Pikmin is a fascinating game. You have three different kinds of little guys, who act identically but can each do unique things, and with them you must collect items in large, open levels. This seems simple but it is extremely effective: thanks to the day/night cycle and your limited amount of days to win, you can never afford to waste any time, but you can also never afford to rush: even a single mistake can lose you dozens of Pikmin and a whole lot of progress. This is stressful, but it does end up doing a great job at getting you to feel a sense of urgency. Pikmin never actually asks too much of you, but it incessantly demands your full effort anyways. It's no surprise that the newest game makes a point to focus on the concept of "dandori", essentially the ability to effectively execute the tasks you're given: that need to play well, to minmax every day, to multitask, to play well, is etched into every single one of Pikmin's mechanics with a rare degree of effectiveness.

What really gets me to love Pikmin though is how well those mechanics mesh with the world and themes of the game. There's an underlying somberness to much of the experience: Olimar's logs are relatively light-hearted most of the time, but they're still the words of a man who understands he may end up dying in this odd world without ever seeing his family again, and at the same time he still has a lot of appreciation and interest in its mysteries. This sort of... uneasy awe is at the center of all of Pikmin's main locations; it's like a memory of a good vacation, or a semi-lucid dream, as much as you might want to, you understand you can never stay there. There's an inherent duality to the experience, both thematical and mechanical, and it leads to an ambiguous, ethereal feel.

I could go on longer- I could talk about the sense of a real, breathing ecosystem in each of the levels, about how the real main challenge of every level is the balancing act of prioritization of tasks and navigation of the level, rather than the tasks themselves in a vacuum, or about the fact that the Pikmin are just autonomous enough to make their very existence an interesting moral quandary, but maybe I've already looked too far into the Nintendo game where you chuck armies of cute little critters at goofy-looking enemies. Still, I do feel that it is one of the rare Nintendo games with a strong thematic core- Super Metroid, Majora's Mask, Metroid Prime, maybe a few others, and this one. It's no surprise that just as they all are among my favorites, so is Pikmin now, too.

I struggled to get into Soul Reaver initially. I wouldn't say I was wrong to, either. There's a lot of issues, and most stay for all of the game. The combat isn't terrible in theory but since you're almost always fighting vampires, who are immortal, you will have to pick them up and throw them into something that kills them (water, fire, spikes, etc), which is sluggish, unresponsive and very difficult to do while their friend is clawing your face in. There's some ways to mitigate that, such as remaining at full health to use the Soul Reaver or just bringing a spear into the fight, but they aren't always reliable, and overall the gimmick ends up making basically all fights a drag whenever it isn't just negated by one of the above.

Really though, I could get past that. I could also get past the block puzzles, which I honestly ended up enjoying a bit, and the platforming, which kinda sucked but I had save states so who cares. I was mostly confused by the exploration, and I think fairly so. Soul Reaver is an impressively open-ended game, and while you're always given vague directions on what to do next, they're difficult to interpret: the world is big, teleport points are infrequent and most damningly there is no map, which means I really barely had any idea where I was going for most of it. There were even whole completely optional areas, which while extremely impressive kept confusing me even more because I kept wandering around them without realizing that they weren't where I was supposed to be. Eventually, though, Soul Reaver began to click. The puzzles and exploration of the dungeons all fell into place, the bosses, while of mixed quality, were all at least interesting, and I started to get a hang of the game's structure. I'd say that the latter half of the game was definitely the most fun I had with it, overall.

That initial reaction, I think, is what most players will have, and that's a shame because under that layer of poor communication and confusion lack of direction lays a rather well-made 3D Metroidvania, not something you'd see often in this generation, or the next, really. Raziel constantly acquires new powers and the world expands as a result, which is quite great because every level's different atmosphere is absolutely Soul Reaver's greatest strength. The adaptive music (absent from the PC version, for some reason) is extremely well-realized, shifting between different instruments and vibes when Raziel enters a fight or switches to and from the spirit world. Unfortunately, exploration is somewhat discouraged by the awful combat and a complete lack of a map (I can make do without one in games with simple or extremely memorable layouts, but Soul Reaver doesn't really fit either description), which meant that I still mostly just made a beeline to the end, with the occasional help of a guide.

The story is perhaps a bit in the background compared to Blood Omen, unfortunately there isn't as much dialogue, and Raziel doesn't do the Kain thing of commenting at length about every single location he enters and ability he gets (which I loved), but I think he's still a great protagonist, maybe not quite as charismatic but very very fascinating, and I loved it every time he did speak. The final confrontation between him and Kain is great, but without getting into spoilers, I have to admit that the story doesn't really ever feel like it's... getting anywhere? Blood Omen had one hell of a climax, a pretty drawn-out one too. Soul Reaver just ends, and with a cliffhanger at that. Still, I had a good time. I would say that it's probably not worth it to play this game if you're not interested in the LoK series as a whole, which I am, but personally, I had a pretty good time, and am definitely looking forward to playing the next game, Soul Reaver 2.

Absolutely batshit insane ending and game overall. Reducing it as only having a mind-blowing ending is actually not very accurate : the game keeps hitting and punching you in the face with insane situations every chapter, and several times for each. Top it off with an awesome soundtrack full of personality, art and sprites with very apparent improvement in comparison to the previous entries, and even though the cast is frequently considered inferior to SDR2's, it remains absolutely unique, and captures the core feeling of Danganronpa as much as possible. I also found that the characters functionned much more as literal representations of the game's themes (main example being the very obvious Kokichi) than their predecesors, which could have easily made them feel liveless or uninteresting on the long run, and yet. It doesn't. Kodaka (and the DR team) is a complete madlad.