Tunic is the result of former Silverback Productions developer, Andrew Shouldice’s move to totally independent game development. It’s one of those games that make you think “Wow, one guy did all this?” And you would be wrong. There were more artists and composers that really made the game shine. But Shouldice made something special with Tunic.

I’m no stranger to the flawed game comparison simile. My elevator pitch recommendation for the game has been isometric Zelda meets Fez discovery. That feels mostly right but the sum feels greater than its parts in this case. Tunic is an isometric Zelda-like game with all the combat and puzzles you might expect. What really sets it apart however is the game’s emphasis on perspective and the unique implementation of an in-game manual offered to the player piecemeal through their adventure. At first, this mechanic serves as table setting and does little to truly inform your playthrough but it quickly becomes a lifeline in the strange world of Tunic. The game’s tone and scope shift and it offers much more than initially meets the eyes. And, this may seem like a small praise, but I love the length of the game. It’s only around 12 hours for a full playthrough. Longer for a 100% completion but not much so.

To have so much depth in such a small package is truly special.

The beginning of the end for Infinite. I'm a little disappointed because it never really felt like it "got started" thanks to all the launch issues, poor progression hooks, etc. When you consider that the game took a whole year to make playtime feel worthwhile, putting Infinite on the backburner in 2024 feels a little sad.

Maybe Halo 7 will be cool from the start!

Editors Note: He also said this about Halo 4, 5, and Infinite before their launches

Another Crab's Treasure feels like it was made as a psyop to get me specifically to buy and play a video game.

A mechanically competent souls-like with a vivid, super-cute art style featuring a ton of great jokes and some genre-best platforming? I've been following this game since its announcement and I'm so pleased that Aggro Crab pulled this off. To be all these things while managing to tell an interesting story is massively impressive for the small studio's sophomore title.

As much as I love the game, I can't dismiss the significant bugs and other performance issues. ACT is magnitudes more technically ambitious than the studio's first game and it comes close to buckling under that pressure at times--particularly on console. What should be seamless transitions into new areas had me wishing for a AAA-style "squeezing through a crack in the cave wall hidden loading screen." There are other moments and monsters that can completely wreck the game as well. At the time of this writing, there's a blue pufferfish in the late game that the dev is requesting no one kill because it can crash the game (I killed it twice and it made things super crunchy until I reset the game but don't tell anybody). I played on Series X and experienced these issues. Apparently the Switch version of the game is notably worse with some folks feeling scammed by the markedly poor experience.

So if you're on the fence, give this one more time to cook. The dev is actively putting out patches and hot fixes for the big things and I'm hopeful bigger fixes will come with the game's success. In spite of all that, I was enamored for my entire playtime.

Aggro Crab has become one of my day one purchase developers.

Once you're at rock bottom, the only place to go is up.

A few days after I lost access to the game on PS+, it went on a sale, it's like fate wanted me to finish it. This was my first venture into the Like a Dragon series, after a long time of being relatively interested on it, a result of its exponentially increasing online presence as a franchise.

Like a Dragon is a very strong story about honor, respect, and most importantly, finding your own worth in the world, with Ichiban Kasuga being at the center of it. He values those features on a person so much that it leads him to take the guilt for a crime he didnt commit, which is as much as I can say about the story without getting into implied spoilers.
This serves to kickstart an amazing RPG that balances both serious, thought provoking and very emotional moments with silly laid back side content, one moment you find yourself being wrapped into a big conspiracy and the next one you are singing on a Karaoke or participating in Go kart races.

The game plays as you would expect any turn based game to play like, if you have played one, you have played them all. However in this game part of the fun of the turn based experience comes from setting up job combos in your party that allow you to minmax the shit out of everything. On top of that, you cant just brute force your way through everything by spamming attacks, you have to rely on as many tools (buffs, debuffs, ailments) as you can use to get through the toughest encounters, which is something I appreciate a lot when its done in this genre because it helps to prevent it from getting stale.

