After sitting here for what feels like an eternity (even though it was probably only a couple minutes), I can’t think of an intro for this review. I can’t help it, cause since these games are so similar to each other in many ways, there’s nothing more I can say without sounding like even more of a broken record than I already am. So, to remedy this, I’m just gonna list off a bunch of fish facts that I found on the internet instead:

1. Fish have great memories, and can memorize the faces of those who treat them well and feed them

2. There are over 30,000 known species of fish out there

3. The scales on a fish help it swim through water more smoothly

4. Some fish are capable of living outside of water for multiple years

5. A lot of fish have taste buds located all over their body

6. Due to a lot of pollution in British water, a handful of male fish located there changed their gender as a result

7. Fish can also drown if there isn’t enough oxygen in the water they are in

8. Most fish cannot swim backwards, because they are stupid

9. Scientists have only explored 1% of the ocean depths, meaning there is still a lot more kinds of fish we don’t know about

10. Fish have small brains, meaning we could overpower them if they try to take over the world

And now that I’ve wasted your time with random bullshit, we should move onto the reason why you came here to begin with: it’s Freddi Fish and the Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds!

Right alongside Putt-Putt, this is one of Humongous Entertainment’s most well known franchises, and unlike with Fatty Bear, who crashed and burned right out of the starting gate, there were quite a few games made for this series before it too crashed and… uh, drowned. And just like with Putt-Putt, I had known a little bit about this game before actually playing it myself, all thanks to the videos made by BrutalMoose, which I enjoyed enough, so I figured at the time that I would give the game a shot to see what it was all about. So, I played it, and what a shocker, it is another Humongous Entertainment game with no real big changes made to the formula whatsoever. It’s still a good time, having plenty of good qualities for a point ‘n click game made for kids, and the setting is charming and lively enough to where I ended up liking it enough.

This game actually has a plot compared to the other games we have seen from this company so far, where a mysterious crook ends up stealing the kelp seeds from Grandma Grouper, and now all of the fish in the sea will starve (according to the game anyway, which is complete bullshit), so it is up to Freddi and her thorn in her si- I MEAN, pal, Luther, to figure out who stole the kelp and get it back, which is a silly and simple enough plot for kids to get behind, and it is good enough to get the player going. The graphics are pretty great here, where unlike Putt-Putt and Fatty Bear, who look like they will kill me if I look at them the wrong way, everything in this game looks colorful, vibrant, and cartoonishly alive in a way that makes you wanna look at it more rather than trying to look away, the music is good, having plenty of pleasant tunes to listen to throughout the game, each one fitting well for the underwater setting, and the control/gameplay is what you expect from one of these games, while still being simple enough for a kid to get a handle of and have fun with.

The game is a point ‘n click adventure game, where you take control of Freddi Fish and, to an extent, Luther, go through the many different locations you can find below and above the seawater, talk to plenty of different fishy friends and creatures of the deep to learn more about the land, help them out with their problems, or get a new tool to help you solve the mystery, gather plenty of different items, collectibles, or what have you scattered throughout the seafloor to help you out on your journey, and when you’re feeling too bored, click on whatever the fuck you feel like to see what whacky shit it does, or even play a few minigames to help add some spice into your fishy life. As you would expect, there isn’t much else going on here in terms of gameplay, but once again, that’s not necessarily a problem with these games, as this one still manages to do what it sets out to do, and if you ask me, it does the best job out of all the games so far.

As per usual, the main draw to this game, in comparison to all of the others, is whether or not you are a big fan of the environment and the characters that you find throughout your journey, and in my opinion, this game is the most visually interesting and fun to explore so far. Yeah, being a living car and stuffed animal is cool and all, but cars are booooooooooooring, and that stuffed animal has a knife, so I don’t waaaaaaaaaaaaant it. Thankfully, with this game, we have plenty of sea life to see and interact with, giving us a wide assortment of goofy and enjoyable characters, not to mention the aforementioned very pretty environments that you can swim through. In addition, there are also several more cutscenes that can be seen throughout the entire game, showing off more of the characters and their interactions, where you can also see the increase in budget when it comes to the animation. Needless to say, they did a damn great job with this, with the animations being looped, yeah, but they are given much more life and personality when compared to what we got before.

If you are not a fan of fish or the sea though, then you are not going to get much out of this game. It is yet another Humongous Entertainment game, where you run around, click on things, talk with people, solve simple puzzles, and question why the fuck Freddi let loose a crab with a fishing pole, you fucking idiot. You know what you are getting into here, and as with the gameplay itself, it gets pretty repetitive and easy. Luckily though, again, this has managed to be the most visually interesting game from the company yet (with the possible exception of Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon), and naturally, it will entertain young ones for hours on end, and that’s all that really matters at the end of the day when talking about these games.

Overall, despite, once again, not changing anything in the gameplay department, the first installment of Freddi Fish is a good time, filled with plenty of fun and lovable characters, easy yet fun puzzles to solve, and a step-up in quality that can’t be ignored, especially with what came before this. I would recommend this for those who were fans of the previous Humongous Entertainment games, as well as those who have younger kids who want something to play, because alongside those other titles, this should provide a decent amount of fun for how long it lasts. Hell, I’m just thankful for the fact that the fish population can now go without starving due to a lack of kelp. I mean, there’s nothing else they could’ve possibly eaten!.......... except for plankton… and algae… and each other…

Game #512

It’s incredible that the Yakuza Like A Dragon series exists in this form at all. It’s really easy to discuss these games as a simple comeback story where it was saved from (Western) obscurity by grassroots efforts rallying around 0, but the fact that this insane momentum was met by RGG Studio changing the protagonist and turning it into a triple-A turn-based JRPG when the studio has no prior experience making those and conventional wisdom says the genre is utter sales poison is staggering. The last several mainline games demonstrate a remarkable and admirable disinterest in providing fans with what they expected or wanted, which is doubly impressive when the series is so iterative by nature.

Infinite Wealth iterates a lot on its predecessor, especially. It’s still a turn-based JRPG, and its changes are really, really cool. 7 felt like an experiment that had some great moments but didn’t cohere, an exemplification of the divine mathematics that underpin Dragon Quest and the travails that come when they are fucked with too much. Infinite Wealth still has a major debt to DQ (and some tinges of Chrono Trigger-style enemy shuffling) but manages to be much more unique and self-assured.

For starters, the exp curve is just phenomenally well-considered this time. Gone are the days of 7’s stupid-ass back-to-back grinds, and the scaling for exp and job levels means that it’s very easy to catch up and it can be surprisingly difficult to overlevel. In my playthrough, I kept half of the cast with their default jobs and I had the other half level a side job to 30 before swapping back to default. Team OG ended the game with job levels in the forties, and Team FAFO ended the game with a cumulative sixty job levels. I didn’t feel punished for doing either, as each job kit feels well-rounded and useful even without getting into the insane potential added by skill inheritance, but leveling side jobs felt breezy.

