RenzoSMZ
11 reviews liked by RenzoSMZ
Demon's Souls
2020
Demon's Souls (PS5) is quite possibly the worst example of a remake ever. Bluepoint have completely misunderstood the complex emotions, atmosphere and vibe that makes the original such an incredible piece of art.
To understand why Demon’s Souls (PS5) fails as a remake, we need to look at the contexts in which we view souls games. The prevailing discussion around the soulsborne series categorises their sole existence as games that gamers play to show how good they are at games. This culture pushes away the capacity of discussion around the artistic merits of each individual game and instead pushes people to view the games on an entirely mechanical level. Because of this, the original Demon’s Souls is viewed entirely as a proto-souls, where its merits as a work of art are discarded because the only significance it has as a game is that it created the mechanical basis for “better” games.
While I plan to write another essay on why Demon’s Souls (PS3) is one of my favourite artistic statements in gaming later on, I'll summarise here what makes the original so special. Demon's Souls at its core is a game about human greed and power. We arrive into Boletaria after the main events of its downfall have already occurred and are effectively set to roam around the wastes, picking up clues of what happened along the way. To many Souls fans, the lorebuilding may feel comparatively tame in Demon’s Souls but I personally feel it works to its benefit, as the game expects the player to come to their own terms on what led to Boletaria's destruction. Demon's Souls (PS3) uses full advantage of the graphical standards and techniques of the seventh generation to create a dense atmosphere that feels in line with the circumstances of its world. Boletaria is shrouded by deep fog because the demons are killing the inhabitants of Boletaria to harvest their souls to be consumed by an entity named the old one. The old one was awoken by king allant while his kingdom was in prosperity because he felt that the outer kingdoms in the world needed to be put out of their misery, when they were simply impoverished and in need of support. This contextualises the game’s dense (and arguably limited) foggy graphical style as the direct outcome of the atrocities that happen at the expense of the king’s hubris.
Meanwhile, Demon's Souls (PS5) sheds the visual style of the original to create nothing more than a showcase of modern hardware. Where once was a very uniquely grim colour palette of muted oranges, greens and very occasionally blue is now grey with a bright blue filter over literally everything. The nexus in PS3 is gorgeous, the walls are very abundantly textured, the lighting is subdued and golden runes adorn the floors, which I feel excellently conveys the nature of this being a long forgotten temple existing as an ethereal plane. On the other hand, PS5’s nexus just blasts you with beams of blue light coming from the roof of the structure, with the golden runes now being a weird orange LED colour rather than the ornamented look of the original. Areas in the remake massively suffer from having the lights look like RGB gamer lights than actual lights, which makes any area that tries to contrast two colours with each other look much gaudier than it should. Another horrible example of this is the Dragon God fight, where the pure red hellish look completely annihilates the visual distinction that the fight was trying to make with its contemporaries in the original in exchange for a generic western fantasy volcano area aesthetic. I think the only area that looks visually appealing in the entire game is the outside of Stonefang Tunnel, where the dusty oranges work in the favour of the atmosphere of the level although this is extremely brief and is ruined by the game's lighting of bloodstains and messages.
The UI of Demon’s Souls (PS5) is maybe the most indicative of where Bluepoint have gone wrong artistically. PS3's UI and HUD are extremely unique as far as games go. The font is skeuomorphic to the writing that would actually exist in world. It comes off as incredibly charming and it’s something that only the original Dark Souls (bar remastered) has attempted in the series since. In addition, the textured grey bars of the menus fit extremely well with the overall artstyle of the game. even the muted red they picked for the selection bar fits the palette in a very dulcet manner. The hud itself also fits the game perfectly. it's adorned with these strange silver demon signs which feel like they represent the resurrective pact you have been inflicted with. Meanwhile, PS5’s UI and HUD goes for a modernised, minimalist approach. it’s hard for me to even say anything about it without becoming enraged, this design choice feels like it exists entirely to appeal to the crowd of Playstation fanboys that think completely uncritically about a game unless it has a woman or LGBT person in it. The font in PS5 looks genuinely disgusting, it’s like they tried to reach a middle point with choosing between a fully minimalist sans serif and something like the original but ended up going with one of those original Google Docs ones. The hud elements have flat outlines and colours that massively contrast with the game's visuals. it adds to the visually overwhelming nature of the remake which is kinda oxymoronic to the intent of the minimalist design.
One of the fundamental reasons why Demon’s Souls would need a remake is quite honestly the combat. I personally adore it, but it is very clunky and jank and thus doesn’t really allow the general souls audience to engage with the game. This is why I think Bluepoint’s decision to keep combat entirely the same is absolutely baffling. it causes the animations to look horrible with the modernised models and it leaves the game worse off in all aspects. The choice to limit moongrass storage is in theory a good change, but it doesn’t really do anything to alter the game’s flawed healing system and instead just adds more grinding to the game. Bluepoint had the opportunity to do so much more with the combat, to speed it up or to at least rework a few elements but they instead did absolutely nothing.
Finally, I'd like to talk about the audio of both games. Demon's Souls (PS3)’s ost is my absolute favourite of the series. Shunsuke Kida focuses on the ways melody can evoke certain emotions in boss fights to excellent effect, which is made much more potent by the smaller orchestra giving a feeling much more intimate than the other souls games’ soundtracks. As is tradition with this remake, Bill Hemstapat's rearrangements are such an insane downgrade that it’s hard to really understand the thought process behind the choices here. These arrangements feature a larger orchestra with an immense amount of reverb over them that dissociate any emotion or feeling from the tracks at all. For example, the character creation theme in PS3 is a polyphonic and smooth textured synth based composition (unique from the rest of the ost) that gives a very calming, ethereal vibe. On the other hand, PS5 replaces the synths with piano, strings and vocals which just makes the composition lack the solitary and ethereal vibe that made it special. The voice acting of demon’s souls (PS5), while not always as egregious as the other elements of the game, does ruin the ending of the remake entirely. In PS3, when you beat King Allant he says his line in a very solemn tone that feels incredibly impactful knowing his circumstance. Meanwhile in ps5, he sounds like he’s pushing his throat up in order to sound like a muppet. It is maybe the worst attempt at a line read I have ever heard, the fact they put it in the game is absolutely baffling and indicative of how little they care for the emotional clarity of the game.
Demon’s Souls PS5 has ruined a game I hold dear to my heart and the fact it will probably be viewed and used as the main archival for the game (even probably coming to PC at some point) is a tragedy.
To understand why Demon’s Souls (PS5) fails as a remake, we need to look at the contexts in which we view souls games. The prevailing discussion around the soulsborne series categorises their sole existence as games that gamers play to show how good they are at games. This culture pushes away the capacity of discussion around the artistic merits of each individual game and instead pushes people to view the games on an entirely mechanical level. Because of this, the original Demon’s Souls is viewed entirely as a proto-souls, where its merits as a work of art are discarded because the only significance it has as a game is that it created the mechanical basis for “better” games.
