In this game, Uchikoshi explores how many different forms of Pained Expression he can give his characters.

Nirvana Initiative is an overall improvement over the original Ai in gameplay, particularly the sominiums, but with a less interesting plot/mystery overall.

In the Hit Band Nirvana, you follow newcomer Ryuji and Tama a few months after the original game, and grown up Mizuki 6 years later, as they chase down the serial killer Tearer, whose victims are cut directly in half; which only gets more complicated when each half of the bodies are discovered 6 years inbetween each other.

The premise is good but the overall execution is lacking. Ryuji and tama personally just aren't as interesting as MCs as Date and Aiba were (something that isn't really fair probably, because Date catapulted into being one of my favorite video game protags ever, but still), and when you're done playing his half of the game Ryuji takes a serious backseat in the plot. I still like Mizuki and Aiba, but not as much as Date.

The game has a genuinely pretty great twist at the climax, and some strong individual moments, but it just wasn't hitting for me as much as the plot of the first game. I actually liked that most of the main cast is new characters, and I definitely liked Gen and Lien for example, but I don't think they're as memorable as some of the smash hits from the first game like So or Irys. Meanwhile the game is filled with moments of just confusing character choices (a lot of this game would be solved if people just called for backup), and an endgame result which feels a little too high stakes for a murder mystery.

This game also double downs on one of my least favorite parts of the previous game; the really bad side endings. Every ending that's not the main one and the secret ending feels like a joke. Every side ending reads like Ota's ending in the first game, which was "that was nice, anyways back to the murder mystery" and then the credits start rolling. One of them is like Kidna Sorta Psuedo canon? just baffling

Somnium's are the high point of the game and are much, much better than the previous game. Most of the previous game's somniums felt like you were mostly just digging around to find the interaction the progressed the sominium. This one has much more varied and engaging somniums; one's mostly a quiz show, one is trying to get out of escape room inspired puzzles, one of them has straight forward interactions but has obstacles inbetween sections to drain your time if they reach you, ect ect. I won't go into details for spoilers but somniums are very fun in this game, and there's a lot of my favorite moments in the game are in them.

There's still a lot of things I like in this game; I like the characters, most of the dialogue, the game's secret ending is particularly cool, all the simulation theory stuff is really interesting that its kinda disappointing that the end result is pretty generic. But while the gameplay is overall improved, the plot and writing just didnt live up to the previous game for me. I still think it's pretty good though, and if you like Uchikoshi stuff yeah guess what you're gonna like it.

you know all things considered i dont do a lot of drawing in this game

I really liked this game, and it's a lot more than just a unique art style but that's also really nice. The mystery has legs and, most surprisingly, a completely dialogue and story driven game has systems for replayability.

You play as Andreas, a 1500s artist in a Bavarian mountain village, working at the village's abbey to make ends meet and work towards your masterpiece, who gets wrapped up in a murder.

The game works in that when you start the game to get to customize Andreas in a few ways, which lets you get exclusive dialogue options to approach leads. If your Andreas spent time in Florence, he knows Italian and can converse with Italians or read Italian books, but if you pick Italian you cant pick Spain so now he cant read Spanish or have knowledge of spain, stuff like that. Each act of the game lets you add more to your repertoire to hunt for leads.

Secondly, each act effectively has a "time limit". You have only a limited amount of time to follow leads and theres no way to investigate all of them in the time so you have you follow what you think is best, or have the talents to pursue effectively.

Likewise, dialogue choices have lasting effects on your choices, and the game doesn't give you any hints on whenever or not the person you're talking to will like what you said or not, eventually leading to a dialogue check where depending on your previous answers the character you're talking to will do what you bring up.

You're gonna fuck up a lot on your first playthrough, but there's no real "bad" ending in the game for fucking up too much; you'll still get to solve the mystery no matter what (i assume so anyways, ive only done one playthrough) but your actions truly have weight and things you do in act 1 will come back to either haunt or benefit you much later in the game. It'll only be in further playthroughs before I know how different playthroughs really are depending on your choices but in particular act ending decisions you make are pretty significant so I can't imagine playthroughs with the different skills/following different leads being too similiar.

And obviously being all dialogue the writing is the most important part, and I think Obsidian did a swell job. The setting alone is fascinating; 1500s holy roman empire village pretty separated from the world post martin luther is a setting that not a lot of games can do things with. You get a huge skew of characters of all walks of life in this time, from the peasants, the tradesfolk, the nuns and the brothers, and people inbetween, but the scale is so small that changes to the village affects the lives of almost everyone there. Everyone has their own stakes and point of views, and there really isn't many cut and dry answers to give. You'll spend a lot of time talking to the people of Tassing and it's a really memorable cast of characters. And as mentioned earlier, the mystery itself has legs.

Only later playthroughs will let me really know how much variation there actually is in routes, and it can be kinda slow at times, but Pentiment was a cool game with a well executed idea. Definitely recommend, it's on gamepass if you're hesitant to drop $$$ on it.

I don't really like putting reviews for games I drop, I feel like I dont want to throw my hat in on a game i didnt finish even if I think my reasons are legit, but I was looking forward to this game since the crowdfunding days and getting really let down by this game was big bummer.
The big thing for me is that this game made me think this was gonna be the indie metroidvania that gave me what I wanted: metroid, not castlevania or hollowknight or dark souls but in 2d. It sure seems like it; it's scifi, you got an armcannon, you kinda look like samus, surely this is the one, right?

