If you look up discussion of these games in forums or reddit, you’ll often find people asking if they’re worth going back to or if they’re a good place to start with the series, and obviously, gamers being gamers, the answer is always a huge “no.” I never see anyone ever recommending these games, even these SNES remakes. Always described as too clunky, too difficult, simultaneously too simple and too opaque, just all around too old. And it’s true on some level that if you’re used to most post-nocturne SMT games then I don’t think that what you get in especially Megami Tensei I is going to particularly resemble the series you love. If, however, you’re a fan of WIZARDRY, well then do I have a very cool little evolution of that strand of late-80s famicom RPG design for YOU.

The Megami Tensei duology exists in such a weird little liminal period in time for Megami Tensei The Franchise, and it shows in the game itself. It’s popularly known that this franchise in general pulls its aesthetic and setting inspirations from Nishitani Aya’s Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei novels, some of which have complete fan translations and are totally readable if you want to seek them out! They’re kind of sick! People don’t really like them these days and I do understand why; they’re unabashedly trashy in all respects, and the main character is pretty genuinely repulsive and not in a sort of “ah this boy will learn to be better” sort of way. It’s also easy to see why they were such a big hit in Japan, though. Certainly they were part of a larger boom of overtly horrific occult-based media at the time, and they were part of a larger planned multimedia push that included a now-famous OVA adaptation and finally, of course, these games. But they are themselves brimming with a weird energy, mixing the vibes of a transgressing western-style anti-christian occult sensibility with classical mythology with modern technology in a schlocky soup that any teenager would be happy to slurp down. The OVA captures this vibe and translates it perfectly into the kind of bristling erotic violence that OVAs of that era are now infamous for.

So it’s interesting that Digital Devil Story Megami Tensei The Video Game kind of doesn’t even try? What we get is something I might call “loosely inspired by” its namesake rather than an adaptation of it. You have the same main characters in roughly the same roles – the same people act as reincarnations of goddesses, Cerberus and Loki and Set are here being Important Guys, but beyond these superficial trappings there’s nothing else really anchoring us to the original premise of “kid with school shooter energy summons demons and ruins everything instead of doing a school shooting, slow-motion tragedy unfolds.” It’s not quite doing its own thing either, though; only two of the original three novels were out at the time this game was released, and dialogue here suggests this is kind of an original sequel capstone to those books? Maybe even just the first book. Characters at the very least seem to be familiar with each other, and based on how heroically you behave in the game I guess we’re kind of massaging Nakajima’s image too. It’s all very strange, taking a story that’s about a gross, pulpy horror scenario playing out mostly inside of a school building and instead making it an epic quest to destroy Lucifer inside of his massive labyrinth in the demon world.

That’s not to say I don’t LIKE it though. As we have established, I looooove Wizardry, and this game makes explicit a lot of the shit that early Wizardry asks you to kind of do the mental legwork on yourself. The entire game takes place inside this evil labyrinth and it’s stacked with weird fuckers to hang out with. There’s whole towns inside the labyrinth, and all these cool little details about the kinds of people and demons you’ll meet in there, not all of whom will be hostile regardless of your recruitment game mechanic. Deeper down these towns stop being safe zones from random encounters, but they’re still often populated by guys who might have crucial advice or shop stock or hints for you.

Otherwise it’s a pretty smooth ride. Gameplay is simply for anyone with a passing familiarity with RPGs, with ultimately every single fight in the game ending up as a sheer contest of who can make the biggest number the fastest, but there is satisfaction in being the guy who can make the biggest number the fastest. I love Wizardry but I also love Dragon Quest 1. Eventually you have to be able to cover yourself from things like level drain and instant death spells but that’s about as complex as magic gets here beyond healing and occasional status afflictions that rarely have huge impact on a fight.

The Kyuuyaku versions at least (idk about the famicom original) do have the magnetite system, where you gain a second currency by winning encounters that drains with every step you take based on the number of demons in your party and how high their levels are. Once it runs out your demons will start taking damage every step instead, and MP is a precious resource so you really can’t have that. I find this system frustrating because the balance never feels quite right – ideally for something like this you would be feeling some pressure about it, like you need to weigh your options and figure out whether pushing it too hard will tip the scales away from you. Here though I feel like I’m always either completely in danger of tapping out or I’m so abundant on the stuff that I’m not even checking it. Ultimately it’s not a huge deterrent and there are plenty of ways to get powerful demons when you need them but I do think ditching this system later on and letting player level be the determining factor in how fucked up of a guy you can make was a wise move.

I imagine that the biggest barrier to these games for many people will be the dungeons themselves, but I think a lot has been done in these SNES versions of the games to make them pretty smooth. The auto-map feature is a game-changing addition, and when the late game dungeons start adding things like teleporters, one-way doors, and illusory walls it goes from necessary convenience to essential feature. When you can be punted as many floors as this game is willing to fuck you with I can’t imagine having to chart your own shit. There’s also a series of backtracking-based quests to find hidden items associated with every boss that will make them significantly easier to fight, and it’s actually required to do this in by far the most difficult area of the game to be able to kill the final boss at all, which is, I’m not too proud to admit, very tedious when you feel the end coming up in your bones.

