Sometimes you just gotta face the music. I put this one off for an entire decade before finally getting around to it. And I should go on record upfront that I loved the first Lords of Shadow and think Mirror of Fate is a decent, underrated game. I understand for plenty of people these aren't Castlevania or whatever buzzwords get tossed around, but I maintain there was value in an Ultimate Universe style timeline to the original's 616 (the success of the cartoon pretty much shows this as well.) And as much as I adore the DS games, I vividly remember Castlevania fansites back around their release going "something has to change." The cheap IGAvanias with reused sprites were not doing it for people anymore (again, I adore them but that's pretty much factual) so taking a wild swing like this was a worthwhile endeavor.

There's lots of ink spilled on what went wrong here. For my money, it feels like the team bit off more than they could chew and ended up diluting the whole experience. LoS might have been a bit overlong and its story might have been your basic sad husband stuff that the 7th gen loved so much, but it was paced well and the levels had variety to them with a nice straightforward thrust. This wants to be an open world game, but it also wants to be a 3D metroidvania and ALSO still a linear action experience, which makes everything feel so jumbled. The areas don't have any real flavor to them which makes backtracking or exploring feel much, much more of a slog than it needed to be. And the plot, full of promise, ends up suffering the most. Characters are barely shown and nothing has any real gravitas.

The combat, despite it all, is still good. There's a lot less enemy types this time around, but the bosses are mostly all very good. When I was focused in on fighting a giant gorgon or weird demon lady or something, all the issues seemed to melt away. Its far from the most deep hack and slash, but the combat throughout all three games has a nice weight to it and the balance of healing, extra damage and such was always fun for me even if I really wanted to fight something other than a basic doom imp knock off.

I'm glad I got this monkey off my back. And even after all that, I'd still play this over something like Legend or Haunted Castle. I think there's a good game there (hell, one only has to look at what Mercury Steam did with Metroid after this game), but alas. If there's ever another Castlevania (which who the hell knows at this point) I'm sure it will resemble the cartoon more than this. But even though it ended on a failed landing, I can't help but appreciate the swing the LoS games as a whole took.

I could complain about the goofy perk system, the removal of skills, the voiced and limited player dialogue, the stinky factions and more, but honestly, none of that really matters. Fallout 4 was really fun to play, I enjoyed almost every minute of it, and that's what counts. It wasn't the sequel I wanted but it's just more Fallout and I love Fallout so what's there to complain about. I sunk 50 hours into it in two weeks and still could play more.

I had to put the game down in 2016 because the original console release game me horrible motion sickness, but I'm really glad I went back to it. Already want to play again with a new build and a new faction.

Demographically speaking, I am the target audience for this game (an adult who owned a PS1 between the years of 1996-2001.) Personally speaking, I am not the target audience of this game. I didn't play FFVII until many years after the PS1's obsolescence. My main experience with it was in the summer of 2000 where I spent a week at a camp in Northern New Jersey homesick, listening to my friend tell me every single thing about the game (I did the same thing for him with Ocarina of Time.) I think the original is a good game but its not something important to me. The subsequent influx of FFVII spinoffs, most of which seemed to miss the point of what made the game and characters interesting, were enough to put me off from wanting to play this for awhile. With Rebirth out now and the hot point of discussion for 2024, I figured it was time.

I'm glad I did. Unlike so many of those spinoffs, this game gets what makes the original characters interesting and embellishes them for this most part. Aeris (I will die with the old translation sorry) is funny and charming, Cloud is a doofus, Barrett is compelling, etc. The weird eccentricities of the game are embraced instead of washed out. And while I have no idea if I will be satisfied with its conclusion, I appreciate approaching the material in a new way rather than it being a completely slavish remake. FFVII has never been a sacrosanct game for me so maybe I'm more lenient than someone who was waiting for this game for decades, but I think the balancing act of keeping the characters true to the 97 original and also taking things in a different direction is its most interesting aspect.

