OH BOY this was not as good as I remember. Still an enjoyable "cinematic" adventure story, if you're into that type of thing.
The concept of a shooter/platformer/puzzle game is novel but the sum leaves a lot to be desired in all areas.
I feel like the multiplayer is very overlooked, pretty tactical and satisfying for the time. The multiplayer maps integrated the platforming and shooter mechanics better than the main game.
Probably giving half a star more to nostalgia and the impact of the plot on my 13 year old brain (very epic, best game I'd ever played).

so much of it starts at the communal living room tv; ours was given to us by a roommate's estranged ex and promptly forgotten, and in some karmic retribution for never returning it we must hit the power button at least five times just to get it to finally boot. when not in the grips of hours of youtube -- we affectionally call it tooba, or scron, or other nonsense conjured in a weed-fueled haze -- there's always games splashed across the screen. sometimes it's gamepass oddities, sometimes it's whatever yawning ps4 epic I'm trudging through, but often it's a rhythm game. everyone I live with is caught up in some sort of rhythm game grind, whether it's ddr, iidx, taiko, or, of course, project diva. we all rotate through our selection, cheer each other on when someone ranks high, and discuss our strategies from song to song. without pd and how it captivated us I don't think we'd have this amazing shared hobby in the same way we do now!

back when I moved in, I had reached the end of my megamix grind and figured the new house wouldn't exactly be amenable to daily sessions. I'm already an atypical vocaloid fan: I never listened to any of the music back when it was most popular in my middle school years and I never ran in any social circles with fans of miku. I was already knee-deep in snobby rym elitism by the time I hit high school and I looked down on vocaloids as a gimmick; a fad corresponding with the rise of social media and video upload sites and not worth my time. it wasn't until I discovered the sega ties that I become interested at all, and my girlfriend's long adoration of the games from the import days on psp pushed me over the edge into full-on fandom. it hit at the perfect time after a year of reevaluating my music taste during lockdown and reinvigorating my desire for musical exploration and eclecticism, and I couldn't help but fall in love with the musical virtuosity of the numerous pseudonymous producers who shared their hobby with the world.

but I certainly didn't expect for my roommates to be as passionate, and after a few early sessions on the aforementioned living room tv I could tell it wasn't going to last. those watching would compliment my skill, but after a couple songs I could tell I was killing the vibe, and besides, you can't really hold a conversation while playing a rhythm game! so I shelved the game indefinitely and moved onto different games. yakuza was the complete opposite at the time: the cutscenes were engaging and easy to understand and the gameplay favored a leisurely pace where I could easily chat or leave in the middle of as session. project diva faded into the back of my mind.

after a couple months however, the fire was reignited. we began weekly jaunts to our local barcade to throw down on an ancient DDR Extreme cabinet; struggling to hear the backbeat over the rickety pinball machines and an unfortunately loud guitar hero 3 setup. the itch followed us home, and soon enough my roommates were inquiring about that "colorful game with the japanese girl" that I used to play. I shook off my rust and began playing again, pleased at how months of inactivity had given me a fresh perspective on the game. my roommates began dipping their toes in as well. much of this is due to project diva being one of the absolute best arcade rhythm games for controller play. many other games simply don't hit the same on a pad, whereas project diva's psp origins gave its arcade counterpart a leg up on transferring home. whereas the cabinet plays a bit like pop'n music with added holds and slides, the home ports incentivize smart left/right hand independence for complex note patterns as well as holding down buttons on one hand while playing the melody with the other. few other rhythm games can attest to such a smooth conversion to console play.

initial interest quickly ballooned into full-on fanaticism. my roommates were listening to the songs during their daily commutes and passing the controller back and forth for hours after work. they were sussing out songs I had never even heard of and introducing me to new favorites I continue to play up to now, in no small part thanks to my roommate purchasing future tone. though I have dozens of hours in pdft, I've actually never owned my own copy... I currently play my girlfriend's copy thanks to her having my ps4 as her "primary" console, and my first time getting to really sink my teeth into it was on my roommate's ps4. he quickly got me out of the comfort zone I was in and had me exploring all the songs unique to pdft's home port, and I would often come home to our subwoofer blaring and him grinding out songs on the couch. pdft encompasses nearly every song ever released for the arcade game when DLC is counted (this also includes the megamix exclusives), and moving outside the curated pdmm list reveals some interesting tidbits about the game's history. early charts from before the future tone overhaul are much rougher and often have more linear visual patterns, revealing a lack of confidence in the concept on the part of developers. higher-level songs are also subject to some blatantly confusing note spam that seems built to obfuscate the patterns rather; see saihate on extreme for instance. thankfully many of these songs received revision charts listed as "extra extreme", and some of the best charts in the game lie here. with added slides and more intuitive and interesting visual patterns, many of the older songs shine.

