A mid-00s light novel come to life, with all the trappings therein. I like some of the gameplay elements here; anyone miffed about the loss of press turn is whinging over some fun experimentation. The Sabbath system offers some interesting choices in combat, forcing you to question how offensive you need to be to maintain your forward advance.

I really like these characters in their downtime, the hangouts and meal segments are sweet and they manage to feel both like coworkers and emotionally stunted 20 somethings meandering through life. Milady was the standout to me and Ringo is a lovely protagonist, I enjoyed Saizo, Arrow was not my fav.

This isn’t a bad game by any means, just a bit simple; the dungeons, particularly the Soul Matrix segments, can be brutally tedious and pale in comparison to the original’s Vision Quests. But it’s a cute and fairly short (compared to its peers) game that never quite coalesces into something truly essential. I will say this game is extremely stable on Series S and ran beautifully. Some fun tunes too.

I think when it leans into its more relaxing, “lo-fi” vibes the game does shine. The hate campaign against this game is saddening because it’s inoffensive at best—you don’t really see this kind of energy for all the Vita RPGs it isn’t too far from

I don't think Triangle Strategy is an exceptional game, but it does show some marked improvements from Octopath Traveler - there's more of an individual identity here, and it feels like it actually has something to say rather than being a proof-of-concept for this nostalgia-laden minefield that is "SNES games but with quality of life features," which is essentially the mission statement for the HD2D series.

That said, I was left feeling a little cold by the end once I realized Triangle Strategy wasn't able to make good on its promises; though I never felt particularly invested in the story, the arc it goes in by the end felt flattened by the austere presentation and emotional beats, which often feel sidelined, unearned, or otherwise compromised. Like, when you recruit Maxwell you don't even get a scene with Roland at all..

I will say Frederica's story is probably the best of the bunch, and I did overall grow to like the main cast, but none get to do anything particularly exceptional and outside of Roland, Frederica, and Benedict, they're there to essentially be yes men and obstacles to overcome during the scales of conviction scenes.

Speaking of, I did enjoy the conviction and decision systems for the most part - after looking at a flowchart I can see how the game doesn't hang on them as heavily as it might seem, but the little moral Crusader Kings-esque dilemmas you have to answer questions about were fun enough to ponder, and if you play honest to yourself, it's interesting to see where it leads you. I was shocked to learn I was on the path to the golden route by the first time I looked up a guide, around the time when you choose who to accompany during a split-up segment.

The gameplay is another place where I felt a little disappointed by the end despite having a lot of fun with it up until then - it's pretty annoying that you're unable to access even half of the abilities of your entire party because it refuses to give you rank-up items beyond five or so. The lack of resources available in the game also makes it feel like the game never truly gets going; you never feel flush with money, which deincentivizes you from using a couple characters who rely on items and therefore cost you to even use.

There's a lot of interesting recruitable characters in the game and I really, really enjoyed how individualized each one is - no character does the same thing whatsoever - but there's some very clear leaders of the pack in terms of usefulness an utility, and most of those are the required characters you start with. At the very least, the core party is the more practical group of deployable units; there might be some more gimmicky or specialized versions of your mage (like Corentin or Ezana), your tank (like Groma or Flanagan), or your archer (like Archibald or Rudolph), but each one feels a bit more niche and situational. I found myself relying on Anna, Geela, Frederica, Hughette, and Erador a lot, so I only really alotted a few slots to experiment with the other characters. I will say I had some pretty crazy wins - in the fight against Thalas and Erika I wound up only having Medina, Frederica, Piccoletta, and Narve left over and spent around 100 turns paralyzing two healers and tricking Thalas into exploding Piccoletta's decoy until I whittled the three of them down enough to finish them off.

Despite how experimental you can get with your strategy, it oftentimes doesn't feel worth it to explore because of how difficult the battles are; the bosses in this game are absolutely brutal and there's really only a few characters that are raw damage dealers that can stack up against them. This coupled with the fact that you'll only be able to unlock a few special abilities in the game really pressures you into picking the more logical ones like nuke abilities and really excellent support ones like Geela's. I think the only wacky one I went with was Ezana's, which I wound up regretting because of how time-consuming the setup is for it.

