I never played any of these games, this was the first, I've heard a lot about them and this one intrigued me the most so I gave it a go. Here's what I thought (PC version/Nonspoiler):

First off the cannon controls are wonky, it's like the sensitivity was driven down to the ground and you don't want to go in and mess with the settings to the point of making your actual character uncontrollable. I had a lot of issues with gameplay, I would try to do something or even try NOT to do something and it would just do its own thing, I know that's a common thing people make up excuses for but I felt like some of the jumps in this game were cheated. The combat is pretty weird because you just keep kicking and slashing, you can grab which is cool but I'm just not a big fan of the system as a whole, I expected a more stealth like approach to this game. NOPE. There actually isn't even an option at most points, you just have to run it and gun it as best you can, that's not to say this game is too hard though.

I actually like this game for some reason, it's a relatively open world (with reasonable limits most of the time) with optional side quests, different gear, different colors you can dye your outfit. There are waypoints you can buy and that way next time you can just go inside one waypoint to get to another but honestly I just ran around the map by foot or by horse and was fine with it, the world was flourishing enough and simple enough to traverse. I have to say I expected something different but I can't say what I got was "bad", I mean I've heard all kinds of bad things about AC so I just chalked them up towards that and there are a lot of things wrong as I mentioned but it still kept me going. By the time I finished it, there are very little things this thing did that others games didn't do better including Uncharted and Tomb Raider but the story and feeling (Dat Italiano) made it.

The game that critics have been raving about for years and I just haven't played. I heard a lot of people say "this needs a movie" but they say that about any game that dares to be a little bit cinematic because I personally disagree.

That first part is rough, the story seems so in your face, predictable and bland but I think the problem is that it didn't know how to put in its exposition. I think it naturally builds up as it goes on, getting bigger and broader, it's just those first experiences that can be a slog because you're pretty much learning what style you're going to play in.

I got more or less everything I expected, crafting, a skill tree, various weapons. What I didn't expect though are dialogue options. You can choose normally up to four paths, an intelligent one, a compassionate one, and a straightforward one. You don't have to worry about the stress of trying to reach a specific ending because there's really only one, the only thing that affects it is the amount of people that are in it. So does that make the choices irrelevant? Yes and no because there are different dialogue options and like I said, which means that you can get certain characters to like you more given the option you choose but not in the same way that relationship points work and I definitely felt the draw to do that whenever I came across my first side-quest.

Side-quests are interesting, I love tracking things in games, though it's rare that you actually get the chance to do it and here you have a good amount of opportunities. Is that all though? Far from it. I actually found myself searching for side-quests because the first two were so satisfying. It really only began to show its hand a bit more after those quests. As I mentioned, there are a lot more RPG elements than I first imagined but it starts to send you on scavenger hunts, especially that Dreamwillow one, that one I actually laughed out loud at every time I was turned away. It also starts to gatekeep to where it recommends that you be a certain level which is...odd? I mean at face value it looks like you could rock basically any combat situation that isn't context sensitive. Leveling up gives you abilities but they're more like Deus Ex on that front, where it's just for preference and upgrading, not necessarily strength. The only thing you improve on offense wise basically boils down to having the right materials or units to buy weapons then a matter of finding modifications. Other than that, leveling up seems to just increase your health. It really just depends on the quest too because I'll play one above my level and be fine then play another that's actually under my level and feel stuck.

Now I only played it on normal mode so something like "Ultra Hard" is bound to be more demanding but as far as actual side quest content, I feel like they have potential but just need tweaked, give me more stuff for major characters that affects their standing with me. Rather than having each quest be contained in its own story, have it affect you later in the game, let your actions be shown, give it rewards and consequences. There are some really great side-quests but there are also some crappy ones, it doesn't pass that threshold that most RPGs fall under or anything. However, I did find myself doing side-quests at my own free will and the ones that I didn't like or couldn't do at the time, I just skipped and focused on something else, I felt a lot more freedom with this game, like I didn't feel forced to grind or do a certain number of side-quests or really do anything. It encourages you to explore and play the way you want to play and I respect the heck out of that. Maybe it's different for other players though.

Perhaps my favorite actual side thing was the Cauldrons for those who actually played this, you'll know why. For those who didn't, just know that it's cool and let it be a surprise for when you go to one. You might expect these big set-pieces and bosses like Uncharted or GoW, but it's not really like that. I genuinely think that this is more video-gamey than it lets on which certainly takes up its runtime. One addition to side-quests that I would like to see is one where you don't know it's happening. For example, in this game, you'll come across random hunters who are attacking or being attacked by machines but rather than just going on about your day and them going on about their's, I want to fight off the machine and the person say "You saved my life, my name's Jara, I live in the town nearby and want to repay you." so you go there and there's trouble so it starts up a side-quest. Now don't get me wrong, there are PLENTY of instances of people getting attacked actually being a mission but most of the time someone in town will just tell you "I haven't seen this person in a while, can you go check on them for me?" It's the art of subtlety and also just doing a good deed and getting rewarded for it. It's a conscious choice and split decision rather than just another checkmark on your list to complete.

Now I won't bother listing the characters and rating them but there's a certain aspect that has me really enthused So, Aloy is an outcast and a lot of these side missions and scenarios reflect her, you'll see the way she can relate with other characters, making it almost poetic in a subliminal kind of way. Then they add this tribal and futuristic setting to it where Aloy acts as the medium, there are parts of the game where she questions the tribe because they cut themselves off from technology and just don't know any better and we as a viewer know that but having the main character view things in 'our' lens is pretty genius. To top that off, they give her enough personality to be her own character while giving us enough power to influence her so that we ourselves can REFLECT WITH HER. It's not her character that I'm impressed with, it's the layout of the story.

So, how is the main story? It's kind of like the Flood scenario in Halo if I'm being honest. I'm not going to spoil anything but it's passable, like I said, it's not like an Uncharted and it's not like a movie. The visuals just look good at times (I took all the pictures in this review myself and so much more!). I'd call it a futuristic/tribal mix between Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Skyrim but I see elements of a lot of things. (Also since it's post apoctalypic, you find items that we see in modern day, like how they call keys, "chimes"! They think they're windchimes because there are no more cars! I love that!)

It actually does a pretty good job at being an open world considering that there are tons of things to do on your routes as well as collect but it's not so much so that it seems unfeasible, as I said, I found myself doing a good chunk of the side stuff just because it was fun to do and I'm not even close to a completionist for any game. If you mess up, healing plants will still be there. As long as you save, enemy parts will still be there. A place can be cleared out and conquered so that enemies don't come back. The actual towns are peaceful so you can't get mangled by any bots outside of scripted instances.

The graphics are pretty good but I can see some error here and there, nothing necessarily game breaking but the animations and AI are definitely janky at times. It's pretty obvious from the get-go but I'll do my best to specify and give constructive criticism on what I found wrong with certain aspects of the game. Rost is slow, like slower than walking speed but that's not to speak for all NPCs, some run, some you don't need to follow, it was really just him. I've had NPCs who fight but miss every single time on simple enemies (that might not be a bug, that might just be a funny bit that someone decided to add in). Sabretooths have jumped through walls (granted the walls were kinda broken but I'm not sure if those big boys can fit when they can barely find the entrance) I found myself jumping to a ledge or on a rope but not land it and just drop (it really boils down to loosening the hit box for that). Which to add on to that, I would like more places to climb and jump to in general (other than stupid mountains). I felt like there wasn't really enough that I could climb and the places that I could, could've been a bit more obvious that I could, maybe even make it viewable with your focus if you don't want it to be visually outstanding. There's a day and night cycle and while I like that, I found some of the contrast to be annoying because I could be staring a ladder right in the face and not even know it sometimes because it would be so dark. I'm not going to complain too much about it because I didn't turn my brightness up, I just left it at default and I would assume the PS5 version fixes some of those little things.

Now, this one is kind of a gray area: Hiking up mountains. Skyrim, Fallout, and Death Stranding went too far and gave little to no barriers. They had you looking for sweet spots that weren't there in order to cheese your way through an area either on or off a beaten path. But I would compare this to something like GTA where it's not as bad and does have its limits but might need tightened up some more because I can certainly get to places that lead to nowhere.

I've made headshots that don't make contact or damage while using precision. Part of that problem was that they could be high up in a tower (which have spikes sticking out) and I would hit ABOVE the logs, to make a headshot but since it was in that vicinity, it registered that as the spikes' hitbox so it wouldn't cause any damage and just alert the enemy (same if I was in the tower, looking down). Input lag where I hit up button on the D-Pad to regain health and I have to keep pressing it. If I had to guess, you have to meet the requirements of not taking damage, staying still, etc in order for it to actually work but it doesn't really have a reason to do that and it doesn't "tell" you that those are the requirements (as far as I know).

During the final boss, one of the enemies hit me into a rock wall, trapping me inside of it and the boss was already half health so I really didn't want to have to restart (I also didn't know how far back the checkpoint was) so I kept shooting stuff and eventually the boss destroyed the wall, allowing me to get out (timed section, by the way). There have been a few times where a tree or leaf or something is obstructing a cutscene and sometimes there will be a mech in the background screaming over the NPC talking, which I'm sure is due to the cutscenes being real-time which is still pretty impressive. Now are these errors all the time? No, not at all, I'm just pointing out that some times these things happened and that I felt it needed ironed out but I wouldn't call this half baked or an unfinished product or anything, it's nowhere near that level. I get that there are so many NPCs that it's hard to account for them all with facial animations but whenever they're talking, it seems pretty static and sometimes the lips don't line up. There's this one guy who says that he got lost in a sandstorm but he's standing in snow. Again, little nitpicks in an otherwise great game.