eventually our enthusiasm died down, and we moved on to different games. once I had a chance to do free play on the cabinet at magfest, it felt underwhelming returning to the pad and the limitations it imposes, and now that I have a iidx ps2 controller at my disposal my daily grind has shifted (as of this week I can finally do 7s!!). no matter what else we play, we'll always come back to diva once in a while just to remind ourselves of the fun we had. my roommate's girlfriend had just moved in with us when we began playing in earnest, and she herself has become truly infatuated with miku. during a difficult period in her life she took to therapeutically playing the game and embracing the nuanced mixture of joy and despair layered throughout the many tracks. their room is now adorned with miku figurines of all types, and she's gone as far as to get a mini arcade controller for the switch so she can grind between trips to our local round 1! it's a connection that I would not have imagined us having, and getting to introduce her to the older console games has been a blast too.

a few weekends ago my girlfriend informed me that pdft actually has master courses similar to iidx's kyu/dan system; I was completely shocked by this. I sat down and handily took out the 9.5* course (an unexpected full combo on envy catwalk had me feeling rather smug even given my lackluster performance on po pi po and saihate), and I gave my best shot at the 10* course too, though I'll likely never be able to clear intense voice on pad despite my best efforts. being able to even tackle these courses felt like a monument to how much effort I've put into learning these games over the last year, and a sense of finality hung over me as I worked through the courses. it gave me a second to reflect on my history with this game and how it gave me so many experiences I never would have experienced otherwise. I've never had another game connect me to the people I share space with in quite the same way, to the point where we have miku fridge magnets and stickers as decorations around our townhouse. I'm eagerly awaiting having a project diva cabinet in my city soon (within the next month... jubeat too!), but I know a few months from now I'll be drawn back into the fold on my ps4, perhaps I'll actually pick up the dlc and work on some of those harder charts I've never been able to try, maybe I'll finally get requiem for the phantasm exex since I always eat shit when I try it at the arcade, or try gothic and loneliness exex for the first time... so much still left to explore! this game truly does not stop, and soon enough I'll have to roll out the concert yet again and pump those tracks through our halls, even if just for a night.

A victory for the business side of video games more than the creative -- its biggest achievement was getting itself out on a popular new console starved for a GTA-style game while development of the real deal, GRAND THEFT AUTO IV, took forever. The reward for their shrewd timing was popularity well beyond what they probably would have enjoyed under any other circumstances, because as a game, it's ... fine. And kind of just barely.

Everything about the structure and the gameplay is, of course, incredibly derivative, but there are a few sparks of personality. The story is super basic but probably a hair better-written that most of its contemporaries. It has a good voice cast of interesting names. The narrative throughline of gangs as dysfunctional families is at least consistent and legible. And there are a couple amusing peeks at the chaotic identity that the series would later be known for.

But other than that stuff, there's plenty here to dislike or just be bored by. The side missions are uniformly dire -- slapped together, frustrating, and worst of all, required to some degree just to unlock story missions. I'm a big completionist guy with a lot of shameful map-full-of-icons open-world 100%s on my resume (including all of this game's sequels, incidentally), and even I, having now played through this game twice, haven't ever even entertained the idea of going for it here because of how miserable it would be.

A lot of stuff in this game feels tossed off, fumbled, or poorly thought through. Occasionally it feels like the whole thing is barely hanging together. But it is playable. If you can power through the rough spots there's an engaging enough game in here, and it even has a couple effective story beats which, surprisingly, get a lot of payoff in the later games. And that, of course, is the game's real legacy -- its sequels. The direction this series would end up charting (once again, in a brilliant strategic response to what GTA was doing at the time) ultimately justifies this, and makes one thankful for the somewhat mercenary nature of its development and release.

it's odd to think that there aren't many other games that take cues from yoshi's island considering how well respected it is. the slower pace, nuanced character abilities, and high-concept level designs were incredibly novel in the mid-90s, but the shift away from side-scrolling platformers with the rise of 3D wilted this particular evolutionary branch before it had time to really blossom. thankfully while klonoa doesn't feature the sprawl of yoshi's beloved headlining debut, it offers a tightly-paced knockout of a platformer that tills the same field to create a masterfully crafted experience.

the gameplay of klonoa centers around the titular character's ability to grab virtually any enemy and use them as a makeshift projectile, which has the added by-product of giving him an extra jump when the enemy is thrown downward. while simple in concept, the planners stretched this mechanic as far as it would go thanks to smart enemy design and an excellent difficulty curve. klonoa is limited in his abilities outside of this power - he does have a yoshi-esque flutter jump when he's not carrying anything - so with any danger ahead of him the player must carefully consider enemy placement both for utility and avoidance. an enemy may need to be carried from a separate section in order to boost klonoa past an obstacle, or ungrabbable enemies in the way may force the player to lure grabbable ones over to use as ammo. further into the game the execution becomes more strict with strings of enemies to chain jumps with, insta-death surfaces, and shielded enemies, but the game never manages to feel unfair. given the number of lives that the game hands out, most will find the difficulty at that sweet spot between leisurely and strenuous. it's the perfect level of challenge for encouraging replays for collectables, and it provides enough training with mechanics to make that difficult extra stage feel achievable.