I can tell this game really flourishes on a second playthrough, especially playing on hard, but after getting the golden ending I don't really feel the impetus to play again and I'm not sure if I will end up taking the plunge - there's some things here I would love to see implemented in other SRPGs, but in the end it doesn't stack up against the complexity of FFT and Tactics Ogre or the replayability and pick-up-and-play nature of Fire Emblem. It's one for SPRG lovers only!

feels just a teensy bit phony to have a definitive opinion on this without having done at least half (or a quarter, really) of what you can do in every level, but for what it's worth, i played through every map at least twice.

it's fun! it reminds me of the olden days of newgrounds, it scratches a very similar itch - the havoc you can cause, the plethora of minor interactions , the casual misanthropy and very silly ways you can go about offing people. if anything, i have to deduct stars just because two of the six maps — colorado and marrakesh — are absolutely miserable. four targets and only 6 mission stories? fuck off!!

on that note, colorado and marrakesh (particularly colorado) represent what i would call some glaring, suspicious issues with this game's politics, something i'm willing to ignore otherwise. where, say, paris and hokkaido, perhaps the best two maps, deal with very very bond-level supervillains, these other two seem to delve a little too hard into a weird sort of centrism, where the ICA is sent to prevent any kind of shake-up to the world order as is. it left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. colorado is like, as if the devs watched one episode of mr. robot and decided to just go with that. i really don't need this game to set up these strawmen for me to then go annihilate, i'd rather it just be contemptible french fashion designers and tattoo'd yakuza lawyers with severe a-line bobs.

this game works best when it's playing off its camp factor. when it goes for this gutterbucket rainbow six bullshit, i have to jump off the train, i'm sorry.

i'm sure much has been said about this, but the levels are only as good as the amount of things you can do. you can't create your own scenario, all of them have been predicted and inserted in the game such that each npc has their own little cycle of movements and dialogue that feel nigh doll-like. i think this is why the methods of assassination that feel the best are often the ones that require the most amount of steps - the more convoluted and esoteric they are, the more satisfying. i found myself getting really bored of "impersonate a model, kill the target," "impersonate a masseuse, kill the target," "impersonate a bellhop, kill the target" and such. i think in part this is because of how achingly passive agent 47 can be; there are times when i wish you could more actively participate as a character than as a weapon, but in doing so it would kind of transgress the blank slate agent 47 is. he is a weapon, sexless, without any sort of desire or pathos attributed to his mission - some of the kills, then, feel quite hollow after they're completed. i shot vanessa graves in the head, potentially one of the most interesting targets; she's empathetic to a fault and, having potentially gone a different route, could have perhaps been your handler instead of diana. but there is no soul to her death, no way to make this feel like any kind of arc, because of the deep impersonal twinge of 47.

i think this is definitely more a me problem than an issue on the game's part. this game lacks, in some ways, any kind of emergence because i cannot infer any sort of reaction on 47's part, and kind of logic to why he decides to kill in the particular way that i choose. there are flashes of this - the intensely aggressive and vindictive "one last time, mr. soders" assassination, for example - but not enough to leave me feeling like i'm chewing on anything but delicious fat. i need something more nutritious.

looking forward to the next two, however, which i hear are far and away much better than the first entry!

dragon quarter boldly relies almost entirely on mystique. one of the most cryptic rpgs i've played, it cleverly strips the formula down to its bare essentials and managed to cart me along with few moving parts - the story itself is relatively simple once you have all the puzzle pieces aligned, and the main thrust is, essentially, to climb your way from the bottom of the map to the very top in hopes of finding a world still suitable for life.

the gameplay itself is reminiscent more of strategy rpgs than it is anything previously in the breath of fire catalogue. it took some while to adjust to, as the game gives very little direction on the ins and outs of gameplay; it felt a little like learning the ropes in divinity original sin ii, which is initially overwhelming and punishing but feels satisfying the closer you get to mastering how to exploit the resources you have.

