This game is fun! With a guide too!
Ok but honestly I did actually slightly for real this time like what I was playing more than I was with Zelda 1, not sure how hot of a take this is but I enjoyed Zelda 2 far more than I did Zelda 1. Once you really get past that tough as nails introduction the dungeons become pretty straight forward and having this game have like a leveling system reminds me of those very old jrpgs and that aspect was great. I'd say above everything this game is just mid, like not a real spectacular game but a game I didn't mind beating this time around and didn't actually cause me any frustration unlike Zelda 1 did.

This game was one I had put off many, many, MANY, times. From the very beginning I knew this game was not for me and it certainly was not on the level of the previous Xenoblade Chronicles. Sure it had its faults but the first Xenoblade Chronicles is an experience I hold near and dear to my heart. When the press release footage and trailers got shown of this game I was just simply confused at everything I was seeing. What is this shift in art direction? Why is everyone look more anime than usual? Is that girls boobs bigger than her entire head? What in the actual hell is this voice acting. Questions that just formed in my head as I was watching, but you know, it's not good to judge a book by its cover. So I decided i'd pick up the game and see if maybe those thoughts of mine will change. I popped it in my switch the morning of December 25th 2017 and...
I put it down like 3 hours into the game. I just couldn't accept these changes, the protagonist literally looked like every other brown haired protag in any game and combined with the awful voice acting and character designs I just couldn't do it. I made it to the fake-out scene where Gramps "dies" and that was the end of it. Guess the Xenoblade Series isn't what I thought it was.

Fast forward to 2023, I had just finished going through Xenoblade 3, which in my opinion is still the greatest game in the series, but knowing this game had many references to 2 made me feel curious, and then I remembered I only put 3 hours into Xenoblade Chronicles 2 so maybe I should actually give it a real chance rather than passing it off as anime cringe. I told my friends about this and they proceeded to tell me if I were to ever go through it I should stream it so they can help me understand more about the game because this games tutorials flat out lie to the player and are just horrible in general, there's no way to view them again. Here we are, years later since my first playthrough, and now that I've finally gotten through the entire thing, what do I think of it? ...eh. It's ok, but let me explain myself. This review will be split into sections because with a big ass jrpg like this I have a lot to say.

Story:
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 no matter how you slice it is going for a completely different crowd in its writing and interaction. The story itself can be classified as a "Xenoblade" story but you only see that after Chapter 5 and then from there the game cuts the bullshit and actually tries to deliver a story worth telling. In my opinion the first 4 chapters are the biggest hurdles you have to go through in order to experience a semblance of interesting storytelling because those 30+ hours were miserable. Chapter 4 has to be the worst chapter in all of Xenoblade history, there's nothing of worth here and it's all pointless anime filler that amounts to nothing. You could remove this from the game and it would change nothing, that's how bad it is. Also it's stupid ass Tora focused and if you know anything about Tora, he's a huge creep who makes little girl robots in his basement like the 50 year old weirdo he is. Absolutely one of the worst characters in the game by far and every time he was on the screen I wish he wasn't. Poppi is ok tho, I feel like if she had to be in the game remove Tora and let her be her own character. But we'll get the characters soon enough.

Gameplay:
The combat in the beginning is so slow and boring, enemies are giant hp sponges and it takes way too long for you to actually start doing interesting things in combat. Ignore what anyone tells you, gacha is and will always be required to progress throughout the story and in the combat itself, it's not simply an optional thing like I was told, its a crucial mechanic you will need to learn and take advantage of in the game. If you don't like gacha in video games then i'm sorry this game will not make you change your mind. One of its biggest flaws is having to be so reliant on it, it locks behind story progression because there are certain field skills you will need to have to bypass areas just to progress the story. Your characters without any blades are useless as they need them to stand a chance to the enemy sponges and perform blade combos. If this doesn't sound fun to you then that's perfectly ok, I just gritted my teeth and just endured the amount of RNG bullshit this game had to be at times. I would have fun during a section and then boom field skills locking out my progression. It's pointless, it's annoying, and quite honestly killed off a lot of my enjoyment of the game. However, the more you progress and the more you go through the game you start to pick up on how it plays and then from there it starts to click, for me, it started to click when I was around level 75. ...which is like at the very near end of the game. jesus christ. Yeah overall the combat is NOT better than 1's in my honest opinion, it's overly simplified and also unnecessarily complex with the gacha management. I didn't even touch upon the poppi system and I don't want to because screw Tora. I didn't find it fun to just farm enemies and rather I did it out of a necessity. If you find this combat fun good for you man, more power to you. (Xenoblade 3 clears tho)