I did like Megami Tensei I and I’ll admit that I’m really easy to please when it comes to the kind of very straightforward blobber that it succeeds at being, but the real star of this package is the sequel, which starts directly after the ending of the first game, no credits, no booting you back to the menu, just the ending screens for the first game, following by one of the most startling nuclear apocalypses in games. A flickering, screaming facsimile of a human face flashing in monochrome under an image of the missiles striking. It doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Now everything you were doing only moments ago seems smaller. Oops! You got some Shin in my Megami Tensei! Fully leaving any pretense of the novels or their original premise behind, the team behind the original game leap the story ahead 30 years to post-apocalyptic Tokyo, where humans live in underground bunkers, fearful of the demons that rule the wastes, or aboveground in cities where they live in communities that serve and worship cults and armies of demon warlords.

Your characters here are Gamers, who accidentally unleash the demon Pazuzu from the video game he was trapped in by the demon Bael (lmao). He says hello everyone I am PAZUZU and I work for GOD from THE BIBLE don’t worry about it I’m super chill and since you freed me you must be THE MESSIAHS please go kill Bael and don’t think about how he’s the most powerful demon in Tokyo and if he was dead I would be the most powerful demon in Tokyo okay see ya later. And your characters are like yeah that checks out I guess we are the saviors of the world! They’re so fucking stupid it rocks. It’s not until the third main character shows up and is like “have you guys considered that Pazuzu is obviously turbo evil” that you are even given the option to be like oh yeah shit that’s so true but even then your buddy will do the classic megaten move of breaking up with you and threatening to kill you next time you meet. Pazuzu even gives you Orthrus to hang out with! That’s Cerberus’ evil pallet swap! MR POLICE I GAVE YOU ALL THE CLUES, and other things of that nature. This isn’t the only time your protagonist demonstrates the brain power of my recently deceased pet cats either, like another time in the middle of the game you have to go get a thing and the thing is inside of the mouth of a big evil statue with blood all over it and you stick your WHOLE ARM IN THERE, and not only that but the arm that has your demon summoning computer and everything!!! And the statue of course fucking bites it off!!!! OBVIOUSLY. But you do get the status effect LOSARM out of this whole situation, as you have to scrabble your way back to the local mad scientist so he’ll make a robot arm for you, taking damage every step and unable to fight or summon new demons until you do. This whole sequence takes maybe fifteen minutes but it’s all time good SMT shit for me. This is also the diagetic way that the game comes up with for upgrading your demon capacity. You got more ram in your robot arm I guess.

Considering that Megami Tensei I is such a clear first run at an idea that feels very within the scope of what one might imagine both a first run at this franchise to look like and also what that would look like on the famicom, it’s kind of wild that Megami Tensei II just IS essentially a modern Shin Megami Tensei game almost fully formed from the ether. The setting is here, you’ve got your shitty friends who stick with you or ditch you based on your alignment choices (although the alignment system for the player character isn’t actually here yet – you’re essentially playing out a scripted version of what would today be considered a sort of combination neutral-law story), the ending is affected by key decisions that would be a little esoteric if they weren’t so obvious, Lucifer is here and behaving much more in tune with how he’s gonna act in almost all of his future appearances – a frustrated guy who sees humans as similarly beleaguered to his own people, if not still generally at the bottom of the worth-pyramid according to his own personal philosophies (in early games, at least). The kitsch comedy is dialed up, the mad science and esoteric fantasy are more heavily emphasized, and the horror is less overt and more ambient, based more in the smog of having the curtain peeling back on the knowledge that your existence isn’t your own and that resistance to the power that governs life is nearly unthinkable. But also like 70% of sapient life would be down to eat you. Both things.

There’s a degree to which SMT as a series but especially the core entries are just telling the same stories over and over again, filtering characters and details but with core identifying elements and story beats and character archetypes, to in my opinion a much greater degree than a lot of series that do a similar sort of thing. I might have expected a kind of bare take on that framework from a Famicom originator of many of those ideas but even today Megami Tensei II feels pretty fresh! In particular I like what the first half of the game is cooking, the post-apocalyptic Tokyo here being the domain of demon lords all jockeying for power against each other in a perpetual status quo rather than there being a real sense of alignment-based organization between the forces of law and chaos. There’s no big war happening right now, the war’s over, this is just the way things are at the moment, especially with no leaders present for most of the game, so it makes sense that it’s only when Pazuzu arrives on the scene to scam a bunch of idiots into starting shit with the biggest guy in town that things really start to spiral out of control. Pazuzu himself is the most interesting character in the game, because I leave it all genuinely uncertain about whether he actually is a representative of God or not? It initially all seems like a scam, one that he has other demons in on like Orthrus, but he DOES give you that special ring to signify your party’s places as messiahs, and later on an angel does speak fondly of him. He does seem to be mostly interested in seizing power for himself though, and for a demon to switch sides with an ulterior motive is equally interesting. The game leaves it ambiguous, or at least I didn’t talk to the right people to know for sure, and I think it’s really cool! There are a lot of NPCs with a ton of personality in this game, enough for the world to feel rich, to have me doing things like speculating on motivations and making observations about cultures and laughing at individual quirks of specific guys. Really impressive stuff.

