Strong game. Wasn't a fan of the original but the sequel improves on the game dramatically, where the metroidvania and digging elements marry together to create this pretty relaxing, wanderous experience where delving into the mines and poking its crevices was...nice. And in addition to that, the game also packs itself with neat upgrades and equipment, including!, a really good grappling hook. Dorothy's loadout is pretty powerful and fun to use, they did a good job of just making moving around and punching dirt to be as good as it could be. The challenge rooms littered throughout also helps you make the most out of them, especially the end game hell dungeon. Also, shoutout to the OST for this game and having probably the best town theme I've ever heard.

Overall, it's ROCK solid. Some easy slouch day entertainment with an even amount of challenge to keep you arching your back every now and again.

They sure took a lot of TIME to make this! It was taking so long, I thought it was SCIENCE-FICTION! Vanillaware more like ABANDONWARE! Ohohohohoho I like this game, I'm glad it came out.

Vanillaware, getting bored of making great action titles, decided to take a page out of their oldest book, or grimoire specifically, and made a RTS visual novel hybrid game. I guess I should talk about the RTS stuff first since it's the easiest to talk about and also probably the most uninteresting of the two. You basically have these sections where you control the mechs that are being piloted by the main characters of the story. It's all played out on a really cool looking, minimal computer grid and you do your usual tactical battly stuff. The main goal is to defend the terminal that the kaiju are trying to attack and it's pretty decent. There's some really cool moments in it, like the one where the idol sings or the final mission, but overall it's nothing special. As much as I like the minimal aesthetic, I could have maybe used a few more details to highlight specific things because sometimes little details can get lost in the grid, such as enemy attacks that are off screen. Also they made these little animations for when your hovering over abilities to show what they do and they look really cool! But they don't include them in the actual game when you do the move and I think they missed an oppertunity to maybe add them to the actual fights to add some impact to your attacks? Like they don't even need to play all the time, just like maybe when you get a kill with the move? Or a lot of damage? Just something to make the battles feel a bit more spicy. Overall, Destruction mode is cool but alright. Play it on the highest difficulty if you want anything close to challenging.

Anyways, the real show stopper is the Rememberance section of the game which is pure 100% visual nov-ahem, I mean, adventure game? Whatever, basically you control a character and you talk to people and you discover things and there's a lot of text and sometimes there's "puzzles" and sometimes there's branching choices. This is where all the story content of the game is doled out over 13 (!!) different playable characters, who all have their own story unravelling through this universe and a lot of the time said story threads will roll into other character's as well, all in the middle of this greater overarching plot about saving the world from invading kaiju! This is definitely the most ambitious and well done part of the game and even if doesn't pull it off perfectly, it should be praised for taking on such a colossal task and doing it well.

My favourite part of this section, and the entire game, is the amount of twists. The game has a really amazing knack at constantly keeping the players engaged in the story and the universe by just dropping plot bombs on the regular and forcing the player to constantly think about the narrative that's being presented to them and how everything pieces together. Like I enjoyed the many hours I spent just sitting/scrolling through menus after finishing a character's story segment, thinking of how it affected what I thought I knew about them or the world, thinking of how "Well if that thing is that, then that means that this isn't this!" etc. etc. I would say that the puzzles in this game are terrible (god fuck that coin stuff it's so bad) but in actuality the puzzles are incredibly strong in this game because the story IS the world's biggest puzzle! Jonathan Blow is a tiny brainlet when compared to 13 Sentinels! Anyways, what I'm saying is the twists and constant recontextualisation of the plot is really well done and it's definitely one of the most entertaining experiences I've had since La Mulana 2.

I really enjoyed the characters as well, my absolute favs being the old boys: Miura and Hijiyama. I really enjoyed their initial character parts of being these dudes who were used to old military japan and general lifestyle of the 40s being teleported into the excess and electronica of the 80s. There's something really tough about a soldier of the 40s, willing to die for their country, travelling to the future and finding out that their coutnry in fact lost the war and surrendered. What does that mean for Japan? Is old Japan gone now? What is his life purpose now? Should he even be living right now? Will the guilt ever go away? Well, they kinda get over it fast but for those moments it was cool! Also individually they have some good stuff, Muira with his fucking "oh my god WHAT" 2188 story sections that appear in the early game and Hijiyama with his bond and connection to Okino through the game's events.

