Schmliff0
128 Reviews liked by Schmliff0
Pokémon Colosseum
2003
I like this game more than I probably should. Gameplay-wise it can get a little repetitive due to the sheer amount of battles it throws at you, and the story, while good at the time, isn't really anything special compared to what we got in later titles. However, the vibes of this game are just amazing. It's edgy in a way that ends up coming off as legitimately cool. The setpieces and unique locales, the music, everything comes together to give it this grand scale that the other games up to this point don't even come close to. Pacing issues and repetition can't hold me back from loving this game.
Final Fantasy IX
2000
No, FF9 has totally bored me.
- Casual
- Most of the music is either fucking mediocre or ok, there's very little memorable music.
- Exploring locations is VERY boring, FF7 was way fucking better.
- VERY drawn out because of that camera overtaking thing
- The mechanics of the trans takes a very long time to charge, because of which very rarely get used in contrast to the limits of the seven. Well, and the fact that most of the buffs and debuffs make sense exclusively on bosses, while any ordinary enemy is killed by literally two blows
- very underplayed with the spirit of the fairy tale, if they had paid more attention to this atmosphere, then I might have finished the game.
- dull card game
Liked the ability learning system, but with caveats:
- A huge portion of the abilities are either too imba, which vanshots opponents, or only get in the way like the autozelier for example
- You have to keep your old armor and weapons and swing until you fill the skill scale, it would be better if they would allow you to use an item to switch skills between weapons and armor.
Often it happens that some of the abilities of the item can not be opened for a given character, because of this you have to either put on stupidly because of stats, or stupidly because of 1 skill.
I don't understand the mass hysteria about this part at all. 7th = better in all respects except character models outside of combat, including soundtrack, combat system, plot and exploration of locations
- Casual
- Most of the music is either fucking mediocre or ok, there's very little memorable music.
- Exploring locations is VERY boring, FF7 was way fucking better.
- VERY drawn out because of that camera overtaking thing
- The mechanics of the trans takes a very long time to charge, because of which very rarely get used in contrast to the limits of the seven. Well, and the fact that most of the buffs and debuffs make sense exclusively on bosses, while any ordinary enemy is killed by literally two blows
- very underplayed with the spirit of the fairy tale, if they had paid more attention to this atmosphere, then I might have finished the game.
- dull card game
Liked the ability learning system, but with caveats:
- A huge portion of the abilities are either too imba, which vanshots opponents, or only get in the way like the autozelier for example
- You have to keep your old armor and weapons and swing until you fill the skill scale, it would be better if they would allow you to use an item to switch skills between weapons and armor.
Often it happens that some of the abilities of the item can not be opened for a given character, because of this you have to either put on stupidly because of stats, or stupidly because of 1 skill.
I don't understand the mass hysteria about this part at all. 7th = better in all respects except character models outside of combat, including soundtrack, combat system, plot and exploration of locations
Final Fantasy VI
1994
Its cast is far too big for its own good. A lot of the characters lack a lot of well interesting good character moments and largely go ignored. The pacing of the game also kind of sucks as well.
Good story Terra,Locke and Kefka are pretty cool much more a fan of the games in the series having more focused characterization.
Good story Terra,Locke and Kefka are pretty cool much more a fan of the games in the series having more focused characterization.
Hi-Fi Rush
2023
Haven't played actually but it's funny how a game about fighting a corrupt corpo is now a reflection of the current state of Xbox and what they did to Tango Gameworks. Fuck modern gaming industry, like if cucking Crash Bandicoot wasn't enough.
This review contains spoilers
Being a fan of the final fantasy series. I wanted to at least give each game its fair share to see what exactly they all have that special to them. Which is why it's funny enough that I am starting with one of the newer titles that is a prequel to the original game.
In concept Stranger of Paradise is an interesting attempt to give a story to the character Jack Garland who spoiler alert, is the first boss of final fantasy one. So there's not a lot you can try to come up with there. But to their credit Square Enix and Team Ninja tried to at least do something.