This kind of early, wizardry-like first-person dungeon crawler exists in a tough spot, where for people who really like the genre and play a lot of these games I think these remakes that simultaneously preserve the really old, simple mechanics but also provide a lot of quality of life improvements, might be a little too simple to hold interest from a play perspective, even with the demon summoning and negotiation element grafted to the top. For players familiar with modern SMT or who are more general RPG fans though, I think even these simpler, easier dungeon crawlers might be a little bit more opaque and unforgiving than they’re used to and comfortable with and I understand that being a turnoff, even if I do think it’s a hump worth getting over (I did and I’m having a wonderful time exploring this genre). Megami Tensei’s personality is truly the thing that sets it apart; visually, sonically, personality-wise, there wasn’t much else even trying to do this kind of shit at the time and it still has a strongly individual vibe, strong enough that I think this collection is totally worth looking into, even if you skip to the second game. But if you’re already a fan of the series, I can’t emphasize enough that it’s really a nonstop parade of treats. I’m begging everyone to play old games. They’re so cool. Everybody wins.

I've been putting this off ever since playing remake intergrade to death. I was ready to stop after that but now that Rebirth is here I wanted to finish what I started for the new release.

Spoiler:
I really like Yuffie as a character so I was excited to see how they adapted her. Luckily they did a good job making her likable and silly while not dumbing her down too much as a 'clumsy' character.

Unfortunately outside of that there is nothing I adored about this short story. As an extended game it does almost nothing different other than add a new character with her own move set and adds a few new bosses. It's honestly surprising how much of the same environments and assets seen in remake you go through again in Intermission counting that there was a two year dev time in between remake and remake intergrade.

Intermission highlights the worst things about remake to me. The boring level designs, repetitive fights, predictable story beats, and uninteresting side quests. The entire story felt like a filler episode of Naruto; especially chapter one.

Last thing that bothered me was sonon. His character was uninteresting and underdeveloped. They bet the entire climax of the dlc on his "death"(probably still alive and Nero is gonna use his body as a boss or something) only to give him zero character other than the fact that his sister died. Hes the embodiment of a character that is only developed to progress/artificially create an emotional plot line. I just didn't really care at all for him.

The highlight of Intermission for me was the new bosses. Getting to fight Nero and Weiss was a really cool experience. Nero had a great design that was giving me devilmaycry x kingdom hearts. It was nice to see something new in what felt like filler after filler. Even the fight with the blonde woman was really cool too!

It wasn't bad but it just isn't what I'm looking for. The writing in remake is really hit or miss for me. This dlc was definitely the writing that misses lmao. I want more from characters like Sonon. I'm hoping Rebirth has a lot more depth. The FF7 universe has so much to it and I think Rebirth and the third game can really prove what remake has set up. mwah <3

There's something amusing about seeing a lot of big fans of Persona 5 in my circle rag on Persona 4 constantly when, in reality, the core issues of both of their stories are near-identical. They both have very formulaic story structures that wear out their welcome by the time they do start shaking things up, they have fairly weak casts that are severely underwritten past their initial arcs, and they're both very non-committal or even contradictory with presenting their main themes. If this is the case, then why do I view Persona 4 in a somewhat more positive light while Persona 5 gets worse for me as time goes on, despite the fact that the lowest lows of 4 are far worse than 5’s? Well, not only does Persona 4 have its own unique strengths that 5 fails to capture, but these direct parallels in shortcomings give me the impression that Atlus learned practically nothing from the shortcomings of 4 after a near-decade, aside from slightly getting the memo that homophobia might not actually be that funny. (Emphasis on slightly)

The main cast is probably the worst out of any modern Persona cast. Not to say that they’re all irredeemably terrible, but they just become incredibly flat once their specific arc is concluded, which makes it even more damning when characters like Haru don’t even have that to their name with how poorly implemented Morgana’s arc is. It doesn’t really take long for them to neatly slot into their respective archetypes without branching out much beyond them. Ann probably gets this the worst, she doesn’t really get to go beyond being “the girl” of the group when she had so much going on during Kamoshida’s arc. I think a better approach would’ve been to limit the cast just to the initial trio. Their dynamic in the early game is very strong and could totally carry a whole game on its own. Yusuke felt pretty out of place once he fully joined the Phantom Thieves, and the sidelining of growth for each party member becomes very apparent once Makoto joins. I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to say it would work, with how often the series tries to push a “main trio” of their parties. Even Persona 4 directly did it, when it arguably started off with more of a quartet than a trio. I don’t know how it would affect the rest of the game, but what I do know is that the characters do need a lot more than they get, especially in a series that prides itself on interpersonal relationships like Persona does.

