XC1 is one of the more interesting experiences I've had with a story. Though I have quite a bit of issues, they feel slightly unfair when looked at in the context of the story this wants to tell.

For nearly the first half of the game, while I was enjoying myself, I felt a disconnect somewhere, like I was just experiencing something but not really having any strong feelings toward any particular aspect. That all changed around chapter 8, specifically the High Entia Tomb section where I started to feel some modicum of attachment to the story. From then on, the story and more importantly, the characters felt a lot more realized.

The combat, while initially I dismissed it as 'good enough' constantly progressed and expanded as subsequent party members joined and learned arts, getting to a point where combat felt extremely rewarding when you completely understood it. I cannot express how fun it is to stun-lock a boss infinitely with chain attacks.

The dub isn't particularly great, I considered switching over to Japanese a few times in the early chapters. Honestly, I'm glad I didn't. While some performances are pretty good and others pretty bad it strangely feels perfect with this type of world and characters. Call it Stockholm syndrome, but I grew to quite like the voice acting with it actually hitting its stride greatly in the last few chapters.

The music is the one thing I never changed my opinion on. From the start, I was blown away by the composition and it only got more and more stellar. This game has a perfect soundtrack and some of the best battle music I've ever heard. The game also looks really good with some stunning areas that really encourage exploration and very dynamic cutscenes with surprisingly fluid action sequences.

The story and characters are where I find myself more or less conflicted. I like them both but have an issue with how they are presented, mainly the dialogue in particular can get pretty silly at times with how on the nose it is. But like I said at the start this feels like an unfair criticism once you look at this game holistically. This game is so unapologetically itself and unabashedly genuine that it becomes contagious. From chapter 12 onward the story REALLY locks in and delivers on a truly epic tale of human perseverance with an ending I comfortably(and kind of surprisingly) say is one of my personal favorites ever. It has such a powerful final say and with the amount of twists and turns in the final act it was mindblowing to think this was the same game as what I played in chapter 1.

I think the correct way to word this game is something that ages beautifully as you play it. It took a while but it ultimately delivered on a powerful story, and one I'm very glad I got to experience.

All around its better than the first game. There are a lot more towns, the variety in areas feels greater, and it tries a bit harder to be a cohesive narrative. However, at the same time Ys II fumbles with some of these new additions. The magic system has some cool features but making almost every boss designed to only be damaged through it is really tedious,. The final dungeon having so much back tracking and leaving and coming back despite its cool aesthetic took me out of the moment a lot. The music was great just like Ys I and there is definitely a charm that it has.

Chained Echoes : Impressive yet flawed

If you know me, you know that I love myself some classic JRPG especially of the SNES-PS1 era variety, there’s a magic to these grand epic journey of traveling a gigantic world on foot, uncovering the secret and mystery of its setting, experience memorable scene written by master hands with a bit of endearing jank to the style.

So when I heard about Chained Echoes through some of my friends and RPG youtubers and saw that it was on the Gamepass (that I got for free thanks to a friend of mine who got a spare code), I was like “Look why not”. I was a little worried about getting into Chained Echoes at first, usually speaking I feel like western developers trying their hand at the Japanese style of RPG usually ends up feeling try hard and forced and without lying to you that’s the impression I got from the game at first.

But then upon realizing that the entire game was made by literally one dude on his spare time on kickstarter money, I started to reconsider my position and while the first few hours of the game were a bit rough eventually upon reaching the 2nd act of the game everything started to click in my head once we got access to the Sky Armors which opens up the game significantly in terms of exploration and a decent chunk of superbly well-crafted and put together side content (actually these are some of the best side-quest I’ve seen from this genre since the PS2 era at least !).