The worst thing I could nitpick about the game overall is that from chapter 12 onwards it starts relying on increasing the level gap between you and the enemies too often, which could have used some more thought to spike the difficulty if they really wanted to, but in the end, it was for a very good reason

As an afterthought, I would like to talk about how I decided to get into it, which was actually quite funny. It all started when I saw the trailer for Infinite Wealth that reveals that Kiryu has cancer and, for some reason, hearing that this character I knew nothing about (except how popular and beloved he is) was gonna have to deal with that in the next mainline game, made me feel like it was about time I caught up before the game released so I could see his story through. While theres no way I can play an entire franchise of long ass games in one month, at least I wanted to play those who precede IW first, that being Yakuza Like a Dragon, and Gaiden (which I hope to get to play sooner than later).

And so, with you as a witness, random user in Backloggd reading this, I make it one of my 2024 goals to play through these series, because I absolutely understand what the fuss is all about now, and I wish I had sooner.

It's not every day that you see a game in the Iñupiaq language. Never Alone is a charming and short game based on a native Alaskan folk tale where you explore the arctic scenery while controlling Nuna and her fox companion.
I must say, i love how this language sounds and also the narrator's voice, it's a mesmerizing one, it feels different.
The cultural insights and beautiful storytelling make it a unique and worthwhile experience and for a few dollars i'd say this is a decent and relaxing 3 hours long game that doesn't overstay its welcome.

"I now realise what I search for is not revenge, but the truth."

A unique title that echoes the heights of the franchise. A Yakuza game to it's core and the first title to be shipped to the West under the Like A Dragon rebrand, Ishin Kiwami (I call it Ishinwami for short) has a lot to live up to., and it does for the most part.

On the gameplay side? I like it, boss fights are slower than the rest of the series but it goes great along with it's swordplay. It's your average day to day enemies you encounter that pose any real issue, enemies with the spear will give you a hard time getting back up and during long fights you're suddenly forced to fight these giant armoured enemies who you can't use heat actions against. While the combat isn't anything amazing, it works extremely well for it's setting.

One thing I do not like Ishinwami's character changes, they sell completely different images of the characters and during my playthrough there was always an itch in the back of my mind about how it doesn't feel right. Replacing fan favorites with other fan favorites was not the way to go, however, it's mostly ignorable and the average person will not mind. I'm just care for details like this. I just hope if they ever decide to release Kenzan here, the changes made aren't as major.

But story is what's always mattered in Yakuza to me, and for the most part it delivers very well. The game uses the Meiji Restoration era as a metaphor for our dual selves. Japan, much like us, projects an image of themselves which is how they want to be seen as. But just like us, it's plagued with infighting and conflict.

The story starts out slow and takes a while to get going but when it does it reminds me of why I love this franchise. The final fight especially is a great set piece about two men fighting over a legacy, their legacy. I just wish the rest of the game could've been like this too, because the cracks start to show very soon.
The ending especially veers so hard into Japanese nationalism out of no where that all it does is leave a bad taste in your mouth. It doesn't break the game but it certainly could've been handled a lot better.

Ishin reminds me of a lot of what I love about the franchise, but I can't deny that it occasionally falls into the same pits as some of the other games. Jarring reveals and awkward pacing, I still love Yakuza, or as it's now called, "Like a Dragon". I'm very optimistic for the future.

𝗙𝘂𝗰𝗸 𝘆𝗼𝘂.

Around three years ago, I played Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc for the first time. I really enjoyed it for what it is, it's not good, don't get me wrong, but it's a damn fun game if you're able to turn your mind off. The same holds true for Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, which I played around the same timeframe as well. I loved it, the writing isn't really good, but it was fun to play that game despite its flaws. Then, of course, I got to Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony. A game I've been utterly confused by for so long now. Then around 2 years later, I met someone so insistent on Danganronpa V3 being some high kino, and I thought maybe I let it fly over my head, so I decided on a replay some time in the future.