essentially, you have a knight, gunner, and mage, who also correlate to your tank, utility, and support respectively. you learn new abilities not from leveling up but from random drops and purchases through the esoteric ant colony system, which i'll touch on in a second. characters like lin have hidden combos that allow for added effects when layered properly. a lot of moves you'll find it most beneficial to skip your turn and accrue AP, especially later in the game when bosses begin blocking damage that doesn't reach a minimum amount of damage done per combo.

in essence, the experience is a dungeon-crawler with occasional checkpoints to re-up on supplies. there's a level of risk and reward to every thing you do, though; you could spend all your money right off the bat or put it in the bank to hopefully make dividends. you could also stockpile your money (or your bonus xp) if you start feeling like your run is losing steam and you're anticipating having to restart.

the game's central gimmick is lies in its d-counter, which is constantly climbing but exponentially rises when you use ryu's dragon form, which can kill any enemy in the game in just a couple hits. each time you use this, though, you can expect to expend 5-10% of the d-counter. if the d-counter reaches 100%, your game is over, and you have the option of restarting completely and beginning with the bonus xp, items you've stored, weapons, and money, returning to your last save with this option (which sounds better than it really is - you lose everything in your stock, which could potentially softlock you right before the boss rush near the end, which happened to me!), or quitting and reloading your save without any changes. the save themselves are limited, requiring tokens to redeem when you reach a save point (which are few and far between). you can choose to play fast and loose and spend things as they come or reserve all these precious resources to the end.

despite the extremity, the game never feels truly cruel. it seems to rally around its central theme, finding freedom in a hopeless situation - this is an intensely lonely game, but shines with an occasional adolescent foolhardiness. dragon quarter really could have succeeded as a comic in the mid-00s or a late night toonami limited series. its darkness isn't purely aesthetic - it's quite baked into the plot, and some rather grim things buoy the sillier instances of action - but does get at a certain angst that permeated most forms of media around the time of its creation. its dedication, in my opinion, feels gainfully earned. dragon quarter goes to great lengths to make its psychotropic plot and undercurrent of zaniness work. it also, notably, features a storytelling device that requires failure to access its full story nearly two decades before hades, and an emphasis on playing the game multiple times with only minor changes two years before drakengard and, later, nier.

you don't have to traipse far on gamefaqs or youtube to see the sheer distaste gamers at the time had for this game, which speaks to the fact that dragon quarter has few-to-no contemporaries. as ardwyw points out in their review here, dragon quarter points out many of the phony aspects of not only the breath of fire series but of rpgs in general, and feels confrontational to the expectations of the people who play them. its existence as a "misunderstood" game pairs with its maudlin, emo aesthetic all the better; it's hard to say whether it's a love letter to rpgs or a scornful satire of them because of how carefully it toes the balance between these two modes. the game is fun and each battle feels unique, yet there are many instances when the rug can be pulled out from under you and, without some preventive save scumming through emulation, you'll end up on your ass.

it's notable that, were the music not as typical of rpg fare as can be, this game would be considered a horror rpg alongside parasite eve or koudelka. it seems pretty purposeful that hitoshi sakimoto was chosen for this, as his work for games like tactics ogre, final fantasy tactics, and vagrant story up until this point really defined what a medieval fantasy rpg feels like, the type of games capcom had been making in this series up until this point. instead, dragon quarter lacks any of those adventuresome, windswept elements - it's hard, mechanical, and sci-fi. all these aspects are remixed or stripped down as if to strip the veneer of illusion that goes into making a rpg, which is really a series of crunchy, quick numerical calculations being made in real-time.

this is a unique and maverick game that conspicuously has received very little mainstream reappraisal over the years. i bought it on ebay last year after having been interested in it for a while, and it was only around $27. it's odd to me that a game that so perfectly corresponds with the recent interest in post-modern expressions of rpg formulae could go so overlooked for so long. it's an uncut gem if there ever was one, unobserved and still interred waiting to be excavated from the bottom of a bargain bin.

Monster Rancher is one of the only franchises where I can see an argument for each individual entry being the best or worst in the series. Outside of the first game, which is a little undercooked and feels more like a true virtual pet simulator a la Tamagotchi albeit with a few extra bells and whistles, 2-4, Advance 2, and DS all do things competently and just different enough to feel the gulf in what is missing from each entry that is present in a specific other one.