The problem is it's very hard to get attached to a character that in the original game exists and gets defeated by 4 level 5 characters. Throughout the entire time with the story, I found it very hard to believe that this guy is the same person that I had to fight in the chaos shrine within the first maybe half an hour of final fantasy one.
I played through the whole game with a friend and tried to keep an open mind to the story and to try and let it all get into my head. So I could have my own opinions and see how good this story could possibly be. The only words I can say before I come back to it is anyone who says that Jack Garland is the best protagonist we have ever had in final fantasy is a liar. The story felt like it was beating me over the head for even trying to understand it and really only became good within the final hour maybe.
Combat wise the game is incredibly fun. Setting up classes however you want. Each having different abilities that make them viable and combing abilities from some classes makes the experience even more fun. For example, I played Dark Knight which allowed you to use your health to deal more damage so a risk vs reward. I would then add in abilities from other classes to recover HP so I wouldn't lose as much.
Graphically the game looks great. Each location is based off a location from all the past final fantasies up to that point so from 1 to 15, each places has a location tied to it. It was a love letter in the sense. Each location also used a motif from the original games so you could have part of the original song included in and it sounded so good. My favorite was 15's rep.
Now the actual story. The entire time you're getting these moments that are supposed to make Jack and his comrades seem as though they know each other very well but we never get to see them actually do anything together, and all these are just weird moments that make no sense until the very end. And even then it's still done poorly to the point that you still don't understand.
The game ends how you expect if you've played Final Fantasy. Jack has to become Chaos. However, the way in which they do was interesting, but feel flat for me. You find out that basically the world of Final Fantasy is being reset by another race of people to keep trying to balance light and dark within it to help with their own world??? It was kinda vague even then. And Jack has been sent in multiple times to keep the balance. By the time you take control of him, he has secretly set in motion the means to stop this reset and to have the world act in its own way and can't be controlled anymore.
The plan of course being, become Chaos. But due to the world being reset, they keep losing their memories. So Jack gets someone on the inside and basically says, "Hey, lead me and I will make sure this doesn't happen again." The rest of the party slowly gets their memories back but it takes Jack the longest to get it back so for the entire game you're as in the dark as he is. The second to last mission has the party remember what to do and fight Jack so he can kill them and regain more memories and corrupt himself to become chaos as you are now forced to kill your comrades which maybe would've made someone emotional but because of how it is handled you're kinda meh about it.
The final mission itself has you go and blast your way through the chaos shrine to go and take the fight back to the lufenians to take the world of FF1 back. You invade and fight Darkness Manifest which is Amano's art of Chaos turned into a 3D model and it looks fantastic. The game ends with Jack taking up the mantle of Chaos, his "friends" becoming the 4 fiends, and them saying we'll train the warriors of light ourselves as the game fades to black and begins the timeloop before cutting ahead the beginning of FF1 with Jack, officially in the Garland armor sitting on the throne in the chaos shrine as the Warrior of Light and his party enter. You see them wrapped in light before.... and I'm not joking... fucking Frank Sinatra's My Way starts playing and credits role.
The moment the credits hit, the bits I was starting to enjoy and even looking forward to immediately turned sour. I felt angry, annoyed, and felt like I was played for even trying to enjoy the story.
All in all. Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origins is great with combat, cool outfits, but horribly captured characters that have no reasons for you to care about them till it's to late and a story that beats you up for trying to understand it.
I can not in good faith recommend this game unless you just want to ignore the story and beat the shit out of stuff.
While there is DLC for it I'm not sure when I'll get to it after how the story made me feel. But when I do this review will be updated.
In concept Stranger of Paradise is an interesting attempt to give a story to the character Jack Garland who spoiler alert, is the first boss of final fantasy one. So there's not a lot you can try to come up with there. But to their credit Square Enix and Team Ninja tried to at least do something.
The problem is it's very hard to get attached to a character that in the original game exists and gets defeated by 4 level 5 characters. Throughout the entire time with the story, I found it very hard to believe that this guy is the same person that I had to fight in the chaos shrine within the first maybe half an hour of final fantasy one.
