Pookykun
2001
Final Fantasy X is an epic road trip romance fantasy, sci-fi mystery conspiracy thriller, part-time sports drama, full-time daddy issues simulator, spiralling rumination on the nature of death, grief, hope, and forgiveness, Japanese role-playing mind-bending politico-navigational adventure. It is a masterclass in world-building and plotting. It is the heart on the sleeve of the video game industry.
To play this game is to refuse despair. To play this game is to engage with, and battle against, notions of racial supremacy. To play this game is to target systems of higher power and tear them down, one suit and tie at a time, until all of the historical abuses, lies, and hypocrisies are laid bare on the dirt for everyone to see.
Final Fantasy X unironically frames friendship—friendship tested by ingrained prejudices that have been expertly woven by the powerful, so finely that you can’t see the stitches, so long ago that you can’t begin to know where their commands begin and your opinions end—as the solution to depression, oppression, and cyclical violence maintained by the wealthy and the powerful. It frames friendship as radical. It frames friendship not only as a political choice, but as the political choice. Embrace the alien or kill them. Love the foreigner or hate them. What do you choose? And how do you turn that choice into action, rather than empty words? Friendship is a political pressure that, when applied radically, can and must snap the status quo in two.
That is what Final Fantasy X is. A manifesto of hope. An agenda of friendship. A fearless reaching out of hands across the border.
It presents this thematically through its magnificent plot and character interactions, while also presenting it mechanically through its rapid-fire rotational party member system. We can overcome even the insurmountable monsters of this world by working together, it is saying, by covering each other’s weaknesses and by building upon each other’s strengths. We can bring about real change with our revolving cast of radical friendship warriors. No matter the first impression, no matter the lies that we have let ourselves believe about one another in the past, we choose to work together, now, and to love each other, forever.
In a similar vein, Final Fantasy X is also about taking charge of your own life, being the change that you want to see in the world, and standing firm in the face of despair. Again, it is about choice. “Now is the time to choose,” the elder of the group, Auron, tells his comrades at one of the most heart-stopping, pivotal points in the story, when the lies, hubris, and the violent depths of those in power are undressed fully before you. “Die and be free of pain. Or live and fight your sorrows. Now is the time to shape your stories. Your fate is in your hands.”
Our lives often appear prescribed by those in power over us, by parents, bosses, and politicians, by the wealthy, by the trappings of poverty, by manipulative and violent headlines in the press, by the black and white messages we consume in television and film, by the hopeless voices in the back of our minds whispering, it’s no good, there’s no point, nothing will ever change. Yet, armed with the radical belief that anybody can be our friend, and backed up by the foreigner, the queer, the outsider, and the beast man with the broken horn, we can overcome anything, everything, no matter how high the climb or big the monster. We can bring about change. We can demand better than the endless spiral of abuse, lies, and death that is inflicted upon us by those in control.
This is Final Fantasy X. This is your story.
To play this game is to refuse despair. To play this game is to engage with, and battle against, notions of racial supremacy. To play this game is to target systems of higher power and tear them down, one suit and tie at a time, until all of the historical abuses, lies, and hypocrisies are laid bare on the dirt for everyone to see.
Final Fantasy X unironically frames friendship—friendship tested by ingrained prejudices that have been expertly woven by the powerful, so finely that you can’t see the stitches, so long ago that you can’t begin to know where their commands begin and your opinions end—as the solution to depression, oppression, and cyclical violence maintained by the wealthy and the powerful. It frames friendship as radical. It frames friendship not only as a political choice, but as the political choice. Embrace the alien or kill them. Love the foreigner or hate them. What do you choose? And how do you turn that choice into action, rather than empty words? Friendship is a political pressure that, when applied radically, can and must snap the status quo in two.
That is what Final Fantasy X is. A manifesto of hope. An agenda of friendship. A fearless reaching out of hands across the border.
It presents this thematically through its magnificent plot and character interactions, while also presenting it mechanically through its rapid-fire rotational party member system. We can overcome even the insurmountable monsters of this world by working together, it is saying, by covering each other’s weaknesses and by building upon each other’s strengths. We can bring about real change with our revolving cast of radical friendship warriors. No matter the first impression, no matter the lies that we have let ourselves believe about one another in the past, we choose to work together, now, and to love each other, forever.
In a similar vein, Final Fantasy X is also about taking charge of your own life, being the change that you want to see in the world, and standing firm in the face of despair. Again, it is about choice. “Now is the time to choose,” the elder of the group, Auron, tells his comrades at one of the most heart-stopping, pivotal points in the story, when the lies, hubris, and the violent depths of those in power are undressed fully before you. “Die and be free of pain. Or live and fight your sorrows. Now is the time to shape your stories. Your fate is in your hands.”