3 is probably the most maverick of any of them - to start, the visual style is so far removed from the others. 1 and 2 had a traditional fantasy look, with the creatures looking like they would fit in as random encounters in a mid tier JRPG pretty easily. The tone is fairly boyish with some gross out humor and titillating designs on some of the monsters present. 3 is a lot more cartoony, but in a cuter, cel-shaded way endemic to the early PS2 and Gamecube eras - think Magic Pengel, Wind Waker, and like every anime tie-in game of that generation. The cel-shaded look REALLY works for this game; I think it has the best visual design of any of them, and introduces a ton of new monsters like the Suzurin, Lesiones, Gitan, Baku, Ogyo, Raiden, Momos, Octopees and Psirollers that eclipse a lot of the more uninspired breeds ditched after 2.

It's kind of sad how 4 moves towards the hyperrealistic, where each creature has noticeable scales, fur, feathers, and realistic eyes. A lot of these designs introduced in 3 simply don't work in 4, making some of the monsters straight up scary (the psirollers are horrifying in 4), and others like the Momo and Octopees clearly couldn't work at all so they were removed entirely. When I think Monster Rancher, though, I think of these designs - the pixies are a lot more fey and elfin than the sexed up iterations previously, and I don' t know why the hell 4 went back to the truly heinous and terrifying human-shaped Jells when the silly cute blob ones here are so obviously superior. The designs perfectly translated to the really sweet pixel art style of Advance 2, too (with the added bonus of some 4 breeds like Garu). There's a lot of fun easter egg designs, like several that directly reference Naruto? Some of the special monsters are truly bananas to look at - a Hare that looks like a housewife with a ladle and fork for ears, a Zuum with a tracksuit and sneakers on... And several CDs and DVDs have special little gimmicks and references based on what you put in, which is really clever and probably a ton of work to implement.

Instead of each species having seveal sub-breeds that are like mixes with other monsters as is typical in the series, monsters are instead divided into several sub-breeds based on the region in which they come from, which represent a few different biomes and climates: jungle, forest, sea, mountains, desert. This means the amount of each monster is evenly distributed throughout each species as opposed to some having, like, 10 different variations while others just have 2 or so. It also means a lot of them are FAR less generic and dialed in than they can be in 2 or 4 - instead of every Zan subtype just being a black, hard to see bug, you have some genuinely creative takes on what, say, a Tiger might look like if it grew up in the desert versus the tropics. Even though 4 has some of my favorite designs in the series and the mixed-species look can be really compelling, I do think this is overall a much better way to execute the idea of species with several breeds. There's also a way to change the breed of your monster by feeding it food endemic to the biome you're training it in during its first growth spurt, which is a pretty awesome way to pad out your encyclopedia and speed up the process of attaining monsters if you don't have a humongous CD and DVD collection.

Gameplay wise, there are several changes from 2 - most notably, perhaps, is the lack of Errantries, which are little month long adventures you can send your monster on that eventually evolve into really cool maze RPG-ish puzzle sections you go on along with your monster. The errantries are probably the most popular aspect of 2, and they are sorely missed here, instead being replaced with "Ran Ran Adventures" where you have a limited amount of energy dependent on how much money you spend for the adventure. You do this once a season (so 4 times a year). In a Ran Ran Adventure, you control your monster as it explores the training grounds you're currently located in (of which there are 5, one for each biome) and search specific areas to find new training modules, train your abilities, find items that allow you to get new moves or use on your monster, and build stats. You can also get unlucky and find leeches that drain your stats or monsters that ambush you. If you lose to these monsters, your adventure ends immediately.

The novelty of Ran Ran Adventures quickly wear out and become a pretty annoying element overall. The RNG is pretty horrible - it's super, super hard to find items to get new moves, and you may not even find one for the entire duration of one of your monster's life. You also can only hold one at a time, so you can't save them for future monsters. The same RNG woes apply to the training modules, so it takes a long, long time to get all of the modules (there are three hidden ones in each area), which greatly cripples your ability to train. The facilities you're able to acquire and purchase in 4 feels like a much better and more expedient way to progress your ranch than Ran Ran Adventures.