While I plan to write another essay on why Demon’s Souls (PS3) is one of my favourite artistic statements in gaming later on, I'll summarise here what makes the original so special. Demon's Souls at its core is a game about human greed and power. We arrive into Boletaria after the main events of its downfall have already occurred and are effectively set to roam around the wastes, picking up clues of what happened along the way. To many Souls fans, the lorebuilding may feel comparatively tame in Demon’s Souls but I personally feel it works to its benefit, as the game expects the player to come to their own terms on what led to Boletaria's destruction. Demon's Souls (PS3) uses full advantage of the graphical standards and techniques of the seventh generation to create a dense atmosphere that feels in line with the circumstances of its world. Boletaria is shrouded by deep fog because the demons are killing the inhabitants of Boletaria to harvest their souls to be consumed by an entity named the old one. The old one was awoken by king allant while his kingdom was in prosperity because he felt that the outer kingdoms in the world needed to be put out of their misery, when they were simply impoverished and in need of support. This contextualises the game’s dense (and arguably limited) foggy graphical style as the direct outcome of the atrocities that happen at the expense of the king’s hubris.
Meanwhile, Demon's Souls (PS5) sheds the visual style of the original to create nothing more than a showcase of modern hardware. Where once was a very uniquely grim colour palette of muted oranges, greens and very occasionally blue is now grey with a bright blue filter over literally everything. The nexus in PS3 is gorgeous, the walls are very abundantly textured, the lighting is subdued and golden runes adorn the floors, which I feel excellently conveys the nature of this being a long forgotten temple existing as an ethereal plane. On the other hand, PS5’s nexus just blasts you with beams of blue light coming from the roof of the structure, with the golden runes now being a weird orange LED colour rather than the ornamented look of the original. Areas in the remake massively suffer from having the lights look like RGB gamer lights than actual lights, which makes any area that tries to contrast two colours with each other look much gaudier than it should. Another horrible example of this is the Dragon God fight, where the pure red hellish look completely annihilates the visual distinction that the fight was trying to make with its contemporaries in the original in exchange for a generic western fantasy volcano area aesthetic. I think the only area that looks visually appealing in the entire game is the outside of Stonefang Tunnel, where the dusty oranges work in the favour of the atmosphere of the level although this is extremely brief and is ruined by the game's lighting of bloodstains and messages.
The UI of Demon’s Souls (PS5) is maybe the most indicative of where Bluepoint have gone wrong artistically. PS3's UI and HUD are extremely unique as far as games go. The font is skeuomorphic to the writing that would actually exist in world. It comes off as incredibly charming and it’s something that only the original Dark Souls (bar remastered) has attempted in the series since. In addition, the textured grey bars of the menus fit extremely well with the overall artstyle of the game. even the muted red they picked for the selection bar fits the palette in a very dulcet manner. The hud itself also fits the game perfectly. it's adorned with these strange silver demon signs which feel like they represent the resurrective pact you have been inflicted with. Meanwhile, PS5’s UI and HUD goes for a modernised, minimalist approach. it’s hard for me to even say anything about it without becoming enraged, this design choice feels like it exists entirely to appeal to the crowd of Playstation fanboys that think completely uncritically about a game unless it has a woman or LGBT person in it. The font in PS5 looks genuinely disgusting, it’s like they tried to reach a middle point with choosing between a fully minimalist sans serif and something like the original but ended up going with one of those original Google Docs ones. The hud elements have flat outlines and colours that massively contrast with the game's visuals. it adds to the visually overwhelming nature of the remake which is kinda oxymoronic to the intent of the minimalist design.
One of the fundamental reasons why Demon’s Souls would need a remake is quite honestly the combat. I personally adore it, but it is very clunky and jank and thus doesn’t really allow the general souls audience to engage with the game. This is why I think Bluepoint’s decision to keep combat entirely the same is absolutely baffling. it causes the animations to look horrible with the modernised models and it leaves the game worse off in all aspects. The choice to limit moongrass storage is in theory a good change, but it doesn’t really do anything to alter the game’s flawed healing system and instead just adds more grinding to the game. Bluepoint had the opportunity to do so much more with the combat, to speed it up or to at least rework a few elements but they instead did absolutely nothing.
Finally, I'd like to talk about the audio of both games. Demon's Souls (PS3)’s ost is my absolute favourite of the series. Shunsuke Kida focuses on the ways melody can evoke certain emotions in boss fights to excellent effect, which is made much more potent by the smaller orchestra giving a feeling much more intimate than the other souls games’ soundtracks. As is tradition with this remake, Bill Hemstapat's rearrangements are such an insane downgrade that it’s hard to really understand the thought process behind the choices here. These arrangements feature a larger orchestra with an immense amount of reverb over them that dissociate any emotion or feeling from the tracks at all. For example, the character creation theme in PS3 is a polyphonic and smooth textured synth based composition (unique from the rest of the ost) that gives a very calming, ethereal vibe. On the other hand, PS5 replaces the synths with piano, strings and vocals which just makes the composition lack the solitary and ethereal vibe that made it special. The voice acting of demon’s souls (PS5), while not always as egregious as the other elements of the game, does ruin the ending of the remake entirely. In PS3, when you beat King Allant he says his line in a very solemn tone that feels incredibly impactful knowing his circumstance. Meanwhile in ps5, he sounds like he’s pushing his throat up in order to sound like a muppet. It is maybe the worst attempt at a line read I have ever heard, the fact they put it in the game is absolutely baffling and indicative of how little they care for the emotional clarity of the game.
Demon’s Souls PS5 has ruined a game I hold dear to my heart and the fact it will probably be viewed and used as the main archival for the game (even probably coming to PC at some point) is a tragedy.
Demon's Souls
2009
patches may kick me down holes but hes still my best weed dealer
Unicorn Overlord
2024
One thing that Unicorn Overlord excels at when nothing else can is a sense of scale; during combat, the feeling of traversing these huge lands and fighting armies at immense disadvantages is sold very well. Outside of combat, traversing the world and rebuilding it is always a fun inbetween.
Unicorn Overlord also falls apart when examined in more detail. Individual characters are extremely basic and the story behind each continent are as interesting as the characters, with an exception that Bastorias has interesting concepts that are also never really reckoned with. Team building feels shallow; not that "anything works", but there feels like there's very little real variety in individual classes. I'm also not a fan of gambit systems but that's more me than an issue with UO, but it definetly didn't convince me otherwise.