I don’t see myself as someone that’s too harsh regarding the “Show don’t tell” critique. I like a good chunk of media that are very in your face about their messages and themes. The point where I do feel it’s right to make that critique is when it feels like a piece of media is talking down to me, which is absolutely the case with Persona 5. It never trusts the player to come to their own conclusions about what they’re being presented, so it feels the need to spell the meaning behind every interaction out in meticulous detail so that a 3 year old can keep up with it. For example, there’s a reoccurring puzzle throughout the Pyramid of Wrath, (Which is my least favorite stretch of the whole game for a myriad of reasons that I don’t intend to go into) where you put together hieroglyphs that depict parts of the palace ruler’s past, and their relationship with a close family member. I thought it was a cool way to let the player piece together the trauma that they endured, especially with how that comes together with the palace’s boss, but every single time you clear one, the characters explain exactly what it means and tell you exactly how to feel. It’s really frustrating when it feels like it has to spell out every single interaction in the entire game. I feel like you could shave off 10 hours from the game just by giving it a tighter script, it’s unnecessary bloat that does nothing but dampen the storytelling. It’s even more baffling that it has this approach when ultimately, it doesn’t really have anything to say until the Royal arc hits. It’s trying to tackle much more grandiose themes of society and rebellion, but it always feels like it’s only putting a single toe into an incredibly deep pool. Let me be clear, I don’t need the PTs to start picking apart every aspect of each corrupt system in the nation. I feel like too many critiques go down that route, especially since it does place more of an emphasis on personal conflict. But even so, it could do a lot better with acknowledging it than the “All’s well that ends well, right?” approach we’re given. That’s honestly my biggest problem with the modern series. It’s so non-commital with presenting these potentially interesting ideas that the stick it’s hitting the issues it tackles seems to be more like a damp pool noodle.

As I’m writing this, I’m noticing a major pattern between each of this game’s aspects. I really like everything about it on paper. The general theme of rebellion that has sparks throughout the whole game, that’s cool! Too bad the ways it explores that theme are pretty paper-thin, even with the social links that usually thrive with conveying themes just as well as if not better than the main plot. Having social links teach you more specific abilities to use throughout the game for a sense of growth, that’s cool! Too bad that the way they’re balanced makes them range from practically meaningless to game-breakingly powerful. Every single addition to the game’s combat, the baton passes, the guns, all of that is cool! Too bad none of the game is balanced around it and it makes even a normal playthrough one where you’re stupidly overpowered. I think this is why Persona 5 fails for me in ways that the other games in the series don’t quite as much. As much as 3 and 4 had their low points and downsides, both of those did have consistent strengths that they were able to bring out exceptionally well. For every great and fresh idea that P5 has that isn’t strictly related to its presentation, there’s something else that ends up completely undercutting it.

In a way, that’s why despite how fun it can be to dunk on Atlus and this game, I don’t like the distaste that I have for it. It does have some genuinely fascinating ideas, I can see a spark of something truly spectacular trapped inside of this. The Royal arc proves this, it’s a fantastic piece of work that’s only weaknesses are the foundation that it’s built upon. If Atlus really is capable of being a tour de force in video game storytelling and can capitalize on the strengths of Royal’s writing, then Persona 6 could be the first game in the series that I really like without any caveats. All I need is proof that modern Atlus has that bite in its narratives, which it’s mostly consistently proven to not have over this decade. I want to believe that Atlus can pull through, and bring us one last surprise…

(Also maybe don’t have a prominent party member that plays into every single autism stereotype in the book at maximum capacity with the core point being “ooh she’s such a quirky gamer girl!” Cool? Cool.)

"As a French studio addressing a global audience, the game does not engage in any foreign policy and is not inspired by any real-life events."

Oh no.

What's the point, then? If you're going to be telling a story through the perspective of a bodycam, should the medium not be the message?

I'm willing to give these developers the benefit of the doubt, maybe there will be more to this than that. But as it stands, that kind of statement attached to a game with a premise like this is only slightly less on the nose than EA or Ubisoft making a game adaptation of Bumfights with hyper-realistic graphics where you play as both the cameraman and aggressor and then claiming that the only bit of reality mirrored in it is that the homeless exist.

Full Moon Full Life

94 hours lead to this moment of re-experiencing that final 1 hour of me just non-stop crying especially in the last 15 minutes of the game. This game specifically means a lot to me and it getting this beautiful remake made with love means a lot to my heart.

Replaying this reminded me of this of how much of its characters and themes resonate with me and I still think about it to this day even though it's been years since I've played the original. It almost felt like a whole different experience, knowing what was going to happen, being older now playing this with a different mindset in my current life and still it has me thinking about it to this day especially playing this remake. I knew what was going to be happening towards the end of the game, but I still broke down in tears.

Even after finishing this game 2 hours ago, writing this while my mind is still fresh off it is just insane, it's so difficult to describe how much I love this specific game in the series so much. Even being older now experiencing this, there’s a lot going in my head on what I’m thinking about on persona 3, that makes me feel like I’m playing it for the first time again, going through all these emotions and the journey of this game all over again. Even after finishing writing this review that helps me spread out my thoughts, I will still be thinking about this game because of how much it has affected me and because of how much I love it. There is just so much to talk about from the beginning months to the end game months, the social links you do every time and how it corresponds with the story overtime and the characters joining SEES, etc. Aigis arc throughout this whole game and experiencing it again, this whole story arc in general. Getting to talk about Aigis and think about her even more would distract me for hours on end because of how much I love her. Aigis is one of my favorite characters ever and is my whole heart. Being able to have so much self-growth, to grow beyond her own insecurities and failures, to be able to start living life.

