I'm going to do something nightmarish and probably go and play (and MAYBE finish) XCX and XC2 before playing 3. I have no intention of replaying 1 and potentially invalidating a lot of my thoughts on it, because it does have issues.

The thrust of the main conceit largely centered around halfway through the narrative is dumb, for one. The whole both sidesy conclusion Shulk comes to with, ahem, "the big bad", is tacky if not downright callous treatment/response to the direct concentration camp theming laid out beforehand. Which leaves a genuinely bad set of things to just have in your head towards the finale when it gets largely spiritual. Granted, when I played this, my brain was fucking off, and that was a blessing in disguise.

Simultaneously, it's hard for me to really really hate. Even if things don't fit together, playing this on a dingy Wii in the late hours of night back from school was borderline transcendental because Xenoblade is just so pretty top to bottom. I love how everything looks, sounds, and feels, from exploring the secret areas of Eryth Sea, to the beautiful serenity of Satorl Marsh, it's lovely. In a way it is a "first mmo" experience in that respect, at least nailing what the mmo is supposed to capture in that sense of awe and scale. Something I wouldn't ever quite feel the same way again in an rpg. Even FFXIV which I still play religiously barely scratches at that side of the surface.

I also love the cast, they're so beautifully characterized, largely by the VA which at some points just carry the whole thing. I don't think there's very many people who can quite belt a scream like Shulk's Adam Howden out there and make it work, you know? It's because of that there's a genuine memetic quality to it that spreads out and surrounds the game with a lot of heart. That side of the text is also moderately kept, there's a lot of moments where the cast just gets to sit down and talk and those moments speak louder than the bombastic messy parts it gets to.

In a way I often liken Xenoblade Chronicles to Chrono Trigger. Practically rips off its whole idea of structuring its story really, there's very similar downtimes and pacing. I'd argue both don't really speak to larger themes either, both impart that unique "epic"ness through playing it, and vibes and energy are a core part of being strung along. CT certainly isn't as messy but neither does it really hit the same highs XC1 gives me. Ah, the point of the comparison though is that I think XC1 genuinely pays true on what the CT intro does. That rip-roaring 2 minute intro with the pendulum swinging through that embarks your journey? Xenoblade Chronicles does that same feel in its own way before expanding beyond that, becoming something much larger and visceral. So massive and sweeping me off my feet that with my feet high above the clouds I neglect to look at the ground below at all to see how it is.

That's magical. It's what adventure and journey can really impart. Whether or not the lessons in here are even worth discussing (they're not) I'll cherish those holy-shit-that's-a-lot-of-hours it gave me.

Boy I really do love pushing up racist systematic oppression and fighting against tyranny as completely equivalent. It's especially more fun when I can shooty shooty bang bang the bad guys with my basic ass gunplay. Bruh it's so fucking deep you don't even know man let me grind this rail another time while agency actually doesn't matter to the major parties and everyone is right but wrong as we appeal to all of the broken promises we can for an 8 hour runtime.

I hear Burial at Sea is kinda neat but god forbid I spend another hour on this game.

When I first touched down on the Sector 7 Slums, after getting off the train, I cried. It's difficult to really boil down those euphoric feelings floating in my brain, the complete wonder and majesty I was experiencing, or seeing something that I cherish captured in painstakingly incredible detail. This tipping point for me defines the whole game, and surprises me at every turn with how much it genuinely understands and soulfully carries the legacy it now seeks to work atop of and, in some cases, defy.

Simultaneously, it's difficult for me to know where to begin talking about the game from here. There's so much to talk about that is just going to come off as fangirling gushing. And while I'm not ashamed of that, I still don't want to say more than I really need to.

I think I'd like to describe another scene, a bit of small spoilers ahead. There's a point of falling action where the cast has to decide what the next option should be. In the middle of the night you walk out to see Barret in the garden, thinking about what keeps him going. He talks to you about his reverence for the people he's known, implying that he's lost them. He tells a history of the wonderful happiness each of them brought, that he continues marching forward with. It's such a powerful characterizing moment for Barret. It as well is a heartfelt honest telling of how these characters act, and respond to what's in front of them.

