22 reviews liked by Utawarerumono


When I first researched stuff online about Dragon Quest 3, I stumbled upon an urban legend saying that the Japanese government had to make a law preventing Square Enix from releasing its games during weekdays because too many people were skipping school and work to get the games. This intrigued me: can a game cause societal disturbances of such scale? During my playthrough, I multiple times felt astonished by the genius creativity behind this game. There's a major step up from what DQ2 has done and switching to Switch port instead of SNES emulation added to the shock.

who let them cook
tf did they do to yukari man 😭😭😭😭

This review contains spoilers

I joked to my friend about this game being the "Xenosaga Killer" and I'll be damned. They did it. And How. How did they do it? I love Xenosaga 3 to death, and this review is not about that game, this game is about Ar Tonelico 2. Also, I know the spoiler warning is here, but we're spoiling the whole game baby. DON'T READ IT UNLESS YOU'RE DONE. I AM BEGGING YOU.

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This review will mainly be covering 2 things, Party Dynamics; and Music. As I think that is what this game does the best above all. I mean yeah, the story is great, makes sense thematically, all that good stuff, but a story is a canvas for characters to grow and to experiment with all sorts of crazy ideas.

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I personally love party members being honest. I think games thrive when the party members can sit down and talk to each other about their sincere feelings about each other, negative or positive. Because that's how a real human relationship is; we fight; we love; we hate; we argue; it's just part of reality.

Luca Trulyworth. That smiling little lady on the box art, I embarked on my journey. I checked both of the Phase 1 Route splits, because I wanted to learn. I ended up going with Luca's.

But why? Why did I go with Luca. Well. I sit down in the prison and she goes up to Cloche and calls her (paraphrased) a murdering bitch, who killed her sister, goes up to the main character Croix, and tells him that she's been using him the whole time.

What goes through my mind during scenes like this; first off; Holy shit. I am like 7 hours in. How did we even get here to begin with?

Second off; I realize the game is already up my alley. Why? Because it is willing to make a party member aggressive. My party member is allowed to think for themselves, they don't need to prevent to be likable. This expression is something that I love.

So Luca. I double down, I need to understand Luca. I am now fully drawn into the situation.

Before this; Luca also tells Cloche to her face that she's privilaged princess who has never had to worry about a penny, has always had people their to support her, and that she'll never understand.

Cloche of course, defends herself. Why wouldn't you? If someone shits all over you without a tiny bit of knowledge of you outside of your position of a princess, of course you would be mad.

We have created a rivalry. A route split, if you will.

Then in Phase 2, Luca's unfiltered feelings come in to Cloche to understand, Luca being casually s***lly harassed at work, her relationships being flimsy due to Dive Therapy and feeling like she always exposes herself to people, her strained relationship with her Mom due to lack of communication, all of these issues pile up before she explodes, all on top of this is Cloche; who if she denies it or not; is adjacent to the deaths of thousands of IPDS; and more importantly; Luca's sister.

I am left in shock. The first game has some good themes, but this game is feisty. The main conflict in this game; is it better to suffer through life; or dream on in our own minds forever; and the two leads live their life suffering; all they can do is release their rage on each other.

But there's a light. A light that progresses and gets brighter and brighter. The fight of humans is what makes us closer. The only way to evolve as people is to face these issues forward and learn, why did we do this? Why do we act like this?

Are any of these people's issues invalid? Of course not. They should be mad, they should be frustrated, These struggles build us up, and break us down. When Luca looks at Cloche, all she sees for a while is class, and the blood that has stained Cloche's hands.

But Cloche has her own trauma. A caged bird, not able to spread wings, while also watching all of her fellow birds burn around here. She watches, that's all she can do. And the princess is not even what she is; Luca ends up being the one holding the Crown. So what is Cloche? A puppet to the government? Is she any better than any other person in the world?

Alice. Alice is part of Cloche. Luca is part of Luca, Cloche is part of Luca; and Luca is part of Cloche.

The puzzle starts adding up. The tension is at an all time high, but the Infel wants Luca and Cloche to learn something before all of it boils over. The sister that Luca has been fighting for; basically her whole life; is Cloche.

The fog has lifted, and the perspective has changed. Cloche who has never had any sort of family, and has been chained to the ground, Luca who's mom; who she already has a strained relationship with; had her real child right in front of her eyes. This fixes some issues, but it can not fix the IPDS, it can not fix Luca manipulating Croix's emotions, there are things that can not be fixed.

But they can be forgiven. Cloche can atone for her sins, make a real Metafalica where there is no need for warfare, where the IPDS can be cured with Dive Therapy. Luca needs to communicate; make real friends; craft real relationships with her family; including Cloche as a start to creating the perfect world.

And they do. They understand humanity at it's core; people contradict, people make terrible decisions they can't even comprehend, but do they understand them? Can they recover from them?