the macro-design shows a clear influence from some of the key-driven levels present in yoshi's island. levels here don't stick to a left-to-right structure and instead generally feature per-room challenges that require a higher level of spatial awareness thanks to elements of both the foreground and background playing into small puzzles. while early on each stage rarely approaches non-linearity outside of small side-jaunts that contain collectables, the later stages begin playing with interconnected stage designs that feature loop-backs and stage-wide object effects such as turning elevators on or opening doors. none of it is truly exploratory (outside of one neat stage that features four keys that can be obtained in any order), but it does go a long way towards actualizing the locations beyond mere vessels of challenge.

vision 6-2 in particular shows a keen awareness of parallelism as an effective way to both present a series of challenges and the feeling of an authentic environment. this level involves a single large cylindrical tower with a long column-filled room that contains different pathways to take. more difficult pathways are locked behind timed switch puzzles at the end of the pathway before it. these switch puzzles inside the tower must be accessed by moving a block located outside of the tower behind a puzzle centered around a super-sized version of a common enemy which impedes progress. reaching this section on the outskirts of the tower requires making it through a climb sequence from within the tower, and before that a precision platforming section over a perilous drop away from the tower. the cycle of these different elements each getting increasingly more difficult imparts the feeling of true progress as one makes their way further and further through the column-filled corridor until they finally reach the end, where they can ascend the final part of the tower to reach a monumental boss fight. an exceptional display of level design chops that illustrates - more than just mechanical understanding - a conscious synthesis of micro-design and macro-design to elevate mere gameplay into a worthy struggle through perilous odds that rewards persistance and patience.

it must be said that the bosses are all excellent as well. each provides a unique twist on the enemy-throwing formula that utilizes the same hierarchy of movement, primary, and auxillary obstacles that I layed out in my cuphead review. klonoa has the extra trick up its sleeve of having those enemies be both tool and trial at once, and the bosses use this to great effect. in many instances the auxillary attack itself consists of or contains the very enemies you need to use to damage the boss, and weighing when to avoid them and when to seize them for an attack creates a lovely risk/reward element that keeps each fight fresh. no boss resembles any other boss, and most of them provide a perfect blend of attacks to keep the player on their toes and repetition to a minimum (the second boss is a little stale tho, there's a lot of downtime during it that unfortunately makes it the weakest of the bunch).

what perhaps really elevates this game beyond the rest of its ilk is its attention to aesthetic detail. no aspect feels cheap or rushed, from the rotating pentagonal prism health bars that each boss has to the gorgeous vision start splashes with unique names and subtitles each. every character is well-animated and meshes well with the 3D backdrops, and the game doesn't skimp on gorgeous oscillating polygonal effects illustrating the magical capabilities of the cast, small particle effects when klonoa runs across certain surfaces, and cinematic swirling camera angles as klonoa takes corners and breathes in monumental structures. the story is also full integrated into gameplay, with smooth transitions and everything handled in-engine with unique sprites that really sell the integration. the story itself is compact and strays little from a vague KH-esque light and darkness dichotomy, which suits the pacing of the game perfectly; mature enough for adults to appreciate while simplisitic enough to avoid overwhelming a child. it neatly foreshadows up to its infamous final cutscene twist, and while shockingly abrupt and bittersweet for a game of this nature, it perfectly captures the emotion with the turmoil and rush of the final FMV before the credits roll. it's evident that this is the culmination of hideo yoshizawa's vision of an action game that marries unvarnished gameplay to cinematic qualities.

a little note to fellow popstarter users: this game is pretty playable up to the end if you can stomach semi-frequent crashes between levels that will require a quick reset (thankfully this is after you save, so you won't lose any progress). in a couple of cases this skips important cutscenes, so be advised. I also found it impossible to reach the credits thanks to a crash after the final boss, and thus after a couple tries I resorted to duckstation to finish the game off. disappointing to be sure, but it's a testament to the game's quality that I was perfectly willing to replay the final boss (all three phases) over and over again to make sure it wasn't a fluke, and frankly it was worth it in the end just so I could play the majority of the game on a proper CRT! this is a game that benefits greatly from that phosphorescent swirl of an authentic old screen.

