LordDarias
BACKER
Played as part of Backloggd's Game of the Week 27/02 - 05/03
Attack of the friday monsters was a pleasant surprise for me, this week we also played this ZX spectrum-inspired thing that I really didnt vibe with, in retrospect maybe I was a bit too harsh, its kinda the issue with writing your review as a first draft as soon as I finished the game which I didnt repeat with this.
Still though, having let the game stew for an hour or two after finishing I can confidently say that its great. Its such a charming little adventure game that really nails the "japanese children's hero show" with the many magical realism elements (contextually they are of course mostly fruit of the children's imagination but it never fully tips its hand) and omnipresent narrator voice.
There is a clear nostalgia for growing up during the 70s in the suburbs of Tokyo and the atmosphere of this is conveyed very effectively through the visual and audio design, as well as complemented through the main plot point of children's "Hero" shows which were at their apex of popularity during the time period. And yet its not all entirely rosy, I was surprised by the mention of striking workers forcing the rail station to close regularly, from a much more militant era in Japan.
The actual card battling aspect is simplicity itself and honestly doesn't come up as often as you'd think, its more about the adventure questline and collecting the glims you need to make the cards that takes up most of the short runtime. Essentially if you beat your friends in these battles they'll be more forthcoming with info to solve the "puzzles". Of course this is a children's game so you can solve them just as well by just going to the icon on the map or thinking for a second or two.
This is absolutely fine though, the low stakes of everything complement the game perfectly and its just oozing with charm in everything from the dialogue to the character and town design and I can't believe I'm saying this but, I even enjoyed the fixed camera movement of the game! It was likely just a technological compromise with the not exactly beefy 3DS hardware but it adds some cozyness to the town and its never frustrating.
I did feel at first that the music was a bit overdone for what it was , but I get now that its probably that way to emulate the often bombastic music these shows have and again the runtime is brief enough that it never became overbearing.
I suppose if I have any issues its that the card battling could have been more interesting and less mostly just based on having better cards than the opponent, and I left a single postgame mission incomplete cause you need to grind out a bunch of battles against a girl with a pretty busted setup and I couldn't really be bothered? Which maybe left a slight sour aftertaste but whatever I'll forgive it based on everything else. If running around talking to people and cardbattling sounds appealing at all, check this out, its a real gem.
Attack of the friday monsters was a pleasant surprise for me, this week we also played this ZX spectrum-inspired thing that I really didnt vibe with, in retrospect maybe I was a bit too harsh, its kinda the issue with writing your review as a first draft as soon as I finished the game which I didnt repeat with this.
Still though, having let the game stew for an hour or two after finishing I can confidently say that its great. Its such a charming little adventure game that really nails the "japanese children's hero show" with the many magical realism elements (contextually they are of course mostly fruit of the children's imagination but it never fully tips its hand) and omnipresent narrator voice.
There is a clear nostalgia for growing up during the 70s in the suburbs of Tokyo and the atmosphere of this is conveyed very effectively through the visual and audio design, as well as complemented through the main plot point of children's "Hero" shows which were at their apex of popularity during the time period. And yet its not all entirely rosy, I was surprised by the mention of striking workers forcing the rail station to close regularly, from a much more militant era in Japan.
The actual card battling aspect is simplicity itself and honestly doesn't come up as often as you'd think, its more about the adventure questline and collecting the glims you need to make the cards that takes up most of the short runtime. Essentially if you beat your friends in these battles they'll be more forthcoming with info to solve the "puzzles". Of course this is a children's game so you can solve them just as well by just going to the icon on the map or thinking for a second or two.
This is absolutely fine though, the low stakes of everything complement the game perfectly and its just oozing with charm in everything from the dialogue to the character and town design and I can't believe I'm saying this but, I even enjoyed the fixed camera movement of the game! It was likely just a technological compromise with the not exactly beefy 3DS hardware but it adds some cozyness to the town and its never frustrating.
I did feel at first that the music was a bit overdone for what it was , but I get now that its probably that way to emulate the often bombastic music these shows have and again the runtime is brief enough that it never became overbearing.
I suppose if I have any issues its that the card battling could have been more interesting and less mostly just based on having better cards than the opponent, and I left a single postgame mission incomplete cause you need to grind out a bunch of battles against a girl with a pretty busted setup and I couldn't really be bothered? Which maybe left a slight sour aftertaste but whatever I'll forgive it based on everything else. If running around talking to people and cardbattling sounds appealing at all, check this out, its a real gem.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ehxt0wvU0AAkVxT?format=jpg&name=small
I didnt like this game, but reading it back I also dont particularly like my review of it, so Im just going to replace it with this.
I didnt like this game, but reading it back I also dont particularly like my review of it, so Im just going to replace it with this.
2005
I am the King of all Zoomers. I am routinely filtered by the older systems and mechanics/attitutudes of games before my time (I was like 6 years old when this game came out). With that being said, anyone who thinks that these controls are bad and that this needs a remake is a big baby lmao they work perfectly.
I quit Silent Hill 1 cause the tank controls made it almost impossible for me to get through the first bit of the game without dying endlessly, I have never been able to get into the MGS games because I despise their controls. So know that I mean it when I say that everyone can play RE4, its designed around its tank controls. The enemies are slow and somewhat passive outside of Professional mode.
The game isnt without flaw, in particular I hate the Del Lago boss fight and the island is kinda lame compared to the excellent first 4 chapters of the game. Also hilarious voice acting if you speak spanish, so many of these supposedly castillan peasants speaking like they are clearly from Latam and some who I don't even know where they are supposed to be from : errors in grammar and pronunciation etc.