There's a moment where the game goes full on against its legacy, cutting the threads metacontextually to forge a path of its own. That path is laid in with a next-level orchestration that blissfully captures the energy, and a combat system that is absolutely excellent and is tested to its complete limits here. The final bosses, like ones before, offer incredible tactics and balancing acts between the ATB management and correct positioning. And I fucking loved every single minute of it.

There are a few niggles of course. The pacing is off-center and leads to a lot of parts that outstay their welcome. The combat system while I can heap praise and honestly analyze in a lot more detail than I'm putting here, has issues in terms of feedback both in learning the systems as well as enemy telegraphs. There's also full-on meme additions that really should've been left to the cutting board.

Either way, FF7R surpasses all my memories and feelings of the original. Despite barely taking up like 15-20% of the original game's plotline, it exceeds the entire game. I really can't wait for the unknown adventure ahead.

General mix of nausea trying to see this on its own terms versus what the series means for me. I'm moreso feeling to judge towards the latter considering that the game is seeking to be more replacing than going in its own direction, albeit you can still buy the first game on any market for cheap, it's not that sunset, so maybe that's a little mean?

Regardless though, I got about to chapter 5 before I stopped. Then got increasingly upset about it. Positives first it's like, a more competent horror in terms of visual design and understanding of its gore and shock. Genuinely better at pacing its atmosphere than the original, which is something I didn't think I'd find myself saying. I think a lot of that is simply by the original's design, as they couldn't get as visceral with the lighting or do most of the effects presented here, and said lighting back then in gen 7 now looks significantly aged worse even within its context. Dead Space 2 sidelines this entirely by going for a way better fusion with its pocket city meets infection, but still, credit where it's due the devs here's very clearly first project with a game of this kind of tone is firing very well here.

Everything ends there though. The big massive elephant in the room is how Dead Space Remake plays. I think it'd be really really silly to not acknowledge that Dead Space by Clear Intent explicitly and by result is influenced by Resident Evil 4. The OG and especially Dead Space 2 took this influence to give incredibly threatening enemies that were built around a toolset you had properly balanced to deal with them. You manipulated their enemy state between terrifying rush mode and kiting them together so you can get shots in while faster and more difficult incarnations came around the corner later. This significantly added to that horror, the necromorphs were very much abominations that gruesomely formed from humanity and their feral instinctual power that you had to manage and keep your distance especially with their erraticism was The defining factor.

But here? They're entirely defanged. This is utterly indefensible to me. The AI for lack of a better word is total dogshit. They'll constantly, CONSISTENTLY, revert to an idle state both after sprinting or even in the middle of attacks. They're boring, reduced in a manner similar to xenomorphs from Alien to Aliens, their threat deorbited to be replaced by, well, nothing. You're far more powerful too, weapon hitboxes have been so overtuned to where flamethrower just disintegrates now, as an example. Your stomp hitbox is so laughably huge that it brought me out of the game hard. I went through the entirety of chapter 4 trying to see how much I could get by just stomping enemies to death. I succeeded and that was depressing. I'm playing this game on Hard btw, and I've actually never been quite able to power through the original's hardest difficulties. I'm not that good at Dead Space. This remake really is just that toothless.

And that's astonishing to me. This is a remake set to be a powerful recognizable spirit of the original, with an uncharitable doctrine towards its coming entirely because EA still absolutely sunset the original devs with prejudice. But its roots, they're gone! They're not even a part of the equation here. I found playing this less interesting and engaging from a mechanical standpoint than Dead Space 3 and that in of itself is also something I never wished I had to say.

I don't know. On its own terms, I think it's largely understandable that people are seeing this from a nu-standpoint where they, likely honestly, never played the original. Simply observed it from its marketing and its dominating horror appeal and came in hoping to be blown away by that part of things. Which is there. That part is not, like, missing. This is in some sense a strongly competent horror walking sim of sorts (yeah i know, levels are still nonlinear, you still kind of fight things, but it's obviously not the point anymore). Difficult for me to internalize that though. The legacy I loved the series for is gone. I'm not very good with horror games exclusively, I loved Dead Space largely for how its monsters were analogous to the horror and forced me to feel things intrinsically through gameplay. I loved that something something ludonarrative. I liked the power and actualization of accomplishing past these terrible monsters, going through with wounds and scars and feeling like I really just lived through a stone cold hell.