I played through the whole game with a friend and tried to keep an open mind to the story and to try and let it all get into my head. So I could have my own opinions and see how good this story could possibly be. The only words I can say before I come back to it is anyone who says that Jack Garland is the best protagonist we have ever had in final fantasy is a liar. The story felt like it was beating me over the head for even trying to understand it and really only became good within the final hour maybe.
Combat wise the game is incredibly fun. Setting up classes however you want. Each having different abilities that make them viable and combing abilities from some classes makes the experience even more fun. For example, I played Dark Knight which allowed you to use your health to deal more damage so a risk vs reward. I would then add in abilities from other classes to recover HP so I wouldn't lose as much.
Graphically the game looks great. Each location is based off a location from all the past final fantasies up to that point so from 1 to 15, each places has a location tied to it. It was a love letter in the sense. Each location also used a motif from the original games so you could have part of the original song included in and it sounded so good. My favorite was 15's rep.
Now the actual story. The entire time you're getting these moments that are supposed to make Jack and his comrades seem as though they know each other very well but we never get to see them actually do anything together, and all these are just weird moments that make no sense until the very end. And even then it's still done poorly to the point that you still don't understand.
The game ends how you expect if you've played Final Fantasy. Jack has to become Chaos. However, the way in which they do was interesting, but feel flat for me. You find out that basically the world of Final Fantasy is being reset by another race of people to keep trying to balance light and dark within it to help with their own world??? It was kinda vague even then. And Jack has been sent in multiple times to keep the balance. By the time you take control of him, he has secretly set in motion the means to stop this reset and to have the world act in its own way and can't be controlled anymore.
The plan of course being, become Chaos. But due to the world being reset, they keep losing their memories. So Jack gets someone on the inside and basically says, "Hey, lead me and I will make sure this doesn't happen again." The rest of the party slowly gets their memories back but it takes Jack the longest to get it back so for the entire game you're as in the dark as he is. The second to last mission has the party remember what to do and fight Jack so he can kill them and regain more memories and corrupt himself to become chaos as you are now forced to kill your comrades which maybe would've made someone emotional but because of how it is handled you're kinda meh about it.
The final mission itself has you go and blast your way through the chaos shrine to go and take the fight back to the lufenians to take the world of FF1 back. You invade and fight Darkness Manifest which is Amano's art of Chaos turned into a 3D model and it looks fantastic. The game ends with Jack taking up the mantle of Chaos, his "friends" becoming the 4 fiends, and them saying we'll train the warriors of light ourselves as the game fades to black and begins the timeloop before cutting ahead the beginning of FF1 with Jack, officially in the Garland armor sitting on the throne in the chaos shrine as the Warrior of Light and his party enter. You see them wrapped in light before.... and I'm not joking... fucking Frank Sinatra's My Way starts playing and credits role.
The moment the credits hit, the bits I was starting to enjoy and even looking forward to immediately turned sour. I felt angry, annoyed, and felt like I was played for even trying to enjoy the story.
All in all. Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origins is great with combat, cool outfits, but horribly captured characters that have no reasons for you to care about them till it's to late and a story that beats you up for trying to understand it.
I can not in good faith recommend this game unless you just want to ignore the story and beat the shit out of stuff.
While there is DLC for it I'm not sure when I'll get to it after how the story made me feel. But when I do this review will be updated.