Everyone in general has some quirk or moments that I really appreciated and nobody was really a bad character. Gouto and his inquistive back and forth with Chihiro over the truth of her and the world was incredibly entertaining. Yakushiji with her "magical girl" cat schtick where she blats dudes. Natsuno's E.T. quest. Shinonome and her reality altering headaches. There was a bunch of cool things to latch onto and I really enjoyed going through each character's different situation and cadence. Even Miwako and Okino, who aren't playable characters, I liked a lot. In general, story stuff is great. It's the main reason to play this game and it does a fantastic job and I totally recommend playing 13 Sentinels for it.

Also, how have I gotten so far into a Vanillaware review and not brought up the visuals??? As expected, the visuals are incredible. The amount of details and effort put into each game's painted backgrounds look amazing, Vanillaware are really untouched in this field and thankfully they've seen no reason to slack off on the style. Also, whoever decided to set the entire game during the golden hour deserves a medal because not only does the golden hour OWN but it also helps make the background look that much more awe inspiring and nostalgic. The presentation wouldn't be as good without the music though. The OST for 13 Sentinels keeps up with the Vanillaware standard and manages to help bring the perfect amount of whimsy or cyber based dread whenever nessisary. Shout out to the idol song they made as well because it rules.

There are some problems with the game though and this is where I'm going to caution and say SPOILERS AHEAD because there's some things I can't talk about without spoiling to describe why this game is mostly top shelf material but just has a few things that bug me. Like how it goes for the "in the end it wasn't real" kinda thing which I don't hate the game for, and I feel like it kinda earns it with making everything else leading up to it so interesting, but that also makes it more disappointing? When you have all these twisting paths and huge bomb shells and constant unsurity and then in the end it can be summed up with "it wasn't real they were in a computer"...i don't know...like I said, I don't hate it but it feels a bit too simple for my tastes. I also feel like they kinda dropped the ball with Shinonome because the most interesting thing about her, to me, was that she was the villain! Kinda! Like she's the reason why the kaiju invasions were happening and her 2188 self seemed to be a little psychotic and I was interested to see where it would end up and it's sad that the game kinda drops it and forgets it in the end. I feel like the game brings it up with a "ahhh sorry about that guys!" "it's okay!" thing (i can't remember specifically) but I do remember being pretty bummed that the game doesn't really end up doing much with Shinonome. In the end she just becomes lovesick headache waifu who doesn't remember how to stop the virus in the sentinels. Was kind of a let down.

Also, I just wanna bring up how bad the romance in this game is. Like, feel free to yell at me that I missed some sort of point with them being destined to be with someone else cus of their previous selves or something but the way people just get together in this game is so...forced? And lame? Which makes me think that maybe I am missing some sort of point but none of the relationships in that game felt real and they sucked. The absolute WORST offender though being Ida and Space Idol Kisiragi at the end credits! I had to use my personal vomitorium to purge that out of my body.

And this isn't really a complaint and more of me trying to reason with myself why it's not a five star game but if you've played a lot of japanese games or know popular culture or played stuff like the Zero Escape games then maybe some of the narrative stuff might not surprise you as much or be as fresh as it would to other people, which I guess is why I'm trying to figure out why it wans't as mindblowing for me as it was for other people I've heard talk about the game. I don't know, this paragraph is my personal blabbering part.

Overall though, I only get nit picky and overly analytical with games that I really enjoyed or wanted to enjoy and 13 Sentinels is definitely the former! Wonderful presentation, going through the story is an amazing, almost puzzle box experience and the large cast and scale of the game really makes it something to be admired. The moments I'll remember from playing this is sitting at the menu and just staring into the screen, in my own mind, thinking of the game.

God bless.

As a follow up to the first game, No More Heroes 2 is pretty dissapointing as it's just less of an interesting game. Story feels totally unnecessary and doesn't do enough interesting things for me.

Travis joins the assassination gig again because he does and he vows to climb to the top to get revenge on the guy who killed BIIIIIIIIISSSSSHHHOOOPPPPPPP!!! and that's kinda what you get at the end. There's some intriguing cut-aways throughout the game with a mysterious figure but they turn out to be Sylvia and it's all revealed to be a sequel bait that doesn't really land for me. The most charitable thing I can do for the story is through a reading of the reason why Travis is in the assassination game again is because there's a No More Heroes 2 and having to go through another assassination gig is what leads to him having second throughts about the treatment of the video-game characters he has no kill and be done with UAA gives the story a kiiiiinda interesting meta angle that may or may not be intended but even then, I still find it hard for me to defend the second game's story as anything meaningful.