Our lives often appear prescribed by those in power over us, by parents, bosses, and politicians, by the wealthy, by the trappings of poverty, by manipulative and violent headlines in the press, by the black and white messages we consume in television and film, by the hopeless voices in the back of our minds whispering, it’s no good, there’s no point, nothing will ever change. Yet, armed with the radical belief that anybody can be our friend, and backed up by the foreigner, the queer, the outsider, and the beast man with the broken horn, we can overcome anything, everything, no matter how high the climb or big the monster. We can bring about change. We can demand better than the endless spiral of abuse, lies, and death that is inflicted upon us by those in control.
This is Final Fantasy X. This is your story.
I remember this game getting a lot of criticism, back before I played it, for being a 'walking simulator'. This struck me as a little odd, especially so after I played it. Firstly, you don't normally criticize a game for its type or genre. Like, who has a go at mario for being a jumping simulator? I don't know. Secondly, this is less a walking simulator, and more an archaeological simulator, because you dig through a virtual space to uncover (extremely recent) history. That's fascinating, to me.
It's a short game, but the experience is rich and hugely enjoyable. Also, how did they make it feel so spooky? I always felt like I was about to get jumped! That's wild. Also, have you ever sat and listened to the soundtrack, top to bottom? What a mood.
Nice to get a strong LGBTQ+ story in a game. We're getting more of them as time goes on, but it's still slow going. From what I remember, this was a really big one for proving the potential popularity of games with gay themes.
Really touching game.
It's a short game, but the experience is rich and hugely enjoyable. Also, how did they make it feel so spooky? I always felt like I was about to get jumped! That's wild. Also, have you ever sat and listened to the soundtrack, top to bottom? What a mood.
Nice to get a strong LGBTQ+ story in a game. We're getting more of them as time goes on, but it's still slow going. From what I remember, this was a really big one for proving the potential popularity of games with gay themes.
Really touching game.
The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa is a relatively short yet re-playable game about how far friendships can be stretched, how many beatings a man can take, and how we stack the deck against ourselves and pretend not to notice.
This game pushes Ringo into a poverty-induced whirlpool of violence and crime, as the only way to afford food in the early game (apart from when your friend, seemingly at random, shells out for you) is by either beating the yen right out of other dudes’ pockets, or by opportunistically scavenging coins from the unconscious forms of fallen gang members who you just watched get pounded into the dirt. In this way, you become a wild animal, a crow picking at scraps upon city pavements, consuming barely substantial crumbs one fingerful at a time.
Ringo doesn’t have parents. Nobody in the adult world seems especially interested in taking care of him, beyond coaches who, you’ve guessed it, train him to be a better fighter. Ringo’s teacher will present him with lump sums of yen every week if he gets good grades, and he will verbally encourage Ringo, yet this too implicitly rewards those who fight and scavenge on the street; to focus on school and to study effectively at home, Ringo must surely have a full belly, and in order to achieve a full belly, he must roam the city in search of other gang members to steal from. In the early game, I found myself caught in a cycle in which I lost multiple fights in a row, wasted a lot of days recovering in bed, and was always starving. I expected to receive a game over, but it didn't come. Ringo Ishikawa always got back up, no matter how I failed him, no matter how very hungry he claimed to be.
When I was a teenager, I didn’t get into fights. I didn’t smoke. I didn’t drink. I certainly wasn’t left to fend for myself, without parents, money, or food—not for any extended period of time, anyway. However, when I was about sixteen or seventeen, I went through a phase where I struggled to eat. Looking at food made me feel sick. Looking at myself made me feel sick. I replaced breakfast with extra time in bed, which helped ease the sleepless nights. I was recurrently dehydrated. I could eat lunch only on days where I could successfully separate my mind from my mouth and my organs. I had a much easier time with evening meals, though I don’t know why, and not always.
I was hungry a lot. Hungry, and empty.
I remember feeling like I was self-destructing. I often hoped that somebody might jump me on the way home in the dark, like getting into a fight might fix everything, but I wasn’t an initiator, and for whatever reason nobody initiated against me. I had become a ghost, I thought. One night, during the winter, I was looking out at the river that sliced the town in two. I thought about jumping into it from the bridge above. I hoped the shock of the cold might be enough to make me panic and drown. If not, at least it would make me feel something. Suddenly, a man I didn’t know appeared behind me, and said something about it being a nice night. This startled me. I was crying. Silently, I think, though I couldn’t be certain. I tentatively agreed with him. It was a nice night. Freezing cold, crystal clear. I…
Ringo Ishikawa is not a ghost. I don’t believe that he can become depressed. I don’t know if he can starve to death, though I don’t think he can. He can initiate fights and have fights initiated against him. No matter how bad his previous day was, he will sit down at a school bench, if instructed, and read classic literature for you—literature that was, and still is, too intimidating for me to read, regardless of the fullness of my stomach and the health of my bank account, and in spite of my degrees in writing and literature.
