WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED!?

After being pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Frontiers my excitement for Superstars wasn't that high but I was still interested in playing. Come release and a good friend of mine got their hands on the game and to say they had a rough experience was an UNDERSTATEMENT, comparing it to some of Sonics worse like 4. Well after finishing up everything I'm here to say ITS EVEN FUCKING WORSE HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN SONIC TEAM/ARZEST. The fact this complete dumpster fire was full fucking price (the last 2D Sonic being Mania priced at $30 with the excellent DLC) proves that God is not real and we deserve everything that has damned humanity as a species.

If I had to say what I liked before the complete ripping apart I'd say the visuals aren't completely shit, with some zones like the first two being pretty pleasant on the eyes. OST is a mixed bag but when it hit it's pretty rock solid, with some pretty sweet tunes throughout (before the generic genesis shit reminds you what you're playing). All the character abilities feel like they should with Amy especially feeling pretty nice to play with her double jump and hammer melting some bosses. Oh and the special stages are bitch baby easy with only the fifth one having any form of challenge.

Because of how much this game gets wrong Imma go through the issues from smallest to biggest. First and foremost is just how fucking buggy this game can be. From soft locking various sections to a hard crash from collecting too many RINGS Superstars might rival 06 in the unfinished department technical wise. The overall control feels like the lovechild between Sonic 4s lack of speed and Forces general lack of polish, with it feeling all over the place which makes the levels a pain to navigate. On the subject of levels I'd like to briefly discuss an issue some Sonic fans have with the franchise that I never agreed with and that's originality=good. Mania gets this the most with how most of it is recycled and while I can understand this a bit the zones still go hard and showcase just how well Mania is designed. Superstars has every stage be original but MAN do they just not hit the mark. Out of the 11 present I only really enjoyed my time with Bridge Island, a solid enough first level with the best overall feel. The rest are either boring (Golden Capital being the most apparent) or some of the worst in a 2D Sonic game (whoever designed Press Factory needs to be blacklisted from the industry). Another interesting idea that falls flat is the Emerald Powers, with each emerald offering a unique power that can be used once before needing to be refreshed at a checkpoint. Out of them only three were useful, with Avatar being a useful screen nuke and Bullet/Slow helping in general platforming and some boss fights (emphasis on SOME). The rest are either only useful for select parts or useful FOR ONE FUCKING STAGE making the entire gimmick feel like a waste. It's genuinely embarrassing when I can give Wisps more credit (and Wisps are just alright).

With all those out of the way its time to talk about the elephant in the room: the bosses. Sonic bosses usually vary in quality but the general consensus for the 2D games is they're pretty simple fights that take about a minute or two tops (even the final bosses). Some games like the Rush spinoffs attempt to rev up the heat to various results but they still keep the same gameplan. Superstars decides to change things up by making EVERY.SINGLE.FIGHT take multiple minutes because you have to wait until the boss ALLOWS itself to be hit and only ONCE BECAUSE THE BOSSES HAVE MORE FUCKING I FRAMES THAN EVERY GENESIS GAME COMBINED WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY THIS IS SUCH A STUPID DECISION I FUCKING HATE THIS SHIT. The final bosses have this problem the most with each being double digits with no checkpoints inbetween meaning its back to square one if you get instakilled (which you will because each boss has one). Only saving grace in this regard is that Superstars ditches the traditional lives system so its more of a test of patience for when you'll beat the game.

All this would make Superstars a middling title on its own but one final kick in the teeth makes this truly the worst: Trips Story. A new OC integral to Superstars plot, her moveset is a combination of both Amys double jump and Knuckles climb and just like Amy she feels pretty solid to control. It's a real shame her unique stuff is JUST THE SAME FUCKING GAME BUT HARDER. Her levels throw every dogshit Sonic level design from bottomless pits,enemy placement,spikes,insta kill squeezing making it a truly dreadful experience. Adding to that is HER BOSSES ALSO TAKE LONGER which means you will be here longer compared to the base game (also you're forced to do the character-exclusive zones because fuck you). The already dogshit final zone is a nightmare for Trip, with the game just throwing everything it has before you limp to a final boss with some of the most bullshit attacks in the game (two instakills which basically force you to use powers to succeed). Also her super form is buggy as fuck and requires frequent switching out of to actually progress (a problem no other character has).