Characters:
Rex is so lame. From the very beginning he's just the same character until the end, he doesn't go through any growth, he doesn't experience anything life changing, he's just the same cardboard cutout protag we've seen done countless times. Except everyone in this game is attracted to him for some reason even though he has no redeeming qualities only other than the fact that he's an optimist. That's it. You cannot tell me straight in the eyes that Rex cares about anyone other than Pyra and Mythra because other than maybe Gramps he's shown no appreciation over his group of comrades he earns throughout the course of the story. In Xenoblade Chronicles 1 you felt like this group know each other, are close friends, have been through a lot, some don't even like each other when they first meet like Reyn and Riki. But as a JRPG group they're believable and everyone has chemistry with each other no matter how you slice it. In this game nobody feels like they know each other and the ones that do know each other are not in the spotlight anyways. Zeke, Morag, and Nia are the definite highlights of this entire game. If you go through the game and don't like these characters then you must not like good writing because man are they the only reasons I kept going. They easily stand out of the main cast and even the antagonists Jin and Malos were just a joy from start to end. That's one thing I will give XC2 credit, it has the BEST villains in all of the series, they're just so much fun to see on screen and someone like Jin has so much personality and story that further adds to his character. Screw it lets do a lightning round on these characters.

Rex: Boring, uninteresting, completely overhyped by his defenders. Is only interesting in Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed (play that one)
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Pyra: The weakest of the female blades and has nothing going for her other than she's nice, if you remove Pyra from the game nothing would change i'm sorry to say. I wish they did more with her. Also has the worst design in the game.
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Mythra: Easily the more interesting aegis and has history with people other than Rex which makes her more nuanced. Would've liked her more if she wasn't forced to fall in love with Rex because of how the game is structured but eh, you can't win them all. Good character tho.
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Nia: Amazing character from start to finish, definitely carried the beginning half of the game. Rex really fumbled with this one, but even as i'm saying this you know he actually didn't.
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Dromarch: A solid character too, no complaints here. I like him :)
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Tora: The worst character in the series, I wish he died somewhere in the story.
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Poppi: Ok, not bad but I hate how she's Toras blade and overly relies on him, even calling him master and that weird shit.
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Morag: YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH BEST GIRL BEST DRIVER WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Amazing design, badass character, should've been the protagonist.
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Brighid: Delightful. I love how much she gasses up her girlfriend, I love them so much.
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Zeke: The REAL protagonist of Zekeblade Chronicles 2, i'm sorry but if you don't think that you're objectively wrong in every single way. He does more than Rex ever does in the story, and actually talks to his companions and isn't just somebody who sits and watches from the sidelines. He carried the show for me, he's got a silly side but he knows when to be serious and his relationship with Pandoria is adorable.
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Pandoria: Pyra done right.
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Jin: The best anti-hero of the game, was really captivated through his own story and I got attached to his character as the story went on. Phenomenal.
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Malos: BEST. VILLIAN. EVER. Malos is a joy to watch from start to finish, there is not a single time where he's on screen and i'm bored he absolutely makes every scene he's in and you can tell with how his voice actor is giving in 100% to really sell us on this character driven by hatred. Peak. Enough said.

Music:
It's Xenoblade man what do you expect me to say, it's peak. Monolift Soft don't miss with these games osts.

Overall Thoughts:
While i'm glad I got to see everything this game had to offer I will admit it was still a mixed bag as I thought it'd be, there were many times where I wanted to quit because the game wasn't engaging enough or the characters were being stupid and annoying. If you really want to see what this game has going for it, and you're willing to put up with more bullshit than you can count. Then go for it, there's stuff here that's actually worth going for but overall I had a mid experience and I don't think i'll ever revisit this one sadly.