Sadly, it's not , especially because it really doesn't want you to do the shooting part of metroid. The game has a heat mechanic where if you shoot too much your weapon will overheat, resulting in really weak shots, and improved melee hits. However, it overheats in like 2-3 seconds of shooting and it takes a lot time for your weapon to reduce heat, often leading to constantly having to swap between ranged and melee. It doesn't feel good, if you want to metroid shoot it up it feels really bad even if you're taking upgrade pieces with the shooting in mind, because you're constantly in overheat and will stay overheated unless you start meleeing, and the melee combat just feels mediocre and limited overall. Special weapons are also attached to their own meter, which i guess is nice rather than ammo but the special recharge is so slow. I feel like no matter what I do im just out of resources at all times even when using equipment with the goal reducing the downtime.

the game also has a lot of Souls mechanics because every game needs them now for some reason and this game did not need them and does not improve the experience. Enemies drop souls which you use to improve stats and upgrade slots, and if you die you drop them and have the pick them up. However, very curiously, not every save point in this game is where you can level up. infact, most of them aren't. In my playtime I only found like 3 of them that let me level up/quicksave. Thinking "i have a lot of souls i should look for a bonfire and level up" becomes an entire endeavor of backtracking through many, many screens to hit a levelup bonfire. It turns out, the souls thing where you hit a bonfire after being alive for a long time and carving through with a ton of souls in your pocket stops being a good feeling when most bonfires wont let you actually dump your souls.
you also do the thing where you lose max health when you die, and picking up your souls does not bring your health back and instead you need to... once again go back to a levelup shrine to repair yourself. It's just tedious.

Ultimately it all comes to head for me when I died on a foggate'd section, went back to it, and found that the foggate was activated, I was locked out of the fight, and I couldn't progress anymore. Maybe if I explored around more and did some other stuff it would've fixed itself, but I wasn't really enjoying myself so I just gave up on it.

It's all disappointing. I think the game's character designs look nice, even if it has that flash movement to it, it gave up on the good parts of metroid by replacing it with melee and souls mechanics because idk hollow knight was popular.

To any indie devs interested in making a metroidvania who is following this: PLEASE stop making souls game in 2d i beg you. i want to play metroid. please rip off metroid i am begging you.

does the plot of this game imply that smash bros is another reality in the bayo universe? does that mean that singularity came out and destroyed the smash bros universe? much to think about if you're stupid like me.

In bayonetta 3, bayonetta travels through the multiverse fighting reality consuming blue boys, collecting macguffins with the person you know on twitter whos really into punk rock and alternate bayonettas to save reality. Bayo 3 comes out with probably the best combat in the franchise and a mediocre to annoying everything else.

Combat goes really hard at times. You get a fuck ton of weapons by the end; almost too many for a game that only lets you use two weapons at a time. The first few weapons are pretty standard but a lot of the late ones go really crazy. The visual design of just the weapons themselves and the part where part of the moveset puts you into half demon forms is really cool across the board. The demon attack system does put priority into combos that end with weave attacks but it was always kinda like that tbh. Witch time is still fun, and even has an additional perfect party mechanic too it, the accessories feel more involved in this, and enemies will not break out of your combo after 3 hits so this pretty sick.

The demon slave mechanic is... okay. You hold ZR and bayo will start dancing while you control a demon (likely the remnants of scalebound lol) , of which you can pick from 3 at a time. They're kinda mashy because their combo/skill lists are limited, but they're really strong (and the game primarly wants you to use them against large enemies, of which there is many) so its pretty recommended to take it advantage of the system. The first couple feel kinda samey but like the weapons, the later ones have some really fun gimmicks (clock tower is an absolute favorite of mine), and visually both using them and combing with them in the weave attacks is really fucking cool.

Funny enough, I dont mind that I wasn't super into the mechanic but implement ways of using it without fully committing to it, which is pretty genius. later in the game there's an accessory that lets the demons just go on autopilot, letting you use the demons while still being able to punch stuff like normal, or my personal preference, the demon that lets you replace it by going into effectively into a very familiar "super form" instead; letting you do big demon skills while having more direct control. It's hard to complain about it when the game offers you options to approach in different ways until you find something you like.

Other combat stuff: most enemies are fine. There's a couple annoying ones but there's annoying enemies in every game. Viola is pretty fun, my biggest complaint is that witch time parry timing feels too strict; most enemies recoil on parrying some shot witch times you often dont get anything, and that Cheshire is really fucking good so I spent more time punching than katana slashing. Unforantely there's only like 4~ dedicated Viola missions, through you can play as her in the sidemissions if you want. Still, for uh, reasons, you should probably get used to how Viola plays.

(personal statement not related to the game; I think every character action game with multiple characters should have a mode like DMC5 Vergil story where it's all the game's leveled trimmed down so every character can do it, and you just play as X character. I'd really enjoy just a viola route in this game, and not being able to play Baldr/Rodan in the bayo 2 story mode is like my biggest complaint about that game)

By far my least favorite part of the game is... basically everything thats not combat. Which is, sadly, a lot.
I'm convinced this game used to be an open world that they stripped down levels. Every weapon comes with its how unique movement option (default is hovering, yoyos gives you a web slinging thing, gun hammer gives you chargeable boost jump, ect ect). To make the use of this, levels in this game are surprisingly large, and is filled with open world style reoccuring minigames stuff. A lot of them are platforming segments.
This sounds not bad at first; lots of little platforming segments and all your weapons give you a type of movement to use on them. the problem is that the platforming fucking sucks. Consistently. They're almost all annoying, bayo is slippery in movement and is difficult to control in moments of precise movement, lots of demon movement just acts fucking weird in general, it still has that bayo thing where if you fail a challenge it takes like 20-30 seconds to restart it because you're watching the challenge initiate (addin a speed up but not just skip to these screens is kinda infuriating). And there's so much. When you beat a level itll separate your times to total time and time spent in battle; I'd finish a level at like 30-40 minutes, and the skew will be like 10 minutes of battling and like 20-30 minutes of Not Battle (i also afk a lot so the numbers are fluffed a little but you get the idea). These are often where you get witch hearts/moon pearl pieces so its not like you can just ignore them. The first playthrough of this game will probably be the worst; atleast after you beat the game and go to do harder difficulties youll have all the upgrades so you can just beeline to fighting.

There's also a story. people dont like it. i really cant pretend to care about the story in bayonetta, negatively or positively. I guess there's a lot less funny/cool action cutscenes than in 1/2. Who cares. It was extremely funny to see people get queerbaited by hideki kamiya tho.

