Not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but, man, this series used to challenge the boundaries of the medium with multi-perspective, multi-generational stories with innovative systems that changed the landscape of the industry. And now it just sort of...wallows in itself, rolling around in the muck of its past glories and sniffing its own farts.

Again, it isn't bad. It looks wonderful, it's very charming, and the dialogue is witty. It's a nice time. And if this was 20 or 30 hours, that'd be just fine. But it isn't. It's 80, 90, even 100 hours long. For a game that demands that much time investment, I want it to do something, to say something, and Dragon Quest XI just...doesn't.

Not only is the battle system too simplistic and shallow for a tale of this length, but the story itself takes a massive nosedive in the final act, chickening out of almost every theme it touches on, reversing character arcs and plot points, all for the sake of more Fanservice. Because Dragon Quest doesn't care about anything anymore, except itself.

Oh, and the soundtrack fucking sucks. Sugiyama isn't even good at his job, Square, why are you keeping this decrepit fascist around?

An intensely frictional experience that sometimes becomes too much to deal with (it is difficult to overstate just how much two of Rouge the Bat's levels in particular are frustrating) but ultimately ends up being an experience far more than the sum of the parts.

This game has such an infectious energy to it, such a cheeky sense of flair and personality, that its impossible to stay mad at it, even after Sonic falls through the level architecture on Final Rush for the third time in a row. Say what you will about the Knuckles/Tails levels, the Sonic and Shadow levels are fantastic fun: a unique platforming experience where you genuinely feel like you are struggling to control your character, just barely leashing their immense power. It makes for some annoyances, to be sure, but when you pull off a stylish run through a level, all those annoyances become worth it because suddenly, you are soaring, a high you can only appreciate because of the lows that contrast it.

The much-mocked story is one of the highlights. No parody fandub could possibly capture just how much of a riot this game's story is, it has the exact manic energy of a game made up by kids on the playground, leaping from tone to genre to plot with nonexistent restraint. It has to be experienced to be believed, and enjoyed without cynicism, without irony. Those without sincerity in their hearts will not survive contact with Sonic Adventure 2.

I love this stupid, messy, awful, brilliant game. I'll treasure my time with it. If I ever have to play Mad Space again I will snap my controller in two.

The game is just shit but the greatest crime is the character creator, which offers you nothing more than the chance to be a faded emulation of an existing DCtm SuperheroTM. There is exactly one female body type (Wonder Woman's) and everyone has to share.

The first time someone makes a game where you can make your own Superhero and fully understands all the dimensions of the superhero fantasy, including bodily hyper-autonomy, and the outward expression of interiority (including a multifaceted representation of the psycho-sexual aspect) they will make approximately One Bajillion Dollars. Until then we simply have to point and laugh at this fucking shambles.

I was gonna have some stuff here discussing the gameplay, but I mostly just want to talk about the story, so I'll just post some quick thoughts and then Drop into the story discussion. Short answer: I like it! Dream Eaters are cute as heck and a fun way to represent Sora and Riku growing stronger through their bonds with their friends and each other, but the system is really grindy if you want to get the best abilities. I enjoy the command deck system broadly but the actual combat still has the BBS problem where the player movements require commitment that enemy moves do not, so it often feels like you are dealing with enemies who are designed to fight a moveset 50% faster than yours. Still, I have fun with it, and I especially like how this is the first game since the original to really put a lot of thought into level and world design, with spaces that actually feel like spaces that can be explored and characterised, something that has been sorely missed in KH2 and BBS' mostly empty combat arenas. Oh, and Flowmotion is just a lot of fun. I wouldn't play it over KH1, 2, or 3, but I think it does it's own thing pretty we-