Beyond just the math, job design and skills got so much love - each new job has a really cool and distinct aesthetic, a really fun playstyle, and AoE attacks are way more interesting than they were 7. Circle AoEs might have one edge centered on the targeted enemy, making them finickier for selecting a full group but granting finer control over who else to include, granting damage bonuses for initiating the attack from far away, or having a long line start and end at interesting points. Cone-shaped AoEs are a lot more useful-feeling in this game when their far edge can be centered on the targeted enemy instead of the front tip. It all adds up to make lining up attacks require thought and positioning, which is really nice.

Being able to move around is the most transformational part of the combat changes, easily, but it’s part of a host of other changes that all feel a little small on their own but add up fast. There’s now a proximity bonus for basic attacks that adds in extra hits if they’re made from up close, and getting a proximity hit from behind guarantees crits. Enemy AI is aware of this, and the window to get back attacks is often fleeting at the start of the player’s turn. Having autoattacks be gimped if the party member is pathed far away or wants to hit a specific far-away enemy is frustrating, and there are three major ways to circumvent this - the simplest is to just use a skill to close the gap and do reliable damage.

They can also pick up an environmental object and use that - being able to walk up to ‘em means that they’re an actually valid part of the player’s strategy this time, and on top of their positioning benefits they're a great way to hit elemental weaknesses on people who don’t have certain skills. Otherwise, they can stand nearby another party member and do a combo attack that applies their weapon effects, does full damage at range, and gives their partner a bit of MP back on hit as well. These latter two options are useful and have a variety of obvious applications, but still come with drawbacks - if somebody’s basic attacks do knife or gun damage, then using a ground weapon will override that. Sometimes proximity attacks do way more damage than a combo strike or weapon attack, or the other person in a combo attack will hit an enemy’s elemental resistance and do almost no damage.

On top of all this, there is now a visible knockback indicator for attacks, which adds in yet another layer on top of all of this: knocking an enemy down into a party member does a lot of damage and applies their weapon effect, but knocking them into another enemy does a good bit of AoE, but knocking a large enemy into a wall scores a full knockdown other party members can exploit that otherwise wouldn’t exist. Enemies who block can have their guard broken by either doing a grab-type attack or hitting them from behind; a grab will permanently break it, a back attack will just pierce it for that one attack (and any followups while the enemy is on the ground). This is all then further compounded by the incessant shuffling and jockeying for space that enemies do - every consideration the player will make is based on reading the situation as it exists and trying to capitalize on split-second opportunities. It’s fully turn-based, but it has the pace and feel of an action fight, while retaining the positional focus, comboing, and okizeme of the series’ beat-em-up roots. It’s really fucking good.

The standout is Kiryu’s default job, which exemplifies almost all of this. Style swapping changes the properties of his basic attacks in cool ways on its own; Rush lets him make two weaker attacks per turn, giving him strong AoE or letting him score a guaranteed KO on a weakling before focusing fire on somebody else, Beast lets him do grabs without spending MP and amps up his ability to use ground weapons, and Brawler is the “vanilla” set of attacks that then let him do heat actions under the traditional series rules - be nearby a specific environmental object or otherwise fulfill certain criteria, get into proximity with them, then ace a quick QTE. All three styles get additional action game flair by having their proximity attacks have a short mash or timing prompt, which sells Kiryu both as somebody with a foot firmly planted in real-time and also as a monstrous DPS machine who feels awesome to control.

This mechanical empowerment is contrasted by his narrative role. Ichiban’s stylization as a JRPG hero sells him as somebody strengthened by his friends, but it results in a constant bitter tinge when Kiryu is in the squad. He didn’t always need help, and the character writing does a lot of really satisfying stuff with this disempowerment and reliance for such a stoic, badass lone wolf. Infinite Wealth is a game defined by dichotomies like this - obviously it’s a story split between two countries and two leads, but its themes are equally defined by parallels and mirrors. Everything ultimately comes back to purification or corruption, light and dark, and the terrors and delights of both the past and the future.

It doubles down on everything that makes these games what they are while simultaneously being confident enough to downplay so many of the series’ touchstones, giving the game a feel kinda like a concert that’s half playing the hits and half showing tracks from their next album. The first time a jacket is dramatically removed to reveal the body underneath is an unthinking act of kindness on Ichiban’s behalf, performed without any intent to fight or to show off, but when the player sees the world through Kiryu’s eyes, he can’t help but see ghosts everywhere he goes. These themes of past and future cycles make it hard to not feel a bit of metatext in this being the first full game released after Nagoshi left, and this “changing of the guard” plot can spark worries of being a retread of 7’s themes - and while certain plot elements certainly evoke it, there’s always a knowing tweak to it. 7 is a game about starting over again, of living through a storm and planting seeds for the future once the rubble’s been swept away. Infinite Wealth is more about perpetuating or changing the cycles everyone inhabits - of seeing what’s been done to them and the people before them and trying to break, fix, or continue things.

The returning characters are all well-considered and, equally importantly, most feel unexpected. Few of them feel obligatory, and those that do are given angles and elements that keep them surprising and cathartic nonetheless. Plenty of them have been chewed up and spit back out, some have come back stronger and better, some are indolent, and some lucky few stroll back into the picture feeling just as magnetic and lovable as they were all those years ago. Seeing the game take full advantage of its position as the ninth mainline title in a series stretching back almost twenty years is just as satisfying as seeing how it fantastically it intersects fantastically with the character writing writ large.

Yamai manages to escape the “Majima clone” allegations with aplomb, with a great design, fantastic presence (Koyasu the GOAT), and a satisfyingly mercurial-but-coherent role in the narrative. With the exception of Saeko, whose entire character frustratingly feels like an extension of Ichiban’s arc, literally every single party member is given a lot more to chew on this time. The gap between December 2019 and November 2023 reshuffled a lot and the status quo shifts give people unexpected and lovely positions and angles to view the world. Each little skit and friendship bingo conversation is consistently funny and interesting, and the new party members are literally all bangers. Special shout outs to the job unlock cutscenes creating the implication that Chitose has a Nico Robin-style hyperactive imagination that she does not ever share with anybody; that being said, Tomizawa and Chitose are both incredibly endearing and have a lot of great dramatic and comedic chops. Tomi gets more focus in the front half and Chitose the back, which gives her a bit of an edge in terms of immediate retrospective emotional edge, but both are excellent.

