PicaratLayton
do you think god stays in heaven because he, too, lives in fear of what social media discourse has created
being a xenoblade fan is the jrpg equivalent of cult indoctrination, which is saying a lot because being a jrpg fan is like joining a cult in and of itself, so really it's like separating into an extremist faction of a larger cult that simultaneously infights at every given opportunity while taunting non-members for not finding Dunban "being over there" ticklingly hysterical even after the 167th time it's referenced in deeply brainrotted twitter circles.
I am allowed to say this and mean it endearingly because I am myself an unfathomably deranged xenoblade fan far beyond the brink of salvation. this game has irreparably changed me. I have been ruined. my brain is broken. I'm not sure it ever worked right, but my xenoblade fandom experience has ensured that it will always work wrong. otherwise innocuous terms such as "44 seconds" or "bestest" have pavloved me into laughing forever. when I see shulk take a bite of a sandwich and that bite does not animate on said sandwich, I emphatically applaud. the mere sight of Juju, a child whose only crime is loving his people, makes me black out with vitriolic rage. anytime I slice a hot knife through butter, I cry. anytime I walk on ice, I scream. when I check the time, all I see is Reyn's face on the clock - it is always Reyn time in my world now.
the other day around Reyn time (lunch) I was slicing open a bagel with a freshly sharpened serrated knife in order to make myself a toasted chicken salad sandwich. delicious. yum. bestest. unfortunately, the bagel slipped out from underneath my hand and I ended up slicing my own thumb instead. despite the alarmingly large amount of blood and even more abundant visceral pain, I luckily did not end up needing stitches. was I relieved? no. grateful? no. all that could cross my mind in that moment was that "your blade... it did not cut deep enough."
I mained Shulk competitively in super smash bros. for wii u because of my love and loyalty for this damned game. for those of you unfamiliar with Smash 4 - Shulk is booty buttcheeks doodoo dogass tier in Smash 4. he is fundamentally fucked. hopelessly hoed. maining Smash 4 Shulk is like marathon training for months only to tie a boulder to your ankle at the starting line, or maining Sharla in xenoblade 1. for four whole memorable-but-not-wonderful years I would mosey to local tournaments having extensively practiced my Arts Landing Lag Cancels and Monado B-Reversals and Purge 50-50s and Airslash Ledge Snaps (in AND out of Jump Art!) only to get utterly dicked and shitted and pissed and vomited on by some iron-deficient 14-year-old Kirby player who sucked the monado into his disgusting mouth hole and used Jump and Speed arts to Run The Fuck Away for 6 minutes. all that suffering to appease the cultish urge to remain steadfast in my xenoblade chronicles brainrot. peak fiction. I hate myself. I live for this game, and therefore want to die.
I am a shattered man. I come to you as a cautionary tale. I love xenoblade 1. it is a good game. some might call it a great one. I could even wager that it's a classic. but it is not worth a total fundamental collapse of the self. this game has significant faults that time has further illuminated. sidequests are trash. the game's third act is a disaster. characters have chemistry but very few have arcs. women don't exist in this game. why doesn't unfinished battle loop in that one fight. juju. I have heard it all. it is no longer cool or trendy or tasteful to praise xenoblade 1 as the jrpg bastion it once was.
I do not care. It is far too late for me to view this game objectively, yet I find I am more grateful to have loved a game to an extreme degree beyond objectivity even if it has cost me an entire lifetime of mental fortitude. I wish Dunban was my real dad and was "over there" instead of "forgetting me because of dementia." Riki eats your favorite jrpg mascot character for breakfast and still has time to canonically fuck his probably-smokin-hot-by-nopon-standards wife before lunch. expert worldbuilding dares to ask "what if we were all on A Guy and we climbed up his ass" and thats raw as fuck. expert OST dares to ask "what would it feel like if ears could cum" and then made my ears uncontrollably bust jumbo nut wads for over a decade running. I am one of the deranged freaks who mained Melia and therefore thinks the combat is Pretty Sick Actually. stop maining Shulk, losers. stop cradling that milquetoast monado like a security blanket and get in Melia's pain train, we're starlight kicking god in his Klaussy.
I don't care if this game is "overrated," or if i'm "scaring the hoes." I don't care if xenoblade 1 is "too anime" or "predictable" or "nonsensical" or "boring" or "not a replacement for proper nourishment." I love this game. I eat it up. I consume it in its totality - characters, world, combat, music, fandom, memes, merch, a decade of irreparably damaged culture and identity. like Shulk, it changed my future. Xenoblade Chronicles ruined my life, and I am forever thankful.
