Felt so at home here...
Characters bleeding into here right from the comics <3 I had such a blast feeling the radiating warmth of the charm, all the little quirks like Tails being such an awesome friend, him talking about his cooking and earnestly roleplaying to the bit in the story, all the way to Blaze (gosh me) and her royal stoicism. It's all so cute, interrogations working like fun Edgeworth Investigations, the care and detail, how it managed to kind of get to me with a scene with Sonic (in all fairness, emotional stability has been tough!). Wonderful high effort gift to the fanbase. I love being a fan of these Mobians ^w^

A memorial and portrait of a time "lost", with the paint bleeding through the page to imprint on the user, hoping for them to understand what we might bring to today. Each brushstroke an elegant capture of people and the communication between them, shared through the tendrils of corporation forever omnipresent then as it is now. And they all share the same message. There's no going back. Reflect now and move forward, because we as a people still are the same expressions of love and joy, regardless of how much it appears to have superficially changed.

For my first warioware title (took long enough haha) this was really fun and solid <3 Just an enjoyable pocket game. I like that microgame rush, pick up and play, fuck around, test how much you can endure quick-thinking reaction times...
I think my issue with touched in particular is whoever made an entire mike part and all you do is just kind of the same action >.> And really in general there's too much overlap, it makes the challenge modes not really that hard or fufilling. Otherwise though I enjoyed playing it! I should really get to the rest of them.

Find it so deeply endearing that this work marred in technical limitations and an altogether rushed-ish structure is The Greatest love letter to a very genwunner philosophy, ALL without feeling egregious or pining for nostalgia. Game Freak despite everything loves its fans who can realistically Never Be Happy and makes that practically explicit from sunrise to sunset, and folds that into something new and altogether hopeful for a brighter future and earnest contextualization of its past.

Not tooo strong of one though, at least for me. Character writing is certainly the best here (or at least, toe to toe with Sun and Moon for me), especially from a moment to moment lens. Finale speaks volumes in its own way there, all so personable and defined and really have weight, presence, beautiful relations and chatter. But it also feels far too hesitant to break free of its limitations and that ends up being probably the most annoying part. Legendaries tend to be metaphorical or stand-ins for wide-spreading things in the series but this REALLY is the most "you just couldn't be serious about a heart to heart to be personable with a Pokemon huh." Still for what it's worth it swings as hard as Black/White and Sun/Moon do, just lacks the wherewithal structurally and in execution to get as high as they do. But it is nice to see people gas this up as their "finest hour" because it's not like it's wholly undeserving of that.

Mechanically it's like, we're taking our Legends Arceus prototype open world map (and bits of it structurally) and making it a Red/Blue + If It Was On Unreal Engine. Or in other words, very LARGELY hands off explore at your own pace open world and take in all the fights and sights and feel your journey of ADVENTURE, while having to reel-in that other than a couple cities the "expanse" is rather,,, illusory haha. I remember first touching this and LOSING it at how absolutely amazing the big hub town area is. I even took the classes, I was so into it all. Granted, high off an edible, but that expectation solidified, it felt so good. Unfortunately, literally nothing else in the game's areas capture or get even close to that, bar maybe the last one (which is kind of cheating really).

It is however also the comfiest Pokemon game to date. Extremely relaxing, potent quality of life implementation from top to bottom. Not a single hour feels even a bit wasted or as grindy as anyone's worst memories with this franchise. So easy to pick up and settle in, get cozy with seeing all of what's on offer here...
And as turbo-niche as talking about this game's difficulty may be, I do like how generally designed the leveling curve and fights are too. A couple were super tough checks for me even! Granted it was cuz i built my team a little awfully haha... all of them were Physical hitters ;w; Certainly some "wow that's funny" moments that feel both charming and, well, naturally hilarious. They gave one of the most important fights a literal ace-in-the-hole pokemon build that's INSTEAD sent out close to the start, while making their actual ace-in-the-hole a pokemon that's a SET-UP DESTROYER. Amazing. Well done.

I will say I find myself a bit more smarmy, sarcastic here, mostly cuz things have been hard and I sortttt of lightly pushed through with too much fervor just so a good friend of mine could get their birthday Suicune Raid present. Also cuz this gets a little too gassed up I feel >.> Not from a bad place tho! And who cares what I think there really!!! I'm glad people are having so much fun!!

Still, gives some to chew on, which puts this on an upper echelon for monster collectors in general. I think if you've been away from this series for feeling completely left out of the hyperlinear storyblook palooza, definitely give this a shot. It really is up there with the best Pokemon's put out.

PMD2 still sweeps tho

Some interesting things to talk about here, despite the trashy-ish core. A light background, I've read my share of gacha stories from start to termination (or however much it's caught up), done my dragalia raids, I know what people are kind of in this for are more long-term. But what's here is still... poor.

