I think the best game Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio has ever made in recent times. The best combat in the game that I spent hours just messing around trying to do combos on enemies. The side stories are the best in the Yakuza series in my opinion, especially the school side stories that feels like GTO anime as in you're helping students with their problems and their school activities as a counselor teacher which is really fun as each after school club has different gameplay styles. Such as a dancing rhythm game, skateboarding, play Virtua Fighter, and many more. except for the Robotics club. Screw that minigame. The story is top notch but can't go into details due to spoiler but it had me in my seats. I highly recommended if you have a modern home console.

today marks the 20th anniversary of metal gear solid 2's release, and hideo kojima tweeted a bit in memory of developing the game so long ago. one tweet in particular stuck out to me though:

"LIBERTY and FREEDOM have different meanings, and MGS2 is not about singularity, but about the 'norms' of society having a will of their own."

the year before the release of mgs2, the norms that maintain the social fabric of the United States briefly reared their head to the public. the 2000 presidential election resulted in a contested florida count; a week-long war where the soldiers were lawyers and county election officials. the supreme court eventually stepped in and settled the matter out of the hands of the voters who supposedly drove the process in the first place, and the culture managed to digest this aberration of electoral procedure cleanly. when a much sillier repeat of this strategy took place 20 years later, there was little discourse about its relation to a time when a party actually did manage to steal an election openly with no consequence.

the point of the above is not to bemoan the "unfairness" of the situation (the choice did not really matter to the american people) but to observe how the american ideological ship rights itself even when it openly contradicts itself. much of our "freedom" yields from america's supposedly democratic structure allowing citizens to exert themselves politically, even as voting is shown to be vapid ritual and direct action is suppressed at every opportunity. yet even when these truths are so plainly evident, the shadow of american capital obscures or supplants the truth as necessary to keep the citizenry proud of the "liberty" they hold. kojima rationalizes this the work of artificial intelligence; a neural network kept fat off of the endless drip of online content, and trained to filter information for the benefit for international capitalist hegemony. the economic engine of the west's security far exceeds the abilities of any group of humans to protect, and must be handled by some sort of higher power; an omniscient american consciousness whether as a group of AIs inside an underwater fortress or a commmon understanding woven into us by the superstructure we exist in.

of course, I don't want to imply that all of the above came directly out of kojima's mind onto the page, especially since I find praises of games such as these to be inherently "anti-capitalist" to be cope in a lot of ways; the text simply does not have any coherent critique of capitalism itself. kojima has stated (paraphrased by tim rogers) that the plot here is "merely a jumble of things inspired by current events," and not a "postmodern literary statement." the thematic undercurrent of this game sometimes struggles to poke its head through all of the mess of plot elements at play: otacon cuckolding his father, the peter stillman false injury subplot, rose's desperate attempts to crack raiden's hardened exterior, the vampire who is lovers with a marine commander and then moves on his daughter who may or may not be able to deflect bullets, and revolver ocelot having liquid snake's personality inside his arm for some reason. what's unquestionable though is that kojima has a keen mind for rooting out legitimately disturbing facets of US hegemony and exposing them within his work both narratively and through the game mechanics.

much of this relies on raiden, or jack, the hapless operator commanded to infilitrate the big shell and rescue the president. his mission: to play in a role in a cataclysmic test that will prove that the patriots (the aforementioned norms, the ideological backbone of america) can organically influence the actions of people via tight control of the information given to them. part of this game's infamous obtuseness revolves around the fact that not only has raiden been misled by his supervisors, but the people he interacts with friend or foe also are acting on false information different than what raiden has. there are instances where raiden will parrot off the plot up to a given point and will be met with incredulous looks by whoever he's talking to that never remotely get resolved, and piecing together the real plot from this can be difficult. his main enemy: solidus snake, a man who has upheld the status quo of america both abroad in brutal secret military actions in africa as well as domestically as president of the united states. this is a man who has seen the superstructure and seeks to gain true liberty in transcending it; he's a man who has seen the true face of God and must be killed. even as raiden struggles to sort through his thoughts regarding all of this, he's pushed to duel solidus to the death to fulfill the patriots orders, and he has no choice in the matter. the patriots have organized the game for him and he (as the player's proxy) must participate. raiden has no alternate options, as his future is bound to the player's performance within the scope of the game, and he cannot disobey his direct inputs.

