I loved this game as a kid, I think between the GameCube and Xbox 360 releases I probably put in about 200 hours into it, just screwing around in the levels and messing with the Chaos. I never took the time to legitimately 100% it due to how easy it was for me to get frustrated at something not going well and not being smart enough to explore for non-necessary upgrades. After watching a friend play it for the first time as an adult, I decided I'd go back and finally finish what I never could as a kid. I installed some mods to fix up the visuals to be a bit closer to the original release and to make some mechanics (like rail grinding or bouncing from the homing attack) smoother, but I ultimately disabled the former in the end.

Here's a general list of my thoughts toward aspects of the game in positive (+), neutral (=), and negative (-) sections.

+ Music is consistently a banger, I don't think there's a track I feel negative toward and I'd happily listen to any of them.
+ This game oozes that Dreamcast personality that has yet to be matched by any games from any other era/console/developer.
+ When the levels feel good, they feel really fucking good. Doing a Sonic or Shadow level without messing up or getting all the Chaos Emerald shards quickly and getting an A rank is peak satisfaction.
+ Interacting with Chaos and raising them is a neat little mechanic if you mess with it casually. It's nice that you're rewarded for exploring levels with the Chao crates and random animals for raising them.
= The "reward" for getting all 180 Emblems is neat conceptually, but ultimately unrewarding. It's one of the few times seeing Green Hill doesn't feel like nostalgia bait and it's cool that they stick with the classic art style for it, but the stage is all you get. No cool abilities, no fun items, just a simple stage you can finish in under two minutes.
= Having to do the same mission five times for all their Emblems is actually garbage. I get that this game was made on a significant time crunch so they had to change the scope from the first game, but the gimmicks they have you do for missions 2, 4, and 5 are boring. The Lost Chao mission type is neat at least since it requires you to have paid attention in the last two missions to where the ancient ruins are and it's nice they make you use most of your abilities.
= Knuckles/Rouge levels are more fun than I remembered, they really incentivize memorizing locations and going fast which is the core of Sonic games to me. They can be a bit frustrating though - some of the hints are really bad, especially within the later stages. This just lead to me restarting missions and trying the same route over and over until I'd get two easy ones I knew and I could waste time finding the third. This is the one mission type where the Hard mission is actually kinda fun since the Chaos Emeralds are in the same spot every time, you just gotta figure out how to get them.
= Sonic/Shadow levels can be fun on an initial run or when you have a really good run, but going for A ranks is excruciating. Some levels are so short that a single mistake just leads to you having to reset over and over and because they're generally really fast, you'll have to be repeating all the quick movements for things like rail grinding and homing attacks.
= Homing attacks can feel really satisfying if you've got a big chain of enemies to do it on, but the fact it's contextual to the direction of the joystick can lead to some awful moments. Some levels have enemies in positions where you can aim your stick at an enemy and it'll just launch you in that direction instead of at the enemy. On top of that, the fact the height you get bounced up after doing one is random is insane, I downloaded a fix for this immediately. It's honestly so bad and inconsistent that I feel like I'm doing something wrong but I can't tell what.
-Tails/Eggman levels are definitely the worst of the bunch. They aren't very engaging and the tinnitus-inducing sound of the lock-on is awful since you'll be going for high enemy chains constantly. One thing I never noticed as a kid is that if you end up gliding against a wall, you'll be pushed down as fast as possible. This is true for all characters but this little quirk makes hovering feel terrible for these two characters especially.
- Lives are always a shitty mechanic in a game like this, running out of lives just means you're booted back to the menu so it's just a penalty to the player's time in a way that doesn't feel justified. I ended up using a cheat for infinite lives because the mechanic doesn't add anything to the game.
- Rail grinding feels terrible! I tried it with and without the mod to modernize it and I truly think there isn't a way to make it feel good in this game. It's incredibly inconsistent to the point where I think "messing up" was probably the cause of the vast majority of my deaths. So many levels refuse to let you transfer from one rail to the other by holding a direction and tapping the jump button, which just leads to you limply falling to your death and having to restart! Speaking of...
- I get that you need a penalty for the player dying, but the fact you lose all your points for dying in a game where the ranking system is specifically based on points really SUCKS! You can get away with continuing from a checkpoint on some levels but I felt like most of them required a great run from the first checkpoint to stand a chance at getting an A-rank.
- The camera is probably one of the worst things about this game. The mixture of fixed angles and a moveable camera for the player can be used well (see the Silent Hill games) but there are so many instances of this game locking your camera into awful angles in situations where it feels like you should be able to move it. Some levels actually made me a bit nauseous from how the camera places itself when it gets caught behind an object and decides to jitter endlessly.
- Doing all the completion for Chao world is actually insane. If you don't want to engage in the exploit to infinitely use animals and chaos drives, you're gonna be grinding an insane amount. Then you'll have to sit through typically 3-4 minutes of doing nothing but watching your Chao run, no way to speed up the race other than cheering your Chao on with the limited stamina it probably has. If you lose at the end, have fun waiting and watching again! If you win, have fun waiting and watching again as you do the same race a total of three to five times for the first two circuits.

