Waste
2000
Shockingly good 2d stealth game, and honestly in my opinion, better than the MGS1 classic on the ps1. More than worth checking out, it's worth outright spending time in.
2024
This is not even close to the aesthetic that i actually enjoy in a game, and I usually hate roguelikes (many rants on my page about them in fact), but this just fucking slaps for no good reason. Very fun with friends as well. Great soundtrack, great gamefeel too. My only and ONLY complaint is that cleaves are not well shown. I cannot put this game down. Play this one.
1987
Poorly aged slop game, no idea how it got a sequel. Too easy to soft lock yourself in it.
This review contains spoilers
None of these stars are story related. In fact, that missing star is straight up because of how bad, thoughtless, and insulting the story is written. If I jumped from ShB's quality of writing down to the level of storytelling Endwalker provided me with, I would shatter every fucking bone in my body. It does everything wrong that Stormblood did with it's structure and pacing (filling your quests with filler by an endless amount, yet when a story beat happens it manages to still rush it as if they had no time to develop anything) paired with it trying its best to outright copy and re-do many story beats that Shadowbringers did much, much better. What a disaster of a story. A horrible and badly made conclusion to a story over 10 years in the making. Instead of making this two separate expacs like originally planned, they mashed 2 whole storylines together and brought back Zenos for no reason. The Garlean storyline literally gets forced to end after building up a character that easily could have been BBV material, and instead makes him shoot himself after 20 minutes of meeting him. Then it introduces a whole new villain with a whole new power system in the last 3rd of the story out of NOWHERE and gives them no development until the LITERAL final fight in the form of 5 lines of dialogue. This is a terrible story, and it's only made worse by the fact that it came after the masterclass writing that was Shadowbringers. Insane how badly someone can fuck up an entire arc when the blueprint for doing such was right in front of them. They followed it, sure, but they did it while refusing to understand why the blueprint was made in the fashion it was in. So many fantastic ideas and themes are present, and not only does EW fail to deliver on those built-up promises, it outright refuses to at times. Then, it introduces the laziest and most insanely rushed FF4 reference as the plot for the postpatch, where it delivers a contrived remix of the Shadowbringers MSQ without understanding what made ShB so good. You can tell Ishikawa stepped down from Main Scenario Writer around 5.4 when Ardbert is literally dug out from his grave to give fanservice as he pet Seto. Such a bullshit scene that ruins a perfect ending for a perfect character, for a forced emotional beat. It marked the beginning of Endwalker and I mean that in every way possible.
The soundtrack, side-content, raids, V&C Dungeons, gameplay changes, mechanics, everything else that is NOT tied to MSQ specifically is so good that it redeems this expansion as worthwhile. All 4 stars are to those things alone, and the missing 5th star is how much of a tragedy this MSQ was.
I cannot imagine why anyone loves this story, genuinely, especially when it does EVERYTHING wrong that Stormblood did (which is disliked amongst many people who enjoy EW). EW is just Stormblood 2, and yet everyone acts as if this is the pinnacle of storytelling XIV has to offer. With my ShB review I mentioned how I went in expecting an 8 and was given something far beyond a 10. How my expectations were outperformed. Endwalker was something I expected to be on the level of Heavensward. Yes, a downgrade from ShB I had expected, but yet again my expectations were so undershot that I wound up shocked. This was a worse MSQ experience than Stormblood ever could hope to be. Not even ARR's postpatch left me more bored, jaded, disappointed, and discontent with it's direction like Endwalker did for me. SOMEONE in Square Enix needs to be demoted. This was made on purpose and greenlit with the intent to sell "as is." This was the intended product. It was meant to be this pile of garbage writing. And it was given the okay. Someone needs to be fucking kept away from that decision somewhere in the chain of command, because holy hell.
TL;DR - Endwalker is shortened to "EW" and it couldn't be more fitting for its MSQ. It is written the same way a CW show is written. At least Zenos became a character finally.... at the literal end. Meteion is NOT a real character by the way, I am begging the audience here to start watching some Kino, start studying literary devices in the Greek, Roman, and Victorian eras, and maybe... just maybe..... healers adjust. If ShB was Square Enix's MGS2, EW is Square Enix's MGSV.
The soundtrack, side-content, raids, V&C Dungeons, gameplay changes, mechanics, everything else that is NOT tied to MSQ specifically is so good that it redeems this expansion as worthwhile. All 4 stars are to those things alone, and the missing 5th star is how much of a tragedy this MSQ was.