All that to say, this game did and did not make me feel like a teenager again.
This game pushes Ringo into a poverty-induced whirlpool of violence and crime, as the only way to afford food in the early game (apart from when your friend, seemingly at random, shells out for you) is by either beating the yen right out of other dudes’ pockets, or by opportunistically scavenging coins from the unconscious forms of fallen gang members who you just watched get pounded into the dirt. In this way, you become a wild animal, a crow picking at scraps upon city pavements, consuming barely substantial crumbs one fingerful at a time.
Ringo doesn’t have parents. Nobody in the adult world seems especially interested in taking care of him, beyond coaches who, you’ve guessed it, train him to be a better fighter. Ringo’s teacher will present him with lump sums of yen every week if he gets good grades, and he will verbally encourage Ringo, yet this too implicitly rewards those who fight and scavenge on the street; to focus on school and to study effectively at home, Ringo must surely have a full belly, and in order to achieve a full belly, he must roam the city in search of other gang members to steal from. In the early game, I found myself caught in a cycle in which I lost multiple fights in a row, wasted a lot of days recovering in bed, and was always starving. I expected to receive a game over, but it didn't come. Ringo Ishikawa always got back up, no matter how I failed him, no matter how very hungry he claimed to be.
When I was a teenager, I didn’t get into fights. I didn’t smoke. I didn’t drink. I certainly wasn’t left to fend for myself, without parents, money, or food—not for any extended period of time, anyway. However, when I was about sixteen or seventeen, I went through a phase where I struggled to eat. Looking at food made me feel sick. Looking at myself made me feel sick. I replaced breakfast with extra time in bed, which helped ease the sleepless nights. I was recurrently dehydrated. I could eat lunch only on days where I could successfully separate my mind from my mouth and my organs. I had a much easier time with evening meals, though I don’t know why, and not always.
I was hungry a lot. Hungry, and empty.
I remember feeling like I was self-destructing. I often hoped that somebody might jump me on the way home in the dark, like getting into a fight might fix everything, but I wasn’t an initiator, and for whatever reason nobody initiated against me. I had become a ghost, I thought. One night, during the winter, I was looking out at the river that sliced the town in two. I thought about jumping into it from the bridge above. I hoped the shock of the cold might be enough to make me panic and drown. If not, at least it would make me feel something. Suddenly, a man I didn’t know appeared behind me, and said something about it being a nice night. This startled me. I was crying. Silently, I think, though I couldn’t be certain. I tentatively agreed with him. It was a nice night. Freezing cold, crystal clear. I…
Ringo Ishikawa is not a ghost. I don’t believe that he can become depressed. I don’t know if he can starve to death, though I don’t think he can. He can initiate fights and have fights initiated against him. No matter how bad his previous day was, he will sit down at a school bench, if instructed, and read classic literature for you—literature that was, and still is, too intimidating for me to read, regardless of the fullness of my stomach and the health of my bank account, and in spite of my degrees in writing and literature.
All that to say, this game did and did not make me feel like a teenager again.
1997
This is a game about lying. A game about the dark corners of one's mind. About simultaneously knowing and not knowing who you are. It is also about bigger, grander things: the environment, the end of the world, globetrotting the smoking wreckage of a post industrial Earth in search of a way forward, or else a way back, to nature. It is about humanity. Love. The things that bind us. Yet to me it seems at its core to be mostly about lies. Not only the lies the powerful rain down on the tired, but the lies we rain down upon ourselves. We get so sodden with it that we forget what being honest looks like, or feels like. We forget that we are telling lies altogether. Our childhood friend knows we are a liar. But also she can't be certain. Maybe she is only lying to herself, too.
This game was introduced to me by my childhood best friend, a boy who was not above lying if he thought it might take you down a peg. He brought it to my house when I was 9 years old and told me, "This is the best game in the whole world." I didn't believe him at the time, because I thought Ocarina of Time was the best game in the world, though I was completely entranced as I watched him play through the first two hours of the game. The visuals. The score. The combat. It was arresting (and I was 'cuffed). It took me a decade to fully clarify my opinion of it. One day, while I was slacking off from writing university coursework, running around Wall Market looking for lingerie, eating takeout pizza alone, and wishing I had never been born (I was fantastically depressed at the time), it occurred to me all at once like a punch in the face:
I love this game.
It gets me. I get it. It's unabashedly, profoundly weird. And it makes me feel something huge and piercing every single time I play it. It's a miracle. It changes you psycho-bio-chemically. There's nothing else in this world like it.