And I can't really say that it's more of the sum of its parts because the scale also works against it; by the time I reached Bastorias I was already tired because nothing really changes. The overworld aspect is repetitive, the secrets aren't really secrets and are just basic things to get good equipment, and the gameplay never really felt like it got difficult. Even in the final quest where all of these characters and nations unite, it doesn't end up making up for how the past 40 hours of Unicorn Overlord continued to be tasteless oatmeal, with a story and concepts done in much better fashion. Calling this Fire Emblem Awakening for the Switch is lowkey an insult to FE.
Unicorn Overlord also falls apart when examined in more detail. Individual characters are extremely basic and the story behind each continent are as interesting as the characters, with an exception that Bastorias has interesting concepts that are also never really reckoned with. Team building feels shallow; not that "anything works", but there feels like there's very little real variety in individual classes. I'm also not a fan of gambit systems but that's more me than an issue with UO, but it definetly didn't convince me otherwise.
And I can't really say that it's more of the sum of its parts because the scale also works against it; by the time I reached Bastorias I was already tired because nothing really changes. The overworld aspect is repetitive, the secrets aren't really secrets and are just basic things to get good equipment, and the gameplay never really felt like it got difficult. Even in the final quest where all of these characters and nations unite, it doesn't end up making up for how the past 40 hours of Unicorn Overlord continued to be tasteless oatmeal, with a story and concepts done in much better fashion. Calling this Fire Emblem Awakening for the Switch is lowkey an insult to FE.
Unicorn Overlord
2024
I cannot lie, I'm genuinely very disappointed in this game, especially with a company as consistently strong an output as Vanillaware it pains me that this game really only has those good ass Vanillaware visuals going for it.
In terms of gameplay, the game has a lot of elements that I would generally enjoy on paper, the formations and the way tactics form together should be so much better than it actually is, there's just so many variables to the point that it largely becomes a numbers game since character building, for the purposes of beating the game (played on the second highest difficulty) is really easy and it's not super hard to make even an unoptimal formation just work through sheer force of will, which really harms the strategy layer. Also the real time Ogre Battle style strategy has a lot of problems on its own. The worst being a lot of quality of life issues, such as not being able to see how your formations will do out of deployment, and the battle forecast changing at the drop of a hat. There's so many variables to battles that you can send a battalion over to an enemy where it says it'll be a sure win, and despite seemingly no other circumstances changing it suddenly switches to a stalemate of a battle which is incredibly frustrating for planning purposes, on top of the fact that if you make mistakes there's no backing out. In many ways I can't help but compare this game to the neighbouring turn based tactics genre, where at least I can make an assessment of which move I can take that would be the most optimal, Unicorn Overlord forces you to throw shit out and if it doesn't work then tough shit, which leads to an incredibly unsatisfying tactical experience. Also there's way too many liberation missions, which I know is for controlling the level curve, but even then the level curve is fucking wacked out by the endgame, there's like a 5 level recommended level jump for no reason. Nearly every gameplay element in the game is something that could work but has a botched enough execution that frustrates me because, man, I really do want to love this game.
But most frustrating of all is the story here, the only way I can describe is like bad Fire Emblem. There's a shitload of characters and they all interact with many others in the army but unlike Fire Emblem these characters offer the substance and flavour of white rice, these characters are truly bland in a way that seems almost alien to me compared to the characters in like Odin Sphere and 13 Sentinels. The story is also dead simple but still does a few things that really hurt its narrative, the villains in this game are fuckin terrible and their motivations never amount to anything interesting, meanwhile all the good guys are so generically good that even the bad guys that become good have some crutch excuse like mind control, hostage situation, or some other hackneyed out that prevents these characters from really flourishing. The rapport system is something I usually always like because it gives these characters that don't really interact in the main story a chance to be fleshed out as characters but all it can offer is the most shallow looks at these characters in their totality to the point that they're just functions to me, Armour guy, Horse guy, Bow guy they never offer anything more interesting than hating the evil empire because they're evil and it's just really surprising to see a game with so much love put into the production lean back so heavily on just being so consistently mid.
Just a really frustrating offering from Vanillaware from me, especially for a game that nearly bankrupted the company I expected so much better because this game really only has its visuals going for it, but I can get that from any other Vanillaware game and actually have a good game too.
In terms of gameplay, the game has a lot of elements that I would generally enjoy on paper, the formations and the way tactics form together should be so much better than it actually is, there's just so many variables to the point that it largely becomes a numbers game since character building, for the purposes of beating the game (played on the second highest difficulty) is really easy and it's not super hard to make even an unoptimal formation just work through sheer force of will, which really harms the strategy layer. Also the real time Ogre Battle style strategy has a lot of problems on its own. The worst being a lot of quality of life issues, such as not being able to see how your formations will do out of deployment, and the battle forecast changing at the drop of a hat. There's so many variables to battles that you can send a battalion over to an enemy where it says it'll be a sure win, and despite seemingly no other circumstances changing it suddenly switches to a stalemate of a battle which is incredibly frustrating for planning purposes, on top of the fact that if you make mistakes there's no backing out. In many ways I can't help but compare this game to the neighbouring turn based tactics genre, where at least I can make an assessment of which move I can take that would be the most optimal, Unicorn Overlord forces you to throw shit out and if it doesn't work then tough shit, which leads to an incredibly unsatisfying tactical experience. Also there's way too many liberation missions, which I know is for controlling the level curve, but even then the level curve is fucking wacked out by the endgame, there's like a 5 level recommended level jump for no reason. Nearly every gameplay element in the game is something that could work but has a botched enough execution that frustrates me because, man, I really do want to love this game.
But most frustrating of all is the story here, the only way I can describe is like bad Fire Emblem. There's a shitload of characters and they all interact with many others in the army but unlike Fire Emblem these characters offer the substance and flavour of white rice, these characters are truly bland in a way that seems almost alien to me compared to the characters in like Odin Sphere and 13 Sentinels. The story is also dead simple but still does a few things that really hurt its narrative, the villains in this game are fuckin terrible and their motivations never amount to anything interesting, meanwhile all the good guys are so generically good that even the bad guys that become good have some crutch excuse like mind control, hostage situation, or some other hackneyed out that prevents these characters from really flourishing. The rapport system is something I usually always like because it gives these characters that don't really interact in the main story a chance to be fleshed out as characters but all it can offer is the most shallow looks at these characters in their totality to the point that they're just functions to me, Armour guy, Horse guy, Bow guy they never offer anything more interesting than hating the evil empire because they're evil and it's just really surprising to see a game with so much love put into the production lean back so heavily on just being so consistently mid.
Just a really frustrating offering from Vanillaware from me, especially for a game that nearly bankrupted the company I expected so much better because this game really only has its visuals going for it, but I can get that from any other Vanillaware game and actually have a good game too.
Xanadu Next
2005
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.
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.
Despite my love for it, I don't have much to say about this one in depth.