Now, I got this game for free as a Playstation promotion but that doesn't necessarily mean it'll be great, I played a little bit of that Ratchet & Clank reboot that was offered and I wasn't impressed, I quit after the first few worlds and was glad I didn't buy it at launch, (despite being a classic PS2 R&C fan) but we're not here to review that. I also played Abzu and loved it but it was short so it was definitely worth a play but maybe not 60$ (I actually think it's 20$ at this point though). With this game, it's the whole complete edition with DLC and everything, it has the length, so it really just boils down to "Would I have spent money on it otherwise?"

I think I would've if I knew more about it because I think it just got better and better after that first part of the game. It's marketed a bit differently than what I ended up getting but I found myself pouring hours into this game and loving it for one reason or another. I actually bought Shadow of the Colossus along with it (which is considered a cult classic) but I liked Horizon so much better, definitely worth its full price in my opinion. (So your promotion worked on me Sony, congrats) It has its problems but the potential is there and I feel like a sequel would probably iron out a lot of my troubles with it, so it's definitely a franchise worth investing into.

I'm going to split this review up in a sandwich so we'll have some good then some bad then a overall but it will be a lot of list of thoughts and just things about the game. I only ever played Brotherhood other than this so you can have that to go off of for reference. I've had dreams about this game before I played it and while I knew that it would never meet the expectation of those dreams, it still surprised me at how good it did.

The good. There are parts where the wind will blow your ship hard enough to make you change course and you have to steer against it, that sounds like one of the easily finicky features but I had no problem at all, it was welcome. This really is a definitive pirate experience, the good, the bad, and the ugly. You can sync watch towers to teleport from one part of the island to another or if you sync all of them in that island then you can just fast travel from anywhere there rather than traversing the entire map (whole diff island). There's a Mayan outfit that you can collect tokens for throughout the game, so I got it and it has some neat perks my only complaint is that it has no hood. You have a scope to check out ships and what level and cargo they have so you know whether to bother plundering them or not. The shipmates sing songs (which are called shanties) whenever you're sailing which really kind of brings it to life which and you can collect these shanties in the form of flying pages so they can sing new songs. You can rescue pirates and add them to your crew, whether they're castaways stuck at sea or need your helping fighting guards, I always liked recruiting in Brotherhood. Every time you get on the ship, the crew cheers, I love it!

You can technically see a beefy ship and watch it tussle with other ships until they chip it down, as long as you get a blow in then you can still plunder it but you still have to take out the crew, especially the captain. You have a blow dart so you can tranquilize people but it's only a limited time before they wake up unless another guard finds them then they can wake up faster. You can change the colors of your sails but I think it would have been more effective to have the sails act as an upgrade so certain ones will give you better speed or something, just something that would have been cool but you can upgrade the ship through other means so that's cool. You can skin animals and use their hides to create armor or upgrades to health or whatever but I rarely ever hunted anything so it's not necessary at all but I appreciate that you can skip the cutscene of actually skinning it. Which is another thing that's not all that bad but something to point out, you don't have instant health vials like you do in Brotherhood, you just kind of have to work through it, if you're good then it's not a problem though.
One more thing...BLACKBEEEAAARRRRDDDD!

The bad. So I played this without subtitles...because I couldn't find how to turn them on, then I did find it in the main menu settings towards the end, I really hate that but it's my bad, just a disclaimer for how my experience went. However the story isn't all that great or big, it's kind of just whatever, half the time I'm not sure what relevance some characters have to the plot but it's not a big deal, this isn't really a game for story but that doesn't mean it doesn't have good scenes.
There's a windmill that sounds pretty cool but climbing up it is a pain in the rear partially due to controls, it took me so long to figure out and do it properly. James Kidd is a douche, enough said. There's a certain person you have to kill when you get marooned which doesn't make much sense to me because I had a berserk dart (meant for the crocodiles but again I barely hunted so I saved it) so why couldn't I have had the option to use that?

Glitches and stuff. When you open chests, it's a bit finicky and you have to be in a certain spot, same with when you knock someone out, it will say "loot ammo" but you have to be in the right spot even if it gives you a button prompt (towards the head). I was on a trailing mission and was in the final stage where they have a conversation before the cutscene, so I was hiding in a bush, didn't move because I was listening. They almost finished the convo when it said "target lost" which if you know AC games, there's a vicinity where you need to be in, I was well within that range and I was practically in the exact same spot when I succeeded the second time. In the last part of Havana, I was looking for the target, using eagle vision and such but he didn't show up. I went everywhere in the green area, I even ended up taking out every person in the area and nothing. I looked it up and sure enough the guy who was supposed to be there, didn't spawn! I had to exit the animus and go back in to restart the mission. (he was on the close side of the church). I infiltrated a naval base and in order to capture it, you need to go into the war room. I took out the officers then went there, in the middle of the cutscene of me opening the door, some guy back-stabbed me, there was no way I could have defended from it. A similar instance happened (but without the cut-scene) in the jungle. I died to a jaguar I believe and respawned but when I respawned, the little summary of the island showed up where it gives stats for what collectibles you have and stuff, it take up a 1/3 of the screen so I couldn't block any attack from it in the quick time event because I had no idea what button to press. I mentioned the Mayan outfit, with collecting the tokens, Edward will say "One more to finish my collection" after collecting so many which gets your hopes up but chances are that you'll need more, he says it too early. I went after a courier and I was right behind him whenever the chase started and I guess the game didn't like that so he rubberbanded away at an unreasonable speed. A shipmate glitched out of the ship and just hung there in mid air while I sailed.

Major rant. Back in the day it was cool to collect stuff because you would usually get something cool out of it and it was mysterious but with the internet now, it's just not mysterious so it doesn't work as well, so why not tell people what doing something will reward you? Especially if it sounds boring like "Animus Fragments" which are nothing more than balls of light. I ended up looking it up when I was around 75% done with the game which means I could have collected at least half of them right? (there are 200!) I'm not a completionist but alas the reward is too good...a skeleton crew! I wanted to end it as decked out as I could because I'm not usually one for post game content either but I did a nice big roundup of these fragments, but not quite all of them...I looked more into it and apparently you need to do challenges and the fragments are just a piece of the bigger picture...so alright, a lot more work but I WOULD still do it in order to get the skeleton crew. It even involves online missions I believe and I'm not up for that. But then...I figured out all of this requires you to more or less 100% the game which means you don't get it UNTIL POST GAME. So you finish the game and you don't even have it for the end, it doesn't even show up in cut-scenes (which wouldn't be a big deal but given the circumstances-) It's just not worth it, you can't even save after the main missions are done apparently so you get to just roam around with it for a little bit. I would rather it not be in the the game at all than tease me like it did, what a let down, what a sham! I was going to say how GREAT this game was but this made me mad because of how promising it was. There aren't even mods or bypasses or anything because it's an AC game.

The overall. It outdoes Brotherhood in the gameplay but the story for BH was better. In the end, I had more fun with this one for sure but I'm going to dock it for the misinformed skeleton crew, save yourself the hours of trying to get it. I will however say that if you are into pirates then check this game out! Like even if you're only slightly into them or have some sort of soft spot, try it! I played KH3 in the Caribbean and while I liked the world, I never thought I would be so giddy over a bunch of pirates like I was with this game. However this apparently connects to AC3 in some way, so I didn’t understand it, I might or might not try that one, not sure yet, I hear it’s sort of weak but if you want to understand the ending to its fullest then you should probably plan on playing AC3 either before or after or just look it up and spoil it, whichever you prefer. If there’s anything I’m wrong about or you want to convince me to play AC3, everything’s welcome, be my guest.

This is the one I was looking forward to most out of the trilogy. After I finished the first game, I made a list of hopes that I want for the future of the franchise. This game delivered that on almost all fronts, I didn't even expect it until a brand new game came out but no this is just one of the best sequels ever. Needless to say that I already hold this highly and even higher than the last.

Let's start with that. First off, there's a better use for flight, using superflight which works similar to supercharge and you just have a limit to using your flight wherever whenever instead of just gliding. On top of that, gliding adds the ability to 'hover' which helps with banging into walls when you're oh so close to reaching the ledge, you just hold (in my case triangle) to hop up an extra step, which brings me to my next topic.

New abilities! You no longer die when you're in the water, you can even swim underwater and guess what? No breath meter! (unless it's a flight level (Man I wish those would go extinct!)) How do you get this? Glad you asked, yet another thing I asked for, gems. The gems are used for something this time around, Moneybags. He's a new character that basically acts as the Tom Nook of the franchise and deprives you of things then taxes it, asking for a certain amount of gems to obtain it. Gems also compile now so you can use gems from anywhere to use for Moneybags but can still look in the menu to see how many are left in the level.

Now the thing about abilities like that is that it prevents you from getting 100% on stuff right off the bat unless you already have the right abilities. (such as sometimes needing to dive underwater for gems) You don't need them to finish the level, just 100% it (just to be clear). I guess that adds replayability though, I'm alright with that, I'll make an exception.

This goes for the last game too but I failed to mention it because I didn't know about it. Motion blur...why is it there? It's subtle but when you move the camera around so much then it starts to suck, I thought it was the vibrant colors making my head hurt the whole time so I only played in small doses but no, I think it was the motion blur, so if you're like me and get headaches from just about anything, turn it off in the menu.

I will add that there are actual bosses this time around at the end of each realm. Ripto as an end boss makes up for having Gnorc at the end of the last game, I was really satisfied. Also is this where Dark Souls got its inspiration? Because you essentially collect 'souls' every time you defeat an enemy and you use them to unlock gates, it's really spooky to think about and I think it'd be funny if they acknowledged it.