Do I think this game is that good? No, not really. Do I think it's generally fun? Yeah, I'd say so. I think SA2 is best played by doing a casual playthrough and messing with the side content just a bit. Going for the 100% is an actively miserable and unrewarding experience that genuinely damaged a tendon in my forearm.

dark souls ii is an incredibly mixed game - but i think it ultimately ends up with more positives than negatives.

there are a lot more flaws than the first game, and the highs don't really reach the highs of the first either. the difficulty is very unbalanced, when it's hard it ranges from genius type 2 fun to bullshit wastes of time.

i think being able to warp anywhere from the start is a good change, especially with the world design of this game being a bit more linear. the enemy placement is pretty contentious here but i think it's MOSTLY good, forcing you to play more methodically, taking out enemies 1 by 1.

what i DON'T like is when standard enemies interrupt boss fights. it's not like it's in every fight, but there's way more of that than in ds1 which is really annoying and distracting.

despite its glaring flaws, ds2 is a very good game. it has an interesting story and lore, with a lot to sink into for people that love uncovering secrets. the good bosses here are very good, rivaling the peaks of ds1. it's still worth playing despite its somewhat controversial reception.

As much as I would love to gush about how this is some of the best RPG writing I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing, the design is very rough at times and that skewed my enjoyment of it.

The nameless one is a great MC. There is a strong reason for his amnesia, and the efforts to regain his memories is both meaningful and rewarding. All the while being a blank slate makes him a vehicle for the player to be expressed well. He doesn't talk in a specific peculiar way like most other characters which both plays into his amnesia backstory and makes him a suitable self-insert for agency's sake.

The setting itself was well implemented, and although I don't know where the planescape world ends and torment's original writing begins in terms of worldbuilding, it doesn't really matter. Even if the entire world was pre-existing, just the work done on the game's story and characters is monumental. It plays into the trope of individuals living impossibly long lives a lot which is a favorite of mine. Despite me being lost at times and that detracting from my pleasure, I found myself agape at some moments that aren't exactly important to the progression but they hold significance to The Nameless One himself, like HER sensory stone as an example.

I did feel lost at times and unable to recall what or where my next main target is supposed to be, and although the continuously updated journal is a great concept that deserves to be more normalized, I found it sometimes missed adding moderately significant events or dialogues or vaguely inscribing them compared to the more straightforward directions given in a previous conversation.

The followers are generally wonderful and great to have, my favorites are obviously Morte and Dak'kon, and while Annah doesn't have many conversations on her own, she shines at interjections. All followers can interject and add to convos with other NPCs, moreover they can even sway conversations into different directions and outcomes or give further insight into their own character.

I guess combat is where we're left lacking most. It works on tabletop D&D rules with rolling saves and misses etc. but that doesn't save it, unfortunately. Magic works on the basis that each learned spell is only cast once before resting to replenish instead of working a mana pool, but with how resting spots and some dungeon designs are it doesn't always go so well.

I'm probably an outlier since many more enjoyed the good that PS: Torment offers without bearing the cons I felt, and even if you'll have a similar experience to mine, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't try playing it. It is a unique game in more than one sense.

