Puzzle platformers aren't really my thing, so I'm shocked to announce that American Arcadia kept me very engaged for its 6 hour runtime. The key factors that contributed to this were the engaging story, the great dialogue writing and the variation. Each section of the game had something different going on, and the first person areas did wonders to spice things up a bit. Some plot beats were a little bit contrived, and some puzzles could get a little frustrating (especially one or two that couldn't be solved without seeing an easily missable clue), but ultimately I really enjoyed this one.

One last thing worth mentioning is that they nailed the difficulty. While it isn't a hard game by any means, there are some sections where it's incredibly easy to stuff up. Thanks to the quick restart, you get back to it pretty quickly, and thankfully not many areas were such a cinch that it got boring. That, I think, was key to keeping me engaged.

This is the only game I beat in one sitting this year and my general impression went from "did we discover the first enjoyable cinematic platformer?" to "dang this is way spicier than it initially lets on". Slaps the player over the head with Themes without a modicum of trust, and might be better off with this approach, as it allows for an incredibly brisk pace without waffling parts. A jolly fun time whenever there's a multitasking sequence, and the general perspective switching is quite well done too. For real though, I expected good and I'm still surprised how much I ended up digging this. A must play if you have strong feelings about certain Danganronpa V3 twist.

Positives
+ Beautiful 70s aesthetic
+ Truman Show vibes
+ Engaging story with unexpected twists

Negatives
- Performance issues (microstutters)
- Okay voice acting
- Lack of explanation of certain puzzle sections means you have to retry a LOT

so glad something like this can exist today. crisis core is probably one of the most expressively “edgy” mid to late 2000s games i’ve ever played - edgy in the sense that it’s filled with stylized teenage blood pumping action and nomura character designs fit for its audience - it’s so gratifying that this era of games can still remain relevant. in 2022 i’m watching a pre rendered fmv of smug long-sworded swordsman do battle on the edge of a nuclear cannon while the hardest drum n bass heavy guitar infused battle music beckons alongside. crisis core’s essence has remained untouched.
while the story is very clearly flawed in a handful of areas (specifically genesis’ handling), zack is still just such a joy to watch, despite the unfortunate decline in voice quality compared to the original. i can look past a lot of flaws because of how heartwarming the story and surprisingly great the gameplay are. every grievance i had with the original’s combat has been completely fixed to my shock. still has the bones of its psp blueprint but its a lot more fluid now and isn’t as easy to bore.

this is for sure the definitive version of crisis core to play with the visual and mechanical upgrades alongside some new bonus content and remixed music. but… i still do think the original is worth playing, being a bit of a time capsule for that era of the ff7 compilation and height of the psp; pushing the hardware to the limits alongside attempting the ambitious endeavor of further contextualizing one of the most beloved titles in the medium. nowadays there’s a lot less risk for square to do something like this, what with basically anything ff7 selling like hotcakes today lol. anyway i had a ton of sentimental fun reminiscing the compilation days while playing this, great remaster!

Every time I think about Astral Chain, I think of how this game manages to be mid and great at the same time.

This game’s story is not too impressive, the main character is unnecessarily silent, too many story information are just poorly presented text files and stealth sequences are horrible. And yet, Platinum Games created a new and innovative action combat system with the legions. Satoshi Igarashi composed one of the most impressing soundtracks I’ve ever listened to, the art style and graphics are beautiful, the character and legion designs are absolutely fantastic, the premise is really interesting, the lore is incredibly deep (if you read through the text files) and I’m an absolute fan of the change of pace and the investigation sequences in this game!

Astral Chain does so many things right and so many things wrong. It’s mid and great at the same time. It has a lot of unused potential and I hope Astral Chain 2 will fix a lot of my complaints. Oh yeah, give us a dedicated jump button. It truly has the potential to become one of the best games of all time and I really want to see that happen!

I highly recommend to play this game if you want to experience something you have never seen before!

Astral Chain is an action game with surprisingly good looking visuals and innovative combat. As per usual with Platinum games the combat is fun, flashy and enough to keep you entertained throughout the mediocre story, though it can feel kind of repetitive after a while.

I love that you can choose between a male and female protagonist and are even able to customize them a little bit, but I hate that the twin you choose as your protag ends up being mute. I've never really been a big fan of silent protags to begin with. But most silent protags at least have some personality shown with their actions, or maybe the game has meaningless but entertaining choices that allow you to headcanon their personality. Astral Chain just has nothing. I also know sometimes for Japanese games, the JP audience and weebs get a little uppity if they can't pretend the character is "literally me" so I have learned to live with it, but my god at least let them speak from a dialogue tree if you absolutely must keep some semblance of the player feeling they are the character.

Not least for its sheer creativity and ambition, Astral Chain is a game we’re lucky to have gotten. Given that action games are generally niche as is, it’s difficult to imagine that one which primarily predicates itself on controlling multiple characters at once was an easy pitch, especially considering its development came hot on the heels of Scalebound’s cancellation. The best media is often borne of troubled circumstances, and Astral Chain surely is one of the best, both of Platinum’s catalogue and its genre at large. Tough out its steep learning curve, and beneath initial frustrations, you’ll uncover a rough gem that stands out as being exceedingly rewarding to learn even by the lofty standards of its peers.