I am allowed to say this and mean it endearingly because I am myself an unfathomably deranged xenoblade fan far beyond the brink of salvation. this game has irreparably changed me. I have been ruined. my brain is broken. I'm not sure it ever worked right, but my xenoblade fandom experience has ensured that it will always work wrong. otherwise innocuous terms such as "44 seconds" or "bestest" have pavloved me into laughing forever. when I see shulk take a bite of a sandwich and that bite does not animate on said sandwich, I emphatically applaud. the mere sight of Juju, a child whose only crime is loving his people, makes me black out with vitriolic rage. anytime I slice a hot knife through butter, I cry. anytime I walk on ice, I scream. when I check the time, all I see is Reyn's face on the clock - it is always Reyn time in my world now.
the other day around Reyn time (lunch) I was slicing open a bagel with a freshly sharpened serrated knife in order to make myself a toasted chicken salad sandwich. delicious. yum. bestest. unfortunately, the bagel slipped out from underneath my hand and I ended up slicing my own thumb instead. despite the alarmingly large amount of blood and even more abundant visceral pain, I luckily did not end up needing stitches. was I relieved? no. grateful? no. all that could cross my mind in that moment was that "your blade... it did not cut deep enough."
I mained Shulk competitively in super smash bros. for wii u because of my love and loyalty for this damned game. for those of you unfamiliar with Smash 4 - Shulk is booty buttcheeks doodoo dogass tier in Smash 4. he is fundamentally fucked. hopelessly hoed. maining Smash 4 Shulk is like marathon training for months only to tie a boulder to your ankle at the starting line, or maining Sharla in xenoblade 1. for four whole memorable-but-not-wonderful years I would mosey to local tournaments having extensively practiced my Arts Landing Lag Cancels and Monado B-Reversals and Purge 50-50s and Airslash Ledge Snaps (in AND out of Jump Art!) only to get utterly dicked and shitted and pissed and vomited on by some iron-deficient 14-year-old Kirby player who sucked the monado into his disgusting mouth hole and used Jump and Speed arts to Run The Fuck Away for 6 minutes. all that suffering to appease the cultish urge to remain steadfast in my xenoblade chronicles brainrot. peak fiction. I hate myself. I live for this game, and therefore want to die.
I am a shattered man. I come to you as a cautionary tale. I love xenoblade 1. it is a good game. some might call it a great one. I could even wager that it's a classic. but it is not worth a total fundamental collapse of the self. this game has significant faults that time has further illuminated. sidequests are trash. the game's third act is a disaster. characters have chemistry but very few have arcs. women don't exist in this game. why doesn't unfinished battle loop in that one fight. juju. I have heard it all. it is no longer cool or trendy or tasteful to praise xenoblade 1 as the jrpg bastion it once was.
I do not care. It is far too late for me to view this game objectively, yet I find I am more grateful to have loved a game to an extreme degree beyond objectivity even if it has cost me an entire lifetime of mental fortitude. I wish Dunban was my real dad and was "over there" instead of "forgetting me because of dementia." Riki eats your favorite jrpg mascot character for breakfast and still has time to canonically fuck his probably-smokin-hot-by-nopon-standards wife before lunch. expert worldbuilding dares to ask "what if we were all on A Guy and we climbed up his ass" and thats raw as fuck. expert OST dares to ask "what would it feel like if ears could cum" and then made my ears uncontrollably bust jumbo nut wads for over a decade running. I am one of the deranged freaks who mained Melia and therefore thinks the combat is Pretty Sick Actually. stop maining Shulk, losers. stop cradling that milquetoast monado like a security blanket and get in Melia's pain train, we're starlight kicking god in his Klaussy.
I don't care if this game is "overrated," or if i'm "scaring the hoes." I don't care if xenoblade 1 is "too anime" or "predictable" or "nonsensical" or "boring" or "not a replacement for proper nourishment." I love this game. I eat it up. I consume it in its totality - characters, world, combat, music, fandom, memes, merch, a decade of irreparably damaged culture and identity. like Shulk, it changed my future. Xenoblade Chronicles ruined my life, and I am forever thankful.
2019
This review contains spoilers
the ideal guilty pleasure game. Everyone in this game is an absolute trash fire scumbag and watching them collide to create the ultimate maelstrom of dramatic tomfoolery is peak low brow entertainment. Because of Catherine, I now understand the appeal of reality television. I get it, yall. I am not above the gutters. I cannot look away from the filth. All these years that I've seen people I respect rave about The Bachelor now make crystal clear sense. Moral grayness truly DOES mean horrible people who are also hot. The literal best ending of this game involves the main character, himself a sewage scum trash man, rocketing up into actual outer space because it is the only safe space where he cannot scare the hoes and the hoes cannot scare him back. Self-actualization according to Catherine is escaping to boundless, empty, literal outer space because bitches DO be that crazy and you are also bitches. I am not immune to this trash. You are not immune to this trash. Catherine is a giant vertical rusty dumpster tower, and we are all the horny sheep itching to climb it. Catherine best girl.