FF7 would save the planet, if only the right people played it.
(The funny thing about all of this, by the way, is that my childhood friend actually doesn't think ff7 is that great anymore. Something something graphics. Something something he thinks Zack in crisis core is a better character than Cloud. Oh, man. Where do you even start with that? Where do you even begin? That's a whole /thing/ and I am not getting into it here.)
This game was introduced to me by my childhood best friend, a boy who was not above lying if he thought it might take you down a peg. He brought it to my house when I was 9 years old and told me, "This is the best game in the whole world." I didn't believe him at the time, because I thought Ocarina of Time was the best game in the world, though I was completely entranced as I watched him play through the first two hours of the game. The visuals. The score. The combat. It was arresting (and I was 'cuffed). It took me a decade to fully clarify my opinion of it. One day, while I was slacking off from writing university coursework, running around Wall Market looking for lingerie, eating takeout pizza alone, and wishing I had never been born (I was fantastically depressed at the time), it occurred to me all at once like a punch in the face:
I love this game.
It gets me. I get it. It's unabashedly, profoundly weird. And it makes me feel something huge and piercing every single time I play it. It's a miracle. It changes you psycho-bio-chemically. There's nothing else in this world like it.
FF7 would save the planet, if only the right people played it.
(The funny thing about all of this, by the way, is that my childhood friend actually doesn't think ff7 is that great anymore. Something something graphics. Something something he thinks Zack in crisis core is a better character than Cloud. Oh, man. Where do you even start with that? Where do you even begin? That's a whole /thing/ and I am not getting into it here.)
2019
Honestly a pretty perfect little game. Nice music and visuals, sweet writing, and fun gameplay. A bit like a tiny breath of the wild with the writing of night in the woods. A healing experience.
1999
I played Final Fantasy VIII for the first time fifteen years ago. Despite loving the music and the visuals, I never progressed beyond disc 1 because I found the story and characters (Squall aside) to be bland. And then there was the junction system, which...well, everybody has already talked about that a million times. It's really neat in concept, but tedious in practice. (I would love to see it attempted again with some things adjusted.)
Anyway!
2020 happened, and I figured it was finally time to knuckle down and finish the game that splits opinions like Squall splits skulls.
And…
I still think the first disc and a half of FFVIII is a total tranquiliser of a game. I'm sorry. I nearly quit like ten million times. The jailbreak sequence at the start of disc 2 was especially dull. That said, something changed when I reached Fisherman's Horizon. The writing there, when you talk to some of the NPC's... It's hot shit, am I right? Like, suddenly it's firing on all cylinders. The dialogue is charged. The skits are funny. This energy bleeds out into the subsequent scenes, too. It's the strangest thing. Your characters start meshing more, and the jokes start zipping.
One of my favourite moments was right after FH, when you put together a band with your characters and set their instruments and perform a song with them for two of your party members to dance to. It's whimsical. It's cute. It's a little stupid. Like, that's the kind of thing I play Final Fantasy for. Everything is going to hell, but then your oddball characters take five and do something that totally eases the tension. It's like smiling at someone you love, moments before the moon crashes into the Earth. It's beautiful. Another example of a scene like this is the date in FF7, when you can get Cloud to kiss the wrong person in the play, and then they twirl off stage.
From FH onward, I really did enjoy Final Fantasy VIII.
Now, a sudden improvement in the writing didn't fix all the problems. The characters didn't actually get any richer, they were just used better. The gameplay didn't improve, but it felt like less of a problem because, well, at least the dialogue was hitting cleaner. And the plot... well, I quite liked the plot from then on! I know most people complain about how wacky it gets, but I think it became a lot more entertaining when it stopped making 100% sense.
(By the way, my favourite thing about the game, soundtrack aside, is the way Squall thinks to himself the whole way through the story, because he's afraid to voice his feelings. Sometimes he answers other people's questions in his head, but forgets to answer out loud, and they're like, yo, you there? and I just find that really great.)
Well, I've talked long enough about this one. Am I going to play it again? Probably not... Would I recommend it? ... ... ... Tentative yes! I'm as surprised as anyone.
Anyway!
2020 happened, and I figured it was finally time to knuckle down and finish the game that splits opinions like Squall splits skulls.
And…
I still think the first disc and a half of FFVIII is a total tranquiliser of a game. I'm sorry. I nearly quit like ten million times. The jailbreak sequence at the start of disc 2 was especially dull. That said, something changed when I reached Fisherman's Horizon. The writing there, when you talk to some of the NPC's... It's hot shit, am I right? Like, suddenly it's firing on all cylinders. The dialogue is charged. The skits are funny. This energy bleeds out into the subsequent scenes, too. It's the strangest thing. Your characters start meshing more, and the jokes start zipping.
