Why she walk like Sly Cooper tho

Anyway, it's... pretty good! I was so instantly captivated by its moody atmosphere and strong sound design, it only took 20 minutes of playing for me to stop just to tell my friends that they should probably check this out. Part-time Hotline Miami in its surreal choice of colors, and part-time Killer7 in its viscerally gushing fountains of blood. The blend of sniper and puzzle genres is a very unique one, and the emphasis on taking out every enemy with nothing but a single ricocheting bullet leads to some very satisfying victories once you nail down the right order.

Puzzle games are not usually my strong suit, and I grow impatient with them far more easily than I should. Most of the time, my brain just ain't capable of thinking several steps ahead, I think in the moment instead. Despite this, I've found that Children of the Sun's difficulty is relatively lenient for the majority of the game's 3-4 hour duration, and allows for multiple solutions to one problem with a little bit of improvisation. At the same time, none of it felt mindless, and I still felt like I had to put in the effort to clear a good chunk of the stages. The balance was struck very well here to make dumbos like me feel a little more clever, while at the same time leaving the option for more skilled play depending on what you can come up with.

I feel like the only exception to this was the final level, which I think escalated the difficulty way too suddenly from the previous stages. We've gone from somewhat tricky but short-length stages, to a marathon that demanded twice the amount of steps than anything before. Losing here felt really draining, and having to think about replicating everything I just did was even moreso. I think this could've been in part fixed if the game remembered the position from where you fired at, so I wouldn't have to walk over there each time. Hiding a bunch of the mooks inside buildings was also a bit of a frustrating process that led to a bunch of time wasted just trying to scout them out across several failed attempts. I nearly gave up here, but eventually pushed on through and won. It's just a shame that for every single level I felt satisfied in, the finale was the only one where satisfaction was replaced with a feeling of relief instead.

Even so, it can't be ignored that for 95% of Children of the Sun's duration, I had a ton of fun. One subjectively frustrating level aside, this is still a raw as hell video game, and one that paints a very strong first impression for its developer. They're definitely on my radar now, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they'll create next.

So, here I finally am. Face-to-face with THE childhood game, the one that I have so much nostalgia for, it should speak enough to how completely skeeved this review could turn out to be. As much as I did always wish to get my hands on a copy of Crash 2 or 3 as a kid, at the time I could only ever experience those games at a friend's house, or via a short-lived rental. My game collection as a whole, was poor and miserable compared to my friends. I had approximately 20 games I could not give a single shit about, a copy of Final Fantasy 8 that froze on the CG opening, Spyro 2 & Rayman 2 were fun until they mysteriously disappeared from my house, Crash Bash was a thing until I tried putting it into my pocket and effectively crumpled the disc... oh, and one day, I got super excited to find a copy of Tekken 3 hiding behind one of the drawers! Only to be underwhelmed when I found out it was just the demo. Also, no memory card for any of this. At least I still had my PS2- oops, my sibling gave it to a friend who then literally ran off with it and never gave it back. Hm, I guess that only leaves Rayman 1... and this game as the two remaining things I could play for months upon months. Hey, at least those had the password system.

So, I've been thinking about who do I actually want to write this review for, and from what sort of perspective. I mean, just because I've amassed triple digits worth of playthroughs on Crash Bandicoot 1, that doesn't mean I wanna blindly defend it as the best platformer ever made, or whatever the fuck. Even with my bias, I wanna try looking at this from an objective viewpoint. And for most newcomers, the objective viewpoint of Crash 1 is gonna likely be "the Super Mario 64 competitor that is nowhere near as impressive." Despite this criticism, the PS1 trilogy of Crash games still ended up being highly profitable. They were a major cornerstone of the console, and even deemed to be the unofficial mascot of PlayStation for its 64-bit tenure. Why? What do people see in this basic run-of-the-mill platformer that goes beyond just blind nostalgia goggles? Let's figure this out first.

Personally, the first Crash was put in a rather unfair position by its own marketing team, and to a certain extent, by its own creators. Which might not've felt like it at the time, but it certainly feels more poorly aged now. Crash Bandicoot strolling up to Nintendo's HQ with a megaphone, cementing himself as "the moustache man's worst nightmare," also cemented himself as a revolutionary. With the PlayStation succesfully swooping in and establishing a lucrative playerbase, the internet was pining for a war. The elusive Mario killer, the people's craving for a 3D PlayStation platformer properly satisfied, and one that would give them a reason to shittalk Nintendo fans for "still playing those baby Mario games." The burden of all that fell to Crash.

But the matter of the fact is, Crash was never going to live up to those expectations. Naughty Dog was a team of like 8 to 9 people, the main leaders of which have never even created a 2D platformer before. By '94, Nintendo have exhausted everything they wanted to do with the 2D Mario formula. They had the experience, and were ready to design a wholly new type of game. Naughty Dog meanwhile, had to stay behind, and play catch-up on what even makes a platformer fun at all. Whereas Nintendo was ready to ask themselves "How do we design a 3D platformer," Naughty Dog was over there figuring out how to design a 2D one. And then they simply adapted that design into a 3D space. The ambitions were there, but they were more humble. Yet, they were needlessly blown out of proportion to be on the same level as fuckin' Mario, I mean, come on. It's no wonder newcomers expect more out of Crash than what they actually get.

Now, the thing is, Crash 1 did not have the open-endedness of Mario 64, nor did it have the huge moveset. The most that could be argued is that Crash looked pretty damn good for its age, and looks appealing even today thanks to prioritizing cartoonism over realism. So, is that it, then? Did people only like Crash just because it "looked" good? Just a bunch of style over substance? And here's where my defense comes in: It's worth noting that I did not grow up with Crash Bandicoot 1 back in 1996. I didn't exist back then. Really, my era of playing video games came around 2007 or 2008. And our family was ALWAYS several console generations behind. My cool friend with the sweetest, kindest mother you could imagine, he owned an Xbox 360 and GTA4. I pictured him as the god of the neighbourhood, because me and the rest were stuck with consoles like the NES, the Gameboy, and the PS1. I had the comparison point, so I was firmly aware that Crash 1 was not the pinnacle of graphical prowess, nor innovation by the time I started playing it. So then, if I wasn't impressed by its sheer novelty, then what was it actually about Crash 1 that stuck with me to this day? And, it's really not that complicated: It's not about nostalgia. The game is simply fun.

Sometimes, you don't need a game to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes, what you want is something familiar, something that has been done before, something simple that you can figure out how to play within 20 seconds. Leading industry publishers keep trying to tell me how linearity is an antiquated concept that nobody wants anymore, and I think that's genuinely insulting and ignorant to say. Sure, I like squeezing in an open world into my docket every now and then, but I can't deal with that sort of scope ALL the god damn time, it's an exhausting commitment. There is still room for 5-hour hallway platformers out there. These are my palette cleansers between longer titles, this is my comfort food. There was room for this sort of platformer even back then. Have you seen how people played that Mario 64 beta booth? They were utterly befuzzled by the game, because half the challenge was learning a new, daunting control scheme, a new type of analog controller, all within a completely new and unfamiliar dimension. Crash 1 was criticized for a lack of innovation, but that doesn't mean it didn't have a place back in 1996. Because Crash 1 was capable of offering comfort and familiarity, that in turn gave it something that Mario 64 did not have. The ability to ease into this new era of 3D gaming.