anyway it's all fun like that until the last couple hours when the writers remind you that, yes, they ARE out-of-touch old transphobic Japanese dudes, and that, yes, you REALLY SHOULD be getting married and having kids right now because, yes, our birthrate is DESPERATELY low or whatever the fuck propaganda this game is trying to spew to us pesky sexless youths. Word to the wise, Atlus: if you want me to have sex with real women, you shouldn't have made your supernatural trashfire B-drama so gripping! Katherine just revealed that she's SUPER pregnant in order to manipulate Vincent into staying with her, I can't simply go meet a loving wife when things are getting this juicy!
gameplay is great. I sure do love toppling fellow insomniac bachelors to their literal deaths while in my polka dot undies just for the vanishing chance of a single extra night of Catherine coochie. This game doubles as an infuriatingly difficult puzzle game AND competitive fighting game side event at EVO, which comprises pretty much 2/3 of my genre interests in one. I love hating Atlus and hate loving Atlus. Never stop tricking us into dumpster diving headfirst into your odious writing with obnoxiously fun and addicting gameplay, you crazy filth bastards.
anyway it's all fun like that until the last couple hours when the writers remind you that, yes, they ARE out-of-touch old transphobic Japanese dudes, and that, yes, you REALLY SHOULD be getting married and having kids right now because, yes, our birthrate is DESPERATELY low or whatever the fuck propaganda this game is trying to spew to us pesky sexless youths. Word to the wise, Atlus: if you want me to have sex with real women, you shouldn't have made your supernatural trashfire B-drama so gripping! Katherine just revealed that she's SUPER pregnant in order to manipulate Vincent into staying with her, I can't simply go meet a loving wife when things are getting this juicy!
gameplay is great. I sure do love toppling fellow insomniac bachelors to their literal deaths while in my polka dot undies just for the vanishing chance of a single extra night of Catherine coochie. This game doubles as an infuriatingly difficult puzzle game AND competitive fighting game side event at EVO, which comprises pretty much 2/3 of my genre interests in one. I love hating Atlus and hate loving Atlus. Never stop tricking us into dumpster diving headfirst into your odious writing with obnoxiously fun and addicting gameplay, you crazy filth bastards.
this probably happened to all my high school friends and that's surely why I haven't heard from any of them in years
2021
this game teaches empathy in the dumbest way possible. you quickly learn to despise fighting every character's copious amounts of unreal unbelievable horseshit until you fight against your own character and have a moment of depersonalization that makes you realize you have also been insanely unapologetically horseshitting everyone you've been playing this entire time. Strive teaches us to love one another with the power of mutual absurd anime-game horseshit. What the fuck are blockstrings in this game? Who approved these lobbies? Why isn't happy chaos wearing shoes? None of these questions matter because we are in these trenches together.
Game very pretty. Music goes so crazy that I'm attributing at least 1/4 of my impending hearing loss to me blasting Naoki's incomprehensible screams into my eardrums daily for over a year now. Fuck Leo (derogatory). Fuck Potemkin (endearing). Fuck I-No (horny). Fuck all of you for playing them. Fuck me for also playing them. I cannot escape this game, but I also don't really want to.
Game very pretty. Music goes so crazy that I'm attributing at least 1/4 of my impending hearing loss to me blasting Naoki's incomprehensible screams into my eardrums daily for over a year now. Fuck Leo (derogatory). Fuck Potemkin (endearing). Fuck I-No (horny). Fuck all of you for playing them. Fuck me for also playing them. I cannot escape this game, but I also don't really want to.
2009
this game began my brainrot for the sport of boxing at a young age and I have since gone on to watch Hajime no Ippo 692 times and train in boxing with the hopes of fighting at least one match someday. This means my love for this game could indirectly but quite literally cause me brain damage if not outright kill me, and brudda if that ain't a 5/5 what in god's name is. I want to speedrun this game blindfolded like all the cool kids. I want to go star punch a guy irl. "Find what you love and let it kill you," the world told me. My answer was Punch-Out!! (2009) for the Nintendo Wii. Peak gaming.
2012
This game ends 67 times and I had enough of it by the 32nd, but it made me nostalgic for going to my grandma's in the countryside as a wee lad so it gets some points. Atlus was in the lab cooking up half this main cast like "hmm no this character isn't quite unbelievably irritating and/or homophobic enough yet keep em baking" but they also somehow stumbled their way into making Kanji Tatsumi so I cannot possibly give them less than 2 stars. Possibly the weirdest and most confused portrayal of progressive themes I've ever seen but at least they pretended to try to say things before meticulously reversing most of it by the end. Combat so basic that it dares to ask "what if SMT combat was instead developed by Fischer Price." I think this game singlehandedly killed my love of JRPGs which allowed me to become jacked, shredded, and sexy as hell in two days. Thank you P4G.