This game just speaks to you on everything, the relationships you make through life, the hardships you go through, the mental thought process on the complexity of life and much more represented through its themes and characters. Death is always present in our life that happens and can be without warning and not just that but our own personal commitment to our own life. We all deal with it but it's different in how we all respond to it and how it affects our lives. Being able to look forward and to keep going despite hardships and whatever we are going through in life with all our different situations.

The ending scene they remade in reload was much more intimate, affectionate and very emotional. I loved every second of it and cried my heart out. I fucking love this game man.

"Not everything needs to be for some greater purpose. Just caring about someone can be enough. That's all we need to give our lives meaning..."

Memories Of You

The presentation of Signalis is off the charts; very obviously drawing on the aesthetics and atmospheric feel of numerous survival horror games of the 5th and 6th generation and doing those styles in a committed and distinctive way. The environments, character design, sound design, animated cutscenes and occasional first person sequences work so well in producing a visual marvel that was executed so well by just two people. The title screen and menus alone are a strong show of confidence and style than most AAA games can barely muster today, outclassing even recent Resident Evil that is somehow still missing the iconic flare of the announcer saying "Resident EVIL" when booting up the new games. I guess it's just too campy nowadays to do something like that.

I just wish I liked Signalis even more on the gameplay front. It utilizes many great approaches from Resident Evil, in particular the first entry, but the execution felt off or even too derivative, the latter of which doesn't bother me that much. The 6 item limit felt too restrictive for the amount of puzzle solving and items the game gives out, which leads to a ton of backtracking through the same pathways to the same item box to stash items and run back through the same path to get the item(s) you left. Incorporating a way to expand to at least 8 slots like in RE1 or assigning specific items like the flashlight (not bad but bizarre to make that take an inventory slot) to key items would alleviate this issue without potentially undercutting the tension with decision-making of space for more resources to deal with enemies versus holding items for main and optional progression. (Also apparently there's been a patch for this that addresses this complaint but I didn't experience it on switch).

I was also surprised with how poor the shooting and lock on is here. Even classic RE has more accurate aiming and in Signalis there were many times where shots straight up missed opponents even while I was directly facing them. It's very wonky which's probably in service of the tension of encounters, but I felt frustrated more than tense when mess ups like that happened commonly. Not to mention many encounters can be cheesed easily by running past enemies or tanking damage rather than having to waste resources because of a missed shot or two. They were better alternatives for me than just downing enemies and this never really failed in my run of the game. This isn't much of a gripe for me, but it could've been addressed through introducing a new enemy type that challenged or punished running or even allowing enemies or certain ones to follow you into or walk through doors into different rooms. It would make encounters and traversal even more perilous and unexpected and be much better than recycling one of my least favorite mechanics from RE1 (burning bodies) and upping it by applying it to all enemies and making it way more frequent, thus making me less likely to want to use my weapons.

That said, the puzzles do make up for the lackluster survival horror gameplay. While they don't involve too much brain power to solve, most of them possess quite a bit of intriguing lore and detail to the world and made me even more curious about my surroundings. The signal based puzzles and few enemy encounters that used the radio were a sonic and visual treat respectively and added even more questions and intrigue to the setting than just only reading random notes that gesture to the going-ons of the place. I also love the textural differences across some puzzles that make it feel like you are operating or fumbling with some outdated or obtuse tech as it prevents them from being very simplistic in feel/look and solving. The puzzles overall work in part in crafting a strong story and world for many excellent survival horror games and Signalis carries on this tradition with its puzzles communicating a great sense of environmental design and storytelling, aside from the hilarious amount of puzzle solving prizes being more key cards.

Level design and exploration is probably the only other detriment I have with Signalis. While I love the amount of detail put into each of the rooms and spaces, it felt really straightforward much of the runtime. I definitely tried exploring around the rooms for anything interesting that would come up, but this usually didn't amount to much outside of the usual finds. Nothing much off the beaten path or even an alternate path or two that makes exploring more inviting. This isn't much of a huge thing, but it was a bit disappointing going down just one predetermined path for most of the time.

Could it have used less overt mentions to stuff like Evangelion, Silent Hill, Resident Evil and other horror and sci-fi media to cultivate more of its own storytelling? Yeah I agree and it is a bit grating in some moments of directly signaling said influences that did take me out of a good game Signalis is; the whole 'nowhere' section was very eye rolling given Silent Hill 1 is very fresh on my mind and I didn't care much for the take on it here. It isn't all overwhelming and the game still manages to carve out its own path with its lore, style and characters like Elster and Ariane and their cute relationship. I don't really agree with Signalis being the 'best' aspects of classic Resident Evil and Silent Hill like some people dub it, but it's still a strong and compelling effort in its own right. I enjoyed this sapphic ass tale and I'm interested in what the developers make next that will probably be even better than Signalis for me. Hopefully without a puzzle that is completely spoiled by a note sitting five feet away from it.