I quit Silent Hill 1 cause the tank controls made it almost impossible for me to get through the first bit of the game without dying endlessly, I have never been able to get into the MGS games because I despise their controls. So know that I mean it when I say that everyone can play RE4, its designed around its tank controls. The enemies are slow and somewhat passive outside of Professional mode.
The game isnt without flaw, in particular I hate the Del Lago boss fight and the island is kinda lame compared to the excellent first 4 chapters of the game. Also hilarious voice acting if you speak spanish, so many of these supposedly castillan peasants speaking like they are clearly from Latam and some who I don't even know where they are supposed to be from : errors in grammar and pronunciation etc.
2022
metroidvania
Soulslike, indie and retro.
It fucking sucks ass
Soulslike, indie and retro.
It fucking sucks ass
2023
Originally this review was just a link to a youtube video which amounted to a lame putdown, which in hindsight feels needlessly mean and Im trying to stop doing that so Ill just say that the game didnt work for me but its an admirable effort and one coming from a Backloggd user whose writing I enjoy
2019
R.I.P Billy Kametz, gone far too soon
120 hours. If you did it in one go it would take 5 whole straight days of nothing but playing Persona 5 Royal. If we add to that a previous attempt at Royal that lasted until the 40 hour mark before I dropped it + my original persona 5 vanilla run (which was staggered across many months) I have played persona 5 for about 240 hours. Which judging by my steam account would make it my 9th most played game of all time. And after all that I can confidently say that Persona 5 Royal is... alright.
Persona 5 is an interesting entry in the series because in theory its the best one, the baton pass seems like a no brainer in retrospect, the palaces being actual handcrafted dungeons is the fully realized version of what Persona had always tried to be (there's hints of this in a certain final dungeon in P4), the soundtrack is absolutely stellar and every social link having a gameplay benefit just makes a lot of sense and enhances the core appeal of the game.
And yet I think P5 is my least favourite of the modern persona games (overall I still hate P2:IS more but Im planning on replaying it soon). For one thing the crop of social links is somewhat weak. Not that they're terrible but there are very few that are actually memorable : the politician, iwai, mishima and maybe takemi? are the only truly great ones IMO. Most of the others are forgettable and especially most of the female social links which uhh might not be a coincidence given some of the game's treatment of women. Smarter and more articulate people have already written about it on this page so just go to them for more on that.
I think a game like Persona 3 benefits from having a more mixed quality of character stories ; it has the worst social links in the series (gourmet king, ken, the athletes etc) but also the absolute very best (akinari, mutatsu, bunkichi, tanaka). Speaking on comparisons to Persona 3, they are kind of opposite ends of the spectrum. P3 starts pretty slow and kind of boring/meandering for a lot of it (strega are still some of the worst antagonists in the series) but pulls off the best ending in the series (havent played Eternal Punishment so idk) whereas Persona 5 is pretty frontloaded in terms of quality.
-Spoilers for Persona 5 and Royal from now on-
Presumably this is why the Royal Additions were made to serve as an epilogue of sorts, replacing the boring final boss of P5 who was just a generic shonen JRPG giant God thing that didnt feel anywhere near as climactic as beating down the guy who was single handedly responsible for most of the events of the game. It replaces it with a much greater character with a really interesting storyline and makes a much more compelling villain thematically for the game than boring old yabbadabbadoo or whatever his name was... is what I would say if they didnt make you fight the boring villain again anyways. Why?! You're already rewriting the plot of Persona 5 in post, go all in! fuck the stupid god of control thing.
Another thing that sort of comes with the format that I found annoying was in this final battle with an interesting sort of puzzle element that tests everything you've learned you defeat him in a low key sort of confrontation where despite not wanting to your differences in philosophy come to a head which can only be resolved with a duel, the game still pulls the whole "this isnt even my final form!" bullshit and I was pretty annoyed ngl. The fight really only needed to be like 10 minutes long but I guess thats not "spectacular" enough even though we already did this whole song and dance for Yaldabaoth!
Another Royal addition I was very mixed on was the character of Kasumi. I was originally playing the game in Japanese until she came around and I had to switch it over to english cause her voice, cadence and tone actively damage my head. Its like scratching a chalkboard. Her actual character is well... ok I guess. I admire the attempt but it just compounds the fact that there is a lot of dead weight in the phantom thieves; not just gameplay wise but even storywise they start to blend together a tad. Did you know Ryuji was canonically born on July 1999? Just like I was. That means most of the Phantom Thieves are my exact generation and maybe If I had played Persona 5 when it came out in 2016 I would have had much more of a connection. Unfortunately I played P4G as my first instead.
In general the party dynamics of P5 are arguably the weakest of the series and obviously a lot of this is just personal opinion but they just don't quite connect with me the way the P4 and 3 and 1 cast do. Also Morgana manages to be more annoying than Teddie somehow, who at least had the decency to fuck off once in a while. Love being told what to do by a cat in a game about rebelling against authority.
I apologize for anyone who's actually read this far cause I imagine this is almost incoherent at this point but I honestly don't know how to write anything about this game in any way thats actually well structured, Im just shooting from the hip at this point.
The Royal additions also rebalanced the combat in ways that are mostly for the better but also made an easy game even easier. I played on merciless and still embarassed most late game bosses. But the focus has never really been the combat challenge so whatever.
Okay, so Ive spent this entire review talking shit about this game but Im giving it an 8/10 so what gives? You see, I am actually an IGN staff member. In all seriousness Persona 5 Royal for all its faults has kept me coming back to it for 120 goddamned hours. There is enough of the good stuff I come to this series for to make it worthwhile : namely cheesy shonen tropes and the hybrid game model that is so wonderfully addictive.