Had this game as my primary form of YGO interaction as a kid and without any kinda manual or idea of what i was expected to do, I didn't get too far without passwords of any kind. Most of my time was spent beating the shit out of Tristan until I got brave and decided to clear the rest of it with primarily Dark Elf and Jirai Gumo, dont remember much else strategy-wise. Nowadays trying to get through this with as little cheats as possible (added one Dark Elf, one Jirai and did Grandpa's bonus card post-battle) feels like such a chore and I really can't recommend this to anyone. Create-a-card seems like a neat gimmick but thats about all there is to diversify this from other games.
Trying to fuse monsters is a struggle, a lot of cards have their effects stripped or nerfed, the card rewards you get suck to high heaven, I don't understand the duelist level requirements for some cards (Blue Eyes is easier to include in your deck than terrible spell cards for some reason???), and much of the early battles are just a matter of getting an okay beatstick out.
When my fascination of YGO reemerged I checked out bits about the early game meta and sure enough the early game was beatdown focused- however even the few sets in the first year of the meta had some interesting card interactions and combos that you can work with so that its not just a matter of summoning your La Jinn/Summoned Skull and leaving that on the field until you win. But here you don't get to see any of those neat effects. Jinzo doesnt have his trap denial, Witch/Sangan can't search for cards, Man-Eater doesnt have his flip-destroy effect, and Jirai Gumo just breaks the game since it's high 2200 attack-no tribute isn't balanced by its coin flip effect. So on the one hand it does break some cards in fun ways but its too primitive to make for a fun simulation of the game on top of not having much 'side substance' to distract this lack of certain mechanics. As a dumb kid I ignored and didn't pay much attention to how good the effects of smaller cards could be so I didn't mind but nowadays seeing the lack of effects bugs the hell out of me, especially here. Milus Radiant is a card you get in your starting deck that can boost EARTH cards' attack by a decent 500 points and decrease WINDs' by the same amount, which would have been a neat effect to have to bolster a bit of your starting cards. Muka Muka would be an insanely funny card here, as its real effect is it gains 300 atk/def for each card in your hand, which would be insanely strong in the early game as you'd have pretty much have this 1800-2100 atk ((300 x usually 4-5 cards in hand, +MMs base atk of 600), on par with or more than other tributeless monsters) beatstick early game. But you don't really have a whole lot to play with in this regard.
Forbidden Memories I've played a bit of recently and also had as a kid, that also having some of these features missing (effects being removed entirely) but I'm wondering if it at least builds up into a more engaging game. I wouldn't mind the lack of card mechanics in DDS if it didn't clash with its inclusion of other mechanics it didnt forget to keep. For example, at least Forbidden Memories has you draw as many cards as you need to have 5 cards in your hand and you can kinda have an easier time messing with fusion combinations through that (at the cost of milling through your deck)- whereas in DDS fusing feels like a gamble if you don't have a cheat sheet up as messing one up will waste one card on the field (probably a better one at that given it survived a turn), you can't summon another monster and you've pretty much bricked if you can't draw a good card. You can also fuse two cards in your hand but if you make a pretty good fusion its probably Level 5 or higher, meaning you need to tribute a card or two to get it out on the field, and we're talking EARLY ass Yugioh. So many of your fusion results are botched-tempo 'have this level 5 card with lower attack than La Jinn or Uraby' that they're not even worth it.
Also you start with such shitheel cards its ridiculous. Thankfully the attribute weakness system (thanks early yugioh) makes it so that having the advantageous type just instakills any monster of the weaker type but you get so few cards that its hard to make sound strategies once you get to the second round of fighters where opponents' decks are better built. Rex Raptor was a pain in the ass to try and fight as his EARTH attribute monsters of around 1000-1800 atk are weak to WIND attribute monsters- which probably made up about 3 cards in my chest. Ironically, it was easier to fight and beat Kaiba than some of the one off/gag characters because of the attribute cycle.
Overall if you had the time and desire you could probably make your way through the game just fine but I don't really care despite my nostalgia/history with the game. It's just too monotonous to get good cards and maybe interacting with the create-a-card mechanic would expedite that but the parts I was getting didn't seem to do that either. Still, interesting that this would essentially be the first glimpse of a Yugioh video game to western audiences and even moreso that two days later Forbidden Memories would release in the west as a complimentary console game. As I go through these games I'm interested in seeing how these two types of games evolve and diverge from each other, as well as the base card game.

it feels somewhat rare that an indie game really captures a retro style in a way that does more than pay lip-service to its predecessors. shovel knight was one of those games: a pitch-perfect recreation of NES-style action challenges stripped away of the mechanical uncertainty of the actual games of that era. cuphead captures that for the run-and-gun in a way that makes it not only a loving tribute but a legitimate cornerstone in the genre.