Playtime: 15 Hours
Score: 10/10

(NOTE: Recently on October 26 2023, rose engine updated the game, specifically to impove the inventory that I originally complained about in my review. You can now switch between: Classic, which is the 6 slot inventory we previously had; expanded which gives you 8 inventory slots; or revised where you still have 6 slots, but now utility items like the flashlight have their own slot and don't take up inventory space. These are great changes and I just wanted to update my review to reflect that)

Such a mesmerising experience that I absolutely loved! I love survival horror games and I love Sci Fi films like Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner, and this game combines all of those which is right up my alley!

Gameplay wise this game plays like any classic survival horror game, taking cues from both Resident Evil and Silent Hill. You have a fairly large weapon line up, with a pistol, shotgun, revolver, flare gun (that can also use grenade shells as ammo), rifle and sub machine gun. I honestly just expected a pistol, shotgun and revolver but this game really over delivered on its weapons line up and I love it. However, you also get a list of secondary items you can equip like a stun prod (which is basically like a defensive knife), thermite flares you can use to burn enemy corpses, so they don't come back (very RE1 remake), a flashlight etc.. I like that the game gives you so many options and the tools to deal with the threats. Combat uses a twin stick shooter system, which I hate playing on controllers in general, but on keyboard and mouse its very accurate and responsive. Overall, I liked the combat and the game has enough enemy variety that you often can't guess what will be waiting for you in the next room.

Puzzle wise, this game actually has some really good puzzles. Very old school in their design, but none of them felt obscure and hard to solve. They also include a radio in this game, but unlike in Silent Hill where its used to detect enemies, in this game you use it to solve many of the puzzles by listening to certain frequencies. I thought it was a clever integration of the radio and there's even a specific enemy type that you need the radio to fight, which I thought was cool, although those enemies did get annoying after a while.

Sound design is also perfect from the monsters making very unsettling noises down to the sounds the weapons make, as they sound very punchy when you fire them which adds to the satisfaction. The music is also amazing, with some very melancholic tracks that reminded me of Silent Hill, while still doing its own thing. This all adds to the games incredible atmosphere that really makes you feel isolated on this desolate planet.

As for horror, this game doesn't try as hard to scare you with jump scares or anything like that. The atmosphere does help the game, but I never felt as scared as I did playing games like Darkwood or Lost In Vivo where even an abandoned subway station scared the hell out of me, despite not much happening. The gore is used very well in this game as the mixture of anime and a PS1 art style adds to the unsettling nature of it, but its never over done that you become desensitised to it. The cut-scenes also use a lot of unsettling imagery that I will talk about more later. Overall the game has a good atmosphere and some good scares, but it wasn't as well done as I would have liked.

The story though was just beautiful. Its done in a very minimal way, as most cut scenes last less then 30 seconds, but its the imagery they use that communicates a lot without saying much. Its got a very European art house film style to it which I liked with a lot of German language and imagery, which connected with me personally, since I studied both German language and history in high school. There's also plenty of notes scattered around for you to read that does a lot of world building about the different Replika units you encounter and the setting they live in. However, these notes are vital to read to understand characters backstories and motivations as they don't outright tell you in cut scenes. There is no voice acting aside for some audio on the radio that's in German, but honestly the story was still very effective and I don't feel like it really needed voice acting to tell it.

As for complaints, I don't have that many really. The big one is the limited inventory of only 6 slots which can be frustrating to deal with. Especially since equipping items still take up inventory space. E.g. having a gun, ammo and a secondary item like a flashlight, already takes up half your space. And it can be frustrating since some puzzles require you to find multiple items to solve it, so you have to make a lot of trips back to the safe room. 6 slots is just too low even for most survival horror games. 8 slots I think would have been the magic number and while I played this game as the devs intended me too, on repeat playthroughs I'm definitely going to install mods that expand the inventory to at least 8 slots, so that its less tedious. One thing I also noticed was that once you pick up the flashlight it almost trivialises the other secondary items as you need it to explore many dark rooms to progress. The only time I took something else out was when I needed to use thermite flares to burn certain monsters that were in certain spots for convenience. Other then that, there was also one level in particular where you have no map and a lot of the games tougher enemies are everywhere, which made navigating that area an absolute pain. When you get there, definitely use a guide is all I'll say.