Modern persona is a bit like XCOM or Total War in that having a management side complement the "combat" side of the game makes each a welcome change of pace from the other and constantly gives out rewards that pass from one side to the next, giving that "just one more day/turn" that makes these games so compelling. The gameplay "loop" has never been more appropriately named and honestly it is like digital nicotine to me. Add to that a truly excellent soundtrack and a UX that is absolutely dripping with style and there is a lot of things I will overlook in all of these games in favour of their positives.
120 hours. If you did it in one go it would take 5 whole straight days of nothing but playing Persona 5 Royal. If we add to that a previous attempt at Royal that lasted until the 40 hour mark before I dropped it + my original persona 5 vanilla run (which was staggered across many months) I have played persona 5 for about 240 hours. Which judging by my steam account would make it my 9th most played game of all time. And after all that I can confidently say that Persona 5 Royal is... alright.
Persona 5 is an interesting entry in the series because in theory its the best one, the baton pass seems like a no brainer in retrospect, the palaces being actual handcrafted dungeons is the fully realized version of what Persona had always tried to be (there's hints of this in a certain final dungeon in P4), the soundtrack is absolutely stellar and every social link having a gameplay benefit just makes a lot of sense and enhances the core appeal of the game.
And yet I think P5 is my least favourite of the modern persona games (overall I still hate P2:IS more but Im planning on replaying it soon). For one thing the crop of social links is somewhat weak. Not that they're terrible but there are very few that are actually memorable : the politician, iwai, mishima and maybe takemi? are the only truly great ones IMO. Most of the others are forgettable and especially most of the female social links which uhh might not be a coincidence given some of the game's treatment of women. Smarter and more articulate people have already written about it on this page so just go to them for more on that.
I think a game like Persona 3 benefits from having a more mixed quality of character stories ; it has the worst social links in the series (gourmet king, ken, the athletes etc) but also the absolute very best (akinari, mutatsu, bunkichi, tanaka). Speaking on comparisons to Persona 3, they are kind of opposite ends of the spectrum. P3 starts pretty slow and kind of boring/meandering for a lot of it (strega are still some of the worst antagonists in the series) but pulls off the best ending in the series (havent played Eternal Punishment so idk) whereas Persona 5 is pretty frontloaded in terms of quality.
-Spoilers for Persona 5 and Royal from now on-
Presumably this is why the Royal Additions were made to serve as an epilogue of sorts, replacing the boring final boss of P5 who was just a generic shonen JRPG giant God thing that didnt feel anywhere near as climactic as beating down the guy who was single handedly responsible for most of the events of the game. It replaces it with a much greater character with a really interesting storyline and makes a much more compelling villain thematically for the game than boring old yabbadabbadoo or whatever his name was... is what I would say if they didnt make you fight the boring villain again anyways. Why?! You're already rewriting the plot of Persona 5 in post, go all in! fuck the stupid god of control thing.
Another thing that sort of comes with the format that I found annoying was in this final battle with an interesting sort of puzzle element that tests everything you've learned you defeat him in a low key sort of confrontation where despite not wanting to your differences in philosophy come to a head which can only be resolved with a duel, the game still pulls the whole "this isnt even my final form!" bullshit and I was pretty annoyed ngl. The fight really only needed to be like 10 minutes long but I guess thats not "spectacular" enough even though we already did this whole song and dance for Yaldabaoth!
Another Royal addition I was very mixed on was the character of Kasumi. I was originally playing the game in Japanese until she came around and I had to switch it over to english cause her voice, cadence and tone actively damage my head. Its like scratching a chalkboard. Her actual character is well... ok I guess. I admire the attempt but it just compounds the fact that there is a lot of dead weight in the phantom thieves; not just gameplay wise but even storywise they start to blend together a tad. Did you know Ryuji was canonically born on July 1999? Just like I was. That means most of the Phantom Thieves are my exact generation and maybe If I had played Persona 5 when it came out in 2016 I would have had much more of a connection. Unfortunately I played P4G as my first instead.
In general the party dynamics of P5 are arguably the weakest of the series and obviously a lot of this is just personal opinion but they just don't quite connect with me the way the P4 and 3 and 1 cast do. Also Morgana manages to be more annoying than Teddie somehow, who at least had the decency to fuck off once in a while. Love being told what to do by a cat in a game about rebelling against authority.
I apologize for anyone who's actually read this far cause I imagine this is almost incoherent at this point but I honestly don't know how to write anything about this game in any way thats actually well structured, Im just shooting from the hip at this point.
The Royal additions also rebalanced the combat in ways that are mostly for the better but also made an easy game even easier. I played on merciless and still embarassed most late game bosses. But the focus has never really been the combat challenge so whatever.
Okay, so Ive spent this entire review talking shit about this game but Im giving it an 8/10 so what gives? You see, I am actually an IGN staff member. In all seriousness Persona 5 Royal for all its faults has kept me coming back to it for 120 goddamned hours. There is enough of the good stuff I come to this series for to make it worthwhile : namely cheesy shonen tropes and the hybrid game model that is so wonderfully addictive.
Modern persona is a bit like XCOM or Total War in that having a management side complement the "combat" side of the game makes each a welcome change of pace from the other and constantly gives out rewards that pass from one side to the next, giving that "just one more day/turn" that makes these games so compelling. The gameplay "loop" has never been more appropriately named and honestly it is like digital nicotine to me. Add to that a truly excellent soundtrack and a UX that is absolutely dripping with style and there is a lot of things I will overlook in all of these games in favour of their positives.
2010
I would like to apologize to Fallout New Vegas. I have 499 hours sunk into this game over the course of several years. I bought it when I was a teenager and played it all the way to Uni and beyond.
And yet, after all those almost 500 hours of play I cannot go back to it, every attempt petering out shortly thereafter from the realization that I have seen it all, experienced every nuance and perspective from a game that only wished to enrich my life through its myriad of systems, characters and masterful roleplaying design. "He wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer".