Also the cut open world and lack of a buy in for gigs totally kills the two sided nature of the first game where a lot of the time you were doing repetitve chores to be able to afford your fantasy basically. I can see why they did it but the game is totally missing something from the first game because of it. It's a trade of character for ease and enjoyment.

And ultimately that's what makes 2 so different from 1. It's doing the same game as 1 but it lacks a lot of the character or uncommon characteristics.

...That being said, I'd be lying if I said I still didn't enjoy myself. The music is great thanks to Akira Yamaoka. Graphically the game looks amazing upscaled to 1080. Sylvia has MULTIPLE OUTFITS! SHINOBU IS PLAYABLE!! They even spent money on a dang fake full OP to the in-game anime that Travis loves! Also, even though I just complained about the pacing, I can get the appeal of turning No More Heroes into a purely boss rush game with weird boss design and track after the next.

No More Heroes 2 is a bit of a conflicting game for me because overall the game is a downgrade from No More Heroes 1 on most fronts and it's nowhere near being a cult classic for me. On the other hand though, the game still does carry a lot of the original's spirit and you could probably still get a good time out of it.

Game is jank as fuck. Story doesn't really exist, all you need to know is you're a dude going through the worst day ever in tokyo and you have to survive. Had a laugh playing through it tho.

The disaster tech with the buildings falling down was really cool. The fact you get to fully customise your character in daft outfits is good. The fact you can dress yourself in a daft outfit AND be a dick to people is even better. Most of my fun in this game was developing my protag's character to being a chaotic evil opportunist who is also helplessly naive. The first half of the game is mostly you trying to find an honest way out of tokyo and helping somebody you just met, but the best part of the game is the second half where that seems to kinda go out the window as you're just placed in goofy situations. Want to run a cult? Hell yes! Want to father some jesus juice and con the city out of money for it? woohoo! There is a more serious part that involves dead children but...that dumb stuff's still there!

Game is fun jank. Get it on sale probably.

A really, really fantastic open world hacking video-game. The main gimmick of this game is that you can interact with an abundance of objects in this game, anything from doors to robotic turtles, through a hacking interface where you can change the properties of something. So say there's an arcade machine that some dickbag who's dating the girl you like has a high score on, well you can hack it to where you can make the game incredibly easy to play and instantly gain a bigger score than his. Or find the central server for the bank and hack into it to give you infinite money. Or hack a door so that whenever someone touches it they get teleported somewhere else. All these things I mentioned are things I did in the game world and that's not even touching on the other things you can do.

Cus that's what this is, it's an open world hacking game where you get to really change objects. It almost sounds too good to exist and work and well...you're kinda right. The game gives you a LOT of freedom to do stuff but the game doesn't always react to the things you do, sometimes making them pointless. The game's story and ending are kinda threadbare too. I guess some sacrifices were made to make this whole thing work but I think the negatives of this game are negligible compared to the magic of interacting with the world in it.

Experiences may vary, the enjoyment of this game is pretty much based on how much you put into it. Also the game doesn't really hand hold you so it's easy to feel directionless in it, especially at the beginning. If you stick with it though, I feel like you get to play a truly unique experience unlike most other games.

Easy going. This was a nice game to have to just be able to pick up for a few hours and just relax by exploring, cleaning up some ground goop along the way and enjoying the several events and lovey dovey bantering between the two protagonists. Very light feeling game with an appreciated focus on two people in a relationship who are just enjoying themselves.

Whilst that stuff left me feeling positive on the game, I also gotta admit there isn't much else beneath that. The main story is irrelevant, the forced drama between the two at one point is boring, the few other characters you talk to are so 2D and barely in it that it makes the "choice" at the end of the game entirely laughable because the game gives you zero reason for ever thinking about wanting to ever go back to your home planet. Also if you play the game more than my recommended allotted time per day then you start to realise that you're mostly on the same biome for 80% of the game and you're doing the same stuff you were doing at the end of the game that you were at the start.

And it's a tough game to recommend because of all that. I feel like they did enough of a good job on the relationship between the main characters and the world exploration that I could forgive those flaws and come out feeling good but if one of those things don't click then the entire house starts to crumble.

Oooooooooooh Astral Chain, you do so much good stuff. The combat is so incredibly satisfying to learn and pull off in this game, the fact your dodge kinda sucks or isn't the most effective way of moving around in combat felt like the team knew they wanted to create something different from the usual Platinum gameplay style and I'm glad they went with it. The chain mechanic and having helpful buddies to swap out at will is rad. Big thumbs up.