In conclusion, despite my issues with the inventory, this game is a masterpiece to me and I won't soon forget it. Its one of those games that I will be thinking about its story long after I have finished it, and in terms of gameplay it gives you the ultimate survival horror experience. If your into survival horror games, you owe it to yourself to play this one!

All Games I have Played and Reviewed Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/all-games-i-have-played-and-reviewed-ranked/

As I found myself circling a zombified grunt at the tutorial area of Elden Ring in order to perform the classic Souls backstab, I subconsciously knew right then and there what game I would be playing for the next 100+ hours, and not even that first sight of the ethereal Erdtree and its expansive surrounding landscape managed to swat away that sinking feeling.

"Dark Souls but open world" is a fairly justifiable tag line that Elden Ring earns with distinction for many, but it's one I interpret in a less charitable way. Considering how cruficied Bloodborne was over its optional chalice dungeon content, it's a bit surprising now to see a map filled with it deal with such little critical scrutiny by its fanbase, having an overreliance in copy pasted settings, bosses and mysteries that ends up homogenizing the experience of discovery and reward.

These issues are par for the course when dealing with the open world genre, and they would be acceptable had the space inbetween them provided any semblance of evolution on the Souls formula to acommodate the shift in scope. Double jumping horse aside, the unaltered Dark Souls moveset doesn't really offer compelling exploration outside of the small pockets of dungeon content, and when most of the interesting and unique content is relegated to the main story dungeons of the game, it's hard not to question if Elden Ring really needed to be open world in the first place.

The obssession with Dark Souls 3 boss design places you into a strict familiar pattern where stat and weapon experimentation are heavily punished, as most bosses have at least one "fuck you" move that one hit kills you for no reason, and weapon crafting insists on being a time consuming and expensive endeavor that forces you to hold onto the same high damage boring greatsword. It's telling that in a roster of 100+ bosses, Renalla, Radahn and Rykard are the only bosses I fondly remember, as they provide a challenge that goes beyond constant I-frame dodge rolling and memorizing fake out attacks.

And make no mistake, Elden Ring is Dark Souls 4, not just in the way it plays but also in the way it tells its story. Despite taking place in a different universe with new gods and lore to learn of and decipher, it has become evidently clear by now that Miyazaki and his team really have only one story to tell. Sure, it is still a fascinating story, but when I'm once again learning about secret crystal magic, beasts and dragons preceeding humanity, golden orders that are built upon lies, or chaotic forbidden flames that threathen the status quo, through the same obtuse and obfuscated dialogue and storytelling that defines these games, I struggle to find reason to engage with it with the same enthusiasm I once had for it.

Concepts like the Scarlet Rot or Destined Death are interesting enough to have had been the sole creative well to take from, but are forced to share the spotlight with the ever increasing and convoluted list of ideas Elden Ring has to offer that unnecessarily overcomplicate its world with a vast number of uninteresting factions, outer gods and characters that dont have the space to develop and enrich the universe of the game, robbing Elden Ring of the opportunity to create a laser focused experience like Bloodborne. Is Rykard's house of horrors that much different from every other castle you end up in Elden Ring? Or can we agree that the Dark Souls 3 formula has sanitized the world design of theses games to a point that they no longer have the capability to put you inside a world in the same manner Demon's Souls once could?

It's an odd thing to be this critical of Elden Ring, considering it still manages to be one of the most compelling triple A titles of recent years, with amazing creative art direction, original storytelling and engaging challenges to overcome, maintaining the strengths of the series that makes it stand out from everything else in the market, then and now. Conveying how threathening Caelid is by the mere act of the player walking into it represents some of the best environmental storytelling you will see, and the confidence to make so much of Elden Ring's content optional and secret turns the nonchalant reveal of a whole hidden area to explore beneath the overworld map one of the highlights of the series. It contains some of the best tragedy filled NPC questlines that characterizes the franchise, with Ranni's being a standout in the way it presents the most tradicional story arc in a Souls game and Diallos' being a noted highlight that feels like it could have come straight out of a GRRM book.