This is not meant to be an insult to FNV, far from it. I am not the kind of ridiculous child that gets made fun of on social media for giving a low score to a game cause "after doing the main campaign and the sidequests and achievements etc there's nothing to do! unfinished game". Quite the opposite. I apologize because in playing FNV so many times from so many angles and perspectives, uncovering every single layer of a legendarily dense game I have stripped it away like a hunter salvaging every organ and resource from a deer.
Its darkly ironic that the very same process which has allowed me to fully appreciate just how diverging, rich and wonderfully replayable this modern classic in RPG design is exactly why I can never go back to it. FNV is to me now like a fully solved problem, a series of understood systems, of known interactions and characters which are transparent in their every function. In short its completely stripped of the illusion of being a world, of being on an adventure with real people with goals and hopes and dreams and fears.
This maybe comes off as overblown and for sure, its no great tragedy, all good things come to an end and FNV has given me more than is reasonable to my life, but after going to back to revisit and old favourite and being unable to enjoy any of it, I felt a profound sadness. I think completionism is bad in general, and semi relatedly FNVs spiritual successor The Outer Worlds feels very much designed to court the enjoyment of completionists and is worse for it. This is perhaps why for how much it frustrates me I still come back to Commonplace, a game concept founded entirely on contempt for the very urge of completionism, of allowing all of its secrets to be revealed (even if in practice they can all be found out with enough time and effort but still).
I could have pulled away at 50 hours, at 100, at 200 and still allowed New Vegas to exist on its own terms, but I didnt. And for that I am deeply sorry.
And yet, after all those almost 500 hours of play I cannot go back to it, every attempt petering out shortly thereafter from the realization that I have seen it all, experienced every nuance and perspective from a game that only wished to enrich my life through its myriad of systems, characters and masterful roleplaying design. "He wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer".
This is not meant to be an insult to FNV, far from it. I am not the kind of ridiculous child that gets made fun of on social media for giving a low score to a game cause "after doing the main campaign and the sidequests and achievements etc there's nothing to do! unfinished game". Quite the opposite. I apologize because in playing FNV so many times from so many angles and perspectives, uncovering every single layer of a legendarily dense game I have stripped it away like a hunter salvaging every organ and resource from a deer.
Its darkly ironic that the very same process which has allowed me to fully appreciate just how diverging, rich and wonderfully replayable this modern classic in RPG design is exactly why I can never go back to it. FNV is to me now like a fully solved problem, a series of understood systems, of known interactions and characters which are transparent in their every function. In short its completely stripped of the illusion of being a world, of being on an adventure with real people with goals and hopes and dreams and fears.
This maybe comes off as overblown and for sure, its no great tragedy, all good things come to an end and FNV has given me more than is reasonable to my life, but after going to back to revisit and old favourite and being unable to enjoy any of it, I felt a profound sadness. I think completionism is bad in general, and semi relatedly FNVs spiritual successor The Outer Worlds feels very much designed to court the enjoyment of completionists and is worse for it. This is perhaps why for how much it frustrates me I still come back to Commonplace, a game concept founded entirely on contempt for the very urge of completionism, of allowing all of its secrets to be revealed (even if in practice they can all be found out with enough time and effort but still).
I could have pulled away at 50 hours, at 100, at 200 and still allowed New Vegas to exist on its own terms, but I didnt. And for that I am deeply sorry.
2023
Its great to see someone take Wario Ware's core gameplay loop and push it through a more coherent throughline, in this case the mad rush of cooking for a special occasion (Vietnamese New Year in this case). Its great fun, Free , lasts all of 10 minutes and even includes some food recipes! What else do you want, go and play it!
Played For Backloggd Game of the Week 07/02 - 14/02
A lot of negative feelings all around it seems. I guess its my job to defend this game as someone who actually rather enjoyed it.
I don't really enjoy deckbuilders very much, in fact seeing "card battler" on a game's tags is a surefire way for me to skip said game just below "roguelike/lite". So it was a surprise that I rather enjoyed the gameplay loop of Majin, playing around with the different spells and their effects, gathering a new one every floor and clearing all the enemies before moving on to the next. Alright its nothing transcendental but it kept me pretty hooked for the hour or so it took to finish it.
Otherwise I really enjoyed the aesthetic, the colour palette is so appealingly ... monochrome? Im not entirely sure what the official name for what its trying to do is but just look at some screenshots it speaks for itself. The Models too I found so charming the way they look like they've been made with modelling clay for the weirdest episode of Wallace and Gromit yet. The music does get kind of repetitive which is an achievement for such a brief game.
The plot is told piecemeal through very brief dialogue (like one line) every floor slowly clueing you in to the ultimate goal of the game and I found it a good enough narrative hook for what it was, paced appropriately. Until that is you get to the utterly abrupt ending which just sort of presents the final boss and then gives you an odd addendum sort of explaining what was going on ; very much a game that didnt know how to finish.
A lot of negative feelings all around it seems. I guess its my job to defend this game as someone who actually rather enjoyed it.
I don't really enjoy deckbuilders very much, in fact seeing "card battler" on a game's tags is a surefire way for me to skip said game just below "roguelike/lite". So it was a surprise that I rather enjoyed the gameplay loop of Majin, playing around with the different spells and their effects, gathering a new one every floor and clearing all the enemies before moving on to the next. Alright its nothing transcendental but it kept me pretty hooked for the hour or so it took to finish it.
Otherwise I really enjoyed the aesthetic, the colour palette is so appealingly ... monochrome? Im not entirely sure what the official name for what its trying to do is but just look at some screenshots it speaks for itself. The Models too I found so charming the way they look like they've been made with modelling clay for the weirdest episode of Wallace and Gromit yet. The music does get kind of repetitive which is an achievement for such a brief game.