Superstars is the worst Sonic I've played no questions asked. Under no circumstances do I recommend this because you can just play Mania or one of the classic titles and get an infinitely better experience. I still am optimistic for the Blue Blurs future but man this was a miss of catastrophic proportions.

2/10

I've always liked Lost Legacy a lot. It combines all the great changes and improvements that Uncharted 4 brought to the Uncharted formula, but with the structure and pacing being more in line with the OG Uncharted trilogy. And on top of that, you have an entirely new main character dynamic to experience: Chloe's charismatic treasure hunter veteran presence clashing against Nadine's pragmatic straightforwardness. Now, this is 4th time I finished this game, and I'm still loving it as much, if not more than before.

I appreciate the small steps that ND took to add more spice to U4's gameplay, like the silenced weapons, or the lockpick-able safes spread all over. And then you have the open world section early on, which feels like a game inside a game because of how well-made it is, despite being relatively small and self-contained. Not to mention how well designed all the encounters are. There's a lot of interesting terrains and traversal mixed in these fights; I distinctly remember one where you are approaching enemies by way of multiple large pillars, so you can try closing in unseen by climbing through the longer paths, or just snipe away from afar if you have the means.

Then in the center of it all, the dynamic between Chloe and Nadine is just so fun to see. The girl talk between these two is so refreshing, in the grand scheme of things. There really is a future for the series beyond Nate, and I'm glad that ND explored this unlikely pairing of characters instead of something more predictable, like Sam and Sully. In a way, it only proves how flexible the Uncharted formula is.

And the most significant feeling I had during this playthrough is the fact that I do like Asav as a villain more than before. He's not quite the most memorable or well-written villain in the series, but I absolutely love the scenes where he goes on the offensive and fights our ladies head-on. Nadine described him as being more than what his exterior shows, and I feel like the game did show a bit of that, although he still needs way more screen time.

Also, the sequence at the end of the game is simply breathtaking. It's somewhat underrated because of how much it takes from their previous biggest set pieces, but it's definitely the most technically impressive set piece in the series. It's an incredible vertical slice of the Uncharted series as a whole, and it's a pretty poetic way to end it all.

Lost Legacy is not the gigantic leap forward that is Uncharted 4 (and it wasn't meant to be), but on all fronts, it is a great Uncharted game. I would put it as the 3rd best in the series. It is a cool and good thing that ND and Sony didn't just pump out a bunch more of these games and potentially bring down the series' reputation; the respect they have for one of their most successful series should be an example for everyone else. But man, I would love a new one someday, especially since its been 7 years hiatus, and there's barely anyone else that makes these sort of action adventure games these days. At least we have Indy filling the void soon-ish!

I have never played any major game that comes off this infantile and soy and basic before. It's like a season of Paw Patrol produced by Tesla. Legitimately painful at times.

I guess chalk it up to MILES MORALES being way better than I expected, but in my apparently infinite naivete, I didn't even consider that this would be worse than the first game. It is, though - wow is it - in every way possible, including the above. Traversal, combat, story, quest design, side quests, incidental features, bugs - even the look of the game, which is supposed to be this thing's bread and butter - all took noticeable hits. Shocking how big of a stumble backwards this is.

It's perfectly clear at this point that Insomniac has nothing interesting to say or do with Spider-Man. The story of this game is so straightforward and basic it's embarrassing that it was written by adults. And once again, the dialogue and the extremely shaky and inconsistent motion capture and facial capture^ can't pull off the prestige MCU thing they're desperately reaching for. I'm no Spidey expert, but this is far and away the least interesting rendition of him that I'm familiar with. Nothing at all going on. Zero juice. It seriously feels like it's for little children.

^(not buying into the absurd conspiracies around MJ's face, but I can understand why someone would search for an alternative explanation for what they did to her because it genuinely seems impossible that they're that incompetent)

As for the gameplay, it really exposes itself in this one, with combat now being so overstuffed, spongey, and yet trivially easy that it becomes flat-out boring. And and they seemed to realize it and for variety's sake had no choice but to leaven the experience with UNCHARTED-style hold-forward-while-stuff-happens tunnels and, much worse, SEQUENCE after SEQUENCE after SEQUENCE of just walking around doing normal ass pointless stuff. It is CRAZY how much time you spend outside of a spider-suit (especially in the first few hours of the game!!!) looking at stuff, walking between nodes, hearing literal science lectures. The BATMAN: ARKHAM games had lots of different applications for its gameplay systems, always had different interesting things to do and discover that felt holistic to that world and story, and it never just felt like a sequence of samey fights (even though it accasionally was). Here, they have just got NOTHING to fall back on.

