As I do with games that I pick up and drop shortly after, I'm not gonna rate this because I didn't see enough of the game to give it any kind of fair rating.

But this is just not for me. Souls-like as a genre is not for me. I wish it was, because they are just massive right now. You boot one up, create a character, get dropped into a world and get destroyed. I just lose my patience with these games very quickly. I'm not curious enough to learn the mechanics. I'm not curious enough to explore these worlds. These games don't represent why I like games and why I play.

This is extra disappointing for me because I quite liked the demo. I like that it isn't as slow, heavy and trudging as a From Software title. I like that it has a jump button! But that's about it.

Hollow Knight thrives off of a combat system that ties pretty seamlessly into the exploration. Just by hitting a wall, you'll find yourself in a new area with several bosses/minibosses and usually they are all pretty solid. That's unfortunately about where my praise ends however, because although I respect its ambition, I feel it suffers from several choices that hinder both the combat and exploration elements that should naturally tie together.

Exploration-focused games usually go for relatively guided level design. Even if the world design itself is non-linear and lets you go anywhere, rooms will maintain a guided format because it allows the designer to add interesting trails to fall down. Going down into a new area off of a winding trail as the visuals slowly change and you have to interact with new mechanics is practically formula at this point for these types of games. Hollow Knight instead applies this philosophy to the entire map at large; where areas are effectively trails to other areas and that serves as their purpose. Ambitious in theory but troubling in execution; you will find that most areas effectively play out like big open boxes with a few mazes of blocks and samey rooms inside. Gimmicks are often relegated to extremely simple changes to the formula that don't compensate for the sheer amount of aimless wandering through repetitive, unfocused level design. If it's not an area you find in a wall, it's a generic item that isn't an actual upgrade and has very little gameplay purpose.

The progression of Hollow Knight is very weak overall to me; whereas Metroid-likes usually like to give you items for every milestone that would lead you being able to go back and open up a new area, Hollow Knight oft abandons the notion of backtracking because so much of it is open from the get-go. Abilities are spread out across hours of play and usually most of the most engaging parts of the game (the bosses) don't give you them and instead are just there to add clutter to the world. Now, in defense of the game, the boss fights are above average for sure. Snappy, fast combat that doesn't over-rely on tired tropes in action-platformers is satisfying to pull off and there's decent variety, but they don't feel meaningful. The fact is you'll probably in the end get more mileage out of random enemies rather than half of the optional bosses in this game since your most effective and active progression you'll be having is collecting Geo; the currency of Hallownest. The best way to collect Geo, is to farm respawning enemies. And there-in lies the issue with Hollow Knight. For a game with such scope and ambition, nothing feeds into another. You get currency to get trivial upgrades while sitting around to get the big cool abilities and fight optional bosses which more often than not give you absolutely nothing. I'm not opposed to a game being fundamentally unrewarding, but I'm opposed to it when all I have are blue mazes to explore. There's another game about blue mazes that released four decades ago, but at least that one has space dinosaurs.

So, I decided to do a little digging on the development and circumstances of Wanted Dead and im convinced this is like a money laundering scheme or something. Like, this is definetly a crime right. Some rich asshole forms an entertainment company in switzerland called 110 Industries, which seems to consist almost entirely of this, Vapourware, and selling the debut album of Stephanie Joosten - most notable for playing quiet in MGSV - on Vinyl. He seems to really want to just make a game that's john wick, so he picks up Soleil and they just use his money to make a sequel to Devil's Third instead, being sure to cast Joosten and a Phillip-Morris model in lead roles, and put in the movie references the rich funder wanted in.

