I’m writing this as someone who has a lot of nostalgia for FF6. It’s one of the games that helped grow my love for the RPG genre as a kid, even if I admit back then I never made it to RoW. Playing the game in full today, I’ve come to appreciate some aspects more while also becoming much more aware of its problems.

My main issues with the game stem from how there are simply too many characters. Terra, Locke, and Celes felt like they got the best screen time and character moments by far, but they only make up 3 of the 14 party members. That’s not to say they all have nothing going on, but I think it would have been much better if the cast size was reduced. This could have given more dedicated screen time to the other characters and really help flesh them out.

Having a large cast really hurt during the many sections where players get full freedom for who is in their party. Many lines of dialogue during these parts use more generic wording and won’t list the speaker’s name, so I can only assume these lines are completely the same no matter the characters you pick. Even if I don’t expect Square to account for every possible party combination, for me it really took away from the characters when I could see how easily they could be swapped around in these parts. These interchangeable lines also prevent characters from receiving more development, and as a result makes FF6 feel really inefficient with its time. If Square was so insistent that players get freedom for their party, there are a couple ways they could have gotten around these issues. One would be to write the story so that more/all of the playable cast travels as a group. Another would be to force at least 1-2 characters during these parts, something FF6 already does in other sections. These aren’t the only solutions, but they both would have helped Square more easily account for player choices, leading to more characters getting development.

I’ll also mention I played this game on the Ted Woolsey Uncensored Edition. This hack aims to clean up the script using a thorough analysis of multiple official and fan translations of the game. It’s been too long since I played the original SNES version to compare, but the TWUE script seemed good on its own. It also includes various bug fixes, QoL improvements, and addons like a sprint button, that last one being invaluable. I highly recommend anyone playing the game today use TWUE or the sprint button addon on its own due to how slow the normal walking speed is. Similarly, a turbo button to increase the game speed felt mandatory. It can really cut down on the tedium you feel from watching the same animations over and over.

Overall FF6 does have some good qualities, but there are many issues that stem from having too many playable characters. It really felt like Square was either rushed for development time and/or they wanted a large cast just for the sake of it. I can still recommend people play FF6 but I just find it difficult to recommend over many other RPGs.

I think I get why a lot of people like this game, and it does have some really good qualities, but I had quite a few problems with the recurring chasing enemies that really detracted from my experience.

SCP-173 felt the most well made out of the bunch. Having to stare it down as the blink meter forces you to quickly find safety was something I really enjoyed at first, and it provided a very unique experience. Overall I still like 173 but I have to mention it was quite frustrating whenever it would suddenly appear in front of me (sometimes scripted, sometimes not) and simply being low on your blink meter would lead to death.

SCP-049 is another recurring chasing enemy but one without anything that makes 173 interesting. He just runs you down at a constant speed, instantly kills when he reaches you, and has no counterplay. This is as basic as enemy design gets and felt more like he was included just for being one of the more popular SCPs.

But then we have SCP-106. On paper, and during the first encounter, he can be pretty interesting. Being able to pop up at any time means you can never feel too safe, and with visual and audio cues to give proper warning so that you aren’t instantly killed. He won’t directly kill you but will instead send you to his pocket dimension, giving you some chance at escape. It sounds like it fixes some of my issues with 173 and 049, but 106 ended up being the most tedious to deal with by far. Running away from him felt just as monotonous as running from 049, both are just running after you at a constant speed. 106 can be stunned with the Tesla gates, but those aren’t always around, and even when they are it feels no less annoying. The pocket dimension sounds nice as a way to not just kill the player, but trying to escape the pocket dimension always felt like plain old luck. Being able to appear at any moment, instead of building tension, led more to irritation as no matter the task at hand, 106 can suddenly show up to halt your progress and force you to run around for a bit. And with how frequently he ended up appearing, he was just irritating to deal with.

I think the overall quality of the game is still fine. The atmosphere while exploring the facility can be great at times and there’s clearly a lot of love put in with the vast amount of SCPs featured, especially for a mostly solo project in the early 2010s. It’s a free game that’s only ~3-4 hours so it’s hard to recommend against it (or the multiplayer version), but my issues with SCPs 173, 049, and 106 still brought the overall experience down for me.