But at this point in time, 10+ year of Souls games, Elden Ring ironically and unintendely further reinforces metatextually the themes of stagnation and extending the life of something that has long gone past its prime. In his pursuit to perfect the Souls formula into his idealized game, Miyazaki has instead dilluted the small quirks, nuances and idiosyncrasies that made the series so groundbreaking and revolutionary all those years ago, and has fallen into a cycle of redundancy and iteration that has quickly trapped the series into a niche of comfort food. Sadly, Elden Ring is not the game we have all been waiting for that dispels the notion that open world is an inevitable flawed genre with diminishing returns, and it is also not the promise of the evolution the franchise has been desperately in need of. Maybe it is time to extinguish this flame and usher in a new age once and for all.

It's good! After 5 years of waiting for the DLC, most of the hype for it has pretty much dissipated and getting it all of the sudden like if it was 2017 all over again was a pleasant surprise. Even odder is how much this DLC feels like something that would have been released just 1 year after the main game. Nothing has fundamentally changed, it being pretty much a boss pack for players already experienced with the main campaign, smartly ditching out the run n' gun stages and focusing exclusively on the things that make Cuphead such a visual joy to play.

Part of me wished that, after 5 long years, Cuphead would bring in something more creatively challenging or at the very least evolve the boss rush concept beyond a new character to play as and a couple of new weapons and charms, but I gotta say that I appreciated this small sized encore that didn't outstay its welcome, had it been a chunkier campaign and the Cuphead fatigue would probably set in.

Hard not to once again be impressed by the level of commitment and care that the devs took with the presentation and how perfectly it encapsulates a bygone era of animation, and the challenge provided is still engaging enough to master while not frustrating to the point of giving up. In terms of criticism, I'll say that the propensity for the difficulty of Cuphead to lean on screen clutter that is hard to keep track of and that relies a bit too much on RNG for my liking is definitely most felt on this DLC. Luckily, the King's Leap stages and the secret boss alleviate this issue with unique gimmicks that force you to play differently and provide a welcoming break from the main content.

I leave Delicious Last Course with my stomach happily full, but I fear the devs now sit at a comfortable position where they can keep chucking Cuphead content out for as long as they please. If Cuphead 2 is an inevitability, then I hope this DLC serves as a victory lap for the incredibly successful endeavour this team put itself through, and doesn't become just a recipe to strictly follow for their remaining future.

The ability to somehow cobble together a sci-fi epic juggling multiple intertwining characters dealing with time travel, parallel universes, clones AND memory loss in a constantly timeline shifting plot that doesn't absolutely fall on its face is alone worthy of 13 Sentinels price of admission. Vanillaware's propensity to indulge on its talent for crafting some of the best 2D artwork ever realized in detriment of everything else is best served in 13 Sentinels, as it presents itself as a Visual Novel above all else, putting its genre comtemporaries to shame with gloriously drawn lived in backgrounds filled with small details and movement that give life and humanity to the game's bonkers story. Why can't all VNs be like this?

Despite its singular aesthetic and universe, 13 Sentinels is a treasure trove of sci-fi influences and homages that span the entire history of cinema, literature and anime, each character presenting a familiar premise that further complicates the stakes of the overall story and increasingly entangles its web with hard to keep up concepts and twists taken from your favorite formative fiction stories like E.T., Evangelion, War of the Worlds or Total Recall, to name a very short few. This admiration and obssession allows 13 Sentinels to muse and explore our relationship with media and how it inevitably informs our perception of the future and past, serving as both as escapism and a means of making sense of the present. Media dealing with the future always says more about the present, anyways.

Fitting that 13 Sentinels' situates itself in 1985, as it stands as a reflective stage of Japan history where art and socialeconomic outlook expressed the anguishes and aftermath of post-war through the lens of modern and futuristic optimism that rejuvenated the country to the world's eyes. Being a story of human failure, where puppetmasters endlessly obssess with revisiting and rectifying the past within the confinements of their own sins and biases, hoping they can somehow influence the fate of a future that no longer belongs to them, 13 Sentinels pits its cast of young passionate characters against an already unsalvageable world where its culprits are adamant in not passing the torch to the next generation. Waking up to a world suddenly being ravaged by giant robots might feel like a infantile analog for real world issues, but you have to wonder if having your homeland suffer nuclear bombing shouldnt be just as inconceivable.