The only condition left is that the game has to flow. And, I don't know about everybody else, but to me? Crash 1 absolutely flows. A big mistake that many failed attempts at mascot platformers committed at the time, often fell to the level designers having next to no grasp of what makes a platformer flow. Their solution was to either make everything a maze, to create a needless amount of open space, make their levels three or four times as long than they needed to be, or, worst case scenario: Copy and paste. It's a relief then to say that Crash 1 avoids just about every single one of these trappings, albeit I can think of at least two levels that go on for maybe twice as long as they should. Yes, hello, I see you, Sunset Vista. Aside from this, I do think that the highly streamlined nature of each level allowed Naughty Dog to gain a solid grasp on how to escalate the challenge, starting off from the first stage that takes you through a simple and cozy variety of setpieces, before slowly ramping up the precision required from you over the course of time. The game is notorious for getting pretty difficult in its 2nd half. Unfair, though? Not at all. Everything comes together with practice. Part of what helps make this practice possible is that that extra lifes are extremely abundant throughout. So abundant, that part of the fun of Crash 1 is seeing just how quickly I can get up to 99 lifes, which generally, I max out about 40% through the game.

In the end, all you're doing is walking, jumping, and spin attacking enemies and crates alike. It's a horrendously basic gameplay loop, but it's made engaging through the skill and reaction timing it demands out of you. There is no such thing as going through the motions here. The stages are constantly testing you to stop and think about the right positioning and timing. This is coupled with a strong amount of level variety - far stronger than games like Crash 2 or 3 even - where level themes are at most repeated only once, but as you start getting closer to the end of the game, plenty of stages start introducing level themes that are unique to themselves, and never repeated anywhere else. Each level theme introduces you to a new set of obstacles, enemies, and at times changes the camera perspective to shake things up. Some levels are 3D only, some are 2.5D, one's a top-down exploratory stage, and of couse there's the iconic boulder chase stages. Though graphics may not be everything, visual variety is important to keep aspects of the gameplay fresh, and considering Crash 1's simplicity, these are highly important additions to retain engagement in what sort of challenge awaits you next.

Alright, now let's balance things out here. The criticisms. Crash 1 sports two stages themed around riding a hog. A neat way to keep in line with the goal of variety, but the hitboxes on these seriously needed another pass. You know the fucking bit I'm talking about if you've played Crash 1, the obstacle with the rotating pole thing? The one where everytime you jump over it, you clench your ass over the 50% chance that it might just kill you no matter how precisely you timed your jump? Yeah, that, and the one part where you gotta zig-zag left and right to break open all the crates, but god is just begging for you to somehow miss one of them so that way he finds us too amusing to be deemed a mistake. The silver lining is that though these sequences were spiritually brought back in Crash 2, they were vastly improved on.

Speaking of "breaking open the crates" and "mistakes", let's get into Crash 1's biggest mistake, the one that pertains to completionists. So, there are all these crates scattered across every stage. You bounce or you break them open so you can get the wumpa fruit, you collect 100 wumpa fruit, you earn a life. The act of breaking the crates is pretty satisfying in itself, but get this: if you break ALL the crates in a stage (not counting the ones found in the bonus levels), you get a gem at the end of it. Get all gems in every stage, you unlock an alternate ending. Ooh, it's a collect-a-thon now! How fun! What's more, there are certain stages you won't be able to immediately do a 100% crate run on... but there are these special Colored Gems, which unlock new paths in previous stages. Sometimes it's just these very small rooms that contain the remaining crates you need, but other times they're total extensions of the level, about 1-3 more minutes of platforming that you wouldn't be able to see otherwise. In the end, the game is still pretty short in spite of these additions, so this all sounds like a pretty nice way to appeal to collectible fans, right?

Okay, now imagine if they fucking hated you though, and made it so aside from having to obtain all crates in a level, you also have to perform a no-death run. Die once in a stage, and all those crates you collected won't mean anything, the game will simply not grant you the gem. Why????? Well, I know why. It was to prevent rentals. This sort of needless artificial difficulty was the justification to pad out game length. If you're just playing the game casually without worrying about the gems, you will objectively have a better time! Otherwise however, going for the gems effectively means that you will be abolishing all checkpoints. Every death will be followed by the two loading screens required to restart each stage. I have gotten good enough at Crash Bandicoot 1 to be perfectly capable of clearing a 100% run. I do not expect many people will have the patience to do the same. The no-death requirement makes this a stupidly stressful ordeal.

Which is why... I'm tempted to recommend that newcomers should play the remake version of Crash 1, found in the N.Sane Trilogy. They've done some very commendable things to streamline the 100%ing of the first game, primarily by removing the no-death requirement almost completely. The only exception is that you still have to do a no-death run for the 6 levels that contain the Colored Gems, but that's a way more reasonable compromise over having to do a no-death run over the whole goddamn game. There's just one catch... the remake is infamously known for its questionable hitboxes, which make certain levels that demand precision far harder to beat than they are in the original. I've gotten used to these physics myself personally, but far too many horror tales are told about the bridge level.

This all leads to the following conundrum: There is no definitive way to play Crash Bandicoot 1. The original is tight and precise to play, but its 100% requirements are awful. The remake makes these 100% requirements much better, but the gameplay loses the tightness and precision in the process. As a long-time fan, my personal recommendation is that you should do a casual run of the original Crash 1. But that's only if you're really interested in a chronological look in the series. If you're willing to go out of order, then I wholeheartedly recommend the original Crash 2. If you thought Crash 1 was too simple for your tastes, Crash 2 expands on the moveset in some very fun ways, makes its difficulty more accessible, and its 100% requirements considerably more doable. Worst case scenario if you can't emulate, the remake is generally fine for what it does, though it does require some adjusting.

Regardless, I have a lot of thoughts about the other games, but... I think this is where I'll wrap it up for now. Crash 1 is not incredible. I was so swept up in writing the rest of this review, I didn't even mention the native american stereotyping going on here, which yeah, I could certainly fuckin' do without. It is not the Mario killer and it sure as shit ain't gonna get anywhere close to the level of Mario 64. But it doesn't need to. It never, ever needed to. It is the simplicity of Crash 1 that I adore. That total confidence in delivering a platformer that everybody just gets instantly, was Crash 1's biggest strength in an era where companies tried to deliver unfamiliar experiences all the time. A lot of it must've been really overwhelming to people who had a harder time adapting. And it's thanks to Crash that there was still some speck of appreciation for the older era of gaming to be found. Innovation is a great thing. But there are times when I just wanna go backwards, to see that 3 hours is all I need to feel completely satisfied with a game.

Just as long as, y'know, you price it accordingly.

The vibe of the the first Nights game is one of the closest things to magic that I'm capable of feeling as an adult. Thanks to its combination of nostalgically polygonal graphics, an easy to get into gameplay loop, a vibrant art style, and an absolutely sublime soundtrack, I feel one with Nights, in the same way that its main protagonists do. Though it may not necessarily be a Christmas-themed game, it elicits that same sense of wonder I had as a kid. Watching those old Christmas DVD's, finding myself escaping to a world where everything feels exactly right, exactly as it should. Free of worries, and full of joy. Life is but a dream, and the night is synomous with beauty, not the risk of getting mugged in an alley.