The fallen leaves tell the story of an arborescent world order decaying from the inside out. The Land Between is slowly cracking away at the seams as its twilight draws ever closer.

This is the world that FromSoftware shows the player, a world in which we are left to pick up fragments of a bygone past piece by piece as we fight against the forces that seek to uphold the ways of old.

This world we are shown is a not-so-subtle metaphor for our own world, a world that so desperately clings onto the ideas of old (capitalism) in the hopes their old world order won’t buckle to the pressure of history and the forces of progress itself, that force being you, the Tarnished.

Elden Ring is a game of stagnation, a game that challenges the very essence of the series it originates from, a game that seeks to take the Soulsborne formula to its logical end point and burn it all down in order to start anew. In some ways it succeeds at doing this, in other ways it doesn’t, and I think the ways it succeeds at this overshadow even its most glaring failures.

The gameplay here is refined to the best it can be; it feels as though every weapon was meticulously crafted to allow for some of the most varied and unique build variety I’ve seen in a Souls game. The open-world especially lends well to enhancing the variety of Elden Ring due to its non-linear nature, which allows for some of the most freedom in exploration and gameplay I’ve seen in a modern AAA title. I sometimes feel that the gameplay, however, was so streamlined and improved to such a degree it can sometimes feel sterile in a sense. I miss the roughness and edge to the older Souls games which I feel isn't present in From's newer games. There’s times, however, where this freedom can become overwhelming and lead to parts of the world feeling either bloated with meaningless content (excess copy-and-paste bosses and dungeons) or completely barren, a problem that could have been easily remedied if the map itself was slightly reworked to be a tad bit smaller. I feel as though a rework of the map that makes it more compact and tight would have greatly benefited Elden Ring and led to the game feeling less unbalanced in the way it presented its content. Even in spite of all that, there’s a genuine understated beauty to the world of Elden Ring that I cannot deny. This world is beautiful at times, and even in its rotting and decaying state, there are still shreds of beauty left that are worth holding on to.

Moving on from the gameplay, I feel that Elden Ring truly shines narratively and thematically the most. One may be quick to write Elden Ring off as a rehash of Souls, which to an extent is a take that isn’t without its merit. I, however, believe that it’s continuity with and rupture away from Soulsborne narrative similarities that this game truly gets interesting; it feels like a meta-self-examination and final nail in the coffin for these ideas. Elden Ring has many similarities to Dark Souls; often times, the main narrative similarity people point to is the concept of a dying world held in stasis that we are forced to decide the fate of, but what Elden Ring does with this concept is far more brilliant than people give it credit for.

Elden Ring is not just taking Souls narrative and gameplay concepts to their logical end points; it’s also burning them down. Elden Ring is Miyazaki’s pivotal turning point, where he realises that this formula is not going to be sustainable forever and that it’s necessary to accelerate these ideas to their end points and then burn it all down (symbolically done through the burning of the Erdtree).

To further understand the significance of the Erdtree, I must draw upon the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.

In their follow-up book to Anti-Œdipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guatarri describe two forms of organisation: rhizomatic (non-hierarchical) and arborescent (hierarchical). These two forms of organisation are obviously references to plants, with arborescence referring to trees with a central root system and trunk and rhizomes referring to potatoes and their decentralised, free-flowing root system, to put it simply. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze uses these plant metaphors as a way to explain and illuminate the flaws of certain organisational structures and forms, with arborescent structures having one key flaw: their dependency on each other. If one part of the structure dies, rots, breaks, etc., the rest will follow suit, as they are dependent on each other.

Now, with this understanding of arborescence, we can tie it to the Erdtree and its functionality within the narrative of Elden Ring. In Elden Ring, the Erdtree serves as a monument that represents and upholds the old world; it maintains order and allows the world to continue as it is, but if this order is threatened or destroyed, the very same old world order it once upheld will crumble soon thereafter. It is through the actions of The Tarnished that we are able to light this arborescent structure ablaze and accelerate history forward (I would use this as a jumping-off point to explain Mark Fisher’s idea of accelerationism (not to be confused with Landian accelerationism)and how it ties into the story of Elden Ring, but this review is already too long as is).

Elden Ring is a story of stagnation and rebirth.

I ultimately see Elden Ring and, more specifically, its Frenzied Flame ending as a rejection and rupture away from the ideas of the old and an embrace of more radical new forms and ideas, while also staying in continuity with the general style of Soulsborne. For all of its flaws, of which this game has many, I firmly believe it’s a bold new step in the right direction. I believe that Elden Ring is not only the end of an era, but a new beginning and continuation into a new, radical, and free era of expression and creativity from Miyazaki and his team.

I don't think I've ever been more conflicted after having finished a video game than I have been with Dark Souls III.