Much has been said about 13 Sentinels' divide between story and gameplay, and while I do tend to champion videogames that seamlessly intertwine both components, 13 Sentinels manages to be successful in this endeavour by allowing the choice of how you wanna build the story of its characters and recontextualize on your own the partnership that happens in its RTS matrix. Playing on Intense difficulty let's the screen be flooded with seemingly never ending enemies that sells the desperation of the characters and decimating them all with a cathartic single attack never gets old. Where it falters is not so much on its detatchment from the story, but instead in how it positions itself as the culmination of it. One of the major setpieces that acts as a Macross homage doesn't hit as hard as it should because at that point you might not yet be sure why it should even matter. Minor issues that are swept aside by the emotion and fun of it all, and considering that 13 Sentinels' "RTS game" is a tangible thing in its world with inner logical explanation needed to understand the story, it's already going above and beyond what most games do.

13 Sentinels is a mess. It's convoluted, it's overcomplicated, and it's too self indulgent. But it's also beautiful, resonant, and totally japanese. It doesn't matter if you don't understand what the song is about, as long as it was sung well.

https://i.imgur.com/D1HkWTd.png

Certain video games don’t necessarily require innovation, originality or trailblazing to stand out from the crowd as works to be celebrated and classics to be. Specifically, titles in the indie scene such as Hyper Light Drifter, Dusk or ZeroRanger have proven time and time again that execution and presentation can far outweigh the well from which their ideas are stolen from, and whose aesthetic perfectionism and gameplay polish and varnish ultimately become the craft to be praised.

Signalis is one such title, unabashedly putting on full display its 5th gen survival horror roots and influences, both visually and mechanically, with a sci-fi coat of paint that covers it with a collage of homages to groundbreaking works that range from Evangelion, Blade Runner and Blame!, all the way to Tarkosvsky, Lynch and Lovecraft. Marrying Resident Evil’s resource management tension with Silent Hill’s purgatorial psychological assault lends Signalis the opportunity to evoke an unparalleled lyrical and dreamlike experience that never sacrifices the tenets from which those series made their name from, perfecting the art of environmental storytelling and backtracking revelatory dread.

In an age of understandably unsubtle and overbearing dystopian nightmares presented through art, Signalis instead places much of its totalitarian regime imagery into the background of its setting, visuals, lore and puzzles, making its love story of inevitable tragedy the central core of the narrative. The retrofuturism of Signalis serves not only as an artistic pursuit for tactile and analogue nostalgia, but also as a tool to convey the priorities of a fascist empire that has consciously dwindled the mental liberty, self-expression and unconformity of the main characters now stuck in an ever perpetuating restrictive world of redundancy and self-mutilation, doomed to a slow, empty death.

The cohesiveness in which Signalis threads its story, gameplay and art design is ultimately the game’s greatest feat. It elevates an otherwise universal and familiar language to new heights, thanks to a talented dev duo that understands the strengths of their interests and influences and manages to funnel into a production effort that would put many triple A endeavors to shame. Can’t wait for what rose-engine has in store next, this is a homerun already.

Ikaruga is a game I respect. While the brilliant simplicity and genius of its polarity mechanic and the way it intrisically threads Ikaruga's aesthetic with the game's challenge and scoring is a craft I'm deeply fascinated with, its art remains inaccessible to someone like me who is incapable of conquering its methodical demanding difficulty reserved only for the greatest of masochists. By stage 3 my grip on the controller is long gone, as the synapses of my small brain fail to register the assault of shifting color threat and I'm inevitably resigned to abuse the unlimited continues boon that ultimately turns Ikaruga into a vacuous theme park ride devoid of its initial purpose.

While Radiant Silvergun doesn't at all abandon the Ikaruga ethos of being a near impenetrable gauntlet of overwhelming enemy and boss patterns to be decoded with twitch precision, the versatility of its weaponry lend the player a level of expression, freedom and puzzle solving that avoids the pitfalls of its spiritual successor that would constrict you into an eternal scrolling of repeating mistakes and hardships that deplete all your lives in the same recurring manner. Added to that, the Story Mode provides a clever compromise over an unlimited continues system that has the difficulty scaling towards you in unison, giving the illusion of progress and personal improvement instead of feeling like outright cheating.