Other minor thoughts:
-Homunculi just aren't as interesting as angels or demons. its a bummer because I normally like designs like that but they just lack the personality of angels/demons, and the side fights that let you fight them again are a welcome sight.
-They're surprisingly tame with the multiverse stuff. I'd expect a few weird realities but the game feels more like Bayonetta In Time rather than Bayonetta traveling through realities. I'd love like atleast one weird one
-the jeanne segments are. alright. it's w/e.
-Whoever did the mocapping for bayonetta's dancing really worked their fucking ass man. There must be like 20-30 minutes of unique dancing animations in this game, go off.

Really fun combat with a lot of weapons and demons to customize how you play, but the mediocre and excessive side content is a complete bummer.

No for real man, you better get used to viola gameplay or you're in for a rude fucking surprise when bayo 4 comes out in another decade.

Have you ever wondered what it'd be like to play through in game in a different language, only working off what handful of words you knew? Well if you were keeping up on your studies and used that JP rom you downloaded as a practice test like you said you would you could do that. Tsk tsk. Also this game works pretty well too.

I sorta wish I liked tunic more than i did. The game's core gimmick is really cool and works well, and a lot of the things around it still work; I just really hated the combat in this game.

The game's main gimmick is that you pop in knowing nothing. As you go you pick up pieces of the manual, but most of it is written in a fictional language with a handful of words written in Actual Language, and you need to use the pictures and what little info you get to figure things out; there's multiple skills in this game that are available from the start but you wont even know how to use it until you get a manual page and go "oh".
That stuff's pretty swell, some of it imo is a little TOO obtuse but it's whatever maybe im just dumb. The map design is fun, with a lot of things hidden in every corner through clever camera usage. I think the game's second act changes to the map are a little lame, with just very "we want to change progression so this ladder is just gone or this door is just blocked now go away", but it's not that bad. While I complained about it, there's a lot less combat in the 2nd act of the game and you kinda just walk around until you find the path to the next.

The absolute biggest killer for me is just i never got to a point where I was enjoying the combat. It controls similarly to like 2d zelda games, with a lot of souls inhaving flasks/currency drops and is pickupable on death/bonfires/how stamina works/rolls/ect, but it just never felt good. Rolling with Tunic (thats his name now) often ended in just strange positions, you get an upgrade to rolls later which is definitely better but you lose the ability to have like two distances for rolls and get only long rolls for weird movement in the remaining combat encounters, your sword is just miserably small and you only have 1 attack combo, inwhich I often had to force myself to stop at the 2nd hit because i'd often get owned going for the 3rd hit because of how stagger works. The bosses are decent, some of them are annoying but it's nothing awful or amazing. Magic items are actually fun (s/o to the gun) and its got the most useful grappling hook in history, but most bosses will be sword combat anyways. I'd argue that in the regular enemy cast it's more annoying than fun to fight.

Cool gimmick, solid almost everything else except combat which i found grating. I'd still recommend a playthrough because the cool stuff in this game is really fun and it's not super long but I def had my fill of it well before the end of the game.

nothing will help you understand the necessity of consistency boosting in your deck in actual card games than playing this game.

I wanted to like this game and I think up until the finale gauntlet I actually did, but when you hit the gauntlet all of the games problems hit the forefront and it stops being fun little novel system and becomes incredibly frustrating uphill battle where you're force to choose between praying to rng or hitting an outrageous grinding and praying to more reasonable rng.

Being made in the early days of the YGO IP and concepts like "the game's rules" being far from set in stone, FM plays off a very barebones version of even early yugioh rules; there are no monsters with effects, you are limited to one card per turn, the list of spell trap cards are very limited, even things like "the graveyard" dont exist, fusions exists but it's a completely different system.

Ultimately the name of the game is making the strongest beatstick you can. There is a reason THTD is so memed in this game; it's not just the speedrunner efficient creature to build your deck around, it's just the second best creature the player can get in the game (the first being a creature with low drop rates and cant be fused into). Fusing in this game involves putting creatures over each other while playing them, and they will fused into a creature from predetermined list of fusions, often based on creature types and atk values. In turn, because the game is focused on making the beefiest beatstick between each player's decks, the game's deck building is focused on making sure you can turbo out the strongest fusion your deck, and hitting it up equips to make sure it stays above the rest. This is the only real way to make a deck, and focusing on thunder/dragons to pump out THTD because it's the best.

"But do i have to do that? surely I don't have to focus exclusively on one strategy if you want to beat the game" you uhhh kinda need to.
Early game not so much ( first zone > most of World tournament) you can get away going with what you got and hitting a gameFAQ page to find out what you can fuse . But the furhter you get in you're gonna find you're gonna hit what feels like breakpoints; if your deck doesn't have the ability to get past X amount of ATK points, you're very likely just going to lose.
It becomes very a blatant when you hit the 2nd to last section of the game, the mage hunt. Most of the final mages have some sort of big badass that they will likely play; and they're real badasses. If you don't have a way to beat past the 3750atk gate guardian, you're praying you draw one of your incredibly limited options for removal (again, you can play 1 card a turn, so dropping a removal also means you ahve to choose between removing threats or building your board, which I think is actually a fun gameplay decision but it does lead into the situation i'm about to describe) and pray that he doesn't drop another GG.

It's already difficult when approaching the mages, but the mage hunt is reasonable enough imo if you're atleast trying to build a strong deck and do a little grinding at Rex and isis (more on this later) you should be able to get through.