I'm going to get my praise out of the way, since you've likely heard similar things said by many others by now: The story and new lore, while nowhere near as thematically interesting to me, is still a good addition to existing canon. This game has many of the best fights in the entire series (although it also has a fair number that I don't particularly care for), and the series' combat is at its' peak here. General gameplay has been polished as well; the game looks and feels great to play as a result. When the game is firing on all cylinders, it is a sight to behold.

It's good enough to briefly make me forget all the issues I have with the game up to those points. Because, for as good as Dark Souls III plays, it also comes across as a very scared game. Dark Souls III is scared to take risks, scared to step on anyone's toes, maybe even scared of being a Dark Souls game.

Both of the prior Dark Souls games have had parts that people have since looked unfavorably towards. Blighttown, The Gutter, and so on. You could honestly google any area in Dark Souls II and find someone that swears up and down that it's the worst area (or game, if you're stupid) Fromsoft has ever created. It's something I've always found funny, because some of the previously mentioned areas have been some of my favorites in the series for how well they're able to force the player to respect their environment and really tread cautiously. They're a brutal reminder to the player that you are outside of your depth but have no choice but press on. Finding Blighttown feels like you're walking into a place that you are not supposed to find, it's immediately so openly hostile and dangerous to you that at times it can be genuinely scary. Dark Souls III doesn't really have a clean analog besides a veeery brief segment of Ringed City where you run through an active war zone, and that's because Dark Souls III feels like it doesn't want people to possibly dislike anything about it. It's supposed to be the climax of the series and everything it represents, it can't risk anything the way Dark Souls I could risk everything to cement an entirely new genre of game into the cultural landscape.

(Yes, I know Farron Keep is the new poison swamp area analogy, but it feels so sanitized and unthreatening compared to the nightmare that was trying to go through The Gutter fearing for my torch timer and scrambling for a bonfire.)

It frustrates me seeing this game fully commit to being a 'hard game where you fight hard boss fights' instead of what I really appreciated about the first two games: Dangerous forays into fallen civilizations, complete with now-mad inhabitants and crumbling architecture. Dark Souls III feels so less inclined to be another example of virtual archeology and more than happy to lean into the popular cultural idea of what Dark Souls was at a surface level. It takes the convenience of Dark Souls II's bonfire system with none of the interesting metroidvania trappings of its predecessor and willingly abandons any attempts to play with cohesion, whether to the degree of incredible density found in Dark Souls I or the nonsensical map of Dark Souls II. Dark Souls III just wants to be an action game, it wants you to take a single road throughout the journey, only pulling over briefly to go beat something's head in before getting back on that road, pushing ever closer to your goal. I want to be clear that I am not trying to paint embracing linearity as a de facto negative when it comes to game design; you can see a very similar trajectory taken within the design of the Devil May Cry games that ultimately helped fine-tune those games to perfection. What I take issue with is the cultural cost that embracing linearity has done for Dark Souls, and how that has affected the way people have interacted and viewed the series ever since. It's sad, thinking I'll never play a game as tightly designed as Dark Souls I ever again, or play a sequel as divisive and willing to break everything that came before it the way Dark Souls II did. Dark Souls III feels content to find some decisively less interesting middle-ground between both games in favor of ensuring the series can finally stick the landing.

Maybe it's fitting then, that in a game about the fading of an era that Dark Souls III itself has faded from much of what I loved about the first two games. Just as Lordran, Drangleic, and now Lothric have reinterpreted their predecessors and sought to alter the status quo, Dark Souls III marks a departure from previous Dark Souls ideology, doing away with the genius world structure of it's forefathers in favor of a land that feels dispassionately conventional. When the game wants to come out of its' shell, it's out. It shows you it can be dramatic, somber, explosive, because at the end of the day, it IS Dark Souls.

It's just buried under a mountain of ash.

Maybe, only maybe, after all said and done, I got rhythm after all...

I did feel a bit nervous going into Hi Fi Rush, because even tho I’m not hesitant to show my love and appreciation for the rhythm genre, that doesn’t change the reality that is the fact I’m complete ass at them, so when mixing that with a 3D beat ‘em up combat style which, wouldn’t you know, I usually suck balls at too, then I was scared I’d be facing a doom or gloom situation. Either it all clicked, or I failed to catch its drift and begin to even enjoy it, I only saw those two possibilities and was really scared of the latter. I really wanted to love it, I really wanted to enjoy what seemed like a game made from sheer love and passion for the craft, and the prospect of not ‘’getting it’’ felt like some sort of looming threat over my head... Only now after beating it I realize that, even if that were to be the case, it wouldn’t change my feelings about any other aspect.

There’s so much to enjoy in and about Hi Fi Rush that I don’t really know where to start with; perhaps I could (and will) begin by praising the outstanding visual style, a wonderful mixture of colors and design that made me reminisce of the kind of futuristic punk seen in games like Jet Set Radio or even deBlob, with the difference being that the Vandelay campus doesn't hold back when it comes to being stylish. The corporation may be rotten, but fuck man, whoever oversees decorations needs a raise! Everything pops up with the beautiful cel shading that made me feel like I was playing through a moving comic book at times; seeing cinematics flow together into and after gameplay was a mastery of transition I was not expecting to witness, and how in it to its entirely dances to the rhythm in such a satisfying way.