And yes, this game is just Devil's Fourth. Whilst Itagaki is oddly absent considering this game feels like a scam, It's the same Valhalla game studios team from Third, and it plays remarkably similarly. The main change is that combat is slightly less shit. You get pretty standard combos with your sword intermixed with a ludicrously powerful pistol used to stagger and parry enemies at a pretty high range. There's a heavy emphasis on canned finishers to restore health (Think doom 4), and the general sense is the game really wants you in the thick of things at basically every moment, slashing and dashing amongst the gunfire. It's a very chaotic system, and I would hesistate to say it's good, the enemy variety just isnt there, and enemies are just a bit too tanky to keep the flow great, but it's far improved from Devil's Third and is a serviceable action game with a pretty nice high degree of difficulty. I would go as far to say that it's bosses are pretty good, and I really like how fast the player dies - make the wrong mistake to even a single grunt and they'll kill you straight up, even on the difficulty that gives you cat ears.

But let's be real, that's really not appeal of Wanted dead when you get down to it. What is - is that will not see a game as truly baffling as Wanted: Dead in a long time. So many times it will make you question why. Why is there a relatively high production value full shmup included? Why is there this kinda rad mix of animated cutscenes intermingled in? Why do some scenes feel pieced together out of dialogue from different drafts? Why does the game clearly jab at some heavy stuff like health insurance and Margaret Thatcher for like 2 seconds and then drop it? Whats up with the Cooking videos featured heavily in the advertising but not in the actual game? Why is there a single (one) ladder that you can climb in the whole game? I legitimately could go on for much longer than this you have no idea, you go like ten seconds in this game and you wonder what the fuck the motivation behind the decisions was.

The game is all over the place to the point where I am in denial that it's just incompetence. A police officer pulling stuff from an interview that the SUPECT REFUSED TO TELL HER to go on to the next plot point is something Neil Breen would catch in the edit. The game's developers have been open that it's a throwback to cheapo PS2 games (presumably oneechambara being the point of reference?) but I seriously feel like this is all a bit. Am I being made fun of? Are Soleil making fun of this rich swiss asshole by making a shitpost? Am I now an accessory to money laundering?

Wanted: Dead is not a "weird game" in the way something like a Suda51 or Swery game is, or even LSD Dream Emulator. I'm tempted to compare it to kane and lynch 2 but that game is a million times more focused in it's vision and what it's trying to portray. I can't stop thinking about it, every decision it makes is so... wrong, yet also so deliberate. I've seriously never played anything like it.

It also, at times, also shines legitimately super brightly. I really like the banter between the gang, as weirdly odd as the voice acting is. I really like that one of it's primary characters is straight up mute and its a nice representation even. The mixing of media types and stuff is sick, there's one absolutely brilliant boss fight and the very final moments of the game provides a legitimately ace story twist which honstly makes me view the whole thing much more fondly.

The whole thing is bewildering. I can't stop thinking about it.

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Other "huh?" things I didn't mention for the sake of pacing

- Final level is absurdly long after the rest of the game was pretty good in this regard
- Claw minigame does basically nothing
- Difficulty curve insanely and blatantly all over the place, the first mission is one of the hardest.
- The degree to which the world is altered from the real world is odd and excessive.
- There's like 6 shower scenes
- Why do you get a free single revive like half the time when the game is overwise commited to being a tough classic action game? But you only get it when one member of your squad is there?
- Why is there such detailed gun customisation in a 5 hour action game
- Why is the one loading screen a very dated meme.
- Why does the one ninja elite enemy look like it's from a different game
- Why do the protagonists just not even mention sometimes why they're going to do a thing.

Make it make sense.

from what i had initially played of engage, i did not at all enjoy it. i went into it with very few expectations based on the direction the series took outside of remakes after path of radiance, but still found myself largely disappointed. i found the cast and dialog mostly insufferable, the actual story itself some of the worst the series has to offer, and the flanderization of legacy characters almost insulting. however, i have a lot of friends with varying levels of experience with fire emblem saying it got good, whether that be solely the gameplay for some or the story for others. i decided to give the game another shot and finish it, hoping that at least one of thoses two camps would be right and i came out kind of disappointed in both repects, though i do have a much higher opinion of the game than i did before

