as of late following a friend finishing Skyward Sword for me over discord, brainworms have been revitalised regarding the Zelda franchise and i'm finding myself in a fixated race to play entries i can get my hands on. like others i was a kid who didn't have many opportunities to buy new games and would often replay the ones i did own to absolute mind-numbing ultradeath, with my usual suspect being Phantom Hourglass for the DS. along with The Sims 2 for PSP it was one of my first experiences with the Tetris Effect and i harbour a lot of nostalgia for this sequel to a game i had never even heard of, and in 2024 i'm visiting another in A Link Between Worlds.

i was an impatient and petty-minded teen when i was taught emulation by my brother and quickly grew frustrated with A Link to the Past for entirely minor reasons (2d, grid based movement and combat, the dark world confused me, link's hair was purple (seriously?)). i couldn't believe this was the same series as the toon link i knew and loved and promptly discarded it after trying to restart any interest in it over and over, my favourite Zelda song ironically being the Hyrule Castle theme; probably due to my repeated experiences of the game's prologue.

it's this background that has me feeling guilty about how much i adored ALBW. featuring 1:1 cast members of its predecessor, a light/dark world transition, a new creative gimmick in the wall merge, and an incredible supporting character found in Ravio, what i see many refer to as the best 2d Zelda game delighted me over the few days i spent playing through it. coming from my background of PH and now SS, ALBW boasts snappy and engaging puzzle design in comparison within and without the dungeons spotting the kingdom with a sprinkling of platforming, highlighted within Death Mountain. on top of it all, the wall merge remains thrilling all the way to the very last second of gameplay, its use within the final boss encounter cementing ALBW's grasp on Zelda as a whole.

the score, art direction, overall worldfeel, dungeon design, and the narrative of manipulation vs ultimate charity is enchanting. it was just such a sweet experience, shoutout to Skull Woods and the Thieves' Hideout.

There is little I can write about Skies of Arcadia that doesn't make it sound like a generic JRPG. Yet its excellence of execution makes it a quintessential RPG, and one of the best games of all time.

It took me around 35 hours to finish this game. Not for a single minute of that time was I bored, or in need of a break, or lacking enjoyment. Skies of Arcadia Legends has enough content in it for five games; I'm amazed they managed to fit it all on a single GameCube disc.

This game captures the joy of exploration in a way that many games attempt, but few succeed. The simple act of sailing through the skies, or climbing a ladder - seeing the beautiful JPEG skybox stretched out before you - or visiting a new town and seeing the designs and mannerisms of the characters there... it instilled me with such happiness. Skies of Arcadia owes a lot to its lovingly crafted world.

The characters and their motivations are hardly original, but they are so absorbing that it doesn't matter. The game also captures all that was good about anime in the 90s - there is humour, there is friendship, there is personal growth, there is love. The story takes inspiration from classic literature to imbue its characters with pathos and its environments with intrigue. We have a Captain Ahab parallel in Drachma, whose tale ends on possibly a more profound note than Moby Dick itself did; we have the mystique of the 'dark continent' portrayed in Ixa'taka; even Robinson Crusoe shows up at one point.

It's not exactly flawless: the random encounter rate is very high, and the battle animations drag on a bit. The ship battle animations are outright overlong. Some boss fights will take 40 minutes to an hour. But I didn't mind very much. Some games just have 'it' - maybe it's because the battle theme doesn't suck, but even when Skies of Arcadia shows its age and flaunts its dated aspects, it's fun to play.

Yet if I told you this was a turn-based JRPG where you explore the world to find six crystals to stop an evil empire, you'd think it's all been done before. Trust me, it's never been done this well. Skies of Arcadia feels fresh at every turn, and is a fulfilling adventure that should've already been remastered by now. All this game needs is a fast-forward button for the battle animations and widescreen support, and it'll be perfect for a new generation to discover its appeal. Go pester Sega about it.

I made a fairly snarky quip for my review of this game before, but I felt the need to expand on at least one point I have against this game to feel right in rating the game this low.

This game has a number of things going for it, but the way it handles its cast ruins it for me and makes it a noticeable step back from 1 in my eyes. The best characters of this game, like Fuyuhiko easily surpass anyone from the original game, but these are few and far between in a group that mostly feels flat character-wise. Most of the characters don't really have much to do in the plot besides act out their over-the-top personalities, which feels far more blatant in this game than the others. One could argue that V3 goes even further with making the cast extremely over-the-top, but it's less egregious since they have more going on besides that with a web of relationships and internal conflicts that keep them engaging throughout. 2 really doesn't have that besides Nagito's actions and a love triangle that doesn't really add much. In fact, I'd say it actively snuffs out a dynamic like that before it can really go anywhere. It's disappointing after DR1, while not doing it masterfully, was effective at keeping tension within the group high in meaningful ways. I think the game is held back by a few other aspects outside of the characters, but they're definitely what make its faults hard to look past.