Admittingly, I just said that the gameplay is easy to get into, but during my first couple attempts, I didn't actually get what Nights wanted out of me. You do combo chains by collecting as many things as possible, okay, I'm with you so far. You can draw circular trails to attract nearby objects, that's pretty cool too. You break open the capsule with enough collectibles gathered, and then you head over to the goal, to proceed with the next segment of the level. But the one thing I couldn't grasp is why did I keep getting D ranks and F ranks for my efforts. In hindsight though, my effort was bare minimum.

Nights is a score-based game, and though it leaves the option of heading straight for the endgoal open to you, unlocking the game's finale requires a series of high scores. To get them, what you really want to do is go AROUND the endgoal instead, and do another loop of the stage, which causes all of the collectibles to respawn. And then you do another loop, and another. And all the while, your time limit continues ticking down, meaning that while each loop is a chance to score additional points and improve your rank, the time you have to do so grows tighter, and at some point, you'll have to choose whether you want to risk another loop, or call it there and move on to the next segment. Playing Nights this way turns it into a game all about risk, seeing how much you can chew off, and how much faith are you able to place on your skill and efficiency. I don't normally say stuff like this, but I think it's valid enough to say that if if you're not playing Nights in this way, you are gonna get very little out of the experience. Otherwise, what's at play is an incredibly unique gameplay system that elegantly combines a simple control scheme with a satisfying depth in how you utilize it, and what sorts of choices you make with it.

I think the only real problem with Nights into Dreams is kind of the one we echo for more recent Nintendo Switch games: The fact that it was made for the Sega Saturn, instead of a more powerful console. Though arguments can be made on just how underpowered the Saturn was, fact is that most developers didn't know how to utilize it to its fullest potential. Nights itself suffers from its console's limitations, resulting in a depressingly low draw distance, and a poor field of view that gives the classic Sonic games a run for their money. Especially as you start picking up speed, it's really not easy to plan ahead for anything before you ram into it head-on. The modern ports provide a better draw distance, and I consider them the better way to play. But the field of view still remains an unfixed problem. At some point, it'd be nice to have a version of the first Nights game where things get zoomed out a bunch, but considering the nicheness of this franchise, it may take another 10 years before we get anything that nice...

Ah, well. Even with this flaw at hand, Nights is very short and really not that hard to play. Anyone who carries the same fascination I have with these sorts of old 3D games owes it to themselves to try it out. Unconventional games like this don't get greenlit often these days, they'd be deemed too much of a risk to even make it out of the pre-production phase. The very idea that Sega even allowed Sonic Team to go through with this instead of putting them on a major Sonic title is in itself an insane decision. Were mistakes made? Oh, no doubt there were several. But I respect the freedom of Nights into Dreams's existence way too much to call it one of them.

Princess Peach Showtime, a game where you press button A to jump, and button B to win.

Not for nothing, this is actually a well put together thing. It was just obviously designed with a 20-year younger audience than myself. Showtime isn't concerned with putting its playerbase in risky situations (unless you're going for those rehearse gold trophies, those ones actually gave me some shit), or getting them to think a puzzle over. It carefully crafts the illusion that it's doing both of these things through its theatrically elaborate spectacle, but that illusion only exists to fool a younger audience into thinking that all the flashy lights and big cutscene moments mean that they're really good at playing the game. Feel Good's goal is in their very company name: You're here to press that B button, and feel very good about yourself.

I can't say that this sort of design mantra makes for a very replayable experience. I'll give it credit and say that 8 hours of longevity is double the amount that I was honestly expecting, but throughout these 8 hours, you're basically getting shoved from one baby's first platforming challenge, to another. The speed at which it shoves you is breakneck enough that there's a very impressive amount of variety to be had here, and it's a major factor that kept me interested in reaching the credits.

But the ideas at hand are just never evolved enough to mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, not to mention their pace is constantly broken (not broken up, just broken) by unskippable cutscenes. This especially becomes an issue when the post-game introduces a new set of collectibles that basically asks you to re-run every single stage again. But with this amount of unskippable scenes, do you honestly expect me to bother? So because there's no satisfaction to be obtained from the mechanical side of things, your main source of satisfaction will come down to the visual aspect, so y'know, the spectacle. The biggest problem with this, is whereas gameplay depth makes your game more exciting on subsequent runs, visual depth will only carry the first go-around.

Keeping all this in mind, I've still had a very pleasant experience with Princess Peach Showtime. I just don't have any reason to play it ever again. That sucks. But, that's not gonna be a problem with kids. Take it from me, kids can play one game hundreds of times if it looks cool enough, and that's exactly what this game was built for. That mysterious ability to make endless fun out of one thing, that grown-ups like us lose over time.

I really like this new direction for Peach, on a side note. The voice direction stuck out to me especially, cutting away from the over-the-top high-pitched damsel voice in favor of just having her speak like a regular-ass person is a big plus in my book. Also, Dashing Thief Peach genuinely rules, did you even hear this song yet? Her segments were some of the coolest parts of the game, and it makes me kinda wish they made an entire game just around that concept. Kind of like a parallel to Barbie, what this game shows is that Peach can be more than just one person, one profession, one aspect of a personality. And if we can get more takes of that going forward - something with a little more meat on the bone if I'm being hopeful - then I'm all for it.

Do you know why I'm here today? Why has fate brought me to this site, writing these words for this review, with such passion for video games? Well, actually, it's not because I grew up with Mario 64, though you were close. The actual answer is way stupider:

Mario 64 blooper videos taught me english.

And I'm not talking about those SMG4 Mario 64 videos, those were actually past my prime, I was already on my way to other pastures by the time they started coming out. Nah, I'm talking the REAL old school shit, Fleskhjerta with his Windows Movie Maker editing prowess and overly liberal usage of Homer Simpson sounds. Truth is, I haven't actually gone back to most of those videos since 2010, I figure whatever the hell is waiting for me back there is either gonna be embarrassing for both me and Fleskhjerta alike, or just outright poorly aged. Maybe one day I'll ruin the magic for myself, but right now, the point is, those things were some of the very earliest opportunities for me to practice english as my second language. I mean, I don't remember them being particularly varied in their word and joke usage, so y'know, hear a pattern enough times and eventually it'll stick as being something in relation to this or that specific scenario. There's a very distinct possibility that amongst my first 10 learned words, one of them was "Mamafucker."

So in that way, Mario 64 has stuck out as something that didn't just revolutionize the industry landscape as a whole, but has also revolutionized my path in life, and the very reason why this is my main language now, with the other one being bumped into a secondary. And that's not the only things that Mario 64 had an impact on. It had an impact on the prototype and rumor mill scene too. The ever elusive quest to find Luigi, to find a beta copy, to uncover every unknown secret that's still somewhere, out there. The impact that Mario 64 had on 2D games, poisoning the entire genre to supposed obsoletion, until eventually people got their heads on straight and realized both can co-exist.

So much impact all around, yet there is one thing that very few games have ever replicated about Mario 64, and that's its impressively technical moveset. Spyro, Banjo, Jak, Sly, all excellent games in their own right, but everything feels a little more "controlled" in those ones, it's not as easy to pull off crazy unintended moves. Of all the ways they've been impacted by this moustached fuck, they never quite replicated that absolute joy of being able to break every stage with just a little bit of freeform acrobatics. Those sorts of influences would only be felt much later, in the form of games like Hat in Time, and Pseudoregalia.