I asked for more story and we got it, plenty of cutscenes and I love every bit. The world of Avalar is just as good as the Dragon Realm in the original game, if not better. The one thing I might ask more of is to make some of it a bit darker, I get it's for kids, but I just mean Legend type of dark, maybe add Cynder in there wink wink. There's plenty to FAWN over here and not to mention how much it improves on the system overall. I felt like it needed an extra gameplay element to it in the last game, well the new story boosts that concept and doesn't make it as simple as saving dragons, this time you're collecting Talismen from each of the leaders of the worlds so that you can gain enough power to beat Ripto. With every few worlds, there will be a little side mission that you can do and get some other items in the process which sometimes in turn unlock new levels entirely.

These missions comprise of little tasks, such as a new gameplay mechanic...spitting! You can pick up rocks and stuff and spit it either into a specific spot or at enemies, it's pretty sweet and you also have an aiming function. I won't spoil all the gameplay nooks and crannies but dang does this game improve on the last.

(Non-Spoiler btw) I’m not going to compare this to any other game because every other review I saw said the same thing over and over, The only one I’ll mention is Kingdom Hearts because KH2 is my favorite game of all time so how can I not draw comparisons to it with everything I play. I also want to mention I’ve been playing on the base PS4 model not a Pro, I feel like I have to say that now with performance and graphical based opinions with big games such as this because you might not have the same problems.

I think they changed the way he got caught in the beginning from the trailer because it’s the same scene but different shots, it honestly made more sense because I was playing the game and didn’t even notice the droid watching them while it was much more noticeable in the trailer, maybe it’s meant to be that way so it isn’t obvious to Cal that he was caught.

Main villain is the “Second sister”, it’s based on lore from Rebels. You would think you’d fight all the other “sisters” considering this is the first place I’ve heard of them (I didn’t watch too much of Rebels but researched it for this reason) but you only fight a couple during the game.

The coats are glitchy in cutscenes, so you should probably wear the basic layer for most of the game, if you want to try and avoid that. You are vulnerable while opening chests so you can’t defend or attack during animations but enemies can attack you. It will introduce the abilities through flashbacks so this guy knew these powers but just cut himself off to hide from the Empire and has to relearn them. At one point it will say “you are now reconnected with the force” and all the abilities will be shown on the skill tree in order to unlock, around this part is the turning point of the game (Kashyyyk/second time at Zeffo) because the opening is fine but the next section gets kind of boring because you have scarce abilities but once you start actually getting into it, it’s fun! I know they showed Kashyyyk in the E3 demo presentation they did a while ago so that was to be expected but it was just a matter of if it was a fluke...it’s not.

I’m pretty sure you lose skill tree points every time you die to an enemy (not falling off an edge or something) which is odd and it’s not like “since the last checkpoint” or “since last death” it’s a bit more than you gain in that time period, I’m pretty sure this revolves around what difficulty you’re on which is also pretty odd but correct me if I’m wrong about that theory.

I knew I liked BD-1 already but I was a bit skeptical of Cal’s character when this was announced because he could’ve easily been generic but no, I kind of like his character, you can tell the actor went the extra mile partially through how he interacts with BD and everybody else. He’s better than Kanan in my opinion, who if you remember has a very similar backstory as “the Jedi padawan who survived order 66” but he blames himself for his master’s death which is a dead trope that I didn’t care too much to see.

I hate parrying, I absolutely hate it, not just this game, every game, even in Kingdom Hearts, I’ll barely use it because I don’t (usually) play on the super high difficulties where it’s necessary but this game has it as essential so you have to learn a little bit of timing...and wait until you can upgrade your dodge so you don’t have to parry as much. And they will punish you for missing a parry and just trying to slam them (only the more hefty enemies like the ones with shock sticks) because they have a shield meter and if you get hit by them then their shield will start to go back up.

Some complaints, it takes a long time to respawn and the sliding is a bit off as well because you can control him while falling but he turns at such a slow rate that you might as well not even bother, it doesn’t matter most of the time any way but when it does then it’s annoying.There’s a lot of things that they just kind of brush past explaining, for example, there are these punching pistons that you have to run past and once you reach the end, there’s an opening above but you don’t know how to get there. I tried using force slow and jumping on top of the thing (logical way of doing it) but he doesn’t jump high enough (you don’t unlock double jump until later and it’s a life saver!). There’s a walkthrough for that simple one minute section on YouTube so I couldn’t have been the only one but you have to wall run and then jump off of it, I didn’t know you could wall run to get to higher ledges. Also with story, I wasn’t sure how they were figuring out where to go for some places, they just kind of said “go here!” but they end up explaining that kind of stuff later on which seems kind of pointless in saving it until that point, it would have been just as effective (if not, more) at the beginning. For those who’ve played it, I’ll give you a hint at what scene I’m talking about “Ilum”, if I was writing it, I would’ve made that scene towards the beginning.

Some little compliments are that BD-1 has a back panel that lights up, if your health is decent then it will be green, if it’s not then it turns red, that’s a nice detail “But what about Blue?” Well yeah there’s that too...that’s just for fun. There are also customization skins for BD-1 as well as your lightsaber and ponchos and guess what?! Your ship too! It’s no 13-13 or Project RagTag (there’s no gunplay though) but it’s still a pretty darn good game with some good music tracks (I mean it’s Star Wars though so...)

This game doesn’t have a dark or light ending so you don’t really have to worry about doing anything the wrong way, it’s fun to throw storm troopers off of ledges, not gonna lie, however I will say I feel bad at times. They added a bit of a grey area there because they’ll cower and say “Looks like I’m the last one” “No, stop!” “They’re all dead” “You killed them!” “Just...just leave me alone.” or something along those lines. BD even called me out for lashing out on them once and Cal just says “They just would’ve hurt somebody else.” I was like “Dang” there are some themes going on here that I think they would’ve made a light and dark ending if EA let them, however I’m fine with there not being one (even if it would make the game seem longer).

Even Second Sister has a bit of a thing going on where it’s questionable about her point of view, it’s almost a grey area.

Quick-fire round:
-Be careful, if you heal at a save point then it will also respawn enemies (you have to pick “rest” first before it does that).

-The creatures are harder than the troopers tbh.

-There’s a character called Mari Kosen on Kashyyyk which sounds a lot like “Ikari Gozen” which basically means ‘rageful female warrior’.

-I was worried about even buying this game because of EA’s track record (I almost bought Battlefront 2 before the whole debacle (Thank goodness I didn’t!)) and I didn’t want to chance they mess it up somehow after launch it getting good reviews, but I can confidently say that I don’t see any way they can do that now, should be no need to worry.

I’m not going to spoil it but the ending (though in line chronologically and could have messed with the timeline) seems kind of one sided, there are a bunch of things they could have done and while the decision they made makes sense, is it the best? I personally would have liked to see a bit more, it seemed a little short to me. I want to see what happens to these characters (which is a good thing) maybe there will be a sequel or extended universe book/comic (there’s already a prequel one with Cere) There are some really great moments in this game, I’m tempted to give it a solid 8 because of the high it ended on but I’m going to lower it a little due to the slow start being annoying. 7.5 / 10 Now EA better make more quality single player Star Wars products without stupid monetization schemes, this one was a success.

I played this game using an emulator and I'm not ashamed of it because I used the FF6 Relocalization project which I'll link:
https://sites.google.com/site/ff6relocalized/home

Basically nerd talk and explanation of what that means: It's basically a retranslation of the original SNES script using the GBA port as a base and mixing and matching some of the best parts so there you go. They have a way to mod the PC version to have the OG sprite work because sheesh is that thing ugly and they also have a way to resprite and resound the GBA version but this is the easiest and logical solution to get the best of all worlds. There's also "Anthology" which is the PS1 port that adds some CG custscenes which I just watched off of YouTube because it's only a few of the major scenes.

Anyways, yeah, I'm glad I emulated it especially because of the fast forward function. That first chunk would've been rough without it because you're left just waiting for one of your party's commands to be ready but it eases up as the game goes on because you get pretty busy with the combat.

I'm not a fan of turn-based RPGs which was the main reason I haven't touched a 2D FF game until now so this is my first and oh boy, what a first!

Could you just watch a playthrough or read the story then? I wouldn't recommend it. There are certain things that I feel are better experienced.

Gameplay actually wasn't all that gruesome, as I mentioned, it got better thoughout but I know for a fact that I didn't do everything it had to offer because I see other people doing it online and I just had no idea how. That's not to say it's not newcomer friendly though, I mean I beat the game, didn't I? I think it would've just gotten complicated and made me confused if I learned how to do everything in the game anyway.

I found myself liking some of the mechanics and recognizing some of the systems from games as late as today (I'm not sure if this is where they started but I wouldn't be surprised). The random encounters weren't all bad because of the emulator's speed up function but there were definitely times where it felt a little out of hand with the amount I was getting. (I'm looking at you Cave to the Sealed Gate!) So it's all pretty familiar, though there are "Relics" which are kind of like Materia but each member has 2 each where it gives you an ability, f.e. Reflect, every attack hits, extra power, auto cast protect, heal with every step, etc.

One of the drawbacks of using BSNES though was that there was no toggle for a L or R shoulder button, just turbo and while that's not a big problem, that is the button to Flee a battle, so I just never fled. There is an item that lets you escape any dungeon or battle but I didn't really use it, same with the permanent item that Mog has in the cave (pretty late in the game). I'd rather there be a repel than the warp stone, but I figured that if I just fought whenever the opp arrived then I wouldn't have to grind, which is another thing I hate about RPGs! Luckily, I didn't really feel the need to grind other than for the ending.

Difficulty wasn't really a grind but make sure once you get to the floating island, that you know what you're doing because that level was annoying and I felt a very stong spike in difficulty as soon as I landed on it. Another thing is that sometimes it'd glitch and an enemy would have infinite health so I'd just sit there on fast forward, watching and watching then finally use Libra and no damage was made, might be an emulator thing, might be a game thing and although rare, it still happened.