perhaps the best illustration of raiden's construction of consciousness over the course of the game is in the arsenal gear section. raiden up to now has been chasing the identity of snake for some time, both literally as he trails behind snake's actions within the game and conceptually as the patriots program the environment around him to resemble the shadow moses incident. after being tortured within the bowels of arsenal gear, raiden is released fully nude and must evade capture as he undergoes a sort of peristalis within AG's intestines. as he proves himself competent after shedding his loadout (mechanically inherited from snake), the real snake bestows upon him an identity of his own: a katana that becomes raiden's primary combat weapon for the final sections of the game. raiden's literal play mechanics develop beyond the idea of snake in this moment thanks to a clever design choice by the developers: the katana uses the previously unused right stick to control its slashes and actions. up to now players are unconsciously playing as snake to some extent, as raiden's control layout has matched snake's MGS1 layout. it is now that players learn how to play as raiden and how he functions as a character beyond the shadow of snake, as he self-actualizes both narratively and within the scope of the game's mechanics.

I don't know if the critical gaming institution was ready to accept the confidence mgs2 brought when it came out, however. obviously the character bait-and-switch turned off those who played solely to become snake; perhaps raiden was an ugly reflection in some ways, as an awkward and lithe protagonist with only virtual combat experience to speak of. the sheer complexity and inexplicable loose ends of the story turned off many more who were willing to explore what kojima has created, including the translator herself: Agness Kaku. even though I disagree with her critique of the script, I do not envy the draconian word count requirements that konami held her to or the strict 1:1 localization requirements kojima enforced after jeremy blaustein's creative liberties in the excellent translation of the first game. the result here is a script that is stilted and cumbersome compared to the snappy script of the original, which I'm sure turned off even more people than mentioned before. it's taken many years to truly cleanse mgs2's mixed reputation for those who originally experienced it: as an example, while I tend to like jeremy parish's work, his writing on mgs2 captures a snide attitude towards this game that has not aged well, whereas his more recent analysis of the game on retronauts has begun praising its prescience of modern american political life as he's reexamined the game, a move I applaud him for as a prominent games critic and historian.

in fact, it's parish's criticism of mgs2's gameplay that I want to use as a launching point to discuss the game's amazing stealth action, which really cements this title as one of the best games ever made in my eyes. mgs2 falls in a difficult spot between mgs1, arguably the first modern AAA game, and mgs3, a game with remarkably few restraints on player expression and another GOAT contender. it's hard for me to argue that mgs2 is better than mgs3; mgs2 is a leaner experience while mgs3 is a much more convoluted web of systems to memorize and clunky controls, but mgs3 is a pure stealth experience in terms of environment and scenario design in a way that mgs2 cannot approach. what mgs2 is not, however, is a rehash of mgs1, as parish's writing (linked below) accuses it of. while there are certainly similar aspects between events in mgs2 and mgs1, mgs2 builds upon these ideas to present something completely new for the genre. mechanically mgs2 is a perfect midpoint between 1 and 3 that rewards player ingenuity and quick decision-making within the bounds of the top-down format and segmented area structure of the original title.

mgs2 brings two major innovations to the series: first-person aiming and the AI squad system. guns in mgs1 are functionally useless outside of the many annoying action setpieces throughout the game, as the aiming is non-existent and there's no way to quickly take down guards with weapons. in that game this flaw is papered over by the fact that guards lack much any critical thinking beyond looking at anything directly within their cone of vision, and thus the game encourages sneaking behind enemies. in mgs2, you now have the ability to headshot or crotchshot enemies for quick takedowns, and with this power comes a slew of challenges that force the player to use this tool effectively. the game stations guards in locations that often actively keep you from slipping past them as a casual player, either from having other guards watch their back, or from patrolling areas that make your footsteps clearly audible, or by putting mission objectives in positions where guards block you at every turn from accessing them. to make matters more complicated, tranquilizing or killing a soldier leaves their body behind, which if seen by another soldier can quickly reveal your presence even if you are on the other end of the map. body disposal becomes an essential and nerve-racking endeavor that is further exacerbated by the fact that dragging bodies is slow, and stunned enemies will eventually wake again. rooms become a matter of determining which soldiers risk mission integrity the most when active, how to best deal with them, and how to hide them in such a way that you have just enough time to achieve your objective before the body is found.