in terms of story, it just gets worse. as the game goes on the already frustratingingly shallow plot continues to spiral downward, taking a break around the solm arc to catch its breath before going even faster down the shitter with everything afterwards. it's not awakening level where it's bad out of being largely boring with nothing of note ever happening and it doesn't get to being fates levels of balls to the wall bad until close to chapter 20, it's just a badly written story in a way that feels frustrating and ultimately like it was written for children. this doesn't feel like a game from the same series that had the battle of belhalla, the battle with emperor rudolf, or (even as sloppy as the writing in three houses is) the final confrontations between dimitri and edelgard. instead we get a 7 minute death scene ending in a pinky promise, or moments that have potential but just aren't able to work for me because they involve characters that everything else has lead me to be unable to stand. it especially doesn't help that i found most of the impotant characters and especially the villains to be some of my least favorite characters. usually in a fire emblem game with a boring cast, there's a really cool cast of villains to at least make things interesting half of the time or at the very least one main character who i like seeing on screen. binding blade absolutely comes to mind for me here with elffin, bern's generals, and (with the context of the manga) zephiel being some of the standout characters for me in that game and some of my favorites in the series despite the other characters around them, but in engage the lords and villains are all either really annoying, really boring, or a frustrating mixture of both and it makes the main conflict and narrative even weaker as a result.

speaking of characters i can't stand, boy there sure are a lot of them. the style of writing here is largely taking a few character traits or quirks and just running with those constantly which is already a style i don't like, but my dislike of them mostly comes down to me not liking those specific character traits, which is pretty apparent when i can't get myself to enjoy fan favorites like yunaka at all. there's also the emblems, which are all just flanderized versions of their original counterparts, with sigurd and ike being some of the more frustrating ones. there are exceptions, such as roy and eirika being just completely mischaracterized and micaiah, lucina, corrin, and byleth not having much to actually flanderize, but i wouldn't say those are positive exceptions. regardless of this lower standard of character writing, the only characters i'd say are actually flat out bad are veyle and alear. veyle is just radiant dawn blood pact levels of bad writing without any of the minor things about the blood pact that made you think "oh neat" and wrapped into an unappealing design who shows up constantly. likewise, alear also invokes a lot of fire emblem's history with sloppy writing, most specifically the my units. like most my units, they are the absolutely most important character on screen at any given time and everybody on your side has to revere them like they're some kind of god, and intelligent systems decided that instead of maybe writing my units a little differently that they would double down on the isssues these characters had and they were going to double down hard. now your my unit is literally a god who almost everyone worships or at least reveres in some capacity, not to mention that their entire personality boils down to "good-doer mary sue with a dark side" like you'd find in self insert works on fanfiction.net in the early 2000s. it honestly got super frustrating seeing a rare scene i thought was actually good just for alear to show their ugly mug and for me to lose interest completely. on a more positive note, i found myself liking a lot more characters to the level i usually do for fire emblem in this game than i ever did in awakening or fates. i wouldn't say they're the best characters ever but lapis, zelkov, goldmary, and fogado are a few standouts to me, with rosado, alcryst, and kagetsu also having a lot of things i enjoyed about them. the game definitely gets a bit more consistent with better characters as it goes, backloading most of the worse ones to firene and just sprinkling one or two stinkers into the later regions, but it can lead to long stretches with no one you actually like having anything to say depending on what you like character wise. while i think engage hits much lower lows with its characters than awakening and fates ever did, it also hits much higher highs than they did too which i guess means i surprisingly like engage's cast more than those two.

if the story just ended up getting worse for me, how about the gameplay?

it's pretty good i guess!