cuphead feels borne by a rigorous design methodology that demonstrates a deep understanding of the fundamentals of boss design in a 2D space. each fight is undergirded by the movement and platform features; this is generally the unifying trait. plenty of fights take place on a featureless flat ground, but very quickly wrinkles such as scrolling, conveyors, limited platforms, or combinations of these are introduced. a great late-game example is the ghost train stage that features of a platform that can and must be moved between left, center, and right using parry controls. these establish for the player the laws of their dominion so to speak: what space can the player leverage? what options exist at any given time to dodge a certain obstacle?

with each phase then comes the primary attack. bosses generally lack dynamic reactive capabilities unlike a human, so they are incapable of mindgames generally speaking. thus, in virtually all boss fights the boss cycles between random attacks that the player must apply a counterstrategy against. in modern games the design parlance is as such: windup animation begets the attack proper begets an opening for a player to either 1) rest if their counterstrategy is not efficient enough to yield a counterattack or 2) counterattack. too unthreatening and the player barely needs to muster a counterattack, and too overpowered and the player will have no time to respond. cuphead weaves in a truly surprising variety of primaries to challenge the player: the enemy may momentarily remove the player's control of the space, such as with the cat at the end of the rat tank fight batting its paws to swat the right and left sides of the screen, or perhaps the enemy creates antagonistic autonomous elements that force the player to utilize their spatial reasoning and pattern recognition to deduce a projectile's movement habits and shift their position accordingly, such as in the bee queen's middle phase where she incorporates stochaistically-drifting geometric projectiles as well as bullets that move in a linear back-and-forth climb on either side of the screen.

primary attacks on their own are only a lock-and-key design principle: find the counterstrategy that works against a particular move and apply it when needed. what creates true tension in the fight are the auxillary attacks. virtually all bosses are able to separately cycle through auxillary attacks that generally involve an entirely separate on-screen entity attacking on their own accord out of sync with the primary opponent. auxillary attacks on their own already heighten the experience by creating a space-constraint intersection that forces the player to adapt their key to more than just a single lock. certain intersections of attacks may prevent successful counterattacks or force the player to fall back on safer strategies, thus making the risk-and-reward judgment more critical and ever mutating. where cuphead really succeeds is having the auxillary attacks cycle as well. it's much like having three basic collared shirts and three basic ties: the combinations they present give you nine outfits, yielding an multiplicative amount of potential attack intersections. phase one of the sea medusa fight is a great example of this: three primary attacks (either summoning ghost projectiles or bringing one of two different fish out of the water with their own projectiles) with three auxillary attacks (staggered puffer fish projectiles, a water jet that forces a positive y velocity, and bombs that explode with a octagonal bullet pattern). each on their own is manageable, but combined there is an additional level of fluidity demanded of the player with adapting on the fly to intersections they may have never seen before.

of course cuphead doesn't simply hew to these elements in every fight; it expands on them and plays with the potential they possess. take the pirate ship fight: this begins with both a small primary attack (pellets fired by the captain one by one) with an auxillary component (a barrel that moves back and forth at the top of the screen, attempting to crush the player when they pass underneath). within time the captain will begin preempting his own pellet attack with a cycle of attacks from different sources, each with their own tell: a shark that consumes the left half of the screen, small bulldog fish(?) that slide across the ground, and a squid that both creates a fountain of bullets and can turn the screen dark if not defeated in time. on its own this is a perfectly interesting fight: manage the primary and auxillary attacks while being cognizant of primary attacks from external components via tells. however, in the second phase, the ship itself begins shooting cannonballs on a timer. at this point the player must not only manage transient attacks from the captain but also track the separate rhythms of the barrel and the ship's cannonballs. these intersect in a truly polyrhythmic fashion that pushes the fight into truly challenging territory that feels immensely rewarding to lock in with.

this is also boosted by cuphead having a stellar kit and smooth controls that feel sharp without being too abrupt or linear. his ability to parry specific objects (which are colored pink to distinguish them) adds a scale of mastery of many bullet patterns, with basic familiarity only yielding the ability to dodge while a complete understanding allows navigation to specific bullets for a parry and the reward of extra super meter. the super meter attacks are all rather useful and feel well balanced, though for the full-meter arts I can't really imagine someone using anything other than invincibility. however, I found myself legitimately switching out his shots and charms for different fights, which is not to say I found all of the variety useful (I mainly stuck to chaser and spread along with the smoke dodge and one extra heart depending on the fight), but to require a level of specificity in strategy for each fight encourages me to experiment more than I may otherwise. there are virtually no points of frustration I can attribute to a failure in the controls or a lack of a specific tool; almost every time I was stumped on a particular counterstrategy I always eventually worked something out even if it wasn't optimal.