There are these sections called scenarios where the game branches off into multiple different paths and you can choose which order to follow the specific sets of characters. I really like that aspect and makes it seem less linear and interactive because it's letting you choose how to tell the story. I have a thing for games that let me interact with it (That opera scene is pretty interactive too).

For a 2D sprite game, it has quite a personality with its cutscenes. They can be very cinematic and defintely makes the characters just that more engaging with some of their mannerisms.

Ok, I get it now. The music is bomb. If anything, that would be worth doing a remake for, to get orchestral and updated versions of some of the themes. (I'd probably cry at that opera scene) But Celes' theme is probably my favorite. The PC port has pretty good remixes for the most part though.

Could this use a remake? It's a trivial matter because I think a good majority of fans want it to be remade and I understand why but at the same time I understand the other side of the argument as well. This was the last 2D FF game and that's special, in a way, the story kind of reflects that. And I think with all the personality comes a bit of caution because you might see something in these characters or scenes that may be misinterpreted or done differently in a remake, similar to how you read a book and just imagine how it's playing out. I think it lays enough ground so that you don't "have to interpret" like with most NES games (how the Super Mario Movie was born) from an outsider's point of view, it may first seem that way though. (myself included (yes, I know this was SNES era. Shut up!))

What would I want out of a remake? I would want the airship to return and be able to move around freely but keep the towns pretty faithful (which makes for more linear opportunities). I could see Edgar's tools being used similar to Barrett's but we have "First Soldier" now which is a 3PS Battle Royale, why not have his tools play similar to that? Then actually give him story opportunities to pick up his tools rather than "just because you bought them" It would be a nice natural progression. I would suggest the same with Sabin and Cyan, have them learn their Blitz and Bushido moves by being taught by Duncan, you do learn one move from Duncan in the vanilla game but I'd see it as more opportunity to build your characters and make it feel rewarded. So, in those aspects, I would like to see FF6 remade or improved but as for everything else, they should keep it a lot similar to the original than FF7R did. I think that's where a lot of the criticism with FF7R came from (as well as what I mentioned in the previous paragraph) While I'd prefer a gameplay overhaul similar to what they did with R, I'd rather keep the essence. There aren't sequels or spinoffs or anything of this game so this is all it has (unless you count the ports but that's minimal).

In the CHARACTERS section, I compliment the side-quest system but I would like there to be a better indication as to "what" you're doing, rather than just looking up the next steps or be left to travel around until the goal is clear. They have the quest completion menu as well as waypoints in FF7R, I could see that being put to good use in a game like this. It would also be cool to actually "visibly" wear the gear that you equip to your character but I understand why that isn't utilized in most of the games (probably makes for better character models) especially considering most of these characters' costumes could use an update. You didn't get to use the Magitek suits nearly as much as I thought you would from the marketing and even the dang cover and logo, so a remake could improve on that as well. Another small complaint is that it doesn't tell you what the items do WHILE you're in battle, only when you're in the menu, sorting them and while some are staples like Phoenix Down, I still don't remember what the heck a 'Gold Needle' does.

Overall I'd probably rate the FF games that I've played (but maybe not finished all of) as such: FF7 > FF13 > FF6 > CRISIS CORE > FF15 > FF12 but I think 6 and 13 are kind of interchangeable because if you said one over the other, I wouldn't really argue.

I read the synopsis but I was never really clear on what the game was until I bought it. Sure, it's a visual novel but were there interactive elements to it? Were there choices?

Lemme start by describing it. This is a visual novel about an AI called 'Eliza', it's like a therapist type chatbot similar to the real life app 'Woebot' but the 'proxy' or host is a real person and they're basically reading a script based off of what Eliza thinks is the right thing to say and they can't break away. You play as an ex developer for Eliza, Evelyn, you don't move around or anything, the situations are fixed, the thing that you can interact with are some of the choices which are mainly attitude based. You interview clients and they tell you about their problems. The problem with that is that Eliza is a chatbot so it has a set formula, it's more just there to listen than to actually have a conversation with, they describe it as "someone talking who thinks you're way more interested than you actually are" which is where they start to talk about corruption.

Eliza is the new and big thing, which means higher ups want to profit off of that, it's not necessarily about mental health to them, to Evelyn, however, she has a bit more personal ties where the story grows deeper. I won't spoil too much though, but I will say that it's nice to see these clients come back and you learn more about them and their story and how they're being affected, I liked Maya and Darren the most because I could relate to them, and somewhat Evelyn too, we barely see Damien but I appreciate him as well. You also level up after every session and get ratings and tips since you're technically a contractor, but those seem fixed, it's not really anything.

One choices question about 'choices' for me is "are there alternate endings?" The quick answer is yes, but you don't make that decision until the end, it saves you the stress of having it based on a compilation of all of your choices, I personally picked the last one and I liked it but I thought there might've been something else so I checked them all out and I would say either the last one or the third one was best. It's not a bad game, I like some of the points it brings up especially for a visual novel but I felt it could've had more interactivity like having you choose to go off script more. The game is about 5 hours long give or take, right now my Steam says my playtime is 1.6 hours for some reason but hopefully that gets ironed out, I also found some stuttering here and there but I'm not sure if it's a game thing or a performance thing.

For this review I'm going to be referring to this game as "ReRe".

Let's get one thing out of the way, this was a game made for the 3DS then was ported over to other systems so it's obviously going to be smaller scale making a lot of the stuff not really something to blame it on, it's the core that I'll be judging as if I were playing it in its intended way.

I really only have Resident Evil 2 Remake and a little bit of Resident Evil 4 to go off of for reference but this was one of the ones that I was most interested in, which is kind of ironic but oh well. I finished RE2 and was craving more RE and I found the demo for ReRe on Steam. Imagine my surprise when I heard Michelle Ruff as Jill, I was already sold on the game, the question was "What platform?" Because I could get the ReRe 1 & 2 bundle on Switch, but I tried the RE5 demo on there and I didn't like the control scheme and I really don't like the control scheme for it on Steam, it was the same with RE4, I even tried plugging in my PS4 controller and it thought left was up and up was left, I couldn't change any of it in the settings either, just the keyboard and mouse ones, so here I am with a PS4 copy.

As you probably know, this game is split up into episodes, similar to that of Alan Wake. Each episode has its own levels, so you could start as Jill then go over as Chris for example in order to display different sides of the stories. I actually kind of like this because with RE2, I always felt like I NEEDED to do the next thing in order to save, it works for a game like this, better than Alan Wake especially considering that you only played as Alan and it was only one side of the story. But it's not so split up that it resets your inventory, you keep your herbs and your ammo (or lack thereof).

A lot of people complain about the scanner and how it gets repetitive and that it should've just stayed on the 3DS but let me say that I love when a game uses the controller, whenever you use it, the controller makes little robotic sounds, same with when Parker calls you on the com, I adore it. It makes me feel motivation to try and get that S rank at the end of each mission because it's basically the same as taking pictures. On top of that, it's night vision, so you can just use it to look around, sometimes you find hidden handprints, it's really neat. And the stuff that you scan, nets you percentage points so whenever you scan a specific type of enemy, it'll register it and once it reaches 100 then you get a herb! Which is a cool system, different from previous games with the mixing and such, here, there is just one type of herb and you can still pick it up on its own if need be.

Let's talk about the setting. The idea that this is "Resident Evil on a ship!" sounds intriguing but limited, given the background of the early games but I beg to differ. I really like the idea of a ship being your environment, there are chapters where you play in other places at different times too so it never feels too familiar. It isn't just aimlessly walking, trying to get in the next room either, there are set objectives and it shows you where to go (not that it's all that hard to find anyway) because it's split up into sections, normally you'll only explore one or a few sections per episode so yeah it is easier in that sense but I'm fine with that. It goes away from the formula but the elements are still there, just not as much, there are still keys to rooms that you have to unlock and then you have to backtrack. I really like the ship itself too, I was in awe when I got to the Clock room, I love it, I'm a bit of a nerd for pirates and stuff so it's right up my alley (apparently there are even pirate skins you can unlock!). Just look at the way the helm spins whenever the next door unlocks and takes you down that elevator.

They even have a solid level just dedicated to swimming, which sounds pretty bad but the swimming controls are actually good and I found myself immersed and tilting with the camera. Now those pirate skins are unlocked using Raid Mode. What is that? Well, you go around various stages of the game just shooting, take out as many enemies as you can, balls to the wall. The bonus stage unlocked after beating the campaign is the "Ghost Ship" which is basically the entire ship that you speedrun in order to unlock the pirate skins I mentioned (why is it always so difficult...) In a way, I have to appreciate this mode because while I might not be as handy aiming with a PS4 controller versus a mouse, it's kind of fun to run around, choosing your own weapons, infinite ammo and just wailing on enemies (I don't like that for any campaign but for a bonus mode it's fine.)

Now some of the characters because you can actually play as a lot of them here.

I've never got the chance to play as Chris before but now I'm really glad I did, I completely understand. I always hear that he's the butt end of a joke but people still like it. He's a muscle-headed Chad, that only thinks about the mission, he's not a character, he's a tool but dang does that make him likable. At one point, he’s trying to unlock a door through a computer and I’m like “You sure HE’S the one that should be doing that?) I think Jill ends up doing it anyway, Jessica is well aware of his obliviousness though, it actually makes for an interesting dynamic.

Parker isn't my favorite. He's there to be there really, sometimes I need support and he'll shoot that last zombie but that's about it. Raymond...for some reason, I like Raymond?? I mean, he's like a red-haired Casey Neistat.