Not so much for the final gauntlet. it's infuriating. It's pretty well know that the gauntlet actually cheat; in particular they dont actually have 5 card hands. They have 20 card hands. Particularly in the final 4, a THTD with one +500 boost is not enough. that's just 3300 atk. every single one dropping monsters in the 4000+ range almost every turn; seto 3 statistically has like a 50% chance to drop blue eyes ultimate at 4500 on turn 1. If you want THTD to beat it, you need 1700 damage just to trade. 90% of the boosts in this game are just +500. You're starting to se the problems here right?
So how do you win?
1) you pray you get lucky. You can, sometimes opponents in this game will actually just give up. You can get away with this individuals fights, but the gauntlet requires 6-7 fights in a row and you get sent back to the beginning if you lose. You might get a freebie in your runs, but you can't bet on it.
2) you grind. you need an ultra consistent deck. Any fusion less than THTD is a brick, and you've got a tight clock when they're dropping 3000-4000 monsters a turn. Your THTD also needs buff, and 500+ are somehow too slow at the gauntlet, you want megamorph which is atleast 1000+. You also want removal, but literally the only good removal (outside of raigeki/BH you get in your starter deck) is widespread ruin, which is rare. If you really want an ace you want meteor B. Dragon, who is a big badass with just 1-2 equips can compuete with even the biggest of boys, which is also a very rare drop.
Did I mention you get 1 drop a duel?

if you play this game I highly recommend downloading the 5/10/15 card drop mode. I did it at 5 because i already felt weird modding a game the first time I play it. I disagree with that now, you should hit this bad bitch with the 15 card drop and save yourself a lot of time. I cant imaging hitting this game up at 1 card a duel, just mind numbing.

I've been hating a lot but I really think it's just the final gauntlet of this game that kills me. I was having plenty of fun going through it, especially if you do know whats good and where to look for it (i also recommend reading the speedrunnin guide for this game, the advice there is just as useful in a casual run), but the finale of this game feels like a brutal slot machine even if you grind out a deck to be as strong as you can get it and it makes me lose all my energy for the game.

Otherwise it's neat. It's got a remarkably good soundtrack, I'm always a sucker for early Duel Monsters era Takahashi art and designs, but the actual card game just lacks the depth to be much more than beatstick turbo, and the way they worked out the fact that there's technically only around 25~ necessary duels in the game is making it that many of the end game duelists simply do not fuck around and require a lot of grinding out the best to have chance at winning.

Still, on an kinda unrelated note, this game was technically the first in a trilogy with a reoccurring villain in all 3. The second, duelist of the roses, reused a lot of the systems of FM but was also a weird psuedo TRPG, while the third game, falsebound king, is a rts/jrpg hybird. I dont think FM is very good, and i also know that FK is not good at all, (idk about DOTR), I sorta miss when they were a lot more experimental with the YGO IP, especially as the actual card game these days has a fair amount of lore and interconnected stories that last multiple sets that you can build on. Aside from 1 weird 5DS racing game, everything since then have just been fairly accurate to the current relevant anime season or just stuff like duel links/master duel. Just go make your sky strikers game and make some weeb money you motherfuckers.

the strangest yugioh reimagining you'll ever play

Bayo 2 refines out a lot of the dogshit parts of bayo 1, but some of the changes to the overall combat system are a little head scratchy. On a single playthrough I think bayo 2 is overall better than bayo 1, but if you were to really be digging into the game you'll start to get annoyed by things.

Gone is a lot of the really obnoxious parts of bayo 1, such has some of the most brutal QTEs in gaming (both in making torture attack QTEs lenient and the complete removal of wack instant death QTEs), some truly awful gimmick encounters, the overly long motorcycle segment and the space harr- okay no wait there's still a psuedo after burner/space harrier section but they're not like 10-15 minutes long like the other one so it's whatever. It's not all perfect, while there's no complete dogshit bosses they implemented the "flying" bosses which are kinda awkward and difficult to parse if you're close enough to hit to the bosses or they just fuck off a mile away between hits (or the Lumen Sage 1 fight, where the flying section im trying to follow a white shape while a giant while shape fights and expldoes in the background, very easy to parse.) Bosses have their own issues, but even the worst bosses in this game are miles better than the worst bosses in B1, plus I'd make an argument that Lumen Sage 2 is like my favorite boss in this franchise.

The stage to stage if good and has some really fun set pieces, the city cracking apart, to inferno, to going back to the past, all that stuff is great, if anything I like the stage to stage pacing of B2 much more than B1. it onyl really chokes infamously at the end, where the game kind abruptly walks into its climax and is nowhere near as satisfying as the insanity of bayo 1's ending. The difference in... intensity... of the two game's endings is why i think most people aren't as hot on the 2nd game's story mode imo but honestly outside of the very ending this game goes really fucking hard, I don't think that's fair.

I shall now talk about combat. I don't consider myself good enough at these games to give a good detailed breakdown of it so i'm gonna bullet point this bad mother.
-Overall like the weapons more, while I miss the katana and don't like the Durga replacement as much as Durga, there's tons of cool weapons and I used most of them atleast for a bit. The chainsaws are so fucking cool.
-Most enemies in this game WILL combo break you, or just can't be launched. On one hand, there is most to enemies than just being combofodder, but there is a level of frustrating when most enemies will break out of your combo by the 3rd or 4th hit and you have dodge out around then. Dodge offsetting will help a lot in still getting larger hits in but dodge offsetting is hard : (. On one hand I appreciate having to learn enemy patterns more, but against certain enemies it will feel like there's not much to do but XYX/XYY > dodge > repeat. I dont think it's that bad in this game, but this is truly the beginning of the more modern platnium style where it's mostly just light/light/heavy > dodge/parry > repeat
-combo system in general overall weighs much more on number of hits rather than how you it. it makes it really difficult to get high combo ratings on slow weapons like the hammer, and it feels like an obligation to break out things like the default guns/chainsaw for getting high scores
-Magic was in a weird place in 1. In 1 there were TWO moves total that used the magic meter, and otherwise magic was just a free high damage torture attack if you were owning and got magic. However, against enemies that you cant TA (see: bosses lol), magic felt like an mechanic that just doesn't do anything except maybe let you use the shoulder bash, and even in regular fights magic was basically Do A Cool QTE if you're beating ass.
In 2 they approach this by introducing Climax, if you have 1 full meter you instead enter a super state where all your moves have bigger range and do more damage. This is its own issue, on one hand magic is always a mechanic you can use, but on the other hand it's miles better than anything else you can do and there isnt much of a reason to not just pop climax when it's up and start mashing. TA feel worthless, why TA on one enemy when you can climax and kill everything on screen, and probably do more damage than a TA on single targets anyways? The game's overall damage is also pretty clearly balanced around Climax, your damage is lower than bayo 1's relatively unil you pop climax, especially when a lot of enemies will break out of your combos all the time, but even bosses can't break out of climax hits. I appreciate magic feeling like more of a thing to care about than in 1, but I don't really like either games implementation of magic and hope bayo 3 is more interesting with it.
-some other shit that's beyond me, something about two enemies being able to attack at once. idk.
This sounds like a lot of negatives, but I can't stress that hitting buttons is fun, witch time is still satisfying, and the weapons are very cool in this game. If you play through this game once, something which a lot of action game players get migraines over the thought of even though they know that 80% of the people who beat the game will probably not try to grind out IC pure platinum clears),you are still going to have fun. It's when you start really digging through the game that these issues start to show.