One of my favourite moments was right after FH, when you put together a band with your characters and set their instruments and perform a song with them for two of your party members to dance to. It's whimsical. It's cute. It's a little stupid. Like, that's the kind of thing I play Final Fantasy for. Everything is going to hell, but then your oddball characters take five and do something that totally eases the tension. It's like smiling at someone you love, moments before the moon crashes into the Earth. It's beautiful. Another example of a scene like this is the date in FF7, when you can get Cloud to kiss the wrong person in the play, and then they twirl off stage.
From FH onward, I really did enjoy Final Fantasy VIII.
Now, a sudden improvement in the writing didn't fix all the problems. The characters didn't actually get any richer, they were just used better. The gameplay didn't improve, but it felt like less of a problem because, well, at least the dialogue was hitting cleaner. And the plot... well, I quite liked the plot from then on! I know most people complain about how wacky it gets, but I think it became a lot more entertaining when it stopped making 100% sense.
(By the way, my favourite thing about the game, soundtrack aside, is the way Squall thinks to himself the whole way through the story, because he's afraid to voice his feelings. Sometimes he answers other people's questions in his head, but forgets to answer out loud, and they're like, yo, you there? and I just find that really great.)
Well, I've talked long enough about this one. Am I going to play it again? Probably not... Would I recommend it? ... ... ... Tentative yes! I'm as surprised as anyone.
Yeah, the dungeons aren't so hot (if they can even be called that), but does that mean it's not a five star game? Nope. Not at all. Botw is an absolute delight. It looks great. Sounds great. Feels great. Playing it was one of the most wonderful gaming experiences of my life. Play it in pro mode (no minimap etc) for the full experience.
2020
An almost entirely miserable experience that gives you all the freedom in the world - to butcher, and butcher, and butcher, in unimaginative lands full of equally violent and miserable people as yourself, nobody with anything meaningful to say in their lengthy monologues, everybody sort of uncanny and ugly. It's not D+D, it's not Baldur's Gate, and it's not a good RPG. When it comes down to it, it doesn't even feel that big - it just feel torturously slow and clunky, with every battle taking forever, and painfully awkward traversal otherwise, all coming together to give the illusion of size, and of time well spent. BG3 is an enigma, if only because of how extremely shallow and juvenile the game is, and also how adored.
Well, I tried to like it. I promise, I tried. I spent more than two weeks playing this, and I can't think of a single quest or area or conversation I would like to revisit. Also, the UI is cluttered and the camera frequently worked against me. Also, it crashed 50 or so times during my time with it (on PS5), mostly when trying to load saves, sometimes after levelling up, and occasionally for no discernible reason at all. What happened to standards?
I keep thinking about all the unsurpassed freedom that this game supposedly offers. Well, I don't think a game needs to offer unlimited things to do and ways to do them, because games should focus first on doing one thing well, and then expanding where it has space to. Yet, since everybody and their grandma keeps bringing up how much freedom this game gives you...I never felt free to do what I wanted in this game. I felt trapped. Suffocated. More so than in most 'linear' RPGs I've ever played. You sort of have to do every quest you can find if you want to level up. Different dialogue choices lead to the same outcomes. You can never escape the endless vortex of (often meaningless) violence thrust upon you by passersby. There were so many fights I got into that I didn't want, so many people I had to kill that I would have liked to befriend, flirt with, talk to, be nice to... God, being nice! Acting like a regular human being to a fellow traveller! What a concept! Instead, your key interaction in this game is putting your fist through somebody's skull before they can do the same to you, through battle inputs that don't feel good or natural to use. It's mind numbing!
...Ketheric Thorm's voice acting was good. Stood head and shoulders over the rest of the cast.
Well, I tried to like it. I promise, I tried. I spent more than two weeks playing this, and I can't think of a single quest or area or conversation I would like to revisit. Also, the UI is cluttered and the camera frequently worked against me. Also, it crashed 50 or so times during my time with it (on PS5), mostly when trying to load saves, sometimes after levelling up, and occasionally for no discernible reason at all. What happened to standards?
I keep thinking about all the unsurpassed freedom that this game supposedly offers. Well, I don't think a game needs to offer unlimited things to do and ways to do them, because games should focus first on doing one thing well, and then expanding where it has space to. Yet, since everybody and their grandma keeps bringing up how much freedom this game gives you...I never felt free to do what I wanted in this game. I felt trapped. Suffocated. More so than in most 'linear' RPGs I've ever played. You sort of have to do every quest you can find if you want to level up. Different dialogue choices lead to the same outcomes. You can never escape the endless vortex of (often meaningless) violence thrust upon you by passersby. There were so many fights I got into that I didn't want, so many people I had to kill that I would have liked to befriend, flirt with, talk to, be nice to... God, being nice! Acting like a regular human being to a fellow traveller! What a concept! Instead, your key interaction in this game is putting your fist through somebody's skull before they can do the same to you, through battle inputs that don't feel good or natural to use. It's mind numbing!