Streamed this to my friend for whom this is his favorite game of all time. After i finished he said, and i quote “so Garb, hows it feel knowing that you can look down on the stupid masses and have full authority over them in discussions of story in video games now that youve played the citizen kane of the medium?” To which, i replied “yeah i thought it was pretty decent”
Sonic Frontiers
2022
Story suck ass it's horrible. The characters aren't themselves and Amy isn't even a character. Her motivation just doesn't make any sense and means nothing. Tails has been through this arc like 3 times already I'm tired of seeing it again and knuckles dosent make any sense. Sage is a cool concept but she does nothing In The grand scheme of things and eggman might as well not be in the game. Roger Craig Smith is at his worst here as he doesn't perform that sonic attitude. The callbacks are annoying and don't make anything sense as they reference game that aren't in the cannon or are In Alternate worlds. The final boss sucks too. But the gameplay is really exhilarating. As a lifelong sonic fan it feels liberation running around in a giant field going really fast and completing all of these little obstacle courses. The combat is jank but tolerable. The cyber space levels are the worst part of the game. It removes all of your stats and the designs are just terrible.
My favorite parts are the bosses. The music is phenomenal and fighting them is cool as you can speed run the bosses if you know the combat enough which is something not a lot of the boost formula sonic games do
Overall just another mishandled sonic game with missing potential. Only check it out if your curious.
My favorite parts are the bosses. The music is phenomenal and fighting them is cool as you can speed run the bosses if you know the combat enough which is something not a lot of the boost formula sonic games do
Overall just another mishandled sonic game with missing potential. Only check it out if your curious.
Sonic Frontiers
2022
I had to vindicate myself for all the dickriding of this game i did in 2022, its butt 😭😭
I was a Pokémon fan, and with that you already know I was biased. But now that I've been hit in the face with so many reality checks I can surely say this is soulless.
And don't even get me started with the "step in the right direction" argument, I already talked about that in my Pokémon Scarlet review.
And don't even get me started with the "step in the right direction" argument, I already talked about that in my Pokémon Scarlet review.
Tried it several times but I really failed to get into it as much as I did with the first one. If I had to guess it's probably due to the mishmash of influences being a lot more prevalent here and the overall ambition of having so many playable characters outlasting each other feels like it's trying too many things at once.
slightly worse than F&H 1
Being the Final Metal Gear Solid game that I believe it to be the best ending to the canonical story ever. Everything is so perfect, the relationships Otacon shares, the conversation between Big Boss and Snake at the end of the game made me cry as it made me realize everything really is coming to an end. I love metal gear solid. Absolutely phenomenal Kojima.
Just finished my Chicken Emblem playthrough. Going for the platinum.
Pokémon fans discovering basic roguelike trends and even more basic storytelling for the first time and hailing both of those as a masterpiece because they clear the low bar of mainline Pokémon slop
The way I'm going to review this is from the POV of a guy who had already played this game 5 years ago, enjoyed it just as much then, and decided to go from Easy to Hard for this particular playthrough, after waiting just as long to play the OG SMT IV for... some reason. For anyone who wants my thoughts on base IV, a review of the game in question is sequestered hence within my profile.
I'll frontload this review with a few quick, minor complaints - primarily the existence of compendium premiums for resist/null passives (one of my favourite ways to play SMT games to this day, and a type of skill I'd argue is just as, if not more important, than buffs), and a few other daft skill distribution decisions (iirc the earliest level you get any buff or debuff is Angel at Level 12-15 or so). So going through some of the early areas, you're liable to get your shit kicked in. I ended up dropping the difficulty for Fusion and Compendium purposes, because otherwise you're forking out about 170k+ for mid-Lv. 40ish mons with resist passives, whilst waiting for the best relic spots to respawn.
What do I like about this game?
...Yeah, well... EVERYTHING ELSE.
Once you get over the minor skill optimisation hiccups, when battles start giving you momentum, they REALLY give you momentum. While you could argue that the reworked Hama/Mudo spells are a bit of an overcorrection from base IV, given their coverage, I... honestly fail to care (especially what they can do vs hordes, and how Smirking was handled here). And (I know this isn't gameplay, but it certainly helps) it's partnered with honestly my favourite regular battle OST in the entirety of SMT (before anyone asks, DDS2 isn't far behind).
QUICK EDIT: something I neglected to mention was that on the overworld, you actually have an idea of where the hell you're going this time. QoL and all that.
