i'm amazed this actually came out at all, i remember when it was announced and i am bewildered that it wasn't actually a scam. surprised how good the writing and art in this are, this tackles some heavy shit but usually backs it up in terms of quality, it felt rawer in a way other games would sensationalize and dramatize to an uglier extreme. somehow it really captures the feeling of a tight group of friends having to go through something tragic and the ways each of them cope, how it changes their world. i say somehow cuz i dont fuckin know how accurate it is i lived on a farm far out of town and had no friends when i was their age i ain't got shit in terms of experience but it sure does feel like someone thought hard about it while making it.


but every time Sweetheart shows up i want to turn the game off. she's so lame! why the hell does she have TWO parts in the game that go on for way too long. why was that needed. the pacing in this game is REALLY. its best quality is its story, but the only juicy bits happen in the real world. most of the game is spent in headspace and most of that time is very, very boring.

Everhood has a lot of soul, a lot of creativity and talent and it is undeniably an interesting game with some incredible ideas. sadly, i'll probably remember it as a game with incredible ideas instead of an incredible game.

the core game is fresh and exciting, i loved the way it would add onto itself and evolve throughout. i love how the rhythm section twists to involve combat. one-off gimmicks like the racing, the cool visual tricks, the D&D bit. new encounters are exciting if only just to see what it'll add. i wanna stress how great the visuals are again, the way it plays with the camera itself and its psychedelic backgrounds rule. unfortunately every fucking location is just a black void with some scattered tiles and the world and environments of Everhood are thoroughly uninteresting.

i think Everhood's biggest failing is its writing. Everhood spends NO time establishing anything or anyone, none of the characters have introductions or lives or unique voices. not literal voices but why do the little gnome guy and the trucker slime boys talk so eloquently. to experience the story is experience an endless barrage of wacky one-note characters, some of which are fun, but none of them are developed in meaningful ways or feel important. i didn't care about anyone, which felt really weird when it came to the latter half of the narrative. it felt like the game expected me to get attached without doing any of the work to show me why i should like its characters. its larger thematic ideas are interesting but when the foundation of the story is so weak i didn't really care. it's like if Undertale's only character was Froggit a few dozen times over.

this game is awful but don't think for one second that i don't love it. Virtual Hydlide is one of the very first 3D RPGs and it definitely feels like it, everything about the game is rudimentary and ambitious. none of it really works out, from its randomly generated worlds to its stiff combat and its sub-10 framerate, but a lot of it is seriously way ahead of its time. it's not just one of the first 3D RPGs, but one of the first open-world 3D RPGs with random generation and the ability to save anywhere. i do earnestly love its stinky, chunky FMV-aesthetic (the player character just makes me smile) and its corny fantasy score. this game is objectively terrible in basically every way possible, it has some seriously frustrating bullshit in it, but i can't help but admire it. it's so cute!!!!!

just like with IV Apocalypse, the story is dogshit - but the game is really fun and from the promo materials (and every other Atlus game as of late) i didn't have any high expectations for the writing. still, its narrative is unique in that it doesn't even fucking try - this game never once puts any focus on its characters or story in a meaningful way and whether that's good or bad is up to you.

combat's peak SMT, mechanically solid as hell and incredibly satisfying. demon fusion is the most sensible its ever been and the replacement of smirk for magatsuhi is a welcome change. Nahobino feels pretty good, the combat's at its best, and the art and music are a massive step up from the previous two games - even if some of the designs are dogshit. sadly, SMT V's world is very uninspired, content with just doing something akin to blasted Tokyo the entire way through with little points of interest or unique areas. save for two dungeons, it's just the desert but with a different colour each time. paired with the nonexistent story, i felt like my time with SMT V blended together despite its runtime. which is pretty fucking lame. the game never throws any curveballs your way, if you play the first five hours you've basically played the entire thing.

it isn't as atmospheric as Nocturne, its world design is lacking and is largely forgettable, but SMT V is a really fun time in terms of gameplay, which is its major focus. Shin Megami Tensei V is a game that probably won't stick with you in the ways Digital Devil Saga or Nocturne do, but it's a comfortable and breezy experience i had a good time with. though it could've been so much more.

i feel like i should be given some form of legal recourse against sonic fans for gaslighting me into expecting a good time from this. it's like if every single level in Mario Sunshine was the pachinko one.

the music, story, and graphics range from great to adorable but genuinely nothing else about this one is fun or good. Sonic Adventure 2 is a game full of the worst levels in a platformer, every stage is a battle with a camera that doesn't work, physics that don't work, constant glitches (a lot of clipping thru walls and floors), and design that rarely ever feels seamless or functional. Sonic and Shadow's levels are the best (and smallest) part and a few specific Shadow levels were cool, the rest are spent wildly flinging into bottomless pits because the camera doesn't show you what you need to see and the game doesn't work. Tails and Eggman's levels are insufferably dull and are far too plentiful. Rouge and Knuckles' levels are on some straight-up warcrime shit, especially the space ones. all of the space levels suck bad and they're the entire back half of the game - which is great if you like the same exact level theme 6 times. there's boss fights, which are either entirely unremarkable or some of the worst boss designs in a game, specifically the Biolizard and that fuckin ghost. i LOVE waiting one minute to hit a boss in its giant obvious weakspot and getting 4 minutes into the fight before having to use the homing dash that just decides to fucking kill me instead of the boss.

the game's aesthetics and presentation are undeniably and overwhelmingly charming but playing this game makes my blood pressure rise, nothing about it ever once feels right. it stressed me out so bad. i bet for fans who've grown up with it and know every level and are accustomed to its janky ass, they probably have fun with it. but for someone who's just a normal person, this shit was mind-blowingly painful. like, it should be illegal to recommend this one to people who haven't played it. i kinda liked the first one but having heard people talk up this game for most of my life, i expected it to be at least kinda good. i really wanted to like it! it kinda bums me out how badly i ended up hating this one.

no game this pretty should have to suffer from writing THIS bad. i don't like to be too hyperbolic, i love video games and i just wanna be chill about em, but Solar Ash has some of the most aggravating writing i've experienced in a game. the core appeal here, to me, is getting to effortlessly glide around gorgeous landscapes and soak in the atmosphere - but your protagonist NEVER shuts up!!!! you'll see a glowing red eye on a goop obstacle and she'll blurt out "that must be its weak point! i should attack it!". the game constantly patronizes the player with obnoxious hand-holding quips, the tone of which never really matches the world's. there's an area with hazardous green acid that causes a vignette and a warning indicator to appear on screen - obviously, that isn't obvious enough of an indicator of danger so she says "Even the water here is hazardous, because... of course it is."

Hyper Light Drifter managed to have an interesting world without any dialogue. it's strange to see how much of an emphasis this game places on story, with a fair amount of sidequest NPCs and text logs that no human being has ever read. a lot of its meat ends up being exposition and a stream of meaningless sci-fi proper nouns. the back end of its narrative has that YA-fiction blatant stating of themes in an attempt to be about 'something.' the final boss is the manifestation of the protagonists' self-hatred and guilt that gets defeated by reaching out to others, i couldn't help but groan.

part of me thinks this game's focus on story is more a reflection of how empty the rest of it is. a lot of its systems seem entirely superfluous - health points never matter (why can you even take damage?), the only thing you can spend currency on is on getting more health, you can collect more suits but they have a negligible effect on gameplay. there's a lot of time spent on boss fights but all of them play the exact same way - you home in on a bit, glide around hitting little needle things, and then home in on their eye. it's fun the first couple of times but gets repetitive. for a roughly 5-6 hour game, a lot of it feels like filler. it never stops looking gorgeous, it never stops being fun to skate around in its world (tho i disagree with how its momentum is so easy to lose & never really builds in a tactile sense and nothing you really DO with the movement is engaging, the world itself isn't particularly fun to explore), but i wish it was designed tighter. and that whoever wrote it is never allowed to communicate in any language ever again.

Banjo Tooie expands on everything the original did. Its levels, music, movement, story, visuals, racism, and every other element is brought up in scope and ambition here. I was worried Tooie had aged similarly to Donkey Kong 64 with its tedious constant gated collecting and backtracking, but save for a few elements (Mumbo and the new racist caricature) the pacing was smoother than i expected.

Most of the new shit here rocks, fast travelling makes the larger level sizes comfy and the new moves you get are fun as hell. I actually really liked the FPS sections too, they didn't go on that long and they control really well. Unfortunately, whenever the game makes you shoot while flying or swimming I wanted to die, that fucking cursor is absolute evil. playing as Banjo and Kazooie separately is fun though not very impactful and I wish you had a menu to do it anytime. if this game had a radial menu on the dpad that allowed that alongside switching to Mumbo or the transformations you unlock this could beat the original in terms of pace.

I think the biggest improvement Tooie makes is with the story and presentation. this game's lighting is unholy for Nintendo 64 and its cutscenes are really good. the writing and tone is a lot darker and comedic than the first game's in a way that kicks ass. Bottles just immediately fucking dying is one of the funniest things I've seen in a game. Kazooie is why i support women's rights alongside women's wrongs and if this came out now she'd probably be a popular furry porno character but she kinda lucked out. Tooie's world is just a lot more fleshed out and imaginative than the first game's.

oh, also I was playing the XBLA version. but uh, I never actually finished it. I was at Grunty Industries, 100% up to that point, and then my save file just decided I was back in Glitter Gulch and would not work again. So really this is only a review of most of Banjo Tooie, with the rest played on an emulator while really wishing i was playing the XBLA version, but I had a great time overall.