I cannot imagine why anyone loves this story, genuinely, especially when it does EVERYTHING wrong that Stormblood did (which is disliked amongst many people who enjoy EW). EW is just Stormblood 2, and yet everyone acts as if this is the pinnacle of storytelling XIV has to offer. With my ShB review I mentioned how I went in expecting an 8 and was given something far beyond a 10. How my expectations were outperformed. Endwalker was something I expected to be on the level of Heavensward. Yes, a downgrade from ShB I had expected, but yet again my expectations were so undershot that I wound up shocked. This was a worse MSQ experience than Stormblood ever could hope to be. Not even ARR's postpatch left me more bored, jaded, disappointed, and discontent with it's direction like Endwalker did for me. SOMEONE in Square Enix needs to be demoted. This was made on purpose and greenlit with the intent to sell "as is." This was the intended product. It was meant to be this pile of garbage writing. And it was given the okay. Someone needs to be fucking kept away from that decision somewhere in the chain of command, because holy hell.
TL;DR - Endwalker is shortened to "EW" and it couldn't be more fitting for its MSQ. It is written the same way a CW show is written. At least Zenos became a character finally.... at the literal end. Meteion is NOT a real character by the way, I am begging the audience here to start watching some Kino, start studying literary devices in the Greek, Roman, and Victorian eras, and maybe... just maybe..... healers adjust. If ShB was Square Enix's MGS2, EW is Square Enix's MGSV.
No, Redditor, Metroid 2 isn't a "misunderstood classic"
Literally the exact same game as UFO Defense, but with slightly worse combat but way more variety in the game-play and a way better horror aspect. The main thing holding it back, was not including the regular ole Geoscape systems and the normal land combat from UFO. Unironically if it had the best of both worlds, this would be the game we all talk about today.
Easily one of if not the best MH game in the franchise. The weapon balance is best in this game compared to every other game. The progression actually rocks. The hub quests are fun and not overbearing. There's no asinine gimmick other than underwater combat, which is great on a controller (sucks to be on a 3ds though). The ONLY and I do mean only downside to this game is Capcom's insanely stupid take on how multiplayer should be done. See, they thought to themselves "well, the 3DS is a mobile platform, which means theyre gonna probably be outdoors when they play! NO ONLINE FOR THE 3DS!" so now if you want to play online multiplayer, you either have to emulate it on PC or you have to use the Wii U to connect online. Genuinely asking, what was their thought process?
Not how to remake a game.
One of the better Monster Hunters after it fully released. Terrible endgame monsters you can tell were stunted by the pandemic shutting down development (Fatalis and Alatreon are really terribly done fights, especially Fatalis who has weapon matchups that are insanely bad to the point runners will avoid them) but there was a soul and care put into this game not found in most other games. There was finally an actual gameplay loop, albeit way too grindy. The clutch claw and tenderization nerf was atrocious and should be modded out of your game ASAP if you're on PC. It has a few flaws holding it back, but many of them are moddable on PC. The game boasts far, far more pros than cons without a doubt. Great MH game. Aged a bit better than.... some other entries.
I only ever started playing FF14 because it was a social thing, because a group I was in was playing this game. I used to hate FF14 when it came out, not just because 1.0 sucked and was infamously bad, but because even when ARR dropped it had so many asinine issues with it that I didn't ever want to install. I hated that it was even a numbered FF game just like 11. One look at my profile and you can see what kinda man I am with the games I do and do not like. I don't care if you think I'm a weirdo, a contrarian, or even if you agree with me and accept that I am a true Kinosopher and lover of all Kino. The truth is, this game was an MMO and I don't like those usually. I didn't like their awful class system at the time with shared role actions, I hated TP, I hated how most of the duties worked, the story was sloppy as hell, I hated how you needed to make alternative characters to play with certain servers and data centers, and 1.0's taste was still fresh in my mouth. I would endlessly bash this game from around 1.0's release to just about the time the Monster Hunter World collab dropped, because THAT also sucked (for MHW that is). In hindsight? I was actually right to bash and hate on everything that I had. It was AWFUL. It genuinely sucked. After 2018 or so I stopped paying attention to it, and this is the time Shadowbringers dropped in. It went under my radar for so many years, and I regret not at least learning more about it.
While most of the MMO mechanics were still around at the time of this expansion's drop, I played it only this year since I joined around Summer of 2023. I got to play the game after every complaint I had about the game itself was changed and fixed. Literally everything above that I mentioned, it's gone. The game itself is massively improved. I went through the slog that was ARR but enjoyed specific moments of it. I played Heavensward which was narratively a bit better but god awful with its level design. I stomached the ass that was Stormblood MSQ (the non-MSQ content was great actually). I had heard great things about Shadowbringers beforehand from friends and others online, and I had moderately good expectations considering the main writer for ShB was the DRK scenario writer, a kinosopher who also clearly loves Berserk. Natsuko Ishikawa is a brilliant writer, and it is a shame she has not written much more than what she has for XIV. Genuinely it is a tragedy and a loss that she does not have more works under her name, solely because her quality of writing is so good that we could use more of it. Not only had I gone in expecting something good, I was assured that a good writer was going to make it consistent throughout the expansion.