Chained Echoes is not gonna break any new ground, the game owes a lot of its solid foundations to what came before it, if I have to boil down the story to its mere essential, I’d say it’s the bizarro child of Final Fantasy Tactics and Xenogears ! Both incredibly ambitious titles with a crazy ambitious scale and tone for their times mixed together with the same level of ambition as the titles of old. The game isn’t shy about its inspiration and while it can feel try hard at times because it’s a genre that tends not to reinvent its wheels all too often, I can only admire the sheer effort and passion that was put into such a project. The world of the game is vast and full of details, various cultures and mythologies clashing with each other, it has warring factions and characters working for their own agenda with a very Matsuno style of human to human conflict with a tints of gray morality and nuance that I admire a lot. The character writing is also nothing to shy on about, Glenn for exemple is an interesting twist on the hard-boiled soldier boil haunted by the sins crawling down his back and always trying to one-up himself for the mistakes he previously committed, this actually takes an interesting direction later into the story when we realize the true nature behind his existence and I actually like how well the game paces its revelations, it’s not a constant rollercoaster ride but they’re placed at just the right time to keep you going further and get more and more invested into it.

The game setting is super ambitious and while that’s definitely one of the game's biggest strengths it also comes to the game detriments especially near the end of the game, the last act of Chained Echoes feels very anti-climatic and very sequel baity. I don’t know if Matthias plans on making a sequel to this game and considering it already took 6 years to do all of this, I don’t think this will happen very soon or at all which is why I think that a co-writer would’ve helped tampers Mathias’s ambition down a bit for what is essentially a small indie release which was probably going to be a one hit wonder anyway.
The last act over-indulges on its lore, events go by super fast, arcs are wrapped up in very ungracious fashion, the game suddenly is way too easy due to the abundance of options you get by the late game and the final boss being more of a narrative spectacle than a challenge. Literally 2 minor but significant villain just disappear into nothingness never to be heard from again, the big bad god deity the game has been urging us about never shows up at all and the conclusion to the story feels very tacked on and cheesy when the rest of the game wasn’t so sappy about “redemption” for its most villainous characters. With many questions left unanswered, let’s just say that what was a pleasant ride kinda ended on a wet fart, I literally wasn’t thinking the game would end during the final dungeon but it actually did and it’s weird as shit, let’s hope a sequel or at least DLC’s or in the work to bounce back from all of this, cause I could genuinely see this being the solid basis for a whole franchise if done correctly.

So while the story is indeed pretty surprising and enjoyable, it’s held back by Matthias' ambition being way too big for the kind of project he’s working on, I can say that ambition helped make the rest of the game all the more enjoyable.

One thing that’s immediately clear right off the bat is how gorgeous the game looks, this is some truly high quality pixel-art right there and at times the game has some pretty stunning looking areas and sprites. The only thing I’m not too big on are the character portraits, they’re not terrible but the fact they only have one expression and the artstyle is pretty uneven between characters makes me feel like these were an unnecessary additions which at times takes away from the intensity or emotions of the scenes, I would’ve rather not have any portraits at all if that was going to be the end result, Glenn’s face especially makes it very hard to take all of his emotional trauma-dumping seriously when he’s just blankly staring into the void with a neutral expression all the time.

Music wise, it’s just ok, it gets the job done, can’t say I was impressed by this game soundtrack it sounds very “everyday snes game” which is about as much of a decent compliment I can give to it.

Now let’s talk about the juicy part of today’s review which is the gameplay. Chained Echoes goes a long way towards doing the thing most JRPG inspired indie games do by trying to “fix” some of the more “tedious” elements of JRPG’s to make for a smoother experience. I personally am someone who’s grown too attached to the roughness of most JRPG systems. I’m a guy who has NES games amongst his favorites despite not being from this generation at all, so I’m going to give my most honest and brutal opinion on the matter.

I don’t think JRPG as a genre needs “fixing” and there has never been an attempt in recent memory that has actually managed to fully convince me that trying to do so ends up in a more fulfilling or even fun experience. Grinding is not a problem in any JRPG’s since the SNES, in fact the only people I see complain about grinding are the people who plays Pokemon and tried a single JRPG once and got bored fast despite the fact that Pokemon has been way behind the curve on its game design ever since the very first generation and is something you notice even more when going on self-imposed challenge to make the game more appreciable as an adult.

In fact, I will defend the idea of grinding as an accessibility function, while most RPG don’t rely on overleveling to get things done as a good game is often supported by various system to circumvent the level curve, grinding for levels is an option that I at least like to have and liked to have especially as a kid when my brain couldn’t process the dullness of such an activity.