But Arcade Mode is of course where Radiant Silvergun truly shines. Unlike the immediacy of other shmups where the road to success mostly lies in the ability to dodge and shoot everything, mastering the color chain scoring is a requirement you will be forced to engage with in order to level up your weapons and diminish the chances of imminent death, a prospect that finally reveals the link between Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga, in addition to the counter intuitive Destruction scoring where you allow the bosses to last longer and strike harder for a chance at a higher score.

Treasure have a natural talent for taking any genre and making it their own, and Radiant Silvergun is no exception. The unique mechanics and challenge of Radiant Silvergun are accompanied by an ever crescending orchestral bombastic soundtrack and beautifully 32bit backgrounds that elevate the scope and portentousness of its exhausting and rewarding apocalypse to a league beyond most shmups, allowing the noobest of noobs like me to feel fullfillment with the completion of Easy Mode.

When discussing sequels that fully realize the potential of the original's premise, elevating it to a level of perfection and showmanship that would forever be near impossible for subsequent entries to overcome, you will be hard pressed to find a better example than Silent Hill 2. That isn't to say that SH1 wasn't already lightning in a bottle, but the level of confidence and talent Team Silent poured into its sequel, just 2 mere years later, is nothing short of amazing to witness.

While Harry Mason's plight in SH1 was easy to sympathize and engage with, there was always a level of detachment between the personal search for his daugther and the source of the emotional trauma that the town of Silent Hill manifested. By shifting the subconscious reflection of the town from a NPC to the player character itself, Team Silent creates with James Sunderland one of the most fascinating explorations of the human psyche and is able to more expertly utilize the setting to inform the state of mind of its victim through a much subtler and escalating process.

This switch in perspective also enables Team Silent to put aside the literalization of Silent Hill's cursed nature as the result of a devil worshiping cult in service of a much more Lynchian approach to storytelling that lends SH2 its ethereal and fleeting somber atmosphere. And don't get me wrong, the cult stuff is still there, and I wouldnt have it in any other way. But by putting that context into the background instead of being the main focus, it imprints SH2's setting with an odd believability and suspension of disbelief that turns it into one of the best purgatory stories ever told.

With the leap to the 6th generation, every aspect that made SH1 special is further iterated and expanded on. The lighting effects are greatly improved and still a marvel to look at, working in tandem with an even more unreliable and claustrophobic camera that Team Silent confidently utilizes to create dread and horror out of every angle and point of view possible. The mundanity of the suburbian spaces you walk through is even more apparent and scary, with each room you pass by being filled with detail and texture that new gen games wouldn't dare mimic. Even the soundscape of SH2 is vastly improved upon, filled with wailings, heavy breathings and industrial clangs and bangings that give an unsettling life to the town.

These tools and devices end up working so well together, that for the most part SH2 is more than happy to let the implications of horror work their way on you instead of actually presenting any real threat, fully aware that the player's mind can do all the work inside a dark empty room. Which makes the actual few and far between jumps scares that much more memorable. It has been 20 years and the Silent Hill Historical Society still remains one of the finest horror moments in all of fiction.

And everyone already knows how well executed the story and revelations of SH2 are. To this day, you will not find many games willing to successfully tackle such serious and morally taxing subject matters with the level of nuance and sincerity that is displayed in Mary's letter. Silent Hill 2 has installed itself as one of the Greats in the videogame halls of history, and weirdly enough that has given it nowadays a target on its back, similar to games like Shadow of the Colossus or Nier Automata. And I kinda understand, Silent Hill 2 is an easy game that anyone can latch onto for quick "videogames are art" cred, but going against the tide here feels like sorta trying to trash Goodfellas. And you don't wanna be the guy who trashes Goodfellas, do you?

If anything, take solace in the fact that SIlent Hill 2 still manages to filter such renowned and prestigous videogame critics such as this one after all these years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lhy9QnBHmo&ab_channel=MrStuntAction

Insane that we got one of the most empathetic and compassionate series of games towards people suffering from mental illness in the early 2000s and outside of indie games, nothing has come close since.

It'd be really funny that if Konami brought it back they'd hire the studio with games that are the complete opposite of that.

EDIT (Oct 20th 2022): if only you knew how bad things really were.