Not here though. Dead Space has moved on. Maybe we should too.

"When people encounter sorrow, they try to forget it, and pretend it never existed at all."

Dreams are, in a general sense, a kaleidoscope of our deeply set emotions, traumas, and discordant thoughts. Lunatea's Veil wants more than anything to present them as they are, walking and jumping through a melancholic journey that deeply wants you to stay and view the extremes and earnest feelings you have. And by the end, also understanding the ones you try to keep down the most. Experiencing past traumatic memories set in maze-like collections of mirrors, joys flamboyantly strung like circus minigames, sorrows stuck in a decrepit kingdom sectioned off from the world. It all paints a picture that's maybe too real, that often I paused just to reflect in a similar vein. I've had a very long weekend up to now where I've fallen to the heart the same way Klonoa does, and as a weird spin this brought me much comfort.

Understand, it's ok to cry, just as long as you never give up!

My kneejerk reaction is that l feel super weird about loving what is essentially an architectural achievement. I can't help but have, a sense of unease at a lot of the surroundings of this experience. The basic copypasta-like clearly House of Leaves-rip that doesn't really have much of a personal soul to it, and more the boxings of one, just rides on me (especially if the trauma part of that is actually real, which makes things even more complicated). Especially when it pulls memes and such of the internet to congeal here, and especially when I'm literally in an in-progress read of the book that leaves me too numb to feel the lovings of a homage without kind of scoffing at the quality attempt.

,,,on that same token though, it is a homage. A very carefully crafted one that manages to utilize its medium in ways that lift the ech-beginnings into something that emotionally feels haunting and winding. It's a very terrible reduction, but sometimes being a meticulous, loving director can help transcend a pretty shitty script. I really was terrified constantly. I found each exploration vast and visceral. Cheating (because this derg, is scared) doesn't even help when more often than not you get lost in ways that unnerve. Walking down the first long corridor and hitting ~The Labyrinth~ I immediately closed the WAD reflexively knowing there was a beast around the corner. I don't want to even talk about the dogs.

There's a big inner giddiness of "gosh I want to see more like this", a nerd-like love from experience looking at the ins-and-outs of WAD-making, feeling the rush when it's all demystified and going "gosh how did they do this??? Amazing!!" Sicker than suburbs have any real right to be. Manages to defy my usual personal distaste for the 'innovative' meta without a concrete narrative heart (e.g. Inscryption (sorry), Pony Island (not sorry), etc.).

I think what generally strikes me first about Ruina, when reflecting, is scale and balance. Most of it comes from sheer awe, jumping from LobCorp this whole work has a stark amount of awareness of the ramifications of LobCorp, while also choosing to make an ambitious goal to balance so so so much more on top. And yet, the scales do not tip over, the further I mulled over and dived into things, the more everything seems awfully well set. Lot of flowery words to say that Project Moon has read a significant amount of literature between games and has an incredible amount more to say AND manages to integrate it perfectly, stretching my use of the word 'ludonarrative' to its absolute limit.

Ruina runs out the gate dismantling the 'hero' of the prior story, burning its idea of redemption into beautiful flame before trying to work beyond him. It keeps the hands of librarians that followed him, resolute in their ways, alongside villains seeking vengeance, joining together against the systems that have confined them, constructing a tower of babel built upon lives hoisted out of the city, justified in the name of 'fairness'. Watch along with them as the city moves in clockwork, these gears set by hypercapitalist systems that turn along people until they are crushed under the metal and spat out as ground together puppets. Reprieve only in the hopes of the little bits of light that people cling to to try to change, sometimes ending up with distorted selves trying desperately to conduct their own symphony, until all of us self realize, progressing beyond the means by which defines human, gender, creed into something more. Full Self-Actualization, Manifestation, capture your E.G.O. to build your future.

It's all explored in intense clashes! Use cards you pull from the light you take, then spread them out into tactics that run an intense ebb and flow on the battlefield. As you stack the shelves with every story you face and people you brutalize, the potential of your use of this knowledge flies sky-high, until you've made 'decks' that swallow the next set of fights with pinpoint precision. Even if you were a master deckbuilder you still have to adapt though. Solve the puzzle that matches each new patron's pscyhe, or be forced to retool from the pushed over house of cards. Every level jump in reputation brings in a whole area of complexity that gives you more immense freedom, with the caveat that the game pulls not a single punch for you to learn it. You'll be walled over and over until fundamentals are rock solid, pushed into an understanding of the ways of the city.