--------------------------DROP--------------------------

>PRETENSION - 50DP
>OVERANALYSIS - 40DP
>GAY - 100DP

-eam Drop Distance's story is possibly the single most ridiculed of the entire series, and almost certainly marks the point in the popular consciousness where the series became a parody of itself, but sue me because I really enjoy it. The character work for Riku, in particular, is great, watching him grow more self-assured as the game progresses is truly heartwarming and it's an effective arc, especially as his feelings about Sora bubble to the surface more and more. Regardless of whether you are willing to interpret those feelings as explicitly romantic, it's very clear that throughout the series up to this point Riku has simply never been comfortable with how he feels about Sora, a discomfort that manifested as jealousy in KH1 and shame in KH2. Throughout this game, we see him work through that, and it's remarkably subtle and well-played. Seeing him talk openly about why he cares about Sora before diving in to save him at the end affected me a great deal. I still relate strongly to Riku's struggle to express his feelings with sincerity, and it's difficult to overstate the impact his scenes had on me when I first played this game.

Sora's side of the story is more concerned with the wider series plot, and is therefore, in typical series fashion, the less interesting side, but it's still extremely engaging thanks to some careful foreshadowing through the disney worlds (Prankster's Paradise and The Grid) about the loss of self and at what point one is considered "human" culminating in a series of late-game reveals that recontextualise the entire franchise in exciting and interesting ways, that manage to achieve the rare feat of introducing retcons that enhance the story rather than detract from it. Sora acknowledging Roxas' personhood, Roxas admitting that he's not sure he would do the same, Xemnas making textual that the Organisation were gaslit and emotionally manipulated, and the reveal that Xehanort became evil because his future self forced him are all fantastic turns that are sold by some of the most arresting imagery we've seen in the series. It's the Xehanort stuff that will be picked up on the most for the sequel, but it's remarkable how much 3D is willing to engage with and interrogate the series' history. Roxas chapter aside, I don't like KH2's story and find it's ending thoughtless, and I appreciate 3D's willingness to tackle the uncomfortable implications of Roxas' lack of personhood head-on. This, coupled with the barrage of spin-off suffering Sora is presented with in the endgame, reveals Dream Drop Distance to be a game that sees Continuity in a critical, almost negative way, and I find that really fascinating. It's extremely back-loaded, but if you've got far enough in the series to be playing this you're likely able to deal with that. Kingdom Hearts has changed so much since the first game that I don't think it's capable anymore of delivering a knockout narrative the same way that game did, but for what it's worth I think this game (and 358/2 Days) come the closest to it.

Ironically, Dream Drop Distance ultimately reads as a game about the act of Waking: to truths that have been staring you in the face, to things you were unaware of, to the person you are becoming, and to your own innermost feelings. It's an incredibly messy, strange, flawed game, but it's one that convinced me that Kingdom Hearts still had more to tell me about myself, and that's all I can ask of it.

KINGDOM HEARTS SEXISM WATCH: there are basically no female characters in this entire game, which considering the state of the female cast of KH3 we should probably consider a blessing

an appalling, self-righteous, insecure act of apologia for a generation of emotionally distant fathers that characterises motherly love and affection as smothering, manipulative, and toxic, whilst characterising casual emotional neglect and abuse as Good, Actually.

god of war 4 is just as sexist as the earlier games in the series, it's just more crypto about it, and the vast swathes of people taken in by this completely surface-level nuance baffles me to a degree not seen since DmC: Devil May Cry was hailed as the "more mature" reboot that series needed despite the existence of a literal sniper-rifle abortion scene and the fact that every single female character in it was called "whore" ad nauseum.

the "one take" gimmick is just that: a total gimmick, adding absolutely nothing to the story and in many ways detracting from it. the staccato nature of this journey, of going up and down the same mountain and teleporting all over the place is only made more absurd by the camera framing this as an uninterrupted trek which it clearly is not.

also it plays like ass and you fight the same boss twenty times. i hope you like that animation of kratos slamming a big pillar down on an ogre because you're going to see it an awful lot.

EDIT: removed a shitty joke.

Turns out, arcade design and pacing makes for a pretty damn compelling concept album mood piece. Who knew?