Is the camera a bit shit in today's age? Absolutely. Does the athletic theme drive me insane after hearing it for the 60th time? That too. But for every instance I return to Mario 64, my increasing knowledge of it turns it into a slightly different game each time. A seemingly huge, sprawling world turned into a small, contained playground. Walls turned from obstacles to shortcuts, roads that I once commonly traveled are now roads I can skip altogether, higher ledges that were once out of reach, I can now easily wallkick up towards. Every playthrough, I find a new route, a new way to beat a stage, a new experiment to attempt, and it fucking rules. It rules that 15 years later, I can still find new things in a game that takes less than 10 comfortable hours to beat. And the craziest part of it is, I still haven't played this game with anything else but a keyboard.

This moveset, this unabashed freedom that Mario 64 permits, the ability to solve every objective in a variety of different ways, in different orders, or even choosing what you want and don't want to do, is why it's such an instant classic. And the thing is, there are games out there where the freedom of playing a game in multiple ways removes any semblance of difficulty, when it has to balance itself around each task being potentially your first. And I think Mario 64 avoids this sort of trapping by making it so the game's difficulty scales with your understanding of the moveset. The default path will be the longest, and balanced around casual play. But once you start wondering "Hmm, I wonder if I could make it over there if I do this..." that's when the challenge really kicks in.

But you never find yourself asking "What's the point of doing it the hard way, if I can do it the easy way?" because you know that whatever unconventional trick you're about to attempt, has the potential to completely skip over a part of the stage and save you a minute or two of your time. Skilled moveset usage encourages more efficient play. Which is also a bit of an oxymoron, because despite these optional routes technically being harder to pursue, mastering them also makes the game way easier and faster than it would be otherwise. It's that sort of design that makes Mario 64 so satisfying to play.

And it's not just that Mario 64 knows what type of game it is, but its focus on shortcuts and easy versus hard routes make it so the game also wants to know what type of player YOU are. That's right, it's not just a bit, fuckers. Every playthrough of Super Mario 64 IS personalized.

This is one of those games where it's better to watch it on Youtube than it is to experience it yourself. I find myself intrigued by the detective-y noir presentation of the story, and the many notes that you find harken back to the vibe of the original Alone in the Dark. Truth being, I mainly tried this game out because its writer was also involved in Soma, and I think they're doing a pretty alright job here. However, these are not strong enough pulls for me to deal with this game's many puzzles, or especially its lackluster combat paired with forgettable enemy design. The attempts at incentivizing stealth alone severely put me off, the protagonist walks so slow that the enemies you're tailing behind are more likely to do an entire loop around the area and catch up behind you before you reach your goal.

It's funny, because putting it into perspective, the original Alone in the Dark is a game with infinitely worse combat and puzzles that are way more obtuse than anything found here. There are so many things in that game that are out to kill you in cheap and unfair ways, there are potential softlocks to run into, and its guns don't work half the time. And yet, I beat that game. I beat it exactly because of this sort of aggressive cruelty and unpredictability it offered, where every individual room felt like its own unique challenge to overcome. It was the game's strongest point, and it's something that the reboot desperately lacks. Trading in the wonder of discovering a huge jellyfish wriggling in a bathtub, or walking out the front door of the mansion only to be consumed by a giant monster, or touching a statue only to summon a poltergeist that violently shakes the screen and relentlessly pursues you... Alone in the Dark (2024) sacrifices all of this in favor of plain and boring predictability. True, you might not know in what sort of place you're going to wind up next, but you'll always know what's going to happen, a bunch of mindless combat against a bunch of mindless zombie-like enemies. This is not a reimagining, it's an unimagining.

Back in the day, arcade cabinets were in the best position to compete against each other. An interesting sounding title, or a bunch of screenshots in a magazine, or some features advertised on the back of the box could've sold you on purchasing a game, but there's no actual guarantee what you'd get is as good as you expected. The same goes for those 90's game commercials that spent 85% of their runtime grossing you out, and the remaining percentage on showing like, 4 seconds of the game. Compared to all that, an arcade cabinet felt more confident. As you walked throughout the room, each cabinet would commonly display an uninterrupted slice of what you're in for, and properly convince you that THIS is what you wanna spend your allowance on, not that loser's game. To that end, these sorts of games had pressure on them to not only look state-of-the-art, they had to play real good too.

Now, Metal Slug heeded this advice, and pulled out all the stops as far as visuals go. Like, god damn, this is a fine looking run 'n gun, far beyond anything its competitors had to offer. The extreme detail on these sprites is so on point, you could look at an explosion graphic and immediately recognize it as being from Metal Slug. Some influence from Hayao Miyazaki's films was taken too, I especially recognize it around the way the enemy soldiers were designed. This is the sort of game where its short length was utilized to cram in an intense amount of visual detail and variety across the whole board.

These sorts of graphics also help to contribute to a better game feel, which considering the simplicity of the first Metal Slug, it desperately needs it. When compared to the later entries, it can't be denied that Metal Slug 1 feels very understated. It lacks the sequel's surreal enemy encounters, or the third game's crazy weapon variety, but in the very least, what is here is loud, fast, and frantic. With some practice, stages are built to be charged through, guns mowing down dozens of enemies, getting in close-range to take out opponents with your knife, and grenades utilized to viscerally blow up the larger tanks. While I'm not too fond of riding the titular Metal Slug vehicle, one huge advantage it does have is when you hold the down button while riding it, you can start chucking your grenades at an insanely rapid pace, and it makes absolute mincemeat out of the bosses. Arcade difficulty still hits like a truck of course, but considering I reached a point where I can clear the first two or three stages without dying once, there's plenty of opportunity to hone in some skills 'n strategies here.

If I were to recommend Metal Slug to anyone, a part of me feels the urge to start them off with Metal Slug X & Metal Slug 3 first, just to give an immediate good impression of where it really honed its identity. But the first game takes half an hour to beat anyway, so there's really no reason why you couldn't blast your way through this one, then play the later ones right after. The modern conveniences of being able to use as many credits as you want via emulation makes these sorts of games as difficult or as accessible as you want them to be. And though a lot of Metal Slug 1's quality rides on its spritework alone, if you were to take it out, you'd still be left with a pretty polished combinatination of platforming and shooting action. It may not be as good or as inventive as the other entries. But it's still fun, and that's that.

Played using the "Lufia & The Fortress of Doom Restored" romhack. It provided much appreciated QoL such as faster walk speeds, nerfs for the infamously aggressive encounter rate, descriptions for items, and the ability for certain characters to use powerful equipment they weren't allowed to before. Initially, I was worried that last thing would offset the intended difficulty balance, but after beating it, I wouldn't worry. It only applies to the equipment found at the very end of the game, at which point the effort it takes to get it feels deserved, while keeping the difficulty even. This is still a very faithful way to experience the game, allowing you to play Lufia as intended. And that... may be the real problem.

The overall QoL from this romhack made Lufia into a tolerable experience, but... tolerable is pretty much the highest it ever goes. I wouldn't be so ridiculous as to say it's the worst RPG I've played, but even calling it "decent" makes my expression skeeve into a skeptical gritting of teeth, accompanied by a dog-like head tilt. Lufia 1 is the embodiment of chasing a trend in the 90's, about on par with Breath of Fire's attempt in the same year. The most cookie-cutter Dragon Quest clone you could think of. It's uninspired, uncreative, undesiring of doing anything of its own without looking over at its competitors for their fatherly approval over what makes an RPG, while never asking itself "What COULD make an RPG?"