The plot is told piecemeal through very brief dialogue (like one line) every floor slowly clueing you in to the ultimate goal of the game and I found it a good enough narrative hook for what it was, paced appropriately. Until that is you get to the utterly abrupt ending which just sort of presents the final boss and then gives you an odd addendum sort of explaining what was going on ; very much a game that didnt know how to finish.
2021
This game sucks. Everyone knows it sucks, even its creator who is going to prison (though not for making Balan unfortunately).
However this being Backloggd and indeed the Internet generally, in a couple years times everyone is going to pretend that actually Balan is secretly genius and cool and smart you guys.
So I am going to play the long game and pre empt the re evaluation of Balan (or reebalanuation I should say) before anyone else does.
Balan Wonderworld is good, actually! The one button control scheme is a great attempt at making platformers more accessible. The Balan bouts are actually an intentional metaphor for the unforgiving nature of punching emo willy wonka across space in this Late Capitalist hellworld we call earth. The BoxFox is actuallly a really funny joke and if you didnt find it funny youre stupid! The framerate drops are actually an accessibility feature allowing kids to nail tricky jumps with bullet time. The story written by a dude who said he worked out how to write stories by reading hero with a thousand faces once is actually really deep and smart and something something, theatre of the mind, carl jung, subconscious, pychonauts etc. I take off half a star for the CGI cutscenes, their polish clash against the intentional roughness of the graphics for thematic reasons (People are sad and dont clean their brains)
Now you may shower me with praise for being ahead of the curve, contrarians of the future
However this being Backloggd and indeed the Internet generally, in a couple years times everyone is going to pretend that actually Balan is secretly genius and cool and smart you guys.
So I am going to play the long game and pre empt the re evaluation of Balan (or reebalanuation I should say) before anyone else does.
Balan Wonderworld is good, actually! The one button control scheme is a great attempt at making platformers more accessible. The Balan bouts are actually an intentional metaphor for the unforgiving nature of punching emo willy wonka across space in this Late Capitalist hellworld we call earth. The BoxFox is actuallly a really funny joke and if you didnt find it funny youre stupid! The framerate drops are actually an accessibility feature allowing kids to nail tricky jumps with bullet time. The story written by a dude who said he worked out how to write stories by reading hero with a thousand faces once is actually really deep and smart and something something, theatre of the mind, carl jung, subconscious, pychonauts etc. I take off half a star for the CGI cutscenes, their polish clash against the intentional roughness of the graphics for thematic reasons (People are sad and dont clean their brains)
Now you may shower me with praise for being ahead of the curve, contrarians of the future
2022
This review contains spoilers
God, what an utterly wonderful, deeply moving game so full of humanity. In truth though I don't believe Pentiment to be perfect and without flaw, I have enjoyed it so much despite its shortcomings I can award it nothing short of the maximum possible number score.
Pentiment is one of those games that only comes around once every many years. Its clear that Josh Sawyer and his small team were given rare freedom to pursue a fairly niche idea, heavily researched (though I am not qualified to evaluate its accuracy) and thought out. Pentiment really stands tall on the merit of its writing and art. A period drama so full of wonderfully flawed, well rounded characters reflecting on so many of the issues of their time, as well as their relation to the past from which they draw and how in turn their stories relate to us in the present.
Its hard to really explain what makes this game so wonderful, in all honesty I think I could never do it justice with words alone. This game is of course very text heavy, and unfortunately some may not appreciate what its doing with its various RPG mechanics and player choice, expecting a "choose your own adventure" style whilst missing the point entirely, though I cannot blame them as I really don't know that I can fully explain it myself. Its an adventure game with RPG elements which is in theory a murder mystery but its more of a framing device to show how events change the course of the town. For example you are never told who the actual murderer is. Like in real life you must make the most of what little time you have to uncover whatever flawed understanding of events and make decisions which for better and for worse will affect the course of history; importantly you cannot uncover everything on any one playthrough. The accused is executed yes, but life goes on. People will remember what happened, the family of the executed may stop talking to you but there is no omniscient hand of god to say "you did it".
One early indication of where the story is going with all this is after the first time skip when Andreas comes back a few years after the murder of the Baron and stays at a local inn that opened up during the timeskip. The local innkeeper will mention the events of the murder and the details of the execution of the guilty party but in a very flawed, slightly wrong way. Even just a few years ago when this is within living memory what little truth there was is already being twisted. In Pentiment the truth is really not as important as the perception of what the truth is. Another is the sheer amount of retellings of the same story of the founding of Tassing and Kiersau abbey, the stories of the "saint" etc are all told by many different people at different points of the game in slightly but importantly different ways depending on their background and education : the old timer who keep the pagan ways, the monks at the abbey, various people of different beliefs all tell the story in a way that suited them and the people who told them said versions, all of them intermixing and getting tangled in the great game of telephone that is the oral tradition.
Coupled with the semi anachronistic elements of the Scriptorium giving way to the printing press for good and for ill related to the reformation and the German Peasant's War and even the archeological evidence you find of Kiersau being founded on top of roman ruins on top of earlier pagan settlements all pointing to the titular theme of Pentiment (referring to a painting being made on top of part or whole of an earlier painting) of the present always building on the past even when we dont know it and GOD! Pentiment is so goddamned good I would voluntarily write a Uni essay on the themes of history and truth in it. I'll just summarize here before I make this an even bigger mess of a review : Your choices reinforce the narrative of the incompleteness of history and the choices we make with what time we have.