Feels like stepping back in time to 2016-2017 where every game was obsessed with setpieces, and given the game started development under Platinum it's not unlikely some older DNA bled into this game.
Granted, unlike AAA titles from the 2010s and Platinum's mediocre back catalogue, setpieces are used cleverly in GBFR and they don't ever repeat.
The first turret section is the last, and the one time it reuses the rising lava gimmick setpiece it's as a ludonarrative character capstone to make you go "OH SHIT".
The story is, at its core, the most quintessential JRPG-ass JRPG ever made, which fits given it's a Granblue Fantasy game and its parent title is mostly the same. It's a breath of fresh air in its simplicity, not shooting for the moon but instead the familiar horizon and all of its hits land because of it.
In an era where Naoki Yoshida and other big JRPG franchises are ashamed of sincerity and keep making edgy ~subversive~ bullshit, it's doubly nice to see something sincere without being an obvious 'tribute game' like the other side of the Modern JRPG Coin.
If you've ever seen a Shonen Jump movie you'll be familiar with GBFR's format: It's not an adaptation of Granblue's story, it's an original work sandwiched between existing arcs with a cast of fan favourites and wholly new supporting cast. Arguably it works better for games than movies, for while the One Piece movie villains are boring as hell I think Lilith might be in my top 5 Granblue characters alongside Vira, Apollonia, Shalem and Belial. Yes, I'm gay, what made it obvious.
There isn't much to spoil because it's so straightforward, and while I think simply calling it "good" defeats the purpose of even having a backloggd, it is. The emotional beats land, it doesn't waste any time, it managed to turn FF1's "go kill these primals" plot into an excellent GBF title, Narmaya is there. Perfect all around.
Gameplay is the star of the show though and wow. It's like a mirror into a world where Platinum Games regularly make titles that aren't garbage.
Their influence is clear, aye, but with GBFR having 19 characters it's opted to sprinkle mechanics onto each of them to keep it fresh.
You're baited into assuming this is yet another piece of licensed Platinum slop by Djeeta/Gran's boring Dynasty Warriors-esque combo mechanic only to stumble into Narmaya's infinite stance combos, dodge cancellable iai draw attacks, and butterfly stacking mechanic.
Or Siegfried, who plays like Hi Fi Rush and actually made me better at that game due to having a rigid but reliable timing mechanic that can actually be dodge offset.
Or Secret Character, who has a devil trigger.
Or Lancelot, whose attacks are centered around mashing and also gave me a minor RSI which still hurts a few days later.
Trash mob fights are almost always you and your party trouncing them while dodging ranged attacks. Fine enough, but the boss battles are the star of the show and their focus in the postgame is why you'll see other reference Monster Hunter. There's an excellent blend of mechanics and spectacle on display here that, again, puts other character action games to shame.
If you've ever played FFXIV you'll likely be right at home dodging AoEs and yelling at your party for something that so very easily could've been negated. God, I hate Siegfried mains who refuse to use his hyper armor.
They're all very lovely to look at, and towards the end of the story the spectacle starts approaching levels heretofore unseen in the character action genre besides Bayonetta (the one good Platinum duology). The final boss was just... Mwah.
On the presentation side, Cygames have long since been the kings of gacha presentation and with GBFR they're expanding that to the action RPG genre. Everything about this game is beautiful. Areas, outfits, characters, Narmaya's narmaya's, music, you name it.
The music deserves special attention though. Tsutomu Narita is one of the greatest game composers of our time and he's applying his decade of composing for GBF mobile to this game. The returning compositions are gorgeous yes, but the new ones for the original fights are jaw dropping and the final boss theme had me pause the game just to let it wash over me. It is some divine work, I hope they keep Zero (a 13 minute prog metal song) when Lucillius debuts in the next update.
Post-game is an amazing encapsulation of the browser game and I'm frankly astounded they managed to keep the experience intact but without the gacha/live service stuff. You grind to build up weapons, buff grids and other stuff ad nauseaum while tackling harder and harder fights that you meet with stronger and stronger characters.
Characters tend to really come into their niche here; you can get by with flailing before post-game, but if you're a Zeta main and you can't land your timed hits you gotta go play Percival or something. Buffs go from being useful accruements to utter gamechangers and I swear to fucking god if I run into another Cagliostro who's afraid of Phantasmagoria I'm gonna flip.
In short: The Monster Hunter comparisons are valid.
All in all... Psh, I really do wish I had more to say. I had the time of my life playing this game, man. I haven't loved a JRPG this much since Yakuza 7, and it's a nice reminder of what the genre can be like when it's not helmed by Naoki Yoshida's eternal shame at having made JRPGs in the past or endless nostalgia bait.
I wish Lilith was real. Happy that Maggie Robertson got to voice act in a game that wasn't terrible.
Feels like stepping back in time to 2016-2017 where every game was obsessed with setpieces, and given the game started development under Platinum it's not unlikely some older DNA bled into this game.
Granted, unlike AAA titles from the 2010s and Platinum's mediocre back catalogue, setpieces are used cleverly in GBFR and they don't ever repeat.
The first turret section is the last, and the one time it reuses the rising lava gimmick setpiece it's as a ludonarrative character capstone to make you go "OH SHIT".
The story is, at its core, the most quintessential JRPG-ass JRPG ever made, which fits given it's a Granblue Fantasy game and its parent title is mostly the same. It's a breath of fresh air in its simplicity, not shooting for the moon but instead the familiar horizon and all of its hits land because of it.
In an era where Naoki Yoshida and other big JRPG franchises are ashamed of sincerity and keep making edgy ~subversive~ bullshit, it's doubly nice to see something sincere without being an obvious 'tribute game' like the other side of the Modern JRPG Coin.
If you've ever seen a Shonen Jump movie you'll be familiar with GBFR's format: It's not an adaptation of Granblue's story, it's an original work sandwiched between existing arcs with a cast of fan favourites and wholly new supporting cast. Arguably it works better for games than movies, for while the One Piece movie villains are boring as hell I think Lilith might be in my top 5 Granblue characters alongside Vira, Apollonia, Shalem and Belial. Yes, I'm gay, what made it obvious.
There isn't much to spoil because it's so straightforward, and while I think simply calling it "good" defeats the purpose of even having a backloggd, it is. The emotional beats land, it doesn't waste any time, it managed to turn FF1's "go kill these primals" plot into an excellent GBF title, Narmaya is there. Perfect all around.
Gameplay is the star of the show though and wow. It's like a mirror into a world where Platinum Games regularly make titles that aren't garbage.
Their influence is clear, aye, but with GBFR having 19 characters it's opted to sprinkle mechanics onto each of them to keep it fresh.