Tomizawa’s arc is tied up with the Barracudas, who are kind of a nexus of the game’s more annoying issues. The gang has a really strong and sympathetic hook that is connected to pretty venomous social commentary, but they rapidly recede from institutional relevance and, just like 7, the themes of homelessness, discrimination, and critiquing the lived effects of Japan’s comically harsh anti-yakuza laws (making it basically impossible to have a normal life certainly makes it effective for killing recruitment, but guys seeking a way out certainly have their work cut out for them…) feel under-discussed after the first act. Additionally, while Yakuza has always had a heightened tone, there are times when, regardless of the player’s tolerances, there will be moments that stretch credulity; especially when combat is done with silly costumes. Sometimes it feels weird to talk about America’s crumbling infrastructure and skyrocketing cost of life only to then beat up three Hungry Hungry Homeless.

These are issues, and they deserve mention, but simultaneously, this is the ninth mainline RGG game. Every issue raised so far has been present to some degree or another in quite literally every single game in the franchise. They’ll affect enjoyment to varying extents, of course, but… I wouldn’t get too mad at a fish for being bad at climbing trees, or at least when I’m neck-deep I’d think I know what pitfalls I'd fallen into.

For all the love heaped on the character writing, the main villains really falter, which is unexpected for this series. There’s good villains and bad villains, and certainly sometimes they contrive excuses for a final boss when punching out a businessman would be unsatisfying, but RGG Studio’s been on a hot streak for antagonists for a good while now. The antagonistic forces in this game feel more like an exercise in thematics than they are actually characters. It’s cool to see a contemporary political thriller manage to make themes of corruption, despoiling paradise, and battling against nature feel grounded within a real-world context and not feel too hacky about it, but despite their screentime they have a terminal lack of real presence or sauce. The villains’ big dramatic showcases pale in comparison to both the quiet and loud moments that accompany their underlings and frenemies. They do create good moments by contriving the protagonists into circumstances that showcase their amazing traits and even better voice actors, but the monologues and physical performances shown off could be bounced off somebody I actually give a shit about and I’d be into it even more than I am.

The cutscene direction, as implied above, is excellent. The stunt coordinator for every game since 6 cut his teeth on Mark DaCascos hood classic Drive (1997), a shitload of tokusatsu, and a little old game called Devil May Cry 3, and it lends the cutscene brawls a sense of physicality and flair that a lot of game cutscenes weirdly can’t do very well. The dramatic scenes have astonishingly good blocking and composition. For how many cutscenes are in this game, they find so many great camera angles, poses, and little vocal quavers to give far more weight to far more than one would expect.

It’s easy to gush about this game, and while it has its flaws and doesn’t always favorably stack up to past games, it feels like a chore to discuss them. Sure, Ichiban got a better moment in 7, Kiryu’s finest hour is still (regrettably) the final scene in Gaiden, and the enemy shuffling just inherently means that the combat’s chaotic, uncontrollable nature will create frustrating situations and missed attacks. It’s maybe not as focused as some other Yakuza games? (I mean, not really, lmao, the only games you might be able to argue that for are 2 and 6, and buddy, 2 is not as focused as you remember it being and 6 is just not interesting.) But at the same time, I don’t really give a fuck.

I love Yakuza most when it’s maximalist, audacious, willing to totally fuck with your expectations, and unafraid to be messy. That’s what I associate the series with and that’s what I want with each new game. That’s what I got here. I was so worried that Kiryu’s return would feel cheap, I was worried that losing Nagoshi would rob the games of an ineffable soul, and Gaiden put the fear of God in me that they would retain the godawful grinds that 7 had (if not double down.) Some mistakes it makes are certainly frustrating and I hope that one day the series will move on.

At the end of the day, it’s hard to not root for the game anyways. A game like this is so special to me. It never treats its past as a burden, and it plants one foot after another into an uncertain future with confidence. You can’t always cure stupid, but the way it endlessly strives towards a better and brighter path, unafraid to experience the sad, bitter, silly, and sweet in all its forms… it’s nice to see a game’s ethos resemble its admirable hero so much.

This was so fucking bad in every regard that I spent its runtime successfully dissociating it from Silent Hill as a concept. "Sure, Ito and Yamaoka are here, but they're hired guns nowadays anyways," I said. It plays like a terrible itch.io or Steam shovelware game, and its mix of incredibly detailed environmental assets (so much unique graffiti!) and horrifically rigged main character model whose hair is clipping through her glasses in every single cutscene in the game gives it a certain Unreal Marketplace Slop atmosphere like those as well. The inciting incident of the plot defeats its own themes and the themes of witches, generational trauma, neglect, and incidents from seven years in the past having unintended consequences make it clear this was written by a guy who wants to be Ryukishi but isn't Him. All of these are so comically bad and dumb that I was able to laugh this off, until the credits song was actually good. The guitars played the Silent Hill riff, and I had to deal with the fact that this is the future of the series. This is what I have to look forward to. I sank into the couch and have not been able to escape.

At this point in time, the Final Fantasy series had created a pretty successful, albeit divisive at points, trilogy on the NES. These three games that would redefine the entirety of the RPG genre as we know it, garner many fans worldwide, and would cement the Final Fantasy series as Square/Square Enix’s flagship franchise from that point onwards. So naturally, after achieving a hat trick with those games, Square was ready to keep this gravy train rolling, with another installment in the series that would be the final entry for the NES, while preparing for what would come out for the SNES later. However, due to the fact that the SNES was about to be released, Square decided to shift gears and re-develop that NES game for this new system, and while they were at it, they were going to release it overseas as well… only, they would end up changing the name of the game to Final Fantasy II for us, because “lol, get fucked, America”. But anyway, just a few months after the SNES would come out for us in America, we would get this next chapter in the series, which we now truly know as Final Fantasy IV.

Before initially playing this game a good couple years ago, I had no clue about the reputation this game held, nor what it managed to do for the Final Fantasy series as a whole. I had just thought it was just gonna be another entry in the series, this time now being brought onto the next generation of consoles, with nothing else to really get too excited about. However, then I played through the game, and needless to say, I immediately fell in love with what I was presented with, as this game is, in my opinion, the best entry in the series that we had ever gotten at that point, and definitely my favorite of the series that I have played so far. Granted, it does have plenty of issues, ones that became abundantly more clear as the years would go by, but for what we have here, it is a massive leap in quality from the previous titles, and one that manages to take the series, and the genre as a whole, into new heights once again.

The story, for the time, was the most developed, character-focused, and engaging one not just in the series, but for video games as a whole, showing that video game stories didn’t have to be just one-note, and that they could show off plenty of emotions and dramatic moments when treated with care…………. even though, looking back, you can see that the story here is kind of a mess, but trust me, we will get into that later on. The graphics are pretty good, having plenty of great sprites for characters, enemies, and bosses, but when you look at it side by side with previous games, you can REALLY tell that it is just an NES game that was prettied up for the SNES, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is worth pointing out. The music is some of the best the series has ever had, with there being plenty of wonderful, iconic tunes that I love hearing even after having played it several years ago, such as with the boss theme, the common town theme, and, for my personal favorite track in the game, the Red Wings theme. And finally, as for the controls and gameplay, both of them work basically the exact same way that you would expect from a Final Fantasy game, but with notable changes that make the game so much more enjoyable by comparison.