further complicating matters, the squad in each room now does routine check-ups on one another to ensure the team has not been comprimised, as well as calling into HQ regularly to provide status updates. making an incorrect decision can have an extremely costly result if the squad becomes suspicious and calls in a search team to sniff you out; the most frightening parts of this game come from hiding in lockers or under cabinets praying that a search team will get lazy when they reach your location and leave you be. this also implements a hidden timer after you eliminate a guard, where your next objective must be finished before the rest of the squad catches wind of the fact that one of their own is missing. even worse is eliminating a squad leader, which could result in HQ realizing that no regular status report was radioed in and thus sending in a team to determine the status in person. it's a delicate interplay between all these mechanics, as any advantage you can gain over the forces against you can be lost just as quickly if you have not planned further movements in advance. taking out guards one by one linearly is simply not an option: you must consider the totality of your environment, plan accordingly, and then execute said plan correctly, often with elements you didn't consider interfering and forcing you into hiding mere meters away from your objective. it is endlessly claustrophobic on first attempts of this game, and truly imposes a sense of dread upon being discovered that I don't think other entries in this series ever capitalized on in the same way. of course, as you grow more experienced, you begin to find ways to push against these restrictions, and to the game's credit it offers a bounty of built-in ways to exploit the guards. shooting a soldier's radio or throwing a chaff grenade jams their tether to HQ and keeps them from calling for reinforcements even in the event that they encounter you, for instance, and you can hold up guards for free takedowns and to lead them away from other guards in the vicinity. steam pipes can be broken to scald guards, cameras can be shot to free up your traversal options, fire extinguishers can serve as makeshift smoke grenades, and you can even drop onto unsuspecting soldiers from a ledge in order to get an instant knockout. what makes this game different is no matter how far you push, the game will still find ways to punish you if you choose to lollygag given the ever-watchful eye of HQ upon you. your job is to catalog your available tools in your mind, use them when appropriate, and plan out your goals in advance as to avoid wasting time once you've begun interacting with the environment.

in terms of macro-design mgs2 also leapfrogs mgs1 to provide area layouts that take advantage of the new tools as well as encourage more exploration. mgs1 lays out its areas in straight lines in both discs of the game, making backtracking a bore, especially during sections such as retrieving the sniper rifle or using the temperature-controlled key cards. mgs2 areas are still heavily enclosed, but feature a greater amount of interconnectivity that allows the player to choose their routes, or for different difficulties to change which routes are accessible to the player when. in the two main open hubs in the game - the tanker area as well as Strut A of big shell - the player can freely travel between areas for the most part while still being naturally led to the next objectives. it helps that each area is roughly symmetrical, and as such the player need not struggle with understanding a complicated interconnected map. after the harrier fight, the game linearizes and begins focusing on more setpieces rather than full stealth sections, but after a more freeform first ~60% of the game this doesn't bother me much.

the environments themselves strike a radically different vibe than mgs1, which focused on snake clawing through the darkness of alaska juxtaposed against the glittering snow blanketing the island of shadow moses. big shell instead feels sterile, with its position far out into the hudson bay removing it from any spatial context as it sits above the water surrounded by mist. I sympathize with those who don't like this setting and its palette, as shadow moses is unquestionably the more memorable area. my interpretation of big shell is that its built purposefully as a "game-y," flat area; a training ground of sorts for raiden. the interiors ignore the oppressive chill of shadow moses in order to present an lifeless area that illustrates the banality of the villainy involved, and the clean order that the patriots impose. it's only as the game continues and the pageant the patriots have created begins to decompose that the aseptic facade collapses and raiden must overcome flooded hallways full of bloated bodies, flaming remannts of catwalks, and the blaring sirens of arsenal gear as he cleaves bodies in two and struggles against the framework imposed upon him.