What is it that I look for in a video game? What is it that I look for in any form of media? The determining factors that can make or break the entire experience for me? When I interact with a medium like this, be it game, movie, or otherwise, I'm looking for a world. A world that I can look into and appreciate, examine, feel every aspect. A world that knows how to pull you in, using every tool it has available. VA-11 Hall-A, and its cyberpunk dystopia they call Glitch City, is precisely what I'm looking for.

This is not a world you are meant to appreciate, though. This is, as stated earlier, a dystopia, run down by the corporations and awful governing bodies that tower over it and its citizens, criminalistic and morally bankrupt at every turn, where dreams struggle to make it out alive or die trying. Yet, despite it all, there's a place of respite. A bar tucked away from the public eye, and a glance into a story that doesn't belong to you, but to a cold, tired woman on the verge of losing it all, whether she knows the full extent of it or not.

Amidst the cyberpunk bartender action, you will meet new faces, a large majority of which are already well acquainted with the game's protagonist, Jill Stingray. Immediately, you'll notice that, in a sense, there is no beginning to this story. There's no need to formally introduce everyone, as this is just another day on the job for Jill, mixing drinks and changing lives as she does for the regulars of Valhalla. Through these customers, you'll soon recognize the depravity of Glitch City. Customers of all shapes and sizes, all different motives and purposes will stumble into the bar each and every day, yet life proceeds as normal for the citizens of the city, and through listening to their story and talking to them, over time, you get used to them. Everyone you talk to has a story, no matter how minor, and those stories can change everything you know and believe. Valhalla gives these characters a place to be vulnerable and speak their mind, giving the player a glance into even more stories, the awful pasts that bring one to where they are now.

But a story isn’t what makes a world. Not alone, at least. A world isn’t complete without its environment and atmosphere, and VA-11 Hall-A nails this aspect stunningly. Michael “Garoad” Kelly’s work on this game’s soundtrack is a damn masterpiece for every scenario, complemented by the jukebox system that integrates the music into the world of the bar seamlessly. To speak a little more personally, this is easily my favorite soundtrack to come out of any video game. Just launching the game and listening to its title screen is enough to get me emotional, knowing full well what’s to come. Making it past that, things only get better with tracks like Safe Haven playing outside of the bar, and the wide list of songs to select during your work, with such beautiful standouts like Synthestitch, Snowfall, and the classic Every Day Is Night, not to mention the way it all meshes perfectly with the PC-98 aesthetic of VA-11 Hall-A’s entire interface. Everything just feels so natural, as it should. The songs that play each day are handpicked by you, the player, at the start of every shift, making it that much easier to immerse yourself in this short glimpse into Jill’s life.

It all comes together to make the perfect world I look for in an experience. The perfect, imperfect world. It is this imperfect world that I fell into so quickly all those years ago. Only starting out as me stumbling across some screenshots a friend of mine posted way back, a silly conversation between Jill and Alma. I laughed, and grew curious, not only by the humor of the moment, but by everything that was presented to me. I still remember that first playthrough. Watching as characters I would grow attached to would disappear for days upon weeks, I would let out an audible gasp upon seeing them again, just to indulge in their casual musings yet again. The sharp twists and turns of this story would break out, and the entire mood would shift dramatically. Characters would grow weary, concerned, Jill herself would lose the cool demeanor her customers had gotten so accustomed to, and the music would become much more somber. All of it, from the brutal reality the protagonist had suddenly been thrust into, to the despondent music I had selected to play by my own hand, it all just felt… natural. Despite the physically unnatural circumstances of the city and its residents, every story I had read felt natural, but I never felt like I was a part of it. Because I wasn’t. It was all just a crucial chapter of Jill’s own story, not the beginning, nor the end. Life went on, for everyone involved, and I found myself holding its precious moments close to me, through multiple replays and reminiscences of the world I had fallen in love with.

And it is in this world, where I can find myself at my most vulnerable. VA-11 Hall-A brings out the emotion in me that few other games can so easily, just as the bar itself does so regularly with its clientele. From day one, I have, and forever will hold this experience closest to my heart, and I will surely do the same with whatever story is to be told in the future with its sequel.