Edit: Reading up a little further on the history of Lufia 1, it's at least worth noting that this was a rare case of a major SNES RPG that actually made it over to the west, in a time where games like Dragon Quest V and Final Fantasy V didn't make it outside Japan due to the genre being seen as a non-profitable niche. To many westerners playing it at the time, it's likely that Lufia didn't feel like a clone of anything, and thus felt quite special. As for me, I have had the chance to experience DQ5 & FF5 beforehand, hence my review was written with that sort of perspective. In a modern age, where you have access to all regions and there's no such thing as an "elusive japan-exclusive" game, Lufia does not carry the magic that it may have carried 30 years ago. Anyway, let's move on.

To its credit, of all the notes Lufia could take, it at least gets close to an engaging combat system. Enemies are no push-overs, and are capable of putting a serious dent in your party. There were plenty occasions where I felt encouraged to experiment with my expanding arsenal of spells, and felt rewarded for taking advantage of certain weaknesses, or developing basic strategies to overcome bosses. Over the course of each encounter with the regular enemies, you quickly learn which ones are more dangerous than others, and you start to actively prioritize getting rid of them as soon as possible.

In addition, Lufia 1 makes the decision to omit auto-targeting. So, if you target one enemy with two party members, but the first party member takes them out, the second member will end up hitting nothing. At first, this seemed like a baffling decision that was antiquated even in the year it came out in, but, I... actually grew to appreciate the element of strategy that this further added into the battles. You can't just mash attack in this game, the efficient way to play is to assign each of your members into specific groups of enemies based on how many you think it'll take to kill each enemy. Sometimes, this even puts the element of risk into the equation. Like, it may take one hit from this party member to kill this enemy, but there's a chance it may take two, so do you want to assign two party members onto this enemy and risk wasting one of them, or should you put them into a different enemy instead? Combine that with the aforementioned prioritizing of more dangerous enemies, and Lufia's combat is... again, to its credit, not mindless!

But even with this saggy ace in its water-soaked sleeve, Lufia is still a very grindy game at its core, and my appreciation for its combat was worn down before I even got halfway through. All that was left then, was everything else, and that might as well mean fuck all. The music? It's whatever. The variety? There is none. There are exactly four types of areas to be found: Grassy town, cave, tower, and castle. Though at one point the game pulls out an underwater cave, and the change in scenery almost made me rocket up into the sky and explode like a firework. And then it was back to those four types of areas for the rest of it. All of them sharing the same music, the same appearance, the same treasure chest hunting loop. Just a rearranged layout and a different color palette being the main difference amongst these approx. 100-150 boring-ass locales.

I don't exactly hold the story in any higher regard, though one thing that confuses me is I've seen at least two instances of the dialogue/localization being called laughably bad, and, I don't... see it? In fact, the localization looks to be perfectly servicable, clearly translated by an english-speaking guy. Is the case that the translation took out important pieces of dialogue out of the script and removed nuance that was originally there in the japanese version? Going through the story, I can't say anything felt missing, or out of place, but perhaps there's more to this than I'm aware of.

But, as far as nuance goes, yeah, there's just none to take away from this. Your main character's a bit of a clueless bumbler, Aguro & Jerin are just in it for the ride, while Lufia, the titular character, for all the importance she's given, can underwhelmingly be summed up as little more but a stereotype. She fights well alongside you, which is the one neat thing, but boy howdy does she love flowers, and shopping, and baking pies, and yowie, will she get jealous and competitive when you show concern for a half-elf with a kid's psychique- wait, what the fuck?

There was only one reason I bothered playing Lufia 1 at all. And much like the age-old question of "Why did the chicken cross the road," here too my reasoning is "to get to the other side." And on the other side, lies Lufia 2, the holy grail. It's the one game that everybody familiar with the Lufia franchise recommends, for some curious reason. Whether playing Lufia 1 or not is paramount to understand the continuity of its sequel - if there is a continuity - is a question I've yet to have an answer for, but I figured I'd cover the bases. Perhaps remind me after I beat Lufia 2, to update this review and answer whether playing this first game was worth it at all. But for now, something tells me, no. No, it was not. The process of forgetting everything about Lufia & The Fortress of Doom, begins... now.

My results screen

Many years ago, I had a lot of mixed feelings on the classic Resident Evil titles, and a lot of them revolved around their limited inventory system. Growing up with Silent Hill first, where there was no need to worry about stuff like that for most of their games, the inconveniences of Resident Evil were a hard pill for me to swallow. Coupled with the door opening animations, that - while iconic - take up obnoxious amounts of time while trying to get around the mansion faster, the franchise came off as this antiquated little thing that was only there for the people who grew up with it. I thought it was far too late for me to be getting into this series.

And then Resident Evil 7 came out, along with Resident Evil 2 Remake shortly after. Which is a topic for another day, but within one fell swoop (or two fell swoops), these games turned me into a huge fan of the franchise, and retroactively got me to beat as many of the other games as possible. Except the classic trilogy. Once again, I would try them, but not really be able to commit to their design, so I would just save state through it all. But I could feel it. Even with the aged PS1 original, I could feel this alluring challenge calling out to me. Especially after playing RE2 Remake, I decided that perhaps if I truly dedicated myself to RE1's challenge, I would be able to appreciate it more than ever before.

And so, I set out a goal: To play the original RE1 with the goal of getting good enough to unlock the Infinite Rocket Launcher. Save states were mostly disabled, at most only used near the designated save points as a way to quickly return to them without having to sit through the game over screen. This handicap also meant that if I was doing miserably, or came into something unprepared, I had a load state button I could use to quickly get back to the nearest Safe Room and re-organize my strategy for what's coming up next.

I have to stress just how nice it was to be able to do that in this game, as Resident Evil 1 does a really poor job conveying what's actually useful to carry in your limited inventory for the road ahead. Weapons are one thing, but sometimes you'll get a puzzle item which the game will either decide you'll need to use 5 minutes from now, or 2 hours. And all the while you're carrying it, a sense of decision paralysis washes over you, "Should I store this puzzle item in a Safe Room for now? But what if I'm about to use it? But if I keep it now, that's one less inventory space..." The crank is a fun example of this, an item you use once, are absolutely confident you'll no longer need it, only for the game to tell you 2 hours later "Haha, gotcha, you actually needed that crank for this spot as well!" Limited ammunition is scary in survival horror. Having to wrestle with limited inventory for puzzle items on the other hand, is just a frustrating time waster, and one that I'm glad I managed to somewhat circumvent.

One more complaint I have about RE1, and it's something that most new players are likely to fall into, is its deliberately misleading difficulty select. Intreestingly, the Japanese version of the game ensures to mark both Chris and Jill as "Hard Mode" and "Easy Mode", respectively. Meanwhile, the western releases took that bit of text out and places Chris as the default choice, ensuring most players will pick him for their first playthrough. I do not recommend doing that. The difference between Jill's 8 inventory slots and Chris's mere 6 is staggering, and alongside giving him more items to carry than Jill needs to, makes him a way bigger pain in the ass to play. Don't let the game fool you, Jill is the Normal Mode. Chris is what you play when you've familiarized yourself enough with the game to desire a more advanced challenge.

In spite of these gripes I had with RE1, I'm pleased to say that after my first playthrough fully concluded, I grew to enjoy the game a lot more. In fact, I kinda went crazy for it, and replayed it 12 more times in the span of two weeks. Totaling 13 playthroughs in total, I've done 8 runs of the original PS1 release (4 runs for both characters to get all of their endings), 2 runs of the Director's Cut, 1 run of the Dualshock Edition, and 2 runs of the PC version. About halfway through these runs, save states were completely abandoned altogether, and I grew comfortable enough to play the game as fully intended.