The leftover roots of the corporation that stand in ashes beneath the spine of the library throw you into even stronger, more complex puzzles, boss fights that adopt the abnormalities' story directly into turn by turn gameplay. Then reaching further, becoming thorough contextualization for the characters, then RE contextualizing across central theming. The Kabbalah's Sephirot and christian allegory returns with a much more complicated and personal base that transcends the story into touching on the baseline recognition of compassion and empathy, down to fighting anthromorphized struggles. Finish off by fighting demonic reflections of each lesson you've learned, until you're once again back at the base of the light, trying to look upon that all too familiar completely hopeless massive scope of depressing systems that oppress life, and going, This Can Change. Even those with the darkest masks over them can decide to break the cycle and seek to dismantle the machine. We can keep going while everything around us is 'distorted', and

Become Star of the City, Facing the Past, and Building the Future.

The journey's a long one but not one step is misplaced, not a moment wasted. You might have cause to grind to backfill your mistakes but the progression is always continuous. If you've got the head for it, you might even break it faster under your feet. The City is not without its weaknesses, after all!

But really, this is a rocketing experience, practically irreplaceable after much time to think over it. If you're not at least considering getting it what are you doing hereeee.

Genuinely was not expecting to enjoy this game by the end. Sincerely doubted it, had to shelve it a few times to keep the strongest sense of charity going. And to be fair to part of Y0, I certainly was uncharitable towards that spirit at many points. Granted, Yakuza 0 really did not do me many favors.

Still, I do walk out of the end amazed by the final steps of the journey, where the game ultimately ties back to that central theme of becoming like a dragon in many many ways. Defining, redefining, and creating character rationale for that "way of the yakuza". Majima especially was the heart of the game that I centered myself around, being the particular character exploration that I found interesting. There's so many wonderful boys rock moments that I had to get in the jive for, as well as a few rare, but excellent energized and choreographed scenes. Presentation in general for Yakuza does not pull punches.

But god it was GRUELING for me to get that far. The ending gates of "holy shit it's finally coming together" is barred by actually just awful awful combat, so dysfunctional and a complete mess to try to take seriously that you might as well put it on Easy and chug health potions. And also some of the worst pacing I've had to set myself up to, and I've been playing some long rpgs lately!!! The beginning chapters, especially with Kiryu, are actual chores in setup and production, and even in the more well put together back half, there'll still be extraordinarily dumb moments because they simply did not know how to deal with a lot of the characters they just threw at you.

And to make matters worse for me, the game's more problematic elements were more than just sour points. Y0 will bend itself over backwards to force you into some substories and a lot of the humor blew right past me but the required ones had some deeply disgusting elements. I don't think a lot of it, or really any, could be said as malicious, but it's certainly very Japan culture to have the one black person you ever see for example be the 'mass murderer' in an underground fighting ring.

I lay this out on the table though, mostly because most people don't (yakuza twitter is a menace), but also because I do think the journey is worth trudging through. It should also be noted I came with my own biases too, because I'm just tired of years being near fratty bro culture (college years i was stuck with a lot of frat roommates) and as I transition I just am kind of averse to bro vibes first. So knowing that, and the fact that I still thought the last few hours were unparalled fucking A energy, I think people should at least give this one a shot.

Do actually like, skip the substories if the humor doesn't work for you like I did.

More misc thoughts:
-Kiryu extremely a hottie, made my SO swoon every time he was on camera. Still team majima though!!
-I really really liked the majima minigame. That was some seriously good down to earth dialogue with the girls and is maybe the only time Y0 has an even somewhat pleasant lens on women in the game. Emphasis on somewhat there's like 5 asterisks there.
-What is this game's obsession with <5f reactable tracking moves on bosses lol. I just laughed every time I found one and there were more than 5!