Substantial improvement over Trigger Happy Havoc in nearly every way. The cast is so endearing and lovable, and much more consistently written. Even people who I disliked or didn't care for at the beginning ending up completely changing my perspective of them. When the murders eventually start happening, it genuinely hurts to see a character you've gotten to know so well either die or be found out as the culprit - there's some real emotional gut-punches to be found that just aren't there in the prequel. The gimmicks within investigation periods are also brilliant; the separate game to find out the culprit, the funhouse, the main idea of Case 5, it all feels really experimental and it definitely paid off, every case (excluding 3) is superbly written and so damn engaging. The trials are much more involving as well; attacking with the correct piece of evidence and figuring out the culprit is actually more challenging since you don't have someone like Kyoko giving away all the hints, the addition of agreeing with someone in Nonstop Debate is also a clever addition. The Run-2/3-esque Logic Dive is fun as hell to navigate. The truth blades... kind of fucking suck and feel redundant, I would much rather just play another Nonstop Debate, and well Hangman's Gambit will just always be complete shit - but somehow they made it worse here. Really the only other aspect that THH does better in, is the setting and atmopshere. For what it's worth, Goodbye Despair is a near perfect sequel.

The NieR of Sonic games...? What?

I never played a Sonic game before, but after reading Phantasm's review and having heard Wheatie advocate for this game for quite some while now, I decided to finally check out the series with Sonic Adventure - and I'm glad I did!

To make sense of the weird opening one-liner, Sonic Adventure is a game told through the eyes of six different characters - which means you need to play through the story six different times to fully understand what's going on. Each character comes with an unique gimmick and win condition, ranging from collecting Emerald Shards as Knuckles to catching a pet frog as Big the Cat. The narrative itself is nothing groundbreaking, it's fairly standard fare with Eggman trying to use an ancient evil named Chaos to destroy the local Station Square and rebuild it under his management. Chaos is an interesting villain though, since he functions basically the same as Resident Evil's Nemesis and you fight him several times with different characters in different power levels, as he grows in power each time he consumes a Chaos Emerald (you see, the name is as straightforward as it gets). As for the individual character stories themselves, you're free to approach them in any order you'd like, as long as you met the character in Sonic's story and the game will notify you when a new story is available. Only after completing all six story modes, you'll gain access to an epilogue and be able to fight the true final boss.

The levels themselves have some interesting mechanics, and they especially get to shine in Sonic's levels (as he's not a gimmicky character), I'll take the Lost World level as an example. While Knuckles can just crawl up the walls here with his moveset, Sonic has to rely on switches that allow him to walk on certain anti-gravity tiles on the wall or use mirrors to shine light on mirrors to illuminate a dark path. But it doesn't always have to be so complex, sometimes snowboarding down a giant mountain with an avalanche in the background is all you need. Even if I had a fun time with most of the levels, one of my biggest complaints is still the rebellious auto camera, which especially hates Sonic zooming through the zones at lightning speed and then jumps to some nonsensical angles, causing you to have no clue what's going on and miss your inputs. I'm not particularly mad at those camera shenanigans (would be lying if I told you it wasn't funny), but there are times where the jank goes from charming to annoying territory. Another thing I'd like to address is the strange progression sometimes outside of levels in the hub worlds. Thankfully there are red hint orbs in the game telling you where to go when you're feeling lost, but even then, sometimes the hints are so vague that I still found myself resorting to GameFAQs guides in order to locate where to head next. This would hardly be an issue on replays, but I couldn't find the raft for the life of me the first time I had to use it.

Sonic Adventure is a very ambitious game for the time it released and it's not only reflected in the level design, but also in the soundtrack, which covers a variety of musical genres and also uses higher quality instruments as opposed to a MIDI soundfont, which was possible thanks to the Dreamcast's advanced audio hardware. My favorite song is Amy's theme, My Sweet Passion, but I'm also particularly fond of Tikal's Theme and Mechanical Resonance. The Egg Carrier Theme needs a shoutout for itself, just for how catchy it is.

In the end, Sonic Adventure was a nice little departure from all the JRPGs I've played recently and I'm now eager to try the acclaimed Adventure 2 and other Sonic games in general - this includes the Steam version of Sonic Adventure DX, where I'm hoping to go for 100% when I get to it :D