one aspect where mgs2 is notably rushed is the boss selection: the main enemy organization Dead Cell has multiple members that evidently were cut in development even though they get brief mentions in the lore. unlike mgs1 where many of the fights are based in specific gimmicks, the bosses in mgs2 are spaced out much more and generally have multiple methods for how to take them down. the fatman fight always sticks out to me, both in sheer ridiculousness and in how it balances defusing the bombs fatman puts down with actually damaging him. balancing those two mechanics makes the fight more than just dodge-and-shoot, which is a fine design for a mgs fight but not always the most interesting. other fights such as olga and vamp sort of fall into the latter category, and then the rest feel a bit more gimmicky, generally leaning on some sort of non-standard weaponry. they're all good, but I wouldn't call them as memorable as the two games that sandwich it in the series, especially mgs3.

of course, there is much I haven't touched on in this review that I could continue to offer my thoughts on, such as the way the game begins violently rejecting the player from even playing it as they attempt to bend against the will of the patriots, or the way the game uses parallel events between mgs2 and mgs1 to confuse the player rather than give them some cynical "I get the reference" moment. perhaps this game's status as a "postmodern" masterpiece is simply because no other game has ever achieved this level of ludonarrative coherence, where the act of playing the game itself is relevant to the plot and subtextually reinforces the themes presented in the text. it's one thing to have fourth wall breaks, especially after the twists in this game were subsumed by gaming mass media and diluted into sillier configurations, but this game refuses to use them only as parlor tricks and instead weaves them into a broader narrative about the control of information and individual agency that resonates at a time when people are hyperaware of the context of their era and yet absolutely powerless to influence it. it's a game where even multiple legendary soldiers are unable to buck machinations of a country that are entirely beyond them, and where they must live with this doomed knowledge whether they choose to feebly resist it or not. in many ways, this is a game that was far ahead of its time and lacks an inheritor of its legacy as both one of the most fantastic action games ever created and one of the few titles that capitalizes on video game's unique traits as an equal form of art and sport.

+two great additions to the series: akiyama and saejima. great eccentric personalities to take over the mantle from kiryu
+saejima's charge moves and tanimura's parry breathe some new life into yakuza's tried-and-true combat
+the best majima boss battle up to this point in the series
+table tennis has been added to yakuza 3's roster of minigames
+ps3 version retains much more jp content than yakuza 3, tho the quiz game is still missing
+hamazaki from yakuza 3 returns surprisingly, and gets a touching redemption arc to boot (for the most part, anyway)
+boxcelios 2!! and the first one returns too as an unlockable
+the non-kiryu characters gets a master with their own challenges, which is a first in the series. they do a good job staying away from just "beat up X enemies" during the challenges too
+low bar but on ps3 I think the overall resolution is better than yakuza 3 at multiple points during the game. on ps4 this is a non-issue

-the plot is completely nonsensical. even for a series that favors flash over solid writing, this game is incomprehensible past the midway point
-each act focuses on a single character, and that character can not be used until the finale after their act is done. this renders their substories and exclusive minigames inaccessible as well
-saejima compounds the above issue by being unable to access certain minigames like karaoke or the hostess club. on top of this, his act is roughly the longest in the game
-the number of substories has been cut down significantly from yakuza 3, with ~120 in that game and 66 in this one (counting all four Amon encounters)
-the substories are divvied up between the characters, leaving them with very few substories each. you won't be running into countless substories like in previous games
-each character starts at lvl 1 at the beginning of their act, making the difficulty feel like it's at an introductory level for most of the game. thankfully kiryu starts with an upgraded kit in his act
-kiryu's act is rather short and he himself has little relevance to the plot
-only kamurocho is available, and the three new areas (rooftops, underground, and little asia) are underutilized and annoying to navigate
-at least one entire action stage is reused from yakuza 3, I get that assets need to be reused but this was a little too far
-hostess maker (akiyama's exclusive feature) is glorified dress-up and frankly not engaging. sucks that it's required for multiple trophies
-many of the better aspects of the game, such as gang encounters, masters, and the police scanner, have negligible rewards beyond just progression ie no trophies and they don't count towards substories

it's really hard to recommend this game at all given that the story/structure have serious issues, much of the content is retained from yakuza 3, and an average playtime is the longest in the series yet (I didn't dilly-dally as much as I usually do in a yakuza game and still ended up at 35 hours by the end). it's not unplayable by any means and it retains much of the good features of other yakuza games, but this one should only be played to set up the story of yakuza 5

Unfortunately, my least favorite in the series so far.