We are all capable arbiters of our own destruction. In the face of trauma, loss, anxieties of the world we chase specters, seeking solace in vacuums where nothing can touch us. But the metaphorical monsters follow, twisted by our own attempts to forget and leaving them in fragments that we are forced to piece together again for any attempt to heal to succeed.

This destruction permeates, festering and swelling until it is our own purgatorial hell. Returnal is Silent Hill 2, it's also Housemarque's past properties, it's also Arrival. It's a weaving gripping story as much as it is a compounding stressful game to play. They're intertwined, for every artifact that saves us is the same one that shoots us down. To gain is to lose, and to lose is to gain. And in that mind-numbing dance we hope that eventually we'll find answers and ASCEND.

But we don't, we return. The choice to journey alone against the dark within is a futile one. We may eventually piece things back together yes, but an outside hand was needed at some point or else the result is the same, the crash repeats. Cyclically. You can help future versions, but those same notes will hurt you too. You are not perfect at envisioning how you will respond to yourself later as much as you can now.

But is that really true? Are we really incapable of breaking the cycle? Perhaps there is a way. Once we've come to terms with our traumas, pieced together things, maybe now the grieving can begin. And then trial after trial, we can come to accept our fractured home and our multitudes, trace them to where they began, and then move on.

There's more to it than I can effectively take away and regurgitate here. Our souls are simply denser than that. Selene's journey is complicated and painful, and crossing every cycle is punishing and difficult. You can choose to remain strong, but the twist is that there's no real destination for you here. This is her story to let go and you can ride it as long as you like.

---------------------------------------------------

I can wax prose like this, but there's simply no way I can do that and comprehensively talk about everything I love here. So this is now when we zoom out, lol. I hope you enjoyed that. As much as Returnal deserves something that considers it in all its interwoven nature, I would like to spend time on just how much it gets right.

Housemarque really just outdid themselves here, something I would've never expected were I following them before this game came out. The sense of scale to where this third person shooter roguelite seamlessly works with its narrative and ethereal elements is incredible!! I enjoyed every boss, each of them forced me to sit still for a moment and understand what I needed to work on and use as soon as possible. Biggest shout out to the fourth boss that really shat on me and said "dashes are not a spammable escape tool. They can be smokescreen to slaughter equally as much as assisting." In other words, sometimes it's better to just WALK. The bullet patterns match this, each of them require different ways of moving, jumping, traversing. The harder and optional minibosses near the end especially emphasize the limits of your toolset. At a lot of points there was a re-evaluation of what my main strategy to traversing the area is. This led to a lot of heart-pounding scrambly moments, and when the roguelite elements showed their ugly face on top of me that only beat me down further. You have to be prepared for the worst case scenario at all times, but you can't afford to stay strictly safe either if you want to grasp victory!!

Also god the aesthetic is so great, I love how Returnal is visually and it never compromises clarity. There are times in Resogun and Nex Machina where I couldn't 'really' see things and felt like I was hit cheaply. Of course it was likely my own fault, but the idea is that the clarity isn't exactly perfect as much as I'm having to adjust my vision for particulars. Returnal sidesteps that completely, just perfect layering. Really doesn't go stupid for the sake of next-gen, and as low a bar that is it gives me a smile! Music is incredible too, and if there's one issue I have it's that the official soundtrack doesn't have all of the music and that makes me angry >:(

I had such a good time here. Not a ps5-seller mind you, there'll never be justification for spending $500+ for one game and that in of itself stops me from shoving this game down people's throats. Fucked up. Even still, I can't stop thinking about this game. I had to finish it today and even still I don't feel like i'm done! I will be returning! If by any chance you can touch this experience please do, I implore you. And to a good rest of the year I pray as well!

Marvelous duality to everything here. The story from the ground up is my shit, with the world surrounding Jack being a perilous shell of other FF games bereft of context as we are complete strangers to this place, both textually and metatextually. Haunting, unfeeling, then recontextualized at last in the end to these ghosts looking towards Paradise we say a mighty fuck you to. And on the other side, probably the most frustratingly dull interior and exterior for the vast vast majority of its time spent playing.