You're baited into assuming this is yet another piece of licensed Platinum slop by Djeeta/Gran's boring Dynasty Warriors-esque combo mechanic only to stumble into Narmaya's infinite stance combos, dodge cancellable iai draw attacks, and butterfly stacking mechanic.
Or Siegfried, who plays like Hi Fi Rush and actually made me better at that game due to having a rigid but reliable timing mechanic that can actually be dodge offset.
Or Secret Character, who has a devil trigger.
Or Lancelot, whose attacks are centered around mashing and also gave me a minor RSI which still hurts a few days later.
Trash mob fights are almost always you and your party trouncing them while dodging ranged attacks. Fine enough, but the boss battles are the star of the show and their focus in the postgame is why you'll see other reference Monster Hunter. There's an excellent blend of mechanics and spectacle on display here that, again, puts other character action games to shame.
If you've ever played FFXIV you'll likely be right at home dodging AoEs and yelling at your party for something that so very easily could've been negated. God, I hate Siegfried mains who refuse to use his hyper armor.
They're all very lovely to look at, and towards the end of the story the spectacle starts approaching levels heretofore unseen in the character action genre besides Bayonetta (the one good Platinum duology). The final boss was just... Mwah.
On the presentation side, Cygames have long since been the kings of gacha presentation and with GBFR they're expanding that to the action RPG genre. Everything about this game is beautiful. Areas, outfits, characters, Narmaya's narmaya's, music, you name it.
The music deserves special attention though. Tsutomu Narita is one of the greatest game composers of our time and he's applying his decade of composing for GBF mobile to this game. The returning compositions are gorgeous yes, but the new ones for the original fights are jaw dropping and the final boss theme had me pause the game just to let it wash over me. It is some divine work, I hope they keep Zero (a 13 minute prog metal song) when Lucillius debuts in the next update.
Post-game is an amazing encapsulation of the browser game and I'm frankly astounded they managed to keep the experience intact but without the gacha/live service stuff. You grind to build up weapons, buff grids and other stuff ad nauseaum while tackling harder and harder fights that you meet with stronger and stronger characters.
Characters tend to really come into their niche here; you can get by with flailing before post-game, but if you're a Zeta main and you can't land your timed hits you gotta go play Percival or something. Buffs go from being useful accruements to utter gamechangers and I swear to fucking god if I run into another Cagliostro who's afraid of Phantasmagoria I'm gonna flip.
In short: The Monster Hunter comparisons are valid.
All in all... Psh, I really do wish I had more to say. I had the time of my life playing this game, man. I haven't loved a JRPG this much since Yakuza 7, and it's a nice reminder of what the genre can be like when it's not helmed by Naoki Yoshida's eternal shame at having made JRPGs in the past or endless nostalgia bait.
I wish Lilith was real. Happy that Maggie Robertson got to voice act in a game that wasn't terrible.
Cocoon
2023
Cocoon is a really good looking game and the soundtrack is fitting enough. That's about the extent of the nice things I can say about it.
First things first I'll get a very minor complaint out of the way. By default, the keyboard controls are bound to arrows, and after I went and remapped them to WASD as most people, I imagine, do, the pause menu still only responded to arrows. Mouse is not supported for the menu either. This isn't a big deal, of course, but it already set me on the wrong foot with the game.
Nominally this game is a puzzle game but, much like Limbo and Inside, the two previous games from this developer, the game doesn't offer any challenge in regards to solving any of the puzzles. I completed the whole game on auto pilot in about 3 hours, never having to stop and think about the solution, and, as I approached the end of the game, the logistics of actually executing the solution started taking long enough to be annoying: the movement speed is slow and to enter a world the action button needs to be held for a second or two.
I don't think there is much else to say about this game, really. It's a very short and pretty walking simulator that pretends to be a puzzle game. In my opinion, it's devoid of anything interesting gameplay or story wise and looking at pretty environments gets really old really fast, but if you're into that kind of thing, give it a go.
If you really like the concept of this game but want actual puzzles out of it, give Patrick's Parabox or Recursed a try instead.
First things first I'll get a very minor complaint out of the way. By default, the keyboard controls are bound to arrows, and after I went and remapped them to WASD as most people, I imagine, do, the pause menu still only responded to arrows. Mouse is not supported for the menu either. This isn't a big deal, of course, but it already set me on the wrong foot with the game.
Nominally this game is a puzzle game but, much like Limbo and Inside, the two previous games from this developer, the game doesn't offer any challenge in regards to solving any of the puzzles. I completed the whole game on auto pilot in about 3 hours, never having to stop and think about the solution, and, as I approached the end of the game, the logistics of actually executing the solution started taking long enough to be annoying: the movement speed is slow and to enter a world the action button needs to be held for a second or two.
I don't think there is much else to say about this game, really. It's a very short and pretty walking simulator that pretends to be a puzzle game. In my opinion, it's devoid of anything interesting gameplay or story wise and looking at pretty environments gets really old really fast, but if you're into that kind of thing, give it a go.
If you really like the concept of this game but want actual puzzles out of it, give Patrick's Parabox or Recursed a try instead.
Cocoon
2023
Not yet a butterfly.
A while back, I wrote a review for Resident Evil 2’s remake, and I gave it five stars. Part of the justification I gave at the time was that I couldn’t think of “anything that I disliked about it”, and I’m beginning to suspect that may have been the wrong way of looking at it. Not only does it frame the praise in a pretty backhanded way, but it’s not wholly accurate to why it got the score that it did, either. To be fair to myself, I knew at the time that it was an oversimplification that I wrote down purely for the sake of having something snappy to say about the game, but it’s games like Cocoon that make me rethink taking that position. Like Resident Evil 2, I can’t think of anything I disliked about Cocoon. Why, then, does the former get five stars, and the latter get three?
Unrealized potential.
There are a lot of pieces of art and a lot of places and a lot of people out there in the world which aren’t unlikable, but they aren’t especially likeable, either. It’s not enough to not have anything that’s unlikable about you. You need to have something more that draws people in and keeps them there. For some, I imagine the art direction of Cocoon alone is going to be enough to fill in the gaps of the weak puzzle design and a premature ending — it almost was, for me — and that’s good. But I’m left wanting for more in a way that didn’t satisfy me, because Cocoon's got a lot of promise that it can't quite deliver on.
The core gimmick of hopping between universes has been done dozens of times before, but Cocoon stands out in how seamless the transitions are. There’s a very, very lengthy pre-load when you first boot the game up as it assembles all of the assets, and this allows you to completely avoid loading screens; whatever loading is going on after you start the game is completely unnoticeable, which is a definite achievement for something that looks this visually impressive. The game has an immensely strong identity, with all of its insect-like machines and swelling synth arpeggios; equally impressive is the paring down of the control scheme to a single analog stick and one button. You would expect your verbs to be fairly limited when you've only got a single button for interacting with the world, but it allows you to carry orbs, drag objects, run through motion sensors, activate platforms, teleport to different worlds, control grub-like drones, and shoot energy blasts. There are a lot of moving parts to keep track of, and that suggests there's going to be some very in-depth puzzle design.
