Alright, let's do this one more time.
Treasures of Aht Urhgan is pretty neat!

I held no real expectations that it would rival Promathia, and I was right, but I don't think it really needed to anyway? It was a nice little story with interesting concepts, dang cool lore, very neat locales and a net boost in production value and presentation.

The cutscenes feel more vibrant, with genuine good comedy finally being conveyed by the presentation, as well as the writing (NEED TANK? SEND TELL), and I also really liked the ost being used specifically for comedic purposes.

Character-wise, I don't think the cast is as stacked as Promathia's but Aphmau and Luzaf were genuinely very well written, especially as dual foils to one another. On top of that, the overall larger stake divine battle between Alexander and Odin englobing the expansion's plot was like SUPER cool, even if the resolution was (by design) open-ended (one day i'll deal with those epilogues bweh).

Something else of note is that I've finished the Windurst questline (the non-S.O.B portion at any rate) in preparation for the next expansion, and it was pretty cool honestly! I'll definitely do the other two before WoG, which will also wait a while cause i'm thinking of taking a break from the game.

But overall, good expansion, I liked it!

Xanadu Next has a lot going for it. A very unique and mysterious atmosphere, an unmatched feeling of exploration and adventure and a really rich and interesting lore that becomes intertwined with a sweet and melancholic storyline. It's a game I would recommend on these merits alone, but some of the crust and jank proper to its genre, some questionable dungeon designs and a lot of astoundingly annoying elements of rust keep it from being something for everyone.

If you can battle through the mud and dirt to enjoy the absolutely beautiful music and wonderful atmosphere of this game, then be my guest. If you're not so sure, i'd pass.

Game is great and port is just really nice qol stuff + a pretty neat HD fps shine but why do joycons feel somehow worse than a wii mote?

Maybe it's just the gameplay feeling, or because the technology was not made for joycons, or even i'm just remembering wrong, but I could swear I didn't have to adjust my Wii Mote cursor nearly as much in every situation, from flying to swordplay. At least it's incredibly easy to do.

Anyways great game, nice port, questionable motion gaming at times.

Continuing my ineffable quest through Vana'diel, this time with the first major expansion Rise of the Zilart.

It's good! Story-wise, XI finally is starting to unveil its deeper lore to pretty impressive effect, as well as try to branch out more in terms of cutscene composition. It's still pretty basic, as final fantasy plots go, but basic is good.

Gameplay-wise, the quests this time around are still quite fetchy, but i've found them way WAY less annoying this time around, and I guess caring more about the plot helps too. But I was happy to see there was no "mission 4" fiasco this time around, I can only handle Castle Oztroja so many times before fucking evaporating haha...
I've also started getting more accustomed to the combat and skillchains and such. It still feels like my trusts are doing the bulk of the work (and they are) but sometimes i do big numbers and it feels nice :D

But yeah, Zilart was a nice surprise overall. I wasn't expecting anything in particular, and I got a few neat things and I liked it! Very excited for Chains of Promathia now, definitely one of my most anticipated expansions in this game, we'll see how it treats me.

The Great Ace Attorney might well be an amalgamation of everything the franchise established itself to do best.
It's got engaging cases, interesting connections, compelling characters and incredibly human motivations.

On the surface, the presentation is simply immaculate, making for the most creative and visually appealing game in the series bar none. The music, heavily relying on orchestral instrumentation, is absolutely splendid and incredibly fitting for the game and everything from the character animations to the designs themselves oozes fun and creativity, it's an absolute festival of stylishness and joy to watch unfold.

The characters are some of the series' best written yet, and the ensemble cast is absolutely my favorite, without hesitation. The way each character bounces off one another, their close links, dynamics, shared history or lack thereof, it's all played in extremely interesting and heartwarming ways, and I love most of them all so SO much.

This game also does what only the best AA games bother doing, in instilling a deeper, connected narrative behind every single case. It's less a duology, and more 10 cases that slowly, but surely, ramp up and set up the larger and foggier mystery behind the events of the game. It's quite a long ride, and maybe a bit slow at times, but by the time you reach the answers and conclusion, it's hard to not feel as if you've truly rode a spectacular rollercoaster. Everything is tied up cleanly in the best of ways, and it feels INCREDIBLY satisfying to reach that ending on your own accord.

To conclude, The Great Ace Attorney is, without question, my favorite AA title.
It's got the style, the groove, the polish, the heart, and everything that makes me love Ace Attorney and so SO much more too.

...wonder if finishing Investigations 2 will change my mind...

Continuing my chronicles through FFXI after the base game and the first expansion, Rise of the Zilart, this time we have the second expansion, and true ending to the game's original storyline, Chains of Promathia.

It's fucking amazing bro.