The game is a traditional RPG, where you primarily take control of Cecil Harvey, go through plenty of different locations not just on the world that you live on, but also the Underworld and even the fucking moon at some point (yeah, things get pretty ridiculous), talk to plenty of NPCs that you will encounter who will either give you helpful hints/advice, or they will aid you on your quest in some way, find plenty of items that you can use to either upgrade yourself, get better items with from shops or otherwise, or to help you progress along in the game, and of course, get into random battles, where you will slash away at your foes before you either using your main weapon, spells, or whatever else you have lying around in your pockets, and gain experience points to level up and increase your stats. For the most part, it is your standard RPG through and through, which, even on its own, would’ve been fine enough to play through, and I would have had a good time with it. However, with the changes that this game implements, it sky-rockets it upwards into being some of the best content that I have seen out of this series so far, making me eager to get to the other titles in the series sooner or later to see where we can go from here.

In terms of the gameplay, not much has really changed, except for one key difference when it comes to the main battles, which now introduces the Active Time Battle system. Rather than taking turns to fight your opponents like in the previous Final Fantasy games, here, the battle is constantly moving, with characters taking turns based on whatever their speed is, allowing them to use commands faster than opponents in optimal scenarios. That may make the game sound pretty easy, but then you remember, the enemies can use this too, which means that, in a battle, you always have to be quick on your toes to use commands before your opponent can, making battle much more fun and exciting as a result. I have never played any other RPG before this that used this type of battle system, so needless to say, it was somewhat odd seeing this play out for the first time for me, but soon after, I quickly fell in love with it, and adored every second of it, as it did make things feel a lot more active, a lot more reactionary, and a lot more strategic, which made me get invested even more. It’s a good thing too, because apparently, this style will be used for plenty of other FF games later down the road, which I am all here for.

That’s really all that got changed for the gameplay though, as again, for the most part, it all plays practically the same as every other game in the series so far. In terms of other aspects of the game though, such as the story, the characters, and what occurs in said story… well, really, what hasn’t been changed? For the first time in any Final Fantasy game, or most other video games at the time for that matter, we have a set of characters that are already defined, have definitive personalities, relationships with other characters, and moments seen throughout that further define them. Yeah, we saw a brief bit of this in FF II, but that was pretty limited in terms of what it managed to do, as this game takes those ideas and pushes them even further.

Not to mention, each character also has a predetermined job class that they work with. You can no longer change up what job a character has, which does kinda suck, but at the same time, not only do the jobs that the characters get fit them pretty well, but they also grow and develop them overtime, learning better skills and different tactics to use in battle. This especially helps out with the boss fights, which do have more strategy to them rather than just “kill this guy while not getting killed yourself”, requiring you to pay attention to what they are doing while you continue attacking, as performing the wrong move at the wrong time can change the heat of the battle very quickly. With that being said though, for what we do get in this game in terms of character traits, dramatic moments, and character chemistry, it is all pretty basic, with elements that we have seen plenty of times ever since, which can make going back to this game feel generic and underwhelming as a result, but for what it is, I was still able to enjoy the cast of characters and the story that we got here… despite how flawed it comes off as.

Which speaking of, in terms of the story, again, it needs to be asked, what DIDN’T get changed? Out of all the Final Fantasy games so far, this one has the most developed and thorough storyline of the bunch, with plenty of character moments, overarching plotlines, and development that we have seen. On the surface, it is all pretty basic, just being another game about collecting a bunch of elemental crystals to stop a big, bad evil person, which is all well and good, but we also have Cecil going from his dark, “evil” nature to becoming a Paladin, Cain being brainwashed and needing to have himself snapped out of it by our party, Rydia losing her village and needing to learn to overcome her trauma, and several other moments that I haven’t mentioned here. Again, a lot of this is pretty basic looking back, but around the time when most video game stories were “Go save your girl” or “Go kill this big evil thing”, this went a long way, influencing video game storytelling all the way up to this day.

However, this then leads perfectly into one of the biggest problems with the game: again, the story is kind of a mess. Yes, it is pretty generic all things considered, and some parts of it have definitely not aged well over time, but when you ignore all that, there’s also several other elements of the story that feel overused and are, to put it bluntly, fucking stupid. First of all, throughout the journey, you will lose a lot of party members, such as with Cid, Porum and Pallum, Yang, and so on and so forth, with you being led to believe that all of them sacrificed themselves for the sake of your quest. But then, as you keep going through the game, you then learn that everyone is ok, and almost nobody ended up dying whatsoever! So with that being said, I have to ask, what was the point of all those fake-out deaths? Sure, a fake-out death can be effective when used correctly, and for most part, they are all pretty well done, but the more times you end up doing this, it not only becomes more predictable and less effective, but it also becomes, again, fucking stupid.

And speaking of fucking stupid, there is also the means in which a lot of the plot elements in this game are carried out. For some reason, Cecil has the biggest case of Murphy's Law that I have ever seen, as whenever he and his crew go on to doing anything in this game, and I really do mean anything, SOMETHING will go wrong, and prolong the journey forward. It all usually involves them going to some place, finding out the problem in said place, taking care of said problem, only to then have the reward or goal snatched away from them in the last second because “Ha ha, FUCK YOU”. There is one part of the game that stands out heavily when it comes to this. It’s when Cecil and the gang defeat Golbez, one of the game’s villains, inside of this sanctuary that holds one of the crystals they need. While celebrating their defeat and discussing what they should do next, Golbez’s hand starts to crawl around the room and go towards the crystal. Cecil and the crew then proceed to watch this hand go up to the crystal, steal it away, and then leave, WHILE DOING NOTHING AT ALL TO STOP IT. Call this story good all you want, but moments like that you cannot defend, as it is just way too stupid to justify.

But don’t worry, my problems with the game don’t just go as far as the story, because oh no, I got some gripes with the game too, albeit very minor ones. Most of the gameplay works pretty well, and again, I would consider it to be the best in the entire series so far, but like with all of these games so far, there just seems to be one or two areas that’s entire purpose is to piss you off. One such place is the Sealed Cave, a location in the Underworld that has one of the crystals you need to get, but it is filled to the brim with these Trap Door enemies, who can all throw themselves into lava for all I care. They can do massive damage to you whenever you fight them, most of the time even one-shotting party members, and to top it all off, they can split into multiple enemies, which can also mean more damage can be dealt to you. But then again, these kinds of issues only apply to one or two areas throughout the entire game, and even then, if you are playing the original SNES version of the game (the US version, anyway), it is very easy, so there aren’t too many instances where you will have a lot of hard-as-hell situations to deal with.