i definitely wouldn't put it up with new mystery or thracia gameplay wise, but it's definitely much better than awakening or three houses in that department. i'd probably place it somewhere below blazing blade and path of radiance, making it one of the better entries in the series gameplay wise in my opinion. the actually gameplay systems definitely work for what engage is. i find myself not really caring about break and no weapon durability is a little boring to me but with everything else about engage being the way it is, i much prefer being able to just jump in with minimal inventory management. the weapon triangle actually returning is very welcome, and the emblems are very fun in the same way that new mystery letting you move insane distances on its maps was fun. because of this, in sections of the game where you have no emblems or very few emblems it can be a bit boring and the game seems very intent on removing the main aspect of what makes actually playing it compelling in that regard, but the map design kinda makes it okay? i've never been too huge on the "conquest is good because it has really good map design" bandwagon that most people seem to be able to agree on, and i find myself feeling the same way about the idea that engage also has really good map design. neither game has bad map design at all, i'd say in a lot of areas they have really solid map design, i just don't think they're the peak of the series like some would allege. engage also had a lot of moments where i needed to put the game down before i was at all willing to start another map if only because i wasn't finding the gameplay enough to push me through to another cutscene i wasn't going to enjoy, but that mostly started cropping up towards the latter end of the game.
on a more minor note gameplay wise, the somniel sure is a thing i guess. i don't like the hub worlds fe has started to do but at least now it's rather unintrusive, at least compared to the complete and utter slog and narrative disaster that the monastery was. if i had my way the hubs just wouldn't be a feature, but i'm willing to take what wins i can when it comes to the social sim aspects fire emblem has leaned into.

i also thought i'd quickly touch on the music, as well as the graphics. music wise, there's very few games in this series with soundtracks i go out of my way to listen to. i only really listen to music from the jugdral titles, the three remakes, and some of three houses and even then they're far from my favorite game soundtracks. likewise, engage is just pretty okay. there's some neat parts of the ost but largely it's not one i found myself super invested in but i didn't find myself bored by it either. in terms of the graphics, while i still think the GBA games are the best looking in the series, engage definitely gets close with the battle animations and there's a lot that are really cool. the models themselves are just okay though, but they would probably be better with a different art style. on the other hand everything about the non-battle animations can only be described as laughably bad. they have this uncanny way of moving that invokes amateur SFM porn and overdramatic mocap acting and it just sucks to look at. it's genuinely baffling to me that on one hand we have the best battle animations the series has seen in almost 20 years but at the same time we're given the most low quality animations for cutscenes and dialog, but i guess it's better than nothing.

overall i think the largest thing keeping me from overall enjoying fire emblem engage is the simple fact that i am not the type of person to value gameplay over story in any type of rpg. to me, gameplay in an rpg serves to lead into and provide context for story moments to elevate it in a way that non-interactive media simply couldn't accomplish. there's plenty of rpgs i loved that i couldn't get into gameplay wise, whether it be xenogears or vagrant story or smt2. engage, however, doesn't have a good or, for lack of a better term, engaging story which leaves the gameplay very little to work with and elevate. you could argue that i'm able to just skip the cutscenes and story elements and just play the game, but at that point why i am playing engage over any other fe game? in any other genre this would be something i could look past completely, but due to the way i approach and enjoy the rpg genre as a whole i find engage an experience that i could've done without. i can understand a decent amount of the hype around this game but it isn't for me and even after giving it a second chance i find it indicative that echoes, three houses, and any future remakes are just detours on the direction that seems to be maeda's vision for this series post-awakening, and i can't say that excites me.
in terms of the series at large, unless there's any reason to believe this direction is changing i'm probably not going to be keeping an eye on it much longer outside of news in regards to remakes. i still love most of the older titles and it's a dear series for me but i can see that fire emblem has shifted to a much different audience than it used to appeal to and for now, i think engage is going to be where i get off of the wild ride that shouzo kaga started.

so long and thanks for all of the memories, you weird bastards at intsys

"You can close your eyes. I'll always remain here by your side."

i think anyone who knows me also knows that i am very decidedly not a fan of persona 4 and i used to not like 5 much either. i feel like they lost a lot of what made the classic era of persona games special and meaningful, and due to the games sharing the same director in katsura "i’ve never successfully forged a true friendship with a girl in real life" hasino, i assumed persona 3 would be no different.