This is my favorite game of all time. The perfect blend of every element I look for in a video game, in a show, in any form of art. This warm and comforting feeling, even in the face of such a brutal environment as this. This is what I would happily call a perfect game. The perfect game.

Cheers to eight years of cyberpunk bartender action.

Writing this review moments after finishing the game, I'm honestly confused and a little sad as well.

This was one of the rare games I was really eager and hyped to play this game. We've all seen how it looked, heard the devs' promises on how they're going to give the series a much-needed breath of fresh air, by both innovating on the style and by retracing a rarely explored side of FF that has been absent for a long time.

It turns out that this is applied only to some parts of the game; and to my surprise, the most of it feels like a game created by the same people that brought us FF14, which is crazy to say given how different it looked initially.

A lot of its ideas sound fantastic on paper, but it's only that. It feels more like a game designed by idea people than anything else, and as you play you can sense the game dipping its toes into some intriguing territory of themes and storytelling. Sadly, it never gets past the point of "this seems like it could work.", and eventually the anticipation wears off as you become more sure that they can't handle what they have here.

There IS a great game with this material, but it's encased between an excessive amount of pure nothingness that kills the pacing even more than the two FF7R games did.

For each Titan fight, you will get a full on quest line that only involves talking a LOT of talking to people back and forth, and for every Bahamut fight you will get a lot of cutscenes that go on for longer than it should, and that's if you're lucky because the direction of the scenes may get great at times.

Though I'm neither a Tolkien nor an Itsuno, I can see how the characters could have been given more depth or what plot points they could have focused on rather than this amalgamation of story beats, how they could have made the subjects and themes more real and effective and truly earn that M rating, and how they could have refined the same gameplay we have here—especially since it's not bad at all.

I do think the combat - despite being very simple - is a decent translation of modern FF design into a character action game that has a lot of polish and amazing game feel. The cooldown Eikon moves all serve a purpose in this hack n slash sandbox, combining this with its limited slots encourages some strategizing and experimentation, but they're still cooldown attacks which just feels lazy, and most encounters may not push you to go crazy with it given both the enemy design and difficulty.

And not to come across as deliberately critical, I do really like the simplified set pieces and the whole Press R3 and L3 to accept the truth/Asura's Wrath/MGR direction, they just don't hit as they might have due to pacing or weird story decisions. They're also like 25% of the game or something so it may not matter in the end.

Fuck it though, I knew I wasn't going to say something that wasn't already addressed and discussed for this 1-year-old game; but I just find it to be a depressing experience.
I can already feel that I've typed a lot of "mights" and that's because the base is there! There is an M rating, there is a combat system that feels good and has some decent ideas, there is a touching story inside about the indomitable human will and reconnection and hope in the bleakest of times, there is an amazing Soken OST here combined with some of the craziest set pieces one may ever see in a video game ever due to its sheer scale and ridiculousness. However, most of it didn't matter in the end, and I was left wondering what was the game's intention after all. Because this feels more like the often criticized bad parts of KH than a spiritual successor to medieval or Ivalice FF.

What possesses developers that they make all these bizarrely toothless PVP 3D shooter games- movement speed is tuned to be middling, Time To Kill is tuned to be middling, weapon handling mechanics are tuned to be middling, all of the fundamental verbs of these games seem deliberately designed to be roughly average, it makes no fucking sense, who wants to play a game like that.
Call of Duty may not be amazing but it has movement and weapon mechanics that can induce ADHD in a fully grown adult with no prior symptoms, Counter-Strike has those wild ass recoil systems and grenade trajectories, Halo was deliberately made to be absurdly sluggish- Tribes absurdly fast, Gears of War had cover platforming, Quake- Bunnyhopping, etc, etc. These games, whether trying to cater to a mass audience or freaks all had real tangible decision making in the move-shoot-kill fundamentals that set them all apart from each other and it feels like every PVP shooter I try now deliberately avoids any kind of distinction in core mechanics, preferring them to be roughly universal and relying on the various hero gimmicks or structural gimmicks layered on top to distinguish themselves. It's no way to make a fun shooter for any kind of audience.