I don't think the gameplay is unimpeachable, in particular I thought Disco Elysium did a much better job of making your dice rolls failing feel as compelling as them succeeding. I like your dialogue choices weighing the dice rolls, it makes just choosing what to say feel much more deliberate (unlike in New Vegas where choosing the high speech option was the most optimal thing to do pretty much always, here using certain traits can be very much the worse thing to say). However what I dont like is having done everything right and having like a 90% chance to succeed and getting a failure anyways (the game autosaves to prevent save scumming too). And sure, thats always the case with this type of RPG but it didnt feel as discouraging in DE. On the one hand, I can see the argument that "Pentiment is a game about making flawed choices based on incomplete information much like the practice of history and indeed life itself is based upon such things, we rarely have the complete picture and Andreas himself is tortured by his choices in life, what he didnt do at various points and etc etc you get the picture" on the other hand : "Go fuck yourself you goddamned motherfucking fucker, get fucked you fucking swine! Fuck your stupid fucking dice rolls!"
Other than that, the backtracking can be a bit annoying especially when the cute little loading transitions stop being cute, walking back and forth trying to remember where everyone lives in this stupid village especially after everytime jump when people die or move or marry or what have you.
However, these are mere drops of water on an ocean of outstanding meditation on history and human drama. The night before finishing this game I had a dream involving some of the characters, this should tell you something about my investment in the story.
I think the best thing I can say about Pentiment is it has made me think about the history of my own corner of the world. Though I live in Spain The village centre has a statue of San Martín and the streets are named after places in Argentina, I vaguely remember hearing this town was founded by argentinian immigrants but now I think I should do what best I can to try to investigate, see what little I can find about the history of this place for good and bad, and who knows what may come out of it? The wheels of time keep spinning, so do what you love for however long you can : "Love is the only reason to do anything in this life"
Pentiment is one of those games that only comes around once every many years. Its clear that Josh Sawyer and his small team were given rare freedom to pursue a fairly niche idea, heavily researched (though I am not qualified to evaluate its accuracy) and thought out. Pentiment really stands tall on the merit of its writing and art. A period drama so full of wonderfully flawed, well rounded characters reflecting on so many of the issues of their time, as well as their relation to the past from which they draw and how in turn their stories relate to us in the present.
Its hard to really explain what makes this game so wonderful, in all honesty I think I could never do it justice with words alone. This game is of course very text heavy, and unfortunately some may not appreciate what its doing with its various RPG mechanics and player choice, expecting a "choose your own adventure" style whilst missing the point entirely, though I cannot blame them as I really don't know that I can fully explain it myself. Its an adventure game with RPG elements which is in theory a murder mystery but its more of a framing device to show how events change the course of the town. For example you are never told who the actual murderer is. Like in real life you must make the most of what little time you have to uncover whatever flawed understanding of events and make decisions which for better and for worse will affect the course of history; importantly you cannot uncover everything on any one playthrough. The accused is executed yes, but life goes on. People will remember what happened, the family of the executed may stop talking to you but there is no omniscient hand of god to say "you did it".
One early indication of where the story is going with all this is after the first time skip when Andreas comes back a few years after the murder of the Baron and stays at a local inn that opened up during the timeskip. The local innkeeper will mention the events of the murder and the details of the execution of the guilty party but in a very flawed, slightly wrong way. Even just a few years ago when this is within living memory what little truth there was is already being twisted. In Pentiment the truth is really not as important as the perception of what the truth is. Another is the sheer amount of retellings of the same story of the founding of Tassing and Kiersau abbey, the stories of the "saint" etc are all told by many different people at different points of the game in slightly but importantly different ways depending on their background and education : the old timer who keep the pagan ways, the monks at the abbey, various people of different beliefs all tell the story in a way that suited them and the people who told them said versions, all of them intermixing and getting tangled in the great game of telephone that is the oral tradition.
Coupled with the semi anachronistic elements of the Scriptorium giving way to the printing press for good and for ill related to the reformation and the German Peasant's War and even the archeological evidence you find of Kiersau being founded on top of roman ruins on top of earlier pagan settlements all pointing to the titular theme of Pentiment (referring to a painting being made on top of part or whole of an earlier painting) of the present always building on the past even when we dont know it and GOD! Pentiment is so goddamned good I would voluntarily write a Uni essay on the themes of history and truth in it. I'll just summarize here before I make this an even bigger mess of a review : Your choices reinforce the narrative of the incompleteness of history and the choices we make with what time we have.
I don't think the gameplay is unimpeachable, in particular I thought Disco Elysium did a much better job of making your dice rolls failing feel as compelling as them succeeding. I like your dialogue choices weighing the dice rolls, it makes just choosing what to say feel much more deliberate (unlike in New Vegas where choosing the high speech option was the most optimal thing to do pretty much always, here using certain traits can be very much the worse thing to say). However what I dont like is having done everything right and having like a 90% chance to succeed and getting a failure anyways (the game autosaves to prevent save scumming too). And sure, thats always the case with this type of RPG but it didnt feel as discouraging in DE. On the one hand, I can see the argument that "Pentiment is a game about making flawed choices based on incomplete information much like the practice of history and indeed life itself is based upon such things, we rarely have the complete picture and Andreas himself is tortured by his choices in life, what he didnt do at various points and etc etc you get the picture" on the other hand : "Go fuck yourself you goddamned motherfucking fucker, get fucked you fucking swine! Fuck your stupid fucking dice rolls!"
Other than that, the backtracking can be a bit annoying especially when the cute little loading transitions stop being cute, walking back and forth trying to remember where everyone lives in this stupid village especially after everytime jump when people die or move or marry or what have you.
However, these are mere drops of water on an ocean of outstanding meditation on history and human drama. The night before finishing this game I had a dream involving some of the characters, this should tell you something about my investment in the story.