while the game definitely takes a lot of steps away from what persona used to be in a lot of aspects, it's still a surprisingly well made experience, and rather than a harbinger of what the series would inevitably become, it feels more like a last goodbye to what the series used to be. i undoubtedly still enjoy the persona 2 duology (at least eternal punishment) more than persona 3, but i can appreciate and come to love persona 3 for what it is; a beautiful game that shows that you don't need to be perfect to tell a beautiful, heart-wrenching story that means a lot to a lot of people.
i played with the undub patch and i think it might have one of my favorite set of vocal performances in any video game. the main party's japanese voice actors are really good at conveying emotions, especially pain, and it pushed me into tears in parts where i otherwise could've reasonably held them back, and persona 3 portable is probably the most i've cried at a video game for a while outside of the 2 duology. portable also has the benefit having a good set of self insert protagonists, especially when one of my major hang ups was struggling to insert myself as a girl into the shoes of the milquetoast pretty boy persona protagonists the modern series has otherwise.

i highly recommend this game to anyone who either loves one and hates/doesn't care for the other era of persona, i'm certain that no matter what you prefer you'll find something to love here.

the ken shit was kinda weird though. obviously didnt pursue it but it's fucking strange and uncomfortable that it was an option.

i think i like persona 4 less than persona 5 because at least persona 5 at least pretends for a little bit that it cares about going against the status quo, and it gives you the illusion that its going to actually do anything good. both games struggle with almost all of the exact same issues, the main difference being 4 doesn't have much style to prioritize over substance so you just don't get much of either.

i don't really care about 90% of the games writing or characters but i will directly point out that kanji and naoto's character arcs are some of the lamest things i've seen in video games, and no it is not because of any "headcanons" i didnt even have for these characters being contradicted. for kanji and naoto specifically i take a lot more issue with the queerbaiting and using queer identities as a stepping stone for their incredibly tame messages than the idea that they aren't actually queer. anyone who is upset about them not being gay or trans isn't necessarily wrong for feeling that way, but it obviously wasn't the intention of persona 4 to make those characters that way and i'm not going to act like it's fair to have problems with the game because of that specifically. the investigation team also do not at all feel like they are friends to me and it sucks, the way that most scenes that wouldve been used to develop SEES in 3 just aren't really there and it makes me care about the group way less

i liked adachi a lot though, he's a really good character

alear is somehow worse than corrin in every way, the dialog is insufferable, the cutscene animations vary between bad mocap and sfm porn in quality, and the majority of the cast is just as one note as the fates/awakening characters but with even less appealing designs. the only positives in this game are the map design and the in battle animations, which are both surprisingly good, but still far from the best the series has to offer and the emblem system makes the act of playing the game trivial. everything else is just a testament to the fact that fire emblem has been on a downward spiral since the release of awakening. the kusakihara directed games seem to be the only ones we can expect to do anything right in terms of characters and story, but even then based on the two games we've gotten they aren't that great aside from the one that is based on an existing game.
speaking of the existing games, it's also very frustrating to me how flanderized or just completely mishandled the emblems are. for a title that was initially an anniversary project you'd think they'd show a small amount of respect to the source material they're supposedly celebrating, but instead they decide to drag the legacy characters down to the level of the modern franchise in terms of writing and characterization to the point where the filler voice lines from the gacha game are better representations of these characters

i'm sure if you started with modern fire emblem and don't care for the older titles you'll enjoy this game but i absolutely hate it, and i would've preferred fire emblem to die with new mystery than become whatever the hell it is now. hopefully we'll eventually get a title that recaptures what the series used to be outside of remakes of what it used to be, but based on the trajectory of intelligent system's other rpg series, i sincerely doubt it.

addendum: i went back and finished the game, here is my review with my thoughts after not abandoning it halfway through

sonic frontiers is a game i went into wanting to like more than anything. i love 2d sonic but most 3d games have a lot of problems, so it makes sense that i would want a 3d sonic game i can say with no caveats that i enjoyed. im sad to say that frontiers is no different and suffers from most of, if not all of the same issues that have plagued the series since its transition to 3d. the setpieces are bland, the music prioritizes being "cool" over the style and substance of the 2d games, needless unenjoyable 2d sections that don't even try to feel as good as actual 2d sonic, you constantly fight against the controls and camera, and the story and characterization is still laughably bad somehow, despite ian flynn being the writer this time around. ultimately i do think fans of generations and unleashed will probably like this one though.