It's like weirdly easy, especially by projectmoon's standard, and i don't just mean in the "regular enemy encounters are just auto" but moreso that its ceiling, both mathematically and functionally is below-par compared to others in this genre. It's got a worse tactical ceiling than Arknights, it's got a very heavy lack of rng mitigation versus its contemporaries, and its toughest bosses including mirror, so far, are... really whatever? From a conceptual standpoint it's tough for me to infer what the hell a "good raid boss" would look like here without it becoming numerically oppressive.

But like, that's not what people stick to this franchise for, certainly not the ONLY reason for me. Ruina's gameplay fucks hard for me, and I love LobCorp's entire mechanical spectrum on paper, but what attaches me is that seamless weaving between that and an incredible all-encompassing narrative. The one here, so far, through three chapters, is very Porcelain. It dresses up some things with fancy nicely laden philosophy with hellish attitudes and anachronistic livelihood, but its character strands are way more vestigial to that main theme, culminating so far in, nothing. PJM's works are backloaded, sure, but they had more clear payoff than this, and they didn't sacrifice on its characters for the sake of The Long Run Soap Opera. Combined with the general messy affair that is gacha's narrative structure you get something that feels rushed as much as unfinished. And, again, sure, LobCorp and Ruina were both early access on release too, but they were way more orderly, far more hinting at what's to come. The pages by which each character in this game comes from is more interesting and expressive then they are in flesh. Seriously. My biggest takeaway is "go read what you get from googling this character". They also feel weirdly impersonal? Throughout all three chapters the weaksauce "deep-dive" done on each chosen character is more OBSERVED than Felt, or even discussed. It happens, and then things move on. There's a slight aura of internal reflection on what just happened but it's never actually considered. Not even by your meta stand-in Dante.

That expressive ~ludonarrative~ is also only barely reflected in its Check system, of which is much more divorced from how you're generally playing than actually something you feel metaphysically. To simplify that, with Ruina's cards you were putting on an air of someone's life that you dressed yourself up as, fighting abnormalities that were, mechanically, structured around their lore and story. Here, the fights barely have the latter but the CHECKS are binary, and they are the real difficulty in every fight so far. And what happens when you fail? You just roll back the clock, prepare with someone who can pass the check. But doing that isn't like ludonarratively the characters actualizing enough to survive the check as much as it feels like you just luck out. And this story isn't about 'luck.'

This leads me to a very very bizzare thought process. Who is Limbus FOR, exactly? Like I don't understand the business strategy. I thought initially that it was like, oh they bring in their devout fanbase and slowly turn them into buying past the grind. But... the past two games forced you to blame yourself for your mistakes and "buy-in" your time. These fans are more likely to grind their way through, not dump money for better pulls. And this gameplay isn't really that appealing from a complexity standpoint or tactical one, it's far too low a ceiling of decisions. Is the idea here simply to platform off people loving ProjectMoon's aesthetic sensibilities that they coast off that alone? I mean, I tried! But gods does that feel hollow. I don't understand why you couldn't just replay their other games or, read The Distortion Detective. Hell, Leviathan might be more worth the time.

I do get it though. They want to keep the lights on so they can fund LobCorp2. This game is certainly budgeted without seeming Too unpolished (at least, it performed well on my platform, i know it has had a terrible launch for most others), it's snappy and receptive, it is not too perfunctory, etc etc. Them keeping the cast to 12 specific main characters that they probably contracted in-house probably lowers their cost from hiring even more talent over time, but that's still a total bulk of money spent. VA isn't cheap over there. I wonder if it'll even be sustainable enough to have a genuine raid. Fuck if I know. It's a depressing tightrope of "I want PJM to not, die" and "this gacha is so terrible for them from a structural standpoint that it should, absolutely, be punished".

tl;dr basically weak-ass spinoff territory, if you want to rationalize it charitably. I'm going back to my not-quite-that-much-better-morally TCG mine.

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.

Cute lil parody thing. It's smarmy about itself but moreso in the charming hehe scrunkly side rather than the "h i yes do you gett this one???", although there's still a bit of that which kind of makes me roll my eyes. But it's kind of like the roll your eyes when your friend's making that really dumb in-joke you have together, that you've probably heard like 10+ times from them but still kind of makes you internally smile because it's coming from that genuine point in history you two share. In this case we've both played moon and we really liked moon, we're giggling about moon's jokes that are (really harmlessly) riffed right off. It's cute, we had a good time, extended metaphor included. That being said if you made it past that really lame joke (I've been inspired) and feel like this game might be a bit underwhelming I'd suggest trying out Magic Wand cuz that game's really cool.