Jakuri; The last of the singers; feels that Humans can not recover from them.

Another caged bird, stuck to human will, demanded to do anything that people demand. If she cannot preform for warfare, why does she exist?

She cannot give people hope, the people have given her no hope to begin with; the one song that she created; has been thrown away because; it's just useless. Why would humans need to do anything other than win the fight?

She cannot fully accept humans, but she watches as Luca and Cloche create this world, this new world. She knows that it is possible for humans to work together, but she's also seen what they've done to Reyvateils, in the first Ar Tonelico, they're basically slaves to human will, they are created for power. At some point, this paradise has a chance of ending.

But paradise even for a limited time, is still a eutopia, we can be human. We can still fight, and argue, and still live in a world that we want to live in. A full life is one full of conflict and reflecting on that conflict. Croix realizes the only way he can truly reach Jakuri's heart and it is through Song. "The Heart Talks"

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Music is the secret backbone to any RPG. Sometimes I wonder if games like Xenoblade would be nearly as good without the score. And Music, music is the thing that gives Ar Tonelico 2 a real identity.

The Hymmos is something that has never really been replicated to me; They can show any emotion; Fear; Anger; Sadness; Happiness; Calm; Serene; Destruction; Death. This is all within human range. These are something that humans go through everyday. The lyrics perfectly reflect this, the composition is all beautiful. The flexability within these songs is something that I don't know will ever be matched. It's hard for me to really articulate why it is so special without just listening to it.

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I apologize if this has been worded a little clunky, or a little scattershot at time, but when I feel passionate about something it just comes in waves. I just hope I portrayed how I felt about this game in a way that is easy enough to understand. It is a game that makes me love being human, and love being in this world.

"We must appreciate that the world allowed us to exist"

The Best part of this game is we start the journey with family and ends the journey with family

Wow, what a journey.

I'm not surprised this one is polarising, with people most often either yelling "peak fiction" or seeing this game as the one that messed up Cold Steel, or even Kiseki so far, right at the end. This game is a bit more difficult to write about than the other Trails games for me because it's so inconsistent. You have genuinely the worst padding in the series at times, and a lot of time wasted on stuff that doesn't amount to anything. On the other hand, you have some of the most hype stuff you'll ever see in a JRPG, and plenty of emotional moments.

On one hand you have MCU-level "Avengers moments" as opposed to the more organic ones in Zero to Cold Steel III (in CS4 they try to include everyone, so as opposed to something like Zero or CS3, they sometimes say/do their one thing then take a break from being in the story for a while relatively often), on the other hand you have some of the coolest stuff you'd dream to see in a connected universe that is only possible on this scale in Trails, such as 5-team dungeon raids and boss fights while old dungeon themes play in the OST. I am into so many long series with connected universes whose fans would salivate at the idea of even a fraction of this amount of crossover-ness.

It was difficult to decide whether to give this a 4/5 or 4.5/5, but I ultimately went with the more generous option since I enjoyed this more than CS3. It's definitely one of the coolest and most fun JRPGs out there, just heavily flawed and inconsistent, with both extremely tropey and generic ideas, as well as very creative ones that you don't see often.

Really looking forward to Reverie, I played the prologue and it's everything I've ever wanted. The best start to a video game I've ever seen, it has potential to be my favourite game of all time.

Parece um jogo muito bom, mas persona 5 e melhor e o jogo e muito inferior mecanicamente o que me fez acabar ficando sem vontade de jogar pela tartarus ser repetitiva pra caralho.

This is a review entry for base Genshin Impact, so Mondstadt and the core gameplay. Backloggd has entries for most of the updates, so I will review specific story expansions and other updates in those.

Genshin Impact is a game that is next to impossible to discuss with nuance on the Internet. A vast majority of the discussion is between terminal gacha addicts in denial and people who often haven't played it at all doing the "ok Genshin Impact fan xD" bit, with little in-between. Some of this stuff is blatantly disingenuous, which you can see with some reviews here, or whenever there is a mention of the game in a videogame community. One major example of this would be the "Genshin is pedo" half-joke, even though Genshin does something that I think frankly the overwhelming majority of other gacha, anime, manga anime-styled JRPGs and visual novels don't have the decency to do, and that's not sexualise young-looking characters. I won't pretend that Mihoyo/Hoyoverse mind if they get money from someone like that, especially considering the amount of Klee ads, but the game itself is extremely non-sexualised with adult characters, let alone younger ones. Something like F/GO or Blue Archive is far more indulgent in such things. There was no point in Genshin's story that has made me uncomfortable with something like that in my three years of playing it on and off. The fanbase is another matter, of course, there is no use pretending that there aren't some weird people there, like in most anime-adjacent media fanbases.

With that out of the way, this review will attempt to capture my thoughts on the base game, as a video game.

