my buddy killbutt (he's the biggest tales fan in the world) told me it's the best game he's ever played. normally I wouldn't believe him (he's the biggest tales fan in the world), but he's friends with kanye west, and I really liked his work in the sopranos. so I'm inclined to agree; tales of arise is the greatest game in the

In a perfect world, Tales of would have died with Symphonia and Star Ocean would have been the franchise to survive and prosper.

No, I will NOT take my medication.

After being sorely disappointed by the critically acclaimed Etrian Odyssey snoozefests, I was just about ready to write off the whole DRPG genre. But like a shining ray of hope, Labyrinth of Touhou 2 descended to completely restore my faith. From a gameplay standpoint, this is the greatest JRPG I have ever played. I'm serious. From start to finish, I was awestruck by it's sheer brilliance.

The game offers 46 different characters that are slowly unlocked over the course of the game. You can bring up to 12 characters with you while you explore the dungeon; 4 in the front, and 8 in the back. Sounds pretty generous, right? Wrong. LoT2 strikes a wonderful balance of random encounters (as a whole) being endurance tests that examine your team comps ability to efficiently take down enemies without depleting your resources too quickly (as evidenced by the fact that you gain more and more experience, money and drop rate bonuses the longer you fight without returning to base). Boss fights also demand a well-thought out strategy that takes into account a boss' strengths and behavior, while still being able to exploit their weaknesses. To this end, you're gonna need to use all twelve of those slots to their fullest in order to make the most out of your dungeon explorations, and to succeed in boss fights. You see, each character has their own unique niches, strengths, and benefits they can bring to the table, and often times they can successfully be built more than one way. There's all manner of attackers, tanks, healers, buffers, supports, status inflicters, and debuffers to mix and match in your team compositions. Add onto that subclasses and equipment that can augment a units inherent strengths, shore up weaknesses, or even expand their roles, and now your possibilities are essentially endless. It's so much fun, building the new character you just recruited, tweaking to find out which team composition works best for painlessly clearing a floor of random encounters, and figuring out how to take down that behemoth of a boss that's kicking your ass. Oh, and grinding is never the answer. Bosses have recommended levels that you should be near before fighting them to stand a chance, and you even get extra rewards for beating them at or below that level.

Speaking of which, this game has a lot of quality of life features that encourage the aforementioned experimentation. Mainly, character builds are not an irreversible commitment; you can reallocate stat points and reset skill points at any time (though the latter required an uncommon item). In addition, ALL characters (even ones that aren't in your party or aren't even recruited yet) gain experience from battles, so you don't ever have to worry about anyone being underleveled.

Oh, and the battle system itself is amazing too. To put it simply, it's a timebar-based system that is similar to FFX but way more involved. All actions incur a delay, which varies based on the specific action, and success in this game revolves around strategic utilization and careful consideration of your and your enemies' timebar and delays. It's a precarious game, manipulating your timebars and waiting for opportune enemy delays to get your squishy attackers and healers in and out while still being able to do their jobs, but it's so much fun.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that the next time someone recommends that you play Etrian Odyssey, realize that they are an evil person with diabolical intentions and just play this instead. Fuck it, just disregard every other turn-based game ever made; LoT2 has invalidated the existence of the rest of the genre. Absolutely, completely, and unequivocally extraordinary masterpiece. You don't even need to like Touhou to enjoy this either.

I've only played 4 of the 8 campaigns (Red, Emilia, Asellus, and T260G), but I can safely say that this game is fantastic. The world of SaGa Frontier was so much fun to explore.

For those that haven't played it, SaGa Frontier has seven campaigns; each stars different main characters with their own unique stories in the same world. Well, the world isn't EXACTLY the same; each character will have a few areas and quests that are exclusive to them.

It's a unique style, and it works brilliantly. On your first run, you're presented with a vast world with tons of secrets to discover: sidequests, optional characters and dungeons, schools of magic, etc. In fact, the majority of the content in any playthrough is optional. Enemy strength more or less scales with how many battles you've fought too, so you can tackle content in any order you see fit.

But how about subsequent playthroughs? Outside of the main stories (which are pretty neat, by the way) and related areas, the world is largely the same. So what's the appeal of multiple playthroughs? The answer is simple: experimentation. After your first playthrough, you'll have a better grasp of all the mechanics and what the game has to offer. You can more easily make the most out of each race of character or school or magic. You can build characters differently, or even recruit all new characters. You can finish content in different orders than before. You can find new secrets in areas that had nothing in previous campaigns. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

Oh and the music is great. The final bosses' difficulty is compounded by the fact that you have the fight off the urge to break out in dance.