The four separate protagonists ruin the pacing. The plot never felt like it was advancing until I got to the third character. On top of that, of the four protagonists I absolutely despise two of them.

The final chapter of the game is amazing though, I just wish the rest of the game was like that.

Overall, worth it if you still want to experience the whole series, but sadly a pretty weak entry overall.

The Binding of Isaac is a weird game for me to discuss and attempt to review, to be quite frank. It's almost the ultimate content dump with how much stuff is packaged in.
Completionist for the base game? 11 Characters with 6 (12 if you dont always do hard mode but ill stick with assuming hard mode throughout this review) completion marks. Around 250 hours.
Completionist for Afterbirth and Plus? 4 new characters and 4 new completion marks. About another 200 hours.
Completionist for Repentance not only adds 2 new characters to make 17 -it then doubles that cast with the addition of 'tainted' characters to 34, and adds two final completion marks. Unless you superbly plan out completionist runs for this game you'll probably be looking at 1000 hours of content (not to mention the challenges, extra achievements and certain characters being way more of a bitch to handle than others but ill get to that later).
By the point in which I'm writing this review I've still barely scratched the surface. I've at least beaten every boss once, gotten most of my newer runs done on hard mode, have at least 50% of achievements, but only a few tainted characters (Isaac, Cain and Samson). There's still a lot to discuss but I'll at least sum up my thoughts like this:
I can't recommend this game unless
A) You don't have any other games to look forward to
B) You're fine dealing with an immense amount of rng/ vague descriptions/ mechanics/etc.
C) You don't have the nagging feeling to try and 100% every game you play
And there's probably a lot of other warnings I could give, I've put in another solid +100 hours since getting this in September despite having a lot of other stuff on my plate and I could easily pull Isaac back up again and try a few runs but nah I need to put that stuff down. It's incredibly addictive. Even at its worse (and I will talk about its worse points), Isaac has this ingenious way of wrapping its economy/functionality into your brain in such a way that can't be easily described into calling certain items or runs 'good' or 'bad', its so much fun to test out where a run is going because it can just as easily take a sharp dip or a steep rise. There's so many factors at play and repentance has done a really good job and buffing certain 'run ruining' items that even shit like Holy Water is suddenly great. In fact there's so many factors that it's hard to even begin the talking points of Repentance, so I'll start with some of the downsides to the overall Isaac package at least.
1) The beginning levels can honestly be some of the rougher parts of a run, even after several hundreds of hours. I just hate cellar, man. Spider enemies are the absolute worst to deal with when having few to no upgrades. Add in some pretty annoying bosses and starting a run off can be annoying at times. It's less a matter of how difficult the enemies are, more so if i start a run and my first item is like, E. Coli, I'm not exactly holding my breath if my boss on first floor is Rag Man or I encounter a room with a bunch of those big, scared, spiders. Obviously I'm fine with the game trying to be challenging but the difference in difficulty between vanilla basement (or even Dross 1) and cellar is a bit steeper just by nature of how irritating the usual enemies are in the latter. (Also this really just becomes apparent for characters that aren't super strong at the start like Lazarus or unwhored? Eve)
2) Fuck Jacob & Esau. Okay not every character in Isaac is exactly amazing but for the most part the weakest characters are usually just extremely janky (Lilith), have fewer redeeming qualities to work with (like Lazarus or Blue Baby compared to a Samson), or are weak but have amazing side effects (The Lost taking free devil deals/theoretically free curse rooms/innate holy mantle). Jacob and Esau is legitimately hard to deal with and I can't overstate how unfun they are to play as. Having essentially double the hitbox is fucky enough with the bullet hell aspect of certain boss fights but then you have to contend with certain rooms being REALLY hard to evade with two characters since whichever twin is following behind can potentially get stuck behind a corner and get beaten by a chasing enemy. Having the ability to drop 2 bombs at once for the cost of 1, and being able to take two pedestal items is nice (like in the alt paths or certain angel room layouts) but controlling these two does not make them worth it other than unlocking items like Birthright, Rock Bottom and Genesis (admittedly really great items you should probably suffer through J&E to obtain). Lastly, why the hell does Genesis not work with J&E right? You need to beat ??? as them to get Genesis but when you actually use it as them, it deletes not just the user's items, but the other twin's as well. And then when you get sent to restock your characters with the rerolled items you can't even restock your twin's inventory by doing the alt path cheese, it's always gonna be a net negative.