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.

There's all kinds of games that are a piece of the creator's childlike wonder, glee, beauty, et cetera. I'd find it difficult to name one that has the same kind of resonance this emanates from start to finish. Gentle, elegant, earnest and bringing you along the ride through a wonderfully crafted landscape of dreams. Sour, dance, play and gymnastics your way through the circus stage made for you. Fears and anxiety are formed only to melt away in the light.

I'll keep thinking about it as the music swells and shifts over the coming days. A lasting impression, of which Oshima himself noted that above all else, they wanted a character and an experience that someone would look at and think "the future looks bright." I'll dance atop that spire of hopeful joy they made.

Really, me and my SO dropped this several months back, but that's neither here nor there. Just reminded to talk about my thoughts on this, Uhm,

I appreciate the spirit of this moreso than the end nature of it. My partner and I had a blast playing it, and the whole Honey I Shrunk the Kids aesthetic is perfect. I loved all the little minigames, the cutesy charm, all the cooperative puzzles. It's a return to this form of gameplay style from what feels like very yesteryear. If any lesson is learned from this game's acclaim, it's that there should absolutely be more of this.

I just wish the end result here was something I could champion. We ended up dropping it largely from its surrounding noxious energy. The main conceit of this couple being entrapped together fantastically to just reignite their fire for, largely implied, the kids' sake, just made us lose all of the vibes at once. Every attempt to reopen the game was spent on trying to ignore that, but it didn't really go very far. We got about a couple hours in before it became too much to tolerate, especially since the absolutely brutal incompatibilities regarding one of the two just reminded one of us of our ex. It feels like a useless story to me? It's definitely not coming from a bad state of mind, and like, it's genuine, it's earnest! But it feels almost shaming to partners who aren't working out together. All for more people going to couples therapy to see if their issues truly aren't fixable but I don't like this general idea at all, it's so "makes up a couple". Couldn't help but doctor out a story in my head that starts with this same idea but ends up taking it in a direction that commentates that maybe at the end of it some things aren't fixable and requires splitting, a far more realistic notion to takeaway that finishes off with a note that has them separating after all, with a bittersweet understanding of what they've learned from their incompatibility, rather than some, to be blunt, sickening notion of THINK OF THE KID!! GOTTA FORCE YOUR TOTAL SPARK OF LOVE (that for most people in this situation, won't be there anymore) BY MAKING UP COOP STYLE.

Honestly it's worse than the writing. We laughed together at a couple jokes, my partner found the two much much more obnoxious from sentence to sentence than me, but I'm used to it. The smarmy totally shouty couple vibe isn't like a complete mismatch for what everything here is going for. That's the most charitable I'll get with it though haha.

I'll say it takes two is good when we get the much more ambitious polycule sequel it takes three.

Simultaneously easier than DD, but also more insane and significantly more illegible. I kind of hate it much much more, and also can't help but respect it more. The biggest issue is that I am personally tired of treating the game as half a manual, things especially here are so counter-intuitive that even the training mode is simply teaching you how you're 'kind of' supposed to be playing at the very minimum. This sort of compounds into a glorious but sort of fucked combo shooter that desires to be as ultimately incomprehensible as possible for you to pass over.

That's kind of sick, but it leaves me rather in the dust. It doesn't induce the panic that Devil Daggers does to me and instead feels like a sense stress test. For its modus operandi of some utter hellish ultraplanar fight against some undefinable deity I can't think of many things in general that's such a perfect match. It absolutely continues on its predecessor of being a congruous entity that you have to fully understand in order to survive and even progress. Its arcadey nature asks for creating clarity out of unwatchable madness.

So as a realized vision I have to like, sort of stan it! But I also feel an utter bone to pick, a sledgehammer I want to take to this sort of approach. From a personal note, for one, this game is absolutely irresponsible. The steam page fine print has an epilepsy warning but the game should fucking start with one, if not more, as should its creator be saying such shilling this game past twitter and youtube. When I first streamed it in front of a friend they felt so unwell they had to tune out for a solid 15 or so minutes because they felt like they were going to have a seizure and they're not epileptic. It's rudimentarily so overzealous in its mission that it genuinely hurts my eyes after a little bit of time to play, and its mixing and sound design just hurts and nails on chalkboards but all of those are Intensely Important Indicators to play. To be blunt I almost feel a sort of noxious "loves its ingroup and hates everyone else" vibe from all that.

But idk, it's like mostly fun past all that. Things connect pretty smartly and it can lead to some intense fun, and it'll certainly satisfy those who REALLY REALLY like Devil Daggers and this uncompromising way of creation. Which is totally valid. It has got crazy good game design top to bottom.