At one point, there's a sidequest where a Spidey fan has a copy of the first Daily Bugle photo Peter ever took of himself in action (recreating the cover of the real-world first Spider-Man comic, you know, where he's swinging and he's got the criminal under his arm). So Peter starts to flash back and you're like, oh nice, we're going to relive his first big adventure! But no, the sidequest is actually about him riding his bike to work to get the pictures in on time. I'd say that about fucking sums things up.

Remember when Naughty Dog used to make games like Jak & Daxter and Uncharted while not being held hostage by a egotistical Zionist who believes he can do no wrong and a bigger company who so desperately wants the same 7 franchises they've relied on heavily since 2017 to be cinematic video game showcases so they can easily translate them into movies and TV shows because said-company's previously existing movie/TV IPs have either underperformed or is forced to have shared custody with the Mouse™?

On a completely unrelated note the Last of Us Part II is a very nothing remaster and they're now announcing the new cast for season 2 of the show.

adding another feather to my cap by winning this year's monkey ball tournament at magfest after last year's typing of the dead win. a friend of mine has run lights and lasers at magfest on and off for the last decade or so, and when he told me there was a monkey ball cabinet in the arcade during a walk-through the night before it opened I was overjoyed. memories of old cons with filthy, unmaintained cabinets that one could barely roll through beginner courses on drifted away as I hoped this would finally give me the monkey ball arcade experience I had waited for. the last-minute announcement of a tournament was even more appealing; this would finally put my endless pandemic training to good use.

they had two cabinets in fact: an original stand-up cab, near flawless except for an uncomfortably dim screen, and a naomi kit and 3d-printed banana shoved into an astro city cab for those who preferred to sit down. both cabs were swarmed at open time, but I snuck in some time on the astro city cab late the first night. the setup was appreciated but god was it sensitive; imagine a joystick with the same deadzones and behavior of the gamecube analog stick, but with a porn-quality cock-sized banana attached to it, nauseating yellow from the printer filament. I resorted to two-handing the monster, using one hand to brace it while gently pressing it with the other. the original cabinet was completely stiff by comparison. even minimal motions required cranking it to either side, and certain full-length presses felt like they lacked the tilting distance of the gamecube version. definitely a learning curve, but it was to be expected. it was my first time, after all.

unlike typing of the dead, which at least had some head-to-head scoring support, monkey ball's tournament was structured as consecutive single credit runs between two players in bracket matches. begs the question of why they didn't just do a pool structure since it was all single elim anyway; a friend of mine who runs my hometown arcade organized the proceedings, so I wasn't about to crawl up his ass about it. score attack also left the crowd puzzled, as most of us ignore score in comparison to floor count. a quick google search as the competition started rolling led me to this particular guide (specifically section 2.6), which outlined the scoring system in some detail. effectively the number of seconds (including centiseconds) multiplied by 100 gives the bulk of the score, with the score doubled if it was done in less than half of the allotted time. bananas contribute another 100 points for each one obtained. however, warps contribute significantly more points, as a green warp goal will give 10000 additional points on the base value (reds give 20000) along with an additional multiplier for each stage skipped. the latter multiplier makes up for score lost on skipped levels, but the base bonus is pretty intense overall; there aren't levels that can give you anything close to 10000 points as a base, much less several in a row! when it comes to a score attack competition, warps are overly centralizing, to the extent that a player could perform worse and still secure a win by locking a warp.

so to the player I unfairly trampled first round, I'm real sorry. you breezed through beginner without dropping a single life, showing off little skips and flair in the process. I popped in after and warped through most of it and demolished your score, even tho I dropped a life and missed the extra stages. it was honestly a screwjob, and I don't blame you for running off afterwards. in the final round a similar issue happened, where two people in a match on expert each got the warp on floor 2, with one person failing at the infamous floor 7 (also known as Exam-C), and the other getting a couple floors beyond that. the former person flew through the warp and got the time bonus, doubling a 70k reward to 140k points and completely blowing the other person out of the water, floors be damned. hell, the same round I took a single credit all the way to floor 16 and I still did not get as many points as she did thanks to an overly cautious run through floor 2. it really was a bit ridiculous. however, these tournaments are about understanding the rules, not necessarily agreeing on whether they're fair. so, emboldened by my rather strong previous showing (only one other person got a run past floor 10), I threw caution to the wind on my floor 2 attempt, snagged the time bonus, and that was it, even with a total choke on floor 7.