Now, let's touch on the story and characters. "There's too much power of friendship!" So I've heard. "It's not nuanced or fleshed out enough!" (even though base IV's approach to the topic was kinda :kek:).
OK, and?
For one, I fundamentally disagree with the lack of nuance. For as much as I'd love to deconstruct individual examples (Danu remaking Dagda, and a lot of aspects of the Divine Powers come to mind), I'd argue that this is one of the better narratives in the series, and I do mean that. And yes, my BOI Hallelujah is a personal channel mascot of mine for a reason.
Something else I want to tip my hat to before we end off, and one thing I don't think people give Apoc' enough credit for, is how genuinely funny this game is. Dagda is a no-nonsense middle finger to existence that I actually find genuine refreshing, not to mention Xander Mobus capturing his personality so well I'd make the claim it's among his best, if not his best, voice work. Yes, even better than Joker, Stocke, or even DBa Superman. It's damn close to my favourite, that's for certain. I also caught myself laughing for minutes on end at stuff like Navarre getting brutally roasted (ftr: I disagree with Nam's Compendium that his character only 'existed for jokes at his expense' or whatever, mostly for reasons of ludonarrative dissonance (him being one of the best partners from a gameplay standpoint) as well as Sean Chiplock sounding like he was having a lot of fun playing the role).
I'll admit I didn't have as much to say about this game as I thought I would. But all's fair in love and war, I suppose.
I'll frontload this review with a few quick, minor complaints - primarily the existence of compendium premiums for resist/null passives (one of my favourite ways to play SMT games to this day, and a type of skill I'd argue is just as, if not more important, than buffs), and a few other daft skill distribution decisions (iirc the earliest level you get any buff or debuff is Angel at Level 12-15 or so). So going through some of the early areas, you're liable to get your shit kicked in. I ended up dropping the difficulty for Fusion and Compendium purposes, because otherwise you're forking out about 170k+ for mid-Lv. 40ish mons with resist passives, whilst waiting for the best relic spots to respawn.
What do I like about this game?
...Yeah, well... EVERYTHING ELSE.
Once you get over the minor skill optimisation hiccups, when battles start giving you momentum, they REALLY give you momentum. While you could argue that the reworked Hama/Mudo spells are a bit of an overcorrection from base IV, given their coverage, I... honestly fail to care (especially what they can do vs hordes, and how Smirking was handled here). And (I know this isn't gameplay, but it certainly helps) it's partnered with honestly my favourite regular battle OST in the entirety of SMT (before anyone asks, DDS2 isn't far behind).
QUICK EDIT: something I neglected to mention was that on the overworld, you actually have an idea of where the hell you're going this time. QoL and all that.
Now, let's touch on the story and characters. "There's too much power of friendship!" So I've heard. "It's not nuanced or fleshed out enough!" (even though base IV's approach to the topic was kinda :kek:).
OK, and?
For one, I fundamentally disagree with the lack of nuance. For as much as I'd love to deconstruct individual examples (Danu remaking Dagda, and a lot of aspects of the Divine Powers come to mind), I'd argue that this is one of the better narratives in the series, and I do mean that. And yes, my BOI Hallelujah is a personal channel mascot of mine for a reason.
Something else I want to tip my hat to before we end off, and one thing I don't think people give Apoc' enough credit for, is how genuinely funny this game is. Dagda is a no-nonsense middle finger to existence that I actually find genuine refreshing, not to mention Xander Mobus capturing his personality so well I'd make the claim it's among his best, if not his best, voice work. Yes, even better than Joker, Stocke, or even DBa Superman. It's damn close to my favourite, that's for certain. I also caught myself laughing for minutes on end at stuff like Navarre getting brutally roasted (ftr: I disagree with Nam's Compendium that his character only 'existed for jokes at his expense' or whatever, mostly for reasons of ludonarrative dissonance (him being one of the best partners from a gameplay standpoint) as well as Sean Chiplock sounding like he was having a lot of fun playing the role).
I'll admit I didn't have as much to say about this game as I thought I would. But all's fair in love and war, I suppose.