By far, however, by biggest complaint with this game isn't attached to the game's story mode or the core combat; it's the incredibly flaccid tag climax mode that frustrates me by having both too much and too little effort put into it.
Tag Cliamx is a... coop / vs mode? I already don't like those words. It is 50 or so set encounters with varying difficulties, a chunk of them being just the game's bosses, you pick and play 6 of them, you and your partner fight the enemies while getting scored by your performance.
It sucks. it's just bad. It's repetitive, the non boss engagements are short, bland and you'll probably spend more time loading than actually playing them. It's not a replacement for Angel Slayer/Bloody palace/Boss Rush/ect, the game is not really improved by adding coop and if anything just makes combat more messy and difficult to follow, and it's jsut not fun.
Now a bonus mode sucking wouldn't be a huge deal normally. However; exclusive to tag climax is multiple bosses and TWO CHARACTERS. They're not even reskins of Bayo with stat differences like jeanne and rosa, they're two cool ass characters with completely unique movesets, trapped in this lame coop mode. There isn't even an option to play these exclusive bosses or characters solo; even if you dont have a friend you have to atleast play with a CPU. Just frustating. I wanted to play lumen sage man.

There was a lot of negative posting by the end of this but honestly after knowing a lot of people who are pretty negative on this game I was pretty pleasantly surprised on this replay, I was still having fun, and god there was just some complete wastes of time in bayo 1. But I also see a lot of my frustrations with modern action games steaming more from this game rather than bayo 1, and the odd decisions in the core combat and the infuriating hole of content that is tag climax are pretty wack

TLDR overall better story mode than bayo 1 with great weapons and set pieces, but there's awkward changes to the combat systems and tag climax is so bad that I can't help but to feel like the time spent on climax could've been put into adding more in the main game / just adding some angel slayer/bloody palace variant in it's place for better results.
If bayo 3 is a combination of the best parts of bayo 1 and 2 that game will be amazing but I don't know if I believe in 2022 platinum.

bayonetta is a documentary btw. this all happened.

Bayo's pretty good. It's been a hot couple years since I last played it, and I'm not really super impressed, but it's still a cool game that makes you feel pretty cool.

When the game is in it's pure combat against normal enemies it's at its best. I dont think I enjoy this game's combat system as much as say, DMC5, but when a lot of action games lately have just become Light > light > Light > light > heavy + stealing witch time dodges it's still refreshing. One of the biggest issues with normal combat is that the game gives you the best + coolest weapon in the game as your second weapon (shoutouts to the katana, though the fire/lighting claws are also really fun). Infact they kinda frontload the weapons because katana/claws are so good but everything after fell kinda flat for me. In terms of enemies there isn't a huge variatity but there's still enough and the only ones I really don't like are the ones that you can't witchtime lol. The camera can also be funky but I dont think it's really as bad as some people make it out to be.

By far bayo is at its worst when it's gimmick section time. It's a very 7th gen game thing where they push a lot of weird gimmick sections to add "variety" and "break up the pace". A controversal opinion of mine is that I don't like most of those sections in 7th gen games in particular and rather just have more interesting standard encounters, and bayonetta reinforces this thought of mine.
The motorcycle/kamiya's love for Space Harrier sections are Okay at best, but then we start getting things like fighting a boss on a turret that's just complete ass, or the on water boss. Infact most of the bosses in this game, past the visual spectacle part, are pretty mid to fight. Things like Jeanne and Balder are pretty good, but then you fight stuff like Golem and Lustitia that just blow. I didn't do all of the bonus stages, but most of those were either really easy or just really obnoxious gimmick. I love having to protect an NPC me when enemy's will just spawn next to it.

(also, this might just be me but the visual spectacle the game's praised often for just kinda floated off me this run. maybe it's because I have played the game before/know whats going to happen, but outside of the few things that are still pretty pog i was kinda checked out for the cutscenes. I don't really consider this a negative cuz I'm sure it was cool as hell back inthe day and everything's a little less cool when you know what' going to happen)

Also there's a story. yeah it's there. There's some nonsense about time travel at the end but the story is simply an engine to give you some cool cutscenes and watch bayo and jeanne kill angels. The game still looks nice tho, obviously being a ps3 game there's age but some fantastic animation work and enemy visual design doing some insane weight lifting.

Bayonetta has problems, a lot of it I put in how games were made back during gen 7, and even if it's not my favorite bayo's combat is still miles above most of it's compatriots in the genre. If you like action games you should go play Bayonetta, cuz a lot of games have been ripping this game off for a while.

Join local Cringe And Fail Dad Kaname Date goes on maybe the worst 5 days of his life, also with his cringe and fail daughter. maybe two cringe and fail daughters.

I don't really know how to review a game that's 80% visual novel well but I think this game cool, very held up by the actual mystery being memorable and a very fun cast of characters.
You can't really go into details without spoiling a lot so here's a short version. Near future detective Kaname Date is put onto a case to investigate the murder of a woman that he personally knows, and shows similarities to another serial killer from 6 years ago. He's armed with his Ai partner/eyeball and a cool and legal grey area machine that him travel into people's minds for a limit time. And the deeper he gets into the mystery the more fucking freaks he meets with more and more complicated ties to each other. To hit a short non spoilers review, I was into mystery the whole time and every time I thought I had a grasp on it I got thrown for a loop. I also adore the characters in the game, i was always clciking around every scene because I wanted more dialogue of these morons talking to each other about likely some stupid shit.