Overall though, despite having one or two annoying areas to go through, as well as a story that is repetitive and flawed when looking back on it, FFIV is, without a doubt in my mind, the best game in the series so far, bringing the classic gameplay to the next generation of consoles in a brand new and exciting way, while further enhancing elements like the story and characters even further, influencing not just RPGs, but all of video games further as a result. I would absolutely recommend it not just for those who are big fans of FF and RPGs in general, but also for someone who wants to get into either FF or RPGs in general, because while it may not be one of the most approachable or beloved game of the series, it is one of the best places to start, and I cannot recommend it enough. Although, now that I think about it, this game sets a pretty high bar for the next game to top. I’m not sure how it will be able to do it. I dunno, maybe they will find a way………. or, you know, they might fumble the ball along the way.

Game #503

Oh no.

I was going to start this off by saying that I've personally dealt with a lot of the subject matter that was tackled in the game and that's why I think it's abysmal but I don't even think you need that to recognize how awfully mishandled pretty much everything is. The whole game feels like it's PSA video on bullying/suicide/parental abuse/whatever else they tried to shove in here that was specifically made for middle schoolers. It's so distilled and surface-level that it would've been insulting had it not been for the almost satirical performances and downright cringey writing. It's also a mess on the gameplay front. The environments are pretty to look at but what's there to interact with isn't interesting and the chase sequences are not only devoid of scares, they're incredibly unfun because they're based on trial and error more than anything else.

Kind of obsessed with how bad this was.

So uh, I think this might end up being the year of Mario Kart for me. Idk why but I feel like playing and reviewing them all. Besides Double Dash as I don't own it and can't run it on my craptop. Either way, 64 was one of the big Mario Kart games I missed alongside Double Dash. I really don't know why I never picked this up years ago, cuz after finally playing it, I just know I would have had a blast playing it with friends.

In terms of controls and how your kart feels, this is miles better than Super I think. The drifting doesn't feel like ass anymore and is pretty solid here. Though, it can be a little tricky to pull off and you can spin out if you don't constantly move the control stick, however it feels pretty nice. Honestly a lot of the time you don't even need to drift as you can turn really well without it, and the courses for the most part don't require drifting. This is a huge plus from Super I think.

Another big improvement is the track design. The courses are now fully 3D and they're just so much more fun to play through. There's a couple I'm not the biggest fan of (I'm looking at you Toad's Turnpike and Yoshi Valley) but in general, this is a very solid selection. Also every stage is distinct and doesn't share the same 5 or 6 level themes like Super did so that's a massive improvement.

The items are also improved tho they can be sort of weird. The red shells are actually super effective in this game, as long as they don't hit a wall. Banana bunches come in 5's now, which I found interesting as this is the only Mario Kart game I've played so far which does that. Shells now rotate around you. The addition of other items like the gold mushroom or blue shell are also very nice. But getting these items can be kinda weird. There were a handful of instances where I was in 2nd place and I was just handed stars and lightning bolts which is just really OP. It's weird but I wasn't complaining because the AI in this game can be brutal

I played on every CC (except for Mirror Mode) and got every gold cup, and the CPU's on 150cc can be brutal. In general, the rubber-banding in this game is nuts but on 150cc, a couple wrong moves can completely screw you over unless you get lucky. This combined with the fact you can spin out way easier, made 100cc the ideal engine class to play on. With friends tho, I'm sure 150 is a blast.

That's another thing, I played this alone. I wasn't able to play battle mode but from what I've seen, it looks like an absolute blast. I'm only judging it from videos, but I can say it's definitely a solid battle mode when compared to other Mario Kart games. That plus the actual racing, and I'm sure if I played this when I was younger I'd love it more. I think a big part in me giving it a 7 and not anything lower despite some gripes is my nostalgia for the N64. Even despite not playing it until this year, it does bring me back to the 2013/2014 days where the N64 was my favorite console. I just love the aesthetic what can I say.

So yeah I'm pretty happy I ended up enjoying this game as I thought the controls would be way worse tbh. Back then, I played Diddy Kong Racing and didn't vibe with it much so I figured this would have the same fate. Or maybe I just need to play Diddy Kong Racing again cuz I was probably wrong back then lol. Either way, solid Mario Kart and a big improvement from Super for sure!

As of now, I have only finished this with the normal and good endings. Going for the other three/all achievements, but I thought I would begin writing my thoughts down.

This game became very fun after awhile! Lydie and Suelle are excellent, fun, charming characters, and I enjoyed the new additions to the series, as well as the returning faces. The events nicely closed out the original mysterious trilogy.

However, it took a long road to get there! For the first six of twelve chapters (about 30 hr in game), I was very bored with the game’s formulaic gameplay, with it being so formulaic that each chapter was structured the same, and the story was predictable. It wasn’t until they broke away from the formula a bit/there was more to do, that I enjoyed it.

This alchemy system is probably my favorite Atelier one so far, and the combat is very fun in the late game, especially for bosses. However, in the early game, regular mobs take way too long, due to both sides not doing much damage. There are some weaker story elements like most Atelier games, but I still overall enjoyed it.

In my opinion, the gameplay pales in comparison to Firis, but is better than Sophie. I’d rank this story highest, and Firis’ as lowest though.

Only 4 stars due to the slow first half…it was going to be 3 before the game picked up. Could have been a 4.5-5 star game if the beginning was given more love! Recommended, but have some patience for it to get better!

Note: 13 trophies to plat. Will play casually until then.

Edit: 9 to plat. Got true ending, so shelving for now.

Edit: downgraded to 3.5 stars. The road to the money ending, as well as platinum are extremely tedious.

The steam discovery queue is a bit like staring at an endless stream of runoff, but sometimes you get to look at something interesting. Cipher Monk caught my attention with the mention of it being based on a number system made by monks in the 13th century (and its 1 euro price tag).

Its definitely a low budget production, a very deliberately minimalistic puzzle game which still manages to control a bit stiff-ly but its otherwise well executed I'd say. Its method of tutorialisation could be accused of laziness, given its literally just a contextless cheat sheet of several numbers in the cistercian system and their arabic numeral equivalents, but I like how it makes the act of understanding the system into a puzzle of its own. Obviously if you have previous knowledge of the cistercian numerals this aspect will fall flat but if not (like I did(n't)) its a good time extrapolating and trying to use pattern recognition to work out the rules of the system.

Of course once you are comfortable with it the game actually throws you the curveball its based around (as otherwise the game would be little more than a rote converter from arabic to cistercian numerals) with a limited number of "characters" being needed to form each number and a few negative numbers thrown in to make you have to think about how to combine these additions and subtractions to make the target number within the logic of the cistercian numerals. They're not the greatest brain teasers ever, and I finished the whole thing in about 45 minutes, but it was a nice 45 minutes.

I do have to laugh, when Steam warned me that the game wasn't available in spanish. The game is in portuguese and english but all the language changes are the word "current" and "target" above the (no prizes for guessing) current and target number, everything else is pictographic, I'm pretty sure everyone on earth can play this regardless of what their mother tongue is.