I think the best thing I can say about Pentiment is it has made me think about the history of my own corner of the world. Though I live in Spain The village centre has a statue of San Martín and the streets are named after places in Argentina, I vaguely remember hearing this town was founded by argentinian immigrants but now I think I should do what best I can to try to investigate, see what little I can find about the history of this place for good and bad, and who knows what may come out of it? The wheels of time keep spinning, so do what you love for however long you can : "Love is the only reason to do anything in this life"
A shitpost of a game. Whether its earnest or ironic I really cannot tell. It got a slight chuckle from me but every character speaks like Jay Foreman when he does an ad read (specifically this video at around the 7 minute mark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAusbJmRB0c). Its only 20 minutes so I guess im not too bothered anyhow
2023
Ok, now that I've finished the game I can do an actual review. First of all, this game has been an absolute joy from beginning to end. If you take nothing else from this review know that this stylish action + rythm game hybrid takes the best parts of Gen 6 design and tone with some mid 2000s western cartoon theming and smashes it out of the park with some QOL improvements which will make it THE rhythm action game others get judged on going forward.
The whole rhythm game + other genre combination seems to have creeped on us a bit huh? I swear it was only yesterday stuff like No Straight Roads and Sayonara Wild Hearts were seen as groundbreaking (I'm sure there are games which precede them, but personally those are the ones that made me aware of the subgenre) I loved BPM: Bullets Per Minute when it came out, the combination of quake 1 with a rhythm core was a blast, reloading a revolver in time to the beat, but it did slighlty suffer in the learning curve being a bit steep in the beginning.
The problem which HiFi rush solves is that whilst in BPM fucking up the rythm meant you could do pretty much nothing but relatively slow movement, in HiFi your actions are pulled off to the beat regardless of input. This also means you can inmediately get back to hitting in rythm by using the character's own moves landing as a metronome. In theory this could have made the game a watered down version of the concept but the key is that pulling off the moves in time to the beat, dodging, parrying etc fits in super nicely to the style action points system of DMC, Bayonetta (or fittingly for the executive producer Shinji Mikami, God Hand) of rewarding good execution of the system with better combos, higher score etc. This is the very definition of the old standard "Easy to Learn, Hard to Master". By the time the game starts to demand you consistently hit stuff to the rythm with the longer parry chains and boss fights you're already a pro at the beat combat. Add to that the multiple visual indicators of your companion 808 and the various assets across the level acting as metronomes and the onboarding is absolutely masterful.
Story wise its nothing super special its your typical scoooby gang vs evil corporation making your way through 6 colourful bosses with a fairly generic evil scheme. I can see the tone given by the trailer giving people pause, especially given the current (mostly deserved) backlash to the whedon/roiland etc sardonic "ha ha we are so clever and self aware" style of writing but its honestly not quite on that level, its fairly subdued other than in the optional logs and NPC dialogues which can sometimes vere into slightly patience testing : "Cos videogame, am I right?" territory. However it gets away with it 90% of the time because a) the main character is canonically kind of dumb and b) the cartoon show tone makes it a lot more endearing and less annoying. The absolute best thing I can say about the story is that the following exchange occurs : Bad Guy - "You're all losers" Protagonist "Maybe, but together we're unstoppable" And my reaction to this dialogue was to have a stupid grin on, rather than wince at its cheesiness.
One slight flaw is in the voice acting, its a bit underwhelming for one slightly baffling decision. They cast american voice actors and then had them do accents, but they can't really pull them off? Its hard to say without coming off as mean but what is Macaron's accent supposed to be? British? American? Very strange decision.
As for why it doesn't get 5 stars, the song selection isnt my favourite, ironically some of the original tracks were the ones I liked the most, but music taste is so subjective I don't know if theres a soundtrack on earth that will please everyone. Also of all the various mechanics, the fire one you have to deal with is the only element I found unfun. Part of the combat involves you temporarily summoning allies (and yeah that is explained within the games fiction funnily enough) to break through certain enemies defenses. The fire enemies however feel particularly annoying with this, it always feels like they are much more overwhelming than the shielded enemies and armoured ones.
In conclusion HiFi rush is an excellent rythm action game and strong early GOTY contender that will become the exemplar of its particular subgenre going forward. Its 30 euro at launch and whilst I rarely buy these games at launch I did so and have absolutely 0 regrets, what a banger.
The whole rhythm game + other genre combination seems to have creeped on us a bit huh? I swear it was only yesterday stuff like No Straight Roads and Sayonara Wild Hearts were seen as groundbreaking (I'm sure there are games which precede them, but personally those are the ones that made me aware of the subgenre) I loved BPM: Bullets Per Minute when it came out, the combination of quake 1 with a rhythm core was a blast, reloading a revolver in time to the beat, but it did slighlty suffer in the learning curve being a bit steep in the beginning.
The problem which HiFi rush solves is that whilst in BPM fucking up the rythm meant you could do pretty much nothing but relatively slow movement, in HiFi your actions are pulled off to the beat regardless of input. This also means you can inmediately get back to hitting in rythm by using the character's own moves landing as a metronome. In theory this could have made the game a watered down version of the concept but the key is that pulling off the moves in time to the beat, dodging, parrying etc fits in super nicely to the style action points system of DMC, Bayonetta (or fittingly for the executive producer Shinji Mikami, God Hand) of rewarding good execution of the system with better combos, higher score etc. This is the very definition of the old standard "Easy to Learn, Hard to Master". By the time the game starts to demand you consistently hit stuff to the rythm with the longer parry chains and boss fights you're already a pro at the beat combat. Add to that the multiple visual indicators of your companion 808 and the various assets across the level acting as metronomes and the onboarding is absolutely masterful.