What’s unfortunate, then, is how all of these actions being contextual means that you’ll very rarely be using them in tandem with one another to solve problems. Most of the puzzles are little more than identifying which orb you need to be carrying at a given time, carrying that orb until the puzzle is solved, and then swapping out for a different orb as needed until you can progress to the next area. The dimension-hopping aspect itself actually ends up taking something of a backseat as you move further and further through the game; progressing through each of the orb’s sub-worlds will eventually place you in a spot that you can’t get out of, locking you to a single screen within that orb. The red orb that you start the game with, for example, will leave you stuck in about thirty square feet of space you can walk around in for the last hour of the game, meaning that it devolves into only being usable as a sort of backpack to store other orbs inside of. The white orb’s world similarly gets pared down to purely being a place to store the red orb inside of, and the purple orb’s world might actually just be one or two screens. Even the final puzzle of the game that requires you to nest all of the orbs inside one another in a specific order is painfully easy due to how linear of a solution it is, reflecting a lot of the other puzzles in the game; the hardest part of most of these is when you know what you need to do, but it’ll take you a couple minutes to walk around setting it all up.
I've struggled with the rest of this review because I walked away from writing for a few days, and now that I'm back at it, I barely remember anything about Cocoon. There are these vague vignette flashes, where I can recall a setpiece or two — the tennis match against the big orb guardian, the drone puzzles — but the rest of these color-coded worlds bleed into one another as a brown-grey muck. What I definitely didn't expect out of Cocoon was for as much of it to be as forgettable as it ultimately feels, but I doubt I'll be able to recall much of anything about it by this time next week. With the puzzles being as linear as they are, the game relies heavily on being a sightseeing tour, and it feels sort of like I drove straight through it. It's the type of game that I want to like a lot more than I actually do. What's here could have been a lot more impressive than it is, but it isn't, and that makes it hurt worse than if it had no potential at all.
You can't only do nothing wrong.
A while back, I wrote a review for Resident Evil 2’s remake, and I gave it five stars. Part of the justification I gave at the time was that I couldn’t think of “anything that I disliked about it”, and I’m beginning to suspect that may have been the wrong way of looking at it. Not only does it frame the praise in a pretty backhanded way, but it’s not wholly accurate to why it got the score that it did, either. To be fair to myself, I knew at the time that it was an oversimplification that I wrote down purely for the sake of having something snappy to say about the game, but it’s games like Cocoon that make me rethink taking that position. Like Resident Evil 2, I can’t think of anything I disliked about Cocoon. Why, then, does the former get five stars, and the latter get three?
Unrealized potential.
There are a lot of pieces of art and a lot of places and a lot of people out there in the world which aren’t unlikable, but they aren’t especially likeable, either. It’s not enough to not have anything that’s unlikable about you. You need to have something more that draws people in and keeps them there. For some, I imagine the art direction of Cocoon alone is going to be enough to fill in the gaps of the weak puzzle design and a premature ending — it almost was, for me — and that’s good. But I’m left wanting for more in a way that didn’t satisfy me, because Cocoon's got a lot of promise that it can't quite deliver on.
The core gimmick of hopping between universes has been done dozens of times before, but Cocoon stands out in how seamless the transitions are. There’s a very, very lengthy pre-load when you first boot the game up as it assembles all of the assets, and this allows you to completely avoid loading screens; whatever loading is going on after you start the game is completely unnoticeable, which is a definite achievement for something that looks this visually impressive. The game has an immensely strong identity, with all of its insect-like machines and swelling synth arpeggios; equally impressive is the paring down of the control scheme to a single analog stick and one button. You would expect your verbs to be fairly limited when you've only got a single button for interacting with the world, but it allows you to carry orbs, drag objects, run through motion sensors, activate platforms, teleport to different worlds, control grub-like drones, and shoot energy blasts. There are a lot of moving parts to keep track of, and that suggests there's going to be some very in-depth puzzle design.
What’s unfortunate, then, is how all of these actions being contextual means that you’ll very rarely be using them in tandem with one another to solve problems. Most of the puzzles are little more than identifying which orb you need to be carrying at a given time, carrying that orb until the puzzle is solved, and then swapping out for a different orb as needed until you can progress to the next area. The dimension-hopping aspect itself actually ends up taking something of a backseat as you move further and further through the game; progressing through each of the orb’s sub-worlds will eventually place you in a spot that you can’t get out of, locking you to a single screen within that orb. The red orb that you start the game with, for example, will leave you stuck in about thirty square feet of space you can walk around in for the last hour of the game, meaning that it devolves into only being usable as a sort of backpack to store other orbs inside of. The white orb’s world similarly gets pared down to purely being a place to store the red orb inside of, and the purple orb’s world might actually just be one or two screens. Even the final puzzle of the game that requires you to nest all of the orbs inside one another in a specific order is painfully easy due to how linear of a solution it is, reflecting a lot of the other puzzles in the game; the hardest part of most of these is when you know what you need to do, but it’ll take you a couple minutes to walk around setting it all up.
I've struggled with the rest of this review because I walked away from writing for a few days, and now that I'm back at it, I barely remember anything about Cocoon. There are these vague vignette flashes, where I can recall a setpiece or two — the tennis match against the big orb guardian, the drone puzzles — but the rest of these color-coded worlds bleed into one another as a brown-grey muck. What I definitely didn't expect out of Cocoon was for as much of it to be as forgettable as it ultimately feels, but I doubt I'll be able to recall much of anything about it by this time next week. With the puzzles being as linear as they are, the game relies heavily on being a sightseeing tour, and it feels sort of like I drove straight through it. It's the type of game that I want to like a lot more than I actually do. What's here could have been a lot more impressive than it is, but it isn't, and that makes it hurt worse than if it had no potential at all.
You can't only do nothing wrong.
No More Heroes
2007
This review contains spoilers
When asked about how the title “No More Heroes” relates to the game itself, director Goichi Suda confirmed that it’s in reference to how protagonist Travis Touchdown thinks of assassins as heroes; the game depicts him growing past his need of such idols and taking them down one by one — using all the “life lessons” he’s picked up through anime, video games and wrestling.
I’d argue the title is a bit of a double entendre though, with perhaps the even more obvious interpretation being that Travis himself is a break from the types of heroes we’re used to in games: an uncompromising display of what it would actually look like if an American weeb really did buy a lightsaber off eBay and went out to murder people to fulfill his fantasies of rising to the top of a real life-highscore board. Tired of cookie-cutter agreeable heroics? Well, here’s a game for you.