...Ketheric Thorm's voice acting was good. Stood head and shoulders over the rest of the cast.
(This is the worst review anybody has ever written. I’m sorry. Basically, I hugely recommend this game to anybody looking for a good, relaxing, wholesome experience. I should probably just copy+paste this at the top so you can know my opinion straight up and skip the rest of this nonsense.)
-
I’m a little late to the party, here, but Dragon Quest XI is the best JRPG I’ve played in years. Five or six years after release, when everybody else seems to have finished talking about it, it is my game of 2023. It is a lungful of fresh air. It is joyful like I haven’t known in the longest time. It is a mirror that shows not the adult you’ve become but the child you forgot about.
“Oh. There you are,” you might think to yourself as you’re running through the greenest grass you’ve ever seen in your life, grass that glows at the edges when it catches sun. “There I am.”
Am I being a little too sentimental? Maybe I’m just tired. Over tired. I work five days a week, man, and I write fiction every morning and lunch time, and some evenings, and I'm training for another marathon. I’m probably a workaholic. I’m probably running from something. At any rate, video games are supposed to be my down time activity. Yet whenever I sit down to play something new these days, particularly new AAA games, I find myself growing even more exhausted. Exhausted by the mindless, cynical stories with nothing to say, by the recycled, towering mechanics, all waving at you to keep your attention, by grim art styles, edgy dialogue, blood and violence without stakes or point, existing just for its own sake, because most people won’t play a game if you can’t remove somebody’s brains from their head through a hole in the back of their skull.
If I’m lucky, I’ll play one big budget game a year that actually makes me feel something. It’s completely mind-numbing, and makes me feel hopeless about an activity that used to bring me so much joy. Memories of Pokémon Yellow, Final Fantasy X, Ocarina of Time, Resident Evil (GC) and all my other childhood favourites are buried under a stinking and growing landfill of Resident Evil 7 and Borderlands and Divinity II, games that have absolutely nothing to say, just time to kill. Buried deeper, still, by ports and remasters of those old favourites of mine that just feel wrong now. Ocarina of time doesn’t feel good without the N64 controller, and Link’s weight is all wrong in the 3DS remake; FFX characters lose their expressive eyes in the HD remaster; Jill Valentine has impossibly jiggly boob-physics in the HD remaster of Resident Evil (GC) (Maybe it was always there, and I couldn’t tell back on the CRT) and there are new ‘loading’ message screens that pop up during startup, made without any effort to mesh with the aesthetics of the game, as well as an analogue control system that doesn't work with the fixed cameras; did you play Pokémon Let’s go? I could write all day about those games and how they hollowed out the originals. My favourite video game is probably FF7 on the PS1, for the strides it made but also the way it wears its faults on its sleeves, for its whimsy and strangeness and beauty (and music). The HD port, though, is full of weird audio bugs, and has these features that might well make the game more palatable, like speed up, but which end up ruining the immersion of the game. And as for the remake…! I spent about fifteen hours on it before I couldn’t freaking take it anymore and I just had to—
…Well, Dragon Quest XI is a vital reminder that big budget games can, and do, still have souls.
It is a wake-up call that, likely, will go unheeded, even by its own publisher—in interviews, developers have spoken about making the next game in the series more mature. Well, we know what mature means in gaming. Edgy humour, swearing, dark colour palettes, violence... It means, potentially, more sales. It means, certainly, creative hamstringing in a rush to make money out of what sells right now.
This is supposed to be a review, isn’t it? Well, I feel strangely unprepared to talk about Dragon Quest XI, even after 80+ hours of gameplay. Maybe that’s why I’m dragging my feet about it.
Dragon Quest XI is bursting at the seams with excellence and elegance. The simple story is bolstered by incredible dialogue and voice acting. The characters are wonderful and whimsical. The stakes are high, the pacing is on-point, the politics are navigable and entertaining, the skits are hilarious, the tragedies awful. The battles, similarly, are simple yet effective. Turn-based, slow-burn affairs where your team works together to pull off fantastic moves and spells and combos, where buffs and de-buffs become increasingly vital as you move forward in the adventure (or, if you’re starting on Harder Monsters, vital from the get-go). The character development is slow and steady, rarely overwhelming, giving you hours to think about how you’re going to develop your characters while you traverse the world map, what skills and spells you’re going to have them learn, and then which team strategies and loadouts you’re going to employ. The side quests are good. The hero’s haircut and outfit are awful to the point of hilarity. The art direction is out of this world.