I'm just listing my problems with BG3 since you've probably already heard the many reasons this game is good. And despite my problems with it, BG3 is still a game I was happy to put over 300 hours into across 4 playthroughs.

Imbalance in Stats:
Some abilities and stats are favored over others. Charisma (CHA) related skills, particularly Persuasion and Deception, felt like the most common skill checks in dialogue by far, which in turn makes CHA a very beneficial stat. To be fair, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Having to make decisions for a character’s strengths and weaknesses is something I enjoy in RPGs. So there can be an interesting dilemma here where for example someone can sacrifice some combat ability for that boost in CHA or vice versa. And CHA being useful in dialogue is completely fine on its own. My problem comes from how much more useful it and its related skills feel compared to other options. Perception and Insight, 2 WIS skills, were definitely useful but after that it becomes a lot more niche. Sleight of Hand is very useful for the multitude of locks and traps throughout the game, but you’re most likely only putting this on 1 character with high DEX and letting them handle all those checks. After that, I found most skills get much worse. Acrobatics, Religion, Animal Handling, and Medicine are just examples of the many skills that saw little use and for relatively little reward compared to the skills I mentioned before. I don’t mean to say any of the non-CHA skills are absolutely worthless, but that they never felt worth investing in. This ties in to stats in general. INT always felt like an easy dump stat for any non-Wizard. STR is one I’d dump less but wasn’t one I invested in if the character didn’t utilize it for their attacks. And funnily enough CHA became a dump stat for my companions while I did all the talking with my Tav. Like with the skills, I’m not saying these didn’t have any use at all but it was never a difficult decision to dump them over DEX, CON, or WIS. Making these decisions so easy is part of the problem for me. For dialogue specifically, Fallout: New Vegas is an example where they allowed its Speech skill to remain extremely useful in skill checks, but also allowed a lot of opportunities for other skills to be used in various conversations and quests. I would have loved to see stat and skill usefulness at least somewhat more evened out.

Villains:
Most of the antagonists don't feel all too interesting. I don't mean to say they're all outright bad but more that it feels like there's a lot of untapped potential. The Elder Brain does give incentive for you and the characters to stop it, but its character doesn't really go beyond a generic BBEG that wants to rule the world. Orin similarly feels like a generic sadist who is just very evil. Gortash at least had some interesting ideas. He's genuinely interested in cooperating with you and does seem to believe in his absolute rule. It's unfortunate most of his screen time is towards the end and whether or not you align with him really doesn't matter. Ketheric felt like he was the most fleshed out, but like Gortash I wish we got to see more of him.

Bugs:
The other main issue I had with BG3 is bugs. Of course bugs in games are inevitable, especially in one where there are so many factors interacting with each other and the possibilities that brings. So bugs existing in BG3 at all isn’t really a problem for me so much as when quests outright broke. In the quest to free Nere, you’re able to align with the Duergar for some gold and help during the combat encounter at the end of the quest. But it seems like if you have a smokepowder item when you arrive at the Duergar colony, their leader won’t even bother talking to you and you’re locked out of working with them. I suspect having a smokepowder item is the issue here as whenever I encountered this bug, reloading a save and removing any smokepowder items before entering the Duergar colony would fix the problem. People online also seem to have the same problem and are where I got the solution from. A quest that I couldn’t easily fix was Wyll’s companion quest during Act III. Early in the act you’re given the objective to attend Gortash’s coronation at Wyrm’s Rock. You’re supposed to see what’s happening with Wyll’s dad, who after the coronation is sent to an underwater prison. However when I got the coronation as an objective, I figured it was a big important event I should save until later in the act. When I eventually did do it, Wyll’s dad just stayed at Wyrm’s Rock with minimal dialogue. Even when trying to progress the quest, having Mizora tell me he went to the prison or just going there myself, Wyll’s dad did not show up at the prison and remained at Wyrm’s Rock. I had done so much between first getting this objective and actually doing it that I just left Wyll’s companion quest for another playthrough. The last large bug I faced was in my Honour Mode run during the high wall section of the final battle. When you interact with the second part of the brain stem that takes you to the next part of the fight, the game is supposed to teleport your party up to whoever interacted with the brain stem and take you out of combat to prepare for the last encounter of the game. But it seems like the game only teleports party members who have passed the large door of the building where the brain stem is. Half-Illithids, Monks, and probably other characters have a really easy time reaching the brain stem immediately, and I found myself doing this while not knowing The Emperor, who hadn’t yet reached the door, wouldn’t be teleported. Because of this, the game did not let me start the final encounter and I was forced to go back to get The Emperor. When I did, my characters were forced into combat with the remaining enemies who, because the game bugged out, refused to take their turn. My game was then stuck in a softlock state with there being nothing I could do. And because it was Honour Mode, reloading a save was not an option. While the enemies not taking their turn was the bug itself, having every party member, even ones who haven’t reached the door, teleported to whoever reaches the brain stem would have completely avoided this problem. Regardless of this bug, I struggle to see why this isn’t how it works. I also had Gale in my party and both him and my Tav at the brain stem, so there was no story reason why I couldn’t have sent Gale up to finish the game right there. The game was just arbitrarily locking me out. With all of this put together, I was literally one short conversation away from completing my Honour Mode run but lost 60 hours because of a bug. In all 3 of these quests these bugs felt somewhat like the game wasn’t prepared for what I did, which especially stung knowing how good BG3 is elsewhere regarding player freedom.