I'm not one to give props to being "intentionally" sludge, as in, I wanted to buy that maybe this gripping sense that Team Ninja simply Did Not Give a single SHIT past what they were asked to is an Intentional choice. But no I really think it brings everything down, as much as emulating the FF feel is nice the "variety" is genuinely smokescreen. Options between classes blend together real quick without much uniqueness to them, even with a kinesthetically sound toolset to all of them too much boils together into tedium. In hindsight, part of this is my fault for playing Monster Hunter at the same time as this, which pretty much takes the uh, for the sake of levity let's call it the 'soulsborne' system of whiff punishing, to an actually fantastic conclusion. Even beyond that though, somebody else mentioned it that, Nioh was never THIS bad. Nioh was never THIS tiring and boring. Even when upping the difficulty to hard and losing the party assist (which, tbh, i never used it anyway but needed to take away the temptation), things formulate too much together. The most praiseworthy aspect of the design is in its bosses but even that comes with a lot of caveats, as so many of them, almost all of them really, limit themselves with their pre-ordained telegraphing. In that the purple-orange-red system is bluntly, a fucked system that pretty much lowers the ceiling tremendously on what a boss's attacks and moves are capable of!!! After Tiamat the game might as well have ended, because once my head entered the rhythm that is how to respond to every single one of these attacks, nothing else ever puts a wrench in it.

Additionally, this project could not have had less caring hands on it for the lead-up to those final couple hours. Not so much in a budgetary way, but more so in a "this is a first draft, and it shows!!!" Found myself a lot of the time script doctoring how I could've paced so many of these elements better, because there's so little to emotionally buy into. And no it's not like that Is the idea, the last hour or so is absolutely riding on that payoff ludicrously.

So, something something duality, two teams who conceptually MAY have been a match made in heaven rather turned the whole thing into a smushed together crust that formulates only barely by the strength of some of its parts rather than the sum. I don't know, I really do love high concept stuff, I really really really really love Nomura's markings and pullings here, the futurism and its cracks and Jack's very multifaceted awakening! Maybe my standards have simply been put too high to accept a very good story told super terribly. I wanted to be floored, I was rooting and hollering for Jack but he just said meh and walked off. And you know what, I somehow enjoyed this a good deal overall.
So good for him, good for him. Respect.

Extraordinarily frustrating. For much more good than bad in the end, but I really did need to talk with others about it, it was like "i'm going to destroy a pillow" with the feelings I had left in the brain stew.

It's in one way, fucking ridiculously well written. Delilah is talk on "not real" escaped to relationships as well as an explicit message on confronting memories. Henry is a "failure" and "cowardly" who cannot confront the pains around him ultimately thrust to realize he has to go back home and come to terms with life. Other characters, their relationships and stories whether surrounding Henry or being left behind to be found by Henry are also failures, painful retellings of this conflict with specters these people saw as real. It's all set to this sunset painting, this growing sense of longing shared by all involved for a sunrise we will never see come up for us on screen. We're denied even the beautiful, serene sunset as it goes up in smoke.

But on the other hand, there's actually too much catharsis. Too much foreground, really. What I loved most of what I was playing was how these background elements intersected, how I was left to feel that pain and wince in real time rather than when the reins were clearly torn from me. I don't mean to say that the cuts were bad, in fact they were perfect, it's more how this structure intrinsically needed to throw the perspective in someone else's agency for us to look at and realize we can't become the sludge trapped in the park. A lot of potential really is left to the cutting floor by this move, a timeline where we never feel a bit of catharsis by a mystery left unsolved, or one where we watch ourselves fail again by Henry's own hands, etc etc. This is what's extremely thorny to talk about though. Like can you imagine just walking up to a work, and going, "you know this works really well but it'd be better if you actually just flipped the whole structure to lean the other way thank you". Like who asked? It works for me not for you?

But the result, at least on my end, is that I ended up decoupled from Henry and Delilah's story for a good portion because the disconnect from the first hour and a half to the latter hour and a half set me ablaze. The dialogue and delivery was still incredible but my emotional investment was missing, at least mostly. Mercifully the background actually never left, as the finale to Dave left me moving away from my desk and pushing myself into a pillow for a good minute.