What the hell happened to cause that many runs? Familiarity happened. As you may remember, my initial goal when I started playing was to unlock the Infinite Rocket Launcher. To unlock this weapon, you are required to beat the game under 3 hours. Keeping in mind that this is the ultimate reward of Resident Evil 1, it becomes clear what the game aims to be on secondary playthroughs: A speedrunner's challenge. For your first playthrough, you don't know what's happening, you don't know what items go where, you don't know if there's gonna be an enemy or a boss around this next corner... now that you've beat it and the "fear" of the whole thing is gone, the game effectively turns into a Time Attack, where all your knowledge is used to efficiently optimize the hell out of everything. By my 2nd run, I've shaved off over 2 hours of playtime, and that's when I knew I was in love. What was once a game that required at least 2-3 sessions, I could now cozily knock out under 2 hours. Then I could show off my skills to my friends, and inevitably fuck up along the way!

So, the appeal of the gameplay turned out to show itself during secondary runs. But is there anything to appreciate during the 1st run? Well, I suppose that all depends on your enjoyment of irony. The entire aesthetic of the mansion is comprised of dated, surrealistic 90's CG graphics, at times it looks like my old grandma's house. It's not really scary as the "horror" in survival horror would suggest, nor is it atmospherically realistic, but it is atmospheric nonetheless. Atmospheric in the sense of it whisking you away into a world that doesn't quite feel like yours, but is enchanting to explore, overcome, and discover its secrets. Much like a point 'n click adventure, the more puzzles you solve, the more things click together. One mystery solved after another, with the satisfaction of knowing each one brings you closer to your end goal, until eventually you've wrapped up all of them with a neat ribbon.

Bonus points go to the feel of the weapons. The knife's a worthless piece of trash, and the handgun is deliberately weak. But that only serves to make weapons like the shotgun and grenade launcher feel so much more amazing by comparison. Getting in those shotgun headshots to instantly take out a zombie, or loading up a grenade launcher with acid rounds and taking out a boss in seconds feels so good, man. By the time you get to the final boss, the game loads you up with enough powerful weaponry to go all out, to end things on an explosive note. Does that lend itself to horror well? Not particularly, but it is by all means deliberate. The 1st half starts you off as a vulnerable mess, but by the end, it wants you to feel like you've grown into something much more experienced and powerful. It's the zombies who should be running away from you now. It's not scary, but it feels really good.

I adore this voice acting. Yes, it's awful, laughable, the writing for it is downright nonsensical at parts. They have fucked it up beyond all understanding, and it is exactly what makes it so enjoyable. Every line is stuck in my head, and kept me looking forward to whatever stupid thing the next cutscene will do. This sort of B-movie camp would become synomous with the Resident Evil brand for many games to come. And even though the voice acting would go on to improve, I think that each of the game's writers understood well, that Resident Evil's uniqueness comes from the very fact that it's not just a straightforward horror experience, but a balance of heavy tension, and cheesy levity.

Oh yeah, so, because of the fact that I've played so many versions of RE1, the big question is, which one would I recommend? So, there are some gaps in my experience, I haven't touched the Sega Saturn or the DS ports for example. But, if I were to recommend one to a newcomer... I'm a little torn between the original PS1 release, and the PC port. Once you apply a fanmade patch to the PC port, it is by far the best way to play. FMV's are present in all their uncensored gory glory, you have a button to spin around 180 degrees for quick turning, you can save without needing Ink Ribbons, and best of all: You can skip the door loading animations! However, I've noted its audio quality (specifically the voices) as being lower than the PS1 release, and at times, the voices were drowned out by the music. Unless there's a way to adjust this, I would recommend playing the original PS1 version despite its lesser QoL, and then switch over to PC once you've got to gripes with things.

As for the other versions, the PS1 was also home to "Director's Cut" and the "Director's Cut Dualshock Edition" versions of RE1. The regular Director's Cut adds some small new features, alongside the biggest addition of an "Arrange Mode", which rearranges enemies, items, and adds new camera angles. I'd recommend it for subsequent runs of the game, but not as your first experience. I would ESPECIALLY not recommend that you make the "Dualshock Edition" your first playthrough. Everybody clowns on its replaced soundtrack, in particular the Basement theme, and the rest of the music is about as dissonant. It has little to offer beyond that. So, really, just stick to the original PS1 release if you want to play it absolutely safe.

Among all the choice, some people would also tell you to just play the RE1 Remake instead. But I don't believe that the remake outright replaces the original. The remake is a different type of experience, with a set of mechanics that makes you adapt a different mentality on how to play. By comparison, the original feels faster, simpler, more arcadey. It's its own game, and there's no need to invalidate its existence when both can co-exist and attract different types of players. In my case, I somehow actually prefer the original over the remake, due to its simplicity. As a whole, I fully recommend it for anyone who's willing to sink a little bit of time into learning how it works. If you're willing to go out of order though, RE2 original is a much more refined take on what this game's doing. Otherwise, if you can't put up with any of the jank that came with these older games, start playing from the easily accessible Resident Evil 7 and onward, then see if you can work your way into the other titles from there.

Hey, you know what? It's not Rogue Corps. And with Konami, that's really all you can ask for in this day and age.

It is what it is, just another alright entry in the series. A series which 30 years ago, used to innovate and push the limits of high-intensity action, but after Hard Corps, has remained content rehashing ideas and setpieces as homage to fulfill an entire game's length. And this game is no exception to that trend, as obviously, it's just a remake of Contra 1, with a little bit of Contra 3 & Hard Corps elements thrown in.

On the other hand, it is by far the best entry point for newcomers, with its customizable difficulty, the choice between 1-hit kills and multiple health points, and the Perk system that through further replays of the game, could grant you the benefits required to get past that one part you're struggling with. The movement feels great, and the weapons are very satisfying to blast your way through hordes of aliens with. Some levels can last as long as 10 minutes, but I was getting so into into the mindless carnage of it all, they always felt way shorter than that, and I think that's indicative of something good. In the end, I don't think this game did anything exciting or new, but as far as simple run 'n gun action goes, I'd say the 2 hours flew by quite enjoyably.

One big problem: This game's asking 40 dollars for 2 hours of what is clearly a budget-minded game based on a bunch of ideas from 30-40 years ago. I know we've just switched over to Daylight Savings, but that's only an hour forward, whereas Konami thinks we've moved all the way to fuckin' April Fools with price tags like this. I mean, sure, there's some replayability, but it's mostly like, do you want to play on a harder difficulty now? Do you want the original soundtrack mode? Or some new characters? None of this warrants a price that high, and you'd be a much wiser person if you were to wait for a sale. You've already waited this long for a decent Contra title, what's another couple months?

"8 games in one?" Alright, come on now.

I usually consider Kirby to fall within the action platformer genre. With Super Star though, there's a different vibe going on. The game toys around with some ideas that put it closer to feeling like a Smash Bros prototype. With each copy ability sporting a couple unique moves that can be activated through simple combinations of inputs, Super Star is more akin to a beat'em up platformer. What helps contribute to that feeling is how enemies take more hits to take out now, and that there is generally a larger focus on engaging enemies in combat than before. The pacing has been tightened up too, throwing you from one major battle encounter to another in the span of 1-2 minutes each. And then there's the 2-player mode of course, primarily handy for making battles more efficient. Putting all of that together, Super Star is actually an arcade beat'em up Smash Bros prototype. That also happens to have some platforming in it, but it's kinda irrelevant, honestly.