In fact, traditional levels and growth structure actually allows to have a better sense of progression, it’s ok for regular encounters in RPG to be mindless because for the most part, part of the fun is figuring out a set strategy to go through these encounters faster and also the game can better control its difficulty and balance with random encounters than field encounters which encourages people to overlevel on reflex (or at least that’s true for me because my OCD refuses to see a single mob left on the screen).

With that said Chained Echoes actually has a few fun systems but not all of which fully convinced me to think of them as a significant improvement over more traditional old-school RPG and it’s mostly due to a weird imbalance between the random encounters and the bosses.

You can’t level up through battle in this game, you level up through getting grimoire shards that you get at certain key point in the game (usually after defeating a boss) or through completing the game reward board which is an achievement system that rewards you for doing certain task and by chaining them together on a grid, you get points to get bigger rewards like the aforementioned grimoire shards.

This way of gatekeeping progression pushes a bigger emphasis on exploring to be more powerful rather than fighting many enemies to be more powerful but here comes the issue I have with said system. Regular encounters can be a bitch to go through, in fact I will say that this game have the quite annoying tendency to have regular encounters sometimes be more challenging than bosses themselves, I actually died more often on these than I did on the game various bosses which are often more straightforward in how you’re supposed to approach them (although some of them have interesting gimmicks that are quite cool to figure out, especially in the end-game). Because of this, you rarely ever feel like you’re getting more powerful, sure you unlock more options, you get more passive abilities, you get more active skills but that doesn’t change that most fight in this game can be a drag and an half and while the encounters are field based like Chrono Trigger, it doesn’t change that you’re going to spend a lot of time on those anyway (and don’t you dare use quick travel or else most of them will respawn).

Which bothers me because for how tough some of these encounters are, the reward is practically non-existent, you get some materials which exist only to be sold at shop to get extra cash (and “deals”) or upgrade your equipment and some SP to level up your skills which takes so much goddamn point to upgrade and you get so little SP that it doesn’t feel like an actual good substitute for exp.

While it creates an interesting new approach to combat in which most encounter cannot simply be mashed through, it does get tiring after a while especially with how bloated and inflated some of the enemies HP bars can be, making most strategies around taking out multiple enemies with multi-target attack often fruitless and a time waste at worst.
I know some people actually praised this approach for being unique and not let regular encounters be dull but I’m not sure I think giving that level of importance to regular encounters is always that great of an idea, it really depends on a case by case basis and a game where you barely even feel an actual sense of progression because the game decides for you what options you may have at certain point (with some space for customisation but not by much) can be pretty ass at time.

But the fights are still incredibly fun anyway, the game is challenging in all the right place, the synergy meter mechanic is a great take on traditional turn-based system that prevents you from again mashing through them like a maniac, the game does a few interesting things with that synergy meter but It quickly loses its steam as the game progresses, I wish more bosses would mess around with that meter or gimmicks involving that meter being more prevalent but oh well, I’ll take what I get (especially since THANK GOD they let status effect actually work on bosses so stalling strats are actually viable).

There’s a part of the progression system I forgot to mention which is the weapon and armor upgrade system. Simply put, this entire part of the game is needlessly complex but also terribly pointless. The idea is that you can upgrade your gears to make them stronger and upgrade the number of crystal slots available to them just like materia. Attaching these crystals that you can farm at certain gathering points on the map allows your gear to get new properties like more passive abilities that help you in battle.

The problem with these is how tedious the entire process is. You have to combine crystals of the same type to make a stronger crystal but wait can’t reuse a crystal you already used silly ! Also since crystals attach themselves to weapons, it means you’re gonna spend a few minutes upgrading and tinkling with said weapon and have all that effort being for naught as you get the higher tier of weapon literally 10 min after you spend time upgrading the previous one.

It’s especially grating in the mid-game where you constantly get new gear in quick successions so at one point, you just completely ignore that aspect of the game and frankly the game hasn’t been made more or less difficult from me completely ignoring this feature even in the later part of the game or the optional content so whatever.

Another feature of the game that went solely underutilized are the class emblems which is the closest thing this game has to a job system but closely resembles more guardian forces or master quartz from Trails, it’s an equipable item that gives you a stat boost and a couple of passive and active skills, most of which are just worse version of skills you can already unlock from the skill tab once you level up meaning that outside of the first one you get which let any characters becoming an healer (especially since you don’t have one until at least act 2 and she’s not really all that useful with Health and Mana always replenishing after battles).