My qualms are more gameplay related. I don't think FF needs to be stuck in the past or locked into a turn based style (I've never beaten it but I think XII is one of the best games in the series for reference) but the Kingdom Hearts sort of combat really never did it for me. There's times in this where it feels good, but more often than not I would feel like it was just a smidge too slow or to unwieldy for me to really enjoy it, especially when you start fighting flying enemies and combat becomes more complicated. It never was enough to break my will, but by the end of the game I was very much ready to just call it a day.

So yeah, its good! I don't think its for me in many ways, but I am glad I played it. I'll probably wait another 4 years for FVVI ReLife or whatever the third one is going to be called before playing Rebirth, even though that game covers my favorite parts of the original. That 60+ hours is terrifying to me right now.

I'm fascinated by what games and franchises Konami chooses to put out these days. First a Getsu Fuma Den game and now this? I never would have guessed we would get one Contra game in the past 5 years, let alone two of them. Need whoever is making decisions to get weird and bring back Goemon soon.

Anyway, Contra games probably have the biggest variance in quality out of all the classic Konami games. This one is firmly in the top half of quality, which isn't surprising since WayForward already made a top tier Contra with 4. I mostly played Story Mode with one hit kill here and had a thoroughly ball busting time. More than nay Contra I've played this felt like a Gradius; I would be cruising along with power ups until an errant bullet hit me and then I was overwhelmed (pro-tip, weapon retention perk is a god send.)

Put about 40 hours in and hit red ranks so I'm ready to say this is among the best fighting games I've ever played. I dug Tekken 7 but never played much of beyond getting all the trophies for some reason (they were easy to do?) and messing around with friends. The new touches in this all feel great and distinguish the game from its predecessors. I imagine in the coming days with more cheating and weird Tekken Coin or whatever purchasing people will start to swing harder against the game but I can't say either thing has affected me yet. Its so good I'm going to EVO for the first time to lose in the first round.

are you using your time to properly think and talk with art? are you listening? or do you plug your ears anytime it tries to talk with you, to challenge you and make you rethink what you're engaging with?

i don't think i have any common ground with most people who like videogames, actually. but i don't think this is just videogames anymore, this is endemic in all of the arts. people stopped being listeners, started being consumers. no long a plot twist will make your heart skip a beat, now it's the author "betraying" your trust. no longer can complicated concept be presented before your public, now you're "fumbling", "overdesigning" or whatever new word people will invent to use as analytical shortcuts. like, really, you spent 90h with this game and all you could get back from it was that it has "Ubisoft-like" design because it has towers? i don't care if you gave the game 4 or 5 stars or if that was a compliment, is it that hard to think more about it? am i setting the bar too high? probably.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is not a product, it's an art piece which you converse with (that's honestly 99.9% of games too btw). hefty admission price for sure, but it does not need to cater to you at any moment. it needs to be heard, seen, felt, I think running around the grasslands felt incredible and vibrant, i love how every map changes its whole design based on the chocobos, i love how sidequests have their own little songs to them with battle music included, i love how every character gets explored a whole ton more because now they have the time to do so, I love how Tifa can be herself instead of Cloud's past, I liked every change, I think this game is probably one of the most courageous games ever made and that will ever be made and people won't appreciate it enough, but that's fine because I will.

the more i think about it, the more i think about its last hours, the more i think how they handled -that moment- the more I like it. I like this and Remake for entirely different reasons, but Rebirth made me feel things I don't think i was even aware I could feel playing a game and I don't mean crying i cry for everything and i cried super hard at several moments in this game, it's something else, which i would only dare to explain if I had spoilered this text but i don't want to do so.

like i said i think i finally realized my lack of common ground is what makes it really hard to talk about videogames outside of my circle, people who only wear "videogames are art!!" as a mantle for feeling validated, but not really treating them much differently than the hamburger they'll buy for lunch. i don't mind if you didn't like the game but i only ask for something of substance, an interesting read, at the very least a personal perspective, not internet gaming buzzwords i can see in like 60 other reviews. i just want to think and challenge myself and i feel like i'm always going into a hivemind. but i guess that's fine i get to cherish good things when i see them at least.

i just need to remind myself of this