Key word, “steep.” The amount of tools you have at your disposal in Astral Chain’s genuinely overwhelming, decision paralysis being about as much of a hurdle for a new player as the ongoing demonic invasion for the Ark’s boys in blue. You’ve wrapped the titular chain around an enemy, incapacitating it for a brief moment. What next? You might whittle it down with one of the Sword Legion’s eco-friendly flurry attacks, but maybe it’d die faster if you expend much more energy to sneak in some headshots with the Arrow Legion. The Arm Legion has the most cost-efficient damage in the business and can even float over hazards, but what if you can’t take advantage of these benefits in time because he’s so slow? Oops, now it’s broken free – parrying its attack with the Axe Legion’s shield would end things fast, but if you can’t afford the risk, you might instead ride the Beast Legion and employ its automatic dodging in exchange for comparatively little reward. Lots of decisions to be made.

This is only taking into consideration the simplest possible situation in the game, too, without regard for the Howard twins’ own arsenal, how every combination of enemies one can think of will eventually be thrown at you by the time you reach the postgame, what’s quite handily some of the most varied combat arenas action games have to offer, or any number of other less obvious techniques you can do. For a bit of perspective, I didn’t learn that you can have more than one Legion out at once until after my first playthrough, which might make it sound like the game’s obtuse but is really just another example of how gratifying it is to feel yourself improve. There’s a particular miniboss I dreaded fighting near the start of the game, but by employing this one neat trick, you too can have a grand time against it come the story’s end. Chimeras hate him!

Action games can get away with fighting predominantly taking place in flat, featureless environments if their combat has enough meat on its bones by itself, so in a way it’s almost bold that Astral Chain’s levels are (as aforementioned) this diverse regardless. Seeing a crate in the distance gated by narrow walkways, explosive environmental hazards, disappearing and/or invisible platforms and actually having to stop for a moment to think about how to get there is a pretty refreshing experience to have in this kind of game. Platforming segments are surprisingly painless even when they occasionally crop up in boss fights, thanks to how little damage falling results in, though the way Howard slightly overshoots wherever you tell him to jump does take some adjusting to. A pinch of stealth and rarer but typically uninteresting tailing missions are less successful, but many of them are thankfully relegated to optional sidequests and they do help sell the feeling of being a cyberpunk peeler. Famed video essayist Masahiro Sakurai once spoke of how crucial slight pauses are to making otherwise mundane actions feel impactful, and it’s thanks to this kind of thing that cleaning up red matter (i.e. Astral Chain’s equivalent of picking up rubbish) is more engaging than most other games’ entire combat systems.

It might’ve been beneficial for whichever Howard you play as to actually speak, given Platinum’s pedigree for excellent protagonists – Wonder Red is the single best to grace the medium and I’ll let yet another Howard speak for me if you disagree – but Astral Chain doesn’t lack for their trademark charm in other areas. Marie is a solid litmus test for how much of a killjoy someone is, while morale-boosting minigames like handing out balloons to passersby in a dog suit and obligatory cat collecting sidequests help inject lightheartedness into what’s otherwise a pretty moody setting. It also marks another example of Platinum putting just about everybody else to shame when it comes to how music is utilised, not just for its quality and range or how it dynamically changes according to all sorts of conditions, but also because a song fit for an OVA playing every time you pop this game’s equivalent of Devil Trigger is the type of thing that should be studied in schools of some kind. Look out for the rhythm of Howard’s steps next time you’re walking around the hub area, as well.

I could just as well gush over how pretty Astral Chain often is, its needlessly in-depth character customisation, its all-thrills-no-frills postgame or what an absolutely astounding boss Noah Prime is (he genuinely might be the best Platinum’s ever crafted), but hopefully you’ve gotten the gist. The uptick in doomsaying surrounding Platinum in recent years has always struck me as vastly disproportionate, and having finally gotten round to Astral Chain has reinforced that opinion regardless of the odd framerate drop or a slightly questionable ranking system or whatever else. Like Taura himself, it gets better and better over time, and one can only hope he goes on to become as big of a name as some of his fellow P* alumni.

Like my review for the Final Mix version of the original, this review is only going over the added content in this version. I will link the review for the base game for those interested.

Base game review: https://www.backloggd.com/u/BrightGalaxy/review/570304/

Like the first game's Final Mix, this game adds more cutscenes, additional weapons for Sora & the gang, color-swapped heartless, and etc. However, there is a lot more additional content that is added this time.

Similar to proud mode in KH1 Final Mix, KH2 Final Mix adds a new difficulty that is supposed to be even harder called critical mode. This difficulty is one of the few flaws I have with the version it doesn't really feel like the step up in difficulty from proud mode that it was intended to be. Every time I play critical I swear I have an easier time with it than I do with proud mode. Later games do improve upon critical mode's difficulty and make them noticeably harder like it is intended to though, but its still weird they didn't make it less forgiving.