In general the game is bloated with annoying filler passive like “do more damage to x type of enemies” but since the encounters are fixed and the game erased grinding from its gameplay loop, I don’t see the point of these being a thing at all, heck the Blue Mage character literally only has that kind of passive (and also is the worst blue mage I’ve ever seen in an RPG).
There’s also the Sky Armors, much like Xenogears, the game oftentimes have fights taking place inside giant mechs which are more or less customizable. These are way better than the ones from Xenogears as they actually require a bit of thinking and strategy to handle the synergie bar this time around but once you figure out the trick to it, they become pretty dull compared to the on-foot encounters, still it’s a nice pace breaker if nothing else.

But what the Sky Armors add to the game is the possibility of fast seamless travel across the game's various maps and the second you get them during the second act, the game evolves from a mostly linear structure to an exploration galore of epic proportions !

In fact, the second and third act of the game was the best part for me, the game opens up significantly and shows us its side-content and believe me, that side-content is to die for ! Between the extremely rewarding and fun exploration complete with the game super tight level design with many secrets to find, the recruitable NPC’s you can add to your newly build home base which adds different new mechanics in the game and makes your central hub prettier the more you go back to it and of course the side-questing which is to die for.

I’ve grown pretty tired of the way side-quest are handled in RPG’s these days, a lot of filler content without much substance with quality over quantity plastered all over it, tedious fetch quest that forces you to go back and forth between locations to do specific task or collect X amount of items but there’s nothing of the sort in this game, oh hell no !

Each side-quest comes with proper story development, character arcs and even their own mini-dungeons and bosses ! These side-quests are so rich and plentiful that it made me feel like I was playing an actual golden age RPG again, they were all super fun and incredibly rewarding as they help you understand more about the world and its secrets as well as making your main cast and the side-characters more interesting.

Heck there’s even a super-side-quest that’s less telegraphed than the rest of them which leads you on a quest to hunt the game various superbosses and that quest is long sprawling multiple new environments and dungeons and feel like actual secrets you stumble upon at random and heck, it leads to an even cooler superboss that the game only slightly hinted at earlier during one of the game side-quest and let’s just say that it was a great surprise and a great moment for me as these superbosses are truly excellent !

So in the end can Chained echoes stand on its own on the shoulders of giant, hey maybe not but it definitely is a more competent attempt at living up to these classics and I’m sure that with a bit of tweaking and perhaps a sequel to build up on its truly solid foundations, it could end up being really special and the game has no shortage of very engaging and profound moments that are synonymous of the style of game it’s trying to emulate and like its inspiration was the result of ambitions being led astray by the limitations of the industry but that’s life.

Considering most of the game is a one man job, it is thoroughly impressive all the way through but doesn’t change the fact that maybe with a few more people on board, it could’ve been perhaps even better than what it reached out to be !

Overall, play Chained Echoes, it’s a good time if nothing else.

This is to the original Dead Space what REmake was to Resident Evil. It retains basically everything that was so iconic about the original and just expands from there. Better plot, better pacing and level design, better gameplay, but at the same time it never feels like it's straying TOO far.

When Dead Space remake chooses to go for considerable changes, it feels warranted. Like making the guns better, expanding the story, making the Ishimura a much more explorable environment, or completely changing the whole way zero-g segments now go about. All the things that held the OG DS back now feel like exciting aspects of the remake.

You can tell EA Motive had immense respect for the original, as they show unwavering love and attention to detail throughout the whole experience. The Ishimura feels so damn familiar and spot-on. All the little corridors are just like how I recall them in my innumerable amount of replays.

Dead Space Remake is one of the greatest video game remakes I've played, hands down. It's a class-act example of what remakes should strive to be. Much like REmake, it's a game that executes itself far stronger than the original but also stays so damn accurate and respectful to it that you could totally warrant playing it over the OG. If a newbie wanted to get into the Dead Space franchise, I would tell them to play this over the original; and that's about one of the highest honors I can give to a remake.

Who is Lloyd Bannings?
To the blind, he is the light.
To the starving, he is the bread.
To the sick, he is the cure.
To the sad, he is joy.
To the prisoner, he is freedom.
To the poor, he is treasure.
For me, he is everything. I love Lloyd Bannings.

