their predecessors. I'm definitely gonna end up going back to this every few months to approach all the levels in a different way.
I knew this game had a reputation when it came to life-sim pseudo-novels, but damn, still I was impressed.
Exocolonist is a game about tragedy, and subverting it. It's a game that requires you to run through it a myriad of times, similar to Signs of the Sojourner or Citizen Sleeper, but this game really does LEAN into the replay value by having run-based knowledge play into future runs. Oh you knew that dog was there? BAM, explosive trap.
This game does a lot in a short run and it's written beautifully, every character is unique and special in their own way, you get to see stupid kids you play ball with turn into militaristic turncoats, or isolationists bloom into explorers. There is a lot and I can't do justice to how well the characters are written and how well the development plays out. There are many mini-events, side-stories, side-quests, entire hidden areas and events. Each of my runs really felt unique each time, even if spamming tasks to raise scores became a bit of a chore.
The only complaints I really have are my not-too-much-love for the overworld design and some of the repetitive aspects of the game, but even if you do eerily-similar things, you still get massive sweeping changes you'd not have noticed before. I will warn you though, the first run is going to beat the ever-loving sh-t outta you, things will happen, you won't know how, and you'll need to learn how to get further. It's like the game sets you up to fail, to convince you to continue forward.
It's really a great game and deserves the praise it gets. While I'm unsure if it's systems work as well in-unison as some other titles like Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, or even Beacon Pines in some regards. It definitely plays it's hand well and got me addicted to keep running it over and over.
Simply great.
Exocolonist is a game about tragedy, and subverting it. It's a game that requires you to run through it a myriad of times, similar to Signs of the Sojourner or Citizen Sleeper, but this game really does LEAN into the replay value by having run-based knowledge play into future runs. Oh you knew that dog was there? BAM, explosive trap.
This game does a lot in a short run and it's written beautifully, every character is unique and special in their own way, you get to see stupid kids you play ball with turn into militaristic turncoats, or isolationists bloom into explorers. There is a lot and I can't do justice to how well the characters are written and how well the development plays out. There are many mini-events, side-stories, side-quests, entire hidden areas and events. Each of my runs really felt unique each time, even if spamming tasks to raise scores became a bit of a chore.
The only complaints I really have are my not-too-much-love for the overworld design and some of the repetitive aspects of the game, but even if you do eerily-similar things, you still get massive sweeping changes you'd not have noticed before. I will warn you though, the first run is going to beat the ever-loving sh-t outta you, things will happen, you won't know how, and you'll need to learn how to get further. It's like the game sets you up to fail, to convince you to continue forward.
It's really a great game and deserves the praise it gets. While I'm unsure if it's systems work as well in-unison as some other titles like Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, or even Beacon Pines in some regards. It definitely plays it's hand well and got me addicted to keep running it over and over.
Simply great.