I also really like the art style and look for the world. Some characters can maybe feel a little plain but there's a tonne of real standout looks and visuals in this game. Most of the OST I didn't fuck that hard with but the base theme....fuuuuuuuuuuuck. Also Marie Wentz/Lappy a cute.

As for the stuff Astral Chain doesn't do too well...well, for the start the story is kinda trash. Like I know Platinum games aren't expected to have great story but even something as boiler plate as Vanquish's story felt miles better than the one in Astral Chain. For most of the time it kinda stays plain/building stuff up and then two thirds of the way through the story it decides to completely forget characters (remember the cool looking dude with the electronic dreads who was set up to be your rival? yeah.) and just prematurely rush you into the end game where it doesn't even bother giving you the dignity of a satisying ending. Literally fade to black. Awesome!

Also the pacing I found to be a bit dodgy sometimes. The balance of this game is between the real world, where you mostly do fights and explore, and the astral plain, where you sometimes do fights and platform, and I don't think either area are that bad, it's just you sometimes stay in one area for way too long. This especially feels bad with the astral plain sections because I already wasn't too hot on the platforming in the game, so having those sections going on for long felt really bad. Just in general, the flow of the game can feel pretty uneven and sluggish at times.

Also something that sucks is that I feel like you don't really get a good amount of time to feel the full potential of the combat in this game since it keeps handing you out buddies and abilities up until the later parts of the game. Top that with having the combat take a little bit to get used to, you don't ever really feel like you're making the most of the combat potential until you're getting near the end of the game which kinda blows. In something like Devil May Cry this doesn't matter too much since you can just replay the game easily but in Astral Chain that becomes a little bit more laborious due to the amount of dialogue and cutscenes as well as the playtime (my save file said 30 hours when I finished my first playthrough) to the point where you wonder if it's even worth going into the game again.

Also, just in general, I feel like the game has less soul to itself compared to Platinum's other titles.

I know I really went on about the game negatively there but I still do love the core of this game. The combat system, the aesthetic, the world: it's all really good! It's just a shame it also comes with problems that really hurt itself.

Marie still cute.

A game that I remember being disappointed with at first but over time have started to warm to more.

The game lacks the interconnected world, balanced encounters and overall tightness of it's predecessor but these days I can appreciate it more as being a bit of an oddity in the series that tried different things. Power Stance is rad, Rat King convenant is dickishly gratifying and the gender change coffin that doesn't explain itself at all. Also like they gave you more ring slots and had fun with ring effects more...the game even has in-game voice chat build in with a certain ring! I mean, I'd never ever want to use it but it's there! Weird!

Overall, the game has a lot of problems but it's still an enjoyable action RPG I can come back to if I wanna have a good time. Just a shame that the bosses really suck.

Amazing game, it's a wonderful mix of action, platforming and metroidvanian topped with some high quality art and music.

Exploring felt excellent, just getting lost in the world in both meanings of the word was a real highlight of the experience and just seeing how many different places, routes connecting to other routes and content there was hiding away in the world was deeply satisfying.

The base game was already great and the DLC managed to add even more flavour to it. It's an awesome game, heavy recommend.

Pretty neat beat em up. As long as you go in not expecting a proper no more heroes game, I think you'll have a good time. Has some cool surprises, each level having a different gaming aesthetic is nice and direction wise it feels like the most Suda game Suda has been attached to in the past like...decade. Downside is the game has zero replayability for a beat em up, combat starts to get dull half way through and the levels are WAYYYYYY too long. If they cut the levels by half I think this game would benefit a lot from it. Otherwise, it's good?...


------UPDATED 21/08/21 ----------------
Alright so I replayed this game two and a half years later with a lot more knowledge of Suda's previous games and his career. I will say this time around the last third of the game affected me more than previously and I found it to be really sweet! The idea of Suda killing his own past and examining video-games as a whole and also his past experiences is a really cool idea that I think he pulls off pretty well! Also after finishing The Silver Case/Flower, Sun and Rain/The 25th Ward I could now play the visual novel sections and point at the screen going "KURUMIZAWA POG!" where I couldn't before.

Whilst I was more positive on that stuff, if there's one negative that didn't change it's the length of these levels ohmygoddddd. I can put up with some laborious gameplay but man! Honestly if the levels were just a bit shorter/more varied this game would be stellar to me. But...it's still good!