Jessica is kinda funny because she's half and half like Chris. I thought she'd be super serious but "Parker better get me dinner!" Also speaking of half and half, she has one pant leg, the other one is bare?? Ok? The characters are cheesy, much like a tv show but I love them. I would've liked a little more Rachel though.

The final boss is actually pretty dumb, he has a weak point but he lasts way longer than he should, the previous chapter's boss was much more fun. As for the alignment of a survival horror game versus an action game, this one is more closely aligned with an action game but I would beg that it's more connected to survival horror than others such as RE5 or 6. The game isn't terribly long, my play-through was a little over 5 hours but I enjoyed it for what it was and again, it's a 3DS game.

I've bought Resi 4 on Steam, after the first level of playing it, I realized that it wasn't for me, all the enemies looked the same and it looked repetitive, zombies kept spawning and there was no way to get rid of them all, I ran out of ammo, it was a mess. I knew that the genre did that, I know that that’s the point, but I didn’t like it. Plus, I couldn't even really get the gunplay to work right. I heard that it was at its best on the Gamecube but I haven't given it another shot since then. However I saw that Resi2 got a demo, so I played it when it released and I kind of liked it, I was sold on the game and asked for it for Christmas (or maybe even my birthday, so yeah it’s been a long time but I was busy with other games) Now, the RE3 remake is already out...wow, time to play RE2 then, huh? So, you can consider this my "first" RE game.

Right out of the gate, visuals are stunning, almost needless to say and the level of accuracy is immense. I mean I didn't expect there to be a gas station at the beginning but it even had the lighters and beef jerky towards the front and stuff, they really went all out.

I can't imagine seeing this game when the original came out with PS1 graphics, it's ambitious, this is clearly the way it belongs. I thought a bug flew on screen but then I realized it was in-game, it's immersive, I don't normally read all the little tidbits and notes and stuff but it was generally interesting to read on the lore along with the VHS tapes and get some clues as to what to do next. I tried to play through it as if it were 1998 so I didn't look much up, I usually tried to do it myself with a few small exceptions. I felt accomplished by the end of each session like "Wow, I did that. I'm smart." It's rewarding. Now I played through each campaign so both Leon and Claire (starting with Leon) Claire on the other hand I was more lenient with, I looked up a decent amount because I was already in the station doing the same puzzles as Leon. It makes me wonder how they got the same items story-wise though, I mean we see Leon leaving her notes but you can't blow up the same wall twice in reality, that's nitpicking the game a little bit though. I will say that I felt like it was a wild goose chase when I did look it up because every thing I looked up was giving me different information "The portable safe is in this room." "No it's in this room." "This is the combination for the unicorn statue" "No it isn't, this is." Because it varies when you're playing on standard vs hardcore and whether it's your first or second run. So, I got my punishments for looking it up I guess.

But with that said, I know some of these types of older games have a tendency to make it really confusing and difficult without a guide so I was kind of worried about not knowing what to do or where to go. While I will say I had had to look a few things up, it became cut and dry once I figured out the pattern, most of the things I looked up were things I was going to do anyway but wanted to make sure before I somehow unleashed a hoard of zombies that I certainly didn't want. Same goes for story too, I knew close to nothing about it. But you basically just have to make it to the next area, think of it as that Chowder episode where he loses his hat and Chestnut has it so he has to go around doing odd jobs one by one in order to progress. The overall goal is to get out of the police station and kind of just find a way to survive but you have to focus on the smaller goals / getting to the next room. I looked pretty thoroughly through everything and managed to find everything I needed without even trying or knowing what it was for half the time like "Well this should come in handy later." puts it in storage chest Speaking of, I like how each chest is like an Ender Chest and is interchangeable as if it was the same one chest in every location, that makes things much easier rather than some hardcore game of "where did I put my keys?" that I'm not into. But you learn to find your destination a lot easier than I thought. That was always something I hated about Resident Evil games while watching them, that there was a lot of backtracking but actually playing the game hits differently, it's not what I expected, it's actually kind of fun, like I mentioned saying "I know where that is!"

Maybe it's just the setting of a police station that did that for me or maybe seeing speedrunners doing it with the old games and paying no mind made me scared or maybe the fixed camera angle of the old games (so that each side of the room had the clip as if it were just a picture) along with the idea that the originals are dated rather than PS4 but regardless, it's just surprisingly not annoying like I thought.

Games can easily stress me out but I actually found myself cruising and feeling good about it despite all these zombies...then I met Mr. X. He chases you EVERYWHERE throughout the game. Thing of nightmares. I will probably hear footsteps in my sleep now. I knew he was coming but I didn't know his presence wasn't always scripted, it's just a game of cat and mouse...and he's the cat! It gets me paranoid because I'll stop and hear footsteps then stand still for a good 5 minutes and he's still tromping around. I walk down a hall. BOOM! Crashes through the wall, making ME screech. There's no way to get rid of him and it kind of ruins the atmosphere to be honest, I know it's trying to be scary but it's more annoying than scary because every time I move I'm like "Ok stop" and I'll stand around for a minute, checking the map, to check the fastest route to where I need to go, just to make sure and then continue... only to turn the next corner and then repeat. I couldn't even move comfortably anymore, it's space invading. The tension is high because he can come into the main hall which I liked to use to save but alas, I had to memorize where all the other save points were or check the map again.

So, you get to play as Claire, which I like, but with Leon's story it's kind of just like "Well I'm going to do my own thing and if she survives, she survives." I understand each step is essential to progressing and getting closer but for all he knows, she's just out in the rain, waiting for him to unlock the door. And I also know that she said that she can handle herself (before Leon had to point out the zombie behind her! lmao) and he has survival on the forefront of his mind too but still. They flirt every time they're on screen together but the thing is that I love it, I ship it, it's cheesy but I don't care, that’s half of what I’m even here for.

As for the rest of the story, you're telling me that they made not just one movie but a SERIES of movies and it wasn't this?! This is great, this is a master-craft in its work. I'm not a big fan of zombie movies, I'm sure there's one out there that I like but I can't think of any off the top of my head but this? This is it! (Jennifer Lawrence would make a good Claire tbh) Let alone the horror genre in general, I'm not even frightened all that easily, I just think a lot of the plots and decisions are stupid in horror, this goes against all that. Speaking of spooky, I know making the screen brightness balanced is normal for games but I don't think it's mattered more than here, brighten that baby up because sometimes it's pitch black, immersive but still hard to see.

Boss fights are something I didn't think a whole lot about until I actually got to it. Doing the first boss fight with G was really memorable for me because I could cower away all I wanted in that gridded pit of a machine room and just launch grenades at him but it wasn't until the bosses in the sewer that I really started to like it. First was that Crash Bandicoot type running sequence, then we had G-2. I had actually ran out of ammo at that point, I used it all on the sewage monsters (I didn't get the flamethrower, I didn't know how, as I said, I did this more or less blind) so I just kept running, and clicked X every time the option came up, hoping to pick up something good. All I got was a combat knife and a flash grenade, then I started messing with the buttons on the control panel, in hopes of cheesing it and just going to the next section but then I realized what I was actually doing. I was using those buttons to move a crate and using that crate to slam G into a pit. I love the classic boss style, I haven't played a boss like that in a long time. One where it doesn't matter how much ammo you have, but just using the environment to your advantage without it explicitly telling you (except the death screen giving you hints). That was until the later boss fights, you basically just keep unloading your belt until they die, kinda lame but whatever.

This actually made me rethink the genre and also about giving one of the other games a shot (PLEASE REMAKE CODE VERONICA, I BEG!) it might be right time, right place (PS4 with modern graphics and modern gunplay) that made me actually interested. The “true ending” is unlocked by playing through one of the two’s campaign and then playing through the other, which is basically the same game but with different cutscenes and context (some new areas too) so it’s definitely worth it, you could even just speedrun the second run if you’d like, you even unlock a secret boss and for those who have already seen the true ending, know that I liked it based off of what I said earlier, no spoilers.

I've wanted to play a good Batman game for a long time, heck even a good DC game. The last good Batman game I played was the Lego Batman series, which I loved, but I could never bring myself to play the Arkham series despite hearing that it was incredible. I've seen gameplay and things of all sort but naturally I would want to start with the first game, Asylum, but I never had the system for it since I was team Nintendo so I tried the demo on my old laptop...it couldn't run decently enough to be comfortable with, my laptop was old and non-beefy and I wasn't even too big of a fan of what I played in that demo.

Arkham Knight came out and I had a PS4, along with that came ‘Return to Arkham’ but I didn't have enough interest to pursue either. Spider-Man for PS4 comes out and people compared it to Batman. I loved that game but I wouldn't care to see the same gameplay put into a different game. So, what made me break down and get Arkham City then? Well I can confirm that you play as Bruce Wayne. This very much interested me because I like playing both parts, I like the little bubble of ordinary inside of an unordinary world. I thought we might get a slice of life out of Bruce Wayne...but in reality, it’s just one scene at the beginning of the game and it’s a good sequence but not the Bruce Wayne I was hoping for (kind of representative of the game if I’m honest). I tried the demo out and it grew on me.

Not only do you play as Bruce Wayne but you play as Catwoman and with this Game of the Year edition, it comes with added costumes (which is kind of just a bonus since I wouldn't normally care about that) but I particularly like using the Dark Knight Returns outfit because it makes me feel like I'm Ben Affleck's Batman. I would use either the 70's or Animated one more but I can't help but feel they look out of place, it's not the game's fault though, I felt that way with some of the Spider-Man costumes. With that, this game has a pretty big cast of villains especially if you count the side missions.