Looking at NMH in the context of Grasshopper’s previous game Killer7 is fascinating, because the evolutionary and thematic chain between the two is a lot more logical than you might first expect. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that Killer7 is Suda’s first international release, while also being explicitly about anti-Eastern xenophobia and the disturbing ways the West will impregnate the minds of following generations with their toxic ideas. What we know for sure based on interviews is that his new audience was a major consideration for Suda when designing Killer7’s absurdist control scheme, essentially asking “if you’re only walking in straight lines anyway, why not boil that process down to just holding a gigantic-ass green button?” With the controls now totally in the background, your mind is free is to fully take in the game’s sights, sounds and themes.
If Killer7 was a game about using the GameCube pad’s in-your-face A button to run through corridors and shoot at nightmarish abominations, then No More Heroes is a game about using the Wiimote’s equally in-your-face A button to slash away at regular people and do janky mini-games. If Killer7 was a game about fear of Eastern culture, then No More Heroes is a game about the commodification of that same culture. The ways that manifests may not be quite as explosive as what’s depicted in Killer7, but the implications are no less disturbing if you stop to think about them.
NMH predates the words “Gamergate” and “incel” entering our everyday vocabulary, so replaying this cold-blooded takedown of nerd culture with a 2021 perspective is almost eerie in its predictiveness. In her final phone call, Sylvia’s finally 100% blunt about the fact that Travis never had a shot with her in the first place and that he’s an idiot for ever thinking otherwise: “You are a dopy otaku assassin. The bottom of the barrel. No woman would be caught dead with you… unless she was a desperate bitch.” Given that Sylvia’s calls are delivered through the Wii remote’s speakers, which you have to hold to your head to hear, meaning she’s speaking directly to you, the connection to actual real life video game players couldn’t be more explicit.
I just used the word “predictiveness,” but it’s actually more illuminating to think about how this game, in reality, has to be a reflection of how Suda perceives our consumption of his country’s culture. It’s interesting that Travis is regularly referred to as an “otaku” by different characters; today and in the West, the word we’d instead use is “weeb” (I already have in this review,) because it’s more strongly connoted as specifically in reference to obsessive Westerners, whereas the word “otaku” is more understood as a descriptor for a “general” nerd in Japan.
From that (and some cursory research I did,) it’s safe to assume “weeaboo” doesn’t really mean anything to most Japanese people, and yet Suda clearly understands the concept and is able to portray it at its most alarming extreme. Over the course of the game, you and Travis spend mountains of cash on surface-level obsessions: you can get dripped out, buy a goofy new laser sword or dummy grind to enter your next ranked fight, but Travis’s life will never actually meaningfully progress, he’s never moving out of that motel, the game’s rigid structure of ping-ponging between work and play is never broken. The significance of either of the two endings (Travis being doomed to be continually challenged by new assassins + him and Henry literally saying they can only keep running now, never to find the exit) didn’t really hit me until I wrote down this paragraph.
Under that light, it’s NMH’s combat that warrants more detailed analysis. Again, very much like Killer7, No More Heroes is a piece of extremely impressive interface design in how the control layout, camera and general mechanics correspond into this vehicle for beautiful kinesthetic violence, but as an actual fighting system it’s fundamentally ill-fit to make for compelling engagements: having to shift between high and low stances to connect attacks and maintain combos doesn’t result in meaningful choices, you basically wail on the enemies until they decide to not take hit stun anymore, at which point it’s time to dodge roll away and look for another chance to get back in. The parry system is so free (you hold one button to block and then wiggle the analog stick) that the game has to sometimes arbitrarily decide to not reward you for it because fights would otherwise be over in like two seconds.
It’s cool that contextual QTE finishers can hit multiple enemies — there’s very little in gaming that’s as satisfying as taking out an entire crowd of NMH goons in a single strike, fountains of blood gushing from where their heads used to be, your Nintendo Wii completely shitting itself as the frame rate hits single digits. Creating opportunities to make that kind of carnage happen by spacing correctly or singling out problematic foes with a dash attack knockdown is engaging enough. The problem is that this dynamic with its periodic cathartic payoffs isn’t whatsoever present in boss fights. Instead they only highlight the rigidity I mentioned previously: you chain as many parries and basic attacks together as the game will let you, until the boss runs away for a minute and throws out gimmicks for you to dodge roll; rinse, repeat.
It’s easy to see how the game’s creative fighting scenarios and audacious violence wowed players (myself included) back in the day, but on my most recent playthrough it’s been kind of difficult not to be underwhelmed with pretty much every single boss fight here — which is ironic when eccentric bosses are the number one thing you associate No More Heroes with. This game is for all intents and purposes a boss rush: it spends a vast amount of its runtime edging you for the next ranked fight, only to never really let you cum.
A deliberate series of anti-climaxes, then? My honest answer to that is “probably not;” I’m unconvinced any mainstream developer would specifically set out to make something that’s shitty in this particular kind of way. Either way, entertaining these debates is pointless with no insight into the actual process. I feel the real achievement here is to have a game that’s interesting enough to make you question the developer’s intentions in the first place. The point isn’t that the feeling of dissatisfaction I got from most of NMH’s gameplay necessarily brings me more in tune with its themes, it’s that the specific combination of elements here is distinct and interesting enough that I find my mind regularly trailing off of the nitty-gritty procedures and instead trying to untangle the experience as a whole while I’m playing. If this reminds you of what I said earlier about Suda’s intentions with Killer7’s mechanics, now you know why I keep comparing the two games.
In an odd way, No More Heroes being so much more conventional than Killer7 on the surface does an even better job of making you let your guard down. That lack of abstraction makes it hit all the harder whenever you follow Travis into yet another dingy, blood-tinged fighting arena where only one more psychopath awaits; to say a couple words, give you a shitty fight and then die without leaving a meaningful mark. I not only appreciate that it balances that darkness with comforting levity, I’d argue it kind of needed just enough anime antics to be interpreted as a celebration of that culture by at least some of its playerbase, rather than the uncompromising condemnation it actually is. The way it walks that fine, almost satirical line is so much of what drives my interest in the experience. Under that light, it’s hard not to consider No More Heroes a resounding success, even if it’s not a game I will revisit much in the future.
I’d argue the title is a bit of a double entendre though, with perhaps the even more obvious interpretation being that Travis himself is a break from the types of heroes we’re used to in games: an uncompromising display of what it would actually look like if an American weeb really did buy a lightsaber off eBay and went out to murder people to fulfill his fantasies of rising to the top of a real life-highscore board. Tired of cookie-cutter agreeable heroics? Well, here’s a game for you.