I like this game overall but so much of the repetition could have been removed without detracting from the experience for me.

Route B felt like it justified its existence with the new scenes providing new perspectives for primarily the characters you’re fighting. Having this occur after Route A created a greater contrast and impact compared to if it all happened the first time around. However, what little was added in Route C and the C and D endings being locked behind it felt very arbitrary. I would have enjoyed the game a lot more if all the new Route C content had just been in Route B. If you’re going for all the endings without downloading someone else’s save file, you’ll play through the game’s second half a total of 3 times. Ending D also requires a 4th run through the game’s final level, which felt especially boring having just done it for ending C. Another issue with Route C is new players trying to figure out what is actually new. Players can skip most cutscenes if they (understandably) don’t want to watch them for a third time, but this risks missing out on actual new content. When I learned Ending E required repeating even more of the main game, I resorted to using someone else’s save from just before Route E.

But even if the game was just 2 routes, there’s a lot of my time that would still feel wasted. Most of the sections I found annoying in Routes B and C were ones I still found annoying back in Route A. The constant walking back and forth between areas takes up so much time, and the introduction of a fast travel system didn’t remove this as an issue for me. Not to mention things like the extremely slow ladder animations you’re forced to watch multiple times for every trip to the Junk Heap or the extremely slow door animations you’re forced to watch multiple times in the Lost Shrine. So much of this came across to me as padding and/or sloppy design, and I would have enjoyed the game so much more had my problems with the game been refined upon. I understand the tedium in NieR is why some people enjoy it so much, doing things like helping players relate to the characters/world. However I can’t say it was the same for me, regardless of whether or not these design decisions were intentional on the part of the creators.

What really sucks about my complaints is I really liked most of the story and dialogue you get once you’re past each tedious segment. The characters have a lot of fun interactions with each other and there are a lot of interesting plot points and reveals across the entirety of the story. It was all more than enough for me that, even if I did have all the issues I mentioned above, the game was still overall enjoyable and one I’m glad I’ve experienced.

This game has some interesting ideas but it's difficult to recommend when it costs $26 CAD and doesn't even last 2 hours.

The first ~30 minutes were the best part since it was when I was most on edge. Your arsenal is at its weakest which means Charles poses the largest threat here, and you never know when he might appear. Moving around the island by train also makes you feel vulnerable due to the limited control you have. These parts came together well to create a good sense of tension.

However, once you start doing the various main/side quests, the enjoyment really starts to decrease. Every quest is some generic fetch quest and none of them really stand out. Having interesting NPCs can make up for mechanically bland quests but unfortunately that's not the case here. The quests that involved sneaking around cult members were particularly obnoxious. Stealth is extremely barebones and enemies who spot you will chase you to the ends of the Earth. But there were points where I could just try to run past enemies and get the objective before they could kill me, something I imagine wasn't intended and made them come across as poorly put together.