Catwoman isn’t as involved as I would have liked. I remember seeing promos for this game and being like "Catwoman and Batman working together!" Well not really, you save Catwoman then you play as her to save Batman. Then after the credits roll Catwoman comes back? Why did the credits roll if the game wasn't over? Well Catwoman is apparently DLC. I'd be disappointed if I paid to get 4 episodes (missions) of playing as Catwoman, it's not even a proper cohesive story and barely ties into Batman's at all, I played the ending and didn't even know it was the ending of her story, I had to look it up because you just pick up the stuff and it’s over.

For the console version, you can pick specific episodes and pick the costumes through that but with the PC version (might just be GOTY edition, I don't know) you have to change it as if you would Batman's and the two extra suits (Halloween and Animated) you have to pick either Year One or Animated Batman and it automatically switches to her alternate costume, which is kind of lame that she doesn't even get her own menu. As for the challenges, you get a menu for all of them and even Harley Quinn's Revenge so I don’t know what to think. I'm not usually one for challenges but you can play as Nightwing and see (some of) Wayne Manor, which is pretty cool.

The gameplay is pretty much what a beat-em-up would be like in a 3D environment. They focus a lot on combat and for good reason. One thing I've known before I even played the game and kind of respected was that you know an enemy is down for the count when you hear that crack and then the slow motion for the final enemy in the group, if I didn't know better that Batman is a ‘pacifist’ of sorts, I would’ve mistaken him for a killer because there are some brutal take-downs and Batman is cold and merciless with his personality like he's fed up with your b.s. (Poor Tim though). The take-downs stay fresh, showing me combos I haven't seen before, so yeah it's kind of just button mashing but I'm okay with that, it has a lot of thought, care and effort put into every move on the developer's end and they don't really make it so easy either. I feel like Spider-Man made it more balanced but it doesn't feel like Spider-Man to me so I almost can't compare it. That could be because I played Spider-Man on PS4 and this on PC but I doubt it, I notice a lot of different things that Spider-Man did differently, maybe it just used some elements, so that inital concern is out of the window.

This seems like a very short game, the credits started rolling and I was like "Really?" I would've done more side-quests but I figured I still had a while, plus it doesn't always let you do them when some main missions have urgency. Speaking of, Batman just leaves some of the victims there, like the nurses and the scientists, he's like "Wait here" and then comes back late in the game and is like "You're good at hiding...so keep doing it." Like dude, you just abandoned these guys the whole game, I get the urgency and stuff but they're desperate and we never really even got them out (unless that's a side mission I don't know about but I really doubt it)

Now Harley Quinn's Revenge.

It made me realize that people play this game very differently, maybe they have a different difficulty set, the console version is very different or maybe they unlocked something I don't know about but I see them knocking out 3 enemies at a time then KO’ing each and every one, I'm not sure how they knocked that many out at once and I'm not sure how they got them to stay down long enough to take them down one after the other, not to mention mastering the Critical Hit meter. It's not a very long story though, I've seen videos that finish it in an hour, for me it took maybe 2 and I didn't even do the final boss, I just got fed up because I would do a part so many times, get to the end then not be able to take out the last guy, I just looked the cutscene up on YouTube.But I like Batman most for Stealth and Robin for combat. Maybe I'll play Arkham Knight some day, I don't know, I imagine it improves a whole lot. As I was saying, it’s a good game just not what I expected.

Welcome to a japanese 'The Game Plan', the video game adaptation. (Kind of)
I wanted to start this review with a first impressions, so I'm writing this after playing the first few chapters of the game.

First off, I like the atmosphere, the town is nice, I like learning the street names and seeing all the people on the road and talking to them. There are even drunks running about (more like stumble about) which is such an odd little feature.

There are plenty of battles, including street fights and each one increases your experience, however if there's a person who wants to pick a fight, they will chase you down at times until they can get close enough to talk to you, you "can" outrun them and cheese it by walking in a nearby store or something then walking back out. I'm not going to complain because it's a remake of a game on the PS2 (which I try to take into account for this review) but some of the models are janky at times with the way the models jerk but again, no big deal. There's a sprint system but he'll get tired and stop to catch his breath but you can reuse it right after, no bar to refill or anything but I will say that the health bar doesn't refill itself unless you die or get something to eat, so be wary if you're going into a fight.

There's a pretty decent skill tree like stuff to increase your health, tech, etc. I'm sure you already know that you can pick up random items like chairs, motorcycles, traffic cones and such to fight with but it really is fun to mess around with, just adds to the world building. It also has a play-style system with Brawler, Beast, Rush, and Dragon to fit however you like to play (I like Brawler best). If you played FF7 Remake, it kind of reminds me of the Operator vs Punisher mode, I wonder if they were inspired by this game. I know I'm going to offend some people here but this is what the Arkham franchise's combat wishes it was (as far as Asylum and City go, I never played the other ones) I just like this more.

Now the story is pretty simple but pretty decent, I still can't believe this is the same guy who made Super Monkey Ball. I could see where it might build for the future games, I wanted to start with Yakuza 5 because I hear that's the best besides 0 and I don't normally care for continuity and do it with plenty of game series and don't have any trouble for the most part but the 5th entry in the saga seems a little more steep than say the 2nd or 3rd so I'm happy to settle on the first.

First impressions over, let's get into the thick of it.
The story is pretty cutscene heavy. Goofy at times but I still dig it, especially seeing Kiryu and Haruka interact.

How are the bosses? Well, the first proper boss is Shimano. There are some mini bosses before it but he's the big one. In the first Kingdom Hearts game, if a boss has a good amount of health, they'll stack the health bars into different colors, such as green, yellow, and orange, this is very similar to that. Shimano isn't what you should base the bosses on because he's a tough first boss, he's very strong and drawn out, but in a way kind of reflective because Kiryu is meant to be a bit rusty after all that time and this dude is huge on top of it so of course he's going to have a rough time with him. Narrative-wise, it makes sense but it's still a hard, kind of unforgiving and annoying boss battle. (also why didn't Kiryu just point out the hole in the window or have Kazama say otherwise??) Just know that they aren't normally like that.

I will say that the Akai break-dancing trash of the bloody eye were also super annoying though. You can't even approach the older brother, one is fine, but two? And a buncha goons?

My actual worst enemy is falling over though...

Majima is more of a rival but you fight him frequently. He reminds me of somebody I know, and that's what makes him funny but I don't like him, you're not really supposed to like him. He does have one of the best fights of the game though and if you’re dedicated then you can upgrade your dragon abilities through him.

One thing that I know may put people off from this game is the localization because for one, "Yakuza Kiwami" actually sounds kinda cool but it's very japanese which means, there is no dubbing, which is kind of rare for big games such as this, you just rely on subtitles. If it doesn't bother you with anime then it's fine. It's actually really fun. Now I have the PC edition but that's mainly because it was on sale (then it was on sale on the PS store a few weeks later which made me pretty salty) but I easily just plugged in my PS4 controller and it was all good, especially since "Real Yakuza use a gamepad". I personally wouldn't recommend the keyboard and mouse setup though as it can seem kind of tedious.

Random Section! Each dude has a name so I know who I'm trash talking. You ask Shinji for money early on but never pay him back and that really bothers me. I will say that the weapons and items you buy should have a stats chart so that you can tell if an item is stronger than one you have (how is an umbrella stronger than a revolver??) you kind of just have to take a shot in the dark based on price. Now once does Kiryu place the blame on anybody even after his 10 years and everything he's been through, it's really honorable, mad respect but it might've saved some hassle at certain points...

One thing that surprised me is just how easy it is to get a lot. I mean it makes sense because you're a yakuza, but I'm not used to getting so much CP after just a few fights and money out the wazooh (not always through fights, but sell a few things and see where you get). There are side missions but are they interesting? I mentioned the random people wanting to beat you up, but there are those that chase you and the ones that are beating on somebody else where you can choose to intervene, like how you would do basic stuff like taking someone to the hospital or stopping a robbery in Spider-Man. But then there are the ones with more context. A homeless man that needs a coat, a girl being harassed by men but then she takes you for a drink, none of them stand out a whole lot or lasts too long (because there are so many) but they're interesting little side things. There’s obviously lots to do, so I know I haven’t even experienced everything.

I mentioned atmosphere and how I liked exploring, you can take a cab, but I would say at least learn the area first, you find tons of little stuff like locker keys.

Was it worth losing Super Monkey Ball over this? Not really but you can get an AiAi plush in the claw machine! Was it a good game though? Yeah, I'd have to say so, I'll be moving on to more in the series, Kiwami 2 seems like the next logical approach.

This game has been out for years now so if you haven't played it, you either don't have a Switch or don't have enough interest in it. So I will try and give you reasons why to play this game and spoil some gameplay details along the way but will save what the bosses are.

This game doesn't appeal to me, "Mario and Rabbids: Battle Kingdom", I mean Rabbids are basically the original Minions. I've heard it called a "Baby's first XCOM" and I, for one, am not about strategy or turn based combat. So, then why is it that when I got my Switch, this was the first thing that came to mind that I wanted to get?

I haven't played many games on the Switch yet but I can tell that there are games that are best played on the TV, best played on tablet, and best played with the Joycons loose, some fall under all of the above such as Super Mario Odyssey. This falls under the best kind of tablet game, it's like it was meant to be played port-ably and is something you can play a level here and there, casually, or seriously and play a whole chapter's worth.

This is pretty much as clever as it gets, it's no wonder they got Grant Kirkhope to compose it, it has the humor of Banjo Kazooie, it's not even Minions-like humor, it's charming to the max.

There are times where you'll play a stage and just go guns blazing but you need to be careful because sometimes there will be a gauntlet of levels and you will either have to find a mushroom or just go straight to another level before it heals you again. Of course later in the game you can switch up the characters (that have more health) but you shouldn't always assume it as a fail-safe, especially for a boss, so if you're low on health and haven't found a mushroom, change BEFORE you get to the level, that is if you keep your other character's stats and weapons, good and balanced.