For years, Panzer Dragoon has existed in a part of mind labelled "love this series, love to finally play it someday" thanks to the evocative art and legendary status of titles like Saga and Orta, and now, due to the much-improved state of Saturn emulation, I've finally shed my "Panzer Dragoon Poser" status and become a full-fledged Fan because I was absolutely enthralled by this wonderful little game.

There isn't too much to say on this one, because, frankly, Panzer Dragoon speaks for itself, being a short, sweet, and gorgeously moody rollercoaster ride through a world that is beautifully evocative, like a playable mid-90s anime OVA. The gameplay is simple, but as it turns out, 25 years later, it's still fun to drag a cursor across a bunch of enemies and let loose a volley of lasers. The fact that this kind of game still hasn't changed that much from Panzer is a testament to that.

You can see touches of Naussica, Dune, and, of course, Moebius all over, but the final effect of this swirling melting pot of influences is distinctly this game's own. A post-apocalyptic earth(?) destroyed by a humanity that turned their own myths and legends into weapons, bio-engineered dragons and sandworms, the fiction of humanity carved into it's very ecosystem is one of the all-time best hooks for a videogame setting I've ever seen, and even if Panzer Dragoon doesn't explore it beyond the suggestion, it's thought-provoking enough on the surface that I immediately crave a whole RPG set in this post-pulp world. Good thing they made one, eh?

Honestly, I kind of loved it, for what it was, and I can't tell you how excited I am to play Zwei and Saga. A lovely little game to sink into for the hour or so it lasts for.

------------------------LUNA-TERRA------------------------

Soaringly, defiantly, almost certainly the best prose I've ever seen in a Visual Novel. In what is so often an insular, overwritten form that constantly fails to leverage the advantages of, y'know, visuals in order to trim their ludicrously overwritten manuscripts (feel confident in saying Umineko's much-memed length could be halved if you cut out the explanations of things we can see with our eyes and repeating the same descriptions over and over again), the density and gravitational weight of HWBM's beautifully poetic prose shines like a star about to go supernova.

Each line says something important, something meaningful, and it's central metaphors are so perfectly pitched and utilized that the clarity of the text is never in question, even deep into an in-universe e-mail about the metaphysics of generating miniature black holes in the ruins of Side 3. I know not everyone gets on with the writing here, but for me, this was so frequently beautiful and impactful that it blows most traditional novels I've read in the past few years out of the water. The incredible music doesn't exactly hurt, either.

Weighty and important yet flippant and understated. As heady and political as it is emotional and introspective. It's everything I want to be able to write like.

------------------------PLUTO------------------------

As pointedly political as the best of Gundam and as nakedly personal as the highest highs of Evangelion, Heaven Will Be Mine is remarkable in its understanding of what Mecha means, an understanding that eclipses much of the work that so visibly inspires it.

Heaven Will Be Mine is about bodies, and takes a transhumanist perspective of our own bodies to discuss both broad, heady concepts of imperialism, as well as how we ourselves characterise, well, our selves.

Who am I? Am I these hands, these eyes, this flesh, or am I less, just the thoughts that exist behind my AT Field. Is everything else is just an endless layer of shells built to protect it? Or am I more than that, the words you read now, the voice I speak and the things I create? The reviews I write, edited and carefully constructed to present a meaning I want to present, the videos I make, a series of images that tell the narrative I want to tell, all of these things are as true a Me as exists. When I take a selfie, and edit it, erasing beard shadow and smoothing out the bags under my eyes, I'm not creating an inauthentic self, I'm showing you a truer me than a simple photo could, a picture that shows you what I value, what I want you to see and what I want you to Not See.

Is Earth the ground we walk on? Or is it everything we look up to and crave, the planets we've named, the stars we've numbered and categorized the heavens that we want to be ours? Our culture is an udurgh - a thing that contains many things - expanding beyond its borders imperceptibly, imperialism of thought and metaphysics that claims all that exists as territory that belongs to it or will belong to it.

Heaven Will Be Mine gets it. At almost every turn, it understands. It knows that mechs are guns. It knows that the Gundam is the White Devil. It knows that we could have made them look like anything, but we made them look like us. And it knows that we love them anyway.