This was a great experience that managed to evoke the sense of child-like wonder that I had when I explored and experienced Pokemon games when I was younger, while also being in a format that stayed engaging and especially challenging for me all throughout. It's got all of the perks of your average Pokemon game, and more. The puppets are cute, varied, and fun to use, and Gensokyo is fun to traverse with a seemingly endless well of secrets, and, of course, the music consists of a bunch of great remixes of Touhou songs. There's a few greatly appreciated QoL features here too, compared to Pokemon. EVs and IVs are extremely streamlined; IVs are always visible, and investing in EVs is as simple as distributing points. Hold items are replenished at the end of fights (even in single player). TMs are infinite use, and you can forget and re-learn moves at your leisure. HMs don't need to be taught to your puppets to be used.

Perhaps the best thing about the game, though, are the bosses. Gone are the type-focused, underleveled pushovers of the main Pokemon series with poor AI and teams so weak that they could be swept by one type-advantageous mon. The Mokou fight in Eientei is the first real wake-up call of the game. TPDP bosses can be intimidating as fuck, sporting balanced teams of strong puppets with good type coverage, whilst employing effective strategies and using strong (and sometimes precognitive) AI to counter your own. It makes for a much more engaging game when the story demands that you form a well-balanced team and use the mechanics to their fullest to progress, especially in the post-game.

I'd highly recommend the game if you're a Pokemon and Touhou fan, even moreso if you're a big PC-98 fan, because man, especially compared to most Touhou works (and even the official games), there is a LOT of respect and reverence towards the PC-98 gang.

Boot up the game on Knight difficulty, thought I was hot shit, you know? Hit the first level, and I got the surprise of my fucking life. I ain't gonna lie to you bruh. I got filtered. I got filtered BAD. How bad? I'm talkin' "Purina Water Filter" bad.

I'm talkin' "industrial grade diesel particulate filter" bad.

Talkin' "Medify MA-25 Air Purifier with H13 True HEPA Filter" bad.

Talkin' "game journalists playing literally anything with a modicum of difficulty" bad.

"Sodium ions attempting to cross the cell membrane from low concentration to high concentration" bad.

"Dodgeball trying to pass through a solid steel wall" bad.

"Working class during the Great Depression" bad.

"Draining pasta with a strainer" bad.

"Ultraviolet radiation across the ozone layer" bad.

"Egyptian army crossing the Red Sea" bad.

"Brazil at the 2014 FIFA World Cup" bad.

So yeah it's some fucked up shit. Cool game tho.

In typical Inti Creates fashion, the sequel is bigger, better, and much more refined than the original. The level design is better, in both side-view and top-down sections. Top-down sections in particular have been improved significantly. Jason now moves faster in top-down sections, and while that's a pretty mundane change, it basically fixes the pacing problem that the previous game had in top-down sections. Also, weapon levels are now much more balanced. While the lv8 shot is still the strongest, it's no longer overwhelmingly powerful, and the lower level weapons were changed/buffed in such a way that you'll actually find yourself using them in various situations, instead of just "I got hit a lot and leveled down" like in BMZ1. The same goes for sub-weapons; all of them have practical applications in combat now, instead of just the grenade. The biggest change, of course, is the addition of the counter. It is very well implemented, and it made top-down combat that much more fun.

As for side-view, it has its fair share of improvements as well. The GAIA system is pretty cool, and it makes SP management feel more involved. Traversing space and exploring different planets was neat too. Shoutout to the new MA pilots too, I hope we see more of them (Leibniz in particular) in BMZ3.

My only gripes with the game are fairly minor, but gripes nonetheless. First, I personally didn't like G-SOPHIA's weaponry as much as Sophia III's from the first game. In addition, I didn't really appreciate all the backtracking I needed to do to get the true ending, compared to the first game where you could get everything as you go.

Great game, all things considered. Might try out the DLC modes later, I'm particularly interested in Copen's.

Short and sweet dungeon crawler. The dungeons are a lot of fun to explore, the combat is straightforward yet satisfying, and progression (though not very involved) feels great, and there's lots of weapons and skills (magic especially) to fuck around with. The music manages to both complement the atmosphere of the game, and still be a joy to listen to. Much like the game itself, the story is also pretty simple, but still very engaging nonetheless. Speaking of interesting, I also appreciate the presentation of lore and backstory; unraveling the mysteries of Xanadu through tablets and memoirs was pretty intriguing.

Xanadu Next is a wonderful game, and I'm holding out for a proper sequel someday; Tokyo Xanadu looks like garbage. We need less Persona, and more Vagrant Story.