Another super noticeable change is in the balancing - speed and accuracy have been combined into one stat, meaning your ability to dodge as well as your ability to hit are dependent on your monster's speed here. This severely skews the game to speed builds, making it almost necessary that you specialize in speed for every single monster. This does make battles a lot more braindead than they are in the other games, where many different builds are viable, and the RNG related to hitting feels pretty cruel here, so if you have low speed you could go a whole battle and never hit your opponent a single time. I find this to be the biggest strike against 3 overall - most battles you'll find yourself spamming the same move over and over again, especially given how incredibly difficult it is to get new moves.

Like most Monster Rancher games, though, the game starts to open up a lot more the farther you get, and by your second monster, what you're able to do increases exponentially. Passing on your previous monster's heart to a new one immediately jumpstarts their stats from birth and trains up their moves, and if you're passing it to a monster of the same species, you get to inherit their moves too, which is SUPER beneficial.

I do think Monster Rancher 4 ekes out 3 as the superior Monster Rancher and the best in the series if only because of 4's story, more balanced gameplay, dungeoncrawling, and the ability to train multiple monsters at once, but even in 4 some of 3's charm is sorely missed - this is clearly the peak of the art direction and 4's attempt to rebrand into something a little edgier has mixed results, and the lack of training montages and diverse environments is a definite downgrade. Also, only one of the games here has Momos and Octopees!!

Monster Rancher 3 is a halcyon vision of what virtual pet games could be, and maybe one of the most innovative entries in the subgenre of all time - it's a shame how hard it is to emulate, because there's so many secrets hidden in this weird little game. I will always feel a deep attachment for the Jell I raised as a kid, and after replaying, I carved out a special place in my heart for my Oltan and Blizzarin too.

Futility and meaning are in constant flux, and in a post-modern world, it’s hard to tell which will actually bring us happiness. In a time where nostalgia is exploited ad nauseam, tomorrow won’t come for those without rallies against reflection in an extreme way. By the end, we’re presented with two philosophies — one of silence, and one of noise — and the conflict between the two never really seems to be resolved. It’s like a fleeting thought verging on a breakthrough that passes before it gets too transformative. More than that, though, it’s an unsettling tragedy and filled to the brim with haunting ambient music, curious lore, and insightful musings on the line between religion and trauma.

I played this at 13 and it was a sea change for my perspective - no other game I would readily recommend to a high schooler than this one because it so expertly talks to them at their level, unafraid to sugarcoat the real drama, frustrations, sexual paralysis, and depth of angst a teen can feel, the entire spectrum of coming into an existential self, toiling with agnosticism, and becoming aware of yourself and your limited time in such a dreadful way. it’s a post-structural treatise on a teen’s burgeoning time management skills, their ability to juggle relationships while toiling with inner conflict and secret traumas, and while it’s flaws are immediately apparent to me on replay in adulthood, it’s hard to fight the gloomy catharsis this game achieves, one I have never found anywhere else in quite the same way.

odiously sentimental, scatterbrained in its many ideas, and bloated with quirky livestock. a story about found family in which one of two characters emotes even less than the average silent protagonist. fails to curry any emotion and confusing in its premise — is it a road trip slice of life a la kino’s journey or a tragic sci-fi epic? some of the scenes in this are laughably overemotional, hysterical and maddening in their contrived melancholy.

sam is really sweet and all that kept me going for most of the game, but i can only take so much of her being the only one speaking any given time, constantly having to ask questions and traipse through situations she doesn’t understand because of her shelteredness and young age. the gameplay is fun and builds on itself quite well but dungeons become few and far between as the game becomes wholly concerned with its GBA tier story. too many flat jokes and reiteration and characters disappearing before they land impact. sad!

mournful meditation on suicidal ideation, collectivism, and decay. smartly juxtaposes brutalist architecture against warm flesh - the difference between rigid structure and the overflowing and organic. it's a short experience at around an hour or so but holds up as a specific tragedy that a lot of people could easily see themselves in; plays with doomer mentality and nostalgia in clever ways. it's impossible to return to our most innocent selves - the knowledge of life's malaise stalks us no matter where we go.