of course, in console play I can comfortably take a 1cc all the way through expert extra, so this shouldn't have felt that impressive, but on the chunky banana the gamefeel transformed the game a fair bit. the whole tournament was on the original cabinet with the weightier controls, so nailing the precision of floors like 14 where nudges around pegs that will bounce you off ledges was as easy as just pressing the stick in the right direction; no attention to minuscule movement required. it's when it got to floors demanding quick build-ups of speed or wild tilts such as floor 18 that it began to dawn on me that perhaps the cabinet was not as in perfect of a condition as I had hoped; could have also been some early control mistuning by the developers, but I'd like to think they understood their own game well enough to design levels around the original stick. still, we got lucky that plenty of extremely challenging stages are front-loaded in expert, as we all still got a good show of some very solid east coast players taking a crack at a sega classic. maybe we would've all preferred to play on gamecube instead tho lol

It's basically DLC, but taken as its own product, it stands head and shoulders above the the first SPIDER-MAN just on the strength of Miles the character alone. Good lord, I had not recognized just how much I disliked playing as that absolute rod Peter Parker until now. In the first game, Miles wasn't given any real personality or anything interesting to do, so initially in this he seems a bit off-puttingly like a totally different person, but then you realize, yeah, no, this is much better, thanks, so who cares. His motivations, supporting characters, humor, and crucially his voice performance (so, so sick of Lowenthal's overdone Parker) are all so refreshing coming straight off of the first game, and along with some other miscellaneous improvements make this feel a lot more like the 'real' game to me than that one.

Not too much more to say about it - it looks absolutely phenomenal, some of the new moves are enjoyable (having a Falcon Punch to just instantly ruin any kind of heavy guy is pretty nice), and the combat is tweaked a bit, seemingly to serve a more brash, aggressive style which ties in nicely to Miles' character/age. It's pretty good!

Not exactly looking forward to going back to Peter for 2.

P.S.: One thing though - don't really want to say too much about this, but for a game that features a 100% non-white main cast (aside from the weaksauce, terribly-written corporate villain), has an appropriate if a bit clumsy Black Lives Matter shoutout, was released at the height of the George Floyd protests, and is the sequel to one of more grossy cop-friendly major games in recent memory, this game sure does deal with the issue of the police by literally pretending they don't exist!

Lost Judgment Finished: 1/21/24
Kaito Files Finished 1/24/24

New Years Eve of 2022 I had spent most of my afternoon finishing off the last few hours of Yakuza 4- a game I found frustrating for most of its run. Thus, I decided to start 2023 off suitably, starting Yakuza 5- a game I found in contrast, full to the brim with excellent moments, sidequests and minigames. It had its shortcomings but a year later I don't feel as though its moments have waned. Its a maximalist nightmare and a dream come true and I still believe it to be my favorite in the series still. A year later, however, I find myself in a similar situation. While I didn't end Like A Dragon Gaiden specifically on new years, it and the playthrough I did of 6 in October had left an admittedly middling aftertaste in the back of my mouth. They weren't bad games but I didn't come out as wowed as some of the other entries in the series- some moments I had expected to be whelmed while others I was baffled I hadn't been spoiled on yet.

Thus, with the start of 2024 I finished off Lost Judgment…a game I actually started a longgg while ago. I started this game around early 2022 (also off the heels of finishing Judgment on new years 2021) and have on/off played it. Really enjoyed it anytime I had it on but part of me wanted to savor it until after I had grinded through the prior games. Two years later:

I think this is at least on-par with Judgment, made stronger by its inclusion of new mechanics, improvements made to traversal and combat, and an overall stronger cast. Judgment was already batting a good average in my opinion with its strong lean into japanese dramas, and Lost Judgment isn't too different but I think this time around but I think there's more of a focus on its strengths than the shortcomings of its predecessor(s). There's a lot less trailing to do, Crane style is a LOT more fun to use in fights- coming off 7 it's a lot easier to traverse Isezaki Ijincho now that you have a skateboard. Coming off Gaiden's combat it felt so nice having three styles that just felt like butter to mess around with. Agent/Yakuza style be damned, nothing feels as good as landing Flux Fissure or ripping items out of enemies hands with Snake style. Fighting just feels GOOD throughout Lost Judgment.