I would really go as far as to say I don't think cuphead has any particular failings or even elements of unfair frustration that I can think of. while an immensely challenging experience, the primary and auxillary attacks are synergistic in such a way that a given intersection can't truly render an attack undodgeable or debilitating. never did I feel like a particular portion was just inserted because it felt cool or to fill space; rather, every bit of the game feels handled with care and finesse. the dragon fight was the peak of this for me... that particular fight walled me and put me off the game quite a bit. while the exasperation I felt was valid, I could never pinpoint a particular aspect that really felt unfair to me. at the end of the day, those projectiles that explode into smaller projectiles when hit really preyed on my spray-and-pray instincts in a way that punished me (and many others I assume) far more than most games are willing to muster. if I had to name one little thing that did feel off to me, it was the platforms during the bee queen fight. the scrolling part and random gaps don't bother me, but their collision box doesn't feel quite lined up with the art, which sometimes led to me falling randomly in confusing ways.

I do wish the flying stages had the same level of customization as the ground stages, but understandably that's a scope issue and not something I would expect from a small production. the non-boss levels also feel a bit perfunctory, but they are all still fun and only necessary for collecting coins for purchasing items in the shop. both of these won't get in the way of anyone looking to experience this: the core of the gameplay is still the tremendous boss fights. this has given me a a nice little kick in the pants to go back and dive into the early 16-bit fundamental works that helped mold this into the genius showpiece that it is.

Here's my thing: I'm the Rick Astley of JRPGs. I never give them up no matter how much they may be letting me down. My 'played' page has its share of RPGs that I absolutely detested but soldiered through anyway, through a mix of Fear Of Missing Out and feeling like I need to have experienced the entirety of an experience to judge it properly, with a bit of Plain Old Fashioned Stubbornness thrown in.

I started playing Vagrant Story on the back of my fifth playthrough of Final Fantasy Tactics (gotta set it up with the Ivalice connection), and was immediately awestruck by the gorgeous graphics that pushed the PSX to its absolute limits, the stellar translation that was sorely lacking from FFT, and the near-perfect cinematic quality that seemed to be the platonic ideal that earlier Square titles like FF6 were striving for. Never would I have imagined that this was the game that would break me!

This game has mechanics on top of systems on top of subsystems; I've played games with obtuse mechanics before, but Vagrant Story is particularly bad at teaching you how to play it. I'm aware that there is an in-game manual, but it's way too much information and the game's early stages don't push you to learn the mechanics in an organic way. The idea of a pure dungeon-crawler with no shops and the only tools at your disposal being what you find and what you craft is sound, but again the crafting mechanics are so obtuse and so irreversible that you can so easily hose yourself at any point with poor crafting decisions and end up in a situation where none of your tools work. And equipment is so influential to the point that it stifles strategy - you either have the right equipment and steamroll the enemy or don't have the right equipment and get stuck poking at a mook for ten minutes.

But the aspect of this game that really made me bounce off it was how soul-crushingly tedious it was. Yes, the load times and spell animations are inexcusably long, and yes, there is endless menu-hopping to be done to change your setup every time you meet a new enemy. But it goes a lot deeper than that: the totally-unnecessary limited inventory necessitated an storage box system which is of course extremely tedious to navigate and which you also inexplicably have to save every time you use. Even something as simple as getting your bearings takes way too much time to do because you need to enter the map menu in order to see the compass directions! This tedium bled over into the bread and butter of the combat as well, with the Risk Bar increasing whenever you attacked, forcing you to either use consumable items to bring it down (which remember, you can't buy because there are no shops), or.... to wait until it goes down on its own.

I really wanted to love this game, but in the space of a week I dropped it three times, talked myself into giving it another chance three times, and realized on my fourth attempt that I was at 20% map completion and completely burnt out, and I just brought out the white flag.

There is absolutely plenty to love in here. Depending on what you value in your RPG experience and your level of tolerance for specific types of bullshit, this game could very well be one of the best games you play, and justifiably so. As such, this is probably the only 1.5-rated game on my list that I would recommend every RPG fan at least give a fair shot!

Matsuno's PlayStation miracle

I feel conflicted about my feelings about Vagrant Story, it's a technical marvel for the first Playstation with the excellent writing and storytelling I've come to expect from Matsuno but it also comes with some of the most obtuse and tedious gameplay I've had to experience in recent times. It's a bit more complicated than that but that's not to say Vagrant Story is bad by any means, I actually overall greatly enjoyed this game despite how I feel about the gameplay but that's because the rest of what's here is so good that it made the entire journey worth it.

The story that Matsuno created manages to do it again despite only being able to work with half of the scenario being cut. The excellent writing and the way he shows only tells enough without being overbearing makes each cutscene a treat to see after enough dungeon crawling that slowly puts the pieces together for you. Ashley is up there with one of the better protagonists with how he develops during the story as well with the game ending on a strong note. Something I wanted to save for the graphics but I think really helps with the story telling is the facial expressions they managed to pull off which kept me immersed throughout the cutscenes.