My wife and I are shelving this, not because we're sick of it after several weeks of constant play, but because we're so willing to sink more and more time into it. At some point I've gotta play other games!

Bolting a city-builder onto a roguelike superstructure is a clever concept, but it's not without risks. A single game of most city-builders is a long endeavor, often taking multiple days of play and feeling like a complete experience in and of itself. How then do you strike a balance where each game is lightweight enough to play multiple in succession, but they still retain the long-term experiential arc that's core to the city-builder genre?

Against the Storm manages this spectacularly, targeting each individual settlement somewhere between three to five hours, depending on the difficulty level and the player's experience. It ends up working out most of the time so that just as you get the highest level of technology up and running, it's time to start getting those last few Reputation points and finishing the settlement. It's just shy of rushed, the perfect amount of time to add the extra challenge of figuring out when to switch focus from sustainability to a sprint for the finish.

Because the player is doing many more cities from the gound up than they would in other city-builders, there's another risk that the play would grow stale. The game avoids this through several layers of clever randomization which combine to push different settlements in different directions. Each settlement is placed in one of a handful of different biomes with different resources readily available; you have a different subset of the five species in your settlement, each with their own strengths and desires; and most crucially, you can only choose from a limited set of building blueprints.

I think the building system is the most inspired part of this game. Most buildings exist to process raw materials into outputs. Each building has three recipes: for example, you can make flour out of grain, roots, or mushrooms. You can make biscuits out of flour plus herbs, berries, or roots. The core ingredients are always the same, but different buildings have more or less efficient recipes for different products, as well as different sets of recipes.

This simple concept causes an incredible amount of variety between runs. If you get a Rain Mill blueprint (excellent flour production but only poor recipes otherwise) you'll know you need to prioritize buildings that make baked goods. But if you get the Press (poor flour production but excellent oil), you'll be able to make a few biscuits but you shouldn't make it a pillar of your settlement. The ramifications ripple out to make each run feel genuinely unique and improvisational in a way even the best roguelikes often struggle to achieve.

The meta-progression helps with this. Each game exists as part of a larger-scale run called a "cycle", which will often contain six or more separate settlements, working towards a final extra-difficult settlement that unlocks the next difficulty level. The cycle system means that you're strongly motivated not to just give up on a settlement that isn't set up for your preferred strategy without damaging your larger-scale progress. Every settlement is important, so every strategy has to be considered.

Two men approach a ledge. They are underground in an incredibly hostile environment that neither could foresee arriving in when they woke up that morning. They are tired, mentally frayed and have an uneasy trust in each other based entirely on circumstances. The first man reaches the ledge, after an awkwardly long second staring he finally drops down the 3ft drop to continue along the dimly lit path. The second man approaches the ledge but rather than drop down he freezes, staring at it whilst his comrade looks at him perplexed. The man walks away from the ledge before coming back to it freezing again. He refused to jump down to continue their trek. Was it fear preventing him? Had the ordeal and horrors he'd witnessed finally pushed his mind to far?

No, it's just that playing House of Ashes in online co-op was a miserable buggy experience.

You see I played this with a friend, we play together nearly every evening and are always looking for a new Playstation co-op experience. We had enjoyed Man of Medan despite some issues and heard this game was supposedly all around the better of the two. We ran into constant technical problems though. Characters getting stuck, locking up for no reason. The game taking forever to actually perform an action, even picking up an item to look at was a complete chore of waiting 10 seconds to see if they would actually move. We had to quit out and restart half a dozen times to get past various sections and by the end we were frustrated by it all. The thing is it wasn't just the technical problems but a variety of issues built up leaving a bitter taste in our mouths. We beat the game, kind of hated it and moved onto Wild Hearts. The thing is, I decided to go back to it to see if the game was better playing it on my own and my second experience has left me softer towards it overall though certain flaws continue regardless of player occupancy.

For those unaware The Dark Pictures Anthology is a series of horror games by developer Supermassive Games that are more like quick time event interactive movies. Your inputs decide the outcome and the wrong move at the wrong time can see characters permanently die and adjust the story outcome slightly. Our first issue with this game is the button prompts for these events. They are based on the PS5 controller with white buttons with the Cross, Triangle, Square and Circle symbols overlayed in grey. They aren't clear without colour to tell them apart and when you only have a second to work it out...well the design is awful. I went into the accessibility options to change them all to cross because it was implemented so badly when playing on my own. I will at least give them credit for those features.

A lot of the rest of the game has it's ups and downs as well. I really liked the setting going with a Mesopotamian historical influence which isn't something seen in games all too much. The modern plot setting there of the 2003 invasion of Iraq looking for chemical weapons however certainly is...a choice. It did allow a good relationship build up between two characters of Jason a lieutenant in the US marines and Salim a sergeant in the Iraqi army. Their characters and relationship are the two best parts of the whole game with some well written dialog and voice acting that bring them to life as being both professional and empathetic. If only the rest of the writing was as good or even competent because most of the other characters are just unrelatable buffoons. I didn't care for the forced interpersonal drama between 3 of them and was quite happy for them to die. They are needlessly confrontational, rude and in a lot of cases completely inconsistent. In one scene as an example:

Character 1: "What's there to think about? We go and save him"
Character 2: thinks about it for a second
Character 1: "He isn't one of us lets leave him"

It's like they are different people from line to line at times completely breaking immersion when they 180, never mind in the same conversation. Frankly except Jason and Salim they are all extremely unlikeable. I understand the developers want to build a varied cast that will leave difficult decisions for the player with conflict but they went overboard leaving a negative experience in a lot of scenes because I just didn't care about what happened to any of them.

The story also kind of lacks suspense and scares which I was surprised by. It has an interesting setting and atmosphere but it never really uses them to build up any tension or fear of the unknown. Except for a few scenes early on the game is more just a military shooter than a horror title. The magic is gone when the monster is revealed and the curtain gets drawn back. In this case it just happens all too early.

I will say my second playthrough was far more enjoyable overall regardless of the issues above. The only bugs playing solo was a trophy not unlocking (I had to disconnect from the internet and restart my PS5 replaying the scene to unlock it as a work around found by the community). I really like the visuals and general ideas presented here, they just needed more polish and to iron out the cast to a better degree. Still I am glad I went back to it as it has convinced me to play the second game in the series Little Hope which I had initially written off after my first playthrough of House of ashes, I just won't play it online...

+ Jason and Salim are great characters with an excellent comradery.
+ Visuals are gorgeous.
+ Mesopotamian setting is a nice choice.

- The other characters could all rot for all I care.
- Playstation quick time buttons are unclear.
- Online is a constant buggy mess and a semi bugged trophy.
- Not scary, no tension or build up.
- War setting is...a choice.