I could (and will) also gush about the characters; the crew of Chai, Peppermint, Macaron and the rest of the gang with is hunger inducing names is a set of characters I really, REALLY wasn’t expecting to be so fond of, and hey, it’s nice to see a main character I can relate to... a complete idiot! I say that, but Chai manages to walk in the fine line that its between being lovably cocky and completely insufferable and coming out positively from it, and for such a simple and free of conflict narrative, it still manages to give him and the rest some incredibly impactful moments. Hi Fi Rush strays away for what I thought would be predictable plot points and instead tales a relatively simple tale with the perfect cast of goofballs, to the point I found myself wishing to see a little bit more or Peppermint’s struggles, more of Macaron’s character wise in general or that CNMN had more stuff to do ‘cause holy hell I love that fact spitting metal head so much (tho he gets the single best most surprising moment in the game so hey, you lose some you win some!). The villains are also a home run, never mind this game’s whole plot is about defeating dastardly suits — I’ve always wanted to bash a cybernetic CEO’s hed with a guitar!— but they are all so into being the specific trope or character they are going for that it’s impossible to not love to hate them, and honestly the big bad ends up being a bit boring personality wise compared to the rest of them (tho now that I think about, that was the intent, in which case it’d be pretty fitting to be completely honest), because they really are a riot.

Tho the funny factor isn’t limited to the big bads. There are so many jokes and gags that and that I feel like I’m watching an airport; whether it’s just the energy that the characters interactions ooze or simply the way they act between each other, Chais’ stupidity at the beginning (seriously I was laughing my ass off during that dream sequence), the way not just the main villains but the damn normal enemies are introduced and how you can discover that NONE of them were originally designed for combat despite being literal killing machines, or just incredibly funny moments like finding a random log of a disgruntled employee that decided to mess the coffee machine firmware, and for that to be a recurring joke THROUGH THE ENTIRE ADVENTURE, that, that right there, and I don’t use this word lightly (or use it in general for that matter), is PEAK humor. And what’s this? Very spaced use and references to memes that actually work as jokes in the moment and aren’t recent??? Hi Fi Rush, if you wanted my heart, you just had to ask!

Even if you think you know what you are getting yourself into, Hi Fi Rush always finds ways to surprise you. When you think you got this game nailed and it’s just combat sections between platforming and exploration zones then BAM!, it hits you with a new idea, a new enemy that introduces a new design, a new boss fight that completely changes how you approach combat, a new partner, a new cool moment, spaced perfectly between each other so they don’t grow tiring while close enough to keep you engaged. It never presents you with never seen before ideas, but it always finds ways to create jaw-dropping situations and mix and match concepts to create something that feels new, a sort of ‘’yoink and twist’’, if you will. There’s a never-ending feeling of ‘’wholeness’’ in this game, where everything works incredibly well when looked independently, but also as whole; it’s hard to not notice how much the game’s systems and ideas sip into one another and some things wouldn’t hit as hard if there wasn’t te other, like the music! It sounds good, they are fantastic tunes, but something is missing from them in re-listens, even the licensed ones... it misses the ASS-WHOOPING!

Seeing so many accessibility options calmed me down quite a bit when I started, but after a while, after playing and beginning the fights and the dance of combat... I was getting it! Not because I was good, oh no, my tempo is still very much far from perfect, and yet, I was getting it. The music began to flow through the sounds of fight and diging, the enemies attacking with the music the same you do, hitting the right times as well as dancing, it was a slow dance at first, but by the half-way point, I wasn’t going along the music, it felt as if I was making it through fighting alone. The new moves you get, the special attacks and interactions of your partners (which also make for some extremely fun platforming challenges) and upgrades nudge little by little, they compel you to be more daring, to dance faster, to be more aggressive, to know where to defend, to dodge and parry through your riffs and hits. Failing is part of the process in a way, it’s still really hard to get a perfect or even high rhythm score at first, and yet it’s fun, it made me want to keep trying, to be a rockstar.

It’s like a story or battle you’d imagine while listening to an intense rock song, only made into a 10-hour game full dream-like joy, and even beyond that thanks to the meaty post-game and incredibly fun side modes. An adventure with so many things to love that I even at this point in the review I wonder if was truly able to express them fully, Hi Fi Rus is a simple game in theory, but in practice is a wonderful, beautiful and funny odyssey, always hopeful and excited to keep going even when facing the clear dangers of such a conglomerate, always finding ways to surprise, to be welcoming, to make you feel like you got rhythm indeed. I know that many couldn't get into it even with the extra help, and I totally get it, it’s still a game that might reject you simply because it’s combat system is not fun or doesn’t click, that makes sense and I’m happy you at least gave it a go, but if you still haven’t, I implore you to give it a try, and even if you don’t jam with its battle system, who knows, you might find something else to adore about it...

Moral of the story? Finances are cringe, lesbians always win, Deemon can’t parry and 808 is best cat, that adorable (goof)ball is so precious...