It's ironic really. I think the idea that this "huehue should've been a movie" has things so backwards (and also it's just really fucking bankrupt, like i'm not taking you seriously). There's so much here to add to, via additional player agency, without even taking away from the narrative focused on. I ended up exploring the whole map completely unintentionally, on the way and a couple times off the beaten path just to finish what qualifies as "the side story". I ended up fishing for a while too. In the end the release I'm looking for needed more 'play,' albeit, I'm no editor. This story still has volumes to speak for what it is, like I ended up discovering not through my own hands how Henry's parasocial relationship has an even bigger relevance as we are today.

I do hope there's a dawn for Campo Santo somewhere down the line. They made something truly special here.

If there's anything out there, it's not going to be something we understand. We already have enough trouble at home defining ourselves, constantly pushed and pulled by gravitational forces we can't free ourselves from. A society crafted around making sure our culture is rigidly defined so that we can understand ourselves for what is human. But what is humanity, really? We keep pushing the ceiling of what that can be, and we project what is "alien" on things that are certainly human-like, because we have nothing else to draw from.

These are esoteric and difficult questions to answer, and even harder to do so when we're still stuck here shifting through our job yearning to free ourselves. Heaven Will Be Mine is queer, in every sense of the word. Queer in that it breaks me from my shell, liberating me and driving me to tears as it helps me understand my own way of expression and why I refuse to be circumvented by this "gravity." Queer in that it breaks between the line of reality to understand what seems strange, and help us transcend the grounded narratives we spin to keep us center. It's deeply personal too, with characters that each deal with their own traumas and flimsily work to try to understand each other in relationships that draw between romantic, heartfelt, and deeply serious.

For hours after I finished the route of Saturn I was in tears, and the route itself took me more time than it should've because I had to take a break to sit there in silence. I had to wrestle with phantoms of if I truly felt liberated, or if I really have grown out of the cage and pull of culture that people craft for me so that I may live. Am I really living my life here?

The discordant thoughts cross around for a while, and Pluto brings me back to center.
Saturn: "And you'd like that, right? Cutting loose with no gravity to tie you down?"
Pluto: "I think about that every day. It's so tempting.
You've got to be ginger with the universe, you know, Saturn.
Now that you're this strong, you've got to be careful. So much can go wrong."
Saturn: "I'll make sure to be very careful with the universe you love."

In another excerpt, Mercury asks "That's just it. Are we too attached? I want to be something new, and share it with everyone. Am I too heavy for this apple?"

The reading is dense, and it might not have to be. But it enraptures me and brings me close. I feel lost and I'm being given the proper guide to truly learn, even if I have to take every paragraph at a time, slowly. I'm shivering by the ending as I feel like I'm reaching a true understanding of why I'm queer, why I identify in the way I do. Why I WANT to live in the way I CHOOSE.

Saturn: "I don't owe them anything but, there's one more thing I can't stand.
Not being seen for what I am.
So, choose to come with us, or choose to stay.
But I won't be happy without them knowing what they're missing out on.
Look up in the sky, and see all the weird stuff we get to do with each other!"

And then I ascend, too.

Shigesato Itoi's ending to the Mother series leaves off on its strongest messages to take home. I'm of a family of brothers and sisters, but most importantly I have a twin brother of my own. That made the story around Lucas and Claus that much stronger and poignant to me, not to discredit that the writing in general isn't already incredible.

From the slow corruption of Tazmily village as it conforms into a capitalist society that comes with less pros than it does take away familial strengths and bonds within the community, to the surrealist hero's journey of the seven needles, Mother 3 fantastically paces itself out and keeps the core message of family ever so strung through the whole thing.

The characters, while not so much riveting examples of three dimensional characterization, each found their way into my heart as I played through. This is a game where, though it has its lows, had a profound effect on my life for a very long time. Even when you dig to its core, to where you find that it's simple in scope and works off of a fine tightrope of emotional beats, I still think it's a shining example of video games I've ever played. I can hum most of the soundtrack to this day.

The combat may not be riveting, it taking up a huge percentage of the time playing the game and just barely good enough thanks to some great boss design, some solid enemy encounters, and the cohesive rhythm system. But still, I never lost my engagement for a single moment. I was gripped until the credits rolled and the game came up and told me that it wants the very best of my life as I did the characters at the end. And I think, I wish everyone here the best too, and that maybe if these words find you that you also play Mother 3. (10/10)