In 2021, Rockstar announced a group of remasters for the three games that put them on the map. Those remasters being the "definitive editions." Shortly after the announcement, they were released and they got absolutely destroyed by critics and fans of these games for being lazy, buggy cash-grabs. Over time, they did release updates that ultimately improved their performance making them a lot more playable than they were on release. Having played both the originals and more recently these "definitive editions," it seems they have fixed these remasters quite a bit, but they are still far from perfect.

Despite its imperfections, there is surprisingly a lot of good that this collection does. In fact, they are the reason I gave this collection the score I did. The first thing I can think of right off the bat is the addition of checkpoints. My biggest complaint when I was playing through the original versions were the lack of checkpoints. I couldn't count how many times I had to rebuy weapons and drive back to the missions across all 3 games. Just having checkpoints alone made playing these games MUCH more enjoyable than my inital playthrough of the originals on Ps4 (which they sadly took down). They also added a marker that tells you where you need to drive during missions. This feature is another major QoL improvement that greatly increased my enjoyment as I got lost quite a bit and would fail missions because of that. There is also the weapon wheel from GTA V, but personally, I just stuck with the old-fashioned way of going through my weapons. Regardless, it's still a nice feature to have.

Even with these positive changes, there are still reasons to dislike it. The graphics lack the charm the originals have, the games still have some glitches and aren't as polished as they should be, and the inclusion of checkpoints are misleading. While I didn't encounter anything gamebreaking, one thing I noticed is that enemies sometimes stand still for no reason at all and their behavior seems off. It didn't happen every time but it was frequent enough to catch my attention. There was also a weird jumping bug I encountered in San Andreas, but luckily it only happened once. While San Andreas has checkpoints, III & Vice City's "checkpoints" aren't really what they claim to be and more like a retry button. I didn't mind this too much as most of the missions in those games are pretty short, but it is highly misleading and comes across as incredibly half-assed & lazy. As for the graphics, they have made an attempt to alieviate that by adding a classic option in the Netflix version. It isn't perfect but its a step in the right direction. I just hope they port it and add more patches to the console versions too.

Compared to its inital release, its clear that Rockstar has fixed these versions to a significant degree, but ultimately they still deserved more love & care than what they got. Do I think this collection is worth $60? Absolutely not! It might have added a lot of positive QoL changes but the lack of polish alone is enough to avoid this at full price. I would recommend getting it on sale, especially since it does quite often. For new players and less skilled ones such as myself, its a good way to expirence these games. As for those who've played the originals, they might want to stick to them.

you know me hot and sexy marathoning 30 series at the same time because the god of gaming bestowed upon me the holy gift of adhd so that i would be able to pop my pussy off with all these games at the same time and it kind of is a damn surprise that i even manage to successfully complete at least some games all around maybe im not as bad as my impostor syndrome makes me believe

so gamefags told me ys 1 and 2 were absolutely necessary to play ys origin and that if i actually played it before the first duology all my family would be murderously killed so for all the people reading this who have no idea if ass one and two are actually essential to play this game i say yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees and noooooooooooooooooooooo theres some really good callbacks or callforwards ? this is a prequel so i have no idea but it was nice to see some recurring places items and plot elements completely recontextualised to the point that they felt like nothing more than cameos . theres some degree of story ties that you can make between this game and the others but at their core theyre basically two different beasts I DO ACTUALLY recommend playing ys chronicles first just because some of the stuff youre gonna see here are probably gonna hit harder if you know whats gonna happen in those games but again its not necessary and youre not gonna miss anything in particular if you decide to just start with this one (which wouldnt be something id judge you for because the bumpy dumpy installments are what they are)

so ys origin takes place a lot of time before ys 1 and 2 which means that adol was still not even an embryo that being said you can choose between 2 + 1 protagonists aka yunica hugo and ??? and all of them have different play styles and story beats and shit so the real question here is UMHHHHHHH is it actually worth it to play all the routes ??? i mean if you really want to i guess it IS necessary to understand the entirety of the story because the last playthrough is actually the canon one as much as i know which means that if you play only the yunica one for example you wont see the beefy hot man doing his shit and all but you can still get a self contained story nonetheless

but whatever youre gonna do i dont care because i did play all three of these fucking routes because this game is ADDICTING . AS . SHIT

ys origin actually has a pretty different action rpg gameplay from the ys duology which means that this is gonna get more hack and slashy than it previously was now theres not any bumb system or whatever but some button mashy and skill using and shit and tachycardia . not too bad . now for some reason though they actually mustve laced this game with some drugs because wow the fast paced gameplay is so fucking intoxicating theres a lot to the fighting system the attacks are super fast the skills actually add a lot to the quality of the movements and attacking and whatever and also a super attack mode theres something for everybody lets just say that

and again the fact that all three characters have some different playstyles mean that the replayability is off the roof ………. kinda

see the main gimmick of the game is just ascending this fucking tower and for every single set of stories youre gonna get some different biomes like idk theres the normal one the water one the fire one the sand one (which is the worst one dont get me started) theres something for everybody now the thing is that youre gonna do this for all three of the characters going through the same floors and watching the same kind of events over and over and over which isnt really too much of a problem for me who played nier replicant three times for all the endings but i guess it can actually be detrimental to somebody else

the enemies are the same the events are the same even the way you progress through the floors are the same most of the time even though there may be some events were you have to get a different item and shit but that just stops there like idk hugo is less of a fast paced guy because he likes to stick magic poles up his ass so he needs dragon claws to walk on the sandy passages and shit or like the fact that yunica just uses her harmonica to stop the devil's room music and instead hugo decides to SMASH the fucking pipes with an hammer insane

this is probably my main issue with this game since the gameplay is absolutely stellar the leveling progression is super satisfying the bosses (for once in ys) are good like really good so much so that they reused them 3 times and the tower is an intricate and interesting place to explore with lots of different loots nooks and crannies to get some new equipments or skill upgrades in and thats probably what drew me in so quickly

also its pretty funny cause i cant really say anything anymore about the gameplay my soliloquy ends here like thats basically it that's what you're gonna do in the game period . its not really that complicated but in its simplicity it gets you going and going and the way the routes dont last that long you can actually get a lot out of 8 or like 10 hours each playthrough

that being said the story is also pretty simple it has a good enough premise for whats gonna happen in ys 1 and 2 goddesses vanish the research team is looking for them a tower ascended from the decaying earth yada yada you already know this shit from ys chronicles so personally my favorite one is yunicas route which is such an heartbreaking beginning to this “trilogy” of stories and shes honestly such an amazing protagonist im in love in her and her interactions with the goddesses never failed to make me emotional her backstory is the one that resonated the most with me and since it was also the very first route of the bunch ive played its nuance obviously hit more then the next 2 routes and the fact that shes never gonna come back in any ys game cause they take place after like 700 years which means she's been under 3 feet of dirt for all this time is gonna drive me insane dont talk to me yunica my sweet baby I love you please be my gf