Most rewards for quests are upgrades for your train, either a new weapon or scrap metal to upgrade its stats. There is a sense of progression but in this case I found it really took away from the tension Charles created at the start of the game. Your collective upgrades quickly become more than enough to deal with any Charles encounter. There is the benefit that trying to quickly swap weapons in response to guns overheating and Charles' distance can create a frantic rhythm. However, Charles becomes less like a monster you should fear and more like a mechanic you need to deal with, which really took away any horror for me. And after only a couple Charles fights, each encounter becomes pretty routine. So even if you didn't get all these upgrades, I imagine Charles would still become pretty repetitive to face.

There were parts of Choo-Choo Charles I like and would love to see applied on a larger scale, but unfortunately many of them aren't very developed here. The game taking under 2 hours and costing $26 CAD makes it especially hard to recommend. If the concept is interesting enough you might think it's worth it but I'd look to the many other indie/horror games that will cost less and/or have better quality.

Blasphemous II feels like such a disappointment after the first game.

The Game Kitchen said this was going to be a more “pure metroidvania” but so much of the design feels like the opposite. The metroidvania genre is known for non-linear exploration and upgrade-based progression, neither of which I feel Blasphemous II (B2) succeeds in.

The way Blasphemous II’s world is structured feels like a strict downgrade for the genre. Blasphemous 1 (B1) and other metroidvanias have many interconnecting pathways between levels, helping them come together to form a single large world. Meanwhile B2’s levels feel more like branches off of the main hub, with areas feeling much more disconnected from each other as a result. B1 felt like levels naturally looped back into the main hub while in B2 you rely a lot on the teleportation spell, which now takes you back to the main hub. This spell would teleport you to your last bonfire in B1, and I suspect the change was a result of the different world structures. I can’t say for sure, but this makes me think even the developers were aware of the world’s lack of interconnectivity, making the “pure metroidvania” comment feel even worse. I’ll also mention the differences in world structure and when you get access to fast travel between B1/B2 draws parallels to Dark Souls 1 and 2, and a lot of people criticized Dark Souls 2’s world design.

Upgrade-based progression is another staple of the metroidvania genre that B2 feels lacking in. Each of the 3 main weapons have sections of the world locked off behind their use, but this use in progression isn’t much more than as glorified keys. For example, the bells in the world require you to hit them with the ball & chain weapon so either a door opens or some platforms appear. These would function identically if you had to hit the bells with another weapon type or some other key item, so it ends up feeling very arbitrary that progression is tied to the weapons this way. My other main issue with the weapons as progression items is how uninspired they feel. Almost every time you smack a mirror with the rapier, hit a bell with the ball & chain, or cut a tree with the sword dive, it just felt like the same old boring task it was the first time. It never really develops on these uses so it feels stale throughout the game. Another example is the airdash. Levels where the devs know you have this upgrade aren’t really designed in a more complex way, instead just having walls that you can only use the airdash to pass through. This type of progression feels more like you’re earning keys that just happen to add to your moveset. I played Rabi-Ribi immediately after beating B2 and it was night and day how so many of Rabi-Ribi’s upgrades felt more like significant additions to your moveset and not just glorified keys.

B2’s second half introduces another problem when it comes to being a metroidvania: linearity. One at a time, levels are literally placed in the map where they just didn’t exist before, with the game telling you to go there. There’s also no player choice in what order they tackle the second half’s levels, even if each subsequent level has minimal upgrade-locked progression or how they never really feel like a step up from the last. I once again have to question how a large sequence as linear as this can be classified as “pure metroidvania”. I’ll also once again point out with this you can draw even more parallels between B2 and Dark Souls 2 for an aspect the latter was criticized for.

There are some things I like about the game. One thing is the statue system which I found to be interesting, even if it felt like it needed a lot more fleshing out. And of course The Game Kitchen has once again created some of the best pixel art in video games. Those aren’t the only parts I enjoyed but regardless, the issues I mentioned above are too glaring to me.

Lastly, I'll mention how this game costs $40 CAD. This is much more than not only the first game but pretty much every other metroidvania out there. And for a product I feel is much worse no less. I’d recommend either waiting for a large discount or just playing something else.