3) There still is a lot of items in Isaac that just aren't great. A lot of 'weaker' items can still be used in niche situations but there's some stuff that still isn't useful- (or is detrimental like My Reflection) like did Dead Bird get any better? Nah. Are you really gonna need Remote Detonation all the way through a run and will you take it over Book of Revelations? Generally no. Are trail-related items good? Not really.
4) It's still Isaac so you'll want platinumgod up to see how some items work. Also have the wiki up if you want to know how certain items interact in case you really don't wanna lose a run and you're unsure if taking one item will synergize like shit and get you killed.
5) Fuck brimstone bosses (mostly just the bloat and the adversary).
6) A lot of challenges are just a pain. Mostly the pre-Repentance ones but even Seeing Double is rough (thanks J&E).
7) I do wish it were a bit easier to keep track of certain things as Tainted Cain. Like a potential upgrade that allowed you to know how much of a specific item was on a given floor. (this just makes it easier for me to tally what all i have for the online calculator because its annoying going back and forth tallying up each item room by room)
8) and lastly, maybe this is more a personal issue but there are points where I feel like there's way too much to handle in a given situation. Some of the newer enemies/ bosses have a lot more going on with harder to discern tells (I still can't really understand Reap Creep's timing for firing diagonal vs straight brimstone) or its harder to see where some attacks are coming from (falling tears or rocks, usually). This mostly occurs with some of the newer fights so maybe I still need to get used to some of it.
After all of that, there's some other stuff I could gripe about but also Isaac really is just one of those games where one run you encounter a continuing issue but the next you find a solution or a small niche that makes that issue just a little less apparent. For example, the issue of certain spacebar items being less useful than others and also the issue of J&E bringing down Repentance a bit. How do you contend with these two problems? Bethany. Bethany isn't an incredibly strong character but as the 2nd 'full' character (since Edmund considers the tainted a kinda 'half character') she makes up for them quite well. Her gimmick being that she can't take soul hearts but can use them to supplement item charges and summon a wisp that can block damage on top of other effects makes so many bad/iffy spacebar items way more useful. I can't call kidney bean a useless item since beating Mother with a full ring of wisps and barely taking much damage because I could never run out of them.
Also there's just so many other neat new characters and stuff I haven't seen since the first Afterbirth that made all the bullshit worth it.
-The concept of melee characters like the forgotten and (berserk) tainted samson is so cool and fun. The former almost immediately became my favorite.
-The lost sucks to play as but is honestly so much fun also? It's such a good example of isaac's risk/reward mentality. Suck godhead is such a pain to get but so many of my nuttier runs have been messing around with the lost.
-A lot of the newer items (AB+ and Repentance) are so cool. Big fan of some of the newer tear effects like Little Horn, Mucormycosis, Sinus Infection, Parasitoid, Jacob's Ladder (and similar). On top of other neat items like Genesis, Urn of Souls, Psy Fly, Alabaster Box, etc.
-The repentance challenges (what Ive played so far at least) have mostly been pretty good. I'd be lying if i didn't say I had a dumb smile on my face during the Isaac's Awakening challenge not realizing until starting it that it was just classic Zelda in Isaac. Cantripped was also a super neat take on an already super weird addition to the roster (T!Cain).
I've spent a bunch of time talking about this game, and there's a lot to bitch about. There's a lot to praise about. There's just too much that could ever be condensed into a review that attempts to cover specific details and aspects when there's so many details and aspects in the game. It really is a hard sell because there's just an insane amount of time that one would need to put into it to get everything, but if there's one game that more than pays for itself in time spent in completion, its isaac. It's bullshit but its an absolute drug.

Lost Judgment is a step up from its predecessor in almost every aspect: the already-fun combat has been given greater depth, side content is surprisingly expansive, and much of the tedium has been removed. Moment to moment, it's as fun to play as these games ever have been.

The one thing I can knock it for is that the story and writing didn't achieve the same impact for me as other games from RGG Studio; it feels like it's already played its biggest surprises well before the main plot wraps up. There are still great moments along the way, but it falls short of being a perfect package.