…
I should feel happier about it. I have a new game to add to my list of favourites, and it is a generous one, filled with extra difficulty modes that make it extremely replayable. But it is like being in the height of summer, knowing the trees will turn soon, and then… I don’t know. Play this game at your own risk, I guess. It’s an eye-opener. It takes you by the hand and makes you stop and smell the roses, and you think, I love the smell of roses. Shouldn’t there be fields of them everywhere? Well, why aren’t there? And why is everything farmland without hedgerows or ponds or other important fixtures of local habitats? Why is all the topsoil damaged? What’s happened to the climate? Why did humans wipe out 60% of the world's populations of wild vertebrates over the last fifty years? Profits? Well, aren’t roses profitable? They’re not? But they’re so nice! What will Dragon Quest XII be? Will it also be nice? Or will it only be...?
…
(This is the worst review anybody has ever written. I’m sorry. Basically, I hugely recommend this game to anybody looking for a good, relaxing, wholesome experience. I should probably just copy+paste this at the top so you can know my opinion straight up and skip the rest of this nonsense.)
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I’m a little late to the party, here, but Dragon Quest XI is the best JRPG I’ve played in years. Five or six years after release, when everybody else seems to have finished talking about it, it is my game of 2023. It is a lungful of fresh air. It is joyful like I haven’t known in the longest time. It is a mirror that shows not the adult you’ve become but the child you forgot about.
“Oh. There you are,” you might think to yourself as you’re running through the greenest grass you’ve ever seen in your life, grass that glows at the edges when it catches sun. “There I am.”
Am I being a little too sentimental? Maybe I’m just tired. Over tired. I work five days a week, man, and I write fiction every morning and lunch time, and some evenings, and I'm training for another marathon. I’m probably a workaholic. I’m probably running from something. At any rate, video games are supposed to be my down time activity. Yet whenever I sit down to play something new these days, particularly new AAA games, I find myself growing even more exhausted. Exhausted by the mindless, cynical stories with nothing to say, by the recycled, towering mechanics, all waving at you to keep your attention, by grim art styles, edgy dialogue, blood and violence without stakes or point, existing just for its own sake, because most people won’t play a game if you can’t remove somebody’s brains from their head through a hole in the back of their skull.
If I’m lucky, I’ll play one big budget game a year that actually makes me feel something. It’s completely mind-numbing, and makes me feel hopeless about an activity that used to bring me so much joy. Memories of Pokémon Yellow, Final Fantasy X, Ocarina of Time, Resident Evil (GC) and all my other childhood favourites are buried under a stinking and growing landfill of Resident Evil 7 and Borderlands and Divinity II, games that have absolutely nothing to say, just time to kill. Buried deeper, still, by ports and remasters of those old favourites of mine that just feel wrong now. Ocarina of time doesn’t feel good without the N64 controller, and Link’s weight is all wrong in the 3DS remake; FFX characters lose their expressive eyes in the HD remaster; Jill Valentine has impossibly jiggly boob-physics in the HD remaster of Resident Evil (GC) (Maybe it was always there, and I couldn’t tell back on the CRT) and there are new ‘loading’ message screens that pop up during startup, made without any effort to mesh with the aesthetics of the game, as well as an analogue control system that doesn't work with the fixed cameras; did you play Pokémon Let’s go? I could write all day about those games and how they hollowed out the originals. My favourite video game is probably FF7 on the PS1, for the strides it made but also the way it wears its faults on its sleeves, for its whimsy and strangeness and beauty (and music). The HD port, though, is full of weird audio bugs, and has these features that might well make the game more palatable, like speed up, but which end up ruining the immersion of the game. And as for the remake…! I spent about fifteen hours on it before I couldn’t freaking take it anymore and I just had to—
…Well, Dragon Quest XI is a vital reminder that big budget games can, and do, still have souls.
It is a wake-up call that, likely, will go unheeded, even by its own publisher—in interviews, developers have spoken about making the next game in the series more mature. Well, we know what mature means in gaming. Edgy humour, swearing, dark colour palettes, violence... It means, potentially, more sales. It means, certainly, creative hamstringing in a rush to make money out of what sells right now.
This is supposed to be a review, isn’t it? Well, I feel strangely unprepared to talk about Dragon Quest XI, even after 80+ hours of gameplay. Maybe that’s why I’m dragging my feet about it.