Lot of the cast is great in this, and I think not having to rely on introducing most of the main cast helps a lot. Suguira and Tsukumo branching out into Ijincho, Higashi playing a more supportive role throughout, Saeko and Hoshino being a thing, Kaito my heartsweet. We'll talk about Kaito files briefly here rather than in a separate log.

I'd be lying if I didn't admit I feel the game can be a bit of a slow burn at times. Yakuza/RGG titles have an odd history of pacing, and certainly the openness to explore whichever metropolitan area(s) said title throws your way doesn't help muddy up the sheer amount of stuff that's available in these games. Half hour chapters can feel like they've been going on for a while just because you actually decided to go off and have drinks, start a go-karting venture and end up becoming a local legend for your efforts, it's part of the fun of every RGG title.

Lost Judgment gets incredibly lost in its sauce at points with regards to the amount of stuff you do regarding the school clubs. You have 10 clubs total- 5 major and 5 minor and these act as long-running side cases in a sense. Thankfully none of these are required for main story progression, so you're welcome to finish them at whatever pace you please, or even save it for the postgame. That said, much of the early game is spent at Seiryo High so you might as well check in whenever you see that teal folder icon.

The bottom line is: I think most of these are pretty fun- but this side plot encompasses RGG's minigame philosophy to a T. For better or worse.

Quick Rundown- the major clubs (barring Mystery Club) first, then the 5 minor.
-Dancing is a lot of fun- Yagami popping it like he's in fortnite is the funniest thing.
-Robotics is frustrating as hell at first -please consult the CyricZ doc to save yourself some trouble and it becomes tolerable.
-Biking is WAYYY too long- honestly coulda been fine but it can't hold a candle to 5's taxi racing.
-Boxing took a while for me to get interested but I dig how it feels even if I'm kind of a button masher when it comes to these things. Later fights get pretty tough but they give you an auto win if you can't eke out victory otherwise.
For the 'minor' clubs now, many of these are on the shorter side (kinda).
-Photography is pretty fun, although I wish it were done in a different manner. Some of these had me doing a bit of trial and error and it's not too punishing if you miss the timing but some took longer than I'd like to admit.
-Casino is kind of a joke- quite literally just as long as any other side story.
-Esports is fine, kinda easy even for someone that still doesn't understand Virtua Fighter. -Skateboarding is simpler than I wish, which is disappointing but overall fine.
-Girls Bar? Oh my LORD this one felt repetitive. You have to keep building up relationships with the staff of the bar and honestly these characters are pretty interesting within their substory (ironically not the main target and eventual girlfriend Emily) but actually doing the minigame and filling the meter gets super repetitive, especially since the club has a high entry fee and you have to go in and out of the place constantly to refresh the side quest markers.

Overall this side mode is pretty good, it's just interspersed with some pretty slow moments and some clubs not being as engaging as others. Getting to the end and finishing the MRC makes for a fun way to round out things, though.

The clubs being optional and a bit on the fatty side (in that RGG way I cant help but like) is one thing, but I will say if you decide to go primarily down the main story, Lost Judgment isn’t much longer than others in the franchise. Looking at the general lengths on HLTB, LJ actually clocks in lower than the first game and looking back over my playthrough it certainly felt like it. You dont have the introductory baggage, there’s a lot less trailing missions that take up time, and the use of the skateboard to help speed up traveling from point A to B makes going through Lost Judgment a breeze- comboing with how excellent of a narrative this game provides.

I won’t go too in-depth due to spoilers however I wasn’t expecting anything less than Judgment considering how much I enjoyed that game’s story and the general praise I had heard about this game. Sorry to say, no hot takes here- I really enjoyed how the story unfolds. Lot of the new cast does a great job, Kuwana and Ehara especially- on top of Yagami and returning characters performing excellently. The school bullying angle is one that’s pretty unique not just to the series but also to a lot of games of this type in general. Also makes for a really interesting angle as you play this from the perspective of a near 40 year old man, makes for an interesting counselor/student perspective. All of this spiraling down the usual twists and turns, but ending up in one of the most fun finales in the series.