new issues introduced are that the open world is inconceivably bland and empty as well as being aesthetically bankrupt. none of the soul or style of previous 3d sonic titles shines through with the locations in frontiers whatsoever. i played on the switch, and the only open world switch game (or 3d game ive played on it in general) that i'd say looks worse is pokemon legends arceus and uh. yeah. not a great look when that's who you're contending with. pop in on the switch version is also miserable, not sure if that's the case in other versions. the new girl character also sucks? she's an awful design and nothing about her character is endearing or interesting. the game managed to make the first time you go super sonic the most bland and miserable experience out of any 3d sonic games which is genuinely an accomplishment. they ruined the one consistently enjoyable part of 3d sonic. amazing.
by the time i got to the 2nd island, saw that it was just a vast rocky desert, and that i would have to repeat the needless item collecting for a whole other island i just couldn't bring myself to play more.

the best i can say about it is that it's an improvement over boom, lost world, and forces i guess. if anything, my only positive takeaway from sonic frontiers is that it made me want to give sa2 another chance

also the best part of the game is big's fishing minigame even if the water had weird texture glitches every few times i went fishing.

Tender Frog House, a game which is described by its creator as "a forum post of a game", is cynical. It's not that it's technically wrong about many of its comments on wholesome games. In fact, its response to wholesome games which view themselves as a unique political statement are incisive in their own way. These aren't wholly original ideas, but they are conveyed with a precision and a bite that calls attention. And they have truth to them. Certainly, being cozy is not a radical act. Those who make this claim are fooling themselves. But Tender Frog House comes off as taking a very broad swing against not just a particular subset of wholesome game creators, but about twee art, and eventually the purpose art itself. And this is where the incisive critique turns into a cynical rat's nest.

Tender Frog House pre-empts my response by refuting the notion that this perspective is cynical, that this is simply a knee-jerk response that defends a conservative mindset. Well, guess what? It is cynical. But it's not cynical for the sake of its perspectives on wholesome games, but rather, its perspective on their ethos. Tender Frog House more or less explicitly states that those who create so-called "wholesome games" are in fact engaging in what amounts to a deeply conservative pastiche which only serves to perpetuate a fascist capitalist society. Further, those who find joy or pleasure in this art or view it as a means of expressing themselves are in fact experiencing a false consciousness which only furthers that fascist capitalist society.

This is an exemplar of cynicism: calling people phony. I refuse this. I refuse to adopt a worldview where people who find and make art that makes them happy is fascist. Tender Frog House seems to find no room for this; either your art is revolutionary praxis, or its reactionary propaganda. Could it simply not be that people make games about cute frogs because it makes them happy? Is that not enough? Why must art only serve the purpose of political action? Art serves many purposes, and just because it performs either an ineffective or maybe even ever-so-slight counteraction does not mean it is not ultimately worthy of being enjoyed. Art acts on us in innumerable ways, in the mind and the body. Not all of these experiences are worth politicizing. That which is anodyne may not cure anything, but that doesn't mean it won't pair well with some wine. As I stated, I think the notion that coziness, sincerity, and self-care are in-and-of-themselves radical is false. But that doesn't mean they aren't worth having.

Moreover, I haven't found supposedly more revolutionary "serious games" to be effective on that front, either. Tender Frog House certainly doesn't inspire me, either as an artist or as a political actor. Maybe I am projecting, but it seems it instructs me to adopt a realpolitik of aesthetics, where I may only offer affordances to or create that which is unequivocally revolutionary. Well, personally? I have found little of that art enjoyable. I have played the Molle Industria games, and others. These games do not invite any transformative thought, and they are incredibly didactic (and frankly, not particularly persuasive). I don't think art is a particularly effective form of praxis, whether it's cozy or cynical. I'm not convinced any of these serious games bring us any closer to a better society than a cute game about frogs.

Let's stop pretending art is a uniquely precious vector for political action. I doubt that line of thinking leads anywhere. But who knows. There is a reason Adorno hated jazz. I think time has proven him wrong. We'll just have to wait for time to pass to see about Tender Frog House.