Ok, I hear this and that about how everybody loves Rabbid Peach and while her gameplay has a lot of perks, Rabbid Luigi was instantly my favorite and I tried to use him for every battle, I mean he has a Yo-Yo and his hat is on sideways, how can you not love him? I made him a beast with his 'Vampire' ability which allows you to slide into enemies and take some of their health to add it to yours. There is a Fridge boss that it's strongly recommended not to use him but I sure as heck tried. So you will more than likely get attached to a certain character but it's up to you who it will be towards and remember that you might not be able to use them EVERY time. You can choose to have 3 different characters at a time but one of them has to be Mario, he's a default and you can't exchange him. There have been multiple times where all my other characters have died and all I have left is Rabbid Luigi and I pull a clutch with that Vampire ability, making a clean sweep and finishing the level alone, I wasn't really able to do that with any other characters (though I valued Rabbid Luigi more so maybe I didn't try hard enough). And don't worry, even if you don't have a character in your current party, they still obtain skill points for the skill tree so you won't have to grind for a character once you unlock them or anything.

So, how do you make your character stronger if every level is right in front of you and not really an RPG style of sidequests? Well, there are little puzzles you can go around, collect coins, hidden chests, some cannons that you can shoot out of that take you to a Red Coin type level (except blue coins) and you get a new weapon out of it. Also you can go back to worlds you've completed and complete challenges, I usually hate doing stuff like that but it's all good in this game. And it's not required, this game is pretty balanced, it's not too hard but not too easy either, there's no difficulty setting so that's good to hear. Sometimes I would play a boss just to kind of test them out and see what they did and then adjust for my second playthrough for them when I inevitably failed. There are definitely some levels I would spend a few days on, usually those bosses and I would lay in bed thinking of different strategies to beat them, some of those were the most satisfying after beating. Now that may sound like a lot of thinking and seem repetitive but it doesn't force you to come up with a strategy, do you think I actually did stuff intentionally? Not really, I used trial and error and it never even got tired, I usually fail the same level of a game just a few times before putting it down and say "I can't do this." because yeah, I am kind of a baby when it comes to some of these games but I feel accomplished when I beat stuff like this. This is where the 'Baby's first XCOM' comes into play, if you're not into that genre, this is the right game for you but if you are into the genre, you're experienced and it may seem a bit more tame but it's still a good play, Win-Win.

Given that topic, if you feel "too challenged" then it will offer you extra health for a level so it will heal your party up and add some extra, but I like to think of it as the chicken hat in MGS5, only use it if you need it, and even if you do need it, it's not ridiculously easy once you have it. I HAVE failed using the extra health before, sometimes you're just not using the right characters or weapons or need something from the skill tree, it's not a bail out free card, it's just a boost. I've played the ending gauntlet many times and each time it was different, some times I would do great until the third wave, sometimes it's just left up to chance whether your shot hits or not because if they're hiding behind a wall, it may not hit and are you hitting the enemy with the right character? Maybe you need a different order for maximum damage. It's a lot to process but you're not forced to think about it too hard, you have time, that's why it's turn based, I am describing it in a lot of detail but don't think that it's overly complicated or anything, if it was, as I mentioned, I wouldn't play it, it wouldn't seem so darn good of a game to me if it was.

And before you think that enemies get too easy or anything because you just upgraded everyone, they're constantly introducing new ones so it's always even with where you are in the game. Some of these enemies need to be handled differently because of how they attack such as the big ones without guns, they usually have a big stone or log or something and if they get close to you then they'll do a hefty amount of damage so it's always entertaining, keeps you on your toes, and brings me to my next topic.

I suppose it's easy to think that they all just have similar blasters but that's wrong. Most weapons come with a status effect such as honey which prevents them from moving on the next turn, ink which does the opposite and prevents weapons from being used, flame which catches them on fire and and makes them run around until they are extinguished, this ability is especially cool because if they hit another enemy, he will also be on fire, that doubles for you though so be careful with placement. There are also some other abilities but I'll get back to this topic in a minute. Not only are there different variations, which really just fit your preference, but there are also shotgun types which only have a short range but a higher amount of damage, rubber-duck grenades, yes you heard me right, and they're even decorated, there's even a Sam (King)Fisher one from Splinter Cell, not even joking. There are hammers which can get multiple enemies at once if you're within range, and these things that are called sentries but don't shoot anything, they're more like rolling bombs, they can be used to divert an enemy's attention away or can be used similar to a grenade but with more power, and then there are rocket launchers which can fire farther and machine guns which are a bit of an odd ball because you shoot a bunch of weaker bullets vs one big blast but you have more of a chance of hitting due to it's ability to instantly break a wall that an enemy may be hiding behind, leaving them open for the next person. I also wanted to mention that before you attack, aiming at an enemy shows you how much damage you'll do, I guess that's easy to look past or expect but given I haven't played a tactical game of this nature, I want to be thorough.

It tosses it up with a few different types of missions, rather than just walking from area to area to fight the next battle, you actually get some landscape to look at, some puzzles which are actually quite fun, I like a good puzzle and it makes me want to try Captain Toad, but there are also escort missions. Most players dread escort missions in games because they take forever to follow you, this is in a different genre though. It will give you a goal and all you have to do is get that character (most of the time it's Toad) to the goal, sure they can't attack or anything and you have to rely on your other characters to defend but you don't have to defeat all the enemies like most stages, just get to the goal and you control the escort just like you would any other character so they don't drag behind. My only slight complaint with this is that Toad or whoever, isn't be able to use a teammate to bounce like everyone else but it's still fine. Same with the bosses, the only requirement is to just beat the boss, there will be other enemies too though. Before you think you can cheese it that way, most bosses have multiple health bars so you may take out their first form tanking hits with guns blazing but will you have enough to last the second and third form? Probably not so you need to take out those side enemies first because for one, they make it harder, and two, once the second form comes, the boss will bring a second wave of enemies and if you don't have the first wave beat yet then it will stack.

Ok, so easily the best thing about this game is the atmosphere, every little detail feels so good to just walk around in, they didn't have to make the world so good but they did, this accompanied with Grant Kirkhope's music is splendid even the different versions of classic Mario tracks. My favorite one would have to be "Exploring the Mine". With that, the designs for characters, enemies, and such will be added as collectible models throughout the worlds, it's a fun little thing to look for if you're into that sort of thing, I made sure to get a few for the bosses I liked the most. This goes double for the music tracks, you can collect them and go back and play them in the museum. But back to the way it looks, it looks so good that there will be points where Beep-O (who is kind of the guide and serves as a reason this tactical map exists) will have a magnifying glass option and if you press it, he will bring attention to certain landscapes and sights such as a Rabbid in a hot tub burning himself or a Bullet Bill with Underpants on his head, it's all in good fun and really makes you see the vibe they're going for with this fusion between worlds. The landscape for battles includes these pipes that you can travel between to slide kick enemies easier and get a better piece of ground to defend, it's really cool when you get a chain of attacks for example: With Mario, you can stomp on top of enemies, so you slide kick an enemy, bounce off of a teammate to get farther, land by stomping on another enemy then finally make your destination where you want to shoot, so much damage can come from just one turn if you really know what you're doing. And about those effects like flame, there will be different boxes around the stage where if an enemy is stationed behind them and you can't see them good enough to get a hit in, you can fire anyway and hit the box, making the effect hit the enemy so it wasn't a wasted shot and may even make them vulnerable enough for another character to shoot.

Some characters have something like "Hero-Sight" or "Steely-Stare", this is amazing, it's up there with the Vampire ability for me. This comes in handy for those bulkier enemies with the stones and if you have a weapon that has "bounce" it's so freaking satisfying because you can use the ability, fire at the enemy and if they make an attempt to get closer then your character will shoot a few more times.

There is a bit of a problem when you don't properly close the game however because sometimes I would just leave it open on the home screen then shut the console off and come back to it later. Yeah only do that once or twice, don't leave it on standby every time because what will start happening is that the models for some of the items and characters will glitch and turn into blocks, it's not a performance based issue, just visual but it was my fault in the first place for not closing the game for so long so I can't really complain.

There is a bit of DLC that I'm actually considering getting (if it wasn't as much as the base game, crimeny!)because it expands off the story and revolves around Donkey Kong, so that's cool. Speaking of after the game, there is end game content. Throughout you unlock puzzle abilities such as moving crates, picking up totems to put them on pedestals so you can unlock new areas, break blocks, and drill a hole. You can go back to each of the worlds and finish some puzzles you weren't able to before because you didn't have one of those unlocked, if you're going for 100% that is or even if you're just trying to make some extra moolah during the game.

The voice acting is campy like it’s a commercial and when it’s not, it’s narration. The main, Alan, is a dick to everyone. Alice is his wife and there’s a part where the power goes out and immediately after, she screams for you but he’s literally a foot away, the same place he was before it went out. You find out later that she’s scared of the dark because it happens again, kinda silly but I get that it’s meant to be quirky and symbolic.

It crashed quite a few times during my playthrough actually, I think part of it had to do with me changing the volume which is odd but hey whatever. The gameplay is similar to Murdered: Soul Suspect which means it’s pretty stiff. The story is set up like an average tv show, it’s even split up into episodes, which reminds me of a Telltale game but at least if there’s a specific episode you want to play, you can, rather than just playing the whole game again. One reason to do that would be to get the collectible thermoses and manuscripts, those are just bonuses so if you want to spot up on lore or want achievements, that’s your route, there are also a few other things hidden about that I found none of which means they must be hard because I explored a lot during the beginning.