The other major story based thing is the Non Main Endings. There's a "true" ending that requires you to go through the other game's endings and i'd argue all but one ends unsatisfactorily. One (maybe two? up for debate) ends with atleast "there's still loose ends but the killings did stop" kind of ending which is fine for a not true ending but every other one ends on a complete non ending, or in one's case, ends in "well that was a nice side diversion, lets get back to the mystery" and credits roll. I like the real ending but until you get there you'll be getting hit with some truly half baked endings.

Also kinda minor note but the action cutscenes in the game are really bad. Just all around shoddy animation and framing, everything feels weightless and takes all the energy out of them, they all feel really cheap.

Oh yeah the actual game parts. when you go into someone's mind (the aformentioned somnium part of the game) you enter a sorta third person adventure/point and click game with the gimmick of having a 6 minute time limit. Doing things takes time off the clock, but you get items that reduce the time it takes to do said things, or even get items that force you to take longer time.

They're pretty alright. they're not amazing. There's a couple that are pretty clever in the time mechanics, in which getting to the end is not just finding which interaction unlocks the lock, but also using other items to do things like getting rid of a time multiplier or doing it to get a time divider, inwhich the time spent getting the divider is and using it is less than just doing thing. Those are good but there's not really enough of it and it does fall into the hole of a lot of games like this where for every time you actually see the interactions and put together the ability to progress yourself, there's also just a time where you're just clicking interactions until The Progression happens, something that normally isn't terrible in other games becomes annoying here where trying interactions leads to you having to restart and redo a bunch of stuff because it killed your clock.

I like this game. It's got problems with things like mediocre endings and individual spoiler plot points that are weird but I love the characters, the mystery had me engaged till the end, and the sominium moments had some individual fun moments or interactions.

anyone wanna hop on ShovelForge?

xenoblade 3 asks a truly haunting question. how far is too far for catgirl pussy.

I find these games oddly difficult to write a review abotu despite being a huge fan of this franchise from even back on the original wii release (I bought a fucking wii u for XBX man, and that game's pretty mid). This franchise is so dedicated to being huge in scale in almost every factor that the games often have the feeling of being a single player MMO, it's hard to try to be indepth while also not turning into an hour long youtube video that'll get 100 views at best with a game that's thick with mechanics. So I'm just gonna try bullet pointing it.

In just the combat in the vacuum I put maybe slightly over XB2 but I'm not sure. The name of the game is chain attacks, which unless you're really at the end gamer hyper optimized team comps most of your damage is just going to be from chain attacks. CAs I think are at the most interesting in the franchise, changing a single hero or class on a character can reroute how you approach it (and you'll probably be swapping often), and even if you're sticking with one comp the not-rng-but-might-as-well-be-rng bonus point system will mix up each round. Unfortunately combat seems very centralized around CAs, to the point where combat outside of CAs often feels like twiddling your thumbs until CA lights up and it's time to hear that sweet sweet CA theme. Something about XB2 is that, while getting big CAs was still the name of the game, getting big CAs required smart play/blade choice on pre CA combat before you let the CA rip trying to get that sick full bust. CA also isn't attached to your rezs anymore so if you're getting owned, as long as you can get everyone up before hitting CA you can often turn a fight completely even if you're getting your ass beat.

Party customization is the real name of the game, and it's really complex. Each class comes with 4 passives, 5 arts (but only can use 3 at a time) and a fancy talent skill. That doesn't sound like much but where it really shines is cross classing. There is a dedicated 3 extra slots of passives and arts exclusively for skills from classes the character has leveled. Along with that, you can "fuse" your class' arts with the crossclass arts to effectively use them both as once for far more powerful art. And you have SIX party members + a 7th less customizable NPC party member, and there's also like 25~ different classes (more when the DLC launches properly), gem slots with passive effects, and multiple accessory slots that start with just stat boosts at first but eventually start getting powerful additional mechanics and you've got a shit ton of ways to put a party together. And this isn't even starting to talk about the blue mage class.
Also in classic xenoblade fashion, if you really know what you're doing you can break this game hard, and that rules.

I like the story. The main cast is likeable and memorable, and the story beats are fucking strong (the end of chapter 5 > start of chapter 6 had me actually losing it, maybe the peak of the franchise), and the details to this incredibly fucked up and miserable world is really enjoyable (stuff liek characters seeing a face with wrinkles and going "what the fuck is wrong with your face?" kicks so much ass.). The last chapter unfortunately loses some of the juice with blatant padding and questionable story beats (some people dont like what happens with the last main story colony event but idk I was kinda mixed on how short what would be a major story event for mio is rather than the anime moment but w/e) and some classic JRPG kinda shallow philosophy, but the actual final boss is pretty fucking kino and it sticks the landing really well so you get back some of the lost juice back.

Some people I've noticed complained about pacing in like chapter 3-4 but I actually think it's a misunderstanding. That misunderstanding that the game has side quests that are good enough to almost trick you into think you're doing main story stuff. While the blue side quests are pretty standard (there's still some pretty memorable ones in there, and there's a lot less Go Get X Cuz I Need Some Bro quests), the yellow quests which unlock new heroes/limit break classes are way more indepth with directed cutscenes, voice acting and character development relevant events that you may trick youself into think it's a main story event but alas no, it was side content! The yellow quest are still a mixed bag of quality as you may expect, but these are still the best sidequests in the franchise since xenoblade x.

Minor things:
-The world is a XB world so its very big and very pretty. There's tons of hidden holes in the wall which NMs or maybe just way overleveled enemies waiting to clobber your ass. I think XB1 is still the peak of cool ass world design but you can't strike gold like that twice anyways.