Sonic Frontiers is a game I think will probably please more so the hardcore fans of Sonic than people like me who just casually check out these games either with fond nostalgia or pure ironic enjoyment.

I'm actually happy that at least on the writing department, Sonic is finally trying again, Sonic stories have never been amazing but the earlier 3D entry just scratch that autistic itch of camp and seriousness that can only be replicated either here or the Kingdom Hearts series.

No more meta cynicism, the game fully embraces its lore and try to haphazardly put all of it into a coherent timeline, which I'm ngl, I didn't even know most of these were meant to have any connection past characters returning.

The game as usual for Sonic games is a lot of interesting ideas held back by a lack of polish (especially in how rough the game feels to play) and questionable design decision that are specifically made to be anti-fun and seems to not understand the strength of its own gameplay loop.

Roaming around the open-world as Sonic feels good but then you realize that you're just speeding through a succession of randomly placed automated obstacle courses which quickly become repetitive and often hinders actual exploration (especially when you're thrown into a forced 2D section for no reasons like it happened oh so many times on the 3rd island) but the game goblin gamer brain effect tend to make these more fun on quick succession than they actually are.

The Cyberspace levels however are for the most part all fucking dogshit, the gameplay stops being responsive, you're nerfed in your abilities, most of them are insanely easy and the ones that aren't are an annoyance and to top it all of a bunch of them are recycled from previous Sonic games and all have the 4 same level skins plastered over them.

Some Cyberspace levels are taken from the Adventure era title and these just do not work with the wack ass physic and gameplay of these sections of the game and don't get me started on the fully 2D levels which makes me wonder why Sonic team is still fucking trying with these when so many people have complained about the 2D sections in all the previous titles that had them.

There's combat in this game, it's nothing remarkable, gets old very fast and makes you question why they even try to have that kind of gameplay that don't really fit in a Sonic game but aight

The bosses while nothing special and kinda wacky are actually the highlight of the game thanks to the absolutely banging music playing that just makes you feel like anime !

The music aren't Crush 40 levels of iconic but they have MGR vibe and I think every videogames in the world need MGR style vocal track it just improves everything

Why is the Final Boss an Ikaruga stage tho ?

Believe me, I LOVE Ikaruga but it was super out of place and could've been even more epic had they actually made a proper boss fight here

Other than that huh...

Game's fine

Spark 3 definitely clears it tho lol

IF YOU ARE NOT A FAN OF THE WORDS

-PEAK FICTION
-GOAT
-RAW
-FIRE

DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME BECAUSE THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT YOU'LL GET

While the first 2 games were average as fuck and full of issues from pacing to badly coded physics and dull combat, this game improves on literally every aspect established by Spark 2 and super-charged it to eleven.

The levels are what I would consider peak SA2 like levels mixing elements of momentum coupled with moderate boost and vastly open area with little to no walls to hold you from just going batshit insane on platforming at high speed while exploring the levels for hidden secrets and shortcuts.

Most the games have lots of variety both in their mechanics and environnement making so not a single moment of this game feels dull (except of a few places like the space level but that was the only low point for me)

The combat has been significantly improved and is now actually fun to mess-around in, I still think it's kind of "too much" and not as fun as just zooming through levels without a care in the world but heh, if they're really adamant on making this a core aspect of the franchise then so be it.

And on top of that they finally figured out how the physics should work and no moments were ruined by the physics doing bullshit, everything work as intended.

This game is to Sonic Adventure fan what Sonic Mania was 2D Sonic, a game which perfected a formula and made it more than the sum of its parts by getting rid of the awkward stuff and focusing on the right one.

The soundtrack is also pure cum in music form and the plot while not super present this time around goes places I never expected to during the final chapter and it's probably the most batshit insane plot I've seen in a platformer since Klonoa 2 or Mega Man Zero maybe

All in all, this is a game I absolutely recommend for those looking for a fun high speed action game with tons of additional challenges for completionist on top (and as a bonus, all the levels from Spark 2 have been recreated and made really good thanks to tweak in the physic)

A generous game, made by passionate people who aimed for greatness and achieved it flawlessly