I think that change in priority is what makes Super Star's gameplay just... alright for me. It's great visually, it produced a ton of iconic songs for the franchise, and I mean, look. The "8 games in one" marketing is still outrageous, but I do like the variety that IS here, it keeps things fresh. However, I don't jive with this increased focus on combat. It feels punchy, sure, but it's a lot of technique for a set of enemies that are barely capable of fighting back. By comparison, the platforming sequences haven't seen much evolution mechanically, so they feel more like an afterthought, a bridge to get to the next fight. But even the fights are far too tipped in your favor, leaving the overall package as doing a whole lot of things with not a lot of focus on real depth and challenge.

To be fair, challenge is not really what most people seek in a Kirby game. I'm down for an easy game myself, I enjoy a bit of lax platforming every now and then, and if the exploration is fun, then all the better for it. But this Kirby is way more about a frantic, chaotic sense of action, which makes me strongly desire a greater sense of challenge. I don't think Super Star satisfies that craving, as it's too easy to get away with a reckless, button-mashy playstyle. As for the exploration, "Milky Way Wishes" is the closest to getting this right, introducing a pretty interesting spin on how you get your powerups. Aside from that however, I wasn't into most of the other exploration. That includes the treasures found in "The Great Cave Offensive," an interesting concept that is entirely superficial in execution, offering little incentive to get all treasures, or even a single one of them.

Overall, I love Kirby and all, but the franchise was still very experimental at this point of time, and didn't quite perfect its formula yet. This has led to some hits, this has led to some misses. Super Star is somewhere in-between those, it's a game I'll occasionally pop into with a friend, to kick some ass and appreciate its hyperactive energy. But as far as fulfilling platforming experiences go, this game just ain't my speed.

Fluid and fast-paced gameplay, and a pretty good soundtrack is juxtposed against a severe lack of identity and a lack of interesting level design to tie it all together. The inspirations drawn from Mega Man Zero & ZX are all centered around how cool and actiony it was, while neglecting that the reason why Mega Man Zero's setting worked at all, is because of its cinematic, darker mood that was built up from its more lighthearted predecessors. By comparison, Berserk Boy has its first game and is already trying to eat its cake. Crafting a dialogue-heavy story around its world, while at the same time having little to offer but a set of legally distinct elemental Guardian characters, and some fire puns. Mega Man's initial simplicity allowed it to establish a personality. Berserk Boy's comparative complexity, due to its desire to take as much from Mega Man as possible, instead gives it an identity crisis.

What could've been just one level, is always drawn out into three seperate ones, each relying on the same gimmick rather than introducing a new one per stage. As another review here pointed out, this does very much lead into repetition, and occasional instances of a level going on for far too long. After a while, every decision I've made in the game was a backseat to my mind wandering to other places. Berserk Boy was still fun to play, but it was the sort of mindless popcorny fun that I'd play for 10 minutes on a lunch break, while thinking up what I'd do with the rest of my day. That very idea, that I was playing a Mega Man-like without any desire to commit to beating it over one or two nights - indicated to me that there's something very off here.

Masahiro Sakurai recently posted a video that conveniently pertains to Berserk Boy's dilemma. It's fine to take influences and inspirations from your favorite titles, and try to make your own game with it. That's how evolution happens. Shovel Knight took influences from many NES titles, but ultimately, that game spun things well enough that what people see in Shovel Knight, is Shovel Knight. I don't see Berserk Boy in Berserk Boy. I see a riff on everything I've already played before, with no special element of its own.

Let me be clear, I respect the hell out of what Super Mario RPG does. The introduction of timed presses to deliver more damage, or negate damage coming your way was a great way to retain the reflex-heavy nature of standard Mario games, while at the same time making the RPG combat more engaging, and friendly to newcomers. The idea of each defeated enemy potentially giving you an extra free turn, or a free recovery is another fun method that ensures that each attempt at clearing a sequence might go differently, and potential deaths may suddenly turn into lucky victories.

All these conveniences for the combat itself, on top of various minigames scattered around to alleviate the constant combat, a short length that ensures anybody could finish this game without getting weary, a soundtrack that is just one catchy earworm after another, and lots and lots of personality and bits of humor in the writing. Including the first effective instance of everybody simultaneously realizing that Bowser is the best character in the Mario series, actually. Give him a personality and a bunch of lines to read, and you just cannot under any circumstance hate this guy. He's a total loser with a totally unrealistic goal, and yet while I cannot root for him, I don't really want him to fail either. He deserves something good, I just haven't figured out what yet.

Anyway, all this to say, there is a lot that this game does well, as far as innovation and evolution of the Mario series goes, BUT... and it pains me to have a but in here, BUT while all of it comes together to form a cozy and accessible romp for RPG newcomers, its combat system did not hold enough weight to keep me engaged for the entire runtime, even though said runtime was already pretty short as is.

By the 2nd half of the adventure, I was able to find weapons that completely broke the balance of the game. As a result, battles no longer required any thought. I was capable of trouncing every boss using the exact same party, with the exact same strategy, including both phases of the final boss. After the game ended, I considered the idea that Mario RPG wants you to dictate your own difficulty through the equipment you choose to wear, but coming from older RPG's where equipping the best stuff was paramount to success, this line of thinking was pretty alien to me at the time. That aside, stats and equipment don't have to be the only measure of difficulty in an RPG. And the best types of RPG's incentivize you into pursuing other strategies beyond sheer brute force. And while Mario RPG starts off doing that quite decently, its latter half turns into a bit of a mindless affair, as your amount of tools outnumber anything that the bosses could possibly have.

What doesn't help is that certain attack animations from the enemies go on for needlessly long amounts of time, and if you get to fight a lot of them, that's more time wasted sitting around and waiting for the animations to finish. Combined with the lacking difficulty, every battle turns into a game of waiting until you win.

To summarize, while I do strongly feel that Mario RPG is a game worth experiencing by everybody for its exploration, its sense of charm, and as a potential gateway for newcomers to the genre... the combat turns from one of the game's best features, to a bit of a weak link, and it's one you kinda have to engage with a lot. Not as much as some RPG's out there with their insane encounter rates, but enough to the point where I'd rather be talking to NPC's in a town than doing this. I will repeat this again: Mario RPG does a shit ton of stuff right. Play it. My personal disappointment with the boss fights aside, everybody has a different reason to play a game, and Mario RPG may just align with yours.

Man, maybe I really shouldn't have equipped that OP equipment... It almost feels like that in itself is what screwed up a lot of my experience. Oh well, there's always the remake.

A few years ago, Suikoden was the first RPG that taught me how do you actually play an RPG. After a couple failed attempts trying to beat the game and getting bored each time, I eventually figured a full playthrough must be done. After all, I gotta prepare for my inevitable Suikoden 2 playthrough, a game which I carry a lot of nostalgia for thanks to a decade-old let's play I watched way back when.

The only hurdle left was that whole "108 party members to choose from" thing. I'm already stressed out trying to manage SIX party members in Chrono Trigger, now I gotta manage 108?! Well, the real number is closer to 80, seeing as not every character you recruit is playable, but still, that's a lot! How the heck will I know which ones are actually good to use, and if I gotta experiment, how long will it take to find a good party to go with? And if the situation will require me to switch up my strategy, how long will it take to reorganize my party THEN?