Sora gets a new drive form that brings back some of the iconic moves from the first game such as Sonic Blade, Ares Arcanium, and Ragnarök. Not only is this drive form a blast to use but it is almost as busted if not more so than final form.

Mushroom XIII are new heartless that act very similar to the heartless that were added in KH1 Final Mix. Some of the members function as more refined versions of those and some of them add new gimmicks like that mushroom in the Mysterious Tower that made me want to tear my hair out when I was going for the record needed to complete Jiminy's journal. Minus the few annoying ones, I really like Mushroom XIII and the minigames they bring to the table. Major improvement from the enemies added in the first game.

Unlike KH1 Final Mix, KH2 Final Mix adds a brand new area to Hollow Bastion/Radiant Garden called the Cavern of Remembrance. This area will require you to level up most of your drive forms and will really test your mobility and skill with the number of powerful enemies that also appear as you venture deeper into it. At the end lies a room containing 13 data replicas of each member of Organization XIII.

Onto the main course, the boss fights. They added a lot more this time compared to KH1 FM which only added Xemnas. You get to fight Roxas in the main story which is not only a fun, challenging boss fight but also one of the most kino moments in the series. You get to fight the absent silhouettes of the Organization members that were only in Chain of Memories too which are all pretty easy if you're around mid-level. Then when you're at max level you'll be ready to take on the Organization XIII replica data. The data battles are essentially just more difficult versions of the same boss fights you fought in the story and post-game but more difficult and with a lot more health. These are easily the best part and addition to this version. Lastly, there is the Lingering Will who is basically a teaser for a future game like Xemnas was in the Final Mix version of the first game. He is easily the hardest boss in the game and one of the hardest bosses in the series who requires you to learn his moves and master this game if you want to beat him.

The secret ending added in this game is amazing to watch and a fantastic teaser to Birth by Sleep. With the added theater mode, you are free to enjoy it and any other cutscene you like as many times as you want too.

Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix elevates an already fantastic game to easily being one of the greatest games of all-time. If you have a PlayStation console, PC, or even an Xbox One, PLAY THIS MASTERPIECE!

the common sentiment that people voice about kingdom hearts is that "i can't take this seriously, mickey mouse is there." and that is a sentiment that, as a twenty four year old woman with a job and a lot of social commitments and a bit of well-earned cynicism all culminating in the abstract of having Shit To Do (as well as one who believes the walt disney company to be actual, corporeal evil), i wholeheartedly agree with. but i think that it's commonly expressed from the wrong place, or at the very least from a place that lacks the perspective you kind of need to look at kingdom hearts from.

so like, yeah, there's disney shit in here and looking at it with an adult brain it might be a bit difficult to reconcile that with the melodrama and the convoluted lore and that Special Vibe that only Kitase's crew is capable of, but like. i played kingdom hearts when i was six or seven years old, i didn't know that it Wasn't Cool to make mickey mouse into a political figurehead and i sure as hell didn't know what the hell "tonal clash" was. any differences were reconciled purely by my imagination and a willingness to simply go with it and be taken away - and once again, there wasn't really any publisher willing to go for it with their stories and concepts the way squaresoft was in their final years of operation. kingdom hearts is in many ways a complete encapsulation of that squaresoft philosophy of going as far as you possibly can with your ideas no matter how self-indulgent, wacky or dumb they may be, and that's something i really appreciate and a big part of why i cherish what i consider to be the two definitive examples of that, chrono cross and final fantasy viii.

on top of all of that i think the idea of taking all of the silly kid's movie stuff and putting serious storytelling on top of it and trying to inject it with meaningful ideas on dualism and pseudo-intellectual jungian imagery and incredibly (perhaps a bit TOO) sincere displays of intense emotional vulnerability is like, a pretty perfect encapsulation of what kingdom hearts is fundamentally about at its core; that is to say stolen childhoods and lost innocence.

at the end of the day it's a narrative about a bunch of kids who are being manipulated within or otherwise tossed adrift into plans and greater schemes that they don't really know much of anything about and have no reason to know anything about. they're just kids. you can read this as being part of a greater statement on abuse or trauma or just growing up or something, but what's important is that it's saying something losing one's childhood and that meant something to me even if i didn't realize it, as somebody who even at the tender age of six-or-seven was terrified of growing up and was desperate to cling onto what little childhood i had left. again, taking something so innately childish and injecting it with Serious Stuff is a perfect culmination of that idea.

i haven't touched this game (or KH2, which was my favorite as a wee thing) in years and i'm not sure i will, but that's okay, it's not something that's really meant for me anyway. sure, kingdom hearts is schlocky and a bit embarrassingly self-indulgent sometimes and the concept is a bit too ridiculous for me to stomach even now as i've developed a taste for over-the-top chuuni shit (i like tsukihime for christs sakes). but that's fine. it's not for me, it's for six-or-seven year old me and meant to be experienced through a worldview that i'm just not capable of putting myself into anymore.

growing up sucks, and it's important to cherish the innocence of being a kid for everything it's worth, even when that's actively being taken away from you - if not by outside forces then by the passage of time itself.