-It's SO SO SO easy to get overleveled. This is probably the first time i've actually considered not using the bonus exp rests because I was kinda clobbering through shit. I almost think this was intended because I found some bosses were rougher than I thought they'd be even when I was fairly higher level than them, but maybe this was because I was more interested in leveling classes than making actualyl good team comps

-Ive spent more time managing aggro in this game than i've managed aggro in my 7 years of playing FFXIV. I almost think I'm doing things wrong because keeping aggro on tanks felt like a struggle even when slapping a bunch of bonus aggro gems/accessories/dedicated a lot of art slots to aggro based skills and taking anti-aggro gem/skills on dps. It felt a lot more consistent by the end but tanks losing aggro and getting auto'd down in the start of a fight when i was using the accessories that makes your cross class arts available at the start was a common occurrence.

-On that MMO topic this is the most ive ever felt the MMO influences in a XB game, and there was one game that actually had online multiplayer. Aggro managment, swapping between characters so my dumbass healers wouldn't get cleaved by the boss, doing shit like swapping to lanz/sena so I can ouroboros and get a guaranteed launch combo before CA, ect ect. I almost wish this game had some kind of multiplayer because the systems are really cool, but it'd be impossible to implement probably. Some wont like this. I like MMOs so this is tight.

Some hiccups in terms of pacing, overall story and gameplay does not overshadow how sucked into this game i was. Ive played a lot of games where it felt like I had played 100 hours but it was only 50 hours, this was a game where i beat it, saw my hour count was 90 hours and thought "wow, i thought it was shorter than that". I love this game, and despite popping in 90 hours I might pop it back up and clean up missing quests/NMs/end game stuff I didnt do. I love this franchise, and while they make it clear this is suppose to be the end of the story brought on by Klaus' experiment, I still can't wait for both the story based DLC (which im assuming is suppose to be similiar to torna/futures connected in scale) and future games from these teams. Takahashi I kneel.

If your name starts with O!!!!!!!!! It is fucking on sight!!!!!!!!!!!

Live A Live is a cool game that is difficult to write a review about because the peak of the game is all in the spoiler territory. A short version is that the game is effectively 8 isolated short RPGs themed around different time peroids, only a few hours long each, with one final longer chapter to close the game out. While each story uses the same grid based + ATB mechanics battle system, each game's story has its own rules and progression. While Near Future and Prehistory are closer to a standard JRPG in progression, there are stories like modern age which is simply just boss fights, the wild west which is mostly just set up for one particular fight, or far future which.. doesn't have fighting at all! Each story has their own quirks out of their timespan, but the final arc really ties it together in a way that it doesn't feel like you grabbed a pile of itch.io rpgs and put it onto a cart.

Quality ranges between the games as you can expect, and oddly some stories kinda dragged for me, the combat has some good peaks but when you get to the chapters where random encounters happen I started to fall out of it. The game's also very easy for 90% of the game, sans a handfull of difficulty spikes (one of which was a me problem because i entered a section incredibly underleveled), but it's never bad enough that it's killer. Also, even though it's designed to be short 2-3~ hour a piece chapters, the shortness can leave you a little underwhelmed when you hit the end of some of them.

Also the game is remake. I am personally not a fan of the HD/2D style, but it'd be a lie to say the game doesn't have some great spriteworks and looks better than the original, often improving the atmosphere of sections. Some great art design really also carries it on its back as well.

Live a Live is a cool unique experience with some roughness, but unique experiences generally are. It's been 28 (!) years since the OG came out, and I can't think of another JRPG that tries that it does, and I think you owe it a playthrough. My mind kinda says it's a 3.5/5 instead of a 4 but fuck it I do what I want.

Far Future > Imperial China > Wild West > Middle Ages > Modern Age > Near Future > Edo > Prehistory

Klonoa 2 teaches you a life long and important lesson. You should steal rental products. You'll never know when it'll be necessary to snowboard down multiple expansive cliffs, so just take that rental snowboard.

Klonoa 1 is a pretty good game, but you can feel the age of First Try At A New Franchise On the PS1 out of it. The core kinda kirby like system where enemies are used as both your way of attacking and as a platforming too is a fun system, but it's usage is pretty basic.
The levels are... surprisingly multilayered for a game that's technically a 2d platformer. Again it's not out of this world but pretty ambitious. The remake controls okay. I really hate how miserablly short the grab range is, Klonoa himself feels pretty slippery and I really dont like floating being hold the button at any point rather that like pressing jump again in the air and then hold from there, like how most games would do this, (this is for both games, i felt it less in the 2nd but thats probably because i just got used to it) but it's mostly fine control wise. The game is almost really short, even on a casual playthrough.
Of course what separated Klonoa 1 as a fondly remembered cult classic from the other PS1 platformers of the era that are remembered as Pretty Good but no ones sweating over a sequel was the story. The game's final act tonal shift into the tearjerker ending is probably the most memorable part of the game, was likely a big reason Klonoa 2 was a lot more story heavy andddd probably why that game got a sequel becoming a series that people will post on twitter about how much they miss it.

Klonoa 2 is a lot better. The levels feel more linear but they're still not straight forward left to right walks, and especially later in the game the level have a lot of backtracking, which is fun. The core gameplay hasn't changed, but instead they've added a lot more enemies that do unique things when you pick them up, and platforming/level design with a lot more moving parts and varied designs. It's smartly not just using enemies as obstacles that you occasionally use to get a double jump, but as puzzle pieces. And a lot of sections really just puzzles, but they're fun so I'm down. Like mentoined before you get a lot more varied level designs; bringing back old stages but revamping them, levels where you're getting chased by an enemy for most of them, a LOT of snowboarding levels, level where after doing a thing you have to escape, level with a oxygen guage, ect ect. I don't really remember much of Klonoa 1's levels even though i played it only a few days ago, but 2's got a lot of memorable levels.
Also yeah it's a lot more story heavy. I don't think it hits like Klonoa 1 but it's fine. I was definetly zoning out for chunks of it but I really shouldn't be putting too much weight into ps1 platformer stories just cuz 1 had a nice tearjerker moment.