The whole idea and structure is based on Twin Peaks and considering that the game itself has been considered to be a tv show at one point and Remedy has Quantum Break as a tv show, it’s kind of a cool idea on paper, but the story would just be be a decent but cheesy book at best in my opinion, maybe tv series for some people but other than the light and darkness aspects in the gameplay and the self awareness of the story, I don’t see where this shines as a game specifically (other than the final dlc). It seems hit or miss with the episodes, every other one seems good and give you good places to explore but most of the odd numbers seem kind of bland (except 5).

There are these lamps around the place that heal you.-lights weaken the enemies so you get a flashlight, flares, have to start generators etc-there’s invisible writing on things that you can only find with your flashlight (or headlights if you’re in a car)-you lose stamina because you only keep your sprint for so long before you slow down. I wish there was a meter like Skyward Sword but it’s mainly used for dodging here so I guess it’s on purpose to have you be slow without it.

There’s this annoying cop that calls Alan different authors and it would be clever if it was once or twice but it’s every freaking time, I don’t think he’s ever even called him Alan and it’s a different author every time! Not to mention he’s always pointing his gun at you, name one scene where he isn’t, it’s like he was out to get you from the start but he’s not meant to be the bad guy.

There are hidden QR code’s throughout the game, I didn’t think much of it, that maybe you get an item to revisit it but no if you actually go and use the QR Scanner on your phone, it will brings up stuff like memes and text easter eggs.

I even played the dlc (which comes with the Steam version automatically). As for those two chapters, I wouldn’t have paid for them separately, however, I feel like it’s a more fitting ending (or set up for a sequel) because yeah the regular game’s original ending is bittersweet which is fine but the delivery feels rushed. “The Signal” seemed kind of pointless other than to say “Oh uh this is what’s happening.” It’s a companion piece, you need the second one but not too much of the first one. “The Writer” is better than the actual game. If someone handed it to me alone and said it was their showcase for a potential game, I would be all over it, it’s pretty good, but other than that, I was unimpressed by this game, even for the time it was made, just not my cup of tea. One of the worst games in recent memory.

If you asked me to describe Mirror's Edge in one word, it would be SLEEK. The graphics, the visuals, the gameplay, atmosphere, all sleek and aged pretty nice for being a 2008 game! You gain an appreciation for the simplistic style, it feels fresh and vibrant with all these different colors around, it's like playing a game of hot and cold with the objective lit up red as well as your enemies and weapons (reminds me of Miraculous Ladybug the way you disarm). It reminds me of sweat and breathing and a workout, it really gets across the idea. There's no grass in this game but I could see doing this run then going home to drink a healthy grass-like smoothie, feeling proud that you just did that, that's what this game is like for me.

The cutscenes are 2D animated and stylized, I would believe you if you told me some of the people that worked on it, helped with Tron Uprising due to it's visual style or maybe Motorcity or something of the sort but I wasn't able to find any information on that, it's a mystery but it's darn good and it's art!

The gunplay is rubbery but for the role it plays, it doesn't matter too much. There's also some hand to hand combat which is a bit odd and confusing for me to figure out how it works, I think if they actually had better controls for it then it would work better but it's only for a small section of the game, though I think it would be cool if you could gain more momentum while sliding then slide-kick them. Anyways, you only collect weapons from disarming enemies and the ammo only lasts long enough to take out about 3 enemies (but you can collect the weapons from the enemies you took out). Most of the time you just throw it back down, you can't run with it anyway unless it's a pistol. Speaking of, the pistol only works if you're right up on them but the other weapons provide some actual range. There's also a reaction button to slow down time (if you want, it's not required) in order to grab their guns easier, but enough about guns.

The platforming is what's really at hand here and are what everything is based around. Imagine I pitched you a game about first-person parkour mixed with some puzzle aspects with which ways to go. My eyes would light up and I would go "Yes." at least that's how I'd like to think this game was made. I love a good puzzle and I made it a point to not look up anything for this game and I successfully haven't except for the sniper part at the end because I had no context to what I was supposed to do no matter how many times I tried, you'll see why I didn't know in a minute, but I did it practically blind and had a good experience, I can now say "I did that" in the appreciative tone I was talking about earlier. The puzzle elements are light, it's more based around where to go next and how to get there, whether it's jumping from one thing to another or wall-running for a head start, it's all there and is a welcome addition.

The story, much like it's art style, is simplistic, it's a simple story about a girl who runs. She has a team of people and some outside of her circle that she talks to. Her sister gets framed for a murder and she has to solve it. On paper, doesn't sound all that but hear me out, it gives you a reason to run. (These guys are attacking for a reason) it makes it interesting and is delivered in such a good way, I really like it and I actually wouldn't mind if they made a tv show out of it, kind of surprised they didn't but that's what underrated games do right?

This is one of my new favorite games and if you don't believe me, I played this game without volume, that's right, something is wrong with my copy and I can't get the volume to work, I uninstalled it, reinstalled it, messed with the audio settings, nothing. The weird part is that the sound works during cutscenes, but only the 2D cutscenes, not engine ones, but that didn't hamper how much I like this game one bit, if I played it again and it worked then I'm sure I would just love it even more. That's why I didn't understand the sniper part. I was weary about buying this, first because it's short and second I thought it would've aged and would've caused headaches with the running but I stand corrected, the only thing that's aged a bit bad are the character models but this is a first person game, you see them once in a blue moon in engine, you have the animated "cute"scenes for that. And yeah it is short but I also played it all throughout the day and finished it in less than a week that way. 5/5 for what it is. Whether I’ll play Catalyst is unlikely because the reviews for that aren’t as good and I don’t want it to try and live up to this only to tarnish it but hey we’ll see, I didn’t even think I’d play this one.

The story is the best so far but the gameplay was slightly better before.

I didn't play the original GameCube or PS2 versions of the first two games so I expected going into this system was going to be different for me, but other than some quality of life changes, I found that this game carries over a lot more elements than I thought.

There's no sprint but honestly it's not that bad, he does a brisk jog most of the time. You can't save whenever but there are relatively frequent places as long as you're not engaged in something. You can't pause cutscenes but you can enable to skip them in the menu. You can't just change difficulty for some reason. Which is especially weird because if you fail an amount of times, it asks you if you want to lower it "temporarily" (if you're on normal). In fact, I'll just tell you what part I used it for.

There's a part where the police chase you and it tells you to tap X if you get caught but tapping it doesn't do anything, I let it go and it had the exact same results. That's the thing, it doesn't matter how many times you press a prompt, sometimes you'll just fail anyway and I think that's stupid especially when it's a boss holding you in a chokehold or something. Same with quick time events, sometimes the timing is crazy fast, it's not fatal if you miss it but really annoying when you're trying to do a combo.

Chasing in general isn't done as actively or relentlessly. In Kiwami, you could see them on the map but here they just kind of pop up and surprise you which isn't all that bad most of the time but it can get annoying if you just did one and then another comes straight after.

As far as the actual remaster aspects, Heat mode is activated by rapidly tapping R2 but R2 isn't an easily tappable button, it's a trigger. It loads before the menu and then loads again afterwards (not a load screen, the save data) then when you go to save it always saves twice, no matter what button you push, it saves and then saves again. Those aren't necessarily that bad but minor inconveniences.

Holding R1 in a fight lets you play it more like a fighting game by having the camera swivel. Combat is really very similar, almost where we left off so you don't have to worry too much about downgrading. You still have to upgrade individual aspects but you don't have to do the skill tree of abilities, they're luckily just unlocked through level, it feels a lot more organized that way to me.

As for story, it starts out with a flash forward revealing the catalyst of this game, the thing is, it backtracks. It doesn't need to have that flash forward, it could just be told linearly and probably have a greater effect. You don't even reach the same part from the beginning until you're already hours in. It's not like an out of context, only able to be understood at the ending thing and it's not even playable, it's just there.

But after that we get some of the stuff I was waiting for. Now some people will be turned off by this but just wait and see. Kiryu moves to Okinawa to take care of an orphanage and you actually interact with these kids and help solve their problems. Sometimes it's the little slice of life stuff like that, that makes this series special for me.

And because of that, I feel like we have some good characters. I've felt most of the Yakuza characters have just been mid in the last 2 games but this game has a good amount of good characters and I actually came to care about these kids. I think Nagoshi was finally out of the practice stage and the series fully started to blossom here. 🌸 There're problems that carry over from the past games but I'm not going to bother reiterating.

It definitely has some of the best moments so far but there's a butcher scene...he may be a bad guy but I'm still not a fan of it and the graphics really didn't age well for the scene in particular, everything else isn't too much of a downgrade in my opinion though.

You can use your phone camera for certain quick time events to capture little memes to put on your blog, I ended up doing those the most because I wasn't all that impressed by the side missions. I believe that's where certain special attacks come from.

There isn't a funeral chase sequence, luckily, but there are returning things like the Colosseum, which I personally don't care to see keep returning over and over. I've more or less accepted that Kamurocho is going to be a main stay but this series rhymes a little too much. I'd like to see something actually done with the Purgatory because you get there and what? Walk a hallway with all these buildings you can't interact with to get to one set location? When you have the potential for all these side quests? When I first saw it, I thought of Wall Market from FF7 and it has the potential to be like that but it just isn't.

Sometimes there will be a big heavy duty guy holding a chair or something in your way and unless you have a weapon or special move handy, you're pretty much screwed and even then, you drop the weapon if he hits you and it takes more time to pick it up than it does for him to hit you again so it can get stuck at his feet so you're limited to just little punches here and there and more or less tanking his hits.

I found Kiwami 2 to be the longest but this one was on par with my Kiwami 1 length, clocking in at 17 hours. There's also "premium adventure" which unlocks after you finish the game, adding more minigames, modes and costumes. A good game for sure, probably a 7 or 7.5/10, if it wasn't for some gameplay aspects, I'd say this was the best one so far.