I would bet it all to smoke weed with Fang and Vanille in their dimly-lit bedroom full of empty takeout bags: I have never seen a burnout codependent lesbian couple depicted this plausibly. XIII is probably the first Final Fantasy to make intra-party dynamics a narrative priority, and the most successful in this. Good dub casting supports this, and it's the series title from which I came away most fond of the characters. Pretty much the gold standard of seventh generation console visuals, and the best version of the ATB system.

kamige. having campaigned to get this on backloggd for months now, i am pleased that at least one of the sex kitten games made its way on here!! isn't my favourite of the series, but 2000s lolrandom edgy humor combined with stolen anime art is my favourite niche slice of internet nostalgia (ew).

this is objectively awful but idc idc idc it reminds me of my weird horrible disgusting childhood.

your takeaway from this review should be to never let your child on newgrounds.

velbearan is so based for adding this.. everyone say thank you

-tbh found the way this game understands when to be quiet and sullen and reflexive rlly compelling. like epi2 has a lot of these just silent moments and it rlly builds off of how loud and aggressive that first ep is
-love the way this game handles language if that makes sense. like it’s def it’s own world w it’s own vocab which makes it feel all the more abstract and diff from our own world. like I rlly liked that although the game is about religious fanatics and church organizations there’s a very pointed spelling of christmas as xmas and w that comes its own implications for the characters and the world. there’s also a ton of typos here which could mean anything from the fact that most dialogue is said by children or the idea that most religious fanatics and zealots are commonly seen as less educated but tbh I don’t think that’s the case and rlly hope it isn’t as that’s kind of rooted in classism. or idk maybe it’s a deliberate choice to make the world feel more alien and less like our own or that the writer just accidentally put it through w some typos
-think the wordplay w nb nonbeliever enby is genuinely rlly smart cheeky commentary. all of the writing is rlly clever in regards to how it handles both gender and sexuality and it’s mostly esp subtle which is rlly nice bc I feel like the worst thing about queer art is how much it feels like it’s beating u over the head. this never does except in one moment where the camera focuses in on the word GAY in a paper written about twigs, even that I find ridiculously charming and almost funny. rlly nails down the way that adults speculate on childrens’ orientations and gender expression in a rlly gross way and how that can make ppl feel, enough of the game is about how from the moment ppl see u they’re drawing their own conclusions and perceptions about/around u.
-love the animation here, middle ground between mid 90s early cgi shorts from animation studios that would become established in the coming decades and the video art horror boom of the early 2010s. equal parts cutesy and comfy and creepy. rlly amazed w the cutscenes in epi 2 and how well they’re directed and overall in terms of staging and shooting the scenes and what a step up that is. there’s like a zoom in on the main characters faces in the opening segment of that episode that’s actually so cool and pretty. got the style of like rando mtv oddities frl. the live action moments r so beautiful…
-think it’s cool what and who they do and don’t show. like it’s very much so a point to never show the parents or grandmother, same w the fathers friend during the poker game segment. reminds me a lot of how adults are shown in peanuts, almost like non entities, npc’s if u will. the fact that the only adults we see are the lovecorp employees who look and behave alien and otherworldly but also mostly completely ageless and ethereal.
-one of the only pieces of media to rlly get down the feeling of disassociation. idk spent basically the entirety of my teenage years disassociated and disconnected from my conversations and interactions w other ppl. like Ik I had friends and I talked w them and occasionally talked to my family but I can’t rlly remember what we talked about or what we did bc I was so checked out back then. not even bc I was necessarily uncomfortable w myself but more so bc I was uncomfortable around others and w how my life was panning out. love the scenes of twigs driving w her mother and how checked out she is in those conversations. I one day won’t be able to remember conversations at all or even how ppl that were once kinda close to me looked but I’ll always remember how the roads looked.
-the bonnie coded marcie coded girls r doing yuri/yaoi again

Are we so gullible? Do we as an audience not demand anything from our art? There's no story, no new mechanics, no real characters, no interesting or enjoyable visuals, no compelling gameplay, no original ideas at all in fact. Is a faceless strawman to antagonise really enough to get millions of people to play an Unreal Engine asset flip made as artlessly as possible? Is no one else actively disturbed by how blatantly and gracelessly this rips mechanics from every popular game of the last 2 decades, without integrating any of them together whatsoever? Has art ever felt this cynical before?

Feel free to discount my opinion. I am a 'salty Pokemon fanboy' after all, and I only gave this game an hour or so of my not particularly highly valued time. I personally just prefer the art I engage with to care for the art form it sits within, even a little bit. Palworld hates video games. It sees nothing more within them than a collection of things to do and hopes that by shovelling a flaccid farcical version of as many of them as possible into your mouth it will somehow constitute a 'video game' when all is said and done. It doesn't. I'm deeply saddened that so many gamers think so lowly of our art form that they genuinely think this is acceptable.