Danganronpa V3 is admittedly a step up in every department from the first two games. The UI is much better, the music is genuinely amazing, I enjoyed the cast, and the writing of some of the later cases are genuinely good. Then there's Case 6. I keep running through it in my head as it moves about in there back and forth. The twist is genuinely something I'd normally adore, as the game forces me to confront the state of Danganronpa and what it's become. But I wish I could love it.

The problem with V3's twist is how much it wants to convince you about how it recognizes the faults of Danganronpa when it just doesn't. The impact of this twist nullifies when you consider that this game is written no different from any other Danganronpa game for the first 5 cases. Why do I have to give it praise for a message that I'm fond of and agree with when I know for a fact that it's handled so poorly that you're left with a sour taste in your mouth as you play through the final case? What am I praising? The existence of the message? I like the message but if it's not executed well I can't help but feel as though this game has huge missed potential.

Maybe I'm being hypocritical, maybe I'm being too harsh, but I can't agree with the lens that this game is supposed to be a parody of Danganronpa when it reuses the same tropes and plot points from the first two games but without the satirization. A parody that doesn't parody isn't a parody. It's a copy. Thing is, I'd probably forgive this game for playing into the Danganronpa formula if Danganronpa 2 didn't exist, but when that game already copied a lot of plot threads from the first game, I have to ask. Is this a parody, or is this just how the game was genuinely written? I think the direction of what the message of this game actually is was decided quite late into development, which is why it doesn't quite stick the landing. What really creates a huge dent in the twist is the fact that the game is written like a normal Danganronpa game for 90% of its playtime, which really doesn't mesh well with the message. It's hard for me at certain points to even say that if it was on purpose or a product of poor writing.

There's an emptiness that was felt in my heart when a major scene happened in Case 6. This isn't a game about Hope vs Despair. I thought it was about truth at first, but no. It's about Faith. V3 is a rejection of Danganronpa, and I absolutely love that concept; I just don't love V3. But I don't hate it either, there's a genuine heartfelt message that was put into this game and it's wrong for me to deny that, it's wrong for you to deny that.

The "fuck you" at the beginning of this review wasn't towards the game itself but to V3's loudest critics. I've seen many people call V3 an unsalvagable dumpster fire and rank it as one of their least favorite pieces of fiction. It leaves me utterly confused because 9 times out of 10, these people never even enjoyed the first 2 games to begin with. So what the fuck are you getting mad at? That the game series you've always hated has another bad entry? That your suspicions were confirmed? Danganronpa bad, LOL? The V3 hate doesn't bother me when it's by someone who enjoyed the first two games, or by someone who critiques V3 on its own merits. It's really the people who've never enjoyed Danganronpa in the first place calling this an "embarrassment" that confuses me because this game LITERALLY admits to Danganronpa being bad, but somehow that's not enough. Where does this sheer hatred even come from if you're not a fan of the first two entries? Most of these people deny the message's existence in the first place, which I'll never agree with. I may not like Kodaka's writing all that much, but he agrees with you, and that's still not enough for you, so what else do you want? If somehow a Danganronpa game is utterly loathed by you, then I'm genuinely baffled because at worst these games are nothing worse than a schlocky murder mystery with corny themes.

Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony aims high, and I'm sorry to say it kinda misses the mark, but I'll never deny the message Kodaka was trying to say. I apologize to my friend who wanted me to replay V3 to like it as much as him, while I can't say this is a 10/10, I do completely see why you like this game so much. I was reminded a lot of my memories of playing Danganronpa three years ago. Starting Trigger Happy Havoc at 5 am, not knowing what it is, spending 14 hours on Goodbye Despair at one play session, and being left confused at the end of Killing Harmony. I love this series, it's bad, but I had so much fun. So I don't care. I'm glad Kodaka was able to end it on his own terms, and I really hope Rain Code can knock it out of the park.

Concerning the ending, yeah, this "fiction" did touch me. I'll miss it, and I wanna go back to the time when I was able to turn my brain off and have fun with these games. But, in classic series fashion, I'm told to move on, so I will. But alas, I will miss you.

Goodbye, Danganronpa.