Dragon Quest XI is bursting at the seams with excellence and elegance. The simple story is bolstered by incredible dialogue and voice acting. The characters are wonderful and whimsical. The stakes are high, the pacing is on-point, the politics are navigable and entertaining, the skits are hilarious, the tragedies awful. The battles, similarly, are simple yet effective. Turn-based, slow-burn affairs where your team works together to pull off fantastic moves and spells and combos, where buffs and de-buffs become increasingly vital as you move forward in the adventure (or, if you’re starting on Harder Monsters, vital from the get-go). The character development is slow and steady, rarely overwhelming, giving you hours to think about how you’re going to develop your characters while you traverse the world map, what skills and spells you’re going to have them learn, and then which team strategies and loadouts you’re going to employ. The side quests are good. The hero’s haircut and outfit are awful to the point of hilarity. The art direction is out of this world.
…
I should feel happier about it. I have a new game to add to my list of favourites, and it is a generous one, filled with extra difficulty modes that make it extremely replayable. But it is like being in the height of summer, knowing the trees will turn soon, and then… I don’t know. Play this game at your own risk, I guess. It’s an eye-opener. It takes you by the hand and makes you stop and smell the roses, and you think, I love the smell of roses. Shouldn’t there be fields of them everywhere? Well, why aren’t there? And why is everything farmland without hedgerows or ponds or other important fixtures of local habitats? Why is all the topsoil damaged? What’s happened to the climate? Why did humans wipe out 60% of the world's populations of wild vertebrates over the last fifty years? Profits? Well, aren’t roses profitable? They’re not? But they’re so nice! What will Dragon Quest XII be? Will it also be nice? Or will it only be...?
…
(This is the worst review anybody has ever written. I’m sorry. Basically, I hugely recommend this game to anybody looking for a good, relaxing, wholesome experience. I should probably just copy+paste this at the top so you can know my opinion straight up and skip the rest of this nonsense.)
On the one hand, it's a robust and functional (local) co-op RPG with some addictive skill development and entertaining (if sluggish and occasionally buggy) battles. On the other hand, it's a monumentally immature, painstakingly insincere, blood and sweat drenched ode to edgy humour and apathy. It is completely enamoured with the aesthetics of violence, but has nothing of note to say about it, and though bold in the face of gore, it seems desperately afraid of feelings. If it were a person, I would stay far away. As it's a game, however, I do feel safe returning to it every now and again with my partner, just to stare, and shake my head (and this time try out being an inquistor or a rogue or etc etc blam heck yeah critical hit)
2020
Played this with my family and had an amazing time full of laughs and scares.
Movement control was a little slippery, but apart from that this game felt really good to play.
It sounded fantastic, even emulating disc loading sounds on the optional door-loading animations, and the ambient soundtrack is wonderful (available on Spotify, too). Visually it's a treat, with a ton of different visual options available to switch between at any point from the options menu, affecting the video quality in different evocative ways. Textures are susceptible to warping, which I think is really neat.
The story is gross, but also quite effective. The characters are fun, with silly, memorable dialogue and good voice acting. As for the horror gameplay? Genuinely frightening. The kind of cat and mouse chase play that has freaked me out ever since resident evil 3 on the PS1.
Brilliant game that I can't wait to show off to my friends. The prologue and post credits sequence are brilliant.
Movement control was a little slippery, but apart from that this game felt really good to play.
It sounded fantastic, even emulating disc loading sounds on the optional door-loading animations, and the ambient soundtrack is wonderful (available on Spotify, too). Visually it's a treat, with a ton of different visual options available to switch between at any point from the options menu, affecting the video quality in different evocative ways. Textures are susceptible to warping, which I think is really neat.
The story is gross, but also quite effective. The characters are fun, with silly, memorable dialogue and good voice acting. As for the horror gameplay? Genuinely frightening. The kind of cat and mouse chase play that has freaked me out ever since resident evil 3 on the PS1.
Brilliant game that I can't wait to show off to my friends. The prologue and post credits sequence are brilliant.
I love this game, and it's predecessor. Kyle Hyde is great. The side characters are really surprising and well written. The plot is pacey and suspenseful. Only a couple of the puzzles towards the end lacked clear signposting, but even then you will eventually catch on to what the game wants. A lot of the mechanical additions were improvements (like being able to restart from a recent point, rather than returning to the last save when you drop yourself in it!) but I think I liked hotel dusk's story a little more. All in all, a wonderful game. (Oh! The soundtrack is really good, too.)
2016
Trico is <3
that is all
that is all
2016
A real joy from start to finish. It's tense, it's beautiful, it's sad. The map mechanic and exploration is great. Obviously the main draw is the story, though, and it is a great one. (Personally, I find it really replayable, too.) A lot of people aren't keen on the ending. I'm not a lot of people, I guess. Looking forward to playing it again soon.
2021
I like the puzzles and the voice acting. I'm not keen on the plot, however, particularly the ending. The controls were also sometimes imprecise, which probably wasn't the case on PC. All in all, while I'm glad to have played it, I was hoping for better.