Vagrant Story is a bit unorthodox with how combat is presented and acted out. The combat system is incredibly in depth but I'll try to simplify it as much as possible for my own sanity. Combat works when you enter battle phase and seeing a sphere grid that represents Ashley's range and options for attack that vary on different limbs of each monster. Damage is dictated by how specialized your weapons are and having a healthy varied arsenal of weapons is extremely important here so you don't get stuck doing little to no damage here. You really can't brute force this game, you'll have to learn the system and pick the right weapons for the right job which is sadly marred by the over abundance of how many menus this whole part of the gameplay is which is the most tedious part for me that I almost actually gave up on the game. Magic and chaining attacks is also here as well and very important as well and a crafting system which will help you make the ideal weapons but that's a whole can of worms I don't want to delve into. If you learn, the game won't be too hard for you. The dungeon crawling and the puzzles are honestly the best part of the gameplay for me. Each area is truly realized and the programming wizards that made this game put an incredible amount of detail into each area that it's kinda surreal how they managed it. The puzzles albeit a great addition got pretty annoying at the end but I still enjoyed them overall. I think they really wanted to do something different here as it's hard to really put this game into any genre and I can honestly appreciate it despite how well the execution is.

The soundtrack is excellent here coming off matching Ivalice's medieval sounds while being way more chaotic and erratic to represent the difference in tone the game is trying to go for. If there was one specific track that I'd like to highlight it would be this specific boss theme early on that manages to increase the tension at just the right moments. The emotional songs during important moments are just as wonderful too being able to instill strong emotions in me especially during that ending.

It's no surprise how good Vagrant Story looks despite the hardware that it's almost famous for how much of a technical miracle this game was. The environments and buildings are some of the best if not the best looking buildings on the consoles and the way they used face textures that actually emote is something I mentioned early but it really helps improves the experience. Blood and wounds appear naturally without a weird delay or a static texture. The fact that they managed to create a lighting system in this game without actually making one at all just goes to show how much effort they put into making this game trying to realize its full potential. I could really go on here but it's hard to deny the magic they did here to pull something off like this despite not having any experience in 3D.

Despite how much I harped on the gameplay being really tedious, I can't recommend this game enough to anyone that enjoys the Ivalice games or old Square games in general. It's a game about learning to deal with the bad stuff we've done and trying to move on from them which I think is a great message especially those hanging onto more guilt than most. A reflective adventure into the darkness within humanity.

+this feels like a fresh take on the collectathon, where the prime collectables (monkeys) are not static objects but moving, living beings you have to subdue
+a wide variety of levels, each with unique setpieces and challenges that are localized and easy to navigate on a system with limited draw distances. feels more compact than something like sm64
+the amount of content is pretty spectacular, and many objectives are open-ended on which items or routes should be used
+good variety with the items. even though there's only 8, they all have their place at various points with none of them feeling too situational; it helps that some of the items have dual purposes for both puzzles and combat. being able to hold 4 at once thanks to the unorthodox controls is also a boon
+another good design element with the items is how differently each one uses the right stick. possibly the highlight is the rc car which you can move independently of yourself and is used in quite a few puzzles
+the music blew me away when I first heard it, I had no idea it would draw so heavily from techno and house. perhaps a few annoying tracks sprinkled in (ugh that carnival track) but the majority of the ost is insanely creative, pulsing electronic music
+very solid in-game cutscenes in this one. I think the particular anime-esque designs the game has going on mesh well with the low-poly actors and pasted-on faces

-I really do appreciate the team jumping at the chance to try something new with the second analogue stick, but the right stick is for the camera, end of story. at least there are camera controls in this game but they're on the d pad and thus usually impossible to use while moving, while at the same time having to aim items with the right stick is extremely fiddly
-combat with the stronger monkeys ie ones with missiles or guns can get quite frustrating. they have a tendency to run off-camera, leaving you unable to follow them until you reorient, and their ranged abilities far exceed the uncomfortable-to-aim slingshot that you're given
-the endgame really drags on, and wades into some precision platforming sections that push the limits of the game's touchy controls
-wow the dub is really horrific in this one, past the point of hilariously bad into being just lazy. no subtitles either
-having to rotate the right stick quickly to get a triple jump is very annoying, seems a little overzealous on the designer's part
-sort of annoying how each level immediately kicks you out once you hit the quota of monkeys you need to move on. would've been nice to avoid some revisits by 100%ing levels on my first run

enjoyed my time with most of this one, started to get antsy for it to finish near the end but overall a game that showed the heights of what 3d platforming could achieve on playstation. I did a little bit of side content aka getting optional monkeys, and while it didn't really hold my interest past that point I'm glad I at least beat the game. definitely worth a try if you're into games that push the limits of 5th generation graphics, or early platformers along with spyro et al.