Genshin's visuals and music are amazing. It feels like I am on an adventure every step of the way. It looks better than most singleplayer anime-styled games, even in its mobile version. The characters and environments look consistently great. Combining various skills and ults leads to some very cool fights. The cutscenes are top-notch, too. The music and visual aesthetic vary from region to region, which is something I appreciate. Mondstadt, Dragonspine aside, is the most boring region, and also first in the story, but it has its own atmosphere. The world building is really good in this game, by the way, you get to know a lot about every region and how its people live, and they all feel distinctly different, rather than a generic European high fantasy inspired setting that you see in a lot of anime-related and JRPG media. There are some really good boss themes, too. Mondstadt's storyline wasn't anything special, but it was fun for what it was. The story definitely picks up in following regions (in the early portions of the story the Traveller still has Paimon speak and think for them instead of being an actual character), which I'll get to in future reviews.

The core gameplay is fun. Combining attacks to make elemental reactions with various characters (put a bit of fire into a tornado, now it's a flame tornado, or stand on top of water and shoot a tornado, it's now a water tornado), as well as character specifics, like grouping enemies with Anemo characters, are cool. The problem becomes that the enemies get damage sponges sometimes, but it doesn't bother me for the most part.

Some of the gameplay systems are frustrating. I hate the "this character is somewhere else in another quest, do it first before continuing the one you actually want!" mechanic. Getting artifacts is very luck-based, so if you care about getting the most out of your characters, you'll end up grinding for hours. Personally, I never cared about artifacts much, so I do like 30-60 minutes per character and just use the best things I have (though my life being easy ever since the early portions of the game may be partially attributed to rolling Diluc early on). I also don't really care about the FOMO or the gacha grind aspects since I have too much media that I want to get to outside of Genshin and mostly have all the characters I'd want. So if you're like me and don't care about the Abyss or whatever and mostly focus on the story/gameplay/exploration aspect, this is a very fun game. The co-op aspect makes exploration even more fun, giving your friend(s) a lift with Venti or something is really nice.

There is a reason why I keep coming back to this, despite my RPG videogame burnout, and that it's just comfortable; it just works. After my initial gacha addict phase years ago and my subsequent break, I've been coming back mostly for the story and to have a few game sessions with friends. The convenience of it is something that is unparalleled. I have my saves sync across multiple platforms, it has a far more frequent content release schedule than any other game I've played (including MMOs; looks like the exploitative gacha system was good for something), and it's just enjoyable in almost every aspect now that I play it casually and don't feel FOMO urges for it. The detail and love and care put into this game is undeniable. It helps that it feels like an actual videogame instead of what other live service games have, which in my opinion are less enjoyable combat mechanics.

Despite some things in Act 3, I totally love this game. While I don't think it's as good as Kuro no Kiseki, It's still a great sequel, and I love the greater focus on characters. The Kuro Cast was already one of my favorites, but with this game, the characters grew even more on me. 
The gameplay was also fantastic, and I really liked the additions to the battle system.
Overall, I can say that while Kuro no Kiseki II isn't perfect, I still really love this game, and I think the good parts definitely outweigh the bad parts of the game. The Calvard Arc is certainly my favorite Kiseki/Trails Arc, and I'm eagerly excited to see how it continues. 

This game is FUCKING CRAZY. I was skeptical over whether they'd top Sky the 3rd yet they somehow did.

I don't know how they did it, they somehow made three back-to-back 5-star, 10/10 games. This has NEVER happened to me in another series, even my favourites.

It's extremely emotional, the artstyle is awesome, it's fun to play (the small gameplay additions compared to Zero are appreciated), the characters are all awesome, they throw so many twists at you, the likes of which I haven't been this affected by since finishing my top 10 favourites across all media, that you can't help but binge. The backtracking is some of the least tedious in the entire genre from what I've seen. This is one of the closest things I've seen to perfection, from concept to execution, in my life. My only actual complaint is that the difficulty curve is kind of unreasonable in the last few fights of the game, but who cares, it was really hype.

And oh my GOD, the music... Trails already secured its place as #1 in terms of OST, beating Umineko, but this is on a whole other level. You have so many bangers, like the Azure Arbitrator or Mystic Core, but they're far from the only ones.

In terms of favourites, I'd place it around Utawarerumono 3. It's just that good.

I will be slowing down with my Trails binging and going through Cold Steel at a more leisurely pace so that I don't burn out but... wow, I'm definitely a fan.

Trails in the Sky is a great RPG, the story is really nice, and I especially loved the characters. I think the characters were even one of the best parts of this game, along with the worldbuilding, which is fantastic. Estelle is also a great protagonist; I really loved her! Not to mention the wonderful soundtrack of this game. I'm really excited to play Trails in the Sky SC and the whole Trails series.

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