Kaito DLC:

Honestly, this is how I had hoped Gaiden was presented. It's a brisk 6 to 8 hours and its all the better for not having the usual Yakuza 'fluff'. Even with how brisk Gaiden is compared to other games, it still feels like there's a lot of moments where you're expected to do some Yakuza-minigame-questline or major exploration collectathon. Here the only major collectible are Matsugane crests and these 'strong' encounters that appear after equipping a certain item. No checklists, no side stories, you don't even get SP from restaurants or most activities because you get a ton just from the normal questline. It feels like a breath of fresh air from how massive LJ already is.

In addition to its pacing it expands on maybe one of RGG's most underrated characters: Kaito.
Definitely my favorite character in the entire series, although prior to this he generally just gravitated to me for his blunt yet friendly, brotherly demeanor.

Kaito was an extremely trustworthy guy in the first game and Lost Judgment definitely gave him some great moments too. However the Kaito Files DLC definitely helps show him in a much more involved and unique role, utilizing his own sense of detective work. I'm so glad that he actually has a quality set of skills and isn't just 'I'll solve this case with my fists'. His heightened perception makes for some interesting detective work as he focuses on smells and sounds a lot more than Yagami, and it reminded me a lot of how powerful of a skill perception is in DND/WRPG- it always feels like an underutilized aspect in these kinds of detective games.
Similarly this DLC helps Kaito's characterization greatly by showcasing some of his regrets involving his mishandling of a prior relationship and the lengths he’ll go to protect the ones he loves. It’s not all the dissimilar to Kiryu, so don't get me wrong when I say I love Kiryu- however stoicness and legendary status within the ‘RGG canon’ somewhat alienates him as the series has gone on. Kaito, while still a monster of a brawler, still has a lot of humanity that does a lot for me. I wont go too into detail but ramping up towards the finale is a scenario that includes some of the most brutal moments in the series- Kaito being the most emotionally steady in the room hits a lot as he faces down arguably one of the most callous antagonists in the series.

Something about the heat action where Jun backs you up if you get downed and afterwards doing a high five without looking at each other just makes him a dawg. A bro. I love this dude.
Final Thoughts:

Lost Judgment, much like its predecessor- stands tall among the RGG catalog. I think there's some give and take between the two games as to certain aspects however ultimately I do think Lost Judgment is more fleshed out and lacks some of the baggage weighing down the initial setup in Judgment. I’m still gonna give this one some time to simmer before I decide where it sits among my all time favorite games, however there’s not a whole lot I really want to point out and complain about. Yakuza 5 might still remain my favorite in the overall series however Lost Judgment might be right behind it- standing similarly as a maximalist pillar in this already large and bloated series. The best thing I can ask for games like Y5 and Lost Judgment is that they snowball like they do and end just as splendidly.

Omega Force continues their trend of successfully adapting the musou combat style to the quirks of other franchises, and Samurai Remnant is no exception.

Set in 1600s Edo, Japan, Samurai Remnant follows Miyamoto Iori as he is drawn into the Waxing Moon Ritual, an off-shoot of the series' Holy Grail war. Masters are selected and servants are summoned, and they must fight for the Waxing Moon to grant their wish. For being a musou game, the game actually is fairly text heavy (as is known for the series). Battles are smaller scale than you might expect too (usually no more than 30-40 at a time) as you hack, slash, and use magic as both Iori and a wide range of servants who have their own playable moments.

Overall, as a fan of Omega Force the combat is pretty fun. Iori has numerous different blade styles to choose from for different situations and a huge skill tree to improve them. He can also tag in his servant when the meter is full to temporarily play as them and dish out big damage. To compensate for the smaller enemy counts, some magical enemies have a 'shell gauge' that must be broken which prolongs fights to last more than ten seconds. It works well enough, and reinforces how strong certain foes are.

Instead of traipsing across large battlefields, the game consists of a huge number of districts across Edo. Visit shops/food stalls, complete little trials for the townspeople, and pet animals. Enemy encounters (outside of the plot) are clearly marked on the map, so the player really can go at their own pace and decide how much extra combat they want to engage in. There are also periodic 'Font Battles', which are tactical territory capture battles that take place across the map. Try to capture all the spirit fonts you can while routing enemies and going into mini-encounters. It's fun, if a little bit easy to outsmart the AI.