such whiplash jumping from viii to this one... I guess I brought it on myself. there's just so many issues tied to this weird hybrid 2D-3D isometric engine holding me back from enjoying this one more.

hitboxes are hard to parse because the sense of depth is compromised by the perspective and the flat characters. it doesn't help that during boss battles there's usually a lot of hitboxes on screen at once. this is exacerbated by the fact that generally adol's only way to get out of harm's way is to jump, and an aerial adol's location in space can hardly be determined without some practice. combat in general is light on options given adol's limited kit in this game. attacks are limited to the usual mash-x combo and with the added wrinkle of a couple different aerial attacks. fighting the regular mobs is so tedious and dull by the end of the game... once you get the double jump you can at least stun enemies by doing double jump->downward plunge? but late-game enemies don't respond to these as often so it doesn't feel like it significantly changes the gameplay loop.

and those boss battles... they truly love throwing crazy bullet patterns and such at you in this game. I'd love to see a 3D action game take on that level of challenge and variety of projectiles, but in this hybrid engine it feels claustrophobic and arbitrary. in the first half of the game I found the bosses truly overwhelming, and much of this has to do with streamlined mechanics from typical action rpgs that really should've made an appearance here. there's no way to heal in a fight outside of popping a full boost gauge, but the second level that includes healing doesn't unlock until the midgame unfortunately considering how useful it is. there's also no way to upgrade equipment until you unlock the ability to teleport after the second major dungeon, which is still relatively early on but feels awkwardly late given how useful upgrading equipment is.

the bosses aren't only overwhelming because of the hitboxes of course, as there's a sort of maximalist old-school design pattern going on here. each boss has a ream of moves that must be dealt with, with virtually all fights having multiple phases and occasional overlapping attacks that really stress proper positioning. what's unfortunate about this is that adol's limited toolkit results in very few options available to approach each encounter. it's a necessity to experiment and find which strategy works with each attack, which is a common design pattern for any boss fight but feels extremely restrictive here with so few different approaches to each fight. in some cases the proper solution to a given attack can be relatively obscure or unintuitive, such as the swoop attack gildias uses in the third phase in his fight. he remains aerial the whole time, but he will only pick you up if you don't jump, which does not make much physical sense and was a strategy not apparent to friends who had previously played the game when I talked to them. this one attack could potentially kill the player in a single shot depending on luck (he throws you down a chasm with ledges that will severely damage you if they are not narrowly avoided or blocked using the charge magic) which feels cruel on the side of the developers. likewise multiple other projectiles towards the end of the game (such as in the clockwork robot fight or either of the final two bosses) will knock you down and chain into other projectiles, causing massive damage to the player. it seems like in a lot of ways the developers put in a wide variety of creative ideas without caring much about how viable it was to play against them. compared to the much gentler difficulty curve of the modern ys games, it's a little shocking to spend 10+ attempts on a boss that can consistently kill you in only four hits. the final boss is especially excruciating, as for most of the fight you cannot attack the boss directly and instead must just survive until your next opportunity to attack arises. it's a shame too, as much of the end of the game (barring the clock tower boss which was far too fast for adol and mostly consisted of me running in a circle waiting for my boost to recharge) has some very solid bosses that feel more flexible regarding feasible approaches. it's not that the ideas here aren't good, but the way bosses control the pace of the fight really removes much of the fun of trying to optimize damage or fight aggressively.

what's most damning really is that this frustration is surrounded by little else. the plot is certainly fine but is pretty thin with shallow side characters and a relatively predictable structure. dungeons generally consist of long straight lines with small detours for field items or extra goodies, and so exploring each one feels more like a chore of wading through enemies rather than any sort of puzzle layout or organic area. regular enemies generally require little thought except for some focus on character placement, which would be fine if the combat had a bit more spice. the magic as well rarely gets used outside of clearly telegraphed lock-and-key puzzles that don't particularly evolve over the course of the game. this is a game entirely built around engaging boss encounters, and I really don't think the combat mechanics are robust enough to make an imprint on me that this is a must-play or even particularly engaging at all.

it's a shame really, since all of the requisite falcom bits are present: energetic music, lovely sprite art, and the feeling of a well-crafted and succinct B-tier jrpg snug within your psp (or pc, which seems to unfortunately not play nice with modern hardware). it just suffers from a lack of ambition in its fluff and structure while potentially possessing too much ambition in its boss design. for every boss I felt satisfied to beat there was a counterpoint that felt tedious or stiff or poorly considered. or perhaps I'm just more cut out for modern ys rather than these older titles.