while i definitely enjoy hugos route i dont think hes my favorite character of the bunch and the rude cute boy with trauma isnt a trope im fond of so he definitely didnt tickle any part of my body BUT his story made me realise how much of a girlboss epona is she just skyrocketed to my favorite character top lisr like its nothing shes incredible absolutely jawdropping character development i kinda hated her in yunicas route but she just ended up being so much more than a nosy bitch AND hugos route is a huge introduction to the storyline that the game is gonna follow on the claws route which is probably not only the most complete and satisfying route of the bunch but is also the one that actually finishes in a way that really makes the entire 3 plays worth it and that final boss is INCREDIBLE

plus hes hot and his backstory is probably the most beautiful one of the bunch because umh I cant get into spoiler territory but its reaaaaaaaaaaaally heart-rending to see the lengths he went to protect what was important for him like when the main twist came in my mind exploded and I was a mess truly a mess im so sorry for the FBI people in my pc to see what happened to me

whatever only downside is that the other side characters are pretty monotonous and uneventful like theres the yunica love interest the hugo love interest some cunty cunty cunt huh magician a girlboss who probably scissors with the magician and a gay priest and thats the extent of the characters I remember if there's somebody else in here OH THE TWINK WHO UPGRADES YOUR WEAPONS yeah he's dope I guess but the goddesses really ended up serving the most cunt in the entire cast so the 2 measures are balanced and they're probably the most complex and sad characters of the bunch so OF COURSE i was gonna fall in love with them im not dumb also feena I still have my engagement ring with me please be my wife

last but not least the art direction reminded me of trails in the sky which is a game I replayed 10 times and never finished so that brought up some Afgh4nistan war flashbacks but that being said the art direction is pretty good the character portraits are portraiting and the ost IS FUCKING BOOMING UGHHHHHH WHAT THE FUCK DID THEY PUT IN THIS also the mirror ice palace somehow ended up being my favorite place in TWO games because of the incredible work of art that is the ost called dreaming im not joking whoever composed that shit deserves a kiss ON their mouths RIGHT now

I'm gonna skip this or else I'm gonna start embedding ost videos on here and never finishing the review so bye

i have surprisingly very little to say about this game after how much i enjoyed it but sometimes a feel good game requires no introduction to be made . godtier action rpg really good mystery type of story with a lot of interesting hints to what happens in the original ys and traversing the same places of those games was a joy and mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm i guess if youre crazy you can also extend this game to 30 hours or something so theres that

so umh this is probably the game that hooked me and made me realise that ys is actually good or better that ys CAN be good sometimes so im gonna continue this venture until i get to lacrimosa because i REALLY wanna play lacrimosa nothing is gonna stop me

play this game theres yunica . the end

hi kishgal im single and if you want im currently stretching my hole you know what that means

why the fuck did they have to make me cry at the end of yunicas route wow and BY THE WAY the fact that the final pose reah and feena make is the cover art of ys 2 is gonna keep me up at night

I wish I gave the game 5 stars. It was for a while, but I can still confidently say it's a benchmark of the genre. Kiwami 2 rejects its modest PS2 origins and manages to embrace its spirit in the process. Playing this gave me the feeling that what I played the day before was something I had done 20 years ago beat by beat, little by little. This mirrors what Kiwami 2's story is about. Kiryu is pulled back in to be a criminal syndicate's wheelchair, and finds a fitting end, only for... yknow, there are sequels, so it's not gonna be a conclusive ending. I've managed to do all substories but the cabaret ones, speaking of it's absurd of much that mode pulled me in. For, like, an hour.

It's a long game, so I should have a lot to say... a lot of it was whopping ass. There's great joy in managing the skill tree almost as much as the fighting in itself. And huh, the ending does similar mistakes the original did, but I'm under NDA I can't reveal further. Yakuza once again a gold mine of screenshots. The quirky and the silly, their stocks are through the roof. What's even better is how they sometimes make you stop and accept profound wisdom from the mentally deranged. At some point, Kiryu even blurts out that some thing or other is, that's right, like a dragon and I couldn't help but clap. Tell it how it is, Dame Da Yakuza! (I'll never be able to make a Yakuza review without alluding to da dame joke)

Castlevania Bloodlines was known as Castlevania The New Generation here in Europe and I'm kind of saddened it doesn't have it's own page on Backloggd as we had the far superior cover art though I admit that may be just my hatred of the red Genesis strip not present here on Backloggd. We definitely got the better Symphony of the Night art though. My North American friends, you have my sympathy. (of the Night)

As for Bloodlines itself, it's easily one of my favorite classicvanias. The story is slightly more modern setting of 1917 and changes things marginally for a more interesting result. Rather than the usual 'Belmont clan goes to Dracula's castle and kills when he resurrects' him plot hook the series mostly runs on it instead has two protagonists to choose from at the start of the game. Admittedly they are both distant descendants of the Belmont's John Morris and Eric Lecarde who take up the call when vampire Elizabeth Barkley (based on a real countess who allegedly bathed in blood among other things) uses the global war to use the souls of the dead to bring back Dracula again.

Global is really the theme of the game taking place on stages set in Romania, Greece, Italy, England, France giving some cool stage themes and effects. One level has a constant water reflection as the characters move atop ruins, another with a rotating tower and another swaying which for the time were mighty impressive and aspects still look stand out today like light coming through windows in later stages or a semi 3D type boss that could fit into vector man. Honestly it both looks and sounds great. The music is the gothic flair you'd expect from the Castlevania series mixed with that bass and machine sound the Megadrive was known for.

The aspect of the gameplay I like most comes down to the two character choices as it's more than a visual swap. John uses the whip as you would expect of a Castlevania. He can power it up, attack downwards and also use it to swing. Eric uses the Spear of Alucard which has a much greater reach and he can use to pole vault straight up. these differences allow the character to diverge slightly in level paths (though it's extremely limited) as well as fight bosses in different approaches. Though the subweapons are generally similar of boomerany, axe and holy water they both also have an extra move if you press up with it for each one for both characters. I prefer Eric personally of the two but that could be because I am bad at these games and he feels more like easy mode due to his extended reach. When you get good enough though you can use the jump to avoid enemy attacks and land ready to attack yourself which is a neat mechanic when it goes well. Either character you choose it feels great to play, less stiff and cumbersome like it's contemporaries.

Bloodlines does have it's flaws though as much as I do like it though. I really dislike the level in Versaille where the pacing and enemy designs feel a little off with the rest of the game and not all the bosses are equal. John also not being able to diagonal whip attack except when jumping also feels off control wise to an otherwise tightly designed experience.

These are pretty small niggles to an otherwise great looking, sounding and playing Castlevania. Absolutely worth a play if you haven't and for those interested youtube channel StrafeFox does a great making of video on Bloodlines and Super Castlevania IV