The scale of the conflict, the writing, the characters, everything lives, breathes and shits the best of the best of what Final Fantasy can offer through its most poignant narratives, this isn't just a good FF or a good mmo story, it's one of the best FFs period and has an inherent quality to it that wouldn't be out of place in that one other Final Fantasy MMO (you know the one).

The very stakes have been gradually ascending since the base game and it all comes to a head with the plot this time around, between potential omnicide by wyrms to reincarnated demiurges, this expansion is packed full with batshit crazy developments and twists left and right, as well as really interesting revelations concerning the very lore of the setting, it's Vana'diel at its most endangered yet fascinating form.

The cast is also at its most interesting here. I liked the tag-along characters in Zilart, but the relative shortness of the storyline meant not a lot of attention was given to the likes of Zeid, Lion and Aldo. This time however that problem is largely averted, with a nuanced cast of fairly fleshed out characters, who all have their time to shine and develop overtime. The standouts being Tenzen and Prishe of course.

Gameplay-wise, I made the decision to lock myself at level 80 for the whole expansion (I was overleved for like 4/5ths of it so it was a good call) and thus my experience shouldn't have been that different. However I acknowledge there's a lot more intricacy to the dungeon design this time around, not always for the better, but I can conceive this would have been really riveting content at release and I respect that!
Also the last thing I did right after beating the final boss was get my super kewl sword skill so I take that as a personal reward for my actions kyehehe...

Special mention goes to the music, which while not adding THAT many new tracks, is pretty much a straight upgrade in most ways from Zilart (except for the final boss music bweh) and how could I not talk about the absolutely magnificent ending song, Distant Worlds.

That shit made me cry dawg. Uncool.

All in all, Chains of Promathia is where FFXI truly grew the beard for me. It's a lot of cool concepts executed really well and while I'm not expecting the next few story arcs to equal, let alone surpass it, it still gives me great expectations from the kind of writing quality I might be getting in the future.

I'm fully won over now. I'll see this FFXI journey to the very end!

I might have been less stringent on the rating if the lategame missions hadn't been an absolute pain in the chode to get through.
It's a classic, and I don't regret playing it, but man it's obvious this was not the game they originally planned lmao.

Some highlights include the Black Knight fights and the general aesthetic mixing RE-style horror with cool action flick stuff, but it's nigh impossible to get past the glaring issues with level design, most boss fights and even the mechanics themselves.

Would only recommend if you're really ready to endure some jank.

An improvement over its first entry in pretty much every way that matters, Nirvana Initative uses the original's concepts and takes them way further, with more interesting somnia, deeper twists, very emotional dynamics and the sort of Uchikoshi-isms I'd expect from an Infinity or ZE title.

I went into this game scared that AI's mainstream appeal would keep Uchikoshi from being his usual weirdo freak self when it comes to using conventional narrative tropes to fuck you over, but I'll be damned. This game sure fucked me over big time.

My thirst for another Infinity game is not quite quenched, but I'm at least glad he can be just as wacky with his ideas, and I'm excited to see what he pulls next.

Giving this game, or at the very least its base campaign, any ranking today feels a bit weird I'm gonna be real.
It's clear this experience extends much further and I do intend to discover where it might lead.
But I still do want to put a small recounting of my feelings about this game up until this point so that I may contrast the quality of it later down the road.

It took me a few months to really get into this game, and I don't blame anyone for immediately shafting it in the opening hours. The controls are clunky, the mechanics are poorly explained, the exploration can be gruelingly slow and a lot of QoL features made specifically to cater to novices are very badly tutorialized, which sucks.
A lot of the early game will be spent navigating from wiki page to reddit questions about the most basic bullshit to your more veteran friend's dms, if you're lucky enough to have such a friend (thanks Alise).
However, and this is where I can't really justify myself, once you're past the stage of second guessing every mouse click, and once you begin understanding the patterns under which the game operates, it's...good?

It's still slow, there are still a lot of things kept from the player for no discernable reason and some of the dungeon design would make the CIA's torture teams blush in embarrassment, but I definitely took enjoyment in the general experience.

The world of Vana'diel is bleak, shrouded in a lot of mysteries and secrets, some of which the main plot does address. Exploring, seeing the sights, discovering more and more of the towns and regions of the world felt like my exploration was being rewarded in kind. It felt good to walk for hours and to finally discover a bustling town of miners embroiled in thinly veiled racial tensions.

And while the plot itself is, quite frankly, a tad basic for what you'd expect from an FF game in the 2000s, there were some genuinely great scenes and set pieces, and the main villain was really poignant? It definitely did struck a chord with me at the very least.

All of this is a rough and general summary of my experience with FFXI's base campaign, and I don't doubt some of my feelings about it will change with the later content. I think XI's a game with a flawed, but fairly decent foundation with an unfortunately alienating new player experience. However, if you do have the patience to surmount those harsh early hours of the game, and a few other stumbles along the way, this game might be worth a shot.