Story wise its nothing super special its your typical scoooby gang vs evil corporation making your way through 6 colourful bosses with a fairly generic evil scheme. I can see the tone given by the trailer giving people pause, especially given the current (mostly deserved) backlash to the whedon/roiland etc sardonic "ha ha we are so clever and self aware" style of writing but its honestly not quite on that level, its fairly subdued other than in the optional logs and NPC dialogues which can sometimes vere into slightly patience testing : "Cos videogame, am I right?" territory. However it gets away with it 90% of the time because a) the main character is canonically kind of dumb and b) the cartoon show tone makes it a lot more endearing and less annoying. The absolute best thing I can say about the story is that the following exchange occurs : Bad Guy - "You're all losers" Protagonist "Maybe, but together we're unstoppable" And my reaction to this dialogue was to have a stupid grin on, rather than wince at its cheesiness.
One slight flaw is in the voice acting, its a bit underwhelming for one slightly baffling decision. They cast american voice actors and then had them do accents, but they can't really pull them off? Its hard to say without coming off as mean but what is Macaron's accent supposed to be? British? American? Very strange decision.
As for why it doesn't get 5 stars, the song selection isnt my favourite, ironically some of the original tracks were the ones I liked the most, but music taste is so subjective I don't know if theres a soundtrack on earth that will please everyone. Also of all the various mechanics, the fire one you have to deal with is the only element I found unfun. Part of the combat involves you temporarily summoning allies (and yeah that is explained within the games fiction funnily enough) to break through certain enemies defenses. The fire enemies however feel particularly annoying with this, it always feels like they are much more overwhelming than the shielded enemies and armoured ones.
In conclusion HiFi rush is an excellent rythm action game and strong early GOTY contender that will become the exemplar of its particular subgenre going forward. Its 30 euro at launch and whilst I rarely buy these games at launch I did so and have absolutely 0 regrets, what a banger.
2023
This game kicks ass so far. It takes the vibe of the 2000s in tone, gameplay and music and adds all the modern QOL to make it more accessible
A space for the unbound is a game I had been anticipating for some time. I played the demo a year and a half ago or so and really enjoyed it, so I was pretty happy when I saw it had finally been released.
Its an adventure game set in Indonesia in the 90s. The gameplay does the pychonauts (and persona and like a million other things) thing of going into people's minds to help them and progress through the overarching story of the protagonist. The gameplay is generally fine, puzzles and quicktime events mainly, which I dont mind here cause they are core gameplay rather than an after thought.
I mused during a stream of the game that whilst perhaps overused, the trope of going into people's minds in videogames make perfect sense. Much like Books and Movies have the perennial "show, dont tell" (which isnt always universal I know, please stop yelling) Games have perhaps a similar "let [the player] do, not watch". Which is probably why the psychonauts thing is so useful, it lets the player learn about a character by doing rather than passively being told or shown a character's action in cutscene. It can lend itself to also telling us a character's personality somewhat unsubtly, but the framework gives it a sense of being organic : this character isnt telling us they feel sad, we're seeing their thoughts and they feeling sad in them. To that end I would say ASFTU does it pretty effectively, we learn about the key characters and their struggles with abuse, bullying etc in ways that humanize them whilst also not coming off as people uncharacteristically just telling us their wildest insecurities and traumas unprompted.
The pixel art and animations are gorgeous and the music is very good. Story wise, its mostly pretty good, the messaging at times is perhaps not as strong as it needs to be in terms of the character stories and I whilst I did feel something, I didnt feel as much as the game presumably wanted me to, if that makes sense? Its hard to get into it without spoilers and in all honesty Id rather not cause I think its very much worth experiencing.
It is slightly longer than it needs to be. Some bits feel pretty padded, especially with the different levels of reality you work with it ends up being a russian doll esque odyssey of going inside a rift inside a dream inside someones subonscious to do it all again so you can hand a pastry chef their dad's will.
Overall Im happy with a Space for The Unbound, perhaps it was the expectations set by anticipating its release that knocks it down a half star (and not making me cry) but I feel like for most playing it with fresh eyes will find a great experience here.
Its an adventure game set in Indonesia in the 90s. The gameplay does the pychonauts (and persona and like a million other things) thing of going into people's minds to help them and progress through the overarching story of the protagonist. The gameplay is generally fine, puzzles and quicktime events mainly, which I dont mind here cause they are core gameplay rather than an after thought.
I mused during a stream of the game that whilst perhaps overused, the trope of going into people's minds in videogames make perfect sense. Much like Books and Movies have the perennial "show, dont tell" (which isnt always universal I know, please stop yelling) Games have perhaps a similar "let [the player] do, not watch". Which is probably why the psychonauts thing is so useful, it lets the player learn about a character by doing rather than passively being told or shown a character's action in cutscene. It can lend itself to also telling us a character's personality somewhat unsubtly, but the framework gives it a sense of being organic : this character isnt telling us they feel sad, we're seeing their thoughts and they feeling sad in them. To that end I would say ASFTU does it pretty effectively, we learn about the key characters and their struggles with abuse, bullying etc in ways that humanize them whilst also not coming off as people uncharacteristically just telling us their wildest insecurities and traumas unprompted.
The pixel art and animations are gorgeous and the music is very good. Story wise, its mostly pretty good, the messaging at times is perhaps not as strong as it needs to be in terms of the character stories and I whilst I did feel something, I didnt feel as much as the game presumably wanted me to, if that makes sense? Its hard to get into it without spoilers and in all honesty Id rather not cause I think its very much worth experiencing.
It is slightly longer than it needs to be. Some bits feel pretty padded, especially with the different levels of reality you work with it ends up being a russian doll esque odyssey of going inside a rift inside a dream inside someones subonscious to do it all again so you can hand a pastry chef their dad's will.
Overall Im happy with a Space for The Unbound, perhaps it was the expectations set by anticipating its release that knocks it down a half star (and not making me cry) but I feel like for most playing it with fresh eyes will find a great experience here.