My main detractors however unfortunately come from the narrative. There are certain aspects I love (Iori's dynamic with his servant is certainly the highlight), but a lot of stuff just feels undercooked. There are a couple choices you can make during the game to change the outcome pretty significantly, but depending on which route you are on, some characters are inexplicably absent. This feels more like an excuse to add more replay value than there should be, but I guess I really just wish the character development (of characters who aren't the main pair) could be on the same level as Stay Night or even Extra.

Still, if you are into the Fate series or even just like musou games, this is a solid entry for both fans and newcomers alike. No prior knowledge of the franchise is needed to jump in, and if you DO like it, I highly recommend checking out the aforementioned Fate games. This is as good a place as any to start.

This is a very difficult game for me to rate or even render any kind of final judgment on because I find the tension between its ambitions and the realities of its production in today's gaming landscape hard to reconcile. At its best, it fully transcends the limitations and deficiencies of video game storytelling and is very well-written, well-acted, and at times quite powerful. But it is also a game that is - for lack of a better term - 'triple-A'ed' within an inch of its life, and the experience is deeply and unavoidably compromised as a result.

For starters, it is officially a member of the UNCHARTED 4 Club for games that could and should be literally half as long as they are. Thirty hours for main story only on an action game is absolutely unthinkable. There is nothing that it accomplishes in that amount of time that it could not comfortably do in fifteen. Every mission is at least a third too long. There are whole SECTIONS of the game and GROUPS of characters that could just be hacked off (probably starting with Atreus' narrative-momentum-annihilating adventures with his little FORSPOKEN-ass neurodivergent girlfriend) and do nothing but improve the experience as a result of it. And it's not just the story length - every aspect of the game - areas, sidequests, systems, loot, menus, DIALOGUE - all bloated beyond belief for seemingly no other reason than that the publisher probably mandated what their HowLongToBeat times had to read as.

And this is again where it's hard to come down on one side or the other with the game. Because all the bloat, all the unnecessary collectibles and constant character patter and whatever else are still quite well done, and with the same care and skill as the meat of the game. They did their best! It shows in every corner, truly! But in the end so much of it feels unnecessary.

Less easy to stomach is the very modern feeling you get from minute one of playing - that this is a game that is TERRIFIED of people losing interest in it. The handholding, the tooltips, the pointless loot every X amount of steps (some in the absolute silliest of places, plotwise), the companion characters reminding you verbally of status effects EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU CONTRACT ONE - possibly more severe than any other game I've played. There are times when my little guys were giving me puzzle hints before I even knew there was a puzzle, ffs. And that specifically is something that is measurably worse here than even GOW '18, where it was already a minor irritant. Were the devs promised additional days of vacation based on playerbase trophy unlock percentages or something?

So yeah, in short, it's really held back by being a major Sony game made in the 2020s, and it frustrates me. So goddamn Game Awards-core. But you look at so much of it, you look at the masterful final run where it all comes together, and then the ending (which, let me just say, as the recent father of a son ....... it hits! It hits.) and it's tough for me to believe that these truly talented people with real storytelling (and game design! the combat is still great) chops wouldn't want to make a tighter experience that actually respected its audience's intelligence as players, just a smidge.

I really hope this particular industry wave breaks and rolls back at some point. It's gotta, right?

If Yakuza: Like a Dragon is the soft reboot of the series, then Gaiden is the epilogue for everything before it.

I think a lot about RGG is reflected back here, with its most thoughtful and personal journey of Kiryu and a study of not only the character, but the franchise. It's kinda crazy how once was a series that started out as open-brawler influenced by the likes of River City and Shemue has turned into a giant that is now basically juggling multiple genres, storylines, and side-content that might as well be games in themselves. I think Gaiden really does continues to embody Yakuza and its becomes self-aware in a way, while still finding ways to refine itself and improve on what was built before. It's a beautiful thing in a way, not often do you see franchises keep finding ways to keep topping itself without becoming unrecognizable from its origins. I really hope we get more side-games like this one and maybe some deeper character studies on others in the franchise.

(and oh yeah the game itself is great of course)