There's a lot to think about, and a lot to say when it comes to this game. But more than anything else, Heaven Will Be Mine stands as absolute proof of the necessity of diverse voices telling diverse stories. Neither Tomino nor Anno could have told this story, and asking them to is ridiculous. It's a story we have to make for ourselves, using what the things they created told us to say something new.

Eternally glad there are other queers who think about Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack as much as I do.

------------------------SATURN------------------------

at the time of writing, well. it's a bad time to be writing. the uk's systemic pervasive transphobia has reached a fever pitch, and currently both the party in government and their supposed opposition trade in barely-concealed terf ideology designed to dehumanize trans people and make us inverse. in the part of the uk's earth where I live - ireland's terra, uk's earth - there is literally no hope for trans people, as we have exactly one gender clinic in the entire country, and they aren't taking consultations. it is impossible to transition right now without obscene wealth and stability that the vast majority of trans people do not possess.

and don't even get me fucking started on the wave of nakedly evil anti-trans legislation that is hitting the USA right now. fuck me.

we live eternally reminded of how much they hate us. how much they hate what we are, and what we want to be. and the few of us that do become accepted, that let themselves fall into the gravity well of their expectations, prostrating themselves before their culture, only highlights how inhuman they think of us.

and in art, in fiction, time and time again, they tell us about the way queer people should exist, hidden in the margins, their queerness incidental rather than defining, something that just exists.

the message is clear. either we be who we are on their terms, or we aren't allowed to be here at all.

Fuck. That.

they think we're not like them? that we're something else, something inverse, inhuman?

fine. let's be "inhuman". let's be new genders and pronouns and names. let's change into new angles, new shapes. let's be loud and obnoxious and screamingly gay.

let's find out just how inverse we can be.

------------------------TRUE-END------------------------

I cannot tell you how much I love this. But I tried my best. A new all-time favourite.

this isn't a review, this post is just spreading awareness of the fact that the director of this game and head of Ice-Pick Lodge has been outed as a predator of minors.

details and evidence in link below. obvs heavy content warnings apply. info has been out there for a week and a half but i didn't find out myself until this morning.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathologic/comments/mlu6u8/nikolay_dybwoski_lead_of_icepick_lodge_and/

I feel like this often gets kinda sidelined as a mere stopgap on the way to Kingdom Hearts 3, which is a real shame because I feel like this is the best the series has done at integrating the Disney worlds with the wider series themes of growing up and the horror of the childhood's end since the original game.

The spaces here are wonderful, easily some of the most evocative in the entire series, and Aqua's depressive trudge through the shattered ephemera of broken Disney Worlds is a phenomenal reflection of what it is often like to revisit one's childhood as an adult. This is the kind of stuff I love Kingdom Hearts the most for, the way it explores the liminal space between childhood and adulthood with sophistication belied by the series' reputation. I could take or leave the wider series plot and continuity, and accordingly, it's when the game goes about tying up a bunch of loose ends that no one really needed tying up that it ceases to enthrall me in quite the same way.

It's still fun, don't get me wrong: extremely fun, actually. Mickey's shirtless explanation is surely one of the funniest things in the entire franchise and I'm enough of a fan of KH3's sandbox that even the restrictive, underdeveloped version here is a riot. But it's a reminder that the things that I value most in this series are patently not the same things it - or, indeed the wider series fandom - is interested in. And while I've made my peace with that from the day the beautiful Roxas prologue of KH2 first ended, the moments when the series brushes up against those feelings just make me want them all the more.

KINGDOM HEARTS SEXISM WATCH: well this is a game about the second most prominent woman in the series having an absolutely miserable fucking time for a decade, but on the other hand it does portray her with agency and nuance...when she isn't playing second fiddle to a cartoon mouse that is the icon of the late capitalist nightmare world we all live in. the fact that they did not carry over the fashion into KH3 is demonstrative of Square Enix's enormous cowardice. let sora be a catboy!!!!!