"Calm your shit," proclameith Suikoden. "I'm not telling you to use every single one of them. Just pick what interests you." For you see, that sheer amount of party members is one of the game's more brilliant moves. Of course it doesn't want you to manage 80 party members at once, of course it recognizes how tedious would that actually be. That overwhelming quantity is the very thing that encouraged me into the playstyle of only choosing some of them, instead of all of them. As for whatever party members I never used, that's where Suikoden drives its replay value.

The point is, you won't be able to see every strategy and every combination of party member throughout your first run, but that leaves room for further experimentation on succeeding runs. Maybe in today's age, that does not seem like a very appealing idea, but back in 1995 when Suikoden was likely the one new game you would've had for months, that's when the different combinations of possibilities would've driven your desire to continue playing the game and trying new things out.

Does all of that sound painfully obvious? Congratulations, your brain is normal. Mine is riddled with a completionism complex, and the constant anxiety that anything I'm missing is setting up the potential for something to go wrong. But if anybody reading this feels similarly, I think you should make this game your first stepping stone into the genre if you wanna get into older RPG's. The way it naturally leads you into the lesson of "Play the way you want to play" has opened up the floodgates for all sorts of other RPG experiences since then. Not to mention, opened my eyes towards the fact that this genre is, frankly, mentally deranged in the most fascinating ways.

With that said! I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. As much as I recommend it for the lessons it teaches to an RPG newcomer, you'll have to brace yourself for Suikoden's slow, antiquated nature, which has been outshined by many RPG's since its inception. Its battles go on for longer than they should. The run button is locked behind an equippable item, which you have to waste 1 of 6 of your precious slots on. Characters don't have a whole lot of inventory, so you'll have to manage your resources carefully. The art style isn't doing anything particularly unique to stand out from the competition, and the hardware of the PS1 is barely being utilized.

The game also has a nasty tendency to force you into taking specific party members on-board, when they may be required to progress the story. In turn, it may also take away party members from you when you least expect it, along with everything they were carrying in their inventory. So, let's say, for example, I gave one of my party members an infinite-use item that enables fast travel across the map. Then they get kidnapped in a story cutscene. That item is now gone until I rescue them several hours later, so no more fast travel until then. Did I say this was an example? Sorry, no, that actually happened, and I still remember the face I made when I realized it. I've learned to carry crucial items in my main character's inventory after that.

And hey, something to consider. When you make your story kill off a party member in an emotional scene, believe you me, you do NOT want the player's reaction to be "Noooo, not my 40 fucking potions!"

The writing in itself is not too bad, but it's also not too great. A war is happening, and it's up to you to gather enough recruits to turn your small ragtag group of resistance members, into an army rivaling the corrupt empire. From there, you keep rising, and expanding your reach, until you start getting shit done. I think it shines when it gives the spotlight to intelligent, calculating strategists who head into each of the major battles with a plan. Odessa was cool, so is Matei, and seeing them make the decisions they made for the sake of minimizing casualties, while maximizing victory, were some of the game's bigger highlights.

Regrettably, much of the writing is sabogated by the blatantly fucked up localization, seemingly rushed and untested for proper consistency. In one of the mandatory cutscenes, there's just straight up a developer note left in the script, with the character speaking outloud what was only meant to be context for the localizer. I've also noted numerous instances of characters inappropriately referring to themselves in third person, and typos galore. Similarly to FF4, it does admittingly make things more entertaining, but it also makes it difficult to treat the story seriously.

This is all topped off with a shockingly disappointing ending. A lot of RPG's in this age utilized the trope of the bigger, badder villain revealed to have been pulling the strings behind everything. Similarly, Suikoden does this too, but presumably due to the game being rushed, you don't ever get to fight the bigger villain. Instead, the game's final boss consists of the villain's servant randomly transforming into a giant fuck-you dragon, with only 1-2 attacks to their name and the regular boss fight theme accompanying it. The final boss doesn't even get their own theme! And it ultimately ends with the big, bad villain themselves dying in a cutscene. Considering how despicable the villain is made throughout the story, the fact you don't even get to so much as nudge them, was a terrible anticlimax to this long journey.

However, that WAS only the regular ending... if you were to recruit all 108 companions across the game, there's an alternate true ending you may access instead. But I'll just let you know right now, don't bother. It does not change anything about the final boss. What it DOES do, is allow you to revive your protagonist's most trusted companion from the brink of death. But despite their death having a significant amount of emotional weight put behind it, their revival is given a laughably minimal amount of fanfare by comparison. A couple lines are said, and then the game unceremoniously moves on, with no further relevance or modification to the story.

Despite all this, something about Suikoden's story... still managed to captivate me. The ending itself is hot trash, but it's the epilogue after the fact that unlocked some feelings in me. Many RPG's have the "Where are they now" ending scene, but Suikoden's really instilled the feeling that the long and arduous war has finally come to an end, and people can now live peacefully, free to decide their own life as they wish. And these efforts aren't owed to just a single hero, or two, or four. It was thanks to everyone, the entire world united together to fight against one powerful dictatorship, thus paving the way for peace.

When I think about it like that, Suikoden has a political and inspirational relevance in today's age, when we ourselves are becoming increasingly more aware of our corrupt governments, and the fascists who will use any means necessary to control us, or slaughter us otherwise. Suikoden presents a similarly bleak world, where you quickly learn that under the banner you were born, your only choice is to serve egotistical power-hungry scumbags, and to accept the greed-motivated genocide they invoke on others, lest you get branded a traitor and meet the same fate. But Suikoden says to not give up. Suikoden asks you to refuse such a world, it asks you to organize, to reach out, to unite everyone under the goal of peace. Suikoden tackles some aspects of xenophobia/racism, and further asks you to mend the differences between races and countries alike.

There are a couple characters that are resigned to their fates, convinced that they'd rather live out the rest of their life as it currently is. Only then, they witness the horrors of the empire themselves, realizing that they cannot sit back and watch the world go to hell. And with every person recruited, your ability to oppose the empire grows larger. Your hideout goes from a dinky little cave, to a formidable fortress. As it becomes filled with people, the mood of the music changes, becomes more hopeful, more lively.

This, for me, is the biggest reason to play Suikoden 1. It may not be well written/localized, but its message, its overall execution, had a great impact on me. Even a single person can make a tremendous difference. Add thousands of others who are aspiring to do the same, that difference will spread across the world. It makes me feel warm. It makes me feel that perhaps one day, we can achieve this same kind of peace in real life. If this is the message Suikoden's creator wanted to share to the world, then I thank him for it. He made me feel less alone.

Anyway, here's a summary! Good message. Good music. Some fun and interesting characters here and there. Poor, but funny localization. Slow combat system. Inventory managment is abundant. Graphics are kinda whatever. Anticlimatic ending. Recommended for people who wanna combat their completionism OCD. Don't try to 100%, just go with the flow. Suikoden's definitely not one of the best RPG's you could play out there, but I think it certainly has its pluses if you're of the mood to dissect its themes a little further, are a fan of PS1 games, or are just looking for a simple RPG to get into, even if it may look deceptively complex at first. It is intensely flawed, but also surprisingly heartfelt. A very bizarre case, indeed. Nonetheless, one that I hold dearly. Here's hoping that the upcoming remaster of the first two Suikodens will give people the best way to experience these games.