Looking at NMH in the context of Grasshopper’s previous game Killer7 is fascinating, because the evolutionary and thematic chain between the two is a lot more logical than you might first expect. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that Killer7 is Suda’s first international release, while also being explicitly about anti-Eastern xenophobia and the disturbing ways the West will impregnate the minds of following generations with their toxic ideas. What we know for sure based on interviews is that his new audience was a major consideration for Suda when designing Killer7’s absurdist control scheme, essentially asking “if you’re only walking in straight lines anyway, why not boil that process down to just holding a gigantic-ass green button?” With the controls now totally in the background, your mind is free is to fully take in the game’s sights, sounds and themes.
If Killer7 was a game about using the GameCube pad’s in-your-face A button to run through corridors and shoot at nightmarish abominations, then No More Heroes is a game about using the Wiimote’s equally in-your-face A button to slash away at regular people and do janky mini-games. If Killer7 was a game about fear of Eastern culture, then No More Heroes is a game about the commodification of that same culture. The ways that manifests may not be quite as explosive as what’s depicted in Killer7, but the implications are no less disturbing if you stop to think about them.
NMH predates the words “Gamergate” and “incel” entering our everyday vocabulary, so replaying this cold-blooded takedown of nerd culture with a 2021 perspective is almost eerie in its predictiveness. In her final phone call, Sylvia’s finally 100% blunt about the fact that Travis never had a shot with her in the first place and that he’s an idiot for ever thinking otherwise: “You are a dopy otaku assassin. The bottom of the barrel. No woman would be caught dead with you… unless she was a desperate bitch.” Given that Sylvia’s calls are delivered through the Wii remote’s speakers, which you have to hold to your head to hear, meaning she’s speaking directly to you, the connection to actual real life video game players couldn’t be more explicit.
I just used the word “predictiveness,” but it’s actually more illuminating to think about how this game, in reality, has to be a reflection of how Suda perceives our consumption of his country’s culture. It’s interesting that Travis is regularly referred to as an “otaku” by different characters; today and in the West, the word we’d instead use is “weeb” (I already have in this review,) because it’s more strongly connoted as specifically in reference to obsessive Westerners, whereas the word “otaku” is more understood as a descriptor for a “general” nerd in Japan.
From that (and some cursory research I did,) it’s safe to assume “weeaboo” doesn’t really mean anything to most Japanese people, and yet Suda clearly understands the concept and is able to portray it at its most alarming extreme. Over the course of the game, you and Travis spend mountains of cash on surface-level obsessions: you can get dripped out, buy a goofy new laser sword or dummy grind to enter your next ranked fight, but Travis’s life will never actually meaningfully progress, he’s never moving out of that motel, the game’s rigid structure of ping-ponging between work and play is never broken. The significance of either of the two endings (Travis being doomed to be continually challenged by new assassins + him and Henry literally saying they can only keep running now, never to find the exit) didn’t really hit me until I wrote down this paragraph.
Under that light, it’s NMH’s combat that warrants more detailed analysis. Again, very much like Killer7, No More Heroes is a piece of extremely impressive interface design in how the control layout, camera and general mechanics correspond into this vehicle for beautiful kinesthetic violence, but as an actual fighting system it’s fundamentally ill-fit to make for compelling engagements: having to shift between high and low stances to connect attacks and maintain combos doesn’t result in meaningful choices, you basically wail on the enemies until they decide to not take hit stun anymore, at which point it’s time to dodge roll away and look for another chance to get back in. The parry system is so free (you hold one button to block and then wiggle the analog stick) that the game has to sometimes arbitrarily decide to not reward you for it because fights would otherwise be over in like two seconds.
It’s cool that contextual QTE finishers can hit multiple enemies — there’s very little in gaming that’s as satisfying as taking out an entire crowd of NMH goons in a single strike, fountains of blood gushing from where their heads used to be, your Nintendo Wii completely shitting itself as the frame rate hits single digits. Creating opportunities to make that kind of carnage happen by spacing correctly or singling out problematic foes with a dash attack knockdown is engaging enough. The problem is that this dynamic with its periodic cathartic payoffs isn’t whatsoever present in boss fights. Instead they only highlight the rigidity I mentioned previously: you chain as many parries and basic attacks together as the game will let you, until the boss runs away for a minute and throws out gimmicks for you to dodge roll; rinse, repeat.
It’s easy to see how the game’s creative fighting scenarios and audacious violence wowed players (myself included) back in the day, but on my most recent playthrough it’s been kind of difficult not to be underwhelmed with pretty much every single boss fight here — which is ironic when eccentric bosses are the number one thing you associate No More Heroes with. This game is for all intents and purposes a boss rush: it spends a vast amount of its runtime edging you for the next ranked fight, only to never really let you cum.
A deliberate series of anti-climaxes, then? My honest answer to that is “probably not;” I’m unconvinced any mainstream developer would specifically set out to make something that’s shitty in this particular kind of way. Either way, entertaining these debates is pointless with no insight into the actual process. I feel the real achievement here is to have a game that’s interesting enough to make you question the developer’s intentions in the first place. The point isn’t that the feeling of dissatisfaction I got from most of NMH’s gameplay necessarily brings me more in tune with its themes, it’s that the specific combination of elements here is distinct and interesting enough that I find my mind regularly trailing off of the nitty-gritty procedures and instead trying to untangle the experience as a whole while I’m playing. If this reminds you of what I said earlier about Suda’s intentions with Killer7’s mechanics, now you know why I keep comparing the two games.
In an odd way, No More Heroes being so much more conventional than Killer7 on the surface does an even better job of making you let your guard down. That lack of abstraction makes it hit all the harder whenever you follow Travis into yet another dingy, blood-tinged fighting arena where only one more psychopath awaits; to say a couple words, give you a shitty fight and then die without leaving a meaningful mark. I not only appreciate that it balances that darkness with comforting levity, I’d argue it kind of needed just enough anime antics to be interpreted as a celebration of that culture by at least some of its playerbase, rather than the uncompromising condemnation it actually is. The way it walks that fine, almost satirical line is so much of what drives my interest in the experience. Under that light, it’s hard not to consider No More Heroes a resounding success, even if it’s not a game I will revisit much in the future.
Final Fantasy
1987
While clearly outdated by design, still fairly enjoyable, if you don't mind grinding. I wanted to play to appreciate how this series started and how old RPGs were designed back in late 80's. Exploration, while may be confusing, becomes manageable over time. World is fairly simple, but talking to NPC can be quite nice. Battles definitely feel repetitive, thought variety of enemies helps to keep your eye on heals and consumables. It was quite a surprise to see that magic system and elemental weakness comes from D&D. Bosses can be cruel and hard, but not as hard as the way to them. Sometimes your biggest enemy is a wrong turn in dungeons.
And it was definitely a trip to play this game after completing Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin.
And it was definitely a trip to play this game after completing Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin.