Sim, tô escrevendo essa review de madrugada, porque esse é um daqueles jogos que têm tantos detalhes bons que, se eu deixar pra outro dia, vou acabar esquecendo deles. É aquele jogo de nicho, bem nicho mesmo, mas que não exige um conhecimento profundo sobre a época abordada, já que tem um sumário com várias notas explicando muitos detalhes, tanto geográficos quanto históricos. Isso facilitou muito pra mim, mas algumas palavras como "abadia", tive que pesquisar no Google mesmo. Basicamente, é um jogo investigativo com o foco quase todo em diálogos, feito pra tu ler, pensar no que dizer, convencer e se relacionar com os personagens, tipo um jogo da Telltale, mas menos linear, já que tu transita livremente pela cidade de Tassing.

Esse jogo me passou a mesma vibe de "O Nome da Rosa", filme de 1986, sobre um monge que investiga uma série de assassinatos dentro de um monastério (juro que daqui em diante não vou mais falar grego). Esse negócio de conhecimento proibido é muito presente em ambas as obras de uma forma que envolve todo o mistério da trama. Pra cinéfilos, tá aí uma recomendação.

Como é um jogo onde teu personagem é um prodígio a mestre artista, tu pode escolher no início os conhecimentos que Andreas aprendeu nas viagens de estudos, que vão te dar opções de falas exclusivas nos diálogos. É uma mecânica perfeita, por mais que eu tenha adquirido o "conhecimento da curtição" e não tenha conseguido "macetar" nenhuma das personagens através do diálogo, mas no trailer mostra que dá pra fazer isso sim.

Gostei muito de fuçar na vida de todo mundo e fazer vários amigos e inimigos, mesmo que o jogo todo se passe em um mapa pequeno com algumas localidades secretas a mais, tem uns time skips que vão trazendo novidades e mudanças na cidade com o passar dos anos, sempre te proporcionando aquela curiosidade pra saber como aqueles personagens queridos estão. A parte mais legal disso é ver a influência que você causou na cidade.

A estética e os simbolismos do game contribuem muito pra história, tipo as alegorias daqueles personagens que só existem na mente do Andreas, representando seus pensamentos, e as fontes diferentes nas falas dos personagens pra simbolizar status e nível de escolaridade.

No início do último ato, confesso que fiquei triste pelo que aconteceu e com medo do caminho que o jogo ia seguir, mas logo o game puxou minha atenção de volta à medida que a trama voltava para o núcleo do mistério principal.

E no final, teve uma bela conclusão, com uma explicação que amarra todas as pontas soltas, mostrando que já estava tudo ali, o jogo esfregou na sua cara, mas você não percebeu (pelo menos eu não percebi).

Não acho que esse jogo tenha um fator replay muito grande, já que o mistério depois do fim já foi solucionado, mas tô muito curioso pra saber o que aconteceria se eu tivesse seguido por outros caminhos e escolhido conhecimentos diferentes.

Edit: As crianças são muito fofinhas.

I think a lot of people (mid-range cope) dream of a robust, visually gorgeous, user-friendly, scrimblo wardrobe simulator. A thingamabob that you can build OCs with, and let you choose from a wide range of clothes to drip them out in and pose and rotate to your heart’s content. Anybody who’s spent ungodly amount of time in /gpose knows this, the people who use Koikatsu also know this but won’t readily admit it.

My experience with fashion games - namely Love Nikki and Style Savvy kind of highlights that the entire concept of gamifying the subjectivity of fashion is something of a mug’s game. They all crumble in the exact same way, by the fact that challenges posed by the game i.e. “make an outfit with X theme” always falls to using the ingame search function and highlighting the exact tags it’s asking for, then selecting the best article of clothing in each category. What else are you going to do, actually plot out an outfit that bangs? This dumb bitch algorithm doesn’t know what colour schemes are, mismatching, wrong sizing for the body type, etc. The outfit you submit will receive a score and it will Never make sense. Your character will look like a biblically accurate secondhand rug store but you’ll Perfect the mission and you’ll learn to like it - because you’re Powergaming - it's all a means to an end: to see ur OC in a new story mission reward jacket that will tie everything together.

It’s not great!! The fact that this is a mobile game gives Life Makeover carte blanche to take the absolute piss. Your progress isn’t gated by your style savviness and outfit co-ordination, but entirely by you not having high enough arbitrarily-graded clothes. This is where the gatcha stuff comes in and I don’t even need to tell you that it’s stingy as fuck because you’d already have guessed. Why do I need to grind so much to dye the clothes too jesus christ show some mercy. I’d honestly recommend playing a hacked .apk of the game if I knew those existed.

I’ve played Life Makeover back at release on mobile briefly, and again now that it’s gotten a fully-fledged PC port. Man I think this game is so pretty. I love how detailed every article of clothing is, I love how the physics makes the multi-layered dresses and hair flow. This being a game developed in China there’s a pretty strong lean towards incredibly well-rendered opulent traditional hanfu clothing, which is inexplicably the most 'overpowered' clothing in any situation, it’s pretty funny but I respect it. Love the wildly undercooked Sims-lite homebuilding thing it has going on too. Love the awful murder mystery storyline with a first-pass translation that the voice actors were clearly not allowed to stray from. Given enough time & patience and hopefully none of your money, you rack up a surprisingly varied array of clothes and then you can finally play the game, which is to just make nice fits. Is it WORTH all of that effort? No, but

Marvel VS Capcom 2 is the absolute pinnacle of everything the VS Capcom series has done up to this point.
It indulges in the insanity and the sheer chaos, and with the game having 56 playable characters, thanks to the reusage of a shit-ton of assests, it hammers that point home.

It brings back the Variable Assist feature of Marvel Super Heroes VS Street Fighter and then some, providing players with three options as to what type of attack they want the summoned character to do, and this provides a lot of variety to the game.

Yes, it's a poorly balanced roster, but I don't give a fuck, it's such an easy game to pick up and play, and I'm having a bunch of fun all the way through!

Coupled that with the game's amazing jazzy soundtrack (which, being a jazz fan, makes me very happy) and the mixture of 2D sprites and 3D background models, which has aged quite well, I'd say, and you've got yourself one of the greatest fighting games of all time!

Please Capcom, negotiate with Marvel to re-release these games on consoles.

Oh boy...this game is an absolute mess. I usually don't review negatively or review stuff I don't finish, but I can't play this game. It's a sprite flickering mess of a game and the first level's music is ear grating.

My understanding is you are to lead Yuko to something while an arrow on your HUD acts as a sort of radar and you attack enemies as you platform around...this was all I could grasp of the game from the first and only level I played. I couldn't get anywhere due to the sprite flickering of the enemies and their projectiles doing the same, combined with the odd scrolling and it makes for a frustrating game.

Honestly couldn't tolerate the game at all.

A triumphant slam dunk of a conclusion to a troubled yet beautiful series, Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra serves not only as the final entry in the sci-fi epic Xenosaga series but also as a laser-guided missile aimed directly towards your heart. This is a game that just hits all the right notes, managing to smooth and iron out several issues that were prevalent in the previous two entries, while also building upon the multiple layers of storytelling and tying up an incredible amount of loose ends for the time given to this overly ambitious project. Everything is at its apex here, an extremely polished game that is intense and heart-wrenching, culminating in an incredibly heartfelt and deeply empathetic ending that acknowledges our shortcomings and weaknesses as human beings, yet has an unrelenting hope for humanity and the future.

Although it should come as no surprise, Xenosaga Episode 3 once again delivers a major overhaul to its gameplay. Gone are the days when encounters would last for 8 minutes as the combat has been reworked to offer fast, snappy and largely streamlined gameplay compared to the previous entries while establishing itself as something different through the introduction of the break gauge, which when filled will result in fatigue for either you or your enemy for two turns. Combat in Episode 3 is my favourite and pick for best in the series, as I really like the freedom you have over it, the break gauge never feels like it imposes itself upon you, the player, but rather acts as another angle to approach fights from. E.S fights also see changes, as they are much more exciting and operate very differently from ground combat. Although lacking in depth, the E.S combat visually is incredibly clean as the attack animations are very fluid and the constant alternating camera angles coupled with the music make them feel very intense and hectic. My only gripe with the combat would be how beefy the E.S bosses can get towards the end of the game, having such insane HP along with gimmicks that serve to further prolong fights can be a pain, but other than that it's all positive with the changes.

The inconsistency of Xenosaga may be apparent on the surface, looking at its frequent gameplay and visual changes, but it makes sure to never let go of is its ability to deliver on its characters, narrative and setting. Drifting abroad the Woglinde, the vast emptiness of space is the first introduction to the world of Xenosaga, with no knowledge of our surroundings or what is out there in the vast cosmos. Showing how far we've come since then, Episode 3 begins with a now masterfully detailed and fully realised world, with narrative weight behind its planets, numerous factions and history. The setting of Xenosaga is incredible not only in concept, as it is brimming with so many unique ideas, but also in the way it is managed, as it knows its place to never overshadow or intrude on the plot-driven and character-driven narrative. The reintroduced database is a testament to the setting and worldbuilding of the series, consisting of over 450 entries relating to all things like characters, culture, factions, events and weapons, from an entry about Shions curry to entries detailing the mechanics of hyperspace travel, it covers absolutely everything in the trilogy leaving no stone unturned.

Furthermore, not only is the setting very detailed through the narrative, but its also visually stunning as in typical Xenosaga fashion the setting is constantly changing throughout, and the way the environments are designed and look is nothing short of meticulous. An incredible amount of work has gone into even the furthest reaches of large, sprawling areas like the cities to really bring these places to life. You might look through a window in a space station, only to then see just outside a gigantic spacecraft docked nearby, or look deep into the backdrop of a city and see the thousands of people going about their lives, visible only as dots from your high vantage point. This sense of scale is truly impressive, present in every area of the game, and is extremely fitting and well-done for a sci-fi setting. The dedication to the world of Xenosaga doesn't just stop there, as Episode 3 scatters NPCs around its different areas, each with their own unique dialogue, introducing a system where almost every NPC has a word that you can hold the square button on while they speak, opening up a whole new conversation related to that word and contributing to the world. The great visuals and new additions that add to the world go hand in hand with the already pre-established lore of the environments to give a distinct look and feel to them, leading to one of my favourite parts of the game being just stopping to observe and take in everything about each area, as the team really did go to bat with the details and design of each location.

The main cast of Xenosaga is exceptional, and one of the pillars of the series as it explores its myriad themes through its characters. From Shion to KOS-MOS, to Jr, Ziggy, MOMO, Jin, Chaos and Allen, the main cast are just so well fleshed out with their own personal motivations and arcs, but also have such great interactions together as a group. If you haven't played Episode 3, you may be questioning why Allen's name is mentioned, and with full confidence I can say that this game manages to somehow turn around Allen into one of the best characters in the series, finding his resolve and giving him possibly my favourite moment in the trilogy. It's clear that some characters were destined for more development across the series, namely the antagonists, as without Albedo as the main villain anymore there is a pretty big void to fill, yet Episode 3 goes above and beyond - filling this void and then some by committing itself to providing impressive characterisation to all of its cast throughout, ingeniously building up characters who previously had an absence of screen time into some of the most compelling in the series in just 1 episode, while also giving an extra push to pre-established characters, leading to an emotional but fitting conclusion for all of them.

One character in particular who really comes into their own in Episode 3 that I'd like to talk about is Shion; if Episode 1 was focused on Shion and KOS-MOS, then Episode 2 takes a slight detour and puts both Albedo and Jr in the spotlight instead. Episode 2s shift in character focus never bothered me as it works really well by basing its narrative around those two, but its Shion who remained as one of the most interesting characters and whom we started our journey with. Episode 3 follows up on this, placing Shion back front and centre in the story this time around as it thoroughly inspects everything about her character, from her past to her feelings, emotions and relationships along with her psychological struggle to comprehend the rapidly unfolding events around her, leading to her acting as the driving force for Episode IIIs narrative from beginning to end as one of the most fascinating and deeply explored characters I have seen.

Originally the series was intended to be made up of 6 games, but much like its predecessor Xenogears, it simply was unable to support itself under its overflowing ambition, and because of this Episode 3 is given the short end of the stick, having the daunting task of wrapping up the series in a meaningful and satisfying way, tying up the deeply layered plot and its unanswered questions. My feelings on whether Episode 3 succeeds or doesn't should be pretty clear from the intro, but I'll say it again. Xenosaga Episode III is a slam dunk, a home run, whatever reference you need me to make to get across how well this game is able to take Xenosagas story and create something beautiful out of it I will do, since it succeeds in all areas, never wavering as it provides a consistently fantastic plot.

For how much Episode 3 has to cover, Disc 1 paces itself quite leisurely at the start, offering more questions than answers before the halfway point, where the game begins to pick up its pace as it continually reveals more and more as the major revelations start to drop. Everything in disc 1 is leading up towards its final segment, the best dungeon in the series purely from a narrative point of view due to it being the culmination of 2 games worth of worldbuilding, delivering on an incredibly cathartic and oppressive atmosphere that left me completely swept away and speechless throughout. Coming straight from the cliffhanger ending of Disc 1 we have Disc 2, and this is where Episode 3 really shines for me, as the gloves come off and the story picks up at a rapid pace, taking you through boss fight after boss fight with story moment after story moment. Episode 3 will lift you up with an incredibly motivating and hype moment, before immediately tearing you back down constantly through Disc 2, as it capitalises so well on everything it has created up until now, whether that be its characters conveying their incredibly human and real emotions or the most insane plot thread you've ever seen reach its conclusion that you can only find inside of a Xeno game.

And then, the final stretch as we approach the ending. By describing these games as esoteric you would be completely right, consisting of countless religious undertones and philosophical themes, and to say that I understand everything about Xenosaga would simply be a lie. And yet in spite of this I was able to take so much away from such an abstruse piece of fiction that left me completely devastated by the end. The last 30 minutes of Episode 3 are incredibly touching, consisting entirely of cutscenes, and they hit me like a tidal wave. I bounced back and forth between intense sadness and happiness before those feelings were gradually replaced by a combination of everything as the game began to play its ending song, Maybe Tomorrow, which I still struggle to listen to without my mind wandering off to the final monologue of the game and being swept away by emotion. I love everything about this series, and Episode 3 is more than I could have ever asked for from it. A story that shows the effect that a single ripple can have on shaping the world, overcoming the fear of death, the importance of choice and breaking free from repeating cycles of pain and trauma. A story with such believable empathy and optimism due to its acknowledgement of our shortcomings and failures of humans, and yet one that believes in a future overflowing with hope.