I was wrong. It was not good. It was perfect. It far exceeded whatever expectation had placed for it. I expected an 8 or so but I got a 10. Half a star is missing for the usual MMO padding, a death that should have happened (but they are not allowed to kill certain characters it would seem), and for issues pertaining to XIV as a whole. That being said, the MSQ was fucking perfect and encapsulated the feeling of hopelessness and moving on from pain and loss. The story itself is next to flawless, but on top of that the quality of the individual lines written is top notch. The details are remembered and carried throughout the expansion. It's not just a great story, it's a well-written one at that.
This expansion is Square Enix's Metal Gear Solid 2. A perfect, life changing story written by a woman primarily (mgs2's story was rewritten and edited by a woman! Kojima doesn't like people knowing that!) and it will never be topped again or even met at eye level by the company producing the game. It is a shame that Natsuko Ishikawa has stepped down, it is super clear from 5.4 and 5.5's story (and what I have seen of Endwalker) that she has stepped down due to the quality of writing following her down the stairs. Stand tall, my gamer.
While most of the MMO mechanics were still around at the time of this expansion's drop, I played it only this year since I joined around Summer of 2023. I got to play the game after every complaint I had about the game itself was changed and fixed. Literally everything above that I mentioned, it's gone. The game itself is massively improved. I went through the slog that was ARR but enjoyed specific moments of it. I played Heavensward which was narratively a bit better but god awful with its level design. I stomached the ass that was Stormblood MSQ (the non-MSQ content was great actually). I had heard great things about Shadowbringers beforehand from friends and others online, and I had moderately good expectations considering the main writer for ShB was the DRK scenario writer, a kinosopher who also clearly loves Berserk. Natsuko Ishikawa is a brilliant writer, and it is a shame she has not written much more than what she has for XIV. Genuinely it is a tragedy and a loss that she does not have more works under her name, solely because her quality of writing is so good that we could use more of it. Not only had I gone in expecting something good, I was assured that a good writer was going to make it consistent throughout the expansion.
I was wrong. It was not good. It was perfect. It far exceeded whatever expectation had placed for it. I expected an 8 or so but I got a 10. Half a star is missing for the usual MMO padding, a death that should have happened (but they are not allowed to kill certain characters it would seem), and for issues pertaining to XIV as a whole. That being said, the MSQ was fucking perfect and encapsulated the feeling of hopelessness and moving on from pain and loss. The story itself is next to flawless, but on top of that the quality of the individual lines written is top notch. The details are remembered and carried throughout the expansion. It's not just a great story, it's a well-written one at that.
This expansion is Square Enix's Metal Gear Solid 2. A perfect, life changing story written by a woman primarily (mgs2's story was rewritten and edited by a woman! Kojima doesn't like people knowing that!) and it will never be topped again or even met at eye level by the company producing the game. It is a shame that Natsuko Ishikawa has stepped down, it is super clear from 5.4 and 5.5's story (and what I have seen of Endwalker) that she has stepped down due to the quality of writing following her down the stairs. Stand tall, my gamer.
My all time favorite MGS game, but I objectively know it is not as good as 2, and maybe even with my bias it is at best on par with 3. Many are quick to bash this game, I don't know why. No one has ever given a valid reason as to why the game is objectively bad as opposed to a game they personally didn't expect. A great MH-esque game which makes sense since they did collab with the team behind MH to design this game. The multiplayer was kino as all hell when it was popping. This game taught 6th grade Waste what Nuclear Deterrence was, and as stupid as "Hot Coldman" is for a character name, the story was KINO. Boo-hoo... it's not just MGS3 all over again. GET OVER IT!!!!
This game genuinely changed child-Waste and started making him ask many questions. A fantastic political-drama with amazing questions to problems we sometimes never faced until recent days. Great stealth game too. Far from the best, but the story and experience behind it far exceed most works of fiction I have ever encountered. They don't make games like this anymore. Thank you, Kojima's editor that he en masse sued because she exposed that Kojima was largely not the person behind this wonderful story! Very cool!
This should be on Letterboxd (kino ending)
One of the best, but also the start of the downfall of Monster Hunter. It has sheer content amount to carry it's weight, but it has the worst single player progression in the franchise next to MH1. The weapon balance here is just.... ridiculous... but nothing like XX. Some of the quests are way overtuned for solo play, to the point where if you cannot find someone to play with you might as well shelf the game if you don't want to dump the time needed to get good enough (we're talking very late G-Rank stuff). The guild quest gimmick and the relic weapons are very, very much a cancer to this game. Holds back half an entire star alone.
KINO ALERT!!!!!