Klonoa 1 is rough with charm while 2 is jsut an improvement overall. I'd give K1 like a 3/5 and then K2 somewhere between a 3.5/4. Checkem out.



Oh yeah i should talk about the remake part of it. it's fine. Game runs good. I like that K1 still has that crunchy dialogue audio that I love. I'm not super into the graphics of the game, it feels flat and reminds me of like a wii game (which, ironically, K1 has a wii remake), and I'm fan of K1's sprites on a 3d world and K2's overall color platette more. But hey, this one's new and shiny and on a shit ton of consoles.

Ikaruga is simply forever.

In steam ladybug's second foray into Metroidvanias, following Touhou Luna Night, commits way harder into SOTN and the surprising influence in Ikaruga. The core gameplay mechanic of this game is swapping between Wind and Fire elements; when you're in a wind your completely negate the wind/blue damage and when you're in fire you absorb fire/red damage, and enemies can take extra/less/completely negate damage if you're in wind or fire. You can swap instantly between the two, even when getting it, and in both bosses and traversing the map will require you to swap constantly between the two stances. It's a cool system, but I overall dont like it as much as I like the time mechanics used in Luna Nights. I found myself often losing track of whatever stance I was currently in, and in the more fast paced bosses it became really hard to micromanage my stances while also trying to dodge the boss hits and also trying to keep doing damage. On the other hand, on the fights I got good at you could get really fast boss kills so that was fun.

The overall level and boss design is just Pretty good. There's nothing particularly outstanding with a few things that were more annoying than enjoyable (s/o to the spinning sword wheels. fuckem.) Even getting movement skills like floating nearly right off the bat doesn't lead to a lot of super interesting moments of platforming and the such.

On the plus side, team ladybug continues to knock it out of the park in presentation. Team ladybug has to have the best sprite artists in the industry right now, especially for what I believe is a small indie team. All of the sprite work and designs are just fantastic, deedlit even literally does the SOTN swag walk. I think Luna Night has better overall tracks but I'm bias and care about touhou more than I care about RoLW, and this game still has some good ass tracks too.

A pretty good overall metroidvania with a cool gimmick and some top notch presentation. If you put a gun to my head and told me to choose i'd pick touhou luna nights but who am I to make two bad bitches fight each other? I'll continue to keep looking forward to Team Ladybug's games

I like to start these reviews with a joke at the beginning but I don't have a good one. but I did look up a wikipedia article about casey jones after playing and found a quote by his creator, Kevin Eastman, talking about his creation which was very insightful but also the quote ended with hm saying that "[Casey and Raphael] are a little retarded, like me" so that was very thought provoking.

Shredder's Revenge is a great time. Straight forward to the point, polished to a T with little fluff. It's not super deep but satisfying. My only issue gameplay wise is how supers work. You get a bar of super whenever you taunt, which sounds fine but you get it even when there isn't any enemyes on screen, so it makes this weird loop where you're taunting between screens and getting full super meter and then owning most of the following screen with supers, and also supers can chunk bosses extremely hard. But really it's not big deal. other than one or two mid stages and/or bosses, it's all around a good time.

Also it's fantastic presentation carries it super hard. Great sprite work, banger sound track, it got as many of the old voice actors as they could, and even picks a lot of really obscure turtle rogue gallery picks for variety.

6 player online is also kinda based. it's a bit of a cluster fuck, especially with people constantly spamming supers with screen freezes, but i'm not sure if 6 player multiplayer anything isn't going to turn into a clusterfucker at some point. it's even remarkably easy to just pop into random games if you want.

Shredder's Revenge is a swell couple hours of fun. It's not long but it's a beat em up so it's not really a complaint, but even if you're hesitant to drop $25 for a game you can beat in like under 5 hours it's avaliable on game pass. Check it out!

Also, how come I cant play Casey Jones until I beat the game once? unbelievable.

do NOT be any high authority of governmental power and be in the same airspace as trigger. worst thing that's ever happened to me.

I have never played an ace combat or even a plane centric game before this and now I think I think I'm a fan, probably gonna go play more ace combat games. Everything about this game is tight as fuck, you'll probably take a mission or two to get into the combat but once you get a hang of it it feels great. Good mission design really enhances it; while pure dogfighting is fun, the game isn't content to jsut be 20 minutes of dog fighting. You have missions about dogfighting, base destruction, hitting bases while ducking between clouds, flying through caves while dodging searchlights, tunnel flying, escorting, killing things while not knowing who or what is your ally, actual boss fights, ect ect. A lot of missions are multiple different styles within one combat. Some of them are kinda annoying, but idk if they're actually annoying or if I was just a little salty that i hit that wall right before the checkpoint.
Probably my biggest complaint is that a lot of missions don't give you a good idea of what you'll need going into it, or you'll be in scenario where you'll want completely different types of weapons for each half of the mission. I eventually just started taking a lot of parts to make the default missiles because atleast they'll always be there with me. Infact this might not be a huge issue i just took a bomber with a special weapon that cant hit the air into a mission where I ended up getting in a dogfight with a dude with a fucking rail cannon and that Took A While.

There's a lot of story, very melodramatic but it's fun. It's not really a great story if you spend too much time thinking it, but I did not care in the moment because it's cool as fuck. Every mission is filled with great set pieces, do some of these missions feel inconsequential to the overall plot? yeah. Did I chase a ballistic missile that was in a hidden missile launch site, chasing it into the sky trying to shoot it down before it hits the stratosphere? yeah, and it was cool as hell. The story falls apart a bit critically but it's filled with fun twists, cool set pieces, some cool lines and a cast i overall enjoyed by the end of it. Sometimes you dont need much more than some adrenaline, a little melodrama and a reminder that terminator 2 can happen at any time.

Fun to controller with a great variation of mission objectives to get the most out of learning to pilot hte plane, badass setpieces and some great tracks along the way. highly recommended.

There's also a multiplayer mode but i did not even bother trying that because i'm assuming the only people left playing this game like 3 years after it's release are some serious killers but feel free to try that incase you want to get humbled .